Literature’s unending charm and challenge:
“I can lift the huge universe.”
Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature School on Blog
Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid with Ms Melly C Tenorio
738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 Evening Class, Monday to Friday
Postwar to Cyber Age Transition
Our principal, Mr. Sebastian
Ruelos, visited our classroom and wrote on the board, I can lift the huge universe, and asked us, “What does this mean. Anyone?”
Silence fell in our
brick walled classroom which still bore the scars of war. No one dared to
recite. There was total silence like anticipating another air raid. But the war was already over. It was already peace time.
“This is what you will
face in life.” He continued, this time in our dialect - Ilokano. We were about
to graduate in elementary in a small town, San Vicente, west of Vigan. War had
taught us survival in the midst of danger and uncertainty. It erased much of the
joy of childhood, and instead tempered us early to take over the role of adults.
Well known Filipino writers: Sedfrey Ordoñez, Ophelia Dimalanta,
Sankore , Larry Francisco and Jose Garcia Villa
When one is focused on responsibility
and meeting daily needs, unsure of what lies beyond, dreams are just wishes and prayers like passing
wind. When fear has numbed the mind to learn, how can it go beyond the three Rs
of education - the fundamentals of literacy?
That was 60 years ago.
This time I asked my
students in the university to interpret the same statement. It was the opposite
of silence that filled our air-conditioned room. Atlas! came a ready answer - the mythical figure holding the sky from
falling. Discussion proceeded as my
students consulted their electronic notebooks, laptops, tablets, smart phones
and i-Pods, and came up with different versions of “lifting the huge universe”
through cyberspace. It was like picking up fragments of information from the
sky, so to speak. But how can knowledge condense into philosophy from fleeting
cirrus and stratus clouds? Short cut to knowledge seldom leads to wisdom.
These contrasting
scenarios and the years that separate them raise questions presenting
themselves into a thesis. Indeed it is.
These questions have
been raised before. They are traced as
far back as Aristotle advising the young Alexander the Great, to establish
peace soon after winning a war. To Washington Irving’s Rip van Winkle who slept for twenty long years and found himself a
stranger in his own village. To the Charles Dickens’ story of Oliver Twist, an
orphan who at the end found his lineage to a rich family. To a boy hero who
plugged a hole in the dike with his arm and saved Holland from deluge. To Tarzan who inspired adventure in children and
kindness to animals. To sages on the question of who is more civilized – the
primitive or the educated, in The Gods
Must be Crazy. To Lola Basyang’s
melodrama, Walang Sugat, played on
the town’ entablado during fiesta.
I remember Camilo
Osias’s books for school children, which are rich in lessons for growing up,
but never moralistic in approach. It has the touch of Aesop, Grimm Brothers,
Hans Anderson, and our own folklore. One story is about a Golden Lion.
Impatient of getting a gold coin each day, a greedy boy inserted his hand into
the lion’s mouth to scoop all the coins like forcing a slot machine to release
the jackpot’s prize. Poor boy, the lion never let go his arm. It has the same
theme as Aesop’s goose that lays golden
eggs.
We kids in our time imagined
the legendary Angalo moved mountains. It is no different from Superman, Lam-ang,
Achilles and Beowolf. They reside in
fantasy and live forever in children.
We also loved to go into
the bottom of the sea, or into a deep crevice below the earth, or to go around
the world in eighty days, for the love of adventure. Thanks to Jules Verne. And lo!
Science and technology has succeeded in turning fiction into reality. They made us grow into real men.
And for girls, Heidi, the orphan in Spyri’s novel who did
not only survive ordeal but also help others succeed as well, has lasting
impressions to these girls who someday will raise families of their own. What greater test of love can one find in
Balagtas’ Florante at Laura? Man’s
chilvalry for a woman in Lorna Doone? Or
a mother’s utmost devotion to her children in The Railway Children? Or a
child’s surprise in opening an old forgotten garden locked by painful memory,
bringing forth new life, and rekindling the love of a father and daughter in The Secret Garden?
The Great Books are now on the
Internet
The Great Books of the Western World is
a series of books originally published in the United States by Encyclopedia Britannica in 1952 presented
in a package of 54 volumes. The Great Books of the Western World cover
the categories of
- Fiction
- History
- Poetry
- Natural Science
- Mathematics
- Philosophy
- Politics,
- Religion
- Drama,
- Ethics, and
- Economics
The original editors of
the series chose three criteria for inclusion:
1. a book must be relevant to contemporary issues, not only in its
historical context;
2. it must reward rereading; and
3. it must be a part of "the great ideas," identified by
the editors;
Each year from 1961 to
1998 the editors published The Great
Ideas of Today, an annual update on the applicability of the Great
Books to current issues. With the advent of the Internet and the
proliferation of E-book readers,
many of these texts became available online. Today Encyclopedia Britannica has
phased out the printing of the Encyclopedia proper and has limited the printing
of other publications, giving way to online publication, and the various forms
of presentation on the Internet.
