Along with F Sionil Jose, NVM Gonzalez, Bienvenido Santos and Jose Garcia Villa, Joaquin's voice is as important to his generation as it is masterful for all to come. That voice was hushed today. Goodbye, Blackbird.
to celebrate not a death but the family
here having one of its final stops,
here it continues where it stops.
Here is Alfred Yuson's obituary for Joaquin, to be published on today's Philippine Star. Thanks to my brother.
For THE PHILIPPINE STAR obit report on Nick Joaquin’s demise (April 30,
2004):
The Passing of An Era: Nick Joaquin, 1917-2004
By Alfred A. Yuson
Foremost Philippine writer and National Artist for Literature Nick
Joaquin passed away early yesterday morning at his home in San Juan, Metro
Manila. He would have turned 87 on May 4.
As a poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, essayist, historian,
journalist, editor and biographer, Joaquin has been the supreme exemplar
for Filipino writers, as much as he was a beacon, an inspiration, and a
literary father to several generations of writers since he served as
literary editor in the Philippines Free Press magazine in the 1950s and
1960s.
Nicomedes Joaquin was born on May 4, 1917 in Paco, Manila, to Salome
Marquez, a public school teacher, and Leocadio Joaquin, a colonel in the
Philippine Revolution of 1896. According to literary critic and historian
Gémino H. Abad, Leocadio Joaquin became “a prominent lawyer in the
American era; and the businessman who first turned Herran Street into the
commercial hub of Paco.”
“Onching” Joaquin was only 13 when his father passed away. He quit school
after three years at Mapa High, and taught himself in his father’s
library. At 26, he wrote the essay “La Naval de Manila” which won a
contest at UST, where, again per Abad, “for his literary achievements, he
was conferred the A.A. (Associate in Arts) certificate.”
In the book The National Artists of the Philippines (CCP, NCCA, Anvil,
1998), Marra Pl. Lanot recounts that “The Philippines Free Press citation
for the best short story went to (Joaquin’s) ‘Summer Solstice’ in 1945,
(and) to ‘Guardia de Honor’ in 1949.”
Joaquin aspired for the priesthood, and UST awarded him a scholarship in
1949 to St. Albert’s College at the Dominican monastery in Hong Kong. But
he stayed there for only a year, and upon his return joined the
Philippines Free Press in 1950, starting out as a proofreader. Soon he was
being acclaimed for his poems, stories and plays, as well as for his
journalism under the pseudonym Quijano de Manila.
Lanot writes: “As Quijano (the name is an anagram of Joaquin), he would
be found at the scene of a crime, in a court battle, on the trail of a
visiting dignitary, in a concert hall, in the middle of a political rally,
in a boxing ring, anywhere he could hear, see and smell first-hand the
subject of his article.”
In 1952, Joaquin’s landmark book, Prose and Poems, was published by
Manila Graphic House, with an Introduction by Teodoro M. Locsin. It
included his three-act play, A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino (An
Elegy in Three Scenes), which first appeared in Weekly Women’s Magazine
earlier that year. Since its first production at the Aurora Gardens in
Intramuros in 1955, Portrait… (subsequently translated into Filipino,
initially for a long-running PETA production in 1969) has become the most
celebrated and most frequently staged play written by a Filipino.
Among the early honors Joaquin gained were: Most Outstanding Young Man in
Literature in 1955; the Republic Cultural Heritage Award in 1961; and the
City of Manila’s Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan Award in 1964.
Joaquin’s first novel, The Woman Who Had Two Navels, was written on a
Harper Publishing Company fellowship awarded in 1957, which took him to
the United States and Mexico. The book was published in 1962, and won the
first Harry Stonehill Novel Award.
Nick Joaquin was declared a National Artist in 1976. The Ramon Magsaysay
Award for journalism, literature and creative communication was conferred
on Joaquin in 1996 “… for exploring the mysteries of the Filipino body and
soul in sixty inspired years as a writer.” The Philippine Star columnist
Alejandro Roces, himself a National Artist for Literature, commented at
the time that “it was Nick Joaquin who was doing the Ramon Magsaysay
Awards an honor, and not the other way around,” according to Lanot.
In recent years, Joaquin took to writing commissioned biographies, among
these The Aquinos of Tarlac; Jaime Ongpin The Enigma: A Profile of a
Filipino as Manager; Mr. FEU: The Culture Hero That was Nicanor Reyes;
Nineteenth Century Manila: The World of Damian Domingo; and La Orosa: The
Dance-drama That is Leonor Goquinco.
Among his latest titles were Rizal in Saga; Palacio de Malacañan: 200
Years of a Ruling House; and Madame Excelsis: Historying Gloria Macapagal
Arroyo.
On March 10 this year, new editions of two of his out-of-print titles,
the essay collection Culture as History and his second novel, Caves and
Shadows, were launched by Anvil Publishing at the CCP. There Joaquin last
spoke publicly, in characteristic jest, before retiring to his favorite
Ermita bar with fellow writer Gregorio Brillantes and his business manager
and confidante Billy Lacaba.
Joaquin was known to be working on a biography of a business tycoon before
his demise, which his countless admirers have begun to acknowledge as “the
passing of an era.”
A special mass was held yesterday at 6 p.m. at the Funeraria Paz on
Araneta Avenue, followed by cremation. The wake begins this evening at the
Santuario de San Antonio at Forbes Park, while special necrological rites
for the National Artist are expected to be conducted soon at the Cultural
Center of the Philippines, before the interment of the great writer at the
Libingan ng Mga Bayani.
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