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15 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 29 NOVEMBER 2020 NEWS fetters that chain us to a seem- ingly unchanging social and po- litical destiny. In Friggieri's case, this was done meekly, without the tra- vails of a Vassalli and a Dimech. As a poet, indeed: exiled from birth, destined to never belong, or, as in the first couplet of Eh, Forsi, a romantic born to crave a century which is not his. An ac- tivism of the word and of the in- tellect, the necessary difference borne out of an existential con- dition before any social or his- torical milieu. Friggieri's politics have to be studied further, may- be even with his same rigour, and beyond puerile attempts at immediately locating him within a particular site of power. Thus, not only in the light of political history, but also in spite of it, as exemplified in Karlu Manju's gratuitous defiance of the political class in Fil-Parla- ment Ma Jikbrux Fjuri, a novel which, faithful to the tradition of modern Maltese narrative, has a losing hero, who however is in- novatively replete with an irony that boggles the minds of the powerful. Even on its launch in 1986, the novel generated an interesting array of comments and criticism, having temporarily rippled the stagnant intellectual pond that Friggieri mentioned frequently. It also shocked certain quar- ters, caught unawares by what could also be construed as a po- et's naïve stumbling into a mine- field where he surely did not belong. Friggieri's words may not have threatened or brought down governments, but they ventured out-of-bounds, against custom and accepted wisdom, with the potential to chime at all levels and whose echoes keep on informing our discourse. As sin- gle-handedly as his monumental work on Maltese literary criti- cism and literary history, Frig- gieri's social and political analy- sis strived to achieve a necessary discussion that penetrated the heart of the matter, the inevita- ble gaze in the mirror which nul- lifies everything else as superfi- cial and ancillary. Friggieri might have been fre- quently associated with the Na- tionalist party, especially in the period between the anti-Mintof- fian civil movement and the cam- paign for Malta's EU accession, or else considered an innocuous bleeding-heart-wordsmith at- tempting to keep the peace be- tween warring factions. It is a fact that the Fenech Adami's PN was always extremely accommo- dating of intellectuals, especially when compared to a paranoid MLP that had dug its feet in an- ti-EU rhetoric, an indiscriminate mix of vetero-socialism and the populist right, and the cult of leader personality that nullified any attempt at some form of in- tellectual discourse. I'd also venture to say that EU membership might have been the crowning of Friggieri's po- litical aspirations for Malta as a nation, a target that would her- ald a new world to be dealt with by others. Subsequent to which, he retired into a nostalgic phase, through his last trilogy of novels and also his autobiographical musings, which more than an archaeology of a nation, can be interpreted as a lament for the disappearance of certain values which he viewed as pertaining intrinsically to the Maltese soul. And maybe, the hopelessness at imagining what an alternative to this could be. Even if potentially subject to being discarded as uncritical- ly conservative, Friggieri's last works merit a more thorough analysis, as the crowning of his vision throughout his career. And maybe, the irony of having that one great certainty, in the sea of doubts he challenged us to have: the existence of God. A simple faith, nearly childish- ly innocent, flying in the face of all studies and intellectu- al challenges. Friggieri's work, even his public persona, is that of a committed Christian and a Catholic writer, imbued with the Malteseness of faith, but without its superficial negative aspects, from the folklore to the power. A poetic, philosophical faith, neither pious nor popish, under- pinned by humility, compassion, and with the figure of the cruci- fied Christ as the metaphor of the human condition. Il-golgota twelidu, il-golgota xortih, il-golgota li tkissru, il-golgota li tqawwih. Hekk biss ikun poeta. Mark Vella is Language Of- ficer at the European Commis- sion Representation and lectures within the Department of Mal- tese at the University of Malta PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAY ATTARD The greatest lesson I learnt from Professor Friggieri, thus – in my attempt for a unique and original reminiscence – was the value of doubt. The lack of any certainty, the distrust of vacuity, the avoidance of platitudes and the deviously commonsensical