LATEST NEWS:

It is an honor to have been a student of Kadare

It is an honor to have been a student of Kadare

Interview with writer and translator Bashkim Shehu
From: Alda Bardhyli

How do you remember meeting Ismail Kadare?
The first time we met at Piro Misha's house, in an evening with friends, where we listened to music and danced and talked occasionally. It was the end of 1973. Although these evenings were forbidden, they were the only opportunities to have some fun in an atmosphere of freedom. A little while ago I had given Piro a short story. After reading it, he asked me if he could give it to Ismail Kadare, and I, of course, very happily agreed. I was eighteen years old. Even Kadareja was quite young, although he had already written some of his masterpieces and was internationally recognized. He claimed that the story was Piro's and that evening he told him that he had liked it. Then, Piro told him that it was not his and that I had written it. He called me to come closer. Kadareja told me that she liked it and gave me some suggestions, mostly about looking at the details and describing them. Later, he told me that if I wanted, I could give him other stories to read. That's what I did and little by little we became friends. At the same time, Kadareja gave me his manuscripts to read. This trust and this trust in my tastes was, of course, an honor for me. Once we started open conversations against the regime.

In the book "Autumn of Anxiety", you describe your father's attitudes towards Kadare, leading to the writer's suspicions that the regime had, that he could be an agent?
What I have described in "Autumn of Anxiety" it constitutes, so to speak, the culmination of something repeated. The first time it happened when Kadareja had just written the title poem "At noon the Political Bureau met" – this was the original title, while it is now known as "Red pashalars". Then, my father told me not to meet Kadare again, but then he changed this attitude when the government's attitude also changed. A few years later, between 1979 and 1981, on two occasions, nothing like that happened. "Red Pashalars" and nothing else special from Kadare's side, my father called me and told me to be careful and not to continue that friendship, to stay away from Kadare, not to meet her often, because, according to him, Kadare had even wrong thoughts, or, according to an expression of that time, he had "cabbage on his head". While in the fall of 1981, that is, in a period when Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu was approaching his end and he, however, saw that he was not doing well, he again told me not to meet with Kadare. In this case, he told me, among other things, that Kadareja wanted Albania to connect with Western countries.


Why was the regime afraid of your meetings with Kadare?
Here two things must be distinguished from each other: why didn't he want me to be friends with Kadare and why didn't Enver Hoxha. In the first case that I told, that is, in the case of "Red Pashalars", I can say that it was my fear of not being influenced by Kadare's thoughts, which my father saw or guessed as suspicious in relation to the regime. For the two subsequent cases, I believe that Enver Hoxha expressed a wish that I should not associate with Kadare. The last case, that of the fall of 1981, may be one or the other, or a mixture of the two. But why didn't Enver Hoxha want me to be friends with Kadare? It occurs to me that this has to do with a wider issue: with the issue of why Enver Hoxha tolerated Kadare, who was a clearly heterodox writer. And, my explanation is that Enver Hoxha saw the great writer as an opportunity to immortalize himself in a literary monument, that no one else had the talent to raise, and he wanted this opportunity only for himself. So, there was some jealousy on the part of Hoxha. While Kadareya, to paraphrase Aeschylus, occasionally threw him some crumbs from his Homeric feast: this was the tribute that Kadareya had to pay to realize his artistic and emancipatory goals.

In his confessions, Kadare told about the investigation during the time you were in prison by the former Deputy Minister of the Interior, Rexhep Kolli, who asked you to learn something more about Kadare?
Rexhep Kolli wanted to know if Kadareja had been an associate of Mehmet Shehu in Mehmet Shehu's agency activity according to Enver Hoxha's fantasies, a fantasy that, apparently, the latter believed. Thus, Rexhep Kolli, then Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, if I am not mistaken, asked me if Kadareja had ever gone abroad sent by Mehmet Shehu and if in such a case Mehmet Shehu had given Kadareja any orders. On the other hand, I clearly got the impression that the Security people knew that Kadareja's thoughts conflicted with their regime, but their interest, or rather the one who ordered them, aimed elsewhere: in short, Hoxha was interested in knowing whether Kadareja had gone so far as to become an agent associate of the newly declared polyagent.

What would the friendship with Kadare bring to you as a young creator in those years?
As I said, he has helped me by giving opinions on my manuscripts and that was an invaluable help to me as a beginner. Meanwhile, there was naturally the risk of epigonism, but this also helped me, because it was a challenge to create my own literary physiognomy. But, above all, it is an honor for me to have been a student of Kadare.