In his book on France in the Maltese collective memory, Charles Xuereb makes an interesting observation: with Dom Mintoff’s death, Malta’s quest for identity, which had preoccupied at least one or two generations, died a natural death.
Dr Xuereb might be right. Indeed, the post-war generations had been overly preoccupied with our national identity, a question rendered both actual and urgent by the quest for political independence. Were/are we truly Europeans; were/are we Latinised Arabs? Were/are we ambivalent Europeans?
Indeed, for decades, a good chunk of public debate was devoted to the Maltese language, the communication medium which defines us as a nation. The Araboid language that many of us speak, preoccupied us until, more or less, Dom Mintoff’s death. Since more or less that time, the frequency of articles and letters in the papers on the Maltese language seems to have abated.
The difficulty with Charles Xuereb’s observation is that Mr Mintoff’s death took place one year before Joseph Muscat’s election to power. Dr Muscat’s liberal-progressive government distanced itself from national identity problems and embraced individual identity politics. Until 2012/13, public discourse was preoccupied with our national identity; post-2013, it was taken over by gender-related issues. Dr Muscat’s battle cry – The Best in Europe – implied two consequences: (1) we are European, (2) now we have to be the best Europeans. (At bit like being more Catholic than the Pope?)
Needless to say, for Dr Muscat ‘being European’ means ‘being liberal’, as if Europe were bereft of conservatives and traditionalists. So Muscatian Malta became the number-one pro-LGT country in the world. (I have seen nothing done for the Bs so far, and I doubt anything will be done for the Bs any time soon, because for the Bs to attain equality with the Ls and the Gs, and be able to formalise their relationships, bigamy would have to be removed from the Criminal Code.)
For those who try to read more than is written, my stance is that I have many, many problems with same-sex adoption. Otherwise, I adhere to the traditional ‘live and let live’ mentality of the Maltese and other Catholic nations. (But more about this later.)
A couple of years ago, more or less, I went to dinner with Fr Mark Montebello, a lawyer and university professor who first invited himself and then outdid himself trying to dominate the conversation. Between bursts of questions fired submachine-gun-like by the professor at Fr Mark, I managed to waddle and proffer two observations as if they were precious vases, and they caught the rebel priest’s attention. Despite my protestations, one of them he dismissed as rhetoric; the other, however, intrigued him.
Fr Mark was all ears when I opined that we Maltese are an unfortunate lot, as we tend to end up with counter-movements without having previously experienced the phenomena which should give rise to the counter-movement in the first place! The philosopher in the man of the frock was hooked. He wanted to know more.
In spite of the professor’s valiant attempts at limelight monopolisation, and to catch Fr Mark out on some family tree business, I managed to convey some of my thoughts to the brilliant but unorthodox Dominican. I argued that we had experienced a fierce counter-reformation without having ever faced any serious Protestant threat. Our pedantically ideological church architecture, trumpeting a counter-reformation which was as redundant as it was unnecessary in the local context, has marked our national character with a ‘baroqueness’ that keeps exuding pedantic exaggerations in many aspects of public life. Similarly, this government’s exaggeratedly pro-gay rhetoric and stances were completely out-of-place in a country that was essentially tolerant of ‘deviant’ behaviour.
I could sense Fr Mark’s impatience but, as the true intellectual that he is, he allowed himself to be swayed to listen to more.
When our Criminal Code was being prepared, the British administration wanted to punish ‘deviant’ behaviour; the Maltese resisted with all the means at their disposal. (I use the term ‘deviant’ in a historical sense, devoid of value-judgments.)
To my mind, if we left out for a moment the vote-catching strategy, this government’s rhetoric would make sense in a Protestant country because it is the Protestants who have had tumultuous relationships with the non-heterosexual segment of their populations. The Puritan ethos drove the British to want to forcibly cure homosexuals, for instance. The Catholic-Latin attitude was more relaxed. During the discussions on our Criminal Code, in the first half of the 19th century, the Maltese were against the punishment of ‘deviant’ sexual behaviour. Andrew Jameson, the Scottish lawyer engaged by the colonial administration to oversee the new Code, even explicitly complained about the lax moral character of Southern Europeans!
