Pashko VASA
BIOGRAPHY
One figure from northern Albania who played a key role in
the Rilindja culture of the nineteenth century was Pashko Vasa
(1825-1892), also known as Wassa Effendi, Vaso Pasha,
or Vaso Pasha Shkodrani. This statesman, poet, novelist
and patriot was born in Shkodra. From 1842 to 1847 he worked
as a secretary for the British consulate in that northern Albanian
city where he had an opportunity to perfect his knowledge of
a number of foreign languages: Italian, French, Turkish and Greek.
He also knew some English and Serbo-Croatian, and in later years
learned Arabic. In 1847, full of ideals and courage, he set off
for Italy on the eve of the turbulent events that were to take
place there and elsewhere in Europe in 1848. We have two letters
from him written in Bologna in the summer of that revolutionary
year in which he expresses openly republican and anti-clerical
views. We later find him in Venice where he took part in fighting
in Marghera on 4 May 1849, part of a Venetian uprising against
the Austrians. After the arrival of Austrian troops on 28 August
of that year, Pashko Vasa was obliged to flee to Ancona where,
as an Ottoman citizen, he was expelled to Constantinople. He
published an account of his experience in Italy the following
year in his Italian-language La mia prigionia, episodio storico
dell’assedio di Venezia, Constantinople 1850 (My imprisonment,
historical episode from the siege of Venice). It is no coincidence
that this historical biography bears a title similar to that
of the famous memoirs of Italian patriot and dramatist Silvio
Pellico (1789-1845), Le mie prigioni (My prisons), published
in 1832. In Constantinople, after an initial period of poverty
and hardship, he obtained a position at the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, whence he was seconded to London for a time, to the
Imperial Ottoman Embassy to the Court of St James’s. He
later served the Sublime Porte in various positions of authority.
In 1863, thanks to his knowledge of Serbo-Croatian, as he tells
us, he was appointed to serve as secretary and interpreter to
Ahmed Jevdet Pasha , Ottoman statesman and historian, on a fact-finding
mission to Bosnia and Hercegovina which lasted for twenty months,
from the spring of 1863 to October 1864. The events of this mission
were recorded in his La Bosnie et l’Herzégovine
pendant la mission de Djevdet Efendi, Constantinople 1865
(Bosnia and Hercegovina during the mission of Jevdet Efendi).
About 1867 we also find him in Aleppo. A few years later he published
another now rare work of historical interest, Esquisse historique
sur le Monténégro d’après les traditions
de l’Albanie, Constantinople 1872 (Historical sketch
of Montenegro according to Albanian traditions).
Despite his functions on behalf of the Porte, Pashko Vasa
never forgot his Albanian homeland. In the autumn of 1877 he
became a founding member of the Komitet qendror për mbrojtjen
e të drejtave të kombësisë shqiptare
(Central committee for the defence of the rights of the Albanian
people) in Constantinople. Through his contacts there, he also
participated in the organization of the League of Prizren in
1878. He was no doubt the author of the Memorandum on Albanian
Autonomy submitted to the British Embassy in Constantinople.
Together with other nationalist figures on the Bosphorus, such
as hodja Hasan Tahsini, Jani Vreto and Sami Frashëri, he
played his part in the creation of an alphabet for Albanian and
in this connection published a 16-page brochure entitled L’alphabet
latin appliqué à la langue albanaise, Constantinople
1878 (The Latin alphabet applied to the Albanian language), in
support of an alphabet of purely Latin characters. He was also
a member of the Shoqëri e të shtypuri shkronja shqip
(Society for the publication of Albanian writing), founded
in Constantinople on 12 October 1879 to promote the printing
and distribution of the Albanian-language books. In 1879, Pashko
Vasa worked in Varna on the Black Sea coast in the administration
of the vilayet of Edirne with Ismail Qemal bey Vlora (1844-1919).
He also acquired the title of Pasha and on 18 July 1883 became
Governor General of the Lebanon, a post reserved by international
treaty for a Catholic of Ottoman nationality, and a position
he apparently held, true to the traditions of the Lebanon then
and now, in an atmosphere of Levantine corruption and family
intrigue. There he spent the last years of his life and died
in Beirut after a long illness on 29 June 1892. In 1978, the
centenary of the League of Prizren, his remains were transferred
from the Lebanon back to a modest grave in Shkodra.
