Literature in evocation of freedom

Transcription

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Literature in evocation of freedom...
Albanian literature, in a close and characteristic relationship with the history of its people, lived a
quality transformation with political changes that took place in a dictatorial Eastern Europe after
the year 1990. The consecration of the freedom of speech and thought during the 90’s, brought
to Albanian literature the energy and longing artistic and esthetic freedom to modernize and move
toward contemporary art world challenges.
By living exactly this challenge, Albanian literature, while it abandoned without pain the canonical
rules of the so called creative method of realism - socialism, began its new path between experiments
and a chaotic imitation of movements and directions, which today we also read as a testimony of the
evocation in search of art. As a result, it took a decade for the new authors in Albanian literature to
crystallize and also, a reconfirmation for the previous writers who did find themselves relevant in such
a free and creative environment.
There have been several attempts for an anthology of Albanian literature after the 90’s, but never
a complete catalog in English, which is more a guide or a collection of Albanian works and authors,
in order to facilitate information to international publishing houses interested in the publication of
Albanian literary works. Due to the lack of publishing agencies to provide such a product, the Ministry
of Culture decided to make this catalog and continue with yearly publications, including information
about the best suggested titles for foreign translation and publication.
Several criteria were applied for this catalog: first, the mentioned authors have a rich creativity after
the 90’s and their works have been appreciated by the critics, have received awards or have a
wide national audience, such as Luljeta Lleshanaku, Agron Tufa, Ardian Kyçyku, Arian Leka, Ridvan
Dibra, Arben Dedja, etc. Some of the authors were established also before the 90’s and are still
active in the literary realm, like Zija Çela, Besnik Mustafaj, Preç Zogaj, etc.
Among these fruitful authors appreciated during the last 25 years, there are also missing some
famous writers in Albanian literature, such as Ismail Kadare, Dritëro Agolli, Fatos Kongoli, Xhevair
Spahiu, Moikom Zeqo, Ben Blushi and others, whose works are already translated and published in
several languages.
In the following editions, we will include among other valuable authors, Rudolf Marku, Primo Shllaku,
Lindita Arapi, Petrit Palushi, etc.
The series of works presented in this catalog testifies a prosperous Albanian literature and well
established authors in their field of creativity.
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Agron Tufa
Agron Tufa was born in 1967 in Dibra, Albania. He studied Albanian
philology at the University of Tirana and later world literature at the Maxim
Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow. There he also studied at the Russian
State University for the Humanities (RGGU), where he obtained his MA in
literary translation, with emphasis on the poetry of Joseph Brodsky. He is a
poet, author, translator from Russian and a 20th Century Foreign Literature
professor at the Philological Faculty at the University of Tirana. His works
include the books of poetry Aty tek portat Skee (There at the Scaean Gates),
Rrethinat e Atlantidës (The Surroundings of Atlantis), Avangardë engjëjsh
(Vanguard of Angels), Fryma mbi ujëra (Spirit upon waters), Gjurma në rrjedhë
(Footprint along the stream), the novels Dueli (The Duel), Fabula Rasa for
which he won the National Albanian “Silver Quill” Literary Award; Mërkuna
e Zezë (Black Wednesday) and Tenxherja (The Pot), for which he won the
National Kosovar Rexhai Surroi Award for the best Albanian novel; as well
as the collection of essays Janusi qindfytyrësh (Hundredfaces Janus) Kuja e
Mnemozinës (Mnemozine’s Howl) and the monographic work Dibra me sytë e
të huajve (Dibra seen with a stranger’s eye). Actually he is Executive Director of
the Institute of the Studies of Communism’s Crimes and Consequences.
Title: Mërkuna e zezë (Black Wednesday)
Place of publication: Tirana
Year of publication: 2009
Publisher: Toena
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 978-99943-1-548-2
© all rights reserved to the author : [email protected]
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The plot:
The Albanian world is filled with magic, and Albanian women know a lot of
things about it. The novel “Black Wednesday” written by Agron Tufa is the gathering of all this
female experience put in a book, which, with a fast pace and without any complexity (at first
glance), explores that deep mystical part women have inside, starting from their womb on to the
power of their beauty, passion and needs, which women themselves wouldn’t know to explain.
In “Black Wednesday”, Guri, the main character, visits his Uncle’s faraway village and finds himself
as the only boy in a house full of women, between the seduction of magic, sexuality and nakedness,
surrounded by women that he can’t tell what do they want from him: to be pregnant with him,
protect him or rather to kill him? The novel has many levels: under the poetic simplicity of the
narration there’s a hidden myth, an archaic myth of the rival genesis matriarch/patriarch, where in
the novel, the matriarch genesis prevails through the sect of witchery and the cult of their goddess
“Wednesday”. It’s quite a paradox this parallelism now, for the era of overall triumph of absolute
feminism in the postmodern society! Guri, the teenage hero who never makes it to back to his house.
From the beginning of the novel, we understand it, when a “soul” without a body narrates
over the sad experience he had at his uncle’s village, from where he never got back.
“Black Wednesday “ is an opportunity to enter into the deep mountains and the imaginary (I believe
so) village of Ivranaj, the place where women knit black wool, where the village has a more intensive
sexual immensity than in Tirana, where the women are more witches than in the Block area, and
where the woman’s spirit ruins the man’s life.
In “Black Wednesday”, Agron Tufa leaves the symbolic, built out of the realist empirical subject
and charms us beautifully, simply and sweetly in a narration where happenings, episodes, realistic
landscapes merge with imaginations of mythic practices, in a world where dramatic mystery
intertwines with sex, the winter life of the mountain village which enters into a dense fog of magic
relationships, the characters have a semantic weight and a psychological depiction that puts them
under a dramatic mobile tension.
Extract
In the back yard, half covered in snow, the aunt was sobbing. She was coming towards a tall
wooden fence, surrounded by fruit trees, bent under heavy snow, with a narrow dirt road winding
nearby. As soon as she approached the fence, at the spot where the layer of snow was the thinnest,
she stepped on the muddy ground, moving the snow aside with her stick. I was annoyed by this
pottering so I ran through the back door towards her. A strange thing, this aunt, I thought. She was
doing the very same thing yesterday, thrusting her spindle where some stranger had urinated... The
aunt spotted me drawing near and tried to hide her stick, regretting immediately having done so:
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she continued to pursue her aim on the muddy soil by the fence. When I approached at the distance
of a dozen meters, I realized that the stick was but yesterday’s spindle. What I was told by Nafaka
of her dappled spindle suddenly assumed a completely different meaning, by all means more
extraordinary. How could a plain piece of wood have such a significance? The aunt stopped several
feet away from me, right next to the huge trunk of a walnut tree. A sort of cavity appeared in front of
my feet, oval-shaped and enclosed from the back by the walnut tree. Right at that spot Shartima was
standing, a spindle in her hand and her eyes wide open: it seemed as if she were joining a dance at
the only place not covered in snow. It was a hole disappearing deep in the ground.
“Moles! I’m following their trails”, - the aunt said.
“Why?” - I asked.
“Moles are real pests. It’s impossible to catch them in the summer. But in the winter they are easy to
track, since they leave their trails behind in the snow, as they just did. It is easy to exterminate them
in the winter so as to stop them from eating plant roots in the summer.”
“Do you think you’ll manage to catch it?”
“No. I just wanted to make sure where its molehill was. Let’s wait for it to come out in search of
food.”- she flapped both her arms about while still holding the spindle, as if aiming a vertical blow.
“With a spindle?” - I asked.
“It’s much better with a spindle. The spindle has magic powers: it drives all moles right into this
hole so that you don’t have to look for them elsewhere. But not now, it has only just returned... later
on, perhaps.” – she explained, pointing her spindle towards the molehill.
“Give me the spindle and I’ll wait for it, it might show up”- I said.
“No way!”- she protested, abruptly hiding the spindle under her clothes, as if it were a precious
flute.
“It won’t come out at least for another three or four hours... it has only just returned ”- she said and
hastily went away.
I suspected she might be lying. I’ll return here on my own in the afternoon, and try to catch it with
a pitchfork, I thought.
Behind the curtain of orchard trees and a mallow bush, a crunching sound of snow could be heard,
under the weight of someone’s footsteps in the street. The footsteps stopped a few meters away:
between the branches heavy with snow. A silhouette of a man appeared, the one who was cleaning
the snow from the path on that very spot yesterday, and after that urinated in the snow.
Translated from the Albanian by Marija Barjaktarovic & Vesna Bratic
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Alban Bala
Alban Bala was born in Lezha (Alessio), on 24 May 1970, where he completed
secondary education. Next, he started studying medicine at the University of
Tirana, but dropped out in 1991, for being involved in the student movement
which brought the fall of Communism in Albania. From May 1991 – to August
1993, he lived in Italy and Germany. Afterwards, he came back to Albania and
studied Communication Sciences in the Department of Journalism, University
of Tirana. Coming from the background of a journalist, he founded the first
Public Relations Society of Albania, and the Albanian Media Institute. He
lives and works in Tirana. His main works are: Semafor (Traffic Light), Lermë
të heshtë (Let me be Quiet), Vullkane të përgjumur (Sleepy Volcanoes), Ikje nga
shtrati (Bed Escape), Qyteti me sy të kuq (The Red-Eyed City), Ngjyra mbi det
(Colours Upon the Sea) , Dashuria e burrit (The Love of the Man).
The Love of the Man is a collection of poems that draws its themes and topics on
the everyday life. There are social topics expressed as emotional judgements
and poetic discourse. The book treats an inner anti-heroism and a sober
theism. The Love of the Man has been critically acclaimed.
Title: Dashuria e Burrit (The Love of the Man)
Publisher: Poeteka
ISBN: 978-9928-4133- 5-2
Genre: Poems
© all rights reserved to the author: [email protected]
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Extract
INDEPENDENCE SONG
Cheap was the victory and high was the price
We paid to the memory of a never ending war
We were never defeated. Just tired
And so were our enemies and foes.
This nation was a cradle without a baby, a house
Where songs replaced hunger and despair on the table.
100 years are a short time to forget about freedom
But still not long enough to remember.
Freedom was not born when we first came here...
We learned about it when we lost it in a sunny day.
And our invaders were farmers and sheppards, looking the same
As anybody else, wearing poor and speaking strange.
They said they wanted to share their life with us
And they took our life, our immense fields cropped with joy
Our horses who obeyed to their sweet whispers and touch
Our children loved their children’ toys...
We mostly learned about our enemies by the next enemies
They never stopped coming here as a bad season.
100 years may be a short time or a long time,
As far as I am concerned
But to freedom may God call it just a beginning.
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ONE DAY
One day I will be gone.
This day I shall arrive forever.
You cannot complain anymore
Of my delays, of my late arrivals, my strange
visits.
I will have no songs left, no poems
To shelter to.
I am the last verse of my poem.
One day
No longer shall I remain in the dawn waiting
Your bright silhouette to fade out against
The horizon of my memory.
I am my memory
And its emptiness.
I will come this day, without a shadow
Adorning my smile, my dancing walk,
Wearing my loneliness only.
For a man who’s gone
This is the cheapest cloth.
One day I will be gone.
This day I shall arrive
Forever…
To be gone means to find
The exact place on Earth where waiting for you
Is so heavenly pleasant.
Translated from the Albanian by Alban Bala
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Arben Dedja
Arben Dedja (born in Tirana in 1964) graduated from the Medical School
of the University of Tirana in 1988 and in 1994 completed the residency in
General Surgery. Since 1999 he has been living in Italy, where he works
as a researcher for the University of Padua. He has earned a PhD degree
from the same university with an experimental study on neonatology. His
research work is mainly related to the issues of organ transplantation and
therapeutic use of the stem cells. He currently works for the Department
of Cardiac, Thoracic and Vascular Sciences, University of Padua.
Besides all that, Dr. Dedja has published four books of poetry (two in Albanian
and two in Italian) and has translated five poetry books into Albanian (Saba,
Holub, Cavalcanti, Plath and Blake). His first book of short stories Amputime të
Zgjatura (Prolonged Amputations) was initially published in 2011 and a selftranslated version was published in Italy in 2014. In the same year, his second
book of short stories Histori (e)skatologjike [(E)scatologic Stories] was published
in Albania. The latter earned him the “Author of the Year” prize at the 17th
National Book Fair held in Tirana in 2014. As he did with his poetry and his
short stories, the author is translating it into Italian.
Title: Histori (e)skatologjike [(E)scatologic Stories]
Year of Publication: 2014
Publisher: Pika pa sipërfaqe
Genre: Short stories
ISBN: 978-9928-185-01-3
© all rights reserved to the author:
[email protected]
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Reviews: The book is a collection of 15 short stories which describe the communist period and the
turbulent transition following it. The reader is taken to the realm of black humour. The characters
are half-crazy linguists, crazy sociologists, buffaloes shot by the regime, secret services ridiculously
fighting each other, medical students representing the lost generation, the crowd and its uncontrolled
instincts, former footballers, corrupted physicians, dedicated physicians, sellers of all kinds of things
(children, sores, queues, graves), archivists of secret information, frightened and fleeing shadows of
the past or current grotesque reality.
The book fair prize certificate contains the following motivation: “Prose full of spicy details, fluent
and rich language, and narration of life under dictatorship through a fine sense of humour that
follows the characters in the numerous grotesque situations. This book is an important achievement
for both the author and the Albanian short prose.”
Extract
Parachute Jumping
When stronger ties were forged with China, the quality of fireworks drastically improved. Now they
were set off not only for the holidays at the end of November (Independence Day and Liberation Day)
but for May Day as well. A platoon of soldiers from the National Guard would fire them into the air,
back and forth, from the balconies of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of the Interior. Dramatic
effect was the key goal. So, during the show that filled the heavens for May Day, the grand finale
made its appearance: an impressively big one that shimmered as it floated down ever so slowly and
meditatively on a huge parachute. The parachute was pure white silk. It had thick cords, also made
of silk. No one had seen parachutes like that since the Allied airdrops during the Second World War.
People said one of the young guys from the neighborhood managed to catch it and sewed himself an
undershirt. According to another version, rather than an undershirt, it was a pair of panties for his girl.
But as usual with these stories, no one had ever seen the undershirt, let alone the panties (except maybe
the girl). We couldn’t help gawking at the neighborhood swell. He was corpulent and ill-shaven. For
the late November holidays, though, the parachute chase was a bust. The wind had blown it toward the
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hills outside of town. Some boys tried running it down (some even on their bikes) but found nothing.
Maybe it wound up in the lake, but in any case the dimming light of late fall brought the search to an
abrupt end. So now, after six months of downtime, people were itching to try their luck on May Day.
When the sharp cracks of the first fireworks rang out, everyone, young and old, poured into the streets.
The direction of the wind over the capital that day meant that those who had gambled on Martyrs of
the Nation Boulevard soon flowed into our street, Stalin Boulevard. The city buses were trapped on the
edge of town, the ambulances at the hospital, the taxis in the square by the National Bank. The burlier
drivers locked their cabs and joined the crowd, while the others chanted slogans about the Party and the
Great Leader, honking their horns in rhythm. But our ranks on Stalin were so serried that new arrivals
had a hard time making inroads. We children were the first to tire of craning our necks, yet the wait was
worth it, not for the show going on just then so much as for what would follow. By that time, everyone
was waiting for the parachute with the final number, and when it appeared, a stifled groan of pleasure
welled up from the gullet of the mob. It sparkled, because the dusk of those long May evenings had not
completely fallen and the full moon was shining over everything. It was a majestic parachute. When it
came level with the first apartment buildings, the wind suddenly dropped and the chute started gliding
diagonally, as if surveying the crowd. At that point, the murmur along the whole avenue swelled to a
peak. The women, an enigmatic glint in their eyes, watched the scene from their balconies. The old or
older men, those past their prime, were backed away centrifugally without even realizing it. The rest
were there, right in the arena, many of them bare-chested. We kids wouldn’t have been surprised at all
to see them grab the parachute and don it there and then. Some had climbed up on the shoulders of an
ally, who staggered forward. Maybe they’d agreed, in the event of success, to split the booty: it would
be enough for two pairs of panties, at the very least, if one tacked on a little lace. Except that what they
gained in height (two body lengths) they lost in agility. When the chute came down to the third floor,
someone on a terrace ventured a last-ditch grab using a long pole with a wire hook tied to it. Threats and
insults flew. Luckily for him, the attempt failed. In a few seconds, it became clear that out of all the youth
on the avenue, about a hundred would be in the running for the parachute, equally divided between
the brawny and the lucky. The rest were cut off from the landing point. A heroic, sensual reek of sweat
suddenly filled the boulevard. At the center of the crowd, a knife blade flashed.
Translated from the Italian version of the Author by Johanna Bishop
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Ardian Kyçyku
Ardian Kyçyku (Pen names: Ardian-Christian Kyçyku / Kuciuk), is an
Albanian-and-Romanian-language writer, playwright, essayist, publisher and
translator, author of more than 45 original books. He was born on 23 August
1969 in Pogradec, Albania. He studied Bachelor of Arts at the University of
Tirana (Albania), Faculty of History and Philology (1991); Professor, Doctor
in Comparative and Universal Literature at the University of Bucharest;
Doctorship at the Faculty of Theology of University of Bucharest. Kyçyku was
Rector of the Romanian Gheorghe Cristea University of Science and Arts in
Bucharest. Since 2013 he is Executive President of the European Academy of
Performing Arts. He is a Co-founder and co-director of the Haemus European
Culture and Traditions review, which was first published in Bucharest
in 1998 and has now an archive of over 5.500 pages; Laureate of the Silver
Quill National Prize for Literature, for Pearls (selected prose) and of several
literary prizes in Romania; Editor-in-Chief of the “ComunIQue” and “euArts”
reviews. He is a full member of the Writers’ Union of Romania, of the Albanian
League of Artists and Writers, of the Académie Européenne des Arts and a
correspondent member of the Central European Academy of Science and Art;
Founding member of the Haemus Albanian Cultural Association; Honorary
citizen of Pogradec. Many of Kyçyku’s literary works have been translated
into more than 10 foreign languages.
Title: Sy (Eye/s)
Place of publication: Tiranë
Publisher: Ideart
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 978-99943-43-53-9
© all rights reserved to the author and “Ideart” Publishing House
[email protected] [email protected]
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The plot:
A deep and complex novel about Eastern European life in the past 60 years. A work that sees
Balkan history not only through the eyes of the soul, and not the contemporary man’s soul through the eyes
of history. Encompassing a time frame from the 1940s of the past century until beyond the present, Eye/s
combines powerful realism with the grotesque and with surprising humour, adding and reducing eyes in
the heartsick consciousness of the contemporary reader. ‘One of the goals was for this book to ask as many
questions as the person’s gaze does. I found the balance between the number of questions and the mysteries of
life essential.’ Kyçyku says ‘This mystery was the Eye’s pupil, around which many important matters move,
such as the underground and sometimes bloody competition between races, languages and religions, the force
of the genetic maps towards the geopolitical and cultural ones, the material circulation (finances), people being
in power and people owned by power, the prosecution of poverty, the living as if it is only about paying taxes
and duties, the mass media madness and the continuous stay in the grey area, where only humour and the
acceptance of industrious absurd stop the soul from getting completely frozen.’ It has been rightfully stated
that the novel Eye/s is a work that must be read because it cannot fully be recounted.
Extract
Uneaten Papers
There are people that have survived feeding themselves with paper. There are even writers that
eat paper. The forerunner of these is that anonymous monk who used to write with his right hand
and to eat with his left hand. There is told that one revealing morning, he realized he had eaten
everything he had written. What had really happened inside his body? What might mean the act
of writing, the writer, immortality, and the potential readers for him? Maybe he had found some
fundamental answers which he had eaten for rage, for hungry, by virtue of the habit or impelled by a
too oppressive feeling of wantonness. A few hundred years after, in my native Albany, the monk has
reincarnated into another anonymous. A poor man as he was, the son of the anonymous poor men,
he had inherited from his father only a bookcase.
