Last Words

Of a Revolutionary

Translating And

Interpreting Mi Ultimo Adios

Bob Couttie

Anyone who has taken an interest in Philippine history knows the story of Jose Rizal’s death poem,

known today as Mi Ultimo Adios. The original bears no title or date or even Rizal’s signature,

which are minor mysteries in themselves, and was written sometime before the evening of

December 29 when he gave it to his sister hidden inside an oil heater he’d used for his food with the

whispered words in English or Visayan, depending on the source “There’s something inside”.

Within days of his execution, Rizal’s poem, his last words, had been copied and were being passed

around a country in the throes of revolution. We do not know whether its words inspired the

revolutionaries but his words can read as a mandate to fight.

But was such a subterfuge, the smuggling out of the poem, really necessary? After all, Rizal had

spent his last days writing letters to friends like Ferdinand Blumentritt in which he protested his

innocence so why smuggle out a poem that, on the surface, is merely an affectionate farewell to his

country with a sideswipe at the friars? True, the friars might have wanted to suppress it, but if Rizal

had thoroughly repudiated revolution then the Spanish authorities had little to fear. Or did they?

During discussions on the RP-Rizal Yahoo group about various translations of Mi Ultimo Adios I

talked of a particularly horrible English version and was forced to go back to the Spanish original to

check on a term I wanted to use as an example. As I re-read the poem, even though my Spanish is at

best rudimentary, it seemed to me that at least some words in the original had layers of meaning that

disappeared in translation.

Rizal was an extremely nuanced writer. He chose his words and their presentation with precision.

Words are containers for a multiplicity of meanings, some of which may not necessarily transfer

directly to another word in another language.

As I checked the Spanish against the English it seemed that there was another, almost silent song

running underneath it. One that Rizal hoped would reach the right ears.

Is there a secret message in Mi Ultimo Adios? Is there ‘something inside’?

I shall not attempt to translate the poem into a poem but to explore the original Spanish text verse

by verse.

I shall not attempt to translate the poem into a poem but to explore the original Spanish text verse

by verse.

Verse 1

¡Adiós, Patria adorada, región del sol querida,

Perla del mar de oriente, nuestro perdido Edén!

A darte voy alegre la triste mustia vida,

Y fuera más brillante, más fresca, más florida,

También por ti la diera, la diera por tu bien.

The Derbyshire translation, the earliest but not necessarily, the most accurate has it:

Farewell, dear Fatherland, clime of the sun caress’d

Pearl of the Orient seas, our Eden lost!,

Gladly now I go to give thee this faded life’s best,

And were it brighter, fresher, or more blest

Still would I give it thee, nor count the cost (Derbyshire)

The term ‘Fatherland’ is less popular today, bearing as it does association with the Nazis of WW2

but ‘motherland’, as some translations indeed have it, is more correct because ‘Patria’ is a feminine

noun. Some translations use ‘country’ which, while not incorrect does not have the overtones of

Patria.

Patria here is a holistic term involving more than physical location and borders, it is everything

within it that makes the nation and identifies its people and its values, all those things which are

seen as unique to it. Patria is the mother-entity which bore us, gave us birth and nurtured and nursed

us into being and to which we owe love and loyalty as we do our own mothers and our adoration,

which goes beyond love.

“región del sol querida”, introduces the male principle, the Sun, which sustains and loves the female

principle, the Patria. Patria is the Sun’s beloved, its ‘querida’. This un can also be read as liwanag,

the enlightenment that leads to redemption and liberty.

Note the singularity of Patria and región. This Patria is not a mere aggregation of people and places

but a single, unified whole inherently deserving our love and loyalty.

“Perla del mar de oriente, nuestro perdido Edén!” translates easily enough: “Pearl of the Oriente

(Eastern) Sea, our lost Eden!” A pearl has beauty and worth but it remains hidden and inaccessible

within its shell until we make the effort to seek it out, we must struggle to find it.

The lost Eden harks back to Rizal’s vision of the untainted pre-Hispanic Philippines, an imaginary

time of purity and innocence. Yet there is more: in the biblical story, the serpent persuades Eve to

surrender her innocence and she then persuades Adam to surrender his and as a result God expels

them from the Garden of Eden. The Serpent and Eve echo the famous Blood Compact of Sikatuna

and a variety of treaties and alliances through which the Spanish ‘seduced’ the Filipinos and the

Filipinos surrendered their innocence and thereby lost their Eden.

Thus, the pearl, the thing of beauty and worth, the Eden, is shuttered and inaccessible within its

shell and we must struggle to find the pearl and make it ours.

