Shostakovich, Kadaré and the nature of dissidence: an Albanian view

Musical Times, Spring 2005 by Koço, Eno

NEVERTHELESS, there were clearly difficult, even critical, moments in the lives of Shostakovich and Kadaré. In Shostakovich's case one of these came when two Pravda editorials of a directly threatening nature appeared in quick succession. As Volkov writes, 'the composer and everyone around him were certain that he would be arrested. His friends kept their distance from him. Like many other people at that time, he always kept a suitcase packed and ready [...] For nearly four decades, until his death, he would see himself as a hostage, a condemned man. The fear might increase or decrease, but it never disappeared.'

Kadaré, too, had to live under the same kind of threat. In the 19705, on a Sunday morning, I met Kadaré's sister Kadrie in front of the 'Soviet Bookshop' (as it was still called, even after Albania left the Soviet 'family'). She told me that she had been asked by her brother to check whether his book was still for sale or had been banned. 'He is hidden in his house', she said, 'and is waiting for my answer before he leaves the house.' On another occasion, after being heavily criticised on ideological grounds in the early 19805, just before a rally at the Union of Writers and Artists, he came into the lobby and asked me to sit next to him. I did not have any particular friendship with him, but he apparently needed somebody outside his circle of colleagues to be close to him. But I did not follow him since I had my little daughter in my arms, and I deeply regretted that I did not support him at that moment of crisis.

As is known, Shostakovich's and Kadaré's works had won critical acclaim outside the Soviet Union and Albania, and this fact was well used as propaganda in favour of the communist systems in both countries. But even though both men were given the freedom to travel and to be performed and published abroad, on certain occasions they were criticised publicly, and their works were censured for a period. In 1982 Kadaré was accused of deliberately avoiding politics by basing much of his fiction on history and folklore. This came after the first publication in Albania of his 1981 novel, The palace of dreams, and as a result it was immediately banned by order of the government. He had previously been banned and 'recovered', as in 1975, when he was forbidden to publish for three years after offending the authorities with a politically satirical poem. In fact, censorship for Kadaré had begun with his first novel, The general of the dead army (originally published in 1963), a survey of post-war Albania, about which there was an open debate in the League of Albanian Writers and Artists. I was present when that debate took place and I was amazed by the courage and competence with which Kadaré's novel was defended by Skënder Luarasi, another eminent Albanian dissident scholar. He represented a unique case of dissidence in the Albanian history of literature during the post-war totalitarian system.

Ambiguities

Shostakovich's works, like Kadaré's, harbour distinct ambiguities of programme and meaning. Both men's attitudes to their respective regimes were ambiguous, even in such light-hearted works as Shostakovich's Cheryomushky, as was cleverly reflected in the 1997 production by Opera North in Leeds. Yet in spite of the demands of socialist realism, Shostakovich fought to maintain an authenticity of feeling, by writing music which was sincere, truthful and loved by the people because of its inspiration and emotional depth.