Poetry
Frashëri's Song of Albania
Bagëti e Bujqësia
Naim Frashëri · 1886
Synopsis
The poet addresses first Albania, then Mount Tomorr and the mountains, the regions of the country and the mother earth, and finally God: each part opens with an invocation. Between them pass scenes of the life of shepherds and ploughmen, the shepherd's daughter, the flock, the idle man, the swallow charged with carrying a message to the regions of the country, the hospitality of winter, a dead young girl. Work appears there as an order willed by God, and pity extends to all creatures.
Context
The poem appeared in Bucharest in 1886, published by the Albanian society Drita, which was then publishing most of the author's Albanian works. The critic Giuseppe Gradilone gives it Virgil's Georgics as its main model, in the alternation of descriptions, digressions and hymns, Hesiod for its vision of work and justice, and compares the closing prayer to the poetry of a Persian mystic. He judges that the patriotic motif merges there into a broader humanity, apart from romantic rhetoric. Luigi Pompilj gave an Italian version of it with the Albanian text, the second edition of which appeared in Spoleto in 1942.
Who it is for
A long poem without a plot, made of tableaux and invocations, in southern Albanian; no French translation.
Prizes and reception
The most successful and most popular work of its author, according to Gradilone; one of the first texts to bring shepherds and villagers into Albanian literature.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.