Naim FRASHËRI
BIOGRAPHY
Naim Frashëri (1846-1900) is nowadays widely considered
to be the national poet of Albania. He spent his childhood in
the village of Frashër where he no doubt began learning
Turkish, Persian and Arabic and where, at the Bektashi monastery,
he was imbued with the spiritual traditions of the Orient. In
Janina (Ioannina), Naim Frashëri attended the Zosimaia secondary
school which provided him with the basics of a classical education
along Western lines. Here he was to study Ancient and Modern
Greek, French and Italian and, in addition, was to be tutored
privately in oriental languages. As he grew in knowledge, so
did his affinity for his pantheistic Bektashi religion, for the
poets of classical Persia and for the Age of Enlightenment. His
education in Janina made of him a prime example of a late nineteenth-century
Ottoman intellectual equally at home in both cultures, the Western
and the Oriental.
Naim Frashëri is the author of a total of twenty-two
works: four in Turkish, one in Persian, two in Greek and fifteen
in Albanian. In view of his sensitive position as director of
the board of censorship of the Turkish Ministry of Education
in which capacity he was occasionally able to circumvent the
ban on Albanian-language books and publications imposed by the
Sublime Porte, Naim Frashëri deemed it wise not to use his
full name in many of his publications, and printed only a ‘by
N.H.,’ ‘by N.H.F.’ or ‘by N.F.’
The poetry collections for which Naim Frashëri is primarily
remembered were also published in Bucharest. Bagëti e
bujqësija, Bucharest 1886 (Bucolics and Georgics), is
a 450-line pastoral poem reminiscent of Vergil (70-19 B.C.) and
laden with the imagery of his mountain homeland. It proved extremely
popular among Frashëri’s compatriots and was smuggled
into Albania in caravans. In it, the poet expresses his dissatisfaction
with city life, no doubt from actual experience on the bustling
banks of the Bosphorus, and idealizes the distant and longed-for
Albanian countryside. It is a hymn to nature in the traditions
of European romanticism and yet one of earthy substance in which,
like Hesiod (8th cent. B.C.) in his ‘Work and Days,’
Vergil in his ‘Georgics’ or the great eighteenth-century
Lithuanian poet Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714-1780) in his somewhat
less idyllic ‘Seasons,’ Naim Frashëri sings of
the herds and flocks, and of the joys and toil of agriculture
and rural life. In the collection Luletë e verësë,
Bucharest 1890 (The flowers of spring), he also paid tribute
to the beauties of the Albanian countryside in twenty-three poems
of rich sonority. Here the pantheistic philosophy of his Bektashi
upbringing and the strong influence of the Persian classics are
coupled harmoniously with patriotic idealism - literary creativity
serving the goal of national identity. The verse collection Parajsa
dhe fjala fluturake, Bucharest 1894 (Paradise and winged
words), published together with the spiritual essays Mësime,
Bucharest 1894 (Teachings), evinced his affinities for the heroes
of the past and for the spiritual traditions of the Orient, in
particular for the Persian mystics. Istori’ e Skenderbeut,
Bucharest 1898 (History of Scanderbeg), is an historical epic
of 11,500 verses which Frashëri must have written in about
1895 in his last creative years and one which the author himself
regarded as his masterpiece. It also constituted the poet’s
political legacy. Another work of similar proportions, published
the same year as the ‘History of Scanderbeg,’ is Qerbelaja,
Bucharest 1898 (Kerbela), a Shi’ite religious epic in twenty-five
cantos, which deals with the Battle of Kerbela in Iraq in 680
A.D. in which Husein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, was killed.
In contrast to the ‘History of Scanderbeg,’ Qerbelaja
is a narrative epic devoid of a hero or principal character.
Many elements of Naim Frashëri’s religiosity are also
present in Naim Frashëri’s Fletore e Bektashinjet,
Bucharest 1896 (Bektashi notebook), which is of major significance
for our knowledge of the pantheistic but secretive Bektashi sect
of dervishes. Frashëri hoped that liberal Bektashi beliefs
to which he had been attached since his childhood in Frashër
would one day take hold as the new religion of all Albania. Since
they had their roots both in the Muslim Koran and in the Christian
Bible, they could promote unity among his religiously divided
people. The Notebook contains an introductory profession of Bektashi
faith and ten spiritual poems which provide a rare view into
the beliefs of the sect which in the nineteenth century played
an important role in the survival of Albanian culture, in particular
by the illegal distribution of Albanian books.
The significance of Naim Frashëri as a Rilindja poet
and indeed as a ‘national poet’ rests not so much upon
his talents of literary expression nor on the artistic quality
of his verse, but rather upon the sociopolitical, philosophical
and religious messages it transmitted, which were aimed above
all at national awareness and, in the Bektashi tradition, at
overcoming religious barriers within the country. His influence
upon Albanian writers at the beginning of the twentieth century
was enormous. Many of his poems were set to music during his
lifetime and were sung as folk songs. If one compares the state
of Albanian literature before and after the arrival of Naim Frashëri,
one becomes aware of the major role he played in transforming
Albanian into a literary language of substantial refinement. |
Albanian Literature in Translation
Classical
Authors (19th - early 20th centuries)
