The General of the Dead Army
Nov, 30/2021 also in: European History | 20th century
I learned about this book by listening to a lecture delivered by a famous Italian scholar, Alessandro Barbero. The title of the book is as captivating as its narrative, written by a young Ismail Kadare.
The story is quick to summarize. Set in the early 60s, an Italian general and a priest (also an army colonel) leave for Albania, to collect the remains of Italian soldiers who died there during Italy's invasion of Albania. Their job is to bring the remains back to their families, to receive burial in Italy. As one can predict, the search is far from simple, because war is synonymous with messy and chaotic.
The general and the priest are a brilliant couple conceived by the author. Even though they both belong to the army, through the book they develop very different feelings about their mission. The priest (being a priest) is hardly shaken by doubts. He conceives the mission as honorable, and has strong (and at times condescending) views on the Albanians: a people born to fight, and that will always fight, even if it leads to self-destruction.
Differently, the general grows uncertain of the value of this mission. On the one hand, he views his role as general as a job (somewhat reminiscent of the way in which Christ Kyle described his life with the Navy SEAL: a profession in which he happened to excel, even though excelling means killing other humans for a purpose -the safety of a nation- that grows shaky). So at least I interpreted his fantasy, when he imagines winning all sorts of wars and battles at the head of his troops thanks to his brilliant strategies. This fantasy, coming almost towards the end of the book, is also related to what I believe is an underlying theme of the book: searching for meaning in a world where meaning can only be destroyed. This emerges from the diary of a soldier who deserted and was taken in as help by a farmer, which is found by the protagonists as they were searching for his remains, as well as the growing doubts of the general about this final mission he undertook, and again when he realizes that the behavior of some of his compatriots who preceded him was far from noble. The general is disgusted when learning that general Z., who was also on the list of people to repatriate and whose burial side could not be found, was killed by a woman after Z. ordered the killing of her husband and raped her daughter. Very significantly, the protagonist of the story is shocked first by the fact that Z. neglected his duties as general, and only later he thinks about the pain inflicted on the Albanian family.
This book is about the effects death has on those who remain, and about mutual misunderstandings: the priest and the general share the entire experience without really understand each other; the Albanians do not understand the desire to dig out remains that can hardly be identified; the general grows more and more skeptical of the value of his own job. This was a very intelligent topic to introduce in the story, since it runs parallel to a sense of resigned understanding. Through flashbacks about the life of deserters during the occupation of Albania, we see the human side emerge in both Italian soldiers and Albanian civilians: the former feel forced into a mission they had no possibility to choose; the latter welcome deserters into their lives, sharing a sense of surviving destructive circumstances.
A curious aspect of this book is in its translations. I read it in Italian, translated by Augusto Donauty from the French edition of this novel. In the diary of the deserting soldier mentioned above, at one point the soldier writes about a woman he falls in love with. She gets married off to an Albanian, so the soldier never expresses his feelings to her. He imagines scenarios in which he would, and in which he would be reciprocated by her. At the end of one of these imagined scenarios, he says
The story is quick to summarize. Set in the early 60s, an Italian general and a priest (also an army colonel) leave for Albania, to collect the remains of Italian soldiers who died there during Italy's invasion of Albania. Their job is to bring the remains back to their families, to receive burial in Italy. As one can predict, the search is far from simple, because war is synonymous with messy and chaotic.
The general and the priest are a brilliant couple conceived by the author. Even though they both belong to the army, through the book they develop very different feelings about their mission. The priest (being a priest) is hardly shaken by doubts. He conceives the mission as honorable, and has strong (and at times condescending) views on the Albanians: a people born to fight, and that will always fight, even if it leads to self-destruction.
Differently, the general grows uncertain of the value of this mission. On the one hand, he views his role as general as a job (somewhat reminiscent of the way in which Christ Kyle described his life with the Navy SEAL: a profession in which he happened to excel, even though excelling means killing other humans for a purpose -the safety of a nation- that grows shaky). So at least I interpreted his fantasy, when he imagines winning all sorts of wars and battles at the head of his troops thanks to his brilliant strategies. This fantasy, coming almost towards the end of the book, is also related to what I believe is an underlying theme of the book: searching for meaning in a world where meaning can only be destroyed. This emerges from the diary of a soldier who deserted and was taken in as help by a farmer, which is found by the protagonists as they were searching for his remains, as well as the growing doubts of the general about this final mission he undertook, and again when he realizes that the behavior of some of his compatriots who preceded him was far from noble. The general is disgusted when learning that general Z., who was also on the list of people to repatriate and whose burial side could not be found, was killed by a woman after Z. ordered the killing of her husband and raped her daughter. Very significantly, the protagonist of the story is shocked first by the fact that Z. neglected his duties as general, and only later he thinks about the pain inflicted on the Albanian family.
This book is about the effects death has on those who remain, and about mutual misunderstandings: the priest and the general share the entire experience without really understand each other; the Albanians do not understand the desire to dig out remains that can hardly be identified; the general grows more and more skeptical of the value of his own job. This was a very intelligent topic to introduce in the story, since it runs parallel to a sense of resigned understanding. Through flashbacks about the life of deserters during the occupation of Albania, we see the human side emerge in both Italian soldiers and Albanian civilians: the former feel forced into a mission they had no possibility to choose; the latter welcome deserters into their lives, sharing a sense of surviving destructive circumstances.
A curious aspect of this book is in its translations. I read it in Italian, translated by Augusto Donauty from the French edition of this novel. In the diary of the deserting soldier mentioned above, at one point the soldier writes about a woman he falls in love with. She gets married off to an Albanian, so the soldier never expresses his feelings to her. He imagines scenarios in which he would, and in which he would be reciprocated by her. At the end of one of these imagined scenarios, he says
"Ma non accadde niente di tutto questo. Nei film si vedono spesso delle cose così, ma evidentemente i film e la vita son due cose diverse. Eppure ho una gran voglia di andare al cinema."
I thought this was a very sweet line, and I went to look for its English correspondent in the translation by Derek Coltman, also from a previous French translation of this novel. And… I could not find it. This chapter is cut much shorter than it is in the Italian translation. Perhaps it's time for a new translation in both languages, directly from Albanian?
P.S.: The sentence I quoted reads something like this: "But nothing of this sort happened. You often see something like this in movies, but clearly life and movies are not the same. And yet, I wish I could go to the movies."