Gjergj FISHTA
BIOGRAPHY
By far the greatest and most influential figure of Albanian
literature in the first half of the twentieth century was the
Franciscan pater Gjergj Fishta (1871-1940) who more than any
other writer gave artistic expression to the searching soul of
the now sovereign Albanian nation. Lauded and celebrated up until
the Second World War as the ‘national poet of Albania’
and the ‘Albanian Homer,’ Fishta was to fall into sudden
oblivion when the communists took power in November 1944. The
very mention of his name became taboo for forty-six years. Who
was Gjergj Fishta and can he live up to his epithet as ‘poet
laureate’ half a century later?
Fishta was born on 23 October 1871 in the Zadrima village
of Fishta near Troshan in northern Albania where he was baptized
by Franciscan missionary and poet Leonardo De Martino (1830-1923).
He attended Franciscan schools in Troshan and Shkodra where as
a child he was deeply influenced both by the talented De Martino
and by a Bosnian missionary, pater Lovro Mihacevic, who instilled
in the intelligent lad a love for literature and for his native
language. In 1886, when he was fifteen, Fishta was sent by the
Order of the Friars Minor to Bosnia, as were many young Albanians
destined for the priesthood at the time. It was at Franciscan
seminaries and institutions in Sutjeska, Livno and Kresevo that
the young Fishta studied theology, philosophy and languages,
in particular Latin, Italian and Serbo-Croatian, to prepare himself
for his ecclesiastical and literary career. During his stay in
Bosnia he came into contact with Bosnian writer Grga Martiƒc
(1822-1905) and Croatian poet Silvije Strahimir Kranjcevic (1865-1908)
with whom he became friends and who aroused a literary calling
in him. In 1894 Gjergj Fishta was ordained as a priest and admitted
to the Franciscan order. On his return to Albania in February
of that year, he was given a teaching position at the Franciscan
college in Troshan and subsequently a posting as parish priest
in the village of Gomsiqja. In 1899, he collaborated with Preng
Doçi , the influential abbot of Mirdita, with prose writer
and priest Dom Ndoc Nikaj and with folklorist Pashko Bardhi (1870-1948)
to found the Bashkimi (Unity) literary society of Shkodra
which set out to tackle the thorny Albanian alphabet question.
This society was subsequently instrumental in the publication
of a number of Albanian-language school texts and of the Bashkimi
Albanian-Italian dictionary of 1908, still the best dictionary
of Gheg dialect. By this time Fishta had become a leading figure
of cultural and public life in northern Albania and in particular
in Shkodra.
In 1902, Fishta was appointed director of Franciscan schools
in the district of Shkodra where he is remembered in particular
for having replaced Italian by Albanian for the first time as
the language of instruction there. This effectively put an end
to the Italian cultural domination of northern Albanian Catholics
and gave young Albanians studying at these schools a sense of
national identity. On 14-22 November 1908 he participated in
the Congress of Monastir as a representative of the Bashkimi
literary society. This congress, attended by Catholic, Orthodox
and Muslim delegates from Albania and abroad, was held to decide
upon a definitive Albanian alphabet, a problem to which Fishta
had given much thought. Indeed, the congress had elected Gjergj
Fishta to preside over a committee of eleven delegates who were
to make the choice. After three days of deliberations, Fishta
and the committee resolved to support two alphabets: a modified
form of Sami Frashëri’s Istanbul alphabet which, though
impractical for printing, was most widely used at the time, and
a new Latin alphabet almost identical to Fishta’s Bashkimi
alphabet, in order to facilitate printing abroad.
In October 1913, almost a year after the declaration of Albanian
independence in Vlora, Fishta founded and began editing the Franciscan
monthly periodical Hylli i Dritës (The day-star)
which was devoted to literature, politics, folklore and history.
