Albanian socialist realism and beyond

Enver Hoxha (1908-1985) and the new partisan leaders who took power at the end of November 1944 were suspicious of Albanian writers and intellectuals of all political hues, regarding the vast majority of them as representatives of the ‘ancien régime.’ A very few writers such as Vangjel Koça (1900-1943) and Vasil Alarupi (1908-1977) had been genuine proponents
of fascism, and a number of intellectuals, while not fascists themselves, had collaborated with the Italian and German occupants in one way or another. Most wanted simply to survive in an age of turmoil.

Many figures of note in Albanian intellectual life fled the country before or during the communist takeover: Ernest Koliqi (1903-1975), Mehdi bey Frashëri (1874-1963), Mid’hat bey Frashëri (1880-1949) and Karl Gurakuqi (1895-1971) to Italy, Branko Merxhani (1894-1981) to Turkey, and left-wing writer Tajar Zavalani (1903-1966) to Britain. Others cherished the illusion that, having survived the war, they could come to some sort of arrangement with the new communist leaders and work actively with them on the building of a new Albania, a new socialist society. Soon, however, the demagogy of Enver Hoxha, the Stalinist show trials under General Mehmet Shehu (1913-1981) and the witch hunts under Koçi Xoxe (1917-1949) made it apparent that liberation and the ideals of socialism were a façade for brutal dictatorship and terror. Neither indoctrination nor education became the primary means of persuasion but naked fear. The immediate post-war period had become an apocalypse for
Albanian writers and intellectuals.

Writers of the Scutarine Catholic school suffered particularly. General Mehmet Shehu, in a public address in Shkodra on 28 January 1945, had called the Catholic stronghold a ‘nest of reaction’ and warned that church leaders would receive their ‘just’ rewards before the people’s court. Playwright Ndre Zadeja (1891-1945), poet Lazër Shantoja (1892-1945), poet Bernardin
Palaj (1894-1947), novelist Anton Harapi (1888-1946) and publicist Gjon Shllaku (1907-1946) were executed. Poet and archbishop Vinçenc Prennushi (1885-1949) died in prison after gruesome torture, as did prose writer and publisher Dom Ndoc Nikaj (1864-1951), the father of twentieth-century Gheg prose. Other intellectuals of note to be executed included Arbëresh
publisher Terenzio Tocci (1880-1945), editor Nebil Çika (1893-1944), Bektashi writer Baba Ali Tomori (1900-1947) and poet Manush Peshkëpia (1910-1951).

