C u l t u r a l M a g a z i n e

SYMBOL
Cultural Magazine
NO 10
Tirana-Pristina-Skopje
2017

Ag APOLLONI
Editor-in-chief

Agron Tufa, Albulena Blakaj

Sherif Luzha, Orjela Stafasani
Editorial board

Xhemajl Avdyli
Editor

Arben Januzi, Gzim Arifi

Managing office

Liridon Zekaj
Designer

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 CONTENT

Linda Hutcheon
Beyond Postmodernity 8

Raoul Eshelman
Performatism, the epoch after postmodernism 14

Gottfried Helnwein
The Art of Rebellion 22

Andreas Huyssen
THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF ART 28

Mieke Bal
Narrative is Our Best Tool 36

D.M.Thomas
I AM A SON OF OEDIPUS 46

Ismail Kadare
THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE IS A HISTORY OF HEIGHTS 52

Rexhep Qosja
LITERATURE IS A FLOWER OF EVIL 62

Rita Dove
POETRY IS A KIND OF DANCE 78

Ag Apolloni
THE END OF THE ERA OF ENDINGS 88
 SYMBOL 10

This special number is a collection of interviews that I have realized with

theorists, artists, novelists and poets. The interviews have been published in the
previous numbers of Symbol, which was launched in 2013 as a part of OM
Publishing House. We were very honored to start our magazine with the interview
of the well-known Canadian theorist Linda Hutcheon, and then to continue with
other eight interviews: the German theorist Raoul Eshelman, the great contemporary
painter Gottfried Helnwein, the German-American theorist Andreas Huyssen, the
Dutch cultural theorist Mieke Bal, the British postmodernist novelist and poet D.
M. Thomas, the most famous Albanian author Ismail Kadare, the great postmodern
Albanian author and critic Rexhep Qosja, and the extraordinary American poet
Rita Dove.
I could talk more about the details of each number, because every Symbol
number and, especially, every interview published here, provokes debates and brings
information from their works and experiences. But, I suggest you to re-read the
interviews in this number and to think more about their answers, concepts and ideas.
Wishing you a pleasant reading, I promise you that our magazine will stay
consequent on his three criteria, declared in the first number: quality, humanity and
innovation.

Ag APOLLONI
Editor in chief
SYMBOL
Cultural Magazine

NO 10
 Linda Hutcheon
Linda Hutcheon (1947) is the most influential theorist of
literary postmodernism and Professor in the Department
of English and of the Centre for Comparative Literature at
theUniversity of Toronto. In 2000 she was elected the 117th
President of the Modern Language Association, the first
Canadian woman to hold this position. Her most notable book
is A Poetics of Postmodernism. Her other books are: Narcissistic
Narrative, A Theory of Parody, The Canadian Postmodern, Ironys
Edge, A Theory of Adaptation etc.
 Beyond Postmodernity
- Prof. Hutcheon, in your book A Poetics of
Postmodernism, which will be published
soon in Albanian language, you wrote that
postmodernism ironizes everything: master
narratives, history, politics etc. Lets start this
interview with an ironic question: postmodern
fiction is a tangle of genres, domains,
discourses, so why you decided to write poetics of
postmodernism, knowing that it is the same like
making rules from the chaos?
LINDA HUTCHEON: What a wonderful
playful question to start with! You are
absolutely right: in fact, writing a poetics of
postmodernism is a decidedly modernist,
not postmodernist, act! While I find that I
am temperamentally totally postmodern,
the academic genre of the scholarly study
is a most modern enterprise. Im guilty as
charged, as we say in English.
- As Genette said, poetics are not discipline,
but doctrine, which has two types: essentialist
poetics (which is classic, canonic and objective)
and conditionalist poetics (which is modern,
instinctive and subjective). Youve studied many
conditionalist poetics then, based on similar
points, you made an essentialist poetics that now,
not only in Genettes sense, is a classic, a classic
work. Could you tell us how did you manage it?
LINDA HUTCHEON: When I was writing
this book back in the 1980s I had no idea
it would become, as you say, an essentialist
poetics: it was never intended to be more
than a timely intervention in a debate that
was going on at the time in all the arts, and for
that reason, it felt like a conditionalist effort
from my point of viewespecially because I
was taking a perspective that very few others
were: that is, a more positive take on the
postmodern, seeing it as more political and
interview
more contesting than did Jameson and the
others participating in the debates at the
time. Twenty-five years later, much to my
8 surprise, it has taken on a different function,
but it is still very much a historical document
of my responseinstinctive, subjective, if
scholarly!to what was happening in what
was THEN contemporary culture.
- A Poetics of Postmodernism is focused only
in prose (fiction). I know that a poetics can do
it, but Im interested to know how do you see the
perspective of poetry now, or, especially, drama,
therefore you even have used irony in a sense of
Brechts verfremdungseffekt?
LINDA HUTCHEON: Brechts modernism
presages postmodernism in major ways, as you
imply: its focus on self-reflexivity and irony
as distancing was a crucial prelude to what
came to dominate later as postmodernism. I
have always argued that there are continuities
and well as differences between the modern
and the postmodern, and Brecht is a perfect
example of the continuities.
The other issue you raise is the focus of
the book on fiction. In a sense, since I was
modeling postmodernism from postmodern
architecture and its use of parody in
conjunction with historical echoing and
formal self-reflexivity, I should have been able
to expand the theorizing beyond fiction (and
in The Politics of Postmodernism the next year
I did include the visual arts, photography in
particular). But, to be honest, I am a narrative
scholar by training and inclination, so that was
my first love and first interest. Subsequently
I have indeed written on postmodern poetry
(in The Princeton Handbook of Poetry and Poetics)
and postmodern opera, though not drama. If
I were writing the book today, Id obviously
think about graphic novels, not to mention
the new electronic media and the new
aesthetic forms being creating dailythough
they might actually be the start of something
new, not the continuation of the postmodern.
- Calinesku wrote that modernism has
abandoned intercultural dialog, whereas you
insisted that postmodernism attempts to unite
 what modernism separated. Is this attempt one When I was writing this book back in the
more reason to believe that were going toward 1980s I had no idea it would become, as you
an integral literature of the world, something say, an essentialist poetics: it was never intended
like Goethes weltliteratur? to be more than a timely intervention in
a debate that was going on at the time in all
LINDA HUTCHEON: Postmodernisms the arts, and for that reason, it felt like a
both/and kind of thinking (that is, not conditionalist effort from my point of view
either/or) is by definition more inclusive especially because I was taking a perspective
certainly makes connections between that very few others were: that is, a more positive
cultures as well as art forms, but I think what take on the postmodern, seeing it as more
you are describing is more the creation of political and more contesting than did Jameson
the diverse, rich, multicultural world that has and the others participating in the debates at
become our reality through mass migrations/ the time. Twenty-five years later, much to my
diasporas over the last decades, combined surprise, it has taken on a different function,
with the globalizing impulses of electronic but it is still very much a historical document
technology. In some ways because of both of my responseinstinctive, subjective, if
of these major changes, the links between scholarly!to what was happening in what
cultures today are perhaps stronger than was THEN contemporary culture.
ever, though I am not convinced that we are
really moving toward one single integrated
literature: our literary cultures do retain some opened up the serious examination of works
(considerable) integrity, I think. from Africa, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines,
etc. And there are other reasons too, such
- While literary work is made by a person, not as political/economic developments
by a state, how can you explain that random things like the rise of China as a major
eminent critics preferred to study authors of, world powerthat have led to many more
- excuse me for this economical terms,- First translations of (and therefore more study
World, almost never authors of Second (except of) Chinese works in the west. The other
Latin authors), or Third World, even those who change in North America, where I live and
are translated in English? Is this a criterion of work, has been a move to what is called
value, or something else? World Literaturecloser to Goethes idea
but usually restricted to what is available in
LINDA HUTCHEON: The power of translation. Ive always seen this as a result
national canons in the academy is still strong, of the demographics of North America: the
as you note. But perhaps this focus on increasing variety of peoples from all over
the canon is a sign of the perceived threat the world now living in both the USA and
that your last question implied: a fear of Canada. But it clearly is also a move away
universalization through globalization and from the study of only canonical First World
thus a worry about losing national cultural writers, and a healthy one, I believe.
integrity? I suspect it depends on the country
and its academic culture, so there may not be - Doctorow said that fiction is a speculative
any one single answerbut my guess is that history, but historiographic metafiction, as you
none of the possible answers would involve called postmodern novels, is a parody to history,
matters of value or quality, but rather matters politics and religions. What do you think about
of ideology. the future of irony in this age of religious
In English-speaking countries, I do know, radicalism, even when, as you wrote, parody is
there has been in recent decades a move to not to destroy the past?
study what would once have been considered
interview

non-canonical literature, especially that from LINDA HUTCHEON: Historiographic

the former colonies of Britain and America. metafiction does indeed use parody and irony
Post-colonial studies is a very important to suggest that all the versions of history
area in North America, in particular, for it has that we know are precisely that: versions 9
 Brechts modernism presages postmodernism
in major ways, as you imply: its focus on
self-reflexivity and irony as distancing was a
crucial prelude to what came to dominate later
as postmodernism. I have always argued that
there are continuities and well as differences
between the modern and the postmodern, and
Brecht is a perfect example of the continuities.
(in the plural), not any one single Truth.
The postmodern and the religious do not
sit comfortably together for this obvious
reason. But theres another way to think
about your (excellent) question: irony is a
complex rhetorical strategy: it can indeed
mock and ridicule, but it can also tease more
gently. Similarly, parody does not always work
to destroy what it parodies: it can also show
reverence for it, simply by taking it seriously
enough to engage with. That said, however,
I suspect you are correct, and that we are
moving into a time when irony will be less safe:
Fiction has always had a way of offering
individual authors ideas of truths, just as
history has offered individual historians ideas
of truths.
if irony entails saying one thing, but meaning
another, it clearly depends totally on context
to make clear that hidden, but intended,
meaning. If an ironic remark is taken out of
context, it will mean the opposite of what
was intended and THAT is dangerous.
- As Lyotard said, lincrdulit lgard des
mtarcits has brought what you called ironic
dialog with the past. But, what kind of dialog
you expect from now and on, if you take into
consideration literary works of the last decade?
LINDA HUTCHEON: In some parts
of the world, I think we are still witnessing
that incredulity toward metanarratives
interview
that Lyotard described, as some cultures still
question the grand narratives of politics and
national identity that constitute their own
10 past: British fiction, for instance, is very much
looking backward at its colonial as well as
literary heritage and forward to its future as
a racially and culturally more diverse society.
But many nations around the world are very
much still in the process of defining their own
grand narratives of nationhood and religion
and are not at all doing what the postmodern
European or American nations have been
doing. We cant generalize, I am afraid.
- Against to the concepts of some critics, who
claimed that we have two postmodernism
engaged and not engaged, - you insisted that there
is just one postmodernism and that is, naturally,
critical engaged. Before 80s, engaged fiction is
seen as bad by some, and as good by some
others, but you ignored this type of distinction.
Could you explain what does it mean to you the
term engage?
LINDA HUTCHEON: When I was writing
about postmodernism in the 1980s in North
Americacoming after the 1960s and their
politicization of race, gender, and sexuality
(and the study of these in the universities)I
clearly saw this kind of politicization as a
positive, while many did not, even in my own
cultural context. In other words, I was taking
a political stand, in seeing this change from
the dominant, apolitical and universalized
liberal humanism as a positive one in the
universities, first of all, and then arguing that
the postmodern was politically or critically
engaged in the sense that it tackled serious
political subjects (like race, gender, sexuality,
history). Again, it is a matter of cultural
context.
- Do you still believe that postmodernism is a cultural
dominant, as Jameson once said? In the beginning
of this century there were many discussions about
altermodernism, metamodernism, rimodernism,
performatism, transhumanism, posthumanism
etc. Is there any other ISM, after postmodernism,
or we will have to wait yet?
LINDA HUTCHEON: There certainly
has been an explosion of new ISMs, as you
say. Interestingly, no single one of them has
stuck the way postmodernism so rapidly
did in the 1980s. There are many possible
reasons for this difference. But perhaps these
new terms each describe something notable Historiographic metafiction does indeed
and significant, but maybe limited to one use parody and irony to suggest that all the
genre, art form, or philosophical perspective. versions of history that we know are precisely
Postmodernism had currency, as we say, that: versions (in the plural), not any one single
because its characteristics could be found in Truth. The postmodern and the religious
many different cultural forms at the same time. do not sit comfortably together for this obvious
The second part of your questionwhether reason.
we have really seen a change yet or whether
we are still in the postmodernis a difficult
one. In many ways, we are still in the modern literary and the musical (and I would add,
as well as postmodernfor they never obviously, the visual) are coming together
disappear, but become parts of our general in new and utterly exciting ways. But I have
culture. That said, and as I suggested earlier, become very interested in recent years in the
I do think we are on the verge of something art form that came out of the marriage of
new, or perhaps we are already there, and it literature and music (modeled on ancient
is going to have everything to do with the Greek tragedy) in the Renaissance: opera.
digital technologies and new social media
that are now part of our lives. I dont worry
that we dont have a label for it yet: we will.
I do think we are on the verge of something
But this feels like something new to me.
new, or perhaps we are already there, and it is
going to have everything to do with the digital
- You have suggested that history and literature
technologies and new social media that are now
are both part of the signifying systems of
part of our lives. I dont worry that we dont
our culture, so the literature that you have
have a label for it yet: we will. But this feels
canonized is art within archive (Foucault),
like something new to me.
an archive which is both historical and literary.
Maybe it sounds ironical, but I would like to
ask you, are we going towards the true fiction,
or towards the false history? With my husband (a physician and academic),
Ive written three books on opera as an art
LINDA HUTCHEON: A truly form that brings together all the arts to teach
postmodern answer would be: both. But us about both the desires and the anxieties
part of the lesson of the postmodern is that of the cultures that create it.
we only have truths (in the plural)which
some people would see as unacceptable and - At the end, I would like to know what your
therefore closer to lies. Fiction has always had next book will be about.
a way of offering individual authors ideas of
truths, just as history has offered individual LINDA HUTCHEON: Opera! Well,
historians ideas of truths. opera and creativity and aging. (I guess in
that sense its autobiographical!) It is a study
- In the Ancient era literature and music were of the last works and late style of opera
mixed, later they was separated, but in the 20th composers who led long and creative lives:
century the poet and musician Rabindranath Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi, Richard
Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Bob Strauss, Olivier Messiaen, Benjamin Britten.
Dylan is still Nobel candidate for Literature and Were studying how the artists themselves
Leonard Cohen, whom you studied in your book felt about their creativity as they aged, but
The Canadian Postmodern, received The Prince also how their last works were received by
of Asturias Award for Literature. Do you think their audiences and what role their advanced
age played in that reception.
interview

that we are going back to the roots of literature?

LINDA HUTCHEON: Thats a great (Symbol, No 1, 2013)

question to ask in our digital age, when the 11
Raoul Eshelman
Raoul Eshelman (1956), one of the most influential theorists
after the postmodernism epoch, is a German-American Slavist
who has written extensively on problems of literary history
and postmodernism. He received his Ph.D. in Slavic literature
from Konstanz University and his Habilitation from the
University of Hamburg. He is author of three books: Gumilev
and Neoclassical Modernism (1993), Early Soviet Postmodernism
(1997) and Performatism, or the end of postmodernism (2008), as well
as numerous articles on Russian and Czech modernism and
postmodernism. At present he is a Professor of Comparative
Literature at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich.
 Performatism, the epoch after
postmodernism
- Prof. Eshelman, in Performatism, or the end - After postmodernism, you described the new
of postmodernism you attempt to define an epoch systematically analyzing literature,
alternative aesthetics of postmodernism. Few film, architecture, theory and visual arts.
months ago, in an interview for our magazine, What unites Houellebecq, Lars von Trier,
Linda Hutcheon, said that postmodernism Sir Norman Foster, Andreas Gursky and
has gone and we are in the new epoch, but we Vanessa Beecroft?
dont have a name for it yet. This new epoch
you called performatism. Is it a right name for RAOUL ESHELMAN: Today we
this new paradigm? wouldnt have any problem talking about
such different figures as, say, Pushkin,
RAOUL ESHELMAN: Naming epochs Beethoven, Novalis, Caspar David
(or anything else in the humanities) is Friedrich, and Wordsworth in terms of
a big gamble. There are a lot of names something called Romanticism. In spite
floating around nowperformatism, of all the differences in personality, themes,
metamodernism, digimodernism, post- media etc. there are still enough common
postmodernism, to name just a few. factors that make it possible to place them
Probably it will take years before any real in a common framework, which were
consensus emerges. Postmodernism adjusting all the time. Performatism is
wasnt generally accepted as a term until the nothing more than an attempt to do the
late 1980s, after it had already been going same thing for contemporary culture. What
on for more than thirty years. Were in about unites the artists youve mentioned? In
the 20th year of what I call performatism, negative terms Id say they all are reacting
so Im not holding my breath. May the best against the endless irony of postmodernism.
term win! In positive terms Id say theyre all doing
it by using different kinds of framing
- What is the relation between Performatism techniques to create ordered spaces and
and New Historicism? enact performancesdiscrete acts of
transcendence that allow basic forms of
RAOUL ESHELMAN: There isnt much trust to emerge between human beings.
of one. New Historicism was a kind of That may take place imperfectly and in
catalyst for my thinking about subjectivity, very different ways, but its a completely
though. The idea of self-fashioning meant different project than the postmodern one.
that it was possible to think about agency
and subjectivity in a positive waythe idea - You said that nothing human is alien to a
that you could actually make yourself performatist, so can we take it as a call of
under certain cultural conditions. But the the human spirit to create without censure or
New Historicists, as far as I can tell, never prejudice?
thought about whether there could be a
successful self-fashioning as a reaction to RAOUL ESHELMAN: Its not that easy.
postmodernism (which, of course, denies Performatism isnt a simple celebration of
any form of autonomous subjectivity). I the human spirit. All human acts (creative
guess you could say that New Historicism ones especially) call forth some form of
interview

unconsciously highlighted one of resentment. And that resentment clouds

postmodernisms major problems without even the most uplifting and transcendent
being able to offer a solution to it. deeds we perform. Performatist works
14
(which are aimed at giving us a feeling of
transcendence) always have a down side
that is intrinsic to the works themselves.
Thats what I mean when I speak of
metaphysical optimism as opposed to
psychological optimism, which sees
the world through rose-colored glasses.
Performatist works are optimistic, but
theyre not nave. They hold out the promise
of redemption, love, transcendence etc.
but they dont pretend that we can achieve
those things just like that. The whole
idea of the double frame, which is the key
concept of performatism, is paradoxical in
that regard. It means an outside constraint
forces you to transcend, it means that
whatever transcendent moment you
experience is already conditioned by force
or even violence.
- Is performatism really a post-ideological
epoch, as you called it, and what can you
say about its political dimension?
RAOUL ESHELMAN: Thats
complicated question. Obviously, the
real world is still very ideologicalyou
only have to look at US politics to see it.
Obamas performatist attempt to create
a bridge between red and blue states didnt
work. Politics and economics are a lot
messier and complicated than art and you
cant simply mandate unity. But in terms
of world culture, I think were seeing a
further breakdown of the old ideological
oppositions. I think this is especially true of
the Arab Spring. The binaries of East/West,
center/periphery, capitalism/socialism that
are still so central to post-colonial theory
dont work there anymore at all. A lot of
the conflicts in the Arab world have to do
with political self-empowerment, creating
frameworks for individual human dignity,
and negotiating a balance between secular
and religious freedom, and those are
very performatist topics. The theory
of performatism and performatist works
can help us address these conflicts more
clearly, but they dont deliver any clear-cut
ideological solutions. If performatism does
have an overarching ideological position,
Postmodernism wasnt generally accepted
as a term until the late 1980s, after it had
already been going on for more than thirty
years. Were in about the 20th year of what
I call performatism, so Im not holding my
breath.
it is that trying to create positive scenarios
within capitalism is preferable to the endless
ironic critique of capitalism that pretends
to be superior to it but cant offer any
workable alternative to it whatsoever.
- Why is the authorial manipulation more
important than physical facts in the art
of today?
RAOUL ESHELMAN: Performatism
is like postmodernism in the sense that
it doesnt offered much new in the way
a of style or what you call physical facts.
Thats why its important to regain the
feeling of authorship or authorialitythe
feeling that there is someone out there
who is able to create positive scenes or
frames we can or must identify with. We
have a feeling of being manipulated, but
of being manipulated in a positive way by
someone with a set goal and a strong set
of values. This is what I sometimes call the
phenomenology of belief: the artistically
mediated feeling of believing or being
forced to believe is actually more important
than the content of belief in many cases.
- Is it possible to make a distinction between
postmodern irony and performatist
sincerity, or it was just Boris Groyss
mistake?
RAOUL ESHELMAN: Groys says
that we can appear to be sincere by
doing something paradoxical, like being a
interview
conservative espousing liberal ideas. That
means that sincerity is just another deceitful
strategy that can be cleverly exposed by an
ironic observer like himself. I dont believe 15

Today we wouldnt have any problem talking
about such different figures as, say, Pushkin,
Beethoven, Novalis, Caspar David Friedrich,
and Wordsworth in terms of something called
Romanticism. In spite of all the differences
in personality, themes, media etc. there are still
enough common factors that make it possible
to place them in a common framework, which
were adjusting all the time. Performatism is
nothing more than an attempt to do the same
thing for contemporary culture.
that sincerity is a trick. But I also dont
believe in authentic sincerity, either
sincerity that is somehow unmediated and
natural. My standpoint is that sincerity
is possible within a certain frame, under a
certain artificial set of circumstances set up
by artistic works. Pi in Life of Pi isnt sincere
something that escapes Groyslike all
other postmodernists he just wants to
have the last, ironic word about everything.
Performatism doesnt shut out that irony
entirely, but it provides a free space where
you can experience things like sincerity,
love, transcendence etc. under certain set
conditions provided by art.
- How do you explain your point of view that in
performatism, the medium is more messenger
than message?
RAOUL ESHELMAN: I said that a long
time ago, and I never really developed the
idea further. But I think what I meant is that
performatist works create the impression
that there is an author behind each work
and behind whatever media are being used,
and that this apprehension of authoriality
is more important than the media or even
the message. I guess thats why Im not
that much interested in analyzing how
different media are affecting us after the
end of postmodernismthats the project
of my friend Alan Kirby, who calls it
digimodernism.

