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This writing is impressed with facts that Francisco Balagtas Baltazar is indeed a paragon of cultural and literary inspiration.
In several discussions about preceding chapters, Filipino laureate stirred up national consciousness that triggers patriotism, opposed colonialism and elevate our Filipino culture through his long line of inspiring works.
Francisco Balagtas Baltazar serve as both cultural and literary inspiration. For one, He has been hailed as the greatest among the brood of Tagalog poets. But beyond a literary merit what matters is the distinctive cultural, social and political value.
Cultural Inspiration
It is said that in the metrical romance “Florante at Laura,” until this date, it is considered as a unique case of literary work in the history of Philippine literature and also in the areas of publication. According to several authors, it holds a unique distinction of being the only poem which was published in our country that has not gone out of print since its first publication and disclosure to the public and at the same time, the peculiarity of the material that has been translated into various local dialects and foreign languages and that continues to be read until this present times.
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As already pointed out in the preceding chapter, proposal for Balagtas to be included in the list as our national hero must be taken into consideration. The clamor for him to be in the rank as our National Hero keep on rising. In fact, Michael Corroza, ,officer-in-charge of the Filipinas Institute of Translation (FIT) stated that our heroes like Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio looked up to Balagtas.” He noted that in his writings, Dr. Jose Rizal, along with other prolific writers recognized Balagtas, for his contributions in literature, just like England’s William Shakespeare.
Another noteworthy statement from Corroza is that “it is our stand in FIT that Balagtas involved himself in the campaign for freedom translated into cultural and political activism.”
According to Romeo Dizon, FBB’s consciousness and sensibility and the heritage helped the latter fashion and bequeathed to the generations to come may be likened to a concentric pattern―to borrow a term from Professor Lucilla Hosillos of Philippine literature. This configuration consists of a center which generates endless circles around it, each assuming a distance from the one behind it.
Further, she said that “throw a stone into a calm river and this exact pattern emerges!” “But one innovative difference in the case of Fred Sevilla’s approach is that these circles do not only move outward concentrically, but they also “retrace” on another level the circles in an inward direction,” Dizon said. He also mentioned that the obra maestra devotes its initial chapters in redefining the causes of the upsurge of nationalism in the 1900s as it was concretized in the Filipinos’ militant response to American colonial rule.
For Dizon , it has become necessary to move back in time in order to retread the paths taken by American colonialism and recapture its impact on the Indios; further back, for him, the book shows the conscious moves taken by both Spain earlier and America later in vilifying the natives as a lowly race.
He further describe that the novel resulted in instilling a negative consciousness of slavishness on the part of the Indios. Romeo Dizon maintains his position that to placate them from this sorry state, to uproot this vicious disease, and in its place awaken a feeling of national pride, took decades and decades of slow and ardous reeducation. But Balagtas successfully initiated this nationalistic flux.
Conclusion
Balagtas’ cultural wisdom is greatly appreciated by many. For Fred Sevilla, events, here in our country and in other countries which were in a historically advantaged position to affect conditions in the so called colonial Philippines and which constituted the cultural concern of the Filipinos as well as socio-economic formation of the period, long before Balagtas, are dwelt with on the author’s assumption that they exercised a dialectical influence in shaping the poet’s outlook especially in cultural and political aspects.
In the same way, those who were inspired during and long after him, bore the imprint of Francisco Balagtas Baltazar’s legacy.
