“…a land within sight of Italy and less well known than
the interior of America.”
“April
is the cruelest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land.” —T.S. Eliot
(1888-1965), The Waste land 2
Despite the globalization movement of
recent decades there remain entire cultures and their literatures that go
unnoticed in the great milieu that is the study of world literature. Even
within smaller categories in academia, such as the realm of Slavic and Eastern
European Studies, there are topics which go largely unexplored except by a
select few at the doctoral level and beyond. Albanian literature is a vast and
as yet untapped canon that deserves to be exposed and to be studied in
undergraduate and graduate institutions, but which also needs to be made
available to the general public. Albanian literature is so under exposed
primarily because it was late to evolve. Of the Indo-European languages,
Albanian is the latest separate language group to develop a literary culture,
beginning as late as the seventeenth century (mostly among Catholic priests),
and thereafter Albanian letters were suppressed by various non-Albanian
polities. In the words of the foremost Albanologist, Robert Elsie, “The tender
plant of Albanian literature grew in a rocky soil. Time and again it sprouted
and blossomed, and, time and again, it was torn out of the earth by the brutal
course of political history in the
1 Elsie, Robert,
Early
Albania: A Reader of Historical Texts, 11th-17th
Centuries
(Wiesbaden:
Otto
Harrassowitz
KG, 2003), vii.
2 Quote taken and
citation from Beckwith, Christopher I., Empires
of the Silk Road (Princeton:
Princeton
University Press, 2009), 263.
Valley Humanities Review Spring
2012
Balkans.” 3 However, today the widespread
availability of books through internet venues such as Amazon.com has
helped, in some regards, to popularize authors and literary realms that in
other times would have passed into obscurity among Western readers, and this
phenomenon has served to minimally promote Albanian literature. And yet, the
only Albanian-language author to enjoy an international reputation is Ismail
Kadare (b.1936), 4
who lives in self-imposed exile in France where his books are bestsellers (in
French translation). In America and the United Kingdom, though, none of his
books—even his praised Chronicle of Stone and The Siege— are
bestsellers, 5
and he is only occasionally to be found in retail book stores or on the shelves
of public libraries. But to any would-be reader, the availability of his works
(or lack thereof, as the case may be) should not be a deterrent, since
sometimes the best literature is that which has to be painstakingly sought out
or discovered by chance. The purpose of this paper is to bring a sampling of
Albanian literature to the general liberal arts audience by introducing and
making a study of Kardare’s dark novel Broken April (Prilli i thyer,
1978) and the way in which the novel utilizes the code of Albanian traditional
law, the Kanun.
As noted, the Kanun—properly, Kanuni
i Lekë Dukagjinit or The Canon of Lekë Dukagjini— is at the center
of Broken April, and while it cannot be said that the Kanun
itself is a character of sorts, as the city St. Petersburg has been considered
in the Russian realist novel of the same name by Andrei Biely, the Kanun
is so prominent that hardly a moment of the plot is
3 Elsie, Robert, Albanian
Literature: A Short History (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2005), v.
4 Elsie,
Albanian
Literature: A Short History, 167.
5 A survey of
Amazon.com
shows
that Kadare’s highest ranking book, in terms of sales, is
The
Siege,
which ranked 169, 598 out of all of Amazon.com sales, as of July, 2011.
Chronicle in Stone and The Ghost Rider ranked below 500,000, and
Broken April (discussed in this paper) ranked 275, 779.
Valley Humanities Review Spring
2012
unconcerned
with the intricate legal system. Thus, it is only natural to observe the
history of the Kanun and its major features, before embarking on a
discussion of its usage in Broken April.
To begin with, the Albanian people
are divided into two self-distinguishing groups, determined in large part by
the dialect they speak and by geographical preponderance. In the south of
Albania are the Tosk, who constitute a minority of the ethnic Albanian
population both in Albania and abroad, and to the north, including the Rrafsh,
Kosova, and the diaspora communities in Macedonia and elsewhere, are the Geg.
It is the northern Geg who have historically utilized the Kanun. 6 The Kanun
as such was first written down and published (posthumously) by the Catholic
Albanian priest and folklorist Shtjefën Gjeçov in 1933, 7 after his murder by Serb extremists.
However, the origins of the Kanun are to be sought after in the
fifteenth century, and folk history claims it as the work of Lek Dukagjin
(1410-1481) 8—that the Kanun is the work of
Lek Dukagjin is an assumption based on its relation to the Dukagjin family as
a whole, perhaps on the basis that their lands were the region where this
particular law code was enforced. 9 It is unknown whether the Kanun had been
written in any form before Gjeçov’s version, but it is well attested that the
law was passed on via the robust oral tradition that survives in Albania to
this day. 10
The Kanun is startling in its thoroughness, governing all aspects of
life, and is divisible into eleven sections 11: church, family, marriage, household
and
6 The
Kanun
is
one of several such law codes, or constitutions, and it is by far the most
prominent
and
well-known.
