Albanian Poetry Emerging from the Aftermath of the 1999 Kosovo War: Memory, Trauma, Revolt

Abstract

This article explores the memory of war, trauma, and revolt in Albanian poetry emerging from the aftermath of the 1998–99 Kosovo War. It focuses on constructing Kosovo Albanian post-war poetry and asks about the avenues of literary representation of war. It examines the work of Xhevdet Bajraj, Arben Idrizi and Halil Matoshi, focusing on the subjects’ positions – exile and national victimhood in the case of Bajraj; critique of violence in the case of Idrizi; disillusion and trauma in the case of Matoshi. The article also finds that Kosovo's post-war literature stands in a broader framework of the literature from ex- Yugoslav republics, providing a geographical and cultural background to war poetry. The view and interpretation of the literary response to the Kosovo War aims to highlight poetry that keeps memory about the war alive, as well and explores the impact of war, to protest against violence and domination.

Keywords:

• Kosovo war
• poetry
• memory
• trauma
• revolt
• poetry as social activism
• disillusionment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 All translations are the author’s own, with edits by Vlora Konushevci, poet and translator.

2 We must emphasize here that in the last five years in Albanian literature in Kosovo, there has been a large increase in the number of literary works that thematize the war, from different and varied perspectives and approaches.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Blerina Rogova Gaxha

Blerina Rogova Gaxha (1982) was born in Kosovo. She is a poet, essayist, and literary scholar; she has a Ph.D in literary sciences. Her awards include Laureate of the International Prize for Literature, Crystal Vilenica Award (Slovenia, 2015), the National Prize for the best work in poetry (2010, 2020) and the best work in literary criticism (2022). She has given numerous presentations at literary festivals and bookfairs in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia, Ireland, and Macedonia, and she has been a guest writer at international writers’ residencies in Vienna, Split, and Novo Mesto. Her poems and essays have been translated and published in German, English, French, Italian, Slovenian, Croatian, Greek, Romanian, Turkish, Bosnian, and Macedonian. Her work has been presented in the anthology of European poetry Europe Grand Tour, 2019. Gaxha’s essay ‘Easy Life,’ written for the project Archipelago Yugoslavia of Traduk, has been translated into several languages and published in major Western media. She has published Gorgonë (poetry, 2009, winner of the National Prize for Poetry, 2010), Kate (poetry, 2013), Forms of Kadare’s prose (literary criticism, 2015), She comes from the East (poetry, 2016), Thasë (poetry, 2020), and Death in Modern Albanian Literature (monograph, 2021). She is author of numerous research articles published in national and international journals.