English A Literature (Standard Level)
Works in Translation Essay
The Significance of Time in Broken April by Ismail Kadare
Candidate Name: Syed Tousif Ahmed
Session Number: 006644-009
Session: May 2013
School Code: 006644
Word Count: 1499 words
Candidate Name: Syed Tousif Ahmed
Candidate Number: 006644-009
Session: May 2013
The significance of time in Ismail Kadare’s “Broken April” is crucial to our
understanding of the climax of the work, that is, the murder of Kryeqyqe and the eventual
death of Gjorg Berisha. The killing of Zef has cut Gjorg’s “life in two: the twenty-six
years he had lived thus far, and the thirty days that began on that very day, the
seventeenth of March, and would end on the seventeenth of April.” (Kadare, 2003, p.19).
Hence, the work is encircled within a time frame; however, by portraying the discrete
matters concerning the nature of time through its narration, for instance: spontaneity of
time, the progressive process, – past, present and future – duration and succession, natural
occurrences etc. in the narration of the work, Kadare discloses the chain of events
following Zef’s murder within a time that is not bound in clock time but exists in a
literary dimension.
Kadare uses the technique of time delay or time that is infinitely continuing and has no
stop, at many instances during the time frame of thirty days, to reveal the intense emotion
of Gjorg. For instance, Gjorg shows delay in response just after he killed Zef, as he raises
his head and is “bewildered [to watch] the dead man – still standing” (Kadare, 2003, p.9).
The word ‘bewildered’ suggests the momentous effect of delay, which intensifies the
emotion of pain and anguish, expressed by Gjorg and hence, leaves him in a numbed
state. Moreover, ‘still’ denotes that the time is continuing and hence, the reader is
unaware of its length, as it only exists when the emotion of pain and anguish exists in
Gjorg. Therefore, since it is still ‘existing’ in the past, the reader would never get to know
when this feeling halts and thus, through this technique Kadare might be implying that
our actions can never be reverted, just like the killing of Zef cannot be reversed. This
serves to introduce the tragic flaw of the protagonist, which is the killing of Zef, and
hence, foreshadows the upcoming chain of events, the tone of which is mostly depressing
and negative. In addition, the time delay also exists in symbols such as the ‘shirt’ hung by
the Berishas. Kadare writes “When bloodstains began to yellow, people said, it was a sure
sign that the dead man was in torment […] the seasons, hot or cold, would affect the
colour of the dried blood […] all those changes would be taken as mysterious messages
whose import no one dared question.” (Kadare, 2003, pp.22-23) The colour change is a
continual process and here also, the reader does not know when the process would come
to a halt, as suggested by the word ‘began’, which is not followed by any word signifying
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Candidate Name: Syed Tousif Ahmed
Candidate Number: 006644-009
Session: May 2013
a ‘stop’. Moreover, the involvement of ‘a dead man in torment’ implies that time is still
existent for ‘the dead man’. Hence, the parallel existence of time in the present and time
in the past ignores the existence of clock time in their manifestation. This serves to
signify the vague relationship between the cosmic sphere1 and the afterlife that might
exist; where time is limited in the cosmic sphere; and is infinite and immortal in the
afterlife.
Apart from the limitation of time in the cosmic sphere, the limitation is also evident in
other situations. Kadare portrays this limitation using the main theme around which the
plot develops: the Kanun. The Kanun is the code of customary law that governs the life of
Gjorg in this work and it is for the laws in Kanun that Gjorg had to kill Zef. Hence, a s
much as it can be said that revenge is the main cause behind the murder of Zef, it is also
plausible to say that Kanun is the external factor that has driven the revenge. This idea is
evident when “There was no way out [for Gjorg and] bearing the punishments, or any
other sacrifice, would not save him.” (Kadare, 2003, pp.46-47) The phrase ‘no way out’
defines the severity of Kanun and it seems that Kanun controls the fate of Gjorg and he
has no control over it. Moreover, as Kanun is controlling Gjorg’s fate and as fate is
revealed in the defined time frame, it is inferred that Kanun defines the time frame and
hence, this theme signifies the power of an abstract medium, which is the Kanun, over
time.
