[attach id=409403 size="medium"][/attach]
Joe M. Attard: Profili ta’ Kittieba Għawdxin, Klabb Kotba Maltin. 2014. 259 pp.
Publishing in this tiny island with an area and population that could easily fit in a district of one of Sicily’s largest cities is nothing but astonishing. Over 1,000 titles get published a year, ranging from academic tomes to parish newsletters and this in a place where the people are not in general known for the voracity of their reading.
A visit to the recent Malta Book Festival confirms that publishing is not moribund, although how it manages to survive in the present world is always a bit of a mystery, and much credit is due to the handful of publishers who march on in the face of adversity.
This scenario has produced its varied plethora of writers, ranging from the sublime to the plainly ludicrous, from the capable to the incompetent, from writers who have found due recognition on the international scene to others who only see their names in print because they had forked out the expenses themselves, never to recover them.
In this scenario the number of local writers who have published works in Maltese, English and Italian mostly, but also in other languages ranging from Latin to Esperanto, is truly remarkable.
And the scene becomes even more remarkable if one were to consider the number of authors that Gozo has produced which include three of our foremost linguists (Ġużè Micallef being the least known to the general public, perhaps unjustly overshadowed by the longer-lived Aquilina and Cremona), historians, poets, journalists, broadcasters, religious writings and essayists.
Its young promising authors include a novelist and a short story writer who has recently achieved international recognition: Pierre J. Meilak was awarded the European Union Prize for Literature.
Joe M. Attard’s book is precisely meant to put on record the literary and academic contribution of authors from Gozo. The genesis of the book was a series of articles he himself had written for Rediffusion and later for Il-Mument featuring authors of the last 150 years, though surely the list could have been extended to include Gian Francesco Agius de Soldanis, one of Gozo’s most distinguished literary sons.
The number of local writers who have published works in Maltese, English and Italian is truly remarkable
The great value of Attard’s book is the fact that he has managed to put together information about some lesser-known authors who otherwise risked being forgotten and who may be so little known in Malta.
Attard’s style is very easy to follow. One can say he writes how he speaks, often adding his own experiences which he has accumulated after being in Gozo’s literary circles for over 50 years, sometimes adding short anecdotes.
He recalls, for example, Ninu Cremona, bringing a cake over to the school where Attard was teaching to celebrate his birthday, or how much he sweated blood to obtain a copy of Mary Meilak’s four-volume Stejjer ta’ dawn il-Gżejjer, or the hours he, as a young man, used to spend talking to Mgr Farrugia Gioioso, the translator of de Soldanis’s history of Gozo. Or seeing Marcell Mizzi working at his desk in his office situated a few metres away from his father’s carpenter shop. It is this aspect which makes the book so interesting in its own way, although other readers may have desired more data and analysis and footnotes.
Attard has ended up with 54 authors, including one single woman, Mary Meilak, and he presents them chronologically according to the dates of their birth. The problem about reviewing such a book is that one is bound to leave out particular names which, in a country beset by conspiracy theories, is bound to be taken as a meant slight.
Attard gives brief potted biographies very often interspersed with his own personal observations which, therefore, tend to make each one more than just a collection of dates and publications.
It is difficult to select names but one has to mention of course Ġuzè Aquilina, the first professor of Maltese at the University since Mikiel Anton Vassalli, a linguist and lexicographer of international reputed, essayist, playwright, and one of our first literary critic. Ninu Cremona did not achieve the same international fame but he left very important seminal studies on the language and was the main contributor to the Tagħrif.
Xagħra-born John Cremona is better known as a constitutional lawyer but he has also written some exquisite verse in Maltese, English and Italian and has been active since the 1930s. He has a distinction in that one of his poems was read out by Queen Elizabeth II.
Anton Buttigieg is better remembered as President of the Republic but his romantic verses have been encountered by all students who studied Maltese literature, as is also the case with Ġorġ Pisani, one of the stalwarts of the language.
Although Pawlu Mizzi has written several historical works and other literature he has taken his place in Maltese publishing history as the father of the modern Maltese book.
Another personality who has made his name as a historian of the island is Mgr Joseph Bezzina, whose publications include the long-lived Gaulitana series which has dealt with so many various aspects of Gozitan lore.
Anton F. Attard has accumulated a vast amount of knowledge about local folklore, precisely at a time when it was in imminent danger of being lost and forgotten altogether.
An author who has published several books about Gozo in wartime is Charles Bezzina who continued the valuable work started by his father, Frank, who surely deserved an entry in his own right as well.
On a personal note, Attard includes his son Fr Geoffrey who is quite a prolific author of historical articles and papers. Incidentally Joseph Attard is an accomplished writer of much sought-after and popular occasional verse in Gozo and which he published in book form in 2012 as L-Għanja tat-Tifkira.