Among the many other writers and intellectuals who were arrested and imprisoned during the witch hunts after the Second World War were noted playwrights Kristo Floqi (1873-1951) and Etëhem Haxhiademi (1902-1965), Muslim writer and publisher Hafiz Ibrahim Dalliu (1878-1952), minister of education Mirash Ivanaj (1891-1953) and poet Gjergj Bubani
(1899-1954), all of whom died in prison; short story writer Mitrush Kuteli (1907-1967), novelist Petro Marko (1913-1991), poet Sejfulla Malëshova (1901-1971), short story writer Musine Kokalari (1917-1983), poet and scholar Arshi Pipa (1920-1997), Bektashi poet Ibrahim Hasnaj (1912-1995), poet Nexhat Hakiu (1917-1978), poet Andrea Varfi (1914-1992), translators Jusuf Vrioni (1916-2001) and Pashko Gjeci (b. 1918), novelist Mustafa Greblleshi (1922-1986), publicist Dionis Miçaço, poet Kudret Kokoshi (1907-1991), novelist and editor Andon S. Frashëri (1892-1965), humorist and indefatigable translator Mid’hat Araniti (1912-1992), linguist Selman Riza (1909-1988), critic Filip Fishta (1904-1973), folklorists Donat Kurti (1903- 1969) and Stavro Frashëri (1900-1965) of Kavaja, and writer Lazër Radi (1916-1998) who was released in 1991 after an incredible forty-six years of prison and internment. The persecution of intellectuals, in particular of all those who had been abroad before 1944, and the break with virtually all cultural traditions, created a literary and cultural vacuum in Albania which lasted until the sixties, the results of which can still be felt today. No one will ever know how many intellectuals and budding writers of talent were dispatched over the following years to labour in dangerous branches of industry, or banished to the provinces forever, to internment in some isolated mountain village with no hope of return. Albanian cultural politics in the early years of the Soviet-Albanian alliance were very much influenced by Zhdanovism, the literary doctrine formulated by Andrey Aleksandrovich Zhdanov (1896-1948) which wreaked such havoc in Russian literature and culture. Albanian writers were encouraged to concentrate their creative energies on specific themes such as the partisan struggle of the so-called ‘national liberation war’ and the building of socialism, and to avoid the cosmopolitan influences of the West. The political message was the essential element for those who wished to survive. Subjects devoid of any educational value in Marxist terms were considered alien and taboo. Albanian literature, which had evolved so rapidly in the mid-thirties, had virtually disappeared. The country had become a literary wasteland. The first turning point in the evolution of Albanian prose and verse, after a quarter century of stagnation, came in the stormy year of 1961 which, on the one hand, marked the definitive political break with the Soviet Union and thus with Soviet literary models and, on the other hand, witnessed the publication of a number of trend-setting volumes, in particular of poetry: Shekulli im (My century) by Ismail Kadare (b. 1936), Hapat e mija në asfalt (My steps on the pavement) by Dritëro Agolli (b. 1931), and in the following year Shtigje poetike (Poetic paths) by Fatos Arapi (b. 1930). It is ironic to note that while Albania had broken with the Soviet Union ostensibly to save socialism, leading Albanian writers, educated in the Eastern bloc, took advantage of the rupture to try to part not only with Soviet models but also with socialist realism itself.

Though it constituted no radical change of course, no liberalization or political ‘thaw’ in the Soviet sense, 1961 set the stage for a few years of serenity and, in the longer perspective, for a quarter of a century of trial and error, which led to greater ophistication in Albanian literature. The three decades of Stalinist dictatorship which were to follow the breaking off of relations with the Soviet Union in 1961 established a clear and fixed path for the evolution of modern Albanian letters. What Stalinist rule also did, however, was to impede Albanian writing from evolving into a literature comparable to that of the more developed countries of Europe. A high degree of conformity continued due to the extreme level of pressure exerted upon writers and intellectuals throughout the rule of Enver Hoxha. Successful writers learned how to lie low and present what they wished to express in thick layers of political wrapping, so that only the trained eye of an experienced reader could comprehend the analogies being drawn. As such, Albanian literature remained political, but in a sense radically different from that intended by party dogmatists. In the rare moments when political pressure abated somewhat, some interesting works were produced and published. Due to the particular political circumstances in the country, it is, therefore, impossible for us to speak of good writers in modern Albanian literature but only of good books which managed to squeeze past the censors at the right moment. In other words, the quality of a novel or volume of poetry depended just as much on the year of publication as upon the talent of its author. Despite the constraints of socialist realism, Stalinist dictatorship and corruption at all levels of society, Albanian literature made much progress in the seventies and eighties.

The best example of creativity and originality in contemporary Albanian letters is that of Ismail Kadare (b. 1936), still the only Albanian writer to enjoy a broad international reputation. Kadare’s talents both as a poet and as a prose writer have lost none of their innovative force over the last four decades. His courage in attacking literary mediocrity within the system brought a breath of fresh air to Albanian culture.

