He is sometimes called the conscience of the country and has at times been outspoken in his prophetic outbursts, which alternate with periods of silence. Noel Grima talks to OLIVER FRIGGIERI who has chosen to speak out again on what he feels are the issues confronting Malta today

Do you feel one can speak of ‘Malteseness’ today?

Apart from generic impressions, one can employ a methodic approach in order to get a scientific definition of Malta and the Maltese. Certain criteria are secure points of reference in any type of investigation. They can all be immediately derived from objective dimensions of Malteseness: an island, a very small one, an island which is also a State lying in the southernmost part of Europe, enjoying a cultural heritage of about 7,000 years determined by an uninterrupted religious tradition since the times of the oldest free standing stone buildings, or churches, a far-reaching sense of divinity, a constant participation in mainstream civilisation, expressing its sense of awe, dignity and pride in the old temples.

By the way, these temples, illum qabel ghada, (today before tomorrow) should be enclosed in glass as soon as possible, so that before it is too late, they can finally start to belong to themselves, to timelessness, which was perhaps the motive which made their constructors, our forefathers (who were they? That is, who are we?) conceive and build them. They are sacred places, as our heritage identifies culture with faith from the very start, long before the arrival of St Paul.

The identification faith-civilisation far precedes Christianity in Malta; it means that eradicating the religious dimension in the Maltese implies the demolition of their own long presence in the region. It may be worth taking all this into consideration now that a whole cultural and physical edifice is being systematically dismantled in front of us all, State, Church, Education. I expect the MLP, the PN and the Catholic Church authorities to be suitably preoccupied with the way (and speed) with which the surviving segments of our identity are being systematically and carelessly eroded. I do not like it.

In what way is our identity being eroded?

The inhabitants of Malta have consistently absorbed whatever they needed from the outside world, and the sequence of events, especially in the field of governance and language, manifests that the end-result is the complex outcome of a set of layers, all contributing towards a unique wholeness, which we call Malta. In other words, one cannot get a glimpse of the ‘inner’ island without putting everything within the international context, regional, continental, and indeed intercontinental. Maltese studies do not exist in isolation, since the island has remarkably attracted the attention of the most powerful at their precise moment of glory.

The real turning point in Malta’s modern history was, to my mind, Napoleon’s plan of transforming the island into a dream of his own. He invaded the island only to update life in Malta, but he underestimated the fact that the tiny local community constituted one unique whole, a nation, however insignificant. I tried to interpret this in Rewwixta. Smallness can also be complete, and in no logical way inferior to any other. It of course means being weak. It is the weakness of countries, which have never been, and most likely will never be, in a position of wreaking havoc on the rest of the planet. That is up to the big ones to do. Napoleon drew up an agenda for Malta and started with tackling the power of the Catholic Church, as later on Strickland and Dom Mintoff as well would try to do. I think Napoleon put the items on the agenda and then it was up to subsequent local leaders to take the hint. An agenda abruptly interrupted, sine die, only for local politicians and then the EU to reshape. All have somehow faced the same destiny as their mentor, even though changes reached the island in due course. The rhythm of Malta is typical of the South, where it really belongs, and that is not necessarily a bad deal.

Napoleon was right in what he perceived as the weaknesses of Malta, as was also recognised by Malta’s own martyr on the losing side, Dun Mikiel Xerri (Malta has its own heroes but these go unrecognised – pity the country which thinks it does not need heroes. It inevitably does).

In the cantata Ghanja ta’ Malta (music by Charles Camilleri) I tried to construct the concept of Malta as an island surviving as a result of the moral efficiency, innate inner strength of its common citizens, illiterate, religious, firmly tied to their stretch of land. Malta’s heritage in stone signifies security, a history that remains unwritten, a pre-scriptural, pre-verbal chronicle. In my view, that experience is mainly determined by the role played by women, namely by the natural power they were able to handle within the family unit. They must have been the real legislators of the community.

