THE POETRY OF MULTIPLE PERSONAE

A decade since his last collection of verse appeared in 1995,

Mario Azzopardi has posted many of his new works on a personal website.

PATRICIA GATT charts the new directions of the poet.

It has been a decade since Mario Azzopardi published his last collection of verse (Notes from a Mystic Sanatorium) in 1995. Many of us had been wondering what happened to his poetic voice as we kept track of his weekly controversial writings as a journalist. Now we have been introduced to his recent poetry posted on a newly constructed website as news reaches us that he is assembling his works for a printed anthology earmarked for imminent publication.

His recent work has lost nothing of its originality, vigour and lyrical quality, although it is evident that the poetic prose which marked well-defined instances in his last collection has now grown into a full-bodied manifestation of characters that crowd his subconscious arena of lost souls in search of themselves while groping desperately for human contact.

Combining intense emotional power and a detachment imposed by a diversity of forms, Mario Azzopardi`s latest poetry presents an array of personae and voices clamoring for the readers` attention. Stretching the literary possibilities of the Maltese language, where the cosmopolitan sophistication of European influences is juxtaposed with more inherent Semitic codes, the poems` controlled energy is reminiscent of Barthes` concept of writing as an act of theatricalisation.

Known for his active involvement in the theatre, Mario Azzopardi not only underscores Barthes` notion of the indestructibility of language, even though it can be masked, supplanted or evaded, but is also aware of the power of gestures. His personae, apparently hidebound in their own private soundscape, reach out to embrace humanity through a subtle fusion of words and stylised gesticulations. In one prose-poem Ludvig D. leaves a note:

It needs to be unrehearsed. Same as an improvised gesture on a bare altar, in the chill of the naves.

- The Sparse Last Will of Ludvig D.

The improvised gestures are typical of the theatricality that critics have always detected in Azzopardi’s verse. What’s more, they are expressly linked to his intense activity as a theatre animator. Equally dramatic are the alternating states of improvised acts and pauses or silences, but even the state of quietude itself is replete with well-modulated “resonances”, all intent on conveying a phantasmagoric atmosphere. The ghostly pervasiveness draws readers into a dreamscape where the real and the hyper-real merge into a perpetually elusive condition mistrustful of any single representation of the truth. Moments emerge where the idea of truth itself is cast in doubt. Fragmented shards are what the poetic voices seem to be holding on to with the tenacity born of a compulsive need to establish an aesthetic order on a creative and cosmic energy that is anarchic and at times chimerical:

I still go on / in solitude /Like a stanza that has to find its place / or like a wedge to support doubt / like an abandoned star seeking a pause. - Shanaya

Set against a panoply of images which persistently suggest infinitude and the end of consciousness in death, Azzopardi`s personae and his other voices initially seem to be kept under a firm grip by aesthetic considerations. However, the strength they are imbued with compels them to break loose and assume an independence of action and assertiveness of thought that lends the poet a reporting role reminiscent of journalists or scribes.

Azzopardi`s latest literary work consistently presents characters involved in note-taking, documentation and the collection of fragmentary material as an act that concurrently objectifies and rationalizes. Already introduced in Notes from a Mystic Sanatorium, the technique provides also a source of detachment or distancing of the poet from the “persons” he creates. At the same time, a beady eye is kept on the ultimate judgment of posterity. Ample evidence of this can be gleaned in poems dealing with the way an anonymous poet or another creative artist should be remembered after he passes away.

The objectification and rationalization are immediate processes deeply embedded in the prevalent socio-political culture that motivates many of the prose-poems. However, posterity signifies another dimension, where the word, wounded and scarred survives long after the physical body has disintegrated. Kamikaze, The Sparse Last Will of Ludvig D. and The Letter about Angele all attest to this.

Throughout the process of his creative output, Azzopardi has consciously sought to shift away from the navel-gazing that is inevitable in insular communities (Malta is a tiny island with a population barely comprising 400,000 inhabitants) in an attempt to reach out, to break the physical and mental limits and to advance human awareness.

