MYSTICISM AS MADNESS

Mario Azzopardi: Notes from a Mystics' Sanatorium (1984)

(Noti mis-Sanatorju tal-Mistici) 

An abridged, translated version of an evaluation of Azzopardi's anthology of poems by Dr Adrian Stivala, lecturer in Italian Literature, University of Malta . The original article was published in l-orizzont , 27 May, 1995 .

The first note is one of polyvalence, of intentional ambiguity. Mario Azzopardi emerges once more as a truly active being, on both internal and external levels, in thought and commitment. In recent years we have seen/heard/read Azzopardi in active protests, in cultural and artistic expression, in journalistic polemics, in political opinion, in television debate, to mention just a few examples how he fits the classic model of a writer committed to civil life.

He is a poet who has weaved his chords from private and public moments. He has no complexes and is even capable of auto-irony. Not content with diffusing his ideas through papers, magazines, radio, television, theatre and the square, Azzopardi reserves his primary and finest articulation for the sacred moment of poetry. He “cancels” man to recreate him through instinct and fantasy, often verging on sublime “madness”.

Azzopardi is conscious that man is the supreme creation of the universe but the poet is also aware that there is a life that looms larger than man, in which context man becomes an instrument of renovation, liberating himself from the webs of tradition, convention and archaic or dead ideas accumulated over time. The poet resists all closures – be they political, religious, sentimental, ideological or operating at other levels. Thus, for instance, mystical and ecological lives are fused in one voice; individual and collective solidarity find their space in Azzopardi's poetic geography as a persecution syndrome that evolves into a mature, critical conscience.

Sentimental intimacies are dissolved and lose their power whilst nature grows beyond all personal sentimentality. The sentiments which hold the poet's attention most are those which transcend the personal dimension and gain their own distinction on the cosmic threshold. Loss remains an experience of unredeemed sadness which never gives in to tears.

However, there are instances of abject solitude, felt as a heavy weight as such a state of being detaches the poet from the rest of existence. In such a context Azzopardi relates to the most vulnerable of people: murdered political victims, dockyard workers killed in accidents or the hidden tragedies of factory women.

There is then the physical journey, garnering experiences lived in countries like Russia, the Baltics, Europe and the United States, where Azzopardi meets humanity on the same contradictory levels that forge his sensibility. And wherever he has not reached physically he reaches through imaginative license (Tien An Men Square in China or Nelson Mandela's cell in South Africa readily come to mind). He is also angered by the rape of the environment and often launches a violent invective against human exploitation and ecological abuse. The same response is provoked by cultural bigotry which accepts human suffering as holiness.

Noti mis-Sanatorju represents in fact, Azzopardi's ability to intone old themes that retain relevance: freedom, social injustice, religious contradictions, ecological concerns, all treated in a unitary vision of man. In his expression of the human predicament and human conscience the poet is versatile, eclectic, universal and cosmic - his psychic and poetic energies have lost nothing from the years of the Sixties, when Azzopardi spearheaded Malta 's Movement for the Promotion of Literature ( Moviment Qawmien Letterarju ). Since then he has attained the original and unmistakable mark of pagan watchdog of man's spiritual project. He paints a vast fresco of his own island, of the world and of fantasy, signing it with values that address the individual's need to overcome his weaknesses.

One line from this anthology becomes emblematic: “ one needs to search for a cosmos where one is no stranger ”.