For years, a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, the most famous and most important Albanian writer, Ismail Kadare was born in 1936 in Djirokastra, in the south of Albania, to an official family. He studied Albanian language and literature at the State Institute in Tirana and at the "Maxim Gorki" Institute in Moscow. As an eighteen-year-old, he published his first collection of poems, "Youthful Inspirations," and later devoted himself more to prose, novels, and short stories. He published the novels "Fortress", "Palace of Dreams", "Chronicle on a Stone", "Great Winter", "November of a Capital City", "Wedding", "Twilight of Steppe Gods", "Concert of Great Solitude" and others. He is also known as a storyteller, poet, essayist, literary theorist and critic. He is a member of several academies. He is the winner of international awards, including the Man Booker International Prize and the French Legion of Honor. Since December 2018, he has been an honorary member of the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts (CANU). His first novel, "The General of the Dead Army", made him the most widely read Albanian writer, and he soon became famous in Europe. "General of the Dead Army" was translated into about thirty languages and caused interest in Kadare's other works as well.
Kadare is a writer who affirms the spiritual, ethical and human values and traditions of the Albanian people, but also a critic of the dictatorial regime and government in his country. U Enver Hodžinoj To Albania, where the entire culture was under ideological control, and literature was captured by a social-realist depiction of reality, Kadare brought the novelties and experiences of the modern European novel. What was natural for European literature, marked the avant-garde in Albanian literature and had a strong influence on its literature, one can say - reformatory both on the content-thematic and aesthetic levels. With each new book, Kadare played with the form, successfully experimenting and expanding the boundaries of the creative process and experience. But that did not make him famous in Albania, even less in Europe and the world. He gained the reputation of a great writer with works that met the highest aesthetic criteria, as well as with topics related to the Albanian social and cultural milieu, historical events and personalities.
In life, as in art, nothing is accidental. The Italians translated "The General of the Dead Army" almost as soon as it was published in the Albanian language; The French right behind them.
The surprise was equal to the sensation. Is it possible for such a writer to be born from a people whose culture they viewed with prejudice and skepticism? Is it possible for such a writer to emerge from the most isolated country in Europe, surrounded by barbed wire, studded with bunkers, with the constant production of internal enemies, party purges, the imprisonment of the most deserving and the best?
"Palace of Dreams" and some other books, with their allegorical presentation of totalitarianism and dictatorship, could not escape the rigid ideological Ždanovs. It is a miracle that his literary career was not ended by isolation or imprisonment. It is an even greater miracle that he was protected from the worst by the only one who could - Enver Hoxha!
That, even more world fame, freed him from "cunning" and fear of punishment. Realizing how much harm and benefit they could have from him, the authorities left him alone. Kadare writes "Veliki Pašaluk", a novel by Fr Ali Pasha Tepelani, a rebel against the Ottoman government who ruled Ioannina for twenty years and imposed on the people a reign of terror more terrible than those from which he freed them. It was a more than clear allusion to the dictatorial regime in Albania. Surely he would not be forgiven for that, but Kadare was already safe, in France - a candidate for the Nobel Prize! It was recommended by "General of the Dead Army", "Fortress" and, especially - "Palace of Dreams". "The General of the Dead Army", Kadare's debut, is considered by many to be his best work, modern, written in an original style, reminiscent of Hemingway, respectively Gogol and the Russian classics he studied during his studies in Moscow. But also modern European writers whom the Russians were happy to translate. "The General of the Dead Army" is, in terms of its theme, content and anti-fascist and anti-militaristic messages, as universal and universal as it is an ode to the Albanian people and man.
Twenty years after the Second World War, a general of the occupying army comes to Albania to collect the bones of fascist soldiers to ship them home. With a priest who was previously in Albania, he searches for graves, identifies the dead soldiers, exhumes their bones and puts them in bags. Faced with a people who defended freedom, ready to make any sacrifice for it and because of it, in an encounter with people whose closest relatives were killed by the occupiers, the general confronts his conscience, examines his human and military attitudes. Getting to know people, their traditions, customs, songs, hospitality, courage and morals, makes him understand and appreciate them more and more. Through his thoughts, conversations and encounters with the priest, Kadare, in the manner of a great artist, connoisseur of the mentality and character of his compatriots, through seemingly episodic scenes and characters and their actions, reveals deep personal dramas and the strength of the community and people's spirit. Visiting and finding places where occupation soldiers are buried, the general is especially looking for Colonel Z., whose family he is on friendly terms with. A sack with the colonel's newly unearthed bones will be thrown at his feet by a nervous old woman, in the middle of the festivities, at a village wedding, revealing to him that the colonel killed her husband and raped her daughter. And that she avenged them! On another occasion, the village miller will give the general the diary of a military deserter he was hiding, but members of the "Blue Battalion" discovered and killed him. The soldier - as he was called in the village, wrote down his feelings and experiences in a diary, testifying to the flamboyance of everyone, especially the miller's wife "Aunt Kate".