“Money, poverty and life are those that your children will find by themselves, but it is not the same
with books like these…”
They must treasure them by hook or by crook. The father took money from those for children’s
bread to be able to buy those books. The heir hasn’t had the slightest idea that, around the end of 50s,
the Stalinist system was about to forbid innumerous books, most of them masterpieces. Written by
Albanian or foreign writers. The owners of these volumes, who didn’t bring to the special stations
of books gathering, or didn’t put them on fire in their yards, took risk for harsh punishments.
These books, like the majority of those written by man, do nothing harmful but to teach the young
generations haw this planet has been destroyed, which are those miraculous feelings that aren’t
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going to be felt again any more, and especially how the man’s soul has started to become a neuter
thing.
Feeling turned upside down, my co-townsman stole a fishing boat, filled it with the inherited books,
and embarked upon passing the border through Ohrid Lake. Nobody found out anything firstly. He
was such a trifling that he couldn’t be absent! Meanwhile, he grasped somehow a certain value of the
books: The state wouldn’t have forbidden them, if they hadn’t contained something that surpasses
the longevity of the system at least, if they hadn’t had a power somehow twin with that of the state.
Why hadn’t been forbidden the bread, for instance? He passed the border without any difficulties,
but he didn’t enter the water of the neighbor state. He was already an enemy of the people for us and
a potential secret agent for them. He stopped into the neutral waters. If he returned into our waters
the prison would wait for him and the cudgeling, which could obliged him to accept their fiction,
would wait for him at his country’s neighbors. That is to accept the idea that he is a special agent sent
with the mission to…carry for them some books written in the maternal language of our minorities,
who are on the way of losing their language, their cultural identity and so on. The neighbors knew
very well that there could be hidden the code of an extremely dangerous spy network, beyond the
simple description of the weather, of a reverie, of an instant of melancholy or of fright.
The books from inside the boat were at a risk to be read with an anthological attention, such as
only few books are read and as only some specialized readers could read. The fugitive remained into
the neutral waters. It was as if he had never been more into his waters. He started to read in order to
forgetting about hungry, about anguishes, but also for being able to understand why his father was
so fond of those paper reams. He read only during the daylight because then the night was falling
down when those in longing for light could not read. Waiting to be searched by those who were by
our side or by those being by their side, the fugitive refused to faint and he started eating. Books. On
a first stage, he chewed the white parts, those ones which were unprinted. He rapidly arrived then
to the written papers also. It is only now when he became a kind of literary critic and he is obliged
to choose what he would keep and what he would change into life and faces. What is that one which
must specially be eaten actually: the fragments or the adornments? When the literary message has a
longer life: after it is digested and amalgamated in the chemical elements, and not only them, of the
body, or if it is kept on the paper? The frontier guards of the two countries had encircled the fugitive
and they were waiting. They could not shut him, because thus there might be proved that none of the
two regimes – which were contrary one to another anyway - were democratic and that each of them
encroaches seriously upon the elementary rights of man, such as the right of settling down into the
neutral waters, or that of reading and eating paper.
Translated by Dr. Luminiţa Tărchilă
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Ardian Vehbiu
Ardian Vehbiu was born in Tirana in 1959. He graduated in Albanian
Language and Literature at the University of Tirana. He worked as a
researcher at the Albanian Academy of Sciences, in Tirana,then as a teacher
of the Albanian Language at the Oriental University Institute, Naples. He is
now a freelance translator and writer in New York. He has written numerous
books and scientific magazine articles in Albania and Italy. Ardian Vehbiu
has won Gjergj Fishta National Prize for the best essay of 2010, Shqipja
totalitare (The Totalitarian Albanian Language); Ardian Klosi award for the
best work in current public affairs 2013, Sende që nxirrte deti (Washed-up
Objects) . Readers are also familiar with the essay Kulla e Sahatit (The Clock
Tower), the controversial essay Kundër purizmit (Against Purism), the short
story collection Gjashtëdhjetë e gjashtë rrëfimet e Maks Gjerazit (The Sixty-six
Confessions of Maks Gjerazi) etc. Ardian Vehbiu has published translations
from Albanian to Italian and from Italian to Albanian. He is an independent
voice in the Albanian public arena, especially through his blog “Landscapes
of Words”. His last book is the novel Bolero (Bolero).
Title: Bolero (Bolero)
Publisher: Dudaj
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 978-99943-0-400-4
© all rights reserved to the author and “Dudaj” Publishing House
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The plot:
“Bolero” is a novel about the hidden joys and thrills of commuting. It takes place in the New
York subway and its narrative is the textual equivalent of a broken record – the same story, or non-story, is
cycled from chapter to chapter, as subtle changes in the premises and characters reveal the essence of everyday
urban life in a modern metropolis, in which the subject has to negotiate his or her identity through a practically
endless series of repetitions. The hero is shown as he/she is waiting for a train; but an accident that has
happened somewhere far away is announced by the public speaking system and the trains are temporarily
not running. This little catastrophe, this glitch in the system, this interruption of routine opens the doors to
the unexpected – as a breach in the urban space-time continuum allows for the meaningful to rush in. With
the subway network being a labyrinthine map of the city above, the commuter can only make sense of it by
re-reading his or her own experience through the cues provided by pop culture: crime fiction, science fiction,
noir, horror and apocalyptic fiction. The small disruption of the commuting routine and the emptied platform
becomes a portent of the end of the world, at least of that world that is based on the mechanical and the
mindless. The many short chapters of the novel replay many tropes of contemporary life in the west, as they
are mediated by the mass media, in an atmosphere were close surveillance and blind indifference go hand in
hand. There is no classical narrative in the novel, as the adventure occurs to the narrative itself, through its
many jazz-like variations.
Extract
MYTH BLOATING
Let’s start with the simple premise of having a man wait for an uptown train, in a deserted subway
station in midtown Manhattan. I know, all this will seem absolutely unremarkable. It can happen
to all of us, it’s a problem of missing synchronization. What we should do, though, is overblow the
scenario, that is, take the banality and transform it into an auto-ironic monument of itself. So, our
man waits. The train doesn’t come, a delay has been announced, due to an incident somewhere in
Brooklyn; the man won’t move, won’t leave the platform, stubborn in his resignation, or maybe just
incapable of changing his plans. He wants to go uptown: how prosaic this sounds! And here resides
the image’s strength, so to say, because the absurdity is never enough: it should be a banal absurdity
of sorts. Other people come and go, service personnel strategically placed at the platform’s entries
discourage other commuters from accessing it, but they are impotent in front of our hero’s resoluteness
to wait. Attention here: this waiting isn’t total passivity, because the man is actually doing something,
instead of withering away in abandonment. He’s an acting subject. No one can reasonably say that
the waiting is imposed on the man as an unwelcome burden, which he is somehow sustaining. On
the contrary, he’s well aware of using his own time for a certain justified purpose. If in the beginning
he’s just willing to go uptown, now he’s just willing to wait. The factual world seems to plot against
16
this decision of his: there won’t be any trains in the nearest future, the line is closed for maintenance,
the Brooklyn incident has raised serious questions about the safety of that particular track. He knows
all this, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference in his decisional process. He waits. At this moment
the monumentalization sets off, and our man doesn’t even need to be a real hero any longer, in
order to impersonate one. He lives there, in the empty platform, with people sporadically bringing
him lunch or dinner in cardboard boxes, or the ubiquitous Coke in a paper cup; with other people
offering him the daily newspaper. The garbage collection service on the platform is still working
only because of his unwanted, but matter-of-factly presence. Later on, we learn that the line will
be closed for thorough reconstruction, but also because it is underutilized. The authorities make
sure that the man is informed about this development, but they still can’t drag him forcefully out
of the station. Not because the law forbids it (the law is intentionally vague about these cases), but
simply because the public opinion in New York won’t allow it. Associations mushroom throughout
the city, using our guy’s cause partly as a banner for furthering their own political agendas: civil
liberties are at issue, and the man isn’t flagrantly breaking any kind of explicit rule or principle.
His determination to keep waiting against all odds is a source of respect. After all, many would
say, wasn’t America itself born this way? At this point everyone is pro our hero, and celebrates the
waiting as a surprising symbol of free will. Let him wait, this is the slogan. Don’t touch the waiting
man. Some timid commercial exploitation has already started: toys, books, bumper-stickers. Among
those involved, it is unanimously decided that a percentage of profits will be devolved to the man’s
family. Because he must have a family, of course. Maybe uptown. Or upstate. Somewhere up, to put
it straight. The police and other law enforcement agencies are strangely reticent about this: no one
seems to know the guy’s name. He is the waiting man, and the implied monumentality excludes all
attempts to closer identification. Something like an urban version of the proverbial Unknown Soldier
in his Tomb. Curious journalists pursue their independent research, while the man’s photos, shot
through the platform’s still-functioning security cameras, circulate on the web. Still, the mystery
thickens. There is now the risk is that the public opinion will forget about the monument, and will
start dealing with the event as they would with a cheap tabloid mystery. So the decision to demolish
the section of subway tracks, (purposefully) including our man’s improbable residence, seems to
arrive in the right moment. What? The City can’t proceed with that while there’s still someone down
there, say the associations, the spokespersons for the cultural circles, and the TV talking heads. On
the other hand, lawyers are already studying possible ways of how to evict the man from the doomed
platform, or convince him to leave, or make him leave, or even have him evaporate. All in vain.
Translated from the Albanian from Elona Pira
17
Arian Leka
Arian Leka was born in 1966 in the port city of Durrës, where he attended
the musical school. Afterwards he studied Albanian Language and Literature
in Tirana and completed his studies in Modern Literature in Florence. He is
founder of the international poetry festival Poeteka and editor-in-chief of the
well-received poetry periodical Poeteka, which is a poetry and poetic culture
review. Arian Leka’s work has been translated into German, French, Italian,
English, Spanish, Romanian, Bulgarian and Croatian.
Among his publications are short story collections Ky Vend i Qetë ku S’Ndodh
Asgjë (This Quiet Country Where Nothing Ever Happens); Veset e të Vdekurve
(The Vices of the Dead); the novel Gjarpri i Shtëpisë (The House Snake); the
poetry collections Anija e Gjumit (The Ship of Sleep); Strabizëm (Strabismus)
etc. To Arian Leka has been awarded the the best poetry 2002 Prize of Writers
League, the 2004 Sonnet Prize in Croatia, the Pena e Argjendtë Award for
the poetry collection Strabismus. He is winner of “Europe, Our Common
Fatherland” competition for the poetry collection Shpina e Burrit (The Man’s
Back). His short story “Brothers of the Blade” was selected and published in Best
European Fiction 2011, edited by Aleksandar Hemon. (Dalkey Archive Press).
Title: Shpina e burrit (The Man’s Back)
Publisher: Toena
ISBN: 99943-1-026-7
© all rights reserved to the author :
[email protected]
18
Reviews: “Arian Leka stuns us with an account of how family responsibility can weigh in Albania. But
it would be just as heavy a burden in a dozen other European countries. It’s interesting that Hilary Mantel’s
sensitive portrayal of anorexia observes a family from the UK at the ‘Western’ end of Europe. Family there
was nuclear and meant ‘parenting’, whereas in Albania it meant ‘clan obligations’.” (Peter Byrne – from
Nonstandard Tales From The Real Europe)
“The volume Best European Fiction ends with a short piece of incredible tension, Arian Leka’s exquisite Brothers
of the Blade, in which the narrator is obligated to shave his brother’s bared neck on his wedding day—a tiny
taut moment, fraught with anxieties and sublimated desires.” (Brandon Wicks – from Art & Literature)
“In the Albanian entry, Arian Leka’s Brothers of the Blade’, a man shaves his younger brother in a complicated
act of devotion and resentment, with a violent undertone that recalls the shaving scene from Melville’s ‘Benito
Cereno.’ The younger brother, a person of courage and common decency, has been the head of the family for
many years, but is now leaving to get married. ‘And after this,’ the older brother thinks, ‘when my little brother
is not our father anymore, what will our real father be? What will I myself be?’ As the older brother contemplates the
younger’s face under the razor, the shaving takes us back into the family’s past: ‘Scars, welts, wens, and lines—a
single careless pass would suffice to start a bloodbath. And meanwhile, their entire childhood, the time when they had been
inseparable, was mapped right there in front of him, was there for him to touch; and in the space between two wounds he
saw that day when they had rubbed each other with shoe polish, under their noses and on their cheeks, so as to look like
men a little sooner.’” (Kevin Frazier – from A Map of Faces)
Extract
Brothers of the Blade
To my brother, Maks
No one knows out of what stuff we cook those few joys which sporadically transmute into poison
and rancor; no one can say why we turn our skin inside out, why we stick the thorns which we
reserve for the world deep into ourselves, to the bone; why we pay such an exorbitant price, pay at
all costs, for the irrepressible desire to open up, to be together, the same as everyone else; why we
bullshit; why we sing to those things in chorus which we had never believed in when we were in
solitude; why we forgive; why we laugh; why do we give string to our kite in days of joy and then
afterwards feel so empty, when we see that our soul is further away from our self than a ship from
its anchor, that anchor which keeps the ship from crashing in the shallows on days of doldrums and
on days of fierce winter winds? So too thinks the big brother, who has dressed in his black suit today,
who has his hair shorn to a close crop, who is freshly shaven, he who has downed a couple of glasses
of raki, no more, just enough to scent the insides of his lungs, as all men do, because he truly is a man,
and he must bear burden throughout the night.
19
At least, he must do so more than his father, who only has to beam and raise toasts to the health of
his sons with a drop of raki at the bottom of his glass.
At least, he must do so more than his mother, who considers herself to be the lucky one, what with
two sons and all.
At least, he must do so more than his sister, who treads the double dance with her husband, and
dreams of pregnancy with twins.
At least, he must do so more than his wife, who smirks at the fripperies of the tribe. At least, and
most of all, he must do so more than all the incipient in-laws, who want to intoxicate him and pin him
down on the fresh September evening when he is marrying off his little brother.
In truth, he has never been just the little brother. For many years, since the time when their father
was no longer good for anything, he has been the man of the house: their mother’s helping hand, the
cage for their sister and father. It is for this brother he is today wearing a black suit for pleasure all
its own.
As the day broke on Sunday morning he was freshly shaven by the barber. When he returned,
he reeked of eau de cologne and on his throat a small bloody weal had appeared over the scrap of
newspaper with which the barber had tried to conceal the nick.
He also had a moment of overwhelming doubt, until he knocked on the door and woke up the
little brother, who, in the meantime, had blanketed himself with white sheets in bed, still in a state of
lassitude following the midnight visit to the future in-laws.
He doubted and dreaded lest perverse fate, the evil hour, had left the selection of rare food in the
hands of the provincial barber, had reserved for his razor the blood vengeance against the clan’s
generations of sinners, the punishment of them all on one single day, by taking the blood of the most
exalted son, on the day of the bridegroom, just a few hours before his wedding.
He had had this fear, and thus had been knocking on the glass, summoning his brother to tell him
that he must get up and prepare to become a bridegroom.
The little brother got up, collected his bones by stretching in bed, and, completely unaware of the
incubus plaguing his big brother, said:
“It feels truly auspicious to be a bridegroom today. And for all that goes with it.”
And for all that goes with it, he had said. For the potent and viscous coffee that he requested from
his mother with a bellow. For the home-made curd-cheese donut he demanded hot from his sister.
For the impermeable rolled cigarette that he had solicited from his father while still supine. For the
glass of water “that I want from you, my legally sororal one,” as he put it. And for that which makes a
bridegroom.
Translated from the Albanian by Sara Lynn Smith
20
Azem Qazimi
Azem Qazimi is an Albanian poet, writer and translator. He was born in
Struga, on 6 February 1977. He attended the University of Tirana, studying
journalism, and later, earned his master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology
from the Centre of Albanological Studies. Qazimi has published two books of
poems Ajri i Kryqëzimit (The Air of Crucifixion), Për Dhuntinë e Mahnitjes (On
the Gift of Amazement), as well as two collections of short stories Të Bekuarit,
Sfera (The Blessed, the Sphere) and Anatomi e shkurtër e pikëllimit (Brief anatomy
of grief). He is the founder and the editor of Helicon literary magazine, and
translator of Oscar Wilde, William Faulkner, Wallace Stevens, Jorge Luis
Borges, John Banville, Vasko Popa, etc.
Title: Për dhuntinë e mahnitjes (On the Gift of Amazement)
Publisher: Zenit
Genre: Collection of poems
ISBN: 978-9928-113-24-5
© all rights reserved to the author
[email protected]
21
Reviews: Azem Qazimi “...comes to us as a world citizen, a traveller looking for beauty, looking for first
feelings, looking for pure emotions, which can come only from the unceasing amazement in the face of creation.
His book doesn’t try to reach us just as a literary creation, but also undertakes a high, but not impossible
mission: to show us new visions, to make us believe that, seen with new eyes… the world appears to us much
more beautiful than we thought it was. (...)
Azem Qazimi is one of very few Albanian poets, who… enriches the poetry through a deep spiritual vision,
through a very carefully chosen language, with an incomparable poetical ability to… his coevals… He moves
humbly in his poetry, without noise and without hullabaloo. He resembles a tree, which germinated at the
curb of the street and grows beautiful on its ground…” (Shpëtim Kelmendi)
Extract
To my brother From the beginning our life sought the meaning and found the fragments. There were days when childhood was sweet,
the soul pledged tenderness.
Our flesh then became the color of parades
and the talking painted the playground
with cries of triumph. The air suddenly satiated with the solemn scent of paper and printing ink, you’d think it would give birth to the Book. This new happiness dictated to us words
that rustled like Chinese silk. Now what’s left of our childhood are only trees of ashes at the edges of the poem,
all filled with vowels and senility.
22
“Ecce Homo”
Just one final effort,
before dust sets sleep upon things,
before the visible turns into an abyss: it is the year one thousand nine hundred and forty-one and my grandfather is written as a graffiti in the war. He is a dirty shadow, like an oil stain. He might die and have everything a man needs:
an empty heart, like a second-hand bookstore.
Meanwhile, pain will have become feasible.
The rosy planet
will smell of bread and doubt.
Later a serious generation will be born,
capable of being saved
from the major conjectures of the heart. Utopia will be cultivated like a garden plant,
but even thereafter
the man will still be the same lumber cabinet.
And the light, will be born crippled
from his body in mourning.
Translated from the Albanian by Sara Kraja
23
Balil Gjini
Balil Gjini is an Albanian writer and translator. He was born in the village
of Lazarat, in Gjirokastra on 16 June 1952. He studied Albanian Language
and Literature at the University of Tirana and graduated in 1987. Among his
publications are the collections of poems Flatra të Fluturta Fjalësh (Fluttering
Wings of Words) and Fantazma Ëndrrash (Haunted Dreams). He also writes
novels and short stories, among which Melusina (Melusina), E Katërta (The
Fourth), Engjëll i Nëmur (Cursed Angel), Magjepsja e zuskave (The Enchantment
of Whores), etc. Balil Gjini has translated Kundera, Hrabal, Cioran, Tournier,
Joubert, etc., into Albanian.
Title: Melusina
Publisher: Zenit
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 978-9928-4005-8-X
24
The plot: Melusina depicts the fate of the character with the same name, which can be read in three semantic axes.
Axis I: Melusina is the girl of the fairy tale, whose father married a fairy. The Mother told her daughters that
they must not see their father washing himself (this motif is also part of the Old Testament, with Noah and his
three sons). Melusina breaks her promise and carries from then on her mother’s curse: on Saturdays she will
become a snake.
Axis II: Melusina is the contemporary woman, who eats fig jam, talks to her neighbours and gossips about
others.
Axis III: Melusina is the woman before Christianity, when temple priestesses were at the same time prostitutes.
Her husband starts making love to her but ends up making love to her sister.
All these three axes interact with one another and create the whole text. The story consists of forty chapters
and is told by Melusina’s husband, on the fortieth day after her death. Many symbols are connected to this
number.
Characters:
Melusina: Melusina wants to have a child at any cost, in order to be saved from her preordained destiny and
she gives birth to a child by masturbating with an oak. The child was a green sapling, whose cradle was a
flowerpot made of clay. She hopes that the child will bring out everything closed in it: the waters of chaos, the
darkness of basement. Although her gesture shows that she tries to remove the snake scales from her body, in
reality she also removes the scales of a 2000-year-old civilization, in order to go back to her genesis.
