Gjergj Fishta

Gjergj Fishta was born on the 23^rd October 1871; he died on the 30^th December 1940. He was a Franciscan, a poet and a translator from Albania. He was also a rilindas. He was the chairman of the Congress of Monastir that sanctioned the alphabets of Albania. In the year 1921, he was made the president of the parliament of the country, Albania. He finished and printed his epic masterpiece Lahuta e Malcís, which was an epic poem that was written by Gheg dialect of the country, Albania. The boot contains about 17,000 lines and is said to be the Iliad of the country. Fishta was the first candidate in the country for the Nobel Prize in Literature in the country.

source of picture: prishtinapress.info

Biography

He was born in Fishte, dajc, Lazhe, Albania. Fishta studied philosophy and catholic theology in Bosnia. He became the head of Franciscan gymnasium in Shkoder in the year 1902. He wrote his masin work, Lahuta e Malcís, under the influence of the Croatian Franciscan Monks as a scholar in the monasteries in Austria-Hungary, and it was influenced by the national epics of the Croatian literature and the Montenegrin literature According to Robert Elsie. Further, Elsie hypothesized that the in the main work of Fishta, he replaced the fight against the Turks with the fight against the Slavs, and that propagated Anti-Slavic feelings. The woprk was proscribed to be an anti-Slavic propaganda by the authorities of Yugoslavian and Albanian histography after the World War II. Fishta was referred to as ‘former agent of the Austro-Hungarian imperialism’ by the Soviet histography, and that took position against the Slavic people as well as Pan Slavism due to the opposed rapacious plans of the Austro-Hungarian imperialism in the country, Albania, and possessed a function in the catholic Clergy’s preparation for the Italian aggression against the people of Albania.

The allegations were not true, since the other factors were in the background of the accusations leveled against him. Fishta was greatly influenced by the Slav Croats, are from the Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Lovro Mihacevic, a Bosnian Croat, an Abanologist, a friar and a writer, implanted the love of literature in the mother tongue of Fishta. While he was living in in Bosnia, Fishta met wiith two writers, Croats, and he became friends with them:Grga Martic and Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević. They both awakened literacy instinct in Fishta. Later on, Fishta was prejudiced by the workings of Croatian writers Andrija Kačić Miošić and Ivan Mažuranić

In the year 1908, he took part in the election and won as the president of the the Congress of Monastir. He was the interpreter of Albania in the conference that was held in Paris in the year 1919. From the starting part of the year 1919 to the year 1920, he worked as the secretary of the Albanian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. At the end of the year 1920, he was also elected to be part of the parliament in Shkoder and in the year 1921, he was made the vice president of the Albanian parliament.

In the year 1924, he supported fan Noli in the attempt to form a democratic system in the country. After the establishment of Zogu Era, he left the country and relocated to Itay willingly in the year 1925, and this happened before he resumed his seat as a teacher and a writer in Shkoder, and it was there that he died in the year 1940.

Through the works he did as a teacher and his literary works, he had a great influence on the development of the written form of his native Ghen Albanian. Fishta served as a translator of the following; Molière, Manzoni, Homer, etc. He was the editor of Hylli i Dritës, a magazine in the year 1913 and Posta e Shypnisë, a newspaper from the year 1916 to the year 1917.

Works

• Lahuta e Malcís, epic poem, (Zara, 1902)
• Anzat e Parnasit, satire, (Sarajevo, 1907)
• Pika voese më vonë ri botuar si 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)
• Mrizin e 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.