MOTHER EUROPE: THE INVISIBLE MUM AND HER LOST CHILDREN FROM THE LAND DOWN UNDER

Immanuel Mifsud

Allow me to start my very short paper by recounting two stories from Malta. 

On 2nd March 2003, on the eve of Malta’s EU national referendum, the left wing weekly It-Torċa, ran a special feature on the literature page, in which a number of Maltese writers, some of whom had had a very active role in the sixties’ literary revolution, took a solemn oath of loyalty to the Motherland. In this document, this group of writers stated that they wanted to safeguard the Independence won in 1964, the full political freedom of 1979 and the Culture, Traditions and Identity which their forefathers had bravely achieved through hard work and love for their country. The document ended with a solemn statement that the signatories’ will was only to see the country governed solely by the Maltese and not by some foreign rulers. Alongside the solemn oath, the page published some of the most patriotic Romantic hymns to the Motherland, some of which were written around seventy years before. 

The second story. In 2005, one of Malta’s leading publishers, who amongst other things publishes the daily and Sunday Times (both papers claim the highest readership on the Maltese islands) abandoned a publication of short stories one week before its launch on the grounds that the stories were too frank and open about certain subjects still considered taboo in Malta, such as incest, male prostitution and the underworld. It should be noted that, the Times was at the forefront of the YES movement during the EU campaign, forecasting amongst other things a European cultural heritage for Malta once full membership was acquired.   

These two stories, in my view, illustrate the present contradictory view that Malta has adopted towards the new Europe, of which it is now forming part politically. The contradiction becomes bolder when one considers that historically various Maltese authors, writing in different epochs, had upheld Europe as a reference point not only for their work but also for their philosophy and their political outlook. One should mention, for example, Mikiel Anton Vassalli (1764-1829), universally acknowledged as the father of the Maltese language, whose project was that of bolstering the national identity by applying a European formula to which he was familiar mainly thanks to his studies and publishing in Rome and France. For Vassalli, Europe was the kernel of free thought, the cultural source giving birth to the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Even the national poet, Dun Karm Psaila (1871-1961), the foremost poet of the Maltese Romantic movement, saw Europe as some spiritual mother of the Motherland, the fortress protecting Christianity and its traditions from the Islamic ‘threat’. Then there was also Gwann Mamo (1886-1941), the enfant terrible of the socio-realist school, who deemed the Old Continent as the cultural destination and point of reference for the emancipation of a country that, mainly due to her geography, had always lagged behind. Gwann Mamo’s disdain of the Maltese insular mentality as opposed to the liberal European way of life, was adopted by most of the sixties’ authors, particularly the prose writers who were very articulate in venting out their scorn at a closed Maltese society, terrified at the slightest sign of modernity. 

All this amounts to an acceptance of the fact that Malta, despite very strong influences from the Maghreb region, which are mostly evident in its language, had, for a long time, considered herself primarly a European country. Having said that, however, it is very clear that the meaning of Europeism has been left unclear, both by the Europhile writers, and the politicians who, to a great extent, are the opinion makers of the island. This comes with little surprise when one considers that this vagueness is shared by many fellow Europeans who find great difficulty in defining the concept of ‘a European identity’, leading to a suspicion that after all, this concept is one concocted by politicians striving to create a political superpower. In a period of time when even Europe’s geography is being questioned, when the boundaries of the continent have become somewhat blurred, the concept of an identity becomes a very elusive business.  

It is all the more the case with a country that lies at the very periphery of the political and geographical reality we call Europe, as Etienne Balibar notes*. Malta is, in my view, failing to take the plunge needed to start considering herself as one of the others, and, instead, is sticking to her status as the European land down under. The dominant discourse shaping the European culture and identity paradigm seems to be featuring the divide between the Old West and the New East, more than anything else, and since Malta belongs to none of these blocs, the outcome is that it has resigned herself to stay away while pretending to be right there.  

To return to the two stories I started with, we seem to be content enough with being considered to be a European country – whatever that might mean – but at the same time we may be apprehensive of the same European ideal which lurks in our minds, notwithstanding it being a very unclear concept. Mother Europe remains somewhere out there: so near, and yet so far; so part of us, and yet so alien.

Read on 4 November 2005 at the International Symposium “Re-Visions: Literary Exchange in an Enlarged Europe”, Literature Across Frontiers/Inizjamed, Malta 3-6 November 2005