“Le Monde” – Ismail Kadare on the front page – talks about writing literature during the dictatorship.

In the column dedicated to “Great writers”, “Le Monde” has paid special attention to the colossus of the Albanian pen, Ismail Kadare.

Among a cycle of five interviews, Kadare is ranked fourth with his story titled: “To live in a dictatorship, for me it meant – I was doing literature”.

During the month of May, journalist Florence Noiville paid a visit to Albania, during which she interviewed Ismail Kadare at his home in Tirana.

“In a world where algorithms want to make the law, we are making the choice of the subjective”, writes Noiville.

What did you feel when your studio home was inaugurated in Tirana?

I see myself in front of the fireplace. Surprisingly, with the feeling that I am a “freelance writer”. My wife Helena worked in a publishing house. Every morning I sat alone and wrote. Is there anything more wonderful? Some of my books were banned, but I pretty much wrote what I wanted. Sometimes I felt that a phrase was good. Although it may seem illogical, I felt its hidden beauty. I tried it physically. For me, every kind of consolation has been within literature. And in the mystery of being understood, even if only by a few people.

Do you know the Latin proverb “Vivere militare est”? Eh.. and if living is like fighting you should be happy if you’re not killed (laughs). For me, living means making literature. Not being able to do this task would be like not living. I managed to do it and nothing stopped me. Then I was lucky. Sometimes they say to me in Albania: “oh if you lived in a free country”. But who knows? Who knows if everything could have been different?

Today, when you look back at your work, what is your greatest pride?

I wrote for decades under the bloodiest dictatorship in post-war Europe. Today, years later, my literature is the same. She hasn’t changed. If you don’t look at the date at the end of a work, you don’t know when it was written. In 2017, for example, I won the Man Booker International Prize in Great Britain with “The Room of Shame”, a text written in 1978, and forty years later, to my happiness, the jury judged that its reading is current and natural. For that I am happy.

Kaynak: prizrenpost