Born on 28 January 1936 in the museum-city of Gjirokastra, Kadare studied at the Faculty of History and Philology of the University of Tirana and subsequently at the Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow until 1960 when relations between Albania and the Soviet Union became tense. He began his literary career back in Albania with poetry, but turned increasingly to prose, of which he soon became the undisputed master and by far the most popular writer of the whole of Albanian literature. Ismail Kadare lived the next thirty years of his life in Tirana, constantly under the Damocles Sword of the Party. He was privileged by the authorities, in particular once his works became known internationally. Indeed, he was able to pursue literary and personal objectives for which other writers would certainly have been sent into internal exile or to prison. But Kadare knew well that liberties in Albania could be withdrawn easily, by a stroke of the tyrant’s quill. Though some observers in Albania silently viewed him as a political opportunist and many Albanians in exile later criticized him vociferously for the compromises he made, it is Ismail Kadare more than anyone else who, from within the system, dealt the deathblow to the literature of socialist realism. There is certainly no doubt that he used his relative freedom and his talent under the dictatorship to launch many a subtle attack against the regime in the form of political allegories which occur throughout his works. Ismail Kadare was thus the most prominent representative of Albanian literature under the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha and, at the same time, its most talented adversary. His works were extremely influential throughout the seventies and eighties and, for many readers, he was the only ray of hope in the cold, grey prison that was communist Albania.

At the end of October 1990, Ismail Kadare left Tirana and applied for political asylum in France. His departure enabled him, for the first time, to exercise his profession with complete freedom. His years of Parisian exile were productive and accorded him further success and recognition, both as a writer in Albanian and in French. He has published his collected works in eleven thick volumes, each in an Albanian-language and a French-language edition, and has been honoured with membership in the prestigious Académie Française.

Prose in Albania remained weak throughout the communist dictatorship. Ismail Kadare’s talent and overriding position in Albanian literature, compounded by his international reputation, cast a shadow over all other contemporary prose writers, and not without reason. Many writers tried their hand at novels and short stories throughout the long decades of the communist
dictatorship, but the awesome level of social and political control over individual thought and the cultural isolation under which the Albanians were forced to live for so long prevented most of them from producing works which can stand the test of time. It was not talent and potential that Albanian writers lacked, but rather a positive, creative and stable environment in which to
develop this potential. Political fluctuations meant that a work of quality could be accepted one year for publication and then banned the very next. For several decades writing in Albania was a potentially lethal pastime.

Martin Camaj (1925-1992) is an emigrant writer of major significance to modern Albanian prose and poetry. He was born in the village of Temal, in the Dukagjin region of the northern Albanian alps, and benefited from a classical education at the Jesuit Saverian college in Shkodra. Camaj studied at the University of Belgrade and from there he went on to do postgraduate research in Italy, where he taught Albanian and finished his education in linguistics at the University of Rome in 1960. From 1970 to 1990 he was professor of Albanian studies at the University of Munich and lived in the mountain village of Lenggries in Upper Bavaria until his death on 12 March 1992. Camaj’s academic research focussed on the Albanian language and its dialects, in particular on those of southern Italy. He was also active in the field of folklore. Camaj’s literary activities over a period of forty-five years cover several phases of development. His first major prose work was Djella, Rome 1958 (Djella), a novel interspersed with verse about the love of a teacher for a young girl of the lowlands. This was followed, twenty years later, by the novel Rrathë, Munich 1978 (Circles), which has been described as the first psychological novel in Albanian. It is the author’s most extensive prose work, one which he took fifteen years to write. After Shkundullima, Munich 1981 (Quaking), a collection of five short stories and one play, came the novel Karpa, Rome 1987 (Karpa), which is set on the banks of the river Drin in the year 2338, a long prose work which Camaj preferred to call a parable. General themes which occur in Martin Camaj’s work are the loss of tradition, loneliness in a changing world, and the search for one’s roots. Needless to say, his works only became known to the Albanian public after the fall of the dictatorship. Up until then, only a handful of people in Albania had ever heard of him.