“A darte voy alegre la triste mustia vida,” here I have to proceed cautiously. The readings I have for

this line differ significantly from virtually every other translation: “I will give you happiness in your

sad life” rather than “Gladly now I go to give thee this faded life’s best” in the Derbyshire

translation but most others seem to follow a similar line. Rizal now introduces himself as an actor in

the poem, one who is offering happiness to the Patria’s sad life.

The penultimate line – “Y fuera más brillante, más fresca, más florida,” – is translated in

Derbyshire, and in sense elsewhere, as “And were it brighter, fresher, or more blest…” Yet the

Spanish has the clear sense of “Outside, it is brighter, fresher, more flowery (or, to coin a word

perhaps, flower-ful)”. This reading places Rizal in his location: a dark prison cell away from the

brightness, freshness and the flowers. It also places the reader on the outside of the cell, as if to say

‘look around you, this is what this I about’.

In the final line of the verse, Rizal, having introduced himself and his location and located the

reader on the outside, now addresses the reader directly as an individual – “También por ti la diera,

la diera por tu bien” – “Also for you I gave it, I gave to for your good”. He has changed focus from

the whole of the Patria to the single individual reader, for whom he is also giving his life. Rizal is

not seeking sympathy or laying a guilt-trip on the reader (i.e. I gave for your sake), but emphasizing

that it is for the reader’s good, something that the reader should learn from and benefit from.

Verse II

En campos de batalla, luchando con delirio,

Otros te dan sus vidas sin dudas, sin pesar;

El sitio nada importa, ciprés, laurel o lirio,

Cadalso o campo abierto, combate o cruel martirio,

Lo mismo es si lo piden la patria y el hogar.

On the field of battle, ‘mid the frenzy of fight,

Others have given their lives, without doubt or heed;

The place matters not—cypress or laurel or lily white

Scaffold or open plain, combat or martyrdom’s plight,

‘Tis ever the same, to serve our home and country’s need. (Derbyshire)

Verse 1 left us with Rizal addressing the reader/Patria from his prison cell and a natural order

would have been to follow with Verse 3 as he is taken to his execution to be followed by what is

now verse 2. Here, however, he leaps outwards with a broadbrush to encompass past and current

struggles rather than bringing focus on his own sacrifice then opening out to include the sacrifice of

others. Why?

What Rizal is doing is to give us the foundation to understand the imagery of the third verse and

place his death in the context of the ongoing struggle for national liberation. In Verse 1 he describes

the Patria he and others are fighting for, in Verse 3 he defines who is being fought against. In Verse

2 he tells us that it doesn’t matter how one struggles, that all struggles, all deaths, are worth it if it is

for the good of the country, the nation, the Patria to release that hidden pearl of the Orient from its

shell.

This verse also shows that Constantino is in error when he assumes that in repudiating

Bonifacio’s uprising Rizal is repudiating the massa who were fighting for liberty. Quite the

opposite, Rizal honors them and includes them in the struggle.

While the Derbyshire translation and others generally translate the meaning of the verse correctly

it nevertheless raises questions, in particular the use of ‘delirio’ and the imagery of “ciprés, laurel o

lirio”.

Rizal uses ‘delirio’ in the first line, which Derbyshire translate as ‘frenzy’ while others have

preserved the word, i.e. “deliriously fighting”. It seems a strange word to use, bearing as is does,

negative psychiatric overtones of confusion and madness. While it can also mean a frenzied

excitement, surely Rizal could have used another Spanish word with a more positive feel than

delirium?

Delirium is a condition of the mind and Rizal was familiar with the emerging medical specialty

of psychiatry. Indeed, he wrote a treatise on the mangkukulam and psychologically induced

illnesses. In his era it was popularly believed that such conditions were due to bewitchment or

possession by spirits, a belief not entirely eradicated today, and delirium would have been seen as a

condition of bewitchment or possession by an outside force.

Familiar phrases such as ‘deliriously happy’ present a more positive feel but retain the sense of a

disconnection of rational thought. It is, perhaps, this usage that Rizal intends but may not be the

only intention. As his manifesto, and data for his defense, reveal, there were many fighting in the

belief, falsely promoted by Bonifacio, that they had his explicit support. There was, therefore, a

disconnect between the reality and their belief, even so, in Rizal’s poem, they were sacrificing for

the patria.

The first line references those who were fighting at the time Rizal wrote the poem. The second

line, ‘Otros te dan sus vidas sin dudas, sin pesar” encompasses those who have, in various ways,

selflessly sacrificed their lives in the past. Together, these lines link Rizal’s future sacrifice with the

sacrifice of the revolutionaries then ongoing and the sacrifices of the past.

