Although he was born and raised in Vusanje, near the famous Ali Pasha springs; although he grew and grew up in Gusinje; although he spends his summer vacation in his homeland; although his name is respected in Montenegro and he is rightly known as a great man of Albanian literature and culture, Rexhep Qosja, at one time also a candidate for the Nobel Prize, only by receiving the regional award "Teuta" (Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo), after sixty years of fruitful literary creativity and books published in French, Greek, Italian, Arabic, Turkish, Swedish, German, Russian , in Macedonian, Romany, Slovenian and Serbian, had his book published in the Montenegrin language.
It is about the novel "Night is our day" (translated by Nikola Berishaj) in which Qosja, more and more consistently than in earlier books, in a typically postmodernist manner, introduces the "atypical" protagonist - Budin Buda, a violinist, intellectual, writer who, after many years of absence and living in the world's metropolises, arrives in his homeland, aware that the city from which he left, is not the city he returned to. The small town with "one foot in the shoe, the other in the shoe" grew into an urban center with a manifold increase in the number of inhabitants, public institutions, economic and social facilities, and after a life of peace and work, found itself in the vortex of stormy and groundbreaking events that collapsed the state and society "according to man". Like on the sea after a storm - all the scum floated to the surface. It's a time of transition, everyone manages as they can or loses as they have to, newly formed businessmen, tycoons, fraudsters, smugglers, mobsters and criminals, in conjunction with corrupt politicians - divide and stratify society into a "new" class and an increasingly poor working population. It's the same in Vayazan. Traditional values have been destroyed, ethical norms and principles as well, many ties have been broken, humanity has been lost. It's time - a storm...
Budin Buda, a modest and benevolent young man, an artistic soul, a violinist with long arms and thin fingers, a lover of poetry and film, returns to his homeland as a man with broad shoulders, hard and strong fists, hardened and strengthened by the cruel struggle for a bare existence in a foreign world, changed and mentally and physically, as well as a city that has lost both its appearance and its soul. And he, in his homeland, will feel like in the cities where he lived, without a trace of nostalgia or sentiment.
On the very first night in his native home, while his father is on a business trip, he will fuck his stepmother, a busty and mature woman with strong thighs. That night, the night of sex, of breaking moral scruples - is an announcement of future events in which Budin Buda will be the culprit, the cruel executor of numerous criminal acts - from robberies, blackmail, fights to murders. And again - "doubleness" - while with his partners, Garip and Demi, unscrupulous as he is, he does as he pleases, educated and intellectual, he often and gladly quotes the verses and thoughts of great poets, whistling the musical number from the movie "Skandberg" and, repeats the line: "As the hills are full of snow..."
Mostly at night, Budin Buddha, better known by the nickname Centaur (demonic being - half man, half horse) constantly confirmed by his behavior and actions that his "dual personality" is half human, half animal. Simultaneously with the restoration of "order" in the city, Budin Buda writes a novel, unusual, postmodern, in which "sometimes he gives his word to the hero, and sometimes he becomes the hero himself", in which he writes down events and portrays significant figures of the Vaizan with strokes, but also philosophizes about literature, the reader, tastes, theories, genres, the role of imagination and fiction, their advantage over reality. Fiction is more real, truer. He agrees with the main character to work together - the hero to talk about his life and he to write in the novel - about the novel, convinced that with that work he will win the contest of the Ministry of Culture for "The best novel of the first year of the third millennium".
"Sometimes I give my word to the hero and sometimes I become the hero. No, maybe I worded it wrong. I would have to say: sometimes turning the main character into a real author, and sometimes turning himself into another author..." - writes Centaur, then, addressing the readers, he says: "To your desire to learn more about the events from the very beginning, and also about the characters, I answer this: Events happen, mostly, though not always, at night; and the events are not revealed to you by me, but by people I met by chance, which means the characters themselves. Truth be told, I will also appear in the novel from time to time”. And: "From the first to the last page, readers will follow the life and experiences of the main character, an honest confession, even though what I will tell them will drive them crazy..."
The reader, real and fictional, really follows what is happening in Vayazan, the life and characters of the citizens, members of the "new class" who get wealth in an unfair way, corrupt politicians, "friends of the night", corrupt customs officials, brawlers, and most of all "inseparable threes" ” - the actions of Centaur, Demi and Garip who act worse than gangsters. Because the members of Omerta and the city gangs have measures and do not cross the "borders", while Centaur and his comrades do not. They will set fire to "Bavilon" - the largest supermarket in the city and its owner, because they received money for it from a competing company. At night, they will also visit the owner of the national magazine Globus today, tie him to a chair, stuff his mouth with a cloth and set him on fire, saying: "Who is a terrorist. You who rob the honest and the dishonest, cheating, inventing, denouncing or what we take from you..."
Fear spreads through Vayazan, fear of everything and everyone, of one's own shadow, no one wonders anymore, no longer expects if something will happen, will - that night or the next, but it is certain, the day will show it. The atmosphere is Kafkaesque, Beckettian, and like a code Ioneska but it is mostly Balkan, actually post-Balkan. Vayazan is on the verge of a "nervous breakdown", Vayazan is devastated, the inhabitants are distracted...
