Monday, August 15, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
By Dritëro Agolli
TRAGIC DESTINIES
Notes for the novel "The Cursed Paradise"
of the writer Shefki Hysa
Shefki Hysa came in literature with the short prose, with the story and with the literary reportage like all writers. His characteristic was the vital juice that moved across the tissues of the prose’s live organism, organism that had nothing artificial, but it came true like the nature. This specialty attracted the readers’ attention and that of the literary circles and it raised the hope in the affirmed writer’s waiting. So, his short prose was first published in the literary press. It entered in the new writers’ anthologies and then it appeared in independent books. Necessarily, this was gladness for the new writer but, as it is said, after the gladness comes the sadness. When some ill-disposed people saw that his name started to excel through the media and books, they started to dig in his biography, to send anonymous letters and to insist in the national instances of the old-time regime for the blocking of his publication. Only some chances and special conditions saved Shefki from the stop of the publication. But as a proverb says, the evil sometimes has the good inside it. These vicissitudes and stories, one day, were converted in literary material.
Exactly in the new novel of Shefki Hysa “The Cursed Paradise”, there are a lot of autobiographic pages, described sometimes with pain and sometimes with sarcasm and anger. This increases the dramatic intensity of the novel and holds upraise its tension although, some descriptions, where the tendency is open like in a tract, appear sometimes. And it is natural that the contemporary novel often leans to the essay and sometimes to the tract. When it is a right equilibrium between the narration and the essayist argumentation, then we have to do with a real prose. In the opposite, when this equilibrium is broken and the matter surrenders to the pamphleteer argumentation, then the prose is converted in journalism; meanwhile, when it leans to the narration, it is converted in a fairytale. The novel of Shefki has survived from this danger and an interesting creation, in idea as well as in architecture, has come out.
At first sight it seems as though the novel gives the life of a lost province among the mountains, a province with its events and its good and bad people, sweetheart and sadist, democrats’ soul and tyrants’ heart. But, if you think, quickly you will find out that the novel takes the characteristics of a symbolic work. An isolated place, where the wild laws of tyranny with all its mechanisms dominate completely, where the speaking and thinking freedom doesn’t exist and where the people live with anxiety and fear, is reflected in miniature. The image of Babeloku, who makes the law and decides about people’s destinies, is the incarnation of the tyrant. The author, putting this personage in usual and unusual situations, has escaped from the schemes of black and white treatment and has described a complex figure. Human sparks, with the view of traditional charity, appear to him in special cases.
But in a very natural way, these human sparks are given to the personage by the author to increase his authority. And it really seems as if the region’s people whisper: “Babeloku makes benefits too”. This is a very realized and interesting artistic discovery that reflects with verity an overlord’s figure through this provincial Babeloku.
The novel’s burden with episodes and with tragic destinies hasn’t extinguished people’s desire to live their life and the perspective light too. The desire of living and the perspective light are incarnated in the Jackie’s figure, in that of his friends and especially in the girls’ and women’s figures, which are described with the feeling of a nice lyric inspiration and with human love. All these are in contrast with the gloomy conditions, when the ululation of the wolves’ kennel with two feet is sometimes felt, but even directly with four legs. And here I should absolutely mention an unusual artistic fact. The author describes a valley with hungry wolves. Here, in snow time Babeloku used to get out of the car those who didn’t like, and he used to leave them in the midway. So they would finish in the wolves’ teeth. The author finishes the novel with this artistic fact full of dramatic tension.
“He was leaving me in his brave men’s hands. And it was still midnight. I was all shuddered and I was feeling that my heart was freezing by an inexplicable fear. Perhaps the forebodings were doing their job. I was trying to drive away my thoughts from the evil that was going to catch me, but the more I insisted the more clearly I was imaging myself in front of the wolves’ kennel.
They were going to stop the car in the middle of the meadow, to push me out of the cabin and then, they were going to draw back several tens meters to view with satisfaction the dreadful scenes. Being alone in the meadow’s darkness, running or staying, it was the same. In few minutes, I would have been surrounded by the wolves. Those beasts were used to the meat of Babeloku’s enemies. I would feel the wolves’ grindings and roars and then, their teeth would have immediately bitten into along my body like a lot of knives. I would scream with all my forces by the pain but in few seconds the kennel would have ripped me and my sanguineous body’s parts wouldn’t feel anything… O my God! Help me God - I screamed with half voice as I realized that I was losing my feelings from the body’s weakness that the hemorrhage of the head’s hurt had caused me and also from the intensity of the neurosis that I was experiencing... My sight was disappearing quickly in the darkness… And my body was subsiding in darkness too… Darkness…”
It was really an avid artistic discovery.
Translated by: Endri Hysa
TRAGIC DESTINIES
Notes for the novel "The Cursed Paradise"
of the writer Shefki Hysa
Shefki Hysa came in literature with the short prose, with the story and with the literary reportage like all writers. His characteristic was the vital juice that moved across the tissues of the prose’s live organism, organism that had nothing artificial, but it came true like the nature. This specialty attracted the readers’ attention and that of the literary circles and it raised the hope in the affirmed writer’s waiting. So, his short prose was first published in the literary press. It entered in the new writers’ anthologies and then it appeared in independent books. Necessarily, this was gladness for the new writer but, as it is said, after the gladness comes the sadness. When some ill-disposed people saw that his name started to excel through the media and books, they started to dig in his biography, to send anonymous letters and to insist in the national instances of the old-time regime for the blocking of his publication. Only some chances and special conditions saved Shefki from the stop of the publication. But as a proverb says, the evil sometimes has the good inside it. These vicissitudes and stories, one day, were converted in literary material.
Exactly in the new novel of Shefki Hysa “The Cursed Paradise”, there are a lot of autobiographic pages, described sometimes with pain and sometimes with sarcasm and anger. This increases the dramatic intensity of the novel and holds upraise its tension although, some descriptions, where the tendency is open like in a tract, appear sometimes. And it is natural that the contemporary novel often leans to the essay and sometimes to the tract. When it is a right equilibrium between the narration and the essayist argumentation, then we have to do with a real prose. In the opposite, when this equilibrium is broken and the matter surrenders to the pamphleteer argumentation, then the prose is converted in journalism; meanwhile, when it leans to the narration, it is converted in a fairytale. The novel of Shefki has survived from this danger and an interesting creation, in idea as well as in architecture, has come out.
At first sight it seems as though the novel gives the life of a lost province among the mountains, a province with its events and its good and bad people, sweetheart and sadist, democrats’ soul and tyrants’ heart. But, if you think, quickly you will find out that the novel takes the characteristics of a symbolic work. An isolated place, where the wild laws of tyranny with all its mechanisms dominate completely, where the speaking and thinking freedom doesn’t exist and where the people live with anxiety and fear, is reflected in miniature. The image of Babeloku, who makes the law and decides about people’s destinies, is the incarnation of the tyrant. The author, putting this personage in usual and unusual situations, has escaped from the schemes of black and white treatment and has described a complex figure. Human sparks, with the view of traditional charity, appear to him in special cases.
But in a very natural way, these human sparks are given to the personage by the author to increase his authority. And it really seems as if the region’s people whisper: “Babeloku makes benefits too”. This is a very realized and interesting artistic discovery that reflects with verity an overlord’s figure through this provincial Babeloku.
The novel’s burden with episodes and with tragic destinies hasn’t extinguished people’s desire to live their life and the perspective light too. The desire of living and the perspective light are incarnated in the Jackie’s figure, in that of his friends and especially in the girls’ and women’s figures, which are described with the feeling of a nice lyric inspiration and with human love. All these are in contrast with the gloomy conditions, when the ululation of the wolves’ kennel with two feet is sometimes felt, but even directly with four legs. And here I should absolutely mention an unusual artistic fact. The author describes a valley with hungry wolves. Here, in snow time Babeloku used to get out of the car those who didn’t like, and he used to leave them in the midway. So they would finish in the wolves’ teeth. The author finishes the novel with this artistic fact full of dramatic tension.
“He was leaving me in his brave men’s hands. And it was still midnight. I was all shuddered and I was feeling that my heart was freezing by an inexplicable fear. Perhaps the forebodings were doing their job. I was trying to drive away my thoughts from the evil that was going to catch me, but the more I insisted the more clearly I was imaging myself in front of the wolves’ kennel.
