Andon Zako ÇAJUPI
BIOGRAPHY
Andon Zako Çajupi (1866-1930) was born in Sheper, a
village in the Upper Zagoria region of southern Albania, as the
son of a rich tobacco merchant, Harito Çako, who did business
in Kavala and Egypt. The young Andon Zako, who usually preferred
this spelling of his surname and was later to adopt the pseudonym
Çajupi, attended Greek-language schools in the region
and in 1882 emigrated to Egypt where he studied for five years
at the French lycée ‘Sainte Catherine des Lazaristes’
in Alexandria. In 1887, he went on to study law at the University
of Geneva. Çajupi completed his law degree on 24 October
1892 and remained in Switzerland for two or three more years
where he married a girl named Eugénie and where his son
Stefan was born. Eugénie died in about 1892, a tragic
loss for the poet, and Çajupi returned to Kavala to leave
his small son in the charge of his mother Zoica. About 1894/1895,
Çajupi returned to Egypt and articled for three years
with a German law firm in Cairo. His legal career came to a swift
conclusion, however, when he made the strategic mistake of defending
a French company in a dispute against the interests of the khedive.
Financially independent, however, Çajupi bore this professional
calamity with ease. He withdrew to his villa in Heliopolis near
Cairo and devoted himself subsequently to literature and to the
consolidation of the thriving Albanian nationalist movement in
Egypt. In the years following Albanian independence, Çajupi
continued to play an active role in the Albanian community on
the Nile, organized as it was into various patriotic clubs and
societies at odds with one another over political issues. The
poet died at his home in Heliopolis on 11 July 1930. His
remains were transferred to Albania in 1958.
The most significant phase of Çajupi’s literary
and nationalist activities was from 1898 to 1912. By 1902 he
was an active member of the Albanian Fraternity of Egypt (Vëllazëria
e Egjiptit ) and that same year published the poetry volume
for which he is best remembered: Baba-Tomorri, Cairo 1902
(Father Tomorr). This collection, named after Mt. Tomorr in central
Albania, the Parnassus of Albanian mythology, contains light
verse on mostly nationalist themes and is divided into three
sections: 1) Fatherland, 2) Love, and 3) True
and False Tales. The work was an immediate success. Indeed no
volume of Albanian poetry had proven so popular among Albanians
at home and abroad since the collections of Naim Frashëri
.
Though there are many technical imperfections in his poems,
their straightforward octosyllabic rhythms reminiscent of southern
Albanian folksongs, their unequivocal messages and their patriotic
inspiration made them extremely popular both with adults and
children, and proclaimed Çajupi the most important Albanian
poet since Naim Frashëri.
Çajupi was also a playwright, author of a verse tragedy
on Scanderbeg entitled Burr’ i dheut (The earthly
hero) written in 1907. This was followed by a one-act original
comedy Pas vdekjes (After death), written in 1910 and
printed, like the former play, in 1937 by Sofokli Çapi.
Another drama in verse, which remained unpublished during his
lifetime, was the four-act situation comedy Katërmbëdhjetë
vjeç dhëndër (A bridegroom at fourteen). |
Albanian Literature in Translation
Classical
Authors (19th - early 20th centuries)
