Rizal in Europe: Portrait of the Traveller as Filipino (Last of two parts)

Erwin S. Fernandez

Thinking of Pasig while touring the Rhine

But before he left for Heidelberg, he was in Paris staying there for seven months under Dr. Louis de Wecker, a famous ophthalmologist and had begun studying German (Guerrero, 1998). The moment he arrived at the Franco-German frontier town of Avricourt, he noticed the change of atmosphere because military men ran the railroad. He made a stop in Strasbourg visiting its famous cathedral and went straight to Heidelberg. Beside his compartment was a first-class seat for Russian royalties who were accorded military honours every time they went down making him conclude that Germany was “a country of great order and subordination” (Rizal, 1977, p. 262).  He would stay in Heidelberg, an old university town until August 9, 1886 when he would make a tour of Germany through the Rhine valley.

The train arrived in Mannheim affording him visits to Schlossgarten of which he compared it to the Retiro in Madrid, the Ludwigshafen and the Jesuitenkirche, a beautiful baroque church. Changing trains at Dornberg Gross-Gerau, he arrived at the Central Bahnhof in Mainz. Staying in a first-class hotel, he visited public squares where he saw the statues of Gutenberg and Schiller before leaving Mainz aboard a little steamer the following day. The Rhine river reminded him of the Pasig River, factories on the banks, of Mandaloyon while Beibrich that of San Miguel with its mansions and gardens. “Were it not for the beautiful towns and extensive plantations on these banks, the Pasig would have been superior to them” (Ibid., p. 105).

He got off at Bindesheim, rode a train to Niederwald and then took a steamer in Rudesheim passing the rock of Lorelei, which to him was the Malapad-na-bato, the ruined castles, Coblenz, Neuwied and disembarked in Bonn. In Bonn, he took the train for Cologne in the morning of August 11. From there he saw the Kaiser Glocke, the cathedral, and the Museum of Fine Arts. He left the city aboard a train to Bonn and from there boarded an ugly boat arriving at Coblenz at night. The following morning he toured the city visiting a chapel, the post office, a fortress and a house of the Order of Knights Templars. From Coblenz, he took a steamer getting to the city of Bingen. Aboard a steamer, he arrived at Mainz to ride again in a steamboat for him to take a trip to Kastel and from there take the train to Frankfurt (Ibid., pp. 106-114).

In Frankfurt, he saw the Staedel Institute, the statue of Goethe, beautiful but “he looks more like a rich banker than a poet,” the zoological park, the opera house, the palace of the stock exchange and a Jewish synagogue (Ibid., p 115). From Frankfurt, the second beautiful city in Germany he had seen, he went to Leipzig by train carefully noting the towns and cities he was passing through and finally arriving on August 15.

Staying for two months in Leipzig, he found the food and the lodging there cheaper than anywhere else in Europe. He would meet Dr. Hans Meyer, author and anthropologist; visit two largest breweries in Germany; go to Halle to visit its university and visit Dresden. In Dresden, he visited the picture gallery rich in classical but poor in modern paintings, the Japanese Palace, the Grunes Gewolbe where he was dazzled by the glow of the precious stones kept in there, the Zoological, Anthropological and Ethnographic Museum where he finally met its director, Dr. A.B. Meyer and the Museum Johanneum. On November 1, he went to Berlin. Arriving in early afternoon, he took accommodation at the Central Hotel with a good service, large dining room and a reading room with newspapers and “insignificant” books (Ibid., pp. 119-125).

Threat of deportation and the lure of going home

His tour of Europe did not end in Berlin. On May 12, 1887, he began his tour with his friend Maximo Viola before embarking on a trip to Manila. Prior to this, faced with threat of deportation he had to report to the German police who wanted him to show his passport because he was being suspected as a French spy. Departing from Berlin, they went to Dresden, Teschen, Leitmeritz where he finally met Dr. Ferdinand Blumentritt, Prague, Brunn, Vienna, Linz, Salzburg, Munchen (Munich), Nuremberg, Ulm, Stuttgart, Baden, Rheinfall, Schaffhausen; Basel, Bern, Lausanne and Geneva in Switzerland.  In the last country when the train reached its frontiers they parted ways on June 23: Viola to Barcelona and he to Italy. In Italy, he would write to Blumentritt of his enchantment with Rome and aboard the same Djemnah he would bid farewell to his “beloved Europe” (Ibid., pp. 318-320, 324-333).

Nevertheless, he loved the Philippines more than Europe and like what he said to the departing Dutch sisters on June 13, 1882 in Marseille, “no matter how beautiful Europe may be, I want to return to the Philippines” (Ibid., p. 74). Here was Rizal the traveller who had seen the best of Europe but kept his longing for his country because it is truism that ‘there is no place like home.’

Conclusion

What portrait can we draw from this narrative based on the travel diaries and letters Rizal himself wrote? What can Filipinos in the Diaspora learn from Rizal as an exile? More than a hundred years after his death, Rizal’s life demonstrates the qualities of a quintessential and durable hero whom Filipinos should try to understand toward understanding their own selves as Filipinos. Though numerous books and countless articles were written about every aspect of Rizal’s life, there remains something in his life unexplored just like any other great Asian or European. But Rizal is unique among the world’s great men and women; some Filipinos consider him not only as a hero but as a god, a Christ. Regardless of one’s religious or political beliefs, Rizal displays both divine and human qualities. The latter is emphasized here, which is the portrayal of Rizal as a Filipino traveller.

Rizal’s attachment to his homeland, his homesickness, is reflected in the way he would compare Laguna and Pasig with what he saw in Europe. He was never the lackadaisical tourist who would fritter away his time seeing without learning. But like most of his countrymen today scattered all over the world struggling to survive in an environment where foreigners are regarded with suspicion, he had been subjected to police harassment and threatened with deportation. It is not an exaggeration to say that he prefigured, that’s why he’s the first Filipino, what thousands of Filipinos would suffer in foreign lands for the same reason – love of country. Rizal went to Europe to create a nation while Filipinos go abroad to build the nation. But what makes Rizal the traveller Filipino is his longing to go home, to breathe the same air that nourished his soul in the land of his birth, the nation he fathered causing Filipinos today to leave and seek greener pastures hopeful of coming back.

Note

1.      The late National Artist Nick Joaquin translated the poem as “Song of the Wanderer” with the first stanza in the following lines: “Dry leaf that flies at random, till it’s seized by a wind from above: so lives on earth the wanderer, without north, without soul, without country or love!” A literal translation by unknown translator rendered it “The Song of a Traveller” with the following first stanza: “A withered leaf which flies uncertainly, and hurled about by furious hurricanes, so goes the traveller about the world, no guide, no hope, no fatherland, no love.”

References

Guerrero, L. M. (1998). The First Filipino: A Biography of Jose Rizal. Manila: Guerrero

      Publishing.

Quirino, C. (1997). The Great Malayan. Manila: Tahanan Books.

Rizal, J. (1977). Reminiscences and Travels of Jose Rizal (Encarnacion Alzona, Trans.).

Manila: National Historical Institute.

[Editor’s note: Founding director of an independent research center, the Abung na Panagbasa’y Pangasinan (House of Pangasinan Studies), the author is a former UP Diliman faculty member who taught PI 100, a course about the life and works of Rizal. While revising this, he was attending a summer archaeological field work at the University of Illinois at Chicago under a Luce/ACLS grant. He can be reached at win1tree[at]yahoo.com.]

Northern Mirror (Dagupan City) January 6-12, 2010: 5-6.