Melusina’s husband: He is the storyteller, who at the moment of narration appears to us as an old man. As he
has no strength left in him, his appetite and his greediness grow. When he was young and was grazing his
goats, a falcon raped a slim gazelle. Now he is 51 years old and a bad twist of fate leads him to 15-year-old
Anxhela, who is just the reincarnated gazelle. He grew up drinking goat milk, which is a symbol of a primitive
and archaic life. Now milk flows through his life, but it is sour and he uses it to poison mice each morning.
Jehona: She is Melusina’s sister. In Albanian, “jehona” means “echo”. Based on her name, we understand that
the two sisters communicate deeply with each-other and have a strange but deep spiritual connection.
Extract
For Melusina, since it became known that her belly was sterile, there was nothing that could return
a smile into her face. She turned inward, did not speak to anyone and started to get sickened from
all men. Even I was allowed into her bed. I could not even think about it! Since the first days of our
marriage she started to lay the mattress on the floor. She used to say “It feels good like this “. I lay on
the side and listen to voices and whispers from far away. I used to look her in the eyes to see if she
25
was joking, if she was acting, or if she was really a witch that was able to enter in a relationship with
the underworld, like i was told.
At other times she pretended to have a headache and drank chamomile and sage tea to make her
migraine more believable, stayed for hours in front of the window and swallowed jam made of the
many fruits, of which her garden was full. She cooked pie and waffles and use to tell me to invite
the French people to come over. Beware!, was her instruction, they can´t take their dog with them
otherwise we´ll have a couch full of flees.
Actually this was just an excuse, because the dog was the cause why they became alienated with
the Frenchmen for some time. They had invited us for a cup of tea, and out of nowhere we started
a conversation about the love of Europeans for animals. You love animals because they don´t
contradict you, they prefer not to argue. They are submissive and obeying. You despise humans
and love animals. That is outrageous. Her tone of voice was so firm, that the others were in disbelief,
interrupted that conversation and slowly changed the topic. As we were getting ready to leave, the
dog was there, in the small hallway. And Melusina stepped accidentally on the his tail. He started a
whining bark, while turning around his tail. The words and apology of Melusina could not exculpate
her and all the circumstances were against Melusina.
Even though she tried hard to keep my mind off from such trouble, it was horrifying for me to see
the belly of that woman, once graceful, and now enlarged, fattened from pasta and desserts, when
it should have been another cause for her belly to get round: the one for which god had created a
woman.
- My belly!.... huh, my belly! – she used to murmur sometime- is like before the genesis. Water,
ancient turtle eggs and a shark that slams the water with his enormous tail. He is the one, who does
not let my belly breed.
Damned be my tongue for not asking her! We all have remorse in the throat like a fishbone of an
unsaid word. Then it becomes our lifelong bother: we scratch our throat to get it out, but no, it gets
stuck worse, the flesh encloses it, it starts to swallow, and it turns into our everyday cancer. This was
the moment when the fishbone of the unspoken word got stuck in my throat.
In beautiful day of May, when the spring was able to bloom by tearing the skin of trees and the
earth, before it dawned, she told me I had to get dressed, because we were going to the Maleni
mosque. I only murmured a silent ”W....?” . The hook of the question mark could had been used to
hang tens of assumption skins.
Translated from the Albanian by Sopot Gjini
26
Bashkim Shehu
Bashkim Shehu was born in 1955 in Tirana. He studied Language and
Literature at the University of Tirana. Until 1981 he worked as a screenwriter
in New Albania cinematic studio. He later spent eight years in the prisons of
the communist regime and two years in internment. After being released, he
lived for three years in Budapest, where he pursued his literary vocation, and
completed post graduate studies in sociology. From 1997, he has been living in
Badalona, Spain. Some of his works are: Rrethi (The Circle), Orfeu në Zululandën
e Re (Orpheus in New Zululand), Udhëkryqi dhe humnerat (The Crossroad
and the Abysses), Mulliri që gëlltiste shpirtra (The Mill that Swallowed Souls),
Angelus Novus (Angelus Novus), Hija e gurit (The Shade of the Stone), Mozart,
me Vonesë (Mozart, Delayed), Loja, shembja e qiellit (A Game Called Sky Fall)
etc. The following works have been translated in many languages: Rrugëtimi
i mbramë i Ago Ymerit (The Last Journey of Ago Ymeri), Rrëfim ndanë nje varri
të zbrazët (Confessions beside an Empty Grave), Vjeshta e ankthit (Autumn of
Fear), Gostia (The Feast), as well as two short stories collections.
Title: Mozart, me Vonesë (Mozart, Delayed)
Publisher: Toena
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 978-99943-1-506-2 © all rights reserved to ‘Toena’ Publishing House
[email protected]
27
The plot:
The social and historical context of the events narrated in this novel is Albania under the
totalitarian regime, more specifically at a time where the great crack and detachment between The People’s
Socialist Republic of Albania and the Eastern Block had happened. This novel is built around the staging of
Mozart’s opera Cosí Fan Tutte (Every Woman does the same), in the 1960s. The staging triggers a chain reaction
that overcomes the limits of the stage, affecting and entwining the characters’ fate, involving them in obscene
sexual affairs, causing to some of them major trouble involving persecution and punishments.
In the heart of the story there are many people’s destinies, strongly linked to one another by Mozart. In the
general tableau of characters, the spotlight falls on a high-ranking principal, the wife of a candidate of the
Political Bureau and a member of the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Albania. Then, we see: the
director of the National Opera and Ballet Theatre of Albania, the tenor, the soprano, the baritone, the scene
painter and other people, artists or not, who undertook the stage setting of the opera and took part in it.
Slaughters, victims, culprits, sinful souls, as well as those who try hard to keep some truthfulness deep down
inside, make the variety of characters that dwell in the spheres of art and power, as if it were a big stage on
which life during dictatorship is acted out.
The time frame comprises the 1960s, where the novel starts, an earlier time when the central character,
Margarita, was a student, a come-back to the sixties, with return trips to the future in order to explain a
character or a work of the new century, and re-entries to the principal events of the sixties. This novel paints
the shades of the past which stretch towards the present.
Extract
It is the year 1959. One of the protagonists of the event, or rather, of the series of events we shall be
recounting, is the wife of one of the most powerful men in the country – a candidate of the Political
Bureau of the Central Committee of the Labour Party of Albania – while she herself has an important
position in the apparatus of the Central Committee, in the propaganda sector, where literature and
fine arts fall into, among others. This character must have a usual Christian Orthodox name, her
grandfather was a priest somewhere in a village of south-eastern Albania and we could thus name
her, let’s say – Dhimitra – which was her alias during the war years, if it weren’t for the fact that the
name of the Ancient Greek Goddess of Fertility and Motherhood could be seen as mockery to the
character, since she could not bear children, an unfortunate condition that is connected, as we shall
see, directly to such alias. We shall thus call her Margarita, a name just as usual for the time and place
where she was born. Her father was an honest tradesman, not particularly rich, running his trade
in a southern town where he had moved a long time ago; her mother was a language teacher in an
elementary school. From her youth, Margarita has been passionate about lyrical opera, her strongest
28
spiritual bond with arts in the framework of the sector she works in; she is even recognized as a
patron and supporter of Albanian opera artists. This musical passion goes back to the period of her
Italian schooling, around the end of 1930s. Before she had finished high school, she went to attend a
female institute in Rome, and one would think Rome was not part of this world, beautiful to the point
of enchantment, mysterious as it was, like a vision of love on the borders of the unachievable. There she
met the famous Italian opera, there she met, almost at the same time, Giancarlo, an Italian young man.
One could say he was her close friend, or even more than just a friend, because she adored him silently,
secretly, without having the courage to admit to herself that there was something more in that, as if she
had a superstitious fear that the spell could break, and neither did she know what Giancarlo’s feelings
were, shyer even than her as he was. This is what was written in 1993 by a friend of Margarita’s, an
old communist militant that had newly become rehabilitated, as she had been expelled from the Party
decades earlier. In her memoir, she also mentioned a dream that Margarita had shared with her, in
which she had seen how Giancarlo had suddenly become courageous and had stolen a kiss from her
and how Margarita had then awoken happy and at the same time sad that it was just a dream. In spite
of that, they were good friends; he invited her to spend a weekend in his parent’s home in Florence,
another enchanting city for her, especially in Giancarlo’s company. And it was halfway to Milan, and
they spoke, contemplating the city from the Fiesolean Hills at dusk, they thus spoke about going to
Milan too one day, where they could stay with cousins of Giancarlo’s and go to La Scala, which was her
dream, to see whatever opera would be would be showing at the time. For that, Margarita would have
to save money, and she failed to give up going to the opera in Rome from time to time, so she didn’t
get a chance to travel, with the exception of a small school excursion to nearby Tivoli. In the meantime,
days, weeks, months passed, and the more she got acquainted with Rome, the more it became a part of
her soul. Only one thing spoiled, appearing here and there, the miracle of this city, just like the repeated
dissonances in an orchestra or a choir that one could feel would recur again, or like a handful of black
stains in the white sculpture block of a fountain, resembling the suffering of living people. These black
stains seemed to be getting larger, like a gruesome disease. They should not be there, they should be
nowhere at all; such was the feeling of Margarita, more or less, and they often became implausible,
like it happens in the first moments after a difficult awakening; the Blackshirts, DVX writings on walls
and Mussolini’s busts and the pomposity of military – athletic statues and the booming megaphones
should not be there. They seemed so out of place against the architectonic grace of Rinascimento and
Barrocco styles, against the Bel Canto, the sweet sound of Italian language, the mannerly and refined
people, and so many other things, that she preferred to believe that they were part of a carnival with
its props and masks, good as the girl was at seeing things from an amusing angle. Or, probably, this is
how she thinks of it now, at a distance of twenty years.
Translated from the Albanian by Manjola Nasi
29
Besnik Mustafaj
Besnik Mustafaj was born in Bajram Curri in 1958. He is a well-known
Albanian writer and politician. He studied French language at the University
of Tirana. He worked as a teacher in Tropoja and afterwards as a professor
at the University of Tirana. Mustafaj has been chief editor of the Albanian
literary magazine Bota Letrare (Literary World). Between 1992-1997, he was
the Albanian Ambassador in France, where one of his greatest achievements
was the signing of the Fellowship Tractate between France and Albania. He
was also involved in the Albanian politics as a member of parliament and in
2005, he was Minister of Foreign Affairs. Among his publications are Motive
të Gëzuara (Happy Motifs), Fytyrë burri (Man’s Face), Një Sagë e Vogël (A Small
Saga), Ditari i një ambasadori në Paris (Diary of an Ambassador in Paris) etc.
His work has been translated into French, English, German, Italian, Greek
etc.
Title: Autoportret me Teleskop (Self-portrait with a Telescope)
Publisher: Toena
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 978-99943-1-936-7
© all rights reserved to ‘Toena’ Publishing House: [email protected]
30
The plot: The
story depicts how a writer from South East Europe can lose literature if he gets involved in
politics. The new politician feels very comfortable in Europe’s first class hotels talking with powerful people.
Through these talks, he tries to improve the fate of his country. After a while, the suppressed writer comes
out and revolts. The subject is permeated by the concept of double identity, that of the writer and that of
the foreign politician. The two persons are not identical to each other. The author plays with schizophrenia,
which brings different selves in the foreground. Through this book, the reader gains an insight, not only of the
dispute between the foreign minister and the writer, but also a panorama of a whole generation, which has to
learn how to live in freedom, before it steps forward. This generation is presented in a very realistic, but at the
same time in a very humorous and touching way. The title, but also the plot of the book involves a telescope,
which can be understood in two ways, including a real object, given as a gift to a friend. This friend lives in the
mountains of north Albania. There unravels a CIA-theory, and communist Albania. The novel offers a literary
journey from communism until now. The novel brings us to a literary labyrinth that grasps the attention of
the reader.
Extract
In the beginning of it all, my senses were reached by her perfume – a mixed fruity fragrance, subtle
but persistent in seeping into my body through all my skin pores, just like light rains that without
much ado, drench one to the bone. It was a scent scaled to perfection so as not to stifle the invisible
steam that a woman emits around herself and that is so essential in affirming her feminine presence.
The aroma reached me just in time to take my mind off the argument between my superior and Arto
Paasilinna, the Finnish writer, an argument in which I had refused to get involved, thus giving my
superior a bitter impression, one that, knowing him like I did, he would not forget easily. To him I
was nothing more than a deserter now. But I wasn’t feeling good myself either, although deep down
I kept thinking that the argument had been a mistake of my superior and my involvement in it would
only provoke more malevolence. This sensible reasoning was unable to ease an ancestral twitch of
remorse: I had abandoned my fellow citizen against a foreigner. And not just any fellow citizen, but
the leader of the country.
I breathed deeply to fill my lungs with that pleasant smell, but wasn’t curious to investigate where
it was coming from. One of those dangerous questions sneakily went through my brain: what is
31
the man’s sense that first perceives the invisible steam that the woman emits around herself? In
this case, I imagine, in the male, as in the involuntary emission of that steam by the woman, there
surfaced an instinct that humans have inherited by their animal past. But through what sense does
that instinct start taking effect on the male? Or what is more: does that instinct awaken in the male for
all the women that he happened to meet, or was there a mysterious selection mechanism where other
elements were involved in addition to that steam? And also: did that steam of the female body work
with the same intensity on all the males that were around a specific woman at the same time? I was
telling myself how little I knew about the male and female body, suddenly and aimlessly bringing
into my mind the writer, who had not been a part of my everyday life for years. I was telling myself
that, once I had been freed – I saw the end of my employment as freedom, but I had no agenda on
helping myself to be freed – so, once I had been freed from my job, I would prioritize the filling of this
void, which was more than a cultural scarcity in the background of the writer. At that point, I heard:
You must know me, there’s no need for me to give you my card.
When I set to write this story, I remembered clearly that the voice sounded too close to my right
ear, that I startled and turned my head. It was a young lady; one could call her a woman. She was
next to me. I was sitting and she was standing. She was looking at me from above.
32
Diana Çuli
Diana Çuli, (born 13 April 1951 in Tirana) is an Albanian writer, journalist and
translator. She graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of
Tirana in 1973. After graduation, she joined the editorial boards of Drita and
French-language magazine Les Lettres Albanaises. In 1990, she became
involved with the democratic opposition, became the head of the Independent
Women’s Forum. During the period 2005-2009 she was Member of Parliament
of Albania. She is an exponent of women’s rights Albanian movement and has
contributed in approving many laws in favour of women. She has published
her first book of short stories in 1970’ The Echo of life. She has published 9
novels, 2 books of short stories, one theatre piece, put in scene in the National
Theatre of Albania and is the author of several screenplays for artistic films.
Some of her novels are translated in other languages. She translates in
Albanian literary works from French, English and Italian.
Title: Engjëj të Armatosur (Armed Angels)
Place
of Publication: Tirana
Year
of Publication: 2008
Publisher:
Toena
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 978-99943-1-495-9
© all rights reserved to ‘Toena’ publishing house
[email protected]
33
The plot: The novel is inspired by a true story. It handles a topic of the Antifascist War. The story unfolds at
the seaside and the main characters are partisans Dorothe Gjika and Aleks Lazari. He is a famous commander,
she a commissar in the same battalion. They fall in love with each other, breaking one of the most important
rules of the national army. Such a breach of moral – according to the partisans, but also to the social norms of
that time – would mean a hard sentence, probably a death sentence. The partisan court condemned Dorothe
Gjika to death, she would be shot and Aleks Lazari would be dismissed from his duty. Desperately, he goes to
fight alone against the German invaders and as he is left with no more ammunition, he doesn’t flee, but waits
for his death. This novel introduces us to life in the typically Mediterranean area of the Albanian Riviera, with
elements of legends, real characters, foreign missionaries, partisans etc. This novel’s structure allows each
character to tell his own story and his connection to the main event. Through the love story, the reader is able
to discover a whole world of human relations in times of war, sudden human behaviours and dark sides of
the human soul.
Extract
March 9, 1944
MANDATE
According to the outcomes of the process that the Assault Brigade Vetetima prepared against the
partisans Dorothea Gjika, Commissar of the first Unit and Aleks Lazari, Commander of the same
unit with the accusation of breaking the moral code of the war, the General Council of the Brigade
declares as follows:
The partisan Dorothea Gjika is discharged from the position of the Commissar of the first Unit
Assault Brigade Vetetima and is sentenced to death by firing squad.
The Partisan Aleks Lazari is dismissed from the post of commander of the first unit of the Assault
Brigade Vetetima of the Albanian Anti-Fascist Army and remains at disposition to the Military
Command of the district of Vlora.
Order to be executed as soon as received.
DEMIR HASANI
Demir Hasani, head of the Military Command of the district of Valona, member of the Council
of the Albanian Antifascist Army, signed and sealed the mandate. He put it with a firm hand in an
envelope thick paper, yellowish. The courier, a boy of sixteen, followed carefully the movements of
the commander. My hand, thought Hasani, must appear sure and fast, so the boy could not tell later
that it had quivered. Tomorrow he would know, how everybody will know, what was written in that
34
letter that he had to bring in the deep South, to reach the first unit.
Demir Hasani stood upright for two or three hours, his eyes keep staring the mountaintops poking
through the window. It seemed they were bringing the rain, veiled by clouds and fogs. He did not
want to think. Above all, he did not like to think why, the night before, the night when it was decided
the fate of the partisans Dorothea Gjika and Aleks Lazari, and no one had spoken of the true causes
of the last battle defeat against the Nazis. He got up and approached the window. He could not see
in the dark, but it seemed that the courier was still down there, running through the narrow path. He
wanted to call him. He was not sure if, for a moment, he would wish that the time would stop, that
he could call back the courier or whether he only feared that the order was going not to be executed.
Now the courier should have arrived. Probably, in that moment they were already reading the order.
They were looking into the faces of each other, with their eyes of age- twenty or something, barely
marked by the first wrinkles. In the first unity, none of the partisans was over twenty five years old.
Dorothea was only nineteen.
He watched the clock on the wall. Leon could come from Tirana at any moment. Demir Hasani
suffocated the feeling of revenge as soon as he felt it sprouting inside him. Leon Nasta would look
at him with his piercing green eyes that he hated since the first day he met him. He would look at
him with those amazed eyes, those eyes that would become too narrow slots for disbelief, then for
horror... for the pain. How many years he has waited the moment, when the handsome face of Leon
Nasta would be disfigured by the pain? That face that denied him a smile, that never offered him its
usual charm, but looked at him with a hided irony, cynicism and indifference.
Would he finally see Leon Nasta kneeling down and praying him to withdraw the order? Or, the
only thing to see would be his eyes clenched in pain?
He jumped and went away from the window; he did not want to search for the horse that was
bringing Leon Nasta. He did not want to think that he had signed the order to quench the thirst for
revenge against the old classmate and comrade of struggle; to the dark motives that prompted him to
order the shooting of a young woman: the pleasure that the suffering on the face of unbearable Leon
Nasta would give him, or the desire to occupy his place in the General Council.
Translated from the Albanian by Diana Çuli
35
Ervin Hatibi
Ervin Hatibi is a poet, painter, essayist and a well-known personality
of Albanian culture. He was born in Tirana in 1974, where he studied
language and literature. Afterwards, he went to Jordan to study Arabic
language and Islamic theology. His verse collections have been translated
into Italian, Macedonian, English and Spanish and have been part of some
anthologies of European literature. Through his paintings, Hatibi has
participated in several exhibitions in Albania and abroad.
Some of his collections of poetry include: Përditë shoh Qiellin (Everyday I
See the Sky), Pasqyra e Lëndës (Table of Contents), Republic of Albania, etc.
Title: Pasqyra e Lëndës (Table of Contents)
Publisher: Ora
Genre: poetry
ISBN : 99927-940-7-0
36
Reviews: “In this book, there is a synthesis and an eclecticism of avant-garde and postmodern elements.
