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Elegy for Kosovo: Stories

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I am a fan of Kadare's and recomend all his books, this one in particular. What beautiful language and powerful image. This is also one of the few books of his that was translated directly from the Albanian, and not from the French, which is important too. We see Kosovo from a completely different angle, as a Serb and an Albanian are thrown together by fate during a medieval battle. The book is full of superb surprises.

Kosovo unraveled before our eyes in the ending years of the twentieth century. In ELEGY FOR KOSOVO, Ismail Kadare takes us back to the Field of the Blackbirds in 1389 to explain when, as the Russian proverb goes, the cloth began unraveling at the edges. There, Albanians, Bosnians, Romanians and Serbs loosely unite under Serbian Prince Lazar to fight the invading Ottoman Emperor, Murad I.

The author presents peninsular residents as quarrelsome types. Things get out of hand only when the newest kid on the block makes the fight ugly. Such happens, from the Albanian perspective, with the invading Slavs in the 5th to 7th centuries and the conquering Muslims in the 14th century.

Known for hospitality to guests, invited or otherwise, the peninsular fighters let the Ottomans get to the battlefield first. The peninsular battle campers then throw a loud party with much drinking and musical bickering while the Ottomans get a good night's sleep. The next day, the peninsular troops lose, and their leaders either hightail it home or become slaughtered captives.

The peninsular history draws on an old oral epic tradition, so minstrels are among the battle's surviving witnesses. They wander north, where only a Great Lady recognizes that the Greek-credited civilization cradling Europe is still among the peninsular fugitives. Accompanying them part of the way, a runaway Turk aspires to three faiths, and just as the three religions fertilize the peninsular killing fields, he too loses his life.

The diverse peninsular peoples never agree to one name for their homeland until the Ottomans call them Balkans. This is the apple of discord left by the Ottomans, along with the buried blood and intestines of their sultan. Kadare suggests that the blood feud can only stop by everyone starting anew. This echoes his autobiographical ALBANIAN SPRING, at the end of which he quotes the first known Albanian language published poem, the 16th century DIRGE, by Lek Matrenga, who asks for mercy since wrongs are everywhere.

Norman Maclean suggests in A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT that we can be so personally involved in facts that we need fiction for perspective. Thus, all of Kadare's novels make the Albanian mysteries familiar. ELEGY FOR KOSOVO in particular prepares readers to go tackle the non-fiction works, available through Amazon Books, which help to understand Balkan turmoil.

The French philosopher and scientist Blaise Pascal once suggested that we "imagine a number of men in chains and all condemned to death, where some are killed each day in the sight of the others, and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the condition of man."

It is also the image of Kosovo and the rest of the Balkans painted so vividly by Albanian poet and writer Ismail Kadare in his masterfully imagined "Elegy for Kosovo". Elegy consists of three inter-related stories centered on a famous battle that took place in Kosovo more than 615 years ago. On June 28, 1389 a combined army of Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians and Romanians waged a fierce battle against an Ottoman-Turkish army in Kosovo on the Field of the Blackbirds. The battle was seen as one in which the combined Balkan armies fought on behalf of Christian Europe to halt the surging westward expansion of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman army, led by Sultan Murad I was victorious. The Sultan was killed on the day of the battle and was buried in Kosovo. Ironically, despite their victory the Turks never followed up on this victory and did not return to the region for another 150 years.

The first part of the story takes us from the night before the June 28, 1389 battle and through the battle itself. In the camp of the combined army on the eve of the battle peoples who have long fought each other prepare to fight a common enemy. Old animosities are forgotten temporarily. The soldiers and officers, drinking perhaps too much, demand that their minstrels sing songs to prepare them for battle. The minstrels (who serve as narrators of the first two stories) sing battle songs but they are songs in which the Serbs speak of the horrid Albanians, and the Albanians sing songs of the hated Serbs. When asked why they rely on these old songs the minstrels respond that songs take long to change than alliances.

The second part begins at the end of the battle. The minstrels, along with the others, are devastated by the loss and begin wandering west. The Balkans were considered the `fringe' of Europe by Europeans even them. As they wander, some of the old animosities come back. They face hunger, suspicion, persecution and the occasional act of kindness.

The third part, "The Royal Prayer" is the most moving of the three. As noted, the victorious Sultan Murad I was killed at the battle and buried in Kosovo. This story is narrated in the voice of Murad's spirit, locked in his tomb. We read of his watching as the same battles rage around him, unresolved, for six hundred years. He catches snippets of information from newspapers tossed aside near the tomb. "From these I learn what is going on all around. The surprising names of viziers and countries: NATO, R. Cook, Madeline Albright. The slaughter of children in Drenice." The more things change.

