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In an ideal world the writer would like to say one’s only
allegiance is to his/her art or craft. After all, writing is a
vocation like priesthood, and one must have the dedication to the
calling. Otherwise, one may as well pursue another interest like
making money.
Yet writers are drawn to making a stand in the
face of injustice, denial of freedom, and repression. Thus writers
and intellectuals did make their stand during the march of fascism
in the thirties with the rise of Mussolini, Hitler and Franco.
The poet exile Jose Garcia Villa, generally seen
as the exponent of “pure” art or aestheticism, wrote the
following poem “Christmas Carol 1938”: “Peace on earth/good
will to m—/ussolini!/Hark! The h—/itler angels sing!/O come all
ye/faithful, Ch—/amberlain flies/but once a year/Silent night,
h—/itler night!/The meek shall/inherit h—/itler. The meek
shall/inherit inh—/itler Europe./Silent night, h—/itler
night!/The Lord is b—/ored with Christmas./Peace on e—/arthworms,/good
will to m—/ice!”
The year 1938 was the eve of Nazi aggression in
Europe, the start of the Second World War. In Spain the
International Brigade (many of whom were writers and intellectuals
from many countries) staged their last parade in Barcelona in salute
to the Republican cause with Dolores “La Pasionaria” Ituralde
crying “No pasaran” against Franco’s falangists.
Ernest Hemingway later wrote his novel For Whom
the Bell Tolls, Andres Malraux his Man’s Hope, and a disillusioned
George Orwell his Homage to Catalonia. Pablo Neruda who was also on
the Republican side wrote several poems on Spain, so did British
poets W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Louis MacNiece, C. Day Lewis. Of
course, the most telling visual presentation of fascist atrocity is
Picasso’s Guernica about the destruction of the Spanish city by
German bombers.
Spanish poets and artists were overwhelmingly
against Franco: Federico Garcia Lorca, killed by fascists in
Granada, film maker Luis Bunuel, the brothers Machado, Alberti,
Miguel Hernandez, Vallejo, Guillen. So were the American writers and
artists overwhelmingly on the side of the Republicans: John Dos
Passos. Richard Wright, Hemingway, Muriel Rukeyser, Langston Hughes,
Howard Fast, Paul Robeson. By and large there were more writers who
supported the Republicans rather than Franco.
According to Connecticut-based Epifanio
San Juan, it was the Spanish Civil War and the demonstrations in the
US that pushed Carlos Bulosan to the left, as his many poems and
long works attest – the last part of America is in the Heart and
The Cry and the Dedication (Philippine edition The Power of the
People).
In the Philippines, the members of the
Philippine Writers League were preponderantly against
fascism—Salvador P. Lopez, Fred Mangahas, Jose Lansang, I. P.
Caballero, Manuel Arguilla, Gabriel Bernardo, Arturo B. Rotor,
Leopoldo Yabes, Teodoro Agoncillo, Fidel de Castro, M. Gracia de
Concepcion, Hernando Ocampo, Hernando Abaya. They were joined by
younger writers and intellectuals like Wenceslao Vinzons, Arturo
Tolentino, Armando Malay, Renato Constantino, Angel Baking, Juan
Quesada, Celia Mariano, Sammy Rodriguez. Many writers were
involved in the Popular Front against international (including
Japanese) and local fascism.
There was an ongoing debate in media between
proponents of art for arts sake or aestheticism (led by Veronican
Franz Arcellana and Jose Lardizabal) and those (led by Rotor and
Lopez) for literature with social content (e.g. proletarian writing
as defined by Lopez in Literature and Society). Manuel Arguilla
would write two stories “Caps and Lower Case” and “The
Socialists” and Hernando Ocampo “We and They” as samples of
proletarian literature. The debate has continued to this day as one
between formalism (or neo-formalism) and contextual (e.g. Marxist)
criticism.
Fred Mangahas said in his speech before
writers on the eve of the Pacific War:
“There are contingencies the appearance of
which is apparent even now and they will have a good deal to do with
literary development in this country. The world crisis is very much
in evidence here. It struck the writers intimately when it induced
the government to curtail the literary contests to their present
narrow scope . . . But this development is trivial by the side of
the problem of the preservation of freedom as now menaced by the
march of fascism in many places. Writers will write, contests or no
contests, but when there is absolute regimentation such as is
visualized under a fascist order, it is difficult to conceive of any
authentic literature coming into flowering at all.”
The following year the Japanese occupied the
Philippines. It was, as Cristino Jamias noted, total intellectual
blackout.
What compelled writers to fight in Spain? As
poet Laurie Lee put it, “I believe we shared something unique to
us at that time – the chance to make one grand and uncomplicated
gesture of personal sacrifice and faith, which might never occur
again.”
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