Book
The Author
The author, Jose Rizal, is a doctor, writer, and key figure within the Philippine nationalist movement. Being deeply disheartened by the discrimination Filipinos faced in their own country (Filipinas Heritage Library, 2011), Rizal pursued further education and learned about the life, culture, governments, and laws in European countries (Nery, 2011). Although he was thousands of miles away from the Philippines, Rizal never forgot the initial purpose of his trip, which was to earn the Filipino people a better quality of life through political reform. Among other Filipinos in Spain, he was deeply involved in the creation of propaganda against Spanish authorities (Filipinas Heritage Library, 2011). In 1896, Rizal was charged and found guilty of treason, sedition, illegally organizing against the government, and was held accountable for those inspired by his written works who acted against the Spanish colonial regime (Craig, 1918, p. 113). After years of being persecuted for his novels, he was eventually executed at 35 years old at the hands of a Spanish firing squad (Chong, 2017, p. 164).
The Title
Noli Me Tangere by Jose Rizal is a novel originally written in Spanish that speaks to the sociopolitical conditions of the Philippines under the Spanish colonial government. Its Latin name translated into Tagalog is, “Huwag Acong Salangin Nino Man” according to Poblete (1909, p. 8). This can be understood as Touch Me Not or more literally, Do Not Touch Me, Anyone. Poblete (1909, p.8) notes how Noli Me Tangere is a colloquial name for a “masamang bukol na nacamamatay na Cancer” or a malignant, deadly, cancerous tumor. Its name alone is so essential to understanding Rizal’s purpose in writing the novel. With the novel’s name and the author’s note at the beginning of the text where he dedicates the Noli to his country, he equates Spanish colonialism within the Philippines to a pain so intense that becomes exacerbated at a touch or a cancer in and of itself (Rizal, 1886/1909, p. 20-21). This alone reveals much about the plot’s premises before even analyzing its synopsis.
The Synopsis
The Noli is set in Spanish colonial-era Philippines as its protagonist, Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra y Magsalin, returns to the Philippines after having spent seven years studying in Europe. Ibarra eventually learns that his father, a wealthy landowner named Don Rafael, had recently passed away in prison. Ibarra learns more from a lieutenant, Señor Guevara, that his father died in prison after being wrongfully accused of heresy and subversion after having accidentally killed a tax collector. With Don Rafael’s power and nonreligious tendencies having earned him enemies within the government and church, the Franciscan friar, Padre Damaso, jumped at the chance of charging him with more groundless crimes, eventually forcing everyone to turn on Rafael and desert him. As Ibarra learns more about the discriminatory nature and growing power of the Catholic friars, he decides to proceed peacefully and focus on what he could do for his people instead. Despite his peaceful disposition, Ibarra is falsely framed and imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. The novel ends with a cliffhanger as Ibarra is pronounced dead in his attempt to escape, deliberately withholding Ibarra’s true fate from its readers. The Noli’s plot is built on and succeeded by its sequel, El Filibusterismo, a couple of years after the first novel’s release. Overall, Rizal brilliantly uses the Noli to do three things. He 1) criticizes the corrupt nature of the Philippines’ Spanish colonial government and the Catholic Church; 2) establishes positive Filipino values; and 3) criticizes his fellow Filipinos’ shortcomings.
The Curator's Copy
For this assignment, I read the E-Book version of the very first Tagalog translation of the novel. This translated version of the Noli by Pascual H. Poblete was made in 1909. Since I had a digitized version of it, I had access to a copy with legible text and was able to enjoy its clear illustrations. For example, I’ve included a marginal illustration of a woman playing a lyre that stood out to me. She dons a peplos and wears a laurel wreath in her hair. At the bottom of the image is a bordered image of a statue with the novel's year of publication, 1909, centred above it.
Throughout the novel, there are also illustrations of certain scenes in the novel. One of the scenes included here is the scene of Señor Guevara and Ibarra discussing his father’s imprisonment and death from the fourth chapter, "IV: Hereje at Filibustero." The illustration is captioned, “—¡Binatà, mag-íng̃at pô cayó! ¡Mag-aral cayó sa inyóng amá!—anáng teniente sa canyá.” In English, this translates to: “‘Ibarra, take care! Learn from your father!’ says the lieutenant to him.” This illustration depicts Guevara advising Ibarra to take heed of his father’s experience. Another notable observation about the book is its use of old Tagalog that bears visible remnants of the Spanish language’s influence on Tagalog. Some examples of this would be the way the illustrations’ captions begin with an inverted exclamation mark or question mark; the various accents and tildes above letters that aren’t used in Tagalog today; and the archaic use of the letter “c” in words like “cayó” and “canyá” which are usually spelled with the letter “k” in modern Tagalog.