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Literature is like a flower, you will not see its potential or beautiful part. Like a flower when starting to bloom, it is not noticeable because it is young or not yet matured or developed. When it blooms, the it is the time the was its true form the amazing one.
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Poet, critic, short story writer, and painter, Jose Garcia Villa was a consummate artist in poetry and in person as well. At parties given him by friends and admirers whenever he came home for a brief visit, things memorable usually happened. Take that scene many years ago at the home of the late Federico Mangahas, a close friend of Villa's. The poet, resplendent in his shiny attire, his belt an ordinary knotted cow's rope, stood at a corner talking with a young woman. Someone in the crowd remarked: "What's the idea wearing a belt like that?" No answer. Only the faint laughter of a woman was heard. Or was it a giggle perhaps? Then there was one evening, with few people around, when he sat down Buddha-like on a semi-marble bench under Dalupan Hall at UE waiting for somebody. That was the year he came home from America to receive a doctor's degree, honoris causa, from FEU. Somebody asked: "What are you doing?" He looked up slowly and answered bemused: "I am just catching up trying to be immoral." Sounded something like that. There was only murmuring among the crowd. They were not sure whether the man was joking or serious. They were awed to learn that he was the famed Jose Garcia Villa. What did the people remember? The Buddha-like posture? Or what he said?
That was Villa the artist. There's something about his person or what he does or says that makes people gravitate toward him. Stare at him or listen to him.
Villa is the undisputed Filipino supremo of the practitioners of the "artsakists." His followers have diminished in number but are still considerable.
Villa was born in Singalong, Manila, on 05 August 1908. His parents were Simeon Villa, personal physician of revolutionary general Emilio Aguinaldo, and Guia Garcia. He graduated from the UP High School in 1925 and enrolled in the pre-med course. He didn't enjoy working on cadavers and so he switched to pre-law, which he didn't like either. A short biography prepared by the Foreign Service Institute said Villa was first interested in painting but turned to writing after reading Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio."
Meanwhile, he devoted a good part of his time writing short stories and poems. Soon he started exerting his leadership among the UP writers.
His ideas on literature were provocative. He stirred strong feelings. He was thought too individualistic. He published his series of erotic poems, "Man Songs" in 1929. It was too bold for the staid UP administrators, who summarily suspended Villa from the university. He was even fined P70 for "obscenity" by the Manila Court of First Instance.
With the P1,000 he won as a prize from the Philippines Free Press for his "Mir-i-Nisa," adjudged the best short story that year (1929), he migrated to the United States. He enrolled at the University of New Mexico where he edited and published a mimeographed literary magazine he founded: Clay. Several young American writers who eventually became famous contributed. Villa wrote several short stories published in prestigious American magazines and anthologies.
Here is a partial list of his published books:
- Philippine Short Stories, best 25 stories of 1928 (1929)
- Footnote to Youth, short stories (1933)
- Many Voices, poems (1939)
- Poems (1941)
- Have Come Am Here, poems ((1941)
- Selected Poems and New (1942)
- A Doveglion Book of Philippine Poetry (1962)
Through the sponsorship of Conrad Aiken, noted American poet and critic, Villa was granted the Guggenheim Fellowship in creative writing. He was also awarded $1,000 for "outstanding work in American literature." He won first prize in poetry at the UP Golden Jubilee Literary Contests (1958) and was conferred the degree Doctor of Literature, honoris causa, by FEU (1959); the Pro Patria Award for literature (1961); Heritage Awards for literature, for poetry and short stories (1962); and National Artist Award for Literature (1973).
On 07 February 1997, Jose Garcia Villa died at a New York hospital, two days after he was found unconscious in his apartment. He was 88.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said Villa, popularly known as the "comma poet," died at 12:37 a.m. (New York time) of "cerebral stroke and multilobar pneumonia" at the St. Vincent Hospital in Greenwich.
He is survived by his two sons, Randy and Lance, and three grandchildren.
Interment was scheduled on Feb. 10 in New York, the DFA said. It added that Villa had expressed the wish to be buried wearing a barong. Though he lived in New York for 67 years, he remained happily a Filipino citizen.
http://pinoylit.webmanila.com/filipinowriters/garvilla.htm
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Manuel Viloria of Viloria.com writes...
I found out about Manuel Arguilla when I chanced upon a twenty peso copy of How My Brother Leon Brought Home A Wife (And Other Stories) lying around some dusty corner in my old house. It was published in 1940 by the Philippine Book Guild (Manila) and it represents the only collection of his stories written between 1933 and 1940. This collection won the first prize award for short stories in English in the first Commonwealth literary contest in 1940.
Looking at the book's inside front and back flaps, here's what Francisco Arcellana of the Philippines Herald had to say:
I have three favourite stories about Manuel...
"Once during a Christmas celebration on the University of the Philippines' Campus, just after the lantern parade and the Christmas program, I ran into Manuel and he called my attention to the way the lights were glinting like diamond pinpoints on the smooth tops of the rattan chairs. It is a favourite story of mine about Manuel, because it is so revealing: when you meet him for the first time you notice his eyes--they are the kind of eyes of which it has been written that they suck in things: very keen eyes, always taking in things, almost always sharply glinting.
