AZEM DELIU –
With and around Ismail Kadaré
Interview by
J. Silva Rodrigues, in Pristina, Kosovo, 13 June 2023
Azem Deliu,
born 1996 in Skënderaj, Kosovo studied Albanian Literature at the University of
Prishtina where he was honoured with the prestigious Distinguished Student
Award for his first poetry volume “The Funeral of Rain” (2013). His
first novel “The Illegal Kisser” (2016) became a national bestseller and
has already been translated into English. Interest in the author is also
growing in other countries. The French press have called him “a great author
from a small country” and “the new star of European literature”.
I met Azem
Deliu by accident while reading comments regarding Ismail Kadaré on Internet. I
happened to read one of his poems in Albanian, with translation to English. The
message of that poem, even tough already far, was the window for a first
contact, which was materialised during the Pristina Book Fair, June 2023.
Azem Deliu is
not only a young and already a well-known writer in his country (Kosovo), but an
enthusiastic researcher and great expert on Ismail Kadaré works and thoughts.
The interview
took place in one café-esplanade along the Mother Theresa Boulevard, in
Pristina, on 13 June 2023.
Joaquim Silva
Rodrigues (JSR): Dear
Azem, I understood that your main interest on Ismail Kadaré are his works, the
way he wrote, in the context he did it. You know him very well, you studied,
you wrote about it. Can I have your global view on the writer, the country, the
whole works that he did. What is your global perception?
Azem Deliu
(AD): Ismail Kadaré
is like a multilayered ocean, in which the deeper you dig, the more you find,
and sometimes you can find different things in the same ocean. Just like you
can find different perceptions and modes of writing in his body of work.
I first came
in touch with Kadaré when I was 14 or 15 y.o., at the end of my primary school.
A book stumbled into my hands, and it was in Albanian. The original title was “Ra
ky mort e u pamë” (in French “Il a fallu ce deuil pour se retrouver –
Journal de la guerre du Kosovo», éditions Fayard 2000), which was a
collection of essays, debates and letters he wrote to world personalities about
the situation in Kosovo end of 90’s around the Rambouillet Conference, a little
before and a little after the NATO intervention, which was done to save the
Albanian civilians in Kosovo from Milosevic. After that, I started imitating
him first. My first reaction was to write an article about the case of Kosovo,
but as good as he did, as clearly as he did, as stylish as he did. Of course, I
was 15, so my sentences would not even nearly be as good. Not I'm not sure
they're as good today. Then I just kept going and read everything I could find.
The next book I could find was “E penguara: Rekuiem për Linda B” (“A
Girl in Exile: Requiem for Linda B”), which is about a girl who ends up in
prison and the writer ends up in prison because of the girl in exile.
Then, I
finished my high school one year earlier than my peers. I finished three years
of high school in two years, and my father's gift for being so successful in
school was a wonderful gift: the complete works of Kadaré. This started a
journey, which hasn't ended today. I was 16 years old. After diving into his
words, almost like a madman, I convinced myself that it would be a good idea
for a high school student, finishing high school in Kosovo, to write a letter
to the Nobel Committee arguing why Kadaré should deserve and win the Nobel
Prize. It was of course a very, very naïve letter. But it appeared in
the press and secured me the very first meeting with Kadaré and his publisher
Bujar Hudhri, who, as we know today, would go on to become my publisher after
this. After that, I read a lot. I was a vivid reader like I still am. I love
Kadaré style.
It was
unimaginable for me how a writer, with such local substance, writing about
Albanians and myths and culture and politics, and very local themes, would be
able to turn those into world literature. Because, if you write about
contemporary world topics, it will be very easy for an audience, a wider audience
to understand you and to cherish you, and to read you. Kadaré was the opposite
of this. He was universal because he was so local, because he was adding so
much colour to the world literature, because he was sending the Albanian scent
and element into the world of writing.
Then I ended
up graduating with my thesis around his book “The Palace of Dreams”,
which is, in my view still today, his best work, not only because of stylistic
elements, because it's pretty much the same style that goes throughout the
works of the body of work of Kadaré, what he did all his life. So, it's not
because of stylistics, it's because of the depth. And because I tend to
appreciate works of art based on how hard it was to construct them. And by that,
I don't just mean politically, because there is this tendency to put Kadaré in
pockets, in boxes. Was he a dissident, a political dissident, or was he the
favourite of Enver Hoxha regime? For me and for the young generation of
readers, it's time to say that these two things are nonsense. Kadaré was a
writer, and we're going to read and analyse what he did as a writer. If we need
the Communist Albania context to make sense of some of the works, we will use
it as a context. But I don't, and in all my years in public opinion, I've never
even tried to engage in the political debate surrounding the figure of Kadaré because,
I insist, we talk about the texts. Because that is either his best or his
worst. Arguments pro and against him. So, I insist, the public debates should be
concentrated exclusively around his texts. I have not been quite successful
because the same generation that lived with him through the Communist Albania
and post-Communist Albania is still alive. And it's very hard for them to just
shake mentally the Communist period. This is true for both sides, those who see
him as a traitor and those who see him as a hero of free speech and free
literature.