As a result of the interaction between these two elements, a new product arises - the neosentimental. Ervin
Hatibi is the poet whose works could be distinguished by each reader between a dozen of texts without the
name of the author.” (Agron Tufa)
Extract
Once Again on the Price of Bananas
Bananas from Rome once grew menacingly
Behind the Berlin Wall,
The year nineteen eighty something,
Jungles of concrete and steel and panic,
Men were wolves or monks for one another, surrounded
By bananas
On an island encircled
By sparkling red water,
Ich bin ein Berliner,
But in fact, I’m an American Czech who...
Post-Marxism still evolutionist reproduced
Black bananas made of rubber
For postStalinists, the grandsons of dervishes, to beat
Our people with (end of quotation),
Bananaland stuffed with fried sweet potatoes,
The potato is still food, underground sustenance
Sown on the museum fields of Mauthausen, Treblinka.
With potatoes we make chips, with the other hand
In the dark we caress
The tepid belly of the television set, full of Coca Cola,
Chips, not potatoes, are related to bananas,
Chips and bananas and the Coca Cola, too,
All related by marriage
And dowry to Madonna
And first gave birth to dead
Bananas from Rome
Now manufactured together
In the same clump
With black rubber cudgels.
Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie
37
Fatos Lubonja
Fatos Lubonja was born in Tirana in 1951. In 1974 he completed his studies in
physics. Because of his works against the communist regime, he was sentenced
to seven years in prison. He regained his freedom in 1991. Two years after
that, he was elected Secretary General of the Albanian Helsinki Committee. In
November 1994 Lubonja founded Përpjekja magazine.
Fatos Lubonja is active in Albanian political life. Some of his literary works are:
Në Vitin e Shtatëmbëdhjetë (On the Seventeenth Year), Ridënimi (Resentence),
Trashëgimia Kulturore e Shqipërisë në Rrezik (Albania’s Cultural Heritage in
Danger) etc. In 2002, he received the Moravia prize for his book Në Vitin e
Shtatëmbëdhjetë (On the Seventeenth Year).
Title: Ridënimi (Resentence)
Place of publication: Tiranë
Publisher: Fjala
Genre: Documentary novel
ISBN: 978-9995-66-3247
38
The plot:
This book portrays life in Albania during the communist era. The author spent many years in one
of the most infamous prisons of that time, in Spaç. He spent those years in an a typical way, without anger,
rancour and tears. The book’s documentary narration is a report of the fact that the communist dictatorship
in Albania was the harshest among those of the countries of the Eastern Bloc. It shows the compulsory labour
camps, the investigative offices and those of the mental persecution, the prisons, the mines, and other places
of physical and mental sufferings. Lubonja writes how the chances of coming out of that prison were equal to
those of dying inside it.
Extract
Resentencing
I returned to my cell under the impression that the confrontation had been a formality, while my
denial entirely disregarded. I then kept pondering the fact that the three scoundrels who came and
slandered me so shamelessly were young men, physically strong, had the support of their families
and a certain educational and cultural level. I couldn’t fully grasp the flaw in their personalities that
allowed them to defame someone like that. The lack of shame, but what was that? Probably the lack
of a moral memory, a condition similar to that of an animal, which pursues the momentary profit;
apparently, man was closer to that, when at a young age.
But then I thought of many people their age who were proud and idealistic, who did the hardest
jobs in the mine, without fearing the galleries or the police and even had the tendency to challenge
them both. And then I thought about some old men in the camp that were as wicked as these three,
if not more. It seemed to me that the difference laid in the relationship people had with authority,
regardless of the age. It was those that who weakened and submitted to the shadow of authority that
were now serving this purpose. But even this argument didn’t hold. There were other prisoners in
the camp who were tame and submissive, but they did not become involved in such filthy matters.
Grigor’s kind was at the same time aggressive and shameless to the point of making it a crime as well
as servile and submissive again to the point of making it a crime.
However, I had noticed one thing: the older this kind of people got, the less aggressive they became,
adding more and more slyness and secrecy to their wicked business.
39
Flutura Açka
Flutura Açka was born 1966 in Elbasan and graduated in economics in
1988 from the University of Tirana. She worked for a number of years as a
journalist in Elbasan and for the Onufri publishing company, before founding
her own publishing company, Skanderbeg Books. As a poet, Flutura Açka
first gained wide recognition when she received the “Lyre of Struga” award
at the 1997 International Nights of Poetry festival held in Struga, Macedonia.
Among her major publications are the poetry volumes: Tri vjeshta larg (Three
Autumns Away), Mure vetmie (Walls of Solitude), Festë me ankthin (Feast with
Anguish ), Kënga e Aretuzës (The Song of Arethusa), Kurth’ i diellit (The Sun
Trap) and Zbathur (Bearfoot) Also, she has published novels: Vetmi gruaje
(Women loneliness / A Woman’s Solitude), Kryqi i harresës (Cross of oblivion)
, Hiri (Grace), Ku je? (Where are you?), Kukullat nuk kanë Atdhe (Dolls without
a Homeland). She published several collections of poetry, and many of her
poems are also published in French, Italian, Greek, Rumanian, German and
Macedonian translation. Two of her novels are published in Bulgarian and
Dutch language.
Title: Kukullat nuk kanë Atdhe ( Dolls Without a Homeland )
Publication date: 2013
Publisher: Skanderbeg Books
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 978-99943-51-80-0
© all rights reserved to the author and “Skanderbeg Books” Publishing House
[email protected]
40
Subject: Is this the homeland we deserve? This is the question that the main character will ponder to himself
and to others. The event kicks off in the capital, during a midnight, a woman who has dedicated her whole life
to puppets, decides to raise her creations into real life, giving them breath, and making them part of a living
world. In their new life, they are a group of women and girls - mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, girlfriends,
lovers, toy girls - which will have to struggle to create and preserve their identity, since their community does
not care to know who they are, what they feel, what they want and what they are capable of doing. In the chaos
of this society’s transition, they try to rebuild their lives (in compliance with a democracy open to corruption,
pollution, moral injustice, but hidden within cheerful European colors), stings of life of the characters of this
novel, men and women, will be conjoint to describe the fate and fatality of their own life in a detailed manner,
exactly in the the heart of the homeland, where politics polices, where opinions are constructed, where the fate
of Albanians from the new century is decided. “Dolls have no homeland” is a novel about family, love, about
freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of sex, and above all, about the right to a life, to question
during times of moral and political turbulence. Homeland, in the expressive architecture of a satirical and
dramatic story, comes realistically and inalienably.
Extract
“Look, this is my present for you. You always wanted your freedom. Well, here you have it. This
is freedom. Savour it as if it were the last day of your life. Buy whatever you wish, go wherever
you want. I hope you can forgive me. Let us start all over again. I realise I have hurt your feelings
from time to time, but you have hurt mine, too. I hope you’ll feel like a princess today, like one of
those princesses that lived here in centuries past, waiting in line to be Casanova’s mistresses. But of
course only Casanova’s mistresses, not lovers of the poor wretches here today, all of these poetasters
dreaming of the women they will never have. Casanova may be the model of masculinity, but he
must have had a weak spot somewhere, a woman he loved more than the others. The future depends
on you alone, my rebel princess! There is only one way out, and that is to forget everything. You have
to forget and begin from the start. With me at your side. There is no other way.”
He put his arms around her and laid her in the elongated, dark-wooded gondola draped in deepred velvet. The gondolier bowed and raised his hat in respect to the gentiluomo holding the princess
in his arms. But she revealed returned no smile. If she had not been clutching onto her black handbag,
the gondolier would have thought he was laying a puppet in the gondola. How fair she was, yet how
41
frail. Her eyes were turned to the water, an empty glance, and the gondolier understood it was no
time for jokes. He understood that the princess was not interested in any explanations of what lay
on the two sides of the Canal Grande, in all the glories of Venice that enthralled all the other visitors.
She was a lady who had had her fill of the beauties of this world and was completely bored by its
presence. Perhaps this obstinate puppet, this moody mannequin in front of him, was an educated
woman. He did not like that sort of woman, but he would do his job the best he could, not only for
the money but because he was seduced by the boredom in her eyes.
The gondola glided through the waves. Puppet No. 13 observed the other darkly draped boats
passing by her in the opposite direction, gently, one by one in order to avoid collision. The passing
gondoliers gave him a jealous smile as they observed him bending over towards his fair yet indifferent
passenger.
“As if it were the last day of your life… You always wanted your freedom… Feel like a princess
today.” These words echoed in her mind, but Puppet No. 13 was afraid to pronounce them, afraid
even to think about what was worrying her. She had no more strength after that long sleepless night,
after that night of silence, of deep thoughts and concerns that disturbed her reasoning.
42
Gazmend Krasniqi
Gazmend Krasniqi was born in Shkodra and lives in Tirana. He is a writer,
essayist, anthologist and literary historian. Among his publications are the
poetry volumes: Në Kryqin e Dashurisë (At the Crossroads of Love); Skodrinon
(Skodrinon); Poema (Poems); Toka e (pa)premtuar (The (un)promised Land);
Fletorja e Poemave (The Notebook of Poems); Anthologies: Sprovë Antologjike
(Experimental Anthology); Antologji e Poezisë Shqipe (Anthology of Albanian
poetry), coauthor; as well as the prose works: Eldorado (El Dorado), Bar “Parajsa”
(Paradise Bar ), Asgjëtë e vogla të Zotit (The Small Nothings of God), Shitësit e
Apokalipsit (The Sellers of Apocalypse), Fytyra e Simurgut (The Face of Simurg),
Nëse Ndonjë Ditë një Prelud (If some Day a Prelude). Krasniqi has also written
plays – Qyteti pa ngjarje (The City Without Events); Metropolis (Metropolis);
Koncerti (The Concert). Parts of his work are included in New European poets
(USA); Galway Review: Antologia della Letteratura Albanese Contemporanea (Italy);
Poésie Albanaise (Belgium); Izbor Iz Savremene Albanske Proze, Montenegro;
Cobpemeha пoеэија Aлбанија, Scopje. Fellowships, Residencies (Selection) 2013
Writer in Residence, Kultur Kontakt Austria, Vienna, Austria 2010 Program
“Writer in residence”, May 2010, Pecs (Hungary) – cultural capital of Europe
for the year 2010. He holds a PhD. in philological sciences.
Title: Romani i lumturisë (Novel of Happiness)
Publisher: Onufri Editions
Genre: Novel
ISBN : 978-9928-186-74-4
© all rights reserved to the author [email protected]
43
The plot: Literary critics have noted that Krasniqi is interested in the manner a story is narrated rather than in
the history itself, no matter how strange it may sound. He changes his style depending on the plot altering in each
novel, in search of the one that suits the work. Away from prose stereotypes, language clichés and the canonical
rules of writing, he uses those that may be preserved in an age that questions the power of literature.
Based on his unique authorial approach, in the Novel of Happiness, Krasniqi aims at unfolding the drama of an
Albanian couple whose life transits from the period of authoritarianism to democracy. The literary proceeding in
the manner of a kaleidoscope, intends to show the ordeals of facing the power of money, the weight of the past and
existentialism or identity dilemmas. The novel’s central idea is that the quest of happiness defines the fate of man.
Extract
INTRODUCTION
As it will be made clear later, this story originates from the image of a man who comes across a
gold-hunter, and he certainly cannot resist the temptation to get the opportunity. The endeavour
to shape this image did not prevent the pursuit of adventure: man is a traveller, because of the
magic of the unknown, the pleasure of discovery, fascination by danger. In the beginning, I ignored
the pursuit of adventure, believing that I was looking for the best way to prove that there was a
gateway to a new world, but when ignored, this image haunted me with the idea that it bore a kind
of mysterious power. It had to, for the sake of the latter, be transcendental.
Memory, somebody wrote, is for those who have forgotten. So, memory is for the people, because
gods, who live beyond time, do not need it. We humans can make it clear that there is no difference
between learning and understanding: to learn means to turn yourself into the mind of universal
knowledge, because you’ve been there before. To be kindled by passion for something, after renewed
memories for a past love, that is the reason why Eldorado is carried as an idea in the world for
hundreds of centuries, as each new passion is a re-invigoration. Why we remember something more
than anything else, is admitted even by scientists of nowadays: the brain has two memory systems,
one for ordinary information and one for emotionally charged information.
Of course, I notice that the fragments (as I write) shift from one point to another, without transitional
areas, the same as memory: I almost forgot that I have a story to narrate. Here it comes once again
the old question: which is more important, the story or how you narrate the story? They say that
the modern man does not believe in hell of Dante Alighieri, as the contemporary poet did, and this
reasoning is followed by various arguments, but the memory of many people can’t be sure when is
overcome with this kind of verses: cadi come corpo morto cade (It falls like a dead body, it falls). This
verses music shows how important can literature be for the man: I am one of those who can recite
44
these verses even when I am asleep. As a result, it seems that although it is not set up a monument of
history, it is set up a monument of language: a strange condolence that urges you to narrate.
Only memory helps me to start this story from the beginning, exactly from the point when
newspapers wrote about a girl who was with no mouth, although there were no signs of physical
violence, in the ruins of a house destroyed overnight. Apparently, there was a time where new stories
became quickly old ones, because, after a while, that story slipped from my memory. Just when I met
the girl herself, I realized that people’s minds were bubbling with questions for this story: here comes
back the memory that connects events. Only by trusting it (the memory), I undertake to narrate this
story, which begins with the image of the man who comes across a gold-hunter.
For newspapers, the first girl was breaking news.
What was this story about it remains to be discovered.
ONLY MAN IS HAUNTED BY THE GOLD FEVER
(He realized that even in the shortest time possible is quite enough to make grandiose plans in his
hot head, because he did not think before that gold could be extracted that easily. Before his eyes
past centuries vanished and he imagined himself at the zenith of the new glory, in the all-powerful
kingdom, he was seeing himself the richest man that the world had ever had (if we were alone, what
would gold mean to us!).
So this story could begin in this way, but, right now, in the normal course of the narration, one
unnameable thing reminds me of the Zen-Buddhist Chinese poet Chuang Tzu (he dreamed that he
was a butterfly and when he woke up, he did not know if he was a man who dreamed that he was butterfly or
if he was a butterfly who dreams to be the a man), because I admit that the story (which I am narrating)
retains incoherence, the unusual (possibly) lack of the End, things which for the ordinary man belong
only to dreams. Convinced of my inability to alienate it, to bring it to normality (some would say),
I am inclined toward accepting, perhaps all in all I wanted to admit myself (I hope agree I am
right) that I am real, that to free somehow myself from the anxiety of the Chinese poet, possibly
I am a ghost, this is something that happened to me, sometimes, during the writing of this story,
because hundreds visions of inhabited the space of the room becoming (to me) obvious to the worldapparently, uncertainty is greater than we admit ourselves.
However – this is what tricks can mind play on us for a moment – although the gold-hunter is
important in this story, this is not his story, but the story of the man who owns it, something which, I
believe, will be further on the task of literature because it is clear that gold fever haunts only the man
(at least, it must occur so in the story we are narrating).
And when you think that in the past we have made to mind so many oblations of praise!
Translated from the Albanian by Granit Zela
45
Gentian Çoçoli
Gentian Çoçoli was born in Gjirokaster, Albania, in 1972. He studied history
and geography but soon dedicated himself to literature. For over ten years, he
worked as a free-lance artist. In 1996 he founded The Aleph Review (Revista
Aleph), a quarterly on literature, which soon became the focus of the young
Albanian writers and translators. He also edited the anthology of the best
young Albanian poets and an anthology of the best poets of the 20th century
in Albanian, introducing authors such as Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, Seamus
Heaney, Miroslav Holub, Paul Valéry, Tomas Venclova, Tomaž Šalamun,
Tomas Tranströmer, Odiseas Elitis, Jorgos Seferis, etc. He edited works and
published more than thirty European and American poets in his smallpress
Aleph Press. He has published three books of poems: Qytetërime të Përkohshme
(Temporary Civilisations) , Perimetri i Hirit (Circumference of the Ash) ,
which received the Best Book of the Year Award conferred by the Albanian
Ministry of Culture, and more recently Dheu Njerëzor (Human Soil). He has
also translated poetry selections by T. S. Eliot, John Ashbery, Seamus Heaney,
Jorie Graham, Charles Wright, Tomas Venclova, Derek Mahon, Michael
Longley, etc. In 2006 he participated in The International Writing Program of
Iowa University in the United States.
Title: Perimetri i Hirit (The Perimeter of Ashes)
Place of Publication: Tirana
Publisher: Aleph
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 99927-766-0-9
© all rights reserved to the author and to “Aleph” Publishing House
[email protected]
46
Reviews: “Poetry is no ‘logos’, it means poetry is not rationality. It is achieved through its constant ability to
surprise with a childish curiosity and innocence, until it reaches an irrational and intuitive form, which leads
to the secret essence of things.” (Agron Gjekmarkaj)
Extract
In the Author’s Hand
I
1921
Just like Nikolai Gumilyev
with feet dragging, attention,
a winter compass set for the final course;
Iliad in hand, he stretches out his arms,
to put into perspective what is about to happen —
when the bullets will fall like stresses on his body
and that which is proper to him will emerge from its hiding place
to take the new path inscribed on his forehead.
Then a deep silence will fall,
lighter than this day’s snowfall on yesterday’s drifts;
polite whispers in Russian and ancient Greek will come
from behind the broken door: ink-black,
leathery, heavy, bookish, “Please, madam, ladies first,”
and “I insist, madam, ladies first.”
II
2005
December. Piazza d’Autore. Fontana della Lingua.
Conference of marble gods. But indulgence
47
has softened and soiled their bodies, even the strongest among them.
And in that transparent air, even he seems etched through some design.
One of the figures, more solitary, sinks back
into the material, a bas-relief, unfinished,
and even if the man’s own features are better defined,
the one that troubles him still casts a human shadow.
In his teeth he holds a piece of wood (also of marble)
though why this has been stuck there in the figure’s body the author fails to specify:
all the water flowing invisibly up through his Adam’s apple
and down past his ankles, emerges in a thin stream
from the crack that a chisel’s tip, held in a leathery hand, once opened in his forehead.
III
Residents of the year 1995. Not far from here,
a siren of our age sounds,
afterwards shots, screams, a silence easily explained.
Then everything all over again from the beginning.
The human season has begun.
But farther off from us,
an ancient forest, attentive, brooding,
still has the strength to pull its heavy gates closed.
This time for good.
[...]
Translated from the Albanian by Gentian Cocoli and Erica Weitzman
48
Lazër Stani
Lazër Stani was born in Shkodra on 17 January 1959. He studied biology and
chemistry at the Faculty of Natural Sciences. He published the short story
collections Misteri i Hijeve (Mystery of Shadows), Shplakja e Santa Marisë (Unaging of Santa Maria), Në Bregenc Shkohet për të Vdekur (One Goes to Bregence
to Die ), Feniksi i Kuq (The Red Phoenix), Kohë për Nuse (Time for a Bride). He
has been awarded two prizes for the best short story collection of year 1993
and 1996 by the Albanian Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, as well as
the yearly prize for the best book published by Eurorilindja publisher in 1995.
Title: Kohë për nuse (Time for a Bride) Place of Publication: Tirana
Publisher: Gjergj Fishta
ISBN : 978-9928-161-65-9
49
Reviews:
“With his short stories of Kohë për Nuse (Time for a Bride) (the short story Daiza Zaharia could be considered as
a novel), Lazër Stani testified his ability as a prose writer of the highest rank, raising the Albanian short story
to those artistic levels aspired or achieved only by the literature of large nations”. (Anton Nikë Berisha)
“Stani is already well-known as a storyteller of originality who writes neatly about the big truths of literature,
those eternal themes such as love and hatred, life and death, good and evil. Through magical artistic language a
thrilling narrative strategy, his characters are outlined as fluid characters that live in our ambiance, breathe in it,
fall in love, lose their love, gain and lose their fame, bump against life’s waves, thus leaving a trace in the reader’s
conscience. Because their halo is the halo of somebody who lives every day with the truths that are uncontested
and valid for everyone.” (Ndue Ukaj)
“Two years ago, I read one of Lazër Stani’s first short stories Njeriu i Dosjes (The Man of the File). It was an amazing
surprise, one of those that only true art is able to cause. It was the short story of a masterful writer. And, as it often
happens in such cases, I tried to find connections between him and his forerunners. It is hard to find something
like that in our traditional or contemporary prose. The atmosphere, the density of feeling, his psychology somehow
reminds you of Kafka; his elegance and laconism - of Chekhov; the psychological analysis, the deep knowledge of
the human soul reminds you of masterly writers who are appreciated for such elements, as Dostoyevski, Buzzati”.
