Madrid
Madrid, 19 April 1891
MR. JOSE RIZAL
DEAR PEPE,
This same day I have just received your letter and it deserves a prompt reply. Everything you say in it was what I wanted to draw out from you through any means in order to acquaint myself with certain nebulosities which I wished to penetrate. Now the mystery is clarified and I have to make many, but many, corrections. I have treated you with a certain rudeness to obtain form you what in another way I would never have succeeded to get. I say more: A friend, who saw your biography, called my attention to what you call a light judgment. I said to that friend: “I write thus because I have a purpose and I may achieve it.” Later on, Aguilera made the same or similar observation and I limited myself to replying that I had an objective. That desire is no other than to draw out certain facts that you could not tell me for being the interested party, or in order not to be immodest. Having obtained this, I am explaining it to you, because it is my duty to do so. But, if on one hand, I am pleased with all that you tell me, on the other I am saddened. You have introduced me, I have introduced myself to a subject whose veracity I did not like or feared to convince myself: The subject of rivalries. I have formed my opinion; under other circumstances, if you had read what I thought of you, you would be convinced that it is very different from what you have read. I have sacrificed your personality in view of the data furnished. You gave me nothing. At that time I was not in Manila; what I wanted was light, more light, and at last here I am with new information which, compared with that, is nearer to the truth, I believe. If you had more details than those found to the truth, I believe. If you had more details than those found by me by dint of investigation or inquiry, what would you have done? What is written? Moreover, as I have told you, I was pricking you so that you would jump and “throw out of that mouth” as they say here abouts. Naturally, in great undertakings, leadership is always disputed, the highest posts, and only in this sense do I accept rivalries which, after all, is the patrimony of the human skin.
I am going to explain to you another thing. To treat with some harshness people who are worthwhile is I believe the most desirable. To say beautiful phrases that mean nothing, splendid praises that dazzle the eyes, the ears, is a partial judgment, you will understand. You must have observed that there is something concrete, condensed, in it. If it is attacked, it is because there is something to attack; if opinions pro and con are expressed, it is because there is something that deserves the attention or the admiration of our people or foreigners. It would be doing you little favor if I had confined my ambition to writing your apotheosis. Don’t you believe so? Don’t you believe that there is someone who may say of you that you are a lofty talent for convenience? Well precisely, it is in order to condemn that opinion that I expose everything before the eyes of everyone. You do not believe that no one accuses you of being personal? For that reason I wrote it, but it is evident that I could not make an ardent defense, because I lacked those data that I now have. Your biography was a delicate subject for me. To write it I spent three months, almost half the time spent in writing half of the volume. Your biography is not entirely my own opinion. It expounded many things that have to be defended in a just and equitable manner. Obviously it is not complete, as the work is not complete…if likes you.
My way of thinking (and I am saying this as if I were talking to myself) is not to allow the withdrawal of your biography under any pretext. I understand that for delicacy you suggest this, but, lad, frankly, I cannot please you. Now, in view of the fact that your biography is not yet complete, I ask you to let me finish it. It is the same as if I had asked it before publishing those articles.
I am very sorry indeed that I had no competitors; all my efforts to encourage our fellow countrymen were fruitless. What a pity, when I know that there were very splendid projects of this first contest that may show in some way the potential energies of our colony!
Lad, undeceive yourself! When a person is attacked, it is because he can live aloof from the vulgar midst. It is enough that one stays away from the common fog to become an object of study and I felicitate you because you have achieved that. My praises of you are deserved; now the isolated opinions or some inaccuracies are no more than those due to lack of data.
Finally, regards to Alejandrino, and you know that your friend some day it may be published, I should like to enlarge it with more data.
ANTONIO
P. S.
You can’t imagine my smile when I was reading your letter. It was like those that animate a face when an object is achieved.
Thanks for your opinion on my articles. If anything has come out of my hands that is more incomplete, more replete with gaps and loose ends, it is that selection of silhouettes, and it is because materially, the time was short; and you know what this Madrid life is, so full of amusements and so devoid of constancy.
Adieu.
Hortaleza 14 and 16
03-618 [Reformists]