By Visar Zhiti
– Reflections and emotion –
Memorie.al/Especially now, as I stand before this painting, wonderful to me, which the well-known painter in Italy, Gjergj Kola, has composed showing the poet Father Gjergj Fishta with his Lahuta (the lute) of the spirit of his Nation and next to him a young man, who is my father, who indeed met Father Gjergj Fishta when he was a student at the “Normal School” of Elbasan, while below them is a lahutar (lute player) – the painter chose my face as the model – it seems to me that there I discover, among other things, as in an icon, chromatic unions of times and timelessness, the patriarchal eternity of our National Poet, which began as of today, on December 30, 1940, as well as the adoration that people have for him, the father and son, the generations and the future.
And to think that when I was sentenced to prison under the dictatorship, among the punishable acts listed in my accusation was the secret reading of “The Highland Lute,” which my father recited to us since I was a child. He too had been sentenced before me.
I want to say that the poet’s afterlife was threatened as the eternity of the national spirit, when the communist dictatorships wanted to build a new world with the new man, the anti-man and the anti-world.
When we say Father Gjergj Fishta, the name of the Poet is inseparably joined with the sacred word, as ancient and old as Albanian itself, “Atë” / father, which has now taken on a greater meaning, not only religious, but also that of the National Poet, who together with Naim seem to form the two heads of the eagle on our Flag.
With his work, at the world heights of epic poetry, he became both the conscience and the call to arms of Albanianism in the 20th century, a century so difficult for us, dramatic from its very beginnings, when the Albanian state was being rebuilt after over four centuries of occupation and severe dismemberment of its lands.
Father Gjergj Fishta had to overcome even his own three deaths: his passing into repose, the killing of his Name and his Work, and of his Grave. They even wanted to kill death itself for him, but He attained immortality.
I could say that he was resurrected, but He was always alive. The devil, the enemies of Albania, the opponents who blew like the wild winds of the steppes, could not defeat him. He remains triumphant. With a kind of mystery beyond deliberate oblivion and political criticism.
Father Gjergj Fishta bore the burden of carrying the testaments of the Illyrian-Arbëresh clan, the tidings of our mountains as if left in the mouths of caves, on the lips of the wounds of centuries, himself becoming a great voice, with the divine powers of Muji and Halili (meaning: Muji and Halili). He bore the cross of Christ and led the conscience and resistance with the language of his people. He became the memory of his land.
He became a modern legend while still alive, biblical, full of knowledge and wisdom, who resounded Albanian like the avalanches of our winters, onomatopoeic of battles and rivers of blood.
An academic novel at times, which suddenly turned lyrical, with a just as European romanticism. Also a dramatist, prose writer, thinker, literary critic, painter, architect, deputy, opposition figure, diplomat, representative of Albania, etc., but always a priest, a beautiful Franciscan! Now and then with a kind of divine anger, which from Christian love, as a poet, he turns into bitter satire, while he was the best satirist in the Balkans of his time, whose satire still rings relevant today, because the key is his passion for the improvement of the race. Some of his mockeries seem freshly written for those around us and those at the top.
Father Gjergj Fishta is a high National activist, a fiery patriot, a caller to arms. And under the occupier, not at all a collaborator with him to the detriment of his country, as the communists accused him; he practiced politics for his homeland. With the cross and the Word. Decorated even by enemies for the peace he brought, even the sultan who averted bloodshed in the Highlands. There is evidence that he was proposed for the Nobel Prize by Americans.
Father Gjergj Fishta is a phenomenon, not only in the metaphorical sense. Persecuted even after death as a crusader of the Nation. When Albania was in the communist empire, under its worst dictatorship, the unprecedented happened: they destroyed the National Poet’s grave in the Franciscan Church, which they also demolished in Shkodër. The red devil took his bones and threw them into the Drin River in a black sack. But thus he became part of the river of the homeland, in the waves of his eternity. Yet He still lived on. Even when the Russian Encyclopedia, and the South Slavs, saw him as a danger and a passionate opponent, but He was against Slavic chauvinists and anyone, even Europe, if they were against his homeland. And Father Gjergj Fishta appeared mysteriously, with biblical power. More than from the underworld, he came from Heaven, lightning-like, with sudden light, indestructible like faith, as if by God’s command.
As I said, I will bring a few simple examples, but meaningful, in my opinion. At the folk festivals held under the dictatorship, highlanders with their lahuta sang verses by Father Gjergj Fishta; the regime understood nothing, because they had become popular, anonymous. The poet had repaid his debt to his people, thus achieving what few poets in the world achieve.
When the dictatorship was falling and people dared to leave, to meet, to see Albania South and North, to join protests for a free and democratic, Euro-Atlantic Albania, etc., wherever they took place – in Shkodër, Tirana, Kavajë, Elbasan, Lushnjë, Vlorë, Korçë, etc. – the distinguished Albanologist Robert Elsie, translator of “The Highland Lute” into English, testifies that once on one of the buses, someone had started reciting something by Fishta, yes, from the banned “Highland Lute,” when suddenly he stopped, perhaps seeing something through the window or thinking of something else, or the verse wouldn’t come to him next, but immediately others on the bus would continue the recitation, as if an ancient choir was formed, one would say one verse, another the next verse… that had always happened with Father Gjergj Fishta among the people, in theaters, on the high plateaus, in men’s gatherings, but also in prison.
The work of Father Gjergj Fishta is part of the Mountain Ranges of Albania.
…81 years have passed since Father Gjergj Fishta closed his eyes forever and took the heavenly road to eternity. On earth, with the mud thrown over him, statues of him were made. Recently, his birth house in the village of Fishtë, ruined like our own memory and conscience, was rebuilt and turned into a museum, but it should also become a place of pilgrimage. Because it is not simply a museum value, but a National spirit. Father Gjergj Fishta’s house is in the soul of every Albanian.
