The work of Kadare: a gift to the world

Ismail Kadare is widely regarded as one of the world's greatest living writers. Since the 1960s he has published well over 20 novels, plus essays and poetry, translated into some 30 languages. He has won a clutch of top literary awards including the inaugural international Man Booker prize in 2005, and has been a Nobel Literature Prize candidate. Kadare is Albanian, and while his themes are universal, his approach is deeply rooted in the traditions, law and culture of his homeland.

On 2 March he was in Brussels for a rare visit: guest of the Flemish literary association Het Beschrijf, the Passa Porta bookshop and the Konitza Cultural Association, founded in 2008 largely by members of the estimated 60,000-strong ethnic Albanian diaspora in Belgium. For lovers of literature, the event was an unmissable opportunity to hear Kadare discussing his work. For Albanians in Belgium, it was more: a chance to show pride in their often-maligned and widely misunderstood homeland.

I asked Ismail Kadare if it is true he was inspired to write by reading Shakespeare's Macbeth at a young age. “When I was 11 or 12 I read it as a fairy story,” he agrees. “I was attracted by the first pages, with the witches. I wasn’t a genius, so while it pleased me a lot, I found it hard to understand. It was troubling, obscure – a thousand time more obscure for a child than a fairy story. I have loved Shakespeare all my life, and his place in my memory has not changed.” Indeed, Kadare recently published his latest essay on Hamlet, in French, in the Livre de Poche series, in which he says, modestly, that he hopes to have achieved something “original”.

The way Kadare's novels blend myth, legend, imagination and history has brought comparisons with the 'magic realism' of Latin American authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Kadare is dismissive. “Literature started as magic realism,” he declares. “It was not invented in the twentieth century – look at Dante Alighieri for example. The enigmatic sustains the greatest literature in the world.”

Storyteller

Kadare is, first and foremost, a great storyteller, sometimes employing a sardonic humour to weave elegiac narratives that cast the reader under their spell. In Broken April, one of his best-known and most haunting works, the background is the Albanian Kanun, the 15th century code of law which in some areas still governs strict rules of hospitality, as well as the notorious blood feud. Since his tragic tales – in which the individual often confronts the force of destiny – have been compared to Homer, it is no coincidence that in The File on H he articulates the link between Albania's itinerant rhapsodes and the Homeric epics. “I love tragedy,” he adds. “It is the noblest type of literature. At the base of Don Quixote, for example, there is a great tragedy. The idealist is always a tragic figure. But in the face of tyranny, tragedy becomes grotesque. There is also a comic side – it is not contradictory.”

Kadare has lived in Paris since 1990. He sought political asylum in France just at the time Albania was emerging from Enver Hoxha's 45-year dictatorship and moving painfully towards democracy. That decision – and Kadare’s relationship with the extremist regime – continues to be controversial. But he has always insisted that literature is beyond politics, and while several of his works are interpreted as subtle attacks on totalitarianism, he denies that he set out to be a dissident. “Either you have a political objective, or you create literature,” he says.

He was born in 1936 in Gjirokaster in southern Albania – a place he describes memorably in his semi-autobiographical Chronicle in Stone as “a steep city, perhaps the steepest in the world ... the top of one house might graze the foundation of another, and it was surely the only place in the world where if you slipped and fell in the street, you might well land on the roof of a house – a peculiarity known most intimately to drunks.” After he left the country, his childhood home in a narrow side street was burnt down – when I saw it in 2006 only an anonymous skeleton of walls remained. The writer donated the house to the Albanian state and it is now being rebuilt as a museum.

How close does he feel now to Albanians and the diaspora spread across many European countries? “They are my first readers,” he replies, “because they read my books in the language they are written in – their own language. But I don't have a mission to represent Albania – that would be wrong for a writer. It's the tragedy of the Balkans: everybody imagines they have a mission. Everybody has a flag to wave. My readers comprise all of humanity.”

Hidden subtlety

The English versions of many of Kadare's novels are themselves translated from the French, not the original Albanian. This means that while Kadare's prose style is lean and deceptively simple, the English reader is sometimes left with a vague sense of missing hidden subtleties. “It is a problem,” he admits. “The best translations have been done from the original Albanian, into French, Spanish and German for example. There's always some loss.

“But I am annoyed when people ask me: 'why do you write in that language?' Albanian is not a small language. It's spoken by 10 million people across Europe. Out of the 10 or 12 founding language groups in Europe, there are only three 'orphan' languages that are not linked to any others. They are Greek, Armenian and Albanian. That's why it's important, and it's a perfect medium for expression. Language is a tool, a machine, and I know all the secrets of Albanian.”

The Albanian language has suffered from the prejudices surrounding the people and the country, he says. Does the negative stereotyping of his compatriots upset him? “Yes, it disturbs me,” he admits. “Albanians are not angels. They are capable of making mistakes – but they’re not the only ones! I find the reaction a bit exaggerated. It’s become a cliché. I can’t explain it: perhaps it’s just 'la mode'. In Italy, for example, the Roma have now replaced Albanians as top hate figures.”

So many people wanted to hear Kadare in Brussels that his talk had to be moved from the original venue at Passa Porta bookshop to the stately surroundings of the Bellone in rue de Flandres. He, himself, has acquired a reputation for being somewhat aloof, reserved. Yet he seemed totally at ease spending the afternoon drinking coffee and chatting with a group of enthusiastic Albanian ex-patriots – some of whom have lived in Belgium all their lives.

According to Kadare, great literature can use a range of formats to reveal deep universal truths. “What is The Brothers Karamazov but a detective story?” he argues. “Macbeth too is a very simple story: it's a dinner, and someone invites someone else. Even Hamlet is simple – almost banal. It's a story of revenge – of the vendetta.

“The reason for writing is profound, and to explain the motivation, you are obliged to falsify things. Writers are tortured by the barriers which won't let them go further. Sometimes I know there's something I want to express but I can't get there. But many great writers have got close. Literature is the only wealth that is universal, and as a writer, you make a present of your work to the whole world.”

Kate Holman

This article was published in 'The Bulletin', April 2010