Albanian Authors – Shqipopedia | Encyclopedia Albanica

Pashko VASA

Honolulu — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 20:25:57 +0000

One figure from northern Albania who played a key role in the Rilindja culture of the nineteenth century was Pashko Vasa (1825-1892), also known as Wassa Effendi, Vaso Pasha, or Vaso Pasha Shkodrani. This statesman, poet, novelist and patriot was born in Shkodra. From 1842 to 1847 he worked as a secretary for the British consulate in that northern Albanian city where he had an opportunity to perfect his knowledge of a number of foreign languages: Italian, French, Turkish and Greek. He also knew some English and Serbo-Croatian, and in later years learned Arabic. In 1847, full of ideals and courage, he set off for Italy on the eve of the turbulent events that were to take place there and elsewhere in Europe in 1848. We have two letters from him written in Bologna in the summer of that revolutionary year in which he expresses openly republican and anti-clerical views. We later find him in Venice where he took part in fighting in Marghera on 4 May 1849, part of a Venetian uprising against the Austrians. After the arrival of Austrian troops on 28 August of that year, Pashko Vasa was obliged to flee to Ancona where, as an Ottoman citizen, he was expelled to Constantinople.

He published an account of his experience in Italy the following year in his Italian-language La mia prigionia, episodio storico dell’assedio di Venezia, Constantinople 1850 (My imprisonment, historical episode from the siege of Venice). It is no coincidence that this historical biography bears a title similar to that of the famous memoirs of Italian patriot and dramatist Silvio Pellico (1789-1845), Le mie prigioni (My prisons), published in 1832. In Constantinople, after an initial period of poverty and hardship, he obtained a position at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whence he was seconded to London for a time, to the Imperial Ottoman Embassy to the Court of St James’s. He later served the Sublime Porte in various positions of authority. In 1863, thanks to his knowledge of Serbo-Croatian, as he tells us, he was appointed to serve as secretary and interpreter to Ahmed Jevdet Pasha , Ottoman statesman and historian, on a fact-finding mission to Bosnia and Hercegovina which lasted for twenty months, from the spring of 1863 to October 1864. The events of this mission were recorded in his La Bosnie et l’Herzégovine pendant la mission de Djevdet Efendi, Constantinople 1865 (Bosnia and Hercegovina during the mission of Jevdet Efendi). About 1867 we also find him in Aleppo. A few years later he published another now rare work of historical interest, Esquisse historique sur le Monténégro d’après les traditions de l’Albanie, Constantinople 1872 (Historical sketch of Montenegro according to Albanian traditions).

Despite his functions on behalf of the Porte, Pashko Vasa never forgot his Albanian homeland. In the autumn of 1877 he became a founding member of the Komitet qendror për mbrojtjen e të drejtave të kombësisë shqiptare (Central committee for the defence of the rights of the Albanian people) in Constantinople. Through his contacts there, he also participated in the organization of the League of Prizren in 1878. He was no doubt the author of the Memorandum on Albanian Autonomy submitted to the British Embassy in Constantinople. Together with other nationalist figures on the Bosphorus, such as hodja Hasan Tahsini, Jani Vreto and Sami Frashëri, he played his part in the creation of an alphabet for Albanian and in this connection published a 16-page brochure entitled L’alphabet latin appliqué à la langue albanaise, Constantinople 1878 (The Latin alphabet applied to the Albanian language), in support of an alphabet of purely Latin characters. He was also a member of the Shoqëri e të shtypuri shkronja shqip (Society for the publication of Albanian writing), founded in Constantinople on 12 October 1879 to promote the printing and distribution of the Albanian-language books. In 1879, Pashko Vasa worked in Varna on the Black Sea coast in the administration of the vilayet of Edirne with Ismail Qemal bey Vlora (1844-1919). He also acquired the title of Pasha and on 18 July 1883 became Governor General of the Lebanon, a post reserved by international treaty for a Catholic of Ottoman nationality, and a position he apparently held, true to the traditions of the Lebanon then and now, in an atmosphere of Levantine corruption and family intrigue. There he spent the last years of his life and died in Beirut after a long illness on 29 June 1892. In 1978, the centenary of the League of Prizren, his remains were transferred from the Lebanon back to a modest grave in Shkodra.

Though a loyal civil servant of the Ottoman Empire, Pashko Vasa devoted his energies as a polyglot writer to the Albanian national movement. Aware of the importance of Europe in Albania’s struggle for recognition, he published La vérité sur l’Albanie et les Albanais. Etude historique et critique, Paris 1879, an historical and political monograph which appeared in an English translation as The truth on Albania and the Albanians. Historical and critical study, London 1879, as well as in Albanian, German, Turkish and Greek that year, and later in Arabic (1884) and Italian (1916). The Albanian edition, Shqypnija e shqyptart (Albania and the Albanians), was published in Allfabetare e gluhësë shqip, Constantinople 1879 (Alphabet of the Albanian language), along with work by Sami Frashëri and Jani Vreto. In this treatise designed primarily to inform the European reader about his people, he gave an account of Albanian history from the ancient Pelasgians and Illyrians up to his time and expounded on ways and means of promoting the advancement of his nation. Far from an appeal for Albanian independence or even autonomy within the Empire, Pashko Vasa proposed simply the unification of all Albanian-speaking territory within one vilayet and a certain degree of local government. The possibility of a sovereign Albanian state was still inconceivable. He never lived to read Sami Frashëri’s above-mentioned treatise ‘Albania – what was it, what is it and what will become of it?’, printed twenty years later, in which the concept of full independence had finally ripened.

To make the Albanian language better known and to give other Europeans an opportunity to learn it, he published a Grammaire albanaise à l’usage de ceux qui désirent apprendre cette langue sans l’aide d’un maître, Ludgate Hill 1887 (Albanian grammar for those wishing to learn this language without the aid of a teacher), one of the rare grammars of the period.

Pashko Vasa was also the author of a number of literary works of note. The first of these is a volume of Italian verse entitled Rose e spine, Constantinople 1873 (Roses and thorns), forty-one emotionally-charged poems (a total of ca. 1,600 lines) devoted to themes of love, suffering, solitude and death in the traditions of the romantic verse of his European predecessors Giacomo Leopardi, Alphonse de Lamartine and Alfred de Musset. Among the subjects treated in these meditative Italian poems, two of which are dedicated to the Italian poets Francesco Petrarch and Torquato Tasso, are life in exile and family tragedy, a reflection of Pashko Vasa’s own personal life. His first wife, Drande, whom he had married in 1855, and four of their five children died before him, and in later years too, personal misfortune continued to haunt him. In 1884, shortly after his appointment as Governor General of the Lebanon, his second wife Catherine Bonatti died of tuberculosis, as did his surviving daughter Roza in 1887.

Bardha de Témal, scènes de la vie albanaise, Paris 1890 (Bardha of Temal, scenes from Albanian life), is a French-language novel which Pashko Vasa published in Paris under the pseudonym of Albanus Albano the same year as Naim Frashëri’s noted verse collection Luletë e verësë (The flowers of spring) appeared in Bucharest. ‘Bardha of Temal,’ though not written in Albanian, is, after Sami Frashëri’s much shorter prose work ‘Love of Tal’at and Fitnat,’ the oldest novel written and published by an Albanian and is certainly the oldest such novel with an Albanian theme. Set in Shkodra in 1842, this classically-structured roman-feuilleton, rather excessively sentimental for modern tastes, follows the tribulations of the fair but married Bardha and her lover, the young Aradi. It was written not only as an entertaining love story but also with a view to informing the western reader of the customs and habits of the northern Albanians. Indeed the rather strained informative character of this prose fable is one of its major artistic weaknesses. Bardha is no doubt the personification of Albania itself, married off against her will to the powers that be. Above and beyond its didactic character and any possible literary pretensions the author might have had, ‘Bardha of Temal’ also has a more specific political background. It was interpreted by some Albanian intellectuals at the time as a vehicle for discrediting the Gjonmarkaj clan who, in cahoots with the powerful abbots of Mirdita, held sway in the Shkodra region. It is for this reason perhaps that Pashko Vasa published the novel under the pseudonym Albanus Albano. The work is not known to have had any particular echo in the French press of the period.

Though most of Pashko Vasa’s publications were in French and Italian, there is one poem, the most influential and perhaps the most popular ever written in Albanian, which has ensured him his deserved place in Albanian literary history, the famous O moj Shqypni (Oh Albania, poor Albania). This stirring appeal for a national awakening is thought to have been written in the period between 1878, the dramatic year of the League of Prizren, and 1880.

Oh Albania, Poor Albania

Oh Albania, poor Albania,
Who has shoved your head in ashes?
Once you were a fine, great lady,
All the world’s men called you mother.
Once you had such wealth and goodness,
With fair maidens, strapping young lads,
Herds and land, rich fields and produce,
Flashing guns, Italian weapons,
Heroic fellows and pure women,
You reigned as their best companion.

At rifle’s blast, at flash of lightning
The Albanian mastered battle,
Thus he fought and thus he perished,
Leaving ne’er misdeeds behind him.
Whene’er an Albanian swore an oath did
All the Balkans tremble at him,
When he charged in savage battle,
Always he returned a victor.

How fare you today, Albania?
Like an oak tree groundward falling!
Trampled now, the world walks o’er you,
No one has a kind word for you.
Like snow-capped peaks, like fields a-blooming
You were clothed, you’re now in tatters,
You’ve no name or reputation,
In your plight you have destroyed them.

Albanians, you are killing kinfolk,
You’re split in a hundred factions,
Some believe in God or Allah,
Say ‘I’m Turk,’ or ‘I am Latin,’
Say ‘I’m Greek,’ or ‘I am Slavic,’
But you’re brothers, hapless people!
You’ve been duped by priests and hodjas
To divide you, keep you wretched,
When the stranger shares your hearth side,
Puts to shame your wife and sister,
You still serve him, gaining little,
You forget your forebears’ pledges
You are serfs to foreign landlords,
Who have not your blood or language!
Weep, lament, oh swords and rifles,
The Albanian bird’s been snared, imprisoned!
Weep with us, oh dauntless heroes,
For Albania’s toppled, face-smeared,
Neither bread nor meat remaining,
Fire in hearth, nor light, nor pine torch,
Drained of blood and of friends’ honour,
She’s defiled and now has fallen!

Gather ’round now, maids and women,
You with fair eyes know of weeping,
Come and mourn our poor Albania,
She has lost her honour, virtue,
She’s a widow with no husband,
She’s a mother with no offspring!

Who has the heart to let her perish,
Once a heroine, now so weakened!
Well-loved mother, dare we leave her
To fall under foreign boot heels?

No one wishes such shame on her,
Each of us dreads such misfortune!
Before Albania’s thus forsaken
Let our men die, bearing rifles.

Wake, Albanian, from your slumber,
Let us, brothers, swear in common
And not look to church or mosque,
The Albanian’s faith is Albanianism!

From Bar down to far Preveza
Shall the sun spread forth its warm rays,
Our forefathers left us this land,
Let none touch it, for we’ll all die!
Let us fall as did our forebears
And not shame ourselves before God!

[O moj Shqypni, ca. 1878, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie.]

Sterjo SPASSE

Honolulu — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 20:24:47 +0000

Sterjo Spasse (1914-1989) is a novelist and short story writer of (Slav) Macedonian origin from Lake Prespa. It was while teaching in the little village of Derviçan south of Gjirokastra that the eighteen-year-old Spasse began writing his first novel, and his masterpiece, Nga jeta në jetë – Pse!?, Korça 1935 (From life to life – Why!?), usually referred to for short as Pse!? (Why!?). Like Haki Stërmilli’s Sikur t’isha djalë (If I were a boy), Pse!? is written in the form of a diary and focusses on the tragic dilemma of a young intellectual in a backward rural society. Gjon Zaveri is an intelligent young man who, after his studies, returns to his native village. His parents, intent on adhering to custom and upholding tradition, insist that he marry the girl they have chosen for him, the village maiden Afërdita. Gjon knows that such a marriage would be a disastrous mistake, but after much soul-searching and anguish, he reluctantly concedes to the alliance, thus submitting to tradition and patriarchal society, and bringing about his own downfall. Pse!? is a nihilistic work, a roman i mohimit (novel of denial). Its pessimistic hero Gjon Zaveri suffers from all the Weltschmerz of Goethe’s young Werther, a hero with whom he feels great affinity. In the end, resigned to his fate, Gjon commits suicide by throwing himself into the lake. Two weeks later, a letter of farewell is found, with which the novel concludes.

Post-war Marxist critics were unable to deal with Pse, though it may be considered one of the great Albanian novels of the early twentieth century. The Schopenhauerian pessimism and the Weltschmerz conflicted too sharply with the positive hero demanded by socialist realism and they dismissed the work simply as the product of the suffering and oppression of the working masses in pre-liberation, feudal-bourgeois society. It was referred to publicly only in order to show what progress Spasse had made with his subsequent novels of socialist realism. From a purely aesthetic point of view, exactly the opposite is true. Although Pse?! is the work of youthful inspiration by a writer as yet unskilled in his métier, this first novel contrasts favourably with all of the later ‘classics of socialist realism’ that he produced.

