In the final months of Xhevdet Bajraj’s life, he producednearly 300 poems, writing exclusively in his native Albanian, not employing thelanguage of Mexico — the country of his exile — as he had sometimes done. This bookis the first of a trilogy dedicated to these poems.
He had given the manuscript a title: Angelus Novus, aftera monoprint by Paul Klee. Walter Benjamin interprets it like this: “A Kleepainting named 'Angelus Novus' shows an angel looking as though he is about tomove away from something he is fixedly contemplating . . . His face is turnedtoward the past . . . where he sees one single catastrophe which keeps pilingwreckage upon wreckage . . . The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, andmake whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it hasgot caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer closethem.”
Bajraj contemplated Kosovo fixedly and added to his gaze thesuffering he witnessed in his place of refuge. Unrest is the essence of hiswork, unrest and dislocation, but his poetry does make whole, and as if toawaken the dead.
This series bears a name borrowed from an earlier poem: COFFIN/ When I die/ I hope they will look/ for the blackbox of my life/ among my poems.