- You talked about dumb, naive, dazed,

I think what is happening, though, is that simple-minded subject in the movies of Jean-
subjects are now entering into what Peter Pierre Jeunet, Sam Mendes, Lars von Trier,
Sloterdijk calls a bipolar intimacy with who is, perhaps, the most extreme cinematic
others. By this he means scenes or frames (he provoca(u)tore1. Why is the art of today so
says spheres) that encourage individuals to much focused on sexuality and the idiocy of
overcome their isolation and achieve a sense the subject?
of trust towards another person. Performatist
narratives tend to focus on developing these
RAOUL ESHELMAN: Postmodernism,
bipolar relationships, which are both supra-
which was a product of the freewheeling
individual and sub-communal. Performatist 1960s, has always focused on sex, so
narratives arent grand anymore, but theyre
that isnt really anything new. I guess you
also not a return to romantic individualism.
would have to say that the way sexuality is
being treated has changed. If Im correct,
sexuality is being portrayed as a corporeal
rather than as a social construct (gender).
I havent written too much on this myself,
but a doctoral candidate of mine, Yuan
in literal terms (in fact, hes obviously Xue, has just finished a German-language
lying). But given the circumstances that dissertation on how sex is constructed in
interview

he was in he is being sincere, and anyone performatist works and I hope excerpts will
reading the book or watching the movie
understands that intuitively. Thats 1Provoca(u)tore is an Italian portmanteau for
16 provoking author.
be available in translation soon. Regarding
idiocy, Id like to point out that performatist
heroes and heroines arent always simple-
minded. You also have genius heroes with
major limitations, like the neurosurgeon in
MacEwans novel Saturday or the Nobel-
prize-winning mathematician in the movie
A Beautiful Mind. But simple-mindedness
works well as a strategic reaction to
postmodernism because you cant argue
with itits just there, and it doesnt
understand any of the irony thrown at it.
The archetypal performatist hero/heroine
is autistic, i.e., someone whos both smart
and dumb at the same time and who creates
a kind of strange force field that we identify
with. Performatism isnt about idiocy for
the sake of idiocy!
- Is performatism return of the phallus epoch,
or return of Dionysian art, unbounded by
ethics?
RAOUL ESHELMAN: If performatism
is anything, its Apollonian (Im writing
on that now for an essay collection on
classicism). The defining characteristic
of performatist works of art is that they
are constrained or restrained by artistic
frames, and that is very Apollonian indeed.
By return of the phallus I didnt mean
were in for wild Dionysian orgies. What
I wanted to say is that we can expect to
see symbolic forms of constraint relating
to the human body (especially genitalia)
rather than to socially constructed gender.
That means that there are symbolic phallic
and vaginal forms that can be appropriated
by both sexes to achieve some form of
sexual or emotional transcendence. Yuan
Xue, whom I mentioned earlier, suggests
that in performatist works, bodies appear
as unified signs that act as ideal projection
surfaces for different characters. This
whole notion of unity-through-projection
is very Apollonian too.
- In performatism, the art has no intention to
break taboos, or to be dissident, it seeks just
to narrate, often by idiots perspective, the
individual story in social or historical context.
Is parody of grand narratives replaced by
something else, totally personal and intimate?
RAOUL ESHELMAN: Good question! I
wouldnt use the term totally personal and
intimate though. That sounds a lot like
some kind of New Romanticism or what
the Germans call neue Innerlichkeit,
some new, privileged kind of inner life. That
would imply that subjects now have a high
degree of autonomy and a personal space
of their own. I dont believe that. I think
The binaries of East/West, center/periphery,
capitalism/socialism that are still so central to
post-colonial theory dont work there anymore
at all. A lot of the conflicts in the Arab world
have to do with political self-empowerment,
creating frameworks for individual human
dignity, and negotiating a balance between
secular and religious freedom, and those are
very performatist topics. The theory of
performatism and performatist works can help
us address these conflicts more clearly, but they
dont deliver any clear-cut ideological solutions.
what is happening, though, is that subjects
are now entering into what Peter Sloterdijk
calls a bipolar intimacy with others. By
this he means scenes or frames (he says
spheres) that encourage individuals to
overcome their isolation and achieve a
sense of trust towards another person.
Performatist narratives tend to focus on
developing these bipolar relationships,
which are both supra-individual and sub-
communal. Performatist narratives arent
grand anymore, but theyre also not a return
to romantic individualism.
- Performatism has the story of an idiot
interview
perspective contrary to postmodernism
erudite narrators. So, can we say that
the birth of idiocy is the death of
erudition?
17

Regarding idiocy, Id like to point out that
performatist heroes and heroines arent always
simple-minded. You also have genius heroes
with major limitations, like the neurosurgeon
in MacEwans novel Saturday or the
Nobel-prize-winning mathematician in the
movie A Beautiful Mind. But simple-
mindedness works well as a strategic reaction
to postmodernism because you cant argue with
itits just there, and it doesnt understand
any of the irony thrown at it. The archetypal
performatist hero/heroine is autistic, i.e.,
someone whos both smart and dumb at the
same time and who creates a kind of strange
force field that we identify with. Performatism
isnt about idiocy for the sake of idiocy!
RAOUL ESHELMAN: Ever since
Erasmus of Rotterdam, idiocy has been
used as a device to undermine erudition
and wisdom. The performatist return of
the idiot certainly isnt going to put end to
erudition, I think its just meant to destabilize
the ironic conceits of erudite people (who
are very often postmodernists).
Ever since Erasmus of Rotterdam, idiocy has
been used as a device to undermine erudition
and wisdom. The performatist return of the
idiot certainly isnt going to put end to erudition,
I think its just meant to destabilize the ironic
conceits of erudite people (who are very often
postmodernists).
- Regarding Lola rennt, Our America
etc., you said that performatism encourages
interview
self-therapy. Can it connect performatism to
psychoanalysis?
18
RAOUL ESHELMAN: Certainly not to
the type of (Lacanian) psychoanalysis that
dominates academic writing today. There
are certain structural parallels between
performatism and Jungian psychoanalysis,
which is based on fixed archetypes
(anima/animus, that sort of thing) that
Jung says are universal and are realized
through individuation. In performatism,
the archetypes float, they arise more or
less spontaneously in artistic contexts and
dont have any previously fixed status. Ive
called these structures archetypologies in
an article that will appear soon in an essay
collection on planetarity. But generally, I
am not much interested in psychoanalysis,
which in present-day academia is used to
empower the analyst rather than to provide
any sort of therapeutic relief.
- Today, more than two decades of performatism,
is performatism accepted as theoretical term,
or as an aesthetic concept?
RAOUL ESHELMAN: Performatism
hasnt been universally accepted as a term,
but it is now at least being acknowledged
and referenced in discussions of
contemporary culture. The problem now
is that there is still no academic discourse
on post-postmodernism in the way that
there is discourse on, say, post-colonialism
or gender. In other words, there is no
consensus in mainstream academia that the
phenomenon of post-postmodernism even
exists. Right now, what we have are a lot of
scattered individuals (mostly young, mostly
beginning their careers) writing about the
topic. It will probably take quite a while
before the idea takes hold that we are in an
entirely new cultural paradigm.
- Finally, what are you writing about?
RAOUL ESHELMAN: Youve already
touched on some of my present interests
in your questions. One thing that interests
me now is authoriality and how that
works as a matter of principle. Another
is archetypologies, which are the free-
floating symbolic forms and categories
that are now shaping culture in a positive give me enough time to write!
way. I hope to have another book out in a
couple of years if my teaching obligations (Symbol, No 2, 2014)
Gottfried Helnwein
The icon of hyperrealism, Gottfried Helnwein (1948),
is an Austrian-Irish fine artist, painter, photographer,
installationand performance artist. He studied at theUniversity
of Visual Art in Vienna. Helnwein was offered a chair by
the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg, which he
declined. Rudolf Hausner, recommended Helnwein as his
successor as professor of the master-class for painting at
the University of Visual Art in Vienna, but Helnwein left
Vienna and moved to Germany. In 1998, he bought castle
Gurteen de La Poer inIrelandwhere he lives with his wife
Renate and with their four children who are all artists.
Photo by Stefan Jermann
 The Art of Rebellion
- Mr. Helnwein, last year while I was walking
around the streets of Vienna, I saw an image
of childs bloody head that shocked me suddenly.
Child seemed like a photograph and also blood
seemed so real. I approached to see who could be
the author of this crime and then I saw your
name therein that poster of your retrospective
exhibition. After I visited the exhibition, I saw
that you are not a criminal, but the denouncer
of crime. How hard is to keep this role, when
we know that your works have been attacked
many times?
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: I dont really
have a choice. From very early age on I was
looking for a way to deal with the questions
and issues that haunted me and one day I
realized that Art was my only chance.It gave
me a voice, it allowed me to formulate my
questions and to speak out and to express
what was burning inside me.
- Why the child is the central theme of your
works?
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: In a child
the full potential of human values and
virtues, of innocence, trust, love, compassion
and creativity is intact.In childhood, for a
very short time, humans are in a state of
purity, almost sacredness. But children are
vulnerable and defenseless and depending
on our fairness. And it seems that adults
tend to betray that trust. In the sixties,
long before mass media ever mentioned
child-abuse, while I researched into that
subject, I saw forensic photographs of dead
childrens bodies, fragile, skinny, broken and
sometimes deformed beyond recognition;
tortured to death often by their own
relatives. These pictures travel now with me
and I cant get rid of them.Unfortunately its
interview
the grown-ups that rule the world and make
the laws and all kids have to go through
their demolition-program called education.
22 Once they come out on the other side they
are usually broken, and their magic is gone.
Ready now to be citizens, soldiers, clerks,
psychiatrists, politicians, bankers, undercover
agents, prostitutes and other useful things.In
my work I try to see the world through the
eyes of children, and I am taking their side.
- Is it more attractive to be a leader of a revolution,
member of Rolling Stones, as you dreamed to be
when you were young, or a painter, what you
really are? Do you think that you have chosen
the right job?
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: Political
revolutions always fail, usually they make
things worse. But in the fields of art and
aesthetics revolutionaries can create a new
renaissance. As a kid I had the unattainable
dream of being a rock musician, but over
the years I realized that being a painter has
its advantages. I am independent and on my
own, I make my own rules, I dont have to
make any compromises, and in my studio I
am the ruler of my own universe, a serene
and solitary sanctuary.
- Leitmotiv of your art is violence. Why is so
much violence in your paintings?
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: When I
learned about the crimes that my parents
generation had committed during the
Nazi-regime, and how most of the mass-
murderers got away after the war and
made big careers in our new democracy
everything stopped for me right there. I lost
my trust in the world of grown-ups and
their system of values.What always upset me
was how children are getting abused simply
because they are physically weaker and not
capable of defending themselves how
they get raped, enslaved and killed. I never
understood why some people seem to have
so much fun causing pain to someone fragile
and small.Ever since my earliest childhood I
have seen violence all around me, as well as
the effect of violence: fear. I absorbed any
piece of information I could get hold of on
persecution and torture like the Holocaust,
the Vietnam War, tyrannical regimes such as
that of Pinochets Chile, the Inquisition
and finally, the general mistreatment of
children. The obsession with inflicting
maximum pain on others, in particular on
the defenseless, that runs throughout human
history has always been a mystery to me. The
creativity that people develop in committing
such atrocities is startling.I guess thats what
Goya tried with his disasters of War series
- to force us to confront all this senseless
violence, pain, despair and death that we
cause, so that we may not be condemned to
repeat the same tragedy over and over again.
It is the function of the artist to evoke the
experience of surprised recognition: to show the
viewer what he knows but does not know that
he knows. Helnwein is a master of surprised
recognition.
William Burroughs
response, your own feelings and sensations
and deal with it.Or with the words of Lucian
Freud: What do I ask of a painting? I ask it
to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.
- You said that the school to you was like a
concentration camp. What were you thinking
when you said that?

- Like in ancient tragedy, you insisted that the GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: Exactly
paintings must generate a catharsis. This that. I felt like a prisoner, I was forced to
therapy is just for spectators, or also it is the obey the commands of strangers that I didnt
part of your artistic process? like. I was forced to do things I didnt want to
do, I was squeezed into an oppressive system
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: Art can only that made no sense to me. But buried deep
have an emotional impact on the onlooker, inside me there was this burning craving to
when it was a cathartic experience for the get out of that, to break free.
creator to beginn with.
- Do you really think that you learned from
- Your paintings look like photograph, but they Donald Duck more than from your teachers?
are more meaningful, because you play with
colors, ideas and techniques. Being like that, GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN:Duckburg
your paintings show something that is impossible still makes so much more sense to me then
to be fixed by camera or to be told by words. thispiss-poorjobof what we call reality,
It seems like you choose to have as a motto knocked together by some bloated, self-
Bacons sentence: If you can talk about it, appointed authorities.
why paint it. So, you do something breathless,
which would be no theme of trivial conversation, - How important in your formation was Salvador
cause primarily it is destined to be felt and to be Dali, John Heartfield and Carl Barks?
understood. Have you ever answered with words
about your image-questions? GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: I dont think
that any artist had a significant influence on
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: I would me, when I started to paint. I was like an
agree with Bacon on that. Whenever an artist autistic child, and was not really interested in
tries to explain his work, its usually bullshit. any aesthetic information from other artists
It doesnt help.And listening to critics is even or authorities of the official art-world. I
worth. Kandinsky said: You must never was a proud to be an abandoned, primitive
believe an academic (art-historian, critic, and street kid. Carl Barks was an exception; his
so on) if he declares that he has detected an work did have a deep spiritual, aesthetic and
interview

objective fault in a work of art the art- emotional impact on me. If it did inform my
critic is the greatest enemy of art. Look work in some way, I dont know.
at the painting and see what its doing to
you. Accept and trust your own emotional 23
 Helnwein is one of the few exciting painters there was also a dark side to Romanticism,
we have today. often referred to asblack or dark Romanticism
- both in literature and art - dealing with
Norman Mailer melancholy, insanity, sexuality, night, death
and evil.Lord Byron comes to mind, E.T.A.
Hoffmann, Ludwig Tieck, Edgar Allan Poe,
- Are you influenced more from painters, or from The Dark Romantics adapted images of the
writers? personification of evil in the form of Satan,
devils, ghosts, werewolves, vampires, and
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: As I said, I ghouls, as metaphor for the dark side of
dont know of any direct influences on my mans inherent nature. Think of the Gothic
work, but writers were always very important novel: Mary Shelleys Frankenstein, Bram
for me. In the beginning I didnt care much Stokers Dracula, or Jekyll and Hyde by
about other painters. It was much later in Robert Louis Stevenson, Vathek by William
Florence in the Uffizi where to my utter Beckford , but there is also Victor Hugo ,
surprise, I had my Damascus experience. Charles Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Antonin
The impact of these renaissance paintings Artaud and so on In Fine Art we have
shook me to my very foundation, I was Goya, Johann Heinrich Fssli, Caspar David
totally overwhelmed, shocked. I had tears in Friedrich, Kubin, Edvard Munch, Balthus, or
my eyes and from that moment on I have think of Arnold Bcklins Toteninsel.That
an intimate almost religious relationship with all reverberates in the culture of the 20
the great paintings of our culture. century, in the films of Fritz Lang, Murnau,
Bunuel, in Comics like Batman or in music
- You dont believe in Parnassian inspiration as the - Alice Cooper, Marilyn Manson and others.
romantic painters did, although you like some of
them. You paint the inspiration which flow out - By the way, what was this experience of
from reality, the comics, movies, music, literature, collaboration with Marilyn Manson?
internet etc. Is the inspiration a spiritual act that
leads a physical act of painting? GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: I really
enjoyed the collaboration with Manson. From
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: the first moment on I met him in Los Angeles,
Romanticism was one of the most important I had the feeling I know him since 1000 years.
movements in Art-history - artists were Everything about him was so familiar to me.
turning to the spiritual and mystic side of Most people I meet are strangers to me, and
life, outside of organized religion, which nothing they say or do, makes much sense to
me, but this guy I understand and I can see
the world through his eyes and I can think
his thoughts and I can suffer his feelings, I
If anyone from Austrian fine art of the last am conversant with his home universe.He is a
fifty years could be called a star, then there brilliant mind, very educated, poetic, inspiring,
is only one person who meets all the criteria: of a rare dark elegance, decadent, spoiled,
Gottfried Helnwein. vain, radical and excessive, considerate and
gentle, arrogant and caring, evil and innocent
Stella Rollig at the same time. He is as multifaceted as
Kali, the goddess of blackness, change and
death. He can be a child at one moment and
morph into a man or a woman in the next or
still has an enormous influence on popular he can be an androgyn angel or demon. We
interview

