Some helpful country overviews:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/1004234.stm
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/al.html
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/altoc.html
Brief summaries of Albanian Literature:
http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/4615/Albanian-Poetry.html
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/12556/Albanian-literature
A note from our translator:
http://www.elsie.de/en/books/b41.html
And an Albanian-American literature journal:
http://www.albanianliterature.org/pena.htm
Signs that life is looking up in Albania:
*Squat toilets are no longer the norm
*Blood feuds are mostly contained in the Northern Frontier
*Homosexuality is now met with open hostility, as opposed to violence
And now for something completely different: A Local Albanian Gas Station
Posts
Arranging the poets in the Albanian section by birthdate makes for a startling show of evolution (or devolution) of Albanian poets' ideas of freedom.
ReplyDeleteThe first poem "Hunger Strike" (Zhitit, b. 1952) recounts the horrific circumstances of the individual living as a guest of The State. There is no possibility of freedom in this poem, even the "patches of light from somewhere" add to the speaker's misery as they "Lay in the room/Like vomit from a sick day."
Next we have "Extiniction" (Ahmeti, b. 1963) and "Adam" (Krasniqi, b. 1963). These poems address the concept of freedom at an individual level in response to an indifferent/absenst God. Freedom might be available, but only on an inner, personal level.
Now we come to Luljeta Lleshanaku's (b. 1968) poem "Fresco." Though she claims in the first line that "Freedom is meaningless," the poem goes on to posit that freedom can be achieved through death/the metaphysical death that love (of another human? of God?) brings.
And we end the section with "Walls," (Arai, b. 1972). The speaker also dismisses (Earthly?) freedom and tells us that, when faced with a high wall:
I would close my eyes, I would crouch
And rest my check (sic?) against it,
I would find peace in its cool serenity.
And if this wall were death...
(/poem)
The Albanian sections starts out with despair over The State and ends with a Zen-ish acceptance of The State/Death. The generation becomes increasingly hopeful, not that The State can be defeated, but that there are better (or, at least, less troubling) things to come in the State-less next life.
Obviously, five poems does not a representative sample make. It's probably unfair to use these five poems to make grand-scale claims about Changes in the Worldview of Albanian Poets Born Between 1952 and 1972. But the section is so neatly bookended by these stark contrasts that I can't help but draw some over-reaching conclusions.
Nice point - and I too am hesitant to draw any overarching conclusions. While there does appear to be a certain evolution of attitudes toward political freedom presented here, I am loathe to make any larger claims about the evolution of Alabanian poetry at-large. A reductively biographical approach would indicate that Zhiti, a former political prisoner, would tend to the despairing side of the spectrum. Months of solitary confinement, torture and years in a work camp can do that to a person. But many of his other poems, especially "At the Bars of My Cell" (http://www.albanianliterature.com/authors_modern1/zhiti_poetry.html) offer us a surprising dose of hope and humanity, as opposed to despair. Likewise, later poets from Ahmeti to Arapi, with their expanded freedoms and Iowa fellowships, ought to be Zenning-it-up, but a handful of their poems not included here paint a slightly different picture (http://www.albanianliterature.com/en/authors_modern1.html.) But yes, there seems to be some generational attitidunal shift, commensurate with the move away from isolationsism, even if it's not as neat as this section might suggest.
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