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„Emoționantă tocmai prin finețea jocului public-privat, dar și prin forța poetică a imaginilor, vocea lui Immanuel Mifsud vorbește despre zvâcnirile sufletului feminin și masculin, deopotrivă; despre erotism, în toate formele lui de manifestare — promiscue ori sublime; despre felurile în care umanitatea se pune pe sine însăși pe muchie de cuțit — prin sărăcie, emigrație, boală; și, mai presus de toate, despre singurătatea densă a călătorului...”
Denisa Duran
Carte apărută cu sprijinul oferit de Arts Council Malta — Cultural Export Fund.
Denisa Duran
Carte apărută cu sprijinul oferit de Arts Council Malta — Cultural Export Fund.
- GenresPoetry
164 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
1 person is currently reading
12 people want to read
About the author
Immanuel Mifsud
44 books57 followersImmanuel Mifsud was born in Malta in 1967, the youngest in a working class family of eight children.
He started writing poetry at age 16, when he co-founded the literary group Versarti. At that same age he began to work in experimental theatre groups, directing his own plays and later he directed plays by Chekhov, Dario Fo, Max Frisch, Federico Garcia Lorca, David Mamet, Harold Pinter and Alfred Buttigieg.
Immanuel Mifsud writes poetry and prose, and some of his works have been translated into various languages and published in various European countries and USA.
His 2002 short story collection L-Istejjer Strambi ta' Sara Sue Sammut (Sara Sue Sammut's Strange Stories) won the Malta National Literary Award. The same book was later nominated for the Premio Strega Europa. Mifsud's next collection of stories, Kimika (Chemistry) stirred a controversy for what was deemed as "pornographic literature". The Left leaning press lambasted the book for its "filth", while the leading Right leaning English newspaper never published reviews on this book. In 2008 Klabb Kotba Maltin published his most recent prose work, another short story collection, Stejjer li ma Kellhomx Jinkitbu (Stories Which Shouldn't Have Been Written).
Immanuel Mifsud writes also for children; his latest publication Orqod, Qalbi, Orqod (Sleep My Love, Sleep) being a collection of lullabies.
He has participated in a number of prestigious literature festivals, such as the Festival de Poesia de la Mediterrania (Palma de Mallorca), Dnevi Poezija in Vina (Medana, Slovenia), Terceti Trnovski (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Dni Poezie a Vina (Valtice, Czech Republic), and others. Some of his poems were published in eminent publications such as New European Poets (Graywolf Press), The Echoing Years (Waterford Institute of Technology), and In Our Own Words: A Generation Defining Itself (MWE), among others.
In 2011 Edizzjonijiet Emmadelezio published Bateau Noir, a collection of poems in a bilingual edition, with translations from Maltese into French by Nadia Mifsud and Catherine Camilleri.
On 12 October 2011 it was announced that Immanuel Mifsud won the European Prize for Literature, 2011, with his book Fl-Isem tal-Missier (u tal-Iben).
He started writing poetry at age 16, when he co-founded the literary group Versarti. At that same age he began to work in experimental theatre groups, directing his own plays and later he directed plays by Chekhov, Dario Fo, Max Frisch, Federico Garcia Lorca, David Mamet, Harold Pinter and Alfred Buttigieg.
Immanuel Mifsud writes poetry and prose, and some of his works have been translated into various languages and published in various European countries and USA.
His 2002 short story collection L-Istejjer Strambi ta' Sara Sue Sammut (Sara Sue Sammut's Strange Stories) won the Malta National Literary Award. The same book was later nominated for the Premio Strega Europa. Mifsud's next collection of stories, Kimika (Chemistry) stirred a controversy for what was deemed as "pornographic literature". The Left leaning press lambasted the book for its "filth", while the leading Right leaning English newspaper never published reviews on this book. In 2008 Klabb Kotba Maltin published his most recent prose work, another short story collection, Stejjer li ma Kellhomx Jinkitbu (Stories Which Shouldn't Have Been Written).
Immanuel Mifsud writes also for children; his latest publication Orqod, Qalbi, Orqod (Sleep My Love, Sleep) being a collection of lullabies.
He has participated in a number of prestigious literature festivals, such as the Festival de Poesia de la Mediterrania (Palma de Mallorca), Dnevi Poezija in Vina (Medana, Slovenia), Terceti Trnovski (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Dni Poezie a Vina (Valtice, Czech Republic), and others. Some of his poems were published in eminent publications such as New European Poets (Graywolf Press), The Echoing Years (Waterford Institute of Technology), and In Our Own Words: A Generation Defining Itself (MWE), among others.