It was mainly this conclusion that prompted me to write the novels It-Tfal Jigu bil-Vapuri and La Jibbnazza Nigi Lura, both evolving around the towering figure of an equally submissive, determined and stubborn old woman. Katarina, a deeply religious nanna, totally submissive to her husband, has the gift of waiting, and the whole story, perhaps the whole experience of Malta, evolves around her. Officially she is a sheer slave; essentially she is all.

Is this view relevant to what Malta managed to be up to now, and to what it seems it will fail to be in the foreseeable future? I believe the whole process, self-destructive, is still reversible. That is why I have tried to give paramount significance to the role played by the Church, and mainly by the bishop. Both It-Tfal Jigu bil-Vapuri and La Jibbnazza Nigi Lura depend on a great extent to the way the strenuous relationship between the Bishop and Dun Grejbel, a modest, albeit saintly, priest develops.

Do you think this is the way ahead for Malta?

Modern Malta is dualistic. One cannot understand living in Malta, in all the aspects pertaining to individual, social and collective life if not in terms of everything being solely divisible into two. The Napoleonic era seems to have enforced the process of Maltese self-consciousness. At least some of the basic questions on the island’s perennial agenda seem to have been given shape since then. One of these conclusions is perhaps the idea that apart from one’s own, there only remains another idea. Our inalienable bipartisanship, which I believe precedes birth (as Fil-Parlament ma jikbrux fjuri amply shows), is not an end in itself. It is perhaps a subliminal reaction against finiteness, numerical, terrestrial and whatever.

A most striking characteristic is the sense of duality, which can be typified in two contrasting words ahna-huma (us-them) – the two may stand for the numerous variations ranging from good and bad to island and planet. No one without the other, and both are frequently conceived as opposites, and mutually exclusive. Malta is by its own nature bipartisan: the political divide is fundamental in Malta, and it tends to represent the secular versus the moral. In writing Fil-Parlament ma Jikbrux Fjuri I thought an ideal life in Malta was possible. I still do, but now I see I should not. Malta will long be what it has been, and what it still is, and that makes us all happy, to the extent that we even grumble about it. Grumbling, an expression of fulfilment.

Despite, or perhaps owing to, this duality, Malta is nevertheless a complete entity, a country with an unbroken historical tradition, a land where the present makes sense and can be perceived only in the light of the past, an ever unfolding truth islanders have to live by, embracing change, resisting change. In trying to recount all this through novels, I found it quite intriguing to learn how tradition, modernity, survival, renewal, absorption, adaptation, are somehow varied dimensions of one single reality. Rather than research, it was the effort to translate systematic conclusions into current situations, which made me believe that Malta’s future actually depends upon its past, on its fullest recognition of its past. Destroy the past of Malta, and Malta will disappear, today, tomorrow. I have tried to recall this in Gizimin li qatt ma jiftah.

But don’t you think this duality is a limiting factor?

We have not been able to agree on one national day. It will be useless for quite a long time to hope for a day that really typifies nationhood, transcending the sharp party divide. No recent historical event provides us with a day of consensus, and older times may seem too remote or irrelevant. Perhaps even our contemporary perception renders pre-party history partisan! Do we still have to become Maltese, by international criteria, now that we have long been partisans? That is the extent of the immanency of our national judgement. The only solution will be for us to choose an ‘artificial’, neutral day on which all agree, a day without any historical connotation, representing wholeness (Jum Malta) as we all have contributed to our history: both the PN and MLP have built modern Malta. This would be a real national day of unity since history does not provide it for us.

When I wrote Fil-Parlament ma jikbrux fjuri I used to think that partisanship could be gradually eliminated. It may not be likeable, but it is inevitable. Today it is clearer to conclude that partisanship defines the community as a small and complex country, and the only option is to somehow civilize it, to reorganise it in terms of mutual respect. But, again, I think partisanship precedes birth. Outside partisanship there is nothingness. Most of the words uttered contextually in our language in Malta are loaded; they have a connotation added to their minimal denotation. This also happens with English. It is an added problem to the Church in the field of public communication.

So are you saying we are ‘condemned’ to partisanship?

