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COPYRIGHT 2002 Modern Humanities Research Association
Ismail Kadare is one of the best known of contemporary Balkan novelists and probably the only Albanian writer known widely outside his country. Among Albanian dissidents Kadare has been a controversial figure, condemned by some on account of his ambiguous relationship with the ruling party of Enver Hoxha. (1) Nevertheless a recent commentator has written that 'no-one who reads The Palace of Dreams, one of Kadare's greatest works, could possibly accept the dismissive judgment of him as a party hack' (Malcolm, 'In the Palace of Nightmares,' p. 24). The novel, published in 1981, foreshadowed the re-valorization of ethnic identity as a socio-political category that has taken place in Central and Eastern European societies since the end of Soviet-style communism. Yet it was published in 'the strictest Marxist-Leninist regime on earth--with the possible exception of North Korea', (2) when 'that country was going through its most ugly and dangerous phase'. (3) Despite having been translated into French in 199[degrees] and English in 1993, it has been neglected by Western critics and reviewers, who have done little more than note the power of Kadare's writing and point to the influence of Orwell. (4) Kadare's language, Albanian, had virtually disappeared from global view during the post-World War Two era, and his novel belongs to an Eastern European literary tradition little known in the West. It is the aim of this article to raise the critical profile of The Palace of Dreams by showing the socio-cultural significance of material relating to little-known Albanian and Bosnian epic traditions used by Kadare to articulate the problems of imperialistic power structures and ethnic identity during a time of political change in the Balkans. The argument falls into three parts: the first is an analysis of the significance of Bosnian and Albanian epics in the novel; the second is an interpretation of this material in terms of the implied historical setting, and the final part is a reading of the novel as a political allegory in the Albanian context of the early 1980s.
The Palace of Dreams is set in the UOS ('United Ottoman States'), an imagined Ottoman Empire late in the last century. (5) The Palace itself, or Tabir Sarrail, is a vast state organization dedicated to the interpretation of the dreams of the subjects throughout the length and breadth of the Empire. All dreams are recorded, scrutinized for signs of impending social and political unrest, interpreted and classified. On the basis of the interpretations, policy is formulated by the Sultan and his powerful ministers, and the administration of the Empire is carried out. The most significant dreams are classified as Master Dreams and carry great weight in the decision-making processes. At the beginning of the novel, Kadare's protagonist, Mark-Alem, has just commenced working at the Palace of Dreams, first in selection and later providing interpretations of potential Master Dreams. The plot depends on the tension between Mark-Alem's function as an officer of the Sultan, and his position as the youngest son of an Albanian Ottoman dynasty at a time of political unrest in the Empire. Warned by his uncle, the Vizier, of the politically sensitive nature of his work at the Palace, Mark-Alem nevertheless misinterprets a crucial Master Dream, bringing about the downfall of his family. However, at the same time, he discovers in himself a hitherto unrecognized longing to reclaim his Albanian roots, which draws him to sympathize with the ethnic nationalism of his maverick uncle, Kurt. The novel ends with Mark-Alem torn between his sense of Albanian ethnicity and his blossoming career as a functionary of the Sultan's Empire.
Kadare uses the period of decadence, when 'the Turkish Empire was consumed by a slow fever', (6) to represent the changing dimensions of ethno-national identity both in the provincial homelands and at the centre of the Empire. Various powerful dynasties are jockeying for influence around the Sultan in Istanbul, while in distant provinces subject peoples are becoming restive. Central to Kadare's political vision is the opposition of ethnic community and empire, rendered as a political allegory of South-Eastern (Balkan) Europe. Power is wielded through the politics of inducement, intrusion and terror, and ethnic identity exists as the repressed substratum of the 'individual' and 'social imaginary' (Castoriadis). The historical costume allows Kadare to raise questions of ethnicity and identity, and social and political allegiance at a time when the discussion of these issues was prohibited throughout socialist Central and Eastern Europe. The setting in late nineteenth-century Istanbul bears resemblance to nothing so much as Moscow, Belgrade, Tirana, or any of the eastern bloc capitals in the last decades of the socialist era. Kadare's satiric and surreal image of the Palace is strikingly original in the literature of post-war European socialism. Like George Orwell's Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four, it is a powerful state institution in control of the mass unconsciousness of the Empire. However, Kadare's novel is more than a satire on the types of control typical of the Eastern European communist dictatorships. Alongside the political satire runs a second, intricately coded theme of ethnic identity at a time of decline and change in power-relationships in the Empire.
Mark-Alem is the pampered and privileged scion of a powerful ethnic Albanian dynasty, the Quprilis, who for generations have lived in the capital of the Empire as viziers, government officials and bureaucrats in the service of the Sultan. (7) The family name, Quprili, which Mark-Alem inherits through his mother's line, is a translation of the Albanian word Ura (meaning 'bridge') into the Slavic Qyprija or Kuprija. It refers to the family's original association with a 'bridge with three arches in central Albania, constructed in the days when the Albanians were still Christians and built with a man walled up in its foundations'. (The three-arched bridge possibly derives from Christian trinitarian symbolism, thus linking the Quprili family to the different historical destinies of South-Eastern Europe.) After the bridge was finished, the builder and founding ancestor of the family adopted after his first name, 'Gjon', the name of Ura (bridge) 'together with the stigma of murder attached to it' (The Palace of Dreams, p. 9). The symbolism of the bridge, with its powerful associations in the Balkan literatures, (8) introduces the theme of ethnicity as something deeply embedded in Mark-Alem's consciousness, a part of his individual imaginary, as well as part of the social imaginary which would manifest itself in the national uprisings of the Albanians in the late nineteenth century.
The Quprilis are a family of assimilated Ottomans, for whom power and prestige long ago took priority over ethnicity. Themes of ethnicity are present but dormant in the historical associations with the bridge, with Christianity, conversion, and assimilation into the Turkish Empire. The main symbol of Quprili power and identity is an epic poem in which the legendary deeds of the family have been preserved since the time of the Turkish occupation of the Balkans. Rhapsodists from Bosnia are invited each year to the home of the Vizier to recite passages from the ancient epic in the Bosniak language (that is, the Slav language of the Bosnian Muslims), accompanied on the single-stringed Serb gusla. (9) This private annual celebration has been a source of contention between the Quprilis and the Sultan. It is said that the Sultan is jealous of their cultural eminence when he himself can command nothing more profound than the eulogies of court poets. Like the spelling of the name 'Quprili', (rather than the Turkish 'Koprulus') the epic represents a provocation. It indicates the degree of Quprili power, prestige, and pedigree as a prominent Muslim family in the context of the interest groups and political factions around the Sultan.
At a family dinner Mark-Alem's uncle, the intellectual and playboy, Kurt, questions the role of the epic in the family's self-understanding. A heated discussion takes place, in which the Turkish occupation of Albania, the family's role in the Empire, and the ambivalence of the Albanians towards the Quprilis are raised. For the assimilated Ottoman members of the family, the Turks brought with them not slavery, but the freedom to share in the Empire:
I remember what a Jew said to me one day: 'When the Turks rushed at you brandishing spears and sabres you Albanians thought they'd come to conquer you, but in fact they were bringing you a...
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