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Mario Azzopardi: Il-Fabbrikant tal-Marjunetti. Horizons, 2012.

This latest volume of poetry and what the author calls poesaġġi shows the author, now approaching his 70th year, to be as verbally uninhibited and desperately uncertain as ever about man and God, society and its rulers, and, of course, about himself.

Where he differs from his early self is that his anger and his protests are no longer directed to a society he feels may yet be reformed, but to political and religious structures beyond redemption. He strikes as much astonishment and dismay in the reader as he has always done.

The volume is equipped with a long introduction by Charles Briffa and two shorter studies by Oliver Friggieri and Patricia Gatt, probably the weightiest academic superstructure for a new work in Maltese I can remember. The funny thing about this is that in Azzopardi’s writings in this volume, he makes what sound like ironic references to real and imaginary works, all of them sounding quite ponderous.

His protests are no longer directed to a society he feels may yet be reformed, but to political and religious structures beyond redemption

It is almost as if he were unconsciously commenting on what the three authors have written about him, as if surprised at all that his latest writings have spurred them to write.

What I fear, however, is that few readers other than university students and other academics interested in contemporary Maltese literature will be tempted to read them.

Those who do so, however, will find the occasional comment that will enlighten them. For instance when he is dealing with Azzopardi’s extraordinary and often astonishing Il-Manifest tal-Poeżija (A Poetry Manifesto), Briffa shows the piece’s relationship with the verse of T.S. Eliot.

This is particularly true for his Four Quartets, bearing the key phrase, “the intolerable wrestle with words and meanings”, and another key statement, “having had 20 years/trying to learn to use words, and every attempt/is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure”. In this long poem, Azzopardi gives us a bewildering series of visions, depicting, presumably, his own experiences of what poetry means for him, what leads him to create verse, written in what one could call a contemporary baroque style.

Azzopardi’s life has always witnessed his struggle with the religion instilled in him in his boyhood and early youth, a religion he has never ceased to question and attack, sometimes with challenging blasphemy.

Among the pieces in the poetry section of this volume, I was struck by Xmun minn Ċirene (Simon of Cyrene, the man made to carry Christ’s cross to Golgotha), a monologue in which Simon protests against his having been compelled to become an accomplice in what he calls “a hysterical melodrama of swearing and blood”. He has no idea what the man to be crucified has done and does not care what it is; all he cares is that at home his woman has prepared his meal and will then take him to her bed.

I suspect Azzopardi’s Xmun symbolises so many Christians of every age, but especially ours, who grow up practising a religion in which they were brought up but which they know hardly at all. A religion, moreover, that sometimes prevents them from doing what they would dearly like to do.

Much more shocking is a piece in the Poesaġġi section, bearing the unsettling title Piss Christ.

On seeing an image of the crucified Christ immersed in a container filled with urine, the author asks Christ why he has not expressed his utter disapproval of this utterly disgusting and blasphemous image.

This prompts him to ask Christ why he always keeps silent about whatever is not just obscene but also about the millions of unjust acts committed all the time, and tells him: “Your silence is obscene.”

He means to shock his readers into thinking his silence is more obscene than the blasphemy committed on his image.

Another piece in this section is Mill-Atti ta’ Claudia Procula (Drawn from the Acts of Claudia Procula), in which the wife of Pontius Pilate desperately tries to dissuade her husband from allowing Christ to be put to death, using both her predictions of disaster following Christ’s execution and physical seduction.

Pilate, incidentally, resembles Bulgakov’s Pilate in The Master and Margherita in having a bad headache that makes him unable to think clearly. This could be a very striking dialogue made to be performed on stage.

Gatt’s essay focuses on Azzopardi’s attitudes towards women, who are often key figures in quite a number of pieces. Azzopardi is ambivalent towards them, fascinated but sometimes threatened. Claudia Procula, however, is not only a physically fascinating figure but she has also the piercing intuition that many women have and that Azzopardi may perhaps envy.

I join Gatt in being much impressed by the poem Mewt f’Camden Square (Death in Camden Square) in which Azzopardi, with superbly controlled anger, apostrophises Amy Winehouse after her early death.

For him, the singer was a figure greatly to be admired, a priestess even of her dark religion: “Priestess, you have burned the incense/drained the chalice, and burned the damning decrees (my version of Azzopardi’s pwieni, possibly a mistaken one)/and now you have entered the immense cavern of night…”

Some of the verses hint at what the poet desires will happen to himself after his death. Surely, he hopes that, like her, he will be seen as having “no need to be prayed for/no need for pity or for wreaths of flowers”. Will he, like her, be seen as having “tamed (his) demons without anyone’s aid/wounded them mortally once and for ever”? This is a piece that will be quoted and read admiringly long after he is gone.

The title Poesaġġ is also memorable. The puppet-maker of the piece clearly relates on one level to the theatre to which Azzopardi has devoted so much skill, energy and devotion for so long, but he could also be God or some superhuman force that makes men and women and then impassively breaks them.

I have touched on just a few pieces and just a few themes to be found in this rich collection. Readers will sometimes be puzzled, and others will find it too strong meat for them.

Many will sometimes suffer from an inability to understand. Those who will come back to it again and again will find the trouble well worth the taking.