- \n
- Gjon Buzuku<\/a><\/li>\n
- Frang Bardhi<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n![\"Ridvan](\"http:\/\/www.shkoder.net\/images\/shkodra\/rdibra.jpg\")
<\/p>\n- \n
- Ernest Koliqi<\/a><\/li>\n
- Filip Shiroka<\/a><\/li>\n
- Gjergj Fishta<\/a><\/li>\n
- Lazer Shantoja<\/a><\/li>\n
- Martin Camaj<\/a><\/li>\n
- Migjeni (poetry)<\/a><\/li>\n
- Migjeni (prose)<\/a><\/li>\n
- Ndre Mjeda<\/a><\/li>\n
- Pashko Vasa<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n- \n
- Gjek\u00eb Marinaj<\/a><\/li>\n
- Kolec Traboini<\/a><\/li>\n
- Ridvan Dibra<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\nBIOGRAPHY<\/b><\/p>\n
Ridvan Dibra<\/strong> (b. 1959) was born in Shkodra where he went to school and graduated from the university in Albanian language and literature. He taught Albanian in the mountain town of Kuk\u00ebs from 1982 to 1987 and worked in his native Shkodra from 1988 to 1994 as a journalist. Since 1994 he has been teaching Albanian language and literature at the University of Shkodra.<\/p>\n
Dibra is a leading figure of modern Albanian writing. He is the author of numerous volumes of innovative literature. Among them are: the poetry volume Thjesht (Simple), Tirana 1989; the short story collections Eklipsi i shpirtit (Eclipse of the soul), Shkodra 1994; and Prostituta e virgj\u00ebr (The virgin prostitute), Shkodra 1994; the novel Nudo (The nude), Tirana 1995; the “parable” Vetmia e diellit (Solitude of the sun), Tirana 1995; the short story collection Mjerimi i gjysm\u00ebs (The misery of half), Tetovo 1996; the novels Kurthet e drit\u00ebs (Traps of light), Elbasan 1997; Triumfi i Gjergj Elez Alis\u00eb (The triumph of Gjergj Elez Alia), Tirana 1999; Stina e ujkut (Season of the wolf), Shkodra 2000; and T\u00eb lir\u00eb dhe t\u00eb burgosur (The free and the imprisoned), Prishtina 2001; the “parable” V\u00eblla me centaur\u00ebt (Brother with the centaurs), Prishtina 2002; and the novels Triumfi i dyt\u00eb i Gjergj Elez Alis\u00eb (The second triumph of Gjergj Elez Alia), and Email (E-Mail), Tirana 2003.<\/p>\n
The plagues of Moses<\/b><\/p>\n
Everyone forgot Sephorah, the Prophet’s wife.
\nThe heavens are unfolding like pages of a book,
\nMy Lord.
\nPages worn from time
\nYet I say they are more worn from their daily reading,
\nSome are creased and some are shredded
\nFrom bolts of lightning and our impatience.
\nJust as blind as we were in the beginning,
\nMy Lord.
\nNot a single page did we know how to decipher,
\nNot a single line, not a single letter,
\nSimply because we searched upward and afar
\nWhen the alphabet was taught around us and everywhere.
\nJust as deaf as we were in the beginning,
\nMy Lord.<\/p>\nWe did not know how to hear your voice
\nDistracted by a thousand and one false voices,
\nWhen everything was so simple and light
\nIt sufficed that we bow our heads and listen to our breathing.<\/p>\nJust as hungry as we were in the beginning,
\nMy Lord.<\/p>\nSimply because we desired our neighbour’s vine
\nAnd never blessed our wild weeds
\nNeither the globe that we should not have bitten
\nIn a rush like the unripe apple.<\/p>\nJust as alone as we were in the beginning,
\nMy Lord.<\/p>\nScattered about like grains of sand
\nFrom the wind that we blew with our cheeks,
\nOr rather like repentant orphans
\nBecause they raised their hands and slew their parents.
\nJust as much in the dust as we were in the beginning,
\nMy Lord.<\/p>\nOn our lips, in our lungs there is dust
\nAnd when we think we are flying higher and higher
\nThe dust pursues us simply because we are idle or forget
\nTo cleanse ourselves before every departure.<\/p>\nJust as homeless as we were in the beginning,
\nMy Lord.<\/p>\nOur huts collapse before being completed,
\nNo thousand years could they suffer your anger,
\nUntil, one after the other, we blame
\nThe walls and the roof, and then the foundations.<\/p>\nJust as thirsty as we were in the beginning,
\nMy Lord.<\/p>\nWith our dried and withering lips blistered as in August
\nWe desiccated the sources of life one by one,
\nSought and then created
\nEndless springs of blood.<\/p>\nJust as ignorant as we were in the beginning,
\nMy Lord.<\/p>\nSimply because we took the second step before the third
\nAnd said the first word after the second,
\nThus, even our knowledge is nothing
\nBut a correction of errors once made.<\/p>\nYou are still everywhere
\nAnd we are nowhere,
\nMy Lord.<\/p>\nWe disregarded all the reasons for blood,
\nWe forgot even the screams of grieving folk,
\nWe forgot that the wounds of our foes
\nWould one day hurt even more in our breasts.<\/p>\nAnd they hurt in my breast,
\nMy Lord.<\/p>\nThe First Plague: Blood<\/strong><\/p>\n
You shake more from the blood than from the shadows, Sephorah.