I believe that the Presidency, the Parliament, the Prime Minister’s office will have laid wreaths at the statues of the Poet of the Nation, I believe there are – not only the modernist one in Shkodër, I wish it so – and the academies, libraries, first of all that of the Franciscans in Shkodër, publishers, media, associations, groups, the diaspora, etc., have commemorated him with publications and conferences, events and tributes. Literary criticism, scholars, writers, poets, especially the young, the high personalities of the country has said and will continue to say their word. So I believe… Meanwhile, I know that more has been said in the past, by the most eminent of the Nation, by foreign personalities, by his translators into German, Italian, English, etc., etc.
The Fishtian spring does not run dry. I have given my emotion today, without any pretension, I simply spoke. I was prompted also by the gift, the painting by the other Gjergj, the painter Gjergj Kola.
The reverence for Father Gjergj Fishta is inheritable.
As I promised, here, I bring a stanza from his poems published posthumously. The painter Guljelm Mosi, also inspired, had composed a painting illustrating the poem and the meeting of my father with Father Gjergj Fishta.
I too have written poetry about Fishta, in prison and afterwards, also in Gheg. Today, young people and students study him; defend their theses on topics about him. So I believe. And I wanted to say that nevertheless, even when we forget, the heart of Father Gjergj Fishta beats mysteriously like the heart of the people.
OUR POEMS FOR THE POET
HEKURAN ZHITI
(He has been called the “Gjergj Fishta of Toskëria” for his poems and satire.
A stanza from the book “Albanian Uprising in Paradise”, written in 1943-44, staged in those years, first in Berat, where the author lived…):
GJERGJ FISHTA
(comes out of a marble altar)
“Even the moon would know, even the sun would have seen,
That around this globe there is no land like Albania!
……….…………………………..
There they lie, yes, Tosk and Gheg, / like two rays in the flame of one sun:
Like two lightning bolts that go burning,/ when the cloud flashes high from the sky.”
………………………………………….
The Echo of Fishta
My voice trembles with love,
Crosses tremble in our graves.
If Albania does not become paradise,
They will descend from Heaven with echoes…
VISAR ZHITI
(From the book of prison poems “I Throw a Skull at Your Feet”)
TWO GRAVES FIVE HUNDRED YEARS APART
Again they came from afar, from the deserts. They crossed
the last mountain. They saw the great sea, alien.
Like a blue liquid, leaping, it pushed the waves,
like the bare chests of harem women. There their
tent like a rose among thousands of military tents, among
cannons and horses under the rumble of drums and
cauldrons, under absurd emblems. Dust of the first
five hundred years. Down there was the small, conquered city.
The church and the grave of Gjergj Kastrioti, the genie, who genied
the great Sovereign. They would rush, always they, the
same ones, they would tear out the heavy tombstone, they would
take out the hero’s bones like the bones of the nation itself. Then
they would break them, piece by piece, the bones with mud, as long
as swords. They would break the skull like the dome of the sky.
Mad and macabre. They would hang a piece of bone as a talisman
around the soldiers’ necks to have luck
in battles like their great enemy. Five hundred years
earlier, when even the graves are now buried in oblivion. Night fell.
The night of the nation. With heroisms like ruins, without skeletons
of heroes. Night with the screams of slaves burning like torches.
Five hundred years of Balkan night. The fruits of trees, like
bread, had no taste. Roots sucked turbid blood,
mixed. In the earth rotted bodies of barbarians and
deserters, bejtexhinj (clerical poets) and camels, spies
and cooks of a peace redder than war. Man
fell and the mountains grew taller from the corpses.
The mountains filled with the partisans of the last war of the
world, full as with forests. The flesh of history
became ruins and we thought new days had come.
We believed in bridges. We believed the sea became the lover
of everyone like freedom. So the songs said. Then, ah,
then when the smoke of the battles cleared, in the puddles we saw
the reflection of the departed rulers, of our rulers
who led us, their reflection mingled in the puddles,
they fell like the dust of the conquerors of five hundred years ago.
Our minds reeled like our feet. And we attacked, we ourselves,
not the conquerors, our own churches. We broke the cross and
nevertheless could not escape our crossroads. In another
church we found the skeleton of Gjergj… no, not of Kastrioti…
of Gjergj Fishta, the greatest rhapsode of the twentieth century,
the last lahuta of the world. We had thrown his books
into the fire. Oh God! No, no, I will not tell you that the Anatolian
conquerors stole the skeleton of the foremost hero and we, we ourselves,
with our own hands, on a sunny day, lost the poet’s skeleton,
(we did not distribute his bones to the young writers as talisman
pieces), we threw it into the river. Into the river that came
from the Slavs. From the poet’s ribs beautiful lyres can be made.
Spaç, January 14, 1983
(Published also in the first issue of the magazine “Hylli i Dritës” (The Star of Light), founded by Father Gjergj Fishta, when it began to reappear after the fall of the dictatorship… It has also been translated into Italian by the Arbëresh poet Cate Zuccaro and was read in the church of San Atanasio in Rome, etc.)
SHKODËR, (RE)BURIAL OF GJERGJ FISHTA
(From the poetry book “Treasures of Fear”)
In the grave, demolished and forgotten, were found
fragments of bones, left over from the unrotted sin.
What can be done with them, O Father, except the skeleton of the hand,
that on the earth wrote the dead epic of the living
and on the earth the living epic of the dead? Make the sign of the cross
and my hand is stripped, the flesh falls, I am left with a skeleton
like your hand, the nation’s. We fill it with your voice as
with the sword’s whetstone. For we have carved the wood of our fate.
Logs of words have fallen into the grave that will no longer die./Memorie.al
