THE GROWTH OF A POET

THE GROWTH OF A POET From the enfant terrible of Maltese literature, Mario Azzopardi transformed himself into a highly evocative intimist, representative of some of the island's best modern lyrical poetry, but the anxiety and the call for commitment resurface time and again.
MARIO AZZOPARDI's poetry spans the best of forty years. Malta acquired political independence in 1964, when Azzopardi had just turned twenty. That major event was destined to bring about a deep, radical change in the people's moral and cultural outlook and Azzopardi was to become one of the main exponents of the shift in value systems. He is widely considered as one of Malta's leading writers, if not the most important one, of the literary avant garde. His literary life is marked by distinct stages: the iconoclast and the enfant terrible, who forced a far-reaching re-examination of Malta's literary and cultural vocation, slowly emerged as an artist of inner tensions representing the best of Malta's modern lyrical poetry. This notwithstanding, Azzopardi never lost touch with the social sphere and even his most recent poems are loaded with a universal concern and a commitment towards the most vulnerable. The following is a brief description of Azzopardi's evolving phases as a poet according to his publications: 1968: ANTENNI (Antennae) In this shared anthology Mario Azzopardi makes his first mark as torchbearer of a lively crop of new poets determined to transform their artistic commitment into a national controversy. Embedded within the Movement for the Promotion of Literature, which he co-founded in 1966, he boldly stood up for a radical conversion of form and content. His appearance in Antenni relates him to the British social poets and the American jazz-beat generation of poets. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti and Corso as well as the Liverpool poets become kindred spirits and it is clear that here Azzopardi is writing poetry for popular mobilization, as a sort of agit-prop. It is also in Antenni that he starts experimenting with projective verse, as expounded by Charles Olson. American poet Kenneth Lawrence Beaudoin (1913-1995) who first noticed Azzopardi's verse in translation in an international edition of Poet India, saw in him an exponent of ferment, passion, éclat and bold protest, a young writer composing poems “as if they were a trademark of the free world.” 1970: ANALIZI '70 (Analysis '70) Azzopardi's cutting down to size in this next anthology of shared verse is ruthless, uncompromising and even irreverent. There is an outcry in the media as the old guard, cocooned within the traditional University of Malta and the Academy of Maltese Letters reacts to his new batch of poems. Azzopardi creates a string of caricatures to destabilize national myths and decry the substantial insignificance of rigid, archaic values hallowed by a religiously-ridden, medieval system, paralyzed further by colonialism. He employs a mechanism of deviation from the normal language and his work is described as a perpetual effort in improvisation and foregrounding. Grotesque elements betray mistrust and contempt of the national inheritance and Azzopardi's rallying call assumes the timbre of a liberal manifesto. 1971: MAS-SEJHA TAT-TNABAR (Drum Call) Azzopardi as with other shared collections gave the title to this collective anthology featuring his work and that of three of his colleagues from the Moviment. The title in itself is an extended testimonial to his call for social engagement through poetry (and also, in his case, through theatre). Bourgeois society continues to be denounced and his line of attack takes aim at the people's alienation and the traditional type of Maltese poet who made sure to keep aloof from any issue that presents controversy or public commitment. 1972: DWAL FIL-PERSJANI (Lights behind the Shutters) A shared anthology, representing Azzopardi and four other authors. At this point he starts to develop modern lyrical poetry of a very intimate nature and makes a conscious attempt to free himself, gradually and consistently from the previous iconoclastic position of an aggressive extrovert. His fearless attacks at tradition are put to rest (though they remained seething as would be witnessed in future personal anthologies) as Azzopardi explores the psychology and the spirituality of pain and suffering. Christian iconography is employed in a new manner to sustain images of desolation and existential anxiety. There is now a need to pause, review, restructure and search for new modulations. 1976: DEMGHAT TAS-SILG (Tears of Ice): The title poem in this first personal anthology has become a mainstay favourite with large numbers of students who study Azzopardi's verse at secondary and tertiary level. It is an intimate poem that features him detached from his own family, from his nearest kin, in his quest to look inside himself and at the forces that have forged him. Critics detect this phase as Azzopardi's “more mature and self-disciplined”. The early pyrotechnics and the wild experiments with “improvised verse” give way to a more sober attitude. The metaphorical field changes and the poet presents himself as a mystic traveler. This anthology marks in fact, Azzopardi's spiritual inward journey and earns him the title of “the poet of the journey”. Leading Maltese critic Dr Oliver Friggieri (University of Malta) compares this journey to what Novalis called “an inward voyage” towards a universe of transparency. 