Malte : a History of Maltese Literature, Its Nature And

'· ()~~ 3:r ' l . - ~ A -R,t~ 1_ tj~ \\.J4~' tk, , ~~ ~~~~ I ' 1 '~'' (R,.ts), 20 1 t'?S\ H?· ' 2-~-so , ., I 5.5 ; P.B. 76 76 72 F UNIVERSITY OF MALTA I I LIBRARY Progressive No. of Work _1_5_0_!4_.. 1_ 1· . I No. of Volumes I pJ '1655-, r--;15 Class Mark Hs7J Remarks University of Malta Library lllllll lllll lllll lllll lllll lllll llllll Ill llll *150241* 150141 Malte A history of nialtese . literature its nature and extension by Oliver FRIGGIERI (University of Malta) A history of Maltese culture may be said to the literary efforts of the Maltese in English are reflect in various Intimate ways the history of the relatively few. since Maltese is now accepted by who!~ community. Since. much more than In the all as the best and more diffused medium of local case of larger countries. Malta could never do literature. it is not likely that the marginal (or without larger countries. which ultimately turned emarginated ?) output in English in our times cons out to be a complex process of Influences. adap titutes a significant aspect of our literary process). tations and reactions. such a history. be It political. The dialectical relationship between Italian and social or cultural. Is necessarily bound to assume. Maltese has been looked at. up to a few years or at least include. a comparative character. This ago. as controversial, or worse still, as the unhappy may be all the more so owing to the fact that and not easily reconcilable, marriage between a rich what one may euphemistically call foreign contacts Latin culture and a poor. quantitatively restricted were nothing less than foreign occupations. Conse Semitic one. (Apart from other motives, a sprin· quently the conditions which characterize and kling of anti-semitism may be found to form part modify the process of, say, a political history of of the crux of this prejudice). One can only subordination may boil down to be the inalienable conclude most easily that, If one agress that the causes of analogous conditions in the cultural field. limits of this partial and Impressionistic definition The basic distinction is, to my mind. linguistic are just those which suit most the language ques and not essentially cultural or psychological. Consi tion ut sic, initiated in the last decades of the dering the two major languages which assumed. Nineteenth century and prolonged up to the thirties contemporarily or subsequently. the role of pri and forties of this century, one has still to further mary media for the sophisticated expression of a subdivide the said distinction. In other words, one community's feelings. experiences and ambitions. presumably has to define the basic nature and one has to start by distinguishing ·between Italian motivation underlying the appartently contradictory and Maltese. (The presence of English is relatively dialectic Italian-Maltese from a purely linguistic too recent to be defined as another channel point of view. After getting a clear perspective of through which Maltese literature could, or actually the language question - since It is only natural did. seek new bearings. Apart from the fact that that languages wich find themselves involved in ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONALE DES CRITIQUES LITTERAIRES interaction within the limits ot the same commu· local soc.iety. or:c :::;hould also seek to define the nlty are also bound to develop cultural and parti proper character of the Italian tradition, and this culaly literary cross-currents - one may proceed cannot be done if not through a comparative ana to deal exclusively with the literary question. {Inci lysis of the ltalinn literature and of Its forms of dentally. at this stage It may suffice to say that pdrtic1pation in the Island. Here one should also considering the widest possible use of languages seek to identify the character of the local deve the presence of more than one medium of expres l0pment. which at its worst would be decadent sion seems to have caused schizophrenic traits in imitation. of various movements such as the our linguistic habit. For example, our fathers presu Renaissance. Baroque. Arcadia, lllumlnlsm and then mably thought In Maltese - though some of them the first inklings towards Romanticism. insisted that they did so In Italian -. spoke In Since Romanticism, both Latin and Germanic. Maltese. but wrote In Italian. An analogous situa took a shape of Its own both through Its ways of tion Is found In contemporary Malta : many think revaluatlng the lllumlnlst diffusion of knowledge in Maltese (or In English?), speak In Maltese. but through the diffusion of the native languages, and write In English). then through the more mature and profoundly felt Without going Into the details of the historical questioning and negation of the true significance evidence we are provided with, I feel I could sum and predictability of the concept of cosmopolltlsm up the whole point as follows. Considering the besides the fundamental discovery of the sense of traditional presence of both languages In Malta. Individuality (both personal and collective or