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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