Several friends did not quite see the connecting thread in your discussion of Liberalism in Malta and the US. In the Maltese context, you distinguished between the true Liberalism of Borg Olivier and the Liberalism falsely attributed to Strickland. In the American context you maintained that an official book by David Petraeus, which might have been taken to reflect Liberalism understood as being the ideology of the free world, was nothing of the kind. Was there a deeper link other than perhaps an analogy with what your clowning friend described as your “funny cooking”?

There evidently should have been a concluding sentence. I had just said that the fascinating book of Petraeus was neither conservative, nor liberal, but political. I should have added that the brand of political ideology exemplified in the book was imperialist. That is also the word which most precisely characterises Strickland’s politics.

I also wanted to suggest that it also describes at least a part of what is being passed on to us as being liberal. The word is used to describe that set of values which some call American and which range from completely free ‘anti-social’ markets to what might be called abnormative bioethics.

The blatant attempts to impose this form of liberalism upon all of us strikes me as an excellent illustration of the cultural imperialism of which the methods of application were so admirably described by Petraeus.

Other friends who had read your preview of the New Ideas Symphony by Charles Camilleri, presented as the opening event of this year’s Arts Festival now in full swing, were surprised on actually hearing the performance. Why did you say that it was a further exploration of the Maltese identity, when it did not sound at all like a sequel to his early folkloristic Malta Suite?

The symphony identifies as the deepest character of the Maltese soundscape that which Camilleri often said was best expressed by the Maltese word hemda, from which I myself derived the title of my textbook on the philosophy of language which is called Peopled Silence.

The first movement of the symphony as very skilfully delivered by Brian Schembri with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra hovered on the verge of inaudibility. Then, out of the quasi-silent melody, more articulated sounds emerged and they are amply developed with only slight although significant lateral deviations from the classical orientations of harmony, but as the movement returns to the initial hemda, the feeling takes hold of you that the complex elaboration had all been germinally present in the quiet, non-resounding beginning.

The second movement again begins with a hemda-style opening. This time, a conflictual counter position of sounds emerges and the din of battle, although never quite degenerating into noise, goes on for a while. But then it subsides and the mood of the opening returns, leaving us this time with the sense that the tumult was in vain.

Finally the third movement, in which trumpet fanfares and other sounds of jubilation are heard. I for one could not help becoming more and more aware that Camilleri was making ample use of material from the dialogic, death-lament between the two jesters in the last act of The Maltese Cross.

I had actually selected this passage to be sung during Communion in the funeral Mass for Charles, when I had no idea that he had made use of it in what he must have been uncannily aware was to be his last major composition and indeed his spiritual testament.

I am sure it was because of the persuasive power of the symphony’s eulogy of hemda that the audience did not spring to its feet in a standing ovation.

The composer was asserting almost with his last breath that the sound of Malta at its most authentic was the expression of a sort of mystical communion which transcends verbal and other dialectical signs (there was no climax whatsoever as finale to the symphony) that are not an expression of religiosity in either the popular festa style evoked in the Malta Suite, nor of solemn liturgical celebration, but rather of a deep cosmic spirituality.

Do you find this Freedom of the Spirit expressed as the mark of Maltese identity by others besides Charles Camilleri?

A very recent witness in this sense has come forward in the shape of Marlene Saliba with her book Ancestral Visions published by the author herself.

Actually, in this very rich volume containing accurate scientific information as well as superb photographs by Daniel Cilia and a gallery of works of art inspired by the temples, there is a poem entitled somewhat enigmatically The Philosophers’ Stone (alchemists believed this stone could turn baser metals into gold, and J.K. Rowling exploited the idea in her first book featuring Harry Potter). Marlene Saliba sub-titled her poem “after seeing the painting of Monica Spiteri and listening to the music of Charles Camilleri, both entitled Silent Spaces”.

The English version reads somewhat more prosaically than the Maltese original with its repeated beat on one rhyming syllable at the end of many successive lines. It has the following last stanza: “Silent stone sanctuaries/near us and inside us/that may be accessed/without passwords,/and upon which/secretly depend/the sound and flow/of our existence.”

Saliba uses her mastery of both Maltese and English to create herself an analogous effect to that of the Silent Spaces celebrated by the musician and the visual artist. The same spirit also pervades the very layout of the book. In its own very different poetic way, it pictures the Maltese identity as elegantly as Joseph Brincat did in his book on language in Malta.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.