The attempt to close the gap between the rigorous demands and strictures of academic writing and that which appeals to a diverse readership is fraught with pitfalls.  Overcoming such traps as the overuse of technical jargon on the one hand and inconsistent cross-referencing on the other, has marred the work of many an inexperienced researcher.

The matter is compounded when creative writers, especially poets, comfortable in their invocations to a present, absent or non-responsive addressee, accept the distancing and atmospherically neutral style academic writing entails.

Such quandaries can result in a maddening, somewhat schizophrenic writing style inimical to serious scholarship.  What might work, however, is the style Mario Azzopardi adopts in his well-researched collection of essays Vergni Sagri, Demonji u Boloh ghal Alla: Kitbiet dwar it-Teatrikalità Religjuza (Sacred Virgins, Demons and Holy Fools: Writings on Religious Dramatic Expression).  Juxtaposing socio-historical background and theatre critique with passages of vivid and intense drama seems to fulfil the brief Azzopardi has set himself. A case in point is the essay on ritual which begins with descriptions of Good Friday penitential traditions that aren’t for the faint-hearted and then segues into a critique of Josè Saramago’s rendition in his novel Baltasar & Blimunda of an inquisitorial burning at the stake of heretics in 18th century Spain. The essay ends with an examination of ritual in Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virgina Wolf?, where a metaphorical exorcism constitutes the climax of the play.

However, the creative urge can’t be suppressed for long in Azzopardi and he ends this study with an original script for a docu-drama based on the cause célèbre of an adolescent girl who accused her father confessor of sexual misconduct in late 18th century France.  The script is based on the conventions of forum theatre, with its stated aim of bringing about social change.  Azzopardi has advocated forum theatre projects in Malta and abroad and it comes as no surprise that the imprint of forum theatre permeates this script.  For instance it introduces the destabilising, earthy influence of the clown whose function is similar to the provocative stance of the Joker in forum theatre. Then there’s the chorus (in a nod to Greek drama) disentangling the trial’s true purpose from the hearsay and innuendo that pits a young girl’s word against institutional power.

The main theme this study explores, then, has all to do with the limits of verbal and physical articulation and communication, and the attempt to transcend them.  To what extent does recourse to the dramatic abet this searing yearning in avowed believers? Mystics from different branches of Christianity, be they Catholic or Russian Orthodox, exhibit a common trait:  that of perceiving themselves as go-betweens between earthly existence and the divine.  A lasting impression seems to strengthen the view (no doubt intrinsically tied to historical female subordination) that female mystics’ relationship with the divine (always perceived as masculine) is more complex. Fuelled by deep layers of masochism and thwarted feminine psychic energy and potential, the more “extreme” of these mystics indulged in violent fantasies of a divine marriage with a ring fashioned out of the infant Christ’s circumcised foreskin. Centuries before Fyodor Dostoevsky’s polyphonic voices permeated his novels, church mystics who, more often than not were illiterate and had to make use of an amanuensis (or assistants / scribes) to record their hallucinatory projections (as with the case of Carmelite Maria Maddalena de Pazzi), are shown to be in the grips of a torturing and conflicted self that is the essence of psychodrama.

Azzopardi painstakingly sets out the background against which religious mavericks operated, tracing Western culture’s deep-seated misogynism to Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo.  Although this is a well-trodden path, the author does not only list instances of ingrained prejudice against the feminine but seeks to understand the male psyche that gave rise to it.  Furthermore, he contrasts it with a growing Marian cult, where Eamon Duffy’s concept of the physical body having an instrumental (or extrinsic) value  forms part of the list of “pious props” (such as the use of bread, wine, water and the blessing of palm fronds on Palm Sunday) used to imbue earthly matter  with a transcendent quality.

The idea of the body as an instrument, so beloved of aficionados of physical theatre (with its modern roots in Artaud’s exploration of the spiritual through the physical body) is constantly evoked either through the mystics’ divine union with Christ or through the body’s mortification and suppression. Significance is further intensified by way of referencing Augustine’s own experience as a theatre-goer who ultimately sees the futility of nurturing such illusory states or stories on stage: Why should he be following artificial drama when the divine, virtuous drama could be activated within his soul?

In contrast, Azzopardi also examines the coming together of the divine and the erotic, focusing on Solomon’s Song of Songs.  Rather than giving us yet another literary interpretation he reads it theatrically, highlighting the dramatic climaxes in the text.  He also notes the biblical scholar Pietru Pawl Saydon’s underplaying of the sexual connotations, a constraint that is understandable in Malta’s reactionary religious context. Thus the interpretation of the Song as a work of literature exposes an alternation of dialogue, which predominates at the expense of narrative action. Azzopardi partially accepts this reading, all the while noting Saydon’s failure to give weight to the work’s choral sections.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculpture The Ecstasy of St Teresa of Avila in the Cornaro Chapel in Rome’s Santa Maria della Vittoria also piques Azzopardi’s interest.  Given that most critiques of the sculpture have long established Bernini’s depiction of the saint’s erotic rapture, Azzopardi continues to insist on giving weight to the spiritual element and the sculptor’s attempt to harness it in the cold medium of marble.  At the same time he also contextualises Bernini’s focus on the female body in moments of sensual transport by asserting that it acts as an antidote to the backlash against nudity and profanity in the arts.  Essentially theatre is no longer perceived to be a source of iniquity but is rehabilitated by means of the sculptural groups of Cardinal Bernini, the chapel’s patron, and members of his family, watching the saint in the throes of ecstasy as if from theatre boxes.

Taking in writers such as Milton, Dante, Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky, theatre makers of the calibre of Peter Brook, Dario Fo and Roberto Benigni together with sacred dance and the use of theatre by religious like St John Bosco and the Jesuits, this collection of essays is as exciting as it is provocative.

Vergni Sagri, Demonji u Boloh ghal Alla by Mario Azzopardi (Horizons / Outlook Coop, 287pp.  Hardbound and Illustrated, 2013)