culture today. It comprised music, poetry, had lots of fun working on the Golden Age
literature, painting, sculpture, fashion, design of Grotesque cycle.
and architecture. But besides the idealization
24 of the landscape and the cult of Biedermeier, - How counterculture influenced on you?
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: I am the
counterculture.
- Is a polemic character of your works the reason
that you called your art a weapon?
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: My art gives
me the ability to strike back. When I started
to paint I suddenly realized that I didnt have
to accept the impertinences of this society
anymore, and I recognized that art was a
weapon and that I had found a way to fight
back.
- Your paintings are against amnesia and they
contain many political, historical and religious
references. What is relation between your art and
politics, history and religions?
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: Its curiosity,
inquisitiveness, I am obsessed to find out
whats really going on. Where am I ? Where
are we coming from, who are we? where are
we going? Different then most people who are
happy to accept the fairy tales that authorities
tell them, I really want to know. Thats why I
constantly research and ask and look and dig
and I try to learn and keep learning as long as
I breath. Between that and my art there is no
difference.
- You look like Goya and Bosch in topics, but you
are completely different in techniques. You paint
in hyperrealist style, so violence in your works is
more shocking than elsewhere. Have you been
always hyperrealist?
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: I was
never very much interested in the subject
of technique. I try to express and formulate
something that is essential for me and I chose
the technique that seemed the most adequate
for my purpose. Technique is just a tool, albeit
an important one, but ithas to serve a higher
cause.
- How much time have you spent painting the
Epiphany?
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: Its hard to
tell, because I always work on 10 - 20 or more
paintings at the same time, switching between
them, letting some of them sit for a while
Well, the world is a haunted house, and
Helnwein at times is our tour guide through it.
Sean Penn
and rest and picking them up later again. Its a
fluid process that can take a year or more. So
its not easy to say how much time I spent on
Epiphany or any other painting.
- Goya said that the act of painting is about
one heart telling another heart where he found
salvation. If any spectator asks whether you
found salvation, what would you say to him?
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: Its a great
quote by Goya. Well, I definitely found
something through my work, that is something
like salvation.
- Knowing your works, I would say that your
painted violence aims peace. I want to know what
kind of dream are you still painting on, and
would you say that your dream will become true?
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN: I think
that every artist has just one central motive,
purpose or request, desire, obsession or dream
or however you want to call it. And each of
his work is another more or less successful
Gottfried Helnwein is my mentor. His fight for
expression and stance against oppression are
reasons why I chose him as an artistic partner.
An artist that doesnt provoke will be invisible.
Art that doesnt cause strong emotions has no
meaning. Helnwein has that internalized.
Marilyn Manson
attempt to get closer to his basic theme, to
make it visible, to grab it, give it shape and
form and make it comprehensible while its
immaterial and therefore it has no form and
interview
will never be comprehensible. The purpose of
a dream is to be dreamt, not to be fulfilled.
(Symbol, No 3, 2014) 25
Andreas Huyssen
Andreas Huyssen (1942) is the Villard Professor of
German and Comparative Literature at Columbia University,
where he served as founding director of the Center for
Comparative Literature and Society (1998-2003). He chaired
the Department of Germanic Languages from 1986-1992
and again from 2005-2008. He is one of the founding editors
of New German Critique(1974-).
Huyssen has published widely in German and English and his
work has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, French,
Swedish, Danish, Slovenian, Hungarian, Polish, Turkish,
Japanese, and Chinese. His books include Drama des Sturm
und Drang, After the Great Divide,Twilight Memories,Present Pasts,
Miniature Metropolis etc. He is known as influential thinker on
modernism, postmodernism, also as intellectual concentrated
on discourses of historical memory, human rights, urban
culture and globalization.
 THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF ART
- Professor, three decades ago you have published
two books: one on so-called the epoch of genius
(Geniezeit), which preceded the sacralization of
literature, and another on the epoch of irony
(the postmodernism), which desacralized the
literature, taking creation as a chaotic bricolage,
suggesting combination instead of inspiration.
Considering these facts, how do you see literature
today: as a progress, a regress, or just as a change?
ANDREAS HUYSSEN: The book on the
drama of the German Sturm und Drang
concluded my publishing in German before
I turned to writing almost exclusively in
English. I read the brief Geniezeit of the
1770s historically as key to creating a modern
notion of aesthetic autonomy (against the
censorship of church and state) and as an
expansion of the affective range of a still
limited form of rational enlightenment in
Germany, an expansion of the poetic faculties
of the German language itself. The Sturm
und Drang also created a series of plays
that remained influential in the trajectory of
German drama and tragedy. The problematic
sacralization of literature you refer to came
later when literature became a key component
in creating a cultural identity for the nation
in an at first progressive, later increasingly
reactionary environment in Germany.
Irony, of course, was already a privileged aspect
in the writings of the Jena romantics who are
often cited as forerunners of modernism
and who had been central in my dissertation
on romantic theories of translation and
adaptation. Even though my academic career
started with work on the literature of the 18th
and early 19th centuries, I have always been
a modernist at heart. Modernism, however,
was not yet fully established in the university
curriculum in the early and mid-1960s; it was a
marginal field. But it was modernist literature
interview
and art that had driven me into my field of
study in the first place. So when I turned to
the study of modernism, mass culture, and
28 postmodernism after coming to the US in
1969, I had simply found my vocation with the
added dimension of now doing comparative
work between Europe and the United States.
To begin to answer your question about
literature today, I would simply say: it lives
on. It is no longer the medium in which a
national class culture establishes its history,
traditions, and cultural identity as it was in
the 19th century. It is liberated from having
to serve canonical claims and it can explore
its boundaries with other media and with the
social world in ever new ways. Literature has
not been made obsolete by the iconographic
turn nor by the internet. It is especially its
story telling powers that can be marshalled
today against a digitally induced historical
amnesia and the foreshortening of temporal
experience.
- Is the postmodernity a kind of museum of
modernity and premodernitys relics?
ANDREAS HUYSSEN: In the influential
account of Fredric Jameson, postmodernity
is a historical period in its own right, clearly
distinguished from the period that produced
modernism. As you refer to premodernitys
relics, I presume you have in mind that unlike
modernism, postmodernity is not adverse to
incorporating and rewriting a variety of pasts
into the present. And that indeed marks its
difference from the modernity of cultural
modernism. At the same time I would argue
that we still live under modern conditions:
modernity, a very flexible and open-ended
term, describes a process that constantly
expands its range, undergoes shape-shifting
transformations, and has remained tethered
for centuries to capitalist development and
to technological and scientific progress. No
need to claim that modernity is over and oh,
so yesterday. Postmodernity, in Jamesons
argument, is perhaps just another such stage
of transformations of capital and culture.
In the arts, postmodernism in its critical
practices was not a rupture, but a radicalization
of modernism itself, a radicalization that
overcame the high modernist dogma of the
Cold War which was dominant in the United
States more so than in Europe. In its neo-
avantgarde instantiations in Europe and the
United States, postmodernism created new
forms out of memories of the historical
avant-garde, as in happenings, pop, concept
and minimal art, later on installation and
performance art. And it was linked from
the 1960s on to the new social movements
and their rejection of the universalist ethos
of classical modernism. My emphasis on
the critical dimension of postmodernism
of course stands against those who simply
identified it with its other side: the affirmative
postmodernism of the anything-goes variety.
- In Mapping the postmodern, first published
in your New German Critique, you have
said: No matter how troubling it may be, the
landscape of the postmodern surrounds us. It
simultaneously delimits and opens our horizons.
Its our problem and our hope. Later, you
said that postmodernism is over. What were
the circumstances that brought the end of
postmodernism, which by its side brought the end
of modernism? And, how we should call our
epoch now?
ANDREAS HUYSSEN: Postmodernism
in the 1970s and 1980s was not an entirely
new period in culture. It was a specifically
North American reactivation of critical media
and artistic impulses inherent in modernism
itself (think Duchamp), the type of avant-
gardist artistic strategies that were written
out of modernist dogma in the post-1945 era
as articulated by Greenberg or Adorno. But
postmodernism was geographically limited
to the Northern Transatlantic and thus, in
retrospect, rather provincial. The frequent
identification of postmodernism with French
poststructuralism was an American delusion
of the post. The two posts coincided
in the United States, but the French master
thinkers either avoided the term entirely
(Derrida, Barthes, Althusser, Foucault) or
ironized it like Lyotard. Thus my suggestion in
After the Great Divide to read poststructuralism
primarily as an archeology of an expanded
notion of modernism itself.
To begin to answer your question about
literature today, I would simply say: it lives
on. It is no longer the medium in which a
national class culture establishes its history,
traditions, and cultural identity as it was in
the 19th century. It is liberated from having
to serve canonical claims and it can explore
its boundaries with other media and with the
social world in ever new ways. Literature has
not been made obsolete by the iconographic turn
nor by the internet. It is especially its story
telling powers that can be marshalled today
against a digitally induced historical amnesia
and the foreshortening of temporal experience.
Late in the postmodernism craze came
1989 and a few years later the invasion of
the internet into everyday life. Some have
described 1989 as the global turn, beginning
with certain art exhibitions and publications
in 1989, which created a new framework
much expanded beyond the intellectual and
In the arts, postmodernism in its critical
practices was not a rupture, but a radicalization
of modernism itself, a radicalization that
overcame the high modernist dogma of the Cold
War which was dominant in the United States
more so than in Europe. In its neo-avantgarde
instantiations in Europe and the United
States, postmodernism created new forms out
of memories of the historical avant-garde, as
in happenings, pop, concept and minimal art,
later on installation and performance art. And
it was linked from the 1960s on to the new
social movements and their rejection of the
universalist ethos of classical modernism.
geographic horizons of postmodernism.
The rise of postcolonialism made critiques
of Eurocentrism de rigeur in the United
States. Just as Paris had lost its claim to
interview
legislate the arts after World War II, New
York lost its claim as center of the arts
from the 1990s on. That is, indeed, why we
need a new name. The current situation is 29
 Just as Paris had lost its claim to legislate the
arts after World War II, New York lost its
claim as center of the arts from the 1990s
on. That is, indeed, why we need a new name.
The current situation is too unbersichtlich
(a term Habermas already used to describe
postmodernism 30 and more years ago) to
encapsulate it in a single term.
too unbersichtlich (a term Habermas
already used to describe postmodernism 30
and more years ago) to encapsulate it in a
single term. Just look at the multiplication of
biannials across the world. There are other
stories of modern experience, polyvocal
interventions, a cacophony of styles, practices,
media experiments for which it would be
presumptuous to come up with one name.
There is no such thing as global literature,
or Weltliteratur, least of all literature written in
English. The most common name by default,
as it were, has become contemporary art.
But maybe we should forget the issue of
naming and instead focus on the differently
Memory studies risk getting lost in an
ahistorical fascination with trauma and an
unwarranted over-privileging of the live witness
(especially on television) over against the
document and the archive. It also risks losing
an imagination of the future in its obsessive
focus on trauma. Historians and memorians
need to work together and memory needs to be
mindful of its responsibility to the future.
situated narratives of art and literature, on
certain nodal points in a world wide web of
lived experience and its translations into art
and literature.
- What kind of feeling encouraged you to write
Twilight Memories?
ANDREAS HUYSSEN: The diverse essays
interview
of TM on politics, literature, media and the
arts were all written in the late 1980s and early
1990s. The core of the book is its first part
30 on time and memory. It deals with the fall of
the Berlin Wall in 1989 and its political and
cultural aftermath in Germany, a topic which
I pursued further in the later book Present
Pasts. It was the transformation of Berlin
after 1989 that got me increasingly into urban
and architectural studies, a topic I pursued
beyond Germany and beyond the Northern
Transatlantic with my edited volume Other
Cities, Other Worlds: Urban Imaginaries in a
Globalizing World.
- You used a concept of historical memory,
comparing it with Assmanns mnemohistory,
and you noticed that the abuse of memory ends in
an ideology. What is relation between memory
and history and how people can escape from a
potential ideology?
ANDREAS HUYSSEN: The battle
between history and memory (history
as objective and reliable vs memory as
subjective, fuzzy, and unreliable) has been
over for some time. Memory studies, which
are always also studies of forgetting, are
now established as a legitimate subfield of
historical investigation. Jan Assmann argued
forcefully for this outcome years ago. But
memory studies, like historiography, which
has often served state and class interests, risks
falling into ideological traps. Memory studies
risk getting lost in an ahistorical fascination
with trauma and an unwarranted over-
privileging of the live witness (especially on
television) over against the document and the
archive. It also risks losing an imagination of
the future in its obsessive focus on trauma.
Historians and memorians need to work
together and memory needs to be mindful of
its responsibility to the future.
- According to you, Holocaust memory is a
universal trope for traumatic histories. Which
are states that kept this discourse alive and how
this discourse challenges their future?
ANDREAS HUYSSEN: After a decades
long battle, Holocaust memory is an
established fact of public life in Germany.
Because it is such a well-researched field and
because of its popularization in the mass
media, it has migrated into other cases of state
violence, ethnic cleansing and genocide where
its images and tropes have been influential
in creating public debate: after apartheid
in South Africa, the military dictatorships
in Latin America, the religious and ethnic
violence in India, the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Other European countries have increasingly
come to terms with their participation and
role in this Europe-wide genocide as well.
The future is challenged when such histories
of mass violence and ethnic cleansing are
not dealt with, thus preventing reconciliation
necessary for life to go on without festering
resentments and calls for revenge.
- You have said that the violent break-up of
Yugoslavia illustrates the paralysis of the
Europeans when faced with a murderous conflict
in Europe. What is the real conception of
Westerns on East Europeans, especially on
Balkans?
ANDREAS HUYSSEN: It took West
Europeans far too long to understand that
the break-up of Yugoslavia was not a return
to a pre-modern violence allegedly typical of
the Balkans and set loose after the collapse of
communism. It was a fundamentally modern
development with Milosevic turning rabid
nationalist and trying to legitimize his rule
by creating an enemy image that mobilized
historical memory. What happened in Bosnia
and Kosovo was a clear case of military
aggression and modern ethnic cleansing. That
is why I thought the military intervention
of NATO in 1999 was legitimate, though
not, as the saying goes, quite legal, i.e.
not unambiguously blessed by the United
Nations Security Council.
The relationship between Western and
Eastern or Central Europe remains a
problem, especially visible today in relation
to the Ukrainian conflict. The European
Union has made great strides in incorporating
Eastern European states into the union,
but has trouble deciding where its borders
should be. All this needs time. After over four
decades of living with the iron curtain, there
still are growing pains, misunderstandings and
different cultural imaginaries in Eastern and
Western Europe, all visible even within the
united Germany 25 years after unification.
- You said that military intervention in Kosovo is
justifiable, whereas in other countries you noticed
that military interventions undermine sovereignty.
What is the problem of national sovereignty in a
globalizing world?
ANDREAS HUYSSEN: National
sovereignty remains an important principle
in international relations, but we know
how badly it can be abused when internal
The future is challenged when such histories of
mass violence and ethnic cleansing are not dealt
with, thus preventing reconciliation necessary
for life to go on without festering resentments
and calls for revenge.
national populations become victims of
crimes against humanity. From my point of
view, this was the case in the disintegration
of Yugoslavia, a tragic development pursued
by an unscrupulous government hell-bent
on maintaining power after the end of
communist rule. But crimes against humanity
were also committed in Rwanda where there
was no military intervention though perhaps
there should have been. It seems clear that
What happened in Bosnia and Kosovo was a
clear case of military aggression and modern
ethnic cleansing. That is why I thought the
military intervention of NATO in 1999 was
legitimate, though not, as the saying goes, quite
legal, i.e. not unambiguously blessed by the
United Nations Security Council.
an ethos of non-tolerance of crimes against
humanity was nurtured by the massive
debates about the Holocaust and genocide
that had developed in the Western world
since the 1980s. But it never led to consistent
international policy. The adoption by the UN
interview
of the principle of R2P, the Right to Protect a
few years after the intervention in Kosovo was
no substitute for policy. It cannot be enforced
and has shipwrecked entirely in Syria. Military 31
 humanitarian interventions remain deeply
problematic because of their inconsistent
usage and the reliance on bombing campaigns
which, as weve learned, often have limited
value or are counter-productive in the long
Living with present pasts that close to the
present is especially painful. In the long run,
reconciliation in political and personal terms
will be necessary.
run; also problematic is the simple fact that
it is always the same powers that execute the
campaigns. National sovereignty it is not the
only problem. We are far from solving the
conflict between national sovereignty and the
legitimate pursuit of human rights.
I understand why it may be especially hard on
Serbia to recognize Kosovo; but the process of
a critical self-evaluation of Serb politics under
Milosevic and his successors still has a long way
to go. Recognizing national responsibility for
crimes committed in the past is by nature hard
to come by, but unavoidable in the long run.
- Even, long dialog after the war between
two states, Serbia doesnt want to recognize
independence of Kosovo. People in two states
still live with memories of conflicts, violence,
and trauma or, to say with your words, people
here live with present pasts. What would you
suggest Albanian and Serbian readers of this
interview? And what kind of examples would
you bring to artists of these states, knowing that
memory of historical trauma has a strong power
to create works of art?
ANDREAS HUYSSEN: Living with present
pasts that close to the present is especially
interview
painful. In the long run, reconciliation in
political and personal terms will be necessary.
This requires that not everybody can claim
32 victim status and that collective responsibilities
are acknowledged. I dont know the current
situation in Kosovo and Serbia well enough
to suggest solutions. I understand why it may
be especially hard on Serbia to recognize
Kosovo; but the process of a critical self-
evaluation of Serb politics under Milosevic
and his successors still has a long way to go.
Recognizing national responsibility for crimes
committed in the past is by nature hard to
come by, but unavoidable in the long run.
- The cultural industry based around Holocaust is
considered by you as a fashion for nostalgia, and
its called nostalgia for ruins, mass marketing
of nostalgia. What is the real problem of our
time with the past?
ANDREAS HUYSSEN: Even though there
may be nave and exploitative dimensions in
some of the Holocaust discourse, I would
not simply want to speak of a homogeneous
Holocaust industry. As a major marker for
genocide and crimes against humanity, the
Holocaust as a non-unique phenomenon
remains too important for the future life of
Human Rights and their institutionalization
in international law. Holocaust memory is not
nostalgia. How could it be? My point in the
memory debates was to draw attention to the
fact that the Holocaust memory discourse
arose together with a culturally changing
relationship to the past in Western societies.
The digital revolution and the internet made
the cultural availability of various pasts a
common everyday phenomenon. Films,
photography, music of past decades came
to be reproducible and available in ways
heretofore unknown. A lot of energy went
into creating ones own archives of everyday
life, first with camcorders, now with selfies
and the social media. At the same time, the
future imaginaries of the 20th centurythe
utopias of communism, fascism, and liberal
modernizationhad for good reasons yielded
to imaginaries of the past in anti-modernist
historical architecture, retrofashions, and
nostalgias of all kinds. Whether the nostalgia
for ruins and the heritage industries with
their restoration mania are merely superficial
cultural phenomena or ciphers for an inability
to imagine the future other than catastrophe
remains to be seen.
 - In your last book, Miniature Metropolis, you have The human need for story telling and narration
explored the history and theory of misrecognized is an anthropological reality. No doubt the
achievement of literary modernism. Your study forms it takes in a digital environment will be
brings and analyzes an exciting material on different from the past, but it will not disappear.
relation of Baudelaire, Rilke, Kafka, Benn,
Benjamin, Musil, Hch, Kracauer, Jnger,
Adorno and Keuns literature with photograph, turn has become dominant: images prevailing
painting and film. How this literary exploration over words. As all theories of major such
has changed your opinion towards these writers turns accompanied by eulogies on an earlier
(and critics)? medium (the linguistic turn, the death of the
author, the end of art, the end of history, etc.)
ANDREAS HUYSSEN: It has not changed have proven to be short lived, this one will
my opinion, it has expanded it in the sense follow suit. Miniature Metropolis shows that the
that I think I have acknowledged in this book pressure exerted by image media on literature
a genuinely new mode of modernist writing is nothing new. Photography and film had
that had been hiding in plain sight. The a powerful effect on literature itself in a
collections of miniatures I read closely have period in which literature was driven to major
been known for some time, but they have innovations such as the feuilleton miniature
never been put into a comparative conceptual or the new city novel. Hard to generalize how
framework. Frankfurt School critical theory literature today will be transformed by its
was key to my argument. It was the writing negotiation of the digital image world. Let me
of miniatures by Kracauer, Benjamin, and conclude with a quote from Alexander Kluge
Adorno that led me to make the link to who said this about the new media several
those other canonical authors of literary years before the rise of the internet: In this
modernism. Much of critical theory, after all, age we writers of texts are the guardians of
was a theory of modernism and of classical the last residues of grammar, the grammar
modernity. of time, i.e. the difference between present,
future, and past, guardians of difference. The
- As a comparative literary critic, what can you say human need for story telling and narration
about the present and the future of literature? Is is an anthropological reality. No doubt the
it endangered from other mediums and, if there forms it takes in a digital environment will
is a competition of arts, which of them will be be different from the past, but it will not
cultural dominant? disappear.

ANDREAS HUYSSEN: Some argue that (Symbol, No 4, 2015)

literature has become obsolete, that a pictorial
interview

33
 Mieke Bal
Mieke Bal (1946) is a Dutch cultural theorist, video artist,
andProfessor EmeritusinLiterary Theoryat the University
of Amsterdam. Previously she also was Academy Professor
of theRoyal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciencesand
co-founder of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at
theUniversity of Amsterdam.
Bal has published more than thirty books on a wide range of
subjects. Her research interests includebiblicalandclassical
antiquity,seventeenth-centuryand modern art,contemporary
literature, feminism, mental illness, and migratory culture.
Her works are: Narratology, Lethal Love, Murder and Difference,
Reading Rembrandt, Quoting Caravaggio, Travelling Concepts in the
Humanities, Thinking in Film, Endless etc.
University of Chicago PresspublishedA Mieke Bal Readerin
2006, while in 2008John Wiley & SonspublishedAbout Mieke
Bal, a collection of essays celebrating her work.
In addition to her academic work, Bal is a video artist whose
films and installations have been exhibited internationally.
She made several videos that mostly revolve around issues of
migration. With Michelle Williams Gamaker, Bal directed the
feature-length filmA Long History of Madnessand Madame B
(2015).
 Narrative is Our Best Tool
- Professor Bal, when you sit down to write a
book, do you think that it will compel the public
to reread or re-think the works that you are
treating?
MIEKE BAL: Thats more or less the idea.
Its not to force the readers but to alert them
to possibilities different from what they know,
or think they know, and get them excited
about it. Usually I get myself enthusiastic
about some text or artwork or film, because
it seems so powerful for reasons I only dimly
understand. Describing the artwork is my
first step. Then, when I describe it, I get
more clarity myself, and see the power and
importance of it. That insight, and access to
the artwork itself, is what I try to convey to
my readers. By the way, I dont sit down to
write a book. Most of my books have grown
out of a field of interest. They start with
some articles, and my interest brings them
together. Then I develop them into a book.
- Your Narratology, which has become an
international classic book, offers helpful concepts
for analyzing both written and film narratives.
While the film is showing (mimesis) and the
fiction is telling (diegesis), what is the relation
between them?
MIEKE BAL:The millennia-old distinction
between telling and showing remains
helpful, but I dont think you can simply
divide media by labelling them accordingly.
All narratives in whatever media, are both
telling and showing, often the one through
the other. Narrative is the mix of those two
modes of connecting. I see it as two aspects
of communication by means of cultural
codes, languages, genres; whatever you name
them. In the new edition of Narratology I
am currently preparing, - also in the second
interview
and third editions - many films, paintings,
and even video installations will serve as
examples - or rather, theoretical objects.
36 Those are objects that help, and even compel
us to do theory in order to understand
them better. Telling and showing collaborate
to make events, including aesthetic events,
present, understandable, and gripping.
- You and Chatman, based on the structuralist
tradition, turned the literary discipline founded
in late of 60, into film analysis. What are the
narrative challenges in visual culture, especially
in film?
MIEKE BAL:I think that in terms of our
respective strengths, Chatman was primarily
a film analyst and I was primarily a literary
one. We met halfway, so to speak. I came late
to film, under the impact of collaborating
with brilliant film theorists such as Kaja
Silverman, when we created together the
first interdisciplinary program in visual
culture at the University of Rochester. Now
such programs exist everywhere, but it was
a novelty then. Your question, however,
concerns the presence, or activity, of
narrative, in other media. As I have already
written in the introduction to the first edition
of Narratology, narrative in itself, as a cultural
mode, is medium-independent. In each
medium it takes different forms, because it
embeds itself in the medium. In film, the
audio-visual dimension is different from
the textual one in literature, although both
are time-based. I find it more challenging to
explore the narrative dimension in still painting
and drawing, sculpture, photography... But
narrativity - the emergence of events and
their actors seen from a specific angle- is
everywhere. Even in abstract sculpture, as I
have argued in my recent books on political
art. The challenge is to avoid projecting
narrativity as representation. Looking at
history painting, for example, is easily turned
into solving the puzzle of what the story
is of which we see a still frame. But that is
not what I find interesting in narrative. It is
rather the movement between the tableau
and its details towards the viewer, who then
becomes a participant. I have written on
this as second-person narrative on the
American abstract painter David Reed, for
example.
- What is an adaptation/translation of
a novel into film and what are the relations
between narratology and iconography?
MIEKE BAL: These are in fact two
questions. The well-known problem with
adaptation is that this word is fraught
with normative assumptions. Even if
many of these have been critiqued and
dismissed, I am not sure the word best
indicates the relationships between texts in
an interdiscursive, intermedial, international,
and intertemporal perspective. This is what
I have just explored, in practice with the
film Madame B, which shows it, rather than
telling it in a few sentences. And in theory,
I explored it when wrote an article about
that film, and how it is loyal to the literary
modes of Flauberts novel, while avoiding
the kind of faithful adaptation that makes
such endeavours often very problematic.
That article will be published in a volume
edited by Thomas Leitch, one of the best
adaptation scholars.
I feel the need to be concrete at this point.
Just one example, from that film and the
article about it. A desire for fidelity makes
Claude Chabrol in his film Madame Bovary
reluctant to let go of the famous narratorial
sentence La conversation de Charles tait
plate comme un trottoir de rue [Charless
conversation was flat like a sidewalk]. I
sympathise. The narrative sentence is superb.
So Chabrol makes Charles say something
silly, like Its going to rain . . . Since
Flaubert doesnt quote Charles, any platitude
is as good as any other. Then the narrator,
who has no business being present at the
scene, pronounces the famous comparison,
and Charles continues: . . . I think. We all
laugh. Ridiculing Charles is one thing, even
if it is already a misreading, but making
the narrator overrule the character in this
intrusive way is another. Interrupting
Charless boring remark, thus taking ironic
distance, is obliterating Flauberts relentless,
continuous reiteration of clichs as uttered
Narrative in itself, as a cultural mode, is
medium-independent. In each medium it takes
different forms, because it embeds itself in the
medium. In film, the audiovisual dimension
is different from the textual one in literature,
although both are time-based. I find it more
challenging to explore the narrative dimension
in still painting and drawing, sculpture,
photography... But narrativity is everywhere.
Even in abstract sculpture.
by everyone. Moreover, using a male voice-
over erases Emmas focalisation, while that is
the point of the sentence. The fidelity, here,
leads to gross infidelity.
- But what is your approach toMadame
B?
MIEKE BAL: What we (Michelle Williams
Gamaker and I, as co-directors of the film)
did, instead, is very different. In order for
an artistic object, such as this sentence, to
become a theoretical object that nourishes
thought, the content of the sentence matters
less than its narrativity. It is famous for its
economy of means, the comparison, and the
power to image routine. It is devastating for
Charles in Emmas eyes - her focalisation.
This sentence cried out for inclusion not
only as a narrative expression of a non-event
- what Grard Genette called Flauberts
silences - but also as a trigger of the
boredom that will kill Emma. But this could
not be done, we felt, by the intrusion of a
Chabrolian narrator. Once it is understood
in its narratological implications, it causes
a reversal in the narrative economy and its
dynamic between narration and description
- for us, between literary and cinematic; a
reversal that must be retained in order to be
loyal to the novel by apparently betraying it.
So, this is how we did it. Thomas Germaine,
the French actor playing Charles, proposed
to hold these iterative conversations on
four subjects, spread out over four evening
dinners, marked by different outfits: the
interview
weather, the project to build a shed in the
garden, a patient, and the tasteless quality
of the raspberries this year. One sees the
boredom coming. Marja Skaffari, the Finnish 37

The well-known problem with adaptation
is that this word is fraught with normative
assumptions. Even if many of these have been
critiqued and dismissed, I am not sure the word
best indicates the relationships between texts in
an interdiscursive, intermedial, international,
and intertemporal perspective. This is what I
have just explored, in practice with the film
Madame B, which shows it, rather than telling
it in a few sentences.
actress who played Emma, needed only to
sit tight and keep her mouth shut, showing
in her face the visual echo of Charless
discourse. The auditory image created by
these two charactersfunctioned like a visual
performative image. This was our form of
loyalty, not to follow Flaubert but to learn
about cinema from his prose.
We filmed the scene with two fixed cameras,
each focusing on one of the two faces.
But we decided to edit it with Emmas
face almost exclusively. That is where the
boredom inscribed itself with more and
more exasperation, and where an audio-
visual Free Indirect Discourse (FID) can
take shape, precisely because Charles is the
one who is talking. Instead of his face, we see
his blurred shoulder in what is called a dirty
close-up, looming over Emma like a dark
shadow. Like the contact that has emerged
from two socially dubious looks voyeurism
and flirting in the first piece encounter,
the two characters together produce the
boredom, ending in horror. This is an audio-
visual image. Iconography would not cover it.
But I contend that between Flauberts short
sentence and our rather long scene, there is
a perfect match. Iconography traces images,
or motives in images, from later works back
to earlier artists in the visual tradition. The
interaction between novel and film is, or
must be, of an altogether different order.
interview
- I like the way you approached Madame Meanwhile, I have started a new project,
Bovary and I hope you signed your authenticity Reasonable Doubt, on Descartes and Queen
in this movie. So, referring to this, can you say: Kristina of Sweden.
38 Madame B, cest moi?
MIEKE BAL: When we decided to title the
film Madame B and not Madame Bovary
we made the gesture of relating it to a wider
audience than Flaubert aficionados, and at the
same time, of bringing it closer to home.
Dont forget that with my name, Madame
B cest moi is literally true. Also, Emma
wears our clothes and jewelry, and every time
I screen the film and talk about it, I make
sure to wear something that is visible in the
film. If Flaubert ever said Madame Bovary,
cest moi (the quote is not authenticated)
he surely meant something like I belong to,
come from this culture where these things
happen but I am not sure his identification
can have been more precise than that. For
me, I do want to make the point that indeed,
this can happen to all of us, and if my name
is (happens to be) Madame B, which is
coincidental and I do feel both empathy and
criticism towards the character Emma.
- What are your future plans with this film?
MIEKE BAL: The future for the film
depends entirely on the question if we can
find a distributor. But there is a great demand
in the educational sector. The DVD package,
with the film, a book with essay and photos,
and a DVD with extras - among which a
visual explanation of emotional capitalism
will be distributed at a workshop of a project
called Art-Based Learning, directed by Jeroen
Lutters, in which many educators as well as
art workers participate. This gives me great
hope that the film and the installation pieces
can be useful in both sectors. The art world
has responded very well so far. We already
have had quite some exhibitions, complete
(19 screens) and also smaller ones (13, 6
and 5 screen versions). In 2016 we expect
two exhibitions in Mexico and Argentina,
and in 2017, one in a museum in Turku,
Finland, and one in the Munch Museum,
Oslo. The latter may be an interventionist
exhibition, integrating the screens with the
Munch paintings. I was invited to curate such
an exhibition. Hopefully, more will come.
 - What was your experience as a video artist?
MIEKE BAL:I have never learned so
much as in that endeavour. It has been,
and is, fabulous. The teamwork, the
collective creativity, and the depth of
analysis it facilitates. I have begun to
make videos when I sought to understand
contemporary culture better. One reason
was that the really contemporary is not yet
documented; documentation always lags
behind. Another reason was that I wanted
to avoid the inevitable domination inherent
in information gathering. So, I started to
make experimental documentaries where the
people in the film were also partners of sorts,
developing an ethics of documentary making.
They got to discuss the concept, criticise the
draft edits, to speak for themselves without
coercive probing, staying silent if they so
wished. The result was more accepted in the
art world than in the media; I never got a film
on television, for example, because television
required an explanatory voice-over, which is
precisely what I did not want. In the art world
- museums and galleries. - the videos were
better received. So, slowly and reluctantly, I
had to concede I am (also) an artist.
After witnessing, in making one of those
documentaries, how a three-year old girl
was able to use fiction to escape from or
undermine the pressure she was under to
develop a cultural identity, my partner in the
filmmaking, Michelle Williams Gamaker and
I decided it was worth trying to use fiction.
The first fiction was a theoretical fiction,
developing a view of psychoanalysis in its
capacity to help psychotic people. This was
based on a theoretical-fictional book by
French analyst Franoise Davoine. This had
to be a fiction, also, because ethically it seemed
inacceptable to make a documentary on the
subject of madness. Again, this was quite
well received in art circuits. With Madame B
we tried to explore something closer to our
own lives and contemporary culture, the
madness called emotional capitalism (a
term coined by Eva Illouz).
- As a theoretician, you have seenfocalization as recuperated under a different term, more
a motor of narrative and you rose against two systematically bound to the underlying
concepts of Genette (la focalisation externe narrative system. So, there the problem is of
and lafocalisation zero), who replied that:
unlike the director of movie, the novelist is not
compelled to put camera somewhere. I dont
know if you responded him, so can you explain
something more about this polemic?
MIEKE BAL: I think Genette was projecting
on the concept of focalisation a desire for
the possibility of neutrality, or objectivity if
you prefer. I think a novelist is absolutely
compelled to put the camera, or another
instrument of perception, or perceiving
agent, somewhere. The novelist cantry to play
God, but that is only a pretence. Jonathan
Culler has decisively undermined the idea of
the omniscient narrator. The best example
of the ideological consequences of the idea
of zero focalisation is Genettes example
of Passepartout looking at his master
I think Genette was projecting on the concept
of focalisation a desire for the possibility of
neutrality, or objectivity if you prefer. I think
a novelist is absolutely compelled to put the
camera, or another instrument of perception,
or perceiving agent, somewhere. The novelist
can try to play God, but that is only a pretence.
Jonathan Culler has decisively undermined the
idea of the omniscient narrator.
PhilasFogg, and the novelist pretending that
it is a neutral description. Genette repeats the
obscuring gesture of the novelist, who strikes
the servant dumb. Instead, an analysts task it
to show the hidden mechanisms of narration,
and demonstrate that the description is,
in fact, focalised by Passepartout who
is intimidated by his master. The social
relationships can thus become apparent. This
is necessary if narrative is to be more than a
tool for intimidation and the reiteration of
social inequities. External focalisation can
interview
be problematic in similar ways, but can be
39
 a different order, emerging from the need for then the whole again, as it takes to read, for
systematic analysis, so that the latter can be example, a poem.
both adequate to the text, and critical of it. I wanted the works by Rembrandt to gain in
depth and interest, but an original perspective
- Some seemed the birth of cinema as the death of the role of visuality in our culture also
of literature, and others say that cinema has emerged, which ultimately has consequences
extended the reign of literature. What do you for our views of gender, artists, and the act
think about relationship between film and of looking as reading. To put it succinctly,
literature? with reading I meant and mean something
like engaging profoundly, so as to do justice
MIEKE BAL: I think it is silly to declare to the artworks power to speak, and speak
new inventions the death of an older one. back if we try to subject it to a methodology
It is true, rather, that through film, literature that is reductive.
has been revitalised. Film has both a
- In Quoting Caravaggio you have seen
echoes of intertextuality in a number of late-
twentieth-century artists who quote the
I think it is silly to declare new inventions the baroque painter in their own works. How
death of an older one. It is true, rather, that important for contemporary art is this dialog
through film, literature has been revitalized. between centuries?