They were going to stop the car in the middle of the meadow, to push me out of the cabin and then, they were going to draw back several tens meters to view with satisfaction the dreadful scenes. Being alone in the meadow’s darkness, running or staying, it was the same. In few minutes, I would have been surrounded by the wolves. Those beasts were used to the meat of Babeloku’s enemies. I would feel the wolves’ grindings and roars and then, their teeth would have immediately bitten into along my body like a lot of knives. I would scream with all my forces by the pain but in few seconds the kennel would have ripped me and my sanguineous body’s parts wouldn’t feel anything… O my God! Help me God - I screamed with half voice as I realized that I was losing my feelings from the body’s weakness that the hemorrhage of the head’s hurt had caused me and also from the intensity of the neurosis that I was experiencing... My sight was disappearing quickly in the darkness… And my body was subsiding in darkness too… Darkness…”
It was really an avid artistic discovery.
Translated by: Endri Hysa
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Together in a front for the Cham ideal
(Impressions from Servet Mehmeti,
former director
of the Patriotic Political Association “Chameria”)
The rivers flow in eternity from faraway fountains, fruit of God. The rivers’ bottoms are their lands and nobody can take them out, as it is the territory of the Cham Albanians. It’s their land, given from God. It’s sufficient to read the poem “Cham ballad” of the dissident Cham writer Bilal Xhaferri and everything is clearly understood. He writes:
The rainbow, like a tearful greeting of goodbye,
Disappeared beyond the distances,
Over the flame crests,
in the rain…
Beyond the distances disappeared in flames Chameria
And all our streets lead to north.
Wails the Mediterranean wind over the ancient epyriot lands,
over the dear ancestral lands.
In the abandoned pastures are grazing the thunderclaps.
The unpicked olive-groves thunder like the waves along the hillocks.
And everywhere the Cham land,
covered by the clouds,
groans tearful and bloody,
left lonesome,
without godhead.
We are shown the way by the bullets that whistle in darkness.
We are lightened the way by the flames that have swallowed up all earth.
Behind our backs the windstorm hits the ramshackle house doors.
And the streets reach and reach the north.
We, a deported population, walk along the rain…
Goodbye, Chameria!
But why did the Cham population suffer such barbaric actions, why was it massacred violently, why did this calamity strike these people of mother Chameria?! They loved Albania, their nation. But the violence and the barbarism of the bad and evil people, such as the Greek chauvinists, unstrapped them from its trunk. Besides Bilal’s poetic spirit and the injustice toward the Cham population, it was even the blind judgment of the people, who didn’t appreciate the freedom and the right. Bilal Xhaferri, like the Chams, has been victimized by the communist dictatorship. The dictatorial system persecuted him, even though he went away, went far away to save his dignity, the dignity that was the life itself for him.
Bilal Xhaferri went on developing his literary and publicistic activity in America. His creations had a big echo at Diaspora’s press. In particular echoed “Eagle’s wing” (Krahu i shqiponjës) magazine created and published by him. But even in America, the dark shadows of communism didn’t left Bilal in peace, opposing him by all means, and so he was prey to their violence.
Regardless of this situation, Bilal went ahead with his activity at service of the country, with a more special zeal. Unwittingly, he had against him two countries: the maternal Albania, which was leaded then by a communist clique and the neighboring Greece that had ousted his brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers from their own lands. So, Bilal’s work was extinguished at the very peak of his attempts. It was extinguished a dignified successor of Hoxhë Tahsini, Abedin Pashë Dino, Muharrem Rushiti etc., men who have illuminated the history of Albania.
Even Bilal illuminates with his light the issue of the Cham pain. We hereby should thank the former Chairman of the Parliament of Albania, Mr. Pjetër Arbnori, the writer Shefki Hysa, director of the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri” and editor of “Eagle’s wing” (Krahu i shqiponjës) magazine, the relatives and the well-wishers that enabled the return of Bilal Xhaferri’s bones in Albania.
A group of intellectuals, headed by the writer and editor Shefki Hysa, as a sign of consideration for Bilal Xhaferri’s works and creations, which shed some light on the reality of the Albanian pain, created the Publishing House “Bilal Xhaferri”, as a necessity to widely inform the public for the work of a big writer, a big patriot at service of the Cham issue. The Publishing House “Bilal Xhaferri” was opened and quickly strengthened, and in 1993 was created even the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri” and began being published “Eagle’s wing” (Krahu i shqiponjës) magazine, which was published before by Bilal himself in America. These institutions were a new support, a new wing of the Patriotic Political Association “Chameria”. I have so evaluated these endeavors as director of “Chameria” Association during 2003-2006.
