Dritëro Agolli was born on October 13, 1931, and died on February 3, 2017. He was an Albanian poet, writer, and politician. He studied in Leningrad, which was part of the Soviet Union. Agolli wrote poetry, short stories, essays, plays, and novels. From 1973 to 1992, he led the League of Writers and Artists of Albania. He was an important leader in the Albanian Communist nomenklatura.

Biography

Agolli was born into an Albanian Bektashi family in Menkulas, Devoll District. He and his family spoke Albanian in the Tosk dialect. He completed high school in Gjirokastër in 1952. Later, he studied at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Leningrad. After returning to Albania, he worked as a journalist for the daily newspaper Zëri i Popullit (English: The People’s Voice) for 15 years. He also served as a deputy in the Albanian Parliament.

Agolli first worked as a poet. His early poetry collections included I went out on the street (Albanian: Në rrugë dolla, Tirana 1958), My steps on the pavement (Albanian: Hapat e mija në asfalt, Tirana 1961), and Mountain paths and sidewalks (Albanian: Shtigje malesh dhe trotuare, Tirana 1965).

As a prose writer, Agolli first wrote the novel Commissar Memo (Albanian: Komisari Memo, Tirana 1970), translated into English as The bronze bust (Tirana 1975). His second novel, The man with the cannon (Albanian: Njeriu me top, Tirana 1975), translated into English in 1983, explored the theme of partisan heroism from a different perspective.

After these two novels, Agolli wrote the satirical novel Splendour and fall of comrade Zylo (Albanian: Shkëlqimi dhe rënja e shokut Zylo, Tirana 1973). The story follows Comrade Zylo, an unskilled official who works in a government department. His foolish actions, strange behavior, and eventual downfall are described by his observant subordinate, Demkë. Critics compared Zylo to characters in works by authors like Daniel Defoe, Nikolay Gogol, Franz Kafka, and Milan Kundera. The story first appeared in 1972 in the Tirana satirical journal Hosteni (English: The goad) and was published as a book the next year.

Agolli wrote:
*"For the poets yet to come, Dritëro Agolli:
For love, we never had enough time to write.
Though as lovers we loved insane.
The state wanted songs of freedom's fight;
The state wanted songs of fields of sun-ripening grain;
The state wanted we wretched scribblers
To teach courses to read and write,
To put up dams in the rivers,
To carry into the highlands socialism's light.
So do not be surprised, you poets yet unborn,
And do not judge us, for that which wasn't done;
We, next to you, will seem like hermits wild and worn,
Burdened with iron chains, and grain ripening in the sun.
We who never slept, from dusk to morning dew;
We who gave our world so many works of art:
Couldn't we have written love into just a line or two?
Couldn't we once have murmured 'oh my beloved heart'?
You want to believe that our hearts were dry?
Oh, if you'd seen how we burned among our beloved beauties!
The wonderful words we whispered, into the golden evening sky!
But we had no time to publish them, among our other duties;
And our printers had more important fish to fry."*

Agolli led the Albanian League of Writers and Artists from 1973 until 1992. He was a key figure in the Albanian Communist leadership.

From the 1960s until the Communist regime ended in the early 1990s, the League criticized writers it believed failed to follow Socialist Realism, a style of writing that supported Communist goals. Some writers were arrested, imprisoned, or executed. Others were harassed by the state secret police and faced attacks. Kasem Trebeshina was imprisoned, Pjetër Arbnori (also called "Albanian Mandela") was imprisoned for 28 years for his anti-Communist writing, Bilal Xhaferri was expelled and forced to flee to the U.S., Vilson Blloshmi was shot, and many others suffered persecution.

Some writers survived, such as poet Xhevahir Spahiu and writer Ismail Kadare. Kadare fled to France to escape the regime and later won awards including the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca, the Herder Prize, the Man Booker International Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award, the Jerusalem Prize, the Park Kyong-ni Prize, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

In the early 1990s, Agolli was a member of Parliament for the Socialist Party of Albania. He also founded the Dritëro Publishing Company and published new prose and poetry.

Agolli continued

Legacy

Even though Agolli was an important leader in the Albanian Communist group of key people, he is still read by many people in Albania.