Abstract
The eastern European contribution to debates about Europe and Europeanness is understudied in literary and cultural studies. This essay will explore the contribution through a study of Ismail Kadare’s Dosja H (The File on H, 1981). The novel describes the visit of two Irish-American anthropologists to the northern Albanian borderlands in the 1930s in search of the descendants of Homer (the ‘H’ of the title), the singers of epic ballads for which the region is famous. Speculating on the Homeric-Illyrian roots of modern Albania, Kadare lays claim to an ongoing ‘European’ identity for the post-Ottoman, once largely Muslim, nation, but simultaneously emphasises the divisive nature of all myths of origin, raising doubts about the possibility of a unitary definition of the continent.
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Notes
- 1.
See Peter Morgan, Ismail Kadare: The Writer and the Dictatorship 1957–1990 (London: MHRA/Maney Publishing, 2010), p. 54.
- 2.
See István Bibò, Die Misere der osteuropäischen Kleinstaaterei, trans. by Béla Rásky (1946; Frankfurt am Main: Verlag neue Kritik, 1992), p. 47.
- 3.
See Anon, ‘Legends of Mujo and Halili’, trans. by Robert Elsie, Albanian Literature, http://www.albanianliterature.net/oral_lit3/OL3-05.html (accessed 31 July 2015), and Anon, ‘The Ballad of Constantine and Dhoqina’, trans. by Robert Elsie, Albanian Literature, http://www.albanianliterature.net/oral_lit2/OL2-04.html (accessed 31 July 2015).
- 4.
The first full edition of The Highland Lute was published in 1912 and was edited and enlarged over the decades until the definitive edition appeared in 1937, only three years before Fishta’s death.
- 5.
The Albanian epics originated in Illyrian antiquity, he writes, but were suppressed in ‘the long night of the Turko-Islamic occupation and by the fierce chauvinist passions of neighbouring lands’ (Kadare, ‘Foreword’ to Qemal Haxhihasani, Luka Kolë, Alfred Uçi and Misto Treska, eds, Le Chansonnier épique albanais, trans. by Kolë Luka (Tirana: Academie des Sciences de la RPS D’Albanie, Institut de Culture Populaire, 1983), pp. 7–10). See also Morgan, Ismail Kadare, pp. 241–5.
- 6.
Kadare, ‘Foreword’, p. 9.
- 7.
Ethnic unrest began to escalate in Kosovo in the early 1980s, shortly after the death of Marshall Tito unleashed the forces of destabilisation which would come to a head at the start of the next decade in the break-up of Yugoslavia.
- 8.
Kadare considered Hoxha’s silence a betrayal of Albanian ethnic identity, attributing it to the dictator’s fear of information about his private life held by the wartime Yugoslav partisan leaders (see Morgan, Ismail Kadare, p. 120).
- 9.
The northern Muslim tribal leader, Ahmed Bey Zogu, ruled as King Zog 1 until 1939. Zog stabilised the economy with Italian financial support, but also opened the way for the Italian fascist regime of Benito Mussolini to use Albania as a bridgehead for military expansion into the Balkans. On the night of 6–7 April 1940 the Italians invaded Albania in preparation for the October 1940 attack on Greece.
- 10.
See Kadare, The File on H, trans. by David Bellos (1981; London: Harvill Press, 1997), p. 8. Page references are to the English translation of The File on H and are given in parenthesis after quotations.
- 11.
See, for example, Rexhep Qosja, Realiteti i shpërfillur: Vështrim kritik mbi pikëpamjet e Ismail Kadaresë për identitetin shqiptar (2006).
- 12.
Kadare, File on H, p. 169. The term majekrah (‘wing-tip’) refers to the ritual gesture accompanying the rhapsode’s performance (see ibid., p. 87).
- 13.
See Valtchinova, ‘Ismail Kadare’s The H-File and the Making of the Homeric Verse: Variations on the Works and Lives of Milman Parry and Albert Lord’, in Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers and Bernd J. Fischer, eds, Albanian Identities: Myths, Narratives and Politics (London: Hurst, 2002), pp. 111–13; and Pipa, Contemporary Albanian Literature (Boulder: East European Monographs; New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 94.
- 14.
White, ‘Kosovo, Ethnic Identity and “Border Crossings” in The File on H’, in Peter Wagstaff, ed., Border Crossings: Mapping Identities in Modern Europe (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2004), p. 23.
- 15.
Crawshaw, ‘The File on H.: Metahistory, Literature, Ethnography, Cultural Heritage and the Balkan Borders’, in Reginald Byron and Ullrich Kockel, eds, Negotiating Culture: Moving, Mixing and Memory in Contemporary Europe (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2006), p. 61.
- 16.
Both White and Crawshaw tend to assume that Kadare is being ironic at those points where the text does not tally with their arguments. White’s ‘border crossings’ thesis avoids the questions raised by Kadare’s deep commitment to the Albanian epic tradition and his inclusion in the novel of anti-Serb elements. Crawshaw, in a similar vein, notes that ‘Kadare cannot be seen as wholly neutral’, but tends to rely on irony and ambiguity wherever he cannot square his thesis with the text (ibid., p. 68).
- 17.
Revision of this chapter has benefited greatly from the constructive critical input of Andrew Hammond and Danica Jenkins, to both of whom I offer my thanks.
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Morgan, P. (2016). The European Origins of Albania in Ismail Kadare’s The File on H . In: Hammond, A. (eds) The Novel and Europe. Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52627-4_5
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