Kadare has said, in commenting on the symbolic importance of the 1389 battle that "on the six hundredth anniversary of the battle in 1989, Milosevic launched the first massacre of Kosovars, and started the explosion of Yugoslavia." Kadare says, in the second elegy, that "[t]he Serb's eyes were filled with the same tragic laments. Both men were prisoners, tied to each other by ancient chains, which they could not and did not want to break." As seen through the eyes of Ismail Kadare the chains that bind the people of the Balkans are old, strong, and not easily broken. The beauty of his prose highlights the tragedy of what he describes.

Some may challenge Kadare's viewpoint or suggest he bears, as an Albanian, the prejudices of his ancestors. As an outsider all I saw was an exposition in beautfully constructed prose on a tragedy whose beginning cannot be traced and whose ending cannot be seen.

is told from the viewpoint of eyewitnesses. Although it is fiction: the message is clear, strong & real there are "rumors of impending war", "rumors of peace", "newly sealed alliances" so the story begins. Kadare's use of natural imagery and poetical lyrical language is unsurpassed. You understand how the anxiety of the mountain people adds to the tensions as political alliances are created, ancient memories of past battles won and lost are discussed while musicians strum on the gusle & bards sing about the past. The Turks, Serbs & Bulgarians (Byzantine empire) and other kingdoms once existed in cohesion ... but now with rumours & past memories inflaming emotions. the inevitable occurs. This is one *great* epic story told in about 120 pages!!!! Amazing detail making one feel as if present on the battlefield itself! Erika Borsos (erikab93)

While I took Western Civilization in college many years ago, the amazing professor Thacker managed to comment on the current situation in Kosovo circa 1998. Some kid had asked about what the Serbs and the Albanians were fighting over. His response was, "they just hate each-other and they have been hating since the beginning of time." Dr. Thacker wasn't very far off the mark.

And in "Elegy for Kosovo", world-renown novelist Ismail Kadare has attempted to deliver a big message through the use of a parable-legend. The message that blind hatred continues to spawn between the Albanians and the Serbs in the region for over a millennium. Yet, these very people fail to grasp why they hate each other so much.

Milosevic tried to evoke the battle between the Ottomans and the Balkan coalition as a tool to pursue his agenda of ethnic cleansing in the region. That's what sparked the attention of Kadare to the issue, who based on some historical research, and on the epic legends that get carried on from generation to generation wrote this nice account of the battle. As a matter of fact in that part of the world history and legends run hand in hand.

The book is short, and having read many volumes of Kadare, I was a little disappointed. However, the story is right on target. It is absurd to use a battle that happened over 600 years ago, as a tool to annihilate an entire ethnic group.

The style of narrative is pure, and makes it an easy one-afternoon-read. I would highly recommend this book to whoever is interested on the Balkan conflict, as a mean to sort through some of the cloudy logic surrounding this matter.

I often hear "polemic" applied to fiction as if it were always a weakness. In the hands of a storytelling master like Kadare, polemic becomes a strength of the novel. He uses a fiction reflecting on the battle for Kosovo with the multiplicity of Balkan nationalities semi-united against the unified Ottomans. He illustrates the Balkan divisions in the different instruments their singers (bards) use and in the repetition of old songs as a way of continually reminding the listeners of old animosities and injuries. I was reminded of an anthropolical paper many years back which explored how parents kept hatreds alive in Cyprus long past the normal period of cultural forgetting. Kadare shows what the academic paper tells. And through this showing, Kadare shows us something of human nature that extends far beyond the specific situation in the Balkans.

While this and several other books of Kadare are political protest, Kadare always lets the story and the poetry shine. Think of him, perhaps, as a very literary George Orwell Animal Farm (Signet Classics), William Golding Lord of the Flies : (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) or Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451.

The novel is a little short and makes you wish the author had expanded it a little more. Kadare is a master of historical novels. His message is clear: people of the Balkan have much more in common than they realize, but often they focus of their hatred rather than their common enemy. This novel is an analogy of the current situation in the Balkan. Kadare seems to dislike the word Balkan, and wishes the Balkan people would have found a name of their own for their peninsula, rather than allow the Turks to name it. I enjoyed this book.

Excellent. A poetry of the Balkan turmoil.

a lot of propaganda in here. i would not recommend this book to people who do not understand the history of the Balkans because they will mistake this book for the truth.

Every writer has a moral obligation and a great responsibility when (s)he decides to write a historical novel, specially one that can become someone's only truth or explanation. In such case, slanted and biased views are deadly, just like any weapon. That is why it is extremely important not to get into the trap of one's nationalism.

