Negative Impact of Ideology in Albanian Literature

Introduction

Ideology is broadly defined in terms and characteristics. There are some specifications which unify its usage every time we deal with it. It stands closely with other fields as politics, sociology or art and the way it is activated creates an impact on them.

The main concern of this research is to analyze the relation created between ideology activated in Albania during the dictatorship period and the influence it had on the literature. It is needed to operate with the term in its historical development in order to achieve the differences and to be familiar with its connotative aspects. It is also necessary a clarification of ideology nature applied in Albania during 1945-1990 related specifically to the literary field. The second part of the research deals with specific cases (authors) who suffered the consequences of ideology.

Ideology is treated briefly in its historical development point of view from Destuttto Frankfurt School and others as well. Also there are underlined terminological consistencies and differences of the concept in the works of some very important scholars, theorists, and critics. This part is considered as a theoretical segment which helps to understand the ideology concept in its historical context. There are taken in consideration especially ideologues who deal constantly with ideology in the shift created from philosophical point of view to its application on guiding and deciding how the literature should be looked at. This theoretical framework is necessary to explain the nature of political ideology which was installed in Albania after 1945, its strategy: orientations and limitation of Albania literature.

By embracing the socialist realism methodology, the ideology required that all literary works should follow rules like Zdanov Manifesto suggested.

The main focus of this chapter raises questions like:

• 1.

  How and why was set the ideological orientation in Albania and what its program was about?

• 2.

  How is deformed the relationship between literature as a free art with a schematic sterile form of production?

The important research part is dedicated to some of the most representative authors of the Albanian literature and the incompatible or problematic issues their work produced according to the political reception. Due to this intervention of the ideology in the reading and interpreting process, these authors experienced the lack of communication with their readers.

The connection between text and readers was limited through ideological interventions and this lead to a misreading process. Some of ideological ways that were used to dictate political influence in Albanian literature may be understood from analyzing these ideological actions:

• 1.

  Editing, adapting or erasing parts of the original literary texts in order to orientate and reduce the interpretation. (Migjeni, Mjedja, etc.);

• 2.

  Rejecting authors who were in coherence with political ideology (Fishta, Camaj, Koliqi);

• 3.

  Impeding authors to publish their literary works (Zef Zorba case);

• 4.

  Bringing authors to work in difficult work conditions in farms, factories or even mines, a punishment known as ‘education amidst the working class’;

• 5.

  Imprisoning authors for many years (V. Zhiti, A. Pipa, P. Arbnori, etc.)

• 6.

  And the most radical of them all: author’s physical elimination (Genc Leka, Vilson Blloshmi, Trifon Xhagjika etc.)

This paper analyses and synthesizes the ideology invasion in artistic production and its deforming process on the history of Albanian literature. It impoverishes the full panorama of a whole literary history, which could have been completely different from what we have nowadays. This interruption phase helps us to re-read, re-interpret and re discover authors who were in the black list of the dictatorial ideology. In order to evaluate the complete history of the literary phenomena in Albania, it should been taken into consideration the process of refilling the huge gap through analyzing the problems that come from this very dark period of the literary process.