1977: PASSIFLORA (Passion Flower) Named after a native Maltese flower, the anthology balances itself on two positions – passionate, sensual love and passion	as pain. The flower of the title actually is so called because it has features reminding one of Christ's agonies, e.g. “nails” and “a crown of thorns”. Removed from the loudness of his early works, Azzopardi now enters a paradoxical state of “tranquility” as he explores the meaning of intimate relationships with a series of women. The male-female relationship is explored mostly in psychic terms, as Azzopardi immerses himself in Freudian and Jungian visions of the other sex. As Friggieri has observed, Passiflora and Demghat tas-Silg constitute the poet's phase of solitary retirement and socio-cultural disclaiming respectively. Actually, many of these works were written when Azzopardi was living in London with a Serbian woman and later, on his return to Malta, retreating with her in a solitary house by the sea, in the north of the island. As a biographical detail, it should be said that Azzopardi broke all social and religious conventions when, besides being involved in a series of turbulent relationships, he married three times in a country where local divorce is not allowed. 1979: TABERNAKLI (Tabernacles) The arduous passage from action to meditation continues as Azzopardi expresses a series of mystic paradoxes, a mixture of Christian evocations (mainly inspired by St. John of the Cross) and Orientalism. There are marked characteristics that offer interesting observations: * Technically, Azzopardi has now completely abandoned the projective, instantaneous style and settles for patterns obsessed with punctuation. He himself has claimed that the transformation was primarily influenced by his intense involvement in theatre, where stretches of silence and loaded pauses have a life of their own; * He detaches himself from the Anglo-American orientation of earlier works and returns to his Latin, linguistic and cultural roots; * For the first time in Maltese literature, a systemic “odyssey” is documented as the poet travels extensively in Europe, including in his itinerary locations in the Soviet bloc that serve the purpose of intensifying Azzopardi's interest in human suffering and alienation; * His interest in the socio-cultural condition on his native island re-emerges but now is expressed in the form of a penitential psalm, as an act of expiation on behalf of the people. A whole section of the book (Azazel, meaning sacrificial scapegoat) is influenced by Biblical invocations. 1984: MONOKORDI (Monochords) The interior journey continues. Experience, content and form achieve a unity that testifies to a radical change in attitude, as if the poet has started a reconciliation process with his inner self. Still, future works would show that the internal struggles persist, even though the modes of expression have been altered. One critic, Dr Paul Xuereb (University of Malta), describes Monokordi as “the most interesting spiritual biography of our times” and “a diary of a suffering and tired soul that speaks for a whole generation of Maltese who have lost their identity and are unable to find an alternative.” 1994: NOTI MIS-SANATORJU TAL-MISTICI (Notes from a Sanatorium for Mystics): This is Azzopardi's most eclectic personal anthology to be published to date. It bears the marks of a cosmopolitan poet who has written on an incredible range of issues. As the inner search continues relentlessly, Azzopardi transforms human pain into his own and vice versa. His extensive travels make sure that the scenario emerges as a universal, human collage. The poet creates an overwhelming mosaic of people and souls, desperately in search of themselves and of possible signs of bondage or solidarity. The sanatorium in the title of the book is a sustained metaphor signifying such a desperate (even cynical) search, as if the inmates know that ultimate failure is a precondition. As Dr. Adrian Stivala (University of Malta) has commented, in this anthology Azzopardi displays an ability to intone old themes that retain contemporary relevance: freedom, social justice, religious contradictions, ecological concerns, all treated in a unitary vision of Man. Stivala sees in this Azzopardi “the original and unmistakable mark of pagan watchdog of Man's spiritual project.” The anthology reflects a variety of styles, including prose-poetry, a style first adopted by Azzopardi as early as 1968 and gives witness to the writer's sustained creative energy. UNPUBLISHED POETRY: 1995-2005 This website contains a selection of poems, in Maltese and in English translation which Mario Azzopardi has written over the past decade. An anthology in book form is in preparation. NAKED AS WATER An extensive selection of Azzopardi's verse (1968-1984) has been published in English translation by Professor Grazio Falzon (Pacific University, Oregon, US) under the title Naked as Water. The anthology, illustrated by Minneapolis artist Tom Cassidy, is published by Xenos Books (1996), P.O. Box 52152, Riverside, CA 92517-3152. Tel: (909) 370-2229. It is available in hardbound (ISBN 1-879378-12-4) and paperback (ISBN 1-879378-11-6).

