Written by: Visar Zhiti
When a people dares to change, (meaning: the government more...), they know how to experience the era as always new and useful, I was thinking... After reading about the elections in Hungary, where after 16 years Viktor Orban lost and the opposition won with Peter Magyar, I wanted to say something about the two Hungarian Nobel Prize-winning writers, but I'm starting with the political question: Why do you win and why do you lose?
Why did Viktor Orbán win four times in a row and why did he lose? He is truly one of the most dominant figures in European politics in recent decades. He promised Hungary stability and order, sovereignty and identity, subsidies for families, tax cuts and support for the middle class. And he did, I read them again. Orban took a very tough stance against immigration. He increased control over institutions and influence over the judiciary, etc., etc. He entered into conflict with the European Union, which had a negative impact on the economy. Likewise, and his stances on Russia and the war in Ukraine, etc., etc. And fatigue from long-term power comes, consumption, say opinion leaders and supporters begin to demand change. The opposition unites… The winner Peter Magyar comes from within the system, a conservative of the Center Right and therefore became even more credible. He did not simply demand a change of government, but almost a “regime change”. Investigations into the way public funds have been used, the creation of structures for the return of abused assets.
Serious fight against corruption. Restoration of institutional democracy. Greater independence for the judiciary. End of political control over the media. He promises a free, European Hungary. Issues that our Albania also needs very much. 16 years in power. It should not have been so common for our time after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the communist empire. The leadership must be changed, because even good ideas and projects are enriched... etc., etc., and I could continue to speak like in an electoral campaign... Hungary wanted change again, Hungary that speaks to the world and with the courageous voices of its writers. Therefore...
And I also wanted to talk about two modern Hungarian Nobel laureates in literature. It's relevant to the issue, isn't it?
THE TWO NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING WRITERS
Imre Kertesz and Laszlo Krasznahorkai. One came from the prisons and camps of the Holocaust, from the experience of extreme suffering and pain of the century, while the other from the metaphysical anxiety of the contemporary world now. Both have man facing the system of fear and the destruction of meaning. And perhaps change begins again when a people dares to reconsider itself without illusions again. And literature is reborn when man refuses to be silent, that's what I was saying to myself.
What did these two writers bring to their Hungary? Did they talk about politics or patriotism? No. Were they part of the government? On the contrary. And they are not. Do they interfere with electoral campaigns?… What they have done and are doing is greater, more valuable and more important than ever. I would like to summarize something, as best I can here:
1. Imre Kertész (1929 – 2016). Nobel 2002. …showed Auschwitz and Buchenwald, not with pathos, but coldly, almost as if it were “normal” to tell us that absurdity and horror can become part of everyday life and you can lose freedom and identity invisibly. In totalitarianism (Nazism and communism), can a person in inhuman conditions remain a person? When I was writing about prison literature, in the book “Cards of Condemned Realism and the Underground Pantheon”, I also took help from Imre Kertész. According to him, the Holocaust is a universal experience… that does not divide, but rather unites – and he emphasizes that – “the Holocaust has created a culture” and the literature of this culture began much earlier, it could even inspire both the Holy Scriptures and Greek tragedy – the two pillars of European culture – so that the unforgivable reality could give birth to forgiveness or catharsis.
“Europe is not only a common market and a customs union, but also a common spirit and spirituality. Whoever seeks to become part of this spirit must overcome, among many trials, that of moral and existential confrontation with the Holocaust” (Imre Kertész “Il secolo infelice”, – I had found the book in Italian. My dear.)
2. László Krasznahorkai (1953), Nobel 2025. …shows that absolute power feeds on silence. And silence, if it continues for a long time, seems like order… Power needs silence. Man, not. The citizen understands that obedience does not save him, it only empties him.
And a day comes when fear becomes more tiring than freedom. No flag can cleanse the blood, and no word can cover the truth.
Then the darkness begins to break, both from the light coming from above, and from the voice rising from below.
What voices! I love them… – Mbioposition – major.
I met Laszlo Krasznahorkai in Slovenia at a poetry festival, I showed him his empathy for those who suffered and wrote in prisons… According to him, no power is stronger than the truth it tries to hide and no war can completely eradicate it. In times of terror and destruction, art remains the only place where one can escape from the lies of power.
(Art in the face of apocalyptic terror).
Literature exists beyond all pressure and expectation and preserves hope… that beauty and dignity still exist. Like the soul. And with the daily courage to improve…
Did another literature have to bring about another change or does another change bring about another literature? – I was wondering. Post-dictatorship Albania did not show true empathy towards the persecuted, human suffering, but also towards the literature that came from prisons and exiles, it condemned it again with oblivion, especially the current, prolonged and corrupt power of the sons of the dictatorship Bloc. When they should have condemned the difficult past that our fathers left us…
Is literature, which is both conscience and memory, to blame? In our case, it was to blame, and it is no longer even discussed. Socialist Realism, gnashes its teeth… But a people who do not read? Of course it is to blame. Because it starts with oneself, with each self. I am stopping here. Change is a shared culture.
t7 live