So, in the local context, this government’s pro-LGT vote-catching overdrive was as historically useless and meaningless as the Church’s counter-reformation: both were a charge on a non-existing enemy. The one extolled the power of the Catholic Church in a country which had shown no desire to embrace Protestantism. The other pushed a legislative agenda for a minority using the language of a justice agenda in a country which had never persecuted that minority, but had actually showed ample tolerance.
I wanted to elaborate this line of thought, and Fr Mark seemed game... but we were derailed by the relentless professor’s insistence on his fascination with family trees, and we were too polite.
I don’t know if my assessment was right. I was quite annoyed I could not have Fr Mark’s knee-jerk reaction to my intellectual provocations. But if my assessment is correct, we have solved the national identity debate by embracing a radical rainbow agenda.
Public discussions on our language as the definer of our national identity have been eclipsed by the counter-reformation-like LGT crusade. That’s a pity, as our national identity keeps being an issue, and our language keeps being the lynchpin of it (even for those who, paradoxically, don’t use it but still define themselves as Maltese).
Maltese is what defines us because it is the repository of our history, probably the Latinisation of a Siculo-Arab community. We have forgotten it, but our ancestors inverted the meaning of Arab words, like dagħwa (دعوة) and issalli (or, to be more precise, salla (صلى)). The first word means ‘proselytism’ in Arabic, and the second, ‘to pray’; we have inverted them to mean ‘blasphemy’ and ‘to use foul or vulgar language’ respectively.
The historical significance of this inversion is tremendous, not only with regard to the obvious question as to whether it was done consciously or unconsciously, but also to the more important question: if it was done consciously, why was it done? Why was the meaning inverted of words intelligible only to Maltese-speakers and not to Romance-speaking Christians hailing from other parts of Christendom? Was there widespread knowledge of Muslim religious jargon across Christendom, inducing the Maltese to want to impress their foreign, Christian masters with their newly-found faith? Would this explain opting for inversion rather than erasure?
I do not have the answers. But the questions are there, and perhaps somebody more knowledgeable than I could shed light on the mechanics and dynamics of the semantic inversion of ‘dagħwa’ and ‘salla’.
Whatever they are, the inversion is part of our collective heritage and therefore psyche. It resides in our collective unconscious, possibly having seeped to our cultural genome which, despite Mr Mintoff’s death and Dr Muscat’s ascension to power, we still have to unravel and decipher. Those Maltese who have adopted English as their mother tongue (as if we did not have a history) have also adopted the history contained in the ‘genetic material’ of that language. The influx of tens of thousands of foreign workers will further erode our history. We will lose our national identity but, thanks to the government, we will acquire a rainbow of sexual identities.
‘Being Maltese’ will become emasculated, and if you are a man and want to become a woman, it’s as easy as pie.
My Personal Library (11)
I was thinking of spending a few words on Anthony Luttrell’s The Making of Christian Malta (2002), but instead I’ll bring to your attention Achille Mizzi’s Ġenesi (2017).
The reason is... personal. Mr late father used to tell me repeatedly that Mr Mizzi uses our little language to discuss topics of a universal nature. He was convinced that Achille Mizzi’s poetry is of a world level, even if written in a lesser-used language.
Mr Mizzi’s Ġenesi is beautiful. Profound also, and at times brimming with intertextuality, but always intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying.
But it is its beauty that I want to highlight. Listen to this: “Qasira wisq l-eternità/ biex għalik nixxennaq/ u nħobbok...” (p. 106).
There is a temptation, with Mr Mizzi’s poetry, to agree with Mr Mizzi’s own self-evaluation: “Mhux poeta jien/ li nitkellem mal-kotra” (p. 132). Well, that might be a plus. But in reality, I don’t think it’s really the case. Mr Mizzi might not address the crowd from a pulpit or write poetry to advocate, but readers will appreciate the burning tears flowing down his cheeks during the night as he awaits his poetry to dawn like a late narcissus.
If that image is not beautiful, then I wouldn’t know what is!
Beauty is sometimes appreciated by the uncouth, but always by the refined. In other words, you can’t be refined and not have Mr Mizzi’s books in your library.
I particularly like this stanza: “Baħnan/ f’għerfu l-bniedem/ bħal triq li ma tinfidx/ ... minn imkien/ ma twasslek imkien” (p. 173). That series of negatives confirms that Mr Mizzi has been, and still keeps going, places.