Now Rizal challenges us: “El sitio nada importa, ciprés, laurel o lirio,”. The place is not

important, he tells us, then gives what seem to be symbols of three places that could mean forest,

bush and garden, yet the Cypress is not a particularly Filipino image, laurel, or Bay, is a common

herb in cooking, and the lily is usually thought of as a cultivated garden plant. Why not balete,

banahaw or Sampaguita?

In mythology, the cypress is associated with Hades, the god of the underworld who, along with

others, overthrew the Titans who ruled the universe just as Filipinos were seeking to overthrow the

rulers of the Philippines. Rizal was also familiar with Jewish writings, indeed he learnt Hebrew so

that he could read them in the original language and may well have been aware of the Jewish

concept of an underworld, the place whether the dead were equal. No matter what station or wealth

they attained while living, all must each dirt while awaiting redemption.

Might cypress, then, be a reference to the common man, the tao, the masa, who’s heart and

minds were as much a place of battle as the fields of Luzon?

Laurel is a cooking ingredient but, more than that, wreaths of laurel were awarded by the Greeks

to victors in battles, in sports, in literature, a laurel wreath was the sign of the elite. If cypress

represents the common man, then laurel here represents that other battle space for hearts and minds,

the elite and the ilustrados.

And the lily, I would suggest, refers to women who are also able to struggle and who themselves

are part of the battlespace.

Note that these definitions do not replace the concept of different terrains but are in addition to

them, another layer of meaning. Cypress, Laurel and Lily can also be identified with courage, honor

and purity, all necessary elements for the redemption of the Filipino and the Patria. Again, these are

not mutually excluive identifications and symbols but additional to them.

“Cadalso o campo abierto, combate o cruel martirio,” Derbyshire translates cadalso as ‘scaffold’,

a structure upon which executions are performed. Others have translated it with more literal

correctness as ‘plank’. When someone is to be garroted they are placed astride a plank to with is

attached a back-rest through with a large screw passes which is turned by a large crosspiece to snap

the victims neck. Performed properly it was a swift death and perhaps seen as ‘humane’. The

French guillotine and today’s death by drugs are other examples of the hopeless chase for ‘humane’

executions.

The most famous martyrs were the three priests executed in 1872 following an uprising at the

Cavite arsenal in which it was claimed they were complicit. The three, Gomez, Burgos and Zamora

had worked for the filipinization of the country’s parishes. Burgos was a friend of Rizal and his

brother Paciano and the man whom Rizal credited with opening his eyes and lighting the spark of

nationalism. It is not unreasonable to suggest that Rizal’s reference to ‘cruel martyrdom’ is intended

to remind the reader of the three priests who deaths were the first stepping stone towards the

revolution of 1896.

By the time of Rizal’s execution the garotte had been largely replaced by the firing squad,

possibly because the numbers requiring execution were too great to satisfy with the relatively slow

method of the garotte.

‘campo abierto’ is self explanatory, the open field of battle. Rizal then inverts the sense order in

the last half of the sentence – in combat or cruel martyrdom. Death in battle and death at the hands

of the firing squad or by the garotte were equal worthwhile sacrifices when, as his last line says, it

serves the Patria and her needs.

Rizal sees the struggle for national liberation as one that can be served on the battlefield, through

revolution, or by loving sacrifice for the motherland. It is a struggle in which each person, each

individual, has a role to play, man or woman, peasant and elite. The struggle is a continuum for past

to present, from Gomes, Burgos and Zamora to the 13 Martyrs and Rizal himself.

More than that, this verse is a call to arms, to sacrifice oneself for the Patria, at a time when Rizal

believed that the moment of redemption was at hand, as we shall see in the third verse.

Most importantly, Rizal presents the key to redemption – selfless sacrifice for the Patria.

In verse 1 he has presented the past, verse 2, is the present condition to which the past has led.

Verse 3 deals with the immediate future, at least Rizal’s hope for that future.

Verse 3

Yo muero cuando veo que el cielo se colora

Y al fin anuncia el día tras lóbrego capuz;

si grana necesitas para teñir tu aurora,

Vierte la sangre mía, derrámala en buen hora

Y dórela un reflejo de su naciente luz.

I die just when I see the dawn break,

Through the gloom of night, to herald the day;

And if color is lacking my blood thou shalt take,

Pour’d out at need for thy dear sake,

To dye with its crimson the waking ray. (Derbyshire)

It was line four of this verse that first brought home the inadequacy of most translations. Rizal talks

of his blood being shed “en buen hora”, or, in a literal English translation, at ‘the good hour”.

