[In the following review, MacPherson praises Three Elegies for Kosovo as a lucid and insightful exploration into Kosovar politics and history.]

Three Elegies for Kosovo again creates the eerie world that was the setting for Ismail Kadare's novel The Three-Arched Bridge, a medieval equivalent of the 1930s, in which war between power blocs is inevitable, and in which the final period before conflict is made even more tense by rumour and propaganda. The stories that circulate claim to report the very words used by European kings, the Byzantine Emperor and the Turkish Sultan (whose recent assumption of that title is seen as ominous).

Among those assembling for the campaign are the minstrels for the allied forces gathered against the Turkish advance. In the phoney war that precedes real action, the Albanian and Serbian minstrels sing their standard numbers, to ribald and cynical reactions from their audience. “‘Are you out of your minds?—The Turks are marching on us, and you are singing the same old songs’—‘The Serbs are attacking, the Albanians are attacking.’” The minstrels reply that songs are not like weapons which can be constantly updated. “Our models need at least a century to adapt!” The battle itself is reported in the style of classic confusion established by Stendhal in La Chartreuse de Parme and continued from War and Peace onwards by writers who have a larger canvas than warfare itself to display. This is particularly appropriate for the Battle of Kosovo, where both leaders were killed, where it was not entirely clear in the aftermath who had effectively won, and about which there is practically no reliable detail available now. We must also consider the possibility that some of what was said or sung about it—years later but as good as we have got—may have been confused with the second Battle of Kosovo, fought in 1448 between Turks and Hungarians.

Kadare takes an ingenious approach to the problem of how the Turkish Sultan came to be killed, and why his elder son also died, while the younger took over the empire. In Three Elegies, this genuine historical uncertainty is explained by an intelligence report to the papacy, relaying the accounts of various informants, and giving the analyst's interpretation of what this meant in policy terms. The second elegy follows the minstrels—both Albanian and Serbian—in the flight after defeat. In the confusion and recriminations, the one Turkish ally to have joined the Christian side is executed in one of the towns they pass through, as being a man whose real sympathies—apparently open to the dilemmas of all sides—are insufficiently clear.

Reaching a refuge within Europe, and asked to tell their story, the minstrels again revert to traditional songs aimed against each other rather than the Turks. Challenged—by a woman of power and position who is the friend and correspondent of European politicians and intellectuals—to abandon these, and speak plainly either about the recent events or about the culture of their own countries, they explain that they are minstrels of war. They cannot speak of other things. The third elegy records the complaint of the unquiet blood of the Turkish Sultan, still at his place of death.

The English edition of the Three Elegies—done from the Albanian in a clear effective version by Peter Constantine—has on the cover a quotation from a review of the French translation, which came out in 1998. This suggests that the three stories “transmit a message about freedom, in the sense that to write truthfully is to set something free. … Kadare has set Kosovo, the battle, the myth, free from the chains of untruth.” Clearly, at present, nobody can read a book on this subject and of this title without being affected by the current political context we all know. Kadare has produced a narrative which, coolly and admirably, uses the historical events to provide another telling account of the destructive effect of conflict between political systems—one which has evident implications for the problems in Kosovo now. To that extent it is a message of freedom. It is, however, romantic hyperbole to suggest that writing, even writing as sophisticated as this, can remove the mists of passion from events and interpretations so bitterly contorted and contested. If the therapeutic knife of art cut so cleanly, it would be the magic weapon to solve most conflict, and poets would be not unacknowledged but undisputed legislators. Unfortunately, neither battle nor myth is likely to be free from acrimonious argument for many years.

In a publication available in French, Il a fallu ce deuil pour se retrouver—Kadare shows that he is certainly well aware of the realities of political life, in a diary that records his long-standing concerns about Kosovo, and his support for action to stop the Serbian killings and expulsions of the Kosovars. Kadare, who is well known in France, where he sought political asylum, has a meeting with President Chirac, takes part in public debates and writes articles for the European press (included in the book). He is an acute and lucid observer of the practicalities of political argument, both in international lobbying and in intellectual confrontations. An English version would be welcome as further revelation both of how Kosovo is viewed in France and of Kadare himself.

He is acerbic where required, explicitly aware that the intellectual vanity and lack of imagination he sometimes encounters can be lethal when it comes to debate about how to protect lives. He retains his perspective, however, and is amused rather than indignant to find a French confrontation between intellectuals set up in such a way that even the time of his arrival becomes part of the drama of Cartesian cut and thrust. He never loses sight of the real issue, and notes that the question he was tempted to put to those who opposed action to protect the people of Kosovo was “Why are you on the side of the killers?”