THE LOVE OF MAGDALENA JALANDONI

Winton Lou G. Ynion Iloilo

Magdalena Jalandoni was five years old in 1896 when her first love was sentenced to death by firing squad by
the Spanish authorities. The man, who was known as Jose Rizal, was an ophthalmologist who, in his times of
passion, wrote reformist novels that provided an indelible momentum for the Philip-pine Revolution in 1898.
His life has been accentuated by women of different languages. He left Leonor Rivera, his childhood love, when
his family sent him to Europe for further medical studies, only to fall in love with a German dame in the person
of Josephine Bracken. When he visited Japan in 1888, he wrote a woman named O-Sei-San about the equation
of her beauty and that of the blooming sakura. There were other women; some of them were kept in secrecy
along with Jose's indecent encounters while sojourning with other ilustrados who established relationships with
women of European lineage. His looks were ordinary; Filipinos, in fact, felt deceived when he once came home
and packaged himself as a doktor Aleman. But he was gentle and, perhaps, romantic that Magdalena, heiress to
the incredible fortune of Francisca Gonzaga and Gregorio Jalandoni, fell in love with him. Magdalena's father
died when she was two. Her brother Luis was only three months old and her mother was only twenty-three.
After Gregorio's death, the Gonzagas supported the Jalandonis, sending Magdalena to Colegio de San Jose. At
night, she would hear stories from her mother. At one instance, she asked if the happenings and situations in the
narrative were true. Having been told that the story-teller imagined the story, Magdalena resolved to make one.
And the household was amazed that she narrated a story that she originally owned. At ten, she wrote her first
corrido, Padre Juan kag Beata Maria (Father Juan and Mother Maria). At 13, she had four of the same genre.
Manuscripts of these were submitted by her mother to La Editorial in Iloilo City, which published them in 6"x
8" softcover newsprint edition. When Magdalena was sixteen, almost ten years after her first love's death, she
wrote her first novel, Mga Tunoc sang Isa ca Bulac (Thorns of a Flower). It was becoming evident then that she
would be a well-known writer like her Jose. But writing was a male-dominated sphere, so Magdalena was
prohib-ited by her mother from producing more literature. She would write at night and keep her notebooks
under her clothes in her trunk. When she was 18, her mother wanted her to get married. The bothered Francisca
had chosen a prospective husband for her daughter. Magdalena, out of obedience, agreed to marry the man of
honorary stature; but she had one unjust precondition, that he should write a novel within the year. So,
Magdalena remained single, and wrote 37 novels, 5 autobiographies, 8 narrative poems, 6 corridos, 10 plays,
213 lyric poems, 132 short stories, 9 essays, and 10 melodramas. Not over Jose, she transformed into painting
all that was imagined by him in his novels. Along with her dioramas of Filipino life, society, culture and history
are striking canvasses of scenes from Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. From her room, Magdalena could
view the quarters of the Spanish priests ruling the Archdiocese of Jaro. She was so religious that she
ornamented her inherited house with wood statues that she person-ally carved. In present Iloilo, the house,
located at No. 84 Commission Civil Street in Jaro, no longer bears the sophistication of Magdalena's isolated
world. Perhaps even the local government lacked the funds to preserve the grandeur of the history of Jaro. The
Jalandoni house was among the balay na bato styled after European architecture, and was among the mansions
that decorated the vicinity of the bell tower and the Cathedral of St. Elizabeth of Hungary where the statue of
the Nuestra Senora de la Candelaria can be found. On the streets of Jaro, formerly known as Salog, rumbled the
carruajes driven by cocheros. The feast of the Senora or the Lady of Candle has been celebrated ostentatiously
with a reina, a festival queen chosen from among the daughters of the richest and the famous of Ilonggo
families. She is often considered as binukot (literally means "isolated") or family treasure, for her affiliation
with the powerful, usually through marriage, could bring more affluence. Contemporary llonggos continue to
observe the spirituality and essence of the Virgin, believed to have been discovered by a fisherman in the banks
of Iloilo River. It was only a foot high then but was dreadfully heavy until folks decided to bring it to Jaro.
Since then, she has had the habit of disappearing in the early mornings. Stories say that a beautiful lady with
long hair had been seen bathing her child at the artesian well at the plaza. The Candelaria, as it was colloquially
known, called for an extravagant procession of Jaro's material assets, a practice that llonggos were not able to
protract along the onset of inequities in a colonial society. Unwritten, it must be celebrated every 2"d of
February to commemorate the presentation of Jesus at the Temple and the purification of the Blessed Virgin.
Once, perhaps was just imagined, when the wealthy families were broke and cancelled the feast, Great Flood
came. The lineage, wealth, opulent lifestyle, and prominence of affluent personages of Jaro largely contributed
to the glory of Iloilo as the "Queen City of the South." In its streets figured the gem-bathed mansions of the
Lopezes, Montinolas, Ledesmas, and, of course, the Jalandonis. But the heirs could only imitate the arrogance
of colonial models that Jaro lost from the track of development and progress. When she was 75, Magdalena
wrote about this leitmotif of losses and finds in Juanita Cruz, her most mature novel according to scholar Lucile
Hosillos. Conscious of the depreciating affluence of Jaro, she wrote about Juanita who was a binukot of her
family, a treasure kept by her father for the highest bidder who offers the greatest wealth and power. But she fell
in love with a poor choirmaster, Elias. Disin-herited, she disguised herself as Celia de Asis, went to Manila,
found a surrogate family, and became heiress of her foster parents. Juanita was reunited with Elias in the end,
only to discover that he was involved in the revolutionary movement against Spain. He was killed in a
victorious battle, and now, Juanita, the old woman who tells the story, or Magdalena, confronts Elias's
monument at the plaza. On the 70'h anniversary of her first love's death, Magdalena wrote about an undying
love—whether filial, agape, or eros, it was a passion toward a country finding golden meanings out of its
centuries of feasts. From her glass windows, Magdalena might have had internalized, more than ever, her life
role of a binukot, isolated and untouched. In 1978, 80 years after the realization of Jose's dream, Magdalena
died at the age of 87. She remains the reins of Hiligaynon literature. No one knows if she once had dreamt of
herself as a reins for the feast of Candelaria, or if she ever imagined Jose escorting her down the plaza.
Magdalena Gonzaga Jalandoni (1891 in Jaro, Iloilo - 1978 in Jaro) was a Filipino feminist writer. She is now
remembered as one of the most prolific Filipino writers in the Hiligaynon language. Hailing from Western Visayas, her
works are said to have left permanent and significant milestones in Philippine literature.