This recalls Jung’s conception of the mercurial spirit that struggles to be liberated. Jung refers to Mercurius as a wild, “cheated devil” who struggles to disentangle himself from the oppression of an unknown master. Mercurius’ multiple aspects consist of all conceivable opposites and innumerable inner contradictions. He represents “both the self and the individuation process” and bears many connections to a state of darkness from which he tries to free himself and others.

In Azzopardi, the struggling spirit is never absent and again, the gallery of ambiguous, paradoxical and shady characters who appear in the fictitious-real prose-poems reflect a preoccupation with the collective psyche.

The more universal his poetry has become the more it is peopled with solitary figures caught up in unanticipated predicaments that range from sexual victimization (Rape), foundered male-female relationship (Marcel Magritte Examines Another Failed Interlude) to tragedies wrought by war and political wrangling (From a Novelist`s Diary, Hafed Besar) A multitude of people ranging from Timora Jackson, the grieving mother who has lost her son in the conflict in Iraq, or down and outs like Karol Marosi or Dolores Herta, sexually molested by her father and traumatized for life jostle for the readers` attention. All the voices, with their vulnerabilities, obsesssions and conscious subversion lend credence to the idea Cesare Pavese put forward regarding literature as a mode of defence. In a 1938 diary entry Pavese declares that literature is a defence against the attacks of life. Life, continues the Italian modernist, cannot deceive because at each and every turn literature involves it in cunning obstructions that halt its normal flow.

It could be argued that Azzopardi`s personae and their concomitant implication of a multiplicity of others fulfill a specific function in the definition of literature expounded by Pavese. What`s more, logical contradiction, in the sense that Barthes meant it as the abolishment by the modern writer of all barriers within himself, is eschewed by Azzopardi in favour of an unpredictability that is multi-faceted.

Vouchsafing for this are the ruptures when the writer, divested of his ego, transforms himself into a vehicle through which lyricism in a variety of nuances comes to the fore:

There is presentiment / there is a moment / which arrives / from the index of possibilities / where dawn can shift abrubtly / into night / full of uncertain shadows. / And that would be poetry - Extracts from the Book of Hours

Besides the destabilizing, even “subversive” use and effect of Azzopardi’s lyricism, the questioning of the boundaries between prose and poetry ultimately also have a similar disorientating effect while at the same time attesting to a lucidity that is markedly different from Azzopardi`s denser work of earlier times. He experiments confidently with intermedia: the demotic is not only transformed into art but is also channeled into different forms, ranging from the stilted, po-faced utterings of mediaspeak,(Kerouac, the Devil in the 13<sup>th</sup> Century and the Audit of Pity) to the travesties employed in bureaucratic language ( A Report from the Hospital of the Blessed Martyrs). Azzopardi ventures into the arena of “electronic poetry” without surrendering to the dictates of the medium. In this he follows avant-garde creators who have been described as being capable of separating and viewing the elements of their traditions in order to restructure them according to their own needs. An Electronic Message to Andreas Giraud from David D`Altona posted on 10 January 2000 offers a collage of incendiary ideas against a background of moral vacuity and social oppression and exploitation.

Using a potently charged language, Azzopardi`s exploration of social issues through poetry continues unabated. He seems to subscribe wholeheartedly to the view that the social character of language embeds it in historical tensions that result in arbitrariness. In fact, the present selection offers plenty of evidence that highlights the manner by which language can either confirm and reinforce a dominant ideology, or challenge, subvert and destabilize it. In Rape, Lesbian, Dolores Herta and The Goat on Regional Road, Azzopardi underlines the prevalent ethos in phallocentric cultures. Division is not only artificially decided on the basis of gender but is also pits woman against herself, lacerating her with multiple self-divisions, fragmentations and differences from her essential being:

A lesbian wiping groans from the wall / from the canopy above the bed / from beneath her abdomen.

