Tribute to Oliver Friggieri – Saadun Suayeh
In November 2020, Malta lost a great writer, thinker and poet who was at the heart of Malta’s soul, heritage and intellect, namely Prof. Oliver Friggieri.
To me, it was a tragic loss of a dear friend. I heard the sad news only 24 hours after hearing about the death in Tripoli of a friend common to me and to Oliver, the Libyan academic and poet Abdelmola Albagdadi, who was a victim of COVID-19.
The three of us were colleagues at the University of Malta in the mid-1990s. Abdelmola Albagdadi and I taught Arabic language and literature while Oliver Friggieri was the head of Maltese studies at the University of Malta. We shared a love for literature and poetry and traveled together to Tripoli on more than one occasion, where Oliver gave poetry recitals.
In those poetry reading sessions, both in Tripoli and in Malta, I still clearly remember the joy of the children on his face when he listened to the cadence and rhythm of the poems. in my Arabic renditions, while retaining some of the common words between the two languages. The poem literally transformed Oliver or, perhaps, revealed his unfathomable depth.
By nature, Oliver was a rather shy, somewhat withdrawn, and reluctant man, but as soon as I found out, I discovered a gentle, compassionate soul beneath that façade, with incredible intellectual power and energy that drew you like a tycoon. Not only did he devote himself to teaching, passing on his knowledge and wisdom to generations of Maltese students, but he was also a prolific writer who worked in various genres, including poetry novels, short stories and literary discourse.
He also compiled dictionaries and wrote in-depth studies on Maltese and Maltese poets, such as Dun Karm. In my humble opinion, he was one of the greatest figures, after Joseph Aquilina, who devoted his whole life to the study and elevation of the Maltese language and literature.
It was Oliver the poet whom I closely identified with. His poems are revelations of a tortured soul seeking his own salvation but, in the process of reading Oliver’s poems, both the poet and the reader are redeemed. In many ways he was indeed a “troubled pilgrim” on this journey of life, a title chosen by Professor Peter Serracino Inglott for his collection of poems by Oliver translated into English, for which he wrote an introduction by amazing.
It was Oliver the poet whom I closely identified with– Saadun Suayeh
It was indeed my hope to produce an Arabic translation of Oliver Friggieri’s poems and I still have a manuscript of some of the poems I have already translated, some of which I really liked, but so far I have never published any of them. . It is my sincere hope that I will soon be able to publish them as a tribute to a great poet and a symbol of my love for his beautiful poems. I really wish I could have done so while he was still alive but although the poet can be physically erased, his poems never do.
If it is of any consolation to Oliver’s friends and his students, at least two of his works of fiction have already been translated into Arabic. The first is his collection of short stories with the title in Maltese Stories For Before Darkness, which was beautifully and masterfully translated into Arabic by Professor Martin Zammit in 2003, under the auspices of my dear friend Richard Vella Laurenti, who introduced me to Oliver and who was one of his closest friends. since childhood.
Richard served as Malta’s ambassador to Libya and several other countries. As for Professor Martin Zammit, also a dear friend and colleague, his knowledge of Arabic places him in the rank of the most refined scholars of Arabic.
The other work translated into Arabic by a Libyan writer is Oliver’s novel In Parliament he does not declare flowers.
I always remember and cherish my memories with Oliver Friggieri. I can never forget the moments when we were standing together on stage and when I read, as his face lit up with noble pain, he was shaken with every syllable, the following lines:
“You are a distracted pilgrim who has lost his way, you are a carnation that does not smell, an unnamed surname, and an unnamed name, you are nothing – you are my son.(“You are a lost pilgrim, a fragrant carnation, an unnamed surname, an unnamed name, nothing widespread – my true son.”)
After reading the Arabic translation, I try to imitate the original and identify with the master. How do I finally get to Arabic in you are nothing – you are my son, using almost the same words, I could see the tears in the poet’s eyes.
May he rest in peace.
Saadun Suayeh, Ambassador of Libya.
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