Excerpt from the novel “WHY!?”

It is better to be ruled by an inanimate yet visible object than by philosophy which is invisible! It is better to become a murderer with a rifle than by thoughts. Only a few people are killed with a rifle whereas thousands are killed by thoughts. I know that books have alienated me from life and that philosophy has caused me to lose my feelings as a human being. Love was not born for me, nothing was created for me! I was born superfluous in this world; I sat down to the dinner table by mistake. Having wished so desperately to right some of the wrongs of man, I find myself with no one close to me in this world. I am not even close to myself. I am like a reed floating in the middle of the ocean and shall soon sink to the very bottom of the sea. And I must drown, for though alive, I am as if dead. It is all the same to me… No one should pardon me for that which the world calls sin, for I pardon no one, especially not the philosophers. As for my body after death, I am a Diogenes. Let it rot where it collapses; let it be devoured by the first wild beasts that find it. But if mankind cannot endure such a thing and insists on burying me, then I have one wish. Let them bury me in a lonely spot, surrounded by thorns and thistles, without a tear or a lament, without offerings or mourning clothes, because for me:

A world of nothing, from nothing for nothing,
revolves around the essence of nothing!’

The villagers buried their only intellectual with due respect, but in a lonely spot – at the top of a hill overlooking the village where the gentle breezes blow from all directions. In the shade of a wild rose lies the young man’s simple grave. On it there is no name, no date or sign. All that is inscribed are his last words:

A world of nothing, from nothing for nothing,
revolves around the essence of nothing!
A young man on the path of the philosophers.

[Nga jetë në jetë – Pse!?, Korça: Drita 1935, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, and first published in English in History of Albanian literature, New York, vol. 1, p. 476-477]

Filip SHIROKA

Honolulu — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 20:23:35 +0000

Filip Shiroka (1859-1935) is a classical Rilindja poet whose verse was first to become known in later years. He was born and raised in Shkodra and educated there by the Franciscans. Among his teachers was poet Leonardo De Martino (1830-1923), whose influence is omnipresent in Shiroka’s verse. His earliest verse publication, All’Albania, all’armi, all’armi! (To Albania, to arms, to arms!), was a rather weak nationalist poem on the defence of Ulcinj, which was written in Italian and printed in the Osservatore Cattolico (Catholic Observer) of Milan in 1878. Like many Albanian intellectuals of the late nineteenth century, Filip Shiroka spent much of his life in exile. In 1880, after the defeat of the League of Prizren, he emigrated to the Middle East, and settled in Egypt and Lebanon where he worked as an engineer in railway construction.

Shiroka’s nationalist, satirical and meditative verse in Albanian was written mostly from 1896 to 1903. It appeared in journals such as Faik Konitza’s Albania, the Albanian periodicals published in Egypt, and the Shkodra religious monthly Elçija i Zemers t’Jezu Krisctit (The Messenger of the Sacred Heart). Shiroka, who also used the pseudonyms Geg Postrippa and Ulqinaku, is the author of at least sixty poems, three short stories, articles and several translations, in particular of religious works for Catholic liturgy. His verse collection, Zâni i zêmrës, Tiranë 1933 (The voice of the heart), which was composed at the turn of the century, was published by Ndoc Nikaj two years before Shiroka’s death in Beirut.

Filip Shiroka’s verse, inspired by early nineteenth-century French and Italian romantic poets such as Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), Alfonse de Lamartine (1790-1869) and Tommaso Grossi (1790-1853) whom he had read as a young man in Shkodra, does not cover any unusual thematic or lexical range, nor is it all of literary quality, though the latter assertion is no doubt valid for most Rilindja poets. Shiroka is remembered as a deeply emotional lyricist, and as one of linguistic purity, who was obsessed with his own fate and that of his distant homeland. Recurrent in his work is the theme of nostalgia for the country of his birth.

Be off, swallow

Farewell, for spring has come,
Be off, swallow, on your flight,
From Egypt to other lands,
Searching over hill and plain
Be off to Albania on your flight,
Off to Shkodra, my native town!

Convey my greetings
To the old house where I was born,
And greet the lands around it
Where I spent my early years;
Be off thither on your flight,
And greet my native town!

…

And when you come to Fush’ e Rmajit,
Swallow, stop there and take your rest;
In that land of sorrow are the graves
Of the mother and father who raised me;
Weep in your exquisite voice
And lament them with your song!

For ages I have not been to Albania
To attend those graves;
You, swallow, robed in black,
Weep there on my behalf,
With that exquisite voice of yours
Lament them with your song!

[Shko, dallndryshë, from the volume Zani i zemrës, Tirana 1933, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, first published in English in History of Albanian literature, New York 1995, vol. 1, p. 275-275]

Lasgush PORADECI

Honolulu — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 20:22:44 +0000

Lasgush Poradeci (1899-1987) had lived the final years of his life in his beloved town of Pogradec on Lake Ohrid, not far from the Macedonian border, tending his garden and studying the ever-changing moods of the lake. The rhythmic and gentle lapping of the waves had always been among the fundamental sources of his pantheistic verse.

Poradeci, pseudonym of Llazar Gusho, was born in Pogradec on 27 December 1899 – being only three or four days older than the twentieth century, as he once remarked. He attended a Romanian-language school in Monastir (Bitola), Macedonia, from 1909 to 1916. In the middle of the First World War, his father, despite the tenuous relations between Albanians and Greeks in southeastern Albania at the time, sent the adolescent Llazar to Greece to continue his schooling, on the condition that he not study at a Greek-language institution. Llazar therefore enrolled at the French-language Lycée des Frères Maristes in Athens where he remained until 1920. For health reasons, however, the last two years of his stay in the Greek capital were spent not at school but in a sanatorium to which, despite his desperate financial situation, he was referred with the assistance of Sophia Schliemann, widow of the famed German archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890). Although not completely recovered, the twenty-year-old Llazar was expelled from the sanatorium prematurely in 1920 after having been caught in flagranti with a nurse. The following year we find the budding poet in Bucharest, where he joined his brother. Llazar wanted to study at the Academy of Fine Arts, but registering proved to be difficult, since the Romanian government, in a wave of anti-semitism, had imposed restrictions on study by all non-Romanian nationals. After much tribulation, however, he succeeded in enrolling. The poet’s stay in Bucharest was to have a decisive influence on his literary development. It was here that he met and befriended the romantic poet Asdreni, whom he replaced as secretary of the Albanian colony in 1922, short story writer Mitrush Kuteli (1907-1967), and numerous Romanian writers and poets. He also began publishing verse in various Albanian-language periodicals: Shqipëri’ e re, an illustrated national weekly published in Constanza, and Dielli of Boston among others. His verse of this period was already revealing a certain theosophical affinity to the Romanian lyric poet Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889).

A scholarship provided by the Fan Noli government in 1924 enabled him to continue his studies abroad. Poradeci immediately left for Berlin, where he hoped to study under Austrian Albanologist Norbert Jokl (1877-1942). The chair appears to have been vacant at the time and Poradeci continued on to the University of Graz in southeastern Austria where he registered at the Faculty of Romance and Germanic philology. The poet spent a total of ten years in Graz which he counted as the most enjoyable of his life. In May 1933 he finished his doctorate there with a dissertation on Der verkannte Eminescu und seine volkstümlich-heimatliche Ideologie (The unappreciated Eminescu and his native folk ideology). The following year, Poradeci returned to Albania and taught art at a secondary school in Tirana where he remained during the war. From 1944 until 1947, the first turbulent years of communist rule, he was unemployed, and lived with his wife in Tirana on the latter’s meagre salary as a teacher. After brief employment at the Institute of Science, forerunner of the University of Tirana, he got a job translating literature for the state-owned Naim Frashëri publishing company where he worked, keeping a low profile, until his retirement in 1974. He died in absolute poverty at his home in Tirana on 12 November 1987.

Lasgush Poradeci is the author of two extraordinary collections of poetry. Vallja e yjve (The dance of the stars) and Ylli i zemrës (The star of the heart), published in Romania in 1933 and 1937 respectively, are indeed just as much a revolution in Albanian verse as was Migjeni’s Vargjet e lira (Free verse). Vallja e yjve was published at the Albania Press in Constanza from funds collected in 1932 with the help of Asdreni and a group of Albanian students in Bucharest. It contains verse first written and published in the years 1921-1924. The second volume, published with the assistance of Poradeci’s friend, prose writer Mitrush Kuteli, contains not only later work but also many of the poems of the 1933 edition in amended versions. It is a synthesis of the best of his lyric production and offers some of the most melodious and metrically refined poetry ever written in Albanian.

Poradeci’s position in Albanian literature has never been satisfactorily defined. He had little in common with his contemporaries: the romantic Asdreni, the political Fan Noli or the messianic Migjeni. He imbued Albanian letters with a quite exotic element of pantheistic mysticism, introducing what he called the metaphysics of creative harmony. What other Albanian poet of his period would have devoted his energy to the study of Sanskrit in order to comprehend the Veda? Poradeci’s verse creates a metaphysical bridge from the psychic states and trying moods of earthly existence to the lofty spheres of the sublime, to the source of all creative energy.

Primordial to the work of Lasgush Poradeci are the waters of Lake Ohrid on the Albanian-Macedonian border. It was in the town of Pogradec that he spent his youth, not far from where, at the foot of the ‘Mal i Thatë’ (Dry Mountain), the River Drin takes its source, and but a few kilometers from the famed mediaeval monastery of St Naum’s just over the border. And there in retirement, he also spent his last summers in a run-down little house of Balkan architecture, tending his garden and strolling along the lake with his dog. Lake Ohrid never ceased to fascinate and enchant him. He studied its hues, the reflection of light both upon its waves and in the depths of its sparkling waters, and observed the surrounding mountains cast their shadows over it.

Apart from the two main poetry collections of the thirties, Poradeci published some verse in literary journals of the late thirties and forties, in particular in Branko Merxhani’s cultural monthly Përpjekja shqiptare (The Albanian endeavour). With the rise of Stalinism, however, the venerable quill of Lasgush, as he was to be affectionately known to posterity, began to run dry. Though secretly lauded by many a critic and connoisseur, this romantic aesthete, devoid of any redeeming ideological values, never enjoyed the approbation of post-war Marxist dogmatists. They were not able to understand his works and the poet himself is reported to have preferred to break his pencil in two rather than write the kind of poetry ‘they’ wanted. A few works did appear from time to time in the Tirana literary periodicals Drita (The light) and Nëntori (November), carefully perused beforehand by party censors, but Poradeci’s main field of activity in the socialist period was, nolens volens, translation, a safer haven for literary heretics.

Aside from verse on nature and that in a metaphysical vein, reworked and republished in numerous versions, Poradeci was also the author of much love poetry, as well as of some verse on national themes, all in all about one hundred poems. He loved archaic words and expressions but also delighted in neologisms and a novel juxtaposing of substantives to create unusual effects. The result was startling, breathtaking at the time, and he was immediately acclaimed. The age of romantic nationalism, which had been fostered by a myriad of Rilindja poets of varying quality, had now drawn to a definitive close.

Poradeci’s subjects, his structures and language were very much attuned to southern Albanian oral literature, in particular to Tosk folk verse from which he drew a good deal of his inspiration. Mitrush Kuteli, who edited his Ylli i zemrës, called him “the only Albanian poet to think, speak and write only in Albanian.” Lasgush Poradeci is at the same time an artist of truly European stature. He combined the verbal sensuousness of Charles Baudelaire, the aesthetic philosophy of form and the discerning elegance of Stefan George, the humanity and philosophy of Naim Frashëri, and the cosmic immortality of his master, Mihai Eminescu. Scholar Eqrem Çabej said of him that he was the “poet whom Albania would one day bequeath to the world,” and although Poradeci’s verse does not lend itself particularly to translation, time may prove Çabej right.

Pogradec

A shimmering sunset on the endless lake.
Ghostlike, a veil is slowly spread.
Over mountain and meadow the dark of night descends,
Settling from the heavens upon the town.

Over the vast land no more sound is to be heard:
In the village the creaking of a door,
On the lake the silence of an oar.
Over the Mal i Thatë an elusive eagle soars.
My youthful heart retreats into the depths of my soul.

The whole town, all life, retires to the realm of sleep.
Darkness rules the four quarters of the earth. And now,
Setting out on his journey through Albania,
Legendary Father Drin arises at St. Naum’s.

[Poradeci, 1929, from the volume Vdekja e nositit, Prishtina: Rilindja 1986, p. 67, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, and first published in English in An elusive eagle soars, anthology of modern Albanian poetry, London: Forest Books 1993, p. 2]

Morning

Like a spirit sombre within the breast
Lies the lake encased in hills.
Mirrored in its depths,
Night expires breath by breath.

I watch how she suffers, how she dies,
Her eyes blinking,
Azure-circled pools,
Like the stars of a fading sky.

