I have been carrying that day for a long time, almost twenty-one years, that August 1, 2004, when I met in Ulcinj Ismail Kadarea, who came to open the Book Fair, a traditional event that begins every year on that day in the southernmost Montenegrin city. Before I recall that day and that meeting, I want to say that I saw Kadare for the first time, but only saw him, seventy-something, when he came to Kosovo and met with journalists in the Pristina Press House, among whom was me, a journalist - a beginner in a Pristina newspaper Unity.
At that time, Kadare's visit to Pristina was a first-class event. His presence seemed to be felt by every person and the entire city. Especially among the writers and intellectuals of the time.
Roman General of the dead army, translation Essad Mekili I read the Kruševac edition of Bagdala as a young man, and later two or three more times, the Sarajevo and Belgrade editions. I was left with a strong impression every time I read that world-famous novel, which the young Kadare wrote when he was only twenty-six, and which was translated into almost forty languages in later years and decades. It would bring him world fame.
Socializing on Ada
And now to return to the Ulcinj meeting and that summer day. I was visibly excited. There are excitements that are impossible to define: the meeting with Kadare brought such excitement. And I would certainly never have come to it if it hadn't been for Branke Bogavac, who was close to Kadare, a friend, which she described in her books and interviews she did with him. I came to Budva, where Branka was, she usually spends her summer holidays in that city, so we headed to Ulcinj, where Kadare had already arrived. We visited him in the apartment on the top floor of the hotel Albatros, he was with his wife Elenom. Since I am writing this memory almost twenty years after the meeting, I cannot remember all the details. I remember when we arrived at the hotel reception and when Branka told the receptionist that she wanted to visit Kadare, the receptionist asked who she was, and called Kadare, so everything was immediately clarified, and soon we arrived in front of the famous writer.
The next day, a trip to Ada Bojana was organized, I had the opportunity to talk to Kadare, and when asked what I do, I said that in my books I deal with ancient themes and forgotten landscapes of my country, the dreams and destinies of those who once lived there, which was particularly interesting to him, and that I had written and published a novel. Aeschylus' last dayI emphasized that, knowing that Aeschylus and close to him, and that he wrote a book of essays about the famous Greek tragedian.
I admit, the day on Ada is still a hazy memory for me today. There was a large group of people. Memory is not always a reliable witness, but there are the photographs that Branka took. Zealous as always in recording all events, with the same saying: it will be important one day. She also took a photograph of me with Kadare, which is both precious and dear to me. At my request, she managed to find it and sent it to me recently, when I became interested in it, not knowing that I would be writing this text, which will be at the end of my book Written in time: my texts, essays, notes, impressions, created over almost three decades, and mainly published in the ART supplement of the daily newspaper Vijesti. The book opens with a text about Lalić and the memory of that writer, and not by chance, closes Kadare with this text. That's how it was meant to be and that's how it should have been. Sometimes what is ahead of us is what we are not really aware of at the moment we start thinking. What is always needed and inevitable comes. So both this memory and this text came at the right time.
Meeting in Podgorica
The second time I met Kadare was in Podgorica when his novel was promoted. The fall of the stone city in a large and crowded hall at the KIC, where the promotion took place. The novel was published by Sibila doo Knjižara Karver and NGO Prostory, and the conversation with Kadare was led by the famous Sarajevo director Dino Mustafić. It was an unforgettable evening, one to remember. He was present Generous Garlic, publishing house director Onufri, Kadare's authorized publisher from Tirana, who was the liaison for this event.
Not long after the Podgorica meeting with Kadare, and after the one in Ulcinj where we talked about Aeschylus, Bujar asked me to write a summary of my novels, which I did, and Smiley Smaka, which is with Varjam Djukic novel translator The fall of the stone city, translated and returned to Bujar, I received an offer expressing the desire for Onufri to publish this very novel. I thought, although I have no tangible confirmation, that Kadare had an influence on this, if for nothing else than because of Aeschylus and the conversations we had about him, so the novel was published in Tirana by this publishing house in 2015 with the title The Last Day of Aeschylus in translation Qazima Muje.
