Robert Elsie's last interview: Left to be buried in Albania

Robert Elsie, a well - known Albanologist who has been working for decades on Albanian Language and Literature and its spread in the world, has just been separated from life. The news has made it known today through a Facebook status, writer Butterto Acka, who also suggests that the late Elsie has left the passports buried in Albania. Nearly five years ago, the Albanologist had given a long interview to journalist Rudina in Junga in TcH. Among other things, Elsie said she would be unable to live in Albania, a country still remaining in the Ottoman mentality.

His statement then faced many reactions, from the ordinary Albanians who daily change their country, but the turmoil when someone notices Albania as dirty. What is impressive is the fact that Elsie has left the wombs buried in the very place where she could not live. Perhaps, only dead in Albania can live quietly.

Interviewed: Rudina Junga this is your first TV interview for Albanians. Why do you change the lights? I don't really want to come to light, try to avoid cameras and do my job, live my life. It's better this way.

Meanwhile, I came to know your work as I prepared for this interview, and I felt more and more satisfaction in meeting you. First ass for albanology. What Does It Mean to Be Albanologist? Everyone has their own interpretation of Albanology, but for me, the essence of my work is to introduce Albanians, to introduce Albania, the Albanian world, the whole world. I try to transmit to the outside world the knowledge I have about this country, so that this world can understand what Albania is, who are the Albanians, their history, their culture, their different stages of life here.

And I do this to make it known because in the end Albania remains a very unknown country. If you are a translator, what does it mean? Being a translator means work, work, work. It's a very difficult job. And anonymous? In part, it is because he is the author who becomes known and the translator is not. They say it's a bullshit job because you're trying to do something and you're not saying anything but I think it's fun. It's my pleasure. Where's the pleasure, for example? It is a pleasure to be able to translate it properly.

It's like a mathematical count. When the final sum comes out and you've made no mistakes along the way, you enjoy it. So is translation. You see a page, and it shoots up, that phrase goes well, that needs to be changed. I go on and I redo it until you get something perfect, and you feel satisfied. So I want to share with the viewer the reason you're in Albania this time. Books you will promote have the historical vocabulary of Albania and Kosovo in Albanian and English. Can we explain to viewers what these books are?

These books came out in English recently, there is a book collan that includes every country in the world, and I was commissioned to design a publication for Albania. It's called the historical dictionary of Albania and Kosovo, but in the end it's more like lexic, general encyclopedia with data not only historical but also cultural, economic, geogratry, etc. I went through the volume of Albania. I was placed where I had to do this volume no more than 250 pages, and when I finished I had 500 pages. The publisher was a little disappointed. I was told by “if we walk this way, Albania's volume will be greater than the volume of Russia”, however, accepted and actually came out larger than that of Russia, this encyclopedia of small Albania. But that actually in this encyclopedia Albania is big. What does the encyclopedia include, dates, events, characters? Yeah, it involves everyone. Historical persons, public persons, politicians but mainly are historical stones of Albanian history, events and so on.

Chesk Zadene I see in this book, Injac Zamputin. How far have you gone with historical events? I arrived until 2010. I've done a chronology of Albanian history, which runs through 2010. It's like the history of Albania, with dates, so who cares about Albania's history can find it in this book in Albanian and English. The same applies to Kosovo, so events, places. Until what year? Again until 2010. In fact, this is the second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Kosovo. I was very happy that the publisher agreed to become a book for Kosovo, since Kosovo, at the time I made the first volume, was not a state, therefore there was no sickness and the problem was what would be used for the cover of the book. Now in the second volume, we have the cover with the new Kosovo ambient.

All the stones you think would interest a person who would be informed about Albania and Kosovo, you've included them in these books. How did you take up this work? It is a great work that usually makes the Institute whole or that the Albanian state should do. It's big, it requires some preparation then, the rest is a simple job, it's data collection, information, caution from misinformation. It's something that's achieved slowly and slowly. I'm actually surprised how fat he got out, but there seems to be a lot of things inside. What is your relationship with the Albanian, the first few days, your first meeting with our language. What happened? How did you know this language that makes you such big books today?

