Fan NOLI
BIOGRAPHY
Fan Noli (1882-1965), also known as Theophan Stylian Noli,
was not only an outstanding leader of the Albanian-American community,
but also a pre-eminent and multi-talented figure of Albanian
literature, culture, religious life and politics. Noli was born
in the village of Ibrik Tepe (Alb. Qyteza), south of Edirne
(Adrianopole) in European Turkey on 6 January 1882. His
father Stylian Noli had been a noted cantor in the Orthodox church
and had instilled in his son a love for Orthodox music and Byzantine
tradition. Fan Noli attended the Greek secondary school in Edirne,
and in 1900, after a short stay in Constantinople, settled in
Athens where he managed to find occasional and badly-paying jobs
as a copyist, prompter and actor. It was with one such itinerant
theatre company touring Greek-speaking settlements in the eastern
Mediterranean that Noli first arrived in Egypt. Abandoning the
company in Alexandria, he found work from March 1903 to March
1905 as a Greek teacher and as a church cantor in Shibîn
el Khôm and from March 1905 to April 1906 in El Faiyûm
where a small Albanian colony had settled. Here he wrote a number
of articles in Greek and translated Sami Frashëri’s
Shqipëria - Ç’ka qënë, ç’është
e ç’do të bëhetë? (Albanian -
what was it, what is it and what will become of it?) into Greek,
works which were published at the Albanian press in Sofia. In
Egypt, Noli learned more about the traditions of Byzantine music
which so fascinated him from his teacher, the monk Nilos, and
resolved to become an Orthodox priest himself. He also came into
contact with the nationalist leaders of the Albanian community
such as Spiro Dine (1846?-1922), Jani Vruho (1863-1931) and Athanas
Tashko (1863-1915) who encouraged him to emigrate to America
where he could make better use of his talents. The young Noli
agreed.
In April 1906, with a second-class steamer ticket which was
paid for by Spiro Dine, Fan Noli set off via Naples for the New
World and arrived in New York on May 10. After three months in
Buffalo where he worked in a lumber mill, Noli arrived in Boston.
There publisher Sotir Peci (1873-1932) gave him a job at a minimal
salary as deputy editor of the Boston newspaper Kombi (The
nation), where he worked until May 1907 and in which he published
articles and editorials under the pseudonym Ali Baba Qyteza.
These were financially and personally difficult months for Noli,
who did not feel at home in America at all and seriously considered
emigrating to Bucharest. Gradually, however, he found his roots
in the Albanian community and on 6 January 1907 co-founded
the Besa-Besën (The pledge) society in Boston.
In this period, Orthodox Albanians in America were growing
increasingly impatient with Greek control of the church. Tension
reached its climax in 1907 when a Greek Orthodox priest refused
to officiate at the burial of an Albanian in Hudson, Massachusetts
on the grounds that, as a nationalist, the deceased was automatically
excommunicated. Noli saw his calling and convoked a meeting of
Orthodox Albanians from throughout New England at which delegates
resolved to set up an autocephalic, i.e. autonomous, Albanian
Orthodox Church with Noli as its first clergyman. On 9 February
1908 at the age of twenty-six, Fan Noli was made a deacon in
Brooklyn and on 8 March 1908 Platon, the Russian Orthodox
Archbishop of New York, ordained him as an Orthodox priest. A
mere two weeks later, on 22 March 1908, the young Noli proudly
celebrated the liturgy in Albanian for the first time at the
Knights of Honor Hall in Boston. This act constituted the first
step towards the official organization and recognition of an
Albanian Autocephalic Orthodox Church.
From February 1909 to July 1911, Noli edited the newspaper
Dielli (The sun), mouthpiece of the Albanian community
in Boston. On 10 August 1911, he set off for Europe for
four months where he held church services in Albanian for the
colonies in Kishinev, Odessa, Bucharest and Sofia. Together with
Faik bey Konitza who had arrived in the United States in 1909,
he founded the Pan-Albanian Vatra (The hearth) Federation
of America on 28 April 1912, which was soon destined to
become the most powerful and significant Albanian organization
in America. Fan Noli had now become the recognized leader of
the Albanian Orthodox community and was an established writer
and journalist of the nationalist movement. In November 1912,
Albania was declared independent, and the thirty-year-old Noli,
having graduated with a B.A. from Harvard University, hurriedly
returned to Europe. In March 1913, among other activities, he
attended the Albanian Congress of Trieste which was organized
by his friend and rival Faik bey Konitza.
In July 1913 Fan Noli visited Albania for the first time,
and there, on 10 March 1914, he held the country’s
first Orthodox church service in Albanian in the presence of
Prince Wilhelm zu Wied who had arrived in Durrës only three
days earlier aboard an Austro-Hungarian vessel. In August of
1914 Noli was in Vienna for a time, but as the clouds of war
darkened, he returned in May 1915 to the United States. From
21 December 1915 to 6 July 1916 he was again editor-in-chief
of the Boston Dielli (The sun), now a daily newspaper.
