Daniel Massa : a Maltese poet

Abstract

Daniel Massa's poetry in the Maltese Literary context: Daniel Massa started writing poetry about twenty years ago not with the intention of conveying a particular message to an audience but just because he wanted to express himself. “Much to my surprise some of these poems were taken up and given some importance, perhaps an importance that they didn't really deserve. So, we started, a couple of friends and I started to club together. We had this sort of poetry group or poetry club. We used to meet outside cafes in Valletta and discuss poetry and the function of poetry. Then we decided that we ought to publish some of our poetry. We started a series of shared collections in which three or four writers club together and chose their very best poetry, and go to the public.” This was happening in the middle sixties when the island reached political Independence. According to P. Serracino lnglott the flourish of Maltese contemporary literature is strictly connected with the sense of achievement derived from political Independence. “The breakdown of colonialism has led not only to the new realization of the distinctive character of a nation moulded by the cross-fertilization of many cultures of which its mixed language is the clear reflexion, but also to the breakdown of the old social order. With this, Malta entered the general crisis of Western civilization of which the Mediterranean was the cradle and is becoming once more a crucible. The open forms of modern poetry are the· expression of this situation in which the established rigidly regulated patterns of existence are being disorganized and disintegrated, in an anxious search, both fearful and hopeful, of new or renewed ways of social life.” The new events were a "precondition for the existence of a national identity.” In fact, "the most striking feature of the artistic afforescence in Malta was perhaps not its unexpectedness or novelty. It was that the outward harlequin appearance the artists assumed quite clearly overlaid an intense identity-crisis within. There was an enigma inside the euphoria". It happened that "the new post- independence generations found themselves free to express themselves. But they no longer felt certain about the ideal ego. The old image of the national identity was fragmented at the same time as the possibility occurred of fulfilling it.” Many of the new writers started being seriously obsessed "by the need of bringing Maltese literature onto the same Ievel of the contemporary continental movement". Most of them had studied in the U.K. and influences of Pound, Eliot and Dylan Thomas were traceable in their poetry. They were discovering "the hidden rhythms inherent in Maltese word-building and sentence-structures that had remained unused or fitted ill with the closed forms of neo-classical Italian metrics" still adopted in Maltese colonial poetry. The new writers' attitude towards Literature started evolving as it had happened in England at the beginning of the century when the mellifluous sound, the purged vocabulary, the suasive diction of last century poetry were regarded as useless and detrimental. […]