Derbyshire has this as “Pour’d out at need”, a version by Frank Hilario has it as “pour at such

beneficial hour,” while Victor Elazio has it a “at a good hour”. A version used in the Sound and

Light Presentation in Intramuros has it as ‘in good hour’.

In fact, en buen hora is a term that has equivalents in several Latinate languages, in French it is la

bonne heure, but no real equivalent in English and the literal translation “the good hour” does not

really represent the same meaning. Thus the Derbyshire, Hilario and Elazio translations (The

Intramuros translation is nonsensical) give it the sense of shedding Rizal’s blood at an appropriate

time.

The term refers to early dawn, at, and shortly, after sunrise when the air is fresh and clear and the

day is new, the precise time, in fact, when he was executed. It’s hardly likely that Rizal would be

offering to shed his blood at an opportune moment, as suggested in the translations, if he was

already dead, whatever his belief might be in the afterlife, he has already shed it.

The message here is that our lack of familiarity with Rizal’s language necessarily separates us from

its meaning. This should be a matter of concern. Verse 3, and its various translations demonstrate

why.

Just a verse 2 relates to verse 1 through sacrifice for the redemption of the Patria, verse 3 builds on

verse 2 – for Rizal, he is to die as the moment of redemption is at hand.

Here are three translations from those mentioned earlier:

I die just when I see the dawn break,

Through the gloom of night, to herald the day; (Derbyshire)

I die as I see the sky flushes with color

And announces day at last, after a dark night; (Hilario)

And at last, the day breaks clad in a mournful cape (Elazio)

What Rizal actually writes is:

Yo muero cuando veo que el cielo se colora

Y al fin anuncia el día tras lóbrego capuz;

While Elizio concatenates the first two lines he retains a significant word which he translates as

‘cloak’ but which can also translate as ‘cowl’ – capuz. Hilario wisely retains the reference to colour

which is lost in the Derbyshire translation. Another translation has the phrase “as dawn unfurls its

colours’. The significant word is colora but the most significant image is of dawn.

Dawn appears frequently in Rizal’s writings in the context of liberation. In a letter left with a friend

in Hong Kong to be published after his death he writes: “I shall die blessing my country and

wishing her the dawn of redemption”. Through Padre Florentino in El Filisterismo he says “When

the people rise to this height, God provides the weapon, and the idols fall, the tyrants fall like a

house of cards, and freedom shines in the first dawn.” (My italics).

That Rizal is using the same image reference in the third verse of Mi Ultimo Adios is certainly not

speculation nor over-reading. “I die seeing the dawn colour”, or ‘become coloured’ or “as I see the

colours of the dawn’, are not unreasonable paraphrases into English. The colour of dawn, in this

imagery is red, the colour of blood, the colour of combat and he sees the dawn of freedom as

something imminent.

Other layers of meaning are worth noting. The term ‘colour’ can also refer to a flag. When a ship, or

a regiment, go into battle they ‘raise their colours’, their identifying symbol in combat. Rizal has

already referred to this combat in verse 2.

When we get to “Y al fin anuncia el día tras lóbrego capuz;” Elazio is way off mark except for the

reference to the cape. Here the dawn announces or heralds ‘el dia’ through, or beneath, the cowl of

gloom or darkness. ‘El dia’ is the day of freedom, the dawn of which has just broken. Implicit in

this imagery is the presence of the sun, light, liwanag, against which darkness cannot prevail.

The capuz, cowl or cape, is without question a reference to the friars whom he had criticized, not

always fairly, throughout his writings. Hatred of the friars was far from universal outside the

Tagalog provinces and Rizal had, as the Brits say, a bone to pick with the Dominicans whom he felt

had unfairly evicted the Mercado family, his family, from their property.

Nevertheless, through the 19th century, as Spain lost the power to administer its colonies it came

more and more to depend on the friar orders to impose some form of control. In effect the friars

acted as an autonomous arm of government in a form of symbiosis with the Spanish administration.

It was not always a comfortable relationship since the friars inevitably represented conservative

attitudes that were challenged by Spain’s periodic shift to anti-clerical liberal government.

Whatever liberalizing winds came from the peninsular, however, were well-minimised by the time

they reached the archipelago.

As independent agents of Spain with tremendous moral force in the Philippines the friars stood in

the way of independence. As agents for the conservative mindset they stood in the way of

liberalizing the lot of the Filipino.

One should, however, be wary of accepting these perceptions as representing the actual situation, at

least outside the Tagalog provinces. In the Cordilleras, and elsewhere, the friars became the

protectors of the hillsmen against the depredations of Spanish military personnel, a problem which,

when resolved, usually resulted in the hillsmen requesting the removal of the friars in a cycle of

dialogue that shows the hillsmen knew well how to work the system.

