Authors of Kosova & Albania

Naim Frashëri (1846-1900) is nowdays widely considered to be the national poet of Albania. He spent his childhood in the village of Frashër where he no doubt began learning Turksih, Persian and Arabic and where, at the Bektashi monastery, he was imbued with the spiritual traditions of the orient. In Janina (Ioannina), Naim Frashëri attended the Zosimaia secondary school which provided him with the basics of a classical education along Western lines. Here he was to study Ancient and Modern Greek, Frech and Italian and in addition, was to be tutored privately in oriental languages. As he grew in knowledge, so did his affinity for his antheistic Bektashi religion, for the poets of classical Persia and for the Age of Enlightenment. His education in Janina made of him a prime example of a late nineteenth-century Ottoman intellectual equally at home in both cultures, the Western and the Orintal.

Naim Frashëri is the author of a total of twenty-two works: four in Turkish, one in Perisan, two in Greek and fifteen in Albanian. In view of his sensitive position as director of the board of cecsorship of the Turkish Ministry of Education in which capacity he was occasionally able to circumvent the ban on Albanian-language books and publications imposed by the Sublime Porte, Naim Frashëri deemed it wise not to use his full name in many of his publications, and printed only a "by N.H.," "by N.H.F." or"by N.F."

The poetry collections for which Naim Frashëri is primarily remembered were also published in Bucharest. Bagëti e bujqësija, Bucharest 1886 (Bucolics and Georgics). is a 450-line pastoral poem reminiscent of Vergil (70-19 B.C and laden with the imagery f his mountain homeland. It proved extremely popular amonf Frash'ëri's compatriots and was smuggled into Albania in caravans. In it, the poet expresses his dissatisfaction with city life, no doubt from actual experience on the bustling banks of the Bosphorus and idealizes the distant and longed-for Albanian countryside. It is a hymn to nature in the traditions of European romanticism and yet one of earthy substance in which like Hesiod (8th cent. B.C.) in his "Work and Days", Vergil in his "Georgics" or the great eithteenth-century Lithuanian poet Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714-1780) in his somewhat less idyllic "Deasons", Naim Frashëri sings of the herds and flocks and of the joys and toil of agriculure and rural life. In the collection Luletë e verësë, Bucharest 1890 (The flowers of spring), he also paid tribute to the beauties of the Albanian countryside in the twenty-three poems of rich sonority. here the pantheistic philosophy of his bektashi upbringing and the strong influence of the Persian classics are coupled harmoniously with patriotic idealism- literary creativity serving the goal f national identity. The verse collection Parajsa dhe fjala fluturake, Bucharest 1894 (Paradise and winged words), published together with the spiritual essays Mësime, Bucharest 1894 (Teachings), evinced his affinities for the heroes of the past and for the spiritual traditions of the Orient, in particular for the Persian mystics. Istori' e Skenderbeut, Bucharest 1898 (History of Scanderbeg), is an historical epic of 11,500 verses which Frashëri must have written about 1895 in his last creative years and one which the author himself regarded as his masterpiece. it also constituted the poet's political legacy. Another work of similar proportions published the same year as the "History of Scanderbeg", is Qerbelaja, Bcharest 1898 (Kerbela), a Shi'ite religious epic in twenty-five cantos, which deals with the Battle of Kerbela in Iraq in 680 A.D. in which Husein, grandson of the prophet Mohammed, was killed. In contrast to the "History of Scanderbeg" , Qerelaja is a narrative epic devoid of a hero or principla character. Many elements of Naim Frashëri's religiosity are also present in Naim Frashëri's Fletore e Bektashinjet, Bucharest 1896 (Bektashi notebook), which is of major significance for our knowledge of the pantheistic but secretive Bektashi sect of dervishes. Frashëri hoped that liberal Bektashi beliefs to which ha had been attached since his childhood in Frashër would one day take hold as the new religion of all Albania. Since they had their roots both in the Muslim Koran and in the Christian Bible, they could promote unity among his religiously divided people. The Notebook contains and introductory profession of Bektashi faith and ten spiritual poems which provide a rare view into the beliefs of the sect which in the nineteenth century played an important
role in the survival of Albanian culture, in particular by the illegal distibution of Albanian books.

The significance of Naim Frashëri as a Rilindja poet and indeed as a "national poet" rests not so much upon his talents of literary expression nor on the artistic quality of his verse, but rather upon the sociopolitical, philosophical and religious messages it transmitted which were aimed above all at national awareness and i the Bektashi tradition at overcoming religious barriers within the country. His influence upon Albanian writers at the beginning of the twentieth century was enormous. many of his poems were set to music during his lifetime and were sung as folk songs. If one compares the state of Albanian literature before and after the arrival of Naim Frashëri, one becomes aware of the major role he played in transforming Albanian into a literary language of substantial refinement.

by Robert Elise.

Eqrem Basha (b 1948) is among the most respected contemporary writers of Kosova in recent years. He was born in Dibra in the western Albanian-speaking region of what is now the Republic of macedonia, but his life and literary production are intimately linked to Kosova and its capital Prishtina, where he has lived and worked for the past three decades. it was in the early 1970's durong the only real years of freedom in Kosova, that Eqrem Basha moved to Prishtina to study language and litterature at the newly created Albanian-langauge university there. He later worked for Prishtina television as editor of the drama section, but was fired ofr political reasons during the Serb takeover of the media in 1989-1990. Basha is the author of eight volumes of innovative verse spanning the years from 1970 tp 1995, three volumes of short stories and numerous translations (in particular French literatur and drama). He is currently in the publishing industry in Prishtina. Eqrem Basha is an enigmatic poet. Perplexing, fascinating and difficult to classify in a literery sense, he succeeds in transmitting a certain mystique to the inquisitive reader. At one moment he seems cooly logical and shows an admirable ability to reason deductively and the next moment he is overcome by absurd flights of fancy into a surrealistic world where apparently nothing makes any sense. Basha has an urbane view of things and delights in the daily absirdities of life. Nothing could be more foreign to him than the inspiration many of his fellow poets derive from the rich folklore traditionsof the northern mountain tribes and verse of social commitment. His verse is light, colliquial and much less declamatoru than that of many of his predecessors.

(By Robert Elise)

Rita Petro (b. 1962) also known as Rita Filipi, was born in Tirana and studied Albanian language and literature at the University there from 1980-1984. She thereafter worked in the publishing industry in tirana. In 1993she did post-graduate studies at the University of Athens.

Petro's vesre, some of which was daringly erotic for post-Stalinist Albania, has appeared in three collections (published under the former married name Filipi): Vargje të përfolura(Defamed Verse), Tirana 1994; Shija e instinkit (The Taste of Instinct), Tirana 1998, and Këtu poshtë këndohet live (They're Singing Live Down Here), Tirana 2002.

(By Robert Elise)