From Objectification to Aesthetic Refusal: Ibrahim Rugova’s Contribution to the Ontology of Literature

Abstract

This paper examines Ibrahim Rugova’s philosophical and theoretical contributions to literary studies, focusing on three central categories that define his aesthetics: objectification, the strategy of meaning, and aesthetic refusal. Through the reworking of phenomenological and ontological concepts, Rugova reformulates objectification as the process by which the inner world of personality becomes externalized in the literary work, thereby affirming the autonomy of art as a mode of being. His notion of the strategy of meaning, developed in dialogue with semiotics and structuralism, explains how literature generates both denotative meanings internal to the work and connotative meanings arising from interpretation. Finally, the concept of aesthetic refusal highlights the tension between literature and politics, showing how literature resists ideological and institutional pressures by affirming its autonomy. The study seeks to analyze and synthesize these concepts by examining Rugova’s theoretical–philosophical works, such as Kah teoria Strategjia e kuptimit, and Refuzimi estetik. letrare, through an interdisciplinary methodology that combines philosophical analysis, literary theory, and cultural critique. Taken together, the categories under discussion form a coherent ontology of the literary work that situates Rugova within multiple intellectual traditions that influenced him—including phenomenology, hermeneutics, information theory, structuralism, and dialectical philosophy—while simultaneously underscoring his originality in adapting these ideas to the Albanian intellectual context. The paper concludes that Rugova’s theoretical legacy, often overshadowed by his political role, offers a significant contribution to modern literary theory by defending the autonomy of literature and reaffirming its function as a distinctive mode of truth and human realization.

1. Introduction

In the international sphere, Ibrahim Rugova is first and foremost recognized as a political leader; the intellectual who became a symbol of Kosovo’s peaceful resistance during the 1990s and later its first president. Yet before entering the political stage, Rugova had already established himself as a noted literary critic within Albanian studies (Elsie 1995, p. 615), offering—together with Sabri Hamiti—the most profound theoretical articulations of what came to be known as the Prishtina Circle (Shala 2014, p. 42). During his studies, first in Prishtina and later at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris under the direction of Roland Barthes, Rugova absorbed the methods of structuralism and semiology that were redefining French literary criticism at the time. Upon his return, he became instrumental in introducing these approaches into Albanian literary studies, thus breaking decisively with the dogma of socialist realism. His major works, Kah teoria (Toward Theory) (1978) and Refuzimi estetik (Aesthetic Refusal) (1987), reflect Barthesian influence by articulating a modern, text-centered critique that positioned Albanian literature within contemporary theoretical debates (Hamiti and Tahiri 2021, pp. 430–32). While his political role has received wide attention, his contribution to literary studies and aesthetics remains far less known outside the Albanian context. This article seeks to foreground this dimension of Rugova’s intellectual profile by situating his literary theory within the broader framework of philosophical debates.

Literature as being and literature as an aesthetic object constitute the central preoccupation of Ibrahim Rugova’s inquiries, developed from a philosophical perspective that seeks to define the distinct world of literature in relation to human existence. By conceptualizing literature as differentia specifica, Rugova views art not as a mirror of social life but as a creative activity with its own autonomous structure and unique aesthetic effects. This approach aligns with the attempt to recognize the particular function of literature, treating it as a functional (artistic) activity of an autonomous structure that produces specific aesthetic effects. Consequently, for literature to be acknowledged as a form and considered the art of the word, it must be studied in a specialized and scholarly manner, as the study of a model of the world. Rugova appears intent on demonstrating that literature—conceived as an artistic creation rather than an activity of reflection, and accompanied by its aesthetic effect—has the capacity to transform the reader’s world. In this sense, his theory resonates with Lotman’s notion of art as artistic information and with Eco’s idea of the “open work,” while simultaneously reflecting his intellectual formation as a student of Roland Barthes. Rugova’s originality lies in developing these perspectives into a systematic ontology of the literary work, grounded in the phenomenological process that he terms objectification.

