KRAHU I SHQIPONJËS, ENGLISH

We seek Chameria

2011-10-21T07:09:00.000-07:00

We seek Chameria

Our people have left home,

Territories, graves, property

Therefore we seek help.

Government does nothing,

Cham call out loudly:

“Don’t think we will forget,

Our land will protect”!

Shefki Hysa patriot,

Chameria defends with head,

Settle down to work,

To take Chameria with friends.

And they have in the forefront,

Shefki Hysa rare man,

Blessed Chams for this guy,

Their hopes are in him.

Sazan Faslli

Albanian Poet

Rodney D. Dir and Lori Dir, Journalists of Magazine "Krahu i Shqiponjës"

2011-08-26T05:23:00.000-07:00

Albania like California

2011-08-25T05:56:00.000-07:00

It is the first time that I come in Albania. I have heard that Albania was one of the problematic countries of a turbulent Region like Balkans, where very often are generated interethnic clashes. However, to tell the truth, I was surprised. I found a beautiful and a quiet place like my California. I feel delighted from Albanian hospitality. In Albania I met hospitable people, hilarious and sincere who turns into pieces for their foreign guests. So, I found true friends who are ready to sacrifice for friendship. I have traveled too much all over the world. I have seen rare and strange countries, but they have not left me so many impressions like the country of Albanians. And, I don’t know how to explain this. Albania is one of the most beautiful places of Mediterranean. It has a nature with an appealing view, fields, mountains, rivers and seas pent in a small surface, in few kilometers; it has a worm spring clime, it has micro-climes as quiet bays where is the life of many sorts of creatures, Mediterranean and exotic flora and fauna, where work peaceful people, but I believe that I was not attracted by these, as much has entered in my heart the kindness of Albanian people.

So, the special thing of Albania stands in the Albanian human world, in his rare individuality and characteristics to love people who come from other worlds.

Due to friendship that Albanian offered me, sometimes it seems that somewhere in this place should be the gate of the Heaven.

Albanians love too much America. They love American democracy. They dream to have Albania one of the United States of America Republics.

What about Americans? American politics and diplomacy have really supported Albania and continue to support and to protect it, but I mean American citizens. Most of them do not recognize yet very well Albania. If they knew it better, they would consider it like my California. They would come for holidays in Albania and would fell in love with this place full of harmony and peace. They would help more in its economic empowerment and to be really part of Paradise over the Globe.

As a missionary of Diplomatic Mission Peace And Prosperity, I will try the impossible to have Albania entered in the hearts of American people, to be as one of its most beautiful countries, like my California.

Rodney D. Dir

Journalist

Rodney D. Dir, Journalist, Advisor of Diplomatic Mission Peace And Prosperity

2011-08-23T07:52:00.000-07:00

Paulin Rranzi, Journalist, Advisor of Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity

2011-08-15T04:55:00.001-07:00

Cham and Flemish People Peace Factor

2011-06-21T22:24:00.000-07:00

Ah, Shefki. Ok, how are you. How is your English actually?
I've read all links about you. I understand now who you are and what you mean to your people both Albanian and Cham. My grand-father played a somewhat similar role. If you would go on wikipedia and read the history of Belgium / Flanders, you will see that the people living around these natural entrances to Europe via the rivers Schelde and the river Rijn, were always very rich. At some points, we were in controll of ourselves, at some points we were at the edge of big empires (Spain, France, Austrian-Habsburg) who sometimes cared or not about us, and at some points we were buffer zones between other big nations (English Tribes, Germanic tribes and Latin tribes). Our top centuries were the middle ages from 700 till 1700, and from 1700 till 1975 the Flemish people just not liberated from first the Spanish, then a couple of decennies later, just not from the the French "Sun King" Louis XIV, his troops were stopped at what is now the Netherlands (who speak our language), we were still occupied. The liberation army of the Netherlands prevented the Spanish and French to allow goods to come in via the Scheld river and Antwerp, hoping to force them to abandon us - their occupied brothers. Times were terrible. Part of our elite was then bribed by the occupying french "Sun King" Louix XIV, who used his arms to fight off first the Liberté-Egalité-Fraternité armies, later on the Napoleon liberation armies of the people. We couldn't speak our Flemish language anymore. We were put in impoverishment. We were made to belief our language was "stupid" and would never allow "advanced learning". All universities were transformed to be given in French language. A francification started ... the underground movement has been fighting ever since an uphill battle. All Flemish have the stories at home of abuse. At the court many were falsely accused because the court was in french and the citizens' didn't understand because they spoke flemish and were denied education, only slavery/labor. Slowly, the Flemish regained control in the capital centers as the "Franskiljons" = flemish and Wallonians that collaborated with the french occupying forces and then betrayed the "solar king" and obtained a piece of the cake for themselves, i.e. Belgium". They managed to obtain the opening from the sea to the harbor from the Netherlands. The economy revived. The flemish slowly grew in strength from the crumbs that fell of the table. And thanks to the economy becoming more and more global, forces grew back. A language frontier was negotiated (unfair, but better than nothing). We had to accept a complete francification of Broekzele, what you now know as 'Bruxelles - Brussels". In 1700, 95% of the poeple spoke Flemish. 2011, 5% speak Flemish, the rest however don't speak french as the Walloons and Franskiljons want you to believe, but English or Arabic and French too. We have a lot in common with the Cham. The First and second World War were fought mainly on our shores with horrible casualties at the Flemish side who were used as "canon-meat". Some Flemish collaborated indeed with the Germans as we share some of our history and indeed our langauge is very similar with South Germans = Neder-Dietsch. We understand each other. Even "Hoch-Deutsch" is quite easy for us to understand. Of course there are many hero-stories as well where Flemish helped jews to escape and tipple over the nazi's. Example: the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were made from Belgian Uranium that was as an ore still in a boat in the Antwerp harbor an brought back to the USA secretly and heavily patrolled. The jews decided to regroup back to Antwerp, which as you know is the top capital for diamonds. Of course the Walloons and Franskiljons keep on insisting we are racists and extremists because of the few that made the mistake to join the nazis. 2 wrongs of course don't make 1 right. The Walloons are completely misguided by the franskiljons around the king who they push forward like a puppet to amuse the people and keep them dreaming of "knights, princes, princesses" that will come and ask them to marry them one day and then heaven will reveal itself to them... at a cost of 2.800.000 €/year of royal dotation. Not bad hey, Shefky? All this resulting in a stalemate: we're now for over 280 days without a government because the Wallonians and Franskiljons don't want to implement some changes in the laws as they have been condemned to by the court. The franskiljons claim this is food for "negotiations", the flemish claim: no, you're condemned, you have to just implement what're you're condemned for, you don't need to hope/ask for anything in exchange. First you implement our language rights, then we can negotiate. The condamnation is for the following: the Wallonians and franskiljons have settled in the flemish part near brussels by the thousands and now they "democratically" decide that all documents etc. must be in french language AND they are allowed to vote from flanders into Brussels to vote for their Franskiljon representatives. it would be as if 100.000 Germans decide some region in Macedionia is a nice holiday place or to grow old. They buy-up all the land around a little village and then democratically elect a german major and democratically decide the official language will be germand and with majoraty of the votes decide to have all the local papers in german and because they pay the taxes, you have to pay for the translations ... of course! Stay tuned on how this will unfold. Fortunately we have Europe, the Europe of the Peoples = Comittee of the regions. Maybe both our peoples can help each other. We're not along: the bask, the Scottish, the Acquitaines, the Alzaciens, etc. are with us. Now, I'm based in Brussels, next to all these Eu Parliament, Comission, Comittee of the Regions. I'm bringing my Albanian team there. I'd like to introduce them to you. But as they have been deracinated, they are weak. It will take another generation to surmount. I need your help to reinforce my Albanian team both here in Brussels as in Albania. This Kyoto Protocol is a very powerfull weapon in the hands of the people, Shefky: it brings back into the hands of the people, the power to print money. As J.P. Morgan put it : "All I care for is to get controll over the printing presses of the money of a country and the pump to insert or suck-up money of a people, and I don't care who is in power in that country." We need a gender balanced team where both intelligent young men and woman reinforce each other and de-mine the roads for each other. Where the young men cannot access, the young woman will find a way to by-pass. And visa versa. Therefore, put me in contact with your assistant, this will facilitate and speed-up the collaboration.
Sincerely yours,

Sven AERTS
Low Carbon Economy Leadership Developer,
Advisor of Diplomatic Mission Peace And Prosperity
Brussels

Sven Aerts, advisor of Diplomatic Mission Peace And Prosperity, in Brussels

2011-06-21T22:14:00.000-07:00

Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity

2011-05-10T08:51:00.000-07:00

Lobbying, Lobbying and only Lobbying for Peace! - This is the message of the mission...
"Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity" is an independent organization established by a group of diplomats, journalists, writers, artists and prominent Albanian and foreign intellectuals.
Located in Tirana, it operates in Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and in many major countries around the world.
This mission also operates in countries where Albanian communities are concentrated, as in Greece, Germany, France, Italy, Turkey, Switzerland, etc.., and especially in the U.S. as a friendly and powerful country that, for more than a century has taken under protection with its policies and diplomacy the small Albania.
Peace and Progress! - This is the mission’s motto.
The members of this mission, under the example of saint Mother Teresa, the great Albanian woman, who sacrificed her life in service to humanity, are engaged in the role of a group of ambassadors of peace, willing to represent the Democratic Albania before international opinion as a country with sustainable development, which has peace in its citizens’ genes and which fights for a better world, Balkans and Europe where only God's Paradise dominates. .
It is known that peace is rooted in true love, in love toward God and toward each other ... For this reason the mission is addressed to each citizen of the world by calling: Lobbying, Lobbying and only Lobbying for Peace!...
This is precisely the axis of the message that "Diplomatic Mission" transmits to the public opinion, both inside and outside the country.
Mission members are prominent leaders from many different countries, from all walks of life and from all faiths, who have dedicated themselves to the question of peace in Albania and in the World.
Peace requires us to work to overcome the boundaries of race, religion, nationality and culture, which have historically divided humanity.
So, Peace and Development, Peace and civilization! - Not only in Albania, but everywhere in the Balkans and all over the world.
The mission aims to bring in its ranks prominent personalities of World Politics, Culture, Art, Literature, etc.., especially Diplomacy personalities, with the objective to create a powerful lobby in support of Albania, of our national issue, of pan-Albanian unification and integration and of supporting the peace.
Administration of human values, coordination, consultation, negotiation, mediation and lobbying for Peace and Progress, this is the goal and the essence of this mission’s activity.
"Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity" through its activity aims to achieve these objectives:
- Re-dimensioning the image of Albania trampled by former Albanian communist dictatorship.
- The mission will play the role of an excellent Ambassador in the eyes of international opinion and foreign diplomacy to exalt Albanian cultural values and Albanian national question.
- It will select, publish and disseminate in Albania, as a sign of gratitude, world personalities’ works in the fields of albanology, diplomacy, culture, politics, etc.., which have contributed and are still contributing to the recognition of Albanian values treasures by world opinion.
- Selection, translation into foreign languages, publication and dissemination of great Albanian works and putting them in service to caring foreigners and our compatriots in the Diaspora, with the aim of expanding the boundaries of knowledge about Albanian people and Albania.
- Realization of television documentaries on life and work of Albanian and foreign personalities who have contributed to the cause.
- Encouragement to pursue a higher education in the country and in the world as well as specialization of young talents and intellectuals in the field of diplomacy and international relations, with the aim of creating new generations that will lobby for continuous improvement of Albanian image.
- Provide technical assistance to new talents and intellectuals so as to be trained as diplomats and as members of the lobby of the future, to neatly assimilate the talent of lobbying through cooperation with professional lobbyists of the Western world and especially with U.S. specialists.
- Employment of talented boys and girls of our community in the Albanian public administration, in Western countries’ administrations and multinational companies, which determine the fate of world politics and economy, especially in foreign diplomatic representations and Albanian diplomatic representation in foreign countries as diplomats and ambassadors of culture.
- Creation of more powerful lobbies with world personalities in support of Albanian democratic developments so that Albania can have a nationwide integrity like all the advanced civilizations.
Lobbying, Lobbying and only Lobbying! ...

Dr. Haim Reitan, Diplomat,
Honorary President
of the Diplomatic Mission
Peace and Prosperity

Dr. Haim Reitan, Honorary President of the Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity

2011-05-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

Idriz Balani, Journalist

2011-04-05T11:27:00.001-07:00

Kadri Muça, Journalist

2011-04-02T05:30:00.000-07:00

Vullnet Dedja, Journalist

2011-03-31T03:14:00.000-07:00

Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity

2011-03-04T06:48:00.000-08:00

Diplomatic Mission
(Peace and Prosperity)

Lobbying, Lobbying and only Lobbying for Peace! - This is the message of the mission...
"Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity" is an independent organization established by a group of diplomats, journalists, writers, artists and prominent Albanian and foreign intellectuals.
Located in Tirana, it operates in Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and in many major countries around the world.
This mission also operates in countries where Albanian communities are concentrated, as in Greece, Germany, France, Italy, Turkey, Switzerland, etc.., and especially in the U.S. as a friendly and powerful country that, for more than a century has taken under protection with its policies and diplomacy the small Albania.
Peace and Progress! - This is the mission’s motto.
The members of this mission, under the example of saint Mother Teresa, the great Albanian woman, who sacrificed her life in service to humanity, are engaged in the role of a group of ambassadors of peace, willing to represent the Democratic Albania before international opinion as a country with sustainable development, which has peace in its citizens’ genes and which fights for a better world, Balkans and Europe where only God's Paradise dominates. .
It is known that peace is rooted in true love, in love toward God and toward each other ... For this reason the mission is addressed to each citizen of the world by calling: Lobbying, Lobbying and only Lobbying for Peace!...
This is precisely the axis of the message that "Diplomatic Mission" transmits to the public opinion, both inside and outside the country.
Mission members are prominent leaders from many different countries, from all walks of life and from all faiths, who have dedicated themselves to the question of peace in Albania and in the World.
Peace requires us to work to overcome the boundaries of race, religion, nationality and culture, which have historically divided humanity.
So, Peace and Development, Peace and civilization! - Not only in Albania, but everywhere in the Balkans and all over the world.
The mission aims to bring in its ranks prominent personalities of World Politics, Culture, Art, Literature, etc.., especially Diplomacy personalities, with the objective to create a powerful lobby in support of Albania, of our national issue, of pan-Albanian unification and integration and of supporting the peace.
Administration of human values, coordination, consultation, negotiation, mediation and lobbying for Peace and Progress, this is the goal and the essence of this mission’s activity.
"Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity" through its activity aims to achieve these objectives:
- Re-dimensioning the image of Albania trampled by former Albanian communist dictatorship.
- The mission will play the role of an excellent Ambassador in the eyes of international opinion and foreign diplomacy to exalt Albanian cultural values and Albanian national question.
- It will select, publish and disseminate in Albania, as a sign of gratitude, world personalities’ works in the fields of albanology, diplomacy, culture, politics, etc.., which have contributed and are still contributing to the recognition of Albanian values treasures by world opinion.
- Selection, translation into foreign languages, publication and dissemination of great Albanian works and putting them in service to caring foreigners and our compatriots in the Diaspora, with the aim of expanding the boundaries of knowledge about Albanian people and Albania.
- Realization of television documentaries on life and work of Albanian and foreign personalities who have contributed to the cause.
- Encouragement to pursue a higher education in the country and in the world as well as specialization of young talents and intellectuals in the field of diplomacy and international relations, with the aim of creating new generations that will lobby for continuous improvement of Albanian image.
- Provide technical assistance to new talents and intellectuals so as to be trained as diplomats and as members of the lobby of the future, to neatly assimilate the talent of lobbying through cooperation with professional lobbyists of the Western world and especially with U.S. specialists.
- Employment of talented boys and girls of our community in the Albanian public administration, in Western countries’ administrations and multinational companies, which determine the fate of world politics and economy, especially in foreign diplomatic representations and Albanian diplomatic representation in foreign countries as diplomats and ambassadors of culture.
- Creation of more powerful lobbies with world personalities in support of Albanian democratic developments so that Albania can have a nationwide integrity like all the advanced civilizations.
Lobbying, Lobbying and only Lobbying! ...

Dr. Haim Reitan, Diplomat,
Honorary President
of the Diplomatic Mission
Peace and Prosperity

2010-05-06T07:35:00.000-07:00

By Shefki Hysa

Chameria is our last will,
neither ground melts the last will
(Interview with Mr. Tahir Muhedini,
president of the Party for Justice and Integration)

- Where does Tahir Muhedini come from and what’s his flow in the river of life?
- I am Tahir Muhedini, born and raised in the “Ali Demi” neighborhood, in Tirana, with Cham origin. I graduated in law, I am a businessman, until the moment I accepted to be elected the president of the Party for Justice and Integration (Albanian: PDI). Now I am responsible for the direction of PDI with the single desire to protect the interests of the Cham population, to enable the return to our motherland, from which we had been violently deported. My family is originally from Paramithia, Chameria, I hope you know it. It is the area that first encountered the atrocity of the Greek chauvinists. On June 27, 1944, the zervist bands massacred about 600 men, women and children in Paramithia and from there their violence spread throughout Chameria, until all the Muslim Chams were deported from their homes and motherland. It is known that June 27 represents the day of the Greek genocide against the unprotected and innocent Cham population.

- What does the Cham issue represent for Mr. Muhedini?
- Now that you know that I am originally from Paramithia, the first Cham city that was covered in blood, was burned and destroyed by the Greek chauvinists, I believe you understand what the Cham ideal represents for a successor to that martyr country. Our ancestors have fallen in the name of freedom, of their convictions and beliefs, have been cruelly killed, though they were innocent. So, we have been unjustly massacred and deported from our land, we should have been back home a long time ago, if the Greek policy hadn’t insisted that it does not recognize the Cham problem, that this problem belongs to the historical past and other excuses like these, when it is trying hard to succeed in getting their soldiers, who came as invaders in Albania during the war and died in this land, settled in the martyrs’ cemetery. According to my opinion, we should say “yes” to the establishment of the Greek fallen soldiers’ cemeteries in Albania, but the Greek state should also remember that there is still an open problem with the Albanian state, the Cham problem and together they should do the impossible, so that our Cham ancestors may have their cemeteries in Chameria, Greece, and we will have the right to go and visit those graves, until we regain citizenship, the property rights and all human rights like all the Greek citizens. I say these because I judge that it is better not to look at the past with a darkening rationality, but to look into the future in a European way, because only this way we can make the others understand that the Chams must necessarily be given the possibility to return to their homes and territories and regain Greek citizenship, which has never been denied by them. I, personally, do not know if the tradition of last will is an element of Greek culture, just as it is in the Albanian culture, and therefore we need a way to make them know this fact. Chameria (memories, homes, land, citizenship) is the last will of our ancestors and neither the ground melts the last will...

- As you head the Party for Justice and Integration (Albanian: PDI), a relatively new party in Albanian politics, can you tell us what you intend to achieve through its program?
- The Party for Justice and Integration (Albanian: PDI) in the recent local elections, being introduced only in areas where it was known that it had its electorate and not all over Albania, managed to win a modest percentage of the Republic-level elections, but it was the first and most voted in the district of Delvina, the fourth force in the district of Vlora, the second political force in the district of Patos, the second political force in the Commune of Sukthi and some other communes. In this way, the Chams that have been neglected by all powers, are already represented by their sons, they are able to say their word. This is what the Party for Justice and Integration aims, that the Peaceable Cham Community, through a political party can be directly represented in the local political power of the Republic of Albania, as it was represented and will be later represented even by deputies in the Parliament of Albania. Now this community knows that there is an institutional “door” where they can knock, to seek or give help, taking an active role in the political life of the city, commune or municipality they belong to. I want to emphasize through this interview that this democratic and well disposed community has joined, has proposed and elected its representatives, in a democratic and statutory way, in the high political forums of the Party for Justice and Integration (Albanian: PDI) and being candidates of PDI in these local elections they were well represented in the power of local parliaments of Albania and this will undoubtedly serve as experience for the representation of this community in the General Parliament of the Republic of Albania. While in the international plan, I would like to emphasize that for the first time in history a delegation of an Albanian political party like the party for Justice and Integration, managed to express the 62-year concern of the Cham population in the European Parliament and for the first time representatives of this parliament directly heard the voice and the claims of the Cham population through a political party, which has in its main battles the democratic solution of this historical impasse, of Chameria problem.

- As far as we know, recently you have had several successful meetings in Strasbourg and Brussels over the Cham issue. Your comment about these achievements?
- Yes. Last October, a delegation consisting of representatives of the Cham Community made a visit to the European Parliament. The delegation also met with Mrs. Doris Pack, Chairwoman of the European Parliament’s Delegation for South East Europe. There was a full understanding at the meeting and in the end Mrs. Pack was given the dossier prepared over the Cham issue, comprised of international experts’ political analysis on the history and the ways of solving this problem left in silence. On October 25, Mrs. Doris Pack in the head- to-head meeting held personally with me, as Chairman of PDI, among other things promised me she would influence to make possible the return home of the Cham population and of course the honor of their ancestors’ graves. Mrs. Pack also promised me the Cham issue would be discussed in the 13th round of talks on Stabilization and Association Agreement between Albania and EU, as it has become reality and you are informed about this. She also promised she would discuss about this issue with the Greek euro deputies of the European Parliament.

- According to you which are the ways that would bring to a fair and quick solution of the Cham issue?
- Its internationalization, of course. When we were in Strasbourg and Brussels, euro deputies Marco Pannella, historical leader of the Italian Radical Party, Marco Cappato, head of the Italian Radical Party, along with other members of the Liberal Democrat Group of the European Parliament, promised us they would consider the possibility of proposing a Parliamentary Resolution, in which they would claim with emergency terms the opening of dialogue between Athens and Tirana with the participation of representatives of the Cham population and the presence of international community. While Graham Watson, Chairman of the Liberal Democrat Group of the European Parliament (Great Britain) together with Baroness Sara Ludford, member of the Liberal Democrat Group and member of the House of Lords in England, after having been informed about the case of disrespect of human rights standards for the Cham population, have promised us they would pass our dossier to the Commission on Human Rights and to the Commission on Foreign Policy of the European Parliament. To close this argument I want to say that all these successful activities constitute only the first important step toward the difficult road to realize the last will of the Cham community ancestors.

- What would you suggest politics, Albanian state and the higher institutions in the country, including President Moisiu to do to positively influence the solution of this problem?
- The Party for Justice and Integration would like to publicly ask the Albanian State institutions to verify the developments in the implementation of the Treaty of Friendship between the two countries and of course regarding the properties of all Albanian citizens and particularly of the Chams in Greece. I would like to remind the Albanian opinion, the Greek opinion and the international one that the Greek minority in Albania, after successive benefits of many properties in Albania, with the legalization policy of the actual Government, is again benefiting with no difference from that part of other Albanian citizens that illegally occupy territories. The party for Justice and Integration (Albanian: PDI) wants also to remember the Albanian state institutions that without solving these fundamental issues that concern the Cham community, no bilateral reciprocal relationship exists, but there is only a relationship based on interdependence between the one that commands and the one that only obeys.