\nFrom the blood that has no name, that rises out of the fresh wound,
\nBlood that shines the same in all wounds,
\nBlood that never knew how to become water.<\/p>\nBut the water becomes blood,
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nI only need to strike it with my snake-shaped staff,
\nThat is, with my untamed will,
\nBang-bang-bang,
\nBang-bang,
\nBang.<\/p>\nSee how the rivers and all other waters have been bloodied,
\nThe snow is melting and it drips blood
\nThe sharp-pointed icicles are dripping blood,
\nDrip-drip-drip,
\nDrip-drip,
\nDrip.<\/p>\nUnderstand now the value of water
\nAnd let my purpose go
\nYou blistered lips and you arid lands,
\nYou thirsty breasts and you hungry fish,
\nYou forgot that they fished me from the water with my name:<\/p>\nIt was life at the beginning
\nDeath followed in its footsteps.<\/p>\nThe Second Plague: the Frogs<\/strong><\/p>\n
You shudder more from the swamp than from the blood, Sephorah,
\nThe swamp called oblivion and lack of attention,
\nThe sallow swamp that chokes the green,
\nAs the moment strangles eternity.<\/p>\nThe swamp that spawns monsters,
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nAll sorts of reptiles, repulsive, slowly creeping,
\nAll types of lilies, brightly coloured, but poisonous,
\nAll kinds of breaths, all of them muddied,
\nAnd in the end, the emblematic frogs:<\/p>\nLured by my snake-shaped staff,
\nThat is, by my untamed will.<\/p>\nThey approach and enter your home, Sephorah,
\nIn the room where you sleep,
\nThey creep into your bed.<\/p>\nThey stain its white sheets
\nDisturb your tranquil sleep
\nWith their salivating cries,
\nCroak-croak-croak,
\nCroak, croak,
\nCroak.<\/p>\nWhen the Gods fight with one another
\nMan must make peace with himself.
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nThe Third Plague: the Mosquitoes<\/strong><\/p>\n
You recoil more from the cause than from the consequences, Sephorah,
\nThe cause that is me or somebody else within me,
\nIt happens rarely, very rarely to human beings,
\nAnd perhaps never to the daughters of Eve.<\/p>\nThe swirls of dust have now become clouds of mosquitoes,
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nOver your face and over your tall body,
\nOver your lips and over your small breasts,
\nOver your sleep and over your virgin dreams,
\nOver your silence and over your divine patience,
\nOver your tears and over your rare smile,
\nOver your motherhood and over your rare fruit,
\nOver your roots and over your green stem
\nHave remained the gray scars of bites,
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nThe Fourth Plague: the Flies<\/strong><\/p>\n
They are tiny and everywhere and drive you crazy, Sephorah,
\nLike grains of the pale sand falling through the fingers,
\nOr like words and daily routines
\nThat we could do without.<\/p>\nThis cloud of flies is the shroud,
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nNeither wound, nor bite, nor poison
\nOn your marble-white body
\nOr all three at once, somewhere under your skin
\nWhere feelings sting like an uncommitted sin
\nAnd where the start is projected as an expected end.<\/p>\nBecause death comes rarely
\nWithout being invited in advance by us,
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nThe Fifth Plague: the Beasts<\/strong><\/p>\n
Once I spoke of you as I did of the beasts, Sephorah.
\nFinding in them everything that is yours
\nOr finding in you everything that is theirs, it’s the same thing.<\/p>\nI am talking about those times when you were called nature
\nOr when nature was a woman, it’s the same thing.<\/p>\nBut the beasts all perished,
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nThey perished in you, grievously, one by one
\nDied the grace of mares in the fields at sunset,
\nDied the sacrifice of camels in the fallow desert,
\nDied the naivety of the donkeys chewing on thorny bushes,
\nDied the kindness of the sheep and the fertility of the cow.<\/p>\nThey were cut, one by one,
\nAnd perhaps it was I who cut them, one by one,
\nThe threads that tied you to nature,
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nThe Sixth Plague: the Dust<\/strong><\/p>\n
The dust is like prejudice, Sephorah,
\nWith your lungs you breathe it in,
\nIt envelops you entirely
\nIn a mantle that changes according to season.
