EMERGENCE PERIOD

(1935-1945)
(ENG. LIT. 4- SURVEY OF PHILIPPINE LITERATURE IN
ENGLISH)
 INTRODUCTION
The years 1935-1945 saw the emergence
of a significant trend in Philippine literature
in English. Jose M. Hernandez says about
this period:

There was an inflorescence of literature. A sunburst

of glory seemed to illumine the whole country.
Everybody was eager to try his wings; a new wave of
freedom permeated not only the life of the people but
also the literature produced.
 EMERGENCE PERIOD
This period was a time of self-discovery and of
rapid growth; hence, some writers have called it
period of emergence. Certain qualities mark the
literature produced during this period.
 The writers consciously and purposefully set out to
create a national literature. They proclaimed that
our writers should reflect the Filipino way of life, our
traditional values as Filipinos, and even utilize the
tropical vegetation of the Islands as an appropriate
background for their stories and poems.
 The writers had gained full control of the English
language and could manipulate it successfully as a
literary medium.
 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 Experimentation with different literary forms and
techniques and moods was the fashion. Writers
in Europe and America were declaring a new
freedom of thought and a freedom from any
literary convention. Our writers soon followed
suit. Jose Garcia Villa, as usual, was at the
vanguard of this new movement
JOSE GARCIA VILLA

He was a Filipino poet, literary critic, short story writer, and

painter. He was awarded the National Artist of the
Philippines title for literature in 1973.
 THREE GROUPS OF

WRITERS
Those who were deeply concerned with social
consciousness.
 Those whose main concern with craftsmanship.
 Those who were determined to explore local
color. Some of the third group called themselves
the Veronicans. Their aim was to make their
writings bear the imprint of the face of the
Philippines just as the cloth of Veronica bore the
imprint of the face of Christ.
 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 All these writers were determined to produce
genuine Filipino literature.
 According to Professor Yabes, emergence period
is considered to be “the most productive of
distinctive work in the half century of
Filipino writing in English.”
 Professor Hernandez enthusiastically called this
THE GOLDEN AGE OF PHILIPPINE
LITERATURE IN ENGLISH.
THE REASONS OF “THIS
FLOWERING OF CREATIVE ENERGY”
IN FILIPINO WRITERS
 REASONS OF “THIS FLOWERING OF
CREATIVE ENERGY” IN FILIPINO
WRITING
 In 1937, the Philippine Book Guild was founded. Its
purpose was to produce literature and create reading
public. The members were a civic-minded group who
sold books at cost. Their purpose was to put books
within the reach of general public.
 In 1939, the Philippine Writers’ Guild was
established. The creed of the members was to
develop a common cultural consciousness among our
people. The members of the association proclaimed
that a writer’s primary obligation was to expose and
promote Philippine culture through his art.
 The Free Press, the Graphic, and the Philippine
Magazine followed a policy providing ample space
for literary work in English
 REASONS OF “THIS FLOWERING OF
CREATIVE ENERGY” IN FILIPINO
WRITING
 The Commonwealth Literary Awards, established
in the 1940, gave the first substantial prizes to
meritorious writers. The first winners of these
awards were:
Essay Division- Literature and Society by Salvador
P. Lopez
Short Story Division- How My Brother Leon
Brought Home a Wife by Manuel Arguilla
Poetry Division- Like the Molave by Rafael
Zulueta da Costa
Novel Division- His Native Soil by Juan Cabreros
Laya
 REASONS OF “THIS FLOWERING OF
CREATIVE ENERGY” IN FILIPINO
WRITING
 The policy adopted by newspapers to issue
weekly supplements when literary works were
published.
 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 This period saw an extraordinary literary creativity
which blossomed all over the islands. That is, there
had been review of some statements made during
the preceding period clearly shows a note of
expectancy and determination to promote the
cultural independence of the Philippines.
 In 1925, Jorge C. Bocobo wrote:

“If any country fails to discover and unfold its own

talent in letters and art, that country has not gone
beyond the stage of apprenticeship. The nation has only
reached the period of formation, not expression.”
 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 Jorge C. Bocobo also adds:

“The Philippines must let her national soul express itself in

beauty and truth and grace…and culture of the human race.
The Filipino writers must sing in immortal verse or depict in
vivid story and drama of this Filipino life. To arouse the social
consciousness of the Filipino, the writers should play up the
fortitude of our great heroes and the rugged, simple virtues of
our people.”

 In his “The Malayan Spell and the Creation of

Literature,” Amador Daguio stated:

“We may be able to achieve something at least more worthy

of ourselves than what merely a ridiculous aping of what is
foreign to our feeling and thought.”
 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 During the Japanese occupation from 1941-1945, the
flowering of Philippine literature in English was abruptly closed
since the country was plunged in turmoil, fear and
apprehension as a reign of terror swept the land.
 Although the Japanese occupation years produced little
literary work of significance, the period was to become a rich
source of subject matter in the succeeding period.