Translated by Lorena Uliu

2010-03-20T03:28:00.000-07:00

Namik Mane

THE PIGEONS’ EGGS

Story

(Dedicated to my friend Shefki Hysa)

I’m telling you what happened to me, without fancies, without inventions, I’m telling you about my unstable will-power, about that opinion vagueness that used to move inside my brain, about that hesitation to arrange myself…
I had been staying in Italy as a refugee for two years but I still wasn’t comfortable: At first I stayed in Lecce, then in Frossinone near Roma, but within six months I found myself in Campofelice, Palermo. Subsequently I went to Torino, Milano and lastly I found myself in Ravenna. This coastal city reminded me of my birth town, Durres, that’s why I said to myself: I think I found my place…
There was nothing left in my mind of the Italian language. Maybe those numerous movements, those southern and northern dialects made me jumble the words and I lost my confidence in speaking or maybe that change of bosses, those different people and different works had quaked my speaking with confidence.
My boss was a well-kept man. When I went to Ravenna, he had just celebrated his 75-birthday. His wife seemed to be of the same age. They lived among the fields in Lido Adriano, 5-6 kilometers far from Ravenna, in a castle-like house with small windows. The boss used to wake up early in the morning. I used to sleep in a hut some meters far from the house, but it soon was converted into a comfortable room for me. Strangely I made friends with my boss. I had different works to do: sometimes I had to cultivate the crops near the house, sometimes I had to drive the small tractor and get into the rows of vines, pruning, spraying poison, sometimes I had to reap the grass with a reaper, to make walls, plaster works, to paint with lime, to change the lamp-shades, to repair the faucets, the sinks. As if I was a master of everything. Within a few months I began to speak fluently with them. Every Sunday Xhorxho’s (the boss’s name) two daughters used to come with their husbands and children. They appreciated my work and expressed surprise over my abilities. The daughters had entrusted their parents to me.
Sometimes I woke up at night. It seemed to me that horsemen with breastplates and lances were going to appear in those fields, in those castle-like houses far away from each other and they were going to suddenly attack, that’s why I had to toughen myself, to be ready to protect them. I’m saying all this, readers, because I want to instill in you the conviction that I was the only one they trusted.
But Xhorxho hadn’t entrusted everything to me. He had kept his hobby for himself: He was a passionate collector of pigeons. In his garden, tens of pig-nosed, hairy-footed and crested pigeons danced from morning till night. Xhorxho opened his arms and the pigeons covered him entirely. I looked at him with envying eyes, without speaking and getting lost in a host of memories. I’m not adding anything. I have been one of the most famous growers and allurers of my city, but I had never talked to Xhorxho about this because it seemed as if I was going to take a piece of his pleasure.
One day, while I was harvesting the full grown grass of the garden, I don’t know how I felt, but I began to coo so warmly and sweetly that the pigeons began to move from Xhorxho’s shoulders. At times they moved toward me, at times they turned back again to him. I went and went on cooing and those damned pigeons and hen left Xhorxho’s shoulders and they all came to me. What could I do?... I switched on the reaper once again and I began working…
Next morning Xhorxho’s greeting was given to me even more sweetly. After that moment we intensified more our friendship. During free hours we used to speak broadly about the pig-nosed, the hairy-footed and the crested pigeons. I used to tell him about Tim’s, Skender’s and Bimi’s jobs. I used to tell him how I had once stitched up the cut breast of a pigeon, I used to tell him about my passion, pigeons lure, I used to talk to him about my childhood, how I did keep the pigeons in my breast and when I used to see a house having a bunch of pigeons in it, I would let the alluring pigeons go.
One day, while I was talking, Xhorxho turned to me:
- Can you lure the pigeons of Aldo and Xhino?
- Yes, - said I and began to explain him that it was necessary to take great care of the pigeons that were lured in, it was necessary to have a great ability to keep them because they could go.
Xhorxho said to me:
- Do your part, the rest of it belongs to me.
One day I took a couple of pig-nosed pigeons and let them go into their flocks. You have to know: luring pigeons is not stealing, as stealing books isn’t called stealing… It’s a sport with particular pleasure…
We went and went on with this sport… In the suburbs of Ravena the cages began to get emptied. The worried owners began to cut the pigeons’ wings…
One day, Xhorxho asked me to bring him a bunch of pigeons from Albania and I fulfilled his desire, without delay. At first we cut their wings so that the couple could get used to the place, we made them even a special food treatment. In the first months the pigeons cooed and flied cheerfully around us, leaving and coming back together with the bunch, but suddenly one day they didn’t come back.
I was worried. They were my pigeons, that’s why I began the search… I thought the other pigeon growers were giving us back the change, Xhorxho and I owed them this. I searched and searched until I ran out of patience, but there was no sign of them…
Finally, I went to Durres… I found them in Bimi’s cages… They sat on my shoulder, began to coo as if they wanted to say something to me. I understood their language, but I didn’t answer. I kept a rancorous attitude. They were the couple Xhorxho and I had fed. They seemed like people who hadn’t respected us, like ungrateful people. How could I justify myself to Xhorxho?!...
Amid trouble, I had an interesting idea; I took a small basket, I filled it with cotton, I went to Bimi’s cages, I clapped eyes on a beautiful couple, I took two eggs and putted them carefully in the basket. Without delay, I took the plane to Rimini and within a few hours I was in Lido Adriano.
I didn’t talk too much to Xhorxho. We didn’t say anything about the missing pigeons. I showed him the basket with eggs. That was enough, he understood me.
He smiled and spoke:
- Now it’s ok. They won’t go away anymore...
We putted the eggs in the cage of another couple. After eigteen days a couple of birds broke out of the eggs, with some shiny feathers as if they were two peacock’s birds. Xhorxho was enormously pleased and from time to time he used to talk alluringly, he felt like he had triumphed...
Months passed. One day we found their cage empty. Xhorxho and I looked at each other. I didn’t know what to say and unconsciously I did some uncontrolled actions. I went to my barrack and took the photographic equipment I still have. I began to photograph the pigeons’ cages, the house, the garden, the tractor, the reaper, the fence and everything else. I tried not to forget anything. I was seized by the desire to collect my memories, without forgetting anything and incited by this impression I said to Xhorxho that I would fly to Albania with the first plane.
As soon as I was in Durres, I went to meet Bimi, the famous pigeon grower. I wanted to verify the fact of the disappearence of the couple born and raised in Italy...
Two pigeons with peacock’s feathers began to dance on me, to coo and coo and strike me with their beak. It was the same couple, the pigeons I had lost in Italy... Two pigeons born from the eggs warmed in Lido Adriano, Ravena, fed and raised there...
The pigeons gambolled and gambolled with me as if they were two small human beings, as if they wanted to apologize for suddenly abandoning me in the foreign land... They cooed and cooed as if they wanted to justify themselves so that I could forgive them for the sake of Durres, the birthplace of their ancestors...
Immeditely I understood them and smiled. I took the message. As from two carrier pigeons...
I phoned Xhorxho. I invited him to come in Albania. I convinced him to come. We were friends from a long time and he had to know my country...
And Xhorxho came... And we silently understood each other for that sudden parting...
Today I have a small business in Durres... We maintain our friendship, we are near each other in joys and sorrows... Everyone in his own country...

Shpëtim Çilotaj: Chameria - my ideal

2010-01-06T03:27:00.000-08:00

2009-12-27T07:46:00.001-08:00

A friend of sacrifices – Naim Nimani

Naim Mehmet Nimani (Gramoz Mehmet Nimani) was born on 19th August, 1971, in the village of Truen (Puka) in a patriotic family. He passed his childhood and got educated there. After he finished the high school, like many other Albanian boys who remained jobless after the collapse of the communist system, in 1991, he was obliged to emigrate in Greece, England or somewhere else to ensure better living. Meantime his family settled in the city of Durrës. After working some years as an economic emigrant, Naim came back and started different businesses in Durrës. Now he is totally committed to his career as businessman. He is married and he dedicates to his family better part of his free time. He has three children, two girls and a boy. His first daughter, Arminda, is ten years old, the second, Sara, eight and the son, Emirgen, is six years old. They are children, who listen to their father and learn how to follow his steps.

Naim is sports-loving; in late afternoon he plays football, he also helps amateur boxers come along in this difficult sport, to become in this way real professionals in the future. One of his biggest dreams, despite the long time he spent in business, is the desire to explore and know the world through exploring journeys.

Naim Mehmet Nimani (Gramoz Mehmet Nimani) is, among other things, a good patriot who makes serious attempts to help the Albanian national issues, especially the Cham issue. I knew him casually in 1995 and since then he fell in love with the Cham issue and has followed me with passion in many of my activities, in all the districts of Albania, where the Chams live. He has travelled with me night and day, putting his cars and economic opportunities at the Cham issue’s disposal. He never got tired of travelling ceaselessly, even twenty four hours at the wheel, being my driver (free), when we had to work to exalt the Cham ideal. In some cases he has followed me in the whole of Albania, even when he was sick in bed with flu and cold. He has never hesitated. Instead, he has expressed himself laughingly:

I have one boss who doesn’t spare his life for Chameria. For this boss I can not only get up sick from bed but also dead from the tomb. I’ll rise like Konstandin of the Balad and follow him with commitment to realize his ideal, Chameria.

This is more or less the portrait of Naim Mehmet Nimani (Gramoz Mehmet Nimani), my friend and Chams’ friend, a man who has sacrifices every time I needed his help…

Isn’t he worthy of my sacrifices, to get up even at 12:00 PM if he needs me and my Cham friends?!... If you don’t believe me, ask his colleague, businessman Shpëtim Çilotaj (Chams’ friend too), and he will tell you the same features of Naim Nimani as a man who sacrifices a lot in the name of friendship.

Shefki Hysa

2009-12-27T07:43:00.000-08:00

Not to get old…

- Shpëtim Agur Çilotaj is a rare boy, a good friend for everyone who knows him closely or has worked with him, - this is what my Cham friends from Fier told me a year ago.

These words were confirmed even by Gramoz Nimani (Naim), a common friend from Durrës, whom I trust because he has followed me for the Cham ideal even in the most difficult days, when he was ill and almost dying from languor.

And so instinctually I began watching Shpëtim, before deciding to open the friendship doors to him. And now he is a pleasant surprise for me, as a man of letters, who sees life from an artistic point of view and of course, even for other friends with a long experience in recognizing people, the same as me. And I am emphasizing not unintentionally, I don’t easily make mistakes regarding my tastes. At least, until today, I have never disappointed the readers. I think I’ll not disappoint them even with the personage I chose to present with such sympathy. I am saying it again: Shpëtim Çilotaj is really a charming boy, physically and especially in his interior. Believe me because I’m not insisting in vain, that’s why you should be curious to follow me in every detail, and you will be convinced that you have in front of you a main personage, really dignified for the Albanian society. A 35 year old man that blooms in his peak age, a friend full of virtues and a successful businessman - this is the right description of the man that advances impressively through this writing rows and in our imagination, honored reader…

Shpëtim Çilotaj was born in June 24, 1974 in the city of oilmen, in Patos (Fier), where he passed his childhood and got educated. So he finished the elementary and high school in his birthplace and graduated in Business Administration, Management in the University of Elbasan. And not in vain he chose this graduate school. It is understood, he was incited by the family gene. His grandfather, Laze Bilaj was a trader and his nephew, Shpëtim, this successful businessman, inherited it. His father, Agur, today is a well-set pensioner although he is 67 years old. Unlike his grandfather Laze, he worked as an oilman obliged by the conditions the former communist dictatorship had assigned, like all the townsmen of Patos, this oil-bearing zone. Shpëtim’s mother, Zonja, worked in construction.

Shpëtim is the smallest of three brothers. They have a sister, who is the brothers’ and parents pet as the last-born child of this typical Albanian family, which has been established in Patos about three hundred years ago. Grandfather Laze Bilaj took care of Shpëtim as the smallest of the boys, telling him his life experiences and teaching him how to be a devoted man for himself, his family and society. So he taught him how to imbibe the best characteristics and values of their clan, generation after generation and how to take values from the Cham coevals’ values.

Who doesn’t know Laze Bilaj in Patos and Fier, especially the Cham families that were established there in 1945, after being violently deported from their homeland, Chameria, by the Greek chauvinistic bands. As it is known, today the Chams, due to their rare genetic abilities, comprise a large part of Patos and Fier population. They came traumatized by the genocide the Greeks practiced upon their country and community. But they rapidly adapted themselves, handled trade and artisanal works, survived, were reproduced, and left many descendants to ensure the continuity of their own gene. So the Chams survived their number increased in Patos as well as in many areas of Albania, where they had set up their dwellings, expanding and strengthening the friendly relations with natives…

Shpëtim grew up and got educated as a Cham child among the numerous Cham families that had already enhanced their friendship with his grandfather Laze Bilaj, their host. The whole zone honors Laze for his hospitability toward the Chams. He supported and helped the Chams to build their homes and trade, as Chams’ most preferred tool to secure their living. And so they were so attached and fraternized that today Chams and natives don’t differ. Through the years the family traditions were mixed together and today it’s difficult to distinguish Shpëtim Çilotaj from a Cham guy and conversely.

In March 2002 Shpëtim Çilotaj created “Çilotaj” LLC company centered in Fier and with branches in some districts, which, due to Shpëtim’s managerial capacities grew, expanded and created capitals as one of the most durable businesses in Albania. Later, based on this company, was created “Çilotaj Group” ltd, centered in Fier and with branches in Vlora, Durrës, Tirana etc...Today, this successful company has production and construction lines and many other objectives. Shpëtim Çilotaj says their company is connected with the Turkish company “Kurum”, owner of former metallurgical combine in Elbasan and trades its iron, having exclusivity for Tirana and Southern Albania. “Çilotaj Group” ltd cooperates even with the Lebanon company “FK Cement” and they have exclusive rights to sell the cement of Fusha Kruja factory in the districts of Fier and Vlora. This company has set up the wiring line in Fier for iron rifling and retraction and the iron hollow production line for concrete platforms and building basements. In Tirana, this company deals with palace construction, while in Golem Beach it builds touristic objects. So they work hard with the aim to expand even more the building possibilities of the company which today has over 100 employees…

This company includes even the physical preservation society “Çilotaj Security” with administrator Gramoz Nimani or Naim Nimani, as all his friends know him.

- Now we have taken the presidency of Albanian Boxing Federation, - says proudly Shpëtim. – Don’ think we are inexperienced in this field. We have given evidence that we know how to manage sport clubs, because we have had before the direction of “Teuta Box” of Durrës and we were successful. That’s why we decided to see beyond it. But you have to know that this coincides with my biggest hobby, which is sport…

Shpëtim speaks with passion for his free time when he totally dedicates himself to sports games, soccer, volleyball and basketball, not only to keep his body in shape as an athlete, but also for pleasure, relaxation and to regain forces for tomorrow when he should be back at his construction works. Shpëtim says he makes a vivacious and exciting life. He likes reading, watching movies, he likes music, and he is so passionate about fast cars that he doesn’t leave the wheel easily. He would like racing, if he was given the possibility. He likes travelling in tourist places, not only for business purposes, when he has to travel and go to different places to meet foreign partners for the expansion of investments in Albania.

- Shpëtim Çilotaj, - tells me Naim Nimani, our common friend, - isn’t simply a systematic state taxpayer, but, with that noble spirit, he is also a philanthropist; he helps anyone who needs help from him, particularly vulnerable social categories. He cooperates with the Red Cross and provides financially many cultural activities etc. So, he works hard in many directions to keep up the dignified personality he has... However, he knows well that we, as his friends, have him under strict surveillance to prevent his spirit getting old prematurely as many others.

This guy is also committed to the Cham ideal, just like a worthy successor of Chameria, - say my Cham friends and I feel even more confident while portraying the features of this character so loved by the social opinion around him. For the sake of truth, I had noticed even before Shpëtim’s readiness to support even with his passionate words the Cham ideal, but when my friends say he is a good friend of Chameria, I raise my hands up and think I haven’t make a mistake portraying him with such certainty.

This is Shpëtim Agur Çilotaj, the guy whose spirit never gets old. I don’t know what else to say… If my friends have lied to me, if my eyes and my experience lied to me, I’m sorry: if they lied to me I lied to you, honored reader…

Elim Xanxari

2009-12-24T01:19:00.000-08:00

AN OUTCAST

From tree to tree the eagle flies,
In quest of warmth, to stay by.
The fire flickers a distance away,
But it is nothing when the bird comes array.
Swooping high, it holds its breath;
Thinking twice, when it just once had to think.
Not in proximity to life;
It wonders to see a better day ahead.
The bird breaks its wings;
This was the only hope to keep it within the ring.
Sensing joys and sorrows are a part of existence,
It continues now by search through walk in the smooth ocean.

Composed by
Amna Tariq Shah

(PAKISTAN)

Shefki Hysa image

2009-07-18T06:35:00.000-07:00

Shefki Hysa image

2009-07-18T06:25:00.000-07:00

2009-04-07T01:24:00.000-07:00

Together in a front for the Cham ideal

(Impressions from Servet Mehmeti,
former director
of the Patriotic Political Association “Chameria”)

The rivers flow in eternity from faraway fountains, fruit of God. The rivers’ bottoms are their lands and nobody can take them out, as it is the territory of the Cham Albanians. It’s their land, given from God. It’s sufficient to read the poem “Cham ballad” of the dissident Cham writer Bilal Xhaferri and everything is clearly understood. He writes:

The rainbow, like a tearful greeting of goodbye,
Disappeared beyond the distances,
Over the flame crests,
in the rain…
Beyond the distances disappeared in flames Chameria
And all our streets lead to north.
Wails the Mediterranean wind over the ancient epyriot lands,
over the dear ancestral lands.
In the abandoned pastures are grazing the thunderclaps.
The unpicked olive-groves thunder like the waves along the hillocks.
And everywhere the Cham land,
covered by the clouds,
groans tearful and bloody,
left lonesome,
without godhead.
We are shown the way by the bullets that whistle in darkness.
We are lightened the way by the flames that have swallowed up all earth.
Behind our backs the windstorm hits the ramshackle house doors.
And the streets reach and reach the north.
We, a deported population, walk along the rain…
Goodbye, Chameria!

But why did the Cham population suffer such barbaric actions, why was it massacred violently, why did this calamity strike these people of mother Chameria?! They loved Albania, their nation. But the violence and the barbarism of the bad and evil people, such as the Greek chauvinists, unstrapped them from its trunk. Besides Bilal’s poetic spirit and the injustice toward the Cham population, it was even the blind judgment of the people, who didn’t appreciate the freedom and the right. Bilal Xhaferri, like the Chams, has been victimized by the communist dictatorship. The dictatorial system persecuted him, even though he went away, went far away to save his dignity, the dignity that was the life itself for him.

Bilal Xhaferri went on developing his literary and publicistic activity in America. His creations had a big echo at Diaspora’s press. In particular echoed “Eagle’s wing” magazine created and published by him. But even in America, the dark shadows of communism didn’t left Bilal in peace, opposing him by all means, and so he was prey to their violence. Regardless of this situation, Bilal went ahead with his activity at service of the country, with a more special zeal. Unwittingly, he had against him two countries: the maternal Albania, which was leaded then by a communist clique and the neighboring Greece that had ousted his brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers from their own lands. So, Bilal’s work was extinguished at the very peak of his attempts. It was extinguished a dignified successor of Hoxhë Tahsini, Abedin Pashë Dino, Muharrem Rushiti etc., men who have illuminated the history of Albania.

Even Bilal illuminates with his light the issue of the Cham pain. We hereby should thank the former Chairman of the Parliament of Albania, Mr. Pjetër Arbnori, the writer Shefki Hysa, director of the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri” and editor of “Eagle’s wing” magazine, the relatives and the well-wishers that enabled the return of Bilal Xhaferri’s bones in Albania.
A group of intellectuals, headed by the writer and editor Shefki Hysa, as a sign of consideration for Bilal Xhaferri’s works and creations, which shed some light on the reality of the Albanian pain, created the Publishing House “Bilal Xhaferri”, as a necessity to widely inform the public for the work of a big writer, a big patriot at service of the Cham issue. The Publishing House “Bilal Xhaferri” was opened and quickly strengthened, and in 1993 was created even the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri” and began being published “Eagle’s wing” magazine, which was published before by Bilal himself in America. These institutions were a new support, a new wing of the Patriotic Political Association “Chameria”. I have so evaluated these endeavors as director of “Chameria” Association during 2003-2006.

“Eagle’s wing” (Krahu i shqiponjës) magazine has given a special help to introduce and propound the Cham issue before people’s opinion. It is known for its social, cultural, historical values and especially for the patriotic opinion that predominates in its writings. During 2004 “Chameria” Association intensified the collaboration with “Eagle’s wing” magazine for treating and approving in parliament a resolution for the solution of the Cham problem. So the press, the televisions and the pan-Albanian opinion would be aware of this problem. Unfortunately the resolution wasn’t approved owing to the Greek pressure. The most typical example was the former Prime Minister, Fatos Nano, who inhibited its approval.

In this difficult period, excepting the unusual activity of “Chameria” Association’s structures, was necessary even the contribution of the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri” and that of “Eagle’s wing” magazine, especially the contribution of its director, the writer Shefki Hysa, coordinator of all the contacts, the meetings and the conversations with deputies, parliamentary groups and parliamentary commissions of the Parliament of Albania.

The collaboration and the cooperation between such structures of the Cham community have been and actually are an indispensable exigency and they ought to be appreciated, mostly when a national issue, like the Cham issue, needs a solution. I want to stress that it’s quite necessary the coordination of actions between “Chameria” Association, the Institute of History for Chameria and the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri”, so to act as a powerful organism and with one purpose, inside and outside Albania, for the solution of the Cham issue. We should align ourselves in a front, for the sake of the Cham ideal. Furthermore, it’s required a good organization and the strengthening of the organism’s structures from the bases to the center.

They have to become the real chiefs of the Cham community. Only in this way the Cham issue can find a solution, as an ideal of all the patriotic and honest Albanians, as a pan-national objective. I am stressing one more time that the solution of the Cham problem, the return of the Chams in Chameria, in their ancestral motherland, will come only as a result of the collaboration between these organizations that represent the Cham community.

So the Cham community can become a compelling factor in Albania and abroad and it can achieve its objective concerning the Albanian state’s politics and this one will so feel responsibility and constitutional obligation for the national issue, a necessity and an exigency for our national prestige and pride. The solution of the Cham issue is based on the politics that the Albanian state will pursue regarding Greece and other international partners. It must keep its body straight in the treatment of this issue. Only in this way the Cham ideal can be finalized. Let’s work together and let’s hope for a safe future.

March, 2009

Translated by Endri Hysa

2009-03-11T08:40:00.000-07:00

By Dr. Haim Reitan

“Eagle’s Wing” - Albanian national magazine

“Eagle’s Wing” is an Albanian national magazine which first appeared in the democratic years, whose aim is to promote the social and literary life as much as to serve to a national aim and also to protect the unfavorable groups of Balkan’s society. The spiritual leader was and still remains Bilal Xhaferri.

“Eagle’s Wing” is a political, cultural, literary and social magazine, which was first published in 1974, in two languages: Albanian and English, as an organ of Cham League in Chicago in US. Bilal Xhaferri was its founder, editor and leader. He was born on November 2, 1935 in Ninat, Konispol, and after an intense literary and publicist activity, died in exile (fleeing Albania as anti-communist nationalist in 1969) on October 14, 1986 in Chicago, US.

Bilal Xhaferri baptized, directed, prepared and published “Eagle’s wing” magazine till the end of his life. He converted it in a powerful arm in the war against communism.

Thus “Eagle’s Wing” was a free democratic thinking tribune, with anticommunist, anti- dictatorial and anti-enverists inclinations, which had as a purpose the union of all political Albanian forces in exile, the unification of thoughts, programs and the unification of their goals for a free pro-western Albania.

