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ismail kadare

on july 1, 2024, the albanian literary giant ismail kadare suffered a cardiac arrest and was buried in tirana, the capital of albania. since 1990, france has become his place of refuge, and he did not return to his homeland until his later years. during the reign of enver hoxha, the former political leader of albania, he persisted in writing for nearly 30 years. on the one hand, enver hoxha, who regarded himself as a writer, favored him and appointed him as a member of parliament; on the other hand, he played a cat-and-mouse game with the hoxha regime in terms of creation. internationally, kadare was one of the favorites for the nobel prize and the first winner of the booker international prize. we can regard kadare as a writer with a keen sense of smell. ethnicity and politics are the eternal themes of his works; beautiful poetry and exquisite metaphors are the foundation of his creation.

the novel "broken april" was created in 1978. it tells the story of giorgu, a mountaineer from the afsh plateau in northern albania, who, in accordance with the blood debt custom, one of the clauses of the ancient code that has been passed down since the middle ages, shot and killed his family's enemy to avenge his brother. since then, this april in giorgu's life has been divided into two halves by the code: the first half is protected by the good faith guarantee period and life goes on as usual; starting from noon on april 17, his enemies will have the right to take his life according to the same custom. the ruthless machine will continue to run, crushing the last male of the belisha family, giorgu's father, who will avenge his son.

the novel "dream palace" was created in 1981. it tells the story of a young man named mark-alem who came from a big family during the ottoman empire. he got a job in the mysterious dream palace and learned about its operating system. on the other hand, his noble kupreli family was engaged in a fierce power struggle with the dream palace. entering the dream palace was the idea of ​​mark's uncle, who was a senior official.

kadare's other novel, "the accident", was written in 2008. the author uses a more secretive writing method to tell the story of albania in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. the story revolves around a traffic accident between european commission official besfurt y and his young lover rowena st, and the anonymous investigator's tracing of the two deaths, reconstructing their love entanglement. behind this relationship is the change of the times: nato's bombing of yugoslavia in the late 20th century, the hostility between albania and yugoslavia over kosovo, and the albanian civil war, all of which are inextricably linked to besfurt, a small figure who is insignificant in history.

the title of broken april alone can evoke people's memories of eliot's the waste land:

"april is the cruelest month, in the dead land

raised lilac, disturbed

memories and desires, with spring rain

awaken the sluggish roots."

these lines of poetry can be seen as a footnote to broken april. the budding love buds being blocked by death is an important aspect of this cruel work.

the hourglass was counting down, and giorgu's integrity guarantee period was about to end. he ran into diana, an upper-class woman from the capital. diana had just married the writer bessian, and they were honeymooning in a black velvet-decorated carriage in this land full of anecdotes. in this bloody april, giorgu and diana fell in love at first sight after staring at each other for a few seconds through the window glass of the black carriage. cadare's description of this love is outstanding, reminiscent of a sentence in garcía márquez's "love in the time of cholera", not the famous opening sentence: "inevitably, the smell of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of blocked love." but the look back that made love disappear: "she saw his cold eyes, purple face and lips stiffened by the fear of love." also struck by love and also showing a dumbfounded look, giorgu's luck is much better than that of the male protagonist in márquez. the latter waited for a lifetime because of fermina daza's glance before he won the beauty. but giorgu, with his pale face and dark eye sockets, received a sweet response. diana fell in love with him: paleness became synonymous with beauty. when the black carriage left in a cloud of dust, giorgu and diana began to look for each other in this broken april. and it ended in tragedy.

the love in broken april only has a beginning, which is very easy to empathize with, because many hopes and possibilities have died, but still leave traces. in contrast, the love in the accident drags its lingering body, almost exhausting the readers, because it has passed its tasting period and has been resurrected from the dead, just like a ripe fruit that exudes an unpalatable taste. kadare uses orpheus and his lover eurydice who fell into the underworld to represent the two protagonists: besforte y and rowena st. the state between life and death and persistence to the end between the characters is based on the story of this ancient greek mythological figure and his lover. in the reality of the text and the illusion of the characters, rowena keeps changing her form: a beautiful woman, a marble naked woman in the bathroom, a mysterious doll. at the same time, the plaster and the frighteningly white skin that are repeated many times in the text are all developed from this prototype. at the same time, the writer also used don quixote as a text copy to clarify the reality of the text by using the method of nested layering (miss en abyme).

