The Reign of the Mockery:
It’s a rite of passage in the early beginning of a calendar’s year deeply seated in the heart of winter.
Small Tag Line or text
Its an annual spontaneous explosion of revelry as the crowds push in the Pjazza Santa Marija in the last 3 days prior to Ash Wednesday. It is like an unrestrained collective letting-go, a cathartic letting prior to the 40 days of lent with its association to penance, prohibition and fasting. The reign of foolery and mockery takes over the small quiet village. These are the nights of a general masquerade reinterpreting life’s paradoxical realities, the fascination with death, afterlife and the realm of the supernatural the primitivity of sexuality, the conflict in between genders and all the gory darkness inhabiting the collective unconscious.
If we had to hold Grandmaster Piero del Ponte as single handedly responsible for the introduction of carnival in the city of Valletta in 1535, we know almost nothing how this small village’s carnival phenomenom evolved. It has survived the test of times although it lived through highs and lows in popularity. The fact is that it is the only remnant of a typically Maltese spontaneous carnival together with the one in Nadur in Gozo. Certainly academic research could yield new a well of gold in information better documenting the evolution of this event.
Yet, no one can deny that there’s a certainly a certain beauty in preserving its foggy beginnings allowing it to preserve its mystique, its lack of definition and all its untamed beauty.