When Umberto Eco wrote his multifaceted masterpiece, "The Name of the Rose" he , as he himself put it, "read and reread" an infinite number of medieval chronicles and texts. It seems like Mr. Kadare not only failed to read any, he completely neglected the known historical facts of the period (around 1389 AD) inventing his own history and peoples. Or maybe this was a metaphor for today's cultural and political problems of Kosovo? In any case, "Elegy for Kosovo" is not worth reading. And here is why:


From the cover and front flap and through the text, this little book stinks of political, ugly propaganda:
-I happened to read Mr. Milosevic's speech at Kosovo (available on the net) and actually was amazed that anyone could call this a "call to arms and ethnic cleansing". He never called for repression. That rhetoric was used in order to justify the war crimes perpetuated on Serbs. Not many questioned the official media reports and thus, this big lie still remains a truth to a great majority.
-Contrary to what some "amazing professors" say, Albanians and Serbs did NOT hate each other "since the beginning of time". That is a great misunderstanding and neglect of actual connections. There was no animosity between the two peoples in Middle Ages. Quite the contrary. In fact, they coexisted just like anyone else in Europe until the "great" powers started meddling and applying the "divide and rule" formula little over a century ago.
-Mr. Kadare writes of Montenegro and Montenegrins. There was NO Montenegro in 14th century. The area was called Zeta and was inhabited by Serbs. "Montenegro" as a name was a much later "invention" by the Turk and the Montenegrin nation was Tito's "invention" in mid `40ies. Same goes for medieval Bosnia and "Bosnians" - Bosnia is/was a geographical entity where Serbs live(d). King Tvrtko was the king of Serbs.
-King Tvrtko did NOT take part in the battle of Kosovo. The news he received were of Serbian victory.
-Belgrade was NOT the capital of Serbia.
-Prince Lazar was NOT voted the commander in chief. He was the commander because he was the one defending his estates (page 23).
-No Albanians or Croats took part in the battle, not even all the Serbs. Some Serbian lords wanted Lazar's demise in order to grab his territories. There were no Hungarians either except MAYBE a few mercenaries. Hungary wanted Serbia weak for their own expansionist goals.
-Lazar's sons were NOT executed, in fact, the older, Stefan Lazarevic, would become one of the most interesting rulers of 15th century Europe (First knight of the Order of the Dragon, a poet, an always mesmerizing figure on European courts...).
-"Gjergj Balsha" was neither an Albanian nor an Albanian count. He was a Serb from Zeta who did NOT take part in the battle even though he was married to prince Lazar's daughter Jelena. His grandfather fought Albanian tribes. He was of a powerful Balsic family direct ancestors of which still live in Belgrade.
-Zeta was a Serbian territory. Today's Macedonia was Serbian territory as well. So, how is it that moving Cetinje (in Zeta) "two miles over" would lend it in Albania?! Same goes for Skopje (Macedonia) which in 14th century was a Serbian capital. Moving them anywhere would still be within the Serbian lands. This kind of writing on Mr. Kadare's part is exactly in par with the program for Greater Albania that would encompass Kosovo and large chunks of Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Greece of today. Similarly, the text on page 60 says: " We've left Albania" suggesting that Kosovo was part of Albania which was not the case. Fight over Kosovo started in 20th century.
-Minstrels singing about taking Kosovo from Serbs/Albanians is utter idiocy. That is one of the examples of projecting today's state of politics and myth into a 14th century history. Very dangerous.
-The battle was NOT a defeat of the Serbs.
-"The Serbs know how to curse better than anyone!" (p.64) Shows Kadare's partiality and unfairness.
-"...quarrels were always started by those who came last ... when the Serbs had come down from the north, the Albanians had already been there, in Kosovo." (p.68). Another complete fallacy. Albanians still feed on myth that they are the ancestors of the Illyrians, a myth made up in the romantic labs of 19th century Europian powers. It would take too much space and time to dive into this problem here. Let me just say that while Serbian existence is recorded from the 6th century onward (with some archaeological finds dating from 1-3 century) there is no mention of Albanians as such until the second half of the 11th century.

Mr. Kadare is a fine poet. However, his nationalism is immense and strong. Note that the weakest parts in his writings are always his odes to Albanian superiority and nobility.
Skip this little piece of propaganda, of innumerable falsehoods some of which I explained above, and get hold of "The three arched bridge" and kafkian "The Palace of Dreams". Always be careful when reading a historical novel specially if it's about a hot media topic. Check the facts yourself, thank God, it has never been easier to get informed.