Then, Three Years Later, There Appeared A Collection
Of Rhapsodies Entitled "Milosao," Which He Had Garnered From The Lips Of
Albanian Village Maidens.
It is his best-known work, and has been
translated into Italian more than once.
After his return to Macchia
followed some years of apparent sterility, but later on, and especially
during the last twenty years of his life, his literary activity became
prodigious. Journalism, folklore, poetry, history, grammar, philology,
ethnology, aesthetics, politics, morals - nothing came amiss to his
gifted pen, and he was fruitful, say his admirers, even in his errors,
Like other men inflamed with one single idea, he boldly ventured into
domains of thought where specialists fear to tread. His biographer
enumerates forty-three different works from his pen. They all throb with
a resonant note of patriotism; they are "fragments of a heart," and
indeed, it has been said of him that he utilized even the grave science
of grammar as a battlefield whereon to defy the enemies of Albania. But
perhaps he worked most successfully as a journalist. His "Fiamuri
Arberit" (the Banner of Albania) became the rallying cry of his
countrymen in every corner of the earth.
These multifarious writings - and doubtless the novelty of his central
theme - attracted the notice of German philologers and linguists, of all
lovers of freedom, folklore and verse. Leading Italian writers like
Cantupraised him highly; Lamartine, in 1844, wrote to him: "Je suis
bien-heureux de ce signe de fraternite poetique et politique entre vous
et moi. La poesie est venue de vos rivages et doit y retourner. . . ."
Hermann Buchholtz discovers scenic changes worthy of Shakespeare, and
passages of Aeschylean grandeur, in his tragedy "Sofonisba." Carnet
compares him with Dante, and the omniscient Mr. Gladstone wrote in
1880 - a post card, presumably - belauding his disinterested efforts on
behalf of his country. He was made the subject of many articles and
pamphlets, and with reason. Up to his time, Albania had been a myth. He
it was who divined the relationship between the Albanian and Pelasgian
tongues; who created the literary language of his country, and
formulated its political ambitions.
Whereas the hazy "Autobiologia" records complicated political intrigues
at Naples that are not connected with his chief strivings, the little
"Testamento politico," printed towards the end of his life, is more
interesting. It enunciates his favourite and rather surprising theory
that the Albanians cannot look for help and sympathy save only to their
brothers, the Turks. Unlike many Albanians on either side of the
Adriatic, he was a pronounced Turco-phile, detesting the "stolid
perfidy" and "arrogant disloyalty" of the Greeks. Of Austria, the most
insidious enemy of his country's freedom, he seems to have thought well.
A year before his death he wrote to an Italian translator of "Milosao"
(I will leave the passage in the original, to show his cloudy language):
"Ed un tempo propizio la accompagna: la ricostituzione dell' Epiro nei
suoi quattro vilayet autonomi quale e nei propri consigli e nei propri
desideri; ricostituzione, che pel suo Giornale, quello dell' ottimo A.
Lorecchio - cui precede il principe Nazionale Kastriota, Chini - si
annuncia fatale, e quasi fulcro della stabilita dello impero Ottomano, a
della pace Europea; preludio di quella diffusione del regno di Dio sulla
terra, che sara la Pace tra gli Uomini."
Truly a remarkable utterance, and one that illustrates the disadvantages
of living at a distance from the centres of thought.
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