Konceptimi i tjetrit në tregimin “Një grek i vogël në shtëpi” (Një manual letrar për miqësinë njerëzore)
Conception of the Other in the Story “A Little Greek at Home”

Summary/Abstract: The rather isolationist tendency of our literature, particularly the postwar one, is generally recognized. Because of numerous historical circumstances and conditions, isolation from the world, from change or ‘otherness’ has at times been a fatal condition and at other times a condition for cultural and identity survival. Amidst the whole range of discourses adhering to the traditional conception, D. Agolli’s treatment of ‘the other’ in his story A little Greek at home is entirely atypical. The profile of ‘the other’ in that story shows the spirit of the Balkans, a region of keen old conflicts but also of many common things in its constituent cultures and identities. Ethnic background is self-sufficient for understanding the other with respect to self, so much so when some other layer such as religious belief is added to it, which further accentuates the difference between the identities of self and other. In the story A little Greek at home, definition of ‘the other’ centers on features or traits like ethnicity (Greek – Albanian), religion (orthodox – Muslim), language (Greek – Albanian). Such stereotypes are as obvious in the story title as in the confrontation between the small Greek child and the family-community he enters. What happens later, however, does not help develop each of these elements in order to portray self and the other as opponents or at least as different. Agolli builds his discourse quite differently. The whole plan of his story, in all its elements – a foreigner-child who enters home, is scorned by a grandmother, is loved by a father, is recognized and accepted by a child-leads to conceiving the other not as alien but as someone who is similar to self. In his story A little Greek at home, Agolli chooses to contrast two sides of the Balkans world, where we belong, and show that occasionally, for different reasons, we have diminished our world and built frontiers in order to save what is most sacred to us: family, life, property or identity. Nevertheless, our identity is not disconnected from the other, the one who is staying next to us, who is ‘the other like us,’ ‘the other like self,’ and who we need.

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