Professor Oliver Friggieri was recently decorated with the Al Merito della Repubblica Italiana award in a ceremony held at the Italian Institute of Culture, Valletta. He received the award from Italian Ambassador Luigi Marras on behalf of Italian President Giorgio Napolitano. The ceremony was presided over by President George Abela.
Professor Oliver Friggieri has made extensive research on the influence of Italian culture on the Maltese literary tradition and on Maltese culture in general in the Risorgimento period. He has published numerous articles in academic journals in Italy and other countries, and is the author of two volumes on the subject, both published in Italy, namely La cultura italiana a Malta – Dun Karm (Olschki, Florence, 1978) and Storia della letteratura maltese (Edizioni Spes, Milazzo, 1986), of which a new facsimile edition has just been launched by the University of Malta.
This is the English version of the speech he delivered in Italian on that occasion.
“As an ancient island which has met, over many centuries, various protagonists of world history – the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Arabs, the Normans, the Aragonese, the Knights of St John, the French and the British – Malta has found its proper political and cultural vocation through such encounters, forming in the meantime its own identity. Through continuous contact with foreign influences, a tiny country has succeeded not only in surviving, but also in gaining for itself the confidence of much bigger and more important countries. The culminating point of such a process was reached during the Risorgimento period, when a modern awareness was born and when such awareness started to take shape in the form of political groups.
“The identity of Malta, in all the sectors of life, is the complex result of an endless series of influences recognised and assimilated without much resistance which have eventually translated themselves into a new cultural nature. The methodical analysis of the various historical layers manifests the original character of the components and the harmoniousness of the total result. It is the constant contact with the nearby peninsula that largely accounts for the most decisive features of such a long and uninterrupted tradition. The Italian Risorgimento, in which Malta took a quite active part, marks the point in time when a whole cultural tradition could be transformed into political activity. The Mazzinian motto ‘Dio e il popolo’ sums up most of the feelings animating Maltese politics and culture then, and since then.”
The modern concept of nationality
“It is the Maltese language, derived from the Arabic speech habit of the conquerors (870-1090) but then developed according to conceptual and grammatical Latin forms, especially Sicilian and Italian, which most forcefully illustrates this condition. The vicinity with Italy, much more authentic than a simple geographical position, is the determining factor of a large segment of the Maltese experience. Under various aspects, the Maltese character boils down to a mature extension of the Italian way of being, even if such a dynamic reality is always subject to the supreme law of critical assimilation, discreet, and typical of the spirit of insularity.
When, through the diffusion of the romantic ideals of the Risorgimento during various decades of the 19th century (1804-1860), the Maltese started to attain a degree of awareness on the new concept of nationality, the sense of ethnic and territorial identity gained momentum, and the need started to be felt of acknowledging and cultivating the land’s individuality. In the background of modern development lies the fact that for whole centuries Malta had its own literature in Italian, the fruit of people moulded according to the Italian brand of education, all exposed to the main thematic choices of Italian writers.
The Maltese participation in the Italian Risorgimento
“The strong participation of Malta in the Italian Risorgimento is, in my view, the equally remote and direct cause of all the achievements of the Maltese in the political field during the 19th century. When a literary movement in Maltese eventually emerged, this could solely occur within the confines of the Italian tradition. At the basis of both literatures which flourished in Malta, the traditional one in Italian and the more recent one in Maltese, there is one single reality, always directly verifiable through the identification of the fundamental Italian character, which, for various centuries, has constituted the only ‘humus’ in which the creative act, the thought and the action could ever grow.
“Midway between both literary experiences, the ancient and the modern (or romantic) one, there is therefore the linguistic distinction between Italian and Maltese. There is also the distinction inherent to the controversy between what the classical and the romantic views, the old and the new, stood for. But in actual fact there is one basic identity, which, in terms of literary and social history, signifies the passage from traditional indifference to the maturity of a new collective awareness. In terms of linguistic controversy this involves the romantic discovery of the traditionally uncultivated popular language.”
The Italo-Maltese fusion
“Therefore, the appreciation of Italian literature, assuming the role of appreciation of the literary trends of the region, is equally necessary for the evaluation of the two experiences of Maltese sensibility. The literary example is being cited here just as a mere example of a general condition which includes all the other sectors of thinking and living.
“Being Maltese means belonging to a small country that is also a complete entity on its own. Being Mediterranean and European means belonging to a much wider reality through which people recognise themselves as citizens, namely to a complex nationality within which the most colourful diversities are fused into one whole. In such a setting the strong and most fruitful Italo-Maltese relationship acquires its truest value. Thus Italy has constantly represented for Malta an important outlet, geographical and cultural, towards the Mediterranean and the continent. Malta’s decision to form part of the European Union may be fully appreciated in such a context.”