Force countering force

Over the years I have come to know the Aquilina brothers who run Miranda Publishers very well. The Aquilina duo is a formidable one that over the years has provided us with a significant body of books all of which are hallmarked by the high standard one has come to expect of a Miranda publication.

There’s the archetype businessman Tony who harbours a deep love for Malta’s heritage and history. Tony provides all the practical guidance, financial knowhow and sober support to make the realisation of a book collection of such high artistic and historical excellence possible. This is no mean feat.

Then there’s Eddie who is openly passionate about capturing images of Malta in the most artistic way possible by engaging the best most painstakingly imaginative photographer to do it and then getting totally involved with the process. Eddie will then ask the most erudite and informed authority on the subject under scrutiny to provide a text that must be historically accurate, not over technical and pleasantly readable.

With Fortress Malta, the dual combination of Stephen C. Spiteri, who is the non plus ultra authority about our military history and architecture and photographer Enrico Formica, who has a wealth of experience and understanding of the very particular subject, produced yet another of those wonderfully collectible 360˚ series to fascinate us all.

One knows that the result is outstanding simply because despite the fact that most of us see many of the sites in the book almost daily, the unusual way in which they are photographed by Mr Formica captures one’s attention. This is because this is top notch artistic photography. For the same reason that a watercolour of Manoel Island or the Greeks’ Gate in Mdina will convey some hitherto unknown aspect of the site, artistic photography will transcend the merely visual rendering of a place and transform it into an interpretation.

Working in the 360 idiom gives plenty of scope to the artist of the lense to produce delightfully refreshing and at times amazingly dramatic views of what, in this case, could have so easily been bland featureless walls and piles of stones. Instead we have carefully prepared photographs for which pathways were cleared, sunsets were awaited and whole areas cleaned of graffiti and rubble. The effect is stunning. The photographs are a poetic visual documentation of Malta’s long and chequered history as a fortress colony and sovereign principality.

One particular photograph in my opinion stands out from the rest; the honey-coloured Caraffa Bastions of Lower St Elmo with the grey concrete staircase of the breakwater in the foreground. The composition of this particular essay in structural splendour is perfectly balanced, perfectly crafted in every aspect; colour, light and shade and mass. All the other photographs take their cue from this one. The result is a collection of fortifications that would not look out of place in the most famous works of fiction like The Lord of the Rings or Gormenghast.

Mr Formica has plenty of experience of the Maltese idiom and is able to combine an eye that has not been jaded by daily exposure to our ambience with an altogether fresh and always artistic approach. This is why the book works so well visually as it is way beyond a collection of mere snapshots accompanying a text but an artistic celebration that is yet another splendid tribute to our heritage and history.

Mr Spiteri’s very first publication about fortifications was sponsored by Mid Med Bank in the early 1990s. I was delighted and am still proud to have been involved in that sponsorship as it was the first time that I realised how rich Malta’s military architectural heritage is and how we are literally surrounded by it. Were it not for Malta being placed in the narrow straits between Sicily and North Africa and had it not had a Grand Harbour, Malta’s history and probably the history of Europe and possibly the world would have been somewhat different. Even in that very first book, illustrated by Mr Spiteri himself with meticulously accurate but artistic pen drawings, it was obvious that his passion for military architecture would lead on to great things. It can only be someone who deeply loves the science and art of military architecture who can produce an unforgettable line like this to describe it: "Majestic essays of force countering force; of grace under pressure".

Mr Spiteri also provides a lucid and coherent chronological progression of Malta’s varied history with clear explanations of how the mediaeval differed from the baroque and how the British defences lacked the heroic grandeur of the Order’s strictures; of how the entire defence of the archipelago prior to 1530 depended on the existence of three puny castles and how, overnight, Malta became a buffer state between the two superpowers – the Spanish and Ottoman Empires.

Had Malta not had the happy accident of being the bulwark in the southernmost extremity of the continent of Europe I doubt whether it would be the sovereign nation it is today. Those massive walls, cavaliers, counterguards, echaugettes and enceintes were built with the ingenuity of great military engineers, the determined militancy of a ruling class, the financial contribution of a semi-monastic aristocracy and the hard work of our forefathers.

Each honey-coloured stone is a living symbol of our collective history.

I have, on several occasions, walked around Valletta’s foreshore feeling dwarfed and humbled by the immensity of its defences. When under St Elmo, between the dark and forbidding black walls and the heaving sea, one can almost hear the dull clinking of chain mail and the clanging ring of steel clashing with steel; of sword against scimitar. From somewhere in the deepest recesses of my imagination comes the booming of cannon, the neighing of horses and the battle cries that invoke the same god in different tongues as wave after wave of janissaries and crack troops throw themselves at the unyielding walls.

There is an eerie feel to that area of St Elmo where one can feel the unquiet presence of many ancient spirits whose shades still linger in this relatively small area that cost both the besiegers and the besieged so much, the former because they never expected it to hold out for so long and the besieged because in the end they were slaughtered to a man. Were it not for the super heroic defence of St Elmo, the siege would have been won by the Ottomans; at what a terrible blood-price.

Leafing through Mr Formica’s visual evocations recreates the history that Mr Spiteri is writing about; a complimentary marriage of two genres that makes one so proud to inherit a proud past like ours. Fortress Malta documents this heritage and is a splendid tome to have by all accounts; one that appeals not only to collectors of Melitensia but also to bibliophiles from anywhere in the world.