MIEKE BAL: I think it is extremely

important for contemporary artists to
Hollywood branch and a sophisticated, interact with earlier art. I also think the good
artistic one (some of the works of which artists do precisely that. If they try to be
have been made in Hollywood). Part of totally original, they get caught in Oedipal
the film industry is dumbing, manipulative, anxiety of influence (Harold Bloom).
or otherwise culturally damaging. But so is, Instead, if they dare speak back to the old
as we well know, part of literature. I would masters, they can achieve an intimacy of
not judge an entire medium on the basis of influence (Catherine Lord). Therefore, I
certain bad examples, nor would I praise it contend that we cannot understand old art
because of some outstanding examples. without understanding contemporary art.
This is as true as the opposite.
- In Reading Rembrandt you focuson paintings. According to the philosophy of the image
Everyone knows how to see Rembrandts of Henri Bergson in Matter and Memory, a
paintings, but how can we read Rembrandt? theory I find of the greatest importance,
perceptions of images happen in the
MIEKE BAL: What I tried to do in the book present, but without the memories that fill the
was actually something different than map perceived images, they would remain empty
the relations between the two media, or arts. of meaning. Also, the dialogue between
I tried to take visuality as just as complex as present and past art is part of what I have
literature, without making it like literature. called preposterous history, which is a
I dont think everyone knows how to see non-linear relation to time and history. Other
Rembrandts paintings. These paintings are took this up but then called it anachronism.
inexhaustibly complex. But because of the This, too is important, if only to get rid of
ideology that says images can be seen in the tenacious ideology of progress. If we
one glance (coup doeil) people assume they keep thinking that later means better
know it in a few seconds. With reading because more developed, we remain
interview

Rembrandt I meant to indicate that looking stuck in a disavowal of the past that makes
at a painting so as to engage with it, takes us repeat the mistakes of the past, as well
as much time and interpretation, looking as in a contemptuous attitude towards other
40 at details, colours, shapes, brush strokes, cultures that only appear underdeveloped
because they are different from our own. A With reading Rembrandt I meant to indicate
preposterous dialogue with the past can be that looking at a painting so as to engage with
a great help in overcoming those hang-ups, it, takes as much time and interpretation,
which do so much harm in the world and its looking at details, colours, shapes, brush
cultures. strokes, then the whole again, as it takes to
read, for example, a poem.
- You wrote some studies about art installations,
which exemplify a Deleuzian concept of
abstraction. How does this art draw participant from Chantal Mouffe, On the Political. Jacques
viewers into experiment? Rancire, whose terminology I do not adopt,
has a very effective term in the same vein
MIEKE BAL: You are alluding to the studies as Mouffes distinction: msentente. That
that ended up as the book Endless Andless. French word is untranslatable; it means both
misunderstanding and disagreement.
- Exactly. The English disagreement forgets the
misunderstanding part, which is just as
MIEKE BAL: This is a dialogue with the crucial, if not more. So, political art is art that
work of Belgian artist Ann Veronica Janssens. intervenes in the political in that social sense,
Her works are enormously drawing in the because it makes people discuss, debate, and
sense of your question. People queue up yes, disagree. That keeps a culture alive, and
patiently to enter her mist installations, for makes change possible.
example. This is because the experience
of the works is so unlike anything one has - In Travelling Concepts in the Humanities,
experienced before that the novelty of it you insist that interdisciplinarity in the
persuades in itself. And yet, in terms of the humanitiesmust seek its heuristic and
previous question, these works allude to older methodological basis in concepts rather than
works, such as the long tradition of depicting its methods. When we can consider a concept
clouds as separations between the earthly meaningful?
and the beyond. If you keep that in mind,
Janssens works do not lure you to religious MIEKE BAL: A concept is meaningful if
feelings but to explore what it means to be it helps understand a (cultural) phenomenon
in a different world, if only briefly. It helps (object, artefact) more adequately within
the visitor to be bold, daring, to experiment, the social realm from which it emerged and
and to imagine different possibilities for the in which it functions. Concepts harbour
world, for sharing space, for living together, ideas, mini-theories, but unlike the kind
for example. of methodological theories that can be
applied, they do not strike the object
- What is relationship between art and politics dumb. Instead, because they are only
and how art can be politically effective? partially explicit and explicated, concept can
be brought to bear on objects and establish a
MIEKE BAL: Do you really think I can dialogue with them. But concepts, although
answer this question in a few sentences, they must be made in intersubjectively usable
after having written three books about it, ones - meaning provisionally the same thing
with a fourth on the way? I have examined, for all participants - are neither fixed nor
through the oeuvres of three artists, how stable. That is why I call them travelling.
art can be politically effective while not But objects, too, are always-already engaged,
being about politics. I even argue: because as interlocutors, within the larger culture
it is not about politics. Art about politics from which they have emerged.
interview

becomes propaganda. Art that stays aloof of Cultural analysis aims to articulate how the
propaganda intervenes in the social domain object contributes to cultural debates. Hence
where the political takes place: where people the emphasis on the objects existence and
discuss and disagree. I take that distinction functioning in the present. It is not the 41

If we keep thinking that later means
better because more developed, we remain in culture where I feel addressed, challenged,
stuck in a disavowal of the past that makes us
repeat the mistakes of the past, as well as in
a contemptuous attitude towards other cultures
that only appear underdeveloped because they
are different from our own. A preposterous
dialogue with the past can be a great help in
overcoming those hangups, which do so much
harm in the world and its cultures.
MIEKE BAL:This question cannot be
answered. I feel best when I am somewhere
and engaged. This changes, not because I
change all the time but because the fields
we have developed are artificially delimited.
This may have been useful, when the need
of specialization was great. I, too, have
specialized. If asked, Id say my specialization
is narrative. My choices are made in function
of the object I seek to understand.

- After you wrote about literature, film, painting,

artist or the author but the objects they
make and give to the public domain that
are the speakers in analytic discussion.
The concept-based methodology became
necessary because of the development
of interdisciplinarity, which made cultural
analysis anchor-less. Without the admittedly
photograph, sculpture etc., can music be the
object in your subsequent works?
MIEKE BAL:The answer here is simple.
No. I dont understand music and will not be
amateurish in my approach. I do think I have
inspired others a bit in pursuing a narrative
understanding of music. Please dont present
me as someone who does anything. All my
choices have been motivated.

- Yuri Lotman called art and science two eyes of

human culture. How does it look to the artistic
eye today?

MIEKE BAL: Although I am not a

...art can be politically effective while not
scientist at all, I do not accept a drastic, rigid
being about politics. Art about politics
distinction between art and science. I have
becomes propaganda. Art that stays aloof of
worked with a theoretical physicist, Evelyn
propaganda intervenes in the social domain
Fox Keller, but primarily on her discursive
where the political takes place: where people
analysis of science, not on the science itself.
discuss and disagree.
- In all your works you analysed narrative as an
expanded concept, so what wouldyou say about
small (local) narratives which replaced grand
narratives?

MIEKE BAL: I think small narratives are the

only ones that matter. The Grand Narratives
rigid methodologies of the disciplines, how that Lyotard wanted to get rid of wont go
do you keep analysis from floundering into away, but they remain what they always were:
sheer partisanship or being perceived as ideologies packaged as narratives. They are
floundering? of no interest to me as narratives. If I want
to critique those, Id rather critique their
- As one of the pioneers who expanded the contents; unpack the narratives and look at
interview

discipline of narratology, you have touched the ideologies, and say why they are wrong.
many fields with many critical methods. In But the small narratives that emerge every day,
which field you feel better? which you call local, are the ones that often
42
pass unnoticed. I dont think they replaced
the Grand Narratives. Rather, I think they
were always there, as means through which a
thriving culture as well as an oppressed one,
facilitate the communication of ideas, but
also of such things as ugliness and beauty,
issues of responsibility and guilt, desire and
hope; private language and symbols. They
can take all forms and operate in all media.
They constitute the cultural moment.
(Symbol, No 5, 2015)
I think small narratives are the only ones that
matter. The Grand Narratives that Lyotard
wanted to get rid of wont go away, but they
remain what they always were: ideologies
packaged as narratives. They are of no interest
to me as narratives. If I want to critique those,
Id rather critique their contents; unpack the
narratives and look at the ideologies, and say
why they are wrong.
interview
43
 D.M.Thomas
Donald Michael Thomas, known as D.M.Thomas (1935) is
a British novelist and poet. He was awarded the Los Angeles
Times Fiction prize for his novel The White Hotel, an
international bestseller, translated into 30 languages; a
Cholmondeley award for poetry; and the Orwell Prize for his
biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He lives in his native
Cornwall, England. He wrote twenty-seven books: fiction,
poetry, play and nonfiction. He also translated Pushkin,
Yevtushenko, Akhmatova.
Many attempts were made to make The White Hotel into a film.
These included attempts byBernardo BertolucciwithBarbra
Streisand, byDavid LynchwithIsabella Rossellini, bySimon
MonjackwithBrittany Murphy, byEmir KusturicawithNicole
Kidmanetc.
 I AM A SON OF OEDIPUS

- I dont know what would be the adequate relationship, you erected a monument to your
question to begin this interview, but if you agree, wife, like Dante, Petrarch and Poe did, but in
let start with Cornwall, which appears in your a different form which is called postmodernism.
first novel, Birthstone, where you talk about While postmodernism is not nostalgic, and you are,
Cornish speech, Cornish people and about your can we see it like a challenge to postmodernism?
family. You have lived in America and Australia
too, but you have turned back to your birthplace. D.M. THOMAS: As a writer I am incapable
Does it mean that everyone belongs to his Ithaca? of thinking in theoretical terms. People say
my writing is often or usually postmodern
D.M. THOMAS:Yes, I think it does. Cornwall especially my novels, not my poetry. I think
is a Celtic land, as you probably know, a kind of my poetry is very traditional, you know I still
sister to Wales and Ireland, and for Celts there rhyme, I still use meter which is kind of old
is always a strongcall back to the homeland. fashion to the rest of people. Yeah, my novels
I returned to live here about 25 years ago. try to move more widely. I dont think of
So, yes, it is my Ithaca. But I also feel that I myself as a postmodernist I just think myself
have other homelands, emotional and mental as a writer. And in the case of the books that
homelands and you mentioned two of them, you mentionedDear Shadows, still is elegiac
Australia particularly where I had a part of my andNot saying everything,the title of that book
adolescence-very influential in many ways, and the whole of which contains poems to Denise.
also Russia which I learned to love through its It is really, because in life, in relationship there
literature and its art in general. is stress and you may row a lot, and then if the
beloved dies you feel youve never concluded
- So you call Russia your homeland, too? the conversation and we would row at the early
hours in the morning over wine, whisky and
D.M. THOMAS: Homeland yes, emotional, at the end the entire walk out and she say I
like homeland as well, which give an added havent said everything, and I feel in the same
dimension to my writings, of course. way I hadnt said everything in her life, so that
is the title of that book.
- Your family is object in some of your writings.
Even the best of your poems (moving elegies) you - In your latest collection,Flight and smoke, is a
dedicated to your mother and to your wife. Seeing poem named Barbecue, where is an indignation to
literature as a bridge which helps you to be near destiny which doesnt offer you the chance to take
your deceased beloveds does it feel like you are both your four wives in barbeque. How important
communicating with them? are women in your life? In your works you have
explored the female psyche. How the experience
D.M. THOMAS: Yes, it does very much. with women in your life has helped you in your
In my forthcoming book of poems, Family works?
Bible,I actually write letters to my father and
to others in my dead family and also its a kind D.M. THOMAS: I supposed to answer the
of obviously a one way conversation but then last part first. Women in my life enormously
in terms of my late wife Denise, who died help in my writing in one sense because a
of cancer in 1998, at age 53, she lives in my woman is a muse and my inspiration, and there
dreams. can be more than one muse, for example the
interview

Russian poet Ana Akhmatova is a muse to me

- Dear Shadows, and especiallyNot saying as well. But in my life Denise was my muse,
everything, includes poems dedicated to your and there have been others, and I have been
46 wife Denise, who died in 1998. Focusing in your married four times, so that choice had play
a considerable part in my life and there were
two divorces and one bereavement and now I
am married happily to a Canadian lady, much
younger than me, as the most of them were,
and when she moved in, I thought how sainted
if we were having a barbeque, a rare English
summer sunny day and I thought why cant all
be here, why cant everyone get on together,
and then I decided that my first wife wouldnt
like my second one, there my second one
wouldnt like my third one, and also the first
one will get on well with the fourth one, and
unfortunately this was impossible. This was an
amusing reflection on marriages and breakup.
I suppose also, of course times if you are in
a kind of desperate relationship you can feel
too disturbed to write, because Pushkin said
that for a writer calm is more important even
than ecstasy for inspiration.
- What would it be better if you will be single for
your literature?
D. M. THOMAS:No, I couldnt imagine it.
- Why not?
D. M. THOMAS:I must have a woman in
my life.
- Because women are your muses?
D. M. THOMAS:Because they are my muses
and also Im of the generation where I was
used to a woman a kind of doing cooking,
even practically it will be very difficult. But is
mostly that feeling women is the anima is the
other side of ones personality and part one of
myself, as everyone is part of the opposite self.
But I actually need a physical presence.
- Lets go back to your childhood!If any
psychoanalyst critic would ask you about eventual
references in oedipal fantasies of your childhood,
how could you answer to him?
D.M. THOMAS: I will say that I am a son of
Oedipus, that I am extremely oedipal. I know
Freud talked about the romance of childhood.
We all create a sort of fantasy over childhood.
Memory is partly made up later on, but I
lived in a small working class home, my older
sister that I am a kind of double here oedipal,
[White Hotel is] a novel of blazing imaginative
and intellectual force.
Salman Rushdie
because my sister who unfortunately died the
last year she was ten years older than me, so she
was almost like a bridge between my mother
and me. And she was also when I was growing
up ten-eleven, she was very attractive very sexy
20-21 year old. So besides my very attractive
mother, forty, I had also, sort of the another
erotic figure, in my sister, so every powerful
influence of women and of imagining, all the
sexual imagining wanted to I dont know
that I want to kill my father exactly. But the
jealousy certainly me unconscious jealousy
and I used to make sure that I slept in her bed
as often as possible. Because I said that were
ghosts and I was frightened so I were going in
her bed, unfortunately my mother gone to the
other bed, goes to my bed and I was left sleep
with my father, which might have made me, I
suppose, gay, but it didnt!. I think its all I want
to say about that.
- Freud is always present in your works: as a
character, or as a deeply writing method. Why you
are so obsessed with him?
D.M. THOMAS: Because I think when I
first read him I was reading English literature
at Oxford and I loved the way he told he
wrote his beautiful writings. He wrote stories
of unconscious sexuality and because I was a
very rare sexual being he kind of explained the
universe to me. I still feel that he told a lot of
truths which are still for people uncomfortable.
- Russia and Russians are other important objects
of yours. They are presented in your poems and
fictions (Ararat, Swallow, Sphinx,
Summit, Lying together), also you wrote
a biography of Solzhenitsyn and translated
Pushkin, Yevtushenko and Akhmatova. What
is their influence on you?
interview
D.M. THOMAS: Profound influence. I had
to do national service as soldier when I was
18 and I was fortunately enough to be chosen 47
 about a woman. Freud is interviewer, is treating
her. So it, very quickly, if all do my minds start
[White Hotel is] astonishing . . . elegantly with poetry, with end very bleak prose, in the
experimental yet quite warm . . . A forthright middle will be the Freudian cerebral intellectual
sensuality mixed with a fine historical feeling study. So I actually started the writing it with
for the nightmare moments in modern history, great enthusiasm and it was until about half
a dreamlike fluidity and quickness. way thru the book when Freud started treating
her and I found who she was like (built in her
John Updike background). So its a sense of discovering for
me as I went through the book. The American
poet Robert Frost says: if there is no surprise
to go in Russian course, and all over the time in the writer, is no surprise in the reader. And
I found the language terribly difficult and still I think one of the aspects that I like about the
do, but, gradually, because we had Russian book is that it alwayskept forme my surprise.
emigrants speakers teaching us. I fell in love
with the language and I loved the sound of - White Hotelis the novel which turned you in
Pushkin poems. And when later I started to a classic writer. Two great Freudian themes, Eros
translate Akhmatova first before Pushkin and Thanatos, havent been treated better than in
I found such such power, such music you work. Even womans death is represented as
in Russian. And the novels of Tolstoy and a morbid combination of these themes, raping her
Pasternak just seems to be going into life with with a sword-bayonet. What do you think about
the depth that English writers in the late of feminist critics who, irritated by this described act,
twentieth century dont seem to, so yes they accused you as devilish misogynist?
have been enormously influence.
D.M. THOMAS:What do I think of it? I
- The climax of your professional carrier,White think theyre wrong. I think none loves women
Hotelwhich talksabout Freud and his patient, more than I do.
translated in 30 languages and admired by
Salman Rushdie, Graham Greene, John Updike, - Yes, you have proved that with four marriages.
Linda Hutcheon etc., is one of masterpieces in
postmodern literature. How did you find the idea D.M. THOMAS: Ha-ha-ha. Indeed. I think
and the form for this novel? they misinterpreted but obviously as I said
to you, I agree with every word they say, you
D.M. THOMAS:It was an idea which came would think I was mad, Im not quite mad,
to me literary in few minutes. I had written a no, I think its because they have been bonded
poem with the fascination for Freud, I wrote by something else, while saying it they were
this long poem The woman to Sigmund unwilling to believe that I dare, to think as a
Freud and I spoke in the womans voice,for woman or trying to think as a woman. One
which the lot of women, all of feminists feminist attacked me in reading ago, and said:
have accused me of doing this, saying: you The poem, it is nothing like I think, she said: I
dont know how the women feels. But I tried dont feel that way, women dont. And, about
to imagine how woman feel. And then I had twenty other women in the audience cried
to be reading a long novel by Kuznetsov, in out and said: I feel like that. Thats me. So, I
the end of it is a historical document of one said: well, its not you, but other women, one
woman who escapes from the BabiYar, when woman, my heroine.
the Nazis were executing all of them, a quarter
million. I thought this woman who is just part - In 1982, the republishedWhite Hotel, in
in that poem, she is that woman. So her life was paperback wrote: soon to be a major movie. But
out of erotic reveries, and also with a kind of still it is one of the greatest never made movies.
interview

violent reveries to dying in Holocaust and then As you say in Bleak Hotel, Bernardo Bertolucci,
I thought I know I wanted to write a kind of David Lynch, Hector Babenco, Emir Kusturica,
novella in style of Freudian key study and so I Pedro Almodvar and David Cronenberg are
48 can put that in the middle. I will create a novel some of directors who were interested to turn it
 into the screen, therefore Liza would be portrayed D.M. THOMAS: Singers? Well, the heroin of
by Meryl Streep, Isabella Rossellini, Juliette White Hotel, is loosely based in part on the
Binoche, Nicole Kidman, Lena Olin or Emily great Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya,
Watson, while to portrayed Freud was chosen by an odd coincidence, there is much
Anthony Hopkins, Dustin Hoffman or Ralph coincidence in involving her, I was in Milan,
Fiennes. After more than three decades, is there assigned into the a hotel where I was going to
any hope to see soonWhite Hotelmovie? be there for a long shot, someone told me that
thereis assigned also a great Russian, Galina
D.M. THOMAS: This spring I did have hope Vishnevskaya, she was in Milan at the same
myself because the people who hold the rights, time in the same hotel and I turned just in
an American financier and his lawyer, after ten time and I saw her. High heels clicking on her
years they hadnt start to making movie so way into the hotel. She had to come there for
the rights legally rewritten to me, and there another performance or to receive the prize.
for I could be free to sell. Unfortunately, this So Vishnevskaya influenced me a great deal,
financier refuses to accept it and more or less, but more generally, I think where music has
I know, none will take it done because they influenced me is in form, the symphonic form,
would be afraid of being sued by this man, very much in my mind in the way of different
and he has sued a great many people, and he movements of the White Hotel, e.g., where
has money and I dont have the money. Less, there are like six movements, all of different
Im still comforted, its very upsetting, but the kinds of moods like allegro, and some andante.
book is there and one day maybe it would be
made, perhaps fifty years times who knows. - I read that you never re-read your works after
Too late for me and maybe too late even for publication. Does it mean that writing for you is
you. Its a shame. just a therapy for which you have no reason to
come back, after you have finished it?
- Being a psychological novel, are you ready to
accept an eventual failure on the screen, because, D.M. THOMAS: When you write in it and
as you know, the great psychological writers like you re-read it so many times, so you know
Dostoyevsky and Flaubert werent lucky on screen? that by heart for a while. And when book
comes first, when I first hold the book in my
D.M. THOMAS: I would be not terribly hand and I read it and I enjoyed it, but after
unhappy if fail on the screen, because I can that Im out of next thing. Its not so much
still say: but you should read the book. And therapy, its just creation. I love creating.I dont
the book is good. If its a failure, I can point want to dwell on a past note, or sometimes you
to the book, if its success, more people can have to talk about it later into interviews and so
read the book anyway. I can only win. But for on. But on the whole I think thats gone, what
the moment, I cant win because I cannot get matters is the blank page Im trying to write
anyone to dare to dive in United States who is next. Once I get over the block which comes
preventing it for making a film. after every novel, so its always the next book
that Im into. But, I did also, I re-read all my
- How the others arts have influenced you: painters novels about a year ago. I have been curiosity
(you wrote a novel about Munchs pictures), at some might happen into twenty years, and
directors (your novelSummitis compared with that was interesting and I think how those was
KubricksDr. Strangelove), or musicians (you in there, and that was pretty good, and less was
have said that you like Rachmaninoff)? not so good, its interesting experience to re-
read. But of course it is always the next page,
D.M. THOMAS: Yes, I think influence is less next novel or the next poem which obsesses
tangible, but I think music is very powerful me, because Impretty obsessive writer.
influence on me. I love all music, but I suppose
interview

classic music is my first love. (Symbol, No 6, 2015)

