Poetry
Juvenilia
Not translated into English
Ndre Mjeda · 1917
Synopsis
A collection of original poems and adaptations. It opens with the nightingale's lament, written by the author at twenty-one, far from his country: a bird mourning its lost freedom, as in the poems of the caged bird by Tommaso Grossi and Leonardo De Martino. Another piece sings of Skanderbeg's tomb. The poet adds his versions of verses by Grossi, Giuseppe Capparozzo, Charles Wolfe and a great German poet.
Context
The collection was published in Vienna in 1917, under a title taken from Giosuè Carducci's first lyric collection, which had appeared nearly half a century earlier. The nightingale poem had appeared alone as early as 1887; Rexhep Qosja regards it as the core poem of its author's work, and judges that it surpasses its models. The acknowledged master is the Arbëresh Leonardo De Martino, whose bilingual collection had appeared in Venice in 1881. His long poems on Lissus and Scodra appeared separately, in a journal in 1921 and, posthumously, two years after his death.
Who it is for
A slim collection in Gheg, the northern dialect, in tight form; several pieces are adaptations; no French translation.
Prizes and reception
It is the book for which its author has remained best known, praised for its classical style and the purity of its language.
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