This article argues that Ibrahim Rugova’s literary theory must be understood through the central category of “objectification,” which he remodels by shifting it from Marx’s theory of production into the sphere of aesthetic creation. By reformulating objectification as the process through which the inner life of personality is embodied in the work of art, Rugova develops an ontology of literature that positions the literary work both as an autonomous being and as a locus of truth. This reconsideration is significant not only for repositioning Rugova within Albanian literary criticism but also for expanding international debates on literary ontology; it demonstrates how concepts derived from Marx, Heidegger, and the tradition of ontological aesthetics can be transformed in dialogue with structuralist and poststructuralist thought, and how the autonomy of literature can be defended against political or ideological appropriations. The guiding question of the article is therefore, how does Rugova’s concept of objectification articulate an ontology of the literary work, and what does this imply for contemporary discussions on literature, truth, and politics?

As Rugova repeatedly emphasizes, literature must be regarded as an open art, whose essence lies in dialogical engagement with the recipient, and whose full aesthetic value can only be realized through the reader’s active and creative participation. Thus, the literary work is never a closed entity but a dynamic structure that demands continuous engagement and interpretation. From this perspective, the literary work must be conceived in such a way as to encompass the reader’s imagination; reading becomes pleasurable not when it is a passive act of consumption, but when it activates the reader’s creative energies and invites them to participate in the construction of meaning. This dynamic conception of literature resonates with the phenomenological approaches of thinkers such as Iser. Yet, Rugova develops it in his own way by formulating the expression “poetics of indeterminate aspects,” a term that acknowledges the indeterminacy and openness of modern literature and identifies it as one of its fundamental features.

From this perspective, the project of literary theory cannot be confined to static definitions; rather, it must continually return to the dialogue between the work and the reader, to the interaction between form and reception, to the tension between fact and fiction. Accordingly, Rugova insists that the study of the literary work must never begin from a merely gnoseological aspect—reduced to knowledge of external objects, physis—but from an epistemological aspect, which recognizes the literary work as metaphysis, as a spiritual and mental product of the human being, and as the product of what Rugova calls the “aesthetically objectified subject” (Rugova 1987, p. 27). This formulation shows that literature does not merely reflect the social world, nor is it simply an expression of the author’s personality; rather, it transforms inner life into a stable artistic being—an object that carries metaphysical and ontological weight and continues to exist beyond the moment of its initial creation.

In particular, Rugova’s philosophy demonstrates that the values of the open work can be recognized and sustained only by the independent individual—the free subject who engages actively with art. Literature, therefore, is bound to the autonomy of human existence, just as it demands autonomy from social or political instrumentalizations. Consequently, the theory of the open work finds its correspondence in the category of aesthetic refusal, through which Rugova defines the dignity of art in relation to power; literature resists by refusing to become merely a tool of ideology, while at the same time affirming its essence as an aesthetic being.

On this basis, the present article seeks to clarify Rugova’s conceptual framework by reconstructing his theory in three main movements, as follows: to define the philosophical premises of objectification and its relation to phenomenology and ontology; to analyze the role of the strategy of meaning in negotiating the relationship between literature and truth; and to interpret the notion of aesthetic refusal as the culmination of his ontology of the work of art.

2. The Philosophy of the Objectification of Literature

According to Rugova, the literary work cannot be understood as a one-dimensional construct reducible to a single aspect—whether social, ideological, or merely formal. In his seminal work Kah teoria (1978), Rugova examines the literary and artistic work from a multiplicative perspective, considering it to be “polyphonic, polyvalent, multilayered, polysemic, polylogical” (Rugova 2013, p. 45). He situates these terms within their theoretical genealogies: polyphony, drawn from the theory of music; polyvalence, borrowed from axiology, signifying the plurality of values embodied in the text; stratification (Schichtung), developed within Husserlian phenomenology and applied by Ingarden to the literary work, describing the coexistence of ontological layers; while polylogicality emphasizes the plurality of internal logical perspectives within discourse. For Rugova, these categories converge to describe the modern literary work as a structure that dismantles the hierarchy between center and periphery, thereby requiring the reader’s active participation and aesthetic competence. This plurality is what he defines as the poetics of the indeterminate aspect; a state of openness that characterizes modern literature and renders it inexhaustible to interpretation.