The manuscript of Centaur's novel is in the police, the inspector who questions the author is the first reader; Qosa's novel has been published, it has numerous readers... In a typical postmodern manner and "game of confusion" (Bart, “Life: A Story”, Salinger, Bakhtin, Nabokov) it is understandable to the reader that their content should be similar (they write about the same events), but they are the same, identical! They differ only in the "choice" of the readers. Centaurs are more numerous, ordinary, whose taste is satisfied by trivialities which, in principle, are found in every postmodernist novel; Qosja, like any real writer, looks for and finds an educated reader who will understand and discover the multi-layered meanings of the novel, "see the reality behind the visible". They will best challenge you to study and analyze it.
Brave in life, Qosja is also in literature, in each of his books, especially in the novel, Night is our day. He refreshed the postmodernist approach and poetics with innovation and inventiveness, with the ability to insert literary "fragments and passages" in several places, making the novel interesting and ordinary for readers with high aesthetic criteria, and inspiring literary theorists to analyze and study.
Centaur, and especially Qosja, know that there are no more great themes in literature. Their novels are a metaphorical picture of contemporary society caught in a crisis. Ideals are dead, God is dead, killed a long time ago, morality is dead, curtains and masks have fallen, idols are people without a biography and - money. Allusions to the past time when life was better - illusions about the present and future time. Vayazan is real, Vayazan is a fairground, Vayazan from the "heroic theater of real socialism", becomes the Theater of the Absurd in which everything is twisted and mixed up, you don't know who the actors are and who is playing which role and what is being played, who is the director. Performances are at night - when you can see the best.
In the city of crazy and semi-crazy, piled up officials, academics, businessmen, journalists, pop stars, lost and lost, brawlers, the main event is Flag Day, November 27, when the patriotic feelings of the citizens of Vajazan, ladies and gentlemen, elites, politicians burst into ecstasy. , private company owners who cover all expenses. A reception for 20 workers is also organized.
Festivities and celebrations gather everyone - from the Centaur to his opponents the Idiot, Tar and the Stutterer. In the center of the city, with the investment of the municipality and the contributions that Centaur and his companions blackmailed from the rich citizens, the Rest House for officials and, normally, the Home for the Insane is being built, which is the lifeblood of the city, an institution of special importance, which has a Statute, where cultural and social activity, debates are held, various programs are organized, the Manifesto is brought. It contains commands, rules, thoughts and tasks such as: "in the name of the motherland - send away all communists", "if Albania is not united democratically, it will be occupied and freed from Toska" to the wish that Enver be revived so that wasting time with these rascals who understand democracy as the freedom to lie and steal legally or illegally. "In the Home of the Crazy, patriotic awards, commendations, medals and decorations are given to the smart, crazy and insanely smart, and these patriotic awards, praise, medals and decorations are given to them for the contribution they gave to the Earth with their insane intelligence or their clever craziness; to be a patriot is always profitable, and the most profitable is to be a patriot who praises crazy smart people".
The centaur whistles the musical number "What will the snow do in the mountain".
Qosja finished the novel, pleased the readers and received the "Teuta" award.
It is believed that he presented his novel to the police and the Centaur manuscript to the publisher as his own and published it under his own name. In Vayazan, as in literature, anything is possible.
The centaur and the characters from the novel leave one by one from Vyazan to the world, some in search of happiness, some not even knowing why, some in search of the writer who created him, unsure whether it is the Centaur or Qosja, whom to thank or whom to eat, depending on the place and role in the novel.
In the explanation of the "Teuta" award, the Jury stated that "The place and role of the novel "Night is our day" and other novels by Rexhep Qosja show that the writer breaks down traditional, romantic and realistic literary codes, as Marcel Proust in french, James Joyce in english, Faulkner in the American i Saturday in Latin American literature.”
Readers of the novel "Night is our day" will agree with that. At the end of the novel, Qosja or Centaur writes: "This is where my story about Budin, Fakir (Garip) and Demi and their victims and masters ends. Please don't be disappointed by the readers who think that my story ended prematurely, but also by those who think it is too long. Let's hope that what will happen after my story will be dealt with by others. According to our verified information, Centaur's manuscript mysteriously reached the hands of Montenegrin readers, Qosa's novel in bookstores in the Montenegrin language, will be promoted on the big stage of the Montenegrin National Theater, the Theater of the Absurd. Distinguished members of the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts will speak. Jevrem Brković i Žarko Đurović, long absent from the cultural and political life of Montenegro, but will have the main say Vojo Stanić who perceives Qosja's novel as his images and Zuvdija Hodzic.
CNP will premiere a drama written together by Redžep Qosja and Budan Buda, aka Centaur who wrote the music, remembering that as Manov musician Adrian Leverkun, rose to the heights and fell to the ground. The name of the play is: "What will the snow do in the mountains".
Montenegrin readers will finally get to know the work of the Albanian writer Redžep Qosja, known under the pseudonym - Centaur, in the right way. The injustice that we did not learn about his work when the time was right has been corrected. "Night is our day", we are convinced, and other books by Qosija will delight Montenegrin readers, who are proud to be the author of "naše gore list", a great literary name, the founder of postmodernist poetics in Albanian literature, who expands the boundaries of the novel through his creative process, a writer whose work has long been in world literature, therefore, universal. Only great writers like Albanian and our own Rexhep Qosja can do that.
Bonus video:
