Hand Art: Sublime art!

Just as art for art's sake is the most sublime form of art, so barbarism for fun is the supreme form of barbarism.

The large barracks in Krastë of Elbasan was built in the 1930s with funds from the SVEA loan of 50 million gold francs that the Albanian state received at that time. It was built with materials that were mainly brought from Italy, bricks, cement, beams, tiles and others.

The project was also Italian and...how the Italians know how to build, the result was a solid two-story building, one of those that can stand for hundreds of years without shaking.

Thick brick walls, beautiful vaults in the windows, facade and main entrance with carved stone, roof with sound beams of seasoned oak, and what else can I say.

It was such a large building that, until the construction (by another empire, the Soviet one) of the Stalin Complex in Tirana, the Krasta barracks held the record of being the largest building in Albania.

It was such a serious investment that, in 1946, when the Peace Treaty with Italy was being discussed in Paris, the Italians mentioned the Krasta Barracks in the list of the main investments made by them in Albania, and the British Foreign Office inspected the country to verify it. .

Foreign Office oreee, the one who had to deal with the affairs of the whole world, found time to go all the way to Kraste!

The building served the Albanian army until 1939 and then, until 1943, it served as a military hospital.

There is a very nice picture of Mussolini coming out of the Barracks gate after a visit to the Italian soldiers stationed there after the Italo-Greek war.

Mussolini, I mean, that man who, when he was in trouble, would call Churchill or Hitler if he wanted to, and who found time to go all the way to Krastë.

Then the Germans came and left, and they didn't disturb the building, they didn't even break the windows, they were such evil invaders.

After the Germans came the partisans and the building once again served the Albanian army with dignity for another 50 years.

Then came the magnificent year 1997, the year of the war of Albanians against Albanians. The building was ransacked inside, but nothing else happened.

Although it lost its former glory, it continued to remain in the service of the Albanian state, now without an army.

In 2010, the Berisha Government transferred the building and the surrounding territory to the University of Elbasan. The wool state that - without the power to actually help the school by building new buildings - pretended to feel it by giving it one of the existing buildings.

And that was the end. The army, because it is "no longer ours", removed the guards; while the University, with the reason that it "didn't have money", did not put up its guards.

The perfect combination that has served the Albanians over the centuries to make loot. That space of time between the retreat of one army and the arrival of the next.

Soon the building was looted of everything that could still be removed: doors, windows, beams, railings. Then they let go of your roof and pulled out all the tiles, rafters, and rafters.

Solid oak beams that had remained untouched for three quarters of a century, Italian tiles imported from across the sea.

Perhaps that looting would have been understandable in the abject poverty of the 90s. But in 2015?!

In the end, the building remained, in its bare grandeur, high and thick stone walls, doors and windows with brick vaults firmly connected, from those that, as the Roman buildings have given us as an example, can withstand two thousand years. The fury of nature, but not the Albanian human fury.

Sometime around 2015, Krasta's dinosaur began to succumb to this frenzy. With pickaxes and pickaxes, crowbars and chisels, nails, they began to pull out the stones and bricks one by one. No, I was wrong, they didn't pluck them, they broke them.

That building was made of mortar and cement so strong that it was impossible to remove the bricks to reuse them for other work.

The work of Italians, done without a tender and not with Kruje cement, was able to resist any attempt to take the bricks without breaking them to pieces. And they tore it to pieces. No gain, just out of spite, out of habit.

It was impossible to stop or restrain them. I wrote to get attention a few years ago. A couple of chronicles were also made. Yes, that avaz. The army said it is not ours. The university said that we have not received it. And we have no money to invest. And we don't have people to guard it.

The builder said that we do not deal with constructions with permits, but with those without permits. I talked to Gjergj Luca not to bother him, since he is talking about the fact that he is supporting half of the province there.

He tried, but he couldn't get the machine gun to guard someone else's gaserma - sorry - nobody.

I spoke with Taulanti, then the deputy of those parts. He tried, although the voters began to take him seriously, that according to their minds he was entering the party.

A few months of destruction seemed to be stopped. But I, Taulanti, Luca, had our own jobs, we didn't dig and dig in Krastë, while those from Krastë had the track at the door of the house. They want to destroy it again.

Today the building no longer exists. They razed it to the ground.

You will tell me where the state was. This state, which is, which was, or even the one which will be, has had, has and will have its flaws. But it is not just the work that the state does. The state is nothing but the concentrated essence of the society that produced it.

I sat one of these days among the pieces of brick there on the lawn and tried to understand. It was a huge field covered with piles of mortar, stones and broken bricks.

It must have been hard work, amid the dust, heat, noise, danger, and heaps of stones, but they had managed to tear everything to pieces for no profit, just for sport.

I have read endlessly in history books about acts of barbarism, but they were always the barbarism of the poor who destroyed and stole from poverty, from poverty.

We have even seen modern Americans from the suburbs destroying and burning supermarkets, but even they did it out of greed and desperation.

While there in Krastë, I was surrounded by two- and three-story villas that did not seem to be the property of desperate people; and I was sitting on piles of broken rubble, not from misery or poverty, but destroyed simply for fun.

Just as art for art is the most sublime form of art; and barbarism for fun is the supreme form of barbarism. And I, who have spent a quarter of a century studying the books of the world, understood this only there, on top of the thousand-year-old hill of the land of eagles.