– Ismail Kadare –
Now that our leader is no longer among us, memories of him acquire a special dimension and value. They form part of his monumental body of work, but a sui generis part, one that is not contained in his books, speeches, diaries, instructions and letters, but is dispersed among hundreds, indeed thousands, of people. Yet, notwithstanding their dispersed nature, this part of his legacy — the memories he left behind, his conversations, words, gestures, expressions and states of mind — constitutes a rich treasury that helps to complete and illuminate entire aspects of his personality as a leader, statesman, Marxist thinker, philosopher, writer and human being.
Memories of him require no embellishment; they require only accuracy, for, when faithfully recorded, they inherently possess their own beauty, depth and true significance. Those who had the good fortune to share experiences with him are therefore conscious of the precious treasures they hold in their hands, treasures whose richness they must reveal to everyone.
In the summer of 1961, the literary climate in our country was both vibrant and complex. Engaged in the great struggle waged by the people and the Party to withstand the new revisionist blockade, which had only just begun, creative forces were fully active. It was natural that, under these conditions, when new paths of development were being sought in order to bind our literature still more closely to the problems of the time, there should be considerable debate and controversy, at times intense.
The literary climate was complicated by several misunderstandings that arose during debates concerning tradition and innovation in Albanian socialist-realist literature. The controversy, which also erupted in the literary press, threatened to lead to an artificial division of writers into “young” and “old,” something exceedingly harmful, particularly in the circumstances confronting our country, when strengthening unity was more necessary than ever.
In such an atmosphere, a major gathering of all the creative forces was organised in Tirana in July 1961. The meeting was to prove decisive in resolving, or at least directing towards a favourable outcome, the debate that had long been simmering. Yet the gathering assumed still greater importance because Comrade Enver Hoxha was in attendance.
The meeting was held in one of the halls of the University of Tirana. Some of the materials presented there reflected the misunderstandings and excesses that had emerged during the controversy up to that point. It must be said that, for us younger writers, the situation was far from easy. Certain authorities in literary criticism and literature had on several occasions published undeserved criticisms of us. There was a danger that the artificial division into “young” and “old” would deepen and that the development of our literature would be impeded by conservative conceptions.
Comrade Enver, who attended every session, listened attentively to each speaker.
During one of the breaks, a comrade who was on the presidium said to me:
“Why is no one among you speaking? From what I understood from his conversation during the break, Comrade Enver would like to hear from you younger writers as well.”
These words seemed instantly to dispel a certain numbness that had overcome me during the meeting. I took out a sheet of paper and began hurriedly to prepare.
During the afternoon session, I asked to speak. I was the first of the “young” writers to take the floor, and it goes without saying that the audience was keen to hear how we would respond to the many criticisms that had been levelled against us.
As I took my place before the microphone, Comrade Enver, who had surely understood the emotional distress experienced by the younger writers at this meeting, said:
“Now, let us hear from you as well. You are young, but you are mature.”
His words increased my courage tenfold, and I not only read my contribution in a firm voice, but, encouraged by him, spontaneously added a number of sentences that I had not written down.
Others spoke after me. Comrade Enver continued to listen attentively to every contribution. By then, both he and the entire gathering had heard the two sides of the controversy. It must be said that there had been excesses and misunderstandings on both sides, including among us “young” writers, but it nevertheless could not be said either that both sides were right or that both were wrong.
In essence, one side was right and the other was not.
It was precisely this essential point that Comrade Enver grasped brilliantly in his eagerly awaited speech. He subjected the problem to a profound Marxist-Leninist analysis, spoke about the dialectical relationship between tradition and innovation, and explained that the younger writers could have no interests other than those of the people and the Party, that they were products of their country and their time and that the division into “young” and “old” served no one.
Comrade Enver’s speech had an extraordinary effect on literary and artistic life as a whole. The misunderstandings that had arisen during the debate were immediately dispelled, the pointless labels that the two sides had attached to one another were set aside, and it was recognised that many of the problems raised in the heat of the controversy were fictitious and that all writers, whether young or old in age, were working towards the same objective.
Thus liberated, thanks to the Leader’s intervention, from a pointless and harmful tension, our literature immediately entered a new period of vigorous development, contrary to the gloomy prophecies of the Khrushchevites, who had anticipated its destruction. Comrade Enver’s meeting with the writers and artists in July 1961, and the speech he delivered there, thus entered the history of Albanian literature. It may confidently be said that the entire generation of writers of the 1960s owed its emergence to this speech.