But now the light of dawn
Shimmers deep within the lake.
The daystar steals away, melting
Like a piece of sugar candy.

Behold, day has dawned,
And lightning flashes from the depths.
Like a harbinger of morn
Appears, bird-white, a pelican.

[Mëngjes, from the volume Vdekja e nositit, Prishtina: Rilindja 1986, p. 81, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, and first published in English in An elusive eagle soars, anthology of modern Albanian poetry, London: Forest Books 1993, p. 3]

End of autumn

The last stork flew off, majestic and forlorn,
Soaring over the snowy mountains at the break of day,
After tapping on the door with his sturdy beak,
Leaving his nest to the master’s care and departing heavy of heart.

No longer does the fateful bird comb the ploughed fields,
The furrows cut into the soil by mountain oxen,
No longer is the grey mouse heard scurrying over fallow land,
In the barren brake the speckled snake is dead.

Beneath the icy wind, the hoary earth lies silent,
The north wind howls through the withered trees.
As the cold grips harder, a clever little wren
Chatters blithely over hedge and over sedge.

Oh, how graceful was the stork, how slender and noble,
Pacing slowly like a bridegroom crowned!
At his side, with radiant breast, the crane,
With measured step, eyes uplifted – played his bride!

[Mbarim vjeshte, from the volume Vdekja e nositit, Prishtina: Rilindja 1986, p. 83, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, and first published in English in An elusive eagle soars, anthology of modern Albanian poetry, London: Forest Books 1993, p. 4]

Winter

From today my spirit is a recluse,
And banished is all my joy.
Long has it been that snow has lain
Over mountain and over wood.
Snowflakes come drifting one by one
Down upon the deserted village
And, shivering beneath the snow,
Earth slumbers, buried once again.

Slowly my spirit too sinks to the ground
In mourning, falling like a leaf.
Nary a soul is to be heard,
No people, no sign of life.

In such peace and tranquillity
I hear a bird lament,
Letting out a faint sigh,
Frightened to leave this life.

[Dimër, from the volume Vdekja e nositit, Prishtina: Rilindja 1986, p. 84, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, and first published in English in An elusive eagle soars, anthology of modern Albanian poetry, London: Forest Books 1993, p. 5]

Fan NOLI

Honolulu — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 20:20:34 +0000

Fan Noli (1882-1965), also known as Theophan Stylian Noli, was not only an outstanding leader of the Albanian-American community, but also a pre-eminent and multi-talented figure of Albanian literature, culture, religious life and politics. Noli was born in the village of Ibrik Tepe, south of Edirne (Adrianopole) in European Turkey on 6 January 1882. His father Stylian Noli had been a noted cantor in the Orthodox church and had instilled in his son a love for Orthodox music and Byzantine tradition. Fan Noli attended the Greek secondary school in Edirne, and in 1900, after a short stay in Constantinople, settled in Athens where he managed to find occasional and badly-paying jobs as a copyist, prompter and actor. It was with one such itinerant theatre company touring Greek-speaking settlements in the eastern Mediterranean that Noli first arrived in Egypt. Abandoning the company in Alexandria, he found work from March 1903 to March 1905 as a Greek teacher and as a church cantor in Shibîn el Khôm and from March 1905 to April 1906 in El Faiyûm where a small Albanian colony had settled. Here he wrote a number of articles in Greek and translated Sami Frashëri’s Shqipëria – Ç’ka qënë, ç’është e ç’do të bëhetë? (Albanian – what was it, what is it and what will become of it?) into Greek, works which were published at the Albanian press in Sofia. In Egypt, Noli learned more about the traditions of Byzantine music which so fascinated him from his teacher, the monk Nilos, and resolved to become an Orthodox priest himself. He also came into contact with the nationalist leaders of the Albanian community such as Spiro Dine (1846?-1922), Jani Vruho (1863-1931) and Athanas Tashko (1863-1915) who encouraged him to emigrate to America where he could make better use of his talents. The young Noli agreed.

In April 1906, with a second-class steamer ticket which was paid for by Spiro Dine, Fan Noli set off via Naples for the New World and arrived in New York on May 10. After three months in Buffalo where he worked in a lumber mill, Noli arrived in Boston. There publisher Sotir Peci (1873-1932) gave him a job at a minimal salary as deputy editor of the Boston newspaper Kombi (The nation), where he worked until May 1907 and in which he published articles and editorials under the pseudonym Ali Baba Qyteza. These were financially and personally difficult months for Noli, who did not feel at home in America at all and seriously considered emigrating to Bucharest. Gradually, however, he found his roots in the Albanian community and on 6 January 1907 co-founded the Besa-Besën (The pledge) society in Boston.

In this period, Orthodox Albanians in America were growing increasingly impatient with Greek control of the church. Tension reached its climax in 1907 when a Greek Orthodox priest refused to officiate at the burial of an Albanian in Hudson, Massachusetts on the grounds that, as a nationalist, the deceased was automatically excommunicated. Noli saw his calling and convoked a meeting of Orthodox Albanians from throughout New England at which delegates resolved to set up an autocephalic, i.e. autonomous, Albanian Orthodox Church with Noli as its first clergyman. On 9 February 1908 at the age of twenty-six, Fan Noli was made a deacon in Brooklyn and on 8 March 1908 Platon, the Russian Orthodox Archbishop of New York, ordained him as an Orthodox priest. A mere two weeks later, on 22 March 1908, the young Noli proudly celebrated the liturgy in Albanian for the first time at the Knights of Honor Hall in Boston. This act constituted the first step towards the official organization and recognition of an Albanian Autocephalic Orthodox Church.

From February 1909 to July 1911, Noli edited the newspaper Dielli (The sun), mouthpiece of the Albanian community in Boston. On 10 August 1911, he set off for Europe for four months where he held church services in Albanian for the colonies in Kishinev, Odessa, Bucharest and Sofia. Together with Faik bey Konitza who had arrived in the United States in 1909, he founded the Pan-Albanian Vatra (The hearth) Federation of America on 28 April 1912, which was soon destined to become the most powerful and significant Albanian organization in America. Fan Noli had now become the recognized leader of the Albanian Orthodox community and was an established writer and journalist of the nationalist movement. In November 1912, Albania was declared independent, and the thirty-year-old Noli, having graduated with a B.A. from Harvard University, hurriedly returned to Europe. In March 1913, among other activities, he attended the Albanian Congress of Trieste which was organized by his friend and rival Faik bey Konitza.

In July 1913 Fan Noli visited Albania for the first time, and there, on 10 March 1914, he held the country’s first Orthodox church service in Albanian in the presence of Prince Wilhelm zu Wied who had arrived in Durrës only three days earlier aboard an Austro-Hungarian vessel. In August of 1914 Noli was in Vienna for a time, but as the clouds of war darkened, he returned in May 1915 to the United States. From 21 December 1915 to 6 July 1916 he was again editor-in-chief of the Boston Dielli (The sun), now a daily newspaper. In July 1917 he once more became president of the Vatra federation which, in view of the chaotic situation and political vacuum in Albania, now regarded itself as a sort of Albanian government in exile. In September 1918 Noli founded the English-language monthly Adriatic Review which was financed by the federation to spread information about Albania and its cause. Noli edited the journal for the first six months and was succeeded in 1919 by Constantine Chekrezi (1892-1959). With Vatra funds collected under Noli’s direction, Albanian-American delegates were sent to Paris, London and Washington to promote international recognition of Albanian independence. On 24 March 1918, Noli was appointed administrator of the Albanian Orthodox Church in the United States and in early July of that year attended a conference on oppressed peoples in Mount Vernon, Virginia, where he met President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), champion of minority rights in Europe. On 27 July 1919, Noli was appointed Bishop of the Albanian Orthodox Church in America, now finally an independent diocese. In the following year, in view of his growing stature as a political and religious leader of the Albanian community and as a talented writer, orator and political commentator, it was only fitting that he be selected to head an Albanian delegation to the League of Nations in Geneva where he was successful in having Albania admitted on 17 December 1920. Noli rightly regarded Albania’s admission to the League of Nations as his greatest political achievement. Membership in that body gave Albania worldwide recognition for the first time and was in retrospect no doubt more important than Ismail Qemal bey Vlora’s declaration of independence in 1912. In a commentary on 23 July 1924, the Manchester Guardian described Fan Noli as a “man who would have been remarkable in any country. An accomplished diplomat, an expert in international politics, a skilful debater, from the outset he made a deep impression in Geneva. He knocked down his Balkan opponents in a masterly fashion, but always with a broad smile. He is a man of vast culture who has read everything worth reading in English and French.” Noli’s success at the League of Nations established him as the leading figure in Albanian political life. From Geneva, he returned to Albania and from 1921 to 1922 represented the Vatra Federation in the Albanian parliament there. In 1922, he was appointed foreign minister in the government of Xhafer bey Ypi (1880-1940) but resigned several months later. On 21 November 1923, Noli was consecrated Bishop of Korça and Metropolitan of Durrës. He was now both head of the Orthodox Church in Albania and leader of a liberal political party, the main opposition to the conservative forces of Ahmet Zogu (1895-1961), who were supported primarily by the feudal landowners and the middle class. On 23 February 1924 an attempt was made in parliament on the life of Ahmet Zogu and two months later, on 22 April 1924, nationalist figure and deputy Avni Rustemi (1895-1924) was assassinated, allegedly by Zogist forces. At Rustemi’s funeral, Fan Noli gave a fiery oration which provoked the liberal opposition into such a fury that Zogu was obliged to flee to Yugoslavia in the so-called June Revolution.

On 17 July 1924, Fan Noli was officially proclaimed prime minister and shortly afterwards Regent of Albania. For six months, he led a democratic government which tried desperately to cope with the catastrophic economic and political problems facing the young Albanian state. His twenty-point programme for the modernization and democratization of Albania, including agrarian reform, proved however to be too rash and too idealistic for a backward country with no parliamentary traditions. In a letter to an English friend, he was later to note the reasons for his failure: “By insisting on the agrarian reforms I aroused the wrath of the landed aristocracy; by failing to carry them out I lost the support of the peasant masses.” With the overthrow of his government by Zogist forces on Christmas Eve 1924, Noli left Albania for good and spent several months in Italy at the invitation of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945). When the Duce finally reached agreement with Zogu on oil concessions in Albania, Noli and his followers were given to understand that their presence in Italy was no longer desired. Noli subsequently spent several years in northern Europe, primarily in Germany and Austria. In November 1927 he visited Russia as a Balkan delegate to a congress of ‘Friends of the Soviet Union’ marking the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, and in 1930, having obtained a six-month visa, he returned to the United States. Back in Boston, Noli founded the weekly periodical Republika (The republic), the name of which alone was in open defiance of Ahmet Zogu who on 1 September 1928 had proclaimed himself Zog I, King of the Albanians. Republika was also published in opposition to Dielli (The sun), now under the control of Faik Konitza who had come to terms with King Zog and become Albanian minister plenipotentiary in Washington. After six months, Noli was forced to return to Europe when his visa expired and his Republika was taken over by Anastas Tashko until it ceased publication in 1932. With the help of his followers, he was able to return from Germany to the United States in 1932 and was granted permanent resident status. He withdrew from political life and henceforth resumed his duties as head of the Albanian Autocephalic Orthodox Church. In December 1933, Noli fell seriously ill and was unable to pay for the medical treatment he so desperately needed until he received a gift of 3,000 gold franks from Albania, which was ironically enough from his archenemy Ahmet Zogu. This gesture, as intended, led to a certain reconciliation between Noli and Zogu and pacified Noli’s now often tenuous relations with Faik Konitza. In 1935, he returned to one of his earlier passions – music – and, at the age of fifty-three, registered at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, from which he graduated in 1938 with a Bachelor of Music. On 12 April 1937, Noli’s great dream of an Albanian national church was fulfilled when the Patriarch of Constantinople officially recognized the Albanian Autocephalic Orthodox Church. Not satisfied with ecclesiastical duties alone, Noli turned to post-graduate studies at Boston University, finishing a doctorate there in 1945 with a dissertation on Scanderbeg. In the early years following the Second World War, Noli maintained reasonably good relations with the new communist regime in Tirana and used his influence to try to persuade the American government to recognize the latter. His reputation as the ‘red bishop’ indeed caused a good deal of enmity and polarization in emigré circles in America. In 1953, at the age of seventy-one, Fan Noli was presented with the sum of $20,000 from the Vatra Federation, with which he bought a house in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he died on 13 March 1965 at the age of eighty-three.

Politics and religion were not the only fields in which Fan Noli made a name for himself. He was also a dramatist, poet, historian, musicologist and in particular an excellent translator who made a significant contribution to the development of the Albanian literary language.

Noli’s first literary work was a three-act drama entitled Israilitë dhe Filistinë, Boston 1907 (Israelites and Philistines). This forty-eight page tragedy written in 1902 is based on the Book of Judges 13-16 in the Old Testament, the famous story of Samson and Delilah. Published at a time when Albanian theatre was in its infancy, it is one of the rare Albanian plays of the period not gushing with sentimentality before reaching a superficial melodramatic conclusion. Such were the tastes of the period, however, and Noli’s play found little favour with the public. Not only was the subject matter too distant and philosophical, but his language was too archaic or dialectal for the public to enjoy.

