Course: Introduction to Literature and Literary Studies (Core Course)
Topic: Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry)
Theme: Self/Identity
Text: “Ako ang Daigdig” by Alejandro G. Abadilla
Method: Online learning: group discussion, close-reading, analysis, critical writing
Prepared by: Mesandel V. Arguelles, Ph.D., De La Salle University
Objectives:
By the end of the lesson, the students should have:
- developed an understanding of the free verse form (in light of modernism in poetry);
- gained knowledge on the use of repetition in poetry; and
- learned more about the concept of the “self.”
Module for Online Session
| Activity | Teacher’s Procedure | Online Tool Options |
| Listening to a musical rendition of “Ako ang Daigdig” | Ask the students if they know who Alejandro G. Abadilla is and if they know his famous poem “Ako ang Daigdig.” Tell them that they will listen to a musical rendition of this poem (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO_mjeM27tE). Tell them that the song was performed by the band The Brockas whose members are also literary writers.Ask them to listen closely to the song and to take note of the important words in the poem/song. After listening, ask how they feel about the song through the following questions: While listening to the song, what do you feel? Does the song express (a) particular emotion/s? Does it evoke certain emotions in you too? Let them express their thoughts and feelings about the song. Ask them about the words they deem important in the song/poem. Ask them why they picked those words. Finally, on the basis of the song they have just heard, ask them if they can tell what the poem is about. | Zoom Canvas Google Meet Facebook |
| Group Discussion: Close reading of the poem | Let the students discuss the poem in groups. Have at least five (5) groups. Ask the students to choose a representative who will report the group’s analysis to the class. Suggested Discussion Questions Give them the following questions to guide them in their discussion of the poem: What can you say about the form and structure (free verse) of the poem? Who is the persona—the “I,” “the self”—in the poem?Who is the “I” addressing?Can you describe the tone of the persona?What is the “I” talking about?What is the relationship between/of the I/self and/to the world?What is the relationship between/of the I/self and/to the poem?What are the interweaving relationships among the I/self, world, and poem?What can you say about the primary use of repetition in the poem? Does it develop/advance the objectives of the poem?Is there any progression in the poem from the first to the last part? What idea/s about the “self” does the poem give you? Note: After the reporting of each group, the teacher will sum up/synthesize the groups answers and provide further discussion, adding emphasis on Abadilla’s modernism. | Zoom Google Meet Canvas Facebook Messenger |
| Take-home writing task: critical essay | Let the students write a short critical essay on the form of “Ako ang Daigdig” with particular emphasis on how the device of repetition was primarily used to develop/advance the objectives of the poem. The students must also discuss how the concept of the self/identity explored in the poem has affected/influenced/changed their own idea/s about the self. They may start by asking themselves the question “Who am I?” in relation to the “I” that is present in the poem. Further, they may also connect their concept of the self and the concept of the self in Abadilla’s poem to the “selfie” phenomenon in the time of digital technology and social media. |
Output: Group discussion/analysis, short critical essay
Assessment:
- The students must be able to participate in a group close-reading of the poem
- The students must be able to write a short critical essay on the poem. The discussion in the essay must include the following:
- how repetition is used to develop/advance the objectives of the poem
- how the concept of the self/identity explored in the poem has affected/influenced/changed the student’s own idea/s about the self
- additional criteria may include: grammar, spelling, punctuation, organization, coherence
Critical Notes on the Text
Abadilla and Modernism
Beginning of Modernism in Poetry
In general, modernism in poetry began in the early years of the 20th century upon the emergence of the Imagist poets or the Imagism movement. Although modernism can be seen as a literary period, literary historians found it difficult to trace its roots exactly. However, the roots of modernism in poetry could be traced back to the poetry of 1890s—in the works of the Symbolists (particularly the late Symbolists). Traces of it could also be found in the works of earlier writers such as Whitman, Wilde, Browning, and Dickinson—but these writers in general were still associated with the Romantic period.
Writers who started modernism wrote poems in response to what they saw as the excesses (or lack) of the dominant traditional poetry (e.g., Victorian poetry). According to Irving Howe, in his essay “The Culture of Modernism,” modernist writers wrote at a time when culture had already been marked with the dominant style of perception and feeling and that their modernity was a revolt against these dominant styles (2017).
Many of the early modernist poems were short, however, in time, long poems would also be written.
Imagism
The origins of Imagism can be found in the two poems of T.E. (Thomas Ernest) Hulme published in 1909 by the Poet’s Club in London. Hulme was a philosopher, theorist, and poet recognized both by Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot as a poetic precursor of their works. In 1912, Pound published the Complete Poetical Works of Hulme and he considered it as a precursor to Imagism.