One writer who has had a far from negligible influence on the course of contemporary literature is Dritëro Agolli (b. 1931), who was head of the Albanian Union of Writers and Artists from the purge of Fadil Paçrami and Todi Lubonja at the Fourth Plenary Session in 1973 until 1992. Agolli was born to a peasant family in Menkulas in the Devoll region near Korça and finished secondary school in Gjirokastra in 1952. He later continued his studies at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Leningrad and took up journalism upon his return to Albania, working for the daily newspaper Zëri i Popullit (The People’s Voice) for fifteen years. Agolli not only served as president of the Writers’ Union from 1973 to his retirement on 31 January 1992, but was also a deputy in the People’s Assembly.

After two rather conformist novels of partisan heroism, the standard theme encouraged by the party, Agolli produced a far more interesting work, his satirical Shkëlqimi dhe rënja e shokut Zylo, Tirana 1973 (The splendour and fall of comrade Zylo), which has proved to be his claim to fame. Comrade Zylo is the epitome of the well-meaning but incompetent apparatchik, director of an obscure government cultural affairs department. His pathetic vanity, his quixotic fervour, his grotesque public behaviour, in short his splendour and fall, are all recorded in ironic detail by his hard-working and more astute subordinate and friend Demkë who serves as a neutral observer.

Though Agolli was a leading figure in the communist nomenclature, he remained a highly respected figure of public and literary life after the fall of the dictatorship, and is still one the most widely read authors in Albania. In the early 1990s, he was active for several years as a member of parliament for the Socialist Party of Albania. He also founded his own Dritëro Publishing Company by means of which he has been able to publish many new volumes of prose and poetry, and make an impact on literary and intellectual life in the country. Dritëro Agolli has been a prolific writer throughout the nineties, a rare voice of humanity and sincerity in Albanian letters.

Prose author Fatos Kongoli (b. 1944) has recently become one of the most forceful and convincing representatives of contemporary Albanian literature. He was born and raised in Elbasan and studied mathematics in China during the tense years of the Sino-Albanian alliance. Kongoli chose not to publish any major works during the dictatorship. Rather than this, he devoted his creative energies at the time to an obscure and apolitical career as a mathematician, and waited for the storm to pass. His narrative talent and individual style have only really emerged, at any rate, in the nineties, since the fall of the communist dictatorship.

Among the other prose authors of the period, mention may be made of Sabri Godo (b. 1929) from Delvina, an author of historical novels such as Ali Pashë Tepelena, Tirana 1970 (Ali Pasha of Tepelena), and Skënderbeu, Tirana 1975 (Scanderbeg), who, after the dictatorship, embarked upon a political career; Kasëm Trebeshina (b. 1926), a committed communist and
dissident who for many years was denied the right to publish; Fatos Arapi (b. 1930) from the Vlora region; Naum Prifti (b. 1932), short story writer from the Korça district; Bilal Xhaferi (1935-1986) from Çamëria who in 1969 escaped to Greece and the United States; Vath Koreshi (b. 1936), a prolific writer from Lushnjë; Teodor Laço (b. 1936) of Korça; Kiço Blushi (b. 1943) also of Korça; Neshat Tozaj (b. 1943) of Vlora, author of the novel Thikat, Tirana 1989 (The knives), which received wide attention for its candid criticism of a ‘theoretical’ abuse of power on the part of the Sigurimi; Elena Kadare (b. 1943), the first woman in Albania to publish a full novel; Koço Kosta (b. 1944), remembered for his short story Ata të dy e të tjerë (The two of them and the others) which was banned after publication in 1986; Nasi Lera (b. 1944), author from Korça of numerous volumes of short stories; Zija Çela (b. 1946) of Shkodra; the prolific DianaÇuli (b. 1951) from Tirana; Bashkim Shehu (b. 1955), who, as son of the purged communist leader Mehmet Shehu, spent many years in prison; Preç Zogaj (b. 1957) from the region of Lezha who in June 1991 became the first non-communist minister of culture; Teodor Keko (1958- 2002); Besnik Mustafaj (b. 1958) from Bajram Curri who served as Albanian ambassador in Paris; Mira Meksi (b. 1960) from Tirana; Elvira Dones (b. 1960) now living in Switzerland, who is author of the successful and exceptionally frank novel Yjet nuk vishen kështu, Elbasan 2000 (Stars don’t dress up like that) on the subject of Albanian prostitution abroad; Mimoza Ahmeti (b. 1963) from Kruja; and Ardian-Christian Kyçyku (b. 1969) of Pogradec, now living in Bucharest.

