The palace of dreams

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The Palace of Dreams ( Albanian  Pallati i ëndrrave ) is a novel by the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare from 1981. The work was conceived between 1972 and 1973 and written between 1976 and 1981. It is widely regarded as one of Kadare's masterpieces. It is an anti-totalitarian novel, written and published in a totalitarian country. Although history attacks the Ottoman Empire at first glance , it knocks down any totalitarian system that seeks to exert absolute power over the individual.

After an emergency meeting of the Albanian Writers' Union and a public condemnation by Ramiz Alia , the designated successor to Enver Hoxha , the novel was banned two weeks after its publication, although the book was already sold out "in an absurd twist" by then.

The Palace of Dreams is said to be in the Ottoman Empire, but in a deliberately inaccurate past shadowed by myth and supposed to represent the modern totalitarian state. The story follows the rapid rise of Mark-Alem, a young Albanian of the powerful Köprülü family in the Ottoman Empire, within the bureaucratic regime of the eponymous palace. He is commissioned by this seedy ministry to collect, study, and interpret the dreams of the subjects of the empire in order to uncover the master dreams that are believed to determine the future fate of the sultan and the state.

background

Kadare disguised an excerpt from the novel as a short story and published it in 1980 together with the stories The Torn April , " Doruntina's Homecoming" and The Wedding in a collection of four novellas entitled "Gjakftohtësia" (Cold Blood ) . Due to its seemingly historical nature, the exodus went unnoticed by the censors . The following year Kadare managed to smuggle the entire novel under the same title into the second edition of "Emblema e dikurshme" (Signs of the Past) . Having already been given the green light once, the story managed to escape the attention of the censors again.

It was only after its publication, however, that it was noticed how much the novel's setting resembled downtown Tirana , especially Skanderbeg Square , from which the Central Committee of the Labor Party of Albania, a few meters away , could clearly be seen. The Palace of Dreams buffet and archive reminded readers of the real-world equivalents in this building. Similarities between the totalitarian atmosphere in the novel and the climate of terror in the People's Socialist Republic of Albania were also picked up by readers, as was the fact that the novel, although set in the Ottoman Empire, shows little attempt at historical accuracy. On the contrary: the novel is rich in deliberate anachronisms and ambiguous passages, the aim of which is to make the story as current as possible. This is a common feature of most of Kadare's novels.

plot

The Palace of Dreams, which takes place in the sybaritic , if somewhat sluggish, atmosphere of the Ottoman Empire, is, according to Kadares, the realization of his long-term dream of constructing a personalized vision of Hell . Developed as a modern counterpart to Dante's Inferno , it compares literary critics with similar literary fictions by Franz Kafka , George Orwell , Evgeni Zamyatin and Jorge Luis Borges .

Mark-Alem is a twenty-year-old Albanian, a descendant of the (real) influential Köprülü family at the time of the greatest power in the Ottoman Empire. At the suggestion of his uncle, the vizier and foreign minister, Mark-Alem is offered a job with the mysterious and feared Tabir Sarai (Palace of Dreams), a government office responsible for the study of dreams. Although he is inexperienced, he is employed on the basis of a “recommendation that hangs between threat and patronage ('You suit us ...')” in the “Selection” department of the palace, where he is obliged, among other things, for a long time Make list of interesting dreams and design interpretations of the more noticeable dreams. These are then passed on to the more skilled interpreters in the "Interpretation" section. Their task is to create a shortlist for the master interpreters in the "office of the master's dream" who use much more than experience and dream dictionaries and decipher the symbolism of the most emblematic master's dream, the message of which is passed on to the sultan at the end of each week. Since dreams are viewed as God's messages, it is believed that these master dreams contain the answers to the future of the kingdom and can help to avert calamities and remove possible threats.

As he climbed the hierarchical ladder within the Tabir Sarai in record time - to his own astonishment - Mark-Alem gradually realizes that the labyrinthine palace holds many secrets and exerts much more influence than is publicly recognized. This ranges from subversive dreamers responsible for the products of their unconsciousness to torture and responsibility for the death of entire families based on dream symbolism - something that, in essence, gives virtually unlimited power to whoever controls the palace .

An allusive dream that he comes across while still a dream voter will eventually prove directly linked to the Köprülüs, who allegedly reveals them as Albanian dissidents within the Ottoman government and led to a bloody conflict between the sultan's and the's Vizier leads. The confused Mark-Alem is caught between the front lines, unaware of the extent of his guilt, responsibilities, and even identity.

censorship

In early 1982, the novel was severely condemned and banned in a special conference of the Albanian Writers' Union in the presence of several members of the Politburo, including Nexhmije Hoxha and Ramiz Alia, due to the obvious allusions to the Stalinist dictatorship in Albania . Kadare himself was accused of covert attacks on the regime and allusions to the current situation in Albania. However, due to its internationally recognized literary significance, the authorities were reluctant to imprison or reprimand the kadars, fearing international backlashes that they were keen to avoid given the country's rapid economic decline. The Western media responded to the condemnation of the novel with protest.

German translation

A German-language edition was first published in 2003 in translation by Joachim Röhm , who also added an afterword, by Ammann-Verlag in Zurich , ISBN 978-3-250-60042-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Robert Elsie : Albanian Literature: A Short History . IBTauris, 2005, ISBN 978-1-84511-031-4 , pp. 175 .
  2. ↑ Ag Apolloni: Paradigm e Proteut . OM, Pristina 2012, p. 24 .
  3. ↑ a b James Woods: Chronicles And Fragments: The Novels of Ismail Kadare . In: The New Yorker . December 20, 2010 ( newyorker.com [accessed March 28, 2020]).
  4. ↑ a b c Julian Duplain: From the Land of plots: "The Palace of Dreams". In: The Independent . February 21, 1993, accessed March 28, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Bashkim Kuçuku: Kryevepra e fshehur: odise kadareane . In: Ismail Kadare (ed.): Pallati i ëndrrave . Onufri, 1999, ISBN 99927-30-31-5 , pp. 199-200 .
  6. ↑ a b Joachim Röhm: Epilogue to the “Palace of Dreams”. (PDF) Retrieved March 28, 2020 .
  7. ^ Jeff K. Hill: The Politics of Dreaming: of corridors endless and identical. In: AngelFire.com. March 27, 2003, accessed March 28, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Éric Fayé: Œuvres completes . Ed .: Ismail Kadare, Éric Fayé. tome 1st Editions Fayard, 1993, ISBN 2-213-03008-1 , p. 25-26 .