Between freedom and disappointment: The rebellious universe of Fatos Arap

I didn't come into this world to sleep, when I can't sleep, / I came to offer songs to free thought (Fatos Arapi)

From: Sejdo Harka

The poet Fatos Arapi, even today continues to be considered one of the highest pillars of the most vocal trinity of Albanian poetry, between 1960-2000, who together with Ismail Kadarena and Dritëro Agolli, walking on the path opened by their predecessors, laid the foundations of our new modern poetry. He is often called the poet of the troubled and rebellious soul, who fell eternally in love with the homeland, freedom, the fabulous beauties of Zvërnec and the roar of the waves of the Ionian Sea. Fatos Arapi came into life as a free seagull, among the wonders of the flag-bearing Vlora and the magic of the gray waves of the Ionian Sea agitated by storms, and he also left, saddled on his beautiful dreams, perhaps with great sadness, that he could not realize them all.

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He left this world, both turbulent and sleepy, one October day in 2018, leaving behind the memories and immortality of his multifaceted creativity, especially his unique poems. He left, never to die, as he himself writes: “The soul of a poet does not die in October”, because October is the month when poets weave thousands and thousands of songs and verses. For Ismail Kadare: “Fatos Arapi was an important writer, with a dramatic life and creativity, spanning two eras; he was a beloved friend and colleague, who became an inseparable part of the Albanian literary calendar of the 20th and 21st centuries”.

A rare privilege, for me too, was the close acquaintance with the great poet and correct and eloquent pedagogue, Fatos Arapi, between 1970-'73, at the time when he gave us lectures on Albanian literature and political economy, at the State University of Tirana. A whole life has passed since the time when we, his students of the early seventies, listened with curiosity to his beautiful lectures on literature and philosophy. We will never forget his warm, very special voice and rare oratory, his broad culture and especially the ability to remember and recite beautifully thousands and thousands of verses from popular creativity and artistic literature. But, with the rare poet Fatos Arapi, unfortunately, it happened just like with many other great poets of the world, such as R. Burns, who, when they needed attention, support and appreciation, the deaf-mute people of politics and power "killed" them with their disregard.

Fatos Arapi fought for freedom, with weapons in hand, since he was very young, but he remained disappointed all his life, because he did not enjoy true freedom properly, not even in the years of the so-called democracy. Therefore, deeply disappointed by this cold and villainous world, in the last years of his life he isolated himself even from his close friends. This stoic attitude towards evil has made Fatos never seduced by the flattery of the idols of politics and power. Even when he sang like a nightingale locked in the cage of the monist system, he composed the most beautiful songs and verses about his homeland and freedom, about hope and love, about his homeland and Albania. The messages and philosophy of his verses, although created in different systems and times, take on universal values. This is the reason why the poet F. Arapi was often called a heretic and a modernist. But they could never stifle his free and rebellious spirit. He lived his entire life with free poetry. In the grooves of his verses, alongside joy, he finds pain and protest, as well as sadness and grotesqueness, towards the reality of the time.

Fatos Arapi was born in Vlora, in 1929, where he received his primary and secondary education. From a young age, he took up arms in the fight for freedom. He completed his higher studies in Sofia, Bulgaria, in economics. For a whole life, he worked as a teacher, lecturer at the University of Tirana and journalist in several central press organs of the time, where he revealed his rare abilities. He distinguished himself for his mastery of all types and subtypes of artistic creativity, not only in prose and poetry, but also in the fields of translations, journalism and literary criticism. But what gave Fatos Arapi a rare name is poetry. He particularly excelled with his beautiful and diverse poems of landscape and love, since the early sixties.

He would later become very well known for his poems: Drashovica, Republika, Antibiographical etc., through which he would bring a new spirit, intertwined with the modern poetry style of Neruda. His first poetic books are: “Poetic Paths”, “Iron Rhythms”, “The Sorrow of Lights”. For his rare talent he has been honored with many national and international awards, such as the “Golden Crown” award, which he received in Struga. Only rare American, European and unique Albanian poets like Fatos Arapi have been honored with such an award. The poet Fatos Arapi has also been known for several song texts such as: “Mesnatë”, “Kur vjen pranvera” etc., which, for the depth and magic of the poetic word, have been honored with high awards at the song festivals on RTSH. What makes the poet Fatos Arapi most immortal is the publication of the series of selected poems in four volumes, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture.

