WHERE RIZAL LIVED IN BRUSSELS

In the middle of the winter of 1890, Rizal transferred from Paris to Brussels. He took residence in a house near the Grand Place where he stayed for some months to finish his novel El Filibusterismo and to write articles to La Solidaridad. The reason of his move was not known precisely but from the exchange of letters with his family, it could likely be that he did not receive any money from them for quite some time because they had encountered financial difficulties from being a victim of threats, fraud and deception by the Spanish authorities.

Inspired by his profound sentiment of disillusionment and bitterness on the division among his countrymen in Spain, the failure to obtain reforms from the Spanish Government and the troubles in his hometown, he wrote the following poignant poem.

To My Muse (a Mi...)

Invoked no longer is the muse,

The lyre is out of date:

The poets it no longer use,

And youth its inspiration now imbues

With other form and state.

If today our fancies aught

Of verse would still require,

Helicon’s hill remains unsought;

And without heed we but inquire,

Why the coffee is not brought.

In the place of thought sincere

That our hearts may feel,

We must seize a pen of steel,

And with verse and line severe

Fling abroad a jest and jeer.

Muse, that in the past inspired me,

And with songs of love hast fired me;

Go thou now to dull repose,

For today in sordid prose

I must earn the gold that hired me.

Now must I ponder deep,

Meditate and struggle on;

E’en sometimes I must weep;

For he who love would keep

Great pain has undergone.

Fled are the days of ease,

The days of Love’s delight;

When flowers still would please

And give to suffering souls surcease

From pain and sorrow’s blight.

One by one they have passed on,

All I loved and moved among;

Dead or married – from me gone,

For all I place my heart upon

By fate adverse are stung

Go thou too, O Muse, depart,

Other regions fairer find;

For my land but offers art

For the laurel, chains that bind,

For a temple prisons blind.

But before thou leavest me, speak:

Tell me why thy voice sublime,

Thou couldst ever from me seek,

A song of sorrow for the weak,

Defiance to the tyrant’s crime.

Source: Rizal in Belgium for program book by Lucien Spittael.