Noli Me Tangere edited by Blasco Ibáñez

The present version of Noli Me Tangere was corrected by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. It therefore differs in certain passages from the original edition.
Rizal wrote this novel about nineteenth-century Filipino society in the midst of his political activity, and sought to denounce the excesses of the Spanish government and its religious institutions. He did so through this story, in which the prevailing social classes, love and historical reflection appear.
This is José Rizal’s most famous text. The novel created so much controversy that only a few days after his first return to the Philippines (1887), Governor General Emilio Terrero informed him that his novel was subversive. However, some copies of Noli me tangere were smuggled in.
Then, when Rizal returned to the Philippines after finishing his medical studies, he was deported to Dapitan, on the island of Mindanao. He was later imprisoned for “inciting rebellion” through his writings. In 1896, at the age of thirty-five, he died before a firing squad.
We quote, below, the first paragraph of this version in which the stylistic differences attributed to Blasco Ibáñez are already appreciated:

“At the end of October, Don Santiago de los Santos, commonly known as Captain Tiago, gave a dinner, which was the subject of all the conversations in Binondo, in the other suburbs and even within the city. Captain Tiago was then the most rumbling man, and everyone knew that his house, like his country, did not close its doors to anyone, except to profitable innovations and new and daring ideas.
With the rapidity of lightning spread the news in the world of the parasites that God bred in his infinite goodness and so affectionately multiplies in Manila.
Have this dinner in a house on the rue de Anloague. It was a fairly large building, built in the style of the country and located on the banks of the Pasig River, called by some Binondo estuary, and that plays, like all the rivers of Manila, the multiple role of bath, sewer, laundry, fishery, means of transport and communication and even provides drinking water if the Chinese water carrier has it convenient. It is noteworthy that this powerful artery of the suburb, where traffic abounds, barely has an old wooden bridge, in a distance of more than a kilometer.”

Fragment of the work

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