From the conception of plurality, Rugova moves to an ontological definition of the literary work. In much of Western aesthetics, attempts to define the literary work in ontological terms have often followed textualist, contextualist, or interpretive lines—a tripartite typology outlined by Davies (2007). Within these frameworks, the work is conceived either as a material structure of linguistic features, as a construct embedded in historical and cultural circumstances, or as an object constituted through acts of interpretation (Davies 2007, pp. 19–32). Rugova, however, does not approach the problem from any of these perspectives. For him, the literary work cannot be reduced to its textual configuration, its socio-historical context, or its interpretive reception. Instead, he grounds his approach in the notion of objectification. In this sense, Rugova shifts the debate from the question “what is a literary work?” to the question “how does a literary work come into being?”—through objectification.

The concept of objectification is central to Rugova’s aesthetics, a term he borrows from Marx. Whereas Marx understood objectification primarily as the materialization of human labor—a process that under capitalism turns into alienation—Rugova interprets the term in an aesthetic–ontological sense, as the transformation of the inner spirit into an autonomous literary being. Rugova examines the process of objectification through the laws of dialectics, as a necessary act for the development and existence of human being, drawing on Marx’s statement: “In production, personality is objectified, and in personality, the thing is objectified” (Marx 1956, p. 179).

Whereas for Marx objectification was the means through which human beings appropriated the natural world and produced useful objects—ultimately described as the process by which human labor was externalized in a product—Rugova insists that in the case of literature, this externalization is not a loss but a creative act that produces a new ontological reality. In his conceptualization of objectification, Rugova goes further by also interpreting Bakhtin and the reality of knowledge as the result of expression. According to him, what exists “exists because it has been spoken” (Rugova 2013, p. 15). Rugova places Bakhtin’s ontological perspective within the field of communication theory, linking it to the polyphonic nature of the literary work and the dialogical dialectic of communication (Bakhtin 2008, p. 273). With regard to the theory of objectification, Rugova also adds that “the work in its constitution emerges as an object,” while in its modality it is “being” (Rugova 2013, p. 52). Within the field of the theory of artistic communication, Rugova also turns to Yuri Lotman’s theory of information, which he considers an important enrichment of contemporary poetics and semiotics. Lotman’s model allows the literary work to be seen not only as an ontological entity brought into being through objectification, but also as a communication system that generates, organizes, and transmits information across multiple codes. For Rugova, this perspective complements his ontological conception of literature by situating the work within a broader semiotic framework, where meaning is not given once and for all but emerges through the interaction of textual structures and communicative processes.

In Rugova’s reading of such phenomena, the objectified being, once it encompasses all the characteristics of being—essence and existence—becomes an artistic being. He interprets this perspective as follows: “The encounter with the artistic being resembles the encounter with the human being, who once appeared to us and who, after who knows how long, appears to us again (in our contemplation it appears continuously). This means that the artistic being exists in its manifestation in the world of the recipient, but in the form of an undefined time; it exists as a being in continuity” (Rugova 2013, p. 53). To illustrate this, he develops the ontology of the character, such as Hamlet—William Shakespeare, Don Quixote—Miguel de Cervantes, Raskolnikov—Fyodor Dostoevsky, Faust—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Anna Karenina—Leo Tolstoy, Josef K.—Franz Kafka, Meursault—Albert Camus, Stephen Bloom—James Joyce, The General of the Dead Army—Ismail Kadare, and others.

3. From Objectification to the Aesthetic Object

Rugova’s thought is grounded in the perspective of ontological philosophy, according to which personality (the inner world) is objectified in the literary work, while the literary work is objectified in personality. In this way, he explains the value of the process of artistic objectification, concluding that the human being who creates these artistic beings fades away or ceases to exist (the subject), while the latter continue to exist as the result of different times and within different times (Rugova 1978, p. 49).

Thus, the literary work as a literary and artistic being must have an “aesthetic object,” which conditions both the “aesthetic effect” and the metaphysical one. This implies that the “aesthetic object” is “a function in itself,” and therefore cannot be identified with the literary work. The aesthetic object, as a polyphonic structure, is the product of the recipient’s consciousness of the literary work.

