By Eduard M. Dilo
A look at the memories of the poet Pëllumb Lamaj, from the “Prison Diary” block!
Memorie.al / In my hands I have a bunch of creations of the poet, screenwriter, writer and translator Pëllumb Lamaj. His writings are simply written, full of feeling, love, sincerity, dedication and clear thinking. They are verses of the poet who killed his dream, shot his youth, but did not defeat him, in his soul he remained free, with a beautiful soul. He comes to creations, exactly as a rebel poet. There, handcuffed, there between the bayonets that dripped Albanian blood, where the bird, when it entered the death camps, was seen as a provocateur, where the dog was an inseparable friend, with those who suffered when the executioner was about to shoot the prisoners, was sentenced to hanging…! The poet grew up and became a man, there he became an erudite, master of more than five foreign languages.
He became a historian because he learned a lot from those true Albanians studied in the West, who were very determined and who suffered from the patriotism of being Albanian. There he formed his character, there he learned how a patriotic man should be, how a true Albanian should be.
His verses, his writings in prose, have a voice over evil, they have reality, they have color, they have majesty. His verses are verses that should enter the real Albanian literature and the students learn what it means to love the Motherland, for the Nation, for the people, what it means and dictatorship…!
Pëllumbi not only writes poetry, but also stories, documentary scripts, translations, essays…! Among them we mention; “Mother’s hands”, “Killed love”, “Two drops of tears”, “When the red monster died”, “What comes out of the cat, mice will hunt”, “You are born noble, you don’t become”, “New Year”, “Statue of Liberty”, “Twenty years today”, “Sinners”, “Fourteen-year-old microbourgeoisie”, “Kulaku”, “In the name of the people”, “Renegades”, “Larot e oborri”, etc.
There are also various translations by Viktor Hygo, Cabriele Anunzio, P. Shelly, Gerarrd De Nerval, Teodor Storn, Scaroni, Secheti, Leopardi, Fides, G. Ungareti, K. Rosseti, etc. His verses really bear pain, but the pain is for the injustices done to the Nation, our Motherland, by the leading cliques, which unfortunately still continue. The verses carry an anticipated reality, there among the barbed wire, where the night was long, terrible, never seen anywhere…!
The blood stains scattered on the walls of the cells, the cries of those who were tortured, the names carved with pain, on the walls full of moisture and mold, that this boy at a young age, at the most beautiful age, was kept in handcuffs, made so that his free spirit inside would explode with these verses, which he has so sensitively carved:
“Within four walls,
surrounded by terri,
I crawl without raining,
I don’t know where the sun rises from.
Within four walls,
stunned by loneliness,
shadows surround me
darken the whole cell.
Within four walls,
frostbite,
I’m waiting for midnight
to turn to GOD.
Within four walls,
and why deep night,
in vain I wait for GOD,
he is in heaven…”!
(“The Cell”, 1979)
This very guillotine environment, under the dim light, where only rats were permanent companions, where moldy bread, with little water to moisten the rotten lip, was the leitmotif from which the powerful explosion would begin. When they took him to the spacian hell, he found there many fellow sufferers who were over 25-30 years old, severely punished and without hope that they would come out alive.
“What does the civilized world say, what does the West say”? – those who were suffering asked with interest and a glimmer of hope – I looked at them and at myself. I didn’t want to ruin your dream and kill that little bit of hope…! And one cold winter’s night, deep in the heart of the mountain, in that pit of death, in the gallery of the second zone, in the dim candlelight, I would put down on a piece of paper these verses:
“Eh statue, statue of Liberty,
how many crowns wither on the forehead?
echoes of love that were never given,
skulls of unburied martyrs,
Oh statue, statue of Liberty,
the only hope, the only fire,
the only hope where hopes lead,
mixed with screams., drained in blood,
Oh statue, statue of Liberty,
the only light that keeps us alive,
but we ran away without meeting,
Believe me, our killers will come to kiss you”!
(Statue of Liberty -1979).
Very powerful verses, a prediction, which we would never like to be like this…! The verses are just dedication, to awaken the human and national feeling, to make the Motherland right. A man who grows up with a free spirit cannot be otherwise, he is right for what is right, he is a negator of negations, he is noble and with a pure soul. Such is the poet, in the verses written at that time (1979).
He was clear in his thoughts, prematurely matured by the sufferings that passed through the sufferings of his beautiful young life, he had clearly understood the purpose of the barbarians who tried to tire him spiritually, mentally, physically, so that one day they would become victims and the soulless persecutors found it easy to close the page of the half-century-old communist genocide crime, so barbarically practiced on the most noble, intellectual and patriotic layer of the nation. He finds the strength to dream and express his feelings as frankly as the peers he left behind in the school benches where they handcuffed him:
“Sadness is a flame today,
over barbed wire,
and tired eyes,
directed by the sky
In pursuit of a rebellious cloud,
That fled with speed,
to distant nests,
painted your face
and immediately the machine guns and bayonets,
directed by me,
turned into petals of love…
why are you so far away
today is summer day
and I the red rose,
I can’t bring it” (1986).