Imagism as a movement was launched in 1913. Their position as a movement was stated in A Few Don’t’s by an Imagiste written by Pound (6):
- Direct treatment of the “thing,” whether subjective or objective.
- To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
- As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome.
- Complete freedom of subject matter.
- Free verse was encouraged along with new rhythms.
- Common speech language was used, and the exact word was always to be used, as opposed to the almost exact word.
In 1922, “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot was published. This poem was considered as a prime example of a modernist poem by Eliot, who himself was recognized as the leading voice of the generation of modernist poets. “The Waste Land” became a foundational text in modernist poetry.
The emphasis of modernism was on individualism and the typical condition of the modernist view was subjectivity. The modern “I,” according to Stephen Spender in the essay “Moderns and Contemporaries,” is “acted upon by events” as opposed to what he termed as the “Voltairean ‘I’” which “acts upon events” (Howe, 2017).
Beginning of Modernism in Philippine Poetry
According to Virgilio S. Almario, in his book Balagtasismo Versus Modernismo, modernism in Philippine poetry was a reaction to both the Americanization during the American period and the conventions of poetry made popular by the Balagtasistas (109).
In Philippine Poetry in English, Jose Garcia Villa was considered as the Father of Modernist Poetry. Villa stayed for a long time in New Mexico and then later in New York. He was the first Filipino writer in English to gain recognition in the West and, as such, dominated the writing of poetry in English in the Philippines.
In the vernacular, Villa’s counterpart was Alejandro G. Abadilla. Almario states: “Ngayo’y kinikilala si Alejandro G. Abadilla bilang pinakamagiting na tagapagtanggol at “ama ng makabagong panulaang Tagalog” (139)” And: “Higit na kinikilala ngayon si Abadilla sa kaniyang “Ako ang Daigdig” na nalathala noong 1940 at itinuturing na manipesto ng pagtulang Modernista dahil sa paggamit ng malayang taludturan, hindi tradisyonal na retorika’t balangkas ng pahayag, at kaisipang pribado’t indibidwalista (xxv).”
Alejandro G. Abadillla, or AGA, was born on March 10, 1905 in Rosario, Cavite. According to writer and critic E. San Juan, Jr., Abadilla “belongs to the generation of Amado V. Hernandez which spearheaded the resurgence of Tagalog literature in the late 1930s and early 1940s. But unlike the socialist Hernandez and others like Benigno Ramos and Teodoro Agoncillo, Abadilla chose a liberal-individualist stance (78).”
San Juan adds: “Abadilla is credited with having introduced “free verse,” more precisely a Coleridgean adjustment of content and form, into the Tagalog poetic tradition. His speculations about poetic form invoke the self—the complex of feelings, moods, visions which he conceives of as the “I”—as the fundamental justification for inventing new metrical forms, stanzaic patterns, surrealistic imagery, and various expressionistic experiments (78).”
San Juan sums up Abadilla’s bio: “Abadilla began his career as a critic of poetry and the short story in 1932, with his popular column “Talaang Bughaw” (“Blue List”) in the Tagalog daily Mabuhay. After World War II, he continued this occupation in various newspapers while working as college teacher of literature, insurance salesman, magazine editor, and journalist at separate times. Abadilla contributed immensely to the important task of anthologizing works printed in the newspapers. Among his own books are: Ako ang Daigdig (1955), Tanagabadilla (1964), and Piniling Mga Tula ni AGA (1965). He also edited the avant-garde monthly Panitikan (1962-67) (78).
Self and Structure in “Ako ang Daigdig”
The poem “Ako ang Daigdig” consists of four parts/sections. Each part has five stanzas. The lines are very sparse, in fact, the longest line only has five words (“ang walang maliw na ako”). On the surface, the poem looks extremely bare and simple. But as they say, looks are deceiving. Abadilla’s now iconic poem is, of course, despite its physical appearance on the page, far from being bare and simple.
In fact, the apparent bareness and simplicity of “Ako ang Daigdig” can be seen as a direct and immediate response to the prevailing poems of the Balagtasistas (Almario’s term) who had a firm adherence to the principles of traditional poetry particularly its strict rules on rhyme and meter.
According to critic Bienvenido Lumbera, Abadilla was “appalled by what he perceived to be the emptiness of much of the verse being written by his elders (185).” Thus, Lumbera continues, “[Abadilla’s] poem “signalled the outbreak of a revolt similar to [Jose Garcia] Villa’s in the 1920s. As a sign of protest against a hypocritical society that had made a virtue of conventionality, Abadilla stripped his verse of rime and meter and insisted on “sincerity” which shunned all artifice in poetic expression (185).”