Maybe it's a long story, but random. I completed my studies in Germany at Bonn University. I had no contact with Albanian because there I studied the comparable language and Celtic language - the language of Ireland, Wales, Scotland - and when my professor, the linguistic teacher, finished his studies, received an invitation from the Academy of Sciences to visit Albania after he himself studied in Vienna with an Albanian, namely, Alex Buddha. Alex Buddha invited my professor to Albania. At the time, Albania was a closed, unknown country, and the invitation was not only for it but also for its students.

And so, we headed for Albania, a group of 20 students in 1978. It was a rare thing for us to enter Albania because Albania at the time was like North Korea today, which is hard to penetrate. How'd you get into this place in '78? It was very interesting to me. I even laughed at myself because I felt that I was in a Hollywood mine, and I didn't take the political side too seriously, not the billboards, the propaganda. You thought it was being a joke, didn't you think it was true? No, I just didn't take it seriously, more like my mother. But it was very interesting.

Do you remember something that bothered you then or something that surprised you? There were many things, it was a absurd place, the whole place was absurd but people took it seriously. I do not know how serious people themselves took them, but they did realize that they lived in another reality. Did you shoot to meet Albanians who were among them involved in this? Not openly, not.

Later this meeting, which began in 1978, took place an annual meeting between the University of Bonn and the Academy of Sciences and we came to Albania every year for two weeks. During my meetings and trips, I began to take an interest in Albanian. I didn't know the language at the time, even in Germany. I started learning the language more seriously. Where did you learn Albanian in Germany? It was difficult because there were no vocabulary, there were gloves, textbooks.

I remember finding a French dictionary and the other Albanian-German side, but there was no English. That was hard. When did you say you already know the Albanian very well? After many years. In the meantime, I went to Pristina every year to the Albanian International Ministry for Language. It was, on the one hand, easier because I could speak freely to people because Kosovars were more freely. How different was Kosovo and those years with Albania? Very, very much. Where did you feel better? In Kosovo, as it was more Western, more normal.

In Albania, I was unable to associate freely with people. I was with officials who were very kind, very hospitable, but it was still a kind of fear to prevent you from going free. And now it's available freely in Albania? Yeah, obviously. Now there's no problem, people neither, even stop talking. They tell everything, they don't keep secrets. Hoxha's Albania compared to Albania and Berisha you now meet, what they have similar and what they have different

I think there's some things about accounting that haven't changed, that are strange not only from Hodge's time, but also from Zogu's time, things that come from Osman times, that of Zogu, Hodge's to today. One of these is bureaucratic corruption. This is one of the things that's always been like this. The other is the country's inability and administration. It's not something that depends solely on the party, it's more people's attitude. So, in order to get something you want, you need to meet somebody at the Ministry, have coffee with him, then have some more coffee with him next week, once again, and then he hooks you up with the person you care about.

D.m. It's like Ottoman times, it's not like a normal state. Even now that we're like this in Ottoman times? Yeah, yeah. But in Kosovo, is that similar? I don't know, I haven't had these problems in Kosovo. Of course, Kosovo's first 20 years is different from Kosovo today, but it seems to me that people are the same, Albanians here or there, with few changes, basically the same. What about understanding the language that is available in Tirana and the language that is in Pristina, do you have problems or is it the same?

Yeah, that's what I meant. I went to that Albanian-language seminar in Pristina to learn, because there I was freely, but they were something that was not Albanian to me. For a student who learns literary language, who tries to discover all the curves of the tongue, and comes out on the street facing another language, it's very difficult and I didn't understand anything.

This was a big problem, and I was deeply hindered from learning the language because I could not understand people at all. That's great because I can even understand the Arabs now. Even the Arbers understand? Yes, right now yes, but I remember in Pristina, when I was a student, I had a student room that I shared with a caballer from Calabria. I didn't even understand what he said. He thought he was Albanian and I listened attentively but I don't know if he was Italian or Albanian.

I believe, you have now met the Arbes, the militants, the Ukraine Albanians, the Albanians of Bulgaria, Albanians everywhere. So you've met Albanian everywhere. Is there still common or is there any one of your Albanian? It is a common language that is understood, but there are local elements that change, and thankfully that are because this is the wealth of language, they are changes.

I'm very happy for the dialects of Albanian. I have an online project with Albanian recordings, and every time I travel, I go through different villages, I get a microphone with me, as a journalist like you, and I record, mostly the herd because they are pure languages everywhere. I am very interested in the language differences between countries, and for me this is the greatest wealth of language.