(Bardhyl Londo)
Extract
THE BEWITCHED
Something dramatic must have happened I thought when I saw the postman’s pale face as he
entered the clinic hurriedly and he said in a frightened voice: Doctor, do you treat magic? I was taken
aback by this silly question. I had never been asked about magic before.
Bad news, doctor, bad news overload, said the distraught postman. As if everything else wasn’t
enough, now we’re dealing with magic. The postman turned his eyes to the bookshelf and gave a
good look at the books, like he was browsing for one on treating magic, but he didn’t see the dreadful
word in any of them. He asked me fearfully if they taught us anything at university on how to treat
magic. They did, I replied, half-jokingly. Doctors learn about every evil that afflicts man.
Ah, said the postman, his eyes widened in surprise, knocked on his pate with his fist, and said
that we needed to go and treat Lena of Markaj’s daughter, Alina, who had been bewitched. You
have to do me this favour, doctor, begged the postman. Word has come out that it was my wife who
cast the spell. He blushed, he was embarrassed, his hands and knees were shaking. I swear, doctor,
whispered he shyly, my wife can’t even thread a needle, let alone cast a spell.
50
I told him to relax, as I would go to Lena’s house in the afternoon and visit her. The postman kept
staring at me with a scared and incredulous look. He had probably been threatened by the bewitched
girl’s relatives, or who knows, the threat had probably come from the mayor. He could not keep a
witch in his staff. That would ruin the authority of the commune administration. I’ll go and see her
in the afternoon at any cost, I promised. At that, the postman sent a thousand thanks and blessings
my way. I saw him out at the health centre’s yard and I shook his hand tightly, like a man who keeps
his word.
That same afternoon, when Lena saw me make a turn towards her gate, she warded me off. I
have no daughter who needs a doctor, said she in an angry voice, looking at me with her cunning
villager’s eyes. It’s pointless that they told you to come. Doctors do not treat magic.
A toneless manly voice was heard from the inside, saying: Bring the doctor in, you brazen woman!
Bring him in, I said, you’re bringing disgrace on us. Lena let me in and I made my way towards
the house, where her father-in-law, who could barely stand on his feet, appeared at the doorstep,
supporting himself with a crooked cornel-wood walking cane. Lena followed me, her head bowed.
The old man invited me into the guest chamber and ordered his daughter-in-law to immediately
make coffee for us and to bring the raki bottle and two glasses. Welcome, doctor, he said. And pay
no attention to that birdbrain; she’s lost what little mind she was left when her daughter got sick.
She’s completely out of her head.
I sat on the sheepskin-covered divan as the master of the house offered me, and I threw a glance at
the poverty-stricken but clean room. A calendar of two or three years ago with a seaside scene was
hanging on the wall.
Inside some wood frames manufactured in the Commune workshop there were numerous family
pictures, photos of dead grandparents, a yellowed wedding picture of a couple wearing a national
costume, photos of children and relatives. On the mantelpiece, there was a picture of the state leader
in a carved frame, happily smiling at the master of the house and the guests in this guest chamber.
My eyes were caught by an empty space on the wall, left by a picture frame that had been removed.
For a while, I tried figuring out whose picture that might have been, but I couldn’t come up with
anything. In that moment, as if he were reading my mind, the old man said: we have taken off the
picture of the sick girl. Her mother gave it to her own sister, so that she can take it to a Good Man
who can write an amulet for her. They say it cures magic and evil eye.
51
Lisandri Kola
Lisandri Kola was born in Shkodra in 12 May 1986. He has published several
collections of poetry Melodia e harpës (Harp’s Melody), Rabini i pasy (The Blind
Rabbi), Ungjilli (si)mbas Gjonit (Gospel According to John), As gëzuar nuk të
thashë (Didn’t Even Wish You Mother’s Day), Flutrat vdesin në maj (Butterflies
die in May) etc., as well as a novel Saga e nji dite (Saga of a Day). He has
translated Alda Merini Mishi i engjëjve (La carne degli angeli /Angles’ meat)
from the Italian language. In addition, he is co-translator of the treatise of
Pseudo-Longin E madhërishmja (On the Sublime). He is also writing scientific
articles and publications [such as Satira në epikën fishtiane (Satire in the
fishtean epic) or Struktura dhe funksioni i figures ne poemen ‘Lahuta e Malcis’ të
Gjergj Fishtës (Structure and function of the figure on ‘Highland Lute’ poem
of Gjergj Fishta)]. Since 2014 L. Kola holds a Phd degrees in Literature. Some
of his poetry is translated in Montenegrin language.
Title: Fluturat Vdesin ne Maj (Butterflies die in May)
Place of Publication: Pristina
Publisher: Dit’ e Na’
Genre: Poetry
Isbn: 978-9951-631-00-6
© all rights reserved to “Dit’ e Nat’ ” Publishing House
[email protected]
52
Extract
Didn’t Even Wish You Mother’s Day
Today is mother’s day , nanë. And, surely, you would have wanted a gift. Remember when I was a
child and used to bring you my own light, little thoughts, all wrapped up in a piece of paper?
Then, sooner or later, you’d take me and kiss me or you’d go tell all the women in the old
neighborhood what your son had gotten for you on
mother’s day. They’d whisper a “God bless him”
through their teeth. You’d have coffee together, a chitchat and that was it. Day would hole up forcefully in night’s armpit and the grass moistened under the sky’s wet back. Today is mother’s day, nanë. And you would have liked a gift, no matter how small. But, except for
my drinking, which goes on for days and nights in a row, I have nothing else for you. I know it’s not easy to see your son drunk, but it’s the stuff of love that troubles the poor fool.
It’s the stuff he’s not able to sort out as he mumbles about texts he thinks he’s so good at. In fact, this stuff is what everyone ever talks about and, to some extent, everyone knows what
causes man to arrive at such thresholds. Transformational thresholds. Or any other kind of
threshold worthy of a different modifier. It’s the snake from the Bible who rolled up
over the eggs he’d left at the roots of our tree. It’s that
same snake, with that same skin, and that same song
swirling on his tongue, with that same spit in his mouth. In this case it’s not clear whether things are said or unsaid. Whether logic is illogic.
Whether memory is mismemory. Love’s own splinters have seized your son and
have thrown him to the floor as if he were a little white
lamb. You’re the cause of narration in my writing yet
again. No matter what I make you look like. No matter in which book I mention you. Sometimes cruelly, sometimes indifferently. With artistic purpose, of course. Sometimes in The Melody of the Harp, sometimes in The Eyeless Rabi, sometimes in The Gospel According to John, and lately, in The Lost Manuscript of St. Matthew’s .
These books, sometimes they cost money,
sometimes they don’t, but together, they’re the price of
an ordinary book by Kadare. • This land is not Camaj’s land, or anyone else’s
who’s written about it. It’s Lisi’s land, your son’s, and
even while he’s always walking on it, he loves it and longs for it. 53
He loves it and longs for it because when he was born you made a cross on his forehead with dirt
from this land. Even though you gave him a Greek name. He doesn’t love this land just because all his first brethren walked on it: Fishta, Mjedja, Koliqi, Pali,
Pipa and many others . He loves it because it’s the land of your cross. Nanë, this time poetry can’t smooth out splinters, because it’s that red snake from the Bible
who decided to drop in on us for a visit.
It’s the snake
who’s numbed
our arms, nanë.
Our beaks,
under sawdust,
touched nothing.
My forehead ebbs
with waiting,
and you, white hairs
chainstitched
over your temples.
My friend loved foreign lands so much that when she’d go abroad she’d make up her nationality. She’d say, I’m from x place, without knowing that her accent would betray her. My friend was a bird who wanted to see too many foreign lands; that was the song she was born
with. It was the song of her veins, in the end. She didn’t like this land; used to think that only
weeds grow in it. It’s the kind of land one must flee from as soon
as possible. Far from it. Somewhere. Without knowing
where to. Without knowing what to do there. Without
knowing where to turn to. Let’s all run toward new shores. It’s better on the other side. We’ll have one another. As though here we couldn’t!
Let’s all run away from here, because this land
is an endless gravel strand. It’s the kind of land where nothing grows.
What should I have done with the dirt of your cross, nanë?
Take a slap from it once in a while for old time’s sake? (...............)
I’ve written a poem, nanë. The way I write them. Poems where sunlight never breaks in.
Translated from the Albanian by Ani Gjika
54
Luljeta Lleshanaku
Luljeta Lleshanaku was born in Elbasan, Albania. She studied Albanian
Philology & Literature at the University of Tirana and later she attended
an MFA Program in Warren Wilson College, USA She was a fellow of
“International Writing Program”, University of Iowa, in 1999 and had a
fellowship from the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada,
Las Vegas in 2008-2009. She is the author of seven volumes of poetry in
Albania and seven other volumes published in foreign languages, such as:
Haywire; New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, London, 2011), Fresco (New
Directions, USA, 2002), Fëmijët e natyrës (Child of Nature) (New Directions,
USA, 2010), Kinder der Natur (Edition Korrespondenzen, Austria, 2010), Dzieci
natury ( Stowo / Terytoria Obraz, Poland, 2011), Antipastorale (LietoColle,
Italy 2006), Lundo en sep Tago (Esperanto, Poland, 2013). She is the winner
of Crystal Vilenice 2009 international award, Silver Pen 2000 award, Author
of the Year award from the Book Fair of Tirana, 2013, Kult 2013 award and
the winner of the Book Fair of Pristina, 2013. She was a finalist for the The
Corneliu M Popescu Prize 2013 award in the UK and a 2011 finalist for BTBA
(Best Translated Book Award) in the USA. With her Polish publication, she
was nominated for The European Poet of Freedom international award, in
Gdansk, Poland, in 2012.
Title: Pothuajse Dje (Almost Yesterday)
Publisher: Ombra GVG
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 978-99906-054-9
© all rights reserved to the author and “Ombra GVG” Publishing House
55
Reviews:
“...We feel blessed that Ms. Lleshanaku has invited us to “the takeoffs and landings/on the runway of her
soul.” Dana Jennings, New York Times, July 22, 2010
“Hers are certainly poems about history, politics and power…But Lleshanaku is also original. When she turns
her attention to love, the sense of human fate is unsparing. The tyrant’s insistence that there is no private
realm has the unintended effect of making it necessary to write powerful and durable poems which suffer
all the constraints imposed by confinement and yet have something ungovernable in reserve, namely their
accuracy.” Sean O’Brien, The Guardian, 23 September 2011
“The Albanian poet Luljeta Lleshanaku’s first British collection is a revelation. The poems are peculiar and
sonorous in these translations, full of objects and souls, transformed and given wings in Chagall-like metaphor.
Her grand and melancholic opening poem ‘Memory’ sets the tone for this remarkable collection. Lleshanaku’s
poetry essentially describes Albanian rural life. Albania, remote and for so long an outcast in Europe, has
in Lleshanaku’s poetry a static, timeless quality.” Sasha Dugdale, Poetry Nation Review 205, Volume 38
Number 5, May - June 2012
Extract
OLD NEWS
In the village nestled between two mountains
the news always arrives one month late,
cleansed in transit, glorified, mentioning only the dead who made
it to paradise,
and a coup d‘état referred to as ‘God‘s will‘.
Spring kills solitude with solitude, imagination
the sap that shields you from your body. Chestnut trees
awaken, drunken men
lean their cold shoulders against a wall.
56
The girls here always marry outsiders and move away
leaving untouched statues of their fifteen-year-old
selves behind. But the boys bring in wives from distant villages,
wives who go into labor on heaps of grass and straw in a barn
and bear prophets.
Forgive me, I‘d meant to say ‘only one will be a prophet‘.
The others will spend their lives throwing stones
(that is part of the prophecy, too).
At noon on an autumn day like today
they will bolt out of school like a murder of crows stirred by the
smell of blood and chase the postman‘s skeleton of a car
as it disappears around a corner, leaving only dust.
Then they will steal wild pears from the ‘bitch‘s yard‘
and nobody will stop them. After all, she deserves it. She‘s sleeping
with two men. Between the pears in one boy‘s schoolbag
lies a copy of Anna Karenina.
It will be skimmed over, impatiently, starting on the last page
cleansed and glorified, like old news.
Translated from the Albanian by Henry Israeli
57
Mimoza Ahmeti
Mimoza Ahmeti was born on 25th of December 1963 in Kruja. She has
published widely and her books have been translated into Italian, French
and English. Although best known for her poems, she has also written short
stories, novels and articles. Mimoza Ahmeti has acknowledged a wide
range of cross knowledge education: literature and linguistic, philosophy,
MBA in IT from IKUB 2009, Switzerland and recently, June 2014, she was
awarded excellent PhD in Meaning theory research from SFU of Vienna.
She teaches at the Mediterranean Uiniversity of Albania. Actually she lives
in Tirana. Winner of Poetry Festival of San Remo, organized by RAI, 1998!
Ahmeti wrote the poem collections Bëhu i bukur (Be Beautiful), the fiftythree poems collection Delirium, the novels Arkitrau (The Architrave) and
Gruaja halucinante (The Hallucinating Woman) etc.
Title: Gruaja halucinante (The Hallucinating woman)
Publisher: Ombra GVG
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 978-99943-897-0-X
© all rights reserved to the author and “Ombra GVG” Publishing House
58
The plot: The novel has in the center of the story a woman. Her world perception, thinking and relations
entered a transfiguration from the wars in Balkan and intensification of politics and male personality in social
life crisis of the country. The other character is a young boy, who seeks to assist her alongside isolation, but
here constrains a confused situation, often giving colors for the text. Attended also by her old aged doctor
and psychotherapist, she discovered other ventures and limitations of political systems. From fallacy based
understanding of the metaphysical Western culture to Taoist, Yoga and mystic elements of interpretation of
quotidian, which delimited her dramatic closure of understanding, turning sorrow of depression into the
delight of insight! An aggravated journey to recover understanding and make possible its continuity!
Extract
The light rolled over the vehicle’s windows that morning, while she was rushing with a sense
of impatience to find the closest fragrance shop. She stopped. She was surprised that her vehicle
dutifully obeyed and stopped immediately.
This headache will ruin her life and a little aroma would do her good. A few scented candles and
the pain will be eased.
Nobody knew how much she was suffering from pain, but it would be useless to say a word, for it
was all Greek.....
The shop didn’t carry candles - at least, not the scented ones. The shopkeeper offered her some dried
flowers in a cherry color. The woman was struck by their beauty and the idea that all good fragrances
together yield a cherry color. They were flowers wrapped in pink silk and a netting of the same color.
Her hair was flat but she felt as if it turned curly, her clothing was simple but she felt she was
wearing cherry clothes and her unvarnished lips seemed to have a bloody cherry color.
Although she felt lightheaded she managed to find the door and walked out with the flowers in
hand, with the scent of autumn gorges and valleys.
It was spring.
How beautiful those flowers wrapped in silk looked in her vehicle. She realized that it was not
just the pain which had forced her to hurry in finding the fragrances, but also because she missed
so much someone whom she had not seen for months. She drove her car, crazy with joy from the
thought of seeing him.... although there was nothing else there but a car, a woman, and a bouquet of
flowers in a cherry color - this was the meeting.
The woman smelled the flowers. She felt an immense pleasure and could not part from them. It was
like a rare kiss from which it is hard to separate yourself. If anyone were to have seen her, he would
59
have been fascinated, but today a trained male eye would resent her. These kinds of kisses were
outdated now and such kindness causes resentment; especially when it is surrounded by curly hair
which in fact is completely flat.
Her husband considered her a hallucinating woman who suffered from a baseless imagination and
he did not hide a kind of resentment for her somewhat grave condition.
But the other guy, whom she missed so much, did not behave much better.
So she wandered in between her husband and her lover, without having either, and she called this
happiness made possible by the city.
The woman was so beautiful that her age did not matter, but her beauty was in such a sorrowful
condition that one should have led a painful life in order to call her a beautiful woman. Her nervous
breakdowns had worn her out; still, suffering doesn’t just come along, we ask for it.
There was no way out of them for they controlled her; they were like an unpredictable drive inserted
in her body from god knows where.
She missed being bored. But she had lost this human right because even the smallest frustration
caused her a nervous breakdown.
The time when she was bored and suffered from antagonistic thoughts and unfulfilled desires and
when she could make her days somber like a cloudy sky seemed wonderful to her. How happy the
man who can be bored is, she thought, but he doesn’t realize that. He is bored but doesn’t die.
She found some somber faces at the door of the mental clinic. They were waiting in line for their
turn. She couldn’t understand why another shock was added to the ones that she already had and
where it had come from. The patients seemed to be ruined not because of their illnesses but because
of their poverty. She was wondering if she was one of them. At that moment she noticed a big mole
on the head of one of them, full of pulsating capillaries underneath. She was astonished. She wanted
to leave but the nurse at the door stopped her by saying, “Please come in, lady.”
She walked frightened among the patients, who did not react. The doctor, who seemed like a small
docile lamb, was sitting behind the desk with a big notebook in front of him.
“I am here only to ask some questions,” said the woman.
“Feel free to talk. I am not taking notes or opening any file,” said he.
“I am suffering from brain contractions.....”
“Have you tried painkillers?” he interrupted her.
“My body rejects them,” she said.
Translated from the Albanian by Ilir Shameti
60
Mira Meksi
Mira Meksi (27 September 1960) is a prose writer, literary translator and
publicist. She graduated from Tirana University in French Philology and was
specialized in Contemporary Hispanic Literature in Zaragoza, Spain, and in
Literary Translation in Arles (France). She has translated into Albanian authors
such as Marquez, Borges, Sabado, Paz, Dumas Kundera, Yourcenar, Duras,
etc. She has written historical novels Frosina e Janinës (Frosina of Ioannina) ,
Mallkimi i priftëreshave të Ilirisë (The Curse of the Priestesses of Illyria) and the
novels Porfida (The Porfid) and E kuqja e demave (The Red of Bulls), volumes
of short stories, volume of essays, novels for teenage, tales etc. Her work
has been translated into French, English, Spanish, Italian, Macedonian, etc.
She has received the RFI prize of unpublished story in Paris; Saint Quentin
Festival prize of, France; The Silver Pen National Translation Award, The
National Essay Award, She was finalist of the Balkanika 2010 Balkan literary
contest, she has received the title Comendadora of the Order of the Civil
Merit awarded by Juan Carlos I, King of Spain, Francophone Personality of
Multilingualism 2009 honorary title: etc.
Title: E Kuqja e Demave (The Red of Bulls)
Publisher: Onufri
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 978-99956-87-88-5
© all rights reserved to the author and “Onufri” Publishing House
61
The plot: The story takes place in an ancient city of legends, bullfighting and alchemy in Spain, where Babel
– a Translation House – is situated. The narrator (the novel is narrated in first person) goes there to translate
a Spanish romantic writer into her language of origin. For the first time, she leaves her small, isolated, Balkan
country. There, she discovers an unknown universe which is beyond her wildest imagination: she discovers
opium as an instrument that enables penetration in the mysteries of consciousness and literary translation;
discovers extraordinary performance of bullfighting and the mythical, almost sensual rite of bull killing; she
discovers her true and very dangerous love for a famous matador; she discovers the Icons’ universe within the
great universe; she discovers the Warriors Against the Forgetfulness of the Icon White Monks, , who have been
working for many years to decipher the mystery of the red colour of the icons of Onufri, the famous Albanian
iconographer of the Middle Ages. Above all, she finds out that she is “the chosen one”, the missionary of
decipherment of the mystery of Onufri’s red. Two worlds are present at the same time, the one of bullfighting
and the one of Icons, which have the red colour of blood in common; they fill the labyrinth spaces of the novel
that create mystery, thriller, suspense and even the prototype of Death itself. Now, submerged in the universe
of the Icon and accustomed to its idle observation, the narrator manages to communicate with Onufri, the
medieval iconographer within opium’s foggy hallucinations. And, through the alchemy of her extraordinary
sensitivity and image memories of Onufri’s icons in the Museum of her country, she achieves to decipher the
hundreds-years mystery of the red in his icons: it’s a human blood red, because the colour has been extracted
from the ground that was kneaded and leavened with human blood in a famous battlefield in the Albanian
land, where Skanderbeg fought the ottomans.
