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THE POETIC JOURNEY OF MARIO AZZOPARDI The best poetry of Mario Azzopardi, argues Professor Oliver Friggieri, went openly against the almost military organization of traditional patterns, in order to liberate form and content, in search of poetry that is authentically experienced. |
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Awareness that romanticism had prolonged its existence in
One of the main exponents, if not the most important one, of the Maltese ‘avant garde' was Mario Azzopardi, born in 1944, a poet, painter, teacher, stage director and a freelance journalist to numerous local newspapers and magazines, as well as a co-founder of the Moviment Qawmien Letterarju (Movement for the Promotion of Literature), a society launched in 1966 with the specific aim of enhancing the renewal of literary forms and contents. Azzopardi boldly stood for a radical contestation of both subject-matter (typically patriotic, religious, nocturnal, self-indulgent) and form (the traditionally acclaimed schemes, predefined, fixed, regular) which had been unquestioningly promulgated by the previous and contemporary authors. Initially an acute cerebralist (largely influenced by the British social poets) who treated poetry as a platform for popular mobilization, and subsequently a highly evocative intimist, Azzopardi is definitely one of Malta's main poets whose merit transcends the confines of his own aesthetic sanctuary and places him among the island's most representative writers. His earliest experiments relate him to the English and American beat generation poets, and the fact that he was responsible to a great extent for the introduction of projective verse in Maltese poetry is clearly indicative of his conscious plan to effect a radical change both in the making of verse and in the popular attitude towards it. (As a matter of fact, he not only wrote verse but produced numerous articles which discussed poetry as a social phenomenon). His new forms were intended to deform and defy. The basic reaction seems to have been formalistic; against the restrictions of accepted genres he wanted to propose the significance of the word freed of any ‘a priori' definition, ready to assume a new role according to its particular semantic environment.
The negation of the traditional code enabled the poet not only to create the form during the actual process of writing but also to treat the chosen word as sheer raw material, sufficiently elastic and adaptable according to the writer's own wish as a recreator, rather than as a faithful user, of language. The modern concept of deviation as well as the idea that poetic diction is necessarily different from the standard are of paramount significance in the evaluation of Azzopardi's work, a nervously involved, perpetual effort in foregrounding.
His incorporating jazz rhythms in poetry did not only imply a rejection, necessarily partial, of the syntactic regularity of the past, but also a conscious effort to reduce as much as possible the gap between poetic and popular language. The improvisation of jazz sought to eliminate the harmonic structure of melody, and the best poetry of Azzopardi went openly against the almost military organization of the traditional patterns. His efforts in associating jazz rhythm with the ‘artificial' rhythm of poetry are some of the techniques chosen for his social commitment as an artist. His social protest, akin to his literary anti-traditionalism, is twofold: against the people's massive alienation from themselves, and against the local type of poet, considered up to the sixties as the old-fashioned bard who dutifully keeps himself aloof as much as possible from contemporary ways of life. His poetic Maltese vignettes aim at indicating the substantial irrelevance of certain unquestionable values which the Maltese community had treasured for a very long time.
Most Maltese poets, like Dun Karm (1871-1961), the national poet, and the romantics who flourished throughout the first half of the twentieth century, had previously celebrated the heroic sufferings borne under the numerous colonial rules. Azzopardi systematically revisited the past to point out the hidden roots of contemporary illusions. The grotesque element of his deceptively descriptive images betrays mistrust. Contempt and the conscious disclaiming of a whole national inheritance are central to his poetic way of being. It is an attitude, expressed literarily but sufficiently coherent to take the shape of a radical-liberal manifesto, which introduced in the island's culture the sense of unrest so typical of the English and American student life in the late sixties. The genral view with which Azzopardi substituted the previous epic material of the traditionalists is that of a collective still-life painting, a pathetic tableau of motionless unidentified creatures in search of identity.
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I died a thousand deaths I died in narrow streets smelling of urine and under the feet of speculation in tails I once died in protest and resurrected thanks to black gorillas crying out in an orgy with virgins another time I died heartbroken and to rise from the dead I nursed on the sour milk of a gypsy who nourished me passionately from her left breast I died a thousand deaths I died in traffic collisions I died under the blade of the guillotine I died with sacraments and holy water on my brow and I died cursing and damning hatred I died throbbing with love I died under the hands of surgeons who had hoped to change my heart last time I died they woke me up to feed me cockroaches and they told me I cold go back to death – so far I haven't listened to them but I understand they are setting for me a time bomb attached to the car keys. (I died a thousand deaths, translated from the Maltese by Grazio Falzon) Both content and form indicate that the poet is experiencing the serenity of contemplation attained in a particular stage of his own endless voyage, the ‘historical' discovery of the lyric of the ‘sea'. The sea, a main figure in
All this explains and justifies the prominence given to ritual, to the regular use (perhaps systematic and fully conscious, as a structuralist analysis may amply prove) of symbols and physical gestures which together form a new liturgy. Here as well one is provided with a modern example of how a poet may partly construct his aesthetic world by revisiting traditional media. The fundamental conclusion is that the poet has gone beyond controversy and has finally accepted reconciliation. Protest and dispute have now assumed the form of detached contemplation. Caricature is not spectaculur or baroque-like any more, and has become almost surrealistic: it deforms without offence and is the end-result of a painter rather than of a sculptor. In certain moments, however, touch and sight give way to the sense of feeling, and the transition from the outer to the inner level of consciousness is complete. Even disapproval or detachment, previously conducive to provocation (a direct influence of the typical attitude of the beat generation poets and of the American group known as The Lost Generation), is now lyrically sublimated. Even human action is essentially religious, and the new obsession is femininity.
The harmonious fusion of Christianity and other different religions (an assimilation of the poet's varied experience in foreign countries and of a major trend in Euro-American contemporary culture) is frequently evident. It recalls a man still remindful of his childhood, the adult who is destined to go on living his primeval infancy. In itself this is manifestation of the internal strife within the poet himself between his Maltese upbringing, which in his earlier work he at times tended to disclaim, and the cosmopolitan adventure, the latter being amply illustrated by his lexical and metaphorical choices. In Azzopardi's recent phase everything seems to centre around the need of self-fulfilment through the man-woman rapport. The poet and the feminine figure he evokes are always co-present because the world is substantially a woman, a sexual figure, at times representing death, at times embodying the god of reincarnation. Monokordi (Monocords), 1984, and Noti mis-Sanatorjutal-Mistici (Notes from the Sanatorium of Mystics), 1995, both confirm that his long and consistent poetic journey had a deep sense of direction.
Demghat tas-Silg and Passiflora constitute the two phases of socio-cultural disclaiming (1971-1976) and the solitary retirement respectively (1977), an arduous passage from action to meditation. Tabernakli (Tabernacles), 1979, is a further stage in the same path leading to a paradoxically mystic life (a unique example of a search for renewal through Orientalism) in which Azzopardi has discovered for the first time the power of creating his own interior world alongside the empirical one (the centre of alientation and the point of departure of the traveller). Monokordi and Noti mis-Sanatorju tal-mistici somehow complete the complex world view proposed by the poet.
Departing from the early anti-romanticism, the self-expressing soul found out a modern lyric. It succeeded in proving that sentiment is actually new according to its time-factor, and that when it is authentically experienced (as content) it may be creatively externalised (as form). Even in this light this line of development shows an inherent dialectic: instead of the previous Anglo-American temperament Azzopardi, now being much truer to himself, has rediscovered his own Mediterranean identity which, however conscious of Eastern cultures, goes beyond geographical barriers to recognize better the universal spirit. After all, this was his initial bone of contention. Oliver Friggieri |