On his ordainment as an Orthodox priest and his celebration of the first Orthodox liturgy in Albanian in 1908, Noli recognized the need for liturgical texts in Albanian and set about translating Orthodox rituals and liturgies, which were published in two volumes: Librë e shërbesave të shënta të kishës orthodoxe, Boston 1909 (Book of holy services of the Orthodox Church), and the 315-page Libre é te krémtevé te medha te kishes orthodoxe, Boston 1911 (Book of great ceremonies of the Orthodox Church). Other religious translations followed, in an elegant and solemn language befitting such venerable Byzantine traditions. Noli indeed considered these translations to be his most rewarding achievement.

Fan Noli’s most popular work today is a scholarly history of the life and times of the Albanian national hero Scanderbeg. A 285-page Albanian version was published as Historia e Skënderbeut (Gjerq Kastriotit), mbretit të Shqipërisë 1412-1468, Boston 1921 (The history of Scanderbeg (George Castrioti), king of Albania 1412-1468), and an English version, the fruits of his doctoral dissertation at Boston University in 1945, as George Castrioti Scanderbeg (1405-1468), New York 1947. Another scholarly work in English which mirrors both his fascination with great figures of the past (Jesus, Julius Caesar, Scanderbeg and Napoleon) and his love of music is the 117-page Beethoven and the French revolution, New York 1947.

Noli has not been forgotten as a poet though his powerful declamatory verse is far from prolific. It was collected in a volume with the simple title Albumi, Boston 1948 (The album), which he published on the occasion of his forty years of residence in the United States. Albumi contains primarily political verse reflecting his abiding nationalist aspirations and the social and political passions of the twenties and thirties.

Fan Noli’s main contribution to Albanian literature, however, was as a stylist, as seen especially in his translations. Together with Faik bey Konitza, Noli may indeed be regarded as one of the greatest stylists in the Tosk dialect of the Albanian language. His experience as an actor and orator, and his familiarity with other great languages of culture, Greek, English and French in particular, enabled him to develop Albanian into a language of refinement and flowing elegance. Noli translated poetry of various nineteenth-century European and American authors, and most often managed, with the ear of the musician he was, to reflect the style, taste and rhythmical nuances of the originals.

Though he wrote comparatively little in the way of literature per se, Fan Noli remains nonetheless a literary giant. He was instrumental in helping the Albanian language reach its full literary and creative potential.

On river banks

Taken flight and off in exile,
In restraints and held in bondage,
I despair with tears unending
On the banks of Vjosa, Buna.

Where is it that we have left her,
Our poor homeland, wretched nation?
She lies unwashed at the seaside,
She stands unseen in the sunlight,
She sits starving at the table,
She is ignorant midst learning,
Naked, ailing does she languish,
Lame in body and in spirit…

How those rogues have all abused her,
How the beys and mercenaries
And the foreigners oppressed her,
How the usurers have squeezed her,
How they raged at her, destroyed her,
She from all sides has been ravaged,
Heel of force always upon her,
On the banks of Spree and Elbe.

Screaming do I burn in rage,
Bereft of weapons, mutilated,
Neither dead nor living do I
Wait here for some sign or glimmer,
Days and years I tarry, linger,
Weak and out of breath and withered,
Old before my time and broken,
Far from hearth and far from workplace,
On the banks of Rhine and Danube.

Yes, I’m beaten and bewildered,
In a swoon and in convulsions,
On I dream in tears unceasing
On the banks of Spree and Elbe.

And a voice roars from the river,
Booming, from my sleep awakes me,
That the people are now ready,
That the tyrant totters, trembles,
That a storm is rising, raging,
Vjosa swelling, Buna flooding,
Drin and Seman scarlet flowing,
Beys and nobles squirm and quiver,
For beyond the grave life shines and
Trumpets on all sides do echo:
“Rise up, set out now against them,
All you peasants and you workers,
Men from Shkodra down to Vlora,
Crush them now and overcome them!”

This salvation, yes, this war cry,
Has restored my youth and courage,
Strength and hope resuscitating,
On the banks of Spree and Elbe.
That a spring will follow winter,
That we one day will return
Regaining hearths, reclaiming workplace
On the banks of Vjosa, Buna.

Taken flight and off in exile,
In restraints and held in bondage,
I proclaim this fervent hope here
On the banks of Spree and Elbe.

[Anës lumenjve, from the volume Albumi, Boston 1948, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, and first published in English in part in History of Albanian literature, New York 1995, vol. 1, p. 380-381]

Dead in exile

(Elegy written in Berlin on the death of writer and political figure Luigj Gurakuqi, 1879-1925, who had been assassinated in Bari on 2 March 1925 by an agent of Ahmet Zogu.)

Oh mother, mourn our brother,
Cut down by three bullets.
They mocked him, they murdered him,
They called him traitor.

For he loved you when they hated you,
For he wept when they derided you,
For he clothed you when they denuded you,
Oh mother, he died a martyr.

Oh mother, weep bitter tears,
Thugs have slain your son
Who with Ismail Qemali
Raised the valiant standard.

Oh mother, weep for him in Vlora,
Where he bore you freedom,
A soul as pure as snow,
For whom you have no grave.

Oh mother, he did his utmost
With eloquence and heart of iron,
Alive in exile, dead in exile,
This towering liberator.

[Syrgjyn-Vdekur, from the volume Albumi, Boston 1948, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, and first published in English in History of Albanian literature, New York 1995, vol. 1, p. 379-380]

Run, oh soldier of marathon

Run, oh run, yes, speed and tell them
That the foreign hordes are beaten,
That we held out, won the battle,
With our victory saved the city,
Run, oh run,
Sprint, oh soldier of Marathon!

Yes, you seized a branch of laurel,
Set off, flying down to Athens,
Over dales and through the valleys,
Hardly did your legs a-flying
Touch the ground while falling, rising,
Falcon hero, soldier of Marathon.

You are wounded, but don’t feel the
Blood and sweat behind you dripping,
You’re determined to be first,
To be the herald of the triumph,
Scarlet soldier of Marathon!

Your throat is dry, but you’re not thirsty,
Legs are numb, but you keep plodding,
For the people there await you,
At their hearts great fear is gnawing,
Gall and terror are within them,
Speed on, soldier of Marathon!
Never did the sun so scorch you,
Never weighed the sky so heavy,
Never were so fair and tempting
Shade of oak trees, cool spring water,
Keep on going,
Forwards, soldier of Marathon!

Swirling dust and heat are stifling,
Thorns and rocks are lacerating,
In your breast burn fire and ardour,
Sweat and steam both blind your vision,
Glowing embers,
Like a torch, soldier of Marathon!

From your breast, like bellows heaving,
Smoke and sparks of a volcano
Belching forth and wide resounding,
Like a maul your heart is pounding
‘gainst your ribs, be
Steadfast, soldier of Marathon!

Mothers, sisters and young women
Swarm and raise their arms to stop you,
Do not listen, they’re but naiads,
Witches doing magic, dryads,
Keep your distance,
Fly on, soldier of Marathon!

Now before you the Acropolis,
Both the city and people
Have now spotted, recognized you,
Giving you new strength and courage,
Keep on going,
Rush on, soldier of Marathon!

You arrive, proudly proclaim the
Cruel joy of that great message:
Crying: “We won!” having spoken,
Fall to earth in last convulsions,
Dead and perished!
Perished, soldier of Marathon!

Run forever blithe announcing
To the glory of the ages
That a lad has felled a giant,
Those oppressed have slain a tyrant,
All alone and all in union,
Union, soldier of Marathon!

[Rent, or Marathonomak, from the volume Albumi, Boston 1948, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie]

Shakespeare and I

Ndre MJEDA

Honolulu — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 20:19:01 +0000

Classical poet Ndre Mjeda (1866-1937) bridges the gap between late nineteenth-century Rilindja culture and the dynamic literary creativity of the independence period. Mjeda was born on 20 November 1866 in Shkodra and, like so many other Gheg writers of the period, was educated by the Jesuits . Influential in his upbringing were Jesuit writer Anton Xanoni (1863-1915) and Franciscan poet Leonardo De Martino (1830-1923). The Society of Jesus sent the young Mjeda abroad for studies and training.

He spent an initial three months in the spring of 1880 in the village of Cossé-le-Vivien near Laval in the west of France and thereafter attended a college at the Carthusian monastery of Porta Coeli north of Valencia, Spain, where he studied literature. In 1883, we find him in Croatia studying rhetoric, Latin and Italian at a Jesuit institution in Kraljevica on the Dalmatian coast. From 1884 to the beginning of 1887, he trained at a college run there which was run by the Gregorian University of Rome, and in 1887 transferred to another Gregorian college in Chieri southeast of Turin where he remained until the end of that year.

It was during these years that Ndre Mjeda began writing verse in Albanian, including the melancholic and much-read poem Vaji i bylbylit (The nightingale’s lament), published in 1887 in the booklet Scahiri Elierz (The honorable poet), expressing his longing for his native Albania. Also of this period is the poem Vorri i Skanderbegut (Scanderbeg ’s grave). The theme of the exiled Albanian yearning nostalgically for his homeland under the Turkish yoke was nothing unusual in Rilindja literature, in particular in the decade following the defeat of the League of Prizren, and many of his other poems are devoted to such nationalist themes. In Mjeda’s verse, however, we sense the influence not only of the Rilindja culture of the age, but also that of his mentor Leonardo De Martino , the Scutarine Catholic poet whose refined 442-page bilingual verse collection L’Arpa di un italo-albanese (The harp of an Italo-Albanian) had appeared in Venice in 1881. An equally important component in Mjeda’s verse were the contemporary poets of Italy: the patriotic Giosuè Carducci (1835-1907), the pensive Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912) and the sensuous Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938), as well as the Latin literature of classical antiquity.

From 1887 to 1891, Mjeda taught music at the College of Marco Girolamo Vida in Cremona on the River Po, the city of composer Claudio Monteverdi and of Antonio Stradivari . There and in Soresina he continued writing verse and at the same time devoted himself to the translation of religious literature. In 1888, the Propaganda Fide in Rome published his Jeta e sceitit sc’ Gnon Berchmans (The life of St John Berchmans ) about a Jesuit saint from Brabant, and in 1892 T’ perghjamit e Zojs Bekume (Imitation of the Holy Virgin) translated from Spanish. In later years he was to publish a translation of the Katekizmi i madh (The great catechism) in three volumes, Historia e shejtë (Sacred history), and a life of St Aloysius of Gonzaga .

From 1891, Mjeda studied for a couple of years at the theological faculty of a Gregorian college in Kraków in Catholic Poland. In 1893, we find the poet in Gorizia on the Italian-Slovene border and in the following year back in Kraljevica where he taught philosophy and philology and served as librarian at the Gregorian college. He was subsequently appointed professor of logic and metaphysics. It was in 1898 that a conflict is said to have broken out among the Jesuits of Kraljevica, apparently concerning their loyalties to Austria-Hungary and the Vatican. The exact details of the scandal are not known, but Ndre Mjeda was somehow involved and was promptly expelled or resigned that year from the Jesuit Order. Mjeda was a member of the Literary Commission set up in Shkodra on 1 September 1916 under the Austro-Hungarian administration, and from 1920 to 1924 he served as a deputy in the National Assembly. After the defeat of Fan Noli ’s June Revolution and the definitive rise of the Zogu dictatorship at the end of 1924 he withdrew from politics and served thereafter as a parish priest in Kukël, a village between Shkodra and Shëngjin. From 1930, he taught Albanian language and literature at the Jesuit college in Shkodra, where he died on 1 August 1937.

Mjeda’s poetry, in particular his collection Juvenilia, Vienna 1917 (Juvenilia), is noted for its classical style and for its purity of language. It is probably no coincidence that the title of this work for which Mjeda is best remembered is the same as Giosuè Carducci ’s lyric volume Iuvenilia which was published almost half a century earlier. Mjeda’s Juvenilia includes not only original poetry but also adaptations of foreign verse by Tommaso Grossi (1790-1853), Giuseppe Capparozzo (1802-1848), Charles Wolfe (1791-1823) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). A second cycle of poetry begun by Mjeda was to be devoted to the ancient cities of Illyria: Lissus (Lezha), Scodra ( Shkodra), Dyrrachium (Durrës) and Apollonia (Pojan). However, only the first two parts of this cycle ever saw the light of day. Lissus, composed of twelve sonnets, appeared in May 1921 in the Franciscan monthly Hylli i Dritës (The day-star), and Scodra was published posthumously in 1939.

Though not covering an especially wide range of themes, Mjeda’s poetry evinces a particularly refined language under the influence of the nineteenth-century Italian classics and, in general, a high level of metric finesse.

To the Albanian eagle

High amongst the clouds, above the cliffs
Sparkling in perennial snow,
Like lightning, like an arrow,
Soars on sibilant wings
‘Midst the peaks and jagged rocks
The eagle in the first rays of dawn.

