Lapidari I © the Department of Eagles · Departamenti I Shqiponjave, 2015
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Për çdo ripërdorim ose shpërndarje, duhet distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of t’ua bësh të qartë të tjerëve kushtet e autorizimit të kësaj pune. this work. First published in 2015 by · Botuar për herë të parë në 2015 pranë Punctum Books, Brooklyn, ny & The Department of Eagles · Departamentit të shqiponjave, Tiranë. isbn-13: 978-06-923504-6-1 Translations · Përkthime Jonida Gashi (23–7; 81–8; 97–104; 115–24) & Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei (29; 33–7; 45–7; 53–5; 125–8; 133–40) Design by · Dizajn nga Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei Cover image · Në kopertinë Lapidar dedicated to the 1st Offensive Brigade, Pishkash · Lapidari kushtuar Brigadës së 1-rë Sulmuese, Pishkash als[ –38] “We Raise Our Eyes and Feel as if She Rules the Sky”: The Mother Albania Monument and the Visualization of National History Raino Isto 1. Introduction the crowds below (fig. 1).2 Reporting on the commemo- On the morning of May 5, 1972, Enver Hoxha and the ration for the newspaper Zëri i Popullit, Agim Shehu de- party leadership, together with hundreds of citizens of scribed, in particular, those mothers who had come to the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania, gathered on a honor the dead who had given their lives in the struggle hill overlooking Tirana from the southeast, in the Cem- against fascist occupation and in support of the Popular etery of the Martyrs of the Nation.1 This Martyrs’ Day Revolution: celebration was the first to be held in the new martyrs’ cemetery, a complex that – in a more modest manifesta- They hold clusters of flowers to their chests as if tion – had previously occupied the hill of St. Procopius they held their own sons. They bring these flow- in Tirana’s Great Park [als–8]. Those assembled stood ers to leave for their sons, together with the feeling on an open platform before the centerpiece of the new of a mother’s gratitude and warmth with which cemetery complex, the imposing figure of theMother they grasp them to their breast. However, they are Albania monument [als–12], which rose 22 meters over something greater than simply the mothers of their children. We see their true face before us, above 1 atsh, “Miting Përkujtimor në Varrezat e Reja të Dëshmorëve të 2 The statue itself is twelve meters high, mounted atop a ten meter Atdheut me Rastin e 5 Majit,” Zëri i Popullit, May 6, 1972. pedestal. Fig. 1 P. Cici, Në mitingun përkujtimor (At the Memorial Gathering), from Zëri i Popullit, May 6, 1972. 73 us, in the great monument Mother Albania of the Albania monument as the materialization of a number martyrs of the Fatherland. Albania itself lives in of ideas about time, history, and society that character- the symbol of the mother. […] We raise our eyes ized the late 1960s and early 1970s in communist Alba- and feel as if she rules the sky. In her majesty is the nia, as the locus of a constellation of transformations majesty of the struggle of the people, the majesty of and syntheses. My goal is in fact quite modest: to offer the ideals of the party, for which so many sons of the a typology of these syntheses, to examine the meaning people gloriously fell.3 of the work in relation to Albanian communist cultural development from several viewpoints, with particular The monument and the cemetery itself ensured that attention to the significance of its representation of the this struggle would not be lost to memory, that it would female form. I will focus primarily on the work’s concep- live on and strengthen the perpetual construction of so- tion and execution during the communist period, and cialist Albania. In his speech on the occasion, Manush indeed specifically on the years immediately preceding Myftiu, First Secretary of the Party Committee for -Ti its inauguration, only briefly considering the post-so- rana, not only described the heroism of those who had cialist period in the concluding section.6 given their lives for the fatherland, but also emphasized While certain aspects of the monument’s mean- the crucial role of memorials erected to the fallen. “This ing will receive more attention than others, my aim is martyrs’ cemetery, and the thousands upon thousands to respect the multivalent character of the work’s sig- of lapidars that fill Albania, are a great source of inspira- nificance in its own time, to capture the simultaneously tion, especially for our younger generation, so that out monolithic and disparate characteristics that are to be of the heroic past [this generation] may draw lessons for found in the formal qualities of the work itself. However, the future […].”4 when encountering works of socialist realism – of which If Mother Albania’s elemental purview was the vast Mother Albania represents a particularly unique and at reaches of the sky, the earth of the cemetery itself de- times confounding example – it is necessary to temper mocratized the fallen and enshrined the origin of the the formal considerations common to the practice of art synthesis that culminated in the symbol of the mother- history with a respect for the invisible, conceptual, dis- as-nation. Myftiu stated, “Here before us lies the simple cursive aspect that plays a fundamental role in the mean- partisan alongside the most distinguished leaders of ing of such works.7 the people’s party, the commander and the commissar, As much as Mother Albania is the concrete, formal, the worker, the villager, the student, […] the commu- materialization of (Albanian) History, the work none- nist alongside he who did not have a party membership theless also presents the figure of the mother as a form card.” Thus, both visually and conceptually, the great arc in flux between intangibility and tangibility, a point of of the cemetery itself and the lone figure of Mother Al- 6 I set aside the post-socialist period largely for reasons of space bania represented the perennial dialectic between hori- and scope. However, a subsequent consideration of the work’s zontal stability and harmony – the “monolithic unity subsequent reception would, as I hope to suggest through an of the masses”5 – and vertical dynamism that often ap- elaboration of its genesis, prove productive for an understanding peared in socialist realist sculpture (fig. 2). The monu- of both the status of communist cultural heritage in Albania (one of the aims of this publication) and of evolving conceptions of ment itself, however, embodied a second synthesis, that modern Albanian identity. between the horizontal – and inevitable – forward mo- 7 This in turn means considering both the creative genesis of tion of national history and the ascent towards both col- the work and its treatment in the discourse of its time. Such lective coalescence and transcendence, toward the real- discourse is often far removed from contemporary expectations of “critical” discourse, and might be better termed “poetic.” This ization of an overarching national identity arising from often leads to the dismissal of such writings as no more than the memory of the dead. laudatory propaganda meant to celebrate the triumphs of the The purpose of this essay is to consider the Mother communist regime. Agim Shehu’s quite lyrical description of the mothers gathered below Mother Albania is one such example 3 Agim Shehu, “…Tek Ata që Ranë për Atdhe,” Zëri i Popullit, May of this type of discourse, which privileges poetic exegesis over 6, 1972. Shehu noted that mothers held a particularly distin- critical consideration or “reporting.” However, one of the defining guished place in commemorative events such as Martyrs’ Day: characteristics of the communist state in Albania (and elsewhere) “one cannot think of such days without thinking of mothers.” [All might be said to be its embrace of precisely this kind of totalizing translations from Albanian to English, unless noted otherwise, poetics. Insofar as the totalitarian aspect of communist – or Stalin- are my own.] ist – states has an inextricably aesthetic character (as Boris Groys 4 Manush Myftiu, “Fjala e Shokut Manush Myftiu,Zëri i Popullit, has most famously argued), then the poetic, panegyrical, discus- May 6, 1972. Myftiu’s reference to “thousands upon thousands of sion of such works must be considered a significant aspect of lapidars” is certainly exaggerated; “hundreds” would be a more their meaning, alongside their formal qualities. For the aesthetic accurate number. character of Stalinist states, see Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism, 5 Ibid. trans. Charles Rougle (New York: Verso, 2011).