the first conclusion is that Maltese Is prior to lta· national), the Romantic epoch would be found to lien as a spoken language, whilst there Is hardly coincide with the first serious efforts towards the any proof that Italian was ever adopted as the rediscovery of Maltese as one of the most ancient habitual speech medium by any local section of patrimonies. as Miklel Anton Vassall! (1764-1829) the native population. When Maltese started to be prefers to call It. of the new emerging nation. The written on a relatively wide scale. Italian had personality of Vassall!. most identifiable through already established Itself as the only and unques his Indefatigable passion for movement from one tionable cultural language of the Island and assu place to another (something which was neither med a respectable literary tradition of Its own. It easily possible nor morally well considered In the 1s superfluous to stress that this considerable Malta of his times), his deeply rooted ambition of deposit of literary output throughout the centuries diffusing culture through Maltese, and his contro Is the work of both Maltese writers and foreign versial political activity which caused him so much ones (who happened to live or spend a period of trouble. Is the result of a harmonious fusion of the their life on the Island) alike. Thus, while Maltese reconcllable components of two apparently contrary has the priority on the level of the spoken lan cultural eras, lllumlnlsm and Romanticism. guage, Italian has the priority of being the almost One of the more important results of Vassall's tlxcluslve written medium. both for political, social political and scholarly activity Is the embryonic and cultural affairs, for a long period. Since It was development of a nationalistic way of thinking only late (about a century ago) that Maltese co.uld which centered around two basic aspects of the strive to attain the status of a decent literary Nineteenth century philosophy and aesthetics : (a) vehicle, the first question the scholar has to ask the affirmation of the singular and collective Iden himself may be this : from which historical point tity (an experience necessarily based on the abso or landmark should a philologically oriented history lute devotion the Romantics had for sentiment and of Maltese literature start ? The question Is ultima passion. as opposed to the old and undisputed right tely the same as asking whether the Italian litera enjoyed by the • goddess reason " which underlead ture of local writers should ever be included, that as evinced in almost all poetics since Aristotle, Is whether It Is at all legitimate to present scien all previous works of art modelled with architec tifically the two languages In a state of mutual tural precision and In a state of psychological equi conflict even on the purely literary order. Or better, librium}, and (b) the faithful cultivation and diffu whether one should be after the establishing of the sion of the national language as the most valuable nature, thematic and technical, of the literary component in the definition of the patria and as expression of the Maltese people when they tradi the most effective justification both for a domi tionally and unquestioningly adopted Italian and nated community's claiming to be a nation and for when consequently, Maltese had no clear and Im· the actual realization of unity of all fellow citizens mediate possibility of gaining the status every under one banner. native language Is normally given. Following this line of approach, the second phase If one tends to seek the literary spirit of the of Maltese literature, or else of the literature of Maltese throughout the centuries, one should only Malta, would be sought In the Identification of two flrid It obvious to include, and give causative pro up to now distinct levels of literary expression. minence to, the said Italian production in the whole Italian and Maltese. The contemporaneity of the picture, thus rendering it as the first, or preliminary two schools, tough linguistically much different phase of the whole literary development. This and politically and socially opposed and engaged in approach would seek to establish the extraliterary a sort of ideological •civil war•, may appear, at motives which conduced Maltese to be debarred first sight, to be the thematic and formal distinc from all cultural works. and why It was (and unfor tion between the old literature still written accor tunately, at times it still •Is•) socially dishonou ding to the Latin tradition, and the new literature rable to use it and practically always impossible written according to some Semitic philosophy and at least difficult, to write It. technical apparatus (Maltese being looked, at, up Alongside this dicothomy, resulting In the inevi to a few decades ago, as a mere corrupt Arabic table co-presence of two distinct stratifications of dialect, the • poverty • of which was further proved 30 ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONALE DES CRITIQUES LITTERAIRES by its lexical • debts • to Sicilian and Italian).

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