The azure sky above its head,
Companion of the stars, glows
Like jewels, like the shimmering
Gold of a bridal gown,
Or the radiant night in which
A god bestows wisdom and grace.

Your kingdom is silent,
Eagle, arbiter of freedom,
And in the empty wastes
The harmony of stars
And the rising moon give you comfort,
And the pensive Muse is heard.

But above the forlorn flatland
Where your children in lamentation lie,
Thunder resounds,
Lightning flashes,
And you above those peaks
Hear no echo of their lament.

Oh, descend to us, royal
Eagle, once more, as you did
When in battle, majestic
Castrioti the Great shone forth
And the whole world trembled
At the brandishing of his sword.

[Shqypes arbnore, 1931, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie and first published in History of Albanian literature, New York 1995, vol. 1, p. 356-357]

Freedom

Tell me, eagles, birds of the highlands,
Do the rays of freedom shine upon those peaks,
In the rugged mountain pastures and clearings
Where springs of fresh water murmur in longing?

Have you heard the echo of its anthem
On your flights o’er the cliffs,
Have you heard its comforting song?
Tell me, eagles, birds of the highlands.

Freedom, freedom, the mountains cry,
But can we find it on the earth we ply,
Or will slavery veil our every step?

Fly, eagle, fly to horizons far away,
The mountains surrounding Albania, survey,
Tell us where freedom takes its source.

Freedom is yours! We have iron bars,
Yet we languish in the mists and sombre night,
No one knows our name, stripped of our country,
We are slaves of the strangers on our own soil.

Like chattel sold to the butcher, we’re driven,
Crazed, by his cane where we don’t wish to go,
Sighs and lamentation on the lips of our people,
Suffering and grief is the name of our land.

The storm of highland heroes in vain
Infiltrates the sleeping plain
Like a bolt of lightning from the clouds.

Crushed by cruel oppression and travail,
Shake in their tombs to no avail
The forgotten bones of Dukagjini and Scanderbeg the Hero.

But no, the Albanian race has not been stamped out,
Wearied by the beatings of a harsh enemy,
Bowed by the darkness of servitude,
It broods and waits for its sudden awakening.

And behold, the flashing strokes of freedom
Extend through the mountains, in stealth advance
From hut to hut, yes, the shadow of Scanderbeg,
A new spirit expands throughout the land.

The mothers of Hoti tend cradles, childbed,
Where fledgling young heroes are nurtured and fed
On the milk of revolt.

And high in the mountains, splendour regal,
Claws outstretched, the Albanian eagle,
Spreads its formidable wings.

(1910-1911)

[Lirija, published in the periodical Leka, Shkodra, 10, 1937. Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie]

Winter

O’er fields and o’er mountains
Blows the bitter polar blast,
Oh north wind, halt your fury,
And you, frost, don’t freeze me over,
Don’t congeal these last drops of blood,
Cringe and cower, poor old man.

With scythe in hand, winter has come,
Has culled the leaves and cropped the grass.
Snow whirls o’er the balcony.
The piteous elder, feeble and frigid,
In failing voice repeats:
Cringe and cower, poor old man.

[Dimni, from the volume Juvenilia, Vienna 1917. Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie]

Lokja

On the porch are withered flowers
Not a soul, a deathly silence,
No one is at home but Lokja
Longing for her dead companion.

Alone to bed, alone she rises,
Ashes on her head, lamenting,
No one there to cast some shavings
On the fireplace coals to light them.

Bitterly does she regret she
Never had a son, for now his
Young bride would be dwelling with her,
Setting out to fetch the firewood.

She would keep the fire going,
She would keep the food from spoiling.
With the other ladies Lokja’d
Venture forth in finest garments.

She’d have spent her years like springtimes,
She’d have gently rocked the children,
Called their names with fondest pleasure,
Watched the babies in their cradles.

Now has sorrow overcome her
As she thinks of wretched Trina,
As she curses Death who seized her,
Clutched her and will ne’er return her.

II.

Chrysanthemums but in the graveyards
Bloom as autumn wanes and falters,
And the north wind’s begun moaning,
Howling, cutting down the forests.

With the winter do the woodlands
Drop their foliage worn in autumn,
Gusts of blust’ring wind now offer
To the poor their leaves as pallets.

Snow falls as the north gale’s keening,
Spreading ice across the country,
From the heavens rage the tempests,
Blotting out the oaks and spruces.

With some shavings in the fireplace
Sits the widow all night mourning,
To the flames her hands she stretches
Like a woman who is praying.

Pale, a light appears before her,
Sad reflection of her lifetime,
Thus revealed is the Grim Reaper,
Coming forward, calling to her.

In the house a ghost has entered,
Like a breeze that filters through it,
In the dusk an apparition
Drifts near Lokja at the hearthside.

His swift arms descend upon her,
Choking her, embracing tightly,
Parched lips on her brow now kiss her,
Darkness reigns, she is no longer.

[Lokja, from the cycle Andrra e Jetës, taken from the volume Juvenilia, Vienna 1917, reprinted in: Ndre Mjeda, Vepra letrare, 1, (Tirana: Naim Frashëri, 1988), p. 91-94. Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie and Janice Mathie-Heck.]

Millosh Gjergj Nikolla

Honolulu — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 20:14:05 +0000

With Migjeni (1911-1938), contemporary Albanian poetry begins its course. Migjeni, pen name of Millosh Gjergj Nikolla, was born in Shkodra. His father, Gjergj Nikolla (1872-1924), came from an Orthodox family of Dibran origin and owned a bar there. As a boy, he attended a Serbian Orthodox elementary school in Shkodra and from 1923 to 1925 a secondary school in Bar (Tivar) on the Montenegrin coast, where his eldest sister, Lenka, had moved. In the autumn of 1925, when he was fourteen, he obtained a scholarship to attend a secondary school in Monastir (Bitola) in southern Macedonia. This ethnically diverse town, not far from the Greek border, must have held a certain fascination for the young lad from distant Shkodra, since he came into contact there not only with Albanians from different parts of the Balkans, but also with Macedonian, Serb, Aromunian, Turkish and Greek students.

Being of Slavic origin himself, he was not confined by narrow-minded nationalist perspectives and was to become one of the very few Albanian authors to bridge the cultural chasm separating the Albanians and Serbs. In Monastir he studied Old Church Slavonic, Russian, Greek, Latin and French. Graduating from school in 1927, he entered the Orthodox Seminary of St. John the Theologian, also in Monastir, where, despite incipient health problems, he continued his training and studies until June 1932. He read as many books as he could get his hands on: Russian, Serbian and French literature in particular, which were more to his tastes than theology. His years in Monastir confronted him with the dichotomy of East and West, with the Slavic soul of Holy Mother Russia and of the southern Slavs, which he encountered in the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky , Ivan Turgenev , Lev Tolstoy , Nikolay Gogol and Maksim Gorky , and with socially critical authors of the West from Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Friedrich Schiller , Stendhal and Emile Zola to Upton Sinclair , Jack London and Ben Traven .

On his return to Shkodra in 1932, after failing to win a scholarship to study in the ‘wonderful West,’ he decided to take up a teaching career rather than join the priesthood for which he had been trained. On 23 April 1933, he was appointed teacher of Albanian at a school in the Serb village of Vraka, seven kilometres from Shkodra. It was during this period that he also began writing prose sketches and verse which reflect the life and anguish of an intellectual in what certainly was and has remained the most backward region of Europe. In May 1934 his first short prose piece, Sokrat i vuejtun a po derr i kënaqun (Suffering Socrates or the satisfied pig), was published in the periodical Illyria, under his new pen name Migjeni, an acronym of Millosh Gjergj Nikolla. Soon though, in the summer of 1935, the twenty-three-year-old Migjeni fell seriously ill with tuberculosis, which he had contracted earlier. He journeyed to Athens in July of that year in hope of obtaining treatment for the disease which was endemic on the marshy coastal plains of Albania at the time, but returned to Shkodra a month later with no improvement in his condition. In the autumn of 1935, he transferred for a year to a school in Shkodra itself and, again in the periodical Illyria, began publishing his first epoch-making poems.

In a letter of 12 January 1936 written to translator Skënder Luarasi (1900-1982) in Tirana, Migjeni announced, “I am about to send my songs to press. Since, while you were here, you promised that you would take charge of speaking to some publisher, ‘Gutemberg’ for instance, I would now like to remind you of this promise, informing you that I am ready.” Two days later, Migjeni received the transfer he had earlier requested to the mountain village of Puka and on 18 April 1936 began his activities as the headmaster of the run-down school there.

The clear mountain air did him some good, but the poverty and misery of the mountain tribes in and around Puka were even more overwhelming than that which he had experienced among the inhabitants of the coastal plain. Many of the children came to school barefoot and hungry, and teaching was interrupted for long periods of time because of outbreaks of contagious diseases, such as measles and mumps. After eighteen hard months in the mountains, the consumptive poet was obliged to put an end to his career as a teacher and as a writer, and to seek medical treatment in Turin in northern Italy where his sister Ollga was studying mathematics. He set out from Shkodra on 20 December 1937 and arrived in Turin before Christmas day. There he had hoped, after recovery, to register and study at the Faculty of Arts. The breakthrough in the treatment of tuberculosis, however, was to come a decade too late for Migjeni. After five months at San Luigi sanatorium near Turin, Migjeni was transferred to the Waldensian hospital in Torre Pellice where he died on 26 August 1938. His demise at the age of twenty-six was a tragic loss for modern Albanian letters.

Migjeni made a promising start as a prose writer. He is the author of about twenty-four short prose sketches which he published in periodicals for the most part between the spring of 1933 and the spring of 1938. Ranging from one to five pages in length, these pieces are too short to constitute tales or short stories. Although he approached new themes with unprecedented cynicism and force, his sketches cannot all be considered great works of art from a literary point of view.

It is thus far more as a poet that Migjeni made his mark on Albanian literature and culture, though he did so posthumously. He possessed all the prerequisites for being a great poet. He had an inquisitive mind, a depressive pessimistic nature and a repressed sexuality. Though his verse production was no more voluminous than his prose, his success in the field of poetry was no less than spectacular in Albania at the time.

Migjeni’s only volume of verse, Vargjet e lira, Tirana 1944 (Free verse), was composed over a three-year period from 1933 to 1935. A first edition of this slender and yet revolutionary collection, a total of thirty-five poems, was printed by the Gutemberg Press in Tirana in 1936 but was immediately banned by the authorities and never circulated. The second edition of 1944, undertaken by scholar Kostaç Cipo (1892-1952) and the poet’s sister Ollga, was more successful. It nonetheless omitted two poems, Parathanja e parathanjeve (Preface of prefaces) and Blasfemi (Blasphemy), which the publisher, Ismail Mal’Osmani, felt might offend the Church. The 1944 edition did, however, include eight other poems composed after the first edition had already gone to press.

The main theme of ‘Free verse,’ as with Migjeni’s prose, is misery and suffering. It is a poetry of acute social awareness and despair. Previous generations of poets had sung the beauties of the Albanian mountains and the sacred traditions of the nation, whereas Migjeni now opened his eyes to the harsh realities of life, to the appalling level of misery, disease and poverty he discovered all around him. He was a poet of despair who saw no way out, who cherished no hope that anything but death could put an end to suffering. “I suffer with the child whose father cannot buy him a toy. I suffer with the young man who burns with unslaked sexual desire. I suffer with the middle-aged man drowning in the apathy of life. I suffer with the old man who trembles at the prospect of death. I suffer with the peasant struggling with the soil. I suffer with the worker crushed by iron. I suffer with the sick suffering from all the diseases of the world… I suffer with man.” Typical of the suffering and of the futility of human endeavour for Migjeni is Rezignata (Resignation), a poem in the longest cycle of the collection, Kangët e mjerimit (Songs of poverty). Here the poet paints a grim portrait of our earthly existence: sombre nights, tears, smoke, thorns and mud. Rarely does a breath of fresh air or a vision of nature seep through the gloom. When nature does occur in the verse of Migjeni, then of course it is autumn.

If there is no hope, there are at least suffocated desires and wishes. Some poems, such as Të birtë e shekullit të ri (The sons of the new age), Zgjimi (Awakening), Kanga e rinis (Song of youth) and Kanga e të burgosunit (The prisoner’s song), are assertively declamatory in a left-wing revolutionary manner. Here we discover Migjeni as a precursor of socialist verse or rather, in fact, as the zenith of genuine socialist verse in Albanian letters, long before the so-called liberation and socialist period from 1944 to 1990. Migjeni was, nonetheless, not a socialist or revolutionary poet in the political sense, despite the indignation and the occasional clenched fist he shows us. For this, he lacked the optimism as well as any sense of political commitment and activity. He was a product of the thirties, an age in which Albanian intellectuals, including Migjeni, were particularly fascinated by the West and in which, in Western Europe itself, the rival ideologies of communism and fascism were colliding for the first time in the Spanish Civil War. Migjeni was not entirely uninfluenced by the nascent philosophy of the right either. In Të lindet njeriu (May the man be born) and particularly, in the Nietzschean dithyramb Trajtat e Mbinjeriut (The shape of the Superman), a strangled, crushed will transforms itself into “ardent desire for a new genius,” for the Superman to come. To a Trotskyite friend, André Stefi, who had warned him that the communists would not forgive for such poems, Migjeni replied, “My work has a combative character, but for practical reasons, and taking into account our particular conditions, I must manoeuvre in disguise. I cannot explain these things to the [communist] groups, they must understand them for themselves. The publication of my works is dictated by the necessities of the social situation through which we are passing. As for myself, I consider my work to be a contribution to the union of the groups. André, my work will be achieved if I manage to live a little longer.”