In Samar, where there were no friar lands, the friars led defensive and offensive against slave

raiders with such success that creating an export industry in hemp and coconut oil became viable,

whereupon the friars proceeded to provide the wherewithal to develop such industries for the

progress of the island.

Till, to Rizal it was the gloomy capuz of the friar orders that prevented progress and liberty.

In the third line and fourth line, Rizal offers his blood to the Patria if she needs it more red for the

colours of the day, that she should take it en buen hora, the good hour, the hour of his execution, to

match/reflect/dye the naciente luz.

The naciente luz, returns us to the sun as liwanag, the light that leads to that state of grace implied

by kalayaan, a state of ease, where there are no slaves or tyrants. This is not merely a physically

rising sun but Father Florentino’s first dawn in which the light of freedom shines reflected in Rizal’s

blood.

Verse 4

Mis sueños cuando apenas muchacho adolescente,

Mis sueños cuando joven ya lleno de vigor,

Fueron el verte un día, joya del mar de oriente,

Secos los negros ojos, alta la tersa frente,

Sin ceño, sin arrugas, sin manchas de rubor.

My dreams, when life first opened to me,

My dreams, when the hopes of youth beat high,

Were to see thy lov’d face, O gem of the Orient sea,

From gloom and grief, from care and sorrow free

No blush on thy brow, no tear in thine eye. (Derbyshire)

Rizal now presents us with a flashback to the beginning of his love affair with the Patria. The

Derbyshire translation however, removes some important contextual information. “My dreams

when I was an adolescent boy/My dreams as a vigorous youth” writes Rizal in Spanish. Why does

he specifically mention adolescence? It is a nod towards a man who, probably more than any other,

sparked Rizal’s nationalism, the martyred Fr. Burgos who was executed when Rizal was almost 11

and, therefore, approaching adolescence.

Burgos was a friend of Rizal’s elder brother, Paciano, who infact was living with the priest in 1872,

the year of his execution. It is to Burgos that Rizal refers in Noli Me Tangere as Ibarra passes the

killing field of Bagumbayan: “He thought on the man who had opened the eyes of his intelligence

and made him understand what was good and what was just”.

In a letter to Mariano Ponce in 1889, Rizal traced the emergence of nationalism to the deaths of

Burgos and explains “At the sight of those injustices and cruelties, though still a child, my

imagination awoke, and I swore that I would dedicate myself to avenge one day so many

victims…”

Adolescence, the limbo between childhood and adulthood, is the time of sexual awakening and the

attitudes and relationships of this period often become the templates for those of the rest of our

lives. It was the moment of Rizal’s first crush, on a 14 year old colegiala called Segunda Katigbak

at the still-extant Concordia College. His description of that relationship is revealing.

They were obviously attracted to each other yet, in the Guerro translation of his Memorias he

writes: “I adopted a course of silence, determined that until I should see greater proofs of sympathy

between us, I would not subject myself to her yoke, or tell her that I love her.” Later, in words of

heartbreak he says: “Ended at an early hour, my first love!… My illusions will return, yes, but

indifferent, uncertain, ready for the first betrayal on the path of love”

From then on Rizal shows a reluctance to dive into the pool of love wholeheartedly and his fear of

betrayal survived into his last relationship, with Josephine Bracken.

Of Segunda, Rizal says “I realized that she was the woman who satisfied completely the yearning of

my heart, and I told myself that I had lost her”.

It is legitimate to wonder whether the imagery of the redeemed, honorable Partia with dark eyes and

head held high is an echo of Segunda Katigbak, Rizal’s first love.

In this verse Rizal tells us when and by whom his love for the Patria was ignited, when he began to

dream of Patria with her dark eyes dry and her head held high and proud, without sorrow or shame.

Here we have Rizal’s personification of the Patria as a sorrowing, shamed woman to be redeemed.

Yet where does Patria’s shame come from? She has not, by her actions, shamed herself. The answer

may have its inspiration close to Rizal’s own home: His mother was illegitimate at a time when

social mores held illegitimacy itself to be a cause of shame, a background shared by his heroine,

Maria Clara. Rizal adored his mother yet, like Patria, she was tainted by the circumstances of her

birth, just as the Patria is tainted by the morally illicit complicity between Filipinos and Spaniards.

The Patria’s shame can only be redeemed by Filipinos themselves.

Verse 5

Ensueño de mi vida, mi ardiente vivo anhelo,

¡Salud te grita el alma que pronto va a partir!