7 Mangalakova,
Tanya,
The
Kanun
in
Present-Day Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro (Sofia:
International
Centre for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations, 2004), 2.
8 Mangalakova,
The
Kanun
in
Present-Day Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro, 2.
9 Malcolm,
Noel,
Kosovo:
A Short History (New York: New York
University Press, 1999), 17.
10 Tarifa, Fatos, “Of
Time, Honor, and Memory: Oral Law in Albania” in Oral
Tradition, Vol. 23, No.
1 (2008), pgs 3-14, 3.
11 There is a twelfth
section not applicable to the above context: “Exemptions and Exceptions.”
Mangalakova,
The Kanun in Present-Day Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro, 2.
Valley Humanities Review Spring
2012
property, work, loans, pledge, honor,
damages, protection, and judgment. 12 Famed Victorian amateur anthropologist Edith Durham
noted in the 1920s, “Whenever in the mountains [of Albania] I asked why
anything was done…I was told, ‘Because Lek said so.’” 13
Kardare’s Broken April is an enchanting yet dark
novel set in the Albanian Rrafsh 14 which narrates the stories of
newlyweds Bessian and Diana Vorpsi, and the highland mountaineer Gjorg, 15 and how the lives
of these three characters are drawn together—and upset—by the Kanun,
particularly focusing on the destructiveness caused by the blood feud (gjakmarrje).
At the heart of the plot is the blood feud in which Gjorg, and his
family, are engaged: two generations ago Gjorg’s grandfather witnessed the
murder of his guest, drawing the Berisha clan into a decades-long blood feud in
which vengeance had to be meted out to the Kryeqyqe 16 clan for the killing of the guest,
because “when the guest whom you [are hosting] is killed before your eyes, you
are bound to avenge him.” 17 The blood feud lasts decades not because the Berisha
clan fails to take revenge, but because the blood feud requires an endless
chain of vengeance since Zef Kryeqyqe killed Gjorg’s brother and now Gjorg is
bound to kill Zef, and thereafter a member of the Kryeqyqe must kill Gjorg, and
so on. This unending cat-and-mouse competition between clans can, however, be
appeased by the two families coming to terms and settling on a price for the
last soul killed in the blood feud, much like the early medieval Germanic wergeld. 18 Gjorg’s
12 Ibid.,
2.
13 Malcolm,
Kosovo:
A Short History, 17-18. Durham goes on to explain that
the
Kanun
gained
more
obedience than the religious statutes of Christianity and Islam.
14 The highland
(malësi) plains of northern Albania, including parts of southwestern Kosovo and
southern
Montenegro.
15
Pronounced
/ɟɔɾg/; all pronunciations
herein will be cited according to the IPA. 16 /kɾy.ɛ.cy.cɛ/.
17 Kadare,
Ismail,
Broken
April
(Chicago:
Ivan R. Dee, 1990), 32.
18 Drew, Katherine,
trans.,
The
Burgundian Code (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania, 1976), 23. This
is one of many late antique/early medieval Germanic law codes or leges
barbarorum; others include the Code of Euric (480), Dictum
Rotaries (643), Lax Visigoth rum (654), et cetera. The so-
Valley Humanities Review Spring
2012
murder
of Zef opens the novel in mid-March, and he is granted a “long” bessa, 19 giving him until
mid-April to live, hence Kadare’s cynically realist title: unlike the April of
every other year, or the April enjoyed by any other person, Gjorg’s is broken
in two, one half during which to live and the other, to die.
Meanwhile, Bessian and Diana honeymoon away from 1930s
Zogian 20
Tirana in the Rrafsh, moving from kulla to kulla 21
and taking advantage of the elaborate hospitality system that governs
the Albanian highlands; Bessian observes that “to an Albanian a guest is a
demi-god.” 22 By happenchance, Bessian and Diana glimpse Gjorg at an
inn and this has an immediate psychological, even erotic, effect on Diana; he
becomes for her the representation of the harsh reality of the Kanun and
life in the Rrafsh. Throughout the story that unfolds—ending with
Gjorg’s death at the hand of the Kryeqyqe appointed to murder him—the
significance of the Kanun as a strict code of life for the Albanian
mountaineers and, likewise, the semi-mythological status that the
city-dwellers attach to their Kanun-dictated life, is explored, with the
issue of the blood feud—ethically, as a traditional and romanticized custom,
and even economically—at its center. This dichotomy, and its in-text
interpretation by the Vorpsis, informs one of the central themes of the novel:
the Kanun’s position between modernity and tradition. An examination of
this role that the Kanun plays in Broken April is shown in the
way that Kardare presents the Kanun’s governing body, the Princeship of
Orosh, which allows the reader to explore the
called
wergeld or “blood money” was an almost universal legal practice, but is
characteristic of earlier Eurasian cultures.
19 Thirty-day truce
in which the murderer (gawks) remains unharmed, but after which he is to
be
hunted
down by the avenging family.
