(Impressions from the book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace” of the author Paulin Rranzi)

The book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace of the author Paulin Rranzi surprised me very much. It was really amazing the way that how this young author compare characters from different fields of life and make them speak the same international language: Language of Peace.
Once finished reading the book you could not stay without saying: Yes, these are the Albanian model of warriors of peace! These are the first Albanian missionaries for peace, the author Paulin Rranzi himself, who resemble the best models of warriors of peace worldwide. These are also the first characters of Albanian contemporary literature dedicated to the world peace.
This reasoning gives the right to come to the conclusion that finally even in Albanian modern literature blew the wind of Peace messages sender. The epoch of Skanderbeg, our national hero, who the old and new west literature reflect in many works as a great warrior, savior of European civilization, savior of human Peace, is being regenerated. Who are these lucky personalities that were transformed into first Albanian characters dedicated to Peace? I will not exaggerate if I say that, if not all, the majority of them are my acquaintance or friends. Let me start with the president Ibrahim Rugova. Once he was one of the best writers of Kosovo, my contemporary and colleague. He leaded The League of Writers and Artists of Kosovo and meanwhile I was chairman of The League of Writers and Artists of Albania.
Rugova was a prominent activist in the politics of Kosovo. Even I didn’t remain back in Albanian politics. But more than politics, what united me and Rugova was the literary creativity, ideals to serve humanity as warriors of pen. Be understood that Rugova worked a lot as a politician till he transformed in the symbol of Peace for Kosovo and the Balkans, the same as Gandhi for India. It is a great honor for the young author Paulin Rranzi, who has treated the figure of Rugova under the viewpoint of the missionary of peace.
Pjetër Arbnori, Mandela of the Balkans, as the author qualifies him, was one of the most prominent men that Albanian nation has brought out in XX century. In the early ‘90th he was deputy of Democratic Party, whereas I was deputy of Social Party. He was dissident writer that came from the prison of former communist dictatorship, whereas I was a writer that seemed to have served communism. As to say, we were political opponents; however we became friends, especially during the years 92-96, when he was chairman of the Assembly of Albania. In that period a part of democrats behaved roughly with former communists, the same as the communists of the years 45 behaved with former rich people, representatives of the reversed former classes.
On the contrary, Pjetër Arbnori behaved friendly with me, treated me as an opponent of political beliefs not as an enemy, as some others tried to act. An example: I remember that the publisher Shefki Hysa, our mutual friend, asked me to do a foreword for the book of new talent and I did it. The book was published with my foreword and was welcomed by the readers. It was also reflected in media and television. Then, TVSH worked as the only television in Albania. A young journalist in one of TV shows treated the values of the book, adhering my evaluations for the author in the foreword that accompanied the edition. For this action the journalist was fired from work with the motivation as a propagandistic of a figure that belonged former communist regime.
Poor journalist complained to the publisher Shefki Hysa and he, indignant rightly, discussed the problem with his friend Pjetër Arbnori, chairman of Assembly, institution from which depended RTSH. Pjetër Arbnori, after listening to his friend Shefki Hysa, said that Dritëro Agolli with his values as a writer, despite left beliefs as human, was a national wealth that didn’t deserve to be infringed, on the contrary should be protected and evaluated. He immediately called the director of TVSH and ordered to bring back to work the journalist, and even to do a special emission for the figure of the writer Dritëro Agolli. And so happened.
This was Pjetër Arbnori, a figure that with his work fed social peace, didn’t undermine it as did some fanatics representatives of Democratic Party that urged class hatred.
It is known that I belonged to communism, however I wasn’t a blind fanatic of communist regime, I was part of its utopia, part of that beautiful dream, of those ideals that communists had to transform the world in a social paradise where would predominate peace and human equality that was never realized in practice. Communist ideals were misused by the communist dictators and in the name of those ideals was raped intelligence and political opponents, was exerted genocide against a part of humanity. I was a writer, I didn’t belong repressive clans of former dictatorship. My creativity is censored from the communist censorship, maybe a little bit, but is censored the same as the dissident literature of Pjetër Arbnori, Bilal Xhaferri and many other writers, although I was also chairman of the League of Writers and Artists of Albania. I was Dritëro Agolli, I was myself, I was part of the world of creators that in soul and in actions are opponents of all powers. Based on my ideals as a writer, despite the directives of the former communist regime, I have helped and encouraged talents like the writer Namik Mane, former political persecuted, the writer Shefki Hysa (without mentioning some others), who are two of the most characteristic characters of the book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace” of the author Paulin Rranzi.
The figure of my friend Shefki Hysa unites all the characters in this book. He is the founder of all this Odysseus that Paulin describes, is not only missionary, but head missionary of this mission shaped in the form of a publication in the service of Peace. I really estimate his figure, as he estimates me. Dritëro Agolli has served Peace with his pen. And if one day the author decided to publish a second volume of this publication, I have the belief that my personality would be included in the book as a message sender of Peace. Ask my precious storyteller Shefki Hysa for this and I am sure he will prove my hypothesis. He will prove it that as a talented writer belong to divine race of creators and like all divine knows very well the character of his friends. I am one of his declared friends. I am Dritëro Agolli. I am myself. I could have been part of Democratic Party, as many former communists. I didn’t. I accepted to remain socialist, part of better people that tend from left beliefs. The same as progressive leftists of the entire world who aspire social peace. I never betrayed my beliefs and ideals, I never went after a power for any personal benefit, on the contrary I put in the service of my nation, as the best Albanian democrats that turned the sight toward European civilization.
So am I, Dritëro Agolli, missionary of peace, that’s why I attentively read the book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace”, that’s why I enthusiastically wrote these rows for its rare values. I am Dritëro Agolli, a missionary of peace still undeclared. Do not forget. Respect the warriors of peace for their sacrifices in the service of worldwide future paradise.

