The Summer Solstice

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"The Summer Solstice", also known as "Tatarin" or "Tadtarin", [1] is a short story written by Filipino National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin. [2] [3] In addition to being regarded as one of Joaquin's most acclaimed literary works, the tale is considered to be controversial. [2] [3] The story narrates a ritual performed by women to invoke the gods to grant the blessing of fertility by dancing around a Balete tree that was already a century old. Joaquin later turned this short story into a play entitled Tatarin: A Witches' Sabbath in Three Acts, on which a film adaptation has been based. [2] [3]

Short story work of literature, usually written in narrative prose

A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a "single effect" or mood, however there are many exceptions to this.

National Artist of the Philippines

Order of the National Artists of the Philippines is an order bestowed by the Philippines on Filipinos who have made significant contributions to the development of Philippine art. Members of the Order are known as National Artists. Originally instituted as an Award, it was elevated to the status of Order in 2003.

Philippine literature in English

Philippine literature in English has its roots in the efforts of the United States, then engaged in a war with Filipino nationalist forces at the end of the 19th century. By 1901, public education was institutionalized in the Philippines, with English serving as the medium of instruction. That year, around 600 educators in the S.S. Thomas were tasked to replace the soldiers who had been serving as the first teachers. Outside the academe, the wide availability of reading materials, such as books and newspapers in English, helped Filipinos assimilate the language quickly. Today, 78.53% of the population can understand or speak English.

Contents

Overview

Tatarin, also sometimes spelled Tadtarin, was a three-day traditional fertility ritual involving women and held during summer in the Philippines. The last day of the festival coincided with St. John's Day; a Catholic feast. Men dressed as women were able to participate in the pagan celebration. [2] [3] It is similar to the fertility rites of Obando, Bulacan.

The role of women in the Philippines is explained based on the context of Filipino culture, standards, and mindsets. The Philippines is described to be a nation of strong women, who directly and indirectly run the family unit, businesses, government agencies and haciendas.

Midsummer is the period of time centered upon the summer solstice, and more specifically the northern European celebrations that accompany the actual solstice or take place on a day between June 19 and June 25 and the preceding evening. The exact dates vary among different cultures. The celebration predates Christianity, and existed under different names and traditions around the world.

Philippines Republic in Southeast Asia

The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Situated in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of about 7,641 islands that are categorized broadly under three main geographical divisions from north to south: Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. The capital city of the Philippines is Manila and the most populous city is Quezon City, both part of Metro Manila. Bounded by the South China Sea on the west, the Philippine Sea on the east and the Celebes Sea on the southwest, the Philippines shares maritime borders with Taiwan to the north, Japan to the northeast, Vietnam to the west, Palau to the east, and Malaysia and Indonesia to the south.

Apart from being considered as Joaquin's personal favorite, The Summer Solstice was also one of the most anthologized. Although popular, it was also regarded controversial due to conflicting interpretations about the masterpiece. Filipino literary critics had debated over the ending of the story, questioning what was victorious in the narrative. The items in conflict were paganism against Christianity, the primitive against the civilized, and the status of men against the status of women. [2] [3]

In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors. In genre fiction, the term "anthology" typically categorizes collections of shorter works such as short stories and short novels, by different authors, each featuring unrelated casts of characters and settings, and usually collected into a single volume for publication.

Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Its adherents, known as Christians, believe that Jesus is the Christ, whose coming as the messiah was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible, called the Old Testament in Christianity, and chronicled in the New Testament. It is the world's largest religion with about 2.4 billion followers.

Primitive culture

Primitive Culture is an 1871 book by Edward Burnett Tylor. According to Tylor a defining characteristic of primitive cultures is a greater amount of leisure time than in more complex societies.

The narrative of The Summer Solstice begins with St. John's Day, as it occurred in the 1850s [1] in the Philippines. Entoy informed Doña Lupeng that Amada had participated in the Tatarin fertility ritual. Amada was believed to have become the Tatarin personified. The next day, while on board a carriage, Doña Lupeng started a conversation regarding how Amada could still believe in such a ritual. Don Paeng cut her short because children were listening. The carriage stopped, and they watched the St. John's Day procession. Thinking and speaking to herself, Doña Lupeng mocked the men's demonstration of arrogance during the procession. Upon arriving at the house, Doña Lupeng found out that Guido, Don Paeng's cousin, had participated in both the St. John's Day procession and the Tatarin ritual. Guido enjoyed the "fiestas". Guido kissed Doña Lupeng's feet as the latter was on her way to look for her children. Doña Lupeng told Don Paeng about the incident. Don Paeng was disgusted and reasoned that a woman needed love and respect, not adoration. Doña Lupeng and Don Paeng went to see the Tatarin ritual at the plaza. The revelers had their own St. John statue. Doña Lupeng joined the ceremony. Failing from pulling Doña Lupeng out of the ritual, Don Paeng had to ask the carriage driver, Entoy, to take Doña Lupeng back. At the house, Doña Lupeng was able to make Don Paeng tell her that he adored her. In submission, Don Paeng kissed Doña Lupeng's feet. [2] [3]

John the Baptist 1st-century Hebrew preacher and later Christian saint

John the Baptist was a Hebrew itinerant preacher in the early 1st century AD. Other titles for John include John the Forerunner in Eastern Christianity, John the Immerser in some Baptist traditions, and "the prophet John (Yaḥyā)" in Islam. He is sometimes alternatively called John the Baptizer.