Rugova aims to present the literary work not only in terms of a textual entity. The literary work has an aesthetic layer that is distinct from the linguistic material, and this layer is essential for making the work an artistic being. He embraces the phenomenological idea that the work comes to life only in interaction with the recipient, through the act of concretization. Without the reader, the aesthetic object remains only potential. The aesthetic object, as discussed by Rugova, is composed of multiple layers and planes, as emphasized in ontological aesthetics—Hartmann’s distinction between the primary sensory plane and the metaphysical plane (Hartmann 1965, p. 112); Ingarden’s insistence on the semantic plane as decisive for artistic reality, alongside the plane of sounds and words (Ingarden 1962, p. 287); and Focht’s systematic division into three planes, namely, the physical–material, the representative–objective, and the spiritual–metaphysical (Focht 1972, p. 47). Rugova stresses the importance of the metaphysical plane of the literary work, which he considers insufficiently addressed in theoretical explanations. By “metaphysics,” he does not mean metaphysics in its traditional philosophical sense, but rather the aesthetico-metaphysical qualities that underlie the work and make it a complete artistic being.

Rugova attributes to these qualities the function of elevating human experience above the banality of everyday life and, in his view, they provide a culminating depth of existence. As a result, Rugova emphasizes that the metaphysical quality of the literary work functions as a catharsis, a purification from ordinariness, which only successful literary works can achieve. However, Rugova maintains that this value should not remain limited to the “catharsis” of feeling (Aristotle 1998, p. 79), but should also be understood as a consciousness developed on the intellectual plane. The spiritual and metaphysical work must realize the unrealizable possibility in the world to fulfill its ontological function as being.

4. The Poetics as Strategy of Meaning

Rugova has engaged with the problem of the being of literature in a substantial body of his theoretical texts; thus, the artistic and literary work is his constant object of inquiry. In his book Strategjia e kuptimit (1980), he discusses literary works through the functions of “strategy” and “meaning” as two “poetic points” related to truth in literary texts. His research focuses on the investigation of “strategy” as a mechanism of “meaning,” which appears in different forms and functions as a manipulation of meaning and its significance. This order is characterized by the idea that it is best realized in art and in literature, while preserving the naturalness of existence. Thus, “strategy” emerges as an essential element of poetics for producing new meanings, and for Rugova, the work creates meanings just as existence itself creates meanings (Rugova 1980, p. 18).

Rugova distinguishes between a negative strategy, which corrupts meaning, alienates it, and leads not to truth but to deception, and a positive strategy, which places objects, words, and meanings into equal relations to exclude the corruption/alienation of the message. Positive strategy, according to Rugova, can be preserved and cultivated only in art, whereas negative strategy has social and ideological applications. Rugova seeks to uncover this negative strategy by drawing on semiology as well as on the social–materialist arguments of Marxism and those of psychoanalysis. In his view, this negative strategy distances meaning from truth and existential experience and transforms it into an instrument for foreign purposes. Within the framework of semiology and sociolinguistics, he associates this strategy with discourse and the persuasive function (following Jakobson), while, relying on the Marxist and psychoanalytic tradition, he connects it with alienation. For Rugova, strategy denotes a force, a regulator that either places meaning in the service of ideology (negative) or allows meaning to circulate (positive). Positive strategy in art is secured through the avoidance of ideological pressures. The fundamental bearer of this strategy is applicative poetics, which is the essential realization of both art itself and the premeditated strategy, and which differs significantly from poetics understood merely as a method and methodology of study (Rugova 1980, p. 13).