This concept can be further explicated by analyzing the event when “Neither then nor
later did he [Gjorg] know if he had called aloud or if the words had been stifled in his
throat. In fact the other man turned his head sharply. Gjorg saw him move his arm as if to
unsling the rifle from his shoulder and he fired.” (Kadare, 2003, p.9) The phrase ‘turned
his head sharply’ signifies that the duration of calling out aloud is sharp and infinitesimal
as it is the ‘fight-or-flight’ instinct of Zef that would make him alert and he would only be
alert if he knows the voice; in which case it is Gjorg’s voice. Following the event of
hearing the voice, the movement of the head and the arm is linked to the fact that the man
heard the voice. Hence, time as succession, therefore influenced Gjorg to fire. However,
here the succession was only caused because of the existence of Kanun and the obedience
1
Cosmic sphere in this context denotes the entire, known universe.
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Candidate Name: Syed Tousif Ahmed
Candidate Number: 006644-009
Session: May 2013
of Gjorg towards Kanun; thus, it is confirmed that Kanun played a major role in defining
the fate of Gjorg and the time for which the fate is revealed.
In addition to the above argument, the idea of succession also extends to the lineage of
the Kanun when the narrator depicts the dominance of the customs that governed Gjorg’s
“grandfather, his great-grandfather, his great-great grandfather, and all his ancestors five
hundred, a thousand years before him” (Kadare, 2003, p.16). ‘Thousand years’ is a long
time in magnitude and since the Kanun exerted its power over time for so long, it serves
to confirm the argument of time’s dependency on Kanun. However, the use of the word,
‘five hundred’ is confusing in the above quote. It could relate to the five hundred
ancestors of the ancestor itself or it could be that the existence of Kanun is five hundred
years old. Moreover, when Mark Ukaciera quotes that “the number of killings had fallen
year after year” (Kadare, 2003, p.135), the word ‘fallen’ in relation with ‘year after year’
denotes that the dependency of time on Kanun has been degrading. Hence, since we know
that the length of Kanun’s existence is uncertain and that the dependency of time on
Kanun is degrading, it is reasonable to assert that time is not at all dependent on Kanun;
rather it is independent of any variables and is spontaneous in character.
This spontaneity of time is best characterised in the event of Gjorg’s murder. By
spontaneity, it is meant how fast or slow time is perceived to be in certain situations. It is
a common phenomenon that time seems to go faster and our life span seems to become
shorter. In other words, when we are alive, time is subjective and is perceived to be long
or short depending on the situation that we are in, for instance when Gjorg “had set out on
the road, it wasn’t to look at the mountains, but to see that woman [Diana] again.”
(Kadare, 2003, p.162). To Gjorg, time is perceived to be restricted in this situation, and
hence, he would undeniably go for the object that he desires the most, which in this case
is Diana. Similarly, in the case of the mountaineer with the ox, “Time just doesn’t go by.”
(Kadare, 2003, p.212), that is, to the mountaineer, time is objective, as he does not have
any motive left to relate to, other than selling the ox. This is because he was expected to
die three days before he met Gjorg, yet he is alive. Hence, it can be inferred that,
objective time corresponds to death and subjective time relates to life; however, when
someone dies, objective time persists and subjective time halts.
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Candidate Name: Syed Tousif Ahmed
Candidate Number: 006644-009
Session: May 2013
Kadare meticulously establishes the relationship between an action and its following
chain of events, by making the reader realize the irreversibility of time, in Broken April.
Moreover, by portraying a hesitant but devoted character of Gjorg towards Kanun, the
writer shows the reader how a time span is not dependent on the action taken by Gjorg,
but rather on the intensity of the events faced later on; that is, his budding love for Diana
and the resulting, limited time of the truce. Furthermore, Kadare makes the reader
understand the persistence of subjective time and objective time and its relationship with
the intensity of the events by contrasting the fate of Gjorg with the mountaineer (with the
ox). Hence, by portraying this independence of time over our daily actions, Kadare
provides the reader with a manifesto best described in the words of the character Marcus
Aurelius, that is, “to live each day as if the last; to be neither feverish nor apathetic, and
not to act a part”. (Antonius et al., 1998)
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Candidate Name: Syed Tousif Ahmed
Candidate Number: 006644-009
Session: May 2013
Bibliography
Antonius, M.A., Farquharson, A.S.L. & Rutherford, R.B., 1998. The Meditations of Marcus
Aurelius Antoninus. In R.B. Rutherford, ed. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
reissue, illustrated, reprint ed. Oxford University Press. p.67.
Cox, M. & Theilgaard, A., 1994. Shakespeare As Prompter: The Amending Imagination in
Theatre and Therapy. In Shakespeare As Prompter: The Amending Imagination in Theatre
and Therapy. 1st ed. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. pp.191-205.
Kadare, I., 2003. Broken April. In Kadare, I. Broken April. London: Vintage.
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