Paris
19 November 1889
Dear Friend and Brother,
I have just received your pleasing letter as well as the clippings from Manila newspapers. I am grateful to you for everything, including the prologue which I find excellent and which I have sent to the printing press some time ago. I wanted to send you a letter together with the proofs, but as you are waiting for my reply and you want to know my opinion, I will write you now just a few lines, for I have to go to the Bibliothèque Nationale.
Your Prologue pleases me immediately and it touches me. It is written with the head and the heart. I am very grateful to you for it. Only I wish to call your attention to some things. You speak in it of Quioquiap. This man may have a name among his friends and enemies, but I find him too small for my Morga. I should not like to stain my book with such names. Moreover, we give him too much importance by remembering him all the time. You are right in believing that Quioquiap has importance among the Spaniards in Manila, but among the natives and the scholars of the world he is a nullity. I do not write for the Spaniards of Manila; I write for my countrymen and all of us detest Quioquiap.
There goes another comment. You know how much I value our friendship — the intimate fraternity that we profess mutually. But our enemies will not understand this sentiment, because they don’t have a delicate sentiment, and as I know the Spaniards very well, perhaps they may even scoff at it, and I do not want anyone to mock our fraternity. Therefore, we who write for our friends in the face of our enemies, would not wish to give them any chance to mock us. I believe you honor me enough by calling me dear friend. You know that the Spaniards are a very rude people towards their enemies. Perhaps you may understand me. Except for these two things I have no more comment to make.
With reference to the clippings of Desengaños and company, I can only say that they are a very filthy people. I know the Spaniards of Manila a little. May God save me from such miserable friendships! Therefore, if you find a good chance to withdraw from this fight, do so; because, otherwise, you will lose your good humor and perhaps your love for humanity, for as I said to you before, you will only find mire and mud in the arena. Laurels do not grow in my country. And he who has to fight against reptiles and worms has to come down to the mire and mud, as the reptiles live there. So if you find a good chance to withdraw, do so. It hurts me to see you involved in this stupid controversy. No honor can be obtained from it, but only headaches, nausea, and hatred of mankind. My people cannot express its gratitude to you because it is mute. For that reason, you will afford me great joy if you could find a good and honorable retreat — an Anabasis[1] in the style of Xenophon. Let the Quioquiaps rage alone. Devote yourself to the writing of the history of the Philippines. You honor too much the Quioquiaps with your correspondence with them and they cannot make you famous.
Spanish politics is not for noble hearts.
Your friend and brother,
Rizal
02-463 [Blumentritt V.1]
[1] Xenophon (c. 444c. 355 B.C.), Athenian general and historian, on the “March of the Ten Thousand Greeks” and became the leader upon the retreat. He wrote the Anabasis , the story of the “March.”