\nIt’s the sky that sifts furnace ashes,
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nOn you and on every other breathing being around
\nFalls the gray sorrow that thereafter conceives
\nAutumn, eternally ailing,
\nFrom its inability to be another season,
\nMore similar to human beings and their fate,
\nFor fates under the dust all become the same,
\nOr so it may seem to the untrained eye
\nTo the stare that only strokes the surface
\nLike the dust strokes your senses,
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nThe Seventh Plague: the Hail<\/strong><\/p>\n
Intermediate things have always caused you to shake, Sephorah,
\nHail, for example – neither a raindrop nor a snowflake,
\nNot even a raindrop and a snowflake together.<\/p>\nYou are alone between fire and ice,
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nThey are not pearly garlands that hang in the heavens
\nBut ropes with hailstone spines,
\nEnticed by my wooden staff
\nWith the fiery snakes of lightning,
\nScorching like blind passion.<\/p>\nThe barley in the sheaves is scorched and withered
\nAs is the flax which just bloomed,<\/p>\nBut not the wheat that endures and is late to ripen
\nNor your invincible core,
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nThe Eighth Plague: the Locusts<\/strong><\/p>\n
The healed wound brings forth another, Sephorah,
\nAs desire brings forth desire and pain brings forth pain,
\nUntil the moment when the soul becomes a soulless object
\nAnd the body a soul and a breath together<\/p>\nThe dancers of death are approaching,
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nA wind from the east has borne them in throngs,
\nAn army of hungry moments, never satiated,
\nA plague that gobbles up everything that remains
\nEspecially young sprigs, as yet to grow shoots
\nAnd everything else that is green and that nourishes the hope
\nSown in your soul
\nAnd in your warm body,
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nThe Ninth Plague: the Darkness<\/strong><\/p>\n
You dread more the darkness than the fire, Sephorah,
\nWhen shapes disappear and everything becomes the same,
\nThe highest and the lowest, and the black and white<\/p>\nYou dread the darkness that is touched by hands,
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nThen you have no other salvation but to turn towards yourself
\nAs to a friend lost and found after many many years,
\nBecause darkness is darkness, and dissipates not like the mist,
\nBecause it hides the unknown and reveals the known.
\nMan does not see man, and touches him only
\nWhen avoidance becomes impossible.<\/p>\nThe belated reward pains you
\nAs it does me and my rediscovered self,
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nThe Tenth Plague: Death<\/strong><\/p>\n
You’re disturbed more by death than by life, Sephorah,
\nThat is, life near to me and my isolated people
\nWith their eternal and false aspirations for salvation
\nIn their arduous attempts to be understood.,<\/p>\nWhile the death itself flees from you,
\nMy Sephorah!<\/p>\nOn your wise brow as on the crossbeam of a heated house
\nI have left the telling sign of blood:
\nMay death remember and seek another shelter,
\nFor man can recognize only what he has created himself,
\nWhereas the beginning and the end are the creations of others,
\nEven though the elephants return to die in their birthplace.<\/p>\n“Who is not with me is against me”
\nSaid even death to itself one day.
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nThe Eleventh Plague: Sephorah<\/strong><\/p>\n
Stronger and safer than on my wooden will,
\nI rely on your silent sacrifice, Sephorah,
\nYou, the most unhealed of all my wounds
\nThat pains me most when the others are silent.<\/p>\nLong has been the road, Sephorah, far too long,
\nFull of turns and ambushes that delayed my purpose,
\nEven though I knew that only children expect instant victory
\nAnd that all the prophets of old were marching through me.<\/p>\nBut long roads never end, Sephorah,
\nMy staff and my faith were too small: only to the Lord does its own self suffice.
\nI needed more love than understanding,
\nAnd then you came, with your body enwrapped in spirit.<\/p>\nI loved only the purpose and thus the people did not love me, Sephorah,
\nFilled with poison, the cup in your fair hands
\nAnd yet, despair is a virtue and joy is a sin,
\nWhereas events live less than people.<\/p>\nWhen you teach someone, they pay you, Sephorah,
\nWhen you teach all, you must pay yourself.<\/p>\nIt is both beautiful and hard to be the wife of a prophet,
\nMy Sephorah.<\/p>\nMarch, 2000<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
[Translated from the Albanian Language by Shinasi Rama, Janice Mathie-Heck and Robert Elsie] <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[ Culture & Arts ]Read also: Gjon Buzuku Frang Bardhi Ernest Koliqi Filip Shiroka Gjergj Fishta Lazer Shantoja Martin Camaj Migjeni (poetry) Migjeni (prose) Ndre Mjeda Pashko Vasa Gjek\u00eb Marinaj Kolec Traboini Ridvan Dibra BIOGRAPHY Ridvan Dibra (b. 1959) was born in Shkodra where he went to school and graduated from the university in Albanian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":913,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-55","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"category-literature"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shkoder.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shkoder.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shkoder.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shkoder.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shkoder.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/shkoder.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":914,"href":"https:\/\/shkoder.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/914"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shkoder.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shkoder.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shkoder.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shkoder.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- Kolec Traboini<\/a><\/li>\n
- Filip Shiroka<\/a><\/li>\n
- Frang Bardhi<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n