To understand Malta one must also understand brinkmanship. We are a people of the edge, a frontier people. We subdivide infinitely, we classify and declare frontiers and name every tiny space. Partisanship is also expressed in the festa rivalry. It is an integral part of our culture, and expresses the need to belong. The prominence of the genitive case in local discourse, both direct and implicit, is just an indication. The Maltese festa is not simply religious: it is also an expression of a community’s immediate belonging.

Maltese festas are communal celebrations, demanding that everybody does something. Even non-participation is in itself a stand. But just imagine how profound the significance of this tradition is: on the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows thousands of people do something at the very same time and in so many places. I once wrote a poem, against a political background, expressing the idea that the Duluri procession is the biggest mass meeting (“L-Akbar Mass Meeting”).

People crave moments of unity and common feeling. Recent events have amply manifested this need.

Opposites resemble each other, and actions cause reactions, unequal indeed. People come together to recall that humanity transcends the superficiality of partisanship. The unbearable lightness of being partial... When the story narrated in Fil-Parlament ma Jikbrux Fjuri reaches its turning point, Karlu Manju realises that he is only dreaming of the future. A dream, equally charming and irrelevant.

However, the biggest party in Malta is not a political one. It is made up of the Church in all its varied ramifications, ranging from deep faith to cultural identification. Both imply a decision worthy of full appreciation. If both coincide, then that is only normal; crisis creeps in when detachment tends to render both meaningless. Indeed, I think that makes a lot of sense, because no content of faith in God can take shape in a cultural vacuum. A plant has roots, that is all. Are roots being eradicated in Malta, by the way? Yes, rapidly, and aimlessly. That is very sad.

The Church, with all due respect to diversity itself a Christian value, can save Malta: it stands for its culture, identity, sense of belonging, hope and happiness, as well as respect towards otherness. As I have written elsewhere, even somewhere in these novels where a towering figure is that of a simple and saintly priest, crucified through misunderstanding, eventually recognised for what he is, may one hope that the Church will become always more aware of her cultural role at this problematic point in time.

But Malta moves on, today it is part of the EU…

Malta has now shed its slow rhythm, normal though it has been for so long, and is bound to maintain a high speed, not hers, but pertaining to the era. That may be absurd, dangerous, and untypical of small countries. It is for this reason that Malta now stumbles, because she has lost the pace she was used to (like so many other countries) and is now hurrying along, like a car that was parked for long centuries, and is now moving on, with unreliable, perhaps dysfunctional brakes. Small – complete, coherent – is always small, even if modern, post-modern and what not. Malta cannot keep up with this pace; she cannot hurry along if not in accordance with her own nature, which is permanent and not temporary. The country cannot become oblivious of its smallness.

Malta can be saved by the EU through treatment specifically designed for exceptions like it. Malta stands for fragility, but it can be taken care of, even in the context of such aggressive globalisation. It has been honest: it entered Europe in a mature way, in agreement as much as in disagreement. A split Malta wanted to enter united Europe. To have doubts is at times a sign of maturity. As in various other historical turning points, the Maltese were equally discreet and correct.

One side kept saying we had to enter Europe. A second side maintained we could afford not to enter Europe while a third side claimed we could only take the step in doubt. That is how Malta joined Europe – midway between enthusiasm and caution. It is only now that Malta is finding her feet, and it means that a higher degree of political maturity has been reached.

It would of course have been better if Malta had a real sense of its roots, of its belonging. One of the long-terms benefits of tourism is that through it we have come to unearth and appreciate the cultural heritage of the island, the unwritten wisdom of so many unsung people who have constructed a country with a startling mixture of disguised pride and instinctive humility. It is up to us now to give them the recognition the formalities of history have consciously denied them. A national day, one for all, and perhaps a memorial to so many unacknowledged heroes throughout a long history. Jum il-Maltin kollha.

Tourists who visit Malta continually ask: ‘What have you got to show us?’ Tourism is indeed a permanent exhibition. Likewise Malta can indeed be a real instrument of peace: this would be its contribution to Europe.

Do you think Malta in the EU has gained, or lost?

