Note 10 — Chapter VIII · THE GRAPES OF WRATH

Between “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo” is a vast difference. We speak of novels. In “Noli Me Tangere” all is fresh, ingenuous, impetuous; it is a novel that impresses one in such a way that it is never forgotten; it is a work of feeling. “El Filibusterismo” is a work of deep thought, and in literature it must be remembered that sentiment is preferred to thought. “Noli Me Tangere” is a picture of the whole country, rich in color and in fantasy, entwined with the dreams of a delicate poetry. “El Filibusterismo” came to be a series of philosophical-political treatises with a novelistic trend; every speech that appears in the work ends in a patriotic dissertation. “Noli Me Tangere” is the unbosoming of an enlightened poet, passionately patriotic, artistically revolutionary. “El Filibusterismo” is a series of meditations; it lacks the admixture of humor, of semi-sweet irony that produces such an effect in the first book. It despises the attacks of the religious fanatics, threatens with Voltairian sharpness. The ambient air of the tropics is not felt, charged full of melancholy, which is to be breathed in “Noli Me Tangere.” Rizal wrote his first novel having constantly before his dreamy fantasy the vision of his country as it was. In the second he wrote thinking of the redemption of his race, elevating the philosopher above the artist. “Noli Me Tangere” is a novel; “El Filibusterismo” is a tract on the national anarchy. Retana, p. 201. ↑