ASDRENI
BIOGRAPHY
Asdreni (1872-1947), pseudonym of Aleks Stavre Drenova,
was born in the village of Drenova, about five kilometers from
Korça in southeastern Albania. He attended a Greek-language
elementary school in his native village and had just begun high
school in Korça when his widowed father died, leaving
the thirteen-year-old Aleks an orphan. In the autumn of 1885,
the young Aleks arrived in Bucharest (Romania) to join his two
elder brothers. It was here in the culturally active Albanian
colony that he first came into contact with the ideas and ideals
of the nationalist movement in exile. Asdreni worked initially
as a coal-boy and an apprentice, and later continued his studies,
both privately, and for a short time at the Faculty of Political
Science of the University of Bucharest. In 1905, he taught at
an Albanian school in the port city of Constanza and the following
year became president of the new Bucharest chapter of the Dija
(Knowledge) society , originally founded in Vienna. Inspired
by the creation of an independent Albanian state, he set off
for Durrës on the Adriatic in the spring of 1914 to welcome
the country’s newly chosen head of state, Prince Wilhelm
zu Wied (1876-1945) , from whom he hoped to obtain an appointment
as archivist in the new royal administration. It soon became
apparent, however, that there would be little to administer and
no need for his services at all. After a short visit to Shkodra,
Asdreni returned to Bucharest in July 1914 as Europe prepared
for war. In the following years, Asdreni continued to take an
active interest in the Albanian national movement. He chose nonetheless
to remain in Romania, and served there as secretary at the Albanian
consulate which opened in March 1922. He made another visit to
Albania in November 1937 on the twenty-fifth anniversary of independence,
hoping after many years of service to the Albanian state to receive
a government pension, but to no avail. He died in poverty on
11 December 1947 at the age of seventy-five.
It was in the early years of the twentieth century that Asdreni
had begun writing poetry and publishing articles in the local
press. In 1904, he published his first collection of ninety-nine
poems, Rézé djélli, Bucharest 1904
(Sunbeams), which he dedicated to the Albanian national hero
Scanderbeg . Asdreni’s second volume Endra e lote,
Bucharest 1912 (Dreams and tears), published eight years later,
displayed much greater maturity. This collection of ninety-nine
poems, like the previous one, was divided into the cycles: fatherland,
nature, thought and beauty, and was dedicated to the English
traveller and friend of Albania, Edith Durham (1863-1944). The
improvement in form, style and technique and the broadening of
the range of themes and ideas are even more evident in Asdreni’s
third volume of verse, Psallme murgu, Bucharest 1930 (Psalms
of a monk), which marks the zenith of his poetic creativity.
Many consider the collection Psallme murgu with its classical
refinement to be one of the best volumes of Albanian verse published
in the 20th century. |
Albanian Literature in Translation
Classical
Authors (19th - early 20th centuries)