FILIPINO WRITERS LITERARY WORKS

Carlos Romulo I Saw the Philippines Fall and My
Brother Americans
Carlos Bulosan The Voice of Bataan

Alfredo E. Litiatco With Harp and Sling

Jose P. Laurel Forces That Make a Nation Great

FILIPINO WRITERS
DURING THE JAPANESE
OCCUPATION

Carlos Bulosan was an English-

Carlos Romulo was
language Filipino novelist and
a Filipino diplomat, statesman,
poet who immigrated to
soldier, journalist and author. He
America on July 1, 1930. His
was a reporter at 16, a
best-known work today is
newspaper editor by the age of
the semi-autobiographical
 He was
a Filipino politici
an and judge. He
was the
president of
the Second
Philippine
Republic, a
Japanese puppet
JOSE P. LAUREL

state when
occupied during
World War II,
from 1943 to
1945.
 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 The period of emergence saw a shift from romantic
idealism to romantic realism. This realism reached a
climax in the stories of Manuel E. Arguilla, N. V. M.
Gonzalez, and Nick Joaquin who wrote portrayals of
Filipino life evocative of the charm of rustic scenes,
rising to artistic value and significance.
 Manuel E. Arguilla- He uses a lyric approach in
his stories “Heat,” “Midsummer,” and “How My
Brother Leon Brought Home A Wife,” produced fine
stories set in Philippine pastoral scenes. These
stories are actually idylls with color and sound
interacting on the rural framework to heighten the
subject matter of love and courtship.
 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 N. V. M Gonzalez and Nick Joaquin, using different
subject matter, utilized similar technique in weaving their
stories around ideas, and with skillful craftsmanship
achieving depth and insight in exploring images and
moods.
 Anthem in Four Voices by Nick Joaquin- depicted the
almost unbearable life during the Japanese occupation.
 Hunger in Barok by N. V. M. Gonzalez- attacked the
perpetual agrarian problem of the landlord and the tenant.
 Bienvenido N. Santos wrote several sensitively realistic
stories of Filipino life in the United States; C. V. Pedroche
wrote stories in a humorous vein; Estrella Alfon won a
Commonwealth Literary Award for her stories in 1940; and
Francisco Arcellana and Aida Rivera-Ford were
anthologized abroad.
 EXAMPLE OF LYRICISM IN A SHORT
STORY BY MANUEL ARGUILLA

“Along the left side of the road ran the deep, dry
gorge of a stream, the banks sparsely covered by sun-
burned cogon grass. In places, the rocky, waterless
bed showed aridly. Farther, beyond the shimmer of
quivering heat waves rose ancient hills not less blue
than the cloud-palisaded sky. On the right stretched a
land waste of low rolling dunes. Scattered clumps of
hardy ledda relieved the otherwise barren monotony
of the landscape. Far away he could discern a thin
indigo line that was the sea.”

-Midsummer, Manuel Arguilla

 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 In poetry, the literary output was rather meager
although there seemed to be a genuine desire to
create new poetic modes of expression. The
“schoolroom” poets still provided inspiration, and
the Romanticists and Victorians offered patterns
that Filipino poets followed. The sonnet enabled
them to create love lyrics which captured subtle
nuances and moods through a more skilled
manipulation of language and imagery.
 The revolt against traditional values and mores was
first felt in poetry. Jose Garcia Villa was charged
with “poisoning public morals and offending
the taste of decent Manila readers” when he
published “Man Songs.”
 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 Villa’s poems echoed Walt Whitman’s “free verse,
egoism, oratorical tones, mysticism, and intimacy
of religious and sexual impulses.” His early poems
were reminiscent of Emily Dickinson’s compact
language as well as her attitude of irreverent
mischief and divine challenge toward God.
 In general, it has been said that his poetry has “the
sorcery of suggestive ambiguities, the mystery of
the truth, the fascination of the tangential
argument, the magic of the idea wrapped in
poetical mists.” British and American critics have
acclaimed Villa’s works.
JOSE GARCIA VILLA’S GOD SAID, “I MADE
A MAN” VIS-Á-VIS WALT WHITMAN’S “BE
NOT CURIOUS ABOUT GOD”
God said, “I make a man And I say to mankind, Be not curious about
Out of clay God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious
But so bright he, he spun
about God,
Himself to brightest Day (No array of terms can say how much I am at
Till he was all shining gold peace about God and
And oh, about death.)

