{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":57496,"auction_id":116,"set_id":150,"lot_number":"72","artist":"José Rizal (1861 - 1896)","title":"Noli Me Tangere","starting_price":4000000,"signed_dated":"1st Edition
\nsigned and dedicated \"To the distinguished Filipinista, Don\nT.H Pardo de Tavera, from his friend and countryman, J.\nRizal\"","medium":"Berlin, Berliner Buchdruckerei-Aktiengesellschaft\n(Book Printing Stock Corporation)\nSetzerinnen-Schule des Lette-Vereins.\n(Typography School of the Lette Society)\n1887","size":"H: 9 1/4\" (23 cm)
\nW: 6 1/4\" (16 cm)
\nthickness: 1\" (2.5 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"A gift from Jose Rizal to Don Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere is not just the Phiilippines’ most famous book — it is also its most important one, written by the country’s most beloved and foremost hero.

Written in Madrid and Paris, and completed in the tiny farming village of Wilhemsfeld, Germany outside Heidelberg, it is a parallel of Rizal’s own personal life and travels.

The Noli, however, is not a European-style novel of manners — for that we have Pedro Paterno’s “Ninay”. It is instead a searing political commentary of what it meant to be a Filipino at the time, (or for that matter, even at this present time.) It told of the bitter but also comical life and times of the Filipino in all social classes, from the ilustrados, gobernadorcillos, and wealthy merchants of both the indio and mestizo blood, but also the working class men and women, hunters and altar boys, neighborhood wastrels and wise men.

By creating a bewildering single universe by setting his pen to paper, Rizal also created a unity of rich and poor Filipinos who all suffered uniformly from the injustices of the Catholic church and the colonial government.

That perspective — of a single people under the Filipino sun — was entirely new and galvanized Andres Bonifacio Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere The Most Important Book in Philippine History by LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL and the Katipunan, as well as an entire generation to take action. Filipinos were not just individual victims of an unforgiving colonial system, they formed a nation longing to be free.

The Noli Me Tangere would light the fuse that would explode in the Philippine Revolution and lead to the First Philippine Republic, the first of its kind in all of Asia.

Rizal would pay dearly for this with his life, executed in 1896 after spending a dreary and pointless four years in exile in Dapitan. That injustice would sound the death knell of the Spanish empire in the Philippines.

The Ilustrados

But make no mistake, Jose Rizal was part of an important intellectual movement of young Filipinos who have since become known as the “ilustrados”. Its members sought excellence in a wide variety of fields, from medicine and pharmacy, as well as the law, but also in science and the arts as well as history, linguistics and ethnography.

Indeed the “ilustrados” were inspired by the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment, promoting science and reason over superstition and blind faith but also seeking equal rights for all men, the separation of Church and State. Individual liberty and the rule of law were correctly believed to create a world that would lead to the birth of new ideas, the age of reason, progress and invention.

The ringleader of this group was the influential and also wildly popular Juan Luna, whose triumph with “Spoliarium” exposed not just Spain’s failings to its sons about also served to ignite the fires of creativity of the entire tribe seeking to compete and even exceed the most distinguished of their European counterparts.

One of the leading lights was Trinidad Hermenegildo “TH” Pardo de Tavera, descended from one of Spain’s Grand Inquisitors, a Filipino-Spanish prince, first among many others, whose family’s fabled wealth allowed them to live in splendor in Paris. (TH’s only sister, Maria Paz, would meet Juan Luna in this enchanted circle, fall in love and marry him.)

TH, in his own right, was a scholar of languages, writing an important treatise while still taking courses in linguistics. This was the ground-breaking Contribution pares el Estudio de los Antiguos Alfabetos Filipinos (1884) which was immediately translated into French in the following year. His biographer E.A. Manuel noted that “This study of ancient Filipino writing attracted attention for the author who \"appears to have been almost the first person who brought an open and scientific mind to the investigation of this material\" in the words of an American authority on the subject, Fletcher Gardner.\" Besides its ethnological and palaeographic value, the Contribution unwittingly initiated a reform movement in Tagalog orthography. The idea of reviving the letters K and W which were used in syllabic alphabets of pre-Spanish origin became clear and logical to the spelling reformers Jose Rizal (q.v.) who in his Tagalog translation of Wilhelm Tell\" started to use the letter K.”