In 2011 Edizzjonijiet Emmadelezio published Bateau Noir, a collection of poems in a bilingual edition, with translations from Maltese into French by Nadia Mifsud and Catherine Camilleri.
On 12 October 2011 it was announced that Immanuel Mifsud won the European Prize for Literature, 2011, with his book Fl-Isem tal-Missier (u tal-Iben).
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 28, 2015
I started reading extracts of Mifsud prose and poetry when I was about 18 and it happened entirely through coincidence. I used to write poetry as part of an online group and one of the users I was friendly with (Helen) had an obsession with all things Malta and referenced it a lot in her writing, through monuments, culture, folklore etc. I ended up through various trails finding Maltese poets that wrote with big ideas, big themes and all encompassing metaphors that I found alluring at a certain time. Malta was a far off distant land when I was a kid and it always represented a distance and an unknown. A kind of micro Hy-Brasil that was as small as a full stop on the map. A fact my grandmother often liked to point out. My grandparents went there so often on holiday that the term itself became synonymous with leaving. With that full circle, there was Nancy Drew and there was the Maltese Falcon. It also meant discovery.
Mifsud is considered one of the best poets of his generation and is thus an exemplar of a contemporary style that fuses Rużar Briffa's simplicity but also the solitude, inner reverie that marked the best work Dun Karm Psaila produced. He uses a free-form approach, which allows his overt focus of love and regret to be striking but also appear distinct and raw. He doesn't write about Malta, in the same way that Robert Pinsky writes about America, but he comes from a nation with such a small population that he is immediately expected to say something that resonates with the culture. A culture I have only experienced in print, or through tall-tales. With the opening preamble, it can be said that the detachment from the cultural flavor a disappointment, but that is partly why he is so highly regarded. He actually seems to do the opposite, by taking the reader outwith the parameters of a Maltese cultural demarcation and into a sort of intellectual saunter. He goes to Bratislava, Helsinki, Paris, Spain, the Czech Republic etc.
This collection has a good coverage but too often it can lack and this is probably due to a number of different factors. I feel as though the impact of his writing in this collection is lost through translation sometimes (as is inevitable) and so some metaphors and allusions fall flat or just feel overdone, or simply inappropriate for the emotion that is being conveyed. The last poem in the collection, "A Question", for example:
"Look at me, pretty lady: is it true
that whoever crosses the ocean
and comes to this sad land of yours
ends up bloodless, with broken bones?"
It is passive aggressive and somewhat angst ridden. Occasionally, the problem with some of the pieces is that they seem to cross the divide from emotionally reverent and poignant to that angstful wasteland that no writer wants to go to unless they are parodying their teenage journals. The poem doesn't fit with earlier pieces that attempt to languish and remember that sit on the right side of the divide, it is in direct contradiction to the feel of the text.
With regards to being lost in translation, the words sometimes feel too empty and without life, the lines can just strike dry. "Last Night" for example has lines that intuitively feel stronger in a different conveyance. "Between your toes I find red flowers. They have a strong smell of last night".
"Do You Remember?" has explicit vagueness and abstraction that in tandem overwhelm the stability of a poem, especially if it is to be taken seriously. So for example the line, "your eyes searching for the soul long since drowned in the seas he'd crossed to find you", has an elementary abstraction and distance that is overwhelmed by the ending line: "This morning I saw him crushed under a leaf which had fallen before its time." This is also seen in "The Rose of Gold" which says "I put a rose of gold around your finger. Gold never withers they say. Tell me, is it true?". Again the writing is abstract and vague to the point of emptiness.
Other times, it is the disintegration of the poem as it is flowing. "Some Leaves from Lahti and Helsinki" for example has a brilliant start, which has some fantastic imagery, but starts to descend into over-the-top dramatics such as the lines: "my love, I wish I'd held onto my virginity!, then i'd have wet you with my maiden blood". Or entire lines should be cut from the poem. "You Are My New Religion" works perfectly without the last line which takes away from the brutality of "Ready to nail yourself to the cross on my chest", with the statement, "waiting at my thigh for the scourge". The metaphor sometimes is lazy, so in "Her Long Legs White as Paper", legs are as white as paper. Paper is not white at all times, it is only white because you say it is white.