¡Salud! Ah, que es hermoso caer por darte vuelo,

Morir por darte vida, morir bajo tu cielo,

Y en tu encantada tierra la eternidad dormir.

Dream of my life, my living and burning desire,

All hail! cries the soul that is now to take flight;

All hail! And sweet it is for thee to expire;

To die for thy sake, that thou mayst aspire;

And sleep in thy bosom eternity’s long night.

In talking of the ‘dream’ of his life and his “living, burning desire/fantasy” Rizal addresses the

Patria of the imminent future, the Patria without sorrow, shame or stain, the Patria of his

imagination, Filipinas as he would wish her to be and, more important, expects her to be for in line

two he welcomes her arrival.

Salud has the sense of mabuhay, cheers, a votre sante, prosit, kampie, a term that is directly

translatable into every language, Asian and Western. Significantly it is a term of distinctively

positive value. Rizal welcomes the coming of the redeemed Patria at the moment his soul is about to

depart as it verse three he refers to the imminent liberation of the country, its dawn of freedom.

His repetition of ‘salud’in the third line is the rousing cheer that greats a triumphal entry into the

arena, the cheer of the crowd to a champion, bringing from the duplication of ‘Mis sueños cuando’,

what was his dream is now a reality.

The sense of ‘it is beautiful to fall so that you can take flight/fly’ suggests that prehaps he expected

his death to inspire the ongoing revolution or otherwise serve to liberate Patria. In flying, Patria, in

the fourth verse becomes the sky, no longer in bondage but free and he is dying beneath her as the

sky.

While Derbyshire uses quite abstract imagery in the last line Rizal gives us a very concrete image of

Patria’s ‘enchanted earth’ (Other translators use this more correct terminology) . Notably he does

not say ‘sacred earth’, perhaps because it would echo too much Christianity, in particular what Rizal

perceived as the debased Christianity practiced in the Philippines. Enchantment also leads us,

perhaps, to those ancient natural forces that surrounded the ancient pre-Hispanic Filipino and who,

as spirits, ruled their daily lives. He rejects on and embraces, or is embraced by the other. At the

same time. Enchantment implies the sense of captivation, enthrallment that Patria inspires. The

earth of the Patria, therefore, has special, magical qualities.

The redemption of the Patria, in Rizal’s eyes was not a long-term objective but imminent, touchable

and achievable.

Verse 6

VI

Si sobre mi sepulcro vieres brotar un día

Entre la espesa yerba sencilla, humilde flor,

Acércala a tus labios y besa al alma mía,

Y sienta yo en mi frente bajo la tumba fría,

De tu ternura el soplo, de tu hálito el calor.

If over my grave some day thou seest grow,

In the grassy sod, a humble flower,

Draw it to thy lips and kiss my soul so,

While I may feel on my brow in the cold tomb below

The touch of thy tenderness, thy breath’s warm power.

Here Rizal has transitioned into his afterlife, or lack of it. In Christian mythology the body remains

in the grave until the day of resurrection and a physical, not metaphysical arising from the grave,

these appear not to be referenced in Rizal’s verse here or elsewhere.

The qualifying ‘Si’ – ‘If’ on the first line is in one sense odd. Since nature is itself an element of the

motherland, the spirit of the land, why should a flower not grow there when it is within the power

for her to provide one? Yet here the flower seems almost accidental.

In days gone by, visitors noted a generosity among Filipinos. If one expressed admiration for, say,

an ornament in a house it was likely to be given to you. Perhaps the small flower represents the

recognition that Rizal undoubtedly sought for he was well aware that he was a historical figure.

Why the thick grass, among which the flower might grow? Outside large, formal cemeteries graves

in the Philippines receive little attention except at All Souls/All Saints when graves are cleaned and

tended and the family of the departed hold a gathering/vigil which, more often than not, includes

direct or indirect conversations with the dead.

Rizal had a clear image of his grave. He asked his family for a simple plot, with the option of a

fence around it, and a cross, that’s all. That is what he describes here. Today, of course, his grave is

what is popularly called the Rizal Monument but should more properly be called the Rizal Tomb

since that is where his remains are buried. Not only were his wishes ignored but even his essence

has been removed from his grave by dubbing it a monument. His wishes, his words, his ‘Rizalness’

have been effaced and removed from consciousness.

In this verse, the image is of an untended grave, perhaps forgotten by his countrymen. At the same

time, the packed grass may also represent the fertility of the motherland, the growth of liberty, those

common tao – the grassroots – who also struggled for the Patria. With the redemption of the Patria

his task is ended and becomes forgotten, as the real flesh and blood Rizal has largely been forgotten.