Contextualisation is important in the understanding of any country. That includes regionality as much as belonging to a specific continent. Preserving its Mediterranean character may indeed be one of the island’s emerging challenges. Geographical positioning is not enough in defining a country belonging to its region. Where implies who and what, and so on.

The moral legislators of Malta will soon be the younger generation: after all, they will have to live in the Malta the formal legislators are now fashioning for them. I have come to understand that Maltese young people really love their country. They have no sense of inferiority. They love Malta as a mother, also with some vague sense of embarrassment because they do not know her enough. But who does? The more the sense of insularity is overcome, the more will the appreciation of things Maltese gain ground. The 20th century, in both politics and culture, has contributed immensely towards the process I have always called normalisation. It simply means that a country enjoys the esteem of other countries, especially the smaller ones. That is why a greater degree of relationships with such countries is perhaps going to become hugely more important. Apart from continentalism (EU), size is also a benchmark. Perhaps we are now in the phase of recovering our debased, hugely undervalued, collective memory (faith, language, traditions, cuisine, landscape, and so on, namely whatever is touristically alluring).

To understand and be understood by the world, one has to begin from one’s own street. My novels are about an island, and are intentionally provincial in context and characterisation, meant to somehow counteract globalisation, the loss of specificity in favour of uniformity. One can read and understand them even without having ever been to Malta. They tell of average people living average lives in an average country. My works could have taken place in Sicily or in any other southern European stretch of land. They tell of the island on which one lives, an island one carries within oneself while reaching out. The island within the most stubborn traveller.

Let us put all the parts together: Malta is a small country, an island, and a State. We did not have to go through strife to get here: that was the fate other countries suffered. Both our parties contributed to our history. We must respect our independence and our republic equally.

Do you think Malta can indeed lose its roots?

Malta’s self-awareness is quite recent, but its foundations are quite old. The heritage in stone is intimately related to the religious tradition, since building construction in the island, as in most parts of the region, has long been an expression of faith. Hence our passion for building, a never-ending process.

But if it is not careful, Malta can lose its own roots. At this point, Malta can still be saved but it must be aware of the frailty of its Mediterranean roots. It cannot retain its roots if it tries to act as if it lies somewhere to the north. We cannot have the cake and eat it.

Over the centuries Malta triumphed over every regime there was here. Today, some people seem to believe integration is above everything else. Malta is now striving to live in the company of far greater countries and these may end up absorbing it. But this is one of the new aspects of our era. The bitterest blows will have to be suffered by the Church. But we could dwell on this particular challenge on another occasion...

We can still save Malta and we can still save much of what has been lost. In earlier times, Malta lived in close contact with nature. I remember once in Rhodes, prior to the commencement of a session of a literary congress, a Polish professor telling me that he was going “to see the sea”, which was not far from where the meeting was being held. He looked so happy, so thrilled! To him, beholding the sea was the main attraction he could associate with the Greek island, much more alluring than our proceedings about poetry and criticism.

For us our relationship with the sea is fundamental, and it now seems it is being somehow underestimated. We cannot conceive Malta as simply the land we live on; that land has its own contours, as stone and water, land and sea are interdependent, each incomplete in itself. Our whole culture, I believe, can be better understood in the light of this predicament, which is not simply geographical. We relate to water. In our case Darwin will have to revise his theory of the species. Perhaps, fish...

Is this search for the Maltese identity reflected in your work?

My main concern in academic research was to establish my early premise, that there is a cause-effect relationship between Italian and Maltese literature, namely that the island’s literary production is an offshoot of a much larger entity, Italian culture, and that such a fact was not merely literary. My MA thesis was entitled “La Cultura italiana in Dun Karm” (1975), which was then published in volume form by the publishing house Leo S. Olschki of Florence (1978) as La cultura italiana a Malta – Storia e influenza letteraria e stilistica attraverso l’opera di Dun Karm. For my doctoral work I broadened the field of investigation so as to further establish the deep ramifications of this relationship, and the thesis was called “La cultura italiana del romanticismo e la poesia maltese” (1978), later launched in Italy in volume format as Storia della Letteratura Maltese (1986) by Edizioni Spes of Messina. Over the years, through numerous articles in many foreign academic journals, I hope I managed to set on firm ground the argument in all its salient details, since such collocation was not simply an initial point of methodology, namely where does one place a specific cultural phenomenon within the international, mainly regional in my view, spectrum. Now I understand that there is nothing Maltese that cannot be explained through an objective, outside criterion. But life itself is like that: being is a set of interrelations. Existence does have a structure, and this can be manifested, in such cases, in words and forms, and mainly in novels.