"He has also a very keen sense of smell as you will see from the stories in this book, and he has himself told me: It is not eyes with me, Franz, as you think it is; rather, it is nose, it is smell--not sight; it is scent, odor first, and then the form and the shape of things afterward.
"My second favourite story about Manuel has something to do with the way he writes his stories. Once he told me that whenever he was working on a story, he usually woke up at one or two o'clock every morning and when he would sit in the darkness and keep still and think of the story he was writing and somehow the writing of the story came easily afterward.
"My third favourite story about Manuel is of a time when he suddenly asked me: Just how do you feel about your writing? Don't you feel that in spite of everything you will be writing the rest of your days that you cannot give it up, that you must keep on writing every day of your life? That is how I feel, he said." (Francisco Arcellana, in the Philippines Herald)
Even Pearl S. Buck, Nobel Prize Winner said this about the book: "I have read these stories with great interest and admiration. . .Mr. Arguilla's writing is so good and his character sense is so developed."
Most of Arguilla's stories depict scenes in Barrio Nagrebcan, Bauang, La Union where he was born (1910). His bond with his birthplace, forged by his dealings with the peasant folk of Ilocos, remained strong even after he moved to Manila where he studied at the University of the Philippines (B.S.E. 1933).
He later married Lydia Villanueva (another talented writer), and they lived in Ermita, Manila. Their house eventually became a meeting place not only of other writers, but also of those who joined the underground in World War II.
In August 1944, Manuel Arguilla was captured and executed at Fort William McKinley (now known as Fort Bonifacio).
Biographical Reference: Filipino Writers in English by Florentino B. Valeros and Estrellita V. Gruenberg, New Day Publishers, Quezon City, 1987.
http://pinoylit.webmanila.com/filipinowriters/arguilla.htm
Francisco Arcellana (Zacarias Eugene Francisco Quino Arcellana) aka Frank V. Sta. Cruz, Manila 6 Sept 16 1916. National Artist Literature. He is the fourth of 18 children of Jose Arcellana y Cabaneiro and Epifanio Quino. He is married to Emerenciana Yuvienco with whom he has six children, one of whom, Juaniyo is an essayist, poet and fictionist. He received his first schooling in Tondo. The idea of writing occurred to him at the Tondo Intermediate School but it was at the Manila West High School (later Torres High School) that he took up writing actively as staff member of The Torres Torch, the school organ.
In 1932 Arcellana entered the University of the Philippines (UP) as a pre-medicine student and graduated in 1939 with a bachelor of philosophy in degree. In his junior year, mainly because of the publication of his “trilogy of the turtles” in the Literary Apprentice, Arcellana was invited to join the UP Writers Club by Manuel Arguilla – who at that time was already a campus literary figure. In 1934, he edited and published Expression, a quarterly of experimental writing. It caught the attention of Jose Garcia Villa who started a correspondence with Arcellana. It also spawned the Veronicans, a group of 13 pre-WWII who rebelled against traditional forms and themes in Philippine literature.
Arcellana went on to medical school after receiving his bachelor's degree while holding jobs in Herald Midweek Magazine, where his weekly column “Art and Life” (later retitled “Life and Letters”) appeared, and in Philcross, the publication of the Philippine Red Cross. The war stopped his schooling. After the war, he continued working in media and publishing and began a career in the academe. He was manager of the International News Service and the editor of This Week. He joined the UP Department of English and Comparative Literature and served as adviser of the Philippine Collegian and director of the UP Creative Writing Center, 1979- 1982. Under a Rockefeller Foundation grant he became a fellow in creative writing, 1956- 1957, at the University of Iowa and Breadloaf Writers' Conference.
In 1932 Arcellana published his first story. “The Man Who Could Be Poe” in Graphic while still a student at Torres High School. The following year two of his short stories, “Death is a Factory” and “Lina,” were included in Jose Garcia Villa's honor roll. During the 1930's, which he calls his most productive period, he wrote his most significant stories including, “Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal” cited in 1938 by Villa as the year's best. He also began writing poetry at this time, many of them appearing in Philippine Collegian, Graphic and Herald Midweek Magazine.
Some of his works have been translated into Tagalog, Malaysian, Italian, German and Russian, and many have been anthologized. Two major collections of his works are: Selected Stories, 1962, and The Francisco Arcellana Sampler, 1990. He also edited the Philippine PEN Anthology of Short Stories, 1962, and Fifteen Stories: Story Masters 5, 1973. Arcellana credits Erskine Caldwell and Whit Burnett as influences. From 1928 to 1939, 14 of his short stories were included in Jose Garcia Villa's honor roll. His short story “The Flowers of May” won second prize in 1951 Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature. Another short story, “Wing of Madness,” placed second in the Philippines Free Press literary contest in 1953, He also received the first award in art criticism from the Art Association of the Philippines in 1954, the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan award from the city government of Manila in 1981, and the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas for English fiction from the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipino (UMPIL) in 1988. He was conferred a doctorate in humane letters, honoris causa, by the UP in 1989. He was proclaimed National Artist in Literature in 1990 – L.R. Lacuesta and R.C. Lucero
http://nationalartists.panitikan.com.ph/farcellana.htm