Though a loyal civil servant of the Ottoman Empire, Pashko
Vasa devoted his energies as a polyglot writer to the Albanian
national movement. Aware of the importance of Europe in Albania’s
struggle for recognition, he published La vérité
sur l’Albanie et les Albanais. Etude historique et critique,
Paris 1879, an historical and political monograph which appeared
in an English translation as The truth on Albania and the
Albanians. Historical and critical study, London 1879, as
well as in Albanian, German, Turkish and Greek that year, and
later in Arabic (1884) and Italian (1916). The Albanian edition,
Shqypnija e shqyptart (Albania and the Albanians), was
published in Allfabetare e gluhësë shqip, Constantinople
1879 (Alphabet of the Albanian language), along with work by
Sami Frashëri and Jani Vreto. In this treatise designed
primarily to inform the European reader about his people, he
gave an account of Albanian history from the ancient Pelasgians
and Illyrians up to his time and expounded on ways and means
of promoting the advancement of his nation. Far from an appeal
for Albanian independence or even autonomy within the Empire,
Pashko Vasa proposed simply the unification of all Albanian-speaking
territory within one vilayet and a certain degree of local government.
The possibility of a sovereign Albanian state was still inconceivable.
He never lived to read Sami Frashëri’s above-mentioned
treatise ‘Albania - what was it, what is it and what will
become of it?’, printed twenty years later, in which the
concept of full independence had finally ripened.
To make the Albanian language better known and to give other
Europeans an opportunity to learn it, he published a Grammaire
albanaise à l’usage de ceux qui désirent apprendre
cette langue sans l’aide d’un maître, Ludgate
Hill 1887 (Albanian grammar for those wishing to learn this language
without the aid of a teacher), one of the rare grammars of the
period.
Pashko Vasa was also the author of a number of literary works
of note. The first of these is a volume of Italian verse entitled
Rose e spine, Constantinople 1873 (Roses and thorns),
forty-one emotionally-charged poems (a total of ca. 1,600 lines)
devoted to themes of love, suffering, solitude and death in the
traditions of the romantic verse of his European predecessors
Giacomo Leopardi, Alphonse de Lamartine and Alfred de Musset.
Among the subjects treated in these meditative Italian poems,
two of which are dedicated to the Italian poets Francesco Petrarch
and Torquato Tasso, are life in exile and family tragedy, a reflection
of Pashko Vasa’s own personal life. His first wife, Drande,
whom he had married in 1855, and four of their five children
died before him, and in later years too, personal misfortune
continued to haunt him. In 1884, shortly after his appointment
as Governor General of the Lebanon, his second wife Catherine
Bonatti died of tuberculosis, as did his surviving daughter Roza
in 1887.
Bardha de Témal, scènes de la vie albanaise,
Paris 1890 (Bardha of Temal, scenes from Albanian life), is a
French-language novel which Pashko Vasa published in Paris under
the pseudonym of Albanus Albano the same year as Naim Frashëri’s
noted verse collection Luletë e verësë
(The flowers of spring) appeared in Bucharest. ‘Bardha of
Temal,’ though not written in Albanian, is, after Sami Frashëri’s
much shorter prose work ‘Love of Tal’at and Fitnat,’
the oldest novel written and published by an Albanian and is
certainly the oldest such novel with an Albanian theme. Set in
Shkodra in 1842, this classically-structured roman-feuilleton,
rather excessively sentimental for modern tastes, follows the
tribulations of the fair but married Bardha and her lover, the
young Aradi. It was written not only as an entertaining love
story but also with a view to informing the western reader of
the customs and habits of the northern Albanians. Indeed the
rather strained informative character of this prose fable is
one of its major artistic weaknesses. Bardha is no doubt the
personification of Albania itself, married off against her will
to the powers that be. Above and beyond its didactic character
and any possible literary pretensions the author might have had,
‘Bardha of Temal’ also has a more specific political
background. It was interpreted by some Albanian intellectuals
at the time as a vehicle for discrediting the Gjonmarkaj clan
who, in cahoots with the powerful abbots of Mirdita, held sway
in the Shkodra region. It is for this reason perhaps that Pashko
Vasa published the novel under the pseudonym Albanus Albano.
The work is not known to have had any particular echo in the
French press of the period.
Though most of Pashko Vasa’s publications were in French
and Italian, there is one poem, the most influential and perhaps
the most popular ever written in Albanian, which has ensured
him his deserved place in Albanian literary history, the famous
O moj Shqypni (Oh Albania, poor Albania). This stirring
appeal for a national awakening is thought to have been written
in the period between 1878, the dramatic year of the League of
Prizren, and 1880. |
Albanian Literature in Translation
Classical
Authors (19th - early 20th centuries)