A novel is a way of putting shapeless life into a ‘shapefull’ way of recognising it in terms of its causes and effects. If one compares a news bulletin with a series of fiction that follows the news bulletin, one can learn a lot. One tends to take fiction more seriously than news. People tend to cry when watching a fictional TV series, but not when watching news, the stark truth. The explanation for this is not that difficult: news conveys crude facts, whereas fiction proposes facts in the light of their inner essence. Art creeps in, and the redeeming feature of our fragile human race crawls in as well: sentiment. No faith, no art, can survive for a single moment without it. The devastation of faith and art are due to the extinction of sentiment. But again, we may take up this point on some other occasion.

Our modern national self-awareness took shape under Napoleon and led to all the recent constitutional achievements, though each step was always reached through sharp disagreement. But again that is a componential pattern of our history. When writing the novel Fil-Parlament ma Jikbrux Fjuri (1986), I envisaged a country where duality, divisiveness could be gradually eliminated. I hope I have contributed to that in my writings. Now I think it can only be adapted to the times. It is an ingrained nature, a condition, a prerequisite for being Mediterranean, Maltese, islandish. Perhaps it is a trait much stronger than our will to be impartial and detached. Literature has helped me a lot to construct and to deconstruct conclusions of this sort. Conclusions reached or at least implied in my academic research immediately provoked in me the desire to reshape them in terms of short stories and novels.

Continues on page 10

Continued from page 9

I think there is no better form to propose a version of life and of a given community than a novel. I hope it has worked like this in my case. For instance, in writing It-Tfal Jigu bil-Vapuri (Mireva, 2000) and its sequel La Jibbnazza Nigi Lura (Mireva, 2006), not to mention Dik id-Dghajsa f’Nofs il-Port, the third in the trilogy, still unpublished, I somehow wanted to narrate a type of Malta which was, and definitely is not any more. Fortunately this is only partially possible, and I learnt this in the process of writing these recent novels. Past and present, whatever was lost on the way and whatever is still in use are two components, incomplete in themselves, of our complex reality. Whither Malta?

Indeed, whither Malta?

This is not simply a question of continuity, common to life in whichever form and time and place; it is rather a distinctive aspect of whatever goes into the making of an island (islanders, remoteness, detachment, self-centralisation, a special relationship with the sea, a different rhythm of life, and so on. If one adds to all these aspects the fact that Malta is also very small, and complete, a universally recognised independent republic, a frontier country, then the picture is much more colourful. I hope I have managed to depict and to analyse all this and much more in my novels. So reshaping facts and perceptions of the past may be one of the more efficient ways to have a closer look at whatever is still the present. In a nutshell, it is rhythm that has changed most, and a change in speed implies a lot as much as it does not. That is why perhaps antiquity and post-modernity coexist at all levels in such a reality (thought, behaviour, discourse, politics, religion, family structure).

Through this weary process of self-awareness, we have saved much that was being lost. The ancient temples were there for 7,000 years, but their discovery is a recent surprise. So is the case with various other components of our national identity, especially the language, a marvellous speech habit that has literally attracted the attention of so many famous writers and scholars from around the world. Maltese enjoys a highly prominent place in world studies of language because of various aspects, which make it unique (Punic, Arabic, Romance, and so on), but its recognition is quite recent. Our national anthem (1922) is no older than just over 80 years. The list of such well-meaning latecomers is quite long, and they all fall into a pattern. Shall we speak about them some other time? Again, insularity is equivalent to very low self-esteem. Only international standards manage to make a country respect itself. I am confident the new generation will soon be in a position to do that for us, elders. A process of self-rediscovery.

