This originally
appeared in the Wales Arts Review
Twilight of the
Eastern Gods
by Ismail Kadare
193 pp., Edinburgh:
Canongate, 2014.
translation by David
Bellos from the French translation by Jusuf Vrioni
Reviewer: B.J. Epstein
Twilight of the
Eastern Gods is, at its heart, a novel about words and writing. It’s about
telling stories, and the importance of literature. It is also an ominous tale
about politics, history, and geography, exploring the Soviet era and its
concomitant political beliefs. Since the time and place frequently are depicted
as rather creepy here, writing, too, can seem to be a suspicious activity.
The main character is
a young foreign writer who has gone to study in a literary institute in the
Soviet Union. All the students are well-known writers from their own regions,
but despite their drinking and partying, they are not typical students. “At
long last, after overcoming their adversaries, having accused them of
Stalinism, liberalism, bourgeois nationalism, Russophobia, petty nationalism,
Zionism, modernism, folklorism, etc., having crushed their literary careers and
banned the publication of their works, having hounded them into alcoholism or
suicide, or, more simply, having had them deported, that is to say, after
having done what had had to be done, they had been inspired to come to the
Gorky Institute to complete their literary education.” (pp. 43-4) Completing
their literary education, it seems, involves dedicating themselves to Socialist
Realism, which doesn’t quite work for our protagonist, who sometimes thinks
about and employs the folklore of his native country in his writing and his
everyday life.
In other words, though
the Institute and the harsh political situation seem to conspire to disenchant
the students in regard to literature (and also in regard to other aspects of
their lives, such as romance), the protagonist still retains his passion for the
written word, even if he just barely does so.
From a translation
angle, an interesting aspect of this book is that it is a relay translation,
albeit one that was delayed by thirty-three years. Jusuf Vrioni translated
Kadare’s novel from Albanian to French, and preeminent translator David Bellos
used Vrioni’s text to make the novel available in English (rather than
translating from Albanian to English, in other words).
Bellos includes a
helpful introduction to the novel, explaining some of the context behind it. He
notes that the work “re-creates Kadare’s experience of this strange ‘factory of
the intellect’ [i.e. the Gorky Institute for World Literature in Moscow], set
up to produce new generations of socialist poets, novelists and playwrights.”
(p. v) Kadare apparently wrote and rewrote chapters of Twilight of the Eastern
Gods over fifteen years, and the novel wasn’t first published until 1978 (the
French version by Jusuf Vrioni appearing three years later, and it included
sections that Kadare felt he had to take out of the Albanian original). Some aspects
of the novel would be hard, or harder, to follow without Bellos’s information,
or even without larger knowledge of the historical period (for example, Antaeus
the Greek’s situation, pp. 74 fwd.).
While the novel is
about the general themes mentioned above, it is based on an actual event: Boris
Pasternak being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, much to the displeasure
of the Soviet powers-that-be. Bellos discusses how “[t]he account of the
Pasternak campaign given in Twilight of the Eastern Gods has nothing fictional
about it: the discovery of a part of the typescript in the Writers’ Union
residence, the co-ordination of the press, radio and television campaign, the
roles of specific individuals, right down to the inexplicably sudden halt – all
these things really happened…it is also clear from this account of the
persecution of Pasternak that Kadare could imagine finding himself in the same
situation.” (p. ix) Indeed, Kadare did face similar charges and complaints to
Pasternak, “but in the end his real response to the constraints of living as an
international writer under a paranoid, isolationist Communist regime was the
write a novel that is also a declaration of fidelity to Albania and its ancient
folk culture.” (p. x) This duality – loyalty to both a place and to freedom of
ideas – comes through very clearly in the novel.
In short, Twilight of
the Eastern Gods is a fictionalised account of Ismail Kadare’s own experiences,
and it sheds light – even if only twilight – on a challenging historical, cultural,
and political period, while also encouraging the reader to recognise and admire
the power of literature.
