Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Of a Revolutionary
Translating And
Interpreting Mi Ultimo Adios
Bob Couttie
Anyone who has taken an interest in Philippine history knows the story of Jose Rizal’s death poem,
known today as Mi Ultimo Adios. The original bears no title or date or even Rizal’s signature,
which are minor mysteries in themselves, and was written sometime before the evening of
December 29 when he gave it to his sister hidden inside an oil heater he’d used for his food with the
whispered words in English or Visayan, depending on the source “There’s something inside”.
Within days of his execution, Rizal’s poem, his last words, had been copied and were being passed
around a country in the throes of revolution. We do not know whether its words inspired the
revolutionaries but his words can read as a mandate to fight.
But was such a subterfuge, the smuggling out of the poem, really necessary? After all, Rizal had
spent his last days writing letters to friends like Ferdinand Blumentritt in which he protested his
innocence so why smuggle out a poem that, on the surface, is merely an affectionate farewell to his
country with a sideswipe at the friars? True, the friars might have wanted to suppress it, but if Rizal
had thoroughly repudiated revolution then the Spanish authorities had little to fear. Or did they?
During discussions on the RP-Rizal Yahoo group about various translations of Mi Ultimo Adios I
talked of a particularly horrible English version and was forced to go back to the Spanish original to
check on a term I wanted to use as an example. As I re-read the poem, even though my Spanish is at
best rudimentary, it seemed to me that at least some words in the original had layers of meaning that
disappeared in translation.
Rizal was an extremely nuanced writer. He chose his words and their presentation with precision.
Words are containers for a multiplicity of meanings, some of which may not necessarily transfer
directly to another word in another language.
As I checked the Spanish against the English it seemed that there was another, almost silent song
running underneath it. One that Rizal hoped would reach the right ears.
VI
Here Rizal has transitioned into his afterlife, or lack of it. In Christian mythology the body remains
in the grave until the day of resurrection and a physical, not metaphysical arising from the grave,
these appear not to be referenced in Rizal’s verse here or elsewhere.
The qualifying ‘Si’ – ‘If’ on the first line is in one sense odd. Since nature is itself an element of the
motherland, the spirit of the land, why should a flower not grow there when it is within the power
for her to provide one? Yet here the flower seems almost accidental.
In days gone by, visitors noted a generosity among Filipinos. If one expressed admiration for, say,
an ornament in a house it was likely to be given to you. Perhaps the small flower represents the
recognition that Rizal undoubtedly sought for he was well aware that he was a historical figure.
Why the thick grass, among which the flower might grow? Outside large, formal cemeteries graves
in the Philippines receive little attention except at All Souls/All Saints when graves are cleaned and
tended and the family of the departed hold a gathering/vigil which, more often than not, includes
direct or indirect conversations with the dead.
Rizal had a clear image of his grave. He asked his family for a simple plot, with the option of a
fence around it, and a cross, that’s all. That is what he describes here. Today, of course, his grave is
what is popularly called the Rizal Monument but should more properly be called the Rizal Tomb
since that is where his remains are buried. Not only were his wishes ignored but even his essence
has been removed from his grave by dubbing it a monument. His wishes, his words, his ‘Rizalness’
have been effaced and removed from consciousness.
In this verse, the image is of an untended grave, perhaps forgotten by his countrymen. At the same
time, the packed grass may also represent the fertility of the motherland, the growth of liberty, those
common tao – the grassroots – who also struggled for the Patria. With the redemption of the Patria
his task is ended and becomes forgotten, as the real flesh and blood Rizal has largely been forgotten.
He asked little of his country. No monuments, no parades, no streets or schools in his name, just a
fond kiss and a warm breathe, a recognition that he existed.
Verse 7
Deja a la luna verme con luz tranquila y suave,
Deja que el alba envíe su resplandor fugaz,
Deja gemir al viento con su murmullo grave,
Y si desciende y posa sobre mi cruz un ave,
Deja que el ave entone su cántico de paz.
The moon makes its first appearance here and perhaps with more reason than mere romantic
imagery. The moon is associated with femininity and feminine deity, she shines by the light of the
sun, a male element, yet it is a light that she transforms. Compare earlier verses and the reference to
the ‘(friar’s) cowl of gloom’. No stars or moon can be seen through such a cowl, yet here the moon
shines brightly, the cowl, ie. The friars have gone and the Patria is free to shine her light.
Here also is a repetition of the imagery of the dawn, the dawn of redemption, now shining its light
over his grave. Although he refers to the night, ie., the moon, and the dawn, he does not refer to the
day, perhaps because the day of liberation is already here.
Only the wind, impersonal, will lament over his grave. Again he uses a qualifying ‘si’ – ‘if’ when
writing of the bird that may rest on the cross above him. It does not lament him but sings of peace,
the peace that comes with liberation and the peace with which he rests below.
Verse 8
Again we have the male principle, the Sun and the female principle, the Earth. The Sun evaporates
the water from the Earth, cleansing it, in doing so the water rises, taking with it Rizal’s last cry,
itself pure and unsullied, part of his spirit.
“Let a friend grieve for my early death” says line three. Here Rizal may be subtly reminding us of
why he died – for the redemption of his country, one could hardly grieve over his earl death without
giving pause to why he died.
