Gjergj Fishta

Gjergj Fishta
File:Gjergj Fishta (portret).jpg Portrait of Gjergj Fishta, 1930s
Born	(1871-10-23)23 October 1871 Fishtë, Albania
Died	Shkodër, Albania
Nationality	Albanian
Education	Catholic theology
Occupation	Educator franciscan poet politician rilindas translator writer
Signature
Signature of Gjergj Fishta

Gjergj Fishta (pronounced [ɟɛɾɟ ˈfiʃta]; 23 October 1871 – 30 December 1940) was an Albanian Franciscan friar, poet, educator, politician, rilindas, translator and writer. He is regarded as one of the most influential Albanian writers of the 20th century due to his epic masterpiece Lahuta e Malcís and the editor of two of the most authoritative magazines after Albania's independence, Posta e Shypniës and Hylli i Dritës.

Notably being the chairman of the commission of the Congress of Manastir, which sanctioned the Albanian alphabet, he was part of the Albanian delegation to the Versailles Conference, 1919. In 1921 he was a member and became the deputy chairman of the Albanian parliament, later on in the '20s and the '30s he was among the most influential cultural and literary figures in Albania. After the communist regime came to power, his literary oeuvre had been taken out of circulation and it stayed so until the fall of communism.

Biography

Early life

Gjergj Fishta was born to Ndoka and Prenda Kaçi, a Catholic family in Fishtë, located in the Zadrima region of what was then the Ottoman Empire. Baptised by the name Zef, the youngest of three brothers and one sister. The parish priest of Troshan, parish where Fishta was included, Marian Pizzochini of Palmanova, asked his parents to make him a friar. At the expense of the parishioner, Zef went to the Franciscan school in Shkodra until 1880, when Troshan's College began its activity. He studied philosophy and Catholic theology in Bosnia (seminaries in Kraljeva Sutjeska, Franciscan monastery in Livno, Franciscan monastery in Kreševo), among Bosnian Catholics. In 1902, he became the head of the Franciscan college in Shkodër.

File:Alcuni disegni architettonici di Gjergj Fishta.JPG

Architectural drawings created by Gjergj Fishta.

As a student in monasteries in Austria-Hungary, Fishta was influenced by Bosnian Franciscan friars when he wrote his masterpiece Lahuta e Malcís. Dedicated to the commander Ali Pasha of Gusinje the work was an epic poem that consisted of 30 cantos focusing on the events of the League of Prizren, which had become a symbol of the Albanian national awakening.

From the beginning of April 1919 to 1920, he served as Secretary of the Albanian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, and interpreted. At the end of 1920, he was elected to parliament by Shkodër, and in 1921 he became the Vice President of the Albanian parliament. In 1924, Fishta supported Fan Noli in his attempt to found a democratic system in Albania. After the establishment of the Zogu regime, Fishta left willingly to go into exile in Italy in 1925/26, before he resumed his position as teacher and writer in Shkodër, where he died in 1940.

Literary works

Lahuta e Malcís (The Highland Lute)
(opening and extract)

Help me, as then you helped, Oh God
Five hundred years the Turk has trod
Upon our fair Albanian lands,
Our people slaves under his hands,
Leaving our world in woe, in blood;
No chest can breathe, no flower bud;
Here not even the sun moves free,
Here all is evil that we see
And we must suffer silently,
Pitied by mice scrabbling for wheat;
Pitied by snakes beneath our feet.
...
These men whose God is gold alone
- I curse them for their hearts of stone -
Desire to take this wretched land,
Won by much Albanian blood, and
Make a jigsaw of its borders.
Why? Because Europe so orders...
Europe, you whore of the ages
Thus to stain your glorious pages;
This your culture: Albania starves
While faithless perjured Brussels carves
Her up to feed the whelps of Slavs.
Thus you pay them, who sacrificed
Themselves to save the lands of Christ.
Skanderbeg fought to save your world,
While you sat mute with banners furled.

