‘Ħajku ta’ Hi u Hu’ L-ambigwita sagra u skandaluża tal-imħabba

Readers of this review will kindly forgive me for beginning with two suggestions on how to go through this elegant, hardbound collection of around 270 haiku illustrated with 30 delicate line drawings.

First, do not read more than a few haiku at a time; heed the advice of Anton Buttigieg, the father of the Maltese haiku: Qisu ċirasa / il-ħajku tibilgħux / iżda oqgħod soffu (freely translated: Treat the haiku as if it were a cherry, do not swallow it, just savour it slowly).

Second, do not skip the Forward;

it will help you avoid wrong impressions. The subtitle itself of this book could lead you to suspect that the themes of these verses are brothers to Ovid’s Ars Amatoria. And if you then turn immediately to the back cover, the two haiku there are likely to confirm your suspicions. But by the time you come across Ars Amatoria and the names of the Roman poets mentioned in Psaila’s haiku, you will already have concluded that Psaila is on a very different wavelength.

Indeed, Psaila’s haiku are at the very opposite end of these works; his approach to love follows Montaigne, Cardinal St John H. Newman, Lacan – an intellectual, a theologian and a psychoanalyst.

Love is here unpacked into the various phases of its development, from its instinctive, mysterious conception, to its fruition, its unavoidable end and then to its bitter-sweet aftermath.

The book is composed of five sections, one on each phase of the Love process: the attraction, lust, love, definitive separation, the

healing; each accompanied by delicate, textured line drawings by artist George Scicluna, strongly linked to the corresponding verses.

When Psaila comes to the section Horma (lust) his verses are unavoidably close to Ovid’s and Catullus’, but still the words chosen and the images evoked are always coated with a veil of modesty. To begin with, there is no Lesbia or Corinna whom the poets talk to expressing their whirling passions without qualms. Here she has no name; Psaila does not address her personally, she remains the shadow of a body wrapped up in a dream. He reminisces and talks to himself about her. He walks the talk of a love story, baring his innermost feelings following the process which has brought them together, melded them into one entity, their joys and sorrows, the devastating impact of their definitive separation, the slow healing and the consolation he finds in his memories.

Even when dealing with such a serious theme, however, Psaila finds space for humour and is particularly effective when fitting in, in quasi-mock heroic style, foreign words, like lockdown, photo finish, social distance, catenaccio, licenzia, ninnananna.

What might be a novelty in Maltese haiku is Psaila’s stringing two or even nine haiku on the same theme. In these cases some of the haiku cannot stand alone. Some might not agree with this; it is debatable. As is his introduction to a few rhymes in his haiku; this I find quite appealing.

Choosing the haiku as his medium was a bold move by Psaila, for whom this literary genre marks a first, but going through this book one is likely to see that it was a very apt choice. Haiku, constrained by their compact 17-syllable conciseness, do not reveal immediately their full meaning; they often need reflection, even revisiting. But isn’t love also shrouded in

mystery?