Among the magazine’s pages Albanian national problems were widely treated, especially the Cham issue, Kosovo’s problem, the problem of other territories that had remained outside the maternal lump, Albania, and problems of Albanian communities around the world and Diaspora.
Bilal Xhaferri could communicate through “Eagle’s wing” magazine with a lot of patriots in USA, Europe and Canada, Turkey and elsewhere, with newspapers and other magazines of Diaspora. He influenced through his activity in the approach, union and collaboration between Albanians of all territories, dispositions, parties and different political organizations. Soon “Eagle’s wing” was converted in a national magazine. It was kept with the emigrants’ writings and it was destined to all the Albanians, wherever they were.

“Eagle’s wing” magazine had a great brotherly, moral and material support from the Albanians in Kosovo and Montenegro, from parties and their national organizations, even some close friends and collaborators of Bilal Xhaferri were from there. In a congratulation note in the magazine he writes: “During this summer (1981) I stayed for some months in Detroit. Among many friends, whom I want to thank very sincerely for their brotherly hospitality, I want to mention in particular Prof. Prenk Gruda, who never reserved his help as a great patriot”.

Besides the publications of many foreign and Albanian authors, Bilal Xhaferri published even his works, a lot of publicistic articles, poetries, tales and fragments of the novel “Opposite sidewalks” (1975), fragments of the novel “The moon of the yards” (1977), skits for the Albanian language courses that were situated near mosques, masjids or Albanian churches. He also published his drawings and caricatures, artistic photos and short films made by him. He wrote in USA movie scenarios. In the magazine number where was published for the first time a passage of the novel “The moon of the yards”, it was advertised that he was producing a scenario from this novel for a feature film with a complete length under the adapted title in English “The moon of the Countryside”. A company from Hollywood was going to film it.

Even in America, the country of the big freedom, the security of the Albanian dictatorial state victimized and punished frequently Bilal Xhaferri to efface his work and kill him. Thus in 1978 they wounded him. “Eagle’s wing” wrote these words for this terrible episode: “Bilal Xhaferri, the editor of “Eagle’s wing” magazine was assaulted in darkness from three unknown people while he was going in a meeting for the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Prizreni League. The friends that were waiting for him in the meeting, worried from this delay, went out to look for him and they found him in the street, wounded in the head and face and with a knife cutting in the rib. The police that was informed and came immediately brought him to the hospital” (“Eagle’s wing” 1985, May).

When the editorial office was set on fire in 1981, Bilal Xhaferri and the magazine met with a knockout, too severe. This fact has been published even in “Eagle’s wing” magazine: “A fire that burnt up in the building where was located “Eagle’s wing” magazine, burnt down all the files and the collections. This was a personal tragedy for Bilal Xhaferri, who lost his books and his manuscripts, thorough literary volumes, studies, scientific researches, translations, political notes, letters, pictures, photos, works and efforts of the ten difficult years in exile” (“Eagle’s wing” 1981, January). So the Albanian state security impeded by all means the activity of Bilal Xhaferri and “Eagle’s wing” magazine. The Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior of the Albanian dictatorial state in those years expressed themselves in this way: “We will bring back Bilal Xhaferri in Albania, dead or alive”.

Bilal Xhaferri could publish 39 editions.

Since 1995 and following “Eagle’s Wing” goes on being published in Tirana, as the organ of the cultural association “Bilal Xhaferri” (The cultural community of Chameri), founded and directed by the well-known journalist and writer Shefki Hysa. He initiated the return of Bilal Xhaferri’s bones in Albania and the glorification of the extraordinary values of this rare personality, prosecuted and thrown into oblivion by the ex-dictatorship of the communist Albania.

In the magazine’s pages, among editions that defend Albanian national issue, notably the Cham problem, have often been published even articles and selected compositions by personalities of Albanian pens like: Bilal Xhaferri, Dritero Agolli, Ismail Kadare, Jakup Mato, Martin Mato, Namik Mane, Pjeter Arbnori, Arben Çokaj, Sazan Goliku, Sokol Jakova, Shefki Hysa, Vath Koreshi, Visar Zhiti etc. and also by other well-known global authors like: Jack London, Jean-Pol Sartre, Alfred de Musset, Edgar Allan Poe etc…

The foreign authors who have notably treated the Chame issue like Miranda Vickers, Hillary Clinton, James Pettifer and Dr. Haim Reitan have taken a special place among the pages of this magazine and they will do the same in the future.

Acting as an editor and chief editor of the monthly magazine, Shefki Hysa, with his contributions and that of his friends, managed to publish more than 100 editions and consistently insists in chanting this pedestal of the free-thought in the trench of Bilal Xhaferri’s ideals.

Dr. Haim Reitan, Diplomat,
Honorary President
of the Diplomatic Mission
Peace and Prosperity

2009-03-05T08:34:00.000-08:00

I am from Chameria too, I’m Cham!
These are some impressions from the activity
of the missionary Dr. Haim Reitan in Albania

Having friends that care on you in the world is the best thing but having friends that are passionate even at your ideals and love your country the same as their country, this is a miracle. This is a utopia, a dream somebody can say. This is his right, however I can tell him that sometimes a miracle happens and the dreams become a reality and part of this wonderful reality is even our friendship with the missionary Dr. Haim Reitan.

But who is this kindhearted man that with his attitude and his actions induces me to think that a person that meets such a friend is fortunate?

Dr. Haim Reitan was born in Istanbul (Turkey) on 20 May 1946. He is a doctor, a diplomat, a translator and publicist.

He is an Italian citizen with Israeli origin. Actually he lives in Bergamo (Italy).
He has finished the college for biology in Bat-yam (daughter of the sea) a city of Israel. He graduated in medicine in the University of Pavia (Italy) in 1974. Later he has done some specializations for the diseases of the cardio-vascular apparatus, Flebology, Nephrology in Pavia (Italy), in New York, Miami, Arizona and Texas, in USA, and further in London, Rotterdam e Tel Aviv. He is a member of the Italian Association of Cardiology and the Association of Flebology.
Until 2003 he has worked as a hospital director in some cities of Italy, as a forensic advisor and as a coordinator in some projects within the European Community countries and developing countries like some African countries. During 2004, he has worked as a medical adviser in engineering projects in the construction of the new hospital of Bergamo.

In 2005 and 2006 he has accomplished the role of the coordinator for the development of the relations between Italy and Albania in the medicine field, a thing that he still does due to the good relations that he has created with the officials of the Ministry of Health. He has assisted and continues to give a hand to many people that need to be treated in the Italian hospitals and this is a feature of his character as a man with a spirit of idealist missionary. Meanwhile he continues to direct his own medical center in Bergamo (Italy).

Dr. Haim Reitan speaks some foreign languages, such as the Hebrew language, English, Italian, Spanish, French, Turkish, etc. Now he is trying to learn even the Albanian language. Owing to his ability of polyglot and erudite he has been engaged as an adviser of some well-known political personalities, like ministers, prime ministers and presidents in different countries and with his work he has influenced in the consolidation of their relations with Italy and Israel.
He has been distinguished as a zealous and visionary diplomat, especially in the role of the honor consul and with his intelligence he has influenced in the improvement of the relations between Italy and Israel, especially with countries like Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo, Congo etc.

As a good connoisseur of the politics and the development of the situations in Balkan with cramps, conflicts and inter-ethnic tensions, Dr. Haim Reitan has contributed even in the albanological studies and balkanology. He is giving a big contribution as a translator and publicist with his editions in different media of the world. He is one of the most zealous collaborators of the magazine “The eagle’s wing”, an organ of the NGO: The Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri” and the publishing organ: The publishing house “Bilal Xhaferri”.

Recently, Dr. Haim Reitan has encouraged some political- economic lobbies in Italy, Israel, USA, Switzerland and somewhere else to support the development of democracy in Albania, for the recognition of Kosovo independence, for the economic-administrative consolidation of its new state and for the internationalism of the Cham problem. In Albania you can find him with the Cham historian Ibrahim Hoxha, with the writers Shefki Hysa and Namik Mane and with other intellectuals, public-spirited for the Albanian national issue. Dr. Haim Reitan is so in love with the Cham issue as to express himself in the Albanian language: I am from Chameria, I’m Cham!”

Dr. Haim Reitan has made friends some personalities of the Albanian politics such as Sali Berisha, Sabri Godo, Fatmir Mediu, Edi Rama, Skënder Gjinushi, Hashim Thaçi etc. One of his projects is the twinning of some Albanian universities with the universities of the most developed countries of the Western Europe. With his work, as a missionary of the Albanian issue in the world, he has gained the respect of many intellectual elites in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia.

Elim Pallmadhi

2009-03-05T08:32:00.000-08:00

By Arben Çokaj

Dr. Haim Reitan – a contributor and a friend of the Albanians

Dr. Haim Reitan was born in Istanbul (Turkey) on 20 May 1946. He is a doctor, a diplomat, a translator and publicist. He is an Italian citizen with Israeli origin. Actually he lives in Bergamo and he is an Italian citizen.

Dr. Reitan works with different projects to invest in Albania, which I will explain in progress, but let’s take a look to his CV. He has finished the college for biology in Bat-yam (daughter of the sea) a city of Israel.

He graduated in medicine in the University of Pavia (Italy) in 1974. Later he has done some specializations for the diseases of the cardio-vascular apparatus, Flebology, Nephrology in Pavia (Italy), in New York, Miami, Arizona and Texas, in USA, and further in London, Rotterdam e Tel Aviv. He is a member of the Italian Association of Cardiology and the Association of Flebology. Until 2003 he has worked as a hospital director in some cities of Italy, as a forensic advisor and as a coordinator in some projects within the European Community countries and developing countries like some African countries. During 2004, he has worked as a medical adviser in engineering projects in the construction of the new hospital of Bergamo.In 2005 and 2006 he has accomplished the role of the coordinator for the development of the relations between Italy and Albania in the medicine field, a thing that he still does due to the good relations that he has created with the officials of the Ministry of Health. He has assisted and continues to give a hand to many people that need to be treated in the Italian hospitals and this is a feature of his character as a man with a spirit of idealist missionary. Meanwhile he continues to direct his own medical center in Bergamo (Italy).

Dr. Haim Reitan speaks some foreign languages, such as the Hebrew language, English, Italian, Spanish, French, Turkish, etc. Now he is trying to learn even the Albanian language. Owing to his ability of polyglot and erudite he has been engaged as an adviser of some well-known political personalities, like ministers, prime ministers and presidents in different countries and with his work he has influenced in the consolidation of their relations with Italy and Israel. He has been distinguished as a zealous and visionary diplomat, especially in the role of the honor consul and with his intelligence he has influenced in the improvement of the relations between Italy and Israel, especially with countries like Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo, Congo etc. Such people with a human and diplomatic activity serve as connective bridges between different nations.

As a good connoisseur of the politics and the development of the situations in Balkan with cramps, conflicts and inter-ethnic tensions, Dr. Haim Reitan has contributed even in the albanological studies and balkanology. He is giving a big contribution as a translator and publicist with his editions in different media of the world. He is one of the most zealous collaborators of the magazine “The eagle’s wing”, an organ of the NGO: The Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri” and the publishing organ: The publishing house “Bilal Xhaferri”.

Recently, Dr. Haim Reitan, Honorary President of the Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity, has encouraged some political- economic lobbies in Italy, Israel, USA, Switzerland and somewhere else to support the development of democracy in Albania, for the recognition of Kosovo independence, for the economic-administrative consolidation of its new state and for the internationalism of the Cham problem. In Albania you can find him with the Cham historian Ibrahim Hoxha, with the writers Shefki Hysa and Namik Mane and with other intellectuals, public-spirited for the Albanian national issue. Dr. Haim Reitan is so in love with the Cham issue as to express himself in the Albanian language: I am from Chameria, I’m Cham!”

Dr. Haim Reitan has made friends some personalities of the Albanian politics such as Sali Berisha, Sabri Godo, Fatmir Mediu, Edi Rama, Skënder Gjinushi, Hashim Thaçi etc. One of his projects is the twinning of some Albanian universities with the universities of the most developed countries of the Western Europe. With his work, as a missionary of the Albanian issue in the world, he has gained the respect by many intellectual elites in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia.Dr. Reitan is trying to intercede even in the investment issue, in Italy or widely in Albania, especially the private investments that come from the Italian business or other countries. As everywhere in the world, the Albanian market should be open for such people with constructive initiatives for our country and our state institutions should be more exposed and careful to approach such people, with considerable knowledge and interest for Albania, so that their will and contribution could turn in serious and long-term investments for our country.

In the business world the profit is the main thing but it’s more beneficial when the business that is offered in Albania from human people like Dr. Reitan is welcomed and stimulated from the Albanian goodwill and hospitality. We should try as we can to avoid our social wound- the corruption- because devoted people like Dr.Reitan can get tired, can feel insulted and at the end can give themselves up. As Albanians, we must open the door to such constructive attempts and think in a dynamic way for the best forms for the development of our country in the future.

2009-03-02T06:17:00.000-08:00

By Shefki Hysa

The confession

Fatija trembled when the voice of the bride brought up the start of her thoughts. After all, a kind of sleep is even meditation, being lost in yourself darkness, where are accumulated the pains, the sorrows, all the sufferings and the troubles of life. There is no better cure for these incurable wounds, harmed unwittingly. You wander in your mind, you unwrap and spin that poor, slowly, like a coil of wool, like the old- age witch would long for. But what did the bride say? The poor thing supposes that the unfortunate old-woman is crazy!
- Did I hear your voice or I didn’t? - She said to the young lady who was grating some cabbages in a used copper pie- pan.

Everything in that cabin, where they had found a shelter after the horror that followed them until the gates of the Albanian border, was half. And, as if the horrible memories that went around time after time in the eyes of the mind weren’t enough, it was also the poverty, like a flock of thorns.

- I said a commission; a commission with some foreigners has arrived here- repeated the bride, in the face of whom, the mother distinguished compassion.
She felt creeps in her creasy, like a ball of rags, old body, arrant because of the gloom rather than the old- age.

- Did you say foreigners? But what do they want here? -almost screamed the old woman, full of shivers and without understanding if the presence of the foreigners brought this hatred or something else…

- They say that they are doing their best mother. They are collecting testimonies for the crimes of our murderers. They say that the world will condemn the Greek Zervist who set on fire, killed and destroyed Chameria- sweetened her voice the young lady, like she had in front her three years old son that needs to be fondled.

- The black goodness of the foreigner! The foreigner remains a foreigner, my daughter. This is from your mother… But what are they looking for? ... Can you say one more time because I feel like my ears are roaring! - emphasized the incredulous and curious mother, meanwhile converted like the fire that blows up in a flame that is thundering.

- The people have got together in Rexha Plaku’s house and they are telling the foreigners about the atrocities that the Greeks have done to us, how they killed and ousted us from our homes, how they plundered and burnt down our fortune, how they left us like refugees without a homeland - said tearfully the bride.

- Is it true?!- whispered hesitantly the mother as though a glimmer had inflamed the corners of the afflicted spirit.

She guessed that it had passed more than a year from that cursed day, when the death with the image of the perfidious Greek Zervists, had come upon their village there in Chameria, in every house, had furiously thrust their clutches in the life of innocent people, had slaughtered, massacred and covered with blood children, boys and men…The coward death wasn’t reserving neither the women!...

“Oh curse, only curse! - jumped the insurrectionary being.-Cursed in eternity! The foreigners! Those who killed us at night and cried us during the day! ... In this way and every time in this way… Maybe since this world was created… The foreigner kills with his knife and his smile too, with bullet and bread… Yes, yes even the bread of the foreigner harasses you! It can stick in your throat, and no one believes you… This is why the story with the foreigners is repeated and repeated… As it happens in our Chameri… No, foreigners I can’t believe you… At least me, the poor old woman, because you reduced me in this way, lonely…

The mother, a little infuriated, like those that feel fainted and lose their temper, was missed in front of the scenes of the tragedy that her torpid imagination made and remade constantly, until the bride’s voice moved her from that self-stiffness. She experienced day and night this stiffness, which brought in the eyes of her mind, as with magic, all the dead people and she flew at the death with the arms of the fantasy, took it away, far away, cleansed the wounds of the victims, talking and discussing with them…

After all, the immersion in the past, even though excruciating, was the only pleasure that consoled the mother, besides her three - years old nephew, whom she loved like the apple of the eye. He was like her son and if she enjoyed the apple of the eye it was owing to this inheritor…

- Did you say anything my daughter? Because I think I am becoming deaf my poor girl - was felt the mother and she noticed that even the young woman, although she still wasn’t thirty years old, was cockling and turning grey, like many other widows.

- I said that those foreigners don’t believe the witnesses of our people. They consider them fantasies…

It broke Fatije’s heart as though the knife of the Zervists had struck her. Her sight darkened and she was stunned again. This time, only her bride’s hands pull her out from this faint condition. It was a kind of logic asphyxia.

- Look after your son my daughter, - said the mother and stood up with some efforts. She didn’t move her hands, lapful on the apron as she was a pregnant bride, waiting her first baby. The only thought that buzzed in her head was that the foreigner remains a foreigner. And her whole body trembled as from the fever…

Walking in a path, she set eyes on the leaves of the nuts that were yellowing. A turbid autumn sky hung beyond her head. It was the autumn of 1946. The fires of Cham refugees still puffed lightly in Vasilikua, beneath Konispol. The tombstones whitened in Qafëbotë. The mold on those graves wasn’t dried up yet…

The old woman climbed down in the midst of the village, holding herself in the trunks of the nuts and olives. She tried to fall and she didn’t fall. The hopes kept her up…

She looked from far away the crowd and they saw her too. The foreigners, although everything was translated in details, continued to shake their head doubtfully. The murderous massacre, that tormented and victimized them, and that was described from the eyewitnesses seemed to be a fabled bugbear rather than a lived homicidal truth. The konispolits, crowded together in
front of the commission, were getting angry by this indifference.

Fatija, who was imagining just a little the run of the conversations, appeared above the square. Surprisingly, a waking force somewhere inside of her interior, made her footfalls more secure. “The foreigner remains a foreigner” was the only chorus thought within her skull, clothed with the white wimple, tied in the gill. The hatred boiled her body, shrunken and crooked from the terror of the cruelty. So hirsute in appearance, she gripped with her hands that were trembling, the lap of the apron. The irritated people hushed and paved like she was bringing a big proof that contained all the proofs, facts and testimonies, those said and those that the people were going to say…In this way the foreigners couldn’t shake their heads with distrust anymore…

The eyes of all the people were fixed simultaneously on the lap of the apron, in an anxious waiting, as though she was having a baby right now, a baby that would grow up instantly to witness with the signs of the wounds, the screams of the terror in front of the tortures of the death, everything that the fervid Chams had seen, heard and suffered…

Even the people of the commission scented something. They hushed and stared at the old woman like a lively and fabled testimony, like a suffering, dolor and poverty node, which was imperceptible from their minds.

The mother was drawing near slowly, like a mortal ceremony. In an instant she hesitated: should she stop or should she go to the end of that hall where the foreigners were staying. Sometimes she warped her face, like in her bride hood from the pangs of childbirth, her only child who was massacred in front of her from the Zervist hangmen. None of the people that were surrounding her didn’t peep or say even a word.

When she approached the table of the foreigners, she was out of breath and the tears that had withered from her deep eyes a long time ago, crashed and tied up her throat. However, she looked up from her belly and gazed the infuriating foreigners. Suddenly a plume of hair tore off from her hands and fell on the paper-work with the ghoulish semblance of a peel that is flayed from a human head…

The foreigners hit the ceiling and backed with horror. A scream, like that of the raven, rose from the breasts of the people. The cynical view of the mother involved all the people and stopped at the foreigners. They didn’t speak, like being scared of a punishment that could appear in every moment.

- So you are collecting evidences against the criminals and their crimes? Here they are! They speak alone for the calamity that the perfidious people threw us, - she said and her voice broke as from a sudden blow. Some tears flowed down by the furrows of the weather- beaten cheeks. She hushed a little and then began to tell, more for herself than for the others.

- We heard the hectic sound of some shoes in the solid stairs. We froze. The foreboding of the bad or the shadow of that ominous clatter, which was flying at our two-storied house, like a solid castle in a cliff in shore there in Chameri, gagged us. We had a joy that day, I don’t remember very well but we were laughing with the little boy, who was dangling in the shoulder of my son. Even the little child stopped smiling. The whey- faced bride, like being simulated by something, grabbed the tongs in the fire- place and remained with the scared eyes fixed in the door. The tramp stopped for a little, the time that a man needs to breathe, in the ground upstairs, and then a kick hit and the door crashed like a thunderclap, against the walls. A leaf that had flowed out from the hinge slanted with a remonstrant crunch. Two bearded soldiers of Zerva, one taller than the other, appeared in the groundsel. The taller one had a red eye, infuriated from the beverage or maybe from the sleeplessness, like the view of a mad dog. Promptly he took the dagger from the girdle and so cross-eyed he threatened us that if we felt sorry for our skin we wouldn’t move or scream. The bride put the both hands on the face to smother the cry that she uttered from the panic. The other soldier, a thick- witted man that knew only to grin, put the point of the dagger in her throat in the moment that she was trying to hit him with the tongs. I rushed between the soldier and the bride and very frightened, I pushed them away from each other. My heart was beating like a drum in the breast. The little boy, who was in the hands of his father and scared from the brutal arrival of those foreigners, burst into tears with screams. Quit down that puppy because otherwise I will pluck his head like a bird - he grinned to my son and approached him with his eyes that were sparkling only badness. I threw myself again between the murderer and my son. They both had the same age of my son. Nameless and nor twenty years old they were cruel like a scion of the devil. They obliged us to go in the corner of the room, my son, the bride and me, trying to protect them with my body from the horrible cusp of the dagger in the hands of the cross- eyed man. The thick- witted man, who was keeping two guns and a dagger, hang around the house, with that abhorrent and voiceless smile, like a sufferer of apoplexy. The shabby floor of plane wood was whimpering and fulminating from those heavy shoes that those damning people were wearing. The cross-eyed man pulled over the heap with mattresses and quilts, the hampers, the buffets, messed the whole house and turned everything backward. He was searching for gold whereas the thick- witted man had his eyes on us as he was flying around, hitting with the toe cap the dresses of my set of clothes. My son hardly restrained himself but I stopped his run-up, nipping him to hush and staying in any case in front of him. The cross-eyed man, who wasn’t finding any worth thing, grumbled and grunted with a hollow voice. He was almost exasperated. His forehead became black. I followed with anxiety every move of him and in that moment I would like to have had a batch of gold for those bogeys so that they couldn’t touch my son, the bride and their child, my dear. I didn’t want the gold before the little child. But instantly the cross- eyed man sat up and ordered the thick- witted man to bind us. Oh, that instant! The eyelashes were wobbling from the deviltry of that criminal. How he squeezed the jowls and the teeth, how chuckled that peevish black hog! O my God, what a hideous creature on earth! He jumped over my son, slipped the terrified baby, threw it in the set of clothes and put his foot in the throat to suffocate it. My son escaped from the hands of the thick- witted man and hunched to save the child. He scuffled with the cross- eyed man, who flounced to him with fists and kicks. He grabbed my son from the hair and began to drag him by the room. My bride and me, bound together, screamed but it was impossible to save him. The thick- witted man held from the arms my son and the infuriating cross- eyed man hit him in the belly with his heavy shoes. His eyes were blooded from the rabies. When my son’s body fell in the ground, almost dead, the gluttonous cross- eyed man stabbed the dagger in his heart, pulled it, and so covered with blood stabbed it again and again… Even the thick- witted man blazed up… With the bayonet…They made his body holey… The bride lost consciousness immediately whereas I was watching as in a haze, with my broken heart, almost exhausted, how my son screamed: Oh, mother, they killed me”!