kadare's protagonists often have delicate and sensitive nerves, and are as hesitant as hamlet. that is why his protagonists must have an emotional connection with someone. of course, this connection does not necessarily have to be love. there is no place for love in "the dream palace". the protagonist mark-alem regards the maverick of the family, kurt, as a spiritual idol. this uncle has "blonde hair, light eyes, and a light red beard". he is regarded as the wild rose of the family, with a free soul, profound knowledge, and sharp insights. it can be said that he is a ray of light in the haze.

kadare writes allegorical stories. all three novels tell the story of albania's politics, life, folk customs, and disasters in just over 200 pages. the emotions he writes about naturally have a sense of depth and implications. how can we detect and confirm the metaphorical power of the characters' emotions in the writer's works? this requires talking about another dimension in the text: the shaping of space and climate.

the stone building in broken april has created countless closed spaces. blood debtors who have passed the integrity guarantee period can hide here for life. the windows of the stone building are very small, and no avenger's bullet can reach here. due to the dim light, the sheltered are destined to become half-blind polyphemus. in order to find giorgu, diana broke into a nearby stone building. when she came out, "(...) her face was as white as a piece of white cloth, without any expression of fear, pain, or shame, only a nervous loss of consciousness, especially around the eyes." after witnessing the victims of the blood debt custom, diana lost her soul. this is a big dramatic climax, and it is also a ritual of diana's emotional transformation: her love is precipitated into a kind of painful pity, which expands from giorgu to all blood debtors. while maintaining her own subjectivity, giorgu became a microcosm of the people, and diana acted as a savior, but failed and lost her soul. just as marquez wrote "the autumn of the patriarch" based on the theme of south american leaders, individuals can be symbols of the nation and their bodies can be metaphors of the country. the love described by kadare also has overtones: it is a projection of the author's love for albania, full of bitterness.

the half-blind polyphemus in the stone building: this image can be used to describe mark-alem in the dream palace. in broken april, kadare used blank space to arouse readers' curiosity about the stone building; in the dream palace, he went the other way and spent a lot of time and effort to create a complex and frightening space. the power behind it was unfathomable, a kafkaesque world. the detailed description and repetition of the plot all tell the anxious size and secrecy of the dream palace. the physical space hints at the character's situation: mark often gets lost in the complex corridors of this building, just as he does not know that he is a pawn in this power struggle. the dream palace uses kurt as a breakthrough point to try to defeat the kuprili family, and the family abandons this member in exchange for mark's promotion. it is no exaggeration to say that kurt's death marks the death of mark's soul. after he recognizes his own destiny, he becomes a part of the dream palace. flowers as literary images - kurt's wild roses or mark's apricot blossoms - are symbols of the characters' vitality, echoing each other and awaiting similar fates: either being crushed or petrified.

the spaces in these two novels are cold and solidified, while the space in the accident is fragmented and needs to be pieced together by the reader. the love between bessfurt y and rowena has no specific time and space anchorage. they take place in hotels in vienna, brussels, strasbourg, luxembourg and other places. on the one hand, these hotels do not have any organic social value and cannot provide a sense of belonging. as marc auger puts it, the "non-place" adds a sense of instability to the characters' own situations and their feelings. on the other hand, the cities chosen by the author all have a special relationship with albania - they are all key locations of international organizations: such as the european commission, the european parliament, and the osce, which to some extent participate in determining the fate of albania, especially in the era described in the novel: from the late 1990s to the early 21st century. in the interaction between the relationship and space between the two, we can detect a detail: for besfurt, rowena left albania and came to graz, austria to live for a long time; most of the time, it was besfurt who decided the city for dating based on the convenience of his work, which means that rowena is a submissive, or even an unconditional follower. perhaps it can be said that for besfurt, rowena is close to the west. this spatial orientation is hard not to guess that besfurt is the political environment of albania, and rowena is albania itself. in kadare's vague and lyrical words, we can indeed capture the political metaphor of the love between the characters.