Give me a name.

This is the title of the first book in this series, which contains poems written between 1962 and 89. The poet seeks a name and poetry gives him this rare name. As soon as you start browsing this book, you clearly understand that even though these poems were born from the “womb of a crazy time”; they resemble seagulls flying freely, “through the storms and predatory falcons of time”. This happens because, as F. Arapi writes, in his soul there was still “a niche where neither fear nor hypocrisy could enter”. My life, he writes below, has passed “in the waters of Albanian fate”. But how faithful have I remained to myself, he asks himself. And, finally, with the sincerity of a modest poet, he says: “You find that in my works”. The poet Fatos Arapi ran his whole life to find true freedom. So he writes: "Because we wanted to meet freedom / in the eyes of our girls, / on the streets full of light, / because we, freedom, fell in love with you."

While, in the poem, “Why did I come to life”, to this rhetorical question, he poetically answers this question: “I did not come to life to sleep, when I cannot sleep. I came to offer songs / joyful to free thought”. In the poem “I came before the dawns”, F. Arapi, although he has no direct responsibility for stopping the “madness of time”, apologizes for not being able to do what was necessary to stop even a little that unbridled madness of the monistic time. Therefore, he writes: “I came before the great dawns, / When the world with its jaws, / was chewing its tragedies, / I went and warmed my hands / And I fell asleep”. One of the most beautiful poems in this volume is “Hey Country!”, where the reader is surprised by the antitheses of the brilliant verses: “Hey Country! / Full of sun and no light. / A pagan and a throne for the Gods / We live, where we can hold the sky with our hands / and yet / into what abysses we have fallen. / And you feel / rich in your poverty, free in your slavery, / Therefore, from pain, I become, as if I were crazy”.

In his unrealized dreams, the poet feels the pain of "the bite of hunger" and the "bloody faces of freedoms" of all nations and times. Fatos Arapi has always sung of free Albania, whose body the invaders have always aimed to bite, to tear apart, but have never been able to annihilate, because Albanians have preserved freedom as the most precious thing. This message, the poet Fatos Arapi seeks to convey to readers through the mouth of our National Hero, Skanderbeg, in the poem "Freedom". Here is how he addresses the Albanians, when he returns to Krujë: "I did not bring freedom to you, but I found it here: In the coals of the fire and the morsel of bread, / in the graves of the fallen, / On the tip of the sword and the knife of the plow. / In the mother's womb, who nursed the child".

In so little Tirana

Even in the second book, with selected poems, written in the years 1990-96, entitled, "In so little Tirana", the poet F. Arapi continues to sing of freedom and the concern to make it an eternal companion of Albanians and all the peoples of the world. He was particularly concerned by the unrest in the Balkans, which, having been for a long time like a "time mine", has endangered and continues to endanger, even today, the bleeding of freedom. This is the reason that the poet F. Arapi, even in the '90s, in the Balkans, unfortunately, sees many graves. In these lands, even the "bitter greenery", has been watered by the "Danube of tears". In the troubled Balkans, "with the blood of young freedoms, the pirates wash their hands". Homeland, for Fatos Arap, is everything: "It is pain and love, which holds and keeps you in the soul / it is hungry bread, dream and anxiety, / exhausted hope and an open grave."

Since the eighties, the poet writes allegorical verses against the gravediggers of freedom, who, “like darkness before the day, / tear day and night with dirty teeth / the heart of my hope”. It was a time when the poet himself “walked with his coffin on his back”. It was a time when, with his own eyes, he had seen the tragedies of his own people. Therefore, deeply depressed, he writes: “The wretched Albanians, with death in their eyes, / seek to be comforted by death somewhere”. While below he continues: “And it makes me laugh, / and it makes me cry”. For Fatos Arapi, Albanians: “In war they sleep walking”; while “in death they die walking.”

