Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1511791
I have to admit, I never really liked that Ruzar Briffa poem very much: least of all, when I had to study it for my Maltese A-level (a process which, at the time, still involved 'learning stuff by heart'.) Nonetheless, I can still recite at least the first stanza from memo- ry, all these years later: "U l-kotra qamet f'daqqa U ghajtet, 'Jien Maltija! Miskin min ikasbarni, Miskin min jidhak bija!'" Now: admittedly, I paused for a moment when it came to the word 'ikasbarni'… partly, because I realised I had no idea how to ac- tually spell it. (Was it an 's' before the 'b'; or a 'z-bit-tikka'? I tend to get these things muddled up, you know…) But in any case: one quick Goog- le search later, I can happily con- firm that my memory (and even my Maltese spelling!) turned out to be spot-on. And let's face it: there's probably a good reason, why those words proved so easy to remember, all these years lat- er… while other poems I once knew equally well – including the lyrics of my favourite rock songs, that I now struggle desperately to recall – end up fading into oblivi- on, over time. As Daphne Caruana Galizia once wrote, in a blogpost about the same Ruzar Briffa poem: 'It's not exactly Wordsworth, is it?' By which she meant (Note: my memory is not up to the task of reproducing her entire argument, in full) that both the lyrics them- selves, and the metre with which they are strung together, do not quite add up to the resounding 'masterpiece', that we were all brought up to believe that poem was, within the Maltese literary canon. For a while, at least, I agreed with that sentiment whole-heartedly. I, too, felt that the poem lacked the sort of 'gravitas' one might expect: from what is supposed to be an evocative anthem, about the birth-pangs of our entire country (Malta's literary answer, If you will, to D.W. Griffiths' 'Birth of a Nation')… 'Miskin min ikasbarni! Miskin min jidhak bija!'… I hate to say it, but it sounds like a bunch of schoolchildren, taunting each other on the playground… At the same time, however: I have to also admit that my own appraisal of that Ruzar Briffa po- em has changed slightly, over the years. [Note: I am obviously aware that Daphne Caruana Galizia her- self is no longer around, to defend her own argument– though she certainly DID defend it, at the time – so I'll vex her ghost no fur- ther, from now on...] Let's just say, however, that a couple of things have happened, over the past 40-or-so-years, that have caused me to revise my thoughts. The first was, very simply, that I discovered (quite by accident) a small detail, which most of you have probably known all along. Contrary to my own assumption, that Ruzar Briffa was trying to capture the national 'zeitgeist' of the late 1940s – i.e., when Malta first starting perceiving itself as, at the very least, a 'potential' coun- try-in-the-making)… … it turns out that he was actu- ally writing about a real-life inci- dent, that occurred in (of all plac- es) the Empire Stadium in Gzira! But in case, like me, you were unaware of this detail… the fol- lowing description is lifted from a 2015 article by Saviour Balzan: "It was in Malta that an interest- ing incident happened before the end of the war. It was 25 March, 1945, in the Gżira Stadium, and Hajduk Split had come to Malta to play the Malta team. "Before the game, the King's Own Band proudly played the anthem of Yugoslavia and then it played God Save the King, ob- viously the national anthem of Great Britain. As the governor, Edmond Schreiber, was about to seat himself, the whole stadium gathering stood up and spontane- ously started to sing the Maltese anthem. Schreiber, embarrassed, was obliged to stand up until the end of the Maltese anthem. "That episode led Ruzar Briffa, a dermatologist by profession, to write a poem that remains one of those 'must learn' if you study Maltese…" And, well, that places an entire- ly different perspective on things. Suddenly, everything I earlier crit- icised the poem for – namely, the 'childishness' of both words, and metre – can be seen to make per- fect sense. Yes, of course it would be written with such a frivolous, 'sing- song' rhythm. It was trying to evoke the sound of what was in reality a 'football chant', spontaneously belt- ed out by anywhere up to 10,000 football supporters… in a football stadium, for crying out loud! Not only does this instantly explain the 'childishness' of the lyrics, themselves (let's face it: you would hardly expect foot- ball fans to spontaneously 'chant Wordsworth', would you?) but it also places that otherwise awk- ward line - 'miskin min ikas- barni!'- into its proper context. Earlier, I might have have trans- lated that as: "Wretched are [or 'shame on'] they, who insult me." Armed with this new perspective, however, I would now go with: "… they who SNUB me! (in the same way as the British governor clear- ly 'snubbed' the Maltese national anthem, back in 1945…) And while the incident itself may still appear trivial, even when viewed as a 'milestone moment', in Malta's long march towards Inde- pendence – you can still see pre- cisely why a poet like Ruzar Briffa would seize on it, to try to conjure up a national sentiment (however contrived) of 'patriotism'. Let's face it: 'football chants' tend have a certain rousing quality, even at the best of times (I shame- lessly admit that a well-belted out rendition of 'You'll Never Walk Alone!' always reduces me to tears… and I don't even side with Liverpool!) Just imagine, then, what emo- tions they can stir: when the 'chant' is your own national an- them; and your 'nation' has yet to be even founded… This, in turn, brings me to the second thing that has changed, over the years. Until quite recent- ly, I had never paused to consid- er just how 'relevant' that poem must have sounded, to a genera- tion which had to actually strug- gle - in one way or another - to achieve its own Independence. Having been born into what was already a fully-fledged nation state (about to become a Repub- lic), in 1971: I have absolutely no memory whatsoever, of any other time in history, when this country was directly under the dominion of any other entity, but itself. And that's another reason why I never really responded to the battle-cry of: 'U Il-kotra qamet f'daqqa'! My generation has quite simply never really felt it was real- ly 'our own battle to fight', in the first place… Looking back on all that today, however: once again, a different perspective swims into view. Obviously, I still have no real memories of what 'pre-independ- maltatoday | SUNDAY • 19 NOVEMBER 2023 10 OPINION 'U il-kotra qamet f'daqqa'… Raphael Vassallo