I had the good fortune to meet Comrade Enver several times, on various occasions — at birthday celebrations, during breaks in ceremonial meetings or between two sessions of the People’s Assembly. Although brief, these encounters have remained indelibly engraved in my memory, but especially memorable was my lengthy meeting with him in 1971, at his home.
One day in March, together with my wife and our young daughter, I went there on a visit. Comrade Nexhmije and her daughter received us. Comrade Enver was not at home, and we did not know whether or not we would have the good fortune to see him.
We were engaged in lively conversation when one of the drawing-room doors opened and Comrade Enver appeared in the doorway, tall and smiling. Since I was facing the door, I was the first to see him enter, and I immediately rose to my feet, momentarily startling the others, who must surely have thought to themselves, “What has got into him?”
Then everyone turned their heads towards the doorway through which Comrade Enver had entered.
“May I join you?” he said with a laugh. “I hope I am not interrupting your conversation.”
Although several times during our conversation, whenever I thought I heard the sound of a car, I had imagined how he might arrive, I could never have imagined an entrance more natural, joyful and human.
He sat down among us, immediately creating his customary atmosphere of warmth and cordiality. He asked each of us in turn about our health, took our six-year-old daughter onto his lap and said to her, using an old Gjirokastra expression:
“Ngalasëm ti, të të ngalas edhe unë (‘You embrace me, and I shall embrace you too’).”
Comrade Enver asked me what I had been working on recently, and I told him that I had a novel about Gjirokastra in press, entitled Chronicle in Stone.
“I shall read it with pleasure,” he said. “Gjirokastra is fascinating, and we do not say that merely because we come from there,” he added, looking at the others with a teasing smile, “but because it really is so. Is that not right? But, unless I am mistaken, you have already published a short story on this subject.”
“Yes,” I replied. “The Southern City, but I thought I would expand it and turn it into a novel.”
“You did well.” He fell silent for a moment, then continued: “I too have a hundred or so pages of notes about Gjirokastra. Had I known that you were writing a novel, I could have given them to you to make use of, because I do not think I shall have time to write that book.” (He was apparently referring to the book Years of My Childhood, which he completed and published several years later.)
I did not know how to thank him for his trust and for the generosity embodied in these words, for there can have been very few instances anywhere in the world of an author so generously offering his unpublished book for another writer to make use of.
When Comrade Enver asked me what I was currently working on, I replied that “I was writing something about the break with the Soviets.”
In fact, I had begun work on the novel The Great Winter, but in my reply, instead of using the word “novel,” I said “something.” I did so without thinking, as an instinctive form of self-protection, because I was not yet certain that I would be equal to the great subject I had undertaken.
Fortunately, or perhaps because I had muttered the words under my breath, Comrade Enver did not notice this detail.
“Hmm, the Soviets,” he said. “Have you read in the news-agency reports what Radio Moscow has been saying about you in recent days?” and he laughed heartily.
I had read it, and it really was laughable. Among other absurdities, Radio Moscow had claimed in one of its broadcasts that all serious Albanian writers had boycotted literature and were no longer writing, as an expression of their sorrow and protest over the break with the Soviets. To fill the resulting vacuum, Radio Moscow continued, the Albanian state had encouraged a number of young pseudo-writers, such as a certain I. Kadare and his associates, to write and publish their works, which were so formulaic and so utterly devoid of artistic value that they resembled newspaper editorials.
It had never occurred to me that this frivolity on the part of Radio Moscow would render me such a great and unexpected service: it prompted Comrade Enver to begin speaking about what had happened in Moscow ten years earlier.
After laughing, his expression darkened and he slowly shook his head, as though summoning an unpleasant memory.
Then, as he drank his coffee, he began to speak in a tone different from the one he had used until then, grave and reflective. He spoke about his journey to Moscow during that unforgettable winter and about some of his meetings with the “Khrushchevites,” comparing them with his first meeting with Stalin. He then recounted an episode involving Kosygin at a Kremlin dinner on the eve of the meeting and, in passing, mentioned something about the villa in which our delegation was accommodated and the nocturnal “visits” of guests such as Mikoyan, Thorez and others.