With the exception of the turbulent years of the First World
War and its aftermath, 1915-1920, and the early years of the
dictatorship of Ahmet Zogu, 1925-1929, this influential journal
of high literary standing was published regularly until July
1944 and became as instrumental for the development of northern
Albanian Gheg culture as Faik bey Konitza’s Brussels journal
Albania had been for the Tosk culture of the south. From
December 1916 to 1918 Fishta edited the Shkodra newspaper Posta
e Shqypniës (The Albanian post), a political and cultural
newspaper which was subsidized by Austria-Hungary under the auspices
of the Kultusprotektorat, despite the fact that the occupying
forces did not entirely trust Fishta because of his nationalist
aspirations. Also in 1916, together with Luigj Gurakuqi, Ndre
Mjeda and Mati Logoreci (1867-1941), Fishta played a leading
role in the Albanian Literary Commission (Komisija Letrare
Shqype) set up by the Austro-Hungarians on the suggestion
of consul-general August Ritter von Kral (1859-1918) to decide
on questions of orthography for official use and to encourage
the publication of Albanian school texts. After some deliberation,
the Commission sensibly decided to use the central dialect of
Elbasan as a neutral compromise for a standard literary language.
This was much against the wishes of Gjergj Fishta who regarded
the dialect of Shkodra, in view of its strong contribution to
Albanian culture at the time, as best suited. Fishta hoped that
his northern Albanian koine would soon serve as a literary
standard for the whole country much as Dante’s language
had served as a guide for literary Italian. Throughout these
years, Fishta continued teaching and running the Franciscan school
in Shkodra, known from 1921 on as the Collegium Illyricum
(Illyrian college), which had become the leading educational
institution of northern Albania. He was now also an imposing
figure of Albanian literature.
In August 1919, Gjergj Fishta served as secretary-general
of the Albanian delegation attending the Paris Peace Conference
and, in this capacity, was asked by the president of the delegation,
Msgr. Luigj Bumçi (1872-1945), to take part in a special
commission to be sent to the United States to attend to the interests
of the young Albanian state. There he visited Boston, New York
and Washington. In 1921, Fishta represented Shkodra in the Albanian
parliament and was chosen in August of that year as vice-president
of this assembly. His talent as an orator served him well in
his functions both as a political figure and as a man of the
cloth. In later years, he attended Balkan conferences in Athens
(1930), Sofia (1931) and Bucharest (1932) before withdrawing
from public life to devote his remaining years to the Franciscan
order and to his writing. From 1935 to 1938 he held the office
of provincial of the Albanian Franciscans. These most fruitful
years of his life were now spent in the quiet seclusion of the
Franciscan monastery of Gjuhadoll in Shkodra with its cloister,
church and rose garden where Fishta would sit in the shade and
reflect on his verse. As the poet laureate of his generation,
Gjergj Fishta was honoured with various diplomas, awards and
distinctions both at home and abroad. He was awarded the Austro-Hungarian
Ritterkreuz in 1911, decorated by Pope Pius XI with the
Al Merito award in 1925, given the prestigious Phoenix
medal of the Greek government, honoured with the title Lector
jubilatus honoris causae by the Franciscan order, and made
a regular member of the Italian Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 1939. He died in Shkodra on 30 December 1940.
Although Gjergj Fishta is the author of a total of thirty-seven
literary publications, his name is indelibly linked to one great
work, indeed to one of the most astounding creations in all the
history of Albanian literature, Lahuta e malcís,
Shkodra 1937 (The highland lute). ‘The highland lute’
is a 15,613-line historical verse epic focussing on the Albanian
struggle for autonomy and independence. It constitutes a panorama
of northern Albanian history from 1858 to 1913. This literary
masterpiece was composed primarily between 1902 and 1909, though
it was refined and amended by its author over a thirty year period.
It constitutes the first Albanian-language contribution to world
literature.
In 1902 Fishta had been sent to a little village to replace
the local parish priest for a time. There he met and befriended
the aging peasant Marash Uci (d. 1914) of Hoti, whom he
was later to immortalize in verse. In their evenings together,
Marash Uci told the young priest of the heroic battles between
the Albanian highlanders and the Montenegrins, in particular
of the famed battle at the Rrzhanica Bridge in which Marash Uci
had taken part himself. The first parts of ‘The highland
lute,’ subtitled ‘At the Rrzhanica Bridge,’ were
published in Zadar in 1905 and 1907, with subsequent and enlarged
editions appearing in 1912, 1923, 1931 and 1933. The definitive
edition of the work in thirty cantos was presented in Shkodra
in 1937 to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the declaration
of Albanian independence. Despite the success of ‘The highland
lute’ and the preeminence of its author, this and all other
works by Gjergj Fishta were banned after the Second World War
when the communists came to power. The epic was, however, republished
in Rome 1958, Ljubljana 1990 and Rome 1991, and exists in German
and Italian translations.
