Renditja e përdoruesit: / 1
DobëtMirë 

english - other

Translated into English by Blendi Kraja

© Petraq Kolevica, 2006

© Blendi Kraja, 2006

 

I know and acknowledge the talent and special qualities in the literary career – in poetry and prose – of the well-known writer Ismail Kadare.

It is clear that he is the writer with the biggest and the most diverse literary production of any writer up to the present..

And it is even acceptable to say that among all the Albanian socialist realist writers, Kadare wrote the best works in terms of artistic quality and distinction. During communism in Albania, the time when Kadare developed his main literary activity, partly for his merits and partly for the profit of the regime, almost all of his works were awarded the Prize of the Republic, were published and republished; his selected works printed in a series of more than ten volumes and then translated into several important foreign languages. A claque of critics have written fulsome praise of him in articles and books. Thus, Ismail Kadare was turned into the best known Albanian writer at home and abroad, not because of artistic value – which he doesn’t lack – but because the Albanian dictator was extremely interested in amplifying the value of the talent of Kadare and wanted – more than all the worshippers of this writer, past and of present taken together – for Kadare be known in the Western World…

 

…he has had the formation and the conscious belief of a militant Communist, which resulted in fanaticism, and he served, with his compositions and in a conscious way, the Communist Party, its ideology, and especially the dictator.

 

Some fragments:

 

“The world in two camps is divided

And you,

You are alone,

But to communism you belong,

My new century.”

“Shekulli XX”, “Shekulli im”, f. 87 / “XX Century”, “My century”, p. 87…

 

…”Let Ilyich be

In the middle of landscapes I love most.

In the middle of streets, in the middle of quiet fields,

Where an oak shivers, where a river flows.”

“Lenini” / “Lenin”

 

Still, the poet thinks these verses are not enough for his beloved Ilyich, so he writes:

 

“While in the chest

In the metal of the badge,

The beloved face

Of Lenin.”

“Buzëqeshje mbi botë” / “Smile on the world”…

 

…Then, the poet Kadare dedicates special care to hymns for the other great classic of Marxism-Leninism, J. V. Stalin, having had the good luck to be his contemporary and the misfortune of experiencing his death as that of a great father. But he managed to find some consolation by composing two long hymns to him:

 

Last farewell

 

Garlands, garlands endlessly,

Garlands of flowers, of stars;

And tearful eyes in sadness

And an unbearable landscape of mourning.

 

O comrades! For the last time today,

The Father is escorted by the crowd

With clear pain and with tears,

With a wounded heart.

 

And now, through silence, on the airwaves,

A familiar voice is clearly heard.

In our name today, comrade Enver,

Before him utters a vow.

 

Lowered flags shake in the wind,

Cannons rumble in the open squares;

Stalin is cheered by the endless crowd,

In the last farewell.

 

So, farewell great friend, Father!

Every heart says farewell today.

Together with Lenin beside him

He will be laid at last.

 

In quietness He will now rest,

But, no! He is not dead! He still lives!

And his wise word once again

Will continue pushing us forward!

 

Spring and Stalin

 

Flowers bloom in the green fields

The sky expands, immensely blue.

Spring came and the wind moves sweetly,

Shaking the damp leaves.

 

Spring came! In the green forest

I again walk on the riverbank;

But why so sad this time

In this spring I contemplate?

 

Everywhere blue smoke. Spring.

The land smiles with flowery breezes.

Spring has come but this time

The Father is not among us.

 

The bunch of flowers I bear in hand

Reminds me again of His death.

O, I see these flowers sadly,

Flowers for his memorial.

 

He often stared, there in the Kremlin

At beautiful spring with its flowers and greenery.

The window opens. The tobacco-pipe in hand

Fumes with a wreath of smoke.

 

He saw the future, with the sun’s clarity

From the Urals to the Balkans;

Green steppes under the golden sun,

The great Stalin plan.

 

And from the wide shiny window,

Where He was lost in thought,

Perhaps Ilyich inspired

The air of the new May.

 

The fog swims slowly on the field,

Spring has come, it has come again,

But in the window He does not appear

Again filled with his thoughts.

 

O comrade Stalin, is it true

That You don’t feel spring again? –

Alongside Ilyich lying still,

It seems like he is sleeping.

 

But the spring with light and stars

Of communism he came to know,

Gardens, factories and belts of forests,

Planted from his own hand.

 

There speaks for him through all time and every spring

The flowers blooming with joy

The quiet Don and the wide Volga

The lights on its shores.

 

In my country where the wind always

Wanders over the Southern blue sea

Each spring flower speaks of Stalin

As each spring morning does.

 

Spring came and thoughtful again

I wander at the river in the dawn.

Spring came and my heart

Again is filled with inspiration.

