La evolucion de la poesia en Malta. The evolution of poetry in Malta

Abstract

The aesthetic myth of the people as the truest poet, a basic principle which determined the real character of romantic art, is the primary motive of the revival of Maltese as a means of literary, and especially versified, expression. The European movement, largely inspired and determined by the democratic spirit of great liberal thinkers like Herder, the brothers Schlegel, Berchet, Tommoseo and others, may be said to hove essentially revolved around Herder's-fundamental distinction between Kunstpoesie (poetry of art) and Naturpoesie (poetry of nature). Latin romanticism subsequently started to adopt this dialectic as its creed and to see in the first component the poetry of the traditional and outdated post, and in the second one the authentically inspired expression of a new emerging generation endowed with the right to translate its own genuinely primitive feelings into poetry which was necessarily uncultivated, spontaneous and instinctive in form and content. This dualistic conception of poetry, and of art in general, amounted to the distinction between classicism, now looked at as an elitist and socially barren culture, and romanticism, a movement fully aware of contemporary political and social features and problems which the modern artist had to interpret according to the dictates of a whole native milieu. Whereas in the major European literatures (such as the Italian, in which the heritage of the Renaissance was still alive) this new concept sought to assume an anticlassical identity, in the case of a small island like Malta, where the traditional Italian literature of the Maltese proved to be the concern of a numerically restricted and socially privileged class, it did not only imply a radical reaction against a worn-out aesthetic vision but also motivated a hitherto unprecedented formation of a national awareness. Such a national conscience had to be both political and linguistic.