In July 1917 he once more became president of the Vatra
federation which, in view of the chaotic situation and political
vacuum in Albania, now regarded itself as a sort of Albanian
government in exile. In September 1918 Noli founded the English-language
monthly Adriatic Review which was financed by the federation
to spread information about Albania and its cause. Noli edited
the journal for the first six months and was succeeded in 1919
by Constantine Chekrezi (1892-1959). With Vatra funds
collected under Noli’s direction, Albanian-American delegates
were sent to Paris, London and Washington to promote international
recognition of Albanian independence. On 24 March 1918,
Noli was appointed administrator of the Albanian Orthodox Church
in the United States and in early July of that year attended
a conference on oppressed peoples in Mount Vernon, Virginia,
where he met President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), champion of
minority rights in Europe. On 27 July 1919, Noli was appointed
Bishop of the Albanian Orthodox Church in America, now finally
an independent diocese. In the following year, in view of his
growing stature as a political and religious leader of the Albanian
community and as a talented writer, orator and political commentator,
it was only fitting that he be selected to head an Albanian delegation
to the League of Nations in Geneva where he was successful in
having Albania admitted on 17 December 1920. Noli rightly
regarded Albania’s admission to the League of Nations as
his greatest political achievement. Membership in that body gave
Albania worldwide recognition for the first time and was in retrospect
no doubt more important than Ismail Qemal bey Vlora’s declaration
of independence in 1912. In a commentary on 23 July 1924,
the Manchester Guardian described Fan Noli as a "man who
would have been remarkable in any country. An accomplished diplomat,
an expert in international politics, a skilful debater, from
the outset he made a deep impression in Geneva. He knocked down
his Balkan opponents in a masterly fashion, but always with a
broad smile. He is a man of vast culture who has read everything
worth reading in English and French." Noli’s success
at the League of Nations established him as the leading figure
in Albanian political life. From Geneva, he returned to Albania
and from 1921 to 1922 represented the Vatra Federation
in the Albanian parliament there. In 1922, he was appointed foreign
minister in the government of Xhafer bey Ypi (1880-1940) but
resigned several months later. On 21 November 1923, Noli
was consecrated Bishop of Korça and Metropolitan of Durrës.
He was now both head of the Orthodox Church in Albania and leader
of a liberal political party, the main opposition to the conservative
forces of Ahmet Zogu (1895-1961), who were supported primarily
by the feudal landowners and the middle class. On 23 February
1924 an attempt was made in parliament on the life of Ahmet Zogu
and two months later, on 22 April 1924, nationalist figure
and deputy Avni Rustemi (1895-1924) was assassinated, allegedly
by Zogist forces. At Rustemi’s funeral, Fan Noli gave a
fiery oration which provoked the liberal opposition into such
a fury that Zogu was obliged to flee to Yugoslavia in the so-called
June Revolution.
On 17 July 1924, Fan Noli was officially proclaimed prime
minister and shortly afterwards Regent of Albania. For six months,
he led a democratic government which tried desperately to cope
with the catastrophic economic and political problems facing
the young Albanian state. His twenty-point programme for the
modernization and democratization of Albania, including agrarian
reform, proved however to be too rash and too idealistic for
a backward country with no parliamentary traditions. In a letter
to an English friend, he was later to note the reasons for his
failure: "By insisting on the agrarian reforms I aroused
the wrath of the landed aristocracy; by failing to carry them
out I lost the support of the peasant masses." With the
overthrow of his government by Zogist forces on Christmas Eve
1924, Noli left Albania for good and spent several months in
Italy at the invitation of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945). When
the Duce finally reached agreement with Zogu on oil concessions
in Albania, Noli and his followers were given to understand that
their presence in Italy was no longer desired. Noli subsequently
spent several years in northern Europe, primarily in Germany
and Austria. In November 1927 he visited Russia as a Balkan delegate
to a congress of ‘Friends of the Soviet Union’ marking
the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, and in 1930,
having obtained a six-month visa, he returned to the United States.
