FLASH
Shkruar nga Ilir YzeiriKadare created another tradition in Albanian and world literature: he created great, special literature, told events and built characters just as Shakespeare or Dante, Kafka or Marquis had done before.
In these sad days for Albania and for its culture, it is difficult to build the profile of the greatest writer or genius of Albanian letters, Ismail Kadare. His departure has not only left us a great void, but we must learn that, from now on, his shadow will follow us everywhere and we will have a hard time separating from it. Such genes are rarely born in the life of a nation. I want to recall here with this text its connection with the tradition of Albanian literature.
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Usually when we talk about tradition we generally mean heritage. Nowhere else, more than at this point, have Albanians shown themselves to be contradictory and light-hearted. The Albanian literary tradition starts with the texts of the great 4Bs and then continues with what has been called Albanian romanticism and which led to the national wars and the creation of the Albanian state. At the beginning of the century, the crippled Albanian independence was declared and entire territories remained outside the state borders. Remember Kosovo. The First World War comes and Albania becomes the most absurd theater of this war. The consolidation of the state of independence begins and literature and culture know an admirable development. Dozens of independent newspaper titles, poets like Fan Noli, Lasgush Poradeci, Migjeni and obviously Fishta, this poet who becomes in a way the Albanian Hygoi, and prose writers like Koliqi and Kuteli who bring the Chekhovian tradition of literature to Albania.
In a word, if the Albanian literary tradition had followed its natural course, today it would be difficult to imagine what would have happened. But the year 1944 came and the communists, when they came to power, destroyed all this tradition. Today it is absurd and unimaginable, but the names of the luminaries of Albanian culture, Fishta, Koliq, Konica, were erased from the memory of Albanians for 45 years. Others like Poradeci were surrounded by silence. From 1945 to 1952, the most brutal brainwashing was carried out in Albania and more than 160 writers, artists, but especially Catholic priests who had given valuable help to Albanian culture were killed and imprisoned. Exactly in the middle of the 50s Ismail Kadare comes to Albanian literature. His poetry, especially, provoked an extraordinary debate in the controlled literary press of the time, and it took the intervention of Enver Hoxha to determine what would be done between those who were called "traditionalists" and "innovators". Suffice it to remember that the use of the free or free verse by Kadareja was declared heresy.
In fact, a writer was coming to Albanian literature who, knowingly or not, was denying the tradition that was being consolidated with the four dogmas of socialist realism. This is where Kadare's isolation and escape from reality begins. From here begins his final separation with what would be called for a long time the literary tradition of socialist realism. In this case, it seems to me that we can also say for Kadare what Proust declared about Flaubert and which Laurent Jenny takes back when he writes about "the foreign language in our own language and mentions Proust's epitaph phrase "beautiful books are written in one language foreigners within our language".
But in the case of Kadare and his relationship with the Albanian literary tradition, we can go further. At a time when the country plunged into total isolation, when the only and imposed model was vulgar socialist realism and the glorification of four figures: the partisan in war, the worker and the peasant in socialism, the emancipated woman who builds socialism together with her husband, when Albanian literature was going towards a patternism and total drying up, when in the collective image only the figure of a communist who had a rifle and a pickax as his ideal, i.e. a kind of terrorist if we were to express ourselves in today's terms, who fights and kills the opponent, was being violently rooted. precisely surrounded by this mountain of propaganda and seduction that went to the point of ecstasy from the projection that the communists were making of the Albanian reality as the only country in the world that is building the system and the happiest society in the world, precisely in this atmosphere Kadareja questions everything starts building another system of images and figures.
His self is avoided and is not projected onto other communists or Albanians, but is projected into a reality that he alone builds and affects. If in Albanian literature novels or poems were written to glorify the partisan war and if in every work there should be a communist who triumphs, in Kadareja the depiction of the war is with a priest and a general who come to look for the remains of of a dead army or the war is the absurd theater of his stone city where the characters are among the strangest and where the war only serves to draw more beautifully and with more irony the scenes of a city that, if you don't know it, you find it hard to believe, where fate and life are determined more by old women's spells and cups of coffee than the imposed communist dialectic. Kadareja lived and created most of his creativity in the dictatorship.