Sometime during Kadare's October stay in Podgorica, I conducted a more extensive interview and published it in Pobjeda's supplement. Agora, which she successfully edited Vera Gavrilović. Reading the interview from a distance of fifteen years, I only now realize its significance. I then asked Kadare several interesting questions to which I received far-reaching and interesting answers. I asked him again about Esihlo and his exile, about the relations between Montenegro and Albania, about the relations between the peoples of the Balkans, about his vision of Montenegro before his arrival there and the promotion that followed.
He told me about Aeschylus that he was not exiled by the official state authorities, but that there was some anger and misunderstanding about the theater and the performance of his plays, and that he himself, Kadare, had once gone through the path of exile. Ovid along Romania. We talked about Bulgakov's the letter Stalin, about the writer-dictator relationship. Among other things, he told me: "I'm from the same city as you Enver Hoxha, even from the same neighborhood. For many people, especially foreigners, this is considered a favorable circumstance. But this circumstance could turn into the opposite, with a negative effect. On one occasion, when asked by a journalist that my house in Gjirokastra was located near the alley where Enver Hoxha's house was, I replied (and the journalist in question was Swedish) that he should go and take a photo of the alley and put a caption in the press explaining that they were in that alley called Crazy Street", two of Albania's most famous personalities had their homes."
To my conclusion - the question of whether it would be Palate snova and other of his great works if he had not lived in a country deprived of freedoms, Kadare replied: "There is an opinion according to which it is good for a writer to experience hell, trampling it up and down, that way he will write better (as one of our poets said in the thirties). Another opinion is the opposite and says: there is no need to open a prison, or misfortune for writers, in order for them to create interesting works. I think there is no model for this. On one occasion I expressed the opinion that neither too much misfortune nor too much happiness are good for literature."
Kadare's memory of Rain
He told me he appreciated it a lot. Ernest Sabat and that he had the best opinion of him. He spoke of him with great respect to Danilo Kish: “In 1984, during a writers' forum in Athens, I was lucky enough to meet and talk for a long time with Danilo Kiša. One of the things he explained to me was that his mother was Montenegrin. And immediately after that he added that his mother had told him something good about Albanians, but he was little at the time and did not understand at all why, precisely at the time of the worsening of Yugoslav-Albanian relations, precisely at the time of the worsening, his mother thought so.”
And he spoke about relations in the Balkans at that time, which was in 2011: "Regardless of the dramas that have occurred, I believe in inter-Balkan reconciliation. The Balkans have experienced great complications. They will be able to endure the mission, perhaps the greatest of all, that history has placed before them: peace among them. But serious missions are not like vaudeville work. They require seriousness. And seriousness, in this case, refers to great truths that we should not fear. We are people of art."
Further, to the same question, he answers: "The world's reality is not made up of cruelty and crimes - but of forgiveness with them. And forgiveness with them means expelling the fog, emerging the truth and beyond it - easing consciousness through repentance, seeking forgiveness and, in the end, reconciliation. You are a people who belong to the Slavic family, we, on the contrary, are a lonely people. Family usually enriches nations, but loneliness also does the same thing to different nations. That is why it is something doubly beautiful when nations are good neighbors."
On the same occasion, I asked Kadare: why did he decide to choose a novel from his extensive and diverse literary corpus for publication in Montenegro? The fall of the stone city, to which he replied: “To tell you the truth, I gave my consent without thinking too much. It simply seemed to me: the Albanian reader liked this book, I thought, the Montenegrin reader will like it too. Let me say a few words here that seem as if I overheard them. The closeness of the two peoples, the literature that increases their closeness, I believe I do not need to emphasize them. However, when I was asked to make a choice for publishing one of my books in Montenegro, I sincerely wanted to choose the best one, as it seems to be for readers whom you value, respect and whom you feel particularly close to, so in this case I did it without hesitation”.
Ismail Kadare is a writer of world rank and fame, an author of international fame, a writer whose total work deserves the epithet world-class. The Nobel Committee, it seems, in its long history, has not made mistakes or has done so in a small number of cases. In this case, it did, it did not give the Nobel Prize to someone who deserved it in every way. Kadare's work will last as long as there is humanity and man. Each of his books individually is a metaphor for humanity. Collectively, they are metaphors that defend humanity!
General of the dead army is one of the greatest novels of modern literature.
Bonus video:
