Ndre MJEDA
BIOGRAPHY
Classical poet Ndre Mjeda (1866-1937) bridges the gap between
late nineteenth-century Rilindja culture and the dynamic literary
creativity of the independence period. Mjeda was born on 20 November
1866 in Shkodra and, like so many other Gheg writers of the period,
was educated by the Jesuits . Influential in his upbringing were
Jesuit writer Anton Xanoni (1863-1915) and Franciscan poet Leonardo
De Martino (1830-1923). The Society of Jesus sent the young Mjeda
abroad for studies and training. He spent an initial three months
in the spring of 1880 in the village of Cossé-le-Vivien
near Laval in the west of France and thereafter attended a college
at the Carthusian monastery of Porta Coeli north of Valencia,
Spain, where he studied literature. In 1883, we find him in Croatia
studying rhetoric, Latin and Italian at a Jesuit institution
in Kraljevica on the Dalmatian coast. From 1884 to the beginning
of 1887, he trained at a college run there which was run by the
Gregorian University of Rome, and in 1887 transferred to another
Gregorian college in Chieri southeast of Turin where he remained
until the end of that year.
It was during these years that Ndre Mjeda began writing verse
in Albanian, including the melancholic and much-read poem Vaji
i bylbylit (The nightingale’s lament), published in
1887 in the booklet Scahiri Elierz (The honorable poet),
expressing his longing for his native Albania. Also of this period
is the poem Vorri i Skanderbegut (Scanderbeg ’s grave).
The theme of the exiled Albanian yearning nostalgically for his
homeland under the Turkish yoke was nothing unusual in Rilindja
literature, in particular in the decade following the defeat
of the League of Prizren, and many of his other poems are devoted
to such nationalist themes. In Mjeda’s verse, however, we
sense the influence not only of the Rilindja culture of the age,
but also that of his mentor Leonardo De Martino , the Scutarine
Catholic poet whose refined 442-page bilingual verse collection
L’Arpa di un italo-albanese (The harp of an Italo-Albanian)
had appeared in Venice in 1881. An equally important component
in Mjeda’s verse were the contemporary poets of Italy: the
patriotic Giosuè Carducci (1835-1907), the pensive Giovanni
Pascoli (1855-1912) and the sensuous Gabriele D’Annunzio
(1863-1938), as well as the Latin literature of classical antiquity.
From 1887 to 1891, Mjeda taught music at the College of Marco
Girolamo Vida in Cremona on the River Po, the city of composer
Claudio Monteverdi and of Antonio Stradivari . There and in Soresina
he continued writing verse and at the same time devoted himself
to the translation of religious literature. In 1888, the Propaganda
Fide in Rome published his Jeta e sceitit sc’ Gnon Berchmans
(The life of St John Berchmans ) about a Jesuit saint from
Brabant, and in 1892 T’ perghjamit e Zojs Bekume (Imitation
of the Holy Virgin) translated from Spanish. In later years he
was to publish a translation of the Katekizmi i madh (The
great catechism) in three volumes, Historia e shejtë
(Sacred history), and a life of St Aloysius of Gonzaga .
From 1891, Mjeda studied for a couple of years at the theological
faculty of a Gregorian college in Kraków in Catholic Poland.
In 1893, we find the poet in Gorizia on the Italian-Slovene border
and in the following year back in Kraljevica where he taught
philosophy and philology and served as librarian at the Gregorian
college. He was subsequently appointed professor of logic and
metaphysics. It was in 1898 that a conflict is said to have broken
out among the Jesuits of Kraljevica, apparently concerning their
loyalties to Austria-Hungary and the Vatican. The exact details
of the scandal are not known, but Ndre Mjeda was somehow involved
and was promptly expelled or resigned that year from the Jesuit
Order. Mjeda was a member of the Literary Commission set up in
Shkodra on 1 September 1916 under the Austro-Hungarian administration,
and from 1920 to 1924 he served as a deputy in the National Assembly.
After the defeat of Fan Noli ’s June Revolution and the
definitive rise of the Zogu dictatorship at the end of 1924 he
withdrew from politics and served thereafter as a parish priest
in Kukël, a village between Shkodra and Shëngjin. From
1930, he taught Albanian language and literature at the Jesuit
college in Shkodra, where he died on 1 August 1937.
Mjeda’s poetry, in particular his collection Juvenilia,
Vienna 1917 (Juvenilia), is noted for its classical style and
for its purity of language. It is probably no coincidence that
the title of this work for which Mjeda is best remembered is
the same as Giosuè Carducci ’s lyric volume Iuvenilia
which was published almost half a century earlier. Mjeda’s
Juvenilia includes not only original poetry but also adaptations
of foreign verse by Tommaso Grossi (1790-1853), Giuseppe Capparozzo
(1802-1848), Charles Wolfe (1791-1823) and Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe (1749-1832). A second cycle of poetry begun by Mjeda was
to be devoted to the ancient cities of Illyria: Lissus (Lezha),
Scodra ( Shkodra), Dyrrachium (Durrës) and
Apollonia (Pojan). However, only the first two parts of
this cycle ever saw the light of day. Lissus, composed
of twelve sonnets, appeared in May 1921 in the Franciscan monthly
Hylli i Dritës (The day-star), and Scodra was
published posthumously in 1939.
Though not covering an especially wide range of themes, Mjeda’s
poetry evinces a particularly refined language under the influence
of the nineteenth-century Italian classics and, in general, a
high level of metric finesse. |
Albanian Literature in Translation
Classical
Authors (19th - early 20th centuries)
