Rue de Champagne, Brussels
Despite wanting to avoid mutual admiration, Rizal praises Blumentritt’s article – Barrantes’ article on the Tagalog Theater is infested with errors – “I fear he may die of rage upon reading Blumentritt’s criticism” – “It would be a great loss to my zoological garden” – “He is one of the best specimens of my reptiles and hippopotamuses.”
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38 Rue de Philippe de Champagne, Brussels
6 March 1890
Jose Rizal
My Brother,
It has been some time ago that I received your two letters, but I have not answered them for lack of any news to give you.
I wish you much good luck in your commission in Dresden and I thank you very much for having remembered me in such a distinguished meeting as well as for your letter in which you praised my article against Barrantes. I would not wish to commit the error of mutual admiration, but I must confess also that your article published in the last issue of La Solidaridad is especially good and proper. It does not surprise me, for Barrantes is so stupid and so ignorant that I believe that one need not break his head to destroy his arguments. Recently he published El Teatro Tagalo and he committed phenomenal mistakes. I believe that I am wasting my time and my work correcting his great errors. And he is one of the academicians, one of the historians! My God keep me! Really I had a better idea of Spanish academicians! He is not only stupid but also malicious, or perhaps even worse! I am afraid that when he reads your article he may die of rage and shame. It would be a great loss in my zoological garden; he is one of the best specimens of my reptiles and hippopotamuses. Only I do not like that you had called him Pag Diwata. Truly that is too great an honor for him and too great a humiliation for the old Diwatas. Barrantes is called simply Barrantes.
My brother has not written me for a very long time. I don’t know why. But my letters do not reach home, so my brother-in-law ad my brother also are getting ready to be deported. Thus announces a letter I have received via Hong Kong:
Paciano also will grant a power of attorney after the departure from our province of Governor Juan Mompeón y Soret. He is very confident that so long as this official is in the province nothing need be feared. In fact, several times he was denounced by the friars in connection with the rumor that a rebellion would break out in the province with Calamba as the focus and the governor replied that in the province under his command there was no revolutionary movement nor would there be any, giving his head as security…. The governor general has delivered himself body and soul to the friars and wherever he goes he is accompanied by two or three of them. None of us here is secure.
We are having more patriotism here. The newspaper which writes anything against Filipino writers, for example, Isabelo de los Reyes or those who favor the country in their writing, like Blumentritt, or speaks ill of the country, immediately finds itself without Filipino subscribers… In Calamba there are more than 40 subscribers. The Revisita Catolica was suppressed for lack of subscribers…
Patriotic spirit and sentiment are being awakened. We owe that to the insults of Retana, Quioquiap, Astoll, etc. I bless all insults if they bring such results. Long live all the enemies of my country, if their lives are a medicine for my people!
I embrace you.
Yours,
Rizal
02-512 [Blumentritt V.2]