‘The highland lute’ is certainly the most powerful
and effective epic to have been written in Albanian. Gjergj Fishta
chose as his subject matter what he knew best: the heroic culture
of his native northern Albanian mountains. It was his intention
with this epic, an unprecedented achievement in Albanian letters,
to present the lives of the northern Albanian tribes and of his
people in general in a heroic setting.
In its historical dimensions, ‘The highland lute’
begins with border skirmishes between the Hoti and Gruda tribes
and their equally fierce Montenegrin neighbours in 1858. The
core of the work (cantos 6-25) is devoted to the events of 1878-1880,
i.e. the Congress of Berlin which granted Albanian borderland
to Montenegro, and the resultant creation of the League of Prizren
to defend Albanian interests. Subsequent cantos cover the Revolution
of the Young Turks which initially gave Albanian nationalists
some hope of autonomy, and the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 which
led to the declaration of Albanian independence.
It was the author’s fortune at the time to have been
at the source of the only intact heroic society in Europe. The
tribal structure of the inhabitants of the northern Albanian
Alps differed radically from the more advanced and ‘civilized’
regions of the Tosk south. What so fascinated foreign ethnographers
and visitors to northern Albania at the turn of the century was
the staunchly patriarchal society of the highlands, a system
based on customs handed down for centuries by tribal law, in
particular by the Code of Lekë Dukagjini. All the distinguishing
features of this society are present in ‘The highland lute’:
birth, marriage and funerary customs, beliefs, the generous hospitality
of the tribes, their endemic blood-feuding, and the besa,
absolute fidelity to one’s word, come what may.
‘The highland lute’ is strongly inspired by northern
Albanian oral verse, both by the cycles of heroic verse, i.e.
the octosyllabic Këngë kreshnikësh (Songs
of the frontier warriors), similar to the Serbo-Croatian juna…ke
pjesme, and by the equally popular cycles of historical verse
of the eighteenth century, similar to Greek klephtic verse and
to the haidutska pesen of the Bulgarians. Fishta knew
this oral verse which was sung by the Gheg mountain tribes on
their one-stringed lahutas, and relished its language
and rhythm. The narrative of the epic is therefore replete with
the rich, archaic vocabulary and colourful figures of speech
used by the warring highland tribes of the north and does not
make for easy reading nowadays, even for the northern Albanians
themselves. An intimate link to oral literature is of course
nothing unusual for an epic poem, though some authors have criticized
Fishta for ‘folklorism,’ for imitating folklore instead
of producing a truly literary epic. The standard meter of ‘The
highland lute’ is a trochaic octameter or heptameter which
is more in tune with Albanian oral verse than is the classical
hexameter of Latin and Greek epics. The influence of the great
epics of classical antiquity, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey
and Vergil’s Aeneid, is nonetheless ubiquitous in ‘The
highland lute,’ as a number of scholars, in particular Maximilian
Lambertz and Giuseppe Gradilone, have pointed out. Many parallels
in style and content have thus transcended the millennia. Fishta
himself later translated book five of the Iliad into Albanian.
Among the major stylistic features which characterize ‘The
highland lute,’ and no doubt most other epics, are metaphor,
alliteration and assonance, as well as archaic figures of speech
and hyperbole. The predominantly heroic character of the narrative
with its extensive battle scenes is fortunately counterbalanced
with lyric and idyllic descriptions of the natural beauty of
the northern Albanian Alps which give ‘The highland lute’
a lightness and poetic grace it might otherwise lack.
‘The highland lute’ relies heavily on Albanian mythology
and legend. The work is permeated with mythological figures of
oral literature who, like the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece,
observe and, where necessary, intervene in events. Among them
are the zanas, dauntless mountain spirits who dwell near
springs and torrents and who bestow their protection on Albanian
warriors; the oras, female spirits whose very name is
often taboo; the vampire-like lugats; the witch-like shtrigas;
and the drangues, semi-human figures born with wings under
their arms and with supernatural powers, whose prime objective
in life is to combat and slay the seven-headed fire-spewing kulshedras.
The fusion of the heroic and the mythological is equally evident
in a number of characters to whom Fishta attributes major roles
in ‘The highland lute’: Oso Kuka, the fierce and valiant
warrior who prefers death over surrender to his Slavic enemy;
the old shepherd Marash Uci who admonishes the young fighters
to preserve their freedom and not to forget the ancient ways
and customs; and the valiant maiden Tringa, caring for her brother
and resolved to defend her land.