Part of the ‘establishment’ which he felt was oblivious to and indeed responsible for the sufferings of humanity was the Church. Migjeni’s religious education and his training for the Orthodox priesthood seem to have been entirely counterproductive, for he cherished neither an attachment to religion nor any particularly fond sentiments for the organized Church. God for Migjeni was a giant with granite fists crushing the will of man. Evidence of the repulsion he felt towards god and the Church are to be found in the two poems missing from the 1944 edition, Parathania e parathanieve (Preface of prefaces) with its cry of desperation “God! Where are you?”, and Blasfemi (Blasphemy).

In Kanga skandaloze (Scandalous song), Migjeni expresses a morbid attraction to a pale nun and at the same time his defiance and rejection of her world. This poem is one which helps throw some light not only on Migjeni’s attitude to religion but also on one of the more fascinating and least studied aspects in the life of the poet, his repressed heterosexuality.

Eroticism has certainly never been a prominent feature of Albanian literature at any period and one would be hard pressed to name any Albanian author who has expressed his intimate impulses and desires in verse or prose. Migjeni comes closest, though in an unwitting manner. It is generally assumed that the poet remained a virgin until his untimely death at the age of twenty-six. His verse and his prose abound with the figures of women, many of them unhappy prostitutes, for whom Migjeni betrays both pity and an open sexual interest. It is the tearful eyes and the red lips which catch his attention; the rest of the body is rarely described. For Migjeni, sex too means suffering. Passion and rapturous desire are ubiquitous in his verse, but equally present is the spectre of physical intimacy portrayed in terms of disgust and sorrow. It is but one of the many bestial faces of misery described in the 105-line Poema e mjerimit (Poem of poverty).

Though he did not publish a single book during his lifetime, Migjeni’s works, which circulated privately and in the press of the period, were an immediate success. Migjeni paved the way for a modern literature in Albania. This literature was, however, soon to be nipped in the bud. Indeed the very year of the publication of ‘Free Verse’ saw the victory of Stalinism in Albania and the proclamation of the People’s Republic.

Many have speculated as to what contribution Migjeni might have made to Albanian letters had he managed to live longer. The question remains highly hypothetical, for this individualist voice of genuine social protest would no doubt have suffered the same fate as most Albanian writers of talent in the late forties, i.e. internment, imprisonment or execution. His early demise has at least preserved the writer for us undefiled.

The fact that Migjeni did perish so young makes it difficult to provide a critical assessment of his work. Though generally admired, Migjeni is not without critics. Some have been disappointed by his prose, nor is the range of his verse sufficient to allow us to acclaim him as a universal poet. Albanian-American scholar Arshi Pipa (1920-1997) has questioned his very mastery of the Albanian language, asserting: “Born Albanian to a family of Slavic origin, then educated in a Slavic cultural milieu, he made contact again with Albania and the Albanian language and culture as an adult. The language he spoke at home was Serbo-Croatian, and at the seminary he learned Russian. He did not know Albanian well. His texts swarm with spelling mistakes, even elementary ones, and his syntax is far from being typically Albanian. What is true of Italo Svevo’s Italian is even truer of Migjeni’s Albanian.”

Post-war Stalinist critics in Albania rather superficially proclaimed Migjeni as the precursor of socialist realism though they were unable to deal with many aspects of his life and work, in particular his Schopenhauerian pessimism, his sympathies with the West, his repressed sexuality, and the Nietzschean element in Trajtat e Mbinjeriut (The shape of the Superman), a poem conveniently left out of some post-war editions of his verse. While such critics have delighted in viewing Migjeni as a product of ‘pre-liberation’ Zogist Albania, it has become painfully evident that the poet’s ‘songs unsung,’ after half a century of communist dictatorship in Albania, are now more compelling than ever.

Poem of poverty

Poverty, brothers, is a mouthful that’s hard to swallow,
A bite that sticks in your throat and leaves you in sorrow,
When you watch the pale faces and rheumy eyes
Observing you like ghosts and holding out thin hands;
Behind you they lie, stretched out
Their whole lives through, until the moment of death.
Above them in the air, as if in disdain,
Crosses and stony minarets pierce the sky,
Prophets and saints in many colours radiate splendour.
And poverty feels betrayed.

Poverty carries its own vile imprint,
It is hideous, repulsive, disgusting.
The brow that bears it, the eyes that express it,
The lips that try in vain to hide it
Are the offspring of ignorance, the victims of disdain,
The filthy scraps flung from the table
At which for centuries
Some pitiless, insatiable dog has fed.
Poverty has no good fortune, only rags,
The tattered banners of a hope
Shattered by broken promises.

Poverty wallows in debauchery.
In dark corners, together with dogs, rats, cats,
On mouldy, stinking, filthy mattresses,
Naked breasts exposed, sallow dirty bodies,
With feelings overwhelmed by bestial desire,
They bite, devour, suck, kiss the sullied lips,
And in unbridled lust the thirst is quenched,
The craving stilled, and self-consciousness lost.
Here is the source of the imbeciles, the servants and the beggars
Who will tomorrow be born to fill the streets.

Poverty shines in the eyes of the newborn,
Flickers like the pale flame of a candle
Under a ceiling blackened with smoke and spider webs,
Where human shadows tremble on damp stained walls,
Where the ailing infant wails like a banshee
To suck the dry breasts of its wretched mother
Who, pregnant again, curses god and the devil,
Curses the heavy burden of her unborn child.
Her baby does not laugh, it only wastes away,
Unwanted by its mother, who curses it, too.
How sorrowful is the cradle of the poor
Where a child is rocked with tears and sighs.

Poverty’s child is raised in the shadows
Of great mansions, too high for imploring voices to reach
To disturb the peace and quiet of the lords
Sleeping in blissful beds beside their ladies.

Poverty matures a child before its time,
Teaches it to dodge the threatening fist,
The hand which clutches its throat in dreams,
When the delirium of starvation begins
And when death casts its shadow on childish faces,
Instead of a smile a hideous grimace.
While the fate of a fruit is to ripen and fall,
The child is interred not maturing at all.

Poverty labours and toils by day and night,
Chest and forehead drenched in sweat,
Up to the knees in mud and slime,
And still the empty guts writhe in hunger.
Starvation wages! For such a daily ordeal,
A mere three or four leks and an ‘On your way.’

Poverty sometimes paints its face,
Swollen lips scarlet, hollow cheeks rouged,
And body a chattel in a filthy trade.
For service in bed for which it is paid
With a few lousy francs,
Stained sheets, stained face and stained conscience.

Poverty leaves a heritage as well,
Not cash in the bank or property you can sell,
But distorted bones and pains in the chest,
Perhaps leaves the memory of a bygone day
When the roof of the house, weakened by decay,
By age and the weather collapsed and fell,
And above all the din rose a terrible cry
Cursing and imploring, as from the depths of hell,
The voice of a man crushed by a beam.
Under the heel, says the priest, of a god irate
Ends thus the life of a dissolute ingrate.
And so the memory of such misfortunes
Fills the cup of bitterness passed to generations.

Poverty in drink seeks consolation,
In filthy taverns, with dirty, littered tables,
The thirsting soul pours glass after glass
Down the throat to forget its many worries,
The dulling glass, the glass satanic,
Caressing with a venomous bite.
And when, like grain under the scythe, the man falls
To the floor, he giggles and sobs, a tragicomic clown,
And all his sorrow in drink he drowns
When one by one, a hundred glasses downs.

Poverty sets desires ablaze like stars in the night
And turns them to ashes, like trees struck by lightning.

Poverty knows no joy, but only pain,
Pain reducing you to such despair
That you seize the rope and hang yourself,
Or become a poor victim of ‘paragraphs.’

Poverty wants no pity, only justice!
Pity? Bastard daughter of cunning fathers,
Who like the Pharisees, beating the drum
Ostentatiously for their own sly ends,
Drop a penny in the beggar’s hands.

Poverty is an indelible stain
On the brow of humanity through the ages.
And never can this stain be effaced
By doctrines decaying in temples.

[Poema e mjerimit, from the volume Vargjet e lira, Tirana: Ismail Mal’ Osmani 1944, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, published in English in Migjeni, Free Verse, Peja: Dukagjini 2001, p. 34-43]

Blasphemy

The mosques and churches float through our memories,
Prayers devoid of sense or taste echo from their walls.
Never has the heart of god been touched by them,
And yet it beats on amidst the sounds of drums and bells.

Majestic mosques and churches throughout our wretched land,
Spires and minarets towering over lowly homes,
The voice of the hodja and priest in one degenerate chant,
Oh, ideal vision, a thousand years old!

The mosques and churches float through memories of the pious,
The chiming of the bell mingles with the muezzin’s call,
Sanctity shines from cowls and from the beards of hodjas.
Oh, so many fair angels at the gates of hell!

On ancient citadels perch carrion ravens,
Their dejected wings drooping – the symbols of lost hopes,
In despair do they croak of an age gone by
When the ancient citadels once gleamed with hallowed joy.

[Blasfemi, from the volume Vargjet e lira, Tirana: Ismail Mal’ Osmani 1944, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, published in English in Migjeni, Free Verse, Peja: Dukagjini 2001, p. 55]

Song of noble grief

Oh, noble grief of the suffering soul
That into free verse bursts out…
Would you perchance take comfort
In adorning the world with jewels?

Oh, noble grief in free verse,
Which sincerely sounds and resounds,
Will you ever move the feelings of men,
Or wither and die like the autumn leaves?

Oh, song worthy of noble grief…
Never rest! But with your twin,
Lamentation, sing out your suffering,
For time will be your consolation.

[Kanga e dhimbës krenare, from the volume Vargjet e lira, Tirana: Ismail Mal’ Osmani 1944, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, published in English in Migjeni, Free Verse, Peja: Dukagjini 2001, p. 63]

Autumn on parade

Autumn in nature and autumn in our faces.
The sultry breeze enfeebles, the glowering sun
Oppresses the ailing spirit in our breasts,
Shrivels the life trembling among the twigs of a poplar.
The yellow colours twirl in the final dance,
(A frantic desire of leaves dying one by one).
Our joys, passions, our ultimate desires
Fall and are trampled in the autumn mud.

An oak tree, reflected in the tears of heaven,
Tosses and bleeds in gigantic passion.
“To live! I want to live!” – it fights for breath,
Piercing the storm with cries of grief.

The horizon, drowned in fog, joins in
The lamentation. In prayer dejected fruit trees
Fold imploring branches – but in vain, they know.
Tomorrow they will die… Is there nowhere hope?

The eye is saddened. Saddened, too, the heart
At the hour of death, when silent fall the veins
And from the grave to the highest heavens soar
Despairing cries of long-unheeded pain.

Autumn in nature and autumn in our faces.
Moan, desires, offspring of poverty,
Groan in lamentation, bewail the corpses,
That adorn this autumn among the withered branches.

[Vjeshta në parakalim, from the volume Vargjet e lira, Tirana: Ismail Mal’ Osmani 1944, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, published in English in Migjeni, Free Verse, Peja: Dukagjini 2001, p. 71]

Scandalous song

A pale-faced nun who with the sins of this world
Bears my sins, too, upon her weary shoulders,
Those shoulders, wan as wax, which some deity has kissed,
Roams the streets like a fleeting angel.

A pale-faced nun, cold as a marble tomb,
With greyish eyes like the ashes of spent desires,
With thin red-ribbon lips, tightly pressed to smother her sighs,
A chilling image of her has lingered in my memory.

From pious prayers she comes and to her prayers she returns.
In downcast eyes, in lips, in folded hands her prayers repose.
Without her prayers what fate would be the world’s?
Yet they cannot stop another day from dawning.

Oh, nun so pale, making love to the saints,
Consumed in ecstasy before them like an altar candle,
Revealing herself to them…, oh, how I envy the saints,
Pray not for me, for I am hell-bent with desire.

You and I, nun, are two ends of a rope,
On which two teams tug one against the other –
The struggle is stern and who knows how it will end,
So, tug the rope, let the teams contend.

