Ismail Kadare remains the greatest master of the Albanian language. It is through a stunning literary talent that his works broke down the barrier separating Albania from the rest of the Western world to gain global renown. Throughout his career, though, this unquestionable talent has been coupled with a more complicated political element, a consequence of both the intensely ideological environment he wrote in and his own apparent interest. Kadare’s political contributions can largely be divided into pre and post-October 1990, when he denounced the communist regime and left for France to take up the mantle of the democratic intellectual. The era preceding this is a deeply interesting view into the dynamic of an artist within dictatorship. It can not simply be portrayed as a writer’s grand struggle against tyranny, but neither as a sycophant’s blind acquiescence to the Party. Rather, it is a much more complicated story, especially between Kadare and the dictator, Enver Hoxha, both of whom hailed from the southern city of Gjirokastra. Though he wrote The Great Winter and numerous poems in praise of Hoxha, Kadare developed a famously oblique manner of conveying dissent, leading to reproaches and his works even being banned for three years, partially due to their “Western leanings.” The head of the League of Writers and Artists accused him of avoiding the sociopolitical issues of the day, rather concealing his views in tales of legend and folklore. Regardless, Kadare was a member of the regime’s People’s Assembly for 12 years and enjoyed great privileges, not least of which being the ability to travel outside of the isolated country, while many of his fellow writers were persecuted with unimaginable brutality.
It is under this backdrop that the following poem is composed. Originally titled “The Politburo met at noon”, it is commonly known as “The Red Pashas”. In it, Kadare condemns and pleads against the bureaucracy he feels suffocating his artistry by invoking the struggle of the working class and the glory of Enver Hoxha – being the only man who could change anything systematically. That this is not a dissident’s poem is made clear by Kadare’s portrayal of the bureaucrats as remnants of the “overthrown classes”: the pashas, the beys and the wealthy. In this way, he assumes the regime’s talking points, and by claiming to support the furtherance of its pursuits, distinguishes it from the bureaucratic apparatus which he denounces. Hoxha did not empathize with Kadare, seeing through his feigned praise and labeling the poem “reactionary”. It was, after all, the regime he personally set up that was being attacked.
The historical complexities of tyranny, I have come to believe, in some strange sense, emphasized rather than muted Kadare’s genius, giving him a perspective which his fellow literary greats could not possibly conceive of. This poem is an especially fascinating, albeit disturbing, example of this, the work of an artist looking to survive amidst an unforgiving system.
"Red Pashas"
1.
The Politburo met at noon.
Why, something must have been afoot at the northern borders.
Or perhaps some commotion at those of the south.
Clouds obscure the sky and winter brings snow with it.
Perhaps the uprooted classes rose up,
Or there was some catastrophe in production.
Maybe the ambassadors sent back
Radiograms laden with worry.
No. The state’s borders are undisturbed.
The embassies free of frantic news.
And under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Crestfallen hibernate the former casts of grandeur.
The production is quite normal, and the days
Flow regularly in December…
Why, then, out of the blue
Did the Politburo meet at noon?
2.
States never collapse from their roofs.
Many may leak here and there.
But collapse comes from the foundations
To this law
Even the socialist state was bound to
At the top, all can seem flawless:
Socialist games, jolly songs, food in plenty.
The banners and the heroes of labor
On the local newspapers for the First of May.
Congratulatory telegrams, a glistening sun.
In rallies and the verses of young writers
While underneath
precisely at the foundations
Slowly grows a black tumor.
For our enemies, we have cannons, hymns and dances.
And embassies to tell us of their sleights.
But for bureaucracy, what have we?
Cannons prove futile
and consuls are nowhere to be found.
3.
Amidst decrees, telephones and blotting papers
They fill the scenes through and through
Enough with these benevolent smiles
Bureaucrats are something else.
Not with their “Pelikan” bottle ink dripping
A delightful flock yelping ho, ho, ho
But rather ghoulish
their hands steeped in blood
Which I see reach up to their elbows.
I see them there, in the depths, digging.
Precisely at the foundations of the revolution.
What are they up to down there?
Why do they seize the bodies of the martyrs
And turn them right, left, and upside down?
Why, look.
As they wash the bodies
Hurrying to cleanse the foundations of blood.
And after the blood, of the legacy the martyrs left behind,
Every principle and ideal they held.
And having washed off the stamp of blood,
Oh, they know how easy it will be
To alter the revolution, the dictatorship
Of the workers
to its core.
And so there they are, kneeling
Restlessly scraping to wash the blood
Yet, what happened
Why did they suddenly cease?
At a desolate garden, a wasteland.
Here lay buried the overthrown:
Pashas, beys, families of consequence,
They launched themselves upon them, starting
To strip them in a shocking hurry.
The cloth of the oppressor, soaked in blood
Full of distinctions and medals, they quickly wrap themselves in.
And with them on, through the night
They make haste for the morning like a storm.
4.
The morning comes,
And pale, frozen stiff,
Beneath their distinguished mantels, adorning their crowns
They head to offices, ministries,
They even climb up to the Central Committee.
Red Pashas. Beys veiled in the garb of the party
Baron-secretaries. Oil bosses.
In gloomy cortèges, ‘neath liturgical hymns
They carry the coffin of the revolution to its grave…
5.
All along, the facade was quite the opposite
Broad smiles, shaking fists at the rallies
Humility shown toward uncle Xhamberi, toward grandma so and so,
And those same words: “Enver”, “party”, “self-critique”
So it was in the day,
while at night
They descended upon the foundations yet again.
But the revolution is not the Castle of Rozafa
That could endure building through the day,
to be torn down at night.
6.
Enver Hoxha, his keen eye
Was the first to suspect this bunch.
Just then, to the foundations of the state,
He descended just as in the great ballads.
A red torch he clutched in hand.
The earth trembled
As the flame fell upon them.
And he saw as they spoiled the blood of the martyrs
As they divided the mantles among themselves.
“Here you have been all along!”
They stood.
“Oh, comrade Enver, oh, hm, long live, oh-”
But he, afflicted
by a sharp pain of betrayal in every grizzle
Thundered like a mountain in winter.
He was not Christ, to banish them
From power by whip and stick.
He called upon the working class,
To render bureaucracy a thing of the past.
7.
As the Partisan patrols once did
The squadrons of workers stand guard.
So that we need not seize the ministries with cannons
Tomorrow.
We take control of them today.
The dictatorship of the class is not only sung in verses
And on the birthdays of the veteran laborer.
Do you stand for socialism?
Run in rows
Declare anywhere and to anyone
control of the workers.
Tear away, day and night, at bureaucracy,
Keep the overthrown classes under your boot.
If you do not want the firing squads
To line you up against the wall
at the Grand Boulevard tomorrow.
8.
The days fly by.
The whirlpool of events
Swirl furiously through seasons and years
There come the plenums of the Party just like soldiers
Of the revolution
through the storm.
The class marches after the Party through the day of glory,
The people overflow after the class like an ocean
And if the Politburo meets again
At noon or midnight,
they all stand ready.
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