[Filipino Short Stories # 3] “The Wedding Dance” and “The Woman who Looked out of the Window”, and some poems by Amador T. Daguio

This is it! I’ve been wanting to talk about Amador Daguio (1906-1983) since I started this blog several months ago but never got around to write about him until now. See, there’s a time for everything.

Starting January 2012, every third Sunday of the month, Mel U of The Reading Life (whose blog has been an inspiration in my book blogging experience) and I engage in a joint venture that involves featuring Filipino writers and their works. We welcome anyone who is interested to join us in this venture. We hope you could participate in this endeavor.

So far, we have featured the following writers and their works:

1. Dead Stars and A Night in the Hills by Paz Marquez Benitez
2. Servant Girl and Magnificence by Estrella Alfon

Today, we talk about Amador Daguio and his short stories. I was supposed to write only about his “The Woman who Look out of the Window”, which I will, but I will also talk about his “The Wedding Dance” and a couple of his memorable poems, simply because I utterly admire the author. If I’m asked for my top five favorite Filipino short story writers, Daguio will most likely rank my first.

Daguio (1912-1966) is a poet, fictionist, essayist, critic, and playwright. He was born in Laoag, Ilocos Norte. (Mel U has been to Vigan, which is near Laoag, a fact that naturally got my mind green with envy. I mean, Vigan! It’s my dream holiday, for crying out loud!) Anyway, Daguio was not raised in Laoag but grew up in Kalinga, formerly a subprovince (now a separate province) of Mountain Province, which became the setting of most of his short stories.

Remarkably, while living there, Daguio was in close contact with the place, the people, and the language. It is no wonder he wrote perceptively and intimately about people in the mountains in his stories The Wedding Dance and The Woman who Looked out of the Window. For him, the Filipino writer should draw inspirations from native elements, like the Filipino life, customs, traditions, and folklore, for “we might be able to achieve something at least more worthy of ourselves that what is merely a ridiculous aping of what is foreign to our own feeling and thought”. Here’s one of his poems, Man of Earth, as an example (which has been taken up well in my high school):

Pliant is the bamboo;
I am man of earth.
They say that from the bamboo
We had our first birth.

Am I of the body,
Or of the green leaf?
Do you have to whisper?
Do I have to whisper
My every sin and grief?

If the wind passes by,
Must I stoop, and try
To measure fully
My flexibility?

Admirably, Daguio began to see the possibilities for stories and poems “in the suffering and miseries of his lonely and repressed boyhood... and the struggles of poor people [around him]”. His ultimate dream was “to translate the beauty, immensity, and depth of the Filipino soul”. I think I really like the works of this writer because I share with him his love for our country.

Here’s one of his poems I like, To Those of Other Lands, which is written in the context of events that happened during the Japanese occupation in the Philippines:

Though I may speak the English language,
Let me tell you: I am a Filipino,
I stand for that which make my nation,
The virtues of the country where I was born.

I may have traces of the American,
Be deceived not: Spain has, too, her traces in me,
But my songs are those of my race
…

Would you prove the courage of our blood?
The frank disdain of the man who is free?
We might have had chains, but of the spirit never;
Beyond us we see time, leveler of all.

Mistake not our seeming softness to you.
If we bow, it is not that we are slaves,
If we feed you, our hearts are in the offer,
Our giving not mere service of the lips.

Simple our manners? Our fathers gave the graces,
Our hearts pure as the hills, clear as the seas,
I tell you not of greed nor of accumulation,
We have washed off these stains of the West.

Look through us then, beyond what you think,
Know us, understand us; we, too, have our pride.
If you give us flowers, we exchange pearls;
We greet you sincerely; acclaim what we have.

Technically, Daguio belongs to the “emergence period” (1935-1945) in Philippine literature when the period said to have been the more productive, producing distinctive work in the half century of Filipino writing in English. During this period, writers were already consciously and purposefully write stories that reflect the Filipino way of life, including our values and traditions as well as the tropical climate and the environment. At the same time, Filipino writers were able to gain full control of of the English language, using it successfully as an effective literary medium. There were writing groups and awards formed. I would have loved to go back to the past and see the period for myself.

However, most unfortunately and very sadly, the Japanese occupation  in 1941-1945 brought the flowering of the literary creativity in the Philippines to an abrupt close. There was so much fear during the occupation that writers could not think; survival was a priority. But of course, good ‘ol Daguio joined the resistance and secretly wrote poems, later compiled into a publication called Bataan Harvest. To Those of Other Lands is one of his works during the Japanese occupation. He was a close friend of another writer in resistance, Manuel E. Arguilla, who is from La Union and who wrote another of my favorite short story, How my Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife. I hope Mel and I could feature him in the succeeding readings in Philippine literature.

The first work by Daguio that I’ve read is The Wedding Dance when I was in college and I’ve read it twice again within the past seven years. It’s a bittersweet story of how culture, traditions, are more important to a man than his love for his wife. It is more like a necessity for the man to leave his wife. The Wedding Dance refers to the second wedding dance of the man where the dramatic conversation between him and the wife he is about to leave for another woman who could bear him sons. Ah, that’s the crux of the matter, and you should read the story to experience the climax and taste the bitter end. The Wedding Dance could be read online.

A demonstration of the Kalinga Wedding Dance (source: http://uchsmapeh.blogspot.com)

Why not head over to Mel U’s detailed post on The Wedding Dance by Amador Daguio?

Another of his short stories is The Woman who Looked out of the Window, which tells the experiences of a woman waiting for his lover to marry her. It is told from the perspective of her son who murdered his father who happens to be his mother’s lover. It is a story of a love gone so sour that the mother dies, the father dies, and the son is under court trial. The story could be read online, too.

Both stories took place in the mountains, most likely stories Daguio heard, observed, or imagined while growing up in Kalinga. Daguio seems to have this knack for bitter endings but nevertheless, his short stories are classics and must be read. On my own initiative, I might feature more short stories and poems by Daguio in the feature but for now, I encourage you to read The Wedding Dance and The Woman who Looked out of the Window.