FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
Ismail Kadare, the Albanian novelist and poet who put his isolated Balkan homeland on the map of world literature, creating often dark, allegorical works that criticized his country's totalitarian state, died Monday in Tirana, Albania. He was 88 years old.
His death was confirmed by Bujar Hudhri, head of Onufri Publishing House, its editor and publisher in Albania, who said Kadare suffered a cardiac arrest at his home and died at a hospital in Tirana, the Albanian capital.
His name was mentioned several times for the Nobel Prize, but it was not awarded.
In a literary career spanning half a century, Kadare wrote a number of books, including novels and poetry collections, short stories and essays. He gained international fame in 1970 when his first novel, The General of the Dead Army, was translated into French. European critics hailed it as a masterpiece.
In 2005, he received the Man Booker International Prize (now the Booker International Prize), awarded to a living writer of any nationality for overall achievement in literature. Finalists included such literary titans as Gabriel García Márquez and Philip Roth.
In presenting the prize, John Carey, a British critic and chairman of the panel, called Kadare "a universal writer in a tradition of storytelling that goes back to Homer".
Critics often compared Mr. Kadare to Kafka, Kundera and Orwell, among others. During the first three decades of his career, he lived and wrote in Albania, then under the control of one of the most brutal and idiosyncratic dictators of the Eastern bloc, Enver Hoxha.
To escape persecution in a country where more than 6,000 dissidents were executed and some 168,000 Albanians were sent to prisons or labor camps, Kadare walked a tight political tightrope. He served for 12 years as a deputy in the People's Assembly of Albania and was a member of the League of Writers of the regime. One of Kadare's novels, "Dimri i madh", also portrayed the dictator Enver Hoxha. Mw vonw Kadare said he wrote it to favor.
In contrast to this work are some of his finest works, including The Palace of Dreams (1981), which subversively attacked the dictatorship, circumventing censorship through allegory, satire, myth and legend.
Mr. Kadare "is a supreme fictional interpreter of the psychology and physiognomy of oppression," Richard Eder wrote in The New York Times in 2002.
Ismail Kadare was born on January 28, 1936, in the southern city of Albania, Gjirokastër. His father, Halit Kadare, was a civil servant; his mother, Hatixe Dobi, was a housewife from a rich family.
When Hoxha's communists took control of Albania in 1944, Ismaili was 8 years old and already immersed in world literature. "At the age of 11 I had read Macbeth, which struck me like a bolt of lightning, and the Greek classics, after which nothing had power over my soul," he recalled in a 1998 interview with The Paris Review.
However, as a teenager, he was drawn to communism. "There was an idealistic side to it," he said. "You thought maybe some aspects of communism were good in theory, but you could see that the practice was terrible."
After studying at the University of Tirana, in the Albanian capital, Kadare was sent for postgraduate studies at the Gorky Institute for World Literature in Moscow, which he later described as a "factory for the production of dogmas of the socialist-realist school".
In 1963, about two years after his return from Moscow, "The General of the Dead Army" was published in Albania. In the novel, an Italian general returns to the mountains of Albania 20 years after World War II to dissect and repatriate the bodies of his soldiers; is a tale of the advanced West entering a strange land ruled by an ancient code of blood feud.
Pro-government critics condemned the novel as too cosmopolitan and not sufficiently hateful of the Italian general, but it made Mr. Kadare a national celebrity. In 1965, the authorities banned his second novel, The Monster, shortly after its publication in a magazine. In 1970, when "The General of the Dead Army" was published in a French translation, "Paris paper was taken by storm," wrote The Paris Review.
The sudden exit of Mr. Kadare attracted the attention of the dictator himself. To appease the regime, Mr. Kadare wrote "The Great Winter" (1977), a novel celebrating Hoxha's break with the Soviet Union in 1961. Mr. Kadare said he had three choices: "To conform to my convictions, that I would said death; complete silence, which meant another kind of death; or to pay a tribute, he chose the third solution, he said, writing "The Great Winter".
In 1975, after Kadare wrote "Pashallalar e Kuq", a poem criticizing members of the Politburo, he was banished to a remote village and banned from publishing for a time.
