By VISAR ZHITI
Part One
– When we read Mërgim Korça…! –
Memorie.al / This is the third book of writings by Mr. Mërgim Korça, the sharp analyst, essayistic orator, researcher of our modern history, its polemicist, and, consequently, of current affairs as well. He entered the field of this kind of writing powerfully and confidently, with a full baggage of genuine knowledge and experience, not as a late fiction of his, which the conditions of freedom would have secured for him, but he felt called by the time, to tell the truth, where it was unknown, covered up, or forgotten intentionally or not, to uncover unknowns of national importance, that would give dignity to our history, there where he had struck. Nearly 10 years ago, Mërgim Korça published his first book, “Unwritten Histories,” where he surprised us with the analyses he brought, making us acquainted with great intellectual, religious, and patriotic personalities, he performed a kind of defiant resurrection of them, but also an accusation against those and the system that did the opposite.
He did not delay, and three years later he brought out his second book, “Shedding Light on Historical Distortions,” where his mission is explained already in the title. Discoveries and unveilings of national values, with the previous surprise and novelty. And now here is the third book, which appears as a continuation of Mërgim Korça’s work, a triad, where the author gives his invaluable contribution to remaking the icon of eternal Albania, he intervenes carefully where the damages are, with competence and concern, as well as with Olympic calm, he recounts the great values, removes the mud thrown upon them, and brings out the golden gilding that the work inherently possesses.
As such, I would say that Mërgim Korça has become our modern classic of analyses, a likeness of the knowledge of our modern history, works and language above all, a captivating user of the two dialects of Albanian, of stances and courage in resolving the knots of events and conflicts, as he manages to portray times and those who made the times.
His word, as much as it has the pathos of discourse from lecterns, just as much has the intimate simplicity of conversations with a friend, the rigor of the scientist and the inner grandeur of the thinker, who carry memory, authenticity, fact, document, statistic, and respect for the deeds and those who performed them, and everywhere he possesses love for the country, as a legacy and ideal, as an inner action.
Embracing the aforementioned mixed qualities, Mërgim Korça’s writings are difficult to determine properly what they are, what genre they belong to; moreover, I would say it is not even necessary, because what matters is that they are useful and needed, they unfold time and unravel issues, synthesize and clarify and open debates, but also close them. They have been read in assemblies, in Albania and outside it, mainly in the USA, they have been published mostly in media, but sometimes they have not dared to publish them. Being a book, together, they enrich publications in the field of Albanian thought.
THE PAST THAT DOESN’T GO AWAY
“We know how to make our future, but we do not know how to make our past…”! More or less, this is the ironic, but also playful, saying of a world-famous writer from a great country, who knows how to mock both him and others. It seems to me that this statement fits us more than anyone else, who, while we are cold-blooded about the future (not to say careless as a collective), but sure that it will come, we deal with the past so much and with so much amateurism, year after year we touch the same issues, always the same and always according to our own interests, and we act according to former mentalities, so much so that we can say we have created a great disagreement with the present, almost a chaos.
This perhaps comes as a continuation and at the same time opposition to the harsh years of the dictatorship, where there was “prison order” and “cemetery quiet,” while Albania tries to part with the past by passing through a long and sacrificial transition. Naturally, the changes are great; Albania is now open and seeks to live the life of a democratic country, without the proper experience of democracy and with a grim legacy of a totalitarian, brutal government without elementary freedoms.
Mërgim Korça’s writings, I would say, take from this subject matter, which becomes their concrete content, from the life of the country anyway, from reality and from those who change this reality, for better or worse, or change themselves according to this reality, why and how, and the reliable author sheds light on the unclear or forgotten, or on what is not known correctly and completely; often he recounts as a memorialist, believing that through detail the whole can also be understood.
The author seems as if he seeks or as if he guides us to understand that it is important that our common past has not yet become history, in the sense of an experience of the country and of our collective march forward, but often also backward, although visions for being an identity and a prosperous people, part of the Euro-Atlantic world, of its culture and spirit, have never been lacking. Such visionaries are also the spiritual friends of the intellectual Mërgim Korça, about whom he often writes and commemorates.
One of the messages of this book seems to be this, which can be summarized: The past should constitute a wealth of deeds according to a national program and collective strategies, ideas and values, of successes and losses, of grandeur and pains, etc., etc., which should serve and do serve the present as a secure ground from which the necessary synergy must be produced.
Also, the work of Mërgim Korça helps us understand why our recent past, surprisingly, still has the power and suggestion to divide us just as it divided us when it was a wild present, and the insufficient and improper knowledge of it has made and continues to make many useless things repeat, protractingly prolonging the transition, allowing statesmen and politicians, products and legacy with few exceptions, to become the leader-causes of this transition and themselves to be transit names! Consequently, the need for civic, wise, and courageous stances, for serious scientific knowledge, is greater than ever. And they are felt as a necessity. Sometimes they are welcomed more than they are understood, or vice versa, understood but not welcomed according to the clan of interests.