Back in Boston, Noli founded the weekly periodical Republika
(The republic), the name of which alone was in open defiance
of Ahmet Zogu who on 1 September 1928 had proclaimed himself
Zog I, King of the Albanians. Republika was also published
in opposition to Dielli (The sun), now under the control
of Faik Konitza who had come to terms with King Zog and become
Albanian minister plenipotentiary in Washington. After six months,
Noli was forced to return to Europe when his visa expired and
his Republika was taken over by Anastas Tashko until it
ceased publication in 1932. With the help of his followers, he
was able to return from Germany to the United States in 1932
and was granted permanent resident status. He withdrew from political
life and henceforth resumed his duties as head of the Albanian
Autocephalic Orthodox Church. In December 1933, Noli fell seriously
ill and was unable to pay for the medical treatment he so desperately
needed until he received a gift of 3,000 gold franks from Albania,
which was ironically enough from his archenemy Ahmet Zogu. This
gesture, as intended, led to a certain reconciliation between
Noli and Zogu and pacified Noli’s now often tenuous relations
with Faik Konitza. In 1935, he returned to one of his earlier
passions - music - and, at the age of fifty-three, registered
at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, from which
he graduated in 1938 with a Bachelor of Music. On 12 April
1937, Noli’s great dream of an Albanian national church
was fulfilled when the Patriarch of Constantinople officially
recognized the Albanian Autocephalic Orthodox Church. Not satisfied
with ecclesiastical duties alone, Noli turned to post-graduate
studies at Boston University, finishing a doctorate there in
1945 with a dissertation on Scanderbeg. In the early years following
the Second World War, Noli maintained reasonably good relations
with the new communist regime in Tirana and used his influence
to try to persuade the American government to recognize the latter.
His reputation as the ‘red bishop’ indeed caused a
good deal of enmity and polarization in emigré circles
in America. In 1953, at the age of seventy-one, Fan Noli was
presented with the sum of $20,000 from the Vatra Federation,
with which he bought a house in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where
he died on 13 March 1965 at the age of eighty-three.
Politics and religion were not the only fields in which Fan
Noli made a name for himself. He was also a dramatist, poet,
historian, musicologist and in particular an excellent translator
who made a significant contribution to the development of the
Albanian literary language.
Noli’s first literary work was a three-act drama entitled
Israilitë dhe Filistinë, Boston 1907 (Israelites
and Philistines). This forty-eight page tragedy written in 1902
is based on the Book of Judges 13-16 in the Old Testament, the
famous story of Samson and Delilah. Published at a time when
Albanian theatre was in its infancy, it is one of the rare Albanian
plays of the period not gushing with sentimentality before reaching
a superficial melodramatic conclusion. Such were the tastes of
the period, however, and Noli’s play found little favour
with the public. Not only was the subject matter too distant
and philosophical, but his language was too archaic or dialectal
for the public to enjoy.
On his ordainment as an Orthodox priest and his celebration
of the first Orthodox liturgy in Albanian in 1908, Noli recognized
the need for liturgical texts in Albanian and set about translating
Orthodox rituals and liturgies, which were published in two volumes:
Librë e shërbesave të shënta të kishës
orthodoxe, Boston 1909 (Book of holy services of the Orthodox
Church), and the 315-page Libre é te krémtevé
te medha te kishes orthodoxe, Boston 1911 (Book of great
ceremonies of the Orthodox Church). Other religious translations
followed, in an elegant and solemn language befitting such venerable
Byzantine traditions. Noli indeed considered these translations
to be his most rewarding achievement.
Fan Noli’s most popular work today is a scholarly history
of the life and times of the Albanian national hero Scanderbeg.
A 285-page Albanian version was published as Historia e Skënderbeut
(Gjerq Kastriotit), mbretit të Shqipërisë 1412-1468,
Boston 1921 (The history of Scanderbeg (George Castrioti), king
of Albania 1412-1468), and an English version, the fruits of
his doctoral dissertation at Boston University in 1945, as George
Castrioti Scanderbeg (1405-1468), New York 1947. Another
scholarly work in English which mirrors both his fascination
with great figures of the past (Jesus, Julius Caesar, Scanderbeg
and Napoleon) and his love of music is the 117-page Beethoven
and the French revolution, New York 1947.
Noli has not been forgotten as a poet though his powerful
declamatory verse is far from prolific. It was collected in a
volume with the simple title Albumi, Boston 1948 (The
album), which he published on the occasion of his forty years
of residence in the United States. Albumi contains primarily
political verse reflecting his abiding nationalist aspirations
and the social and political passions of the twenties and thirties.
Fan Noli’s main contribution to Albanian literature,
however, was as a stylist, as seen especially in his translations.
Together with Faik bey Konitza, Noli may indeed be regarded as
one of the greatest stylists in the Tosk dialect of the Albanian
language. His experience as an actor and orator, and his familiarity
with other great languages of culture, Greek, English and French
in particular, enabled him to develop Albanian into a language
of refinement and flowing elegance. Noli translated poetry of
various nineteenth-century European and American authors, and
most often managed, with the ear of the musician he was, to reflect
the style, taste and rhythmical nuances of the originals.
Though he wrote comparatively little in the way of literature
per se, Fan Noli remains nonetheless a literary giant. He was
instrumental in helping the Albanian language reach its full
literary and creative potential. |
Albanian Literature in Translation
Classical
Authors (19th - early 20th centuries)
