Gëzim Hajdari: On a Poet and His Poetry of Exile

Abstract

Gëzim Hajdari's poetic subject is an exceptional case within the contemporary scenario. He has been spending in Italy his exile from Albania since 1992. Hajdari tries to express a semantic universe able to overpower effectively his readers' literary and cultural identities of reference, by adjusting the classical referents existing in several Mediterranean traditions. He has been always interested in the creation of a new epic, recalling -to overcome without abandoning it -his status of permanent dispatrio through the choice of genres and references, both alluded and manifest. The constant exile, which he and his work live in, is tied to the testimonial obligation of the horrors of dictatorship and the slaughter of an entire intellectual class; it also focuses attention on significant matters of the classical tragic and epic thought -especially the Greek one -and introduces it in the research of a widespread classical style, open to the literary traditions which are far from the Western ones. This aim, pursued by writing Delta del mio fiume [16], leads him to the editorial choices for Erranze series he runs, and to the latest decision to publish his first compendium in three languages.