Dun Karm, the national poet of Malta = Dun Karm, le poète national de Malte

Abstract

Malta's national post, Dun Karm Psaila, popularly and officially known as Dun Karm , is perhaps the most significant Maltese artist. In 1961 , the year of his death, Cambridge University Press paid a tribute to the poet with the publication of a volume comprising some of his more important works, Dun Karm Poet of Malta, edited by P. Grech and A. J. Arberry. Professor Arberry had the opportunity of knowing him a few years before and was soon impressed by his creative and human merits. He sums up his judgement of the artist and the man, inseparable components of a unique complex personality, in the following paragraph: «When I met Dun Karm he had recently entered upon his eighty-seventh year. I found him a frail old man, but still in full possession of his great mental faculties ... It seemed to me then ... that this was a poet of more than local importance; his art and his message must reach the world, to which they truly belonged ... I became increasingly convinced of his greatness.» Dun Karm was born in October 1871 in a small village, Haz-Zebbug, which was later to feature as a microcosm of the whole island in his poetry. His humble rural origin never played second fiddle to other aspects which later naturally prevailed in his career as an intellectual. The historical and cultural identity of his country, which he sought.to discover poetically and to define in a typically romantic manner, provided him with a secure point of reference in the treatment of any other universal theme.