The heroic aspect of life in the mountains is one of the many
characteristics the northern Albanian tribes have in common with
their southern Slavic, and in particular Montenegrin, neighbours.
The two peoples, divided as they are by language and by the bitter
course of history, have a largely common culture. Although the
Montenegrins serve as ‘bad guys’ in the glorification
of the author’s native land, Fishta was not uninfluenced
or unmoved by the literary achievements of the southern Slavs
in the second half of the nineteenth century, in particular by
epic verse of Slavic resistance to the Turks. We have referred
to the role played by Franciscan pater Grga Martic whose works
served the young Fishta as a model while the latter was studying
in Bosnia. Fishta was also influenced by the writings of an earlier
Franciscan writer, Andrija Kacic-Miosic (1704-1760), Dalmatian
poet and publicist of the Enlightenment who is remembered in
particular for his Razgovor ugodni naroda slovinskoga,
1756 (Pleasant talk of Slavic folk), a collection of prose and
poetry on Serbo-Croatian history, and by the works of Croatian
poet Ivan Mazhuranic (1814-1890), author of the noted romantic
epic Smrt Smail-age Cengica, 1846 (The death of Smail
Aga). A further source of literary inspiration for Fishta was
the Montenegrin poet-prince Petar Petrovic Njegos (1813-1851).
It is no coincidence that the title ‘The highland (or mountain)
lute’ is very similar to Gorski vijenac, 1847 (The
mountain wreath), Njegos’ verse epic of Montenegro’s
heroic resistance to the Turkish occupants, which is now generally
regarded as the national epic of the Montenegrins and Serbs.
Fishta proved that the Albanian language, too, was capable of
a refined literary epic of equally heroic proportions.
Although Gjergj Fishta is remembered primarily as an epic
poet, his achievements are actually no less impressive in other
genres, in particular as a lyric and satirical poet. Indeed,
his lyric verse is regarded by many scholars as his best.
Fishta’s first publication of lyric poetry, Vierrsha
i pershpirteshem t’kthyem shcyp, Shkodra 1906 (Spiritual
verse translated into Albanian), was of strong Catholic inspiration.
Here we find translations of the great Italian poets such as
the Arcadian Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782) of Rome, romantic
novelist and poet Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) of Milan whom
Fishta greatly admired, the patriotic Silvio Pellico (1789-1845)
of Turin, and lyricist and literary historian Giacomo Zanella
(1820-1888) of Vicenza, etc.
Fishta’s first collection of original lyric verse was
published under the title Pika voëset, Zadar 1909
(Dewdrops), and dedicated to his contemporary Luigj Gurakuqi.
It was followed in 1913, at the dawn of Albanian independence,
by the first edition of Mrizi i zâneve, Shkodra
1913 (Noonday rest of the Zanas), which includes some of the
religious verse of Pika voëset. The general tone
of Mrizi i zâneve is, however, much more nationalist
than spiritual, the patriotic character of the collection being
substantially underlined in the subsequent expanded editions
of 1924, 1925 and in the definitive posthumous edition of 1941.
Poems such as Shqypnija (Albania), Gjuha shqype (The
Albanian language), Atdheut (To the fatherland), Shqypnija
e lirë (Free Albania) and Hymni i flamurit kombtár
(Hymn to the national flag) express Fishta’s satisfaction
and pride in Albania’s history and in its new-found independence.
Also included in this volume is the allegorical melodrama Shqyptari
i gjytetnuem (The civilized Albanian man) and its sequel
Shqyptarja e gjytetnueme (The civilized Albanian woman).
With his nationalist verse concentrated in the above volume,
Fishta collected his religious poetry in the 235-page edition
Vallja e Parrîzit, Shkodra 1925 (The dance of paradise).
The verse in this collection, including poems such as Të
kryqzuemt (The crucifixion), Të zânun e pafaj
të Virgjërês Mri (The immaculate conception
of the Virgin Mary), Nuntsiata (The annunciation) and
Shë Françesku i Asizit (St Francis of
Assisi), constitutes a zenith of Catholic literature in Albania.
Gjergj Fishta was also a consummate master of satirical verse,
using his wit and sharpened quill to criticize the educational
shortcomings and intellectual sloth of his Scutarine compatriots.