“Eagle’s wing” (Krahu i shqiponjës) magazine has given a special help to introduce and propound the Cham issue before people’s opinion. It is known for its social, cultural, historical values and especially for the patriotic opinion that predominates in its writings. During 2004 “Chameria” Association intensified the collaboration with “Eagle’s wing” magazine for treating and approving in parliament a resolution for the solution of the Cham problem. So the press, the televisions and the pan-Albanian opinion would be aware of this problem. Unfortunately the resolution wasn’t approved owing to the Greek pressure. The most typical example was the former Prime Minister, Fatos Nano, who inhibited its approval.
In this difficult period, excepting the unusual activity of “Chameria” Association’s structures, was necessary even the contribution of the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri” and that of “Eagle’s wing” (Krahu i shqiponjës) magazine, especially the contribution of its director, the writer Shefki Hysa, coordinator of all the contacts, the meetings and the conversations with deputies, parliamentary groups and parliamentary commissions of the Parliament of Albania.
The collaboration and the cooperation between such structures of the Cham community have been and actually are an indispensable exigency and they ought to be appreciated, mostly when a national issue, like the Cham issue, needs a solution. I want to stress that it’s quite necessary the coordination of actions between “Chameria” Association, the Institute of History for Chameria and the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri”, so to act as a powerful organism and with one purpose, inside and outside Albania, for the solution of the Cham issue. We should align ourselves in a front, for the sake of the Cham ideal. Furthermore, it’s required a good organization and the strengthening of the organism’s structures from the bases to the center.
They have to become the real chiefs of the Cham community. Only in this way the Cham issue can find a solution, as an ideal of all the patriotic and honest Albanians, as a pan-national objective. I am stressing one more time that the solution of the Cham problem, the return of the Chams in Chameria, in their ancestral motherland, will come only as a result of the collaboration between these organizations that represent the Cham community.
So the Cham community can become a compelling factor in Albania and abroad and it can achieve its objective concerning the Albanian state’s politics and this one will so feel responsibility and constitutional obligation for the national issue, a necessity and an exigency for our national prestige and pride. The solution of the Cham issue is based on the politics that the Albanian state will pursue regarding Greece and other international partners. It must keep its body straight in the treatment of this issue. Only in this way the Cham ideal can be finalized. Let’s work together and let’s hope for a safe future.
March, 2009
Translated by Endri Hysa
(Impressions from Servet Mehmeti,
former director
of the Patriotic Political Association “Chameria”)
The rivers flow in eternity from faraway fountains, fruit of God. The rivers’ bottoms are their lands and nobody can take them out, as it is the territory of the Cham Albanians. It’s their land, given from God. It’s sufficient to read the poem “Cham ballad” of the dissident Cham writer Bilal Xhaferri and everything is clearly understood. He writes:
The rainbow, like a tearful greeting of goodbye,
Disappeared beyond the distances,
Over the flame crests,
in the rain…
Beyond the distances disappeared in flames Chameria
And all our streets lead to north.
Wails the Mediterranean wind over the ancient epyriot lands,
over the dear ancestral lands.
In the abandoned pastures are grazing the thunderclaps.
The unpicked olive-groves thunder like the waves along the hillocks.
And everywhere the Cham land,
covered by the clouds,
groans tearful and bloody,
left lonesome,
without godhead.
We are shown the way by the bullets that whistle in darkness.
We are lightened the way by the flames that have swallowed up all earth.
Behind our backs the windstorm hits the ramshackle house doors.
And the streets reach and reach the north.
We, a deported population, walk along the rain…
Goodbye, Chameria!
But why did the Cham population suffer such barbaric actions, why was it massacred violently, why did this calamity strike these people of mother Chameria?! They loved Albania, their nation. But the violence and the barbarism of the bad and evil people, such as the Greek chauvinists, unstrapped them from its trunk. Besides Bilal’s poetic spirit and the injustice toward the Cham population, it was even the blind judgment of the people, who didn’t appreciate the freedom and the right. Bilal Xhaferri, like the Chams, has been victimized by the communist dictatorship. The dictatorial system persecuted him, even though he went away, went far away to save his dignity, the dignity that was the life itself for him.
