Ties that bind: FEU and Nick Joaquin

In her remarks for the opening program of Far Eastern University’s toast to Nick Joaquin on May 25, billed as “Remembering Our Nick,” FEU vice-president for academic affairs Dr. Maria Teresa Tinio expressed what may be the most significant initiative taken by the university with regards the late National Artist’s works.

She announced that as new curricula and new syllabi are being crafted for the start of university education for students who had completed 12 years of basic schooling, “FEU will take this opportunity to infuse its general education curriculum with the works of Nick Joaquin.”

In classes such as Study and Thinking Skills and Purposive Communication, Joaquin’s essays on Manila will be used as specific models of writing, even as FEU aims to build a common cultural experience for students through a canon of readings.

“Nick Joaquin’s works will play an important part of that canon and part of that culture; no student will graduate from FEU without having had experienced Nick.”

As Nick himself would have said: Terrific! Other universities could well consider replicating this commendable initiative.

FEU’s director of the University Research Center, Dennis Pulido, also plans to start building a Nick Joaquin resource center — “an electronic hub that will hold copies of studies about Nick Joaquin and other resources such as interviews, letters, photographs, that will help researchers come to more understanding of Nick’s works, genres, life, and times.”

As a university that has enjoyed special ties with the most prominent Filipino writer, FEU is prepared to commit substantial resources for this undertaking.

It was Nick who wrote the lyrics of the FEU Hymn, on the prodding of his sister-in-law Sarah Kabigting Joaquin, an outstanding Speech and Drama student, for whom then university president Dr. Nicanor Reyes had the FEU Auditorium built. As current FEU president Dr. Michael Alba recalls, that auditorium became the staging ground of Portrait of the Artist as Filipino, as well as the venue of inspirational talks Joaquin gave to FEU college students. 

Nick’s translation into English of The Complete Poems and Plays of Jose Rizal was commissioned and published by FEU Publications in 1976. And on the centenary of the university’s founder, Dr. Nicanor Reyes, Sr., current chair emeritus Dr. Lourdes Reyes Montinola commissioned Nick for the biography, Mr. FEU: The Culture Hero, which was launched in February 1995.

The morning program had UP professor emeritus Dr. Gémino H. Abad delivering the Memorial Lecture, on “Nick Joaquin the Poet,” following which the Nick Joaquin Special Collections Room on the 3rd floor of the university library, Nicanor Reyes Hall, was relaunched.

New items added since it was opened two years ago include a bust of the writer donated by sculptor Julie Lluch, a fresh copy of Zena s Dvoma Pupkami, the Czech translation of The Woman Who Had Two Navels, donated by the Czech Ambassador Jaroslov Osla, Jr., and a copy of Pop Stories for Groovy Kids, donated by Ramon Magsaysay awardee Ligaya Amilbangsa.

Nick’s nieces, Cecile Joaquin Yasay and Charo Joaquin Villegas, led in the relaunch of the collections room, the renovation of which received sponsorship from San Miguel Corporation, as well as the relaunch at the ground floor lobby of Joaquin’s translation of Rizal’s works. On display at the same lobby was the FEU students’ art exhibit, titled “Revisioning Dona Jeronima.”

Forthcoming activities for the continuing celebration of Nick Joaquin’s centennial include special film screenings at FEU Makati of Sari Dalena’s Dahling Nick and National Artist Lamberto Avellana’s Portrait of An Artist as Filipino, at 3 p.m. and 6 p.m., respectively, on Sept. 20; and on Oct. 6, the staging at FEU Auditorium of a new adaptation of “May Day Eve” by Galleon Theatre MNL. 

For that day that launched FEU’s yearlong commemoration of a truly beloved writer, it was poet-critic Jimmy Abad who provided inimitable entertainment with his recitations from memory of Nick’s poems.

Some lines from his lecture also resonate, as when he quoted Nick telling his sister-in-law Sarah about his considered heartland that was Intramuros: “There is so much history and culture in this small place ... this breath of the past tells us who we are and where we have come from.”

The same may be said of Far Eastern University’s well-preserved campus in Manila, with its art deco buildings now joined by a modern hall that houses the great writer’s books, papers, and other precious memorabilia.