Filli Ma Tcun Xein, Filli Tithol fl’Esistenza

by Immanuel Mifsud

published by Midsea, 2024

The title gives it away! Filli Ma Tcun Xein, Filli Tithol fl’Esistenza (From Nothingness One is Thrown into Being) by Immanuel Mifsud is an existential novel of our time, and our place, which asks some very pressing questions about the nature of existence and our thrownness into being. 

The nod to Sartre’s existential philosophy is subtle; through the narrator’s stream of consciousness themes of freedom, responsibility and authenticity are explored. The narrator is a newly middle-aged Maltese man (I would call him ‘young’), seeking a metaphorical and physical connection to a state, and place, of being, where, from being a ‘peregrinatio perpetua’ he may find a ‘home’.

The author condenses the existential reflections of Edgar to explore a number of interrelated themes, the most prominent being the nature of heterosexual masculinity of Maltese men in this demographic.

As a companion volume to Lejn il-Missier, Mifsud presents Ed’s grappling with the originary relationship with his mother as a hymn to motherhood and femininity.

She is exalted through Ed’s recollections of childhood attachments to her, of a growing sexual learning/yearning of her body, and in his tender care of her now fragile body – this as he concurrently becomes aware of her disturbing secret.

Ed seeks resolution to his inability to form lasting relationships to persons and places. The relationship with the mother not only promotes the provocative question of how far secrets and fabrications shape our lives, but as an account, it stands in juxtaposition to Ed’s rather boorish relationships to his two lovers.

Though we learn about these women’s lives through Ed’s account of encounters with them on overseas business trips, their voices emerge both through direct speech as well as through the WhatsApp messages they send with alarming frequency.

In different cities and time zones, they are both vying for connection with this (until now) emotionally elusive man. 

Thus, the book also offers a nuanced insight into the nature of femininities, in the plural; apart from the mother, it also presents historic figures like the strict aunt of childhood, the neighbour-prostitute young Ed has had his first sexual encounter with, her daughter, and his sister with her tragically short life.

Through Ed’s accounts of relationships with them, as well as with significant males, like his father, and of revelations made to him over time, the narrator ponders how much (and how many) secrets underpin relationships.

Connections are made through the metaphor of dying trees. Photo: Shutterstock.com

The existential question therefore appears to be not simply about what masculinity or femininity one may inhabit, but about how authentic a life may be, given we are, in part, living fabrications. 

From a stylistic perspective, the connections across time, place and persons are innovatively constructed through techniques like intertextuality (Ed’s quotations from Sisner’s 1904 prayer book), the Biblical quotations alluded to in

Ms Finland’s (as I call her) WhatsApp messages, the refrain from G. F. Bounamico’s poem and others. 

Connections are also made through the metaphors of the dying trees; the pollution-darkened Cospicua tunnel; the ‘belt’ of Ed’s overseas visits, of his childhood and of his longing for ‘home’. 

These evoke existential themes through the lament for a lost childhood and youth, a lost Malta, and a lost climate. They bring the spatiotemporal concerns of our time to older existential questions about redemption and authenticity that the author raises in relation to secrets in relationships, tantalisingly posed on the inside cover with the quotation from Pope Leo the Great’s Cordis nostris secreta rimemur. 

The novel is a bravura achievement, a very engaging read which should reach an audience beyond our shores for its remarkable scope in capturing both a Maltese and an ‘every person’ experience of ‘being’ from the 1960s to our time. 

Mary Darmanin is a sociologist at the University of Malta.