Dritëro Agolli
Writer

Notes about the book “The night of foreign cypress” of the writer Artur Spanjolli

“The night of foreign cypress” (Nata e qiparisave të huaj) of the new creator Artur Spanjolli is a compilation of poetry and essays that essentially express the philosophy of his age. 20-year-old Arthur strangely resembles an old wise man in his own creations. This comes, perhaps, because he has run so much in search of the dreamed paradise, that, even if he would found it, it would be something like worthless for his overstrain soul that has already lost something of what is called spiritual paradise – sensitivity. This comes simply because in order to achieve a success of the age, like many young Albanians, he has spent the whole spiritual potential, that potential, that in normal conditions would help him to build the “paradise” of his whole life. However another thing are the vicissitudes of life and another is the value of creativity; Arthur in “Night of foreign cypress” (Nata e qiparisave të huaj) expresses like a mature author, although this is the first edition. Odysseus of his life throughout Italy, and especially in Florence, where he achieves to participate in a literary competition and wins not only a price but also an opportunity to register in the university of this ancient city, for modern literature, has given him the experience of an immigrant. The experience in one hand as well as the summary of the selected creations of three different volumes, within a book, make the publication “Night of foreign cypress” (Nata e qiparisave të huaj) a striking work for the 20-year-old author. Dear reader, the publications that will come later, will introduce Arthur Spanjolli even more worthily, however, as a start let us be content with this book. As we are pleased, let us wish further success to this poet and prose writer made somehow in a special way from life.

Shefki Hysa
Writer

Impressions about the volume with short stories of the writer Dylbere Dika

It is becoming every day more common the presence of new firms in the field of papers which indicates that our literature will have a prosperous future.
The young poetess, Dylbere Dika, after the publication of the summery with poetries “The sold paradise” (Parajsa e shitur) is represented in front of the readers with a narration’s summery which is called “Also the day dies” (Dhe dita vdes).
In the wake of her creative individuality, the talented author, also in these prose written with inspiration and sincerity, aims to give a tableau by the contemporary life, pouring into them fresh impressions impregnated with a seductive poetic spirit. The short stories with simple subjects, without many complications, reveal human messages, now and again with sincerity and fondly as well, but anyway exiting for the readers.
As in the poetry the new writer, Dylbere Dika is distinguished for special creative’s affinity, for satisfactorily technical when describing the events and carving in characters, for inspiration and sincerity when writing, which promises that this creator, thanks to the gained experience in the future will give us works even more mellowed from artistic part, creating in this way her full creative profile.

