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ALBERTO S. FLORENTINO
In The Philippine-Literature-In-English Canon
ALBERTO FLORENTINO IN THE CANON FOR PHILIPPINE LITERATURE IN ENGLISH
ALBERTO FLORENTINO & (HIS) THE WORLD IS AN APPLE IN PHILIPPINE LITERARY CANON"When I wrote 'The World Is an Apple' in '53, I didn't know 'canon' or 'cannon' from 'canyon'."
---A. FLORENTINO (age 69, NY 8/15/00)ALBERTO FLORENTINO in
Shortlist of Top 5 WRITERS Novelists: NVM Gonzalez, 36 pts.
Playwrights: ALBERTO FLORENTINO, 35 pts.
Short Story Writers: NVM Gonzalez, 33 pts.
Poets: Jose Garcia Villa, 33 pts.
Essayists: Salvador P. Lopez, 29 pts.THE WORLD IS AN APPLE in
Shortlist of Top 5 LITERARY WORKS in their GENRES Plays: THE WORLD IS AN APPLE by FLORENTINO,
20 pts. (tie w/#2)
Literary Criticism: Phil. Lit.: Perpetually Inchoate by
Miguel A. Bernad SJ, 20 pts.
Short Stories: How My Brother Leon Brought Home a
Wife by Manuel E. Arguilla, 18 pts.
Poems: Like the Molave by R. Zulueta da Costa, 18 pts.
Essays: Literature and Society by S.P. Lopez, 19 pts.ALBERTO FLORENTINO in
Shortlist of 10 Top PLAYWRIGHTS: ALBERTO FLORENTINO, 35 pts.
Severino Reyes, 17 pts.
Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero, 16 pts.
Nick Joaquin, 16 pts
Wilfrido D. Nolledo, 15 pts.
Jesus Peralta, 15 pts
Severino Montano, 14 pts.
Aurelio Tolentino, 13 pts.
Rolando Tinio, 11 pts.
Mar Puatu, 9 pts.THE WORLD IS AN APPLE in
Shortlist of 10 Top PLAYS: THE WORLD IS AN APPLE, 20 pts
Paglilitis ni Mang Serapio by Paul Dumol, 16 pts.
Walang Sugat by Severino Reyes, 16 pts.
Solo entre las sombras by Claro M. Recto, 10 pts.
A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino by Nick Joaquin, 9 pts.
New Yorker from Tondo by Marcelino Agana, Jr., 8 pts.
Turn Red the Sea by Wilfredo Nolledo, 7 pts
Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas by Aurelio Tolentino, 6 pts.
Sabina by Severino Montano, 6 pts.
Forever by Wilfredo Ma. Guerrero, 5 pts.(*from a doctoral thesis by Dr. Estrellita Valeros-Gruenberg, De La Salle University, Metro Manila, the Philippines)
BIENVENIDO LUMBERA ON ALBERTO FLORENTINO:
EXPERIMENTS IN CONTEMPORARY THEATER. With the increasing prestige of Tagalog, Philippine drama began to show signs of life again after a dormancy of almost 20 years. In the 1950s, the only theater activity to be noted in Manila consisted of occasional campus presentations of foreign plays in English. Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero continued to write and produce his plays, but the only new talent in English-language drama was Alberto Florentino (1931- ), who turned out one-act plays that at the time seemed anachronistic as literary works in English because of their concern, not with alienation and other literary themes from the West, but with social problems like poverty in the slums. These plays were put together in The World Is an Apple and Other Prize Plays (1959), and their continuing pertinence to Philippine conditions has been demonstrated by the many productions that have been given to these dramatic works. In the 1970s, Florentino has turned to Filipino, having worked as a television playwright and found a mass audience hospitable to the subject matter of his dramas. (p. 45)* * *
Drama in English had to wait until after the Pacific War to turn out a playwright who would brave the tide of aestheticism and dare to be socially conscious. Alberto Florentino wrote about the urban poor and their desperate lives in a society where mobility is possible only if one has wealth and education. His slim volume of one-act plays, The World Is an Apple and Other Prize Plays (1959), was unfashionable when it first camer out but the plays included in it have since proven their durability as images of the urben lower depths of the Philippines. (p.64)
* * *
One might resort to a clichι and describe the effect as crippling. While Phlippine poetry and fiction in English are possible, drama in English is almost not feasible. The reason is obvious: the language is not appropriate for the characters and, therefore, the very medium in which the dramatic impulse is embodied undermines verisimilitude that is absolutely essential in writing that is acted out by the performers. Language carries the values of the society to which it is native. When used in Philippine drama, English to be acceptable as the speech of real people either has to be idiomtic, or bent to simulate the native language of the characters. Used idiomatically English rings false when spoken by a Filipino character. When bent, it can communicate only part of the values of the speaker, and the playwright risks being floridly sophomoric or woefully inarticulate. English plays have been written by Filipinos and are still being written by them. Nevertheless, it is a rare playwright who can create a convincing English substitute for the dialect of his characters. The flatness of the prose that Alberto Florentino uses for his characters from the slums of Tondo is perhaps an attempt to conceal the alien ring of the dialogue.
