Written by: Sabri Hamiti
August 28 marks the centenary of the birth of the famous Albanian writer, Át Zef Pllumi. He is the author of the following works: “Live Only to Tell You”, “Antipoetry for the Twentieth Century”, “The Great Franciscans”, “Ut Heri Dicebamus (As We Said Yesterday)”, “A Thousand Years Ago” (Events in the Land of Arbni)”, “The Brother of the Bushatli Pashallarvet of Shkodra”, “The Great Franciscans”, “History Never Written”, “Ten Years of Freedom”, “The Saga of Childhood”.
“Live Only to Tell” is a book about prison and the trenches, which reveals the hidden side of the Albanian communist dictatorship. Fueled by doctrinal dissidence that opposes love to violence, by political dissidence that opposes freedom to slavery, the work becomes a book of testimony and teaching. This is a masterpiece of its kind in Albanian literature and a work of global importance in the field of logography.
Father Zef Pllumi accepts the role of missionary, but turns into a rebellious missionary. His fundamental rebellion in the work “Live Only to Show” is a rebellion against “forgetting.” If something can be forgiven, nothing should be forgotten.
Father Zef Pllumi in “The Great Franciscans” has created a monumental work for the monuments of Albanian culture. His work is both a testimony (document), an evaluation (monument), and, at the beginning and end, an autobiographical work, like all his works, definitively proving that he is not only a writer (scriptor), but also a creator (author) of Albanian literature.
The work “The Brother of the Bushatli Pashallarvet of Shkodra” is a utopia in the form of a ukrony. Like any utopia that is born in the present, to escape into the past or the future, this one, while proving a desirable thing in the past, seeks a desirable and possible thing in the future. Which will be summarized as: “harmony and freedom for Albanians, in Shkodra and everywhere”.
“The Saga of Childhood” is a purely personal, even autobiographical, literature in which the author returns to the innocent world of childhood, to finally rest in a world where the thread of a new dream always begins for the life of the individual, as a testimony, and the life of humanity as a metaphor. This seems to be the last call, articulated in the form of a prayer, for human kindness and love.
He shocked his meditation on history and its truthfulness with the title “History never written”, even putting faith in writing into crisis. As Zef Pllumi added, writings are incredibly false, stories (of memory) are reliable and authentic. Later, in his work “A Thousand Years Ago” he has time as the guarantor of universal truth, while he breaks down personal truth into two variants: (Events of the Land of Arbën) and (Stories of the Land of Arbën). “Event” guarantees truth, while “Story” factifies its personalized derivation.
All his works are referential, with little fantasy and little fabrication. His masterpiece “Live for Yourself to Tell Me” is testimony, the book “The Brother of the Bushatli Pashalars of Shkodra” is a historical narrative, “The Franciscans of Mëdhaj” is a resonant and personal writing, and “The Saga of Childhood” is an autobiography.
With his masterpiece "Live Only to Tell", Father Zef Pllumi created the most important work of Albanian folklore, among the most well-known in the communist world, comparable to the works of Shalamov or Solzhenitsyn.
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