We have basically overcome our congenital sense of inferiority and have discovered we are not alone. You cannot understand Malta without constant reference to the evolution of Europe. Maltese Studies are by definition international, even intercontinental, and cover quite a long span of time. Our historical tradition binds us continually with powers that were greater than us. The Maltese were called barbarians in the Acts of the Apostles, because as men of the sea they could not speak Greek. Malta’s history was written by simple people who remained uncelebrated; they spoke through their stones. We Maltese have built ourselves. In an unobtrusive way we have implemented all the changes that have taken place in Europe, and still retained a full democracy with very little shocks because we have a sense of moderation. Both the MLP and the PN, namely almost all of us, have constantly striven to build a nation State out of a colony, and that is to the credit of all of us. That is why, as I did in Fil-Parlament ma Jikbrux Fjuri, I would again like to propose the choice of a special, casual day to be proclaimed our one and only national one. The official ones, important and divisive, will be the constituent parts of this day. The day of Malta.

And yet in your novels, you somehow manage to tell simple stories of simple lives.

The novel Gizimin li qatt ma jiftah (1998) is about the significance of uneventfulness in the life of a small family from Balzunetta in the late fifties, perhaps the period preceding the spectacular loss of innocence in the mid and late sixties. A boy is growing up alone in a family, facing all the problems and trying to solve them on his own, since his young parents, themselves having their own tale to narrate, are quite keen to see what happens when their son leaves Balzunetta, the place where dreams and delusions, happiness and expectations go hand in hand. The gloomy figure of the grandfather, sombre, ambiguous, rigid, and kind, himself in search of justification on the eve of death, looms in the background and determines all. Is such a reality, midway between imagination and reality, not worth narrating? Do not such people, humble and honest, the real builders of a nation State, deserve to be somehow transformed into protagonists?

In Gizimin li qatt ma jiftah I intended the novel to be a tribute to many people I knew in my youth there, and by inference to all people who in their, our, simplicity have given so much to society through suffering, silence and hope. They should be at least acknowledged through a book. I hope that Gizimin li qatt ma jiftah will long be considered as an effort to acknowledge the validity of people who have given so much to one and all without asking for anything in return, let alone remembrance. The novel is partly intended to revive their memory.

Don’t you think there is a growing realisation of the importance of our environment along with a dreadful fear we are losing the most important battle?

If Malta reduces its degree of respect to its landscape further, it will soon become a nuisance to itself. The challenge facing such tiny spots of land is clear: will it be worth living there? I tend to give a negative answer. But we can also look at the brighter aspects. There is an ever-growing sense of the beauty of the Maltese landscape as well as a sense of one‘s personal education. We have learnt to appreciate what we have, through museums, through culture. If we lose this, we would lose it forever. Irrelevance may be the future.

And we constantly lose track of the issues due to the controversies between the parties.

The parties discuss each other but they do not discuss enough issues. They resort to ad hominem arguments. Arguments should be ad rem. But we must discuss issues more. There are strong currents within our society and politics, which demand that we must discuss this.

A political party must also foster a sense of enjoyment about what one is doing. It must base its actions on a proper understanding of culture in the widest sense of the word. One cannot build tomorrow’s Malta without understanding what the outside world is doing. Lack of appreciation of one’s own cultural identity is derived from low self-esteem. We are still, so belatedly, in the process of recovery and I know that our participation in the process heading towards a unified Europe will help us salvage the degree of self-esteem still prevailing.

Your latest public effort has been the Oratorio Dun Gorg

Dun Gorg Preca’s MUSEUM brought about order, discipline, a fear of wasting time, an insistence on the centrality of God. The basic lesson I gleaned from my MUSEUM education is a most productive obsession with the transience of time. Time passes, we were insistently taught every evening. The logical conclusion: use it all fruitfully! I still remember a sentence written on a grandfather clock at our MUSEUM centre (qasam) in Floriana. It said: “Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis” – Times change and we change along with them. Now I understand it also reflects Dun Gorg’s pervading sense of contemporaneity. Perhaps it is the sentence that has determined what since my childhood I have persistently tried to do as a writer: translate intense moments into special words.

