Poetry
Zani i zemrës
Not translated into English
Filip Shiroka · 1933
Synopsis
Poems written for the most part between 1896 and 1903, far from Shkodra, in the Levant. One of them entrusts a greeting for the homeland to the swallow. Sonnets speak of Skanderbeg and his tomb, King Pyrrhus, Albania itself, the Catholic world and the mission of the cross; others, more intimate, are addressed to the poet's mother or to a priest friend, with irony turned against himself. Nostalgia for the homeland recurs throughout, and the appeal to the nation sits alongside satire and meditation.
Context
The verses first appeared in the press: Faik Konica's review Albania, published abroad, Albanian periodicals in Egypt and a religious monthly in Shkodra. Dom Ndoc Nikaj collected them and had them printed in Tirana in 1933, two years before their author's death. The latter had begun in Italian, with a poem on the defence of Ulcinj published in a Catholic periodical in Milan. His models are the French and Italian Romantics, among them Tommaso Grossi; he writes in Gheg, with a concern for the purity of the language.
Who it is for
Short pieces, often sonnets, in Gheg, the northern dialect; no French translation.
Prizes and reception
His only book of poems; readers of his generation knew the poem to the swallow by heart.