The story of modern verse in Albania begins with an exception, a poet who managed to flee from Stalinist Albania in 1949 and thus escaped the all-pervasive influence of socialist realism. Martin Camaj began his literary career with poetry, a genre to which he remained faithful throughout his life, though in later years he devoted himself increasingly to prose, as we have seen. His first volumes of classical verse, Nji fyell ndër male, Prishtina 1953 (A flute in the mountains), and Kânga e vërrinit, Prishtina 1954 (Song of the lowland pastures), were inspired by his native northern Albanian mountains to which he never lost his attachment, despite long years of exile and the impossibility of return. Camaj’s mature verse shows the influence of the hermetic movement of Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti. The metaphoric and symbolic character of his language increased with time as did the range of his poetic themes. Camaj’s language is discreet, reserved and trying at times, although the author himself regarded the term hermetic as coincidental. He relies on the traditional and colourful linguistic fountainhead of his native Gheg dialect in order to convey a poetic vision of his pastoral mountain birthplace near the Drin with its sparkling streams and shining forests.

The best known of the contemporary poets of Albania itself to have solved the dilemma of the poet with a pre-established mission is Fatos Arapi (b. 1930) from Zvërnec near the port city of Vlora, author of philosophical verse, love lyrics and poignant elegies on death. Arapi studied economics in Sofia from 1949 to 1954 and worked in Tirana as a journalist and lecturer in modern Albanian literature. Child of the Ionian coast, he never lost his fascination with the sparkling waters of the sea, the tang of the salt air and the intensity of Mediterranean light, all of which flood his verse. Indeed, beyond the echoing pathos of much of his revolutionary verse production on industrial and political themes in numerous publications during the dictatorship, his true poetic vocation can be seen in the creation of an equilibrium between the harmony of the waves and the rhythmic impulses of his being.

Dritëro Agolli made his name originally as a poet before turning to prose in later years. He is still widely admired in both genres. His first verse collections Në rrugë dolla, Tirana 1958 (I went out on the street), Hapat e mija në asfalt, Tirana 1961 (My steps on the pavement), and Shtigje malesh dhe trotuare, Tirana 1965 (Mountain paths and sidewalks), introduced him to the
reading public as a sincere and gifted lyric poet of the soil and demonstrated masterful verse technique.

Prose writer Ismail Kadare also began his literary career with verse, and although he has been much less active in this genre in recent years, he is still recognized and admired as one of his country’s leading poets. Kadare’s poetry was less bombastic than previous verse and gained direct access to the hearts of the readers who saw in him the spirit of the times and who appreciated the diversity of his themes. With candidness and sincerity, Kadare contributed in particular to the evolution of love lyrics, a genre traditionally neglected in Albanian literature. He soon became widely admired among the youth of Albania.

