Having dedicated all my life to writing I hope, although being Maltese, I can claim it is nothing less than a congenital compulsion, an innate urge beyond control. A human condition which has to be faced according to the diverse dictates of time. I have been committed to writing since I was 11 or 12. Since then I have never sought to change my job, and I consider myself lucky as my urge for writng and my academic job coincide. Since my early childhood I have never questioned whether writing was actually my main concern, and since the 1960s I have been writing and publishing without ever doubting that this was, and still is, my calling in life. The language in which I write is irrelevant to me.

There is a substantial difference between scientific research and creative writing. I have done both over a long period of time. I have conducted research out of a sense of duty, with the aim of constructing the literary history of Malta, in both Italian and Maltese. Creative writing is quite a different matter. Although I had to embark on literary research to justify my presence in the academic field, my main passion has been and still is poetry, which I think can be written both in its acknowledged form and much more in the narrative shape of a novel. The crude absurdity of life, I discovered, can be best expressed in the form of a novel. I have experienced this mainly in the process of writing Gizimin li qatt ma Jiftah, It-Tfal jigu bil-Vapuri and Dik id-Dghajsa f’Nofs il-Port.

Writing novels has been my main concern, and the most rewarding as well. When in 1995 I embarked on the writing of the book of memoirs Fjuri li ma jinxfux (Klabb Kotba Maltin, 2009), I was not at all aware that in the meantime I was to find myself somehow constrained to interrupt the writing of the memoirs, and to embark on novels. But so it happened. The novels I wrote since Gizimin li qatt ma Jiftah are all the offshoots of my commitment to memory, namely my decision to write Fjuri li ma Jinxfux, a true story which however is not very different from a novel.

When I was young I was obsessed with the idea of having to write a certain amount of words every day. As time went by I learnt that I was actually obliged to spend hours thinking, rather than writing. A novel may take years to come to fruition, but the longer part is taken up by thinking. The writing period has been, in my case, much shorter. My novels have taken more time to be thought out than to be actually written down. Mysteries of the trade.

It will be quite difficult for me to describe how I have spent my whole life writing. I have repeatedly tried to do otherwise, namely to stop writing, but it did not work. I have also stopped smoking, since smoking unfortunately accompanied my long years of daily writing, but again it did not work. I stopped smoking and am still writing. I know for sure I have to have a silent environment, a high degree of concentration, and, above all, a high degree of fear of what the blank page actully demands. Writing is equally easy and difficult. Good writing is an exception. It demands unity, conciseness, implication, and the beauty of sounds. I have always considered writing akin to music. A question of sounds conveying sense, expressing the real essence of literature: intensity.

Most of my life has been dedicated to writing. Most of my years have been spent in front of my beloved typewriter, and eventually, in the company of a computer. But my real challenge has always been how to create something unique and marvellous out of average and common forms of discourse. My agelong battle with words has been a battle with myself. In writing in Maltese, Italian and English I have always understood that I was tackling a spiritual, inner challenge: silence. Writing is not conducted in Maltese, or in Italian or in English, etc. It is an act of defiance against inner silence.

There are only two languages in our planet: utterance and silence. Different languages are just different sounds, efforts to express something which is unique. The more I write, whichever the language, the more I become convinced that inner truth is actually inexpressible, and that silence is the most eloquent language. All languages are poor and inadequate in regard of our innermost experiences, but writing tries to do what it can to break silence. I consider my long years dedicated to daily writing as just a feeble effort to express what, I know, is simply inexpressible. The only perfect language is silence, but this has to be expressed through writing. And so, writing is at least a worthy effort, however poor and unfaithful it may be.