He asked little of his country. No monuments, no parades, no streets or schools in his name, just a

fond kiss and a warm breathe, a recognition that he existed.

Verse 7

Deja a la luna verme con luz tranquila y suave,

Deja que el alba envíe su resplandor fugaz,

Deja gemir al viento con su murmullo grave,

Y si desciende y posa sobre mi cruz un ave,

Deja que el ave entone su cántico de paz.

Let the moon beam over me soft and serene,

Let the dawn shed over me its radiant flashes,

Let the wind with sad lament over me keen;

And if on my cross a bird should be seen,

Let it trill there its hymn of peace to my ashes.

The moon makes its first appearance here and perhaps with more reason than mere romantic

imagery. The moon is associated with femininity and feminine deity, she shines by the light of the

sun, a male element, yet it is a light that she transforms. Compare earlier verses and the reference to

the ‘(friar’s) cowl of gloom’. No stars or moon can be seen through such a cowl, yet here the moon

shines brightly, the cowl, ie. The friars have gone and the Patria is free to shine her light.

Here also is a repetition of the imagery of the dawn, the dawn of redemption, now shining its light

over his grave. Although he refers to the night, ie., the moon, and the dawn, he does not refer to the

day, perhaps because the day of liberation is already here.

Only the wind, impersonal, will lament over his grave. Again he uses a qualifying ‘si’ – ‘if’ when

writing of the bird that may rest on the cross above him. It does not lament him but sings of peace,

the peace that comes with liberation and the peace with which he rests below.

Verse 8

Deja que el sol, ardiendo, las lluvias evapore

Y al cielo tornen puras, con mi clamor en pos;

Deja que un ser amigo mi fin temprano llore

Y en las serenas tardes cuando por mí alguien ore,

¡Ora también, oh Patria, por mi descanso a Dios!

Let the sun draw the vapors up to the sky,

And heavenward in purity bear my tardy protest;

Let some kind soul o’er my untimely fate sigh

And in the still evening a prayer be lifted on high

From thee, O my country, that in God, I may rest.

Again we have the male principle, the Sun and the female principle, the Earth. The Sun evaporates

the water from the Earth, cleansing it, in doing so the water rises, taking with it Rizal’s last cry,

itself pure and unsullied, part of his spirit.

“Let a friend grieve for my early death” says line three. Here Rizal may be subtly reminding us of

why he died – for the redemption of his country, one could hardly grieve over his earl death without

giving pause to why he died.

The penultimate line reads better as “When someone prays for me in the serene afternoon, which to

a modern reader may mean little. There was only one moment each afternoon when stillness and

serenity ruled at the time of Rizal’s death – at the ringing of the Angelus when prayers were made,

which very devout Catholics still make, to the incarnation of God in Christ. Christ, of course, was

executed in his 30s for the redemption of mankind just as Rizal was executed for the redemption of

his country.

To many Filipinos, Rizal appear as a Christlike figure and it is not far-fetched to suggest that in

these lines, Rizal himself drew the same parallel.

Rizal’s relationship with God, and he certainly believed in a deity, has been subject to much

controversy. From his letters, especially those to his mother, who was much concerned with which

neighbourhood her son would end up in the hereafter, he believed God to be humane and rational, a

reasoning Almighty who would recognize that Rizal’s intentions were good, even if he upset

members of the Catholic church. In other words, he believed he could make peace with God, hence

the last line of this stanza.

Verse 9

Ora por todos cuantos murieron sin ventura,

Por cuantos padecieron tormentos sin igual,

Por nuestras pobres madres que gimen su amargura;

Por huérfanos y viudas, por presos en tortura

Y ora por ti que veas tu redención final.

Pray for all those that hapless have died,

For all who have suffered the unmeasur’d pain;

For our mothers that bitterly their woes have cried,

For widows and orphans, for captives by torture tried,

And then for thyself that redemption thou mayst gain.

Rizal asks the Patria to pray for various groups of the deceased who have died, it is apparent

contextually, in pursuit of the revolution against Spain, leading off with those who have died ‘in

ventura’, probably here best interpreted as those who have died with achieving their goal, or at least

before that goal can be achieved.

The Derbyshire translation uses ‘unmeasur’d pain’ in place of the Spanish ‘tormentos sin igual’ in

line two which is probably inadequate. Torment would include the pain of separation from family

that is a necessary concomitant of the warrior, the pain of the family itself not knowing whether

their loved one is alive or not, the pain of actual injury and disease at a when then, even by

contemporary standards, the available medical care among the warriors was at best rudimentary.