Extract
Same as the disappeared Rublev – the notorious 15th century iconographies, whose icon “Trinity”
that I evoked afore had become a model after the verdict of The Stoglavy Synod, and for which
Rublev himself was later elected a saint– the same way Onufri haunted my slumber where hazy
impaired visions tangled with the fumes of opium, promising a heavy sleep on leaden lids. The
flashy gleam of his icons had paved way into it. He wore a crimson cloak and seemed as large as life,
although I was conscient, during the first minutes, of my drowsy state. But, as I stared long enough at
him, I began to experience his own time, and wandered lost into the labyrinth of a dream-wake state,
which soon replaced the deep reality in me. Only in dreams one is mostly oneself, they say; the soul
buds as the body reposes, and passion embraces the mind faster and stronger than one’s awake, and
the soul soars, because, they say, the power of the soul reigns higher while one sleeps in alleviation
... I concocted my own world that same night, while I was in an opium-drenched dream; the world
Plutarcus writes about: a world that one shares not with the others; I had assembled its elements
gradually in time; at brief moments I was soon conscious of my reverie, and then my inquiries had a
62
decisive aim. In my recollection, it was the color of Onufri’s uncommonly inflamed cloak that made
me ask h:
- Are you in eternity? He shrugged. -Do you live beyond time? – insisted I. He then addressed to
me: - Eternity is neither in front, nor behind, nor is it beyond the time. -What is, then, eternity? -It
is the dimension where time is an open site. I narrated then the marvel of that day, and lined up the
details orderly; I told him about abbot Juan’s solitary cell at the Varuela Monastery, which seemed
remote from this world; I re-stated how I eyed incessantly the icon and how I’d planted myself in
front of it in a feverish contemplation; and the impossibility to measure the sum of hours or even
decades that slotted down into me while I kept viewing it. -Which icon was it? – he asked me. -The
Apparition of the infant Christ in the Temple, - said I, the icon they keep at the church of Saint Triada;
when suddenly all its intricate details were revealed to me eyes, all that I had contemplated for
hours or years in the cell of Verula Monastery; but it was at the Castrum of Berat that I’d first laid
my eyes on it. Onufri spoke as if he was following directly the display of the detailed revelation
of the icon that I’d experience: - The scene is the interior of the Temple of Jerusalem; the tapestry
also configures this. Yet you can see, partly, in the background, the gables of a church; and further,
another, more complete and noble building that evokes the Temple; its architecture is outlined as a
reverse perspective, so that the spectator finds himself within the composition. Forty days after his
birth, on the 2nd of February, the son of God is escorted into the Temple, in order to submit like all
men to the Law issued by Moses … The Mother of God is placed in the center, bestowing her son.
And Joseph, her husband, follows after her, with a couple of thrushes to bequeath. Ensuing, Anne,
the prophetess, with her left hand handed out, pointing at the Savor of Jerusalem, while she holds
the unraveled scroll of the Law in her right hand. Simon, the elderly of the Temple, opens his arms
to Jesus, while Mary’s still with her arms out towards the Son; the cloak covers his hands, a sign
of respect, down from the sanctuary vault. Built upon the siborium, the altar evokes the Sacrifice of
Christ, as two holy gates seal up the altar itself.
-Yes, - explained he to me after this description. This icon represents a theological synthesis of
Christ’s mundane existence: his obedience to Father, up to self-sacrifice, the mission for which he
descended upon the earth and for which we laud him, the glory of Resurrection. In my account I
spoke about the red bend that flaps at the summit of the temple, and how my friend in the white
cassock had explained to me kits unique fervor and glint without peer and unparalleled in all icons
of all times produced; I accounted, too, that as I kept contemplating that ribbon, I’d, for hours and
centuries, trod down a path which sprawled ahead but also floated infinitely above up into the thin
air …
Translated from the Albanian by Idlir Azizi
63
Parid Teferiçi
Poet and painter Parid Teferiçi (b. 1972) was born and raised in Kavaja. From
1990 to 1994 he studied computer science at the University of Tirana and
from 1994 to 1999, he studied economics at the Bocconi University of Milan,
Italy. During 1999-2001, he served as head archivist at the library of the Don
Calabria Institute in Rome, and in 2001 he became curator of the visual arts
section of the Cini Cultural Institute in Ferrara. He has exhibited his painting
in Italy. In 2005, he returned to Albania to take part in the parliamentary
elections as a candidate for the Republican Party in his native Kavaja.
Teferiçi has published two slender volumes of poetry: Bërë me Largësi (Made
with Distance), Tirana 1996, and Meqenëse Sytë (Since the Eyes), Tirana 2003.
Title: Meqenëse Sytë (Since the Eyes)
Publisher: Aleph
Genre: Poetry
© all rights reserved to the author and to ‘Aleph’ publishing house:
[email protected]
[email protected]
64
Review
“He is very complicated in his fantasy, demanding in his choices and cultural taste which is mature in its
manifestation.” (Agron Gjekmarkaj)
Extract
In Obot, While Waiting
In Obot, as he waited for the ferry to take them over to Bar, Gjergj Nikolla decided to while away the
time by cheering up his twelve-year-old son (it was the first time the lad had been away from Shkodra).
He took a stone, flung it across the Buna and invited him to outdo him if he could. The son smiled at the
unexpected challenge from his father, chose a stone with great care and clambered down to the riverside.
Clasping the stone to throw it farther than his father’s and perhaps even to the other bank, he felt a
sharp pain in the palm of his hand. His wish was simply to hurl the stone and the pain as far away
as he could. But he did not outdo his father, and he still has the pain to this day.
In Perspective
...sarebbe stato il più leggiadro e capriccioso ingegno che avesse avuto da Giotto in qua l’arte della pittura, se egli si fusse affaticatò tanto nelle figure ed animali, quanto egli si affaticò e perse tempo nelle cose di prospettiva.
VASARI
DONATELLO
Carts in perspective roll on one wheel;
Horses hide behind their tails; trees - beneath the grass,
And people have no hands to greet one another.
What remains of us beyond our visual perception?
PAOLO UCCELLO
Man, in perspective, is his visual perception.
Our strongest point, our ultimate strength,
Is the fact that we appear when seen from a distance.
65
Levers of light, with it and only with it,
Succeed in exalting us to our dignity.
DONATELLO
Distance is the wall which separates us
From the truth, from forms.
PAOLO
It is the wall where truth casts its shadow
And we can draw forms.
DONATELLO
But there, the light, thought bright, is not enough.
How can our visual perception ever suffice?
PAOLO
Do not confuse visual perception with light,
As death confuses the farmer with his fields.
DONETELLO
Exactly, in perspective, we are dead.
PAOLO
We are our visual perception. Death - a form.
The Poet
They shoot at me where I am not to be found.
It comes to pass that they raise my hand from the table
To see if I am not hiding there.
It comes to pass that I must give way
To someone hastening by in search of me.
It comes to pass that they set me on fire
To look for me in the darkness.
However much I stand with my back against the wall
They do not shoot me.
66
Preç Zogaj
Poet, prose writer and political figure Preç Zogaj (b. 1957) was born in Manatia
in Lezha District. He studied language and literature at the University of
Tirana and thereafter worked as a journalist and publisher. Zogaj played a
significant role in the democratic movement in Albania in 1990 and served
as Minister of Culture in the “stability government” of June 1991. Since
that time, he has been active both as a writer and as a politician. Among his
more recent publications are poetry collections: Qielli i Gjithkujt, (Everyone’s
Sky), Kalimi (The Passing), and Pas Erës së Re (Following the New Era), Gjallë
Unë Pashë (I Saw Alive), Nuk Ndodh Asgjë veç Dashurisë (Nothing Happens but
LOVE), Ngjarje në tokë (Occurrence on earth) Fundi, një Fëmijëri Tjetër (The
End, Another Childhood); and the works in prose: Shetitorja (The Promenade)
and Pa histori (Without History); and the study Paradhoma e një Presidenti (The
President’s Antechamber) Fillimet (The beginnings) . His works have been
translated into French and Italian.
He has been awarded the Penda e Argjendtë (Silver Pen) award in 2000 for
his poetry volume Kalimi (The Passing) and in 2008 the Lasgush Poradeci
award for his poetry collection Gjallë unë Pashë (I Saw Alive).
Title: Ngjarje në tokë (Occurrence on earth)
Publisher: Tirana Times & AIIS
ISBN 978-9928-4038-5-8
Genre: Poetry
© all rights reserved to “Tirana Times & AIIS” Publishing House
[email protected]
67
Reviews:
“It is a poem with feeling. It has the temperature of life, of humanity.” (Visar Zhiti)
As a poet, Zogaj is profoundly in love with Albanian distinctive natural beauty, rugged mountains, and
picturesque Adriatic coastline. He is intensely interested in the social, economic and political aspect of his
country. As a result, a fair amount of the cultural substance of this background is infused into his verse. (Gjekë
Marinaj)
Occurrence on earth, translated and published in English by the Center for Translation Studies of The University
of Dallas, Texas (USA), speaks to the collective experience of his people during the period leading up to and
immediately following the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. Zogaj’s verses, composed between 1989
and 2008, present the haunting introspection of a people just emerging from decades of life under one of the
world’s most isolated and repressive dictatorship.
Extract
I TOOK SORROW BY THE HAND
I took sorrow by the hand,
Went to drown it in the river,
But the stream was too shallow.
Tossed it over my shoulder like a sack,
Went to throw it from a cliff top,
But the ground was too near.
Then I swaddled it in a cradle,
Two days and nights I rocked it,
But it wouldn’t fall asleep.
Now I wander the streets,
With sorrow on my face:
Forgive me, I say to all.
68
THE SISTER OF JESUS
People were dying,
Seasons getting killed.
Women with hungry children at their bosoms,
Waiting in line, in silence answering,
Destroying wisdom itself.
I thought only of you.
Back and forth, back and forth.
The sea besieged the bay chasing the clouds,
Like the Jel mountains pursued the deer
In a dream that I had from forgotten time.
The nights would fall, the memories, the leaves.
My future Decembers, what I had left,
Were falling on top of each other faster than the time
Of this planet.
From a mountain defiled
My dear grandma kept signaling,
As if she wanted me to turn my head
Toward the old snake that menaced me from behind.
Get away! Get away! Get away!
I thought only of you.
I
thought
Only of you.
I thought
Only of you.
Were you the sister of Jesus,
O quiet
Spirit made of matter,
Thought, illness that changes systems ?!
Translated from the Albanian by Gjekë Marinaj
69
Ridvan Dibra
Ridvan Dibra was born in Shkodra on 9 January 1959. He was raised and
educated in his hometown. He graduated in Albanian Language and Literature
from Luigj Gurakuqi University of Shkodra. He worked as a teacher in Kukes
(1982-1987) and as a journalist in Shkodra (1988-1994). Currently, he is a
professor of foreign literature at the University of Shkodra. He is the author
of over twenty books in prose and poetry. He has written many essays and
has conducted many studies. Among the most important works of the writer,
are: Thjesht (Simple), Eklipsi i shpirtit (Eclipse of the Soul), Prostituta e virgjër
(The Virgin Prostitute), Nudo (Nudes),Stina e ujkut (The Season of the Wolf),
Franc Kafka i shkruan të birit (Franz Kafka Wrote to his Son), Triumfi i Gjergj Elez
Alisë (Gjergj Elez Alia’s Triumph) and Triumfi i dytë i Gjergj Elez Alisë (Gjergj
Elez Alia’s Second Triumph). Parts of this work have been included in six
anthologies nationwide and abroad, and have been translated into English,
French, German, Italian, Romanian, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Bosnian, etc.
His work has been rewarded with several national and international prizes.
His latest work, The Legend of Loneliness, was awarded the Rexhai Surroi Prize
as the best novel of the year in the Albanian territory.
Title: Legjenda e Vetmisë (The Legend of Loneliness)
Publisher: Onufri
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 978-99956-87-82-3
© all rights reserved to the author and “Onufri” Publishing House
70
The plot: The novel The Legend of Loneliness is based on the motives of an old Albanian folk song, but the
folk material is utilized and transformed in accordance with the intentions of the author’s aesthetic goals.
The events of the novel are placed in an undefined area somewhere in the north of Albania, on purpose. The
main character of the novel, who serves as the connecting node of fable, is called Bala. At a young age, Bala
witnesses a serious misfortune: his father’s death. According to the official version, which is supported by
Bala’s mother, his father committed accidental suicide while hunting. Bala, despite his young age, is full of
doubts. At a certain moment, he is convinced that his father was murdered and the killer was his father’s best
friend, the neighbour living closest to their house. The reason for the killing was the secret love affair between
the neighbour and his mother. The discovery of this truth shocks and disorientates Bala the teenager. As a
result, he undergoes a deep change. He used to have a sensitive character and possess a soul of outstanding
artistic taste; after this, he turns into an introverted individual who doubts everything. Then, the moment
comes and he sets himself the one goal alone: revenge. In this way, a triangle is built: the neighbour (the killer)
- mother (adulterous) - and Bala (thirsting for revenge). Thus, with his doubts and dilemmas, Bala reminds
us somehow of Prince Hamlet, as well as the tragical Orestes. Bala’s plans for taking vengeance fail. After
the plan fails, the neighbour and his mother blind Bala and call it an accident. Finally, the mother marries
the murderous neighbour. Bala the Blind is forced to participate at the wedding. The old friends accept Bala
in his present state. The society accepts the individual, but only when he goes blind. In this sense, the new
novel is defined by contemporary symbolism and interpreted by new interpretations and angles of reading. In
conclusion, we can say that the novel The Legend of Loneliness is essentially both Albanian and of the Balkans,
just as much as it is universally human.
Extract
“The mother blinded her own son, just to marry her husband’s killer”.
(From an Ancient Legend)
1.
Bala always stays alone.
Even if dislikes loneliness.
Because he is only 18 years old.
Oftentimes, he sits and hides behind the Black Rock. A huge Rock, as big as Bala’s house. And a
rock for which the old men swear that “it has fallen from the sky.” There hides Bala. And sits and
watches how kids of his age play silly games on the grass and the flowers of the Blue Eye Meadow.
Kall call it thus: “Blue Eye Meadow. Because in the midst of it, exactly at the middle, there is a very
small lake. With a water that is always blue and limpid. Thus, if you climb somewhere higher, let’s
say at the Mountaintop of Egoboka, and gaze down (something that Bala has done tens and hundreds of
times), the Meadow will appear exactly as a huge human eye with pines – eyebrows on the sides and the
71
lake – as an iris in the middle. Or so it seems to him, to Bala, that is.
Bala feels secure in the place where he is sitting. Because the Black Rock has a very bad reputation, all
around and nobody dares approach it. Except for the girls, that to Bala’s surprise, often happens to get
closer to that Rock. Without any concern for ‘the bad reputation. ”Or just because the Black Rock has that
kind of reputation. Who could figure out the girls! Save that in such cases, once they get closer to the Rock,
Bala has behind his back the forest. The forest where he disappears once he senses that danger.
His coevals improvise all sorts of plays there on the Meadow... these seem like new and strange
games that ten years ago, nobody played. Then, when Bala could join his coevals. Or may have been
played even then by older kids.
“Because every age has its own plays.” chats Bala with the Black Rock, his only friend for the past
ten years.
“Not only every age, but every era too” answers the friend.
This seems to Bala to be the same thing. However, he does not understand the meaning of these
new and strange games that are played in front of his own eyes. Or to be more precise, those games
that are played in the front of one of the eyes (the left eye). Because, the other, just to feel secure, he
keeps it hidden behind the Black Rock. No, no, Bala does not comprehend those games. Even if he
thinks about them quite a bit. The reason must be the distance; from where he is hidden, up to the
Meadow where his equals are having fun, the distance may be about hundred yards. or so.
“Yes, the distance is the problem” says Bala to the Black Rock.
The Rock does not answer. Which means that it thinks differently from his friend. In beginning
Bala is annoyed. However, after a few moments pass, and once he becomes honest with his own self,
admits that the distance is not guilty at all. It is hidden somewhere else, the guilt that is: how could
you understand games that you yourself have never played?
Because, even from that distance, he could see his coevals dresses.
Because he can distinguish boys from girls.
The girls! Even when they are just getting closer to the Meadow, Bala feels their presence. Entirely
different from anything else. Neither with the smells that rise from underneath the soil. Nor like
the smells that drip from above the sky. The smell of the girls, that, is. It happens quite often that,
after they have bathed at the Lake in the middle of the Meadow, girls approach to the Black Rock
.However, by then, Bala dissipates as a shadow in the forest behind the back. He has chosen a big
tree and sits couched behind its huge trunk, while the girls laugh. Laugh and play with words and
hands with each-other. Then they undress, naked. And hang their clothes to dry on the Black rock.
Bala, then, without living his days and a crazy imagination lowers his pants and touches with
hands his own thing. The livid trunk of the pine slimes As if there just passed a humongous snail.
Translated from the Albanian by Shinasi Rama
72
Rita Petro
Rita Petro (Filipi) was born on March 13, 1962, in Tirana, Albania. She has
graduated from the University of Tirana, Albanian Language and Literature
Branch (1980-1984). She specialized in Ancient Philosophy and Culture at
the University of Athens (1993). She worked as an editor and specialist on
the subject of literature for primary education (1985-2000). She established
Albas Publishing House (2000) where she he is currently holding the office of
Director of Publications.
She has authored 36 school textbooks on Albanian Language and Literature for
primary. She has also authored the following 5 poetic books poetic: Slandered
Verses; Taste of Instinct; They Sing Live Here Below; In privacy ... by Rita; The Hole.
She is the winner of “Onufri Prize” (1999). She is also winner of the “Prize
for Poetry Career (2014). She has participated in several International Poetry
Festivals. Her work as appeared in various literary magazines and anthologies
of the contemporary world literature.
Title: “VRIMA” (THE HOLE)
Publisher: Albas
ISBN : 978-9928-02-461-9
Genre: Poetry
© all rights reserved to the author: [email protected]
73
Reviews:
Her book “Vrima” (The Whole) was published under the title “L’Origine” by L’HARMATTAN,
France 2015.
This book describes the female allegorical journey that begins with the Exodus from the flesh walls to travel
constantly surrendering body and soul throughout the Forbidden Zone where freedom is hiding, and reach
the abyss of eternity where the seeds of rebirth are to be found.
The journey through this energetic power, which is also known as sexual history, continues in the second
part of the book where a real incest relation rises to the height of a philosophical and theological thought on
the creation of the human world. Here, the fruits of love reveal the human being down to its secret instincts
and passions, which sometimes takes the disfigured shape of sister-brother relationship, of what is forbidden
and punishable according to moral and social codes. However, at close reading level (which poetry always
requires), the poetic message can be adequately deciphered only through the help of theology and philosophy.
Through great controversial art, the poetess breaks the taboos related to morals, legends, and philosophical
conceptions of existence, thus extremely provoking the reader’s intellect and feelings. Even in the most
romantic situations, she shakes the feelings instead of caressing them.
This book aims to reveal poetically darkest recesses of the universal consciousness and human soul. Eros is
placed in the center of the harmony of celestial and human bodies: Its presence is felt in every line of the book
as motherhood and female sensuality.
Extract
THE HOLE
Come here
My brother
My lover
Extend your hand
Do you feel the hot breath flowing out of this hole?
It will burn your fingers… even without putting them inside it
Do you smell the flavor of that whit liquid matter trying to pour out?