How trembled and curled the corpse, still warm, how dribbled the blood, sprinkled the wall and the murderer’s clothes, poured on the floor, some of it exuding through a slot downstairs, in the dark of the cot whereas the other part shrank and froze in my feet…

But was this enough?! The thick- witted man didn’t take away that bogey laugh from his lips whereas the cross- eyed man gabbled, grinning near my nose, with the blood of my son dripping from the knife…I was parched. With the wall-eyes from a horror that one has never heard or seen, from that very arduous dread for the shoulders of a grey- headed mother, I had lost, almost completely, my tenderness… I was like a living cadaver… Whereas the bad men, who still wanted to torture me, after they had slaughtered my son like a cattle, peeled his head and put the bloody skin on the lap of the apron… Even that apple of the eye darkled and I couldn’t see anymore… When I recollected myself, they had gone…

I washed with my tears the house that was covered with blood and I took the way beyond the border, at least I could save the bride and the little boy from the clutches of the pestilence that Zerva threw us, with that band of cursed recreants…

The crowd that was listening to the story terrified, without understanding, blazed in a rebellion whisper that surrounded the mother. So integrated, that close group of people, aforetime violated, irradiated the feverish desire for justice, in front of the table of the commission…
The foreigners that had already recollected themselves, as if they absorbed in every cell of their body the atrocity that these people had suffered, the revolt that the unrequited maiming caused to them…The justice was among them, massacred…

They took some pictures as if they wanted to fix in celluloid the human anger, wrote something in their papers, closed them hurriedly into some black briefcases and left the pace with a car…
Mother Fatija took with caresses and sorrow the skin of her son’s head, winded it on with caution and care, and put it in the breast, unbuttoned the shirt and put it near the heart, as if she wanted to give her life from her life…

She took a look at the people one more time, with the tearful eyes and so, with the hands on the breast she turned her body, ready to go…

The people paved without saying a word. She was going. However she remained like a fresh incurable wound in their hearts, one more wound near the just hurt wounds of the innocence that enlightened their faces…

2009-03-02T04:59:00.000-08:00

By Dr. Haim Reitan

What is the cultural association “Bilal Xhaferri”?!

The cultural association “Bilal Xhaferri” (The Cultural Community of Chameria) is an Albanian NGO, with its center in Tirana, founded by a group of journalists, writers, artists and intellectuals, friends and well-wishers of the noted dissident poet, narrator and publicist Bilal Xhaferri, which aims to point out the brilliance of this outraged figure, thrown in forgetfulness from the former communist dictatorship and the sublimation of our national culture values versus the values of the advanced civilizations, especially those of the martyr Chameri.

The boom of the publications of this publishing-house and the big echo of its activity in those years, initiated the idea that an institution, with bigger spaces and legal purview than those of a simple publishing organ, was indispensable. Thus, it was necessary to found a cultural multifunctional organism, more dignified, an unprofitable organization that should include even the publications field and at the same time it should have possibilities to collaborate with governmental and non-governmental institutions in all the life views, inside and outside the country.

A group of Cham activists, in concert with their friends in different regions of Albania and in Diaspora, discussed a long time with the best intellectuals of the Cultural Community of Chameria and in collaboration with many writers, artists and other Albanian intellectuals, friends and well-wishers of Bilal Xhaferri and the Cham issue, decided to create a cultural association, that would have besides the publishing-house, even its press. So, they would found a non-governmental organization like the Cham League, which was founded by Bilal Xhaferri, in Chicago, USA or something similar with the association “Chameria”, but disposed toward the Cham culture rather than politics.

As a result of the collaboration, the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri” was founded and consolidated during 1993 and 1994 as a specialized institution that would expand his cultural activity beyond the Albanian borders, in Kosovo, Macedonia and USA to coordinate the work with the Cham League, the Kosovo’s League, the Democratic League of Montenegro, The League of the Albanians of Macedonia and with many other organizations that operated in the American continent. The association would be a potential voice for the support of the Cham problem and for its solution in a diplomatic way …Thus, these initiators had to become a little diplomats, like all the writers and artists that take the role of the ambassadors of their country’s culture… In this way they would become missionaries of the Albanian culture, her diplomats…

But who were some of the friends that joined the table of this association and helped with the Albanian heart the Cham ideal?! Even well-known intellectuals were distinguished among them. We can mention: Namik Mane, Pandeli Koçi, Pjetër Arbnori, Dritëro Agolli, Ismail Kadare, Ballkiz Halili, Dhori Karaj, Faik Teodori, Fatos M. Rrapaj, Hektor Sejko, Hekuran Halili, Namik Selmani, Martin Mato, Minella Kureta, Sokol Jakova, Vath Koreshi, Axhem Çapo, Alem Hoxha, Balil Proda, Bujar Shurdhi, Qani Biraçi, Xhemil Lato and many others, not only Chams…

Very soon, the cultural association “Bilal Xhaferri” was expanded not only in the areas of the Cham community but even in the main districts of Albania, wherever the friends of Bilal Xhaferri’s work and ideal lived… It created very good relations with the structures of the Albanian state, with politicians of every political spectrum, with those of the position and opposition, with the old politicians and the young ones such as: Pjetër Arbnori, Sali Berisha, Ibrahim Rugova and Fatos Nano, Aleksandër Meksi, Servet Pëllumbi and Skënder Gjinushi, Sabri Godo, Fatmir Mediu, Namik Dokle and Arian Madhi, Edi Rama, Hashim Thaçi, Gramoz Ruçi, Bamir Topi, Besnik Mustafaj and Neritan Ceka, Petro Koçi and Preç Zogaj, Ilir Meta, Pëllumb Xhufi and Sabri Hamiti, Makbule Çeço, Jozefina Topalli, Diana Çuli, Lajla Pernaska, Valentina Leskaj, Mimi Kodheli, Majlinda Bregu and many others.

The contacts of this association were extended and consolidated even with the American, Italian, German and Turkish embassies etc, or with personalities of the world diplomacy and culture like Hillary Clinton and Doris Pack, Miranda Vickers and James Pettifer, Marko Panela and Callenback, Dr. Haim Reitan, Amir Gilad etc.

A generation of poets, journalists, intellectuals and young talented politicians such as Agim Mero, Alma Ahmeti, Bianka Bilali, Dylbere Dika, Florian Bulica, Fllanxa Veshi, Kadri Aliu, Kostaq Myrtaj, Ismail Murtaj, Leonora Bilali, Mina Çaushi, Rudina Hasa, Yllka Sulku, Xhulia Xhekaj and many others afterwards would become in years the big armature of the warriors of the Cham ideal that this association had as a purpose…

The magazine “Eagle’s wing”, founded by Bilal Xhaferri in USA became the organ that reflected and continues to reflect all the activity of this patriotic organization.

The main purpose of this organization is to point out the grandiosity of the figure of Bilal Xhaferri and the values of the Cham and Albanian culture near the best world values… The most imminent objective that was assigned to realize this purpose was: The restitution of the bones of Bilal Xhaferri in Albania that was realized in May 6, 1995 with the contribution of the Albanian state and the writer Shefki Hysa, director of this association…

An in this way began a long collaboration with all the governmental and non-governmental organisms, until it was made possible that the bones of Bilal Xhaferrit could come and repose in Saranda. A lot of other purposes in benefit of the Albanian culture and the final solution of the Cham problem were the other objectives to achieve…

It was extracted from the book “The diplomacy of self-denial” of the writer Shefki Hysa, Tirana, 2008

Dr. Haim Reitan, Diplomat,
Honorary President
of the Diplomatic Mission
Peace and Prosperity

2009-03-02T04:56:00.000-08:00

By Dr. Haim Reitan

How was founded the publishing house “Bilal Xhaferri”

The publishing house “Bilal Xhaferri” is one of the first Albanian publishing organs of the post-communist period with the purpose to select and to publish the most prominent values of the world literature, the Albanian dissident literature and the creativity of the young talents that are at risk to lose in the difficult conditions of the trade market.

The publishing house “Bilal Xhaferri was created as a result of the idea that the culture, the art, the literature and the personalities that represent them, with their values, are the ambassadors and the most convincing and effectual diplomats for the dignified presentation of a nation before the other civilized nations. In January 27, 1992 the Ministry of Culture released the permission for the foundation of this publishing organ. The minister at that time was the writer Vath Koreshi, one of the promoters and supporters of the literary beginnings of the talent Bilal Xhaferri. Vathi signed with enthusiasm the permission for publishing activity and promised that he would constantly give his support and that of many friends of Bilali.

At that time the work of Bilal Xhaferri was forgotten. His values were denied from the former communist dictatorship. It was the duty of the Cham intellectuals like Shefki Hysa to glorify the work of Bilal and the treasures of the Cham culture and folklore, great values that were infringed and the Albanian public didn’t know. The marvelous pearls of the popular Cham epos could be expressed in front of the Albanians and the civilized world through the figure of Bilal Xhaferri, an exceptional talent that had shined like a star in the horizon of the Albanian literature in 1960s and was suddenly extinguished from the fatal stroke that it took from the former communist dictatorship. The Albanians and all the foreign well-wishers, being familiar with these wonderful values of Chameria, would raise the interest and fell in love with the Cham issue like a singular and sacred religion institution that belonged even to them.

Thus the publishing house “Bilal Xhaferri” due to the capacities, the great zeal and the numerous contacts with the Albanian and international politics of the writer Shefki Hysa, increased and it was experiencing day by day a bum of selected publications from the world literature, books of former outraged personalities like Pjetër Arbnori and especially works of young talents. Its staff made all the attempts that the young boys and girls, full of talent, not only of the Cham Community, could find themselves in the publishing house “Bilal Xhaferri”, be affirmed and not meet with the whilom destiny of Bilal, in the difficult period of the cruel capitalist transition that Albania was experiencing.

It was difficult to find monetary instruments for books publications in the first years of the post communist period and the young talents saw a dreams shelter in this publishing organ, part of the institution: The cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri”…

The novel “Krastakraus” of Bilal Xhaferri was published in 1993. It was one of the most artistically realized works with the topic and the problems of the Albanian ethnicity, so preferred from this author. The publication was enabled with the assistance of the Cham intellectual Ballkiz Halili, who has kept for years a typescript copy of this novel. This publication was a great and unexpected success. Finally the Albanian public had in his hands one of the most dignified works and not only the figure of Bilal, the dissident writer that had scuffled with the former Albanian communist dictatorship. The number of the publications increased every year and the Publishing House “Bilal Xhaferr” played an important role to introduce the Cham problem that was near the solution, in the national and international area.

Some of the most known publications of this institution with national values are:

“Fatal love”, romance (1992), Alfred de Musset
“Bloddy Love ( Beyond the distances)”, romance (1992), Bilal Xhaferri
“The respectful prostitute”, novels (1992), Jean Paul Sartre
“When the vikings invade”, novel (1992), Pjetër Arbnori
“The flaw of the heart”, poetry (1992), Gjin Progni
“The turtledove and the devil”, tales (1992), Shefki Hysa
“Krastakraus (Berati crumpled), novel (1993), Bilal Xhaferri
“Don’t remind me the death”, poetry (1993), Rudina Hasa
“Rebel”, poetry (1993), Shpëtim Roqi
“The night of the foreign cypresses”, essay (1994), Artur Spanjolli
“The beauty and the shadow”, romance (1994), Pjetër Arbnori
“Hostages of peace”, novel (1994), Shefki Hysa
“Peccant angel”, poetry (1994), Mirela Rapi
“The living dossiers”, journalism (1995), Agim Musta
“The pergola of the tears”, poetry (1995), Namik Mane
“The homesick horse”, poetry (1996), Arshin Rexha
“The dream stars”, poetry (1996), Etleva Shahini
“The vortex”, novel (1997), Pjetër Arbnori
“The cursed paradise”, novel (1997), Shefki Hysa
“The sold paradise”, poetry (2002), Dylbere Dika
“And the day dies”, tales (2003), Dylbere Dika
“Soul scream”, poetry (2004), Liri Hidërshaj
“Aroma of Chameria” , tales (2004), Shefki Hysa
“The false miracles”, tales (2005), Shefki Hysa
“Spiritual lactacion”, novel (2005), Liri Hidërshaj
“For a little bit happiness”, poetry (2006), Venka Capa
“The narration”, novel(2006), Liri Hidërshaj
“Dialogue for the impossible peace”, journalism (2006), Hysen Haxhiaj
“Family sorrow”, poetry (2006), Mina Çaushi
“With our feet we traveled the world”, novel 2007), Xhulia Xhekaj
“Dodona, the ancient temple of Albania”, research articles (2007), Rasim Bebo
“The regret”, novel (2007), Liri Hidërshaj
“The tears of the rose”, poetries (2008), Kostaq Myrtaj etc, etc.

It was extracted from the book “The diplomacy of self-denial” of the writer Shefki Hysa, Tirana, 2008

Dr. Haim Reitan, Diplomat,
Honorary President
of the Diplomatic Mission
Peace and Prosperity

2009-02-19T03:01:00.000-08:00

By Shefki Hysa

"Krastakraus"- Love and resistance
Note about the novel "Krastakraus"
of the writer Bilal Xhaferri

Bilal Xhaferri (November 2nd, 1935- October 14th, 1986) was a poet, narrator and a distinguished dissident publicist. Author of many unpublished works: "Krastakraus"- his masterpiece. This would be the exact definition for Bilal Xhaferri, the writer of the Albanian ethnicity, as some scholars have defined him.

He was born in Ninat of Konispoli's region, in the district of Saranda, in a patriotic family that belongs to the tribe of the distinguished encyclopedic polymath Hasan Tahsini, the first rector of Istanbul University.

In 1945, the communists shot his father, Xhaferr Ferik Hoxha, because of his nationalist anti-communist convictions. Bilal remained fatherless, the only boy, brother of three sisters. Later his life would be a fatality. Like a Sisyphus, the heavy stone of the "the bad" biography would weigh over his shoulder. He hardly finished a school for a geometer technician and his life began to run along the difficult yards of the "bridge- road" enterprise, building and asphalting new streets and in pursuit of the alleys of the literary creativity.

In 1966 he published the volume with narrations "New people, ancient land", that fulminated in the reader's minds as the bolt from the blue. The extraordinary talent, Bilal Xhaferri was bringing a new romantic-realistic spirit in the Albanian literature, which aimed the rising of the faded feelings of the people, indoctrinated from communism. Against the "new man", the bastard that the communist dictatorship was trying to create, Bilal, with his composition appealed to the Albanians to turn the eyes to the antiquity, to their predecessors, the gentle, freedom-loving and combative forefathers, holders of these home lands. His poetic volume "The red clearing" was published in 1967, but it couldn't move along. With an order of the communist censure, it was converted in cardboard dough. In those few copies that were preserved, stolen from Bilali's well-wishers, caught the eye the silent dissidence of this inexorable author, proud of his Pelasgus- Illyricum blood.

In August 24th, 1969 Bilal Xhaferri was constrained to escape in Greece and from there he emigrated in U.S.A, in Chicago where he published, for more than ten years, the anti-communist magazine "The Eagle's Wing", a bilingual Albanian-English magazine.
He died in unknown circumstances, languishing from the nostalgia for his own country and the hatred for the communism that had isolated Albania within the barbed wires.

His novel "Krastakraus" (The Crest of Kruja, the birthplace of the legendary, lion-hearted Gjergj Kastrioti Skënderbeu) written in 1968, passed for a long time through the newsrooms of the unique publishing-house of the communist state, until it ended up imprisoned in its archives for the ideas it treated. It was published only in 1993 from the private publishing-house
"Bilal Xhaferri", created to remember the name of this remarkable dissident writer.

The novel "Krastakraus" is a monumental and classic as well as modern creation. It takes the theme from the historical past of Albania, precisely from the period of the heroic wars of Gjergj Kastrioti Skënderbeu, the king of the Albanians (1417- 1467), who for a quarter- century afforded with his sword the ottoman invasions, in defense of the Albanian state and the Christianity. It is a creation written very neatly. The strong imagination of this author permeates the mist of medievalism and through the tableaus and the details that he describes, he succeed in taking away the heroes from the land of the legends and bringing them alive in the eyes of the readers. The whole history of the Albanian-Turkish wars, of the losses and victories, betrayals and resistance is outspread through the life and the jobs of the simple warriors of Gjergj Kastrioti.

Strezi, one of the courageous officers of Skënderbeu's commission is the central personage of this novel. The destinies of the other personages in peaceful and war times are evolved through the line of his love for the princess Ajkuna in one part, and his activity as a courageous warrior in the other part.

The world of the personages and their psychology is entwisted with the nature and sometimes it isn't understood whether the man is a creature of the nature or the nature is his creature. The trinity: God, nature, man and conversely, is entwined as a fatal node in the world of every personage, as well as in the lyric-dramatic situations and events, disposed toward "the tragic" that threats the destinies of the populations and personages.

The end of this novel is a masterly description, almost Homeric, of a bloody battle, without winners and losers; of a battle that means other battles and resistances, even more bloody, ensuring in this way the survival of a proud population that knows to live the life in peaceful times as well as in war times.

"Krastakraus" is a symbol of love and human resistance at the same time. It is a symbol of the victory of civilization toward the barbaric invasions of all the times.
The actual Albanian man finds in the pages of this novel his image and he nearly falls in love with himself like the Narcissist of Mythology in front of Bilal Xhaferri's creation. We hope that this book will be a kind surprise for the readers.

Shefki Hysa

2009-02-14T09:51:00.000-08:00

By Dukagjin Hata

The Cham World, a spirited historical - publicistic narration
About the publicistic book “The diplomacy of self – denial” of Shefki Hysa

The writer Shefki Hysa, one of the most passionate searchers of the Cham spirit and psychology, following in the footsteps of Bilal Xhaferri and the other apostles of the Albanian letters, in that forgotten corner of Iliriada, where the goddess Dodona spoke for the first time the Albanian language, not only one time, has called on the collective conscience of a evacuee population, the Cham one, in the veins of which flows the pure blood of the old Epirotes, that writes the history of the proud and insubordinate tribes, in the bark of the gigantesque tree of our national memory.

Shefki Hysa has converted the subject of the Cham destiny into a universal metaphor of the discrete identity search where the individual and collective destiny interweaves in the metaphysics of the time-space of freedom.

After a lot of marvelous narrations, such as tales, novels and sagas, where the Cham world moves in the dark-light of time, Shefki Hysa returns in a point-blank history, “a history spirited from the poetic ego”, as Umberto Eco would say, for the Cham forbidden history. This time is given in its three-dimensionality, with regard to those bridges of the Albanian, Balkan, European and worldwide memory, where passes the historical facts, the gingerly truths and those proclaimed in a sensational way, toward the tree of pain and the love of a prohibited country.

In this way, his brand new book “The diplomacy of self-denial” is a publicistic summary with articles, essays, interviews, memories, impressions, portraits, adjustments, redactions, comebacks, reportages, narrations, sketches, in the focus of which is the discovery of the Albanian world of Chameria, in that historical and actual vector that is called the Cham issue and makes up the Gordian point of the modern Albanian history.

With a succinct and concise style, but at the same time warm and with a lot of colors, where are mixed together the narration and the investigation, the portraiture and the analysis, the academic connotation and the journalistic principle, the personal attitude and the communitarian attitude, and onward the national attitude for this capital issue of the Albanian world, with a lithesome and elegant language, where the integral search of the journalist is combined with the aesthetic principle of the writer, Shefki Hysi brings us with this book more than a concern for the historical destiny of a outgoing population, sacrificed in the road of a double Calvary, the Greek-zervist and the communist-enverist.

Author of some artistic books such as narrations and novels, and also editor of the prestigous magazine "Eagle's wing" ("Krahu i shqiponjës"), where frequently he has given us narrative spaces and occurrences of the Cham world, (Even Ismail Kadare speaks with admiration for his last book that treats the destiny and the fatality of the Cham world) Hysa with this book brings a philosophical and historical-literary estimation for a wound of the Albanian world, the Cham wound. The author, with facts and with his intellectual attitude of Gandhi type, claims that this wound, which continues to cause pain to all the Albanian people, must be operated soon, before it turns into gangrene and without damaging the frame of the Albanian national issue.

The author emphasizes with the force of argument that in the dark tunnel of the tragic past, which still keeps in hostage the memory of the living persons and the dead ones, after a period of silence, prejudice and disinformation, finally is seen a ray of light. The author invites us to run after this light, to see beyond it that street where is expanded the vision and the future strategy for that land and the sacrificed population.

In this voluminous book move historical characters and VIPs, ordinary people and individuals that have carried the Cham burden along the streets of the Albanian Stalinist Gogoltha, move Bilal Xhaferri, Ismail Kadare, Namik Mane, Sabri Godo, Bedri Myftari, Ibrahim Hoxha, Pandeli Koçi, Pjetër Arbnori, Sali Berisha, the shortsighted political vision that doesn’t generates nothing but moment conjunctures for the sake of x party or y politician survival, but even that vision which is molded in the anvil of the real nationalism ( not the folkloric nationalism) and generates ideas for the future of the Cham land and population.

But even international personalities such as Hillary Clinton, the British researcher and diplomat Miranda Wickers, who in the gloomy monastery of the Cham issue has fired up the candle of hope, aren’t excluded from the ample, investigative, comparative and polemical view.

The universe of the author point of view is the same multiple and broken universe of the universe issue, which constitutes a dimension still unexplored of the Albanian national issue.
At bottom the book is an experience that the author and his collaborators have lived, with victories and losses, with achievements seen, rationalized, argued, prejudged and judged from the viewpoints of those people, who in their dream and ideal vision, have had and still have Chameria in the head place.

The author estimates the diplomatic world and its reactions, which though insubstantial, have done again their best to make conscious this joyless space of the collective memory of the Albanian world, emphasizing the fact that the achievements of the foreign diplomacies are much more than those of the wars.

Disciple of the Gandhi’s spirit and of those streets that bring water in the effective national choices from the intelligentsia grinder, Hysa appeals to the Albanian society elite to do what is necessary for the Chameria, to contribute for the Cham vision, so it won’t be a hostage of the gloomy past.

The author emphasizes with pain the silence, almost apostolic of the Albanian state in front of this historical and actual drama, the Cham drama, meanwhile the foreign diplomacy, benevolent versus the Albanians reminds the politicians of the eagle country that Chameria is a historical hostage that needs to get rid of the misunderstanding and the injustice, getting off this issue from the moldy buildings of the archives into the political agenda of the day. The author describes the labyrinths of a misunderstood and startling dossier from the perception rate of the Albanian political conscience. The action that our indolent and expectant politics has never done and it won’t take the courage to do, will be effectuated from the responsible foreigners, our country friends with their eyes toward the west. Thus in the summer of 2001 with the intercession of Hillary Clinton, the Cham issue was introduced before the American Senate. In an auditory session the senators were informed about the Greek-Albanian relations, the developments, the irritations and the appeasements, from the summer of 1944, when genocide was plied over the Albanian Muslim population of Chameria, called otherwise Thesprotia, massacring and deporting them from the birthplace and the dwellings, from their ethnic land. The author describes the reaction of the Greek lobby in America and the official policy of Athena, the cards of justification of this policy, the closure in an isolated cairn of this problem, the manifestation of the mock fact that in Albania doesn’t exist a organism to represent the Chams, that the Albanian state moots this issue only as a counterweight in the irritation moments of the bilateral relations between Tirana and Athena, that this problem doesn’t exist and when something doesn’t exist it doesn’t need a choice.