Tipari themelor i diktaturës ishte izolimi total dhe ndërprerja e komunikimit me të tjerët. Jo vetëm shkrimtari, por cilido shqiptar tjetër, me përjashtim të atyre që vuanin në burgje si kundërshtarë të regjimit, ndiheshin të identifikuar në dy figura: njëra ishte Partia dhe tjetra atdheu. Kjo kishte krijuar egocentrizmin shqiptar komunist dhe kishte projektuar në vetëdije e në nëvetëdije kultin e qëndresës, të përjashtimit nga të tjerët. Të gjithë ndiheshin të lumtur e krenarë dhe ashtu të izoluar jetonin me kultin e perëndive të reja që kishte krijuar propoganda e regjimit totalitar. Ndërsa te Kadareja, po të nisemi, nga krijimtaria e tij, kishte ndodhur një gjë krejt tjetër. Edhe në jetën private ai ishte i vetmi që nuk merrte pjesë në jetën publike. Të gjithë e kujtojnë se pjesën më të madhe të jetës ai e ka çuar i izoluar në një apartament në qendër të Tiranës dhe të vetmet kontakte me atë që ndodhte jashtë, ishin shetitjet pas orës 9 të darkës në Bulevardin e Madh të Tiranës.
Që në atë kohë ishte përhapur miti i izolimit të Kadaresë, izolim që ai e kishte zgjedhur vetë dhe që kishte nga ana tjetër luksin e jetës së shkrimtarit, sepse e vetmja perëndi ku ai kishte projektuar unin e tij, ishte letërsia. Ndaj krijimtaria e tij me atë që krijohej në Shqipëri gjatë socrealizmit, nuk kishte asnjë pikë kontakti. Ai edhe vetë ishte i bindur se po krijonte një traditë tjetër që kishte në qendër fatin e njeriut total, shqiptar por edhe europian gjithashtu. Për Kadarenë miti i tragjedive greke dhe atyre të Shekspirit, imazhi i vdekjes tragjike për shkak të pasionit, teatri absurd ballkanas, misteri i perandorisë otomane dhe pas viteve ’70 imazhi i diktaturës, i këtij pallati që analizon deri edhe ëndrrat, u bënë ankth.
Kadareja pati edhe fatin se gjenia e tij u mbrujt në epokën e luftës së ftohtë, kur Shqipëria ndali kohën dhe për 45 vjet nxiti sidomos te një shkrimtar si Kadareja refleksionin. Ndaj të gjitha ngjarjet e mëdha të historisë shqiptare ishin skena të teatrit ku ai vendoste personazhet e tij që ishin tragjikë e komikë njëherësh. Nga kjo pikëpamje Kadareja pati meritën se projektoi me veprat e tij edhe një shije të veçantë te bashkëkohësit dhe krijoi një vetëdije tjetër që kishte në thelb magjinë e artit të madh. Nga kjo pikëpamje ai mund të krahasohet me shkrimtarët e quajtur të shenjtë, me Hygoin, bie fjala, të cilët bëhen në një farë mënyre vetëdije e një epoke të tërë.
But the year 1990 came and the edifice created by the tradition of socialist realism collapsed. At this point, Kadare's creativity is the only one that cannot be included in the great reevaluation, in the sometimes fair and sometimes contrived trial that is done to the culture and art that served the dictatorship in Albania. But Kadareja has not escaped this type of trial. No, in many cases the attitude towards him is the same as towards Orhan Pamuk. What his opponents do not forgive is precisely his talent and genius, while Albania and its literature and culture are suffering and are today in a deep crisis.
What was expected happened. The revaluation of the tradition has been done. The tradition removed from circulation has taken its place, the works of banned authors have been published and the documentary literature that testifies to the crimes of the dictatorship has flourished. Many of the myths and names of socialist literature have fallen, but Kadare's creativity cannot and has not been affected. It happened more or less like with Christ. Everyone accepts his work, but there is a part that wants to see him with the cross on his arm, and every time he comes to Albania, he should think carefully about where he will load the cross, at which airport, because when he lands in Tirana, a large part of the press will ask him to load the cross, because the Albanians are now free, but they no longer have any place to project themselves: they do not believe in god, although they follow four faiths, they do not believe in any leader because the long transition has tired them.
In the Albanian collective consciousness, only the guilty are now projected and Kadareja, in a large part, is blamed even though he did not save us from the dictatorship before. However, Kadare created another tradition in Albanian and world literature: he created great, unique literature, told events and built characters just as Shakespeare or Dante, Kafka or Marquis had done before. He, like Pygmalion, trusted only his Galatea and gave us his Galatea to enjoy. At this point, it is probably not correct to say that a political allegory is read after each of Kadare's works. In fact, Kadare's work went against what the tradition of Albanian socialist realism did, and this anxiety, this inability to transform into a banal servant, the awareness that art has within it the myth of Pygmalion, he has skillfully unraveled it in one of his most beautiful novels, in the novel "Shadow".
*This statement was held at the International Colloquium "Lectures d'Ismail Kadare" that took place at the Paris X University, Naterre, France.
Lini një Përgjigje