- What kind of musicians, concretely? Which

singers? 49
 Ismail Kadare
Ismail Kadare(1936) is anAlbaniannovelist and poet. He
has been a leading literary figure in Albania since the 1960s.
His profile rose significantly in 1963 after the publication of
the novelThe General of the Dead Army. In 1996 Kadare became
a lifetime member of the Academy of Moral and Political
Sciencesof France, where he replaced the philosopherKarl
Popper.
In 1992, he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca;
in 2005, he won the inaugural Man Booker International
Prize; in 2009, the Prince of Asturias Award of Arts; in
2015, theJerusalem Prize, and in 2016, he was Commandeur
de la Lgion dHonneur recipient. He has divided his time
between Albania and France since 1990. Kadare has been
mentioned as a possible recipient of the Nobel Prize in
Literatureseveral times. His works have been translated into
more than 40 languages.
 THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE IS A HISTORY
OF HEIGHTS
- Mr. Kadare, half of your prose is written
under dictatorship and the other half in times
of democracy. Which of the two periods do
you think enabled you to write your best work?
KADARE: Without wanting to sound
pretentious with aboth of them type
response, I sincerely think that the best of
my works, just like the less good ones, were
written, fortunately, during both periods. I
said fortunately because that is a good sign
for literature.
- In times of democracy you have published
several works that you had written during
dictatorship. Apart from official censorship,
was auto-censorship a reason to not publishthem
earlier?
KADARE: Auto-censorship might be a
reason to refrain altogether from writing a
work, not a reason to not publish it. Id even
daresay that the decision not to publish a
work, should it not emerge from artistic
deficiencies, proves your awareness of the
lack of auto-censorship.
- You have also written poetry, drama and
essays, yet gainedinternational acclaim as a
storyteller. Does this imply that when you write
poetry, drama or essays, youre addressing an
Albanian audience, while through your prose
you appeal to an international one?
KADARE: No, there are no grounds for
such a claim. A normal literature, in any
case, being written for the people of your
country, (in their language), is automatically
written for all people of all languages.
Literature knows nomegalomania. What is
thus termed for other fieldsis forliterature
its merenatural state.
interview
- Your first published novel, The General of the
Dead Army, came as a quake to Albanian
52 literature, which up until 1963 did not
enjoy the fortune of having any great novels.
It turned you into the leader of Albanian
literature and as such you then emerged into
the globalliterary scene. When you first wrote
it as a shortstory, did you ever think that your
name would forever be linked to that title?
KADARE: No, no I didnt. As Ive
mentioned it elsewhere, it was a close friend
of mine, Drago Siliqi who, by expressing
his awe at the some 30-40 pages long
version (as the story had first appeared)
also voiced his discontent of my rushing to
consumethe topic withina novella. Weather
this was fair or not, one thing is for sure: in
literature, the novel as a genre has gained a
special aura.
- As you have done with other novels, you have
constantly revised The General of the Dead
Army, yet without ideological retouching.
Should such stylistic interventions be viewed
as attempts toperfectthe work or are they
somewhat similar to the interventions of
Greek aedos who changed their songs with
every singing?
KADARE: Obviously, any intervention in
literature occurs naturally,purely for reasons
of perfecting the work. Interventions
based on other grounds, whatever you call
them, are forceful and not normal. As for
the Greek aedos, they would dodge this
conditionality, simplydue to the lack of
writing. However, forceful retouching, due
to non-artistic reasons, cannotbe excluded
even in their case.
- Although The General deals with events
following a conflict (war), you have created
many psychological conflicts in it. The readers
enjoyedthis, but the official critics have
condemned you for not sticking to the socialist
realism paradigm and for not showing any
hatred against the enemy. What was and is
the impact of criticism on your work?
KADARE: Literature, like any other art,
is created to as readers, who are viewed as
our audience can welcome it.Obviously,
their acceptance of itand a works artistic
valuesdo not always correspond. In some
cases they are quite separate. The same goes
for criticism.
It is natural for the writer to always aspire
towards a positive pact with theiraudience.
Yet there are cases when the opposite
occurs. This is because the audience is
also constructed. In totalitarian countries,
for example, a part of the audience, once
aware of the semi-officialcirclesnegligence
of the writers work, will also opt to remain
negligent. Meanwhile,for another part of
the audience, it will be this very negligence
that will stircuriosity, and even a liking for
the same writer.
I believe that in those famous meetings
with readers,namely the Q&A sessions
with audiences, most of the Albanian
writers of the time have felt this.
culture with temporary values, nor chaos
or anarchy.
- Similar to The General, The Castle is another
novel without a hero. Why did you avoid heroes
in these novels?
KADARE: Rather than be specifically
done, this most likely came as a natural
effort that otherwriters also employ to
avoid the annoying subjects of socialist
The best example of creativity and originality
in contemporary Albanian letters is Ismail
Kadare, still the only Albanian writer to enjoy
a broad international reputation.
Robert Elsie

- While The General is somewhat linked to realism, such as the cooperative,factory life,
Aeschylus dramas, The Chronicle in Stone socialist competition, positive characters
portrays your passion for Shakespeares work. in a way. The latter, from simple people
How was it that you got bound to these two to the partys model secretaries and labor
writers, about whom you have also written heroines, had become so burdensome for
books of essays? literature that it seemed as ifsalvation could
only come from negative characters. When
KADARE: Being attracted to the classicsis it came to more complex characters, such as
by no means a merit for anyone. Quite the castle commanders or partisan groupings,
opposite; it is the right thing for everyone. it all became even more difficult. Greek
antiquity or Shakespeare usually provided
- Aeschylus and Shakespeare can also be felt in top ranking characters that would give one
your novels with political topics such as The goose bumps. The assumption was that the
Great Winter, The Concert, Agamemnon laws of great art were conditioned through
Daughter, The Successor, etc. Do you consider them.
those writers to be safe aesthetic shelters from
which to treat such political topics? - Unlike links to earlier literature, The Palace
of Dreams resembles the dystopian novels of
KADARE: As I just said, this is all natural. the 20thcentury. How did your dystopian novel
Literature, like other arts, has a great come into being at the same time when the
fortune: it is esteemed only from the peak. utopian doctrine was being proclaimed?
Ordinary writers and even mediocreones
are unavoidable, numerous and useful, KADARE: Literature naturally leads
but are spontaneously removed from to freedom. I was often surprised by
interview

literatures long journey. In brief, the the opacity of some of our critics and
history of literature remains the fortunate researchers minds that failed to understand
history of its peaks. And this is a miracle how it was possible to write works in the
for the world, as it does not burden its midst of communist austerity, which, at the 53
 same time transcended it. I would not use KADARE: The fate of the novel itself
the word nave for their questions because was perhaps more unusual than that of
it is too innocent. Their questions are quite its protagonist. As I have said elsewhere,
guilty. These critics are often 45-55 years old, the manuscript of the novel, together
which means they parted with communism with Agamemnons Daughter and a novella,
duringtheir 20s or 30s. They ask today emerged abroad in the mid 1980s, from my
how was it possible for some authors to French publisher. You know that sending
understand what was going on and express manuscripts abroad was prohibited by
hesitation about the regime?We are also law. The French publisher made a trip to
entitled to ask: how was it possible that you Albania specifically for this. It was the only
understood nothing? To be 20 years old way to preserve the work from a sudden
and not understandthat there is something raid. Publishing it in Albaniawas out of the
question. The novel itself was written not
to be published as long asAlbania remained
communist. Like everyone else, prior to
1990 I did not believe that communism
Ismail Kadares world is a sort of antimatter. It
would collapse soon.
destroys ours. Except that, unlike the example
The manuscript was dangerous, so I
from particle physics, it also complements ours
thought of coming up with another one
and to stark effect.
before the arrival of the French publisher.
Apart from the authors name, the German
Richard Eder
Siegfried Lenz, which replaced my own, I
also changed the names of some characters
and environments. So alongside Vienna
and Innsbruck the reader would encounter
wrong with your country called Albania Hanses and Helgas and Tirana street names
means you either belonged to families and ending in Strasse! I had the opportunity
the machinery serving the regime, or your to tell Siegfried Lenz about the grotesque
mind has a deplorable lack of development. episode at an international meeting of
Sometimes such types, spellbound before writers. He said he felt very pleased to have
writers who despite censorship managed to been able to helphis colleague from remote
uncover parts of the Albanian misery, come Albania, albeit while having been unaware
up with theories that one should have of the conditions there.
made at least one trip to the Western world
in order to understand something! And they - After the novel about the fate of a filmmaker,
go even further, doubting that a work was you wrote a novel about the fate of an actor.
written during that period to begin with. With a Shakespearean composition and a
They claimthat its date is changed, thus Freudian psychological depth, Life, Play and
sinking into ordinary slanderers. Literature, Death of Lul Mazreku marks the culmination
as I said above, is inseparable from freedom. of your post-communist literary career. The
irony of the novel is visibleat the end, when the
- In your novel The Shadow you talk about a character that survived the vicious regime gets
filmmaker who enjoys the privilege of going to killed in the democratic mess. How important
Paris. Allegorically, this novel, which contains is the novel for you and whats your takeon
autobiographical references, equates communist the silent treatment it received from Albanian
Albania to the world of the dead. Together critics?
with interceptions in Spiritus and the fabulous
sinking in The Eagle, the plot of The Shadow KADARE: The book was written in Paris,
interview

causes anxiety. The fate of the filmmaker is after the fall of communism.Its final title
described in the novel, but could you tell us wasThe Actor. As for the silence, I do not
about the fate of the novel before it reached know what to say.
54 the readers?
 - The plots of novels such as The City with was even noticeable in Tirana. Apparently,
No Advertisements, Chronicle in Stone, the reprimand of Stalins crimes allowed for
Generations of Hankonats, A Question of certain liberalism. Unfortunately, the period
Lunacy and The Fall of the Stone City take was short-livedand Stalinism re-emerged.
place in your city of birth which, thanks to
these works, has become a literary attraction - Recently you published two books (Tiranas
for the entire Albanian writers. The frequent Mists and The Doll) through which you
focus on this location, is it a conscious choice or appear closer to the readers, who, knowing you
a subconscious return? foran author of grand subjects, were surprised
by such minor ones. Why is this opening
KADARE: Again, I find it hard to explain. occurring so late?
Or perhaps there is no genuine explanation,
and thus it should not be sought. Early on I
had made a simple discovery (so simple that
it probably does not deserve to be named
such) that the distance from my hometown, Kadare mapped a culture, its history, its passion,
where I lived until the age of 17, has been its folklore, its politics and its disasters. He is
the main motivation to write about it. So a universal writer in a tradition of storytelling
the first novel, The City with No Advertisements that goes back to Homer.
I wrote in Moscow in 1959, at a distance
of some three thousand kilometers. The John Carey
Chronicle and The Hankonats were written in
Tirana, in different years, but with a modest
distance, about three hundred kilometers.
Perhaps it would seem a made-up answer KADARE: I dont think that in literature
if I were to say that during a several weeks there is a set time for grand or minor
stay in New York, where the distance from subjects. It often happens that as an
my hometown peaked (about six thousand adolescent you are more attracted to cosmic
kilometers), as if not wanting to lose this themes than real ones, which are commonly
opportunity, I wrote A Question of Lunacy. called minor.
The Fall of the Stone City was written in Paris.
You may laugh. Me too, yet this does not - You kept your first novel in a drawer only to
help me find a different answer. publish it after more than half a century later.
Why wasnt it published when written, and
- As you have mentioned several times in why is it published now?
your essays, the fellow Albanian students in
Moscow stirred your interest in Gjirokastra KADARE: What you call my first novel I
after you once described to them the geography still hesitate to call it that. In my conscience
and the architecture of your hometown. it has never been that, as I never thought of
This means that the magic realism of your publishing it. It was not due to censorship
birthplace conquered your socialist education, or a moral problem. It was simply pre-
which you have described neatly in the Twilight literature, if such a word can be used.
of Eastern Gods.
- Your recent story, The Doll, is a tribute to the
KADARE: When I went to study in mother. Unlike with usual tributes, in it you
Moscow, in 1958, not only me, but generally mix nostalgia and irony, creating a somewhat
the students coming from different nations naive and very loving portrayal. While writing
were conquering, as you put it, their socialist The Doll were you focusing more onexploring
interview

education. Unlike what occurs today what Stanislavsky calls emotional memory,
through memories, it was a brief period in or were you focusing on the subject the way a
the history of socialism, when a somewhat puppeteer focuses on his puppet?
softened spirit appeared. The same spirit 55
 that in the history of Europe none of its
ten, eleven founding languages have been
prohibited by decree, as was the case with
[Ismail Kadare is] one of the most compelling Albanian. Apparently, it was this dramatic
novelists now writing in any language. ban that gave rise to hymns, the nostalgia
and the sense of guilt towards it.
Bruce Bawer Todays nihilists in our midst, insensitive as
they are, use every chance they get to show
their lack of reverence toward Albanian,
certain they will thus look more modern
and cosmopolitan. This obsession takes
KADARE: The ways, or secrets, of the art them so far thatthey end up as vulgar
of writing are endless. Its hard to say that slanderers, like one of them, who recently
some of them are automatically inciting accused the writer who is now answering the
while others automatically hindering. questions of your interview that, in order to
establish the glory of the Albanian language
- The socio-political context has often conditioned he juxtaposed it toa noble lady next to a
the literary text, and in the past few years Gypsy handmaiden, namely Serbian. This
works have appeared on religious extremism, defamation from Albanian nihilists would
given thatit has returned as a key political then be sent to be published simultaneously
topic, which is why it is likely to turn intoa in the Romanian press, the Serbian one,and
literary and artistic one. Philip Roth, Orhan other provincial newspapers of the Balkans,
Pamuk, Don DeLillo and Michel Houellebecq in order to spread the idea that Albanian
are just some of the famous names that have literature is ruled by xenophobia and racism.
turned their pens against terrorist guns. Do
you think writers have a sort of obligation to - You sensed the risk of fanaticism, extremism,
react in times of political unrest? and terrorism three decades ago with the
Bringer of Misfortune. Also, in some recently
KADARE: Accustomed for quite some published essays you put an emphasis on the
timeto expressions like art for the matter, which is now a global issue. As you
people,or art for the brotherhood of know, religious fanatics had also attacked
nations,for emancipation,we find it hard Dante, asking that The Divine Comedy
to accept that literature need not serve any be withdrawn from school programs, and
such needs. Yet, it is not a blasphemy or fanaticism has prompted assassination attempts
something worth getting alarmed about against prominent writers. What do you think
should someone stipulate such a thing. of this aggressiveness towards culture, perhaps
In recent years, for example, it has become starting from your own experience with fanatics
custom to hold a grudge against our who threatened you with death, calling you
national Renaissance for its commitment to pro Catholic, and burning your books in a
awaken the Albanian nation. It is true that mosque in New York?
this cultural and literary movement, due to
its direct engagement, more accurately its KADARE: Aggressiveness to culture and
sacrifice, suffered artistic deficiencies, but literature in particular is known around the
this is understandable. We were an enslaved world.
nation, which is why freedom, the number Unfortunately it is reviving at present timeas
one motif of the Renaissance, was not a seldom before. However, weAlbanians
luxury, but a precondition for existence. should not be comforted by the fact that the
If I were to compare ours with other problem is planetary. Our country belongs to
interview

literatures of the continent, I do not believe those specific areas where such animosities
that in any one of them one can find as may have dangerous consequences.
many hymns and praises for the language, The courage to propose, in the time of
56 as we find in ours. We should not forget the UN,the ban of Dante Alighieri from
schools, the greatest poet of Europe, and
no doubt of the world, shows how cruel the
evil be when it finds ways.
- What is your comment on the Albanian
intellectuals silence vis--vis religious
radicalization?
KADARE: There are many silences for
which the Albanian intellectuals, especially
the people of letters, are blamed. The
accusations are often fair, though not
always. First and foremost the purpose
of literature is to perfect itself. Naturally,
this then radiates in all that constitutes the
spiritual wealth of a people.
With regards to the role of the spiritual
dimension, namely culture, there have been
different opinions. Returning to the cult
that Albanian Renaissance formedaround
the Enlightenment, coming from Culture,
more precisely, from Europe (from where
the the sun sets), thisis understandable
for a movement developing under the
darkness of Ottoman slavery. What is not
understandable is the mockery of this trend
by our nihilists.
Obviously, it is not culture that determines
some basic developments of a country, such
as the economy or war against corruption,
but its role in other matters, such as
justice, is very sensitive.The links between
literature, justice, and awareness ofguilt are
well-known,consequently with daily issues
which affect the Albanian society today,
such as the opening of secret archives or
allowing pseudonyms to be used in the
press, this tragic farce of the freedom of
thought.
By perfecting itself, literature can stand as
a great example for the whole society.The
persistent presence of former Security
collaborators in todays literary life, not only
creates an unprecedented confusion, but it
is a public mockery of morality. There are
many intolerable things in the world, but as
we are in the sphere of literature, lets say
that it is difficult to find something more
disgusting than spying writers; those who
once used to have their own colleagues
arrested, and are now hiding behind
pseudonyms, trying to confuse everything.
Given that the history of literature and
arts is, as noted above, a story of heights,
it automatically creates a spirit of positivity
and light.These positive and bright features
can lead to the wrong idea that letters and
arts are more tolerable to serious moral
flaws. In fact I think the opposite happens;
it is precisely the higher spirit that does not
allow for any generosity towards writers who
politically denounced their own colleagues.
A chemist, a bridge-builder, they can
continue practicing their profession after
such a discovery. A writer cannot. Perhaps
you find this view too radical, and I cannot
persist that it isnt. However, I was surprised
to read the interview of a writer who,after
[Ismail Kadare] has been compared to Gogol,
Kafka and Orwell, but his is an original voice,
universal but rooted in his own soil.
Shusha Guppy
having been talked about by the press as
a former collaborator of Security forces,
instead of putting his head down in shame,
expressed satisfaction that many people
(with pseudonyms of course) supported
him. This shows that writers who denounced
others dream of the return of their time.
As not to leave room for misunderstanding
regarding this delicate issue, I must highlight
that by spying writers I do not mean the
ones who found themselves under special
dramatic circumstances and have later
confessed their own drama.
It should also be added that ithas become
fashionable in Albania to express frustration
against the much-needed explanations of
complex issues. I think that this misbehavior
against explanations, willingly or unwillingly,
is due to the fear of the opening of archives,
interview
files, and pseudonyms.
57
 - In your wifes Memoirs, I encountered the
blasphemous conclusion that says you believe
in literature more than a religious fanatic does
in God. Can you tell me what you think about
the frequent findings of critics who claim that
the novel is dead, or that literature is dying?
KADARE: I have never concealed my
unlimited faith in literature. Nor my love
for it. It seems customary to do so, not only
for writers but also for all readers. On the
contrary, I am surprised by the pedantic
attitude of some writers and scholars, who
find animosity to the values to be as harmful
as the exaggerated love (worship) for them.
I find it hard to understand what harm
there is in exaggerated love for literature,
arts, books, particularly when compared to
animosity, or rather hatred, towards them.
It is needless to mention that the spiritual
values, language, music, and literature of a
people, are, among other things, the reasons
for its being. For the Albanian case this is
more than understandable and separatefrom
nationalistic discourse, the bugaboo that
is appearing more often in our literary
environment. In all discourses that debated
whether Albania should or should not be,
or whether Kosova should or should not
be recognized, the pseudo-arguments that
this is a people without culture, without
literature, or even without language are not
absent. How often should we mention that
the Albanian language, one of the main
and founding languages of Europe, is the
only one to have been banned for several
centuries by decree?
However, in the Albanian press, it is
particularly the pro-Ottomannihilists who
insist that the ban of the Albanian language
is a mere Albanian paranoia, for there
hasnt been one;there has only been a ban
on writing it! This persistence is surprising,
yet what is most surprising isthat in Albania
there may still be scholars who do not know
that the ban on writing a language (namely
a language that had reached a high level of
written form), coupled with the prohibition
interview
of Albanian schools is twice as dramatic
compared to banning its spoken form.
I use the opportunity of your question
58 to repeat that in the Albanian mentality
the formula: Albania will make it or the
opposite Albania will not make it is widely
known. The essence of the formula itself
depends on the faith or lack thereof for the
future of this country. There was an abyss
that our language seemed to be heading
towards following the ban. One of the
fundamental components of the nation was
affected. And besides, given that an Indo-
European language was affected, Europe
was thus put to the test because one of its
languages had been separated from it.
This country will make it, in the sense that
it should make it, has been the number
one maxim of our Renaissance. The full
meaning of the formula would be: Albania
will make it without fail, where the verb
make proves all the enigmatic strength
and depth of the language.
As for statements such as death of the
novel, or some other deaths, they are not
serious, so it is better not to deal with them.
It is a story that has been repeated since the
time of Greek aedos: now that we have the
theater, your ballads are finished;and after
the invention of print: now that we have
books, we wont need theater; and so on
and so forth with the end of the novel, the
cinema, and the internet.
- In 2007, according to the current prime
minister of Albania, the Albanian political
parties had come to an agreement and humbly
requested that you become President of the
country. Was devotion to literature the reason
why you were so indifferent to the adamant
request of the politicians?
KADARE: If the reason that you mentioned
were not the only, it was certainly the
primary one for that rejection.
- As the President of the Albanian Republic
of Letters for decades in a row, how do you see
the future of this Republic?
KADARE: My reply as a writer, in spite of
the title I have been given, is, in this case,
unchanging. The Albanian Republic of
Letters is doing well. If there is something
not doing well, it is our eyes, or even worse,
our mind. For you need to have bad eyes,
and especially a bad mind, in order to
persist that Albanian literature is the most
backward and non-translated literature of
Europe. Without wanting to linger on a
totally verifiable matter, I will answer that
this is simply a fabrication.
So as to not conclude our conversation with
the not very pleasant word fabrication, let
me add that Albanian literature is not only
widely recognized and translated, but has
since long entered the European family of
letters, even before Albania itself entered
into the family of nations. And this is not a
small gain for literature.
Translated from Albanian: Gazmend
Brlajolli
(Symbol, No 7, 2016)
interview
59
 Rexhep Qosja
Rexhep Qosja (1936), novelist, playwright and critic, known
as one of the greatest Albanian writers and representative
author of Albanian postmodernism, also as a critic who
overturned Socialist Realism method in Albanian literature.
Besides many non-fiction books, Qosja has written four
novels (Death comes from such eyes, One love and seven sins, Night
is our day and Nobodys sons), four plays (Living Sphinx, Beselam
why am I sacrificed, Death of a queen and Bardha) and a satirical
novella (The Regretful Resurrected).
 LITERATURE IS A FLOWER OF EVIL
- Professor, you start your diary A Witness
in Historic Times with 1966, meaning you
decide not to narrate the first thirty years
of your life, not even by rebringing them as
memories. I know it is not in your nature
to narrate briefly but would you agree to an
exception for our magazine and start with this
very silent period?
REXHEP QOSJA: In the foreword of this
compilation of diaries which I am publishing
under the title A Witness in Historic Times, I
point out that even prior to 1966, when I had
started writing the very first volume of my
diaries, I kept notes on what Id experience,
see, hear, read, understand or not, love and
not, for at least a few days a month. Theyre
some nave notes of a youngster studying
in a Prishtina High School and later in the
Department of Philosophy, which was part
of the University and offered a course on
Albanian Language and Literature at the
time, for which I had enrolled. I did record
notes, deeming them not very valuable or
worthy I did not insert anything from them
in the diary I am publishing.
Ill publish here a tiny little passage
from that youthful diary of mine:
May 6, 1958. Its time to learn more than
I have until now, as teachers will now start
to turn in the final grades. I do not wish
to come out this year worse than I did the
previous one. So I put my notebook inside
my jackets inner pocket and head towards
Grmia Park, where nobody bothers me
and I can repeat aloud what I read. I learn
the answers I need to know for the teachers
by heart, and dont feel bad when classmates
call me a nerd! Let them nerd me all they like,
but I get straight As from those answers
remembered by heart!
interview
- What do you recall of those early family years about its author. He might have been a
in your hometown?
62
REXHEP QOSJA: I grew up in a family
consisting of my mother, my father, three
sisters and four brothers. We had enough as
to not starve and could afford some modest
clothing; modest, yet clean. My mum, as I
was growing up, bathed us with ashes and
later textile soap. I was an outstanding
pupil at school, in terms of cleanliness and
learning alike, and indeed a nerd is what
theyd call me then, and later even. I have
never heard my father raise his voice to
offend my mother nor have I ever heard my
mother raise hers. Unlike my father, who
would at times scold us gently, our mother,
when wed be disobedient and refused to do
the chores we were assigned, would punish
us with slaps or with a withy, thinner at
times, and at times, slightly thicker. I might
say, therefore, that I grew up in a happy
family, happy under those circumstances,
which might be called circumstances of
poverty and lack of so many basic things.
I only possessed a pen and a notebook after
completing the fourth grade of elementary
school. During those first four years wed
write in old, rectangular boards with chalk,
hard as stone, scratching the boards and
thus making them unusable after a little
while.
- What are the first books youve read?
REXHEP QOSJA: The first books, in
fact the first verses and prose passages
that I read in my youth were verses from
Naim Frashri Summer Flowers and Flocks and
Farming, as well as some excerpts from Haki
Strmillis If I were a boy.
Yet the first foreign book, in fact the first
foreign novel Ive ever read is TheAdventures
of Samuel Pingle.1 Never again have I come
across that novel or have I learned anything
Russian, American or an English author
1 The author in the question is S. Beliaev, Semiuelia
Pinglia (1945).
living perhaps in the 19th or the 20th century.
The other books I read in my childhood and
my early youth, while attending the seven
year Primary School in my hometown, were
mainly books by Russian and Ukrainian
authors: Tolstoy, Gogol, Maxim Gorky,
verses from Mayakovski and Yesenin, as
well as prose and verse by Yugoslav authors:
Branko opi, Desanka Maksimovi,
Radovan Zogovi, Ivan Cankar, Vladimir
Nazor, Ivan Goran Kovai and others.
- Were you debating what your calling in life
would be, or was literature your first choice?
REXHEP QOSJA: I wanted as it was
my fathers wish to study medicine and
I did prepare for the entry exam, but, as I
had studied at the Pedagogical School and
not the Gymnasium or the Medical High
School, I was not allowed admission in
Medicine, in Belgrade of course. I enrolled
for the first ever Department to open up in
Prishtina The Department of Philosophy,
which housed a Section of Albanian
Language and Literature. My father was
disappointed by my failure to enroll in
medicine, but I can say that for me it was a
delight; I enrolled for the course that would
enable me to study what I had liked most in
High School literature. As a High School
student I wrote several articles that my dear
and loving teacher, Ali Hadri, published in
Prparimi (Progress) Journal.
- Was that when you met your wife?
REXHEP QOSJA: My wife, Shpresa,
deceased ever since May 20, 2012, I knew
while I was in my third year of High
School and she in her first, but we started
a relationship once we became university
students; me a student of Language and
Literature, and she a student of English at
the Department of Philosophy in Prishtina.
Our relationship was crowned with a
marriage almost two years later, in 1962.
It was something I said to Shpresa that
cemented the relationship between us: Do
not rush, pretty one, your waist is so thin,
you might break it with that quick walk!
It is not in vain when they say that womens
love, more than from the eyes, is awakened
from their ears: good words please them.
- Was it difficult to detach from your birthplace
and forever live in Kosova?
REXHEP QOSJA: For me it was not easy
to detach and come to study in Kosova.
At that time namely the 50s of the 20th
century great organized social efforts
Rexhep Qosja isone of the mosteminent and
prolific literarycriticsin the Balkans.
Robert Elsie
were put to educate the young boys and,
partly, girls too. My parents did their
utmost for me to continue my schooling, to
become knowledgeable, a doctor my father
would say; a doctor or a professor my mother
would add. Due to the devotion of my
parents I was inspired to get schooled. And
where would I continue my schooling? In
Kosova of course because only Kosova
had secondary schools available in the
Albanian language and willingly admitted
many young Albanians from Montenegro
and other territories outside Kosova, whod
come here for education.
- I recall reading in your diary about your
complaints against the Kosovar society that has
repeatedly seen you not as its own citizen, but
as a foreigner, a settler.
REXHEP QOSJA: There was a somewhat
provincialist stance, expressed by an
occasional resentment against settlers as
newcomers were called, that I encountered
neither as a High School student, nor in the
interview
university, but when I began to indulge in
writing. Though, this was not a widespread
provincialism. It was not the provincialism
of the Kosovar Albanian society not by 63
 any means. This was the provincialism of
some mediocres who, through it, showed
how much they loved Kosova, while in
fact harming it.
I would like to stress here that we who
came from Montenegro and I believe those
coming from Macedonia, or the Presheva
valley area, enjoyed support from Albanian
politicians and intellectuals, whose numbers
in Kosova, back in 1966, did not exceed
600 people. For instance, in the final year
of High School I was given a scholarship
A true discovery, this is a great writer... how
can we qualify this novel [Death Comes from
Such Eyes]? It is impossible to qualify it, it
escapes any qualification or, which is similar,
it is multiple Altogether a great tale, a
philosophical fantasy, a longing chronicle of a
small town in Kosovo.
Frdric Vitoux
in Mitrovica by Professor Vahide Hoxha,
the wife of politician Fadil Hoxha, whereas
during the university studies, as I was late to
apply for scholarship, I was able to support
them by working for Radio Prishtina. It was
the Director of the Radio, Ismet Mula, who
made this possible for me.
Today there is more provincialism than prior
to our democratic way of organization. It is
often said that democracies are where so-
called parochialisms thrive, namely different
forms of provincialisms. And these
parochialisms, these different forms of
provincialisms, are present and expressed in
our social, political and cultural life. Once the
provincialists were mostly lone voices, later
they organized themselves in clans, and now
form larger groups, sometimes in cultural
and scientific institutions, sometimes in
interview
political parties and institutions. There is
no doubt that behind those individuals who
preach some covertly and some blatantly
64 the idea of establishing a Kosovar nation,
that will have its own language, its literature
starting from Pjetr Bogdani, stand several
groups working in cultural, scientific and
political institutions.
There is no doubt that behind some people
who for many years have been hindering
the co-operation between Albania and
Kosova, saying that Kosova has nothing
to learn from Albania, saying that Albania
imposes on us an intellectual lead we should
not follow, saying that Albania cannot be
our benchmark, saying Albania should
mind its own business rather than ours
as if Albania is really attempting to be a
benchmark for all the Albanians there is
no doubt at all that behind individuals who
produce this propaganda erecting it on the
so-called separatist ideology, stands some
sort of a feudal party, or scientific, cultural
and political institutions with their own
loyalists.
Provincialism as a restrictive and backward
mentality is not prompted by origin, but the
different interests of those who show it and
use it in everyday life. Differing personal
benefits are the ugly reason why today
provincialism determines ones judgments
and opinions in politics, as well as in the
field of arts and sciences, and it determines
judgments as well as critical, aesthetic,
political, ideological and other perceptions.
I have raised my voice before and continue to
do so against provincialism, not because as
some people exercise it, it could personally
hurt me, but because provincialism in my
conviction is a phenomenon generally
affecting the democratic and cultural dignity
of the environment in which it manifests.
The provincialists forget, meanwhile, that
their feelings expressed as patriotism for
their own neighborhood often promote
the support of many others for the very
opposites. It often happens in this life: the
small-minded try to do evil, yet unwittingly
do well.
- With your work you have become the main
intellectual not only in Kosova, but also in
Albania, and you are considered the compass
showing the nation the direction to follow in
perilous times.
REXHEP QOSJA: There was a period League that I become its leader. We spoke
when I, for many years, alas alone, raged a at length and on different aspects of the
battle against the Serbian chauvinism, which new party, its composition and its political
had turned into the policy of the Serbian possibilities under the conditions in which
intellectuals and their state against the Serbia had seized our 1974 autonomy. At
Albanians, against our history, our creative the end of our conversation I told Jusuf
spirit, our traditions and our present. It was that I cannot accept to become the leader
at this time when, for years in a row, alas of the Democratic League. There were
alone, I disputed the anti-Albanian policies several reasons why I could not accept to
of Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro become its leader.
in my writings published in the Croatian The first and the main one was its program,
and Slovenian daily or weekly press. The which Jusuf brought to me and I read in
Albanian people awarded this activity with
the honor they showed and still show
everywhere I go and appear.
But this political and cultural engagement
of mine was not the only reason they
considered me such. The biggest reason
Rexhep Qosja is the greatest writer among
why I was viewed and for many Albanians
Albanians living outside the country, who
I am still viewed today as the compass
make up more than half of the Albanian
showing the nation the direction to follow
nation.
in perilous times is my never betrayed
commitment to truth and justice, in fact
Ismail Kadare
my never betrayed commitment to the
powerless and my disagreement with
the powerful, who exercise power not
by considering everyone, but by primarily
focusing on themselves and their own.

