I recently discovered an old poem of Ismail Kadare’s. It made the writer who is often mythologized by the Albanian public, both by those who revere him as a national treasure as much as those who revile him as the darling of the Communist regime, seem human, all too human. I realized that Kadare wrote ‘Longing for Albania’ during his studies at Moscow’s Maxim Gorky Institute of World Literature from 1958 to 1960. Suddenly, the grand writer who dominated curricula throughout my childhood and whose family home I visited as a museum this past summer appeared before my eyes as a brittle student. The prolific old Nobel Prize nominee made way for the unsettled young writer longing for his birthplace.
The poem's sentiments closely reflected my own, only better written. There is something remarkably relatable not only in its theme but style, too. One notices its brevity and a certain sense of incompleteness. Even the line about Tirana’s leaves, ‘for which comparisons are aplenty’ indicates that no matter how many metaphors and similes are used, there is no way to quite capture the image in mind. Such are the images of childhood: somewhat impossible to recreate precisely because of their purity in our minds, only amplified by distance.
Doubtlessly, a part of the poem’s appeal is the fact that Kadare misses what I miss: the warm blue of the Adriatic, youthful carelessness in the streets of Tirana or a childhood in that land as far in mind as it is in kilometers. I suspect, however, that the sentiment is quite generalizable. It can be understood by anyone feeling the pangs of exile, of awful distance. Everyone has their version of the Partizani cigarette: a memento, aroma or sound which brings them back with a frightful force.
They never last, though, these reminiscences – certainly never longer than the poem’s five stanzas. That is why one must enjoy them while they are here.
Below is Kdare’s poem, translated in full.
"I long for our Albania.
Tonight, as I was coming home on the trolley
The smoke of a Partizani cigarette coming from a Russian’s hand
Flickered into a bluish hue, forming into spirals.
As if it was whispering secrets in the language of the Albanians
To me, its compatriot.
I long for evenings in the streets of Tirana,
Where I’ve done a mischief or two,
And even in those streets where I have not.
They know me, those old wooden gates,
They will still hold their old grudges,
Shaking their head at me,
But I won’t mind
Because I’m filled with longing.
And in the sidestreets full of dried leaves,
Dried leaves, autumn leaves,
For which comparisons are aplenty.
I long for our Albania,
For that grand sky, vast and deep,
For the haste of the azure Adriatic waves,
For the clouds which burn like castles in the twilight,
For the white-haired and green-bearded Alps,
For the nylon nights, fluttering in the breeze,
For the fog which, like a Red Indian, roams at dawn.
For the locomotives and horses,
Which, dripped in sweat, huff and puff
For the cypresses, the herds and the graves
I long,
I long,
For the Albanians.
I long and swiftly make my way,
Flying over the fog as if over desires.
As distant, just as beloved are you, my fatherland.
The airport will tremble from the droning,
The fog will stand suspended over chasms.
Those who invented the reaction engine
Must have once been far from their fatherland.