Hiqmete Daja
Writer

Notes about the novel “Captives of peace” of the writer Shefki Hysa

I met Ismail Kadare by chance one of the days he was in Tirana. During the conversation I said to him that “a new writer has published a novel about you”. He might have been felt glad of course, but he is accustomed to not express immediately his feelings. Nothing moved in his face, he just said: “He had to ask me first”.
To justify somehow the writer and to explain myself even theoretically, I said: “It doesn’t mean a biographic book, as it is written about the well-known personalities of the different fields such as science, culture, politics, sport… He has written a novel and you are a personage in that novel, the protagonist of the book. Is it necessary to ask permission to create a personage when the prototype is still alive?
It seemed that Kadare sneered. Indeed I was showing the fields to the father. He had walked in that furrow for a long time.
In a press conference with the intellectuals of Tirana, Ismail Kadare answered in this way the question about this novel: “…Even though it has discovered some of my privacies, the novel is very nicely written, especially the part about the autumn of 1990.”
The novel of the writer Shefki Hysa “Captives of peace” (Robër të paqes) was welcomed by the readers and by the literary critique as well, so it seemed reasonable to the author republishing it revised.
A question comes out while reading this novel: What kind of typology does it belongs to? Is it an adventurous, a feuilleton, a picaresque or simply a biographic novel? The author, despite his attempts to remain realist till the end, has been able to entwine elements of these types of novels, without being identified with any of them. This is one of the secrets of the typological and compositional originality of this novel.
The writer and the man in rapport to the dictatorship, this is the essence of this novel. Dictatorship suppresses and deforms the consciousness of individuals and personalities, who make them, create protective shells to exist but it arouses in them even the rebellion spirit. The fact that the two personages where the triggers of the subject evolution are based are two teenagers, two artists, two adorers that are in love with the art of Kadare is such meaningful as well as motivated from the outlook and psychological aspect. Young people, with the intuition and the desire to discover and embrace every new contemporary and modern element in the literature and art but also in the trends and the mentality that differs a little bit from the official mentality of the dictatorship that called itself as Marxist, those two guys personify the budding of a new liberal spirit even though it isn’t expressed in an explicit way because of the high-risk conditions, especially in the province.
The complexity of the figure of Kadare as a writer and as a man is the base of the shocking dramatization of the novel. This feature is explained and analyzed by the judgments and the estimations of the two guys, the different intellectuals, the party and state representatives and also through the creation and the recreation of the significant scenes and situations, too much fragile and in the ambit of a possible tragedy. The views from which the writer is investigated are antipodal:
The security men and the fanatic employees view him as an enemy (“We know what you deserve but we can’t do anything to the one who is above us!”), while the teenagers and the intellectuals with a free spirit and a democratic thinking consider him as “the unique hope” but they are also sorry for the debts that the writer has to pay to the regime to survive and write his real works.
The succinct structure of this laconic novel is clotted with vital and conventional components, with an absurd atmosphere and an existential weigh, with dreams and somnolence, with documentation almost chronic and with a trivial and hyperbolic reflection. These contradictory structural elements form a flowing rainbow in the reader’s contemplative imagination and especially to the reader that has enjoyed the sublimity of the Kadere’s art.
While reading the last pages of the roman, the ancient idea reminds that every creator is a man and remains such despite his greatness.
In the future, when the historical-literary studies will sift and point out the books of the last decade of the century that we are leaving behind, I think that the hand of the scholar of Kadare will stand even over this interesting novel.

Sazan Goliku
Writer

Notes about the book “Chameria’s flavor” of the writer Shefki Hysa

I was impressed by the book with short stories “Chameria’s flavor” (Aromë Çamërie) written by Shefki Hysa, promoted in one of the programs of the national TV Channel. I am interested in every publication on Chameria, whenever it is remembered. This is not to encourage any disturbances in the Balkans, as someone might think of, but to calm down any restless conscience. This is why I said that I was impressed by the book with short stories “Chameria’s flavor” (Aromë Çamërie) of this author originated from Chameria. I was interested in reading this book and I was anxious to go carefully through its pages and come across the message of hope and peace that it conveys to the reader.
In short, I would say that this book is necessary, imperative and moral, like every publication of this nature. There are many reasons that the Chams do not forget Chameria and this is not only their right, but also the right of all the Albanians. Furthermore, it is a moral task, because one can never forget the suffering wound of thousands and thousands people. It can never be forgotten the displacement, it can never be forgotten the birth place, where the hearth is. All of these will help to get rid of the nightmares, as the book “Chameria’s flavor” (Aromë Çamërie) does.
It is high time for the Balkans to get rid of the old crimes, and one of them is what happened to Chameria – the Cham’s drama. In this way, the Balkans will pave the way towards the emancipation. Only after this, the Balkans might become part of the emancipated European family.