Further, "Her Body Wakes Up in the Shape of a Poem", sounds deep but the depth is superficial. Poems are in every shape imaginable with free-form enjambment, the comparison therefore just doesn't have power. It merely has an embryonic idea that could have been expounded with more depth.
He often reminds me of my earlier poetry, which is partly why I dislike it. For example the line in Madrigal, "A woman is naked at the edge of the rocks waving to the emptiness that was inside her a moment ago" would have been one of those deep lines I would have thought up after a deliberate attempt at getting myself sad enough to write something pensive and otherworldly. Other lines are explicit but without reason. I once wrote a line about an infant being born without feet, as a linked eternal karma chain. It was sensationalist in the sense that it created cheap emotional response from readers. Likewise, "Your Hands Are Always Searching" has lines like, "They search for the boy whose eyes popped out and landed in the flowers that wake up wt shedding their cold tears in all weathers". Also, Mifsud falls into the trap of generality with his imagery, so flowers are never specific, they are always flowers and there are so many flowers in his poems that you could create a general unspecific garden of unknown plant genera. (He does mention roses sometimes, but you get the point)
Mifsud provides upbeat, motivating pieces such as "One Night I Dreamt of the Old Gypsy" where the narrator implores you to keep on despite exhaustion, no need for sleep, life is a freak show but somebody has to man the oars. Incompatibility is expressed beautifully as the line in "The Clock", "There's an end walking in step with every beginning. There's an edge towards which we're moving without wanting it. There are different streets for us two". Other pieces are imbued with simplistic, magical realism and it is lovely to read, even as it feels intuitively silly or not germane. An example being "Trees":
"It's said the trees round here sometimes walk,
that they follow a path down to the river.
They spend the day looking at the water.
They walk back up again when it's dark"
The best place to look as a starting point for the work of Mifsud, is the work that is available on his website. It acts as a primer covering prose and poetry and his work seems to have more oomph when in a story mode. That makes sense, as his first calling is in the theater.
Highlights
On The Terrace of Dum Panu Z Lipe
In Silence the Leaves Are Falling
The Clock
Weariness
One Night I Dreamt of the Old Gypsy
The Day of the Dead (in Bratislava)
Trees
Mifsud is considered one of the best poets of his generation and is thus an exemplar of a contemporary style that fuses Rużar Briffa's simplicity but also the solitude, inner reverie that marked the best work Dun Karm Psaila produced. He uses a free-form approach, which allows his overt focus of love and regret to be striking but also appear distinct and raw. He doesn't write about Malta, in the same way that Robert Pinsky writes about America, but he comes from a nation with such a small population that he is immediately expected to say something that resonates with the culture. A culture I have only experienced in print, or through tall-tales. With the opening preamble, it can be said that the detachment from the cultural flavor a disappointment, but that is partly why he is so highly regarded. He actually seems to do the opposite, by taking the reader outwith the parameters of a Maltese cultural demarcation and into a sort of intellectual saunter. He goes to Bratislava, Helsinki, Paris, Spain, the Czech Republic etc.
This collection has a good coverage but too often it can lack and this is probably due to a number of different factors. I feel as though the impact of his writing in this collection is lost through translation sometimes (as is inevitable) and so some metaphors and allusions fall flat or just feel overdone, or simply inappropriate for the emotion that is being conveyed. The last poem in the collection, "A Question", for example:
"Look at me, pretty lady: is it true
that whoever crosses the ocean
and comes to this sad land of yours
ends up bloodless, with broken bones?"
It is passive aggressive and somewhat angst ridden. Occasionally, the problem with some of the pieces is that they seem to cross the divide from emotionally reverent and poignant to that angstful wasteland that no writer wants to go to unless they are parodying their teenage journals. The poem doesn't fit with earlier pieces that attempt to languish and remember that sit on the right side of the divide, it is in direct contradiction to the feel of the text.
With regards to being lost in translation, the words sometimes feel too empty and without life, the lines can just strike dry. "Last Night" for example has lines that intuitively feel stronger in a different conveyance. "Between your toes I find red flowers. They have a strong smell of last night".
"Do You Remember?" has explicit vagueness and abstraction that in tandem overwhelm the stability of a poem, especially if it is to be taken seriously. So for example the line, "your eyes searching for the soul long since drowned in the seas he'd crossed to find you", has an elementary abstraction and distance that is overwhelmed by the ending line: "This morning I saw him crushed under a leaf which had fallen before its time." This is also seen in "The Rose of Gold" which says "I put a rose of gold around your finger. Gold never withers they say. Tell me, is it true?". Again the writing is abstract and vague to the point of emptiness.