He was lovely to behold; I hear and behold God in every object, yet
But in his hands held he a bow understand God not in the
least,
Aimed at me who created
Nor do I understand who there can be more
Him. And I said, wonderful than myself.
“Wouldst murder me
Why should I wish to see God better than this
Who am thy Fountainhead?” day?
I see something of God each hour of the
Then spoke he the man of gold: twenty-four, and each moment
“I will not then,
murder thee! I do but In the faces of men and women I see God, and
in my own face in the
glass,
Measure thee. Hold
Thy peace!” And I did. I find letters from God dropt in the street, and
But I was curoius every one is sign’d
Of this so regal head by God’s name,
“Give thy name! – Sir! Genius! And I leave them where they are, for I know
 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 Filipino poets sought selective affinities with
Western poets. The intensely personal lyricism and
preoccupation with love displayed by Trinidad
Tarrosa Subido and Toribia Maño could have been
inspired by the American lyricists Edna St. Vincent
Millay and Sara Teasdale as well as by Elizabeth
Barrett Browning.
 The poetry of R. Zulueta da Costa shows definite
touches of T. S. Eliot and Walt Whitman. Other
poets of this period are Bienvenido N. Santos, Nick
Joaquin, Oscar de Zuñiga, Amado Unite, and Angela
Manalang-Gloria. And Guillermo del Castillo.
 R. ZULUETA DA COSTA’S LIKE THE
MOLAVE VIS-Á-VIS T. S. ELIOT’S
PRELUDES
LIKE THE MOLAVE BY R. ZULUETA DA COSTA Until our people, seeing, are become
I. like the Molave, firm, resilient, staunch,
Not yet, Rizal, not yet. Sleep not in peace: rising on the hillside, unafraid,
There are a thousand waters to be spanned; Strong in its own fiber,
yes, like the Molave!
there are a thousand mountains to be Out of the depthless matrix of your faith
crossed; in us, and on the silent cliffs of freedom,
there are a thousand crosses to be borne. we carve for all time your marmoreal
Our shoulders are not strong; our sinews dream!
are Until our people, seeing, are become
grown flaccid with dependence, smug with like the Molave, firm, resilient, staunch,
ease under another's wing. Rest not in rising on the hillside, unafraid,
peace; Strong in its own fiber,
Not yet, Rizal, not yet. The land has need yes, like the Molave!
of young blood-and, what younger than II.
your own,
 Not yet, Rizal, not yet. The glory hour will
Forever spilled in the great name of
come
freedom,
Out of the silent dreaming
Forever oblate on the altar of
from the seven thousand fold silence
the free? Not you alone, Rizal. O souls
We shall emerge, saying WE ARE FILIPINOS!
And spirits of the martyred brave, arise!
Arise and scour the land! Shed once again
and no longer be ashamed
your willing blood! Infuse the vibrant red
sleep not in peace
into our thin anemic veins; until
the dream is not yet fully carved
we pick up your Promethean tools and,
hard the wood but harder the woods
strong,
yet the molave will stand
Out of the depthless matrix of your faith
R. ZULUETA DA COSTA’S LIKE THE MOLAVE VIS-Á-VIS T.
S. ELIOT’S PRELUDES Of which your soul was constituted;
PRELUDES BY T. S. ELIOT They flicker against the ceiling.
I. And when all the world came back
The winter evening settles down And the light crept up between the shutters
With smells of steaks in passageways And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
Six o’clock You had such a vision of the street
The burnt-out ends of smoky days As the street hardly understands;
And now a gutsy shower wraps Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
The grimy scraps You curled the papers from your hair,
Of withered leaves about your feet Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
And newspapers from vacant lots; In the palms of both soiled hands
The showers beat IV.
On broken blinds and chimney-pots, His soul stretched tight across the skies
And at the corner of the street That fade behind a city block,
A lonely-cab horse steams and stamps Or trampled by insistent feet
And then the lighting of the lamps At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
II.
And evening newspapers and eyes
The morning comes to consciousness
Assured of certain quantities,
Of faint stale smells of beer
The conscience of a blackened street
From the sawdust-trampled street
Impatient to assume the world.
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee stands
I am moved by fancies that are curled
With the other masquerades
Around these images, and cling:
That time resumes,
The notion of some infinitely gentle
One thinks of all the hands
Infinitely suffering thing.
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms
III. Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
You tossed a blanket from the bed, The world revolve like ancient women
You lay upon your back, and waited; Gathering fuel in vacant lots
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 The essays were on various types. Some were light
and frothy; others dealt with timely and serious
subjects, posting problems for public solution. The
editorials were often essays too, although too
many of them were merely exercises in rhetoric.
 A group of essayists group together to form the
Philippine Writers’ League. They were animated by
the belief that “literature is conditioned by the
society.” This was the unifying thread in their
writings. Among the more articulate of this group
were Francisco B. Icasiano, Salvador P. Lopez,
Federico Mangahas, Leopoldo Y. Yabes, Amando G.
Dayrit, Alfredo Efren Litiatco, and Antonio Estrada.
 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 Francisco B. Icasiano (“Mang Kiko” as his nom
de plume)- He wrote essays bubbling with humor
and sardonic wit.
 Salvador P. Lopez- He is popularly known for his
deep concern for the development of Philippine
literature in English. In his first book of essays,
Literature and Society, he insisted that the writer
should have a direct responsibility in a dynamic
society:

“The writer should redirect his talent and energy toward a

red-blooded literature and should deal with virile people
winning victories toward freedom or of emancipated
human beings enfeebled by an antihuman civilization.”
 LITERATURE AND
SOCIETY by SALVADOR P.
LOPEZ
“He is no longer a florist, scissors in hand
gathering lovely blossoms; he has become a
tiller of the soil, spade in hand, digging into
the roots of things and planting seeds.”

-Literature and Society, Salvador P. Lopez

 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 In the drama, the Western influence continued its
firm hold on Filipino playwrights. Although the West
had already rebelled against photographic
representations of life, the Filipino playwrights in
English were not yet at home with representational
realism. Filipino plays in English continued to have
little literary value; their subjects were insignificant
and their conceptualizations were neither serious
nor well-written.
 The use of a foreign language , English could not
have been a deterrent because there was
substantial achievement in the short story and
poetry utilizing the same language.
 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 Nationalistic themes and revolutionary subjects
could have appealed to the general public because
Filipino audiences enjoy seeing spectacles more
than psychological conflicts, but the playwrights
who adopted the English language as their vehicle
of artistic expression felt neither rebellious nor
seditious.
 Movies took over the zarzuela despite the great
competition put up by the latter.
 Dramatic realism, as previously pointed out, could
not assimilate unrealistic dialogue and situations
resulting from the use of English to express Filipino
situations, experiences and ideas.
 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 Playwriting was not taken seriously, for:

“At the same time, there has developed among

educated Filipinos the feeling that the drama is not to be
considered a true form of artistic expression, not even as
an authentic work of art. Talents among the young
Filipino writers which might have proved highly
productive in this field was deflected into other channels
of expression. Polished speeches and romantic love
stories claimed far too large a share of our native talent.
Furthermore, the drama was unfortunately relegated to
the position of inconsequential entertainment designed
wholly to grace the “velada” or to exhibit the beauty and
charms of a debutante, to please the eyes and ears of
gay fiesta crowds.”
 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 Prominent among the playwrights of this period were
Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero and Severino Montano. Both
were playwrights and directors.
 Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero- He succeeded in establishing
a drama tradition in the University of the Philippines
and had recently put up the UP Mobile Theater. His
plays have been gathered in three volumes: 13 Plays, 8
Other Plays, and 7 More Plays. These are about the
social ills of the country.
 Severino Montano- He was the “founder-director” of
the Arena Theater at the Philippine Normal College. He
was a graduate of the Yale Drama Workshop. He wrote
a number of significant plays, among them: Sabrina,
The Ladies and the Senator, The Love of Leonor
Rivera and Parting at Calamba.
PLAYWRIGHTS DURING THE
EMERGENCE PERIOD

Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero was a Filipino Severino Montano is considered

playwright, director, teacher and as one of the Titans of Philippine
theater artist. Guerrero wrote well Theater. He was a playwright,
over 100 plays, 41 of which have director, actor and theater
been published. His unpublished organizer with an output of one
plays have either been broadcast novel, 150 poems and 50 plays
 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 In the field of the novel, Juan C. Laya’s His Native
Soil won the first Commonwealth Literary Award in
1940.
 Juan C. Laya- He wrote His Native Soil while
studying for his M.A. in English at Indiana
University. This novel tells of a Filipino repatriate
who, having been educated abroad, finds himself a
stranger in his hometown.
 N. V. M. Gonzalez was also a prolific novelist. His
novel The Winds of April deals with the frontier
land of Mindoro. He is a “regional realist” and gives
a down-to-earth portrayal of the farmers and
fisherfolks and “how they live, love and fight.”
NOVELISTS DURING THE
EMERGENCE PERIOD

N.V.M. Gonzalez was a Filipino

JUAN C. LAYA novelist, short story writer,
essayist and, poet. Conferred as
the National Artist of the
Philippines for Literature in
 EMERGENCE PERIOD
 Although the influence of the American novels and
novelists was strong, the Filipino novel was not well
developed. An explanation for this may be found in
the “indifference of local publishers to publish
longer fictions.” It was not until literary prizes were
offered by the Commonwealth Government that
Laya wrote His Native Soil and Gonzales, The
Winds of April.