Notes about the book “The stalagmites started to melt” of the writer Llambi Kallço

The poet has in his soul and thoughts something divine therefore the words through the strings of poetry, blow as a divine breeze. The feelings of the poet, his breath, shape in the most human forms even the amorphous and absurdly of this world. The revival spirit blows through poetic universe during the hot seasons, but also instantly with icy, whose stalagmite, depend threateningly in the consciousness of a people, as happened with the Albanians in the difficult years of dictatorship.
Even the young poet Llambi Kallço has a Christ in the thoughts, a Christ that inspires him only revival. His poetry is as a liberating breath of human, whose soul’s ices are melting. And the melt of the ices warns only spring! The loops of spring verdure have now exploded across the strings of the first volume, “The stalagmites started to melt”(Stalagmitet nisën të shkrijnë). Wish his creativity be blossom!

Shefki Hysa
Writer

Metamorphosis of pain

Notes about the book of stories “The turtledove and the devil” of the prose writer Shefki Hysa 
The first book of stories of prose writer Shefki Hysa is called “The turtledove and the devil” (Turtullesha dhe djalli). This summery of stories is the review of a reality travestied by former communist dictatorship, unlike that fabled socialist “reality” that the disabled literature of ideological realism used to hymn. So, this author’s creativity belongs to a literature denied by former communist censorship, which was bewaring of the so-called claws of “Absurd decadence”, that allegedly used to darken the real values of Albanian art and literature.
In this book, the writer Shefki Hysa is presented as a love singer and at the same time a singer of the big human metamorphosis caused by the pain of that love loss, a love that is violated by malignity, symbolized by devil, daemon, villain or many other nicknames with which the popular rhapsody labels man’s malice. In this viewpoint, his creativity is an innovation, which brings back in Albanian modern literature in a creative way, the magical elements which are often met in folkloric creations, especially in the Cham epos, a thing that makes this literature wonderful and with big values, like that of magic realism represented by the famous world writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Where does this magic-realism appear in Shefki Hysa’s stories? In making tragic the reality itself masterly adduced in two plans: in one man’s tragic destiny and the denied love denied and in the other plan the wonderful Cham epos, with legends, fairy- tales, ballads, narrations, lived stories and shivering events, artistically repeated in the creations of this author originating from martyr Chameria blooded by the barbarian Greek General Zerva legions’ violence. Thus, “The turtledove” is nothing less than a “Love in the time of cholera” similar to the loves of Marquez’s turbulent times, which wander and wander through centuries up to now and which will go on wandering until the inevitable war between The Good and The Evil exists. The whisper of the inextinguishable love longing is felt from one page of the book to the other the same way as that desert grief that derives from the transformation that evil and devil brings in everyday human life.
The transformation in the literary reality that Shefki Hysa has created is a kind of metamorphosis like the one of the writer Franz Kafka brought recurred in the form of a narration, (not as a fairy tale, but like a hidden metaphoric reality by the view of “state Cyclops”, a thing that makes this writer’s book a dare with rare literary values. Without hiding anything (away from collectivism and the obligatory love in the reality of collective work preached by socio-realism), this creativity puts the individual in the real dimensions and conveys the message that love and pain are as human as divine products, which stimulate in man the abilities for survival in the long war for existence. The man in love with the life experiences victories and losses, so, he passes from a situation in another, and he meets even a metamorphosis to defend himself from the pain caused by evil. In the book “The turtledove and the devil” (Turtullesha dhe djalli), this metamorphosis of pain doesn’t come as an evocation of a moment of imagination but as a collapse of a “Cheops’ Pyramid” of anti-values which used to frequently adorn the spirit of love of socio-realist literature personages. There is no any religion or ideology in these stories, but just an authentic lyricism, a showing of a universal faith “legend”, which is called love-pain and human loss, real as well as earthy, like in every work of contemporary world literature.
Perhaps is this harrowing lyricism simply an artistic fantasy? No! It is a survival expression in the memory of human love, which, like the life itself, in the process of mutability inside material and substance, rouses by causing more tears and pain than smiles. Every kind of love brings change, blooming, but the evil, like all the monsters pending their prey, aims the destruction of love spirit, which, to survive, is constrained to be converted, to be metamorphosed, without losing its function, like the personages Turtledove and Murmur, which are again metamorphosed, were embodied in Bird and Wind, again two realities inextricably related and necessary for each other.
This “magic realism”, this miracle, is propounded as a concept of survival of the divine creatures that never end in front of the fatality that the clash with the evil brings to them. They are only transformed as in these stories, which have neither “literary frames” nor “Ionian esthetical ego”, but reflect what the Albanian man experiences, regardless of how much he expresses them in specific situations.
No one can say I lived without living, no one can say I loved without loving; no one can say I lost without fighting… This is the essence of the message that the book “The turtledove and the devil” transmits…

Emrie Krosi
Writer