"She asks me about various things, I tell her about my parents, my relatives and the house, as much as I want them, and she looks at me with sadness and shakes her head. "Black child" - he says at the end and leaves to knead bread or wash dishes.
Kadare is a master of the whole and a master of details. In the middle of the story, making it more interesting, he skilfully inserts a "sequence" about mountaineer Nik Martin, who alone, inspired by the heroism of characters from the Albanian tradition and epic, goes to meet the occupying brigade "to fight with it". Skillfully changing positions and shooting, he keeps them at bay for hours and provokes them. Enraged and powerless to approach him, they throw throwers at him... He has no grave. He lives in a poem, one of those that left a special impression on the general, which he thinks about for a long time, convinced that he understands them.
Ashamed of the colonel's crime, the general throws the bag of bones into the river, although he is aware that the priest's report will bring him before a court-martial and incur the wrath of the colonel's family.
The general, without even looking at the telegram sent to him by the war veterans after the successful operation, crumpled it up, tore it up and threw it out the window. And it said: "We welcome your gesture..."
"The General of the Dead Army" and "Fortress" are "nationally colored" and apologetic, but they also achieve that foreign readers accept them with sympathy because they are great works of art.
"The Fortress", a novel about the Ottoman campaign in Albania and the siege Skanderbegs the capitals against which the conquerors marched with previously unseen military force and technology, newly minted cannons, units of Janissaries, Azaps, Eshkinjis, Akinjis, Kurds, Tatars, Kalmyks, members of the "Death Squad" who either returned from the battles victorious or perished. They cut off the water supply to the fortress, dig tunnels to conquer it from the inside, introduce infected mice to cause a plague, poison the water but cannot conquer the fortress. Skanderbeg is not in it, he is nearby or in the mountains, invisible and unpredictable, ready to attack the Ottoman camp at any moment. His night attacks cause panic and the death of hundreds of enemy soldiers, instill fear in their bones. As it appears, it disappears, but both defenders and attackers know that it is everywhere. For some, even the mention of his name gives chills, others to strengthen and convince them that they are invincible. There is no description of his character in the novel, but he is not depersonalized. On the contrary, he is identified with the people. People who, according to tradition and epic consciousness, would have the most reason to perceive him as a mythical being, see him as an ordinary man. And when he is described as such by an Ottoman officer who saw him during negotiations with the sultan, the symbolism of the unity of the people and the leader is even more striking and natural. There are no names of Skanderbeg's commanders or fighters in the "Fortress". They are one. They are a nation that, although few in number, shows that even "small" ones can play a historical role and influence world events. That's why numerous Ottoman figures - from commander-in-chief Tursun Pasha, chronicler Mevlija Celebija, astrologer, scribe, Janissary commander Tuz Okčan, mechanic Sarujja, doctor Siri Selim, engineer Kaur and others - whose names will be erased by time, parade through the "Fortress". They will leave, others will come and come but also return - defeated. This is also understood by the commander-in-chief, whose full name is Ugrulu Tursun Tundžaslan Sert Olug-paša, who after a failed campaign awaits the removal of "sorrow", a silk cord, or humiliation. He judges himself, retires to the tent, demands that he not be there, drinks poisonous powder, thinking "about his short-lived life and all that he did, about the soul that goes to the other world and Skanderbeg who remains in this one..."
