Poetry
Vjersha
Not translated into English
Zef Serembe · 1926
Synopsis
Thirty-nine poems in Arbëresh. Love is the constant theme, almost a condemnation: a young woman of the village, loved with a love that gossip thwarts, then lost. Alongside come calls to fight the Turks, an address to the woman of letters Dora d'Istria for the union of the Albanians, landscapes of Calabria belied by the melancholy of the one who writes, and the faith that consoles and then disappoints. One elegy gathers everything: the lost girl, the restless wandering, the homeland under the yoke.
Context
The collection appeared in Milan in 1926, through the care of the poet's nephew, Cosmo Serembe; the rest of the work, poems, dramas and psalms, has been lost. The verses are in Arbëresh, in a language close to popular song, clearer than that of his teacher at the college of Saint-Adrian, Jeronim de Rada. The nephew's preface perhaps presents him as the first to sing of hatred for the Turkish occupier. Klara Kodra, in 1971, sees in “Rrutullupë” the first open call to struggle against the Empire in Albanian literature; Giuseppe Gradilone compares him to Giacomo Leopardi for the place given to memory. Tirana published an edition in 1962.
Who it is for
Short poems in Arbëresh, sonnets, elegies, odes and a ballad; the language is not today's Albanian; no French translation.
Prizes and reception
His verse is considered by many to be among the best lyric poetry written in Albanian before the modern era.