I wished that he might speak for hours on this subject, but unfortunately my dream of hearing as many details as possible about that monumental event, of which he himself had been the central figure, was short-lived. Comrade Enver turned to another subject, and I did not have the courage to ask him further about Moscow.
Later, in the course of working on the novel, I made extensive use of the archives, familiarised myself with Party documents, the minutes of the Moscow Meeting and various first-hand accounts, especially the text of Comrade Enver’s speech, his instructions and his annotations in the margins of the pages, curving upwards or downwards for lack of space, which resembled the branches of oak trees swaying in a storm. And indeed, in all those words, rejoinders, lines and annotations, one could powerfully sense the storm of the age.
Nevertheless, I must say that Comrade Enver’s spontaneous conversation gave me, as a writer, something for the novel I was writing that nothing else could have supplied. The entire atmosphere of the second part of the work, subtitled “Guests in the Castle,” its overall vision, colours, symphonic quality, tragic character and gravity, all had their origins in that conversation with the leader. His account possessed an extraordinary vividness: with a single phrase or emphasis, he could evoke the gleam of the festive chandeliers over the Kremlin dinner, or the furtive shadows upon Mikoyan’s face, the monumental tranquillity of the dinner with Stalin or the comic quality of Khrushchev’s figure. Above all, however incidental his remarks might have been, his account powerfully encompassed every dimension of the drama.
Later, as work on the novel progressed, several of my fellow writers suggested that I seek an opportunity to meet Comrade Enver, but I did not dare to do so. I was constantly apprehensive that I might fail to fulfil my promise to produce a work worthy of that great event, but I had another, still more important reason. I had worked in the literary press and knew that Comrade Enver had categorically forbidden writing about his own figure. If I managed to arrange a meeting with him concerning the work I was writing, what would happen if, during our conversation, he discovered that I had made him the central historical character of my novel? He would forbid such a thing, and that would be a catastrophe for my novel.
But let me return to my meeting with Comrade Enver.
After our conversation about Moscow, the discussion turned to the spiritual strength of our people and their ancient origins. He asked whether I had read a book by the Frenchman Zacharie Mayani about the Etruscans and the Albanian language, and when I told him that I had heard of it but had not read it, he said that he would give it to me. He sent someone to fetch it, saying:
“I left it on the mantelpiece.”
The conversation once again became relaxed and cheerful, and at one point returned to Gjirokastra, to the Lane of the Madmen, perhaps the only street in the world to bear such a name and one that we both knew so well, and also to the wise old women of Gjirokastra’s houses, in striking contrast to the name of the lane.
“From their accounts alone of how houses were illuminated, of the introduction of paraffin or the evolution of lamps, you can draw interesting conclusions of a socio-economic character,” Comrade Enver said.
I listened in astonishment as he spoke about these matters in a way I had never encountered anywhere in writing.
(After returning home and recording in a notebook everything I had heard from him about the events in Moscow, I wrote on a separate sheet: “Project for a novella. In chronicle form. Paraffin, salt, lives, deaths, trials, economy, generations.” This was the germ of the novella I later wrote, The Hankonat Generation, a work particularly dear to me, among other reasons because of the story of its genesis.)
We had come for a brief afternoon visit, and it was already approaching 8:30. Although we very much wished to remain longer, we asked permission to leave. Before we departed, Comrade Enver also presented us with Zacharie Mayani’s book La fin du mystère étrusque.
We were already standing and about to take our leave when he said to Comrade Nexhmije:
“Go to the library and choose something else.”
Comrade Nexhmije returned shortly afterwards with Balzac’s complete works in French.
“Oh, you have loaded him up with Balzac!” Comrade Enver joked. It was the subtle jest of a man thoroughly informed about the discussions taking place throughout the world concerning the relationship between the realist literature of the 19th century and contemporary literature, debates in which Balzac stood at the centre of the opposing positions and which had not passed entirely without echo in our own country.
As I thanked him for the books he had given us, I told Comrade Enver that, although I was a contemporary writer, I was very fond of Balzac.
“But how are you going to carry all these books?” Comrade Enver said as we were taking our leave. Turning to Comrade Nexhmije, he added: “See if you can find a car to take our guests home.”
These were the final moments of that unforgettable memory.
(Translated by NEPH from the Albanian original)