Bilal Xhaferri went on developing his literary and publicistic activity in America. His creations had a big echo at Diaspora’s press. In particular echoed “Eagle’s wing” (Krahu i shqiponjës) magazine created and published by him. But even in America, the dark shadows of communism didn’t left Bilal in peace, opposing him by all means, and so he was prey to their violence.
Regardless of this situation, Bilal went ahead with his activity at service of the country, with a more special zeal. Unwittingly, he had against him two countries: the maternal Albania, which was leaded then by a communist clique and the neighboring Greece that had ousted his brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers from their own lands. So, Bilal’s work was extinguished at the very peak of his attempts. It was extinguished a dignified successor of Hoxhë Tahsini, Abedin Pashë Dino, Muharrem Rushiti etc., men who have illuminated the history of Albania.
Even Bilal illuminates with his light the issue of the Cham pain. We hereby should thank the former Chairman of the Parliament of Albania, Mr. Pjetër Arbnori, the writer Shefki Hysa, director of the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri” and editor of “Eagle’s wing” (Krahu i shqiponjës) magazine, the relatives and the well-wishers that enabled the return of Bilal Xhaferri’s bones in Albania.
A group of intellectuals, headed by the writer and editor Shefki Hysa, as a sign of consideration for Bilal Xhaferri’s works and creations, which shed some light on the reality of the Albanian pain, created the Publishing House “Bilal Xhaferri”, as a necessity to widely inform the public for the work of a big writer, a big patriot at service of the Cham issue. The Publishing House “Bilal Xhaferri” was opened and quickly strengthened, and in 1993 was created even the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri” and began being published “Eagle’s wing” (Krahu i shqiponjës) magazine, which was published before by Bilal himself in America. These institutions were a new support, a new wing of the Patriotic Political Association “Chameria”. I have so evaluated these endeavors as director of “Chameria” Association during 2003-2006.
“Eagle’s wing” (Krahu i shqiponjës) magazine has given a special help to introduce and propound the Cham issue before people’s opinion. It is known for its social, cultural, historical values and especially for the patriotic opinion that predominates in its writings. During 2004 “Chameria” Association intensified the collaboration with “Eagle’s wing” magazine for treating and approving in parliament a resolution for the solution of the Cham problem. So the press, the televisions and the pan-Albanian opinion would be aware of this problem. Unfortunately the resolution wasn’t approved owing to the Greek pressure. The most typical example was the former Prime Minister, Fatos Nano, who inhibited its approval.
In this difficult period, excepting the unusual activity of “Chameria” Association’s structures, was necessary even the contribution of the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri” and that of “Eagle’s wing” (Krahu i shqiponjës) magazine, especially the contribution of its director, the writer Shefki Hysa, coordinator of all the contacts, the meetings and the conversations with deputies, parliamentary groups and parliamentary commissions of the Parliament of Albania.
The collaboration and the cooperation between such structures of the Cham community have been and actually are an indispensable exigency and they ought to be appreciated, mostly when a national issue, like the Cham issue, needs a solution. I want to stress that it’s quite necessary the coordination of actions between “Chameria” Association, the Institute of History for Chameria and the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri”, so to act as a powerful organism and with one purpose, inside and outside Albania, for the solution of the Cham issue. We should align ourselves in a front, for the sake of the Cham ideal. Furthermore, it’s required a good organization and the strengthening of the organism’s structures from the bases to the center.
They have to become the real chiefs of the Cham community. Only in this way the Cham issue can find a solution, as an ideal of all the patriotic and honest Albanians, as a pan-national objective. I am stressing one more time that the solution of the Cham problem, the return of the Chams in Chameria, in their ancestral motherland, will come only as a result of the collaboration between these organizations that represent the Cham community.
So the Cham community can become a compelling factor in Albania and abroad and it can achieve its objective concerning the Albanian state’s politics and this one will so feel responsibility and constitutional obligation for the national issue, a necessity and an exigency for our national prestige and pride. The solution of the Cham issue is based on the politics that the Albanian state will pursue regarding Greece and other international partners. It must keep its body straight in the treatment of this issue. Only in this way the Cham ideal can be finalized. Let’s work together and let’s hope for a safe future.
March, 2009
Translated by Endri Hysa
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