The penultimate line reads better as “When someone prays for me in the serene afternoon, which to
a modern reader may mean little. There was only one moment each afternoon when stillness and
serenity ruled at the time of Rizal’s death – at the ringing of the Angelus when prayers were made,
which very devout Catholics still make, to the incarnation of God in Christ. Christ, of course, was
executed in his 30s for the redemption of mankind just as Rizal was executed for the redemption of
his country.
To many Filipinos, Rizal appear as a Christlike figure and it is not far-fetched to suggest that in
these lines, Rizal himself drew the same parallel.
Rizal’s relationship with God, and he certainly believed in a deity, has been subject to much
controversy. From his letters, especially those to his mother, who was much concerned with which
neighbourhood her son would end up in the hereafter, he believed God to be humane and rational, a
reasoning Almighty who would recognize that Rizal’s intentions were good, even if he upset
members of the Catholic church. In other words, he believed he could make peace with God, hence
the last line of this stanza.
Verse 9
Rizal asks the Patria to pray for various groups of the deceased who have died, it is apparent
contextually, in pursuit of the revolution against Spain, leading off with those who have died ‘in
ventura’, probably here best interpreted as those who have died with achieving their goal, or at least
before that goal can be achieved.
The Derbyshire translation uses ‘unmeasur’d pain’ in place of the Spanish ‘tormentos sin igual’ in
line two which is probably inadequate. Torment would include the pain of separation from family
that is a necessary concomitant of the warrior, the pain of the family itself not knowing whether
their loved one is alive or not, the pain of actual injury and disease at a when then, even by
contemporary standards, the available medical care among the warriors was at best rudimentary.
There is also the torment of living in the field. These are not the torments of actual battle, but the
hardships that must be endured.
In the mother-orientated culture of the Filipino male it is not surprising that Rizal gives more time
to mothers than other family members, a whole line for mothers, a third of a line each for orphan
and widows. In the latter case he links them to prisoners being tortured. What we have here is the
pain of entire families who fathers, brothers and sons are fighting, dying, being incarcerated and
tortured. It isn’t only those whose fight that must withstand suffering, but those at home, too.
Lastly, he appeals to the Patria to pray for her own ‘redención final’, her final redemption. Struggle,
whether as a violent revolution or the seeking of liberty by other means, is a process of redemption,
it is only when that process is complete, and the Patria free, that the redemption is ‘final’.
Verse 10
This verse doesn’t really appear to belong here. It would have been more appropriate one or two
verses earlier, or at least before verse 10. Perhaps it is a sign of hurried composition, something
written without the proper editing that marks a great writer – one French novelist wrote to a friend
an apologized about it’s length ‘I didn’t have time to make it shorter’. I would suggest that the
present verse 9 is out of place and may have been written later that other verse.
Rizal has previously talked about his grave alone and desolate. Now there is a cemetery.
Derbyshire’s line ‘Break not my repose’ is wrong, ‘my’ should be ‘their’. In earlier verses Rizal
used repetition for emphasis – Salud… Salud – Deja…Deja, and here uses it again with “No turbes
su reposos, no tubes el misterio” – do not disturb their repose, no not disturb the mystery”.
With a classical education, Rizal would have been familiar with the derivation of ‘mystery’ from the
Greek ‘mystērion’ in the sense of a divine secret or divine knowledge known only to initiates and
revealed through ritual, it is still used in that sense in the Catholic mass, the Catholic mysteries
being ‘Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ is born again’. Death is a mystery in itself , now
revealed to those in the cemetery.
Derbyshire appears to depart almost entirely from Rizal’s Spanish text in the fourth line, where
Rizal talks of the Patria hearing the note of a psalter or zither, there is no mention of a sad hymn at
all and, indeed, as the final line shows, this is a song sung in praise to Patria so there is no rationale
for sadness.
The choice of the psalter, a guitar-like stringed instrument played with the bare fingers, is
interesting because, apart from being a musical instrument it is also the biblical Book of Psalms. In
the Old Testament English translation the term ‘psalter’ is often used instead of harp, which is more
correct. Unlike the psalter or the zither, the biblical harp does not have a soundbox.
The Psalter, then, has religious connotations. The Patria was Rizal’s religion, her redemption the
object of that religion just as the redemption of man from sin is the object of the Catholic religion.
The last line of Verse three makes this even more clear.
The zither is another stringed instrument, and also confused in the Old Testament with the harp. It
has a squarish, flat soundbox and is plucked with fingers or, in some versions, with a mallet or
plectrum, again it is mentioned in the bible in place of the harp.
In a sense, Rizal is talking of singing a hymn, one of praise to the Patria as is explicit in his last line.
Again, Rizal use repetition for emphasis as in the third line, which is better translated as “It is I,
beloved Patria, it is I who sing the song to you”.
Alone among the dead, then, Rizal praises the Patria as Catholics praise Mary.
Verse 11
Little clarification is needed here. When his grave and the signs that marked it are long gone he
wants his ashes spread by the plough and the spade to carpet Filipinas, to become one with it, with
his beloved. A second thread here is that the ashes are his physical remains, his thoughts, words and
philosophy are his intellectual remains. The symbolic ashes can also be seen as the remains of
Rizal’s thoughts being spread across Filipinas, to fertilize the new, free country long after he
himself is forgotten.