And when it cakes
You can see
Its green orange threads
It smells like sulphur
My brother
74
My lover
This will be the end of the world
The earth’s orgasm exploding outside
The whole world will get burnt by a volcano
Staying silent under the earth
Hidden under the ashes of past volcanoes
I feel it under my feet
It is thronging
I have tried it
(I once lived in the exploding lo of Jupiter)
The earth trembled, and lava devoured everything
Trees, stones, temples, swords, and sheets
Men and women, old and young, children… flocks of animals
Thousands of embryos that were waiting to come into life
I ran to extinguish the fire in the ocean
But even there the water was floating…
I remember that to this day
My cells melted into orgasms of lava
My bones remained there – they turned into black stones
My flesh… turned into ashes
With the wind spreading them all over cosmos
Bringing me back here
Reborn from a new volcano
Come here
My brother
My lover
Burn your fingers in this hole
If you really want to know
That the EARTH is preparing for a new explosion…
Translated from the Albanian from Ukë Buçpapaj
75
Romeo Çollaku
Romeo Çollaku (b. 1973, Saranda, southern Albania) is a poet, prose writer,
playwright, and translator. He has published five books of poetry, a novel,
and a book of short stories, and has translated a wide range of nineteenthand twentieth- century European writers into Albanian and Modern Greek,
among whom Villon, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Claudel, Seferis, Kavafis, Ricos,
Elitis and Rilke. He has received both the Albanian National Award for
Translation and the Albanian National Award for Fiction. The work of Romeo
Çollaku has also been published in anthologies and literary magazines in
English, Bulgarian, French, Greek and German.
Title: Varrezat e Vendlindjes (Hometown Cemetery)
Publisher: Aleph
Genre: Novel
ISBN : 99927-766-3-3
© all rights reserved to the author and to ‘Aleph’ publishing house:
[email protected]
[email protected]
76
The plot: In centre of the novel is a grave robber, who, after having practiced this illegal profession
for years, decides to rob the graves of his own city, which he left at a very young age. This act, which
he tries to commit together with his old strict mentor, will not be easy at all; the confrontation to his
childhood will lead him to some dramatic surprises.
Even the characters of this book are not able to distinguish where reality ends and where the tale
begins. The characters move from the tale to reality and from reality to the tale, from terrestrial life
to life after death, from one epoch to the other. All these things have only one purpose: to manifest
the big dilemmas of the human soul.
Extract
The hole had been dug enough and Master jumped inside it. From above, Prentice pointed the
torchlight towards him.
-
She was pretty, - Master said, turning the skull aside, but Prentice did not hear that.
After having rummaged around in mud, bones and water for almost twenty minutes, Master came
out of the hole and, grim in his face, he showed Prentice a golden ring.
Just the ring, - the latter said. – Very little for a young bride, isn’t it?
- This is how much her people were willing to give, - Master said in irony. – That’s true, very little for
a young bride, but this isn’t something that you didn’t know, Prentice. You knew this before we set
off. I knew that too, but I still paid heed to you. Tell me, you knew it, didn’t you?
-
I did, - Prentice said.
Master shook his head in rebuke.
-
Keep going further on, - he said, putting the ring in a small bag.
Prentice read two or three gravestones without saying a word. What could he say about them?
What other than silence could describe best the economic condition of a person who is born, lives
and reaches the end of his life in utter poverty?
-
Were these like the rest of them? – Master asked.
-
They were completely broke, - Prentice said.
-
How about this one here?
-
The same. I feel sorry for him. He was alive when I left.
-
People die, Prentice.
-
Yes, Master. They die. All of them.
-
They die.
77
An epitaph carved on one of the headstones attracted Prentice’s attention: “You should be happier
than us.” He read that to Master.
- What was he?
After racking his brain for a little while, he said:
- This name doesn’t ring a bell.
- Happy! – said Master in surprise.
Prentice started looking for the pickaxe.
In the meantime, hope made Master’s eyes sparkle like flint stone. A happy man! A happy dead
man! They couldn’t have written the epitaph in vain. “The deceased, - thought Master, - must have
enjoyed life in wealth and prosperity, like we all dreamed, so he passed being contented. Happy.
They must have given him something to take with him of all that opulence, to remind him here,
where he lies, of the years he lived in lavish splendour”.
Prentice dug the soil persistently, removed it with the spade, then dug again and again asked
Master to give him the spade.
At some point, he froze, pickaxe in hand.
- Can you hear footsteps?
- I can only hear the rain. – said Master.
Nobody was coming. Prentice could clearly hear the footsteps of the person that would come to
dig his grave one day.
- Stop! Stop digging! – yelled Master sometime. – Where is your mind wandering? Come on up.
There’s the coffin plank. Climb out and hold the light for me, quick!
They switched sides. Master went down, and after a while, he shouted:
- Damn! What is this?
He threw a tall plank out of the grave. He had mistaken it for a coffin plank. Prentice pointed the
torchlight at the muddied wood, and he saw it was an oar.
- I need light here, - yelled Master again, enraged. He had buried his arms elbow-deep in the wet
soil and was persistently and anxiously searching.
- Stop searching in there, it’s useless. – said Prentice from above.
- What?
- There is no dead body in there.
- There is no grave without a dead body in it.
Master did not believe in symbolic graves, in cenotaphs, although he had heard about them
numerous times. He did not believe in them, because he had never seen one. But, in half an hour, he
climbed out of the hole, fuming with anger.
78
Rudi Erebara
Rudi Erebara is a poet, novelist and translator. His first published work, the
poetry collection Fillon Pamja (There Begins the Sight), is part of several poetic
anthologies. Erebara has translated Robert Hass’ poetry, Herman Melville’s
Moby Dick as well as works by A. R. Ammons and Aldous Huxley. He won the
prize as best translator of the year with Ammon’s book.
Title: Vezët e Thëllëzave (The Partridge’s Eggs)
Publisher: Pika pa sipërfaqe
Genre: Novel
ISBN:978-99956-824-9-1
© all rights reserved to the author [email protected]
79
The plot: The novel is about the deportation of a family during the communist dictatorship. Linda’s husband
and Afërdita’s father tries to go over the border and is sentenced to death. As a result to that, his family is
deported to a northern village. Mother and daughter, Linda and Afërdita, who are the main characters of the
book, live their life in deportation, in loneliness and poverty. They live in an almost ruined shack and have to
fight against cruelty, day by day, for seven years. Mother and daughter are shown in the borderline between
life and death. Will they live or will they die? The characters are able to survive praying to God and finding out
that even animals were more human than the ideology-brainwashed beings around them. The author recounts
the dictatorship’s absurdity through the eyes of a child. 13-year-old Afërdita narrates the story with calmness
and naivety. It is the diary of a child in a very high artistic level.
Extract
The Partridge’s Eggs
The more time passed, the more I thought about Father New Year. I don’t know when he passed
here in the snowy night. I know he doesn’t travel in his chariot pulled by reindeer to bring us gifts,
but I wanted a gift with all my heart. He had maybe passed this way in one of the days when the big
wolf of the pack would pee on the doorstep of our broken gate, to show all animals and people that
we were his friends.
As a matter of fact, one day Mom cooked a nice meal with mushrooms and very little oil and very,
very little applesauce dissolved in boiling water. For the New Year, may it be a good year, - she said,
although I thought it was early March. She was unwell, and when she slept, she would call out dad’s
name and get up like a moonstruck woman. I thought she was cr..., but I never mentioned that word
to myself; I now feared that word even more than my father’s death.
We mostly cooked wild potherbs and corn flour, with no oil, in a baking pan. Mom bought salt
when she went to the village herself to get some corn flour. She did not take me with her. She came
back and took the sack off her back and on the floor, took off her boots and went close to the fire. She
smoked rolled tobacco; I didn’t know where she had got it from. She placed the sack of corn flour
– the monthly ration of the man with a moustache riding a mule – as a pillow under her head, and
fell asleep. Or she pretended to fall asleep. She often placed her hand between her legs, as if she was
hiding something; maybe the money, maybe some very mysterious secret that I wasn’t supposed to
uncover.
80
One day, Mom did not get up with me in the morning, and I let her sleep. I got out and closed the
gate with the suitcase and I watched the birds. I collected potherbs like I had seen mom do, except for
charlock, whose bitterness could not be disguised by the corn flour - not even with unused peanut
oil. Mom did not move at all for two full days, and I collected food. Whenever I happened to find
mushrooms, I would collect them like dad had taught me to:
Mushrooms are like women. The good ones are either white, or ugly. Those with bright colours are
like women why try to look pretty in order to be noticed. So, those with bright colours are poisonous;
do not touch them: they are like wicked, promiscuous women who love nobody but themselves.
I cooked the mushrooms as well as I could. Mom ate them and fell asleep. I didn’t know where
to go, for I had no money to buy anything. Mom kept the money in her clothes. Probably in her
underwear. And even if I tried, I wouldn’t be able to buy anything. Who would sell anything to
me, if they hadn’t sold to mom? So I kept repeating the same thing. I collected wild potherbs every
day. The warmer the weather turned, the larger the leaves became and the easier it was to collect
them. I didn’t even need to go deep into the bushes now. I could find all I needed in front of the
house. I learned how to use the axe, and when I went to cut firewood, I would sometimes glance
over the road. The big vehicles passed rather seldom. I didn’t know what to do. I never saw any of
the agricultural cooperative people. Mom slept. She slept like a log. She would get up and do her
business at the gate or on the grass in front of the house and she would go back to sleep. She didn’t
even clean herself anymore. I would leave the potherbs with a little salt and flour for her breakfast,
she would eat and she wouldn’t awake again before lunchtime. At lunch, she ate if I had cooked
something, otherwise she would sleep hungry. She didn’t add wood to the fire, even if it was cold.
I spied on her several times. At lunchtime she didn’t close her eyes, or she probably slept with her eyes
open, as she never replied to me, even when I grabbed her shoulders and shook her and talked to her
relentlessly. At night, we slept close to each other. We would keep each other warm and she would caress
my hair. My hair would get tangled in her hands, which were cracked like the axe’s handle and it hurt,
but I never said ouch, for the minute she started caressing me, I fell asleep. I dreamed of dad more and
more frequently. He gave me things, usually things we missed. I told mom about it at breakfast; she said
neither yes, nor no and she stared me in the eye as she ate. Even when she got outside and pretended to
warm herself in the sunlight, she ignored me completely. I got used to it and did not hold it against her.
She will wake up one day, I thought, like dad used to say that this people will wake up one day and it
will understand that they have left it naked and in disgraceful conditions, but it will probably be too late.
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Thanas Medi
Thanas Medi was born in 1958, in Saranda. He followed his primary studies
in Asim Zeneli high school and later on continued in the University of Tirana,
where he graduated in language and literature in 1988. Till 1994 he worked as
a teacher in Lunxhëri, (Gjirokastra) then he emigrated to Greece. He now lives
with his family in Athens. His first steps in literature were his publication of
poems and stories for newspapers and magazines of the time. His first serious
work was a volume of stories and novels, which was rejected during the
years of the communist regime by Naim Frasheri, the only publishing house,
because it was considered incompatible with the ideological concepts of the
time. The first novel Hija e mallkuar (Cursed Shadow) was published in 2011
by Toena. The second novel, Fjala e fundit e Sokrat Bubës (The Last Word of
Sokrat Buba) published by Toena in 2013, won the Major National Prize for
Literature “best literary works of 2013” awarded by the Ministry of Culture
of Albania.
Title: Fjala e fundit e Sokrat Bubës (The Last Word of Sokrat Buba)
Place of publicatioin: Tirana
Publisher: Toena
Type: Novel
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The plot: The novel speaks of the life of the mountain Vlachs, the last nomads of Balkan territories. It is the
life of some tribes and a bunch of straw huts somewhere in South Albania in the years 1950-1970. The life
of these people is always in movement, constantly adapting to the circumstances, suffering and all kind of
complications. Their relationship and their life as a group is what builds the first subject line of this novel.
By migrating alone or in groups, these people leave behind them a lifestyle and face a new and completely
different one. We are dealing with a a group of people that lived in the same huts as their sheep and cows until
the 1950s, and later they were forced to live in community with the locals. Right here starts the second subject
line of the novel, that of the coexistence of the Vlach and the locals.
The intrigue and the main event starts with a baby boy and a baby girl promised for marriage to each other
since childhood, the ignorance of the beginning and the later awareness about the reality they were living is
the ground where the intrigue develops. It is a twenty-year-old story that starts with the decision of adults to
pass their friendship from generation to generation, to preserve the early friendship between the two biggest
families of a tribe. In the novel, the spiritual world, traditions, songs and ballads of an almost forgotten kind
are described in details. The life of a young boy and girl, engaged without their knowledge, is described along
with the effects of coexistence with the locals. A great community love for man is at the same time an individual
love, embodied in the representatives of the new generation that face themselves with disadvantageous
circumstances. The subject of this novel exceeds the dimensions that the last migration of a group of people
and becomes a novel about human love.
Extract
- Wait here, - said grandmother, leaving him in the yard. - “They” had to come today of all days.
The yard in front of their hut was filled to the brim with people. Less men, more women. They had
all quit their Easter chores in the hope of spending a little time with their loved ones. These things
had taken place in that yard for quite some time, but recently, mother had been especially preferred
by the departed. They had decided to take advantage of her more, probably due to her calm and
reticent nature. He really feared the dead, but from the day he found himself alone with mother,
grandmother and one of “them”, he became bolder. He didn’t exactly “find” himself alone. He had
planned that for quite some time. Children were not allowed to hear a dead person chatting with
a living one, but the rule had aroused his curiosity instead of quenching it. Without denying his
terrible dread, he could not conceal that he was yearning to see how “they” came and spoke. He got
the itch from grownups who’d tell stories around the fireplace about the new dead that had come to
mother. So frequent were their visits and the grownups’ stories, that he knew the quirks of the long
departed better than the hurdles of those who hadn’t kicked the bucket yet. The dead never gave
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away their name, which means that they never said “It’s so-and-so!”, as if they were feeling guilty
for having ceased to exist. Grandmother identified them, asking them “Is it you, so-and-so?”. She’d
recognize them from their voice, like the rustle of dry reeds, or their chronic cough, or a snicker like
those which the deceased used to have in their life.
Another snag was that “they” would come in larger numbers during feast-days, as it was the case
that Easter Sunday, when people were roasting meat. It was as if they became envious of the moments
when the living were enjoying themselves the most. They also did not agree to speak when the living
man or woman that they had summoned was wearing something that indicated joy – a sparkling
pin in their hair, a flowery apron, a tilted hat, a golden necklace or a white headscarf. The only one
with no such requirements was his maternal uncle, Vasil Plasari, the martyr. Every time he came,
he begged grandmother to convince Nasta, his sister and his wife to discontinue their mourning of
many years for him by sewing in their clothes at least a white button. He would speak in a very meek
voice, due to a wound received in war, but grandmother could recognize him easily, because he’d
come more frequently than anyone else. He differed a lot especially from Auntie Athina, who died
of croup at an early age and who would show up very rarely, only when she needed to announce
important predictions. Her predictions were so important that people in Owl wished to “ask Athina”
every time they had a minor problem.
Auntie was the one to help him become bolder the day in which he achieved his goal and found
himself alone with mother, grandmother and one of “them”. He soon understood that the invisible
guest, that is to say “one of them” was auntie, since he heard grandmother ask in a concerned voice:
- Why do you come so rarely, Athina?
He hid like a mouse after the trunk filled with the good clothes as soon as grandmother closed the
door of the hut and went close to Nasta, who was lying by the hearth on a rug and was covered by
a thick woollen cover. On top of that, up to her chin, there was another cover, thinner and of light
brown colour. Her forehead was tied with a black headscarf, her eyes shut tightly, her lips sealed
and her face beyond white, as if there was no drop of blood left in it. He saw all that peeking his
head from behind the trunk time after time. His heart sank at seeing his mother’s face with no blood
in it, but his yearning to see how “they” came and talked was stronger. He almost peed on himself
when from behind the trunk he saw his mother moving her lips and talking to grandmother like
someone in a delirium, with a voice like the rustle of reeds that he could bet his right arm it wasn’t
hers. It didn’t take long for him to learn that it was Auntie Athina’s voice. Grandmother mentioned
her name when she said that “Why do you come so rarely, Athina?”
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Virion Graçi
Virion Graci was born in Gjirokastra in 1968. He studied Language and
Literature. In 1992, he started working in the Albanian Telegraphic Agency
(ATA). Later he became a lecturer at the University of Gjirokastra, where he
has been working for 16 years. By now, he is a researcher in the Department
of Contemporary Literature at the Centre of Albanological Studies. At the age
of 24, he wrote Të çmendur në parajsë (Madmen in Paradise), his first novel.
The novel was translated and published in France and Greece. Other works
by this author are: San Valentino (Saint Valentine’s), Shpata e ndryshkur (The
Rusty Sword), Bijtë e Zotit majmun (Children of the Monkey God), Babai në shi
(Dad in the Rain), Zonja pa emër (The Nameless Lady), Litari dhe lamtumira
(The Hangman’s Noose and The Farewell), Stina e hijeve (The Season of Shadows).
The novel The Season of the Shadows is the best novel of 2014 and the winner of
the Reverend Father Zef Pllumi National Prize.
Title: Stina e Hijeve (The Season of Shadows)
Publisher: Pika pa Sipërfaqe
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 978-9928-4136-9-7
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The plot: The Season of Shadows is a present day journey of the living, side by side with the dead, a journey
in the border between the two worlds. It is also a reviving of the dead brother ballad, bringing this ballad back
in our everyday life the story of no longer as something of the past but as something of the present. The novel
is based on a true story. It is Elona’s story, a young woman suffering from an incurable illness, who, in order
to survive, was treated illegally in Greece, using her cousin’s documents. Sickness rules; she and her loved
ones struggle hard to face it. The approaching of death destroys the harmony and balances between the people
she loves, turns their dreams upside-down and forces them to face many dilemmas. In the fourth chapter,
the grotesque narration rules. The moral degradation of high State structures, from Athens to Tirana, forces a
father to start the most desperate journey of his life. In order to escape Greek authorities, he travels following
at a certain distance the car that is taking his dead daughter back home, while she sits as if she were alive. The
storyteller assigns to a well-known former actor of the Albanian National Theatre the task of accompanying
dead Elona, to drive her corpse back home; there’s “no need for the death certificate”, an expensive “lifeless
passport”. It is a terrifying trip, not anymore for the dead, but for the one who is journeying with the “living
death”, a taxi-driver who confesses his disillusions to a dead body. In the end, he succeeds to fulfil the wish
of a grieving father by bringing back home ‘safe and sound’ the corpse of his beloved daughter, since to the
Albanian the dead is ‘something’ more strongly trusted than the living.
Extract
“Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, perhaps I’ll be at home, to my mother” Elona said. “After so many
months of useless and torturing wanderings, I’ll stay with the youngest sister. They must have grown up
more than I think. We girls, grow up as if someone is pulling us up by hair, they say. Don’t we Artan”?
I remained silent. Elona had heard the trot of the shadowy horse coming to get her. Elona didn’t
seem lifeless in her face. After a quick look taken by one like us who are not knowledgeable at
medicine, her parameters seemed normal: the white skin of her face slightly rose-coloured in the
cheekbones, the blue eyes with the same permeating luminosity, the thick, tense lips, showing no
tremble, nervous ticks or irrepressible emotions. Considering her outer look, it was impossible for
her to be on the verge of catching the reins of the dark horse of death.
“If she..If she has already decided to commit suicide…, I supposed unsure of myself, ready to cry
out the repudiating pain while trotting at a gallop with my horse of doubts and rejections...the girl’s
suicidal horse should be stalled…she must remain..here...in this life. She is like a sea-gull, a swallow,
a sky-lark that goes off flying all over the blue skies..It is so pointless to let her fall in the eternal sleep,
it is pointless to let her leave and never move on earth….
