Rafaela Prifti
Alicka’s storytelling in Stone Slogans lays one episode after another with cynical awareness and mindful deliberation to reveal the anguish and despair that has taken hold of an existence controlled by fear in communist Albania. After reading the first story eponymous with the book’s title Slogans in Stone, every narrative starts to feel like those natural rocks that are collected and placed purposefully so that the reveal in the end is complete and striking. Though the content is fictional, the experience of living a-slogan-led life was very much real. The “billboards” crafted with stones display a pro-communist state rallying cry, and, taken together, the stories bring into full view a recurrent theme in Alicka’s novel. Regardless of what the words written in stone say, what they spell is hopelessness and repression since the intention of slogans is to perpetuate the power of the powerful. Reflecting on the present impact on Albania’s history, it’s worth asking what it feels like to read Ylljet Alicka’s first novel in the US now.
Alicka’s Slogans in Stone invites the reader into a world where injustice and alienation are normalized to the point where they appear commonplace. Andrea, the main character, who has just graduated from college, is assigned to a Northern mountain village in Albania to start his job as a schoolteacher. Ironically he soon realizes that he is on the receiving end of getting some brutal lessons on the school’s ‘unreasonable’ expectations that revolve around politics and ideology and have nothing to do with teaching. The primary task assigned by the administration is the executing and overseeing an outdoor display of party featly, unrelated to education but essential to survival. In an environment of extreme partisanship and indoctrination, Andrea finds that “working hard”- his father’s advice before sending him off to his first teaching job – doesn’t lead to being professionally rewarded whereas “tending” to slogans is an effort that is repaid with a comfortable existence. The second piece of advice from his father before going to the Northern village was: “Pay attention because life is hard.”
Alicka’s matter-of-fact-narration style is the literary tool exemplifying that no disturbances can come to the status quo. At one point, the suggestion for a new material for the slogans – white silicate blocks instead of natural stone – gets condemned by the District Party Committee, since “students are caught stealing bricks from construction sites” and, as the School’s Principle puts it, because “the natural-made materials express the spontaneous character with which the masses express their own free views.” The explanation is met with Andrea’s complete agreement since his return to teaching at school after a six-month disciplinary transfer to the farm. The communist grip was even more firm outside of Albania’s capital because being diligently overzealous meant better jobs, which translated into better pays and other perks for the party loyalists. The submission and fealty portrayed by Alicka permeates every corner of life. “Three reports from enterprise “N” describes the outpouring of people’s grief over “the death of the Commander,” in which, Alicka chronicles the mourning of the Supreme leader Enver Hoxha, who ruled Albania for forty years. A fleeting moment of a possible turning point is just as briefly wiped away by public displays of grief while the Secret Service informants take it upon themselves to frantically observe, record and file reports on the nature and intensity of individual expressions of mourning the ruler. Sarcastically, “even the informants were initially obliged to train and learn about the various ways people grieve, how they weep, the psychological and spiritual impact of this weeping, different ways of crying, defining genuine or fake tears, tears of delight, sorrow and so on.”
In the story “The Tree Planting”, Lind, a university student, gets thrown in prison for “the crime of being in possession of a banned book, written by a foreign author.” He is sent to “interrogation on charges of propagating bourgeois literature,” and then, without evidence of any kind, is “accused of attempting to flee the country.” The significant escalation of his indictment translates into drastic and severe consequences for Lind’s life. Yet, the linear narrative of the story belies the tension and the unfolding drama, which is Alicka’s signature style. Lind’s mother, and his only family member, is never allowed to see him. Lind’s passing away in prison generates a twofold drama for the inmates who made an attempt to get a little more food rations and got caught, and, far worse for the mother who desperately asks and digs feverishly around the prison walls for her son’s body. The guards, who do not even remember the spot where they threw the young man’s corpse, are amused that the holes dug by the mother will serve now to plant trees, a task assigned to them by their superiors. “The Tree Planting” is a hauntingly beautiful story where purity stands next to repugnance, where compassion and humanity are contrasted with cruelty and callousness.
Seeing the contrast between what was and what could be, Alicka’s reader feels the anguish that pours out of his stories. While the setting of most of the collection is Albania, the last stories are set in Venice and Paris. There again, through a mixture of humor, sarcasm and encounters with colorful characters, Alicka uncovers the discomfort of seeing things as they are.
It is hard to escape the hold of the Communist era slogans in the psyche of Albanians. Ylljet Alicka’s writing of Stone Slogans delivers a cautionary tale from the past that speaks to our future. Early this year, the author had book talks in New York and Boston community sparking interest in reading, re-reading and, hopefully, publicizing Stone Slogans in the US. The English translations by Robert Elsie and June Taylor of the selected stories coalesce flawlessly the accuracy and faithful precision to the original Albanian language.
Ylljet Alicka is an Albanian author and screenwriter. The publication of Slogans in Stone elevated his literary career to international prominence. He successfully adapted it into a screenplay titled Parullat (Slogans). The French Albanian co-production received the 2001 Foreign Film Award at the Cannes Film Festival that year and then the Golden Prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival. Alicka has authored seven books and several screenplays. His novels have been translated into more than twelve languages. From 2007 to 2013, he served as Albania’s Ambassador in France, UNESCO, Portugal and Monaco. His new novel Histori Njerëzish të Zakonshëm recently translated in Italian Piccole Coincidenze Della Vita Coniugale received favorable literary and press reviews.