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Appearance and trial and error

While it may seem surprising that a language is used by only 460,000 people, half a million if members of the diaspora are included, it is equally surprising to see how central literature is to island culture. Moreover, Maltese, with its oral tradition, has the peculiarity, indeed the paradox, of being one of the oldest living languages still in use - its origins being around the ninth century - while being one of the most recent to have a formalized orthography and grammar. Situated at the crossroads of civilizations and inhabited since prehistoric times, Malta has been under the domination of an impressive number of peoples even before the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem settled there in 1530. From these successive occupations there remains a language that is as much Arabic as Italian, a fascinating agglomeration - which is still open to all philological disputes - of which the first written transcription, discovered by chance in 1966, is a simple leaflet that still preserves its mysteries: Il-Kantilena, a twenty-line cantilena attributed to Pietru Caxaro, who died around 1470.

Until then, ancient Maltese had already been written, as evidenced by the work of the forerunners poets and various notarial records, but in the Arabic alphabet. In the seventeenth century, it would seem that Gian Francesco Buonamico (1639-1680), a doctor of the Order of Malta of Nantes origin, was the first to try his hand at translation, delivering his version of the French poem Le Grand-maître Cottoner

. As the archipelago had become Catholic, the sacred scriptures were to serve as a springboard, as was often the case. Thus, the first printed text of the Maltese edition is a bilingual Italian catechism made in 1770 at the request of Archbishop Paolo Alpheran de Bussan. Twenty years earlier, it was also a man of the Church, Gian Pietro Francesco Agius de Soldanis, born in Gozo in 1712, who had studied the thorny problem of the transcription of his native language, basing himself on his knowledge of Latin where his worthy successor, Mikiel Anton Vassalli (1764-1829), would also rely on his knowledge of Arabic, which he mastered perfectly. These works of linguistics gave rise to moving alphabets with a fluctuating number of letters and spellings of different origins. Vassalli also contributed to the emergence of a true Maltese culture, collecting local aphorisms and sayings in one of his works. His most famous achievement was his translation of the New Testament, which was unfortunately received posthumously, since it was only after his death that the Bible Society of Malta published this work, which had barely enabled him to survive. His tomb, which is in the Msida Bastion Cemetery, bears a plaque so old that no one remembers having placed it, proclaiming him "Missier il-Lingwa Maltija", "Father of the Maltese Language", a title that no one would think of arguing with.

Entry into Literature

Strictly speaking, it was at the end of the 19th century that a true Maltese literature emerged, following a trend that favoured both writing talent and a certain patriotic claim, mixing tragedy and heroism: Romanticism. It may be useful to recall that the country was then under English domination since 1800, and that it remained so until independence in 1964, which explains why the national anthem - written by the "first national poet", Dun Karm Psaila (1871-1961) - will long be sung in both languages, although its author, as well as the writer Frangisk Saver Caruana to whom the first Maltese novel is attributed, Inez Farrug, published in 1889, advocated a language as free as possible from external additions.

This view was not shared by Ninu Cremona, a playwright famous for his play Il-Fidwa tal-Bdiewa (The Liberation of the Peasants) and biographer of Vassalli, who, on the contrary, saw in the fusion of terms the faithful restitution of a country and a spirit based on numerous foreign contributions. Lively exchanges between writers took place in the columns of the newspaper Il-Habib

as early as 1920, and from this effervescence was born the Maltese Writers' Association, future Academy, and a commission in charge of defining an official alphabet and grammar. The latter would not be recognised by the colonial government until 14 years later.

If the debates were fertile for the evolution of the language, they were also fertile for literature and, moreover, were the mark of the gradual emergence of a new current, Realism. After the return to the roots and the search for a common identity, came the time for social criticism, as Gwann Mamo (1886-1947) excelled in his satire Les Enfants de grand-mère Venut en Amérique

, which met with great success. The sharp pen of Manwel Dimech (1860-1921), who created the Association of the Enlightened, will however cost him forced exile and an anonymous grave in Egypt, as his desire for social reform in favour of women, children and workers did not please the clergy or the English. It is said, however, that the colonial power decided to take into consideration the demands of the indigenous people, at least in matters of literature, no doubt in a desire for appeasement. The language that had taken so long to be made official was now being encouraged, so in 1935 the government set up a competition open to novelists, the winner of which was Ġużè Aquilina. The floodgates are open and the ink will not stop flowing, but although independence was gained in 1964, the debates continue. In 1966, a new polemic broke out in the press, pitting the "old" against the "modern", led by a number of authors including Charles Coleiro, Lillian Sciberras, Joseph Camilleri, etc. These sparks, which were inevitably political, gave rise in 1974, the same year the Republic was proclaimed, to a literary prize created in collaboration with Rothmans and awarded for his novel Samuraj to one of the most brilliant writers of his generation, Frans Sammut (1945-2011). In 2004, Maltese took a decisive step towards being recognised as one of the official languages of the European Union, which will hopefully lead to international translations.