Unfortunately, Florentinos language fails as a report on the inner life of his characters, thereby nullifying what is gained in disguising the Americanness of the problem. A solution to the problem of language is to ignore the cultural values that localize a plot, and write works that are universal. In works that prescind from the questions of nationality, the characters are symbols or allegorical figures. When a play has such characters, the playwright, to be interesting, has to have something fresh if not profound.
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(From Revaluation 1997: Essays on Philippine Literature, Cinema, & Popular Culture by Bienvenido Lumbera, © 1997, U of Santo Tomas Publishing House, Manila.)
P U B L I S H I N G HIGHLIGHTS
MY ROLE AS PUBLISHER (1959-2000).
I PUBLISHED 21 TITLES BY 6 NATIONAL ARTISTS Jose Garcia Villa, National Artist for Lit. '73 (8 titles)
Nick Joaquin, National Artist for Lit. '76 (8 titles)
Francisco Arcellana, National Artist for Lit. '90 (2 titles
+ 1 forthcoming)
N.V.M. Gonzalez, National Artist for Lit. '97 (1 title)
Edith L. Tiempo, National Artist for Lit. '99 (1 title)
Napoleon V. Abueva, National Artist for Sculpture '76°I PUBLISHED THE FIRST BOOKS OF 15+ AUTHORS
Carlos A. Angeles, A Stun of Jewels (poems)
Francisco Arcellana, Selected Stories (1 + another title,
15 Stories)
Linda T. Casper, The Transparent Sun (1 + another
title, The Secret Runner; both stories)
Paz Marquez Benitez, Dead Stars (stories)
Edith L. Tiempo, Abide, Joshua (stories)
Casiano T. Calalang, Soft Clay (stories)
Sinai C. Hamada, Tanabata's Wife (stories)
Paz Latorena, Desire (stories)
Narciso G. Reyes, The Stream (stories)
Arturo B. Rotor, Zita (1 + another: selections fr. The
Wound & the Scar [both stories])
Loreto Paras Sulit, Harvest (stories)
Leonidas V. Benesa, Abueva (1 + 2 more: Alcuaz,
Saguil)
Nick Joaquin as essayist, La Naval de Manila (1 +
another: Nick Joauin Revisited [both essays])
Joseph Estrada (Phil. President), ERAPtion
Robert Burdette Sweet (American), A Memory of Fire
(a play + stories)OTHER BOOKS I PUBLISHED
America Is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan; which I
reprinted (in 3000 cps. ca. '82) w/ National Book
Store under a Martial Law Presidential Decree
("Compulsory Licensing or Reprinting").
ERAPtion: How to Speak English Without Really Trial
'94 (attrib. to Pres. Estrada), which I co-edited
with Ben Medina, Jr.; this "book of jokes" sold
280,000+ copies in 4 years before he became
President; now one of the country's bestselling
books since Doctrina Cristiana (1593), second
only to Gaspar de Belen's Pasyon which has been
selling for several centuries. (Illustration by Larry
Alcala, Roddy Ragodon, Hugo Yonzon, Noel
Rosales; book design by Dani Sibayan; cover
design by Larry Alcala)
Emma Blair & James Robertson's Philippine Islands
(1593-1898; © 1905) which I recommended to
National Book Store (Ben Ramos) for second
reprinting; the monumental 55-volume
encyclopedic compendium of historical
documents pertains to the Philippines up to 1898.TITLES I ALMOST PUBLISHED
N.V.M. Gonzalez' Winds of April, one of the winners
in the first Commonwealth Literary Awards ('41)
for the novel, was in the press (in blueprint stage)
when I stopped publishing to go to the US in '83.
Don't Sing Love Songs, You'll Wake My Mother by
Wilfrido D. Nolledo; this would have been
Nolledo's first book (a collection of 14 short stories
"designed as a sonnet" of 14 lines); the type was
melted because of a disagreement over the
typesize of the text; Nolledo's first book, But for
the Lovers (Dutton), came out '70.
Pacita Pestaρo: Selected Stories. She would have been
in the 1st 10 peso book titles. She didn't have
copies of her works but gave me the sources. She
paid for my copying expenses & took over. She
wanted to publish it on her own.
Virgie Moreno: Glass Altars & Other Plays. Her peso
book was in blueprint stage. When she saw how
the peso books looked (nothing like Larry
Francia's handcrafted binding & book design),
she pulled out. Her next book was 13 poems in an
edition of 13 copies for only 13 readers, read at a
soiree in English, French tr., etc.
Jesus Q. Cruz: Selected Stories. He would have been
the first young writer to join the company of
Villa, Joaquin, Arcellana, Angeles. He said he
wasn't ready.
Estrella Alfon: Prize-winning Plays. Her MS was
ready for the press but she was not.
H.R. Ocampo: Short Stories. This painter (future NA
for Visual Arts '91) promised me the MS of his
proletariat stories, but it was lost when he gave it
to Kerima Polotan for an intro.NATIONAL ARTISTS I MISSED PUBLISHING
I would have loved to have published persons who have been made National Artists for Literature, but for the following reasons:
LEVI CELERIO (Literature/Music '97). He was
composing SONGS.
CARLOS QUIRINO (Historical Literature '97), he was
writing HISTORY.
CARLOS P. ROMULO (Literature '82), he was
MAKING history.
ROLANDO S. TINIO (Literature/Theater '97). He was
doing THEATER.
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