There is also the torment of living in the field. These are not the torments of actual battle, but the

hardships that must be endured.

In the mother-orientated culture of the Filipino male it is not surprising that Rizal gives more time

to mothers than other family members, a whole line for mothers, a third of a line each for orphan

and widows. In the latter case he links them to prisoners being tortured. What we have here is the

pain of entire families who fathers, brothers and sons are fighting, dying, being incarcerated and

tortured. It isn’t only those whose fight that must withstand suffering, but those at home, too.

Lastly, he appeals to the Patria to pray for her own ‘redención final’, her final redemption. Struggle,

whether as a violent revolution or the seeking of liberty by other means, is a process of redemption,

it is only when that process is complete, and the Patria free, that the redemption is ‘final’.

Verse 10

Y cuando en noche oscura se envuelva el cementerio

Y solos sólo muertos queden velando allí,

No turbes su reposo, no turbes el misterio,

Tal vez acordes oigas de cítara o salterio,

Soy yo, querida Patria, yo que te canto a ti.

And when the dark night wraps the graveyard around

With only the dead in their vigil to see,

Break not my repose or the mystery profound,

And perchance thou mayst hear a sad hymn resound;

‘Tis I, O my country, raising a song unto thee.

This verse doesn’t really appear to belong here. It would have been more appropriate one or two

verses earlier, or at least before verse 10. Perhaps it is a sign of hurried composition, something

written without the proper editing that marks a great writer – one French novelist wrote to a friend

an apologized about it’s length ‘I didn’t have time to make it shorter’. I would suggest that the

present verse 9 is out of place and may have been written later that other verse.

Rizal has previously talked about his grave alone and desolate. Now there is a cemetery.

Derbyshire’s line ‘Break not my repose’ is wrong, ‘my’ should be ‘their’. In earlier verses Rizal

used repetition for emphasis – Salud… Salud – Deja…Deja, and here uses it again with “No turbes

su reposos, no tubes el misterio” – do not disturb their repose, no not disturb the mystery”.

With a classical education, Rizal would have been familiar with the derivation of ‘mystery’ from the

Greek ‘mystērion’ in the sense of a divine secret or divine knowledge known only to initiates and

revealed through ritual, it is still used in that sense in the Catholic mass, the Catholic mysteries

being ‘Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ is born again’. Death is a mystery in itself , now

revealed to those in the cemetery.

Derbyshire appears to depart almost entirely from Rizal’s Spanish text in the fourth line, where

Rizal talks of the Patria hearing the note of a psalter or zither, there is no mention of a sad hymn at

all and, indeed, as the final line shows, this is a song sung in praise to Patria so there is no rationale

for sadness.

The choice of the psalter, a guitar-like stringed instrument played with the bare fingers, is

interesting because, apart from being a musical instrument it is also the biblical Book of Psalms. In

the Old Testament English translation the term ‘psalter’ is often used instead of harp, which is more

correct. Unlike the psalter or the zither, the biblical harp does not have a soundbox.

The Psalter, then, has religious connotations. The Patria was Rizal’s religion, her redemption the

object of that religion just as the redemption of man from sin is the object of the Catholic religion.

The last line of Verse three makes this even more clear.

The zither is another stringed instrument, and also confused in the Old Testament with the harp. It

has a squarish, flat soundbox and is plucked with fingers or, in some versions, with a mallet or

plectrum, again it is mentioned in the bible in place of the harp.

In a sense, Rizal is talking of singing a hymn, one of praise to the Patria as is explicit in his last line.

Again, Rizal use repetition for emphasis as in the third line, which is better translated as “It is I,

beloved Patria, it is I who sing the song to you”.

Alone among the dead, then, Rizal praises the Patria as Catholics praise Mary.

Verse 11

Y cuando ya mi tumba de todos olvidada

No tenga cruz ni piedra que marquen su lugar,

Deja que la are el hombre, la esparza con la azada,

Y mis cenizas, antes que vuelvan a la nada,

El polvo de tu alfombra que vayan a formar.

And even my grave is remembered no more,

Unmark’d by never a cross nor a stone,

Let the plow sweep through it, the spade turn it o’er

That my ashes may carpet the earthly floor,

Before into nothingness at last they are blown.

Little clarification is needed here. When his grave and the signs that marked it are long gone he

wants his ashes spread by the plough and the spade to carpet Filipinas, to become one with it, with

his beloved. A second thread here is that the ashes are his physical remains, his thoughts, words and

philosophy are his intellectual remains. The symbolic ashes can also be seen as the remains of

Rizal’s thoughts being spread across Filipinas, to fertilize the new, free country long after he

himself is forgotten.