His was not the benevolent, exhortative irony of Çajupi,
but rather biting, pungent satire, often to the point of ruthlessness,
the poetic equivalent of the blunt satirical prose of Faik bey
Konitza. Fishta had printed many such poems in the periodical
Albania using the telling pseudonym ‘Castigat ridendo.’
In 1907, he published, anonymously, the 67-page satirical collection
Anxat e Parnasit, Sarajevo 1907 (The wasps of Parnassus),
which laid the foundations for satire as a poetic genre in Albanian
literature and which is regarded by many critics as the best
poetry he ever produced. In the first of the satires, Nakdomonicipedija
(A lesson for Nakdo Monici), he turns to his friend, Jesuit
writer and publisher Dom Ndoc Nikaj, whom he affectionately calls
by his pen name Nakdo Monici, to convey his sympathy that the
latter’s 416-page Historia é Shcypniis (History
of Albania), published in Brussels in 1902, had not received
due attention among their compatriots. The Albanians were quite
indifferent to their own history and indeed to their present
sorry state in general. The reason for this indifference, Fishta
tells us, was a contest between St Nicholas and the devil. St Nicholas
had sailed the seas at the command of the Almighty to sell reason
and taste. The devil, for his part, competed with a ship full
of old boots which he offered for sale. When the two merchants
arrived at the port of Shëngjin, the Albanians took counsel
and decided to go for the boots on credit. With such uneducated
masses, Fishta recommends that Nikaj take solace in the aloof
and cynical attitude of Molière’s Tartuffe. Anxat
e Parnasit, later spelled Anzat e Parnasit, which
contains many a delightfully spicy expression normally unbecoming
to a mild Franciscan priest, was republished in 1927, 1928, 1942
and 1990, and made Fishta many friends and enemies.
Gomari i Babatasit, Shkodra 1923 (Babatasi’s ass),
is another volume of amusing satire, published under the pseudonym
Gegë Toska while Fishta was a member of the Albanian parliament.
In this work, which enjoyed great popularity at the time, he
rants at false patriots and idlers.
Aside from the above-mentioned melodramas, Fishta was the
author of several other works of theatre, including adaptations
of a number of foreign classics, e.g., the three-act I ligu
per mend, Shkodra 1931 (Le malade imaginaire), of Molière,
and Ifigenija n’Aullí, Shkodra 1931 (Iphigenia
in Aulis), of Euripides. Among other dramatic works he composed
and/or adapted at a time when Albanian theatre was in its infancy
are short plays of primarily religious inspiration, among them
the three-act Christmas play Barìt e Betlêmit
(The shepherds of Bethlehem); Sh’ Françesku
i Asisit, Shkodra 1912 (St Francis of Assisi); the tragedy
Juda Makabé, Shkodra 1923 (Judas Maccabaeus); Sh.
Luigji Gonzaga, Shkodra 1927 (St Aloysius of Gonzaga); and
Jerina, ase mbretnesha e luleve, Shkodra 1941 (Jerina
or the queen of the flowers), the last of his works to be published
during his lifetime.
The national literature of Albania had been something of a
Tosk prerogative until the arrival of Gjergj Fishta on the literary
scene. He proved that northern Albania could be an equal partner
with the more advanced south in the creation of a national culture.
The acclaim of ‘The highland lute’ has not been universal,
though, in particular among Tosk critics. Some authors have regarded
his blending of oral and written literature as disastrous and
others have simply regarded such a literary epic with a virtually
contemporary theme as an anachronism in the twentieth century.
Only time will tell whether Fishta can regain his position as
‘national poet’ after half a century of politically
motivated oblivion.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Gjergj Fishta was
indeed universally recognized as the ‘national poet.’
Austrian Albanologist Maximilian Lambertz (1882-1963) described
him as "the most ingenious poet Albania has ever produced"
and Gabriele D’Annunzio called him "the great poet
of the glorious people of Albania." For others he was the
"Albanian Homer."
