Amy Hakanson Life Unlimited Professor Davidova 2/4/2013 The Contrast of Reality and Imagination in Ismail Kadare's Broken

April Since the earliest days of mankind, humans have used stories to escape reality. They create legends to explain their existence and fill every shadow with imaginary creatures. In his book Broken April, Ismail Kadare uses the society of the High Plateau in Albania as a framework to express the positive and negative attributes of a specific example of societal regulation, the Kanun, and the ways that several individuals escape the reality of the Kanun by living in their imaginations. Kadare uses several characters to express contrasting views of the Kanun, all of which have differing versions of reality. The story centers around two simultaneous and occasionally overlapping journeys, both of which take place physically around the High Plateau of Albania, but have deeper metaphorical destinations. Gjorg, a young mountaineer is traveling first to pay the Blood Tax for a life he has taken, and then, after seeing a beautiful woman from the valley below the High Plateau, travels to find her in his last thirty days of life. He is literally traveling for these purposes, but is in fact traveling towards his death, which is expected to fall on the seventeenth of April. The beautiful woman seen by Gjorg is named Diana Vorpsi. She is a young wife on her honeymoon with her husband, Bessian, a writer who is obsessed with the Kanun. The young couple is from the valley in the south of Albania, and Bessian has chosen to travel through the mountains on their honeymoon because of his obsession with the Kanun which reigns only in the High Plateau. The couple's honeymoon is, like Gjorg's travels, literally a journey through the country, but represents the path of their new marriage, and during their stay in the mountains that path changes drastically. Gjorg's journey begins on the first page of the novel. He commits a murder, his duty as part of a family engaged in a decades-long blood feud. His brother has been killed by a member of the Kryeqyqe

family, and so it is Gjorg's responsibility to avenge his brother's death. He lies in wait for his victim, and when the opportunity presents itself, kills his brother's murderer according to the Kanun. Even before he pulls the trigger of his gun, Gjorg slips out of reality. According to the Kanun, one must warn one's victim before firing, which Gjorg intends to do, but is not sure of doing. Neither then nor later did he know if he had called aloud or if the words had been stifled in his throat. (Kadare 9) He proceeds to blunder about the rituals that follow a killing, but it unsure of any of his actions. The shock of killing has broken his connection with reality, and he begins to detach from his life. He now has thirty days in which the Kryeqyqe family cannot avenge their relative, and in which Gjorg must pay a tax for the murder he has committed. Gjorg sets out to deliver the blood tax to the Kulla (castle) of Orosh, the center of the Kanun and the ruling palace of the High Plateau. Throughout his voyage to Orosh, Gjorg is out of touch with himself. He occasionally gets lost in thought and cannot accurately gauge the passage of time. He arrives at the Kulla of Orosh without much incident, and proceeds to wait until his turn to pay the blood tax for three days in a small building with other murderers from across the High Plateau. On the journey home from Orosh, Gjorg sees Diana and Bessian. Diana and Bessian are on their way to the Kulla of Orosh, not to pay a death tax like Gjorg but to visit the prince that lives their as his guests. All throughout their voyage Bessian has explained the Kanun to Diana. She listens passively, but is clearly affected by the rules of the blood feud. He came back again and again to the laws of hospitality, but even in her drowsy state, she felt hat his exposition...went from the peaceful side of daily life under the Code to the bloody side. No matter how one dealt with the Code, one always ended up there. (Kadare 76) As Bessian becomes increasingly enchanted with the mysticism and glory of the Kanun, Diana becomes horrified. Through the course of the novel, Diana realizes that she is stuck in a marriage with a troubled individual, and during her honeymoon, is surrounded by violence and horror which her new husband relishes. She shrinks away from Bessian, slowly becoming more passive and guarded. Her demeanor changes drastically after seeing Gjorg, whose name is given to her by an innkeeper.

For both Diana and Gjorg, meeting (or seeing each other, rather) is the turning point in their journeys. Though it is not immediately apparent in Gjorg, he fixates on Diana, whose light hair and beautiful eyes make her unlike any other woman Gjorg has ever seen. He realizes his fixation while spending his last few weeks traveling around the High Plateau. ...Suddenly it came to him in complete clarity why it was he had undertaken this journey. He had tried to hide it from himself...if he had set out on the road, it wasn't to look at the mountains, but to see that woman again. (Kadare 162) From the moment he killed his target, Gjorg has thought of his life in terms of his death. The vision of this beautiful foreign woman, who represents life outside the jurisdiction of the Kanun, gives him an escape. That glance, while it aroused desire, had some quality that took hold of your, carried you far away, beyond life, beyond the grave, to where you could look upon yourself with serenity. (Kadare 163) This quote clearly demonstrates how Gjorg is hoping to escape his fate, how he has come to believe that if he could look upon Diana once more, his life will not have been meaningless. Diana's reaction to seeing Gjorg on the High Plateau is immediate. She talks of him even after they have moved far past the inn where the couple first saw the young mountaineer, describing him as pale. Bessian notices this, feeling that Diana had uttered the word 'pale' as if she had said 'beautiful.' (Kadare 111) Later, in their room at the Kulla of Orosh, Diana thinks of Gjorg. ...suddenly, with unbearable intensity, the guise of the man who had passed through that hell was present to her...He wandered forbidden roads, bearing omens of death in his hands, on his sleeve, in his wings. He must be a demigod to face that darkness and primal chaos of creation. (Kadare 126) Diana has found in Gjorg a vessel for the horror of her situation and the understanding of the bloody and violent society surrounding her. She describes him as her black prince, and wonders if they will ever meet again. Diana and Gjorg have elevated each other to mystical levels in order to escape their own lives. Diana thinks of Gjorg as a demigod, and Gjorg believes Diana to be a fairy. In his search for her, Gjorg rashly leaves the protection of a road protected by the Kanun and is killed. In searching for Gjorg, Diana enters a tower of refuge, where murderers go to escape death. Kadare never explicitly describes

what happens in the tower, but she leaves the tower a changed woman. The mystery of what happened in the tower adds even more mysticism to the story, creating a reality that is impossible for the reader to discern. The lives of these two interwoven characters show the lengths that humans will use dreams and imagination to escape any sort of harsh, unbearable reality.

Works Cited Kadare, Ismail. Broken April. Chicago: New Amsterdam Books, 1982. Print.