TRANSFORMER AND DESTROYER
Edited by professor and writer Dr. Hope Sabanpan-Yu, the book The Sea and its Transformations in Cebuano Literature contains 11 essays by distinguished writers, scholars and academicians from Cebu, a province surrounded by seas, in Central Visayas
The sea, with its beauty and terror lurking beneath the waters, has always been a source of fascination for writers. I recall John Masefield’s poem “Sea Fever”: “I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky/And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by…”
For me, the all-time great creative work involving the sea, equaling and perhaps surpassing the novels of Joseph Conrad, is Herman Melville’s Moby Dick with its magnificent threnody at the end: “Then all collapsed…and the great shroud of the sea rolled on, as it rolled 5,000 years ago.”
Although focusing on one major theme or subject, the sea, this anthology is a testament to the richness of Cebuano literature in general, written in three languages.
It is not surprising that Filipino writers share this fascination, for we are an archipelagic nation, with the oft-repeated declaration that the Philippines is composed of more than 7,000 islands. A case in point is the anthology The Sea and its Transformations in Cebuano Literature (published by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts in Manila in 2020; 154 pages). Edited by professor and writer Dr. Hope Sabanpan-Yu, director of the Cebuano Studies Center of the University of San Carlos and former head of the National Commision for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) National Committee on Literary Arts, the book contains 11 essays by distinguished writers, scholars and academicians from Cebu, a province surrounded by seas, in Central Visayas.
“I have drawn together a range of different views of the sea,” wrote the editor. “The essential theme running through the book is the way experience of the sea shape who we are, individually and collectively. Through art appreciation, embodied personal experience and reading metaphors, the writers convey the joys and the challenges posed by writing about the sea within a broader social framework.” Setting the tone of the book is Gremer Chan Reyes’ poem in Cebuano, “Sakayanon,” translated by Lamberto Ceballos (“Sailor”), with its second stanza, saying: “I enjoy the melodious laughter of the wind/lullaby of the sea the song of a sailor’s love./Emboldened by the wind the boat sails on fast/ happiness is the sea, to race the ocean a challenge.”
In the opening essay, “Visual Spaces and the Picturesque in Contemporary Cebuano Paintings of the Sea,” Genesis Bideo focuses on seven paintings: Kanlaon by Dong Secuya; Little Fishers by Maxcel Megallos; Waves by Romulo Galicano; Seashore II by Jose Pempe Ybañez; A Hope and a Future by Harry Villalonga; Sunset with Rainbow by Pepe Villadolid; and Lapu-Lapu Shrine by Jovani Rodriguez.
The paintings are reproduced in miniature and in black and white, making it difficult for the reader to appreciate them. But, of course, this is not an art coffeetable book; the intention of the writer is simply for the illustrations to serve as a guide for the reader as Bedio describes and interprets each work. Even in miniature, however, one can feel the power of the Galicano painting. From the town of Carcar, he is, after all, considered a master.
“The seven paintings in this essay have different interpretations and expressions of the sea, capturing the physical, allegorical and phenomenological experiences, sometimes almost idyllic,” says the author.
Poetry in the Cebuano language is the focus of Joanalyn P. Gabales’s “Fishing as Poiesis in Selected Poems of Ester Tapia.” The word poiesis is defined as “a making, fabrication, production.” The writer reproduces selected verses (without translation) and dissects, analyzes and interprets the meaning and intent of each poem.
Examining the poetry, Gabales concludes: “We see Tapia herself bringing forth her own poetry and the meaning of the images in her poems. The meaning stems from her observation and understanding that the sea is a realm of the imagination, that the sea gives life, and that the sea is abundant with stories that a writer has yet to unveil.”
In “The Sea, the Unknown and the Enlightenment in Temistokles Adlawan’s Short Stories,” Niño Augustine Loyola takes on two stories by Adlawan, who is also a poet.
The stories are “Pagsalig” (Confidence) and “Ang Gidak-on sa Dagat” (The Immensity of the Sea). Loyola concludes: “These men stand helpless in the face of fear as their respective stories end up making them accept the unknown, that basically there are some things in nature that could not be explained.”
Literary researcher Bea Yap Martinez discusses two short stories by Marcel Navarra, recognized as the father of the Cebuano short story: “Si Lakas ug ang Pupago” (Lakas and the Grouper) and “Siya ug and Tungdonon” (He and His Landmarks).
The sea, the author says, “is not just depicted as a source of livelihood, sustenance and profit but a source of fantasy, dreams and awe.”