After the war, Fishta was nonetheless attacked and denigrated
perhaps more than any other pre-war writer and fell into prompt
oblivion. The national poet became an anathema. The official
Tirana ‘History of Albanian Literature’ of 1983, which
carried the blessing of the Albanian Party of Labour, restricted
its treatment of Fishta to an absolute minimum: "The main
representative of this clergy, Gjergj Fishta (1871-1940), poet,
publicist, teacher and politician, ran the press of the Franciscan
order and directed the cultural and educational activities of
this order for a long time. For him, the interests of the church
and of religion rose above those of the nation and the people,
something he openly declared and defended with all his demagogy
and cynicism, [a principle] upon which he based his literary
work. His main work, the epic poem, Lahuta e Malësisë
(The highland lute), while attacking the chauvinism of our
northern neighbours, propagates anti-Slavic feelings and makes
the struggle against the Ottoman occupants secondary. He raised
a hymn to patriarchalism and feudalism, to religious obscurantism
and clericalism, and speculated with patriotic sentiments wherever
it was a question of highlighting the events and figures of the
national history of our Rilindja period. His other works, such
as the satirical poem Gomari i Babatasit (Babatasi’s
ass), in which public schooling and democratic ideas were bitterly
attacked, were characteristic of the savage struggle undertaken
by the Catholic church to maintain and increase its influence
in the intellectual life of the country. With his art, he endeavoured
to pay service to a form close to folklore. It was often accompanied
by prolixity, far-fetched effects, rhetoric, brutality of expression
and style to the point of banality, false arguments which he
intentionally endeavours to impose, and an exceptionally conservative
attitude in the field of language. Fishta ended his days as a
member of the academy of fascist Italy."
The real reason for Fishta’s fall from grace after the
‘liberation’ in 1944 is to be sought, however, not
in his alleged pro-Italian or clerical proclivities, but in the
origins of the Albanian Communist Party itself. The ACP, later
to be called the Albanian Party of Labour, had been founded during
the Second World War under the auspices of the Yugoslav envoys
Dusan Mugosa (1914-1973) and Miladin Popovic (1910-1945). In
July 1946, Albania and Yugoslavia signed a Treaty of Friendship,
Co-operation and Mutual Assistance and a number of other agreements
which gave Yugoslavia effective control over all Albanian affairs,
including the field of culture. Serbo-Croatian was introduced
as a compulsory subject in all Albanian high schools and by the
spring of 1948, plans were even under way for a merger of the
two countries. It is no doubt the alleged anti-Slavic sentiments
expressed in ‘The highland lute’ which caused the work
and its author to be proscribed by the Yugoslav authorities,
even though Fishta was educated in Bosnia and inspired by Serbian
and Croatian literature. In fact, it is just as ridiculous to
describe ‘The highland lute’ as anti-Slavic propaganda
as it would be to describe El Cid and the Chanson de
Roland as anti-Arab propaganda. They are all historical epics
with heroes and foreign enemies. The so-called anti-Slavic element
in Fishta’s work was also stressed in the first post-war
edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia of Moscow, which reads
as follows (March 1950): "The literary activities of the
Catholic priest Gjergj Fishta reflect the role played by the
Catholic clergy in preparing for Italian aggression against Albania.
As a former agent of Austro-Hungarian imperialism, Fishta, in
the early years of his literary activity, took a position against
the Slavic peoples who opposed the rapacious plans of Austro-Hungarian
imperialism in Albania. In his chauvinistic, anti-Slavic poem
‘The highland lute,’ this spy extolled the hostility
of the Albanians towards the Slavic peoples, calling for an open
fight against the Slavs."
After relations with Yugoslavia were broken off in 1948, it
is quite likely that expressions of anti-Montenegrin or anti-Serb
sentiment would no longer have been considered a major sin in
Party thinking, but an official position had been taken with
regard to Fishta and, possibly with deference to the new Slav
allies in Moscow, it could not be renounced without a scandal.
Gjergj Fishta , who but a few years earlier had been lauded as
the national poet of Albania, disappeared from the literary scene,
seemingly without a trace. Such was the fear of him in later
years that his bones were even dug up and secretly thrown into
the river.
Yet despite four decades of unrelenting Party harping and
propaganda reducing Fishta to a ‘clerical and fascist poet,’
the people of northern Albania, and in particular the inhabitants
of his native Shkodra, did not forget him. After almost half
a century, Gjergj Fishta was commemorated openly for the first
time on 5 January 1991 in Shkodra. During the first public
recital of Fishta’s works in Albania in forty-five years,
the actor at one point hesitated in his lines and was immediately
and spontaneously assisted by members of the audience - who still
knew many parts of ‘The highland lute’ by heart. |
Albanian Literature in Translation
Classical
Authors (19th - early 20th centuries)