Born to an affluent land-owning family in the former city of Jaro (Salog), now a present day district of Iloilo City, she
began writing at a young age wherein she already had her poems published at the age of 12. She published her first
novel Ang Mga Tunoc Sang Isa Ca Bulac (The Thorns of a Flower), which was later followed by many novels,
compilations of poems and short stories. Jalandoni only wrote for publication purposes due to the male-dominated society
at the time. Back then, female voices in literature were not taken seriously by the general public. Although her mother
strictly forbade her to take literature seriously, she refused to do so and devoted her life entirely to literature.
In her childhood autobiography Ang Matam-is Kong Pagkabata (My Sweet Childhood), she cites: "I will be forced to
write when I feel that my nose is being assaulted by the scent of flowers, when my sight is filled with the promises of the
sun and when my soul is lifted by winged dreams to the blue heavens."

Her famous poem Ang Guitara (The Guitar) is read in classrooms all over the country today. Literary critics and
historians claim that she has mastered a special talent for poetry and description as well as dramatic evocations of
landscapes and events in her novels and short stories. Her works span from the coming of Malay settlers in the Middle
Ages up to the Spanish and American colonial era as well as the Japanese occupation of World War II, all portraying the
history of Panay and the evolution of the Ilonggo culture. According to Riitta Varitti of the Finnish-Philippine Society in
Helsinki, "Jalandoni was the most productive Philippine writer of all time."

Other famous works include Anabella, Sa Kapaang Sang Inaway (In the Heat of War), Ang Dalaga sa Tindahan (The
Young Woman in the Market) and Ang Kahapon ng Panay (The Past of Panay). Throughout her turbulent and displaced
life, she still managed to publish 36 novels, 122 short stories, 7 novelettes, 7 long plays, 24 short plays and dialogos in
verse complied in two volumes, seven volumes of personally compiled essays including some translations from Spanish
and two autobiographies. She has been displaced from her hometown twice and has survived the Philippine Revolution,
the Filipino-American War and the Japanese Occupation. In 1977, she received the prestigious Republic Cultural
Heritage Award for her literary achievements from the government, about one year before her death. She is now survived
by a few nieces as well as several other close relatives. Despite all this, she still remains relatively unknown up to this day.
Her family's ancestral house still stands as a historical landmark and museum not far from the cathedral of Jaro.

A street at the Cultural Center of the Philippines complex in Pasay City, Philippines is named in her honor.