Fejjaqtni int – Rużar Briffa u jien, a biography of the Maltese lyricist Rużar Briffa who passed away 60 years ago this year, written by Paul P. Borg, was recently launched at the President’s Palace at San Anton Gardens. The poet’s only daughter, Cecilia, was present.

As a nine-year old boy, the author was cured by Briffa, who was a dermatologist, of a serious and infectious skin decease.  As fate would have it, many decades later, Borg came in contact with dermatologist Dino Vella Briffa who happens to be the poet’s nephew.

The biography sheds new light on Briffa’s periods of studies in London and his travels among lepers in India.

The book includes also a long study by Briffa presenting him as a keen researcher of the Maltese social and medical histories

A document written by Briffa sheds new light on the character of the national poet, Dun Karm Psaila, and reveals that the two poets used to discuss their poems together so that most of the last verses of the famous poem non omnis moriar (not everything dies) was composed together in close collaboration.

The book includes also a long study by Briffa presenting him as a keen researcher of the Maltese social and medical histories. His research shows him especially attracted to human suffering.

Borg traces the poet’s mental anguish to a sad infancy eclipsed by numerous births and deaths of siblings. The poet seems to have embarked on a voyage of sadness from his sad infancy to the years when, as a doctor of lepers, he laboured continuously to eradicate the sadness of leprosy and death by means of powerful poetry and medicine.

The book was published with the financial help of the KNK Book Fund.