Homeric elements in Ismail Kadare’s The Monster
Abstract: Kadare’s The Monster, whose plot resembles the abduction of Helen that generated the Trojan War, is placed in Tirana during the years of increasingly deteriorating relations between Albania and the USSR. The monstruous, shapeless wagon abandoned in the fields looks like the Trojan wooden horse into which the invaders, degenerated copies of the ancient Greek warriors, are hidden waiting for an opportunity to enter the town. The modern and the ancient worlds interfere with one another, contemporary scenes reconstructing the main episodes of the conquest of Troy. Both the well-known mythological characters and the ancient events are presented from the perspective of the 20th century suspicious mind. The confrontation is an opportunity to reexamine the events of the antiquity and their representations by Homer, who is seen as the spokesman of the winners and the unreliable messenger of their propaganda.
Keywords: Kadare, Homer, epic poem, modern novel, Trojan horse
Bibliography
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Kadare, Ismail, Dosarul H. Monstrul [File on H. The Monster]. Translated by Marius Dobrescu. Bucharest: Univers, 1999.