I remember dad’s books
he brought home after finishing his studies at De Paul University in the US during
the Great Depression. One particular book is Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. It was about the French Revolution.
“Be like Jean Valjean, the hero.” He told us, his three children then in our
elementary schooling. It was many years later that we understood him.
Authors Dr Felipe Briana, Dr Abe V Rotor and Dr Kristine Molina-Doria, Philippine Literature Today
Another book is Evangeline or Tale of Acadie by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow written in romantic
hexameter and patterned after Homer’s epics.
Longfellow listened to Nathaniel Hawthorne relate the story. It’s not my
style the latter confessed. So Longfellow re-created the forcible separation and exile of two young lovers
on their wedding day only to see each other again in their very old age. It was
a sweet parting, their torn lives coming back in one piece, but only for a
moment as Gabriel died in the arms of Evangeline.
And the epilogue goes –
“Still
stands the forest primeval; but far away from its shadow,
Side
by side, in the nameless grave, the lovers were sleeping
…
In the heart of a city, they lie, unknown and un-noticed.
Daily
the tides of life go ebbing and flowing…”
That was a long time ago.
Things have greatly changed. Cable TV is bringing into the home whole theaters,
the Internet whole libraries. And with palm-size gadgets, any information is
virtually at fingertip’s access. Why many universities no longer have walls!
And the audience has not
only increased by leaps and bounds; their profile now includes infants to
senior citizens whose longevity is ever increasing. Interestingly as the world
walks on two feet – communication and transportation – people are losing their
cultural identity and original domicile.
One-half of the world’s population of 7.7 billion live in big towns and
cities, and cities are ballooning into metropolises and megalopolises. Ironically
one-half live below the poverty line, while the other half have simply more
than what they need and the control of the world’s resources is virtually at
their disposal.
Literature seems to be
far out. It is one of the uninteresting subjects in school. It is a topic we encounter everyday and yet
at the end ask, “Literature ba yan?” (Is that literature?) Or one distinct from
other disciplines and confined in its own quarters. It is literature, if it
wears a laurel or olive leaf. And written by well-known writers whose authority
is unquestionable.
I have yet to read
Filipino versions of An Inconvenient
Truth by Al Gore, and Thoreau Legacy published
by Penguin Classics that warn of the harmful consequences of global warming. Of
a local treatise between man and nature as in Walden Pond, of the Origin of
Species that broke a the age-old church’s dogma of creation, of Small is Beautiful that warns of
dinosaur syndrome when man’s dream goes beyond control. Of Silent Spring that challenged the excesses of modern agriculture,
chemicals that destroy the very base of production. Of Genetic engineering
which created Dolly the sheep, the gateway to stem cell technology and cloning,
with the human being coming next in line.
Many people are asking
where does literature begin and end. What does it set its boundaries? What is
its stand on issues like pornographic art, euthanasia or mercy killing, same
sex marriage? This prompted me do my own share of research.
Literature and our fast changing world
today
Among the ideas of our fast
changing world are
1. Common
Wealth’s new concept. National interests aren't what they used to be. Our
survival requires global solutions.The defining challenge of the 21st century
will be to face the reality that humanity shares a common fate on a crowded
planet.
2. Runaway world population will reach 8
billion, and will double in 50 years. By 2050 stabilization is
believed to be manageable under a sustainable development system.
3. Geo-engineering
. Messing with Nature caused global warming. Messing with it more might fix it. One solution to global warming is induced
volcanic eruption. (Mt. Pinatubo’s
eruption in 1991 cooled the Planet Earth. Ash and sulfur actually lowered the
atmosphere’s temperature)
4. Aging
gracefully . Forget conventional wisdom; gray-haired societies aren't a
problem. Aging
gracefully means productive retirement
and longer life span. Some 5 billion people in 120 countries will live to 60
years old and over not far from now.
5. Women's
Work. Tapping the female entrepreneurial spirit can pay big dividends. The role of women may soon equal that
of men, and may even surpass them in many fields.
6. Beyond
the Olympics. New games and sports, constant TV coverage of local and global
sporting events, are outshining the Olympic games.
7. Jobs are
the New Assets. A sampling of fast-growing occupations - actuaries,
financial analyst, computer programmer, fitness trainer, biophysicists,
translators, manicurists, marriage counselors, radiologists.
8. Recycling
the Suburbs. Environmentalists will celebrate the demise of sprawling
suburbs, which left national addiction to cars. Infrastructures will be
converted in favor of "green", town centers, public libraries,
museums, sports centers, parks.