The British searcher and diplomat Miranda Wickers, as sublimating a new political reality, which was now contoured in the American senate for Chameria, referred another challenge to the Greek policy, when she, as a representative of the British Foreign Department published a detailed study with incontrovertible historical data and facts about the tragedy of the Cham population and its beginners. This gave a strong buffet to the political circuits of Athena, set in motion some deputies of the European Parliament, like the radical Italian deputy Marko Panela and other personalities such as Dr. Haim Reitan etc, that were a protest voice, which was coming in the right time and from the right direction against the silence, till oblivion, of one of the most cardinal problems of the Albanian history.

An important part of the book is the academic and intellectual personality of Bilal Xhaferri, the elite writer of Chameria, the dissident that paid up the freedom of creation with his young life, the most industrious and passionate amplifiers of the Cham world, whom he boosted in the seventh sky of a brilliant aesthetics.

Shefki Hysa, with his intellectual engagement, with the foundation of the Publishing House "Bilal Xhaferri" and of the Cultural Asociation "Bilal Xhaferri" (Shoqata Kulturore "Bilal Xhaferri"), influenced that the figure of Bilal Xhaferri could get out from the fifty years of misunderstanding and adulteration flour and could take the deserved place in the forgotten pantheon of the dissidents letters.

The journey of Shefki Hysa in the annals of the Cham world is a virtual journey where is interweaved the historical fact and detail with the impressions of the author, the international geopolitics with the narration of the apostolic silence, till political naivety, of the official Tirana institutions, the investigations for the truths covered from the oblivion flour with the deduction for the intellectual Gandhism, as a tool for the identification and the profit of the Cham paradise.

As our remarkable writer Ismail Kadare says: “This book is necessary, imperative, moral, like every ripe publication of this kind, as are numerous the reasons that the Chams don’t forget Chameria, and it can be intended that this is not only their right but the right of all the Albanians.
Furthermore, it is a moral obligation because one can never forget a suffering wound of thousands and thousands people. It can never be forgotten the displacement, it can never be forgotten the birthplace, where the earth is… Chameria can never be forgotten”.

Translated by: Lorena Uliu

2009-02-14T08:05:00.000-08:00

By Bardhyl Maliqi

The Writer that Cracks up the Armature
of Arbitrary Values

With a difficult childhood, blooded-knees, mucky hoofs, full of yellowish flowers jam, lacerated pommels from blackberries, with pink eyes from the cold river “Pavel” from whose caves he fished trout and codfish, with seasoned limbs in sharply slants of rocks where he tracks pintails, Shefki Hysa got over the threshold of puberty and entered a problematic juvenility with a political convicted uncle, with his father dead on juvenility, with a family victim of the class war, a flock of children like a flock of sparrows swam in the compassion of destiny, was fed with seeds of plants like birds in the slabs of stones, always liable from trap, with their hand leather blackened from wild pears and riverside nuts fluid to extinguish hunger, always present, with a harsh drapery cheese-cloth, with books and copybooks of scholar , they mature and grow up.

And it came the day that the short young boy, with a heavy face, like a man went to Konispoli’s high school. He was skillful like a sable which smells, when he must and where he could, he clasps the good mark, but he was never estimated as he should, not because he didn’t deserve but because in his class were some beautiful faces of guys caressing from the political climate who necessarily must be the first of the class and even the studentship, the chosen stanza and the white necked maiden should be only for them.

Composed to coolness, worried face, seasoned on the atmosphere of a social nonchalance, without having the possibility to live his juvenility, deprived from the right to attend university, he was obliged to enter in the reclamation venture to be a Bulldozer. Inured with the petrol and grease smell, fattened with a driver dictionary, but very near to the nature virginity he began to sharpen the journalist’s and confessor’s pen to inlay a new profile of self-esteem. He was obsessed at the possibility to go to university at every cost, as a student of Tirana’s Philological University, owing to Dritëro Agolli goodwill for the new composers, in war with tarnishing biographies that never disunited to him. Thus, at hummer and tongs, owing to his ambitions to go onward , but also born educated like a contradictory reaction toward a vicious reality, he broke the armature of the dictatorship values system, to bill communicative ability and his reliability.

He is the author of phrases such as: “Turtledove and the boy” (Narrations), “Slave of Peace” (Novel), “The Cursed Heaven” (Novel), “Confessions of a Thief” (Novel) and also editor, chief editor and also redactor of “Eagle’s wing” magazine (which was established from the poet writer and the publicist: Bilal Xhaferri in USA), Shefki could attract the Albanians reader attention with his prominent individuality.

The admission of diversities and the observance of the real values of the writers and artists, regardless of their economical, political and social position, is a necessity that will condition the progress Albanian society. As one of the most talented and productive prose writers Shefki Hysa springs in literature with an abundance of motifs and themes that descend from the directly recognition of life as he was watered from its sources, in reservoirs and constructional brigades, in the school classes where he taught, in Saranda’s and Bulqiza’s precincts but also in down towns and capital cities where he worked as a journalist. Shefki’s prose has a deep realistic spirit because his individual evocations entwist with our communal biographical elements.

A scalene reference in the place names where narrating and Romanesque actions happen, or a chart of the protagonists would assure us that we have to do with an irreplaceable faint afflatus and a possibility for a detailed and persuasive demonstration of the settings and characters: Foinike, Dodona, Konispol, Saranda, Pandalejmon, Qafëbota, Qafëbualli, Bulqiza, Tirana, Chicago, Mileja, Mëllezi, the Holy Mountain, the Jinn Outfall, The Cross Crown, Epyr, Kosovo, Tchameri etc. This argument aggrandizes also the usage of well known and contemporary names as: Pirro of Epyr, Hasan Tahsini, Enver Hoxha, Niccita Hrushov, Dritëro Agolli, Ismail Kadare, Bilal Xhaferri or their Vilëza ( the same) , Ben Lleiz (Arben Iliazi), Ali Arkeologu ( Halil Shabani), Cifja (Josif Papagjoni), designer Gim (Agim Mato), etc. A concrete stratification consists of the symbolic names that are based in realistic events and characters: like Docent Ramushi, Nondë Kaçoli, Bill Burreci, Kapo Erosi, Kurrizo Hefesti, Ramush Kaleci, chief editor Kopani or denominations used as sobriquets based on epithets, vices as Babloku, the Reeve Maliq, Dullë Baxhaja ( taken from the H dossier), Xan Gungaçi, Çalamani, Capori Gungo, Satanai, Farmaku, Esmeralda, Lina, Lirika, Rozafa, Zemëria, Demona, Bardha, Eli, Turtullesha, Diella, Kumrija, Afërdita,Vejusha e Zezë, Princess Marsjana, Marsida, Kullumbria etc. This word of names is striking and significant and would serve as a tutorial target.

The rich language full of Phrase logical Phrases, dialects, jargons, which are functionalized especially in the character’s chamber, utters the realistic characteristics of Hysa’s prose. Beyond the inclinations of his prose we notice in it elements but even concepts of a real prose which being based on folk compositions and also contemporary literary techniques, appears to us as complex as rich in its apparently simple structures, but also excessively expressive. It must be pointed out that this wont has its basement in the dramatics of vital material dredged and picked by writer.

The narration “Didini” that has as a protagonist the so named character, a discrete nationalist, betrayed and shot, who isn’t at rest in his tomb and wonders like a squab in the old house’s relics, is an artistic model of the usage of the magic elements which are an utterance of the magic realism in our literature. In the same way the setting of the conversation I.Kadare and Pirro of Epyr, vivid dreams of the same protagonist etc, support the idea of magic realism in our literature is not imported from Italy or Latin America, from Dino Buxati or Garcia Marquez, or Isabel Aliende but is a contrivance of Albanian Folklore’s influence; a product of fantastic fairy tales that populate it, thus it is a lawsuit artistically natural and wrongful. The folklore’s influence is fairy-well obvious in the other magic narration “The Turtledove and the Demon”, where is operated with the same artistic means, in the transformation of the girl into a turtledove and the boy into a whisper. The umbra’s role, acting as umbrae characters or the umbra images in Hysa’s books for ex: the soul or the umbra of Didini speaks in benefit to the existence of magic realism in Albanian literature: “The soul stopped in abeyance on the roof of the old house” (“Confessions of a thief” pg.51).

In this sense art’s burden is not a naturalist reflection but an esthetic transformation of reality based on the main esthetic categories, where the beautiful becomes more beautiful (Rozafa, Afërdita, Esmeralda, Diella) and the ugly is disfigured (Kryeplaku, Babloku, Dudumi). Reddish face of Babloku, big and rounded, in a mash of deep wrinkles as impaled with knife… looked on you through hollows life, as two fresh wounds where two pupil eyes blanched like two breezes, stuck in reddish reeves’ nets (The Cursed Heaven pg.122).

Divinities and monsters bristles on this principle, the grandiose and the grotesque. Kryeplaku, Kapo Eros, Kurrizo Hefesti; Babloku and Dudumi; jackass president and the shit under the fez are just artistic embodiments where the reality is changed and transformed through the hyperbolical features, manners and attitudes, thus creating the grotesque image which has a more sensitive esthetic effect as an archetype of the hideous and the ridiculous. Embodiments of the evil with faces like red skinned indigenous, with the utterance sometimes of idiot innocence and sometimes of beast’s savagery which fences tooth, sometimes cynic and supercilious, sometimes rambling as caricatures, are symbols of Power and Violence or blind executives of this embodiment. Thus the author manages that through entwisting of naturalist and expressionist elements to fulfill in details the perverseness, the disdain that the characters awake, when they eat carrion like vulture animals, when they snore like pigs in slush and urinate under the table. Even their criminal deeds acted placidly and deliberately, are neatly motivated. Murders of Dardan, Albano, Rozafa and Jack witness this ghoulish attitude.

If greatest artistic figure existed like the one which are artistic in our case in literary opus, these are the figures of Bablok and Dudum, which should be considered together as representatives of Power and Violence. The author merit is the disposal of the two socio-political archetypes that have ruled Albania among all the time until the 20-th century. How many Chieftains, Majordomos, Reeves, constabulary commanders, cooperatives elders, commissioners, directors, deputies and ministers used to be part of us? Such has been thousands. Monsters with debonair faces, monsters with monstrous faces, tarnished souls and daring people that never forgot that ever and anon to pour ashes in our eyes by doing some public commonweal or in benefits of a dervish, a “common weal” for the sake of name. The naïve peasant used to say: “mister so and so does but good deeds too”. In the narration with same title, the reeve is the continuation of the same character with Bablok, but not of a socialist dad but that of the Albanian democracy (read this as anarchy). This character has evolved, but still awakes a grater disdain and a deep disappointment feeling for our vicious realities. Anyway, the deflection of the white and black colors and the emplacement of these characters in concrete situations make the artistically reliable.

Even Kapo Eros and Kurrizo Hefest are like two halves of one entire. The connotation and the hyperbolas that the author has used has crated two different characters not only in their physical appearance but also in their characters. As much beautiful and fascinating is Kapo Eros, as capable of absorbing like with a magnet and to seduce all the feminine beauty, as ugly and disdainful is Kurrizo Hefesti, a chase of whom is all the feminine world seduced but now by Kapo Eros who is incapable of fulfilling their sexual desires. This couplet also reminds Power and Violence (read Bablok and Dudum) but in an indirect sense. Women are seduced by the power of Eros and are restrained by Sword’s violence. This couplet that stigmatizes the moral aspects of nowadays society becomes unwillingly her portrait.

* * *

Beside the literary language inside Shefki Hysa writings vivify even southern-northern dialectical forms, taken from the labors environment and due to the characters psychology. But actually the language of this narrator is characterized by the will and effort to produce new forms, often linguistic forms, produced with the dough of our linguistic treasury or the will to make use activate rear forms, which effect in the ideas expression, in portraitures and give to the artistic tableau a special emotional connotation. Some of them are: the hole entity was re-alarmed, flummery attitude, anxious expectancy, over –tiring, imperial twilight, ghoulish flip, head-idol of the empire, crouched in invisibility, lights constellation, ticklish laughter, crazy love, widow-hood fast, elderly solitude, the darkness of the stocking cave, pained body, greasy acridity, the spoons pitter pattering, winter souls, mysterious ruins, draggle-tailed snows, etc. Sometimes this linguistic attainments stipple around a name or around his form, in a word formation and in the lexical frames of the key word for example world-neck, dream-neck ,hope-neck, pig-neck, lost-neck; the dept-city, the city-dept; or I’m Dullë Baxhaja, the multi-hands, multi-animus, the multi-face, the very invisible, the very ubiquitous… and other new colloquialism acquire new-words with new-meanings in function of the ideas ex: the idea that we have to deal with an immoral human being is given by these words: ladies tracer, searcher, hidden gluttonous, his body pullulates for the amorous desire, devil orgasm, erotic battle. An ominous tiding is given by these means and other characterizations: the raven-phone, the ravish phone, cawed, portentous, the ominous tiding, the thunderclap- tiding etc. I doubt that these word-forming structures aren’t influenced by one of his literary idols, Ismail Kadare writer. But still the linguistic novelties artistry goes further when they serve to built up alliterations and harmonic sound organizations that create coherence to the realities essence, Ex: the blood traces hunter, love rendered him into an ox for Danana, carrion crows with black-calamity caws, a calculated hesitation from diabolic minds etc. These sounding organizations and the metaphoric, symbolic and metonymic language of the author bring up his prose near to poem, because we know that these are means and techniques of writing poems.

In order to establish stylistic effects the author uses densely functional suffixes, often diminished: slightingly, dully, bluntly, blindly, violently, furiously, cyclonically (as adverbs); geezer, dame, a saintly way, groom, little avenue, little town, squeaker, a small lawn, a small fez; (nouns): decrepit, grayish, wounded (adjectives) etc. Actually these morphological operations in word structure refresh it, make it meaningful and more though-conveyer and feeling conductor. To see their functional side we can give an illustration in a more concrete way. Ex: he considered himself grandee as Penelope, he took the little antenna with the top of his fingers and hold up the fez; …the walls were grizzled, the roof-tiles where livid, kissed the absorption like a small strawberry, with a singer tone… I was out-scarred etc.

The use of vulgarizations by this author, have an artistic function to justify the art democratization, the right of citizenship of speech, authenticity of circumstances etc. The possibility for another cause is not either excluded. Generally the writers and the artists aren’t the nature’s caressing nor are the power favorable. This kind of language puts them nearer to the mass of simple people, their real readers because they feel like real authors, people made of flesh and blood. And we can say this language is the expression of discontent, their inner revolt.

Let’s get to a new problem: it’s about the foreshadowed and impressionable tonality of the literary and artistic work or to the idea-emotional attitude of the author. We know that these tonalities and attitudes are reflective towards different socio-political, economic and cultural realities, but primarily they express the outlook and the evocation of the artist. He has a social origin, sources of a fortune, economic situation, political engagement, ideological convictions, and the psychology as an artist and as a human being. Being like this he can’t be immune from the politics’ influence but would be indisputable not to fall his pray.

Generally in his literary work Shefki escapes from this trap. He presents in that book an incubus commander who shoots with a bullet behind shoulders but to the other side he has a partisan nurse that feels sorry for human beings and moves heaven and earth to save their lives. The socialist realism is stigmatized there, but it is also spoken out in a delightful way for I.Kadare, D.Agolli, and Bilal Xhaferri as characters in the novel “Slave of Peace”. Occasionally like in the “Slave of Peace”, the hell scene, which actually is excessively episodic and has nothing to do with the main lines of the conflict’s development, where the writers of socialist realism don’t let each other to perk, is explained by the eternal envy of creators but even by the state politics to set them against each other and this has been real. Other scenes are justified by the symbolic burden of main characters. Still the author sometimes hasn’t purposely avoided the exaggeration. “Beasts’ junket, the lion grabs the haunch (Babloku), the wolf a part of the chest (Dudumi), Chippings some ribbings (some cadres of the party and power), and hyenas (some simple communists and distinguished miners) what is remained from the beasts’ junket. Ex: Dudum is described not as a lawman but as a gigantic police, a biped brute as an ignorant being and the wolf-herder of the human race of this city of the hell. Even the city itself is scaring, rolled with an old mountain pelisse, and a black cloud cap above the head, a city that consumes only peppers, whose paunch is empty and cant fill the miners’ punches either etc. It is to be mentioned that Bulqiza or Memaliaj of the 80s don’t differ much from this tableau. Even the fact that with the same vivid colors and the same grotesque scenes, are described Bablok and Dudum, as representatives and products of yesterday and Kryeplaku and Kumria as representatives and products of the present, assures that the author doesn’t see all in black and white, that the exaggeration is an artistic lawsuit and not a political playbill. In the roman “The Cursed Heaven”, in the ingoing scene the portraiture of the two harlequins, that among centuries have tried to destroy Albania, the scenes of the battle for the head-idols’ crown in the chapter for the Holy Mountain and especially in the narration
“The idols Empire” it is built the thought that idols are our national disgrace.

The author feels sorry for this country and every time he has the chance, he disinters his patriotic soul, his anguish for Tchame and for the Tchame’s issue, for Kosovo and Kosovo’s issue, for the whole Albania and for the Whole Albanian issue. Scenes of Pirro of Epyr, of Bilal Xhaferri, and of the massacre that Zerva committed in Tchamëri, of that of the Bota’s saddle, the scene with the two emigrants in America etc are the evidence that establish this kind of conviction. I wonder how many years will we wander as yellowish in desert.
Despite all this, optimism and hope, is not lacked by the author. The depiction of big-heart characters as uncle Miho, the lakes’ magic oldster, the presence of lovers who for the sake of great feelings as love is, sacrifice and underline this faith.

Another important artistic joint in the narrative composition of this author, in which his mellow values catch the eye distinctly, is undoubtedly a psychological rummage of characters, feelings, thoughts, manners and their attitude especially in the culminant and conflict moments. In “The Cursed Heaven” novel, when Jack is between two choices the battle of motivations is very long he finds very difficult to choose: loving Rozafa, not just because of affection, but for great true human feelings and sincere love, in this way bearing the vital privations and sacrifices or else lay in bad with Diella, the innocent ideal-beauty and who is also a victim of Bablok, in this way gaining a well ordered life in Tirana, in expectance of a important post but without human dignity. What triumphs in his soul is closely connected with the power of his character, when he discovers Rozafa was massacred to open way to the marriage of Diella. He doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice paying his disapproval with death, murder in the mountain, in cold, in darkness, in the wolf’s mouth. Even in the major narrations, especially in those in which the author doesn’t use catches but the vital juice is directly given, the psychological motivation is naturally found, it flows in their interiors, because of the action and the personality of the characters, is not an outer dishing to legalize characters’ variables. Lets recall certain narrations such as “Didini”, “Testimony”, “Maggie of the City” , “Olives”, “Qopeku” ,”The Oldster of the Lakes” etc.

Shefki Hysa’s compositions speak clearly of the fact that he has the ability to bake art works with dough from his own magic. There are writers who have created during their entire life but haven’t baked a single crumpet from their corn.

With his tireless job, with culture and passion he will always be able to mould and bake each time better his literary bread. His so far compositions allow us to hope so.

Translated by: Dr. Haim Reitan

2008-11-19T01:01:00.000-08:00

By Visar Zhiti

The Big Tchame Concussion

Shefki Hysa is the author of many narrative and story books in which echoes the troublous Tchame wind and where people’s fate is connected with their land like the roots thrust deeply into stones but also like the life fingers blooded as they are grasp reality. He likes realism and the truth no matter how thrilling is. That is the reason he becomes its historian, strong witness, feeder of collective memory. Aforetime I have written that meanwhile the massacres in Kosovo are a stone’s throw and still vivid, even thought “The Balkan’s executioner”, the Serbian Miloschevich, the last communist dictator keeps on being judged for anti-humanism crimes to the court of Hag (in TV programs was often presented the Byblitical outgo of Kosovo’s, their expatriation from dardany since the world was created), we are exposed to another expatriatation of Albanians in the south most ancient and cruel Ilyric, although it didn’t have international televisions as witnesses nor didn’t congregate the worlds army, NATO, to punish the worse.

And so the Tchame nationalities were expatriotated from their epyrioth land, houses were set on fire. People were slaughtered in concert with live stocks, olive-groves and the future were destroyed; it was killed the national mythology. Their terror peregrinated towards mother-land and than came like another massacre the cruel dull obliteration. Even after three-thousand years no one could say anything, in the mythic Balkan, another Troia in modern times was set on fire. Meanwhile tchames found in their homeland a dictatorship, which nay didn’t try to defend the rights of its fellow countrymen, but on contrary didn’t let them alone. Maybe it prosecuted them more than the others, invented enemies, and imprisoned them. In order to meet their dreams, tchame people among their motherland communist prisons joined to Kosovo’s people to elope from hither to thither. But… the only thing they were going to meet was the rusty manacle. In this way, meanwhile Albania was cruelly fragmented by the others; Albanians did fragment inside by themselves. Later on was difficult to remember Kosovo and tchame… nothing was says about in geographic scholastic prints, history didn’t dare, conscious was constrained…
Nonetheless collective memory which milled about like a subterranean river, hidey reinforced and hardened the right resistance. Literature achieved to bring out some anonymous songs about splited lands, any tremulous Tcham wail or a blustery Kosovo elegy. Folk-dancing’s recalled apocalypse with their hullabaloo, while writers tried to create metaphoric possibilities or to say sth about Kosovo and Tchame through Ezopy’s language. I recollect that, if the poet ALI PODRIMJA like in our big sorrow would go in the trans-national coast Tchame , and would write hermetic poems which he would secure thrice: from the Albanian dictatorship, the Serbian conqueror and from the Chauvin Greeks. Here, in the remaining Albania, Tchame writers felt difficulty and prosecution. Books were prohibited to them; they set themselves in prisons, eloped, kept mum, waited….

Now the Tchame voice has came back from its sorrow ember, covered with the ash of the ancient obliteration, to cracker of promethean fire and the world is always seeing and feeling more and more its illumination and its fervour, will be longed for the truth and justice… and a slaughter population deserves to be given back their land and their spirit, wealth songs and the future…

A thrilling squawk is the literal creativity of Shefki Hyses, bearer of the tragedy of its population, that the mythical Balkan found its calmness…

Translated: By Dr. Haim Reitan

Dr. Haim Reitan, Honorary President of the Diplomatic Mission Peace and Prosperity

2008-10-23T02:33:00.000-07:00

Foto - Bilal Xhaferri

2008-04-28T03:15:00.000-07:00

2008-04-28T02:33:00.000-07:00

By Dr. Haim Reitan

A remarkable creative individuality

Shefki Hysa was born in Ersekë on July 20, 1957 in an intellectual family.
His father, Mazar, was a teacher for the minority vlleh at this time and followed their pastoral movement, passing the summer in "Gramoz" mountains in the region of Kolonje with Erseka as municipality, pending the winter so in Saranda, always concerned for the education of shepherds’ children. All his family lived in Shalës, Konispol.

The mother of Shefki, Bahrieja followed up her husband in his movements taking care of the family. Shefki belongs to an old patriot family settled in Konispol, Shales in the 18-th century, perhaps in the period of the Muslim influence in the region, since it is considered as one of the first seven founding families of Shales village, according to the popular memory. AS we can see, it was a rich family, who lived caring for livestock and agriculture, owns several timber, pasture and cropland, therefore they can be considered as real patriots and they were ready to be sacrificed to protect their homeland, La Patrie - Tchameri, from the separatory intentions of Greek invasion.

