At Macchia Was Born, In 1814, Of An Old And Relatively Wealthy Family,
Girolamo De Rada, [Footnote:
Thus his friend and compatriot, Dr. Michele
Marchiano, spells the name in a biography which I recommend to those who
think there is no intellectual movement in South Italy.
But he himself,
at the very close of his life, in 1902, signs himself Ger. de Rhada. So
this village of Macchia is spelt indifferently by Albanians as Maki or
Makji. They have a fine Elizabethan contempt for orthography - as well
they may have, with their thirty alphabets.] a flame-like patriot in
whom the tempestuous aspirations of modern Albania took shape. The ideal
pursued during his long life was the regeneration of his country; and if
the attention of international congresses and linguists and folklorists
is now drawn to this little corner of the earth - if, in 1902,
twenty-one newspapers were devoted to the Albanian cause (eighteen in
Italy alone, and one even in London) - it was wholly his merit.
He was the son of a Greco-Catholic priest. After a stern religious
upbringing under the paternal roof at Macchia and in the college of San
Demetrio, he was sent to Naples to complete his education. It is
characteristic of the man that even in the heyday of youth he cared
little for modern literature and speculations and all that makes for
exact knowledge, and that he fled from his Latin teacher, the celebrated
Puoti, on account of his somewhat exclusive love of grammatical rules.
None the less, though con-genitally averse to the materialistic and
subversive theories that were then seething in Naples, he became
entangled in the anti-Bourbon movements of the late thirties, and
narrowly avoided the death-penalty which struck down some of his
comrades. At other times his natural piety laid him open to the
accusation of reactionary monarchical leanings.
He attributed his escape from this and every other peril to the hand of
God. Throughout life he was a zealous reader of the Bible, a firm and
even ascetic believer, forever preoccupied, in childlike simplicity of
soul, with first causes. His spirit moved majestically in a world of
fervent platitudes. The whole Cosmos lay serenely distended before his
mental vision; a benevolent God overhead, devising plans for the
prosperity of Albania; a malignant, ubiquitous and very real devil,
thwarting these His good intentions whenever possible; mankind on earth,
sowing and reaping in the sweat of their brow, as was ordained of old.
Like many poets, he never disabused his mind of this comfortable form of
anthropomorphism. He was a firm believer, too, in dreams. But his
guiding motive, his sun by day and star by night, was a belief in the
"mission" of the Pelasgian race now scattered about the shores of the
Inland Sea - in Italy, Sicily, Greece, Dalmatia, Roumania, Asia Minor,
Egypt - a belief as ardent and irresponsible as that which animates the
Lost Tribe enthusiasts of England. He considered that the world hardly
realized how much it owed to his countryfolk; according to his views,
Achilles, Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great, Aristotle, Pyrrhus,
Diocletian, Julian the Apostate - they were all Albanians. Yet even
towards the end of his life he is obliged to confess: -
"But the evil demon who for over four thousand years has been hindering
the Pelasgian race from collecting itself into one state, is still
endeavouring by insidious means to thwart the work which would lead it
to that union."
Disgusted with the clamorous and intriguing bustle of Naples, he
retired, at the early age of 34, to his natal village of Macchia,
throwing over one or two offers of lucrative worldly appointments. He
describes himself as wholly disenchanted with the "facile fatuity" of
Liberalism, the fact being, that he lacked what a French psychologist
has called the function of the real; his temperament was not of the
kind to cope with actualities. This retirement is an epoch in his
life - it is the Grand Renunciation. Henceforward he loses personal touch
with thinking humanity. At Macchia he remained, brooding on Albanian
wrongs, devising remedies, corresponding with foreigners and
writing - ever writing; consuming his patrimony in the cause of Albania,
till the direst poverty dogged his footsteps.
I have read some of his Italian works. They are curiously oracular, like
the whisperings of those fabled Dodonian oaks of his fatherland; they
heave with a darkly-virile mysticism. He shares Blake's ruggedness, his
torrential and confused utterance, his benevolence, his flashes of
luminous inspiration, his moral background. He resembles that visionary
in another aspect: he was a consistent and passionate adorer of the
Ewig-weibliche. Some of the female characters in his poems retain
their dewy freshness, their exquisite originality, even after passing
through the translator's crucible.
At the age of 19 he wrote a poem on "Odysseus," which was published
under a pseudonym. 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.
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