Birds of Fire, A Filipino War Novel by Jesús Balmori

Description

Jesús Balmori (Manila, Philippines. 1886-1948) was one of the leading writers of the golden age of Philippine literature in Spanish. At age seventeen he published a groundbreaking book in Philippine poetry, Rimas Malayas (1904), in which he introduced the aesthetics of Modernismo for the first time in the Philippines. In 1926 he received the prestigious Zóbel Prize in the literary genre known as Balagtasan, a form of call-and-response debate conducted in verse. Balmori achieved his greatest recognition as a poet in 1940 with Mi Casa de Nipa, a collection of his best poems that won the National Literary Award sponsored by the U.S. Commonwealth Government. In his poetry, Balmori expressed his intention to create a Filipino aesthetic that could transcend Modernismo and help establish the identity of Spanish-Philippine literature. He wrote prolifically in many genres, including scathing articles and satirical poems under the pseudonym “Batikuling”, criticizing the socio-political establishment and the ruling elite of the times. Balmori was also considered one of the most accomplished novelists of his time. His first two novels, Bancarrota de almas (Bankruptcy of Souls, 1911) and Se deshojó la flor (Withering Flowers, 1915), attempted to go beyond the romantic novel, developing a social realist narrative with the intention of unveiling Filipino national psychology. His third and last novel, Los pájaros de fuego (Birds of Fire, 1945), is a testimonial account of the chaos of war and the destruction of the archipelago during World War II. Written in secret during the years of the Japanese military occupation, it is today considered his most important work.

Robert S. Rudder holds a doctorate degree in Spanish/ English history from the University of Minnesota (1962-69) with a specialization in Golden Age Spanish Literature. He began translating short stories while teaching Spanish at the University of Minnesota in the 1960s, and later continued his dedication to literary translation during his teaching years at UCLA and other universities in California. He has published twelve books, including a new translation of the picaresque classic novel Lazarillo de Tormes (1975), and English translations of such writers as Benito Pérez Galdós, Rosario Castellanos and Cristina Peri Rossi. He has received grants from the Spanish Ministry of Culture for the translation of Nazarin by Pérez Galdós (1997); and from the National Endowment for the Arts for Lo prohibido by Pérez Galdós (2004) and Tres y un sueño by Ana María Matute (2017).

Ignacio López-Calvo is Presidential Chair in the Humanities, Director of the Center for the Humanities, and Professor of Literature at the University of California, Merced. He is the author of more than one hundred articles and book chapters, as well as nine single-authored books and seventeen essay collections. He is the co-executive director of the academic journal Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, the Palgrave-Macmillan Book Series “Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia,” and the Anthem Press book series “Anthem Studies in Latin American Literature and Culture” series. His latest books are The Mexican Transpacific: Nikkei Writing, Visual Arts, Performance (forthcoming); Saudades of Japan and Brazil: Contested Modernities in Lusophone Nikkei Cultural Production (2019); Dragons in the Land of the Condor: Tusán Literature and Knowledge in Peru (2014), and The Affinity of the Eye: Writing Nikkei in Peru (2013).