Towards An Independent Literature: Malta’s Writers and Poets

Malta’s geographic location at the heart of the Mediterranean Sea has made it a target for a long succession of colonial powers over the course of its history, among these: the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Spanish, Knights of St John, French and finally the British. These powers, and the various waves of emigrants which followed in their wake, all made their mark on the culture of Malta, which is a synthesis of these various traditions. The colonial legacy also lives on in the linguistic world, as Malta still proclaims English as one of its official languages. Its other official language is Maltese, which was only granted this status in 1934, and has emerged as the vehicle for an indigenous literary heritage rich in the arts of translation, poetry and religious script.

The Maltese literary canon is defined by two principal periods of the country’s history; the first during British colonial rule, and the second, ignited by the country’s independence, gained in 1964. A Malta under the British published Romantic-inspired poetry, which celebrated aesthetic beauty and traditional structure. The themes of these poems typically paid reverence to Western greats such as Keats, Wordsworth and Blake. Malta’s independence from Britain in 1964 not only excited a surge of national pride for the newly independent nation, but also stimulated a modern literary movement inspired by innovative philosophies, intellectual considerations and poetic articulation. This modern period embraced a fierce rejection of the Romantic, and ignited the exploration of an explicitly emotive and inventive literary impulse.
Malta’s national poet Carmelo Psaila (pseudonym Dun Karm) (1871-1961) studied theology (he was ordained a priest in 1894) and philosophy, both of which would have a profound impact on his poetry. Inspired greatly by the traditional Romantic works and authors of his adolescence, Psaila’s debut poem ‘La Dignità Episcopale’ was published when he was just 18-years-old. Psaila wrote solely in Italian until 1912, when he began writing exclusively in Maltese. Known for highly imaginative poetry which articulates internal spiritual journeys and the search for a defining cultural identity (Psaila is also the author of Malta’s national anthem, ‘Innu Malti’, written in 1923), Psaila introduced a revolutionary exploration of Malta’s national voice under British rule. Thematically, Psaila depicts this search for a national identity through the lens of deep religious meditation and philosophical interrogations of existentialism. Since Psaila’s death in 1961, his work has been translated into Arabic, English, French, Italian and Spanish.