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Remarks

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Malte A history of nialtese . literature its nature and extension

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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 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 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 . 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 as the most valuable nature, thematic and technical, of the literary component in the definition of the patria and as expression of the 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). racterized by the radical contestation of the thema­ Since the Maltese community had, or still has. tic content of the previous literary schools, that a Catholic Orientation. and since the local writers i!> realism as a somewhat stale (or so, at least, who either abandoned Italian to start experimen­ 1t ap;)enred to some of the new generation of ting with Maltese or started their creative activity writers) reproduction or documentation of human through Maltese were not in any way alien to the activity (a sort of literary photography which Italian tradition (they were repeatedly reminded of recalls the earlier European realist movements their being • educati ltallanamente •, and so they rather than the more subtle universal developments were), one can only speak of a fusion between the In these last decades). and romanticism, which, as older and the new tradition, a historically organic it happens to all movements which prolong their continuation of one complete process with the sole existence too much, started to bear ample evidence difference of the use of the native language Instead of decadence and extinction. The new vision of the of the more respectable foreign one. cerebrallsts, regarding both literature as a creed Maltese only needed then to assume this • res· or a way of life and Maltese society, which had pectabllity • and to be identifiable with culture, long started to modify Its identity and to expe­ apart from folklore, popular comedy and religious rience different modes of thinking and behaving, ritual. This was the challenge which expected and goes back to the sixties of this century when the needed a master of both languages, gifted also new sense of national identitiy and political adven­ with a sublime poetic character. This could not tures naturally ought to give rise to more complex possibly be one who was outside the (only) group attitudes in the creative field. of dedicated Maltese writers, that Is those who Together with the reaction of young poets cultivated the Italian tradition and sought to deve­ against the previous models (the elementary phra­ lop it locally. The situation, if purified from all the seology, the metaphorical nucleus, metrical forma­ political innuendos which easily made one lose lity. syntactic patterns which appeared to be obsti­ sight of the objective approach to the real problem nately afraid of traditionally unknown syntagmatlc (labelled as linguistic but In reality deeply rad I· and paradigmatic deviations etc.) and with the cated In social and ldeologlcal substrata), only reaction of young novelists against the historical lacked the presence of resourceful author who had (the basic structure of its narrative, the already let European (and especially the Italian extrovert nature of characterisation, the classical rlsorglmental) Romanticism exert considerable or neo-classlcal. at times baroque-like, rendering of Influences on his spirit to make him take the Irre­ the language. the preference of decorative descrl£?­ vocable decision of giving both Italian and Maltese tlon to character Investigation, the epic pattern thalr respective due. In fact, Dun Karm (1871· which appeared to divert the attention of the new 1961), today known as Malta's national poet, endo· readers from new Inward and outward preoccupa­ wed with a deep sense of historicism, accepted the tions, etc.). one has to point out the attention challenge In Its entirety, but only •felled • to see which these same writers started to give to English any lncompatlbllity between the two linguistic and American authors. Being almost nervously media on the literary, purely creative, level. aware of their foreign contemporary colleagues, local authors could at last claim that they were Since he wrote exclusively In Italian up to 1912 moving ahead apace with the most recent (his first poem, La Dlgnlta' Eplscopa/e, goes back movements. to 1889). when he started writing In Maltese he This Is, of course, a rather sketchy delineation of did not undergo a substantial or radical change, the fundamental character which a history af Mal­ but retaining the formal and Ideological characte­ tese literature may adopt. I personally would prefer ristics he had already developed considerably In to add a structural analysis of the formal and his first poetic phase, he passed on to assert the thematic evolution involved, together with the phi­ same dignity In the regard of the native language. lological stratum which, things being as they are. The fact that this event of major importance In the is still Indispensable and which In better condi­ literary evolution of Maltese did not take the form tions may be always valuable if adequately exploi­ of a total re-examination but just of a healthy fusion ted. (By adequate exploitation I mean the disposing between the past and the present, is further evin­ of the relevant data in the proper manner, parti­ ced by the other significant fact that Dun Karm cularly through the scholar's being rather scrupu­ went on to write occasionally In Italian even after lously and rigidly selective In handling them, in the year of his • conversion •. In this way, he may order to arrive to establish an average qualitative be said to summarize within the limits of his level which does not present Maltese literature as poetic life the three historical phases which I have inferior to foreign ones.) Searching deep In the briefly tried to outline from the point of view of literary patterns which would reveal themselves the linearity of a history of Maltese literature In such an exposition Is always challenging and conceived and written as a history of culture : the worthwhile, but It Is also imperative in order to Italian period, the Italian-Maltese period, the Mal­ make way towards a methodic and exclusively tese period. scientific examination in spite of the common temp­ Obviously enough, the Maltese period comes up tation to treat the whole problem In an improvised to our very days. The contemporary period is ch~- and Impressionistic manner.