Unfortunately, one of the inevitable questions I get asked at cocktail and dinner parties in this town of absolute liberalism is why Malta doesn’t allow its citizens to get divorced. I always get that puzzled look which says ‘you guys must be crazy’. If I’m talking to a good-looking woman I reply ‘if you get married to a foreigner, it’s ok’. If I’m talking to a woman I’m not interested in sleeping with I give her the whole socio-political-religious argument. This made interesting conversation for a while. But after four years in this place, the whole thing’s becoming desperately boring. For the past two years I’ve been telling the less attractive of my dinner companions to refer their question to Jason and Joe - the two Malta Konservattiva MEPs.
My Czech friend, Zitka, has another explanation. She’s become intrigued by Malta after our trip there last year and reads all the local newspapers on line. She loves The Times which she calls ’so sweet’. I don’t know what she means. Zitka thinks that Malta is the land of kitsch and that that alone explains the whole divorce thing. She wrote me this email yesterday:
“Malta drips with kitsch. You take Eurovision seriously, your newspapers and politicians are beautifully kitsch, all those religious feasts are great – so kitsch
Kundera defines kitsch as ‘the absolute denial of shit’ by which he meant that kitsch functions by excluding from view everything that humans find difficult to come to terms with, offering instead a sanitised view of the world in which all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.
The world of kitsch is a world of make-believe, of permanent childhood, in which every day is Christmas.”