In his treatment of meaning, Rugova situates the study of the issue on three levels: on the gnoseological plane, as a category of knowledge; on the ontological plane, as being that reflects the spiritual meanings of the intellectual product; and on the axiological plane, to seek the value of meaning in the process of existence. Thus, meaning is simultaneously knowledge, existence, and value. If art is considered as being, then meaning is a mode of existence. When we interpret, meaning is gnoseological—it is a category of knowledge that must be explained. If we speak of the value of this meaning, then it is axiological, where meaning/meanings become a criterion for judging the value of art. The argument on the gnoseological plane resonates with Jung’s views, which begin from the idea that art does not require meaning and that it has no inherent meaning, but that meaning is recognized and interpreted when observed from the outside, at a distance. Rugova maintains that the three planes of meaning are ways of systematizing the experience of meaning that arises from Jung’s distinction between creation (art exists) and interpretation (art acquires meaning). Moreover, Rugova draws on Jung’s claim that in the process of creation, the author does not think simply and declaratively about meaning; rather, the creator is concerned only with strategy, with the placement of poetic points from which the curves of meaning will unfold (Jung 1966, pp. 77–78). Thus, in the act of creation, the creator does not have meaning in mind but rather the strategies that generate meaning. In this sense, strategy acquires the significance of a global intention, one that does not imply awareness of all the details of writing and of the placement of meaning. In this way, Rugova positions himself at the center of the debate on meaning, the signification of the work, and on the intentionality of the work and the author himself—a debate led by his teacher, Roland Barthes, at the forefront of the anti-intentionalist camp.

In line with anti-intentionalist positions, Rugova appears to insist on the argument that a literary work cannot be limited to the meaning the author may have assigned to it, but must be regarded as a product of the accumulation of interpretations from its appearance to the present day. Thus, the sum of a text’s interpretations across time constitutes its meaning. Therefore, when Rugova discusses meaning, he does not speak in terms of its monopolization by the creator of the literary work, but as a meaning carried by the work itself. Alongside this meaning carried by the artistic work, Rugova argues that there also exist attributed meanings, typical of literary research. The meaning of the work is the product not of the creator, but of the creator’s strategy, while attributed meanings are potential meanings. Rugova associates the meaning of the work with denotation, whereas attributed meaning is linked to connotation. This distinction resonates with Barthes’s semiological “framework” even as it diverges from it. For Barthes, denotation represents the first order of signification—the seemingly neutral relation between signifier and signified—while connotation defines a second-order system in which the denotative sign itself becomes the signifier of broader cultural and ideological meanings. Barthes connects literature to ideology through his analysis of connotation, which he defines as “a fragment of ideology” (Barthes 1977, p. 91). According to him, ideology is a form of signifying connotation. Whereas for Barthes, connotation is a semiotic process laden with ideology, for Rugova connotation represents a literary process imbued with creativity and humanism. For Rugova, ideology is more closely tied to a negative strategy, where meaning is manipulated and distorted. Moreover, for Rugova, signification begins with semiological theory but transforms into literary typology, where denotation is associated with classical literature, while connotation is linked with modern/contemporary literature. To the former, he attributes the plane of denotative language, while to the latter, he connects the connotative dimension of language and of situations within the work. In connotation, Rugova identifies what he calls the strategy of meaning.

5. Literature and Truth

Literature and truth—a longstanding conceptual binomial that has preoccupied thinkers from antiquity to modernity—also constitutes a constant concern for Rugova. According to him, the spiritual and the intellectual world are translated into the literary work, bringing the human being and the literary being together at this common point. Within this philosophy, “the literary work is an artistic and philosophical model that objectifies the world, the life of a given time, conveyed through the subject constituted in the world and in language” (Rugova 2013, p. 59).

To support this approach, Rugova turns to Heidegger’s essay The Origin of the Work of Art (Heidegger 1950), where he finds a compelling explanation of objectification in its artistic sense. Heidegger asserts that the truth of the world does not remain an abstract proposition but is a self-setting of truth into the work (das Sich-ins-Werk-Setzen der Wahrheit). For Rugova, this perspective is decisive: the work of art is not merely a beautiful object in the classical sense, but the place where the truth of the world becomes manifest. What is crucial is that the creative subject plays a constitutive role in this process, since the work is not a product of nature but a human objectification. Through the act of creation, the artist’s subjective world is externalized into an aesthetic form, and in that form, truth itself becomes visible. The literary work, therefore, is not simply a creation about reality but participates in the “unconcealment” (Unverborgenheit) of Being. It embodies a metaphysical dimension that confirms its ontological status.