Other times, it is the disintegration of the poem as it is flowing. "Some Leaves from Lahti and Helsinki" for example has a brilliant start, which has some fantastic imagery, but starts to descend into over-the-top dramatics such as the lines: "my love, I wish I'd held onto my virginity!, then i'd have wet you with my maiden blood". Or entire lines should be cut from the poem. "You Are My New Religion" works perfectly without the last line which takes away from the brutality of "Ready to nail yourself to the cross on my chest", with the statement, "waiting at my thigh for the scourge". The metaphor sometimes is lazy, so in "Her Long Legs White as Paper", legs are as white as paper. Paper is not white at all times, it is only white because you say it is white.
Further, "Her Body Wakes Up in the Shape of a Poem", sounds deep but the depth is superficial. Poems are in every shape imaginable with free-form enjambment, the comparison therefore just doesn't have power. It merely has an embryonic idea that could have been expounded with more depth.
He often reminds me of my earlier poetry, which is partly why I dislike it. For example the line in Madrigal, "A woman is naked at the edge of the rocks waving to the emptiness that was inside her a moment ago" would have been one of those deep lines I would have thought up after a deliberate attempt at getting myself sad enough to write something pensive and otherworldly. Other lines are explicit but without reason. I once wrote a line about an infant being born without feet, as a linked eternal karma chain. It was sensationalist in the sense that it created cheap emotional response from readers. Likewise, "Your Hands Are Always Searching" has lines like, "They search for the boy whose eyes popped out and landed in the flowers that wake up wt shedding their cold tears in all weathers". Also, Mifsud falls into the trap of generality with his imagery, so flowers are never specific, they are always flowers and there are so many flowers in his poems that you could create a general unspecific garden of unknown plant genera. (He does mention roses sometimes, but you get the point)
Mifsud provides upbeat, motivating pieces such as "One Night I Dreamt of the Old Gypsy" where the narrator implores you to keep on despite exhaustion, no need for sleep, life is a freak show but somebody has to man the oars. Incompatibility is expressed beautifully as the line in "The Clock", "There's an end walking in step with every beginning. There's an edge towards which we're moving without wanting it. There are different streets for us two". Other pieces are imbued with simplistic, magical realism and it is lovely to read, even as it feels intuitively silly or not germane. An example being "Trees":
"It's said the trees round here sometimes walk,
that they follow a path down to the river.
They spend the day looking at the water.
They walk back up again when it's dark"
The best place to look as a starting point for the work of Mifsud, is the work that is available on his website. It acts as a primer covering prose and poetry and his work seems to have more oomph when in a story mode. That makes sense, as his first calling is in the theater.
Highlights
On The Terrace of Dum Panu Z Lipe
In Silence the Leaves Are Falling
The Clock
Weariness
One Night I Dreamt of the Old Gypsy
The Day of the Dead (in Bratislava)
Trees
June 30, 2021
Un volum ce te răscolește ca o rafală de vânt rece în plină caniculă. Un text care a scuturat din mine, ca dintr-un pom înflorit petalele, panoplia de cărți cu miros de sare marină în care m-am scufundat în anii imediat următori studenției.
„Nu putem face nimic altceva decât să stăm/să ancorăm/cu letargia albă scurgându-ni-se din gură/niște fire de nisip își cercetează propriul somn/niște stropi călduți cad, împroșcând din nou/o scurtă vijelie, în căutarea unui loc de adăpost/o lună veche, vărsând lacrimi în somn” (p. 35).
Printre nuanțele și tonurile care mi s-au prefirat în gând citind „Rapoartele” lui Immanuel Mifsud, o imagine călâie a izbutit să dăinuie – cea relatată de versurile nichitastănesciene: „Dacă timpul ar fi avut frunze, ce toamnă!”
Și nu numai. În poemul Dora (numele diminutivat, deci de alint, al ultimei soții a lui Nichita) dibuim un scriitor însetat de amorul artei, aflat la limita dintre o schizoidie creativă și-un colaps afectiv, iar asta pentru că, deși se îndrăgostește de propria-i muză, e conștient că toate au un final:
„...mă faci să sângerez, iar sângele se prelinge/.../Nu-ți fie frică/vino mai aproape de țărmul din mine/.../Tu ești bărbatul la care am visat multe nopți cu lună/.../Hai să ne oprim.../.../Încă nu, doar când oasele noastre or să cedeze/când ochii tăi se vor preface-n sticlă și-or să crape.../Nu știu întotdeauna cum să-ți citesc privirea/nu știu dacă ritualul ăsta e un act de iubire/sau e un sacrificiu plin de regret” (pp. 107-108).
