Dermatologist and Poet
Rużar Briffa was born in Valletta, son of Domenico and Giovanna née Debono. He studied at the Lyceum and the RUM. In 1928 he graduated in B.Pharm. and BSc and MD in 1931. He was awarded the Strachan Travelling Scholarship to follow postgraduate courses at the Institute of Dermatology and at St Thomas Hospital in London and another scholarship at the Calcutta School of Tropical Diseases. He was appointed senior consultant on skin disease at the dermatological section of the Central Hospital in Floriana and a specialist at St Bartholomew Hospital (Malta) and Chambray Hospital (Gozo). He was also nominated honorary specialist of skin disease of the Malta War Memorial Hospital for Children. From 1951 to 1963 he lectured on venerology and dermatology at the RUM.
As a doctor he was a dedicated physician of humanity. The bubonic plague that broke out in 1936-37 found him an assistant medical officer working incessantly at the Lazzaretto Isolation Hospital. In 1938 he was appointed leprosy control officer and then left for India where he studied and worked at the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine, at Albert Victor Leper Hospital (Gobra), at the Leprosy Investigation Centre (Bankura), and at the Lady Willingdon Leper Settlement (Madras). After his return to Malta in 1939 he kept working with the lepers on the island. During World War II he was medical superintendent at the Blue Sisters emergency hospital. In the 1945 epidemic he was chief consultant at the War Memorial Hospital for Children.
In 1931, still a university student, Briffa, together with Ġużè Bonnici, founded the Għaqda tal-Malti (Università). On 19 January 1931 Briffa invited the rector, Professor Thomas Agius*, to preside over the Għaqda’s first meeting. The rector was unable to attend but showed interest in attending subsequent meetings and gave his blessings for the use of university premises for the Għaqda’s meetings. Briffa explained the aim of the Għaqda to encourage ‘the students of the Malta University in the writing of original compositions in the Maltese Language and the reading of same before their brother-students’. It was, therefore, ‘a purely cultural end and has no connection whatever with any similar union’. Among those who attended the first meeting were Dun Karm* and Anton Buttigieg*. Briffa became its first president and Bonnici its first secretary. The official organ of this literary society was Leħen il-Malti.
Briffa expressed his deep patriotic sentiment in ‘Jum ir-Rebħ’, a poem that communicates a rare sense of nationalism in the poet. A football match (8 September 1945) between Malta and Hajduks inspired this poem. The band failed to play the Maltese national anthem and the Maltese supporters spontaneously sang the anthem themselves.
Rużar Briffa’s poems are to be found in various journals and anthologies. Some of them he collected in one volume, Poeżiji (1960), and others appeared in various publications posthumously: Leħen il-Malti (1963) and Rużar Briffa - Il-Poeta tas-Sbuħija (1964). His poems have been translated into French by Laurent Ropa*, into Italian by V.M. Pellegrini*, and into English by Professor A.J. Arberry.
In his fertile poetic imagination Briffa reveals a romantic vein that makes his poetry melodious and elegant. Ġużè Aquilina* called him ‘the prince of Maltese lyrics’ and Oliver Friggieri* summarised the essence of the poet-doctor in these words: ‘His lyrics translate personal sorrow into a universal vision of human suffering and express in a sentimental way his attitude towards life seen as a difficult condition in which man is solitary and, largely unable to understand himself and be understood by the outer world’.
A biographical portrait of the poet-doctor is to be found in Oliver Friggieri’s* Il-Ħajja ta’ Rużar Briffa (1984).
Briffa married Constance Winifrid Dunn in 1933 but she died in April 1950. They had a daughter, Cecilia. Two years after the death of his first wife, he married Louisette Attard Bajona.
This biography is part of the collection created by Michael Schiavone over a 30-year period. Read more about Schiavone and his initiative here.