If you listen closely to the heart of the night when the shadows have vanished waiting for the dawn,
86
the sun, the light, the trot of the dark horse hits even for us who consider ourselves healthy and longlived. The trot that kept Elona away of me as a man and away of her inner desires as a woman, the
deceiving trot of the shadowy horse that intermingles with the wretched shadows of the day, to mess
with chaps like me, like Arizi, like Aleko, could incite Elona to make the next folly. I said: “If I gave
you a charged pistol, can you kill a criminal? A rapist? A pedophile? A serial killer?”.
“No, I can’t,” she said with eyes wide open with wonder, “I can’t, I can’t kill anyone,” she said
again, by turning the head slightly away. She got it; she got the meaning of my words and laughed:
“The least I can think of is killing a person that resembles me. Artan! Don’t even think that I can kill
anyone,” she said.
I sighed relieved. I accompanied her until the apartment where they lived. We didn’t speak. We
didn’t embrace each other and didn’t become sentimental although both of us knew that it was the
last time that we were staying side by side. I was sure that after a few hours, or days, she would
travel back to her mother in Fier, with dignity, by a car or taxi, like every privileged traveller. I knew
that a few moments later I would be at the bet-club, drinking iced ouzo, observing through the
window glasses, girls who move outside with a haste that is above the average.
Reluctantly, we shook hands according to the ritual of good manners: we were parting “Good
night, Artan,” she said with a resounding voice. “Good night, Elona,” I replied.
Our hands, our palms, fingers were separated. A shadow tore itself off a stool somewhere near. The
shadow pursued the traces of Elona who was already transformed into a shadow herself, she was
transformed into an eternal shadow for my eyes.
A chap like those illegal Albanian taxi-drivers pulled up to my feet. “Get out of here” I shouted,
“Drive off! Dismiss!”
I turned my head to see Elona, but she had disappeared in the huge mouth of the multi-floor
apartment. I was confused. I was not confident, having a slight tremble of hands, arrhythmic
breathing, I was not in my planet anymore. I was the first inhabitant in uninhabited planet or the last
inhabitant of a vanishing planet. I had lost there where loss was unjustifiable; I had lost there where
there can be no winners.
I had been unsure whether I had loved extraordinarily a lot Elona, I had been unsure whether it was a
mutual love that indispensable need we had to drink coffee, water, refreshments, together, regularly;
I can’t be sure that when we were together we nourished deep feelings of spiritual friendship and
mental and physiologic well-understanding for each other. Now, separated from her, I was sure,
undoubtedly: I felt violated by her, hit by her, smashed by her in thousands of flesh and spirit atoms
which would never remake together again.
Translated from the Albanian from Granit Zela
87
Visar Zhiti
Visar Zhiti was born in Durres in 1952. After graduating from the Higher
Institute of Pedagogy in Shkodra, he started working as a teacher in the
northern town of Kukës, where he started to write down his first poems
that were published in the literary magazines of the time. His poems,
characterized by a democratic spirit were the reason why he was sentenced
by the communist regime to 18 years in prison. After the fall of the communist
dictatorship in 1991, he has lived, studied and worked abroad for several
years. Afterwards he came back to Albania where he first worked as a
journalist and then he was appointed to various positions such as Director
of a Publishing Company, Cultural Attaché to Rome, Minister of Culture,
and more recently the Charge d’Affaires to the Vatican etc. Some of his most
notable works are: Hedh një kafkë te këmbët tuaja (Throw a Skull at your Feet),
Mbjellja e vetëtimave (Planting Lightnings), Dyert e gjalla (The Living Doors),
Kohë e vrarë në sy (Time Killed in the Face), Si shkohet në Kosovë (How to get
to Kosovo?), Ferri i care [The Cloven Hell (recollections of time in prison – a
biographical novel) – prisonology ] etc. His books, both in poetry and prose,
have been translated and published in different countries. He has been
awarded many prizes, among them, the Major Prize in Literature.
Title: Ferri i çarë [The Cloven Hell, (recollections of time in prison) (A
biographical novel) – Prisonology]
Publisher: Omsca-1
Genre: Novel
ISBN: 978-9928-132-06-2 © all rights reserved to the author : [email protected]
88
The plot: The Cloven Hell is a complex novel where the modern and the classical are intertwined, a shocking
narration about the infamous Qafë-Bari prison. The events and the characters are real. The novel’s protagonists
are prisoners and policemen, relatives, as well as present-day familiar political figures. The novel, which the
author calls by neologism burgologji (prisonology – a biographical novel), consists of 9 chapters, as many as
Dante’s circles of Hell.
It is built of fragmentations and cracks. It starts with the protagonist having been freed from prison and
ends with him being present at a memorial conference held in the capital city after the fall of the dictatorship
regime. Life in prison, unbelievable as it is, full of infernal scenes, sufferings, violence, hard work in the mine,
escapes, deaths and killings, prisoners’ revolts, their oppression, prisoners’ release out of prison, their dreams,
love, disappointments... These are all presented through retrospective.
This book is a living document, an evidence of violence exercised during the dictatorship, as well as an
evidence of the resistance of those who confronted it; it is a rare and gruesome evidence, a stark mosaic, but
with universal overtones, written in a hard language, but rich in metaphors, signifying the greatest strength
of the word.
As much as being a continuation of The Streets of Hell novel or (prisonology) (a Biographical Novel) – Burgologji
about Spaç, The Cloven Hell, (prisonology) (A Biographical Novel) - Burgologji About Qafë-Bari, is also a separate
work, despite the fact that some of the characters are the same, but in a different setting as it happens in life,
moving from one prison to another.
The Cloven Hell is not a work of hatred, but of love; it is a reminder for the future.
Extract
New prisoners kept coming before we old timers had had a chance to get to know each other,
which, by the way, was forbidden. The lack of contact with others lessened one’s self-perception.
That poor mass of humanity, seemingly dressed the same, with identical haircuts, equally famished,
where another seemed to be you and you someone else; without individuality we were nothing if not
empty transparencies, multiplied by a thousand, or two thousand, by a million, by millions. During
the age of slavery, three thousand years ago, this setup would have reduced you to nothing more than
a slave due to your long years of imprisonment We whispered among ourselves that cosmonauts
could see our jails from afar, from the cosmos, perhaps from the moon, the prison caves, the rows of
the condemned, the seemingly endless chain of them, stretching longer than the rivers. There were
no prisons anywhere else.
Among the prisoners emerging one day from the police van was a young man with a face paler
than those of others who had survived their interrogation period. Around his shoulders he wore a
black jacket with a flap in the back. Perhaps that was the fashion outside. He was told to take it to the
89
clothes depot; he would get it back the day he was discharged (or whatever was left of it). He was
also to get rid of his shoes and pants and don the prison uniform.
When he was done, he emerged from among the new arrivals and silently, slowly, with the
dignity of slow motion, he started climbing the path toward the barbed wire fence, disregarding the
prisoners’ mounting tension. We had fixed our eyes on him. He walked sure-footed, his head held
high. “Hey” – said some voices- “where are you going? There is no exit there. The guards will open
fire. . .” These voices caught the attention of the guards inside the compound, where one of them,
unexpectedly, rushed toward the newcomer screaming that he stop, as the guards would shoot: “Hey
you, prisoneeer! You guards, don’t shoooot.” The prisoner, however, continued walking, without
turning his head, with dignity. He entered the killing zone where signs marked “DO NOT ENTER”
were buffeted by the wind like crosses in a graveyard. The soldier in the nearest guard tower, like
from inside a wooden monster head and from between its teeth, was aiming his automatic rifle in our
direction. “No,” yelled the guard from inside the compound, “soldier, don’t fire, I, too, am here.” He
reached the recently sentenced man, grabbed him by his arms and pulled him back. “Turn around,” he
yelled, “what’s the matter with you? Why are you crossing into the forbidden zone, or are you trying
to get killed?” Look at the other inmates, be patient!” The former citizen did not open his mouth. “Are
you insane?” He nodded in agreement. When he came close to us, he looked bewildered, more terrified
of us than of the guns. He probably saw himself like one of us.
I was overcome by sorrow, I didn’t know whether for me or for him who wanted to get killed. I not
only did not dare kill myself, but had given up thinking altogether. Besides, whom was I supposed to
kill, we were no longer human beings. My sorrow turned completely toward the unknown newcomer.
It would have been better for him had he been killed. It would have been over for him and a challenge
to the status quo. My very thoughts terrified me, for being so merciless toward another’s life. I had no
right to want someone else’s death, even though others felt that way toward me.
I doubt it that from the very beginning we had a psychologist among us. Had there been one,
he would have been rejected as a Freudian. More likely, someone among us could have become
a psychologist in prison. Chances were slim but psychological anomalies were all around us. A
psychologist could have thought along these lines: “The inside guard, no more than a rubber
truncheon for the regime, dares to save an enemy’s life. That must mean that the dictator is very
ill, probably in his death throes; he may even be dead. They may be hiding it as in ancient Chinese
dictatorships that were ‘led’ by dead emperors. Thus, the policeman of the ‘class warfare’, by saving
the life of a prisoner may have been promoting his own future thus extending the life of an evil, even
as he prevented death.”
Translated from the Albanian by Genc Korça
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Ylljet Aliçka
Ylljet Aliçka (1951) is an Albanian writer and former Albanian ambassador
in France. He graduated in Biochemistry, and worked as a teacher until he
began his diplomatic career. He has written several collections of short stories
and novels Kompromisi (The compromise), Parullat me gure (Stone slogans)
Koha e puthjeve (A time for kisses), Valsi i lumturisë (Valzer for a lover).
Author of the screenplay Parullat “Slogans” French Albanian film, based on
the book Parullat me gure (Stone slogans), author of the screenplay Lutjet e
dashurisë (The prayer of love) French-Italian-Albanian film based on the book
Kompromisi (Compromise), and author of the screenplay “The foreigners”,
French-Albanian film, based on the novel Rrëfenjë me ndërkombëtarë (Story
with internationals). Some of his works have been translated in French, Polish,
Russian, Slovak and Italian like Les slogans de pierre (Montpellier / Paris) La
sloganoj el stonoj (Poland), Tezky rok (Prage) Kompromis (Poland) I compagni
di pietra ( Italy) etc. He has also won many international literature awards
like Bronze medal by the International Academy of Lutéce, (literature section)
Paris, Primo premio-I stranieri, International competition of short stories,
TERAMO, Italy, Second Prize , International competition ARTS ET LETTERS
DE FRANCE, “Silver Medal 2001”, Albanian Ministry of Culture, “Prix de la
Francophonie”, Albanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, , Best Novel of the year
2006 (A story with internationals), “KULT prizes”, Premio speciale, (I compagni
di pietra), VII Premio Letterario Nazionale “Libri editi”, Italy,“Silver medal
2013” National Competition, Ministry of Culture of Albania.
Title: Parullat me gurë (Stone slogans)
Publisher: Toena
ISBN : 978 - 99943 - 1 - 480 - 5
Genre: Short Stories
© all rights reserved to ‘Toena’ Publishing House
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Reviews: Albania is the real main character of this collection. Meant as the final frontier between Western
and Eastern Europe, squeezed by History, it is a place of division: north and south, rich and poor, Catholics
and Muslims. It is also a fascinating and complex web of cultures where tolerance and sectarianism blend, as
do religion and superstition, and people helplessly look for happiness, ineluctably bound with suffering. Short
stories often close with a bitter and unpredictable end, as it is the case with the one after which the collection is
titled, which focuses on the absurd ritual of making big communist slogans in stones, a practice schools were
obliged to perform.
“I read these short stories with highest interest and emotion. It is a great piece of literature, highly moving and
insightful.” (Ryszard Kapuscinski)
Extract
The authenticity of these short stories comes from their tone, domestic, realistic, and apparently
distant, but actually prudent: the tone of a friendly talk in a totalitarian regime. A virile and reassuring
kindness outside, but if you listen carefully to Aliçka’s words, you can hear value judgments that
could mean years of reeducation. Jean Soublin, Le Monde des Livres.
It was immediately after Andrea had finished his studies that he received an appointment as a
school teacher in an isolated mountain village in the North.
His father accompanied him in silence to the railway station. At the moment they were to part,
hardly holding back his tears, he said to him: “Work hard, take good care of yourself, and pay
attention, because life’s not easy.”
He arrived at the mountain village that evening. The school was small, a mere ten teachers, six of
whom were from the nearby town. One of them was from the capital.
The next day, the oldest of the school teachers, Pashk, willingly accepted the task of explaining to
him “how to work and live so as not to get into conflict with anyone else.”
Pashk began by depicting the hierarchy of the village authorities. First of all, there was the Party
Secretary, the teacher Sabaf, and then the chairman of the agricultural cooperative. When he finally
got around to mentioning the school principal, he characterized him as follows: “He’s not a bad guy.
He doesn’t beat the pupils very often, but when he does, he beats them until he’s out of breath. Try
to keep on good terms with him because everything is in his hands... everything from your teaching
schedule to the slogans.”
92
“What slogans?” interrupted Andrea.
“What do you mean, what slogans?” uttered Pashk, astonished. “Every teacher and his class are
assigned a slogan in stone for which he is responsible all the time.”
“I see,” said Andrea.
“You think it’s no great matter at all, do you?” he asked.
“No, no, not in the least,” responded Andrea, attentively.
The surprised expression on Andrea’s face forced Pashk to explain a few things which he would
never have imagined that people did not know.
“Well, since you’re new here as a teacher and have your career ahead of you, let me be frank with
you. If you want to be respected by the Party and the authorities, roll up your sleeves and take good
care of your slogan.”
“To take care of your slogan, you have to be systematic,” he continued. “and never neglect it. What
I mean is, you have to go out and check on it at least once a week. If it rains, the slogan’s appearance
will suffer. The rain cuts furrows into the soil and can cover the letters over with mud. It dilutes the
whitewash and the stones look blotched. You know what happened here recently?”
“No,” replied Andrea.
“Well, how could you?” Pashk recalled. “It took a full six months to find out beyond any doubt
how Baft’s slogan became damaged. To tell you the truth, the teacher Baft had been reputed for his
excellent slogans. But a few months ago, all of a sudden, his slogan began to deteriorate. If you were
looking for Baft, you knew where to find him. He was always out at his slogan fixing the letters. He
spent more and more time there, even in the evenings.
The truth is that when a shepherd from the cooperative, one descended from one of the most
bourgeois déclassé families in the village, took his sheep out to pasture early in the morning, he
cast a spell on that teacher’s slogan (Pashk’s eyes took on the air of an investigator). Poor Baft was
exhausted, going out every day to fix his slogan. He was constantly moaning and groaning: ‘Why
am I having all this bad luck? Why do the sheep keep grazing on my slogan?’ He could not imagine
that it was the neglect of the words of his slogan THE MOST DANGEROUS ENEMY IS AN ENEMY
FORGOTTEN that had attracted the sheep in the first place and caused them to destroy it.
Baft asked the principal several times to change his slogan, ‘just because I’m superstitious,’ but the
principal was in no mood to do so.
93
Zija Çela
Zija Çela, (born in Shkodër, 25 March 1946), is an Albanian prose writer. He
graduated in Albanian Language and Literature (1968). In the period between
1984 -1990, he worked as the editor-in-chief of “Drita” literary newspaper and
as the director of Letrat Publishing House, established in 1990, the first private
publishing house. From 1997 until 2002 he was an editorialist of “Albania”
newspaper as well as the editor–in-chief of its literary supplement. Through
the years, he has been awarded numerous literary prizes. Some of these prizes
are: Best Novel of the Year Prize Monedha e dashurisë (The Currency of Love),
awarded from the Albanian Ministry of Culture, 1996; Velija Prize for the Best
Novel of the Year Banketi i hijeve (Shadow’s Banquet), 1998; Buzuku Prize for
the Best Novel of the Year Lëngata e hënës (Languor of the Moon), 2002;
Best Novel of the Year Prize Las Varrezas (Las Varrezas), awarded from the
Albanian Ministry of Culture, 2006; Petro Marko Prize for the Best Novel of
the Year Apokalipsi sipas Shën Tiranës (The Apocalypse According to St. Tirana),
2011; At Zef Pllumi Prize for Best Prose Writing of the Year Buza e kuqe dhe
Gjaku i errët (The Red Lip and Dark Blood), 2012, and many other prizes.
Title: Las Varrezas
Publisher: Ideart
ISBN: 978-99943-695-8-X
Genre: Novel
© all rights reserved to the author and “Ideart” Publishing House
94
The plot: In Kukunam city people were living longer, because every time somebody was dying, the beautiful
Dinosha, wife of the post office employee, came to him, held him tight and could take him away from death,
although she had to suffer. But one day Dinosha was lying on her bed, ill. Somebody should suffer for her,
in order to heal her. But nobody wanted to sacrifice; life’s formula couldn’t work anymore. A curse fell over
Kukunam, death’s formula started to work. Each time somebody was dying, he didn’t want to go alone. So he
named somebody who he wanted to take with him in the other world. While Kukunam was promoting life, it
was an unknown city. After starting to promote death, it became famous all over the world. The international
associations immediately came to provide support to the city. They even proposed to add Kukunam to the list
of cultural heritage protected by UNESCO.
Extract
Las Varrezas
As indicated in the local registers and general state statistics, it had been years since someone had last
died in that town among mountains. High central government officials, encouraged by specialists
of the Ministry of Public Health, observing the miracle at a distance, explicated the wonder of this
life reservation as an outcome of the air, the water and the natural isolation from polluted urban
environment. But the town’s inhabitants themselves related it to Dinosha, the wife of Harap Habitari
– the virtuous post office clerk.
It was Dinosha’s first year of marriage when her husband had almost cashed in his chips; a sudden
illness had sent him flat on his back, puffed him up, and rot his bowels. The doctors could find
neither a name, nor a cure for this illness. When Harap went into the torpor of death, his pretty wife,
who had never left his bedside, was weeping, caressing his hair and holding him tight, as if she had
resolved to keep him in life at any cost, or to follow him in death. And as she was bowing over him,
sobbing, she feverishly muttered something; these compassionate words, which no one could hear,
were the ones that made the miracle happen: Harap opened his ashen eyes, he yawned, and got up.
Later, they all said that Dinosha’s beauty had kept him from dying. Actually, when her husband
got up, she went through a horrific alteration; her skin was scarred, her face went pale and she could
barely breathe. But everyone around was surprised to see her in three hours’ time: she was three
times more beautiful than she had ever been.
95
From that day, whenever death approached anyone, they would send for Dinosha. Little by little,
as her fame spread, she also received requests from nearby regions, and she did not oppose to that.
She tried a couple of times, but it didn’t work. Apparently, the beautiful woman could only use the
mysterious formula that she had discovered in feverish pain to heal her fellow townsfolk. Naturally,
the doctors there did not quit their job. The people continued to go to the polyclinic, they would be
hospitalized at the rural hospital, they would get medicated and they would heal. But if it happened
that the patient’s situation went downhill with no improvement, they would get him out of hospital
and take him right to Dinosha. Those in need would knock at her door day and night, as if her home
were the temple of a goddess. It once occurred that Dinosha was put to test. That happened when she
received two simultaneous requests. Bert Miluka and Afrim Prati had lethally wounded each other
with firearms. When people from both families came to take her where she was needed, Dinosha
reasonably chose to enter the house that was first on her way. In his dying bed, still able to think and
speak, Bert Miluka welcomed her, gun in his hand.
Have a seat, Dinosha, - he invited her calmly, probably so as not to frighten her. Mother has put
the coffeepot on fire. Sit on that chair, let us have coffee first, then we decide what to do next. Stuck
on the chair, Dinosha could not tell how much time had passed when a member of Prataj family,
in whose house she had been eagerly awaited, appeared crestfallen on the doorway. At that, the
wounded man’s feeble voice was heard:
You can leave now, Dinosha, you gave me the help I needed. I didn’t keep you here for my own life,
but so that my nemesis would go belly up. – And in the blink of an eye, Bert Miluka turned the gun
to himself, pointing its tip to his chin, and then boldly pulling the trigger.
Anyhow, this gruesome incident was forgotten in a couple of years. As always, Dinosha could not
bring back the dead, but she had the capacity to keep the living from passing.

Literature in evocation of freedom

Transcription

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