Përgjigja e tij erdhi në vitin 1981, kur botoi "Pallati i ëndrrave", një kritikë mallkuese ndaj regjimit. I vendosur gjatë Perandorisë Osmane, ai portretizon një burokraci të madhe të përkushtuar ndaj mbledhjes së ëndrrave të qytetarëve të saj, në kërkim të shenjave të mospajtimit. Në rishikimin e tij për The Times, Z. Eder e përshkroi atë si një "shëmbëlltyrë të hënës përpara marrëzisë sw pushtetit - vrasës dhe vetëvrasës në të njëjtën kohë". Romani ishte i ndaluar në Shqipëri, por jo para se të shitej.
Suksesi i zotit Kadare jashtë vendit i dha atij njëfarë sigurie në vend. Megjithatë, tha ai, ai jetonte me frikën se regjimi mund të "më vriste dhe të thoshte se ishte një vetëvrasje".
Për të mbrojtur veprën e tij nga manipulimi në rast tw vdekjes sw tij, Kadare nxori jashtë Shqipërisë dorëshkrime kontrabandë në vitin 1986, duke ia dorëzuar botuesit të tij francez, Claude Durand. Botuesi nga ana e tij përdori udhëtimet e tij në Tiranë për të kontrabanduar shkrime shtesë.
Loja mace-miu në të cilën regjimi publikonte dhe ndalonte me radhë veprat e zotit Kadare vazhdoi pas vdekjes së Hoxhës në vitin 1985, derisa Kadare u arratis në Paris në 1990. Pas rënies së regjimit, Kadare u sulmua nga anti. -kritikët komunistë, si në Shqipëri ashtu edhe në Perëndim, të cilët e portretizuan atë si një përfitues dhe madje një mbështetës aktiv të shtetit stalinist. Në vitin 1997, kur emri i tij përmendej për çmimin Nobel, një artikull në Weekly Standard i kërkoi komitetit të mos i jepte atij çmimin për shkak të "bashkëpunimit të tij të ndërgjegjshëm" me regjimin e Hoxhës.
Pwr tu imunizuar kundwr kritikave Kadare botoi disa libra autobiografikë në vitet 1990, ku tregonte se nëpërmjet letërsisë së tij i kishte rezistuar regjimit, shpirtërisht dhe artistikisht.
"Sa herë që shkruaja një libër," tha ai në intervistën e vitit 1998, "kisha përshtypjen se po i fusja një thikw tw mprehtw diktaturës".
Duke shkruar në vitin 1997 në "The New York Review of Books", Noel Malcolm, një historian i Oksfordit, vlerësoi "dendësinë atmosferike" dhe "përshtatshmërinë poetike" të shkrimeve të Kadaresw, por dënoi mbrojtjen e tij me kritikët.
Autori proteston shumë," shkroi z. Malcolm, duke paralajmëruar se vëllimet e tij vetëpromovuese" mund të dëmtojnë reputacionin e tij më shumë sesa sulmet e kritikëve të tij. Veprat më vitale të zotit Kadare “zhvillohen në një plan tjetër, njëkohësisht më njerëzor dhe më mitik, nga ai i çdo lloji arti ideologjik”, shkruante ai.
Me njw përgjigje të hollë, Kadare e akuzoi z. Malcolm për shfaqjen e arrogancës kulturore ndaj një autori nga një vend i vogël.
"Të marrësh një liri të tillë me një shkrimtar vetëm sepse ai vjen nga një vend i vogël do të thotë të zbulosh një mentalitet kolonialist," shkroi z. Kadare në një letër drejtuar The New York Review of Books.
Informacioni për të mbijetuarit nuk ishte i disponueshëm menjëherë.
After the fall of communism, Mr. Kadare continued to set his novels amid the suspicion and terror of Hoxha's regime. However, some portrayed Albanians living in 21st century Europe, but still haunted by the blood feuds, legends and myths of their nation. His best known works include Chronicle in Stone (1971); "Bridge with three arches" (1978); "Agamemnon's Daughter" (1985); its sequel, "Pasardhesi" (2003); and "The Accident" (2010).
All his works exude a force, wrote Charles McGrath in The Times in 2010. Mr Kadare is "apparently incapable of writing a book that fails to be interesting".
In 2005, after winning the Booker International Prize, Mr Kadare said: "The only possible act of resistance in a classical Stalinist regime was to write."
/The New York Times
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