Epic
The Highland Lute
Lahuta e Malcís
Gjergj Fishta · 1937
Opening lines
Ndihmò, Zot, si m’kè ndihmue!
Pesëqind vjet kishin kalue
Çëse të buk'rën ketë Shqypni
Turku e mbate në robnì,
Help me, Lord, as you have helped me!
Five hundred years had passed
Since this beautiful Albania
The Turk had held in bondage,
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
The poem opens in 1858, when Montenegro advances onto the Albanian lands of the north. At the fort of Vranina, on Lake Shkodra, Oso Kuka holds a tower with a handful of men against the army besieging him. From cycle to cycle other figures arise, Çun Mula, the young Tringa, and the fairies and dragons of the mountain take part in the men's battles. The narrative spans half a century of the history of the north, from the Congress of Berlin and the League of Prizren to the Young Turk revolution and the Balkan wars.
Context
Written for the most part between 1902 and 1909, then revised over some thirty years, the poem appeared in parts in Zadar in 1905 and 1907, then in 1912, 1923, 1931 and 1933; the definitive edition in thirty cantos was presented in Shkodra in 1937. It draws on the oral epic songs of the north, notably those of an old peasant, Marash Uci, whom Fishta met in 1902. Soviet criticism called it chauvinist and anti-Slav in 1950, and it was banned in Albania as in Yugoslavia after the war; it reappeared in Rome in 1958, in Ljubljana in 1990, and an article by Aurel Plasari revived interest in it in 1991.
Who it is for
An epic of thirty cantos, some fifteen thousand lines in Gheg, read in cycles; translated into French and English.
Prizes and reception
Compared by critics to the Greek epic, regarded as the Albanian national epic; banned for more than forty years.