Writes: Agim Vinca
After the news of the eternal departure of Rexhep Qosje, 1936-2026)
The news of Professor Rexhep Qosje's passing found me far from Prishtina. I was returning from Ulcinj after the promotion the night before of my book published in Podgorica. Everything went well, even brilliantly, thanks to the care of the publisher and the organizer of the meeting. On the way, shortly after I left the city, the phone rang. It was the chairman of the National Council of Albanians in Montenegro, Faik Nika, with whom I had almost just parted ways. He asked me if I had had any difficulty leaving the city, where the roads were being repaired on the eve of the tourist season. I thanked him for his care and when I was about to end the conversation, he said to me: "One more thing, professor. The professor we talked about a little while ago has passed away!".
I thought of my colleague at the Faculty and the well-known intellectual of this area, Ruzhdi Ushaku, in difficult health, whom I had also mentioned in the conversation. “No, said Faiku, Rexhep Qosja!” I was shocked. I was speechless. He also informed me that the funeral had already taken place, in the presence of the close family circle, according to the Professor’s written instructions.
Immediately, I remembered the conversation we had had a little while earlier at the Continental Hotel. While drinking coffee around the table, where my wife, Faik's fiancée, Arlinda (the evening's moderator), and the Albanian consul in Ulcinj, Arben Doçi, were also present, I evoked a memory from our joint work with Professor Qosen.
He was a member of the committee of one of my doctoral candidates, who had just submitted the third version of his thesis to me. Professor Qosja, who as a teacher was not known for very strict criteria, had some remarks about the thesis. “This thesis is not a monograph,” he had said, “but a collection of articles.” The remark was correct to some extent, but as a mentor I had already given the candidate the “visa.” The conversation, in which the third member of the committee was also present, lasted a long time. At one point, I, who had begun to lose my patience, said to him: “Professor, there have been much weaker candidates than this one who have received their doctorates!” He looked me in the eye, over his glasses, as he did on special occasions, and said: “Yes, but they don’t sell their minds, these (allusion to the candidate and his friends), sell their minds!” And he shut me up. But the defense, nevertheless, took place.
And now, the news of the passing of the man who waged so many intellectual battles in life, both orally and in writing, and who from now on will no longer be able to speak except through his great and unique work.
The news came to me and seemed almost unbelievable. It had not been two or three weeks, at most a month, since I had spoken to him and it never even occurred to me that this would be our last conversation. I knew that his health had deteriorated, but, I told myself, he is a tough guy and he will not give up.
I had planned to go from Ulcinj to Tirana to see my daughters (this is the word Professor Qosja used when talking about his daughters) and to meet my friends, most of whom were and are our mutual friends, but I changed my route. Even though the funeral had already taken place and there would be no "see you later", I still couldn't help but be in Prishtina these days. I wouldn't forgive myself.
At the Buna Bridge, where the Drini and Buna rivers meet, this great symbol of national unity, I stopped and had a coffee for the Professor's soul. Meanwhile, my cell phone rang nonstop. The calls and messages of condolence continued from Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia and the outside world (Visar Zhiti from Chicago, Ambassador Kicmari from Tokyo, Xhafer Shatri from Switzerland...) and the incessant calls from journalists asking me to go on their show or make a statement for their media.
The next day, April 24, was a day of mourning in Kosovo. I spoke on three Pristina television stations about the Professor and participated in the memorial meeting held at the Albanological Institute, where Prime Minister Kurti was also present, who delivered a kind speech as always.
I wanted to write a study-style article, but I gave up. I left it for later. Because I have written such articles before. I decided to deal this time not with the themes, ideas and thoughts of Qosje, but with some "chatter", because they are also part of everyone's life and biography, therefore also of great people.
The two greats of Albanian literature, Kadare and Qosja, had several clashes during their lives. The biggest one occurred in 2006 when they debated the identity of Albanians as a nation, a debate in which many others were also involved. Kadare rightly spoke about the European identity of Albanians, while Qosja, without denying this affiliation, stressed the need to highlight the oriental element, alongside the western one, in Albanian culture and civilization. One spoke mainly as a writer, the other mainly as a researcher, who sees the identity of Albanians as “composite”, such as Albanian society. Those who declared Qosja a “fundamentalist” on that occasion will have been disappointed and, perhaps, even regretted, when they saw that the “devout” academic left the will to be buried without religious ceremonies, which means without imams and hoxhalls.