This is also the core of Rugova’s thought, as he continually returns to this point to uncover the relationship between the literary work and truth—that is, the literary work as a sign that endures in time and in history, and that speaks to human existence. Viewed from this angle, to clarify the issue, he sees it as necessary for the literary work to be interpreted within the relation world–life–human being. This degree of dependency in artistic formation does not result in imitation but in a new creation, called a model, which, through its creation, exists in a parallel manner with reality and is independent of it, as a self-sufficient creation with which we can establish infinite forms of communication. This function cannot be realized as such without taking into account Rugova’s conviction that literature fulfills the human dimension in the fullest way in relation to humanity. This becomes possible only when the autonomy of literature is achieved.

Building on this ontological foundation, Rugova incorporates the category of the symbolic sign. According to him, the literary work never exhausts itself in a single meaning; on the contrary, it is polysemic and multilayered, always open to new acts of interpretation by the reader. The symbol does not merely reproduce an image of reality, but generates a surplus of meaning that invites continual engagement. This aspect recalls Barthes’s claim that the literary text is itself “symbolic,” a fabric of meanings rather than a fixed message. Rugova, however, reconsiders the concept by situating it within the sphere of aesthetic objectification: symbolic density is not simply a linguistic phenomenon but a manifestation of the spiritual–metaphysical plane of the work, through which truth enters into art and becomes a lasting presence in human consciousness. This Rugovian discourse is analogous to that of Barthes, who speaks of both the symbolic nature of discourse and the linguistic nature of the symbol to probe more deeply into this issue. He describes the mode of relation between the literary work and discourse by considering the work symbolic and discourse itself as a sign of truth. And just as Rugova suggests about the multiplicity of the literary work in demonstrating the relationship between literature and truth, the same concept can be found in Barthes: “the literary work is symbolic: the symbol is not an image, but a multiplicity of meanings.” Therefore, the aforementioned relationship is determined in every conclusion by this opposition—namely, by the immortality of the work—since it offers diverse meanings to humanity in a symbolic language, and the symbol is a quality of the imagination that Rugova calls metaphysical objectification.

6. Aesthetic Refusal

Alongside issues related to the nature of literature, its ontological status as an autonomous form of being, and questions concerning the relationship of literature to truth, knowledge, meaning, and interpretation—that is, problems of an epistemological nature—Rugova also turns to questions regarding the relationship between literature and politics, and between the author as an individual and society. He addresses these issues most clearly in his book Refuzimi estetik (1987), particularly in the eponymous essay “Aesthetic Refusal.” Here, Rugova formulates the concept of aesthetic refusal, which for him most fully defines the being of the literary work.

“Aesthetic Refusal” is the concept through which Rugova most clearly defines the ontology of the literary work and its being. In this regard, it is important to note that (drawing on Barthes’s work) Rugova considers literature as a test of reality; therefore, he explores the nature of literature on the plane of realizing the human in an autonomous way in relation to the world and to humanity. Thus, through “aesthetic refusal,” he seeks literature as value and its function as being, rather than as an activity in function. In assessing the being of the literary work, Rugova emphasizes the problem of aesthetics and politics to shed light on the conflicts between art and authority (the theory of the relationship between art and the state originates in Plato’s Republic). Within this logic, regarding the creation and necessity of “aesthetic refusal,” Rugova also discusses the problem of the control of literary and spiritual production, which he regards as a harmful claim over the freedom of the author.

As Rugova explains it, aesthetic refusal is above all a gesture of non-acceptance of imposed meanings. Human existence itself is situated within a trichotomic aporia—imposition, acceptance, refusal—and literature participates in this aporia at a collective level. When political or ideological systems attempt to impose their discourse, literature responds in its own way; not necessarily through direct opposition, but through its autonomy as art, through satire, irony, the grotesque, or simply through its capacity to remain different, to “ignore” imposition, and to affirm dignity as a universal value.

Placing it in a historical context, Rugova observes that attempts to control literature have taken the form of censorship, from antiquity to modern times. He recalls how the Athenian council altered Homer’s work and how later eras institutionalized censorship through the Inquisition. In the twentieth century, beyond external prohibitions, Rugova recalls self-censorship (in his view a term of Sartre): the act by which the writer, anticipating repression, censors himself and limits his creative freedom. For Rugova, this self-censorship is the most harmful restriction of all, because it corrodes literature at its very source, undermining the act of creation from within.

