Ficțiunea calului troian. Semnificațiile politice ale mitului căderii Troiei
The Fiction of the Trojan Horse. The Political Meanings of the Myth of the Fall of Troy

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to investigate the political meanings of the Trojan Horse myth in Ismail Kadare’s novel The Monster. The Trojan Horse represents, in the European imagination, an archetype of temptation and seduction that lures and kills. As a symbol of a poisoned gift, the wooden horse offered to the Trojans by the Greeks is a metaphor for deceptive enticement that haunts human imagination. A multifaceted artifact, the Trojan Horse fits into the category of magical objects in mythology and literature (Dorothy’s shoes, the gingerbread house, Snow White’s poisoned apple), which belong to the (im)material heritage of the imagination. Constructed at the boundary between literature and history, the famous wooden horse, in which the Achaean generals hid to ambush the Trojans, is exposed by historians as a fiction, an abstract concept that designates unconventional siege and warfare techniques. In Kadare’s novel, „the monster” that watches over totalitarian Tirana is imbued with the meaning of the Trojan Horse in the minds of the characters. Whether an abandoned van or a wooden horse, Kadare’s symbol is a metaphor for political propaganda and totalitarian ideological manipulation that fuels a constant sense of siege and vigilance among the citizens trapped under the regime. The Albanian novelist deconstructs the political meanings of the wargift myth in post-Homeric and post-modern worlds. In Kadare’s text, the wooden horse no longer enters the city because the fears, intrigues, suspicions, and doubts it awakens in the unconscious, already dwell in the minds of the characters, in their dreams and nightmares. The wooden horse is the totalitarian ghost that haunts the 20th-century Europe.

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