Fejjaqtni int: Rużar Briffa u jien 

Paul P. Borg

Self-published

Rużar Briffa is a poet I have always much admired. He started writing when still at the Lyceum, later studying medicine, and wrote so very well that he attracted the attention and admiration of the great Dun Karm himself who actually wrote a poem, Poeta, in which he describes the young Briffa as “żagħżugħ poeta tagħna” − our young poet − and invites everyone to bestow on him the iconic olive-wreath. 

The poet must have seen him as a probable poetic successor, and even went to the point of discussing with him his writing of the poem Non Omnis Moriar, which was to become one of Dun Karm’s most celebrated poems. Like Dun Karm, Briffa occasionally wrote verse in a language other than Maltese, such as a charming Italian poem for his daughter and others to his second wife, Louisette, in later years.

Briffa and his great friend Ġużè Bonnici set up the Għaqda tal-Malti (Università) with its journal Leħen il-Malti, and it was Bonnici who, before his early death in 1940, published the first collected edition of Dun Karm’s poems.

 Briffa became a respected dermatologist who in his private practice attracted many patients not only because of his specialist knowledge but also because of his kindly, smiling treatment of patients.

Paul P. Borg, author of this book, knew him as his young patient for the treatment of an unpleasant but not too serious skin complaint, and was always struck by Briffa’s almost fatherly treatment. Briffa’s second wife, Louisette, was to describe his sessions with patients as not being of the familiar doctor-patient type but as a kindly relationship between two humans.

It is precisely this sort of human approach that Borg, then a boy, experienced over a number of treatments by Briffa, and describes it vividly in the first chapter of the book. It was this that remained so strongly imprinted in his memory and eventually led to his long exploration of the poet/doctor’s life. 

Briffa was a melancholic and his poetry often reveals this or hints at it.  Borg’s view is that the family deaths he experienced in early life affected him strongly, while the author Herbert Ganado describes Briffa as having a somewhat weak character, leading him occasionally to drink.

Briffa died when only 58, his last years greatly saddened by the discovery that he was afflicted by deadly cancer of the throat.

It was this weakness, however, that led him even in his teens to depend so much on his mother to whom he wrote fine pieces, such as one of his most famous poems written in his student years with its well-known opening verses, “Benninni ħa norqod / Benninni bil-ħlewwa” in which he longs to be back in the cradle, rocked and fondled. 

In another poem of the same period, he sees himself creeping back to his mother’s womb, feeling happy and strong. I wonder what a psychoanalyst would have told him.

In the years when he became a private consultant in a Valletta pharmacist’s establishment, he had the habit of spending leisure time in one or other of the public gardens of Valletta and Floriana. It seems these were the times when he wrote many poems, being almost invariably on his own. 

It was during one of these sessions, this time in Argotti Gardens, Floriana, that he first met an Englishwoman, Constance Dunn. They took to each other and friendship soon became love and finally marriage in 1931. Before the ceremony, he wrote her a poem, Lin-Namrata (To my Sweetheart) and the marriage moved smoothly producing a daughter who was named Cecilia.

From his schooldays, Briffa was a patriot eager to see Maltese people come into their own

Constance was an Anglican, but Cecilia was baptised in a Catholic church and, although this is not made very clear in the book, was brought up as Catholic. Rużar was a very busy professional, so it is probable that the daughter saw much more of her mother than of him, but he greatly loved her and wrote poems for her. 

‘A universal vision of human suffering’

Rużar’s poems (first appeared in a collection in 1960) had their first comprehensive and critical edition, by Oliver Friggieri, 20 years after the poet’s death.

He was certainly a prolific author of lyrical poems, mostly short but elegant and sometimes exquisite. He himself described his poems as “snapshots of daily life, coming from the heart”, but they are very often snapshots taken with great care for rhythm and striking imagery. 

A photo of Rużar Briffa taken in 1960. Photo: Facebook.com

The best single comment about his poetry was made by Friggieri when he wrote that Briffa “translates personal sorrow into a universal vision of human suffering”. Writing, the poet himself once wrote, gave him no joy, no pleasure, and was apt to cause him much psychological suffering.

Many of his poems are addressed to persons – his mother, Constance, Cecilia and Louisette  and one angrily addressed to an  unknown girl who let him down – while others comment on human life and even social mores, such as his Għajjiena le xebgħana (Tired but still wanting more).

Briffa was, certainly in his youth, a religious man who wrote the fine poem Wieħed biss (He alone) about the woman caught in adultery saved from being stoned to death by Jesus’s tacit condemnation of her accusers, and loving forgiveness of her with his appeal to her, “terġax” (Sin no more). This is, to my mind, his most elegant and deeply Christian poem.

From his schooldays, Briffa was a patriot eager to see Maltese people come into their own.  In one of his earliest poems, Ġens il-Malti (The Maltese Race), he glories in Malta’s past heroic deeds and cultural achievements, such as its prehistoric temples, and appeals for his co-nationals to be proud of their national achievements rather than foreign ones.  

In Il-Każin Malti (The Casino Maltese), he writes with pity or indignation of the old members of the club who once helped run Malta and are now quite forgotten.

His masterpiece in the patriotic line is deservedly famous, one of a few works known to all.  This is Jum ir-Rebħ (Victory Day), written in 1945 when at an international football match between a Yugoslav team and a Maltese one, the Yugoslav anthem and the British royal anthem were sung formally.

This led to anger from the Maltese who stood up and sang what was already recognised popularly at the time as Malta’s informal national anthem, Din l-Art Ħelwa.

Briffa depicts the occasion rousingly, his first two verses a trumpet call: “U l-kotra qamet f’ daqqa u għajtet Jien Maltija / Miskin min ikasbarni, miskin min jidħak bija” (“The crowd stood up at once and shouted: We are Maltese / Shame on those who insult us, shame on those deceive us”). This poem is important historically as it celebrates the moment when Din l-Art Ħelwa became truly a national anthem in the Maltese heart.

Borg has worked hard to dig out a large variety of facts to make this remarkable poet and medico much better known. It reads easily but it is structured a little loosely, and I wish the index had been more detailed. To give an example, the entry for Briffa’s first wife Constance and that for his daughter Cecilia are simply series of page numbers without mentioning, say, dates of marriage for the former and the date for her return to Malta for the latter.

Readers will like the many facsimiles of Briffa’s poems here reproduced and many other poems are shown fully in print. Some of the facsimiles are signed “Ros. Briffa”, his baptismal name being Rosario, and this is the name he regarded as his proper one and used in correspondence. He, must have been persuaded to use the Maltese version of his name, “Rużar”, in his verse publications and this will certainly be the name by which he has gone down in the history of Maltese literature.