[Kanga skandaloze, from the volume Vargjet e lira, Tirana: Ismail Mal’ Osmani 1944, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, published in English in Migjeni, Free Verse, Peja: Dukagjini 2001, p. 73]

Resignation

In tears have we found consolation…
Our heritage in life has been
Misery… for this whole world
Is but a grave in the universal womb,
Where human reptiles are condemned to creep,
Their will crushed in the grip of a giant.
– An eye adorned in purest tears of profound pain
Shines from the far side of hell,
And at times, the reflection of a fleeting thought
Flashes round the globe
To give vent to awesome wrath.
But the head hangs, the sorrowful eyelids droop
And through the lashes wells a crystal tear,
Rolls down the cheek and splashes on the earth,
And in every splash of a teardrop a man is born
To take to the road of his own destiny.
In the hope of the smallest victory, he roams from land to land,
Over roads covered with brambles, among which he passes
Graves washed in tears and crazy folk who snigger.

[Rezignata, from the volume Vargjet e lira, Tirana: Ismail Mal’ Osmani 1944, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, published in English in Migjeni, Free Verse, Peja: Dukagjini 2001, p. 75]

Fragment

…
On the mercy of the merciless
The little beggar survived.
His life ran its course
In dirty streets,
In dark corners,
In cold doorways,
Among fallacious faiths.
But one day, when the world’s pity dried up
He felt in his breast the stab
Of a new pain, which contempt
Fosters in the hearts
Of the poor.
And – though yesterday a little beggar,
He now became something new.
An avenger of the past,
He conceived an imprecation
To pronounce to the world,
His throat strained
To bring out the word
Which his rage had gripped
And smothered on his lips.
Speechless he sat
At the crossroads,
When the wheels of a passing car
Quickly crushed
And… silenced him.

[Fragment, from the volume Vargjet e lira, Tirana: Ismail Mal’ Osmani 1944, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, published in English in Migjeni, Free Verse, Peja: Dukagjini 2001, p. 77]

The themes

Is there the theme of a poem among fading memories,
Among the happy memories of childhood innocence,
When the heart was full of worldly pleasures,
Desires, hopes and ever-sweet dreams?
Is there the fiery theme of a poem of love
Among the lingering memories of eager youth,
With sonorous rhymes and ardent vows,
Full of the lust for life and shouts of mirth?

On the pallid faces of fallen women
Loitering in doorways to sell themselves,
On their faces a tragic poem is carved
In tears and grief that rise to the heavens,

In dark corners where derision reigns
In disgust, and the insane jeer
At their wives and children,
There in revolt great themes await creation.

In hidden corners where fear dwells
And passivity lurks to smother life,
There in betrayal does the theme take its source
And with it, the poet pens his verse.

Throughout man’s life do themes of all kinds
Come and go. Now the ultimate of themes has come,
Frightening in our fantasy – the paling of the face,
An ominous shadow, and the death knell tolls.

[Motivet, from the volume Vargjet e lira, Tirana: Ismail Mal’ Osmani 1944, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, published in English in Migjeni, Free Verse, Peja: Dukagjini 2001, p. 81]

Suffering

For some time now
I have seen clearly
How from suffering my eyes are growing larger,
The furrows in my face and brow are growing deeper,
And my smile has grown bitter…
…and I have come to realize
That the coming days
Will no longer be constructive ones
Of energy and work, but simply the passing
Of a waning life.

With time, I have come to see
How this treacherous life
Has singed
Each of my senses,
One by one,
Until nothing remains
Of the joy
I once had.

Oh life,
I did not know before
How much I dreaded
Your grip
That strangles
Ruthless.

But helpless now,
I gaze into the mirror and see
How from suffering my eyes are growing larger,
The furrows in my face and brow are growing deeper,
And that soon I will become
A tattered banner,
Worn and torn
In the battles of life.

[Vuejtja, from the volume Vargjet e lira, Tirana: Ismail Mal’ Osmani 1944, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, published in English in Migjeni, Free Verse, Peja: Dukagjini 2001, p. 123]

Under the banners of melancholy

The banners
Of a mournful melancholy
Wave
Throughout our land…
Nor can it be said
That here live a people
Who are building
Something new.
Here and there in the shadow
Of the banners
An effort can be seen,
A gigantic struggle
To triumph over death,
To give birth to something great,
To bring a jinni to light!
But (oh, irony of fate)
From all that labour
Only a mouse is born.
And thus this comedy
Bursts our vein of humour,
And we ourselves
Burst into rage.
Over the threshold of each house
That contains a sign of life
Mournful melancholy
Unfolds its banner.

[Nën flamujt e melankolisë, from the volume Vargjet e lira, Tirana: Ismail Mal’ Osmani 1944, translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie, published in English in Migjeni, Free Verse, Peja: Dukagjini 2001, p. 135]

THE STUDENT BACK HOME

Sketches

Esad MEKULI

Honolulu — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 20:12:16 +0000

The writer widely considered to be the father of modern Albanian poetry in Yugoslavia, Esad Mekuli (1916-1993), was not born in Kosova itself but in the mountain village of Plava on the Montenegrin-Albanian border where national traditions are still revered. Mekuli went to school in Peja on the Kosova side of the wild Rugova canyon and studied veterinary medicine at the University of Belgrade. There he came into contact with Marxist teachings and subsequently took part in the partisan movement of World War II. In 1949, he founded the literary periodical Jeta e re (New life), whose editor-in-chief he remained until 1971.

Mekuli was a committed poet of social awareness whose outrage at injustice, violence, genocide and suffering mirrors that of the pre-revolutionary verse of the messianic Migjeni of Shkodra. His first collection, Për ty, Prishtina 1955 (For you), was dedicated to the people of Kosova. His final collection, Drita që nuk shuhet, Prishtina 1989 (The light that does not go out), appeared over thirty years later. Mekuli also published translations of much Yugoslav literature, including the works of the Montenegrin poet-prince Petar Njegosh (1813-1851), as well as Serbian translations of many volumes of Albanian literature.

Longing for the Unobtainable

Like lambs on the hillsides clouds frolic on high
As a longing for the unobtainable permeates my being:

How I long to join in the dance of the crimson clouds
And soar to the dazzling heights
In the rapture of a pastoral song…

And when the moonlight floods the valleys
Casting silvery rays upon ears of corn,
And the earth calls out in nocturnal desire,
Let me go
And visit
The extremities of my suffering and the haunts of my anguish.

Alas! My heart yearns
To join in the dance of the crimson clouds –
For my youth to exalt and rejoice
And for my aching heart to burst with longing.

But why does my heart beat with nostalgia,
like a quivering voice,
And fear plunge into the depths of my heart and soul?

Whenever I contemplate the clouds over the city,
Whenever longing for the unobtainable permeates my being.

[Malli për të pambërrijtshmen, from the volume Brigjet, Prishtina: Rilindja 1981, p. 14. First published in English in An Elusive Eagle Soars, Anthology of Modern Albanian Poetry, London: Forest Books 1993, p. 28. Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie]

Turk, Elhamdulila

The Turks took up the sword,
Europe trembled, shuddered.
And we too in Kosova fought
For our beloved freedom.

They attacked with fire and sword,
For centuries our freedoms were lost,
The tyrant overran us:
‘You are a Turk, elhamdulila!’

Religion and nation were the same,
Moslem and Turk were one.
He wanted us to forget our very names:
‘You are a Turk, elhamdulila!’

He forbade our language too,
To speak no Turkish was to be an infidel.
It is the word of God, they told us:
‘You are a Turk, elhamdulila!’

‘You are a Turk, you are a Turk,’ they thundered
At the Albanians for centuries,
And one day one of us uttered:
‘I am a Turk, elhamdulila!’

But no, Turks we are not!
Never! Let everyone know
We have always been Albanians;
Religion cannot wipe that away!

No, Turks we are not!
But their working people we love.
After times of blood and gloom
We shall go forth – hand in hand!

[Turk elhamdulila, from the volume Brigjet, Prishtina: Rilindja 1981, p. 72. First published in English in An Elusive Eagle Soars, Anthology of Modern Albanian Poetry, London: Forest Books 1993, p. 29. Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie]

Is it the Albanian’s Fault?

(1938. On hearing of the secret agreement to expel four hundred thousand so-called ‘Turks’ from ‘southern Serbia’ to the wilds of Anatolia, 65 Kosova students (56 Serbs and Montenegrins, 8 Albanians and 1 Turk) signed and published a protest (in Serbo-Croatian and Albanian) against the Yugoslav government for this crime against the people. The protest was transmitted illegally to foreign embassies in Belgrade and distributed throughout Kosova and Macedonia.)

Is it the Albanian’s fault that he lives under this sky,
Under this sky, in the land of his ancestors?
Is it his fault that he exists and will not be uprooted,
The Albanian, slave or master, who wants to belong to himself?

Is it the Albanian’s fault that his eyes flash fire
When he glares as others expel him from his home and his soil?
Is it his fault that he exists when others wish him dead,
Or that he will spill blood to defend his hearth and not give up alive?

Is it the Albanian’s fault that he wishes to live as others do,
Like a human being, among his own people, now and forever?
Is it his fault that, despite force, he resists
Under the precious sky of Kosova, the land of his ancestors?

[A asht fajtor shqiptari, from the volume Brigjet, Prishtina: Rilindja 1981, p. 44. First published in English in An Elusive Eagle Soars, Anthology of Modern Albanian Poetry, London: Forest Books 1993, p. 30. Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie]

Evening

Like the golden fringes of an azure shawl
Held in two white hands, two snow-laden hills,
The sunset flames… Overhead the clouds
Cross the sky and melt into space.

As the last rays fade over the slopes,
The veil spreads to cover the ash-grey plains,
The mountains now fall silent, frozen and
Lifeless… all things have grown sombre and vanish.

Night has fallen and, in the air, cries can be heard,
The trees by the roadside tremble in the wind…
Yet in some distant land is the white light of dawn

Whetting its golden arrows to overwhelm the night.
Darkness reigns o’er the world. In the valley, the villages,
Stretched out in the wee hours, are sound asleep.

(1933)

[Mbramja, from the volume Brigjet, Prishtina: Rilindja 1981, p. 11. Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie]

The Death of Day

The setting sun
Spent itself
In a flickering fire…

All things quivered
In sadness
And lamentation.

In that silent coffin of twilight,
In orphaned pain
Tonight

We mourned
What we loved, what was ours,
With pristine tears.

The sighing of the blades of grass,
The quiet sobbing of the wind
Met my heart in sorrow…

The sun tonight
Spent itself
In a flickering fire.

(1934)

[Ndekja e ditës, from the volume Brigjet, Prishtina: Rilindja 1981, p. 17. Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie]

I know no joy: worry seethes in my heart,
I am alone – no brother or sister,
A broken child on the misty horizon
Where lightning flashes and flings one into the depths.

I am the pain of the poor, bereft of food and drink,
A mother’s tear fallen on an empty table,
I am the longing of the slave, forever pursued,
Who rises like a giant in the air amongst the birch trees.

I am the suffering of the oppressed, muffled in misery,
A war cry resounding, scattering all impediments,
In that great expectation splendidly arising
Over the ruins, I am a ray of hope.

No, I know no joy, worry seethes in my heart,
I am alone – no brother or sister,
A broken child on the misty horizon
Where lightning flashes and flings one into the depths.

(1935)

[Unë, from the volume Brigjet, Prishtina: Rilindja 1981, p. 28. Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie]

Hope

(Two fishermen, covered in a piece of torn canvas and rocked
by the waves, are asleep in their tiny boat called Ümüt (Hope),
the letters of which can hardly be read.)

All night long did the foaming waves beat them,
The beacon its signal did cast,
Yet they, caught in reverie visions,
Had drifted and fallen asleep,

Outstretched,
A brief respite
In their struggle for a better life,
For that which they longed to lead.

… then the dawn cast its white rays,
The sun outshone the lighthouse,
Wide-eyed gulls perched on the reefs.

Alone were the two of them, waiting
In their Hope, rocked in their reverie,
And in their endless dreams.

[Shpresa, from the volume Brigjet, Prishtina: Rilindja 1981, p. 136. Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie]

Sejfullah MALËSHOVA

Honolulu — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 20:10:43 +0000

The forced marriage between Albanian literature and Marxism-Leninism was firmly cemented from the start with the founding in October 1945 of the Albanian Writers’ Union. Initially, responsibility for cultural policies in post-war Albania was conferred upon the poet Sejfulla Malëshova (1901-1971), who used the penname Lame Kodra. Originally from the Përmet region of southern Albania, Malëshova spent a good deal of his life abroad. Most of the verse of this self-styled rebel poet was written in exile and was published in the now rare volume Vjersha, Tirana 1945 (Verse). He had studied medicine in Italy and in 1924, at the age of twenty-three, became Fan Noli’s personal secretary in the latter’s democratic government. With the overthrow of Noli, Malëshova fled to Paris and from there, inspired by the October Revolution, he continued on to Moscow where he studied and later taught Marxism. In the Soviet Union he joined the Communist Party (1930-1932) but was subsequently expelled as a Bukharinist. As minister of culture in the communist-controlled provisional government, Malëshova followed a relatively liberal and conciliatory course in order to encourage the reintegration of non-communist forces into the new structures of power. He was not one to condemn all prewar writers such as Gjergj Fishta as reactionaries, nor was he in favour of a total break with the West. Malëshova soon became the spokesperson of one of the two factions vying for power within the party. With the backing of the Yugoslav communists, however, the faction of his adversary Koçi Xoxe (1917-1949) gained the upper hand by early 1946 and Malëshova fell into disgrace. At a meeting of the Central Committee on 21 February 1946, Malëshova was accused of opportunism and right-wing deviationism and was expelled both from the Politburo and from the Central Committee.