Then appeared in 1887 El Sanscrito en la Lengua Tagalog, a work just as significant in the study of pre-Spanish Filipino culture at his first production. Pardo de Tavera believed that the Hindus who brought them over did not only come to play the role of merchants, but also dominated different parts of the archipelago in military matters, religion, literature, industry, and apiculture. \"It also appeared to Pardo de Tavera that Tagalog literature enriched its literary forms and acquired new vigor under the Hindu influence.\"

It would be these works that would deepen his friendship with Rizal.

Pardo de Tavera would intersect with Jose Rizal’s life at the very moment when he was writing the Noli Me Tangere — and indeed would be one of the first recipients of the first edition of the book, the Berlin edition of 1887. Al Distinguido Filipinista D. TH Pardo de Tavera — Su Amigo y Paisano, J Rizal

To the distinguished Filipinist Don TH Pardo de Tavera — Your Friend and Fellow Countryman, J Rizal

Rizal uses the term ‘Filipinista’ to describe Pardo de Tavera, a word with two meanings; The first, a scholar of Filipino languages (which clearly TH was) but also the more subtle one, a lover of all things Philippine.

The word “distinguido” or “distinguished” would refer to Pardo de Tavera’s sterling international reputation as an academic and a scholar.

Rizal signs himself as “amigo” (friend) and “paisano” (fellow countryman). Of these, “paisano” is the more significant, underlining a shared identity and also common goal — and an intellectual comradeship.

To date, only two other signed copies are in government collections: The first, dedicated to Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo which is in the Malacañan Collection; and the second, dedicated to Pastor Karl Ullmer, in whose home in Wilhelmsfeld, the last chapters of the Noli were completed in 1886. This copy resides in the National Library along with a second first edition work that is unsigned.

Why Have So Few First Editions Survived?

As soon as it was published, the Church — in the person of Friar Salvador Font, head of the country’s all-powerful committee on censorship — declared it unlawful to possess, much less read, the Noli Me Tangere.

As a result, while Rizal (in a letter to Pastor Ullmer) would report that sales of the 2,000 copies in its first printing were so brisk that he was obliged to give the Spanish Governor-General of the Philippines Emilio Terrero y Perinat a dog-eared, old copy because there were none to be found when he returned to Manila between 1887 and 1888.

The Pardo de Tavera Noli Me Tangere is one of the few books that have survived not just the confiscations of the Spanish colonial regime but also the destruction of property in the war-torn years from the Philippine Revolution to World War II.

By the time of the arrival of the Americans, the library of Don Trinidad H. Pardo Tavera had become legendary and had become invaluable as a resource to the new regime.

As a result, \"TH was persuaded to make a catalogue of his collection which was published in 1903 under the joint sponsorship of the Library of Congress and the U.S. Bureau of Insular Affairs,” noted E. Arsenio Manuel. “This is the Biblioteca Filipino which now stands a monument to his learning and a milestone in the history of Philippine bibliography making. It contains 2850 entries relating to the peoples of the Philippines, their history, languages and literatures, and culture.”

In 1923, Pardo de Tavera was appointed to the directorship of the Philippine Library and Museum, a position which he held until his death two years later.

He was married to Doña Concepcion Cembrano, daughter of Don Vicente Cembrano y Ker and Carolina Gonzalez Calderon, a cousin of Felipe Calderon.

Family lore recalls that his daughter nicknamed “Bebeco” would refer to this first edition as a “galerada” or a “galley proof” since the book bears many markings of the year 1886: the first is the year in ink in a triangle and the second, a scribbled “1886” in pencil on the title page.

There are also several pages with pencil annotations and markings, whose origins reflect his inquiring mind. Bebeco would take up the torch left by Don Trinidad and ensure the safety and survival of this precious treasure through the years.","lot_group":"BOOKS","lot_details_html":"

José Rizal (1861 - 1896)
Noli Me Tangere
1st Edition
signed and dedicated \"To the distinguished Filipinista, Don T.H Pardo de Tavera, from his friend and countryman, J. Rizal\"
Berlin, Berliner Buchdruckerei-Aktiengesellschaft
(Book Printing Stock Corporation)
Setzerinnen-Schule des Lette-Vereins.
(Typography School of the Lette Society)
1887
H: 9 1/4\" (23 cm)
W: 6 1/4\" (16 cm)
thickness: 1\" (2.5 cm)

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