Visar Zhiti (b. 1952) is the Albanian writer whose life and works perhaps best mirror the history of his nation. He was one of the many to have suffered appalling persecution for no apparent reason. But he survived - physically, intellectually and emotionally, and is now among the most popular poets of present-day Albania. Born in the Adriatic seaport of Durrës as the son of the stage actor and poet Hekuran Zhiti (1911-1989), Visar Zhiti grew up in Lushnja where he finished school in 1970. In 1973, he was preparing the collection Rapsodia e jetës së trëndafilave (Rhapsody of the life of roses) for publication when the Purge of the Liberals broke out in Tirana at the Fourth Plenary Session of the Communist Party. Zhiti, whose father had earlier come into
conflict with the authorities, was one of the many scapegoats selected as a means of terrifying the intellectual community. The manuscript of the verse collection which he had submitted to the editors of the Naim Frashëri publishing company was now seen to contain grave ideological errors and was interpreted as having blacken socialist reality. His works were denounced as anticommunist agitation and propaganda, and there was nothing the poet could say to his interrogators to prove his innocence. None of his fellow writers dared or saw fit to help him. Indeed in October 1979, some of them prepared an insidious report condemning the works of the poet, no doubt to save their own necks. Visar Zhiti was arrested on 8 November 1979 in Kukës
where he was teaching, and spent the following months in solitary confinement. Sentenced at a mock trial in April 1980 to thirteen years in prison, he was taken to Tirana jail and, from there, transferred up to the isolated northern mountains to do the rounds in the infamous concentration camps similar to the Soviet gulags, among them, the living hell of the copper mines at Spaç and the icy mountain prison of Qafë-Bari. Many of his fellow prisoners died of mistreatment and malnutrition, or went mad. Visar Zhiti was released on 28 January 1987 and was then ‘permitted’ by the Party to work in a brick factory in his native Lushnja, where he kept a low profile until the end of the dictatorship. Zhiti is the author of four other verse collections, including most recently Si shkohet në Kosovë, Tirana 2000 (Where is the road to Kosova), a volume which mirrors, among other things, the poet’s horror at the sufferings of Kosova and its people during the ten years of oppression and the two years of war leading to NATO intervention and final liberation in 1999.

Emotion and ideas were always an integral part of Albanian poetry, but there has been a conspicuous lack of sensuality and lust for life in literature, both in Albania and in Kosova. The watchful eye of the Albanian Party of Labour curtailed any would-be expressions of intimacy and certainly succeeded in eliminating sincerity in creative writing. Mimoza Ahmeti (b. 1963) from Kruja is one of the ‘enfants terribles’ of the nineties, who set about to expand the horizons and explore the possibilities offered to her by her own senses. Dragging the nation, in her idiosyncratic manner, along the bumpy road to Europe, she has managed in recent years to provoke Albania’s impoverished and weary society into much needed reflection which, with time, may lead to new and more sincerely human values. After two volumes of verse in the late eighties, it was the fifty-three poems in the collection Delirium, Tirana 1994 (Delirium), that took their departure, for the first time, essentially from the senses. Mimoza Ahmeti’s poetry has been well received by the new generation of readers in tune, for the first time, with Western culture. Her candid expressions of wide-eyed feminine desire and indulgence in sensual pleasures, and the crystalline fluidity of her language have already made of her a modern classic.

Among other noted poets in Albania during the last two decades of the twentieth century, of whom we note a dramatic rise in the number of talented female poets, are: Jorgo Bllaci (b. 1938), who spent ten years in prison; Koçi Petriti (b. 1941) from Korça; Frederik Rreshpja (b. 1941) of Shkodra; Ndoc Papleka (b. 1945) from Tropoja; Xhevahir Spahiu (b. 1945) of Skrapar; Natasha Lako (b. 1948) from Korça; Bardhyl Londo (b. 1948) from the Përmet region; Rudolf Marku (b. 1950) from Lezha, now living in London; Preç Zogaj (b. 1957) from Lezha; Flutura Açka (b. 1966) of Elbasan; Luljeta Lleshanaku (b. 1968) of Elbasan; Lindita Arapi (b. 1972) of Lushnja; Gert Pashaj (b. 1972) of Tirana; Ervin Hatibi (b. 1974) of Tirana; and Ledia Dushi (b. 1978).

Courtesy of Albanologist Dr.Robert Elsie from his Article
Albanian literature: an overview of its history and development.
in: Österreichische Osthefte, Vienna, 45, 1-2 (2003), p. 243-276.
Source: http://www.elsie.de/pdf/articles/A2003AlbLitOsthefte.pdf