- In the early 90s, the initiators of the Kosova

his presence, there in my office. It was
Democratic League asked you to sign the a program for Kosovas autonomy, yet a
charter of the party. Did you refuse simplymuch more limited autonomy than in 1974,
because there were two people who had been in fact very much like the autonomy the
campaigning against you in that party, one Serbian Parliament envisaged for Kosova
of whom would be elected the party leader aafter the changes it introduced to the 1974
month after your rejection of that program, or
Constitution, endorsed by the Kosova
were there other reasons? Assembly in the session of March 23, 1989.
I could not accept that Program for Kosovas
REXHEP QOSJA: From what I recall, autonomy because I had different ideas,
the Founding Assembly of the Kosova ideas about freedom and independence
Democratic League was held on December in fact freedom and unification with
23, 1989. Some weeks prior to this date Albania ideas expressed in my writings
there were rumors that some journalists of and the conversations that I presented for
the Rilindja daily would establish a political several Croatian, Slovenian or even foreign
party to be called the Kosova Democratic newspapers and radio-stations.
League or something of the sort. The second reason was that the party
On December 20, the journalist and author concerned, the Kosova Democratic League,
Jusuf Buxhovi, who was said to be the first in order to get legalized, as Jusuf said, would
interview

to initiate the formation of the party in have to register in the relevant Ministry,
question, came to me, to the Albanology and I dont remember now whether it
Institute, and proposed on behalf of his was a Ministry of the still-not-dispersed
peers founders of the Kosova Democratic Yugoslavia, though it was falling apart, or a 65
 Ministry of the Republic of Serbia.
The registration in the Ministry of
Yugoslavia or Serbia made it possible for
LDK to act politically, but at the same time
obliged it to act in accordance with the
policies of Yugoslavia and Serbia.
The third reason why I did not agree
to become the leader of the Kosova
Democratic League was because among its
founders and members who were already
enrolled, there were people with a political
biography of the sort that made their
political sustainability unreliable.
I cannot say that those two writers who had
campaigned against me were among those
[Rexhep Qosja] often has solved vital problems
in literature.
Ibrahim Rugova
with whom I did not want to be in the same
party.
These were the main three reasons,
sufficient in my view, why I could not accept
to be the leader or a member of the Kosova
Democratic League. The period between
late December 1989 until November 1997,
when the KLA, the Kosova Liberation
Army, emerged publicly, proved me right
exactly because the LDK, with its miserable
politics of so-called free and democratic
elections under the Serbian occupation,
demobilized people both spiritually and
morally, which is why it suffered a total
political and moral fiasco on the day the
International Conference for Kosova in REXHEP QOSJA: When I began with
Rambouillet was organized, this itself owing my literary criticism I was at the same time
to the KLA war.
- Although you did not accept the post of
interview
eagerly welcomed. Your going to Rambouillet
was good news for everyone, because between
those lacking the courage to oppose and those
lacking the patience to reason, you created a
rational balance. The peace accord that was
signed there, for the bloody peace as you termed
it, brought another war, a war that unified
the two opposing sides to benefit at Kosovas
expense. How do you see and how do you
experience this?
REXHEP QOSJA: The merger of those
two sides that were in total disagreement and
greatly opposed each other, those sides that
lead opposing and conflicting politics before
and during the war for liberation, united
today to benefit at Kosovas expense,
I do not experience comfortably as does
not, I believe, the majority of the Albanian
people in Kosova. I feel much remorse
over the corruption, nepotism, organized
crime, embarrassing privileges of people in
politics, the purchased diplomas for Masters
and PhD degrees, the reemergence of some
political apprentices of Milosevics regime
in Kosovas political institutions, the revival
of the semi-intellectual apparatchiks that
are nowadays compromising and insulting
the mission of the intellectuals, loading
those political and state institutions with
lies, resentment, jealousy against those who
think differently and with their own head.
- Let us talk of literature! You are acclaimed
as a leading critic in Kosova. According to
Sabri Hamiti2 you have inverted the method
of socialist realism; according to Ibrahim
Rugova3 you have resolved vital issues for
literature; according to Robert Elsie4 you are
one of the biggest critics in the Balkans. What
critical models have you followed and adopted
to create your own integral criticism?
trying to learn about the different ways
2 Sabri Hamiti, Studime letrare, ASHAK, Prishtina
2003, p. 7.

political leader, you kept the role of the nations
spiritual leader. The last decade of the previous
century was the decade of your veneration.
66 Your books, interviews and statements were
3 Ibrahim Rugova, Interpretime metodologjike e teknike
t kritiks letrare, in Jeta e re, Prishtina 1974, No. 6 p.
1102.
4 Robert Elsie, Histori e letrsis shqiptare, Dukagjini,
Peja 2001, p. 444.
criticism was written not only in Yugoslavia,
mainly Serbia and Croatia, but also Europe.
By learning how criticism is approached in
Europe I learned enough about how it was
tackled in the United States. My Masters
studies in Belgrade also enabled me to
learn about extant literary theories and
scientific methods, about what constitutes
the science of literature, and what critical
genealogy, critical morphology and literary
periodization were.
I managed, more or less, to understand
impressionist criticism, biographical
criticism, sociological criticism, structuralist
criticism, Russian formalism, linguistic
criticism, stylistic criticism, reception
criticism, phenomenological criticism,
thematic criticism, psychoanalytic criticism,
etc. I would say I was greatly impressed by the
Czech researchers who were the first to deal
more broadly and deeply with the structure of
a literary work. The Polish scholar Roman
Ingarden who popularized his theoretical
opinion about the multilayered character
of the literary work, the Croatian scholar
Ivo Frange who dealt with the study of
the writers style and, finally, the German
scholar Hans Robert Jauss, who dealt with
reception, namely the current and historical
reading of the literary work, also influenced
me greatly.
I started to believe that it is important and
even crucial for a literary critic, namely a
literary scholar, to know first and foremost
that a literary work is written so as to
state something and, secondly, to show
through its interpretation, explanation and
evaluation, how the authors intentions are
artistically expressed. A literary work is a
work of art not because something is stated
in it, but because it is stated in an artistic
manner. The more artistically the authors
intentions are expressed, the better and
more valuable the work. Aware of this, I
also became aware of another truth, related
to the former.
A literary work is great not only when it is
artistically well constructed, but when what
is treated by the author is meaningfully
important. Oedipus King is a great work of
literature, The Divine Comedy, Hamlet, Faust
as well, because all of these are works
of meaning, works of great significance,
artistically built with exceptional creative
genius flair. Such thoughts, such beliefs
made me become a critic of the so-called
integral criticism.
By acknowledging individual criticisms,
the specific methods of literary studies, I
learned that one single method would not
suffice to write the history of literature.
I am a literary critic, yet a literary critic
with the awareness, the formation and the
commitments of a literary historian.
- I believe you found the pleasure of writing in
fiction rather than criticism.
REXHEP QOSJA: Youre absolutely right.
Literary criticism and literary studies in
general, are more or less restrictive, in the
sense that they restrict freedom of opinion
Qosja in the late sixties overturned the method
of socialist realism.
Sabri Hamiti
and expression, freedom of imagination.
Creating a linguistic work of art, namely
a work of literature, brings forth this
freedom. While creating a literary work
youre full, thorough in mind, imagination,
understanding and feeling. Creating a work
of literature makes you substantially enjoy
the value of freedom in human life, the
unlimited freedom.
- How do you feel when starting a novel and
after you have finished it?
REXHEP QOSJA: When I start a novel
I am full of different opposing thoughts
interview
and feelings, full of thoughts and feelings
characterized, on the one hand, by a certain
joy that I am creating a new life, a life called
literary work of art and, on the other hand, 67
 a concern as to whether I shall be able to - The novel Death Comes from Such Eyes is
create it the way I truly want. the most morbid and pessimistic in Albanian
When I finish a novel I feel somewhat empty, literature. How can this be explained within the
like a wide long tunnel, in which, even the happy system, within which socialist realism,
most muttered of voices can be heard. Yet although an alternative method (thanks to
a muttered voice is not devoid of a silent Krlea, of course) was the preferred one in
joy that you have achieved something, you Yugoslavia, while unfortunately mandatory in
have created something in your life which Albania?
you hope will live.
Several days need to pass before that void, REXHEP QOSJA: After the political,
that spiritual emptiness is filled with new including the ideological and cultural
thoughts, new feelings, a new imagination. relations, namely after all state relations
with the Soviet Union were cut in 1948,
- Most characters of Vajazani are based on the scientific, artistic and philosophical life
Prishtina prototypes. Is this related to that in Yugoslavia was relieved of the official
well-known strategy of Dante, whereby he obligation to adhere to the doctrine of
would place people he did not like in hell, those socialist realism. This does not mean,
who were improvable in purgatory, and the however, that there were no writers and
best in paradise? other creative people who more or less
obeyed this realism in their creativity. As
REXHEP QOSJA: The character named an opponent to socialist realism and any
Trashe and another one from the novel Death dogma in creative work, I was first formed
Comes from Such Eyes are based on prototypes under the influence of literary critics,
from my birthplace, while the protagonists theoretical thinkers, and writers, especially
and most of the other characters are based the French ones. I love the French national
on Prishtina prototypes. I cannot deny that literature more than any other, and I love
in the great literary genres, like drama or the it so much, of course, because I have read
novel, authors sometimes free themselves many works of that literature for a long
of certain opinions, judgments, prejudices time and continue to read them to this very
or feelings that already exist and sometimes day. I think the summary Flowers of Evil by
Charles Baudelaire is the most beautiful
and most significant lyrical work in world
literature. Contained in it is a special
meaning for literature, which I call aesthetic
Academic Qosja is undoubtedly one of the and theoretic: literature is a flower of evil.
great figures of Albanian literature and I cannot and know not how to write about
culture, but also one of the most influential the good in social and human life. The good
personalities in the social and political life, not in life for me is obvious, it is natural. I am
only in Kosovo but also in Albania. encouraged and inspired to write about
the cons, the unbearable, the limiting, the
Agim Vinca humiliating, and the offensive in life: these
are unnatural to human life. It is from
here that what we call pessimism comes to
my first novel, and more or less, in other
novels, plays, and monodramas. It might
express such acquired opinions, judgments, be that by nature I am a bit of a pessimist.
assessments and feelings. Perhaps this is the reason why I appreciate
What you call Dantes strategy, which can Nikos Kazantzakis as one of the greatest
interview

also be called Dantes Ethics, is a strategy European writers of the 20th century. You
and ethics of many few writers in my view. know what epitaph he wrote to himself ? It
Mine is most certainly one of them. is an epitaph that contains a whole novel:
68
 I hope for nothing. demands for the future, for freedom and
I fear nothing. independence of Kosova that will one day
I am free. inevitably unite with Albania.

- Your first novel is the most translated Kosovar - A French critic, Andr Clavel, had called you
novel. Why did it take you almost three decades in the 1990s Kosovas rebel. You remained a
before you wrote your second novel, One Love rebel in the time of peace. Apart from many
and Seven Sins? political writings, your third novel, The Night
is Our Day, as a conclusion of the trilogy for
REXHEP QOSJA: Although the novels Prishtina, came with a dose of rebellion. After
I wrote after Death Comes from Such Eyes the intellectual, wise and patient protagonists
are, in my belief, better than it, they have of the previous two novels, the emergence of
remained under its shadow for a variety of the rebel protagonist in the third novel came as
reasons, the explanation of which I do not a surprise. As someone who did not agree with
consider necessary for this conversation. the endurance of violence under occupation,
Almost three decades have passed before your postwar rebellion is related to the current
the publication of my second novel, One misuse of democracy, isnt it?
Love and Seven Sins, because I was overtaken
by political, social and national events in REXHEP QOSJA: Since Kosova after
Kosova after the historic demonstrations the war is no longer the same as before
of 1981. the war, since Kosova after the war has
changed a lot from the pre-war Kosova,
- Did you write any prose during this interval? it is understandable that novels on the life
of Kosovar characters and protagonists
REXHEP QOSJA: Yes, of course, but I cannot be what they were before the war.
could not publish novels, because I felt a The protagonist of Night is Our Day is so
spiritual, political, national, and moral need disagreeable and revolted because, after
to deal with writings about the situation returning to Kosova from an asylum in
and the fate of Albanians in Yugoslavia, the Europe sees, lives, and realizes a reality he
violence against them and their legitimate never and in no way expected.
historical and natural rights.
And so, rather than continue to appear
in public as a writer or a historian of
literature, I emerged as an analyst and wrote
about five thousand pages on everything
that the Albanian Kosovars suffered and
everything that they wished at the end of [Qosjas fiction makes] the deepest treatment
the twentieth and the beginning of the and most complex to date in our literature.
twenty-first century. And I do not regret
it. It may well be that with that writing I Ali Aliu
completed a political, ethical, national and
democratic mission, more important than I
would with my novels or historical literary
studies. Those writings of mine, once
translated, reached European and American
chancelleries, where indefinite words of In many meetings I had with foreign
political parties often would not reach diplomats and politicians from 1981 until
Diplomats and European politicians alike the end of the war of liberation, I repeated
interview

used my book, The Albanian Question: History to them that famous opinion of the notable
and Politics, translated into French, as a British philosopher John Locke: it is a sin
compulsory text to understand the Albanian to exercise violence against another but it
issue, the situation of Albanians and their is also a sin to endure the violence. Let me 69
 add, however, that the evil exercised by a moral, for the rich, the poor, the merchants,
foreigner and that exercised by one of your the thieves, the victims, the arrivistes, the
own are equally called evil. The evil coming naughty, the yes-men and all the crooks and
from one of your own hurts even more heroes of our slave democracy.
than the one coming from a foreigner. The
protagonist of my novel Night is Our Day - Your fiction is considered postmodern; a model
may not have heard this opinion forged later followed by many famous Albanian
and implemented for centuries in European writers such as Vath Koreshi, Zija ela,
countries, but pretends to know it because Ridvan Dibra, Bashkim Shehu and many
the evil he sees and experiences in post-war others in Albania, Kosova and Macedonia.
Kosova brings much heartache, pain and If we believe T. S. Eliots opinion that the
resentment to him and his family. importance of a writer depends on the impact
he or she has on later generations, then the
- After finishing this trilogy, which lasted 33 importance of your works is indisputable.
years, you published a novel in two volumes, Tell us who were the postmodernist authors
Nobodys Sons, which is a continuation of you read before starting to write your own
the same poetics, but not the same project. postmodern works?
This novel, which expands the geography
of the narration, argues in a quote that REXHEP QOSJA: When I started to
Communism has fallen, but its habits will write a novel, I had come to believe that
continue for as many years as communism a novel should not be written the way it
reigned. Since previous novels were contentdid at that time in our literature back in
with Vajazani only, what were the impulses the 70s, namely I had come to believe
to write about Albania, presenting an autopsy
that a novel should not be written the way
of the communist system, paying homage to a traditional realist novel or the socialist
the persecuted of that system and whipping the
realism novel was written. My conviction
Albanian democracy so hard? came from the novels, stories and plays I
used to read. And I read and continue to
REXHEP QOSJA: As my creative urge read to this day novels, stories and plays of
after the war did not come only from Vajazan, many writers, among whom critical realist,
not only from Kosova, but also from a modernist, avant-garde, postmodernist
broader and more general Vajazan, namely writers such as Thomas Mann, Hermann
Albania, it is understandable that I would Hesse, Franz Kafka, Cesare Pavese,
expand my, as you called it well, geography James Joyce, Albert Camus, Robert Musil,
of narration. By expanding my geography Margaret Jursenar, Saul Bellow, Jean-Paul
of narration I was able to report on our Sartre, William Faulkner, Natalie Sarotte,
democracy that in moments of despair Michel Butor, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Samuel
might be termed a slave democracy. By Beckett, Eugne Ionesco, Gnter Grass,
extending that geography of narration Umberto Eco, always Umberto Eco, Don
I have greater and wider opportunities, DeLillo, Philip Roth, Carlos Fuentes, Mario
more numerous and different views open Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garca Mrquez, Julio
up to me, that are more rooted and more Cortzar, Witold Gombrowitz, Max Frisch,
convincing to present that democracy not Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Friedrich
only as it is enjoyed by its privileged ones, Drrenmatt, Paul Auster, Salman Rushdie,
but also as it is seen and experienced from Jean dOrmesson, Kurt Vonnegut, John
former victims of communism and others Barth, Michel Turnier, Donald Barthelme,
deprived of its benefits. I imagined the novel John Gardner, Robert Coover, Cormac
Nobodys Sons as a way to settle a score with McCarthy, Richard Brautigan, Gilbert
interview