Mërgim Korça is among those sober minds that judge with honesty and strictness – yes, yes, strictness – with the ability to place phenomena in their circumstances and time, and from there they unfold proper knowledge and useful values, and among the multitude of issues, concerns, and troubles the country has, they know how to seek that what is most appropriate possible, the best, be done, so that society becomes even more capable in predicting what may come, so that we are not caught by surprise, but that many things are summoned for the benefit of the country.
One of the concerns of our history, the misunderstandings with it, even to the point of abuse, is the issue of Albanian collaborationists, which has its specifics, conditions, and results. Mërgim Korça is the best explainer of this issue, the most truthful and persuasive. Collaborationism is inevitable and as complicated as it seems, just as simple is its solution; it suffices to see whether collaborationism was in favor of or against the country…?!
FLIPPING THROUGH THE GREAT DRAMA
Mërgim Korça, too, is a particle of our modern history, not a maker of it, but a sufferer, and as such, a witness. But if we return to that Orwellian concern about how we might be able to construct our past, since we know the future (just for the paradox, ignorance is also knowledge and knowledge ignorance), I would like to “flip through” Mërgim Korça’s past, as much as we are allowed here – who he is, where he comes from, etc. – because those things would make us understand the author and his work better.
The Korça family has made history and has been struck by history. I will not go far into factology, but in my books, “Roads of Hell” and “Torn Hell,” where the characters are real and the events real, besides the sufferings in prison, I also tell something about outside the prison, about people they knew, because history is everywhere, and from time to time Mërgim Korça also appears. Here is what is said in a somewhat ordinary conversation in the internment city of Lushnja, under the dictatorship:
“Lushnja has produced all those artists. Let’s count them…! We mentioned Vaçe [Zela], Vath Korreshi, Margarita Xhepa, Pavlina Mani, Loni Papa, Ilia Shyti, and his brother, the painter Zoi? Leave him, he’s escaped. Do you know Mërgim Korça, the engineer who invents agricultural machinery? He knows all those languages, he was born in Austria. You should be proud of your father, he dared and told that to my father, not only about the high duty, minister of education – he was my minister – but also about the death he chose in… Prison.
Ah, that’s why the engineer’s wife, Doctor Mimoza, is so good with those who have a bad biography. And the priest Irené Banushi, have you seen him in construction, beardless? I know Llukani’s grandfather, an Orthodox priest, he doesn’t leave the house because he didn’t want to cut his beard, do you know how long it has become? – he drags it along through the house…!”
And here, I bring another, more important part, now I’m entering the prisons of the dictatorship, where life is horrifyingly concentrated and resembles history, and when it doesn’t enter history: “And the other Minister of Education, Xhevat Korça, do you know what he did? The father of engineer Mërgim Korça in Lushnja, who…! Yes, yes. And what did he do? A hunger strike, the very first in the prisons of communism. He decided to put an end to his life, he couldn’t live like that. And he was educated across Europe, an Albanologist, and translator.
He alone managed, in the archives of Belgrade and Vienna, to locate and translate over 5,000 pages of documentation, called what – ‘Acta et diplomata Austro-Hungarica’ – yes, yes, that’s it, everything written about Albania, which are now kept closed in the Albanian State Archive. While they locked him in Burrel prison. That’s the reward, the honor…! They also seized his library; Koçi Xoxja took it, while other militants took the house furniture.
Listen, Xhevat Korça had been sentenced to death three times. First by the Turks, then by the Greeks, because he worked for Albania and Albanians as an opponent. Then by the communists, that’s how. Then they sent him to Burrel prison. The terror was there. The cells were packed full with the most renowned intellectuals, whom do you want – the speaker of parliament, Mihal Zallari, or the scholar Visarion Xhuvani, there were from Dodbibaj, from Kokoshi… Vuçiterna, Bitincka, Kurti… Aleksandër Çurçia, Father Pjetër Mëshkalla, Dom Shtjefën Kurti, Gjon Shllaku, Mborja, Alimerko, Leonidha Kume, the Vrioni family, many. Xhevat Korça decided, in the name of life and its sacred dignity – these may sound like big words, but there are people truly destined for greatness – he, therefore, decided to put an end to his life.
He chose a hunger strike. It was the first time it happened. We didn’t know there were such acts. We had always been hungry. Xhevat Korça wanted to protest against the injustices and against the merciless dictatorship. To show the executioners, and not only them, that above life itself there are other, higher, untouchable powers, that there is also morality, also personality, and inner freedom. The state possesses people’s lives and even their deaths, although everyone has something of their own life in their hands, a little more of their death, but even more of their secret purpose, if not all.
Pain, suffering, hunger, sublime sacrifices pass from one prison to another, we carry them, thrown here and there, the very air does. You are simultaneously in the cells of Burrel, in the muds of the Death Marsh in Vloçisht, in canals, on the airport tarmac where a strong wind blows, in mines, rocks fall, we are all killed, and we rise again as ghosts…! The first day of the hunger strike began. Mr. Xhevat did not accept the prison soup and the piece of bread. He pushed them away with his hand, with contempt…!” Memorie.al
To be continued in the next issue