THE GROWTH OF A POET

From the enfant terrible of Maltese literature, Mario Azzopardi transformed himself into a highly evocative intimist, representative of some of the island's best modern lyrical poetry, but the anxiety and the call for commitment resurface time and again.

MARIO AZZOPARDI's poetry spans the best of forty years. Malta acquired political independence in 1964, when Azzopardi had just turned twenty. That major event was destined to bring about a deep, radical change in the people's moral and cultural outlook and Azzopardi was to become one of the main exponents of the shift in value systems. He is widely considered as one of Malta's leading writers, if not the most important one, of the literary avant garde.

His literary life is marked by distinct stages: the iconoclast and the enfant terrible, who forced a far-reaching re-examination of Malta's literary and cultural vocation, slowly emerged as an artist of inner tensions representing the best of Malta's modern lyrical poetry. This notwithstanding, Azzopardi never lost touch with the social sphere and even his most recent poems are loaded with a universal concern and a commitment towards the most vulnerable.

The following is a brief description of Azzopardi's evolving phases as a poet according to his publications:

1968: ANTENNI (Antennae)

In this shared anthology Mario Azzopardi makes his first mark as torchbearer of a lively crop of new poets determined to transform their artistic commitment into a national controversy. Embedded within the Movement for the Promotion of Literature, which he co-founded in 1966, he boldly stood up for a radical conversion of form and content.

His appearance in Antenni relates him to the British social poets and the American jazz-beat generation of poets. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti and Corso as well as the Liverpool poets become kindred spirits and it is clear that here Azzopardi is writing poetry for popular mobilization, as a sort of agit-prop. It is also in Antenni that he starts experimenting with projective verse, as expounded by Charles Olson. American poet Kenneth Lawrence Beaudoin (1913-1995) who first noticed Azzopardi's verse in translation in an international edition of Poet India, saw in him an exponent of ferment, passion, éclat and bold protest, a young writer composing poems “as if they were a trademark of the free world.”

1970: ANALIZI '70 (Analysis '70)

Azzopardi's cutting down to size in this next anthology of shared verse is ruthless, uncompromising and even irreverent. There is an outcry in the media as the old guard, cocooned within the traditional University of Malta and the Academy of Maltese Letters reacts to his new batch of poems. Azzopardi creates a string of caricatures to destabilize national myths and decry the substantial insignificance of rigid, archaic values hallowed by a religiously-ridden, medieval system, paralyzed further by colonialism. He employs a mechanism of deviation from the normal language and his work is described as a perpetual effort in improvisation and foregrounding. Grotesque elements betray mistrust and contempt of the national inheritance and Azzopardi's rallying call assumes the timbre of a liberal manifesto.

1971: MAS-SEJHA TAT-TNABAR (Drum Call)

Azzopardi as with other shared collections gave the title to this collective anthology featuring his work and that of three of his colleagues from the Moviment. The title in itself is an extended testimonial to his call for social engagement through poetry (and also, in his case, through theatre). Bourgeois society continues to be denounced and his line of attack takes aim at the people's alienation and the traditional type of Maltese poet who made sure to keep aloof from any issue that presents controversy or public commitment.

1972: DWAL FIL-PERSJANI (Lights behind the Shutters)

A shared anthology, representing Azzopardi and four other authors. At this point he starts to develop modern lyrical poetry of a very intimate nature and makes a conscious attempt to free himself, gradually and consistently from the previous iconoclastic position of an aggressive extrovert.

His fearless attacks at tradition are put to rest (though they remained seething as would be witnessed in future personal anthologies) as Azzopardi explores the psychology and the spirituality of pain and suffering. Christian iconography is employed in a new manner to sustain images of desolation and existential anxiety. There is now a need to pause, review, restructure and search for new modulations.

1976: DEMGHAT TAS-SILG (Tears of Ice):

The title poem in this first personal anthology has become a mainstay favourite with large numbers of students who study Azzopardi's verse at secondary and tertiary level.

It is an intimate poem that features him detached from his own family, from his nearest kin, in his quest to look inside himself and at the forces that have forged him. Critics detect this phase as Azzopardi's “more mature and self-disciplined”. The early pyrotechnics and the wild experiments with “improvised verse” give way to a more sober attitude.

The metaphorical field changes and the poet presents himself as a mystic traveler. This anthology marks in fact, Azzopardi's spiritual inward journey and earns him the title of “the poet of the journey”. Leading Maltese critic Dr Oliver Friggieri (University of Malta) compares this journey to what Novalis called “an inward voyage” towards a universe of transparency.