9. The
New Calvinism. More moderate evangelicals are exploring cures for doctrinal
drift, offering some assurance to " a lot of young people growing up in
sub-cultures of brokenness, divorce, drugs, sexual temptations, etc."
Church Literature starts with the bible as epic in form and style patterned after Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Author's family and nephew, Msgr Cecilio Rotor, Papal Consul
10. Amortality - "non-moral sensitive" or "neutral morality' -
whatever you may call it, this thinking has revolutionized our attitudes toward
age. There are people who "refuse to grow old," people who wish to be
resurrected from his cryonized corpse.
11. Bio-banks.
Safe deposits - freezers full of tissues for transplants, cryotude for blood
samples, liquid nitrogen storage for sperms and eggs, test-tube baby
laboratories and clinics. Welcome, surrogate motherhood, post-menopausal
technology, in-situ cloning, multiple;e birth technology, and the like.
12. Ecological Intelligence. There are
guidelines now available to judge products on their social and environmental
impact. This is new culture characterized by environment-consciousness,
environment-friendliness. Here life-cycle assessment and clean-up corporate
ecology become an obligation. We are going back - happily and beautifully to a
simple and natural lifestyle.
Friendly TV Programs for Growing Up – A Renaissance
When my grand daughter
was less than one year old I was advised to keep her away from TV because of
the bad reputation of TV to very young children. But I discovered something that convinced her
mom - my daughter, and everyone at home. There is a TV channel (21) that
features Jim Jam Everyday which consists of two dozen children-designed
programs, among them are .
1.
Barney
and Friends, stuff dinosaur come alive to play with kids
2.
Oswald,
the blue octopus (kindness, gentleness)
3.
See
the Sea (oceanography and marine biology)
4.
Fireman
Sam (life of a fireman)
5.
Benjamin’s
Farm (life on the farm)
6.
Bob
the Builder (life of a workman)
7.
Baby
Antonio’s Circus (entertainment)
8.
Heroes
of the City (emergency crew in action)
9.
Nuksu
(Be yourself)
1. Gazoon (life of animals)
The program puts an end
to arrogance, violence, sex, sensationalism, and overbearing format which characterize many programs. has no
interruptions of advertisements and programs that would negate its child-friendly
nature. Episodes may be replayed from time to time, but this is also
advantageous in the learning process. The
richness of TV programs has come a long way with Discovery, National
Geographic, History, and other channels, in an armchair travelogue bringing
into the sala nature, whole novels, history and live shows.
The big challenge to other
channels is do away with violence, real or cartoon, frivolities and
wastefulness, and stories that present ways to live by as good children and
citizens. – without proselytizing unless shown with good examples. Under the
heap of cheap dramas, features, shows, and the like, true literature is
difficult to appreciate. So with the tremendous daily output of social media
and digital photography all the more masks what literature is and should be. Thus requiring a redefinition and continuing education regarding the subject.
Are diaries considered literature? Homilies
and speeches? Office memoranda, legal opinions and court decisions? How about
advertisements?
I was watching State of the Nation of Jessica Soho, and
found out how well researched her topics are. I would say to same with SOCO, Matang Lawin, and similar
programs. I can only guess how many view regularly Discovery, History and
National Geographic. A million copies of
printed literature would be a far cry from the power of the Radio, Television
TV and the Internet whose total audience
at present reaches millions and millions worldwide via satellite and
other networks. The power of media can never be underestimated, for which
reason literature should be able to ride on it as a strong and beautiful
horse.
As a professor I find my
students becoming more and more informed than in our time. They are wired to the world all the time. They carry more subjects than we
did before. The information highway includes inter university library services,
fellowships, student exchange, congress and symposia. Never a dull moment has the
student of today.
Kuwento ni Lolo Abe sa mga bata, Lagro QC
On the part of the
professor, he uses the computer to facilitate his work. Now and then he attends in his home broadcast
programs in some kind of refresher course or simply to keep abreast with
events. Every semester my classes view at least one movie and some
documentaries. In my teaching Humanities and Mass Communication, I have
chosen The Little Prince, The Fourth Wise
Man, Dead Poet Societ, Oliver ; in Mass Communication, Shattered Glass,
Reporters at War, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Count of Monte Cristo, Hunchback of
Notre Dame, for my students to view and critique. This is a method I found
to be effective and to make the subjects more interesting.
Finding
Nemo, The Land Before Time, Babe
to mention a few of the recommended cartoon movies keep our world young. While
literature is tested by timelessness, it is also measured by its success when
young and old share together their time, thoughts and feelings, their dreams
and hopes for a better world and brighter tomorrow.
Through literature we
can lift the huge universe. ~
