Delicadeza
Media
Part of Panorama
- Title
- Delicadeza
- Creator
- Sinco, Rene
- Identifier
- It's in the blood
- Language
- English
- Source
- Panorama Volume XII (No. 2) February 1960
- Year
- 1960
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- It's in the blood DELICADEZA By Rene Sinco In my grandmother’s Antillan house with the big red roof and the azotea with the pot ted palms in Negros, there used to hang in the sala a framed piece of clotn on which were embroi dered in red thread of silk the names of virtues, such as Patience, Constancy, Charity, and nine or ten others, but the one that puz zled me was the word Delicadeza. That one was embroidered in white and done in an exquisitely florid hand. “That,” Grandmama used to instruct us, “is an impor tant virtue. Put that into your heads. The virtue that distinguish es the true hidalgo (gentleman) from somebody without manners, a barbarian; the mark of a true lady.” It was one of those grand words so hard to define, that smack of an age of ritual and good graces. It could mean a softmannered way of speaking, grace ful movements, prudence, tact, or a subtle way of putting things. Sometimes it meant all these at the same time. My grandmother, disciplinarian that she was, de manded we observe all of them, most specially when we had vi sitors. Delicadeza—hallmark of a Genteel Tradition, of an age of laces and horse buggies. But it is still a part of our na tional character, though we no longer consider ourselves living in a Genteel Age. One remembers the episode in Rizal’s No/i Me Tangere where the hero, Crisostomo Ibarra, find ing himself momentarily friend less in a party, accosts a group of ladies. “ ‘Allow me,’ he said, ‘to overstep the rules of strict eti February 1960 31 quette. It has been seven years since I have been in my own country and upon returning to it I cannot suppress my admiration and refrain from paying my res pects to its most precious orna ments, the ladies.’ ” His boldness, of course, was met by a stony silence by the ladies in question, although Ibarra’s manner of ap proach is described by the author as “simple and natural.” But Ke was not working according to pro tocol, which required a middle man to do the introduction. This silent refusal to begin an acquain tanceship on the part of the iadies is a good example of lady-like de licadeza, which has, in the tradi tion of Maria Clara, a touch of maidenly coyness that was sup posed to be attractive to the males. Nowadays, such is no longer the case, party-going-wise. But de licadeza expresses itself in a dozen or so ways in our relationship with others. Take, for instance, the disconcerting habit of many Filipinos to conceal the truth which Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil mentioned in an article in Philip pines International. When an em ployee wants to leave a job for another with better pay, does he approach the boss and tell him that he is quitting for that reason? Oh no. He invents a subterfuge: he has to leave for the province because of a sick or dying rela tive, or he has to take a vacation in Baguio because of failing health. Behind the subterfuge lies something that is ingranied in the Filipino psyche, and it is this sim ply: his inability to offend the other person’s feelings. Which is one way of saying that the boss is sure to feel offended if he is told the reason why his employee is leaving. Delicadeza—one has to be careful about hurting the other person’s feelings. Hence, a spade is not called a spade, and both parties engage all too happily in a grand illusion of sorts. Many foreigners notice that Filipinos take offense all too easily. Which makes criticism, no matter how legitimate, a difficult thing to do in these parts. One music critic of a metropolitan daily once criticized the faulty performance of an up-and-coming pianist in the most matter-of-fact, unbiased manner possible. In no time, the relatives of this hapless pianist started calling up by phone the critic to ask him if he had any thing personal against the pianist in question! One can never be certain whether one has lost the friendship of a writer simply be cause his books were roundly panned. Delicadeza—amor propio-. they go together. It is tough to draw the line between the objec tive and the subjective, the ra tional and the emotional, the im personal and the personal. To cri ticize a person’s wrong is consi dered by many as an assault on his very person, and so the ac cepted method to employ is to 32 Panorama handle the situation with kid gloves, as much as possible. I n his book The Life and Deeds * of Admiral Dewey (1898), Joseph L. Stickney, Dewey’s aide, describes this dominating flaw in the Filipino character as follows: "The moral obligation to tell the truth does not weigh heavily upon the Filipino. The civilized natives often like to conceal the most tri vial shortcoming, or even without any excuse whatsoever, and the detection of a falsehood brings no regret except chagrin that the practice has not been more dex terously carried out.” A careful study of Philippine history will provide an explana tion for Stickney’s comment: co lonialism is, at least partially, to blame. Centuries of Spanish do mination has brought about injus tices that caused all kinds of psy chological torment on the lnaios. Somehow the Filipino, as a de fense mechanism of sorts, has de vised a way of covering up short coming in order not to incur the superciliousness of his white mas ters and also as a means of “sav ing face.” It is all emotional, cer tainly, and colonialism is in a way responsible for the emotionalism of the Filipinos, who, for decades and decades, have not been orient ed in rationalizing things cooly, detachedly. Suddenly, freedom burst wildly in the horizon and, with the American regime, mass education enabled the Filipino to partake of matter-of-fact attitudes and practicality, a sense of objec tivity and impartiality. The Fili pino soul began to break away from the cocoon of complacency, timidity, and moral isolation, to assert its own moral integrity. In governing the state, delicadeza is definitely a drawback; emotional ism and hypersensitivity to criti cism have characterized many gov ernment administrations and often the results have been loud politicking, character-assassination, noisy internal squabbles (delica deza clouding the real issues), ra ther than quiet deliberation, dis passionate discussion, and prompt action.—Philippines International. ¥ ¥ ¥ Drop tear for the poor lady who reduced 65 pounds and then found out that it was her face peo ple disliked. ¥ February 1960 33
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