How many wonderful verses colored with love, stirred with pain there among the barbed wire, where the youthful heart forgets the suffering and sends greetings of love to the one he left in hopeless solitude.
A true standard-bearer, with verses that enter your soul and make you read with pleasure. Find verses written for the fallen, those whose graves are still unknown, where to put a flower. Verses that; “to wake up the living”, but “these Medes had died in time”, even though; “it fell to the sirens to wake up the mangroves”, “except for the wet shadow I noticed in the background” – says the Poet. Seeing this reality, very disappointed for him, continues:
“Tired, overwhelmed, I let go of the ship,
in the turbulent sea with gales and storms,
I cut the waves towards the lonely island,
where amazons and birds chirp,
well, it was written to come back one day,
by the shore where the nan frags swim,
I will not fall for the loud sirens,
I will return the wine glasses and the sails will be released”.
Uncompromising with the right and justice for the right, he has made peace with himself, and it cannot be undone, to be different…!
“I never became a tool of politics,
and why did politics call me to prison,
it is the den of villains and intrigue,
conspiracy named whore
What about the lilies of the yard?
Poets, bone-licking deputies,
all their lives remain nothing but urinals,
poor people who can’t touch FREEDOM…!
All my life I remained a rebel,
sometimes I don’t even know why,
I only know that I made peace with myself
and I never change this socket”.
I continue browsing the pages, I stop at this very powerful poem that contains an undeniable reality:
“All your life you sang to monsters,
when he died and cried in every verse,
now as an exception to Slavocommunism,
you have no choice but to spit up
You were the first to give two thumbs up,
party secretaries, youth consomolas
spit, with feet, treads on the red gravel,
and oh… the torches of democracy have risen!
You were the first to flee to the West,
red birbo without Religion and Homeland…
you who all your life opens but a grave,
the shadow of death follows you behind,
don’t forget the lightning that comes down from the sky,
The woes and misery of an unlucky people”.
We hoped for democracy, in that democracy that we suffered and dreamed about, but we got nothing but disappointment, only sadness and persecution as before, that they are the ones who were, they are the ones who can be anything, but never democrats and humane.
There is no way it could happen otherwise, if they were a little humane, they should have given the class that suffered that Dantesque hell the place it deserves. Those who suffered, these people so humane, noble and righteous to GOD, patient to the point of self-denial, not vindictive and criminals, wanting to see the Motherland and the entire nation progress, as a protest for the injustices that continue, sacrificed themselves as in the case of the “Hero of Democracy”, Lirak Bejko, whose poet co-suffering in prison with him, engraved these verses on the epitaph:
“You fled, brother of suffering, you flew up,
where only Angels live,
took with you the miseries of this world,
now only God is your shield,
In the hunger strike they are reluctant,
those whose lips never smiled,
conscience of the Nation, symbol of Freedom
the only wealth, they have a Flag”.
Each of his writings, each verse that are only writings and verses of the soul, contain in themselves the human side of this big-hearted man, for whom everything is but the Motherland, mother Albania, the place where he grew up, the place where he became a man in chains – the signs of which we still see -are writings that kept him alive, kept him with hope in Liberty, even when under the thick bars, in those narrow cells, full of smoke and humidity, he passed the most beautiful age, the age of dreams, the age of love, the age of playing with friends, the age deprived of everything and everything, youth!
The poem “KOSOVËS MARTIRE”, which the poet recites with a sinned love in the family, is a poem of dedication and praise over the years and times we pass, and that the martyred Kosova is waiting to climb the mother trunk…, it is a dedication that the son of Vlora it brings the echo to the creches and hills of Kaçanik and Rugova, which have remained alive as in legends, Shote and Azem Galica, Xhem Gostivari, Shaban Polluzha, etc.
“One hundred years the tree of Freedom was cut,
but the roots of the Nation were deep,
they were soaked in the blood of martyrs,
Kosova sprouted from generation to generation.
Kosovo fought for a hundred years.
no, the Albanian did not surrender,
star the lands of Ethnic Albania,
thanks to the Jashari Family.
Martyr Kosova marches free,
longing eyes seek the mother trunk,
the clock of the Illyrian race is striking,
who is a man, stand up”?
How can the evil year ’97, when the “communist revolution” took over and destroyed the whole of Albania, sabotage the issue of Kosovo martyrdom, in its denied right. How can the destruction of Vlora, the Holy place of all Albania, the place of the Albanian “pilgrimage” pass in silence?
This is how he writes:
“Clouds swallow Karaburun,
and they poured upon Sazan,
the Adriatic Sea begins,
the lightnings fry Kuz-Baba.
In Tirana divided into parties,
Bolshevik and renegade,
let the smoke go to Vlora,
women are used to crying.
Oh, my red hair,
how was he not filled with blood?
and eat your offspring,
how did that stomach not burst”?!
We wish the Poet further success. It is the living testimony of the survivors from Spaçi-hell, it is the worthy bearer of the legacy of those whose bones are still unknown. Memorie.al
