Going Through Twentieth-Century Malta in the Company of Francis Ebejer’S Heroines

Going Through Twentieth-Century Malta in the Company of Francis Ebejer’s Heroines BERNADETTE FALZON HEN ONE SPEAKS OF MALTESE LITERATURE one is faced with the problem of what exactly is meant by Maltese lite- W rature. Is it literature written in the Maltese language or literature written by Maltese authors regardless of the language? In this article I have chosen to concentrate on the novels, written mostly in English, of Francis Ebejer (1925–93), one of the major literary figures on the Maltese scene, who wrote several novels, mostly in English, and quite a number of plays, most of which are in Maltese, along with other publications. A brief excursus into Maltese literature or, rather, into the Maltese narrative genre will reveal that nineteenth-century novels in Malta followed the tradition of the historical novel, of which Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi, first published in 1827 and later in 1842, was a masterpiece that certainly had acolytes among aspiring Maltese authors. It is also interesting to note that the first author to start writing an historical novel in Malta was Sir Walter Scott, who, in 1831, visited Malta in search of inspiration for a novel on the Great Siege, but then continued his writing in Naples. Early Maltese historical novels were usually imbued with sentimental and patriotic values, often accompanied by nationalistic propaganda, mostly under the influence of the Risorgi- mento in nearby Italy. After the first traditional historical novels written in Italian, towards the latter part of the nineteenth century we also find historical novels written in Maltese and with a Maltese setting, more easily understood by the population, of which the larger part was illiterate. The choice of the Maltese language is especially important in the case of novels intending to convey a patriotic message. 124 BERNADETTE FALZON ½¾ The patriotic question in Malta was bound up with that of language. On the one hand, we had the cultured Maltese, who saw in the adoption of the Italian language for scholastic, legal, and religious purposes, accompanied by the Maltese language, a remedy for the island’s anglicization and the guarantee of a Maltese national identity. Others favoured the use of Maltese in all fields, an idea which, on nationalist grounds, could hardly be rejected, but which was considered highly impractical. The adoption of the English language for cul- tural and practical use, as well as because of the growing political prestige of Great Britain, might have been a solution, one which, however, was only accepted in the closing years of the nineteenth century. It was, in fact, only in 1934 that English and Maltese were declared the official languages of Malta, when the growing aggressiveness of fascist Italy, its strong propaganda machine, and the realization that it had many influential supporters of its cause on the island alerted the English to the danger of a predominance of the Italian language and the political consequences of such a state of affairs. The realistic novel which was becoming popular on the continent, not least as a reaction to the romantic novel, was not well accepted in Malta by most of the Maltese authors still anchored to the traditional narrative genre, as well as by the ever-powerful clergy, who protested against the display of what were considered immoral situations in realistic literature (see Flaubert, Maupassant, Zola). The first realistic novels (such as those by Giusé Ellul Mercer), as a consequence, only began to be published in Malta in 1935. With a few exceptions, therefore, historical novels with a Maltese setting continued to be produced until the 1960s. The interruption of this tradition also had much to do with the birth, in 1966, of a literary movement, Movi- mént Qawmien Letterarju (movement of literary rebirth), which dealt with new themes and linguistic forms in keeping with international, albeit perhaps not quite current, literary tastes. This literary change coincided with changes in Maltese society – the gain- ing of independence in 1964 and the development of industry and tourism, which stimulated an appraisal of other modes of being besides the British colonial one or nostalgia for past Italian glories. Maltese narratives now, belatedly, began to concentrate on the individual – no longer the hero as representative of a nation, in the case of a Malta strug- gling for nationhood, but often as a weak human being with his own personal existentialist problems, defeated by circumstance and in particular by the sense of unease which, in this case, had concrete roots in Maltese soil – weighed down as the hero is by cumbersome and suffocating local beliefs and dogmas. In his search for inward well-being, the hero of these novels first tries to escape from his past by making a move from village life towards the more .

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