“Three Elliptical Dots” Poetry of “Jeton Kelmendi” “Critical Reading” Dr. Sherif Aljayyar

By: Dr. Sherif Algayar
Egyptian academic critic
Post Doctorate University of Chicago – USA

“Three Elliptical Dots” Poetry of “Jeton Kelmendi”
“Critical Reading”
Dr.Sherif Aljayyar
…
Jeton Kelmendi is a distinct poetic voice and one of the best actual Albanian poets. Attention was drawn to him in “Kosovo” after publishing his first book ”The Century of Promises”1999. He became more famous with the release of his successive poetic achievements represented by his books “Beyond Silence”2002, “If it is afternoon”2004, “Fatherland pardon me”2005, “Where are the arrivals going”2007, “You arrived for the traces of wind”2008, “Time when it has time”2009, “Wandering thoughts”2010.Kelmendi’s poetry was translated into more than twenty two languages, such as “Romanian, Indian, French, Greek, German, Turkish, English,…” and finally into Arabic with “Three Elliptical Dots”. He is the Albanian poet with the most translated poems. He is considered by some critics as the legitimate representative of the actual creative Albanian poetry, and has become the most famous poet of Albania alongside the famous “Mimoza Ahmeti” (1963- ) who wrote “Delirium”, “Pollination of Flowers” and others.
This Albanian poet presents in his “Three Elliptical Dots” a human experience, with existential vision to the world, based on three main axes: “Time, Word and Thought .. Homeland/his girl/Dream”. His poetic speech  -between 2000 and 2009- reflects his attitude towards his chaotic world, in which human cannot distinguish between White from Black, nor finding the dividing line between Joy and Sorrow, This world with the fuzzy vision between Dark and Light.
This chaotic world affects the poet’s attitude towards Place/Time. He refuses this Place/Time, which his poetic soul sees it as a bewildered time:
“There came a time
as bewildered as cheerful
No one could tell its white from its black”
In Kelmendi’s poetic context, time combines with the loss of Human, the loss of freedom, and then the loss of his presence and present:
“We couldn’t find ourselves
we could neither see it nor meet it
or maybe did we miss it ”
For this, the poet is anxious and imponderable, because of his epoch’s disorder and chaos, in which past overlaps with present and future, until the separating lines are diminished, and the directions also. Therefore the poet condemns this in an interrogative structure of repudiation, as if he decides to split himself from this reality:
“What do you want from the anti dream
Where yesterday turned into the day before yesterday”

As long as today is chaotic like this, as the poetic soul sees it, then we should not trust it in the future, it is a cruel reality,  because it comes from a chaotic present, in which human loses his presence:
“But alas
What are we to do with you
Distrust in tomorrow”

The poet refuses his outer world, with its plains which are full of nothingness and his white dreams which linger beyond the river. He also invites himself to be quiet, and to create an inner virtual world that coordinates with itself:
“Keep mum
With your garrulous mouth
Create an inner world
With what you see instead”

And this emotional regression of Kelmendi, is caused by the reality’s surrealism, that’s why the poet prefers to go back to himself, to look for the journey without end
“And today
Nobody is in time
Buy the ticket for the journey without end”

Although this defeated look towards the present; the poet hopes that one day everything will be changed, and human will find the bread and water,…:
“One day
My day will come
If indeed it’s true that
Every dog has it’s day,
And I will know how to welcome it
Then the soil will be as bountiful in bread
And the spring in water
That it will fill all the gaps”

It is remarkable to notice, in Kelmendi’s poetry, his faith in the freedom of Expression and Thought, and in the no- restraint of the Word:
“Let freedom live unfettered
Let the word
The mind
Speak whatever
They want”

The Word, Thought, and Freedom die if they stay quiet, and if they do not play their role in self-determination, so the poet gives his advice as he says:
“The combat ground of the unspoken word
Remains barren
And dead silent
Without seeing the scheduled game”

Kelmendi stick with the Dream in his poetry bends, and pushes human to dream, and to let the fear go:
“I’d dread nothing
And it’s not a bad thing to dream
Do consider this mate”

The Dream is related sometimes with meeting his girl:
“And arrived together with my dream
In the meeting with the girl
I want to hug you, my dear, for today”

And sometimes, he attaches The Text, and the fatherland with The Girl, and with himself:
“Why, Verse, are you bothering me today?
When my fatherland and my girl are
Far away
And myself is far away, so very far”

From the above, we notice that Kelmendi is a human poet, careworn about human actual issues everywhere, especially human’s freedom, in a chaotic epoch .…

By:
Dr. Sherif Algayar
Egyptian academic critic
Post Doctorate University of Chicago – USA