Saturday, October 18, 2003

Scrutinizing the Stone Sisters



What’s the deal with the monument to the Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres? Perhaps to answer that question, it is best to deal with the bigger context, and start from there.



A great monument to people of rank, or of substance, must have the power to awe—a tenuous translation of that relationship, almost an aesthetic, between viewer and art object, which is more or less metaphorical for what that person represents in his or her life. American democracy, for example, blasts its importance and earnestness onto the bald rocks of Mount Rushmore, etching the faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. It says “grandeur” on those granite faces, and perhaps that is also the way we must somehow feel—the way it is as well for us, beholding the trench-coated giant monument (of an otherwise dwarfish) Jose Rizal in Luneta, or the bronze importance of Dr. David Hibbard in front of the CAP Building, or the immaculate sorrow of the marble Pieta in St. Peter’s Square, or the concrete hideousness and dictatorial testament to self-importance that was Marcos’s bust which once jutted out of a mountainside in Benguet province, and which Tourism Secretary Richard Gordon has called “a monument of hate.” So much hate stemming from the symbolic that it was summarily bombed in December last year. Any worthwhile monument is not just a silent work that begs to be treated cursorily. It necessarily provokes reaction.



The medium, after all, is the message.



And there is also the story a monument tells.



For this article, we go to the Boulevard some time on one lazy afternoon—to peek at the work in progress, timed for completion just before the beginning of the centennial celebration of the founding of St. Paul’s in the Philippines (yes, the first Paulinian institution in the country was founded in Dumaguete—a Catholic answer to the Protestant Silliman University). The work is draped in tarpaulin, like a wrapped secret.



“Why this spot?” I asked Mark, viewing the monument’s place in what may the heart of the Rizal Boulevard. In front of us, the Tañon Strait looked placid for an October day. There were people milling about the promenade in search of a life, and hawkers, too, of various trades, and sometimes joggers rushed past in search of sweat, while tricycles rambled away to make their Dumaguete day.



“This is the spot where they landed,” Mark told me. Although there are still debates about the authenticity of the claim, he continued.



We looked at the cement statues (in a white coat of paint then when we first visited).



Seven nuns on a boat, in various poses of queer reflection. One is pointing—at something. One is praying the rosary. A few of the sisters just sit, as if waiting for divine answers to an alien destiny. What was immediately striking were the individual characteristics of their faces—and no mean feat here: the makers of the statue were certainly going for the facsimile of their very faces. All austere and proud and… nun-ny. Nobody looked like Julie Andrews, or the Flying Nun.



“There’s Sister Josephine,” Mark said, pointing at one sister. She has an oblong face.



“There’s Sister Marthe de St. Paul,” Mark continued. She looks like Bette Davis with a dash of Mickey Rooney. “And there’s Mother Marie Micheau, the Mother Superior.” Or not. “I’m not really sure, maybe she died early,” Mark smiled and scratched his head.



They came in 1904 on a boat straight from Hong Kong. It was in response to a request by Archbishop Father James Rooker (of Iloilo, and the former Diocese of Dumaguete), who was reportedly alarmed to know that the only school in Dumaguete was run by… Protestants. In one of his trips to Hong Kong, he saw some Paulinian nuns with their curly wimple (which was actually designed by the Christian Dior) and pointedly asked them whether they could perhaps establish a school in the Philippines. They said yes. And soon arrived in Dumaguete’s shores and promptly set up shop in what is now the premises beside the Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria. The original school burned down, however—and the sisters were forced to decamp to what is now the present location of St. Paul.



“What does this monument tell you?” I asked Mark again. And what does this mean to a typical Paulinian?



He gave his silence a consideration. He thinks like that. “I am,” he began, “very proud of being a Paulinian, and this monument reminds me of all the things the first seven sisters had to go through in order for me, and many others, to get an education.” Which was as well. This was a guy who’s been with St. Paul since kindergarten, and now goes to its college hoping to become a marketing executive.



Perhaps that is how we must look at the monument itself: as a kind of history lesson to remind us of all those who came to our shores (Catholics or Presbyterians), to give Dumaguete the intellectual vibrance it boasts of being a “University Town.” That is enough reason for awe: seven sisters out to sea sailing from a faraway place. One must admit that notion contains a very romantic idea—an adventure with a humanist appeal. The statue deserves its place then in the Boulevard—



“But if only they didn’t have to paint it,” Mark and I, however, agreed. Which made the whole thing somehow tacky. And perhaps this is enough of an aesthetic criticism, which this article was meant to be in the first place.



“It reminds me of those unfortunate painted figures in front of the Capitol na lang,” Mark said, pouting a bit.



“Yup, sayang no? It was already great when it was just white,” I said.



“Oh well,” Mark said.



“Oh well,” I nodded.



And that was that.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

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