WHO IS BEHIND IT??? (Noli Me Tangere)

 

The first half of Noli me Tangere was written in Madrid, Spain from 1884-1885 while Dr. José P. Rizal was studying for medicine.

While in Germany, Rizal wrote the second half of Noli me Tangere from time-to-time starting February 21, 1887. After he read the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, he had an inspiration to write his own novel with the same topic–to expose Spanish colonial abuse in print. Beecher Stowe's novel describes black slavery abuse done by white men. Rizal suggested to his fellow Filipino friends in Europe, through writing, to have a meeting and plan for writing a novel similar to that of Beecher Stowe's. (At this moment, Rizal planned not to write the novel himself, but through collective efforts done by other Filipinos who shared ideals with him.) In 1884, Rizal and his friends including the Paterno brothers–Pedro, Maximo, and Antonio; Graciano López-Jaena, Evaristo Aguirre, Eduardo de Lete, Melecio Figueroa, Valentín Ventura and Julio Llorento; decided to meet at the Paternos' house in Madrid. Each of them agreed to write a unified novel. Suddenly, when the writing began, most of them wanted to change the topic from Spanish abuse to somehow related to women. Rizal walked-out of the hall and decided to write the novel himself.

Rizal finished his studies in Madrid, By this time his understanding of human nature had broadened and he had come to realize that his true ambition and vision laying in meeting the needs of his people. His first idea was to publish an anthology from various Philippine authors but he finally published only his own work and called it Noli Me Tangere. This work was criticized as being influenced by the German Protestants due to Rizal’s close contact to the Berlin group, but he agued that he had written three quarters of it in Catholic countries like Spain and France. From the beginning Rizal was afraid that Noli (as the title is called in the Philippines) would never be published and remain unread. Eventually he was offered a gift of 300 Peso and 2000 copies were printed. Rizal sent a copy of this his first book to his close German friend Herr Blumentritt on the 21st March 1887. In a letter to Blumentritt, he wrote, ‘The novel is the first impartial and bold account of the life of the tagalogs. The Filipinos will find in it the history of the last ten years’1.



Criticism came first from a committee of the University of Santo Tomas that had been set by Archbishop Pedro Payo. It condemned the novel as heretical, impious, and scandalous in its religious aspect, and unpatriotic, subversive of public order and harmful to the Spanish government and its administration of these islands in its political aspect. However, the negative publicity was better than none in that it awakened the curiosity of the many people who managed to get copies of the book. Rizal’s writings opened the eyes of his countrymen to sufferings, the truth of which had long remained unspoken if not totally unheard.