It is not excluded that Qosja was jealous of Kadare's international fame, just as Kadare coveted the influence of Qosja's word on the vast majority of the Albanian intelligentsia in Tirana and throughout Albania.
But let's also look at the other side of the coin.
When Ismail Kadare left Albania and sought political asylum in France, in October 1990, Rexhep Qosja gave the "Voice of America" the famous statement, which, among other things, said: "I would like Ismail Kadare to have fought his mental battle for Democracy there, in Albania, together with his colleagues and other brothers. But Ismail Kadare has chosen a different path. We may not like this path, but it has been chosen by the intellectual they call Ismail Kadare."
We come to another, later moment. When Kadare passed away, in July 2024, Rexhep Qosja did not remain silent or curse, but expressed high regard for his "rival" and his work with "eternal values". He did the same a few months ago, when the 90th anniversary of Kadare's birth was marked, in January of this year, thus showing ethics and nobility in accordance with national tradition, but also with the great humanist, universal culture.
Mother Albania did not mourn her eldest son. The Prime Minister was content with just one sentence on Instagram: “Farewell, good Albanian!” That's it. Nothing more. A good Albanian can be a farmer who works in the fields, a teacher who teaches students in the classroom, a clerk who does his job in the office, a doctor who treats the sick in the hospital and many others. Rexhep Qosja, born in Vuthaj 89 years ago and who came to Kosovo, like many others, in the fifties of the century we left behind (there were also those who called him a “newcomer”), does not belong only to Kosovo, but also to Albania and the entire Albanian Nation. He was and continues to be a Great Albanian, not because he sought the unification of Albanians in one state (and not “Greater Albania”, as is mistakenly said), but because he was a great patriot, a great intellectual, a great scholar and a great thinker. And above all, a great scholar of literature and its great creator. If nothing else, Rexhep Qosja is one of the people who brought the current Prime Minister to power (professor Qosja's favorite word), telling him that as chairman of the SP he had to take his hands out of his pockets to fight the DP and Berisha, something Edi himself has affirmed on one occasion.
And here's the surprise! Berisha mourned Qosje better than Rama. He had the right to remain silent and perhaps even curse, because the academic from Pristina did not give him a beating for years, but the opposite happened: Sala spoke with choice words about his great critic. And don't go and say that Albania is a country of paradoxes!
Rexhep Qosja is not an individual, but an institution. With his departure from this world, an era in Albanian literature and culture, but also in our national life, closes: the “Qosja Era”. A man with inexhaustible energy and great dedication to creative work, it can be said that he created a literary and scientific opus, without which the Albanian culture of the second half of the 20th century and the first quarter of this century cannot be imagined.
In 2010, the WORK of Rexhep Qosje was published in 29 volumes, which is the largest corpus ever published in Albanian culture, but this is not his entire work, because in it, apart from the first three books, of his creative beginnings (Literary Episodes, Dialogues with Writers and Literary Criticism), his diary Witness in Historical Times, which covers the period from 1966 until the declaration of Kosovo's independence on February 17, 2008, is not included, as well as two or three other works published later. The last work For Freedom, Truth and Justice (2024) is an Ultima verba of a man who dedicated his entire life to the spiritual emancipation of his Nation, but also to the sublime values of human life: Freedom, Truth and Justice.
With his great, monumental work, he erected monuments to himself while still alive. “Exegi Monumentum,” said Horace in his Odes. Great in value and quantity, Qosje's work is an entire universe.
I could end this final word with a quote.
When Tolstoy fell ill and was bedridden, Chekhov wrote: "I fear Tolstoy's death, and even more so I am anxious. Why? Because his moral authority protects us from bad taste in literature and from servile behavior in society."
Qosja was a moral authority, which our creative and intellectual environment will miss.
Whenever something happened, for better or worse, in Kosovo or Albania, and anywhere else in the Albanian space, we waited for what Rexhep Qosja would say. And so over the years and decades. And his word was never lacking: fair, strict, clear, critical, but also wise, appreciative, inspiring and encouraging, according to the occasion and need.
But what are we going to do now? How are we going to act? We will look for what Rexhep Qosja said in his writings, in interviews, in articles, in studies, in dramas, in novels, in polemical texts, in literary and scientific works... Because Rexhep Qosja, the true, the wise, the arrogant, the visionary and the immortal, is there, in his books.
Published in "ExLibris" no. 384, May 2, 2026.
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