Portrait of an artist

Nick Joaquin was a story teller. As a writer, he was touched by the hand of God. He had an intensely sensitive soul, and a magnificent pair of eyes and ears. He had the power to put into words the most passionate emotions which people usually keep hidden deep within themselves.

Long ago, he wrote a play called: "Portrait of an Artist as Filipino". I saw what I think was its first presentation — outdoors, in Intramuros, with the stage built up against the ancient walls, and the narrator, Totoy Avellana, high above the stage, on top of the wall.

It was an Avellana production. Bert Avellana directed it. The star was Daisy Hontiveros Avellana, who was superb! She had excellent support from Dolly Sale, they were two older women, living in a once beautiful home in Intramuros, now falling into decay. Their no-good, womanizing boarder, whose job was playing the piano for a stage show, was Armando Goyena – in real life, Pinggoy Revilla. His mastery of this character was amazing, when you consider the fact that he was really a conservative, faithful husband who loved his eight children.

Koko Trinidad played in this production, and Sarah Joaquin, and many other strong actors and actresses who had worked with Bert Avellana both on stage and on screen. It was a star-studded cast.

The story centered on a large, life-size portrait which the audience never saw, and the actors never saw. It was a portrait created in the mind of Nick Joaquin. It was supposed to be hanging on the fourth wall of the stage – the open space facing the audience. All of the actors and actresses, at one time or another, stood center stage, looking up at that imaginary portrait, and giving their reflections on it. It was supposed to be a masterpiece, painted by the old man of the house, who never came out of his room.

It was a portrait of a young man, carrying an old man on his back, out of a burning city. This was the portrait of an artist as Filipino. It was Nick Joaquin’s portrait of himself. Nick had a classical education in Hong Kong. He studied Latin and Greek in the seminary of the Dominicans. He studied the masterpie-ces which are still the foundation of all literature.

That story of the young man carrying the old man out of the burning city was famous among the Latin and Greek poets, historians and playwrights. It was Aeneas, the great hero of Rome, carrying his aged father, Anchises, out of the burning city of Troy. To the classical writers, like Homer and Ovid, it meant that the vocation of the artist is to preserve the beautiful values of the past, and bring them to life in the present.

Nick Joaquin looked upon this as his vocation, too: to preserve the beautiful values of the Filipinos; to preserve the memory of the great things Filipinos have done; their suffering, their courage; their patient, cheerful endurance; their love for one another; their laughter, their tears, their hopes, their dreams. He wanted to tell us that we are standing on the shoulders of great men; that we should not forget the warm hearts and the sacrifices of our ancestors; that we should treasure, and honor the beautiful gifts they have left us.

At the moment, that task is difficult to accomplish. The past is despised, out of date, irrelevant. Not only in the Philippines, but all over the world, any person over forty is on the way down. At 50 they are on the way out. No one reads Latin or Greek anymore, not even the seminarians and the priests. The values of the past are forgotten. The morals of the past are vanishing.

But the Philippines has preserved more of the beautiful things of our past than most other nations. Nick chose Aeneas as the model of the Filipino artist with great wisdom. Aeneas has an adjective placed before his name in the whole of Latin literature. It is "Pius Aeneas".

The literal translation of "Pius" is pious. But to the Romans it was crystal clear — exactly what that adjective meant. It was devotion to the "Household Gods". The Gods over the fireplace, in the heart of the home. It meant devotion to the family. And when Rome was conquering the world, the average number of children in each family was 14. The strength of the Roman Army was the Roman mother, who said to her son as he was going off to war: "Come back with your shield, or on it!"

The Roman soldier carried a great shield, almost body length. If he ran away in battle, he would drop the shield. This meant he was a coward. If he was killed in battle, his body was brought home on the shield. And that is what his mother told him: "Come home with your shield, or on it."

"Pius" also meant devotion to all the families together, loyalty to the state. The state was only as strong as the family. Then it meant devotion to the family of nations, the brotherhood of man. When Rome began to decline, it was because the Roman family began to decline. The Roman poets said: "When women began to count their ages not by the consuls, but by their husbands, this was the end." The consuls changed every year. When women began to go from man to man, they did not have children.

Rome fell because they ran out of Romans. They did not have enough soldiers to defend the borders of their Empire, so they hired the barbaric tribes, as mercenaries, to defend the borders. But as morals declined, graft and corruption grew, and they could not pay the mercenaries. When the Huns sacked Rome, they had no idea of conquering the Empire. They were Roman mercenaries, coming into the City to get their back pay. When they could not get it, they broke into the homes and took the silverware.

Pius Aeneas was the champion of the family. And that is a value which the Filipinos are at least trying to preserve. A professor of moral theology at Catholic University in Washington D.C., a layman who had been teaching for 30 years, came to the Philippines, and talked to a group of Church people at Villa San Miguel. He said: "The Filipino family is so beautiful! You don’t have nursing homes! Here, when a man grows old, he is the Lolo, and everyone comes to him for his wisdom and his experience. He is the decision maker for the whole family! When a woman grows old, she is the Lola, and all the children come to her, and love her! The Filipino family is so beautiful! Don’t lose it! Don’t lose it!"

Nick Joaquin chose Pius Aeneas as the model for the Filipino artist. Aeneus tried to preserve the family. But it was deeper than that. He was trying to preserve love. First, in the home. Mutual help, cooperation, working together, sharing, caring, sacrificing for each other. Then, on the national level, all working together for the same objective. And on the world level, justice, charity, friendship. The Romans prided themselves on the justice of their laws. Not only for Romans, but for everyone.

The Filipinos have that basic quality of love. It was Jose Rizal who said: "My people have always been poor. For centuries our only possessions were the land. . . .the sea. . . . .the sun. . . . .the rain. But, having nothing, we discovered that our real treasure was . . . . . each other."

Our Filipino artists should take Nick Joaquin’s advice, coming to them from the grave. We should not fill our media with stories of violence and hatred, vice and crime. We should put the accent not on the things that divide us from each other, but on the things that make us one.

We are one people when we sing. We are one people when we pray. We are one people in the typhoon, in the flood, in the avalanche, in the earthquake. Let’s try to be one people in the turmoil of our elections.

Nick Joaquin was a national artist. He took it as his task to try to preserve the beautiful things we have inherited from the past. We should listen to him, speaking to us loud and clear, from the grave, from his beautiful grave in Libingan ng mga Bayani.