On my side, I
only see him as an author, not championing free or censored literature,
but good literature. And this is the distinction. This is what I think. This is
very, very important, because I see not only here in Kosovo and Albania and in
the Albanian speaking market, but also in the world, there is this debate going
on every year, when the Nobel Prize decision is near, they will regain the
perspective of “... was he a servant of Enver Hoxha? Was he a dissident? If
he was a dissident, why wasn't he imprisoned or killed?” I'm under the
impression that nobody would need to martyr Kadaré, but we do need the writer
Kadaré, though, and I suppose it is better that we focus on the writer. That's
why I did that for “The Palace of dreams”.
So it was very
important for me, not only that I make a contribution regarding Kadaré, but
also that I make the right contribution and I tried to do this with “The Palace
of Dreams”, that I would not practically speak too much about the political
elements inside “The Palace of Dreams”, and by that, I mean the anti-Enver
Hoxha regime elements, because political elements you cannot escape, because
they are full. “The Palace of Dreams” is full of political thoughts. I rather
try to analyse it as an anti-totalitarian work, not referencing to Hoxha or not
referencing specifically to the Ottoman Empire. I mean, it's a book of
political content in literature, which is, in my view, besides alongside with “1984”
of George Orwell and “Brave New World” of Aldous Huxley and some other works, maybe
also Margaret Atwood. He's part of the best corpus written in the 20th century
about regimes, totalitarianism, and part of the best corpus of political
literature.
JSR: Do you see the Ottoman Empire as a tool used
by Kadaré, not the content itself, but just an instrumental tool for it?
AD: I do, I do. But he did this. He did this
through his entire career.
JSR: The same for the legends?
AD: Yes, and it was justifiable to say
something that was maybe not in proper lines with the system, if you would do
that from the historical perspective. So, I see it as a tool, but it is, in my
view, not as important as researchers and critics and journalists tend to make
it, because by and large, first and foremost “The Palace of Dreams” is a
remarkable literary work and it would be so even if written in democracy. This
is my point. It's not that it was not against the Hoxha regime. I do accept
that premise, but I am trying to put the debate somewhere else. I'm saying: “Here
is Kadaré and his works and he's a great writer”. Because, if we try to analyse
only the anti-Enver Hoxha elements of it, there will always be the groups that
think he was anti-Enver Hoxha and the groups that think he was pro-Enver Hoxha.
And they will debate each other in a very non-constructive debate that will go
on forever. But if we say that this is a great literary work, we have a
potential to catch readers from both groups and make them fall in love and be
in awe with this stylistic semantic and masterful ways of literary construction.
This was my point! Building a character as deep as Mark Allen, writing in such
a wonderful either descriptive or sometimes impressionist style. Writing
wonderful, suggestive dialogues, going as deep as one can with the idea of
totalitarianism, controlling even the dreams, which is, as far as I'm
concerned, much deeper than George Orwell.
And this was
the point I would do in an analysis of “The Palace of Dreams” with the
political elements, with the consideration that the Ottoman Empire was a tool
but not link it directly to Enver Hoxha. Why? Because “The Palace of Dreams”
serves as a political anti totalitarian work for every totalitarian country in
the world, for every authoritarian or totalitarian regime in the world. You can
read “The Palace of Dreams” as if it was written in Northern Korea today and it
will still make sense; or probably in Russia today and it will still make sense;
in every country that, unfortunately, made their purpose to minimize the
freedoms of the individuals. This falls within “The Palace of Dreams”, and that
is what makes it a good literary work outside of the context of whether the
writer was a dissident or was not a dissident or was the favourite of the Hoxha
regime. This is for me a very not important issue because these issues will die
with the writer, but “The Palace of Dreams” will not. That was my point!
After I
finished that - it was the thesis of my Bachelor- I, of course, went on writing
two novels, which had very good national success and were published by ONUFRI (by
Bujar Hudhri). Then it came time for my master thesis, and I saw that most of
the thesis in Kosovo and Albania and the Albanian speaking world are being done
for Kadaré’s novels. But this offer has an aspect that was not very, very
widely touched, which is his essayistic, publicist and literary thought. So, I
decided to go on a mission that is still not finished and is not as easy as I
would have thought before starting it, to analyse Kadaré’s literary thought.
After I have analysed
his novels and his fictional writing, literary thoughts and try to put him in context
with other literary essayists. Maybe it would be unfair, for example, to
compare with Harold Bloom or other writers from his period, although most of
them were writing under free circumstances, which is not the case with Kadaré,
but still these are differences that are interesting to study and to analyse
and I've been having quite some fun doing that, especially with the works like “Invitation
to the studio” (“Invitation à l’atelier de l’écrivain”, 1991). This essay is
about Aeschylus, about Homer, about Shakespeare, about Don Quixote, and a lot
of topics which I learned at the university and read PhD thesis about,
especially about the authors of the Greek antiquity, ancient times. This is the
very interesting thing about Kadaré: when he writes for an author, either be it
Cervantes or Shakespeare or the Greek tragedy, or whatever, he says: “I'm
writing an essay, or as he likes to call it in Albanian, “prov” (provokable),
which means challenge. I'm writing a challenge. I'm challenging myself to write
about this topic”. He doesn't claim to do research, scientific work. And
yet his book is more informative and more contextualizing than most of the PhD
thesis I have read about these authors.
