Monday, June 06, 2005
Blogging and the provincialism of small nations
Hampstead, London
In his latest book Le Rideau (2005), Milan Kundera, who left his "petit pays" for a larger one and has written in French ever since, has a chapter called Die Weltliteratur which starts with this observation:
Qu'il soit nationaliste ou cosmopolite, enracine ou deracine, un Europeen est profondement determine par le rapport a sa patrie.
And on the provincialism of small nations.
Comment definir le provincialisme? Comme l'incapacite (ou le refus) d'envisager sa culture dans le grand contexte. Il y a deux sortes de provincialisme: celui des grandes nations et celui des petites.
Les petites nations sont reticentes au grand contexte...elles tiennent en haute estime la culture mondiale, mais celle-ci leur apparait comme quelque chose d'etranger, un ciel au-dessus de leur tete, lointain, inaccessible, une realite ideale avec laquelle leur litterature nationale a peu a voir. La petite nation a inculque a son ecrivain la conviction qu'il n'appartient qu'a elle.
This reminded me of something Mark Vella had written some time ago in a review of Immanuel Mifsud's literature:
In one of his more insightful critical contributions, Alfred Sant once remarked that a new Maltese literature could only appear by means of a generation of writers that had not experienced the traditional "closed" society.
It is, of course, absurd to say that the loose format of blogs were what Kundera (or Sant) had in mind when they spoke of literature. But to me it seems undeniable that several Maltese blogs are the freshest, most un-provincial, reading material about Malta (or simply by Maltese) at the moment. And I do think that those who have left "the traditional closed society" (after having lived it and known it well) simply have the advantage of feeling free(r).
Blogging may prove to be more important culturally in Malta than in other places. ¶ 5:10 PM
In his latest book Le Rideau (2005), Milan Kundera, who left his "petit pays" for a larger one and has written in French ever since, has a chapter called Die Weltliteratur which starts with this observation:
Qu'il soit nationaliste ou cosmopolite, enracine ou deracine, un Europeen est profondement determine par le rapport a sa patrie.
And on the provincialism of small nations.
Comment definir le provincialisme? Comme l'incapacite (ou le refus) d'envisager sa culture dans le grand contexte. Il y a deux sortes de provincialisme: celui des grandes nations et celui des petites.
Les petites nations sont reticentes au grand contexte...elles tiennent en haute estime la culture mondiale, mais celle-ci leur apparait comme quelque chose d'etranger, un ciel au-dessus de leur tete, lointain, inaccessible, une realite ideale avec laquelle leur litterature nationale a peu a voir. La petite nation a inculque a son ecrivain la conviction qu'il n'appartient qu'a elle.
This reminded me of something Mark Vella had written some time ago in a review of Immanuel Mifsud's literature:
In one of his more insightful critical contributions, Alfred Sant once remarked that a new Maltese literature could only appear by means of a generation of writers that had not experienced the traditional "closed" society.
It is, of course, absurd to say that the loose format of blogs were what Kundera (or Sant) had in mind when they spoke of literature. But to me it seems undeniable that several Maltese blogs are the freshest, most un-provincial, reading material about Malta (or simply by Maltese) at the moment. And I do think that those who have left "the traditional closed society" (after having lived it and known it well) simply have the advantage of feeling free(r).
Blogging may prove to be more important culturally in Malta than in other places. ¶ 5:10 PM
