Pogradec honours Kuteli with monument

TIRANA, April 27 – The southeast lake town of Pogradec has honored its writer Mitrush Kuteli with a monument placed in the local promenade. The monument created by sculptor Muntaz Dhrami was unveiled on Tuesday in ceremony bringing together writers, citizens and local government officials.
Unveiled 43 years after his death, Kuteli’s monument faces that of Lasgush Poradeci, Albania’s best modern poet also born in Pogradec.
“Kuteli cannot be portrayed in a single word. We can talk a lot about Kuteli as an economist, writer, literary critic but above all he was a patriot, who refused to put anything else above Albania and his home country, even in conditions of continuous persecution,” said Pogradec Mayor Artan Shkembi as quoted by local media.
A scientific session on Kuteli’s creativity followed the unveiling of the monument. The meeting at the local cultural centre closed with a monodrama written by Kuteli and performed by Ligoraq Riza.
Kuteli served two years in prison soon after the communists came to power from 1947 to 1949 in a labour camp.
Kuteli’s open persecution ended with the collapse of the Yugoslav influence in Albania. The writer returned to Tirana and was allowed, like Lasgush Poradeci and a number of other suspicious intellectuals, to work as a literary translator for the state-owned Naim Frash쳩 publishing house.