Memories of War and Violence in Anton Pashku’s Short Stories

Abstract

Albania is a state where political violence has been present for 45 years, 1945-1990. In our literature after the crash of communism many books were written. They are based on topic of memory of political violence. The Albanian literature includes author and works from Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, which use Albanian language. One of the most important writer of Albanian short stories is Anton Pashku (1937-1995). His short stories aims to discover the relationship between human, war, violence and life. He chose symbolic objects and situations, which describe confrontation of mind with memories. These memories are from real World War II, from occupation of Kosovo by Serbian state, from Albanian dictatorship, but are never named in the short story. The memory of war and violence influence everyday life of character. They live with fear, they are isolated from other people such as real world. They identify themselves with memory, they can not escape from memories. Element such as: smoke, machinery, fire, sound, noise, reveal memories. The short stories of Anton Pashku represent an universal relation of human and memories of violence that are present nowadays. Human and machinery, man and war, man and ethnic identity, human and freedom. The purpose of this presentation is to give aspect of artistic narration of memories.

DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2014.v4n4p17