1977: PASSIFLORA (Passion Flower)

Named after a native Maltese flower, the anthology balances itself on two positions – passionate, sensual love and passion

as pain. The flower of the title actually is so called because it has features reminding one of Christ's agonies, e.g. “nails” and “a crown of thorns”. Removed from the loudness of his early works, Azzopardi now enters a paradoxical state of “tranquility” as he explores the meaning of intimate relationships with a series of women. The male-female relationship is explored mostly in psychic terms, as Azzopardi immerses himself in Freudian and Jungian visions of the other sex.

As Friggieri has observed, Passiflora and Demghat tas-Silg constitute the poet's phase of solitary retirement and socio-cultural disclaiming respectively. Actually, many of these works were written when Azzopardi was living in London with a Serbian woman and later, on his return to Malta, retreating with her in a solitary house by the sea, in the north of the island. As a biographical detail, it should be said that Azzopardi broke all social and religious conventions when, besides being involved in a series of turbulent relationships, he married three times in a country where local divorce is not allowed.

1979: TABERNAKLI (Tabernacles)

The arduous passage from action to meditation continues as Azzopardi expresses a series of mystic paradoxes, a mixture of Christian evocations (mainly inspired by St. John of the Cross) and Orientalism.

There are marked characteristics that offer interesting observations:

* Technically, Azzopardi has now completely abandoned the projective, instantaneous style and settles for patterns obsessed with punctuation. He himself has claimed that the transformation was primarily influenced by his intense involvement in theatre, where stretches of silence and loaded pauses have a life of their own;

* He detaches himself from the Anglo-American orientation of earlier works and returns to his Latin, linguistic and cultural roots;

* For the first time in Maltese literature, a systemic “odyssey” is documented as the poet travels extensively in Europe, including in his itinerary locations in the Soviet bloc that serve the purpose of intensifying Azzopardi's interest in human suffering and alienation;

* His interest in the socio-cultural condition on his native island re-emerges but now is expressed in the form of a penitential psalm, as an act of expiation on behalf of the people. A whole section of the book (Azazel, meaning sacrificial scapegoat) is influenced by Biblical invocations.

1984: MONOKORDI (Monochords)

The interior journey continues. Experience, content and form achieve a unity that testifies to a radical change in attitude, as if the poet has started a reconciliation process with his inner self. Still, future works would show that the internal struggles persist, even though the modes of expression have been altered. One critic, Dr Paul Xuereb (University of Malta), describes Monokordi as “the most interesting spiritual biography of our times” and “a diary of a suffering and tired soul that speaks for a whole generation of Maltese who have lost their identity and are unable to find an alternative.”

1994: NOTI MIS-SANATORJU TAL-MISTICI (Notes from a Sanatorium for Mystics):

This is Azzopardi's most eclectic personal anthology to be published to date.

It bears the marks of a cosmopolitan poet who has written on an incredible range of issues. As the inner search continues relentlessly, Azzopardi transforms human pain into his own and vice versa. His extensive travels make sure that the scenario emerges as a universal, human collage. The poet creates an overwhelming mosaic of people and souls, desperately in search of themselves and of possible signs of bondage or solidarity.

The sanatorium in the title of the book is a sustained metaphor signifying such a desperate (even cynical) search, as if the inmates know that ultimate failure is a precondition. As Dr. Adrian Stivala (University of Malta) has commented, in this anthology Azzopardi displays an ability to intone old themes that retain contemporary relevance: freedom, social justice, religious contradictions, ecological concerns, all treated in a unitary vision of Man. Stivala sees in this Azzopardi “the original and unmistakable mark of pagan watchdog of Man's spiritual project.”

The anthology reflects a variety of styles, including prose-poetry, a style first adopted by Azzopardi as early as 1968 and gives witness to the writer's sustained creative energy.

UNPUBLISHED POETRY: 1995-2005

This website contains a selection of poems, in Maltese and in English translation which Mario Azzopardi has written over the past decade. An anthology in book form is in preparation.

NAKED AS WATER

An extensive selection of Azzopardi's verse (1968-1984) has been published in English translation by Professor Grazio Falzon (Pacific University, Oregon, US) under the title Naked as Water. The anthology, illustrated by Minneapolis artist Tom Cassidy, is published by Xenos Books (1996), P.O. Box 52152, Riverside, CA 92517-3152. Tel: (909) 370-2229. It is available in hardbound (ISBN 1-879378-12-4) and paperback (ISBN 1-879378-11-6).