 

Blow you wind over the field with flowers;

You take my songs in your breast;

New songs in every spring

Will I compose for You, o Stalin!

(“Mësuesit dhe Artit”, 1953, F. 49-53.) / “To the Teacher and Art”, 1953, p. 49-53…

 

…Though, it was to be understood that the poet Kadare would dedicate the greatest effort, of course, praise of the dictator of Albania, Enver Hoxha. His personality immensely inspires the poet, who composes verses:

 

“The “Appeal” was composed

The Party founder lifted his arm to sign…

It was not a signature

It was thunder

In the sky of revolution full of winds and tempest.

 

By signing the first document

Comrade Enver Hoxha signed

the storm.”…

 

…Being that these verses were “very little”, of what was needed to exalt the figure of the dictator, the poet Kadare moved us with vibrant and emotional verses for the Commander whose hair turned grey because of his exhausting work for Albania and the purity of Marxism-Leninism:

 

“Comrade Enver Hoxha resting on the window

Looked at the open landscape in front of him.”

 

“Enver Hoxha stared at the bleakness of mountains…

He didn’t move his eyes from the discolored mountains

And didn’t think that in his hair

Also grey was growing.

He didn’t think

That the high mountains

Become grey as they pass through storms.”

“Vitet gjashtëdhjetë” / “The 60s”

 

Then he surprises us with these inspired verses:

 

“When amid this autumn sky

Thunder meets the words of Enver Hoxha

Thunder gives way to honor His words!”...

 

…After his hymns for these great figures of proletarian revolution, it would be understood that the poet Kadare would dedicate special care to artistically praising his Party as highly as possible, so he composed for her a lot of inspired poems, which you have the providential chance to read below.

 

My Party

 

What nobody could give to me,

You, my Party, gave me.

A legion of comrades shoulder to shoulder

The most magnificent on earth.

 

Thousands of hearts tied

Like communicating vessels in a row

In my veins thanks to them

Flows your great blood.

 

And well, I feel your blood

With the same pulse pounding in the veins

From the simplest Communist

To the First Secretary.

 

Often the elders have their gods

With many wings, eyes and ears;

I laugh at the Indian gods

And at the Greek gods I laugh.

 

Tied together with a system of hearts

Which you, our Party, gave us

The simplest Communist in the ranks

Rises above hundreds of Prometheuses.

 

Because there is no bigger miracle

Than living communally this way;

To have in your body the joy and the pain

Of thousands of other comrades.

 

When concern is shared between

The old worker and the statesman,

Or when the statesman is in the same rank

With an elderly farmer.

 

And me being sleepless

For the seed is not germinating;

And the farmer turns twenty times in bed

Reading a bad book of mine.

 

To feel, o Party, that your blood

With the same pulse pounds in the veins

From the simplest Communist

To the First Secretary.

 

I laugh at the Indian gods

At the Greek gods I laugh.

With You I’m high as the mountains

Without You, like a grain I die.

 

With You even the bitterest pain

Has value more than a joy.

With You I would be immortal

Even if I were anonymous.

 

The militant poet Kadare feels that this poem is too little for the Mother Party, so that he dedicates to her other verses, for example:

 

“There will be light,

it’s not the Bible speaking,

It is the PARTY.”

or

“Because a big force

Albania now has added

To the mountains, storms, prides

Of her,

The new force,

The PARTY.”

“S’lindëm ne princa”, “Shënime për brezin tim”, (“Shekulli im”/ “We’re not born princes”, “Notes for my generation”, from the book “My century”, p. 69)

 

or

 

“The PARTY was the periscope

Like a genius of the sea

The PARTY distinguishes first

The winds that blow,

Distinguishes the storm,

Detects the treason.”

(Idem)

 

Kadare dedicates to his Party - on her 25^th anniversary – the other famous poem “Eagles fly high”, which opens with these verses:

 

“This song for You

In the twenty-fifth autumn,

Like a red rose in the muzzle of the rifle,

By writing for You,

I would hope my lines

Resemble the trenches, ditches dug in the field.”

 

And he continues:

 

“The Communists decided

On the founding.

Time called to the stage

THE PARTY.”

 

Then, with his characteristic poetic emphasis, he breaks into song:

 

“Where should I seek your roots, o PARTY?

Like a magnificient plane tree in this high land

You sprout beside the road where storms go by.”

 

But there’s more:

 

“All our days were glorious…

Our days

So would we march

With the PARTY, without stopping,

Toward shining horizons.”

 

And there’s even more:

 

“A new PARTY in this ancient world.

Her name would rise

Higher and higher,

Like the eagle that soars through the arrows of hunters.”

 

And more, and more:

 

“The long trail of mountains was waiting

For a leader to lead the way forward.

Albania was waiting for

The COMMUNIST PARTY.”

 

Do you want more on the Party?...

 

…to be continued…

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