It should be emphasized that Rugova’s “aesthetic refusal” is linked to “aesthetic being,” to the ontology of the artistic work. Rugova views the concept in a general sense, taking into account all the factors connected with art and literature, as well as all the circumstances in which it has developed, concluding that the fundamental element is the literary work and its essence, its aesthetic being.

Taking into account that “aesthetic refusal” influences the historical and cultural order and contains its basic form to remain pure art, while at the same time influencing authority and society, Rugova concludes that in this way, the effect called “aesthetic refusal” is constructed, developed, expanded, and becomes influential.

Continuing this discussion on the relationship between aesthetics and politics, Rugova turns to the figure of the “court writers,” a historical example that clearly illustrates how authority has always sought to establish special relations with writers. This relationship was not only financial—in the form of patronage by kings or religious institutions that offered them protection and welfare—but also ideological, where the writer was placed in the service of legitimizing the political order. Nevertheless, Rugova emphasizes the distinction between those who wrote merely as court authors, producing factual material for the government, and those who, although present at court, remained true writers, such as Goethe in Weimar, Goya in the Spanish court, or Fishta and Naimi in ecclesiastical and national circles. For the latter, the aesthetic dimension of the work did not disappear; on the contrary, it became a form of aesthetic refusal, preserving the autonomy of literature and protecting it from ideological alienation. In this sense, the example of the “court writers” is not a deviation but a concrete testimony to Rugova’s thesis that the aesthetic essence of the work, when left intact, allows the author to triumph over the constraints of power, whereas its absence reduces creativity to a mere political document without literary value.

This reflection also allows Rugova to reconsider the modernist debate on the “committed writer” (l’écrivain engagé). While Sartre had argued that the writer bears the responsibility of active engagement in political and social struggles, Rugova remains cautious about the risks of turning literature into an instrument of ideology. For him, the true commitment of literature lies in aesthetic refusal; by preserving its autonomy, literature refuses to become mere propaganda and thus safeguards the human dimension of art.

As a result, Rugova presents the concept of aesthetic being as prevailing over the literary work. When aesthetics is present in a literary work, it enables the author to triumph even in the role of leader of the people, Rugova proposes.

7. Conclusions

This paper has argued that Ibrahim Rugova’s literary theory is best understood through the interaction of three central categories: objectification, the strategy of meaning, and aesthetic refusal. By reinterpreting the Marxian notion of objectification through an aesthetic–ontological lens, Rugova developed a philosophy of literature in which the inner world of personality is objectified in the work of art, thereby conceiving the literary work as an autonomous being. Through the concept of the strategy of meaning, he articulated how literature generates meaning in forms that parallel existence itself, distinguishing between the denotative meanings of the work and the connotative meanings generated by interpretation, thus viewing literature as a dynamic process of truth-making. Finally, in the category of aesthetic refusal, he addressed the conflictual relationship between literature and power, insisting that literature must preserve its dignity by refusing to become an instrument of ideology.

Taken together, these three movements of Rugova’s thought define a coherent ontology of the literary work: literature is at once metaphysical objectification, a strategy of meaning, and aesthetic refusal. This framework situates Rugova within the broader context of twentieth-century literary theory, in dialogue with Barthes, Heidegger, and Lotman, while at the same time demonstrating his originality in adapting these perspectives to the Albanian intellectual context.

This paper aimed to address the main contributions of Ibrahim Rugova in the field of literary and aesthetic studies. A limitation of the study was its focus on a selected number of Rugova’s works, which restricts the possibility of offering a comprehensive picture of his figure as a theorist and literary critic. Further research could be enriched by expanding the corpus of case studies to include other texts by Rugova that address various aesthetic issues, not only within the narrower framework of the Albanian context but also as a contribution to global knowledge of literature.

If in the international sphere Rugova is remembered above all as the political leader of Kosovo’s peaceful resistance, the analysis undertaken here suggests that his contribution to literary theory constitutes a parallel legacy; a rigorous effort to defend the autonomy of art and to conceptualize literature as a distinctive mode of being. By grounding literature in objectification, opening it to strategies of meaning, and affirming its power of refusal, Rugova’s aesthetics offers not only a reorientation of Albanian criticism, but also a valuable contribution to ongoing debates on literature, truth, and politics.