About "Palace of Dreams", a masterpiece that, if not better than "General of the Dead Army" and "Fortress", is certainly on their level, Kadare wrote: "I have long been attracted to projecting a vision of hell. I knew that it was difficult, not to say impossible, to create something original after the previous architects of hell, such as the anonymous Egyptians, Homer, St. Augustine or Dante Alighieri. The more I thought about it, the clearer it became to me that this is a kind of kingdom of death made up of our sleep and dreams, that is, from the other side of our beings that lives parallel and at the same time with us... There were nightmares, pangs of conscience , lost hope. But, above all, there was the administrative gradation, the sectors through which dreams had to pass, in order to be thoroughly studied and interpreted, which somehow made the building of the Palace of Dreams close to the structure of Dante's hell..." The theme of hell is not new, but is a new way for Kadare to realize his vision of hell. In fact, the regime he lived in, totalitarianism, control of everything and everyone. Because of the death of one innocent, ten more innocents died. Aware that even though he is a well-known writer at the top of the Party, he can be a victim, not for himself but for others, Kadare is thinking about how to oppose the dictatorship as a writer and a person. He "creates" a frightening institution in which the dreams of every individual, group and people in the empire will be collected, preserved, classified, studied and deciphered. He imagines the Palace of Dreams, Tabir Saraj and places it in the past, in the center of the Ottoman Empire, in the closed system of oriental despotism. Mark-Alem Ćuprili, a descendant of a powerful, vizier Albanian family, starts working in Tabir Saraj, an archive with countless files of dreams, in which everything is registered. His last name, in Albanian, is a "code" that connects him to the "Land of Eagles", an allegorical representation of the dictator Enver Hoxha's regime. While one of the administrators introduces him to the functioning of the sector in the Palace of Dreams, the ranking and gradation of services, their influence and importance, he repeatedly repeats to him: "Don't think that there are no others above them..." and "that besides the ordinary Tabir there is also a secret Tabir dreams that the state achieved in its own way and with its own methods..."
Mark-Alem will progress from an ordinary "dream logger", getting more important and influential positions, eventually becoming the manager of the Palace of Dreams. When he was invited to report to the Department or the Administration, he, like the others, rather thought that punishment or execution awaited him than promotion. Already at the beginning of his service, he was a witness to how members and friends of the powerful Ćuprili were killed because of a trifle, a misinterpreted dream. As he rides in a carriage by Central Park one spring afternoon, looking out the window, Mark-Alemi, at the height of his power, fears and knows that "they will come to take him to take him to the place of no return..."
"I could immediately order an acacia branch in bloom to be carved on my grave," he says to himself.
Almost everyone who has written about the "Palace of Dreams" compares it or finds similarities with Dante's Inferno, perhaps misled by Kadare's statement about the infernal structure of the "Palace of Dreams". This "closeness" is only formal. Selection Departments, Interpretation Departments, Grand Interpreters, archives, layout of rooms, mysterious corridors, numerous halls in the Palace of Dreams may resemble the "funnel" and horizontal stairs, circles and circles of Dante's Inferno, but the difference between them is great. In Tabir Saraj there are dreams - hell is outside its walls, real, it is on earth, in the state; Dante's is inside the Earth, in a funnel. In Dante's there are only sinners, in Kadare's - everyone. That is why it is more terrible and dangerous.
Everyone can be found in Kadarevo, the innocent before the sinful and the guilty.
"The General of the Dead Army", "Fortress" and "Palace of Dreams" are masterpieces that promoted Ismail Kadare not as the greatest and most important Albanian writer or "Balkan Homer", but as a leading contemporary European and world writer. He is not one of the greatest. Kadare is - the biggest.
The conflict with myself was the most difficult
Praised and criticized, printed in unusually large circulations but also banned, with the justified fear that he too could be a victim, Kadare, in order to avoid the worst and to be able to write, wrote some books in the spirit of socialist realist iconography or engaged politically in To the Party, at the tribunes and Congresses.
He could have remained silent like Ljasguš Poradeci, whom E. Čabej said back in 1929 that he was a poet whom Albanian literature would one day present to the world, and who did not publish a single verse during the forty years of communist rule. He could, but he would have caused irreparable and unforgivable damage to literature. Kadare knew that. Maybe that's why he missed out on the Nobel Prize. In any case, the reasons were non-literary. In those time intervals, he writes the "less valuable" novels "Wedding", "November of a City", "Great Winter" and "Concert at the End of Winter" - about the end of the "eternal friendship" between Albania and the Soviet Union, that is, Albania and China. Condescending and adapting must have been harder for him than for others due to the explosive power of his talent and the belief that he was born to be a "Balkan Homer". That is why the conflict with himself was the most difficult for him. He defeated others and himself by writing masterpieces such as "Fortress" and "Palace of Dreams", in addition to the previously written "General of the Dead Army".
Bonus video:
