Emmanuel S. Torres: A Quiet Voice in Filipino Poetry

 Emmanuel S. Torres

A Quiet Voice in Filipino Poetry

Emmanuel S. Torres: An Almost Idealist: The Arts and Letters of a Filipino Renaissance Man

Who is Torres?

Emmanuel S. Torres was one of the most significant and outstanding personalities in the fields of Philippine arts and literature as he was a great poet, art critic, historian as well as a curator. Throughout his illustrious career, he emerged as one of the important figures in promoting modern and contemporary Filipino art and contributed significantly to the development of the Philippines’s art scene in the twentieth century. It can be said that Torres guided the Ateneo Art Gallery for more than 40 years, as a result of which he promoted the works of Filipino modernists such as Fernando Zóbel, Vicente Manansala, and Arturo Luz. The curatorial philosophy of Bard is credited for raising modernism within the context of Philippine art while encouraging non-mainstream trends or reactions against traditional iconographies.

In the realm of literature, Torres made his mark with his evocative poetry, most notably in his acclaimed collection "Shapes of Silence: Poems" (1966) The poems which are predominantly lyrical in form adeptly capture the flavors of America. His works done in ‘minimalism powerful stamp’ deal with love, memory, loss, and self-search, which are global issues along with strong Philippine insight. As a critic, Torres’s concise analysis and philosophical analysis threw real light on the relationship of art to society putting Filipino art in its proper historical perspective thereby placing it in the international art movements.

Torres’s professional career was that of a curator and a writer but also that of an educator, as throughout the years he was a professor at several educational institutions and contributed to forming young generations of artists and connoisseurs of art. His writing, artistry, and critical perspective are relevant in the circles of modern Philippine culture today and rightfully place him in the annals of culture’s most important modernist icons.

The Poet and the Writer

Emmanuel S. Torres came into existence in the year 1932. He is an admired poet who painted life in poignant verses. Lyrical and philosophical, reflecting the attitudes to language and emotion his poems are also filled with admiration and admiration. Many of the themes of Torres’s works are devoted to love and loss, time and memory, and are built based on the author’s reflection and the facts of life. One of his exhibits Angles of Ascent (1987) is considered one of the prominent poetry collections in Philippine literature as this shows his deep understanding of the craft. In the course of his writings, Torres received many accolades for his poetry one of which was the Palanca Award.

Torres was more than just a poet, he was also very skilled in essay writing and art critique. This was evidenced by his article writings on Philippine art where he was able to appreciate the beauty of the arts and see the social and historical realities of art making. He enjoyed the gift of describing what he saw by detailing the technical aspects and the emotions that could be derived from a work of art thus making art more popular. His essays and reviews were printed in top-ranking newspapers and journals, making him one of his generation's most renowned art critics.

A. LIFE

  He is a poet, art critic, a teacher of English and Comparative Literature at Ateneo de Manila, and concurrent curator of the Ateneo art museum. He was originally born in Manila on the 29th of April in the year 1932. Thus he completed his BA in Education in 1954 and won the Joseph Mulry Award for literary excellence at the Ateneo de Manila University, and F. S. on a Fulbright-Smith-Mundt fellowship in 1957 obtained his M. A. in English at the State University of Iowa and studied under an International Scholarship in Creative Writing and participated in Paul Engle’s Writers’ Workshop. he became the faculty member of the Ateneo in 1958 and from 1960 assumed the charge of curator of the Ateneo University Art Gallery. In 1961, he was awarded Ten Outstanding Young Men or TOYM Awardee for Literature. In the Ateneo, he came to the rank of Professor of Creative Writing and Art Studies as he held the Henry Lee Erwin Chair of Creative Writing and the Jose B. Fernandez Chair for Art Research. Apart from the numerous commendations and honors he got from the local and international spheres in art and letters, Torres was an art columnist for The Manila Times and SIM. He has also served on several committees in art exhibits.

B. WORKS

An illustrious poet, art critic, and curator of Philippine arts whose brilliant legacy was in arts, literature, and the appreciation of Filipino talents, Congmental was an exemplar of what pride in the Philippines industry has to offer to the global community today. Through caring for the Ateneo Art Gallery to which he contributed categorically, Torres assisted in the growth of modernist art in the Philippines by supporting modern artists, including Fernando Zóbel and Vicente Manansala among others. In literature, Torres is celebrated for his poetry collection Shapes of Silence: includes Poems (1966), the collection that has been described as perhaps the most powerful and musical of all Neruda’s books, and it is the first of the books which Cementerio deals with love, death and personal identity themes. Thus, concise and meaningful texts, alongside with the dedication to the preservation of the Filipino artists’ work, are regarded as his major contributions to the Philippines.

The Smile on the Smokey Mountain and Other Poems by Emmanuel S. Torres – is just a collection of emotional poems that claim the author’s sensitivity to the outcasts and prove the ability to describe the Filipino experience. A garbage mine called Smokey Mountain in Manila where district groups of people exist and look for something becomes the impulse of his poetizing. This is described in the title poem, “Smile on the Smokey Mountain” concerning living in horrible conditions but still being content. It might be seen that he paints quite sparsely but the backgrounds of the paintings depict the real-life pain and struggle of the poor and the endurance of humans.

Torres intersperses social commentaries in between or before poems in this book; themes include the battle of life, hope, and the problems in the society in the Philippines. This suffering is depicted in his work especially between the beauty of nature and friendly people on the one hand and vice, poverty and pollution of cities on the other. Art for art’s sake implies the use of artistic imagery as a means of conveying socio-political themes in a manner that makes society accept the marginalization of the most vulnerable groups. Altogether, "The Smile on Smokey Mountain" and Other Poems remain a lucid testament to Torres that poetry can cohesively interweave the beautiful and the good as well as both sentimentalism and spirited sensibility for affliction and fortitude.

The death of Prof. Emmanuel “Eric” Torres, the first curator at the Ateneo Art Gallery, is stated. He died at the age of 89 on the 13th of September in the year 2021. He was a poet, writer, art critic, and a one-time professor at the Ateneo de Manila University where he was teaching in the English Department.

Over the years, he was instrumental in establishing art and literature in the Philippines by organizing significant art shows that focused on Filipino modernism to creating poetry that embraced the local and global atmosphere. He left a positive cultural impact which can still be felt today as Filipino artists, writers, and cultural scholars still draw their motivation from him.