Strangely enough, Sejfullah Malëshova survived his fall. This left-wing idealist who had once been a member of the Comintern was interned in Ballsh for two or three years and spent all his later life in internal exile as a humble stock clerk in Fier where, for years, no inhabitant of the town dared speak to him. His only social contact was to play soccer with the children. Whenever anyone approached he would pinch his lips with his fingers, signifying the vow of eternal silence which ensured his survival.

Sejfullah Malëshova died on 9 June 1971 of appendicitis in unimaginable isolation. Although everyone in town knew his poems by heart, no one dared to attend his funeral. He was buried in the presence of his sister, the gravedigger and two Sigurimi agents.

How I Love Albania

I’ve no farm estates or manors,
I’ve no shops or lofty buildings,
Yet I love my land, Albania –
For a barn in Trebeshina,
For its boulders and its brushwood,
For a hut above Selishta,
For two fields ploughed in Zallishta,
For a cow and for a donkey,
For an ox, a little lambkin,
This is how I love my country
Like a shepherd, like a peasant.

Yes, I love my land, Albania,
For the clover in its meadows,
For a quick and agile maiden,
For its spring of water gurgling
From the cliffs and flowing swiftly
Through the leafy oak tree forests,
Tumbling down to form a river,
Yes, I love my land, Albania,
For the fenugreek in blossom,
For the birds that fly above it,
For the nightingales a-singing,
In the shade and in the brambles,
Trilling songs of love and longing,
This is how I love my country,
Like a poet in devotion.

Yes, I love my land, Albania,
Right from Korça to Vranina,
Where the farmer sets off early
With his hoe and plough a-toiling,
Sows and reaps by sun and moonlight,
Yet, he has no food to live on,
Where the farrier and saddler
Day and night stoop o’er their duties
Just to get a few stale breadcrumbs,
Where the porter at the dockyards,
Laden down with iron and barrels,
Bears his load, barefoot and ragged,
Always serving other people.
Yes, I love my land, Albania,
Right from Skopje to Janina,
Where its people in misfortune
Suffer, live their lives in serfdom,
Yet they have a fighting spirit –
This is how I love my country,
Like a revolutionary.

(1939)

[Si e dua Shqipërinë, from the volume Vjersha, Tirana 1945, p. 18-19. Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie]

Rebel Poet

Listen to me, men and women,
Everywhere,
There’s an warrant out to snare me
from Tiranë.
Over hill and over dale and
in the fields,
Their patrols are right behind me
step by step.
I fear not their hunting dogs and
all their guns,
I am off and make my journey
path by path,
I am off and will find shelter
house by house,
Everywhere in this, my country,
I’ve my lair.
I’m a thug and I’m a rebel
and I’m proud,
Both the beys and, yes, their thrones I
will attack.
I have come to do my job,
protect the poor,
And a war on slavery have I
now declared.

* * *

Who have raised their guns against me?
let me know!
Who’s behind me, searching for my
every trace?
Stop a while and listen to me,
soldier boy,
Are you not a peasant’s son, a
village lad?
Bide a bit and listen to me,
brother mine,
Hold your pace and save your bullet
For those men,
For the ones who rob, oppress our
piteous home,
For the ones who here exhaust us
in our plight.
And my poems may, too, resemble
me, a thug,
For my lines with black gunpowder
have I filled.
Songs of war and songs of fire
in my mouth,
And a storehouse full of weapons
is my chest,
Verse, my verse, fly off in fury
like a bomb,
Go and furl out like a war cry,
like a flag,
Let our country’s people gather
everywhere,
Let the tyrant tremble, quiver
in his hall.
To your feet arise, oh Korça,
matriarch,
With Devoll and with Kolonja,
with Opar.
Come forth now, oh Vlora river,
banner high,
As you’d come to pick your bride up
in her veil,
To the vanguard like Gjoleka,
Kurvelesh,
Beat upon them, Chameria,
like a storm.
Like an earthquake may you bellow,
Mount Tomorr,
May the waves of Shkumbin river
seethe and boil.
Rise up, people, like a lion,
Cast the yoke,
In Berat and in Tirana,
Elbasan,
And you, Mat, Luma and Dibra,
like the wind,
Seize your arms and for your freedom
take to war,
Moan and groan, oh wretched Shkodra,
ancient town,
Come along, arise Kosova,
join the dance,
With Krasniqi, Bajram Curri
and Tetovë.
Let our country’s people gather
everywhere,
Let the tyrant tremble, quiver
in his hall.
Verse, my verse, fly off in fury
like a bomb,
Go and furl out like a war cry,
like a flag.

(1935)

[Poeti rebel, from the volume Vjersha, Tirana 1945, p. 13-16. Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie]

Mitrush KUTELI

Honolulu — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 20:06:22 +0000

Mitrush Kuteli (1907-1967), pseudonym of Dhimitër Pasko, known in Romanian as Dimitrie Pascu, was born in Pogradec on the banks of Lake Ohrid on 13 September 1907 and attended a foreign-language school in Greece (a Romanian commercial college in Thessalonika) and later moved to Bucharest, where he studied economics and graduated in 1934 with a dissertation on the banking systems of the Balkans. He collaborated for a time as a journalist at the Albanian weekly newspaper Shqipëri’ e re (New Albania), edited in Constanza from 1919 to 1936. For his journalistic activities, he employed the pseudonym Janus, after the two-headed Roman god able to see into the past and into the future at the same time. It was also in Bucharest that Kuteli began publishing the collections of short stories for which he is best known. His first book, Nete shqipëtare, Bucharest 1938 (Albanian nights), was a compilation of eight tales on village life in and around his native Pogradec. Of the 1,200 copies of the first edition, about 1,000 were destroyed in a fire in Constanza before they could be sold, and the book only became widely known after the second edition of 1944. It was in Bucharest, too, that Kuteli arranged for the publication of Lasgush Poradeci’s breathtaking verse collection Ylli i zemrës (The Star of the heart) in 1937. Romanian culture, still under the spell of national poet Mihai Eminescu, had left its impact on Mitrush Kuteli, as it had on Asdreni, Lasgush Poradeci and the many Albanian writers and intellectuals living there in the early decades of the twentieth century.

In the autumn of 1942, as the destruction and horror caused by the Second World War was gradually approaching its peak in the Balkans and the Soviet Union, Kuteli returned to Albania, which was itself on the verge of disintegrating into open civil war. It was during these war years that Kuteli, at his own expense, was able to publish most of his major works: Ago Jakupi e të tjera rrëfime, Tirana 1943 (Ago Jakupi and other tales), a collection of seven tales of peasant life; Kapllan Aga i Shaban Shpatës. Rrëfime – Rrëfenja, Tirana 1944 (Kapllan Aga of Shaban Shpata. Tales – Stories), five short stories written between 1938 and 1944; Këngë e brithma nga qyteti i djegur, Tirana 1944 (Songs and cries from a charred city), a collection of folk songs; Shënime letrare, Tirana 1944 (Literary notes); and Sulm e lotë, Tirana 1944 (Assault and tears), a collection of modest nationalist verse written by Kuteli and a fictitious friend named Izedin Jashar Kutrulija whom Kuteli claimed to have met in Prizren in May 1943. Also in this period, he edited a collection of the verse of Fan Noli (1882-1965) entitled Mall e brengë, Tirana 1943 (Longing and grief), and published a number of works on the finance and monetary system.

Mitrush Kuteli set the pace for the short story in southern Albania and managed to attain a higher level of literary sophistication than most other sentimental prose writers of the period: Milto Sotir Gurra (1884-1972), Foqion Postoli (1889-1927), Haki Stërmilli (1895-1953) or Kolë Mirdita (1900-1936). He derived many elements for his tales from the Tosk oral literature he had heard as a child, using them to create crystalline motifs of village life and a lively narrative style. Kuteli’s syntax and lexicon are elaborate and his diction is often compelling. The peasant themes and the mixture of folksy humour and old-fashioned adventure made his tales popular with broad sections of the reading public during the war and thereafter. In some of his short stories one senses the atmosphere of nineteenth-century Russian prose, of Nikolay Gogol and Ivan Turgenev, whom the author had read and particularly enjoyed in his earlier years, and of Romanian prose writer Mihail Sadoveanu (1880-1961).

At the end of the Second World War Mitrush Kuteli, now an executive at the Albanian State Bank, was a leading figure of Albanian letters. On 15 February 1944, together with Vedat Kokona (1913-1998), Nexhat Hakiu (1917-1978) and Sterjo Spasse (1914-1989), he founded the fortnightly literary periodical Revista letrare (Literary review), which had a significant impact on Albanian culture during its short life. He was also a founding member of the Albanian Writers’ Union, which was set up under the direction of Sejfulla Malëshova (1901-1971) on 7 October 1945, and a member of the editorial board of Albania’s first post-war literary journal Bota e re (New world).

Kuteli managed to survive the transition of political power in Albania until the real terror began in 1947. During a purge which ensued after the Albanian Communist Party had come under Yugoslav domination, he unwisely disapproved of the proposed customs and monetary union between Albania and Yugoslavia. As a member of an official delegation to Yugoslavia, received among others by writer Ivo Andri? (1892-1975), he is also said to have expressed a critical attitude to the Serb re-occupation of Kosova, a stance reflected earlier in his Poem kosovar (Kosovar poem), published in 1944. Upon his return to Albania, he was arrested and sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

For Kuteli, as for most writers of the late forties, life had become a nightmare. He survived the first two years of his prison sentence (April 1947 to April 1949) in a labour camp near Korça where inmates were put to work draining the infamous mosquito-infested swamp of Maliq. Working and living conditions for the prisoners were unimaginably harsh, and Kuteli, amidst such horror, attempted suicide. But with the elimination of Yugoslav influence in Albanian party politics, the open persecution of Kuteli subsided and he was released. He 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 Frashëri publishing company.

Zhdanovism, which had penetrated and taken thorough control of what was left of Albanian literature in the fifties, made it expedient at the time to translate Russian literature to serve as a model for the introduction of socialist realism in Albania. Kuteli willingly acquiesced by producing noted translations of recognized Soviet authors such as Maksim Gorky, Aleksey Tolstoy, Konstantin Paustovsky, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Fadeyev and Nikolay Ostrovsky. Aside from these writers recommended by Soviet cultural and political advisors, Kuteli also managed to publish some translations of his favourite Russian authors of the nineteenth century: Nikolay Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Krylov, and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin.

In addition to these many translations from Russian, and others from Romanian (Mihai Eminescu, Mihail Sadoveanu), Spanish (Pablo Neruda), and French (André Maurois, Paul Eluard), etc., Kuteli is remembered in particular for his prose adaptation of a collection of Albanian oral verse, including the heroic cycle of Mujo and Halili, in Tregime të moçme shqiptare, Tirana 1965 (Early Albanian tales). He was also able to publish some verse and tales for children, the safest pastime for Eastern European writers in the Stalinist period. A novel on an Illyrian theme remained unfinished. Mitrush Kuteli died of a heart attack in Tirana on 4 May 1967, bereft of the honour and recognition due to the man who had made the short story a popular genre in Albania and who, had politics not interfered, might otherwise have been the leading prose writer of the fifties.

The Muddy Albanian Soil

I love you, muddy Albanian soil,
I love you
Ferociously,
Desperately,
Like a wolf loves the forest,
Like a wave loves a wave,
Like mud loves mud.

Up to my knees
I am into you,
For I was born
Here,
Like my Father,
Like my Grandfather,

I love you, muddy Albanian soil,
Up to my waist
And above it,
I am into you,
And I cannot stop
For I do not wish to.

For you bind me
And captivate me
With honey
And with wormwood.

For my Mother
And my Father
And my Ancestors
All perished
Here.

I love you, muddy Albanian soil,
Magic,
And sweet,
Like death itself.

For I am deep here,
Deep into you,
Up to my knees,
Up to my waist,
And up to my neck.

And how I would love to get drunk
And relax
(Right now!)
Within you.

To hug you
Desperate,
To embrace you,
To be embraced,
Ferociously,
Desperately
That you absorb me
As you absorbed
My ancestors, absorbed
Oh, my noble-minded,
Grey-haired,
Withered-bodied
Father.

I love you, muddy Albanian soil,
Magic,
Sweet as honey,
Bitter as wormwood,
I love you
Ferociously,
Desperately,
Like a wolf loves the forest,
Like a wave loves a wave,
Like mud loves mud!

[Balta shqipëtare, from the volume Sulm e lotë, Tirana 1944, p. 55-57. Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie.]

THE AUTUMN OF XHELADIN BEY