Hasan Zyko KAMBERI
BIOGRAPHY
Hasan Zyko Kamberi was born in the second half of the eighteenth
century in Starja, a southern Albanian village near Kolonja at
the foot of Mount Grammos. Of his life we know only that he took
part in the Turkish-Austrian Battle of Smederevo on the Danube
east of Belgrade in 1789 [1203 A.H.] in an army under the command
of Ali Pasha Tepelena (1741-1822). He died a dervish, no doubt
of the Bektashi sect, in his native village at the beginning
of the nineteenth century. His tomb in Starja was turned into
a shrine known locally as the turbeh of Baba Hasani.
Kamberi is one of the most commanding representatives of the
Muslim tradition in Albanian literature, though his main work,
a 200-page mexhmua (verse collection), has disappeared.
A manuscript of this collection is said to have been sent to
Monastir (Bitola) in 1908-1910 to be published, but all traces
of it have since been lost. Indeed little of his verse has survived
and even less has been published. Of the works we do possess
are: a short mevlud, a religious poem on the birth of
the prophet Mohammed; about ten ilâhî; and
over fifty secular poems.
Kamberi’s secular verse covers a wide range of themes.
In his octosyllabic Sefer-i hümâyûn (The
king’s campaign) in thirty-three quatrains, he describes
his participation in the above-mentioned Battle of Smederevo
and gives a realistic account of the suffering it caused. In
Bahti im (My fortune) and Vasijetnameja (The testament),
Kamberi casts an ironic and sometimes bitter glance at the vagaries
of fate and in particular at the misfortunes of his own life.
Gjerdeku (The bridal chamber) portrays marriage customs
in the countryside. It is not a pastoral idyll we encounter here,
but a realistic account of the anguish and hardship of young
women married off according to custom without being able to choose
husbands for themselves, and the suffering of young men forced
to go abroad to make a living. In Kamberi’s love lyrics,
the author laments social conventions that inhibit passion and
spontaneity. The most famous of his poems is Paraja (Money),
a caustic condemnation of feudal corruption and at the same time
perhaps the best piece of satirical verse in pre-twentieth century
Albanian literature. |
Albanian Literature in Translation
Early
Authors (16th - 18th centuries)
