Bernard Grech is a quiet, unassuming man endowed with what I perceive as the right values and vision. He's an articulate straight-talker and a doer. Great potential lies concealed beneath his serene and gentle manner. He seems to me to be the embodiment of the phrase, "Still waters run deep."

Just like his singing. Who would guess that hidden behind Dr Grech's equable demeanour one can find such a passionate singer? I actually particularly like that Dr Grech has cultivated singing as a hobby. He has an undoubtedly pleasant voice and is at ease with himself and his abilities – he even sang in a promotional video with tenor Joseph Calleja! So Dr Grech can sing, knows he can sing, and not only does he enjoy his hobby but also shares it with his son! Extrapolate and you get the picture of a man who has what it takes to lead the country.

The polls suggest that Dr Grech has struck a chord with PN supporters, and beyond. Apparently, and unfortunately for him, the incumbent enjoys the support of only 17% of PN supporters surveyed. Adrian Delia has already given much – perhaps even too much – to party and country. He would certainly be perceived as doing the honourable thing if he were to bow to what the surveys are indicating and urge his followers to support Dr Grech. A drawn-out leadership campaign can only further enfeeble an Opposition that needs to grow strong.

 

Robert the Covid

The Scots have Robert the Bruce (a national hero); we, Robert the Covid (a national hero?). Scotland's Robert assured military victory for his homeland; Malta's Robert is assuring victory for Covid-19.

Dr Abela is making a dog's dinner of public health. Why is he allowing reckless greed to shout down words of wisdom? One country after another's taking measures to close down travelling to and from Malta as a direct consequence of silly decisions taken by the weak Abela administration. Were these decisions taken in the national interest and for the common good?

It's true that Robert Abela had the unenviable task of trying to strike a balance between the economy and public health. Many thought it was just a matter of putting more weights on one pan and less on the other until the balance was struck. But instead of delicately adding or removing weights, former weightlifter Abela loaded too many weights and managed to break the balance!

Now we're witnessing a renewed health problem and a concurrent economic problem, with incoming tourism declining by the hour. Kudos Dr Abela! X'ċuċ hu Albert Einstein!

Greed and stupidity are the virus' most valuable allies. Dr Abela should forget votes, and think of lives.

All said and done, the country would've been better off with Chris Fearne as Prime Minister.

 

Guido de Marco

Ten years ago, a Maltese luminary passed away: Guido de Marco. Many knew him mostly because he was a politician; I knew him as our criminal law professor. In 2011, during a conference at the Milan State University, an Italian professor I was sitting next to couldn't stop talking highly of him – she had met him during a conference on the Maltese Criminal Code held in Venice in 2003/04, and he had utterly impressed her with his intellectual vim and vast culture.

I remember him fondly not just because he penned the Introduction for one of my books, but for other reasons too. He didn't teach us students the wording of the law, but how to think. His approach was so no-nonsense it gave the impression of intimidation. But, in reality, beneath that veneer lay immense warmth. Guido de Marco was one of the few people who would pay you a sincere compliment. In this world of malevolence, as Jordan Peterson loves referring to it, a sincere appraisal of one's potential when one's still young has inestimable value. Professor de Marco was a smart man, brimming with courage and wisdom: a rare combination.

When my father was in Alfred Sant's political secretariat, they had travelled somewhere on official business, and Guido de Marco (and possibly somebody else) had travelled with them on behalf of the Opposition. When they returned, Prime Minister Sant made his people pass through the normal channels, whereas Guido de Marco passed through the VIP channel. My father felt compelled to tell me about this incident and to observe that "The Nationalists have a sense of State." 

 

Maltese Quirks - 3

Part 1

Somebody who signs off as "V Zammit" left a comment beneath the online version of my last article: "On 'Maltese Quirks', Dr Sammut is advancing the prescriptive method at the expense of the descriptive."

This reader's right. I'm happy that somebody pointed out that I subscribe to the prescriptive school of thought. I do so because of one practical consideration. Why should the opinion of the uneducated be given more weight than that of the educated in matters of knowledge unrelated to wisdom?

That said, I'm fully aware that the rain of non-knowledge will ultimately break the levee of knowledge, and, to borrow the words of that beautiful Led Zeppelin song, "If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break/ When the levee breaks I'll have no place to stay". I might be fighting a lost battle.

To go back to the prescriptive v. descriptive debate, I'm generally for the prescriptive approach, even though I do hear what the people say, and do take note. Only a few days ago I heard a government employee use the phrase "bniedem Serbjan". I would have prescribed "Serb" (without the redundant "bniedem") but I'm aware that some people say "Serbjan". I still try to keep the levee from breaking, even though it keeps on raining. I'm hoping that by the time the levee breaks and I'll have no place to stay, I'll be dead. In the long run, aren't we all dead? Mors omnia solvit.

