Antoine Cassar

Mużajk is an experiment in multilingual verse, an attempt to combine the sounds of different languages into a single rhythm and a single thought.

Written in a blend of English, French, Italian, Maltese and Spanish (in no particular order or proportion), but occasionally also peppered with phrases from other languages, the mużajki or mosaics endeavour to explore the possibilities of braiding together the sounds and cadences, literary memories and motifs of different tongues. The successful interaction of the various elements will depend on how well the seemingly multiple voices are gelled into one by the rhythm and logic of the poem. The rigid but versatile form of the sonnet, together with the flexible verse of the alexandrine, aim to help achieve a tightly-knit structure of a musical and perhaps even natural-sounding quality.

Despite this technical, somewhat postmodernist description, the mosaics are more than a mere linguistic challenge. Having lived in five different European countries and languages, I find it difficult to decide which tongue I feel more at home with. Although I still write monolingual poetry occasionally (particularly in Maltese), I believe that selecting one, or even two, would mean sacrificing others, and to a certain extent, I feel that making a choice would also imply a political decision. Why the fixation with one as opposed to many? In a review of Hbula Stirati (Tightropes), an anthology of poetry published in Malta in July 2007 containing the first set of mosaics, a veteran Maltese poet asks whether the mosaics are the zealous attempt of a poet-linguist to break down the insular walls of the Maltese language in order to broaden his audience, or whether the poems aspire beyond the immediate demands of recognition and consumption and look more to transcend the slavery imposed ipso facto by the regime of “a single language” on the free spirit of the poet. The first supposition is not entirely false, but I feel the second to be more accurate. The mosaics might be considered as an expression of a fragmented identity, but perhaps also as a humble yet audacious manifesto taking unity in diversity another little step forward, towards a poetry which is at once local and supranational. Nevertheless, I am convinced that this will depend more on the content of the poems than on the mere form.

The name mosaic refers not only to the balanced panaché of languages but also to the way the poems are written — each utterance being a fragment of a different shape, colour or taste — and to the frame itself, the sonnet being a rectangular form requiring density, concision and logical distribution of thought. The themes of the mosaic, as of the sonnet throughout its long, celebrated history across languages and literatures, are also diverse. Solitude and the joy of being plural, the pleasure and futility of modern life, love unrequited or fulfilled, desire for simplicity in an ever-increasingly complicated world, the beauty of the Mediterranean, the existential compulsion to write, and the at once exhilarating and disorienting feeling of variety itself, are among some of the main preoccupations.

Whilst C’est la vie and White Knight Syndrome are composed in the five languages mentioned above, A Dunánál is part of a second phase of the development of the mosaic, where I have begun to experiment with tongues outside those I know and live in, by including what could be called a “guest language” related to the subject of the poem. In this case, Hungarian words and phrases taken from a poem of the same name by Attila József and from signs in the street are used to transmit a brooding impression of modern-day Budapest, with the necessary dose of cynicism, the city appearing to have been transformed into a giant advertising space. Having said this, one would not be wrong to accuse the mosaics of being “eurocentric” — I have only experimented with European languages so far. To this I can only reply that in form, content and scope, the mosaic is still taking infant steps.

More so than to be placed pleasingly on the page and to be read, the mosaics are composed to be performed and heard. For this reason, an audio recording is offered with each poem. After all, as Borges and other poets have repeated on different occasions, poetry aspires to the condition of music. This does not necessarily imply that the use of metrical form should be compulsory in the writing of poetry, but I believe the patterning of language in general is essential for a poem to be recognised as such. And as "formalists" (I am shy to use this term) know well, rhyme and rhythm often open the doors to wild, unexpected and unpredictable associations, which we should not cease to explore, and which can create even more wonder when given voice.