Clearly, by writing poems devoid of any poetic embellishments, Abadilla has embraced fully the form of free verse in his art. The foremost virtue of his poems lies in the insistent and forceful assertion of the individual self against its surroundings and the society. Again, Lumbera has this to say about him:
The injunction to be true to the Self, the insistence on sincerity, is
the recurrent theme of Abadilla’s poetry. It is what led the poet to
reject mechanical form and, thus, to use free verse. In the con-
text of the history of Tagalog poetry, Abadilla has something new
to say. To utter it is to invent a new way of saying. In this, he is
“modern.” He is a destroyer, a true literary rebel (qtd. in Almario, 141).
Repetition
The most apparent poetic technique/rhetorical device employed in Abadilla’s poem is repetition. In poetry, sounds, syllables, words, phrases, stanzas, patterns, and even ideas can be repeated. Thus, repetition produces not only emphasis but also clarity, amplification, and emotional register.
Words are commonly repeated (conduplicatio). In “Ako ang Dagdig,” the words “ako,” “daigdig,” and “tula” are repeated by Abadilla for emphasis. However, by employing various combinations of these words, he is also able to achieve a different expression each time. For instance, in the fourth stanza of the first section, Abadilla says:
ako
ang daigdig
ng tula
ang tula
ng daigdig
and we get the idea that the persona, the “I” in the poem, proclaims the self as the “world of the poem.” Therefore, the self is as large as the world of the poem—they are one. However, in the last two lines of the stanza, the persona also asserts that the self is indeed “the poem of the world”—suggesting, in effect, that the self and the world are two separate entities. It can be observed further that in this stanza, the meanings of the words “daigdig” and “tula” have significantly changed in the second instance they were used (antanaclasis). “Daigdig” in the first instance it was used means the “world/realm” (or the figurative world) of the poem while in the second instance, it becomes quite the literal “world.” Moreover, the word “tula,” which signifies “poetry in general” in the first usage, in turn, becomes the “particular poem” upon second mention.
The repetition of the word “ako” in successive stanzas (anaphora) throughout the poem exhibits the poem’s movement. This is exemplary considering that the poem contains only a few words. Let us look at the first part:
ako
ang daigdig
ako
ang tula
ako
ang daigdig
ang tula
ako
ang daigdig
ng tula
ang tula
ng daigdig
ako
ang walang maliw na ako
ang walang kamatayang ako
ang tula ng daigdig
Here, we see that, as the poem proceeds, the number of lines of each stanza gradually increases and the poem accumulates its many meanings as well, thus providing for a richer reading.
Concept of Self
According to Pedro Ricarte, although “Ako ang Daigdig” is about the personal beliefs, experiences, and poetics of Abadilla, it was written in a very impersonal, very detached manner, and as such, it would be incorrect to construe the “I/self” (“ako”) in the poem to refer to Abadilla himself (Philippine Studies). It can be said, therefore—if Ricarte is correct in what he posits—that the poet’s “I/self” in the poem is merely a concept, a construct.
Further, in Abadilla’s poem, we find that the individual self (particularly a poet—represented by the “I”) was in constant struggle with the society (represented by the “world”). This conflict of the “I” and the “world” is intensified by a series of conflicting ideas and elements also present in the poem. For example, in “ako / ang daigdig,” we get, as stated earlier, the conflict between the “individual” (“ako”) and the “society/community” (“daigdig”); also, private versus public. In another instance, the conflict between what is mortal and immortal can be seen in the lines “ako / ang walang maliw na ako.”
For Abadilla, it seems to us, these conflicts were necessary to show in order for the self to continuously assert and establish its individuality and identity. Hence, Almario says, “ang “ako” at “sarili” ay paulit-ulit na tinutumbasan ng “daigdig,” “buhay,” “walang-kamatayan,” “walang-hanggan” (140).” Eventually, the “triumph” of the self over what it was up against—the society, the world, et cetera—was subtly implied in the concluding lines “daigdig / tula / ako” where the self has completely become one with the world and the poem.
References:
Almario, Virgilio S. Balagtasismo Versus Modernismo. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1984.
—–, ed. Hiyas ng Tulang Tagalog. Manila: Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, 2015.
Howe, Irving. “The Culture of Modernism.” Commentarymagazine.com. Commentary Magazine. April 2017.
Lumbera, Bienvenido and Cynthia Nograles Lumbera, eds. Philippine Literature: A History and Anthology. Manila: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 1997.
Pound, Ezra. “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste.” Poetry, Vol. 1, March 1913, p. 6.
Ricarte, Pedro L. “Alejandro G. Abadilla.” Philippinestudies.net. Philippine Studies. April 2017.
San Juan, Jr., Epifanio. Introduction to Modern Pilipino Literature. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1974.
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