I have a very high opinion of MUSEUM, and I earnestly urge parents to be aware how beneficial it is to have a MUSEUM instruction. It is an equally religious and social investment, at the least an investment in well being, at the most an understanding of the transcendency of life. Such education makes one a fitting member of the community and greatly contributes towards self-esteem, which is now such a problem. The members of the MUSEUM gave an important contribution to popular culture and to education in general at a time when illiteracy was rife.

They educated the people: so many people today owe what they have become to the years they spent at the MUSEUM. Malta is commemorating the centenary of the foundation of the Society by Dun Gorg in 1907. This society has given so much to the country, without asking for anything in return. In my view MUSEUM is proof that even such a tiny country is capable of reaching great heights. Religious heights are social, and vice-versa.

The sense of discipline so engendered provided a civic education. Dun Gorg was a great man of thought and a very good leader: a real person. His proficiency as a religious writer is in the process of being properly acknowledged.

He taught that God enters the life of a human being and provides man with a sense of being. There is a resemblance in a way between Dun Gorg and Sartre: the sense that God is here, that God is full of love, that He can provide an explanation to all dilemmas, especially to suffering, about which Dun Gorg spoke at length every time. He managed to change the mentality, raise the standard of education, and propose good behaviour as a guarantee of peaceful conviviality. Dun Gorg did this far more than any politician. If he spoke about the fear of God, that was because this was written down in the Bible. Dun Gorg can also be compared to Pope John Paul II and to Mother Teresa with regard to his outlook on the world.

You must learn how to fall in love with what you speak about: there was in Dun Gorg this sense of a passionate appreciation of life, an understanding of life and what it is all about. Dun Gorg was somehow a poet. Many excerpts of his works are densely metaphorical, and it is obvious that his communicative success, exceptional even by today’s multimedia standards, is largely due to his command of the people’s language. He just solved the Language Question by taking for granted what elsewhere should have been obvious, self-evident, sheer common sense, from the very start: instruction (he wrote in his Statuta) should be delivered ‘in the language of the country’. As simple as that, by world standards. He was modern long before modernism was in sight. His collaboration with Saydon only strengthens this conclusion.

For someone who has been quite silent for a rather long time, that’s quite a torrent of words from you…

After a lifetime involved in the usage of words, I hope I have learnt how to appreciate the immense value of silence; perhaps the most eloquent form of speech. I am grateful for having lived the sixties and the seventies to the full. Now I can only reconstruct all that in terms of novels, which I try to do in a manner that is always relevant, irrespective of who the reader is, and when and where the reader is. Today I tell of those days, which are today: I describe the present by re-awakening the past. It is so.

There is a sense of incompleteness in our people but also a sense of achievement: we have done it! Malta is a living people, and even though its people would fit in just one street in Cairo, it is a nation, a State.

Today, life is hurried. In earlier times, life was unhurried, ruled by the clock in the church steeple. Modern man today has lost all sense of measure, he must seek silence and quiet and there he will find what he has been seeking all his life.

We are pushed forward relentlessly by frenetic activity that comes from abroad and by frenetic activity that comes from within us. Malta has become just like one town, a city-state, with a frenetic lifestyle, traffic, crowding, and an unbridled search for profits. A question of self-deceit.

Malta does not have to be like this: it must not forget it is very small, with a smallness that is complete and beautiful. There is no other country like ours inside the EU. Even Cyprus is different. So we deserve a treatment specifically designed for exceptions, indeed a tiny island the EU should appreciate for its uniqueness. In joining the EU we sought an alliance with greater countries. From partial isolation we have moved to relative integration. Now it is up to Brussels to ascertain that the predicament of a tiny island State is specifically defined and guaranteed for what it is: an exception among rules.

It is indeed intriguing to describe all this in an article, but it is really more enticing to reshape it all into a novel where thoughts and situations become drama, the drama underlying common day experience. I hope I managed to convey this in my novels. Indeed, fiction is fine, because it does not exist.