20 It is obvious from
repeated references to the Albanian monarchy that the story is set during this
period,
that of the reign of King Zog I (1928-1939), also known as Ahmet Zogolli or
Zogu.
21 Kulla
is
a stone tower, used as a dwelling place in the Rrafsh.
22 Kadar, Broken April, 77.
Valley Humanities Review Spring
2012
personal
and confusing commentary that this premier Albanian-language author has
presented to non-Albanians.
In the words of Bessian, the Prince
is “not exactly a prince…and yet, in a way, he’s more than a prince…because of
the way he rules over all the High Plateau.” 23 In the homeland of the Kanun,
where “neither police nor government had had any authority,” 24 the power
of the Prince was founded on the Kanun and the entire Rrafsh
bounded by it, so that the Princeship acted “like a temple of the law, an
institution halfway between oracles and repositories of legal tradition.” 25 The Princeship of
Orosh also operated on an economic basis, surviving in part on enfeoffment 26 but also on
blood-taxes paid after every honor killing as part of the blood feud, a
financial undertaking so extensive that it required the office of Prince of the
Blood. Chapter Four (of seven) is an homage to the Princeship of Orosh, and
operates as a critical analysis of the Kanun and the blood feud as a
socio-economic system subject to the ebb and flow of history. Kardare
reaches the climax of his discussion of the Kanun by introducing the
Prince of Orosh’s brother, Prince of the Blood Mark Ukacjerra, 27 who makes his only appearance in this
chapter, and who, more than any other character, is concerned with the upkeep
of the Kanun. Kadare uses Mark’s unique position to pose the question of
the Kanun’s place in a modern world and of the denigration of tradition
in the face of modernity. While even the Prince of Orosh is modernizing,
embracing Zogian visitors and world diplomats, and encouraging university
23 Kadar,
Broken
April,118.
24 Ibid.,
119.
25 Ibid.,
119.
26 “Enfeoffment,”
i.e. a lord-vassal system, commonly known as “feudalism,” though this term is
marked
and under debate by many medievalists.
27 The book itself
uses two spelling—an editorial oversight—but this is the more correct according
to
Albanian orthography (the “Ukacierra” spelling was most likely meant for ease
of reading for the English speaker).
Valley Humanities Review Spring
2012
study, Mark is trapped in the
“blood-feudology” 28
of the Kanun. Here, Kadare uses fictionalized scholarly works to
critique the state of the Kanun: “one time elements of sublimity and
grandeur in Albanian life had become denatured in the course of time, changing
gradually into an inhuman machine, to the point of being reduced…to a
capitalist enterprise.” 29 Kadare contradictorily provides readers with an image
of the Kanun as both an outdated set of laws averse to modernism and a
tradition as vital to the Albanians as the lifestyle of the highlanders and the
national myth of the urbanites. This ambiguous portrayal of the Kanun,
however, is necessary and is analogous to anthropological studies that consider
the importance of tradition in defining identity, but weigh the moral
consequences of destructive practices. Indeed, this theme is elaborated on by
the most destructive aspect of the Kanun—the blood feud—and its
repercussions in the broken April of Gjorg and the broken marriage of the
Vorpsis, discussed above.
Ismail Kardare’s Broken April,
like Durham’s High Albania of the 1920s paints the picture of a society
living at the behest of the Kanun, and the few, privileged onlookers who
become enamored by their own fantasies of the Rrafsh’s “fairies,
mountain nymphs, bards, the last Homeric hymns in the world, and the Kanun,
terrifying but so majestic.” 30 The Kanun may be understood in the context of
its role as a framework for life in the Albanian highlands as portrayed through
the devastation caused by the blood feud and the institution of the Princeship
of Orosh. At the heart of the Kanun is tradition, unbroken for hundreds
of years; at the heart of that tradition is the Princeship of Orosh. But the
tradition and its upholding
28 Kadare, Broken
April,
141.
29 Ibid.,
141.
30 Ibid., 63.
Valley Humanities Review Spring
2012
institution—the entire framework of
Albanian highland or traditional life—are weighed down by a push toward
modernity, from within (Prince of Orosh) and without (the Vorpsis and
flashbacks to conversations with Tiranites). Thus, Ismail Kardare, a
self-exiled Albanian, calls into question the relevance of tradition in the
face of modernity, a theme which may be interpreted broadly as a comment on
Westernization and globalization, 31 or as narrowly as a comment on the contemporary
Albanian communist regime of Enver Hoxha 32 (d.1985). Kardare’s use of the Kanun
in Broken April, though a piece of obscure Albanian folk law to the
outside world, evokes an interpretation pregnant with universality while
providing a unique teaching experience for the reader uninitiated into the
world of Albanology. It is in the rich context of Ismail Kardare’s novels and
the works of other modern and classical Albanian authors that Albanian
literature and culture should be made known to the world, as there is perhaps
no better way—aside from language—to access and assess a people than through
their literary output.
31 Ironically, the
modernization is here affecting a “Western” peoples
32 / hɔdʒa/
Valley Humanities Review Spring
2012
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