the users, abusers and humiliators of our Sorrentino, Danilo Ki, etc.
democracy. If I were younger I would write I can say that no less than from literary
a series of novels, a series of analysis, which works I read, my creative tastes and
70 Balzac would call social, psychological and inclinations were always determined from
aesthetic, philosophical and theoretical REXHEP QOSJA: I used to frequent
works, which I read as a professor of the theater; I would say there was no theatrical
course Introduction to Aesthetics in performance Id miss. My younger brother,
the Department of Literature and the Isa Qosja, was once an actor in what was
Albanian Language for almost forty years. then called the Provincial Theater. Then, he
The authors of aesthetic, philosophical and studied direction and worked as a theater
theoretical works I read continuously during director and in the Faculty of Arts. I had
this time are Ren-Marie Albrs, Wayne C. a very good relationship with a range of
Booth, Kte Hamburger, Cecil Maurice actors. Some of them, like for example
Bowra, Viktor Shklovsky, Northrop Frye, the famous Istref Begolli, an extraordinary
tienne Souriau, Wadysaw Tatarkiewicz, actor, would pressure me to write plays.
Roman Jakobson, Roland Barthes, Mikhail Thus, for example, the monodrama Death of
Bakhtin, Yuri Lotman, Michael Riffaterre, a Queen I wrote after the repeated request
Jean-Franois Lyotar, Hans Robert of the renowned actress Melihate Ajeti. The
Jauss, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Living Sphinx is also a result of my frequent
Wolfgang Welsch, Brian McHale, Steven conversations with some of the actors and
Best, Gianni Vattimo, Frederic Jameson, my brother Isa.
Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard, Janko I cant say Ive read the works of many 20th
Kos, Ale Debelak, Ivo Frange, Miroslav century playwrights. No. I believe that as
Beker, David Simpson, Gilles Deleuze, the majority of those who have completed
David Lodge... regular education and studied language and
When I wrote novels and plays I wanted literature, say Albanian, French, English,
them to unfold in a way that is sudden Italian or German Language and Literature,
and surprising to the reader. I believe in Ive mostly read the plays of previous
incorporating in my literary art the fruit centuries. I read the plays of great ancient
of my imagination and knowledge, as wide Greek playwrights, those of Aeschylus,
a knowledge as possible, give as much Sophocles, Euripides, the tragedies and
imaginary and concrete, documented dramas of Shakespeare, the comedies
data, encourage readers curiosity as of Moliere and dramas of Corneille and
much as possible, but encourage it with Racine, dramas of Schiller, Chekhov, Henrik
data preferably presented in the most Ibsen, August Strindberg, Nikolai Gogol,
artistic manner, be it by quoting literature, and George Bernard Shaw, who belongs
philosophy or science of different times, be both to the 20th and the 19th century alike,
it by merging the cinematographic imagery Alfred Jarry, who also belongs to both these
with the story, be it by turning the prose into centuries (albeit with more works in the 20th
the theme of the novel, or by adding satire, century), and many others.
irony and parody, by deconstructing the The playwrights of the 20th century are
constructed, by mixing the literary genres, too many. From all those playwrights of
by making the story or even the language this century, some of whose works, I have
unusual. This is what I have wished, but even read two or three times, I most prefer
of course, what is desired is sometimes the American playwrights Eugene ONeill
achieved and sometimes not. and Edward Albee, the French playwright
Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, the
- Besides novels you also wrote four plays German playwright Bertolt Brecht and the
(Living Sphinx, Beselam, why am I Swiss playwright Friedrich Drrenmatt.
sacrificed?, Death of a Queen, Bardha), These are the playwrights whose creativity
which I think suffice to view you as the Camus corresponds to my mind the most,
of the Albanian Theatre. What was your corresponds the most to my sensibility.
interview

connection to theater and what playwrights of There are also some other playwrights
the 20th century do you appreciate the most? of the 20th century that I appreciate very
much, not because the world of their plays
corresponded to my thoughts and sensibility, 71
 but because they are extraordinarily original,
because through their creative innovations
they have enriched the possibilities of
drama and, consequently, of theater. And
these playwrights are the Irishman Samuel
Beckett, the Romanian Eugne Ionesco -
both affirmed and turned big artists in Paris,
the generous, open, sympathetic Paris to
many literary creative minds from abroad,
and the Frenchman Jean Genet. I have tried
to learn from Becketts Waiting for Godot and
Endgame, from Ionescos Bald Soprano, The
Lesson and The Chairs and less from Genets
plays The Balcony, The Maids and The Blacks.
Maybe my plays show that I have not learned
what I should have from their plays. Sadly.
- Which of your plays do you consider the best?
REXHEP QOSJA: I think my best play,
the best and the most difficult one is Beselam,
why am I sacrificed?
- In the 20th century there was much talk
about the impact that literature had on
cinematography, but in the recent decades
there is also talk about the impact cinema has
on literature. Is there a filmmaker, or more
specifically, a film that has influenced your
novels in some form?
REXHEP QOSJA: The arts today are
viewed and treated as less divided than
they were before. The influences between
them are greater than one might assume.
The renowned French aesthetician tienne
Souriau has published a work titled The
Correspondence of Arts, in which he presents
many examples of these relations. I believe
I have not escaped the impact of film.
Hitchcocks film The Birds I have watched
more than once and with a notebook at hand.
I also watched Akira Kurosawas Rashomon
and Throne of Blood with a notebook at
hand. Thats how I also watched the famous
Stanley Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Special ways of viewing life and death have
inspired me in, say, Ingmar Bergmans The
interview
Seventh Seal, Federico Fellinis Amarcord,
Andrei Tarkovskys Nostalgia.
72
- Now that many postmodern works are declared
classics and the end of postmodernism is being
discussed, are you pleased to have represented a
model that has helped the Albanian literature
mature aesthetically, or are you still writing
novels and seeking new avenues of narration?
REXHEP QOSJA: I feel good that my
literary oeuvre is being read, dealt with and
evaluated as it is. Furthermore, the way
you state it is. I have been impresses by
the way in which scholars have treated my
work, noticing and acknowledging in them
the poetic idiosyncrasies and those creative
novelties brought to the Albanian literature.
Should I be blessed with more years of life
I may return to writing another novel, yet
could I go back to narrating like I did in
my previous novels or would I be seeking
new avenues of narration? Each new
literary work and it is especially so for a
new novel will inevitably change in some
ways from the previous one. This perhaps
means I will narrate as I previously have,
though trying to bring a new viewpoint,
construction, a novelty in the story and the
stylistic linguistic expression, generally in
the creative technique.
Since postmodernism, which, as you said,
was once regarded as the avant-garde in
literary and artistic realm in general on one
side, and on the other post-structuralism,
which was once considered the avant-
garde in criticism and theory, are now both
viewed as a thing of the past, I do not think
I would write, should I manage to write
another novel, free of the postmodern
experience. No.
I do not think I should give up on the so-
called, as some call it, opposing ethos, or the
revolt either, with which postmodernism has
enriched my artistic oeuvre, characterizing
more or less my literary artistic oeuvre also.
I do not think that I should refrain from
the so-called Messianic promise with which
postmodernism has also enriched the
artistic creativity, inheriting it, of course, as
scholars claim, from surrealism.
I do not think that I should give up on the
riches which quotations semantically and
sensitively bring to a novel, and I do not think
I should ever renounce the patches and the
patchwork that enrich it by deepening and
expanding the novels creative technique.
I cannot forget and it would not be in order
for me should I manage to write a novel
to forget the opinion of a well known
postmodernist scholar, whose name now I
do not recall, who stated that the creation
of the novel is by large a process of uniting
diverse elements.
When I write a work of literature or art I
often recall the saying of the great French
thinker Blaise Pascal, Great distances and
excessive proximities weaken the eyesight,
while speaking in excess or very briefly
make the conversation vague.
And I often remember this saying by Blaise
Pascal when trying to get away and at times
approach the world I treat in my work, and
speak about it at times for longer and at
times in brief.
I do not forget that that world determines
my shooting angle, the way it determines
the length of my discourse.
- Professor, some years ago you prompted heated
reactions with your claim that the Albanian
literature has not reached the artistic standards
of European literature. Without wanting to
aggravate the issue any further, I would like
to know if you still hold this conviction and
also where do you see the Albanian literature
in the future?
REXHEP QOSJA: I continue to believe
that Albanian literature remains quite
behind the artistic standards of European
literature.
We do have very good writers with creative
gift, but they are hardly writers whose work
represents a European artistic standard.
One could say we have artists of European
standards in performing arts: artists in
fields of music, theater, film. Inva Mula and
Ermonela Jaho may be artists who have
attained European artistic standard in the
art to which they dedicated their lives.
In creative arts, such as literature, in order
to obtain a standard perceived as European,
the stakes are much higher than they are
for the same standard in performing arts.
In performing arts one attains such artistic
standard by extraordinary performance
skill, whereas in literature it is attained by
Mind and Imagination - the gift of creating
with Mind and Imagination in which
the experience of previous generations,
namely that of the Tradition to which the
literary creator belongs, is contained. The
European literary standard, therefore, is
not easily attained and this is because it
is a multidimensional standard and a very
high one too. This is a standard set by the
geniuses of Dante in his Divine Comedy,
Cervantes with Don Quixote, Shakespeare
with Hamlet, other plays and tragedies,
Goethe with Faust, Baudelaire with The
Flowers of Evil, Flaubert, Balzac, Tolstoy,
Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens, Marcel
Proust, Thomas Mann, Robert Musil, James
Joyce, Nikos Kazantzakis, Michel Turnier,
Jean dOrmesson...
I recently read the novel LArt franais
de la guerre by Alexis Jenni, published by
Galimard in 2011. To produce a novel of
such artistic and meaningful value we will
need at least another 50 years.
There is no need to justify your question by
saying that you do not want to aggravate the
issue any further with it and awaken those
who voiced themselves against me some
years ago when I first expressed the same
opinion. I do not fear that the fire coming
from the opponents of this opinion can
burn me, while I remain convinced that by
saying the truth about our standards, our
literary and all other standards, I serve the
Albanian people, culture and politics well,
justly, honestly, and creatively. And our
standards, ranging from political to the
other ones, are frequently set by criteria
that I will call provincial, a consoling name.
Provincialism is an inseparable component
of our mentality; it is its politics, ideology,
ethics and aesthetics. The provincialist will
turn even the tiniest thing into something
huge, immensely huge! Watch and listen,
on TV, the two Academies dedicated to
various different anniversaries in Albania
and Kosova, in which political, literary,
artistic, scientific and other biographies
interview
are so often falsified, erasing the cons and
beautifying the pros.
You will see how much the adjective great
is used and abused. A great singer, great 73
 football player, great performer, great
dancer, great writer, great politician, great
statesman, great artist, great fighter. Our
great ones are many and varied, ranging
from twenty to a hundred years. Some of
the frequent producers of these claims make
their great ones even greater, turning them
into legends, myths or even giants. One
such trivializer of our historical, literary,
scientific and journalistic thought was not
sufficed by the dimensions of a legend, a
myth or a giant, and therefore called the
victim of his worship a world conqueror!
God save the Albanian literature from such
banal fans. We do not hear, however, any
mentions of a great liar, great deceiver,
great thief, great ignorant, great destroyer,
great fabricator, great bore, great servant,
great flatterer.
Once we have the true great ones we will
emerge out of the provincial mindset and
the abuse provicialists make of the adjective
great.
How do I see the Albanian literature in
the future? Better than at present. I see it,
at some point, reaching European artistic
standards. But so as the time lapse until
such European standards are reached does
not become a long one, some changes
should be made in our society and our
state policies. We first need to change the
present attitude of political, social and
state organizations parties, associations,
non-governmental organizations in both
Albanian states towards spiritual creativity
and culture in general. The present neglect
of this creativity, the neglect of this culture,
should be replaced with the care towards it.
This care needs to be proven not through
empty rhetoric, but become palpable
and concrete: the miserable, demeaning
percentage that the two Albanian states
today put aside for artistic creativity,
scientific research, and culture in general,
should be increased.
I can present here two examples that in-
spite of not saying everything about
achieving European standards in our
interview
literary creativity and scientific research, do
say something nevertheless.
The first example is a statement by
74
the British politician and statesman
Winston Churchill. In a session of the
British Parliament, while he was a Prime
Minister at the verge of the First World
War, Churchill spoke to the Government
ministers on the seriousness of the overall
state situation, the British army being
unprepared for the war primarily due to its
armament being insufficient and outdated.
The ministers voiced their opinions one by
one about what should be done to change
that desperate state of affairs in the British
army. The Minister of Culture proposed
in his discussion that the financial means
allocated to the Ministry of Culture be
transferred to that of Defense. Without
letting the savior Minister finish,
Winston Churchill answered: And what,
Mr. Minister, will Britain fight with if there
will be no culture?
The second example: the English literature
has reached a European standard or rather
it has turned into a literature to determine
the highest artistic standards in European
literature, along with French, German,
Italian or Russian literature, due to one
major reason: in the 16th, 17th or 18th century
(I am not sure about the exact century),
writers were given a permanent salary that
financially secured them and their family
members. A lifelong salary was provided,
but they were not asked to write what
the government or the state institutions
wanted.
Even among us, at the time of communism,
a number of artists and scientific
researchers were provided a salary without
doing any other work, but, alas, they were
told to write according to the party line.
Despite this limiting government request,
the best artistic works in our literature have
not written during these last twenty-five
years of democracy, or rather this crippled
democracy of ours, but during those forty-
five years of communist dictatorship. Why
and how did this happen are things our
history has yet to answer scientifically.
Let us say in the end that the European
artistic standards are a result of objective
judgment on the weaknesses, shortcomings
and achievements in all areas of creativity
and life, a result of the so-called critical necessary value in our intellectual, political,
culture to which Europe owes its splendor cultural and national life.
in arts, philosophy, science and civilization.
We will mature historically once we treat Translated from Albanian: Gazmend
that critical culture as an immeasurably Brlajolli

(Symbol, No 8, 2016)
 Rita Dove
Rita Dove(1952) is anAmericanpoet, novelist, playwright,
essayist and university Professor. She is United States
Poet Laureate, a member of the American Philosophical
Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She
received Pulitzer Prize, National Humanities Medal from
President Bill Clinton, National Medal of Artsfrom President
Barack Obama and numerous literary and academic honors,
among them 25 honorary doctorates. The annual Rita Dove
Poetry Award was established bySalem College Center for
Women Writersin 2004. Her best-known works include: The
Yellow House on the Corner, Thomas and Beulah, Mother Love, On
the Bus with Rosa Parks, American Smooth, Sonata Mulattica etc.
 POETRY IS A KIND OF DANCE
- I would like to start by asking you about
your familys background, because I see their
importance and their impact in your books,
especially in Thomas and Beulah.
RITA DOVE: I grew up in a first generation
middle-class African American family
in Akron, Ohio, which is in the northern
Midwestern portion of the United States.
Ohio borders Canada, and my home town
was known as the Rubber Capital of the
World because all of the major tire factories
were located there. My family came up from
the South that is, my mothers parents
came from Washington DC and Tennessee,
and my fathers family migrated from rural
Georgia; my father was two years old when
his parents arrived in Ohio, in 1923. So
although I grew up as a Midwestern child,
there was a strong current of southern
heritage running through greater family. My
maternal grandparents were the inspiration
for Thomas and Beulah. My grandfather came
north as a young man, fleeing a Jim Crow
incident in his home town in Tennessee. He
had formed a musical duo with a friend who
died on the river boat that took them up
the Mississippi to Ohio. As a child, I was
unaware of my grandfathers past and indeed
had never thought of him as anything other
than my grandfather so that after his
death, when my grandmother began telling
me stories about his youthful adventures as
a means of cherishing his memory, I was
haunted by the young man who had been
a stranger to me. Years later, when I began
writing Thomas and Beulah, those poems
became a way of getting to know the
young Thomas in order to understand the
grandfather I had loved.
- Did you know as a child that you wanted to
interview
be a poet and what is the story of your first
poetry?
78
RITA DOVE: I had no role models for an
artistic life, so the idea of becoming a poet
simply wasnt on my radar screen. But from
the moment I could decipher the squiggles
on the page, I became an avid reader; and
later, when I couldnt find characters in
books that resembled me, I was driven to
create them. I remember finishing a story
in a science fiction magazine and picking
up a pencil to continue the adventure, with
a little black girl filling the heros shoes.
Reading was my ever-expanding universe;
but when I would get lost in a paragraph or
passage because the sounds that the words
made and the lilt of the phrases wove as
much magic as the plot, I knew I wanted to
do that, too which meant writing poetry.
Every summer vacation my brother and I
would start a little neighborhood newspaper,
and every summer I would quit and launch
my own magazine, usually called Poets
Delight, or something like that. Writing
was play and joy and excitement, but I also
believed that was all it was something one
did for fun, a childs hobby and when I
grew up, I would have to put away childish
games and become an adult. I didnt actively
try to become a writer that is, to write and
rewrite and strive for publication until I
was in college. After that, it became a matter
of trying to figure out a way to earn a living
so that I could write in other words, find a
job to support my passion.
- For many writers childhood is a kind of a lost
paradise. Is it the same to you?
RITA DOVE: I was a painfully shy child
and was bullied in school for being smart
and black and not very cute, so childhood
was not a total paradise. Yet the delight of
discovery the way a prism could break
light into rainbows while mixing a rainbow
of pigments on the page would turn the
paper black, or how I could feel completely,
happily alone for an entire afternoon
watching clouds dance across the sky
was a kind of paradise that can never be
reentered.
- What is your writing routine?
RITA DOVE: I will work with lots of
fragments, from several different poems,
for a long time before anything coheres. I
may start with a line I instinctively know
belongs in the middle of the poem, so Ill
write it down in the middle of the page.
Other lines may gather around that first
one; or I might skip to the beginning and
write until I get stuck, at which point Ill
turn to another collection of fragments and
work on them until I reach a dead end there,
and so on. The process is like assembling
a jigsaw puzzle; in time days, weeks,
months a workable draft of a poem will
emerge, and then another, and another.
Each draft is clipped to its fragments and
filed in a colored folder; so that instead of
organizing a poem-in-progress by a title,
which might change, or by theme, which
can limit the imagination Ill start each
writing day choosing a folder by its color.
Following my instincts. Then the polishing
begins, which can take months. Its a nerve-
wracking process, but Ive found its the best
way for me to cultivate the subconscious
connections; though I find myself writing
through a period of limbo for quite a while,
I frequently end up finishing three or four
poems in the space of a few days.
- Where does your inspiration come from?
RITA DOVE: Everywhere. Everything. I
never know what will ignite the spark. Even
after all these years as a poet, I still find
myself constantly amazed by the world
the slant of sunlight through a snow-laden
branch, the crunch of dry husks underfoot,
the utter fearlessness of a toddler exploring
her environment for the first time, the
things people do for and to each other.
- How important is the imagination in your
poetry?
RITA DOVE: Utterly, completely
important. But so is the language, and so is
the silence behind the language.
- How do you include the emotional memory in
your poems?
RITA DOVE: This is a difficult question
you might as well ask how I find the
inspiration for my poems! Like many aspects
of the creative process, it is a mystery I dare
not try to explain too neatly. Including the
emotional memory is fostered by the drive
to find words to express the inexpressible,
On the Bus with Rosa Parks [by Rita Dove]
is perhaps the first verse History of African-
American womens achievements in the
twentieth century. It is a tale that transcends
race, class, and gender divisons through its
razorsharp gaze that highlights the poetic in
politics, and the political in poetry. On the
Bus with Rosa Parks is her homage to those
who paved her way into political and artistic
freedom as well as her poetic integration of a
politically segregated world before her.
Therese Steffen
which means searching for words that not
only awaken the imagination but convey
the music the rhythms an experience
has generated. First I write out the actual
memory through detail not always the
facts, but rather dreamed details. This
reimagining opens up emotional pathways
which Ill follow like Alice in Wonderland
blindly, boldly until the poem gives me
its answer.
- Once you said: even a leaf falling from a tree
interview
is a pretty dramatic story to the leaf . Is
the way to feel the others pain that made you
a poet?
79
 RITA DOVE: Is it?I dont know. Its just this first book is the preamble of all your
the way Im wired. Doesnt every artist feel books. But, what does the first book mean to
the others pain? I believe every human you?
being has a natural capacity to feel anothers
pain, but it is the artist who find the way RITA DOVE: As a matter of fact, I have
to articulate that empathy. This kind of just been going over the manuscript for my
connection is one of the touchstones of next book, Collected Poems 1974 2004, so
all art; but I wouldnt want to suggest that Ive had the strange experience of reading
that first book again. Youre correct that
from this vantage point, its easy to see The
Yellow House on the Corner as a preamble to all
my later work. What Ive noticed, however,
is how much of that first book was driven
Doves verse sequence re-creates the life of the by a search for meaning or rather, a
biracial violinist George Bridgetower, best search for the engine behind my longing as
remembered for being the first performer, and an artist. Much of the surrealistic imagery
the initial dedicatee, of Beethovens Kreutzer found in those poems is a reflection of my
Sonata. (Beethoven replaced his humorous frustration at not being able to find the right
dedication to the lunatic and mulatto after words for what I felt.
quarrelling with him, apparently over a
woman.) A virtuosic treatment of a virtuosos - To write a good poem, how important are the
life, the poems use all registersnursery experience and the readings?
rhymes, diary entries, dramaand are stuffed
with historical and musical arcana. Yet the RITA DOVE: My love affair with poetry
book remains highly accessible, reading much started with reading: As a young girl
like a historical novel. Dove is fascinated by reading Shakespeare, I was astonished by
Bridgetowers life as a black musician and all the worlds I could inhabit merely by
occasionally implies parallels with the world of opening a book, without ever leaving my
jazz and rap, but the issue of race does not chair. I wanted to explore those worlds;
predominate. then I wanted to step into worlds that I
had created myself. Experience can be a
Leo Carey trigger for the poem, but one neednt have
had the experience oneself. Relating to an
incident from the inside out inhabiting its
world is a way of writing about something
one has not experienced personally. What
is crucial is to pay attention to the spark
empathy for only the painful side of life has that stopped me in my tracks in the first
made me a poet. Lets just say that empathy place an overheard phrase, a bird flying
for the human condition the joys as well as back to its nest, a particularly brilliant shade
the sorrows coupled with understanding of yellow and then follow that impulse.
another persons experiences and emotions Its a way of tracking the subconscious
through the written word, is what I find so while using the tools of my trade, which
compelling in poetry. Still, the quality is are language, music, imagery. Music is a
not confined to poetry think of Mozarts pretty important element for me. When Im
Requiem or Picassos Guernica, which can revising a poem, I will hear the lines in my
fill any of us, regardless of language or head, much the same as reading the poem
nationality, with terror and grief. aloud. The auditory component is vital,
interview

because a poem must use every resource

- Your sense of history and philosophical at its disposal in order to enrapture the
resonance was appeared in The Yellow House reader, and that includes orchestrating the
80 on the Corner. Now its easy to notice that very breath the reader takes as she reads
the poem. Intertwine the sound with the my father among the blurry images of the
sense, the meaning of the words with their crowd amassed at the Lincoln Memorial. It
melodic signatures, the story being told with was August 28, 1963, the day of the March
the rhythm of breathing in and breathing on Washington; I was proud, scared, and
out and the poem will be more convincing just a little peeved that I had to share my
because it has aligned the readers body with birthday with Martin Luther King, Jr.s I
the poets consciousness. have a dream speech! Ive never lost that
acute sense of connection between the
- On the Bus with Rosa Parksis an interesting personal and the world, the elements that
book with living characters, deep reflections and constitute our notions of history and how
strong emotions about the oppressive political people come to figure in that narrative.
system during the Civil Rights movement?
How important was Rosa Parks for you and - In your poems you have consciously tried to
how did you create this panoramic imagery of put a narrative into lyric poems. Would you
contemporary American history in verses? tell us why you unite what the modernism had
separated?
RITA DOVE: I was three years old when
Rosa Parks refused to get up from her seat RITA DOVE: Modernism was forged
on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama; during a period when the world seemed
so for me she existed mostly as an icon, to be falling apart the center will not
a revered figure shimmering just beyond hold, Ezra Pound wrote because the
reality. And what an unlikely hero! She was rise of cities tore family structures asunder
a woman, she was petite; she looked like the even while wars tore nations apart. The
sweetest person on earth. I couldnt begin
to imagine the amount of fortitude, of
grace under stress that she had to muster
in order todo nothing that is, not to rise
from her seat when commanded to do so.
Such courage in the face of such intractable
Rita Dove appears to have blended the
hatred how did she do it? As I grew older,
lyricismwhich derives from her musical
I found myself achieving things I had never
backgroundwith a fresh sense of movement and
dreamed myself capable ofspeaking
rhythmwithin the poems that owes something
before thousands about poetry, holding
to her developedinterest and participation in
press conferences as Poet Laureate of the
dancing.
United States and I began to understand
that sometimes being in the right place at the
Edward Byrne
right time makes you the right person; and
you find yourself doing the right thing, the
brave and difficult thing, because you cannot
imagine walking away from everything you
believe in. This is how Rosa Parks became
human to me; it was this human side of the
civil rights struggle I wanted to write about. separation of narrative and lyric was as much
As an African American I have an intimate a protest against romanticism, which used
connection to the wider world; its a the seduction of plot to float its emotional
necessary way of looking at reality, to be declarations, as it was an attempt to shake
able to conduct business in the natural writers and readers out a contentment
world while being able to see oneself as borne of a smug acceptance of traditional
interview