(Fishta, trans. Wilton)

In 1899, Fishta, along with Preng Doçi and Ndre Mjeda founded the Shoqnia e bashkimit të gjuhës shqipe (Society for the Unity of the Albanian Language) literary society, usually known as the Shoqnia Bashkimi (The Union Society), or simply Bashkimi (The Union) of Shkodra for publishing Albanian language books. In the late Ottoman period Fishta's publications included folk songs and a number of poems, which like other Albanian publications of the time often had to be published abroad and smuggled into the empire to avoid censorship.

In 1907, Fishta wrote the satirical work The Wasps of Parnasus that critiqued Albanians of the time that placed individual interests over national ones and the intelligentsia who did not devote themselves to studying the Albanian language and showed disdain toward it. As a representative of the Society for the Unity of the Albanian Language, Fishta participated and was elected for president of the committee in the Congress of Monastir (today Bitola in North Macedonia, then Ottoman Empire) held in 1908. Participants of the congress accepted Fishta's proposal for the Latin Bashkimi alphabet, and many of its elements were merged into the Istanbul alphabet resulting in the standard Albanian alphabet. In 1916, he was core founder of the Albanian Literary Commission, where he unsuccessfully tried to place Shkodra subdialect as standard literary Albanian.

Through both his work as a teacher as well as through his literary works, Fishta had a great influence on the development of the written form of his native Gheg Albanian. Fishta worked also as a translator (of Molière, Manzoni, Homer, et al.).

Criticism

Robert Elsie hypothesized that in Lahuta e Malcís, Fishta substituted the struggle against the Ottomans with a struggle against the Slavs, after the recent massacres and expulsions of Albanians by their Slavic neighbours. After World War II the authorities in Yugoslavia and Albanian historiography controlled by communist regime in Tirana (influenced by Yugoslav communists) proscribed Fishta's works as anti-Slavic propaganda.

According to Arshi Pipa, Fishta's satirical works are modulated after the Bejte tradition of Shkodër, which he elevated to a literary level.

Legacy

Awards in his lifetime

In the last years of the Ottoman rule over Albania, proposed by the wali of Shkodër Hasan Riza Pasha he was awarded with the Maarif Order of 2nd class (tr. Maarif Nişanı, Order of Education) for his contribution in the local education. He was awarded with the Order of Franz Joseph from Austro-Hungarian Empire authorities, later on in 1925 with the Medaglia di Benemerenza by the Holy See. On 1931 by the Order of the Phoenix by Greece, and after the Italian invasion of Albania he was part of the Royal Academy of Italy.

Historical

In Soviet historiography he was referred to as "former agent of Austro-Hungarian imperialism" who took position against Slavic people and Pan-Slavism because they opposed "rapacious plans of Austro-Hungarian imperialism in Albania" and had a role in Catholic Clergy's preparation "for Italian aggression against Albania".

Honours and awards

In Albania:

• 60x60px National Flag Order (posthumous)

From other countries:

• 60x60px Second Class of the Order of Education (Ottoman Empire, 1912)
• 60x60px Knight of the Order of Franz Joseph (Austrian Empire)
• 60x60px Medaglia di Benemerenza (Holy See, 1925)
• Commander of the Order of the Phoenix (Kingdom of Greece, 1931)

Bibliography

• Lahuta e Malcís, epic poem, (Zara, 1902)
• Anzat e Parnasit, satire, (Sarajevo, 1907)
• Pika voese republished afterwards and retitled Vallja e Parrizit, (Zara, 1909)
• Shqiptari i qytetnuem, melodrama, (1911)
• Vëllaznia apo Shën Françesku i Assisi-t, (1912)
• Juda Makabe, tragedy, (1914)
• Gomari i Babatasit, (Shkodër, 1923)
• Mrizi i Zanave, (Shkodër, 1924)
• Lahuta e Malcís (2d. ed.), Gesamtdruck, (Shkodër 1937). In English The Highland Lute, trans. by Robert Elsie and Janice Mathie-Heck. I. B. Tauris (2006) ISBN 1-84511-118-4

Sources

• Maximilian Lambertz: Gjergj Fishta und das albanische Heldenepos "Lahuta e Malsisë" – Laute des Hochlandes. Eine Einführung in die albanische Sagenwelt. Leipzig 1949.

External links

• Biography of Gjergj Fishta