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Even Sterjo Spasse has not found the reason

2023-08-14 20:37:00, Opinione Sadik Bejko

Today is the 109th anniversary of the birth of Sterjo Spas (1914-1989).

Sterjo Spasse is one of the most prominent authors in Albanian literature after the 1930s, with outstanding contributions. The novel "Pse?", written by him in 1935, is considered the first philosophical novel written in Albania. Philosophical novel written in the Albanian language.

Moving away from the usual novel themes of the time to mark a new typology of narration in the history of prose, the Albanian novel, pushing the literary genre towards modernism, Spasse remains an emblematic prose writer of those years. Even for today.

But at the same time he is also the type of authors, writers of the 1930s, who with political constructions adapted to the aesthetic requirements of socialist realism, conformed politically to the literary climate after 1944, he writes, but without losing the quality and strength of the art of prose.

In Ismail Kadare's memoirs, he is the typical decadent writer of the 30s. Kadareja 22 years old, Spasseja 44 years old. For anyone of this age gap, they call a colleague twice your age old... But when they are there in Moscow, they receive a telegram from Albania that "old man" Sterio has given birth to a daughter in Tirana. Ah ah... in 1958.

Further.

A writer, student of the Gorky Institute, a beauty from Ukraine named Vera, has fallen in love with Sterjo, the Albanian of the Institute.. With the Elder. With her 44-year-old husband. Man in black, old-fashioned suit, black, double-breasted, A late, sad, runaway crow from the 30s.

Kadareja, a 22-year-old boy, yelled at Sterio: what's going on with you, old man? You had a daughter in Tirana, do you have a girlfriend in Moscow? Later, much later, he would realize that a 44-year-old is not that old. As Kadareja himself says. In his memories now.

Spassja with his main novel "Why?" and other prose of the time, he represented to us the type of writers of the lost generation, those writers who in their books gave characters with no way out, characters who die or commit suicide at a young age, novels that describe states with a heavy and spirited psychology pessimistic... That's why these writers in the world were called decadent.

This Albanian "decadent" was an exotic curiosity among his communist colleagues at the Maxim Gorky Institute of Writers in Moscow from 1958 to '61. Among writers younger than him. Between communists with other parties. There he was learning how to leave philosophical pessimism ala Schopenhauer, to become politically, aesthetically optimistic, a revolutionary optimist and a Marxist preacher...

Many of the writers of the Gorky Institute, and female writers, says Kadareja, were surprised to have a decadent among them, S. Spassen. Some of them silently, from afar, adored our decadent .. pessimist Spasse.

Later, in the cultural landscape of Tirana during the communist era, Spasseja will be remembered as a very friendly man. His house on Rruga e Kavaja, right behind the Catholic Church, was the place where you could find writers of all ages, from all directions and generations. The hospitality, the simple style without distance of the Spasses drew writers like Mitrush Kuteli, Mustafa Greblleshi, Nonda Bulkën and Petro Marko, linguists like prof. Mahir Domi... who came from the 30s. With a coffee, brandy or a glass of Prespe wine, you can find there Fatmir Gjatan, Llazar Siliqin, Nasho Jorgaqin, Dhimitër Xhuvanin, I. Kadarenë, prof. Ziaudin Kodra, but also others of his children's age.

With the corpus of his last novels, novels with a theme from the history of the Albanian Renaissance, Sterio Spasse renewed the poetics of his prose, remaining a prose writer with outstanding creativity.

A writer and... man this Spassja.

Note/ In Tirana of the 50s and 60s, he was considered a surviving writer of two eras. His authority continued to grow. Perhaps from the survival and in those times of a writer with a name coming from the "past" regime. The other writers in the voice of the "past regime, those of the time of Zohu, of the kingdom", were on the run, killed in prison, in the mines or in the swamps.

Sterjua still remained a teacher, writer. They worshiped him even without reading it. To anyone who bitterly tried to find the "Why" of life's enigmas, to the one who asked in shock "why and why did this and that happen to me?", the tyrants of the time responded with a joke: You are looking for Why?

- Not even Sterio Spassja found the reason. You try in vain, you cannot find Why.