Small urn

The third book of selected poems, written in the years 1997-2003, is entitled “The Small Urn”. The poet F. Arapi, even in the period of prolonged transition, is unfortunately troubled by the musty smell of monist tyranny. Therefore, through metaphors, he makes such apostrophic appeals to the rulers of the time: “Leave the Homeland alone! / With the spirit of tyrants, / you are polluting our destinies”. While to awaken the memory of ordinary people, drowsy by the smoky propaganda of the time, he writes the verses: “You do not see the Albanian destinies, / how they have stopped and do not move / like a mule before a precipice”. It is the time when infertility deceives itself, because it seems to it that it is pregnant with Prometheus. Below, the poet, in love with freedom, poetically protests against those who seek to deprive him of his freedom: "I, who have entered and exited through the pain of the stars, / I had no right to freely enter / through my freedom!".

It was a time when Albanians “lit and went out in the death of candles”, when people, like the poet, forgot themselves. In his “torn” days, the poet sees “the bloody wars, / the victims and the murderers”, which he keeps in his memory, since the time when he, at a very young age, grabbed the weapon for freedom. But, the “murderers of freedom”, the true poets, were never separated from them all their lives. With their own eyes, they saw, the “knives” in the back, that the pseudo-poets, who never became “lovers of the divine muse”, stuck in their backs. They remained eternally murderers of freedom, because “in sleep they buried and dug up freedom”.

Although the poet Fatos Arapi had weakened greatly in the last years of his life, there were moments when he regained his composure. Therefore, he ran as in a dream, “with bloody soul and feet”, to find a smile. All his life, “black cats” and Cerberus have cut his path. Although everyone has tired of these samples: “even tragedies and comedies / even the fates and the Gods”, he still believes in the end, in hope.

An incredible smile

The fourth book of selected poems written during the years 2005-2010 is entitled “An Incredible Smile”. One of the most prominent poems in this volume is “The Tradition”, at the core of which lies the grotesque whipping of this difficult political-social process of the time. Democracy, which had begun to emerge from the “sick womb” of a savage dictatorship, was “the offspring of a difficult birth”, which would be reflected in its fragile fruit, freedom. Despite its efforts to escape from the clutches of the monist dictatorship, it has had to face, even more savagely, the “new dictators”, who, through pseudo-reforms and beautiful words, fight with force to stifle true freedom alive. Therefore, the poet F. Arapi writes the metaphorical verses: "The man trembles inside me, quis, / like a puppy beaten by wild shepherds. / Freedom goes on the road and asks freedom: - Freedom, where is hope, where has it died"!?

While the failed halabaks, witches and chroniclers, as the poet calls the new dictators, boast that they are making the history of the new democracy. The poet Fatos Arapi, in order to preserve true pure freedom and to free it from the shackles of slavery, addresses the people of the time with allegorical apostrophe calls: “Do not crush the earth's thorns, / the chirping of birds, do not touch them! / Do not violate the truth! / Do not obey the men of death! / For, we are nothing but a bitter smile”. Albanians have always loved and sought fate and freedom, but, unfortunately, even today, they do not fully enjoy true fate and freedom. Therefore, the poet, deeply disappointed, asks himself and all Albanians: “Why does fate fight us, all of us!? / Why does freedom betray us!? / Are our lands giving birth to failed Prometheans!?” / Are we to blame, or are the spies, who follow us foot by foot to the edge of the grave?!

This also applies to the entire world today, troubled by wars and conflicts. Although humanity has fought all its life for freedom, unfortunately, again, “The world remained the same: full of hunger and crime, / madness of wars and deaths”. The poet Fatos Arapi did not sing only of pain and sadness. There are many poems that he dedicates to love, the rare beauties of the magical Zvërnec and especially to the wonders and rare glory of the flag-bearing Vlora. Therefore, these brief notes on the poetic creativity of this great poet, I am closing with the verses with a deep folk color, which he dedicates to his birthplace, Vlora: “What can I do to the deserted Vlora!? / A flag of love in the hand / It becomes a rock and makes freedom / It becomes a cinder and makes martyrs”.