TASK 4 - PAGE 11 [1.

1] (BSA 1C_TRIXY BUSTAMANTE)

1.1 Based on the poem of Jose Rizal, give your analysis of this poem and whether you
believe or not that Rizal wrote it. Justify you answer.

Apart from his two famous novels, Rizal wrote a variety of other works throughout his
life. He was always writing letters to friends and family, personal memoirs, and essays for
magazines. Although much of Rizal's original writing has been preserved, it appears that he
never saved a copy of this now-famous poem or even bothered to mention it in an essay during
his lifetime. So, he had nothing to do with the poem. Furthermore, there are numerous clues in
the poem itself. The language, for example, is too advanced even for an eight-year-old prodigy
like Jose Rizal. Some details point to 20th-century authorship, even though the poem was
allegedly written in 1869. The use of the word kalayaan [freedom], which appears twice in the
poem, is crucial for me. Kalayaan was not a common word in 1869, and there is unquestioned
evidence that Jose Rizal did not learn it until he was 25 years old. We know this because of a
letter he wrote in 1886 to his brother Paciano. Jose had written a Tagalog translation of Friedrich
Schiller's German play Wilhelm Tell, which he wanted Paciano to read. He explained that some
of the concepts in the play were difficult for him to translate:

“My Dear Brother,

There I’m sending you at last the translation of Wilhelm Tell by Schiller… I lacked many
words, for example, for the word Freiheit or liberty. The Tagalog word kaligtasan cannot
be used, because this means that formerly he was in prison, slavery, etc. I found in the
translation of Amor Patrio  the noun malayà, kalayahan that Marcelo del Pilar uses. In the
only Tagalog book, I have – Florante  – I don’t find an equivalent noun.”

Rizal had never heard the term kalayaan until he came across it in Marcelo H. del Pilar's Pag-ibig
sa Tinubuang Lupa [Love for the Native Land], which was his Tagalog translation of Rizal's
Spanish essay, Amor Patrio. Naturally, if Rizal didn't know the word kalayaan when he was 25,
he couldn't have written a poem that appeared twice when he was only eight years old.