Waiting for the Storm
Here I am again, trying to squeeze my brain for literary juices: a comprehensive presentation on Rilke and his masterpieces, a scholarly work on A.S. Byatt’s Possession, two short story manuscripts and heaps of readings to devour. Outside, the skies are not so merry.
Tasked to discuss my issues and problems as a specialist in literature makes me feel drained. I have never considered myself a specialist in literature until I realized that I was already doing graduate work on literary studies, writing prose and poetry, reading good books and teaching high school students to appreciate Jose Garcia Villa.
As a student, I know I have to read a lot. I guess one cannot really learn without reading. I come to class every Saturday and participate in the discussions. Afterwards, I go home with a long reading list and this list grows by the week. I really don’t complain about these readings. In fact, I enjoy reading all of them. But because I have to attend to many things in life other than literature, I feel that I don’t give each book or reading the attention it deserves. How I would long for quiet afternoons—sitting on a couch, the smell of coffee inside the room and the companionship of a good book. But this had always been, as with Butch Dalisay, a “postponed pleasure.”
As a writer, I feel threatened with the unspoken mandate to write something new and original because of the canon. The canon somehow tells me what good writing must be. If I follow the canon’s promptings, if I consciously think that I need to conform my writing to certain standards of good writing, I feel that my work will be good and accepted but not really original. But the canon can be dynamic. It can expand its own borders to new, uncharted territories soon. If one wishes to write something original, one must not only be daring but brave enough to explore the unfamiliar, dark territories of writing and there wait for countless storms and ages before the light of the canon can reach that territory.
But this is all ambitious rambling when in fact I have not yet written anything substantial to attract the canon-makers.
I also feel that I am not a credible “window” to showcase the Filipino culture to the world. I have too much Western influence and not enough depth on Philippine Literature and Filipino classics. I feel an aversion to speak of the disheartening political and economic situation in this country. Maybe because I don’t have a clear grasp of the whole picture. Maybe because I feel that there are other things to talk about, and that does not make you less of a Filipino. Maybe because I feel that as a writer, I need to devote myself to the universal issues of human existence and Nature as a whole, not fleeting circumstantial problems. Or maybe I have yet to find what is universal in all of this?
These are some of my concerns today, as a budding “specialist in literature.” David Damrosch, in his essay “What is Literature?” discusses the general problems in the literary world. These problems are indeed present and are worthy to be brought out in the open. And yet, this is still grand talk to me. Not that I do not realize how classics are treated nowadays, or how the canon evolves, or how modern masterpieces thrive, or how translations can be both beneficial and harmful or how a certain culture can impose its dominance over all the others. These are grand talk to me, because I know I have my own concerns to deal with to call myself worthy to stand among the literary greats. I know I need to work with greater intensity, despite my own petty troubles. I know I have to read diligently. I realize I need to start scribbling down lines for my short stories. I see the need to breathe the fresh air and polish my verses. Damrosch talks about a storm that looms over the skies of literature. I do not wish to find myself right in the eye of this storm, unprepared like a twig on the ground.
