Filip SHIROKA
BIOGRAPHY
Filip Shiroka (1859-1935) is a classical Rilindja poet whose
verse was first to become known in later years. He was born and
raised in Shkodra and educated there by the Franciscans. Among
his teachers was poet Leonardo De Martino (1830-1923), whose
influence is omnipresent in Shiroka's verse. His earliest verse
publication, All'Albania, all'armi, all'armi! (To Albania,
to arms, to arms!), was a rather weak nationalist poem on the
defence of Ulcinj, which was written in Italian and printed in
the Osservatore Cattolico (Catholic Observer) of Milan
in 1878. Like many Albanian intellectuals of the late nineteenth
century, Filip Shiroka spent much of his life in exile. In 1880,
after the defeat of the League of Prizren, he emigrated to the
Middle East, and settled in Egypt and Lebanon where he worked
as an engineer in railway construction.
Shiroka's nationalist, satirical and meditative verse in Albanian
was written mostly from 1896 to 1903. It appeared in journals
such as Faik Konitza's Albania, the Albanian periodicals
published in Egypt, and the Shkodra religious monthly Elçija
i Zemers t'Jezu Krisctit (The Messenger of the Sacred Heart).
Shiroka, who also used the pseudonyms Geg Postrippa and Ulqinaku,
is the author of at least sixty poems, three short stories, articles
and several translations, in particular of religious works for
Catholic liturgy. His verse collection, Zâni i zêmrës,
Tiranë 1933 (The voice of the heart), which was composed
at the turn of the century, was published by Ndoc Nikaj two years
before Shiroka's death in Beirut.
Filip Shiroka's verse, inspired by early nineteenth-century
French and Italian romantic poets such as Alfred de Musset (1810-1857),
Alfonse de Lamartine (1790-1869) and Tommaso Grossi (1790-1853)
whom he had read as a young man in Shkodra, does not cover any
unusual thematic or lexical range, nor is it all of literary
quality, though the latter assertion is no doubt valid for most
Rilindja poets. Shiroka is remembered as a deeply emotional lyricist,
and as one of linguistic purity, who was obsessed with his own
fate and that of his distant homeland. Recurrent in his work
is the theme of nostalgia for the country of his birth. |
Albanian Literature in Translation
Classical
Authors (19th - early 20th centuries)