The grandfather of Shefki, the well-known patriot Shefki Hoxha (they were religious for generations and that’s why they were called "Hoxha"), is known as one of the founders of the first patriots’ clubs of Konispol, Filat, as a donor of the first schools in the Albanian region Çamëri (Konispol, Filat and Gumenicë), and as a tough critic of any power, such as Turkish and following the royal power of Zog The I-st . In the early 20-s, Shefki Hoxha was famous as a democrat, a great adherent of Noli and his reformist government, regardless of the fact that its properties could be affected. This was one of the reasons why he was imprisoned by the regime of Zog I. The popular poet of the region sang:

"Telegrams come and go, / gendarmes raise custody, / a rebellion was spoken for, / when the Tchameri King denied, / deny Ahmet his majesty. / In Shales took Shefki, / Konispol, Maze Hami / and also Xhafo Pandalejmoni "…

Shefki Hoxha fell ill in prison in Lezha and died in 1936, because of unbearable pain of imprisonment.

The father of Shefki Hysa, Mazar, has been persecuted as anti-dictatorship, although their home in Shales was an important war support. In 1960 Mazar was fired from Education, because of his brother nationalist Sadedin, shot without trial by the Communists on November 13 of 1943 at the Partisan hospital of Theollogos. So, their family was involved in the blind mechanism of the war classes, which seriously affected even Shefki, after the death of his father, Mazar, in 1976. Mazar Hysa, the father of Shefki Hysa, left this world with the bitter taste of this life. Shefki has managed to survive thanks to the genes inherited from the grandparents.

Shefki has begun his studies in the village of Shalës, Konispol. He started high school, with agricultural profile, in 1972 and completed in 1976 at Konispol, Tchamëri . (The communist regime of the period had obliged him to attend the agricultural school, because of his "bad" biography, as a family of rich and anti-communist origin and for the fact that his uncle, Sadedin, was shot for political reasons). After ten years of surviving efforts, in 1985, Shefki is able to have the right of studying literature at the University of Tirana. Thanks to the insistence of the well-known Albanian writer Dritëro Agolli, his position as Chairman of the Union of Artists and Writers of Albania, allowed him to give Shefki the right to follow his university studies and also in other occasions, as in the case when to poet Namik Mane was denied the right of publications, he did his best to help him.

In 1989 he was graduated in language and literature at the Faculty of History and Philology, at the University of Tirana. Meanwhile he continued to write and published his first stories. So finally Shefki Hysa has been recognized and valued his talent for prose, characterized by a remarkable creative individuality as the critics expressed for his first lyrics, welcomed by the public and literary readers. "My dear teller, by strange comments and sensitive feelings; a writer always appreciated by me and others," so expressed Dritëro, enthusiastic for his literary future and he never would be disappointed. During 1991-97 he worked as a journalist for the newspaper "Çamëria" and as chief editor for newspapers "Kombi" and "Dielli". In the meantime he attended several specializations for journalism, publishing, public relations and international issues.

Since 1997, he continued working in the administration of the Parliament of Albania.
He founded and continues to run the Cultural Association "Bilal Xhaferri" and Publishing House "Bilal Xhaferri".

He is the Secretary of the Union of Writers and Artists of Albania.

Among his publications, he has "The bird and the devil," stories (1992), published by "Bilal Xhaferri" Publishing House.
" Peace Hostages" novel (1994), published by " Bilal Xhaferri" Publishing house"
"Dammed Paradise" novel (1997), published by "Bilal Xhaferri" Publishing House.
"Confessions of a thief," stories (1999), published by "Arbëria" Publishing House
"Tchameri Flavor" stories (2004), published by "Bilal Xhaferri" Publishing House, ISBN 99927-960-1-4
"False Miracles," stories (2005) publication of the "Bilal Xhaferri" publishing house, ISBN 99927-960-0-6
Editor of the novel "The Prostitute worthy of respect" (1992), writer Jean Paul Sartre.
Editor of the romance "Fatal Love" (1992), writer Alfred de Musset.
Editor of the romance "Bloody Love (Beyond distances)" (1992), writer Bilal Xhaferri.
Editor of the romance "Krasta Kraus (Berat ceded)" (1993), writer Bilal Xhaferri.
Editor of the novel "Invasion of the Vikings" (1993), writer Pjetër Arbnori.
Editor of the romance "La belle with the shadow" (1994), writer Pjetër Arbnori.
Editor of poetry volume "The vine of Tears" (1995), poet Namik Mane.
Editor of stories volume "One ordinary night " (2003), author Namik Mane.
Editor of stories volume "White desert" (2007), author Jack London.
Editor's novel " We have traveled the World with our paws " (2007), writer Xhulia Xhekaj, and etc etc. Publications, and literary essays edited and created by him and other authors.

Since 1995 publishes and edits as chief editor the monthly magazine "Eagle’s Wing", a political, cultural, literary and social magazine, published first in 1971, in two languages, Albanian and in English, as organ of Tchame League in Chicago, the - US. Its first founder, editor and leader was Bilal Xhaferri, poet, prose-writer and a well-known dissident publicist, who was born on November 2, 1935 at Ninat, Konispol, and after an intense literary and publicist, died in exile (fleeing Albania in 1969 as anti-communist nationalist) on October 14, 1986 in Chicago, in the United States.

"The Eagle’s Wing" was a forum of free democratic thinking basically by anticommunist, anti -dictatorial and anti-enverists inclinations, which tended the union of all Albanian political forces in exile, the unification of thought, programs and their goals for a free Albania Pro-Western. The magazine dealt largely Albanian national issues, especially Tchame issues, the problem of Kosova, and other territories left outside the legitimate borders of Albania, and also the problems of the Albanian communities everywhere in the world and Diaspora. Bilal Xhaferri was able to publish 39 editions.

Since 1995 and after "Eagle’s Wing" has continued to be published in Tirana, as the official journal of the Cultural Association "Bilal Xhaferri" (The Cultural Community of Tchameri) founded and directed by journalist and well-known writer Shefki Hysa, who enabled the return of Bilal Xhaferri bones in Albania and to glorify the extraordinary values of this rare personality, persecuted and thrown into oblivion of the communist dictatorship in Albania. Shefki Hysa, acting as editor and chief editor of the monthly magazine, with its contributions and those of his friends, was able to publish 80 editions and continues insisting to glorify this pedestal of free thinking, following Bilal Xhaferri’s ideals.

His ideal: Tchameri and ethnic Albania.

Prepared by: Dr. Haim Reitan

"Krahu i shqiponjës"

2008-04-23T04:23:00.000-07:00

"Krahu i shqiponjës"

2008-04-21T04:09:00.000-07:00

2008-04-20T23:51:00.000-07:00

By Dr. Haim Reitan

A remarkable creative individuality

Shefki Hysa was born in Ersekë on July 20, 1957 in an intellectual family.
His father, Mazar, was a teacher for the minority vlleh at this time and followed their pastoral movement, passing the summer in "Gramoz" mountains in the region of Kolonje with Erseka as municipality, pending the winter so in Saranda, always concerned for the education of shepherds’ children. All his family lived in Shalës, Konispol. The mother of Shefki, Bahrieja followed up her husband in his movements taking care of the family.

Shefki belongs to an old patriot family settled in Konispol, Shales in the 18-th century, perhaps in the period of the Muslim influence in the region, since it is considered as one of the first seven founding families of Shales village, according to the popular memory. AS we can see, it was a rich family, who lived caring for livestock and agriculture, owns several timber, pasture and cropland, therefore they can be considered as real patriots and they were ready to be sacrificed to protect their homeland, La Patrie - Tchameri, from the separatory intentions of Greek invasion.

The grandfather of Shefki, the well-known patriot Shefki Hoxha (they were religious for generations and that’s why they were called "Hoxha"), is known as one of the founders of the first patriots’ clubs of Konispol, Filat, as a donor of the first schools in the Albanian region Çamëri (Konispol, Filat and Gumenicë), and as a tough critic of any power, such as Turkish and following the royal power of Zog The I-st .

In the early 20-s, Shefki Hoxha was famous as a democrat, a great adherent of Noli and his reformist government, regardless of the fact that its properties could be affected. This was one of the reasons why he was imprisoned by the regime of Zog I. The popular poet of the region sang: "Telegrams come and go, / gendarmes raise custody, / a rebellion was spoken for, / when the Tchameri King denied, / deny Ahmet his majesty. / In Shales took Shefki, / Konispol, Maze Hami / and also Xhafo Pandalejmoni "…

Shefki Hoxha fell ill in prison in Lezha and died in 1936, because of unbearable pain of imprisonment. The father of Shefki Hysa, Mazar, has been persecuted as anti-dictatorship, although their home in Shales was an important war support. In 1960 Mazar was fired from Education, because of his brother nationalist Sadedin, shot without trial by the Communists on November 13 of 1943 at the Partisan hospital of Theollogos.

So, their family was involved in the blind mechanism of the war classes, which seriously affected even Shefki, after the death of his father, Mazar, in 1976. Hysa Mazar, the father of Hysa Shefki, left this world with the bitter taste of this life. Shefki has managed to survive thanks to the genes inherited from the grandparents.

Shefki has begun his studies in the village of Shalës, Konispol. He started high school, with agricultural profile, in 1972 and completed in 1976 at Konispol, Tchamëri . (The communist regime of the period had obliged him to attend the agricultural school, because of his "bad" biography, as a family of rich and anti-communist origin and for the fact that his uncle, Sadedin, was shot for political reasons). After ten years of surviving efforts, in 1985, Shefki is able to have the right of studying literature at the University of Tirana. Thanks to the insistence of the well-known Albanian writer Dritëro Agolli, his position as Chairman of the Union of Artists and Writers of Albania, allowed him to give Shefki the right to follow his university studies and also in other occasions, as in the case when to poet Namik Mane was denied the right of publications, he did his best to help him.

In 1989 he was graduated in language and literature at the Faculty of History and Philology, at the University of Tirana. Meanwhile he continued to write and published his first stories.

So finally Shefki Hysa has been recognized and valued his talent for prose, characterized by a remarkable creative individuality as the critics expressed for his first lyrics, welcomed by the public and literary readers. "My dear teller, by strange comments and sensitive feelings; a writer always appreciated by me and others," so expressed Dritëro, enthusiastic for his literary future and he never would be disappointed.

During 1991-97 he worked as a journalist for the newspaper "Çamëria" and as chief editor for newspapers "Kombi" and "Dielli".

In the meantime he attended several specializations for journalism, publishing, public relations and international issues.

Since 1997, he continued working in the administration of the Parliament of Albania.

He founded and continues to run the Cultural Association "Bilal Xhaferri" and Publishing House "Bilal Xhaferri".

He is the Secretary of the Union of Writers and Artists of Albania.

Among his publications, he has "The bird and the devil," stories (1992), published by "Bilal Xhaferri" Publishing House.
" Peace Hostages" novel (1994), published by " Bilal Xhaferri" Publishing house"
"Dammed Paradise" novel (1997), published by "Bilal Xhaferri" Publishing House.
"Confessions of a thief," stories (1999), published by "Arbëria" Publishing House
"Tchameri Flavor" stories (2004), published by "Bilal Xhaferri" Publishing House, ISBN 99927-960-1-4
"False Miracles," stories (2005) publication of the "Bilal Xhaferri" publishing house, ISBN 99927-960-0-6
Editor of the novel "The Prostitute worthy of respect" (1992), writer Jean Paul Sartre.
Editor of the romance "Fatal Love" (1992), writer Alfred de Musset.
Editor of the romance "Bloody Love (Beyond distances)" (1992), writer Bilal Xhaferri.
Editor of the romance "Krasta Kraus (Berat ceded)" (1993), writer Bilal Xhaferri.
Editor of the novel "Invasion of the Vikings" (1993), writer Pjetër Arbnori.
Editor of the romance "La belle with the shadow" (1994), writer Pjetër Arbnori.
Editor of poetry volume "The vine of Tears" (1995), poet Namik Mane.
Editor of stories volume "One ordinary night " (2003), author Namik Mane.
Editor's of stories volume "White desert" (2007), writen by Jack London.
Editor's novel "We have traveled the World with our paws" (2007), writer Xhulia Xhekaj, and etc etc. Publications, and literary essays edited and created by him and other authors.

Since 1995 publishes and edits as chief editor the monthly magazine "Eagle’s Wing", a political, cultural, literary and social magazine, published first in 1971, in two languages, Albanian and in English, as organ of Tchame League in Chicago, the - US. Its first founder, editor and leader was Bilal Xhaferri, poet, prose-writer and a well-known dissident publicist, who was born on November 2, 1935 at Ninat, Konispol, and after an intense literary and publicist, died in exile (fleeing Albania in 1969 as anti-communist nationalist) on October 14, 1986 in Chicago, in the United States.

"The Eagle’s Wing" was a forum of free democratic thinking basically by anticommunist, anti -dictatorial and anti-enverists inclinations, which tended the union of all Albanian political forces in exile, the unification of thought, programs and their goals for a free Albania Pro-Western. The magazine dealt largely Albanian national issues, especially Tchame issues, the problem of Kosova, and other territories left outside the legitimate borders of Albania, and also the problems of the Albanian communities everywhere in the world and Diaspora. Bilal Xhaferri was able to publish 39 editions.

Since 1995 and after "Eagle’s Wing" has continued to be published in Tirana, as the official journal of the Cultural Association "Bilal Xhaferri" (The Cultural Community of Tchameri) founded and directed by journalist and well-known writer Shefki Hysa, who enabled the return of Bilal Xhaferri bones in Albania and to glorify the extraordinary values of this rare personality, persecuted and thrown into oblivion of the communist dictatorship in Albania.

Shefki Hysa, acting as editor and chief editor of the monthly magazine, with its contributions and those of his friends, was able to publish 80 editions and continues insisting to glorify this pedestal of free thinking, following Bilal Xhaferri’s ideals

His ideal: Tchameri and ethnic Albania.

Dr. Haim Reitan, Diplomat,
Honorary President
of the Diplomatic Mission
Peace and Prosperity

2008-03-28T05:06:00.000-07:00

By Dritëro Agolli

A new stage of creativity

I have in front a manuscript of the new book with short stories, "False Miracles", by Shefki Hysa. Before reading it, I thought I would find in it the same elements of narration style I used to find in his previous books, particularly in the book with short stories "The thief’s narrations". By that time, this book was the most distinguished one regarding the spirit of the real contemporary realism, embodying several problems and social ideas, characteristic for the time. I remember I was impressed by the fragment: "Babloku", extracted from the novel "The cursed paradise", which I would consider expressionistic, due to the deep emotional impressions felt after its reading.

While reading through the lines of "Babloku" an idea struck my mind: the writing process of Shefki Hysa is about to pass into a new stage! Anyhow, I was not very much convinced…
So, I started to read "False Miracles", without succeeding to get out of my mind "Babloku". Those elements, ready in embryo at the "False Miracles" were now about to bloom.
But what are these blooming buds? I think they are present in the mixture of fantastic and grotesque together with the allegory which conveys the idea indirectly. Let us take into consideration the short story "False Miracles", which is part of the book with the same title. Its idea is that no matter how beautiful and precious things are in themselves, if they do not serve the mankind, they are common like all the rest. The daydreaming hero enters the world of magic, in the arms of an enchanting girl with luxurious palaces and magical library. She is eager to have all these miracles, including love as well, all for herself and her lover. Here comes out the conflict. This is in a few words the content, which is revealed at the beginning in the psychoanalyst spirit:

"When he opened the eyes, he saw the sun caressing the wall in front. It was high time to get up but he did not want to leave the bed. He gasped and took his arms out of the sheets. He remembered that last night he puzzled his wits to change something in his life. To make something worthy, to the benefit of mankind, but still he was ruminating what.

He wanted to think it over again before taking the next step. He had all the time ahead until two o’clock in the afternoon, when he had to start the job at the old bus garage. He was a mechanical engineer.

He had to go through the same things lately: get up at eight, wander around to drive away the sleep, then to near at the old basin with his gritting teeth, comb the hair at the washed out mirror nailed against one of the wardrobe doors, get dressed and leave."

Such psychoanalysis is revealed bit by bit to depict the realistic-phantasmagorical character:
"He was perplexed in various thoughts, until he reached the corner of the road, that left behind the inhabited zone and could make out the high-school girl in her black school uniform and white collar, which stirred up in him the nostalgia of migratory birds, the swallows, maybe because she used to commute every day from town to village and vice versa. With his heart pounding, he slowed down the pace and waited she passed by him. He could feel in every cell of his body her approach and his heartbeat melted suddenly into her deer-like steps. He could hardly breathe in those moments, his back thrilled and his nape got sweaty. He could feel her troubled breath kissing his ears but did not dare to turn around. He could feel the inner voice urging to speak, but they have never greeted each-other so far."

So, bit by bit, portraying figuratively the character, the short story turns into a symbol. And while in this story we have to do with a symbol, in the other one "The donkeys" we come across the grotesque that whips the kingdom of inefficiency mingled with the cringe. The inefficient people, the donkeys, live happily thanks to the skilfulness of other people- the well-known formula of all the times. Even here the author doesn’t skip the psychoanalyses, the paradox together with the grotesque mixed together with the sarcasm and the contemporary satire. The metamorphoses elements remind us of Apuleiu’s novel, the famous Latin writer "Metamorphoses or the golden ass", which unfortunately is not translated yet into Albanian.
In his short story "The donkeys", the author writes:

"Strangely, every night he dreamt of himself turned into a donkey. Nevertheless, even though his being might enter the skin of that animal, he would never believe it. How could such a thing be believed? He was the number one of the Presidential staff… He was right after the President in rank. Everyone feared him more than His Excellency, the President himself. No! Rrapush could never be and would never turn into a four-footed despite that strange feeling that tormented him at nights and deepened him into the dream world, becoming a donkey…"

It is not the case to enter a minute analysis on the book "False miracles", because it would ask some time. That is why I mentioned only some short stories, typical of the actual level of the works of Shefki Hysa. But I cannot let without mentioning the unique short novel: "The village headman", which contests the greediness and voracity. I would say, the traits of the expressionism are more obvious than in any other short story, not leaving aside the paradox and grotesque or phantasmagoria, all mixed together in realism. The short story evokes figuratively the corruption and degeneration of the society through the unique cinematographic dynamics. Each word here is readable and transparent.

In these few lines, I would also like to mention "The magic" that belongs to the kind of short novels above, but differs in the anxiety it lets out and the fear not to become a written calamity.
"Oh, I know you would call me nuts, evocative, fascinated, raving into the infernal grounds of a scary dream, or whatever epithet you’d like to add, when I mention magic. Your job, nevertheless, or otherwise- the vivid fact, the outcome of its violence, is me. Looking closely at me, you would understand the transfiguration of my being. Hence, look at my unshaved skinny face, swollen and bloody nose and lips, pimpled and scabby cheekbones, shaggy, untidy, muddy hair, becoming scarce in the widened and creasing forehead because of the fear sheltered deep inside the skull, outlining more and more clearly. Just look at my numb and cold body! So… aren’t you feeling fear, pain, pity, disgust, taunt, or anything else, because of the way I look like? …."

As I mentioned above, the actual level of the writing process of the narrator Shefki Hysa is perceived by the expressionist traits. But permit us to say, very friendly that we would like to have this tendency hidden from time to time and not to come out strongly and open. It is clear that the early expressionism despite the tendency of the idea hidden in it, it was also distinguished for the pathos of "catastrophe and scream". The new expressionism should be different and I am convinced that Shefki Hysa is aware of that, because his stories are characterised by the national spirit and signs of the clever Cham spirit, always troubled and always in search to discover, because he knows well the book of life and that of library.

Dritëro Agolli

July 2003

Transladed by: Dr. Haim Reitan

Hashim Thaçi, Olli Rehn

2008-03-26T06:02:00.000-07:00

2008-03-26T05:58:00.000-07:00

Declaration of Independence of Kosovo

17. 02. 2008

Convened in an extraordinary meeting on February 17, 2008, in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo,
Answering the call of the people to build a society that honors human dignity and affirms the pride and purpose of its citizens,

Committed to confront the painful legacy of the recent past in a spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness,

Dedicated to protecting, promoting and honoring the diversity of our people,
Reaffirming our wish to become fully integrated into the Euro-Atlantic family of democracies,
Observing that Kosovo is a special case arising from Yugoslavia's non-consensual breakup and is not a precedent for any other situation,

Recalling the years of strife and violence in Kosovo, that disturbed the conscience of all civilized people,

Grateful that in 1999 the world intervened, thereby removing Belgrade's governance over Kosovo and placing Kosovo under United Nations interim administration,

Proud that Kosovo has since developed functional, multi-ethnic institutions of democracy that express freely the will of our citizens,

Recalling the years of internationally-sponsored negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina over the question of our future political status,

Regretting that no mutually acceptable status outcome was possible, in spite of the good-faith engagement of our leaders,

Confirming that the recommendations of UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari provide Kosovo with a comprehensive framework for its future development and are in line with the highest European standards of human rights and good governance,

Determined to see our status resolved in order to give our people clarity about their future, move beyond the conflicts of the past and realize the full democratic potential of our society,
Honoring all the men and women who made great sacrifices to build a better future for Kosovo,

1. We, the democratically elected leaders of our people, hereby declare Kosovo to be an independent and sovereign state. This declaration reflects the will of our people and it is in full accordance with the recommendations of UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari and his Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status Settlement.

2. We declare Kosovo to be a democratic, secular and multi-ethnic republic, guided by the principles of non-discrimination and equal protection under the law. We shall protect and promote the rights of all communities in Kosovo and create the conditions necessary for their effective participation in political and decision-making processes.

3. We accept fully the obligations for Kosovo contained in the Ahtisaari Plan, and welcome the framework it proposes to guide Kosovo in the years ahead. We shall implement in full those obligations including through priority adoption of the legislation included in its Annex XII, particularly those that protect and promote the rights of communities and their members.

4. We shall adopt as soon as possible a Constitution that enshrines our commitment to respect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all our citizens, particularly as defined by the European Convention on Human Rights. The Constitution shall incorporate all relevant principles of the Ahtisaari Plan and be adopted through a democratic and deliberative process.

5. We welcome the international community's continued support of our democratic development through international presence established in Kosovo on the basis of UN Security Council resolution 1244 (1999). We invite and welcome an international civilian presence to supervise our implementation of the Ahtisaari Plan, and a European Union-led rule of law mission. We also invite and welcome the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to retain the leadership role of the international military presence in Kosovo and to implement responsibilities assigned to it under UN Security Council resolution 1244 (1999) and the Ahtisaari Plan, until such time as Kosovo institutions are capable of assuming these responsibilities. We shall cooperate fully with these presence to ensure Kosovo's future peace, prosperity and stability.

6. For reasons of culture, geography and history, we believe our future lies with the European family. We therefore declare our intention to take all steps necessary to facilitate full membership in the European Union as soon as feasible and implement the reforms required for European and Euro-Atlantic integration.

7. For P ahead period the in work its continues it as Nations United with constructively working to committed are We democracy. Of institutions build and war from rebuild recover us help done has gratitude deep our express.

8. With independence comes the duty of responsible membership in the international community. We accept fully this duty and shall abide by the principles of the United Nations Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, other acts of the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the international legal obligations and principles of international comity that mark the relations among states. Kosovo shall have its international borders as set forth in Annex VIII of the Ahtisaari Plan, and shall fully respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all our neighbors. Kosovo shall also refrain from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.