Un poet care, la fel ca visătorul mușcat de leoaică, nu șovăie în fața pasiunilor de alcov: „Nu știu cine pe cine o să găsească: dacă ea e cea care/dă târcoale după pradă sau eu sunt cel care vrea să o/sfârșească” (p. 133).
Bineînțeles că elementele proprii celor doi autori sunt pure coincidențe. Dar ce ne-am face fără coincidențe?
Însă forța scriitorului maltez rezidă în depingerea acelor clipele poetic-metafizice pe care doar cei inspirați o pot face: „Taci acum, nu spui nimic nou/și-ai folosit deja imaginile astea de nenumărate ori/Draga mea, îți scriu de la Paris/orașul pe care dintotdeauna ți-ai dorit să-l vizitezi/să-ți spun că și aici oamenii umblă și mor” (p. 79).
January 1, 2023
TEB - Malta
Îmi amintesc că ne-am întâlnit sub clar de lună,
dar acum ai în păr un soare măreț.
Nu știu întotdeauna cum să-ți citesc privirea -
nu știu dacă ritualul ăsta e un act de iubire
sau e un sacrificiu plin de regret.
Volumul acesta de poezie, găsit complet întâmplător prin Cărturești, a fost cireașa de pe tort a anului 2022, pentru mine. Ultima carte citită, o carte care și-a făcut loc în biblioteca mea doar pentru că am fost la locul potrivit în momentul potrivit. Când am făcut lista de titluri pentru proiectul meu de a citi câte o carte din fiecare țară europeană, pentru Malta nu găsisem nimic. Nici autori, nici titluri, nici cărți. Însă pierzând vremea prin Cărturești, am dat peste acest volum de poezie și la un search pe Sfântu' Google am văzut că autorul este maltez așa că nu am stat pe gânduri și m-am dus cu cartea în mână direct la casă și apoi acasă.
Immanuel scrie exact poezia pe care mi-am dorit mereu să o citesc. Raw, pură, directă, folosind cuvinte care în mod clasic nu își au locul în literatură. Dacă vreți ceva fresh/diferit/ciudat/intim dar vulgar, Denisa Duran a făcut o treabă excelentă traducând volumul de față.
A devenit cartea mea preferată din 2022 și sunt sigur că o să-mi fie gândul la ea mult timp. Însă avem o problemă, nu cred că voi mai putea citi vreodată poezie fără să o compar indirect cu cea a lui Mifsud. Grazzi!
Îmi amintesc că ne-am întâlnit sub clar de lună,
dar acum ai în păr un soare măreț.
Nu știu întotdeauna cum să-ți citesc privirea -
nu știu dacă ritualul ăsta e un act de iubire
sau e un sacrificiu plin de regret.
Volumul acesta de poezie, găsit complet întâmplător prin Cărturești, a fost cireașa de pe tort a anului 2022, pentru mine. Ultima carte citită, o carte care și-a făcut loc în biblioteca mea doar pentru că am fost la locul potrivit în momentul potrivit. Când am făcut lista de titluri pentru proiectul meu de a citi câte o carte din fiecare țară europeană, pentru Malta nu găsisem nimic. Nici autori, nici titluri, nici cărți. Însă pierzând vremea prin Cărturești, am dat peste acest volum de poezie și la un search pe Sfântu' Google am văzut că autorul este maltez așa că nu am stat pe gânduri și m-am dus cu cartea în mână direct la casă și apoi acasă.
Immanuel scrie exact poezia pe care mi-am dorit mereu să o citesc. Raw, pură, directă, folosind cuvinte care în mod clasic nu își au locul în literatură. Dacă vreți ceva fresh/diferit/ciudat/intim dar vulgar, Denisa Duran a făcut o treabă excelentă traducând volumul de față.
A devenit cartea mea preferată din 2022 și sunt sigur că o să-mi fie gândul la ea mult timp. Însă avem o problemă, nu cred că voi mai putea citi vreodată poezie fără să o compar indirect cu cea a lui Mifsud. Grazzi!
October 18, 2022
Country: Malta
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