Other. History is personal to me. I spent forms; the reassuring cadences of rhyming
my eleventh birthday standing in front of quatrains, for instance. But what goes
a boxy black and white TV in my cousins around comes around, and Ezra Pounds
house in Washington, D.C., searching for exhortation to Make it new! should 81
 have also included the footnote Repeat as
needed. In other words, the new becomes
old, and what used to startle us out of
complacency becomes, in time, the New
Complacency. We have become used to
seeing stark, short lyric poems describing a
brief moment; these lyrics are not expected
to explain their surroundings or defend
their outbursts. Insisting on having a
If you find memoirs more immediate than
contemporary poetry, novels more compelling,
history more vivid, then you havent read Rita
Dove. A former poet laureate of the United
States, Dove is at the height of her powers
inOn the Bus with Rosa Parks. Her range is
extraordinary.
David Laskin
License to Be Sensitive means that poems
can become self-indulgent, opaque, and
sentimental. Narrative poetry was gradually
relegated to the camps of Anecdote and
Humor, and then generally disregarded,
looked down upon as not Real Poetry at
all. The very best aspects of Robert Frost
his gift for rendering vernacular rhythms,
his characters, the subtle intertwinings
of action and unspoken emotion were
lumped under the rubric Rustic Interlude.
But narrative and lyric are really two sides
of the same coin. In a narrative poem, a
story is being told on the surface, although
the emotional states of those involved are
throbbing underneath all the talk and action.
interview
In a lyric poem a moment is frozen in time,
and the speaker contemplates the details of
his circumstances within that suspension
82 it feels quite direct and intimate, but if
we read carefully, we can feel the pressure
of time on that poetic bubble; at some
point the speaker will have to step out of
the charmed sphere and enter ordinary life
again.
- In Mother Love, you used the myth of
Persephone as an allusion of contemporary,
making myth as something ordinary. Do you
think that the hell of underworld is the same
as the hell of our world?
RITA DOVE: The hell of our world is far
worse than the Greek underworld! In Greek
mythology, Hades is a place of perpetual
darkness and pain; suffering is constant and
predictable, and you know why youre there.
In our world, we never know where the
violence or pain and suffering will sprout up
next. This unpredictability is coupled with a
profound feeling of helplessness, rage that
has nowhere to go because so much of the
pain is unwarranted and undeserved. Id say
that makes our hell a little more horrific.
- After reading Persephone in hell, its clearly
visible that the rhythm of your poems derivate
from your experience with dancing, singing and
cello playing. Would you describe the connection
between you and the music, and also between
the music and the poetry?
RITA DOVE: I began playing the cello
when I was ten years old; music of all
types, from blues to classical, formed the
aural underpinning of my childhood and
beyond. I learned to appreciate music from
the outside in through listening but
also from the inside out, by creating it as
a performer. My connection to music is so
strong that if I had not been a poet, I am
certain I would have become a professional
cellist. I believe a poem should sing; it
should float on the music of its saying.
- American Smooth is infused with dance
rhythm, jazz atmosphere and different musical
titles: Fox trot, Lullaby, Soprano, Bolero,
Samba, Rhumba, Blues etc. Was it music the
first impulse to write this book?
RITA DOVE: No, it was lightning!
Lightning quite literally struck our
house, in 1998, during a rainstorm. The
house caught fire and burned down. Two
weeks afterwards my husband and I were
still running around in borrowed clothes,
covered in ashes, recovering things out of
the debris, and our neighbors decided they
wanted to do something special for us. So
they invited us to a black tie dinner dance
that weekend and told us: Its formal, so
go buy yourself something grand. Crazily
enough, the first clothing we bought after
the calamity was formal attire an evening
gown, a tuxedo. It was a miraculous feeling,
buying a gown in the middle of all that
misery. Our neighbors had inadvertently
given us the greatest gift of allthe gift of
beauty and grace.
So off we went to the ball. As we sat
watching couples waltzing across the
parquet, I remarked, Ive always wanted to
learn to dance like that and before we
knew it, the entire neighborhood signed up
for a free introductory lesson at the local
dance studio. So we started taking ballroom
lessons. I wasnt thinking about writing; I
was relearning how to live -- no poems, no
thinking about poems, just dancing. And
then, when I was least expecting it, a poem
about dancing, called Foxtrot Fridays
just slipped out. I began to want to
write again. After all, poetry is already a
kind of dance: The play of contemporary
speech patterns against the bass-line of
Shakespeares iambic pentameter gives the
English language a kind of syncopation, a
rhythm under the melody. Just as dancer
is limited by gravity and the capabilities of
the body, poetic expression is continually
restrained by the dimensions of the page,
the capacity of the lungs, and the very
architecture of language. Ballroom dancing
helped me understand that poetry has a
physical component that the length of a
line, for instance, influences how slowly or
quickly the reader breathes.
Sonata Mulattica referred
BeethovensKreutzer Sonata, whichwas
originally dedicated to a mulatto violinist George
Bridgetower. Its like a novel in verses. It has
musical theme and form; also it is a poem, as well
as a novel and a drama. How did you write it
and how much time you spent on it?
RITA DOVE: Sonata Mulattica took me
about five years to write. If I had known
at the outset how many years I would be
committing to one vision, I may not have
had the courage to forge on. As it was, I
had already written myself deep into the
books territory before I realize how large it
would become. It began innocently enough:
one evening my husband and I were
watching Immortal Beloved, a movie about
Beethoven, in which George Bridgetower
makes a cameo appearance. My curiosity
Mother Loveis an unsparing book. . . . Rita
Doves laser glance exposes and cauterizes its
subjects in new and disturbing ways.
Helen Vendler
was kindled: Who was this man of color,
strutting around eighteenth century Europe
with a violin tucked under his arm? So
I Googled him, which sparked my first
investigations into his life. At that point, I
had no intention of writing a book; I merely
wanted to understand what it was like to live
as a black person in Europe at that time,
and writing became a means to exploring
his state of mind. Very often I find myself
writing poems in order to talk with the
characters, and this case was no different.
I began writing, mostly fragments; and as
I grew acquainted with the world that had
interview
shaped him I realized that what I actually
had to do was portray an entire cosmology
rather than one brief moment in historys
spotlight. This man and his world were far 83
 too complex for dabbling; I had to commit
myself fully to the task.
My routine was not very scientific, though
it worked for me: First I would do research,
following interesting tangents as they
appeared, all without trying to line things
up chronologically. Then I would turn to
the poems, writing without looking at
the research, for a period of about three
months; then it was back to research, and
so on. I saved all the fact-checking until
the last six months, and only in the last
three months did I finally put together a
timeline and tack a map on the wall in order
to track each characters journey. I did not
write the poems in order; in fact, one of
the Beethoven poems (Vienna Spring)
was the very first to be completed. I needed
to embody the research; to become so
familiar with his world that I was living in
it rather than referring to it. I cant explain
any better; it all seemed rather enchanted.
I was in deep conversation with all of its
characters proud Haydn and haunted
Beethoven, prodigy Bridgetower and his
charismatic father, the chatty wardrobe
mistress and the paunchy Prince of Wales.
uses a different part of the brain to teach,
since one is tasked with articulating the
mysterious process of creation. Much of
my teaching involves reducing the student-
poets fear after all, she is struggling to
put into words what is essentially unsayable.
Our emotional matrices are in constant flux,
shifting to accommodate our encounters
on the physical plane of existence, and
translating these shape shifters into words
on a page is a daunting task. So I try to
turn my students focus to the tools of
the trade. Most people readily accept that
a painter must acquaint herself with the
properties of paints and canvas; she must
know what each brush is good for as well
as understand the rules of perspective
and the musculature of the human body.
The instruments at the writers disposal
are grammar, vocabulary, and syntax;
consequently, the young poet must build
vocabulary, develop keen observational
skills and study grammar. Punctuation
can be used to orchestrate the pacing of
a meditation; syntax is the musculature of
the sentence as it is deployed across the
blank page.

- All poets know the anxiety of influence. How - You have given advices to the students for a
do you see this anxiety in writing process? long time. What can you say to those students
who want to be poets?
RITA DOVE: My constant worry is that I
wont realize when Ive been influenced; Im RITA DOVE: I ask them who they are
terrified Ill subconsciously lift a phrase or reading. I really need to know whats on
echo a cadence from another poet. Since I their reading list, just that its long and
am musical, I tend to perceive and organize varied. If a student claims not to like to
the world in terms of rhythm and sounds, read, I know that student will not last as
shades of meaning which emerge through a poet. A writer loves literature first and
the nuanced lilt of vocalization and that writing second. Honor the art, not your
kind of musical mimicry is more difficult ego.
to detect.
- What are your writing plans now?
- As a poet and as a spokesperson for poetry,
how do you see the connection of teaching RITA DOVE: At the moment I am
poetry with writing poetry? involved in a project called Reimagining
the Ghetto of Venice. As part of an
RITA DOVE: Teaching poetry is the polar international roster of artists and writers,
opposite of writing poetry. One writes in I have been asked to reflect upon the
interview

solitude but teaches within a social situation; concept of the ghetto, past and present.
when creating a poem the writer lives silently (The word ghetto was first mentioned in
inside her head, whereas teaching requires conjunction with the establishment of
84 talking, explaining, before a public. One the Jewish enclave in Venice, 500 years
ago.) The city and university of Venice are
planning a commemoration later this year.
Many of my recent poems have been part
of this project. My original idea one long
poem, or a group of 5-6 shorter pieces
has expanded into a much larger concept;
I dont know where it will end, but Im
happily following the Muse wherever she
chooses to lead me.
(Symbol, No 9, 2016)
 Ag Apolloni
Ag Apolloni (1982) is a Kosovar author and Professor at
University of Prishtina. His works are: Zomb (2009),
Four Plays (2010), The Postmodern Parable (2010),
The Paradigm of Proteus (2012), The Howl of the Wolf
(2013), Zazen (2014) and Konicas suitcase (2016).
 THE END OF THE ERA OF ENDINGS

Postmodernism is widely considered to be the movement that has brought about several
endings: the ending of metanarratives as collective idealisms, the ending of history
as the end of totalitarian systems, the ending of reality as a simulated end, the
ending of seriousness as end of nostalgia, the ending of inspiration as the end of
literatures sacredness, the ending of magic as the end of authors magic trick, the
ending of creation as the end of originality and the ending of the novel as the end
of genre purity. Yet, in the 1990s, another ending was being talked about that of
postmodernism.
Let us first view the endings brought about by this poetics, in order to then view its
own one.

Key words: Postmodernism, metanarrative, hyperreality, bricolage, performatism,

poioumenon, dcoup, collage

THE END OF METANARRATIVES THE END OF HISTORY

Industry is increasing the pollution scale on
daily basis, economy is powerless against
worlds hungry stomachs, the overwhelming
development of vehicle production helps the
increase in accident rates, nuclear weapons
forecast a thermonuclear war, which is why
modernisms positivist epistemology based on
the idea that knowledge and science will make
the world a better place, does not soundvery
convincing. Postmodernists were the first to
express their doubts about this epistemology,
viewing it simply as another metanarrative (fr.
mtarcit) and insisting on the idea that just like
others, it was subject to abuse (Walker 1996).
Postmodernism is thus not a tendency of
modernism, but quite the opposite.
Jean-Franois Lyotards notion of mtarcit has
become widely recognized as a metanarrative,
encompasing the idea of grand narratives
such as enlightenment, idealism, communism
and others that postmodernism rejects by
declaring its distrust in them: Simplifying to
the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity
critique
In 1989, with the falling of the Berlin Wall and
communism, Francis Fukuyama published
his famous essay The End of History, which
he later expanded and supplemented. This
philosophical phrase that marked the end
of history was preceded by some religious
and philosophical metanarratives. It is
unanimously accepted that precursors of
Fukuyama had been Hegel, Marx and Kojve,
according to whom the end of history meant
the coming of freedom for all, as a result of
the Napoleons wars, after whom there will
be no more wars and revolutions (Hegel);
the advent of class equality which was seen
as the end of the class struggle, the greatest
conflict in history (Marx); the advent of post-
revolutionary state as an ideal (universal and
homogeneous) one, which would bring an
end to class and national conflicts (Kojve).
So, the end of conflicts is the beginning of
a peaceful life and the end of human history,
which becomes Fukuyamas subject matter,
according to whom the end of history means

toward metanarratives (Lyotard, 1979: 7). In the coming of liberal democracy as the only
short, postmodernism brings about the end form of governance for all countries (see
88 of metanarratives. Fukuyama 1989).
Of course, Fukuyamas thesis was questioned
and criticized by various philosophers, as
it purports to convince people that the
American styledemocracy is the solegenuine
political system, although his thesis is
illustrated with examples from European
Union and proclaims democratic pluralism.
THE END OF REALITY
In spite of its religious background, the
term simulacra (lat. simulacrum) is related
to postmodern reality. According to Jean
Baudrillard who launches and represents the
philosophy of simulation, todays reality is no
longer a reality, as it is dominated by virtuality.
He bases his concept of simulation on the
virtual world offered by the screen in the
simulated world of Disneyland, in the world
overwhelmed by the media transforming it
into a hyperreality. It was thus expected of
him to declare after the collapse of the Twin
Towers on September 11, 2001they did it,
but we wanted it, suggesting that we had
been longing for something big and true to
happen for real, as such things only occurred
as simulated.
According to Baudrillard, hyperreality as
a postmodern state has replaced reality.
Internet and media have created a media
reality that has brought the end of the banal
reality. Consequently, as reality has become
a hyperreality, literature has turned from
fiction to surfiction (Spanos) or metafiction
(Hutcheon).
THE END OF SERIOUSNESS
Even when dealing with serious topics,
postmodernism processes them in complex
structures and filters them through ironic
discourse. The irony is not articulated simply
as a mockery, but rather as a rational proof
vest protecting the writer from nostalgia. In
order to combat nostalgia, postmodernism
turns everything into an ironical game, which
is why the era of postmodernism is also
termed the era of irony.
According to Linda Hutcheon, being a
historiographic metafiction, the postmodern
narrative is pastime with past time (1988: 105-
123). This leisure, as can be assumed, is
limited to the content, while the game
continues with the form (montage, collage,
bricolage, etc.). Thus, irony is a postmodern
filter of serious stories.
THE END OF INSPIRATION
In antiquity, inspiration was viewed as a sacred
act that preceded creation or writing. It was
assumed that the poet was during inspiration
in a divine drunken state and belonged to God
(gr. enthousiasmos belonging to God). This
concept was maintained until romanticism,
to be questioned in modernism, and denied
in postmodernism. The passage of literature
from degree zero to second degree is the
passage from inspiration to combination.
Thus, the entire postmodern literature is ars
combinatoria with a style of bricolage.
In postmodern literature, inspiration is
denied because the postmodern author
takes the subject from various books and
documents to structure the new text as
a network of countless references and
quotations. The authors learnedness rejects
the inspiration by muses. The postmodern
work is controlled by reason, not emotions.
THE END OF MAGIC
For a long time, readers have read novels
that were offered to them as a result, not as
a process. Since ancient times theoreticians
have spoken of the principles of literary
writing, but without the process of creation.
Creation was regarded as a kind of magic of
a writer who offers us only the result of that
magical process.
However, the explanation of this process in
postmodernism turns into a creative principle
known as poioumenon (Alastair Fowler, 1989:
372). The term refers to a specific type of
metafiction which indicates the process of
creation, like in such cases when during the
narration, the narrator is concerned about the
work being created and starts explaining how
(s)he started it, how (s)he will continue and
then end it. This phenomenon occurs often,
such as with Vladimir Nabokovs Pale Fire,
critique
Salman Rushdies Midnights Children, Kurt
Vonneguts Slaughterhouse-Five or Breakfast of
Champions, etc. 89
 The poioumenon phenomenon has become an
identifying mark of postmodern novels, with
the reader somehow becoming a participant
of the postmodern texts construction, or
at least being allowed to participate in the
workshop of the writer to see his magic trick.
THE END OF CREATION
Although all writers of a language deal with an
equal amount of letters, some are considered
great and some small. Although all writers of
a language use the same characters, they still
try to be different. All writers of a language
have one alphabet, meaning they have the
same number of letters available. Logically,
the greatest creator of a national literature
is the inventor of the alphabet. Others are
not creators (inventors), but combinators.
Paradoxically, the latter are considered
creators, rather than the former, which
means that combinators, and not inventors,
are creators.
In this sense, Umberto Eco saw the alphabet
as the first combinatorial machine. Different
people combine the same letters. Different
people combine the same letters differently.
In Orwells terms, we could say that all writers
are equal, but some writers are more equal than
others. They are equal (the same) in tools
(letters) they posess, but are more equal
(different) in the ability to use those tools.
And the value of writers is not in creating,
but in combining differently.
The alphabet is the invention. Everything
else in literature is a combination of letters,
yet in postmodernism a novel cannot simply
be called a combination of letters, but a
combination of signs. Images also enter the
novel through the method of montage, with
techniques of collage, cut-up, or dcoup (started
by Dadaists and followed by postmodernists),
which allows for the implication of photos,
pentagrams, paintings, drawings and sketches
in the text.
The potpourri (Walker 1996) in postmodern
theory marks the work that mixes everything
inside itself, the work built by the montage
technique and resulting in a collage. Art
critique
knows no geographical boundaries, so the
inclusion of different cultures within a work
90 of art is quite normal, particularly today,
when art is seen more as a combination than
a creation. The postmodern author does not
conceive originality as ex nihilo invention, but
as a specific way of treating an object.
As John Barth says, postmodern literature
is a literature of exhaustion, which is why
it operates with previous practices, thus
earning the epithet of the literature of
replenishment, and receiving within it all
previous literary practices, because it is an ars
combinatoria. Because the postmodern work
is a bricolage, postmodern authors are often
accused of plagiarism. Among the most
famous examples is D. M. Thomass novel
The White Hotel, which imitates many styles,
mixes many materials previously dealt with
by others and contains several paragraphs of
Anatoly Kuznetsovs Babi Yar.
Thus, creation comes to an end as originality
and lives under the mask of authenticity.
THE END OF NOVEL
According to two scholars, Wellek and Warren,
theory of genres is a principle of order: it classifies
literature and literary history not by time or place
(period or national language) but specifically literary
types of organization or structure (1984: 226).
This theory of the three literary genres was
launched at the time of romanticism. Lyrical,
epic and dramatic genres are the arch-genres
of the romantic triade (Genette, 1979: 70).
Goethe, being a romantic rebel, disobeyed
the rules of literary genres, on the grounds
that their combination can produce unlimited
variations of poetic genres. Aristotle was not
a follower of the genre purity either, while
Plato included the epopee under the mixed
manner. Linda Hutcheon, having studied
the poetics of postmodernism, reaches the
conclusion that there can be no more talk of
pure genre of a postmodern work, because
there is intertextuality and complex generic
interaction (1988: 139).
Therefore, the terms novella and novel are
devoid of the genre determining meaning,
marking only what Genette calls manner (fr.
mode), which in these cases is a narrative
manner, although within those literary works
one encounters a variety of forms, discourses
and styles that, in case of sticking to strict
principles, should be left out.
In postmodernism, the novel is considered
the dominant literary form. Yet, with poetry,
drama, scientific, religious, political and other
texts introduced within this form, the very
nature of the novel is questioned. The novel
has indeed dominated, but once the question
is asked about what percentage of it has been
a novel and what percentage other forms, a
suspicion arises about its dominance, and a
need emerges to view it more as bricolage of
genres than as a self-sustained form. Thus,
the novel has ended from the very punches it
received from other genres internally.
THE END
Postmodernism marked the beginning of a
new sensitivity and the end of an old form,
because it was written with ironic filters and
erudite capacity. Yet by the 1990s there was an
attempt to substitute it by other movements
which consider it an ended period.
Postmodernism has ended as a period, and
as an already finished project is has enriched
the golden fund of literary canons (like
classicism, neoclassicism, romanticism,
realism or modernism), permitting new
movements and poetics to follow. Linda
Hutcheon, Ihab Hassan, Andreas Huyssen,
Raoul Eshelman, Alan Kirby, Tom Turner,
Mikhail Epstein, Eric Gans, Robin van den
Akker, Billy Childish, Charles Thomson
and others have spoken about the end
of postmodernism. Some have even
suggested designations for the era following
postmodernism: performatism (Eshelman)
digimodernism (Kirby), post-postmodernism
(Turner), trans-postmodernism (Epstein),
postmillennialism (Gans), metamodernism
(van den Akker) remodernism (Childish and
Thomson) etc.
While the majority insists on protecting and
promoting their own designations, Eshelman
insists on the end of postmodernism, leaving
the naming of the new era to time itself:
Naming epochs (or anything else in the humanities)
is a big gamble. There are a lot of names floating
around nowperformatism, metamodernism,
digimodernism, post-postmodernism, to name just
a few. Probably it will take years before any real
consensus emerges. Postmodernism wasnt generally
accepted as a term until the late 1980s, after it had
already been going on for more than thirty years. Were
in about the 20th year of what I call performatism,
so Im not holding my breath. May the best term
win! (Eshelman 2014: 7). Andreas Huyssen
concludes that the priority of our time is not
to invent a term to name this chaotic era: The
current situation is too unbersichtlich (a term
Habermas already used to describe postmodernism
30 and more years ago) to encapsulate it in a single
term. Just look at the multiplication of biannials
across the world. There are other stories of modern
experience, polyvocal interventions, a cacophony of
styles, practices, media experiments for which it would
be presumptuous to come up with one name. There is
no such thing as global literature, or Weltliteratur,
least of all literature written in English. The most
common name by default, as it were, has become
contemporary art. But maybe we should forget the
issue of naming and instead focus on the differently
situated narratives of art and literature, on certain
nodal points in a world wide web of lived experience
and its translations into art and literature (Huyssen
2015: 15). Linda Hutcheon, who created the
poetics of postmodernism, confirms the
end of postmodernism but prefers not to
participate in the debate of naming the next
era: I do think we are on the verge of something new,
or perhaps we are already there, and it is going to have
everything to do with the digital technologies and new
social media that are now part of our lives. I dont
worry that we dont have a label for it yet: we will.
But this feels like something new to me (Hutcheon
2013: 15). Meanwhile Ihab Hassan asks what
is there beyond postmodernism, and then
answers: we hardly know what postmodernism was
(Hassan 2003: 303).
For the time being we cannot know what
term will name our era, but one thing is
certain: postmodernism that brought so
many endings, has ended.
Translated from Albanian: Gazmend
Brlajolli
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Barth, John. The Friday Book. Virginia:
John Hopkins University Press, 1984.
2. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacres et simulation.
critique
Paris: ditions Galile, 1981.
3. Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference.
New York - London: Routledge, 2001. 91
 4. Eco, Umberto. The searching of the perfect
language. New Jersey: Wiley Blackwell,
1997.
5. Eshelman, Raoul. Performatism, the epoch
after postmodernism. Symbol, No. 2, Tirana
Prishtina Skopje, 2014.
6. Fowler, Alastair. The History of English
Literature. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1989.
7. Fukuyama, Francis. The End of
History?The National Interest, summer
1989.
8. Hassan, Ihab. Beyond Postmodernism:
Toward an Aesthetic of Trust. Modern
Greek Studies, Vol. 11, Australia New
Zeland, 2003.
9. Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of
Postmodernism. New York and London:
Routledge, 1988.
10. Hutcheon, Linda. Beyond Postmodernity.
Symbol, No. 1, Tirana Prishtina
Skopje, 2013.
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11. Huyssen, Andreas. The past, present and
future of art. Symbol, No. 4, Tirana
Prishtina Skopje, 2015.
12. Kojve, Alexandre.Introduction to
the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the
Phenomenology of Spirit.Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press, 1980.
13. Lyotard, Jean-Franois. La condition
postmodern. Paris: Minuit, 1994.
14. Singer, Isaac Bashevis. TIME, Vol. 122,
No. 3, 18 July 1983.
15. Spanos, William. The Detective and the
Boundary: Some Notes on the Postmodern
Literary Imagination, Boundary 2, 1: 147
- 68, 1972.
16. Walker, Thomas. Postmodernism and the
study of the future. Futures Research
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17. Wellek, Ren; Warren, Austin. Theory of
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 SYMBOL
Cultural Magazine
NO 10
Tirana-Pristina-Skopje
2017

ISSN 2415-2749
(Online)
ISSN 2310-9998
(Print)

Format
A4 (21x29.7 cm)

Press run
500 copies

New Eurozine partner: Symbol (Kosovo)

The Albanian-language cultural journal Symbolhas joined the Eurozine network. Established in 2013,
the magazine is published in Prishtina and distributed throughout the capitals of Kosovo, Macedonia
and Albania. The journals staff hails from all three countries.
Editor-in-chief Ag Apolloni, who is also an author, poet, playwright and literary critic, heads up the
team, whose members include the renowned Albanian poet, writer, critic and professor of literature
Agron Tufa.
Intended as a bridge between cultures and a forum where different artists articulate their
visions,Symbolfeatures writings on literature, theatre, film, music, media and the arts.
The journals first issue set the tone for subsequent issues, starting with the well-known theorist of
postmodernism Linda Hutcheon responding to crucial questions of our time, and suggesting that
postmodernism is coming to an end as the dawn of something new begins.
Symbols webpages include free and complete access to all the journals issues, and every issue contains
a selection of articles in both Albanian and English.
Published 2016-08-01
Read more: www.eurozine.com

Sponsor

Republic of Kosovo
Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport
2017