9. We hereby undertake the international obligations of Kosovo, including those concluded on our behalf by the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and treaty and other obligations of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to which we are bound as a former constituent part, including the Vienna Conventions on diplomatic and consular relations. We shall cooperate fully with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. We intend to seek membership in international organizations, in which Kosovo shall seek to contribute to the pursuit of international peace and stability.

10. Kosovo declares its commitment to peace and stability in our region of southeast Europe. Our independence brings to an end the process of Yugoslavia's violent dissolution. While this process has been a painful one, we shall work tirelessly to contribute to a reconciliation that would allow southeast Europe to move beyond the conflicts of our past and forge new links of regional cooperation. We shall therefore work together with our neighbors to advance a common European future.

11. We express, in particular, our desire to establish good relations with all our neighbors, including the Republic of Serbia with whom we have deep historical, commercial and social ties that we seek to develop further in the near future. We shall continue our efforts to contribute to relations of friendship and cooperation with the Republic of Serbia, while promoting reconciliation among our people.

12. We hereby affirm, clearly, specifically, and irrevocably, that Kosovo shall be legally bound to comply with the provisions contained in this Declaration, including, especially, the obligations for it under the Ahtisaari Plan. In all of these matters, we shall act consistent with principles of international law and resolutions of the Security Council of the United Nations, including resolution 1244 (1999). We declare publicly that all states are entitled to rely upon this declaration, and appeal to them to extend to us their support and friendship.

2008-03-14T05:01:00.000-07:00

By Ismail Kadare

A book of messages of hope and peace for Tchamëria

I was impressed by the book with short stories "Tchamëria’s flavour" written by Shefki Hysa, promoted in one of the programs of the national TV Channel. I am interested in every publication on Tchamëria, whenever it is remembered. This is not to encourage any disturbances in the Balkans, as someone might think of, but to calm down any restless conscience. This is why I said that I was impressed by the book with short stories "Tchamëria’s flavour" of this author of Tchamëria’s origin. I was interested in reading this book and I was anxious to go carefully through its pages and come across the message of hope and peace that it conveys to the reader.

In short, I would say that this book is necessary, imperative and moral, like every publication of this nature. There are many reasons that the Tchams do not forget Tchamëria and this is not only their right, but also the right of all the Albanians. Furthermore, it is a moral task, because one can never forget the suffering wound of thousands and thousands people. It can never be forgotten the displacement, it can never be forgotten the birth place, where the hearth is. All of these will help to get rid of the nightmares, as the book "Tchamëria’s flavour" does.

It is high time for the Balkans to get rid of the old crimes, and one of them is what happened to Tchamëria - the Tchams drama. In this way, the Balkans will pave the way towards the emancipation. Only after this, the Balkans might become part of the emancipated European family.

January, 2004

Translated by: Dr. Haim Reitan,
Honorary President
of the Diplomatic Mission
Peace and Prosperity

Pandeli Koçi

2008-02-28T05:41:00.000-08:00

2008-02-28T05:17:00.000-08:00

Pandeli Koçi

The truly friends of Bilal Xhaferi and my own friends incited me to be dedicated entirely to this initiative, especially to Pandeli Koçi. He is both my friend and my professor, academic of Kosovo literature in Faculty of History and Philology during years 1985 – 1992.
But who is this golden-heart man?

Pandeli Koçi, (the literary name – Sazan Goliku), was born in Vlora on 6 January 1942. Elementary school, eight year school and high school finished in Vlora. Graduated in the University of Tirana, in the Faculty of History and Philology, branch Albanian Language and Literature. He has completed some specializations in the field of journalism and publications. Mr. Koçi worked as teacher, culture worker, journalist, and literature editor in the publishing house "Naim Frasheri", etc.

Since year 1970 undertaken the publication in Albania of the Kosovo literature and was lecturer of this wing of Albanian literature in the University of Tirana.

From 1981 until 2002 worked in the Press Sector as spokesperson, as chief of official publishing sector, and editor of Official Journal (Fletorja Zyrtare) of the Parliament of the Republic of Albania.

Since the year 1960 are published studies, literature critics, and books redacting in various magazines and newspapers: Studime Filologjike, Nentori, Jeta e Re, Jehona, Drita, Fjala, Rilindja, Flake e Vllazerimit, Zeri i Rinise, Albania, Shqip, Telegraf, Shekulli etc.and especially in the magazine "The Wing of the Eagle"(Krahu i Shqiponjes).

Since 1972 are published over 20 artistic books for children.
Some of the studies and literature creations are evaluated with prices of the national level.

Several published books:

"Vague" (Turbull), poetry, 2007
"The triangle of the black sky" (Trekendeshi i qiellit te zi), stories, 2006, ISBN 99943-620-7-0
"One morning adventures" (Aventurat e nje mengjesi), poem, 2002, ISBN 99927-54-43-5
"The fallen petals" (Petalet e rena), poetry, 2001
"The White Mountain’s Guerillas (Komitet e Malit te Bardhe), novel, 1999
"Cosmic Epidemy (Epidemi kozmike), poetry, 1996
"Love dream (Enderr dashurie), poetry, 1996
"Adventures of freedom" (Aventurat e lirise), short story, 1995
"Infirmity" (Intimitet), poetry, 1987
"Light flower" (Lule drite), poetry, 1977
"The broken mirror" (Pasqyra e thyer), short story, 1972

Pandeli Koçi, writer, publicist, literature critic, was an intense ally of the Bilal Xhaferi work and the cam problem. Since the beginning of 80’s, when I firstly met him, he not only helped me during the most difficult years of the Communist Regime, when no one dared to freely talk to me cause of my biography as anticommunist, but as well nourished and incited me with the desire to be a valuable intellectual for the country. I am thankful to him for all the support and motivation that gave me to work with the figure of Bilal and with cam (Albanian çam) ideal. My friend

Pandeli Koçi, has contributed as a great patriot that cam ideal could be a true reality, so deserves the respect of all cams.

Bianka Bilali

2008-02-15T05:28:00.000-08:00

By Vaso Pasha

ALBANIA

Oh, poor Albania, bruised from lashes,
Who dared push your face into the ashes?
Hailed once as a woman of noble birth,
Mother you were called by men of this Earth.
Rich you were, to tell the truth.
With lovely girls and handsome youth,
With cattle, gardens and farms
With Latin rifles and other arms
With men of courage and women of cheer
In all the world you had no peer.

When guns boomed like the crack of thunder
Albania’s men rushed out of yonder,
And always fought well, till the end came,
And never soiled their name with shame.
When men of Albania pledged to fight,
All of Rumelia shivered with fright,
In fierce battles they fought and died,
With honor their memory inscribed.

But now, Albania, you’re a sight of woe
Like an oak tree brought down low!
All step on you as if you were dead,
And not one kind word to you is said.
Once you dressed well, like a woman high-born,
Today, your fine robes are badly torn,
You’ve lost your name, your faith, too,
And none is to blame for it but you.

Albanians, you are slaying one another,
Some shout for country, some against sin,
One says I’m Turk, another Latin,
Others Greeks or Slavs profess to be,
Fools! You are brothers, can’t you see?

Priests and mullahs have made you mute
To keep you split and destitute.
Foreigners sit by your fireplace,
Your wives and sisters they disgrace,
And if money comes knocking on your door
The faith of your father you ignore,
You become slaves of alien boors,
Whose race and tongue differ from yours.

Weep, oh, your rifles, and you who care,
Albanians, like birds, are caught in a snare,
Weep with us, you warriors all around,
For Mother Albania, lying on the ground;
She has no bread or meat to eat,
Nor fire in the hearth, not light or heat,
Pale of cheek and unrespected,
She lies broken and neglected!
Gather you women, so pretty and spry,
Who know so well to weep and cry.
For she’s shorn of honor and forlorn,
She’s like a widow whose man is gone,
She’s like a mother without a son!

Who has the heart to let cruel death,
Take this brave woman, panting for breath?
Can we allow aliens to smother
And trample on our cherished Mother?
No, no! Such shame no one can bear,
Such vile conduct all men forswear!
Let warriors die carrying the banner
Before Albania is lost in this manner.

Awake, Albania, it’s time to rise
And bind yourselves with brotherly ties;
Look not to church or mosque for pietism,
The faith of Albanians is Albanians!

From Tivar all the way to Preveze
The sun sends down its light and rays;
It’s our land, the land of our ancestors,
To the death we’ll defend it from predators.
Better to die for it like the men of old,
Than in shame before the Lord!

2008-02-15T01:07:00.000-08:00

THE CULTURAL, PARADOXES, AND TIE INFLUENCES ON EMIGRINTS LIFE
(About the book of Dr. Zyhdi Dervishi, "The crossed glimpses on the sea''

By: Prof. Dr. Jakup MATO

In the impetuous and irrepressible flow of I current' Albanian editions, it is difficult to I distinct real scientific or artistic values from I the ordinary values written by scriveners. It I happens like in a mountain when the stray I turns of the fallen leaves have covered the flows of vivifying waters. It is needed a careful work to discover them. Something similar it happens also to editions when poems, stories, sensational and erotic literature, memories, studies, valuable or without any value have covered important books. The artistic criticism even the scientific one if it exists has lost the orientation. The artistic criticism even the scientific criticism turned into almost friendly advertisement. In this whirl of the editions and in a fog of criticism suffer more the scientific editions which do not succeed to be taken into consideration appropriately.

Anyhow, the book it has a strange fate. The artistic and scientific, sociological and practice values of the books with such real values can't be Obscured by anything. Zyhdi Dervish’s book "The crossed glimpses on the sea" was edited last year. a theoretical and practical study in the field of the sociology of culture. In it, as underlined in the subtitle, it was made a comparative analysis between cultures through socio-cultural integration of the Albanian emigrants in Italy. After you read this book your mind is preoccupied wide a multitude of extremely interesting issues of theoretical and practical character: and it leaves an impression on you that until now this book or the problems that were presented in this book didn't attract the media attention, although the author is often present in these media. In this edition in your memory remain significant facts and data, sometimes figures sometimes the detailed sayings through sincere interviews which very often distress you with the dramatic subject and the coloring they contain. Through them come out into conspicuousness some characteristics of cultural co-actions in actual conditions of Albanian massive emigrations and some dramatic situations they reminisce. The conclusions for every issue are proved with the given examples and numerous data. But, even if the reader has any fixed idea for an issue, he is informed with new and rich facts that make him think.

The structure of the book forms the trio: Albanian culture. Italian culture, and the intermediate link among them, emigrants. In these processes they are the receptors but they keep and show also the characters of their national culture, certainly with differences according to the experience, education, provincial features etc. In this study it was shown that the emigrants bring a national cultural structure, with good and bad sides, with a medley of opinions and practical experiences. But, at the same time it has been proved in details that they are also usurpers of a foreign rich culture. The author often refers to the theoretical theses for the elements of culture, but he insists more on facts, practices and life data. In general it is not spoken about the components of the culture, as for instance: the living culture, production, artistic culture which for decades developed in quite propagandistic forms. He deals with its particular and concrete elements, as tolerance, sincerity, courage, correctness, rationalism, competition, optimism, pledge, patriotism, the characteristics of human's life in the automation society and many other issues. Therefore, a lot of issues create a link with some of main cultural spheres but they create the possibility to be discovered by social psychology and the consciousness of social groups. All these elements of culture can be seen on their opposite side, when they appear as values or when they appear with elements of anti-values. Thus, when we deal with innovative soul at the same time we deal with adoption processes, with the occurrence of spiritual inertia, and in such a case he has studied the sincerity and naivety events, mutual respect but also prejudices. Also many features and other cultural particularities are studied on their opposite side. This had an influence on the presentation of elements with an attractive and modem language. The contemporary sociological theories that it can be realized clearly are well known by the author are used as instruments to he discovered in details the colorings that use cultural feature, during mutual influences or coincidences on a, a con sequence of the changes between cultural structures of both nations. The author of this study has collected extraordinary factual material through interviews, conversations, and special editions for these topics. He aims to go deep into consciousness of experiences and psychological situations of the social groups he studies. The living and dynamic alternation of theoretical instruments and of concrete living data composes a precious value, even special one from the methodological standpoint. In order to be proved the presented ideas for study, he omen calls for help also the theses of other scholars of mind, spiritual culture and social psychology. The skillful conjunction of sociological theoretical theses with life evidences discovered through reminiscences and confessions of the emigrants make the book to he read also as a serious: scientific study, as an attractive edition, satiated with emotional and sincere confessions of the interviewed. The value of such an edition is determined from the object of study, after the research of the cultural confrontations between emigrants and natives, since in 1998 Albania had 528 thousand emigrants: while now their number has been increased much, more. Their life problems, among other factors, depend on their adaptation capability with other cultures and the levee, of their own culture. Due to this reason, parallel with scientific values of the developed theoretical issues, this edition presents a special practical interest. Many cultural elements of Albanian emigrants ate researched in the beginning by the author to find out in which scale they possess contemporary values and after this he researches them in comparison with Italian culture, or more concretely with the culture of Siena inhabitants. When he brings them together he discovers joint Clements, colorings of differences, mutual influences and oppositions: and he stands out with objectivity the real values and detects of one or another culture. Although time after time it seems that, the feelings and courage for Albanian ethno-cultural traditions intervene to stress the virtues of the compatriots; in general the scholar is object and is characterized by a critical glimpse, therefore he differs real and rich values but also weaknesses and cultural detects of both cultures, while he is not at all under the influence of xenophobic psychology, or xenophobic mania. Anyhow, the author was able to make deep researches for Albanian culture through the conceptual sociological instruments, and to stress its propensities towards some samples of the culture of western civilization. 19 Such a study presents numerous difficulties to explain theoretical meanings of the issues moreover to collect the factual material. The author had to clarify even in the beginning what do we exactly understand by the notion "culture". Among hundred formulations, the author stresses as more accepted the definition that culture is an entirety, of mentalities and the models of behavior and of the living manners that reflect on the entire activity of the culture members. In this way the notion culture includes all mentalities and practices despite their nature and quality. In Albanian editions culture has been perceived as an entirety of achievements (values) in material and spiritual life, a dentition that is closer with Robin William's idea mentioned in the book that perceives the culture, only on values, neglecting those that are not qualitative achievements.

The dentition that was taken as a basis, if it can be discussed, creates the possibilities for more completed standpoints of chiaroscuros of every cultural feature. When he researches the mentalities, experiences and models of the behavior of Albanian emigrants (according to the groups and educational level), the author aims at the same time to discover and prove how much they are oriented towards the medication of the models according to Italian standards. But at the same time it shows how much is strong the force of the tradition in order not to abandon the samples of Albanian culture. He researches from several standpoints every cultural and psychological feature (creative soul, courage, pledge, openness etc.) showing in which culture are presents superlative values and in which stand out the defects. In order to prove his theses the author used fully surveys and their data are presented graphically. Certainly, the surveys have their defects too, since all it depends on number and composition of those who were researched. Anyhow, they speak with an expressive and emotional language, special clearness, with concrete figures regarding some truths that are connected with the concerns of large groups of emigrants. So, about 72% of the interviewed emigrants say that in the working relationship, Italians arc a little or fairly sincere, this it proves big difficulties they face due to the lack of correctness in the working relationship, failure to implement the agreements as a consequence of greediness and the dishonest exploitation of unprotected foreign manpower. The author used the surveys' dawn, according to scientific criterions, dithering ages, experiences and completed education from each group. It has been proved that the judgments of those who have a superior education usually are more objective and convincible.

Likewise all other cultural values that have been researched, the value of tolerance as a possibility to amortize the conflicts between cultures, its general features in the culture of the world and Albanian mentality or optimism and pessimism as the formed spiritual states by living conditions are developed with a rich theoretical and factual material, focusing at the same time several other problems that are connected and mutually subordinated. So, it has been shown that during the period when the emigrants were in desperation, for some time paled also the feeling of patriotism. But, that feeling is waking up and it is coming to life as an expression or mentality in order to nod its own dignity. [( is interesting the gained conclusion after several surveys and analyses that Albanian superior educated specialists feel more and more themselves as a foreigner in emigration and they are not attracted any more by the commodity and profit. In this study, according to the way in which it was developed the scientific subject is attractive especially the chapter where are treated theoretically and practically the issues of ethnocentrism and xenon-centrism, the basic idea that the propensities and psychosis of ethnocentrism transform your own culture into a comparative criterion for the evaluation of other cultures, bad or good ones, high or low, serves to enlighten several events in the relationships between emigrants and foreigners and some contradictions that crone out. When we treat the ethnocentrism, mentalities that were inspired by the monist ideology we get some conclusions for cultural, social and economical consequences that were brought in Albanian life.

In this study were developed and examined, o many 1ife problems and mentalities of the emigrants, always compared with the jives that you can create the idea that you will tined then: all emigrants' concerns with j all their contradictions. How to survive and to adapt to the working conditions and life conditions in a foreign land, how they build the relationships between Albanians and foreigners, do they have to risk or to be stained with common pronto, should they be sincere, naive cry emotional or rational, reserved or malice should they create the families with foreigners or only with Albanians, should they go back to fatherland one day or to stay and be always as emigrants and serial other problems are treated with al! Their contradictions, with all their reelections in different groups, according to the age, experience, level of education. In the end you are shocked by the conclusions that the author gets by researching the judgments of many emigrants who notice that in there country, in Albania, became alienated many cultural and moral values: the human and altruist spirit is being replaced by the spirit of harsh and often dishonest competition, the collectivist spirit of facing, the difficulties is being replaced by extreme individualism, the pledge, to keep one'$ given word, has been transformed into a practical trick for profit, human values are replaced by the fevers of enrichment. So, a lot of Albanian noble cultural values arc transformed into problematic forms. So the emigrants, also in the fatherland, find the second, desperation. All these ideas, although given as prejudgments are also a consequence of a lot of interviews and conversations.

In the book "The crossed glimpses on the sea" is researched and developed a multitude of problems that must be recognized by the Albanian society, especially the emigrants. The content of this edition will help them to clarify the attitude for many issues, to go deeper on their judgments and activities, to distinct real cultural values they havoc and the cultural values of natives. This book will make them be more conscious for many problems they have to face in the foreign land. The data and the conclusions of this edition can be used also by different organizations that deal with social problems, or with emigrants in order to be informed with them and to be found a more useful solution for some of them.

2008-01-30T05:32:00.000-08:00

ROBERT ELSIE

Albanian Literature since World War II

After the Stalinist purges under Koçi Xoxe (1917-1949) and the elimination of the first postwar minister of cultural affairs, the liberal Marxist Sejfulla Malëshova (pseudo: Lame Kodra, 1901-1971), intellectual life in Albania had been virtually wiped out and literary production, as a consequence, had come to a standstill. The early writers of SOCIALIST REALISM in the 1950s, Dhimitër Shuteriqi (b. 1915), Shevqet Musaraj (1914-1986), Jakov Xoxa (1923-1979), and Aleks Çaçi (1916-1989) could not demonstrate any particular talent under the unbolting terror of the Hoxha regime.

From 1961, the year of Albania's break with the Soviet Union, a new generation of more talented writers arose. Represented by Ismail Kadare, Dritëro Agolli, and Fatos Arapi (b. 1930). Kadare, in particular, did much to emancipate Albanian literature gradually from the shackles of the past and in the 1970s and 1980s came to dominate the literary scene. After the French-language publication of his first major novel, Gjenerali i ushtrise së vdekur (1963; The General of the Dead Army. 1971), his international reputation grew, giving him confidence at home to continue his subtle attacks against the otherwise all-pervading doctrine of socialist realism. Among his pioneering novels to have appeared in English are Kronikë në gur (1971; Chronicle in Stone, 1987), Prilli i thyer (1978; Broken April, 1990), and Nëpunësi i pallatit të ëndrrave ( 1981: The Palace of Dreams, 1993). At the end of October 1990, a mere few months before the collapse of the dictatorship, Kadare sought political asylum in Paris, where he has been living and writing ever since. Other noted prose authors of the period include Petro Marko (1913-1991), Kasem Trebeshina (b. 1926), Dhimitër Xhuvani (b. 1934), and Bilal Xhaferri (1935-1986). Of the poets of the 1980s and early 1990s, mention can be made of Xhevahir Spahiu (b. 1945), Natasha Lako (b. 1948), Bardhyl Londo (b. 1948), Visar Zhiti (b. 1952) who survived seven years of prison and concentration camps, and Mimoza Ahmeti (b. 1963).

Albanian literature in Kosovo was put into motion by poet Esad Mekuli (1916-1993) with the founding in 1949 of the literary periodical Jeta e re, but did not produce much of note until the 1960s. Exceptions must be made for the novelist Adem Demaçi (b. 1936) who was to spend the next twenty-eight years as a political prisoner of the Belgrade regime, and of the verse collections Nji fyell ndër male (1953; a Flute in the Mountains), and Kanga e vërrinit (1954: Song of the Lowland Pastures) by Martin Camaj, later to become a leading scholar of Albanian studies in Rome and Munich. The Yugoslav constitution of 1974 gave Kosovo Albanians more freedom and a semblance of equality for the first time, and literature flourished on the Plain of the Blackbird in the decade to follow. Of leading prose writers, mention can be made of the experimental Anton Pashku (1937-1995), Rexhep Qosja (b. 1936), notably for his explosive political novel Vdekja më vjen prej syve të tillë (1974; Death Comes with Such Eyes), the prolific Nazmi Rrahmani (b. 1941) and Teki Dervishi (b. 1943). The poetry of Kosovo has been far more experimental and creative than that of Albania. Among its leading proponents are Din Mehmeti (b. 1932), Besim Bokshi (b. 1932). Azem Shkreli (b. 1938), Rrahman Dedaj (b. 1939), Ali Podrimja (b. 1942), Eqrem Basha (b. 1948), Sabri Hamiti (b. 1950), and Basri Çapriqi (b. 1960. Since the military occupation of Kosovo and its forceful annexation by Serbia, the Albanians have returned to their status of second-class citizens. Economic, cultural and literary life in Kosovo have been virtually destroyed in the process (suspension of Albanian-Language secondary schooling, closing-down of the University of Prishtina for non-Serbs, takeover of the Rilindja publishing company, and the paramilitary occupation of the Institute of Albanian Studies in Prishtina). The future of Albanian literature in Kosovo is uncertain.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mann, S. E., Albanian Literature (1955); Bihiku, K., History of' Albanian
Literature (1986): Elsie, R., Anthology of Modern Albanian Poetry (1993); Elsie, R., Dictionary of Albanian Literature (1995).

[Published in: Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th century. Third Edition. Vol. I: A-D. General Editor: Steven R. Serafin. (St. James Press, Farmington Hills MI 1999), p. 35-36]

2008-01-24T07:13:00.000-08:00

Bilal Xhaferri

Bilal Xhaferri (1935-1986), Albanian writer, (poet, novelist and remarkable dissident publicist) was born in Ninat, Konispol, Cameria district and died in Chicago, USA.

Bio data

Main dates of Bilal Xhaferri’s life and activity.

1935, 2 November was born in Ninat village, Konispol, Cameria region.

1943, his mother passed away.

1945, his nationalist and anti-communist, father was executed

1948, leaves his home village.

1948-1952 resides and works in Saranda, as courier and simple worker.

1954-1955 attends the seventh-grade school in Sukth village, Durres city.

1962-1963 publishes his first lyrics and stories in "Zeri i Rinise" (The voice of Youth", "Drita" (Light), in magazines such as "Nëntori",
(November), Ylli", (The Star) etc.