So I thank "V Zammit" for the intelligent comment. This same reader then invited me to express an opinion on the phrase "rilaxxament ta' miżuri", apparently used by Charmaine Gauci. "V Zammit" argued – prescriptively – that "rilaxxament" doesn't exist and should be "rilassament". My reaction's that rilasciamento exists in Italian, so why shouldn't it be imported into Maltese? If we were to adopt a non-relaxed approach to this concept, we'd opt for Dun Karm's translation of "relaxation": "reħja". But I won't argue that Professor Gauci should use "reħja" instead of "rilaxxament".

Part 2

There are public officers whose duty is to fight crime, but their vehicles don't have "Crime" on their doors. Similarly, there are officers whose job's to fight illness, but there's no "Illness" on their vehicles; and there are officers whose function's to fight the consequences of disasters, but their vehicles don't say "Disaster". And yet, there are officers whose mission is to fight fire, and their vehicles have "Fire" written on them!

Frankly, I'm bemused. Police vehicles have Pulizija, ambulances Ambulanza, civil protection Protezzjoni Ċivili, but fire-fighter vehicles have Fire! Why? Why not Pompiera?

That this country is seemingly driven by utter incoherence drives one up the wall.

 

My Personal Library (100)

A few weeks ago, I wrote that the hundredth would be the last. And that day has come.

I want to close this little half-ludic, half-serious interaction with readers with a reflection on a book, itself also half-ludic, half-serious, I believe I've already discussed. I've recently watched an old TV show on YouTube that dealt with this book, and I want to convey what I heard.

During this 1974 show, called "Si rilassi" ("Relax") and presented by Enzo Tortura, a psychoanalyst would psychoanalyse a guest.

In this particular episode, the analysand was Paolo Villaggio (1932-2017) whose book Fantozzi, rag. Ugo had just met with huge success and was about to be made into a movie (every writer's dream since the first cinematographic transposition of 1896).

Villaggio's immortal creation, Ugo Fantozzi, is an employee who hates his job, wants only to skive work, and is always on the receiving end of abuse hurled at him by his superiors. Fantozzi can be read in the light of Jordan Peterson's teachings on meaningless work and psychopathology in organisations. 

Fantozzi is a surreal, exquisitely ironic paean to the "salaried slave". The very Italian mixture of Catholic symbolism and Marxist imagery is breath-taking. Just think of that scene when Fantozzi throws a stone at the huge building of his employer, the multinational that has been throwing stones at him, and security officers escort him up to the ascetic office of the St-Francis-like "Mega-galactic Director" for a reprimand. Instead, the Director, whose office boasts an aquarium with employees diving and dolphin-kicking in, convinces Fantozzi of his goodness and that he's ready to engage in mature conversation with him.

When a short while earlier he'd been in the lift on his way up to the Director's office, Fantozzi had had a vision: he had seen himself being crucified in the canteen ("crocifisso in sala mensa") for his throwing the stone. The vision isn't religious; the reference isn't to Christ but to Spartacus, the slave the Romans crucified on the Via Appia for rising up against the masters.

Let's not digress. In that 1974 programme, Si rilassi, in which Villaggio-Fantozzi is psychoanalysed by Fausto Antonini (1932-1996), a professor of philosophical anthropology at La Sapienza University and psychoanalyst, who said:

"Paolo Villaggio's principal deep psychological issue is his struggle against something that overpowers him and passivises him. Fantozzi's, and Villaggio's, success stems from his having rebelled against this passivisation, which, in reality, is a problem we all have. It is an expression of the sadomasochism – that is, being passivised or passivising others – described by Fascist or sadomasochist theory: being kicked by those above and kicking those below. Villaggio-Fantozzi tackles this problem with irony, but he makes use of irony to defend himself from having to recognise the problem that weighs upon him. The problem of passivisation is a universal problem. There is the grand human tragedy – death, ending, destruction, passivisation – and the tragedy on a smaller scale of the employee who is passive to an authority that oppresses him in an irrational, not functional, way."

Perhaps psychoanalysis is a powerful killjoy; perhaps by explaining it, the analyst kills the joke. A book that casts light on jokes is Freud's Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious  (1905), but nowadays Freud is no longer fashionable, even though I can't figure out why. I mean, he was fixated on sex, made liberal use of cocaine, and, in his quest to analyse manifestations of quirkiness in his patients, applied the Greek myth of a son who killed his father and married his mother. Why such a thinker should fall out of favour in our ultra-liberal times beats me.