“A La Juventud Filipina”, a poem of ten stanzas, written by an eighteen year old Jose Rizal in 1879, won a literary contest held in the Manila Lyceum of Art and Literature. An elite society of literary men and artists conferred on him a feather-shaped silver pen and a diploma. Towards the end of the colonial period, when Rizal was implicated as leader of the revolutionary movement, the same poem was among the evidence of his perceived body of incendiary literature presented at the trial for charges of sedition, rebellion and treason. The trial that began on December 6, 1896, found Rizal guilty as charged, in part because of a stirring stanza he wrote to open this particular poem.
Tema – Crece, oh tímida flor!
¡Alza su tersa frente,
Juventud Filipina, en este día!
¡Luce resplandeciente
Tu rica gallardía,
Bella esperanza de la Patria Mía!
Early in the 20th century, the American translator Charles Derbyshire, rendered the first stanza of ‘To The Philippine Youth’ in these words:
Theme: Rise, o timid flower
Hold high the brow serene,
O youth, where now you stand.
Let the bright sheen
Of your grace be seen.
Fair hope of my fatherland!
Philippine National Artist Nick Joaquin, also made his own English version of the poem, published in 1976:
Theme: Unfold, oh timid flower!
Lift up your radiant brow,
This day, youth of my native strand!
Your abounding talents show
Resplendently and grand
Fair hope of my motherland!
Not deemed puerile at the time it was written, the poem by a prodigious young talent had made a lasting impression with members of the ruling class. So much so that it had to be traced back as a precursor to his later radicalism. Trumped up charges was levelled against Rizal, whose fervent desire was to raise consciousness and bring light to those being discriminated for being ‘Indios’ or natives.
The liberal-minded jury of the literary contest had a roseate view of the then promising ‘ilustrado’ in contrast to the prejudicial and alarmist military court that persecuted him during his last remaining days at age thirty-five. The image of a romantic poet as a young man had coalesced in suspecting minds of the power elite as a burgeoning threat to the status quo. His bold plea to ‘hold high or raise the brow’, was critically viewed as summoning the native youth to emancipate themselves from ignorance and slavish disposition. Alluding to his subsequent writings, particularly the radical novel “El Filibusterismo”, his acerbic tendency during his evolution as a poet, essayist and novelist, conveniently gave the erring Philistines of the regime the justification to implicate him as the prime instigator of a pivotal insurrection.
The theme itself, “crece, o tímida flor”, or rise, o timid flower, had been Rizal’s exhortation to proper education for his people, challenging the young to pursue knowledge and wisdom, to be an equal to any illumined citizen of the civilized world. This was what impressed the Spanish jury of the literary contest. They saw a progressivistic poet in Rizal during his youth, who was urging others to cultivate their minds and undergo an enlightened transformation. He was encouraging them to overcome timidity and lack of courage to be the real hope of the future.
What was lauded by the privileged few as a great achievement for a Jesuit-educated young lad was his poetic brilliance, notwithstanding the tone of nationalistic fervour that would later be pinned against him in 1896 by the frantic military court beleaguered by the spark of revolution.
Rizal’s ‘wokiesm’ so to speak, gestated under the aegis of guardians and mentors, aside from his early exposure to a collection of Greek classics and western literature. His poem revealed a sense of purpose.Though his own writings lie dormant in the pages of history and literature, it is for the ‘woke’ of this generation to breathe new life into his words.
Youth is the real hope of our future. Motherland, fatherland, homeland, or whatever one may wish to call the sacred soil to which Filipinos are born, implores its children to learn from history and challenge the current state of affairs. The bane of timidity should be overcome if the youth endowed with talent and gift of intelligence become the bearer of light. Generations come and go, with the youth of past eras contributing to how society functions today. Have the slaves of yesterday turned reckless tyrants and cowardly brutes today?
In a verse from a Spanish poem dedicated to Rizal during the centenary of his birth in 1961, Emeterio Barcelo succinctly phrased his evocative sentiment in this translated words:
What are victory songs worth,
What matters independence if,
In the midst of so many vices,
They forget your sacrifices,
Crucify the conscience?
In light of the many scandals of corruption and breach of trust in public servants, the youth are faced with a destabilizing series of pestering anomalies which threaten their wellbeing and sabotage their future. It is in these troubling times that a poem from the past can be overlooked, or worse, be dismissed as anachronistic by deaf ears and disillusioned souls. Perhaps a version in Tagalog might flutter some wings of inspiration to wake sensibilities of young minds. Those languishing in limbo might give it a try, retrieving the treasure of Rizal’s timeless musings, to counter today’s dearth of decency and escalating dissoluteness, by ‘holding high the brow serene’.
Paksa: Pumailanglang ka, mapanilong na bulaklak
Ibunyag mo ang kislap ng iyong noo
Sa araw na ito, kabataan ng ating lahi
Igilas mo ang managana mong talino
Nagniningning at humihitik sa mithi
Sariwang pag-asa ng minumutya
kong lupang tinubuan
( Isinalin sa Tagalog ni Eusebro, 2026, hango sa unang saknong ng ‘A La Juventud Filipina’ ni Rizal, 1879 )
