Unfortunately, I could not attend the soiree organised by the Circolo Gozitano on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Prof. Guze’ Aquilina and I was very glad to read the scholarly talk by Dr Joe Zammit Ciantar reproduced in The Malta Independent on Sunday of 11 April.

I knew Prof Aquilina first as my professor of Maltese and later as a senior colleague on the teaching staff of the Royal University of Malta, as it was then styled. He was the president of the ATRUM (Association of Teachers of the Royal University of Malta) of which I was also a member at one time. He encouraged me in my weak attempts at poetry and other extra-curricular interests.

When he retired and devoted practically all his time to his dictionary, he often phoned me, or got his assistants to do so, about the exact meanings of technical terms referring to the building trades.

Prof. Aquilina is well known as a widely cultured man, but he had a particular scholarly interest, which we shared, and which probably very few people know about. 

As he was the chairman of the Library Committee, I once tried to persuade him to divert some of the funds to para-psychology and psychical research. I was then particularly interested in the work of Prof. J.B. Rhine of Duke University, North Carolina, especially his experiments on ESP (extra-sensory perception). He told me that funds were very limited and at the time the subject was looked at rather askance in academic circles. We would be bracketed as cranks and perhaps a little bit potty. But he had quite a few books himself on the subject that he proceeded to lend me and which we would privately discuss on a regular basis.

I cannot think of any subject under the sun on which he was not very well informed.

Andre’ Zammit