For Martinez, the protagonist in the second story, who has lost his job,
“the sea is a vast and volatile space for him to hand over the control of his life.”
A hero pawikan (sea turtle) and blast fishing are the disparate but environmentrelated subjects in Samuel Rusiana’s short stories “Pawikan” and “Nabanhaw ang Dagat” (The Sea Came to Life Again), as analyzed by researcher and professor Raphael Dean Polinar in “Reading the Sea as Metaphor.” Metaphor is defined as “a creative force in human thinking that finds expression in language,” which can lead to a deeper understanding of literature.
The influence of Western capitalism as against the traditional rural lifestyle by the sea animates the short stories of Gremer Chan Reyes, as analyzed in the essay by Charles Dominic Sanchez. The stories are “Ang Isda sa Bulak sa Talikod” (The Fish of the Flower of Talikod) and “Ang Bata, ang Langgam, ang Tao” (The Child, the Bird, the Man).
In the first story, the college graduate Dodo personifies modernity but he chooses to remain in his seaside village for two years before migrating to the United States. This merits the disapproval of his grandfather, Tatang, who is supposed to represent tradition.
LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and others) as a subject appears in the essay by Francis Luis M. Torres. In the first story he discusses, “Si Mar” by Apronianito Miramon, the sea is represented by the main character named Mar (Spanish for “sea”), who refuses to be circumsized and thus acquires the reputation of being a bayot (Cebuano for “gay”). However, the effeminate Mar has a crush on a girl and eventually decides to be circumsized. Is he bisexual, the reader may well ask. But it is the essayist who asks: “Is Mar a bayot or heterosexual? This puts the reader in a confused state, rendering the story queer.”
Equally enigmatic, it seems, is “Hulagway” (Portrait) by Raul Figues. A young man arrives at a seaside pension house, is welcomed by a “neat, fair-skinned” keeper, notices that there are many portraits of young men his age, and wakes up feeling weak. There is a hint that he has been molested.
In Lamberto Ceballos’s “Merida” (Bad Omen), two best friends frolic in the sea during a beach party, while their companions on the shore speculate on who is the bayot. The outing ends in tragedy. “The sea as a setting provides an avenue for unraveling,” Sanchez pronounces.
The forebears of Eva Rose Washburn-Repollo are from the scenic island of Bantayan in northern Cebu, and it is this connection with the island that led to her advocacy essay, titled “Magpalawod, Magpalawom: Seeing the Sounds of Our Breath in the Deep.” It is a paean to the seas around us and the small-scale fishers, who are often shut out of decision-making.
Journalist Criselda Yabes (The Sea that Speaks of Books) grew up in Zamboanga City but has traveled extensively in the Visayas, especially in Cebu. The latter immersion led to the writing of a novel, Broken Islands, about the heroine Luna, “her love of heritage, revealing her desire to both keep and change the country’s history.”
Luna’s beloved father dies in the novel, and after completing the draft, Yabes learned that her own father had passed away too: “So I shall speak of Luna’s grief as one I had not even come to terms with, as if I myself was grieving before my father’s death was something to grieve for. That is the miracle of fiction, when it is surpassed by reality.”
In “Buenaventura Rodriguez and the Sea,” Sabanpan-Yu examines two stories by the Cebuano fictionist-dramatist Buenaventura Rodriguez who wrote in Spanish. His tales “El Festin de la Muerte” (The Feast of Death) and “Nelia” both end unhappily.
“Saloma,” a poem in Cebuano by Fernando Buyser, illustrates the dark theme of the stories: “The sea is imagined as an obstacle to be overcome … as an atemporal figure that cannot be dominated.”
In the final essay, “Casting Stones into the Sea: Cebuano Poetry from an Ecological Standpoint,” Sabanpan-Yu analyzes three poems in Cebuano: “Alas Kwatro as Kadlawon” (Four O’clock Dawn) by Ric Bastasa; “Mananagat” (Fisherman) by Urias Almagro; and “Matag Guilo” (Every Second) by Leo Bob Flores.
“The Sea becomes a flexible, fluid instrument of expression,” says the author. “They (Cebuano poets) understand too the need for active human recognition and engagement with nature…”
Although focusing on one major theme or subject, the sea, this anthology is a testament to the richness of Cebuano literature in general, written in three languages. It would be worthwhile to come out with another book, an anthology of Cebuano poems and short stories, with the original on one side and the translation in English or Filipino on the other page.