Procession organized body of people walking in a formal or ceremonial manner

A procession is an organized body of people walking in a formal or ceremonial manner.

Festival Organised series of acts and performances

A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern.

Linguistic analysis

An analysis related to the language used in this piece of literature revealed that the speech or dialogue of the characters represented "stereotypical notions of masculinity and femininity", the difference between genders, and the hierarchy that bound the two sexes. In spite of the part where the character Don Paeng was presented as a crawling man who kissed the feet of Doña Lupeng, female critics viewed the story as against women and anti-feminist. On the other hand, male critics saw the short story as pro-woman and feminist. [2] [3]

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It involves analysing language form, language meaning, and language in context. The earliest activities in the documentation and description of language have been attributed to the 6th-century-BC Indian grammarian Pāṇini who wrote a formal description of the Sanskrit language in his Aṣṭādhyāyī.

Speech human vocal communication using spoken language

Speech is human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words, and using those words in their semantic character as words in the lexicon of a language according to the syntactic constraints that govern lexical words' function in a sentence. In speaking, speakers perform many different intentional speech acts, e.g., informing, declaring, asking, persuading, directing, and can use enunciation, intonation, degrees of loudness, tempo, and other non-representational or paralinguistic aspects of vocalization to convey meaning. In their speech speakers also unintentionally communicate many aspects of their social position such as sex, age, place of origin, physical states, psychic states, physico-psychic states, education or experience, and the like.

Dialogue Conversation between two or more people

Dialogue is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literary and theatrical form that depicts such an exchange. As a narrative, philosophical or didactic device, it is chiefly associated in the West with the Socratic dialogue as developed by Plato, but antecedents are also found in other traditions including Indian literature.

Critics considered The Summer Solstice as pro-woman or a tale of "triumphant women" because of Don Paeng's submission to Doña Lupeng and the portrayal of women's reproductive role that made them "rulers of men". [2] [3]

Reproduction Biological process by which new organisms are generated from one or more parent organisms

Reproduction is the biological process by which new individual organisms – "offspring" – are produced from their "parents". Reproduction is a fundamental feature of all known life; each individual organism exists as the result of reproduction. There are two forms of reproduction: asexual and sexual.

However, there were also critics who called The Summer Solstice as "pseudo-feminist" or a work that was not truly feminist because to them the authority and power given to women in the story was unreal, short-lived, of no social value, mysterious, and illusory. Based on the story, the empowerment of women emerged only once a year, in summer, and only during the Summer solstice. The role of women in the story was further described as "demonized" and "sexualized". [2] [3]

Literary reviews

Other items that literary critics focused on in The Summer Solstice included Joaquin's literary style and theme. In general, critics agree that Joaquin's stylistic genre was to present the way of life and culture in the Philippines during the transition from being Hispanic into American. Some critics praised Joaquin for his style of "setting the mood" for a presentation of a past full of mysticism, but others found Joaquin's melodrama as excessive thus pushing away from the story's "narrative logic and formal elements". The presentation of pagan rituals and Christian rites, superstitious and religious beliefs, the old and the new were argued to be more of a "fission" rather than a "fusion" due to the existence of the struggles occurring between the pairs mentioned. Contradicting descriptions of the Philippines during its pre-colonial past also led literary reviewers to regard Joaquin as a writer who was unable to "embrace" the ambience of such a time in Philippine history because he was more "nostalgic" of the colonial history of the country. Thus, Joaquin through The Summer Solstice and his other stories, was summarized as a search for his country's "national and cultural identity." [2] [3]

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Nick Joaquin Filipino writer

Nicomedes "Nick" Márquez Joaquín was a Filipino writer and journalist best known for his short stories and novels in the English language. He also wrote using the pen name Quijano de Manila. Joaquín was conferred the rank and title of National Artist of the Philippines for Literature. He has been considered one of the most important Filipino writers, along with José Rizal and Claro M. Recto. Unlike Rizal and Recto, whose works were written in Spanish, Joaquin's major works were written in English despite being a native Spanish speaker.

Liwayway is a leading Tagalog weekly magazine published in the Philippines since 1922. It contains Tagalog serialized novels, short stories, poetry, serialized comics, essays, news features, entertainment news and articles, and many others. In fact, it is the oldest Tagalog magazine in the Philippines. Its sister publications are Bannawag, Bisaya Magasin, and Hiligaynon.

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References

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