whether it is the thousands of stone buildings that shelter the blood debtors, the dizzying huge dream palace, or the luxury hotels on the european continent, they are all shrouded in the cold and desolate climate, becoming witnesses and cold-eyed bystanders of the characters' inability to resist their fate. kadare often uses elements such as fog, rain and snow to modify his text space. even the sun is "boring", and the dry and cold wind is the norm.

in addition to the delicately constructed space, the setting of suspense is also kadare's forte. in his works, suspense is not only a seasoning that adds readability, but also has the effect of making disguises disappear. because, in kadare's fictional world, reality always appears in a mask at the beginning to hide its bloody cruelty.

at the beginning of "broken april", the majesty of the "code" is presented. the strict compliance of the mountain people adds a sense of grandeur of ancient greek tragedy to "this play". therefore, when besien, a cultural celebrity, talks about the aesthetics of the code, it does not seem so hateful. he analyzes the "code" in depth, but does not make value judgments. his only judgment is ambiguous: "it cannot be asked whether it is good or bad, like a child asking about things. just like every solemn thing, the code is far above good or evil." however, as kadare brings out another key figure - the "steward of blood" who serves the ruling class, by describing his psychological activities, the solemn shell of the code is broken, revealing its face of being obsessed with interests. the disguise faded, the conspiracy was exposed, and no one would disagree with the doctor, the opponent of the code, who judged besien: "in death you seek noble themes, beauty for your art. you don't see that this is a kind of beauty of killing." in the running gears of this mechanism, "the revenge of killing a friend" became the key gear to expand the scope of the vendetta, because according to the code, anyone who knocked on the door for a place to stay could be regarded as a "friend" of half god. it must be said that the code is a well-designed killing machine, and its ultimate goal is to harvest the "blood tax" paid by the blood debtors. the whole system is a blood business.

kadare is good at constructing complex and sophisticated systems, and will set up opportunities to peel off this layer of mystery and reveal another reality under the surface of reality. the fate of the characters is manipulated by the latter, and this sense of fate is integrated with the grand mystery at the beginning. it is this kind of mutually separated and integrated characteristics that makes kadare's writing attractive. as the author himself said: "i tried to write a style that combines grand tragedy and absurd narrative." the world depicted in "dream palace" is full of logic at first glance: the dream palace strictly designs layers of bureaucratic systems to collect, screen, and analyze the vast number of dreams of the people, and regularly selects "special dreams" from them to present to the monarch, and the weight of this dream is enough to influence the monarch's policy of governing the country. the rigor of the system, the number of people involved, and the huge cost are staggering. however, the system itself is only the surface of the operation of the dream palace. under it, another intention is operating. the former has evolved into a cover for mobilizing troops. the more troops are mobilized, the better the cover is, and the more dangerous the undercurrents surging under the surface are. the creation of a "special dream" can even be a product fabricated halfway, and it does not necessarily come from a designated chain.

if broken april is based on the real kanu code, and the focus on the blood debt clause is an allusion to the living conditions of albanians; then although dream palace is set in the ottoman empire, combined with the time of the novel's creation, it is easy to see that it alludes to the reign of enver hoxha. compared with the previous two works, kadare in the accident is concerned about the current situation of his homeland in a highly condensed way, narrating its process of approaching the west and its struggles along the way. kadare's writing is undoubtedly solemn, but not without cunning. the mask falls off, the conspiracy reveals its terrible face, the characters' hearts are exhausted in sorrow, but they remain eager to welcome the arrival of their own tragic fate:

"outside the window, something was calling him persistently. finally, he broke his habit and leaned forward. through the mist left on the glass by his breath, he found that he was driving through central park. the almond trees are in bloom, he thought. he was moved. usually, after seeing something outside that attracted him, he would immediately shrink back into the corner. at this moment, he almost did so, but he found that he couldn't. there, a few steps away, life was reviving: warmer clouds, white cranes, love - all of which he had always ignored, for fear that they would take him away from his dream palace."