- Lesbian

The current global political scenario also impacts on Azzopardi`s consciousness. The fallout from 9/11, namely the Second Gulf War, the ongoing situation in the Middle East, environmental destruction on a massive scale, poverty and institutional paralysis are high on the poet`s agenda in a manner in which he employs language with intrinsic weight and value. On Priap`s Island, for instance, the poet uses a ranting voice to retrace castrating Mediterranean female imagery in a surreal parade that starts from contemporary representations and ends with primordial figures and symbols.

It can be argued, therefore, that Azzopardi is writing literature that is conscious of itself, that struggles with language forms and manipulates them into submission. He uses language not simply as a tool to represent reality, nor to function as an assertive medium, but to create improvisations which constantly remind us that we are in front of a poet who also works in the theatre. It is a “performative” language that Azzopardi’s latest works are expressing. As in dramatic improvisation, language is here used unpredictably, much in the same way Barthes indicated when he wrote that “the implacable power of verification has been swayed by the play of masks.” The reference to Barthe’s notion of masks is particularly relevant, since the dramatic masks which he brings to the foreground of his thesis on the theatricality of language, are also parallel to the idea that literature is both present and absent. Behind his mask the actor becomes “living-dead”, simultaneously living and dying.

This conflict is of paramount significance in the latest Azzopardi since he is constantly confronting eros (life) with thanatos (death). The central theme bridging these two dualities is the feminine perceived as both victimizer and victimized, transgressor and transgressed. “Love”, in all its ambiguities, motivations and representations, is ultimately portrayed as a self-revelatory experience.

Idealisation is done away with and facile conclusions about erotic love are viewed with extreme suspicion. It is through the vigour of his imagery that Azzopardi inadvertently compels readers to view the erotic relationship as a compulsive journey towards an essential “fiction”. The assumption is that two people are prepared to denude themselves of their respective egos in order to relate fully to the other. Since love is a medium leading to self-revelation and if the essential meaning of life is rooted in suffering and death, then it is congruent to life that love should involve anxiety and death.

Aware of suggestions that love is also a cultural product in that it is rooted in the power relations prevalent in society at large, Azzopardi shies away from presenting love as a momentary relief from life`s paradoxes. The experience of love leads individuals to evaluate life in its stark reality. In Marcel Magritte Examines Another Failed Interlude masculine and feminine power vye for supremacy within the existential void engulfing the solitary couple. The state of love precipitates a more searing solitude than the existential solitude involved in day to day living. Way back in the Sixties Susan Sontag had attached this love / suffering motif to the cult of love and pain in Western, Christian tradition. While sustaining this concept, Mario Azzopardi has expanded his cultural references to include non-Eurocentric representations and even cosmic ones. Erotic love, ultimately is a fragmentary speck in a universe composed of a mass of suffering energy:

Said the Valkyrie: I`m the pagan melody, the symbol you`re eternally looking for, your irrational groan. I`m your margins, she said: the sweet anguish that embraces you, the fascination with death. I`m the eternal feminine, biding time until you emerge for her to bear you away….These pains are no longer mine: they are the cyclical pains of the world.

– -The Sparse Last Will of Ludvig

As with his previous collections, Mario Azzopardi`s online selection of poems and prose-poems impacts Maltese Literature with its freshness, relevance and complexity of texture.

A surface lucidity belies the layers of inference that readers will find intriguing. While there is a definite thematic continuation from one anthology to the next, this selection proves that Azzopardi has lost none of his capacity to reinvent himself, in the process of which he creates figurations, fantasies and permutations that continue to be passionately committed to the lyrical-social mode and inordinately perceptive about existence. This time he accentuates and refines the prose poem (which he first introduced in 1968 in Antenni, a shared anthology), in order to manipulate his material more extensively, to use D.H. Laurence`s explanation of “active” poetry. Above all, the human subject remains as omnipresent as ever, with all the unpredictable rigour that gives life impetus, vitality and an anguished motivation to seek a sense of meaning.