JSR: Do you agree when he says that he's not a
fictionist writing historic novels, he says he always bases his writing in facts.
This is the core of his thinking. When I asked him whether he considered
himself to be a fictionist, he said: “No, because what I write is not a
fiction. What I write is the reality.”
AD: Yes, this is true, especially for his political
and literary thoughts in his books. Of course, in novels you must be a
fictionist because it's a novel, and if you're not, you are a bad writer. But
he is very much based and is very much grounded by facts.
JSR: In novels, you have more freedom than do
writing historical books?
AD: Yes, but he comes in historical or essayistic,
I would rather say yes. Of course, he's not a fictionist when he has to deal
with facts. But he brings this fictional dance. This is it! You can say
that these books are written by the same brain that did “The General of the
Dead Army”, “The Palace of Dreams” or whichever book you want to quote. But
regarding his fiction work, the style, the fictionist style is there, and
that's why he needs to explain it, because people confuse this fiction. Did
this Shakespeare guy exist? Was Hamlet really this kind of work? All of those
are true.
JSR: I like what you said: “dancing with
the fiction”.
AD: Yeah. So, he does that. He dances with
the same style that he does in fiction, with factual literary and historic
works, and it's one of the reasons why I like him because, reversing to the
issue we talked about before, about his local topics becoming universal. What
made them universal? It's precisely because of this style. Precisely because of
this, because of this stylistic proclivity, to make the sentence dance. It has
rhythm, it has musicality, it has humour, sometimes very dark humour, but
humour, nevertheless and this makes him, in my eyes, one of the top writers
alive today in the world.
JSR: Azem, you, at a certain moment, you will stop
having Ismail Kadaré as a reference because you have your own objectives, the
line of your horizon is a different one? You are younger. You live in a free
country. Yes, the context under which Kadaré wrote, fortunately, is not the
same. We don't have Stalinist regimes. And Enver Hoxha in all corners. You are
a boy of the Millennium, if I can say, you are 27. You have these roots called
“Kadaré”, the main routes for you, but you will grow-up with different education
and with different objectives. What is your literature for you now flying as a
free bird in your literature world? What are you expecting you to write?
AD: I am expecting myself to write books that
I would deem worth reading. One of my favourite quotes is one from American
writer Toni Morrison (1931-2019) and she said: “If there is a book you would
like to read, but it is not written yet, it is your job to write it.” So,
this is how I write. It's articulating myself to the best of my abilities and
being able to put forward stories that are profoundly touching, and that can
resonate with audiences who would give me the honour of giving me some hours to
go through my text.
JSR: But will the novel be yourself, I'm not
saying a biography or similar, but will you be reflected in the book? Will the book
be the mirror of yourself?
AD: I think that is something the author
cannot avoid. That's the problem. Now we have to come back to Kadaré again.
There was one of his quotes in an interview. The TV host asked him why he
hasn't written memoirs. He replied that the real biography of a writer is in
his fictional works. And, countless times, I have seen this happen to my works
as well. I had a problem with headaches, with migraine, and then I see my
character has a problem with migraines and with headaches. I had a bad breakup,
and then they have a bad breakup. I have, you know, you cannot distance
yourself completely from works and we don't have to, otherwise everything
written would be the same. It's our individualistic that give the specifics to
a book.
JSR: It becomes dry if you don't take this
into account?
AD: Of course, otherwise, let's just write
about objective facts. This glass is a porcelain glass of water. And it's the
same porcelain glass of water for me and is the same for you. If we don't put
in the individualistic element of it, we can just say that is a porcelain
water, a porcelain, a glass of water. But, when putting the individualistic
level, I can say that is a porcelain glass from which I am not able to drink
because it's yours and you will say: “This is a porcelain glass from which I
can drink because I ordered it, but I cannot take home because it belongs to
the restaurant.” So, if we don't put this individualistic experiences in
works, we end up writing only about facts, because only facts are not
individualistic. Everything else is perspective.
JSR: So, honestly, I'm glad that we met when I
made the comment on one of your poems translated from Albanian to English through
Google translation. It really touched me. I said to myself, when I read it, where
is this guy coming from in Pristina? I'm very glad and happy to have met you
here. Secondly, because you are an enthusiast of my favourite writer. Maybe I
started reading Kadaré before you were born, here in Kosovo. So, this is a
coincidence that nobody could anticipate.
AD: Wonderful. I'm very, very glad. Thank
you.
JSR: I'm very happy and I hope that we can do something
more in the future, for the promotion of Kadaré, and for the promotion of your
writing. I hope that you will be very successful. Very rich in terms of writing,
imagination, creativity never missing. And, on my side, if I can do something
like making the bridge between your language and other foreign languages, you
can count on me.
AD: Thank you.
Pristina,
Kosovo, 13.6.2023
