Literature During the American Period

The introduction of the English language in the second decade of the 20th century turned literature trilingual, thus literature was written in Tagalog, Spanish, & English,
The Educational system instituted English as the medium of instruction.

-Washing ton Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and William Wadsworth, among others.

-Early Filipino Scholarly writers in English:
Vicente Hilario, Godofredo Rivera, Francisco Africa, Manuel Gallego, L.B. Lichangco, Nicolas Zafra.
(There contributions were published in the U.P Folio, the 1st official publication of the University of the Philippines).

-Literary figure flourished and wrote free verse, play, critical essays, and the modern short stories.

Some of them: Lope K. Santos, Aurelio Tolentino, Benigno Ramos, Deogracias Rosario, Jose Corazon de Jesus.

-1920s Phil. Literature became commercialized when the weekly liwayway & Bisaya published stories, novels, and poems of the varied subject matter.
Philippine Novels
-1930s Novel were made into movies,
Child of Sorrow by Zoilo Galang
Novel his Nature Soil by Juan C. laya
Other Novelist: Maximo Kalaw, Ernesto Lopez, Felicidad Ocampo, Felipe Calderon Cortez, Victoria Lopez Araneta
- A number of vernacular novels also appeared during the American rule, especially with the emergence of much news papers and magazines
Phil. Short story showed American influence with 1st real modern story
Deogracias Rosario- acclaimed Father of the Tagalog short story
The wound & the Scar by Arturo Rotor
Tagalog Poetry
Pedro Gaitaman & Benigno Ramos- experimented on the use of rhyme and meter with their “Malaprosang tula” (prose poem).
Jose Corazon de Jesus “Ang Sawa” 1920 has the making of free verse although it has the traditional rhythm and meter when read.
Philippine Play
Zarzuela (1930) began to be replaced by the vaudeville and movies with the University or College campus providing the venue.
The one-act play,
Wilfredo Ma. Guerrero- turned out to be the most prolific & the most durable playwright in English. (Wanted: A Chaperon, the Forsaken house and Frustrations)
The member of Kapisanan Panitikan(1935), the tagalog writers organization broke away from the editorial restrictions of commercial magazines which were their publishing outlets and deliberately used American models.
Philippine Essays
Zoilo Galang- also wrote the 1st book of essay in English, Life and Success (1921)
Thinking of ourselves (1924)
Literature & Society by Salvador P. Lopez
-Many of which were written by the leaders of the time and edited by: Vincent M. Hilario, Eliseo M. Quirino, Carlos P Romulo, and Jorge Bagodo were other essayist before WWII

DAKILANG LAHI

"WRECK OF THE HESPERUS" By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintery sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.

The Skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailor,
Had sailed the Spanish Main,
"I pray thee, put into yonder port,
for I fear a hurricane.

"Last night the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!"
The skipper, he blew whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast,
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
And do not tremble so;
For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.

"O father! I hear the church bells ring,
Oh, say, what may it be?"
"Tis a fog-bell on a rock bound coast!" --
And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns;
Oh, say, what may it be?"
Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!"

"O father! I see a gleaming light.
Oh say, what may it be?"
But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That saved she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave,
On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf,
On the rocks and hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman's Woe!

The cry of the unborn child by Myrtle Poor (c)

Your unborn cries out to you,
"Mommy, please! Don’t take my life.
I know you don’t know me yet,
For I’m such a tiny mite."
"I’m nestled here beneath your heart
Just waiting to be born,
Yet Mommy you want to kill me
Because you think I’ll bring you scorn."
"My grandparents loved you dearly,
When they gave you life.
Mommy, what have done so awful
That you’re condemning me to die."
I’ll love you with all my heart
And I promise to be good..
If you’ll only let me
I’ll do everything I should."
"If you kill me, I’ll go to heaven
For it was God that gave me life,
But I’m not sure you’ll meet me there
If you take away my life."
"There is no hate in heaven,
No murders will walk streets,
But I’ll be there with Jesus
Worshiping around His feet."

FIRST ORATION AGAINST CATILINE by Marcus Tullius Cicero

WHEN, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now? Do not the mighty guards placed on the Palatine Hill- do not the watches posted throughout the city- does not the alarm of the people, and the union of all good men- does not the precaution taken of assembling the Senate in this most defensible place- do not the looks and countenances of this venerable body here present, have nay effect upon you? Do you not feel that your plans are detected? Do you not see that your conspiracy is already arrested and rendered powerless by the knowledge which everyone possess of it? What is there that you did last night, what the night before- where is it that you were- who was there that you summoned to meet you- what design was there which was adopted by you, with which you think that anyone of us is unacquainted

TIME by Bhartrihari

Time is the roof of all this earth
These creatures, who from time
Had birth
Within his bosom at the end
Shall sleep
Time has neither enemy nor friend
All we in one long caravan
Are journeying since the world
Began
We know not whither, but we know
Time guides at the front, and all
Must go
Like as the wind upon the field
Bows every herb, and all must yield
So we beneath time’s passing breath
Bow each in turn – why tears for birth or death.