Michael Cini:L-Ewwel Preżenza: L-Imħabba tal-Ħares ma Tmut Qatt!
Horizons, Malta, 2018
L-Ewwel Preżenza: L-Imħabba tal-Ħares ma Tmut Qatt! (2018, The First Presence: A Ghost’s Love Never Dies!) is the fifth novel by Michael Cini. In it, he gives us Gabriele Caruso’s split sense of self to stress the value of sterling love. The imagination is engaged so deeply that the reader must see that the moral matters.
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The author started his novelistic career with a ghost story and gave us Preżenza – Inti Temmen fil-Ħares? (2014, Presence – Do You Believe in Ghosts?) in which the restless spirit of a mother tries to discover how her seven-year-old son disappeared mysteriously.
Then, he moved to the historical novel by Ix-Xafra tad-Destin – L-Imdina 1565 (2015, The Sword of Fate – Mdina 1565) where he uses the historical landmark of the Great Siege of Malta to depict a story of love, strife and glory. His third work of fiction is a social novel, Skjava... fil-Ktajjen tal-Imħabba, which presents a sensual story of love that must struggle against the onslaught of abuse and infidelity.
He then returned to the historical novel with his fourth novel, Konvoj – Ġrajja li Naf Jiena Biss!, where he uses another landmark in the history of Malta to juxtapose the concept of love with that of a heroic victory.
L-Ewwel Preżenza combines elements from history, the ghost story and the social novel to present a literary inquiry that expands the dialogic horizons of the narrative.
The novel brings us face to face with the social reality of Napoleon’s political betrayal of the Maltese and the violent arrogance of his soldiers after the French occupation of Malta in 1798.
In Cini’s fantasy, this historical event leaves a casualty: the death of Gabriele Caruso, a young Italian soldier in the service of Napoleon.
When Gabriele was still alive, he loathed what the French soldiers were doing to the Maltese (stealing their treasures, denuding the churches and raping the women); and he fell in love with a beautiful Maltese girl, Rożina.
He tried to help Rożina and her poor mother (Tereża) as much as he could. But when the Maltese popular uprising erupted against the French in Mdina he was shot through the head and killed on the spot.
Because of this unfinished business, his spirit chose to remain roaming on earth because it wanted to help Rożina and her mum financially.
The Maltese word for ghost is ħares, which has an affinity with the verb ħares (to protect).
A literary inquiry that expands the dialogic horizons of the narrative
Cini plays on the semantic relationship of these two, and makes Gabriele the ghost the supreme protector and provider of Rożina’s family from the end of the 18th century to modern times.
The writer uses fantasy as a cultural artefact as he responds consciously to social experiences like the exploitation of the weak by people like is-Sur Nikol (a notary and the son of a count) and the military arrogance and betrayal of the mighty French army – antagonistic experiences that might choke the value of real love by their selfishness.
The sense of the fantastic in Cini becomes ideological and psychological, and he produces a novel that is almost a political interpellation. At the same time, the novel makes us feel that the fantastic is a possibility because it must operate within a realistic framework.
For this reason, ghosts are given human characteristics. For instance, the ghost physically touches the girl, smells jasmine, and can breathe on a harmonica.
Ghosts practise human logic and conduct discussions among themselves. And, moreover, the novel gives us a community of revenants. All this is based on the traditional belief that the dead are universally existent near the living.
The narrative presents us with a fantasy that may be described as a cultural issue which requires us to perceive the fantastic in an inverted connection with the real.
Cini’s fantasy changes reality but does not escape it. In this novel the fantastic (manifested mainly in the presence of the ghost), exists because it depends on the real (exposed mainly in the tribulations of the family).
The literary subject (i.e. the ghost’s presence) is a conscious product wilfully reacting to the rift between the real (the human beauty of the living Rożina) and the desired (the eternal love of Gabriele the ghost) – there are snatches in this production that remind us of the romantic fantasy The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1945). And reactions are always under control.
The novel gives us fantasy that is morally more acceptable than reality that is morally unacceptable.
A significant characteristic of the novel is that it deliberately allows the readers’ movement from the real (which is expected to be visible, but in actual fact it has invisibility in the form of the priest’s hypocrisy) to the fantastic (which is supposed to be invisible, but which raises an aspect of cultural invisibility to the level of moral visibility in a literary style). The reader must constantly check acceptable codes.
Cini displays fantasy that shows social anxieties, fear, and uncertainties. For him, revenants can contribute to the literary imagination as they enter into a dialogue with the living.
He is successful because he knows how to bring history to life, even making it psychologically possible; he gives it a character.
The story of L-Ewwel Preżenza is full of adventures that keep readers interested in the action.
And at the same time there is in the novel an emphasis on the traditional values of genuine family love.