1966 His first summary of stories is published entitled "Njerëz të rinj, tokë e lashtë" (Young people, ancient land), which had an extraordinary success.

1967 The summary of lyrics is published entitled "Lirishta e kuqe" (Red Valley), which was forbidden by communist censure.

1967 writes the novel "Krastakraus" published post-mortem in 1993.

1968 writes the script for the artistic movie "Era shtyn mjegullat" (The wind pushes the fog).

1968 was denied the right of publishing. Communist censure prohibited the distribution of his books and has been exiled in "Hamalle" village, Durres city.
After being exclude from "Lidhja e Shkrimtarëve & e Artistëve të Shqipërisë" (Albanian Writers’ & Artists League) under the reason that he had criticize Ismail Kadare’s novel "Dasma" (The wedding).

1969, 30 August he escapes secretly from Albania to Greece and later on in USA due to the file compiled by the State Security Service for his arrest and custody.

1970, arrives in Boston, USA.

1970-1972 works for "Dielli" (The Sun) newspaper in Boston, USA.

1972 Demands to publish the novel "Ra Berati" (Berati Surrenders) to the Publishing Enterprise "Rilindja".

1974, October, in Chicago, USA founded the magazine "Krahu i shqiponjës" (The Eagle Wing) in Albanian and English, a product of Cam League.

1974-1986 directs, publishes and edits the magazine "Krahu i shqiponjës", where he published a lot of articles, lyrics, stories, novels, cartoons, artistic photos etc.
This magazine became the tribune of freethinking and continuously dealt cam issues, national concerns, and dictatorship issues in Albania and after 1981, more intensively about Kosovo concerns.
Bilal, used to publish on this magazine not only his literature creations but translation and literature products of many foreign and Albanian writers as well.

He managed to publish 39 editions of this magazine in two languages, Albanian and English till he died in unknown circumstances on 14 October 1986

1975 publishes fragments of the novel "Trotuare të Kundërta" Opposite Avenues" on the magazine "Krahu i shqiponjës" (Eagle Wing).

1977 He publishes fragments of the novel "Hëna e kantjereve" (The Site Moon) on "Krahu i shqiponjës" magazine.

1978 some strangers wounded him.

1981 The editor’s house "Krahu i shqiponjës" burned down ", where he has his literature manuscripts, studies, scientific researches, translations, correspondence, political notes, photos, paintings.

1986 His disease was recognized and he was submitted to a surgery operation.

1986, 14 October, he died in Chicago, at unknown circumstances.

1995, 3rd May the President of Albanian Republic issued him an honor
"Martyr of Democracy" (Decree 1089), with the motivation "For his dedication as publicist and dissident politician in the fight against communism and dictatorship, for his deep national and democratic aspiration".

1995, 6th May, the writer Shefki Hysa, chairman of the Cultural Association "Bilal Xhaferri", in cooperation with Albanian government initiated and organized the ceremony of carcass return in homeland of the outstanding dissident poet, novelist, Bilal Xhaferri who rests now in his hometown, Saranda.

Book titles:

"Young People, Ancient Land" – summary of stories (1966)

"The Red Valley" - lyrics (1967) [1]

"Bloody Love" – romantic novel (1992)

"Krastakraus" - novel (1967), (Published post mortem 1993)

"Sadness, come" (1995)

"Berati surrenders" novel, published by - Prishtina 1995 ISBN 99943-904-5-7

"Beyond distance " – prose and articles (1996)

Bianka Bilali

2008-01-24T07:06:00.000-08:00

"Krahu i shqiponjës" ("Eagle Wing")

"Eagle Wing" is an Albanian magazine, which aims to promote the literary, social and artistic Albanian life, serving to an important national goal, and to defend and support unfavorable society groups in Balkans. Its spiritual leader was and remains Bilal Xhaferri.
Historical background

"Eagle Wing" is a political, cultural, literary magazine, published for the first time in October, 1974, in two languages, Albanian and English, as a periodical of Cam League in Chicago, USA. Its founder, publisher and director was Bilal Xhaferri, poet, novelist and well-known dissident publicist, who was born on 2nd November 1935 in Ninat, Konispol, Cam district, who after an extensive literary- journalistic activity, died in exile (escaped from Albania in 1969 because of his national and anti-communist views and persecuted by the State Security Service) in 14th October 1986 in Chicago, USA.

"Eagle Wing" was a forum of free democratic ideas, with powerful and deep anti-communist, anti- dictatorship trends, aiming to unite all Albanian political forces in exile in order for them to unify ideas, programs and goals for a Free Pro-Western Albania.
The magazine represented widely the Albanian national issues, especially cam concern, Kosovo issue, and other territories divided from the territorial borders of homeland Albania, and Albanian community issues (Diaspora) all over the world.

Bilal Xhaferri managed to publish 39 editions.

Since August 1995 till present "Eagle Wing" continue to be published in Tirana as periodical of Cultural Association "Bilal Xhaferri" (Cam Cultural Community) established and directed by the well-known journalist and writer Shefki Hysa, who initiated the return of Bilal Xhaferri carcass in Albania and the graced the extraordinary values of this rare figure, mistreated and forgotten by the former Albanian communist dictatorship.

"Eagle Wing" pages hosted articles and interviews of Albanian and foreign politicians who defend Albanian national issue, in particular cam concern. Articles and selected stories of personalities of Albanian and world literature are published on this magazine, such as: Alfred de Musset, Bilal Xhaferri, Christina Rossetti, Dritëro Agolli, Edgar Allan Poe, Ismail Kadare, Martin Mato, Miranda Vickers, Namik Mane, Pjetër Arbnori, Shefki Hysa, Vath Koreshi, Jack London, Jean-Paul Sartre, etj.

Shefki Hysa, in charge of publisher and editor of this magazine, based on his own funds and those of his friends, has managed to publish over 80 editions and consistently chant this pedestal of freethinking following up the footway of Bilal Xhaferri ideals.

Bianka Bilali

2008-01-19T02:15:00.000-08:00

Images of Albania and Albanians in English
Literature from Edith Durham's

The Albanian State, as we know it now, was born at the turn of the twentieth century, but the history of Albania [PERHAPS] predates that of Greece. History has been cruel to the Albanians since the Roman conquest. Except for the 1443-1468 period, when the Albanian national hero Gjergj Kastrioti, Skanderbeg, (1403 - 1468) was successful in his mammoth task to defeat the Ottomans (thus defending both the Albanian nation and Catholic Europe), the fifteen years (1925-1939) when Ahmed Zogolli (1895-1961) ruled Albania first as a president and then as a monarch, and the post World War II period, for the last two millennia the Albanians have been constantly living under occupation.

In this respect, Albania is the closest European equivalent to Egypt. Like the Egyptians, who had to wait for almost three millennia until they finally could govern themselves again in 1952, the Albanians never abandoned the dream for self-rule. As opposed to the Egyptians, however, when the Albanians finally succeeded in proclaiming their country's independence in 1912, they were not left with much of a country to govern

The Albania that resulted from the dreadful historical miscalculations and injustices culminating in the London Conference of the Ambassadors of the Six European Great Powers in 1913, was a dismembered nation, something of a still-birth whose long-term survival was never taken seriously. But survive the fledgling Albanian State did, and so did the Albanians living in Albania territories unjustly left outside Albania. Survival has been a basic instinct of the Albanians since 169 BC when Gent, the last Illyrian king, was captured by the Romans at Shkodra. This has always baffled foreign Albanologists.

It was this specific Albanian characteristic that surprised and marveled Edith Durham (1863-1944), one of the most well known, some would say controversial, Western Albanologists of the first half of the twentieth century. A British woman, a self-taught anthropologist, writer and artist, she spent the first two decades of this century traveling in the Balkans, took up the Albanian cause, wrote seven books on the Balkans and influenced British foreign policy. She was adamant that it was not religious difference that caused the bloodshed of the Balkan Wars. She observed and took photographs of religious processions. Some, taken in Scutari (today's Shkodër) show clearly from the clothing and headgear of the participants that they were from different religions. And the same was true when Pope Paul II visited Shkodra in l993. People attend religious ceremonies regardless of which faith they belong to, as a form of social gathering. Numerous Western travelers have remarked on this.Mary Edith Durham was born in 1863 in Hanover Square, London. Her father, Arthur Edward Durham, was a distinguished surgeon who sired a large Victorian family of eight children, all of whom went on to excel in respectable professions. Edith manifested artistic ambitions and, after being educated privately in London, attended the Royal Academy of Arts. She became an accomplished illustrator and watercolorist, exhibiting widely and contributing detailed drawings to the amphibian and reptiles volume of the Cambridge Natural History.

As the eldest child - and still unmarried in her thirties - Edith took on the task of caring for her ailing mother after her father's death. Filial responsibility turned out to be the unlikely impetus for her Balkan entanglements. At thirty-seven, Durham sailed from Trieste down the Dalmatian coast to Cattaro and trekked overland to Ã‡etinje, the capital of the exotic principality of Montenegro.

She was not a scholar when she first visited the Balkans and the Albanian territories in 1900. It would probably be unwise to consider everything she wrote on the region's complicated history as being indisputably correct.

Durham did not go to the Balkans to do fieldwork; she went there on medical advice when she was ill and depressed. She left England for a cure and found a vocation. She was one of the first Western travel-writers to discover that the Balkans is a career.

Many British and European hopefuls are trying to emulate Durham's example, especially recently when so much has happened in the Balkans: the collapse of Communism, the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosova, and the fighting in Macedonia.

As opposed to some recently self-proclaimed Western experts in Balkan and Albanian affairs, Durham appears to have gone to the region not with many preconceptions and prejudices. While it is true that she wrote favourably more often than not about the Albanians, her 'preference' for one of the most ancient European nations was not inspired or motivated by the interests of her own country in the Balkans or Albania.

The problem re-emerged after the Balkan wars of 1912-1913, when an arbitrary and unjust decision by the London Conference in 1913 assigned Kosova to Serbia and other parts of Albania to Macedonia and Montenegro. With the rebirth of Yugoslavia in 1945, Kosova was annexed to Serbia by the decision of the Great Powers. In 1908 the famous Albanologist, Edith Durham said: "Empires came and went, and passed over the Albanian as does the water off a duck's back."

Durham was, however, the twentieth century's indispensable interpreter of Albania, and arguably the most important writer on that culture since J. C. Hobhouse journeyed through the Albanian lands with Byron. She was adored among the Albanians themselves, who knew her as "Kralica e Malësorevet" - the Queen of the Highlanders. "She gave us her heart and she won the ear of our mountaineers", the exiled Albanian king, Zog, wrote to The Times on her death in 1944 (even though she was not on good terms with him, either). The only other Briton to have been so lionized was, improbably, Norman Wisdom, whom the Communist dictator Enver Hoxha found uproariously entertaining.

She remained involved in Albanian affairs for the rest of her life and was secretary of the Anglo-Albanian society. In fact, with Aubrey Herbert (a relation to Lord Carnarvon, who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun), she is credited as having Albania finally recognized by the League of Nations in 1920.

Durham was a scholar by instinct rather than by trade. She based her judgments on her own observations. She wrote about what she saw. In this respect she is different from the nineteenth-century German writer Karl May, who offered to the German readership an almost entirely fictitious picture of the Albanians.

She upset many of her contemporary, one-sided and often blinked Balkans experts because she championed the cause of a long-neglected people. But this was not done for reasons of self-interest. Despite her initial reason for visiting the Balkans, Durham benefited the region more than it benefited her. The Albanians were so impressed with her relentless efforts on their behalf (in Albania and the UK) that they expressed their gratitude by referring to her as their Kratlitse (Queen).

She approached and vigorously defended the Albanian question primarily as a humanist. As opposed to some recently self-proclaimed Western experts in Balkan and Albanian affairs, Durham appears to have gone to the region not with many preconceptions and prejudices. While it is true that she wrote favorably more often than not about the Albanians, her 'preference' for one of the most ancient European nations was not inspired or motivated by the interests of her own country in the Balkans or Albania.

Durham was her own spokesperson when she defended the Albanians. With her determination to speak her own mind, she set an example seldom followed by her contemporary British and Western Balkanists and Albanologists.

She' discovered' Albania, especially Northern Albania, the country was perceived as being in a state of hibernation as a result of successive invasions by the Celts, the Romans, the Slavs and the Turks. The Albanians appeared ossified. Although geographically near, they were politically and economically far from the European Powers that had perpetually chosen to ignore and often abandon them in favor of their own political and economic interests.

When Durham visited Albania, Europe had little time for the long neglected country. She found the Albanians isolated, but not of their own volition. They had been forced into isolation. Cut off from Europe, the Albanians had no alternative but to ensure their survival by relying on their ancient mythology, laws and traditions. These were bound to change and in some cases to become distorted in order to suit the often extraordinary circumstances the Albanian nation had experienced during the previous two thousand years. The Canon of Lek Dukagjin, for instance, is probably the best example of the need the Albanians felt to revive, preserve, update and to some extent 'spoil' their ancient traditions of self-government in order to meet the challenges of surviving under Turkish rule and the constant threat of assimilation by their neighbors.

Much as she regretted the Albanians' imposed isolation from Western Europe, Durham makes no secret of her exultation at discovering the exotic Albania and Albanians. While it is true she differs from many former and contemporary European 'experts' in Albania for the unfashionable sympathy for the Albanians, the exotic is as central in her writings on Albania as it is in the work of other Western travel writers, past and present.

Although Durham traveled widely throughout the Albanian territories, her most inspired work High Albania (1909) concentrates on one of the most isolated and as such, one of the most exotic parts of Albania and the Albanian nation.

High Albania offered Durham a unique opportunity to see a 'backwater of life' at the heart of Europe, which has 'primitive virtues, without many of the meannesses of what is called civilization. It is uncorrupted by luxury' It was in this particular region of Albania, well known for its breathtaking and epic landscape and its people's proverbial hospitality, that Durham felt transported into an alien yet majestic world of living myths and legends, about which her European education had taught her almost nothing.

She had been well received in the Albanian uplands, and although it was unusual for a woman to travel to the remoter mountain districts, the notion of a lone female wanderer actually fitted with Albanian custom: the tradition of Albanian "Sworn Virgins"* - women who assumed the responsibilities of manhood and wore men's clothes and held a protected status in tribal society - meant that Durham traveled unmolested.

Charmed by a reality she had never thought it existed, Durham remarks: I think no place where human beings live has given me such an impression of majestic isolation from all the world. It is a spot where the centuries shrivel; the river might be the world's well-spring, its banks the fit home of elemental instincts - passions that are red and rapid.

She became a fervent promoter of the Albanian national cause all over the world. I looked her up to see that, "many thought her at best wildly eccentric and at worst completely mad." And yet, her most famous work High Albania published in 1909, is still one of the leading guides to the culture and customs of this area. She was much loved by the Albanians, who gave her the name "Queen of the Highlanders."

Durham that she often 'forgot all about the rest of the world'. In High Albania Durham came into contact with an enchanting wilderness, which explains why when she was there she commented: 'I never want books. They are dull compared to the life stories that are daily enacted among the bare Grey rocks' .

This mountainous part of Albania was for Durham something of an exotic oasis at the heart of Europe, which at times she felt was better left unspoiled. In High Albania Durham the humanist and champion of the rights of small nations is at times subdued by Durham the selfish Western tourist who seems to believe that the world and other nationalities exist primarily for her own recreation and entertainment. Thus Durham emerges as judge and jury; she alone knows best what is good or bad for the Albanians and what they should and should not do.

Her patronizing attitude is seen especially in the comments she makes when hearing that the farmers in one of the most fertile regions in Albania would welcome the building of a new railway: I looked at the room full of long, lean cat-o'-mountains, and wondered whether it would benefit anybody - let alone themselves - to turn them into fat corn and horse dealers 'Civilisation is vexation, And progress is as bad, The things that be, they puzzle me, And Cultchaw drives me mad.' (Durham 1985)

Durham was not the only one who would have preferred the Albanians to remain 'uncivilized'. 'God cast you into Hell,' a priest once said to her, 'that you might tell of it in England - that you might cry to every Catholic in England: 'Save these people!'' (Ibid., 197).

Durham understood the Albanians well enough to realize that they were no twilled' and 'uncivilized'. She tried hard to comprehend and explain, sometimes successfully sometimes not, why they were lagging behind other European nations. Occasionally, however, Durham glorifies the 'primitive' life in which contemporary Albanians lived. Dazzled by the festive atmosphere she witnessed throughout the feast of St. John, she remarked: I thought how dull London dinner-parties are, and wondered why people ever think they would like to be civilized. This was as good as being Alice at the Mad Hatter's Tea-party.

If not taken out of context, Durham's remarks on the Albanians' lack of civilization are on the whole light-hearted. I personally enjoy reading her work not because she wrote, and in most cases favorably, about Albania. She had the ability to rediscover Albania, to reinterpret the country, the people and the culture not just for the European audience still largely ignorant of this terra incognito, but also for the Albanians. Her independent mind, her eye for details and her sincere and fresh narrative are bound to continue to attract the attention of open-minded readers who do not judge Albania and the Albanians.

High Albania depicted only one Albanian region. Durham made it clear from the beginning of the book that the conditions there 'are very different from those in South Albania, and it is with the wildest part of High Albania alone that this book deals' (Ibid., 1). Did she offer this explanation simply because she wanted to clarify to the readers the scope and focus of her book, or because she was afraid lest her work would be seen as the 'definitive' picture of all Albania? Whatever her reasons were, it cannot be disputed that in High Albania and other works, Edith Durham introduced Albania and the Albanians to the British readers in a sympathetic light (although at times patronizingly) hardly seen before.

Edith Durham's work belongs to the best tradition of the British travel writing where foreigners are depicted not as the alien and hostile 'other' but as fellow human beings who try hard, at times against all odds, to retain and protect their individual and national identity and integrity. Writers like Edith Durham, D. H. Lawrence, George Orwell and E. M. Forster presented a new picture and perception of overseas peoples and cultures to a largely ignorant and at times misinformed British readership.

She continued her campaign throughout the 1930s and befriended many Albanians driven into exile in London. On "Black Friday" (Good Friday 1939) after hearing that Mussolini's forces had invaded Albania, the outraged 76 year old Edith Durham paraded the London streets wearing a placard with the slogan "Hands off Albania!" She died in November 1944. An obituary containing an emotional tribute written by a leading Albanian politician appeared in the Daily Telegraph:- "Open-minded and generous as she was, she speedily understood Albania's soul ... Fearlessly and without compromise she told the world and its rulers what she had learned... Albanians have never forgotten, and never will forget this Englishwoman. In the Albanian mountains she knew so well, the news of her death will echo from peak to peak, the news of the death of one who was loved there".

2008-01-08T02:21:00.000-08:00

By Anthony Weir

NOTE OF ALBANIA'S HISTORY

Albania, anciently known as Illyria, and occupying a large part of the Western Balkans, lost its independence in 169 BC, when Gent, king of the Illyrians, was defeated and captured by the Romans at Shkodra.
But in the two thousand years that their land was ruled by foreigners, Albanians lost neither their identity nor their ancient language - more ancient than Latin, and related both to Greek and Etruscan.
The Albanian state which came into being in 1912 was really the remnants of Shqiperisë (Eagle-Realm in Albanian) that the Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians had by some miracle been unable to lay claim to. It was considered by Western nations to be first a ruritanian, then a totalitarian joke. But Albanian has survived in its truncated form the Italian, Greek and German occupations and incursions of the Second World War - and the rule of its last paranoid war-lord, Enver Hoxha.
Albanians swallowed up by the neighboring countries - especially Greece - were considered rather as the Slavs were considered by the Nazis. Before the First World War, Albanian was spoken as far south as Athens - but a policy of linguistic cleansing more successful than that of Britain or France soon fixed that. Janina, the chief Albanian city under Turkish rule, became the entirely Greek-speaking and Greek-thinking capital of Southern Epirus.
Having seized Southern Epirus, the Greeks (whose national costume is actually Albanian) laid claim, and still lay claim, to "Northern Epirus", which is more or less the southern half of modern Albania.
Given this history, and the collapse both moral and economic of the 'Communist Bloc' after the destruction by East Germans of the notorious Wall in 1990, it is not surprising that Albania has exported a quarter of its population and is in thrall to the insidiously destructive values of American capitalism. Television can in a decade destroy a culture which has survived two thousand years of satrapy, for television has become both God and the manifestation of the sordid culture of capitalism which has choked the planet with its foulness

2008-01-08T00:27:00.001-08:00

Çameria

Çameria geographically is situated on the to-day north-west Greece. This beautiful region, has a rich Albanian her5tage and it was only in the 1912 that it was annexed unfairly and unjustifiably from Greece. This was the aftermath of the decision of the great powers to give Çameria to Greece, just as the great powers had made similar decisions to give Kosova and other Albanian territories to Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro.
The word Çam is an evolution of the word "t'chiam" which is the name of an ancient river passing right through Çameria (The word T'chamis appears on many ancient Roman and even Hellenic maps, indicating that the word Chameria is older than the word Epirus, and it's used only by Albanians). Another branch of this river remains to be known to this day as the "lumi i kalamait" (Kalamait River - Childrens Rivier). What's most important is that everything about Çameria is Albanian in every sense of the word. The word Çameria has more of a topological meaning, but Çams have a very strong Albanian ethnicity, tradition and customs. Çameria has a very well-defined ethno-geographical meaning, which is strongly Albanian.
A large number of Çam population is situated on the seaside and goes up to the Gulf of Preveza. Another considerable number of towns and villages are situated on both sides of the river of "kalamait". The rest of of the Çam villages and towns are situated in more remote places and often on hills and mountains.
The Greek government has been very hostile toward Çams and the main reason is the fact that Çams have a very strong Albanian identity. Another reason of the Greek hostilities is the fact that Greeks inherited a very hostile policy towards us. During the period of time, from 1854 till 1877 the Albanians of Çameria resisted successfully the attacks from Greek "Andartes". During the WWI and WWII the greek troops attacked Çameria again. The (provisional) government of Vlora (Albania) responded by sending Albanian military troops to assist the Albanian population of Çameria , but the decision of the Ambassadors Conference assigned Çameria to Greece. As a result of this decision by the great powers, Greeks forces led by the hateful figure of N. Zervas launched attackers that ended up with many innocent Albanian locals killed.
To this day, we Çams in greece are described as bad people from an increasing "suffocating" Greek propaganda based on the fact that we refuse to be assimilated as it is the case with some of "Arvanites" in south and central Greece.
The today exact number of Albanians of Çameria in Greece is approx. one million people, taking into the account some relativly newly formed Çam villages and towns elsewhere in Greece..if all the number of Albanians in Çameria is added to the number of Arvanites in other areas of Greece, then the total number of Albanians in Greece is around 3.000.000 people. However only Albanians in Çameria call themselves real Shqiptars (Albanians). Arvanites elsewhere in Greece are under greater assimilating pressure from the Greek government and Anti-Albanian Greek circles.
This section is dedicated to hundreds of thousands of Albanians from the region of Chameria expelled by force, from the Greek forces in 1944 and residing now in the Republic of Albania and in the memory of 850,000 Cham Albanians sent to Turkey during the period between 1913-44.
During the summer of 1944, the neo-nazi forces led by Zervas attacked many villages and towns of Chameria and as a result 9,000 Albanians (including children, women and old folks) were killed indiscriminately. A considerable number of Albanians were expelled and live now in the Republic of Albania. The official number of those Albanian refugees from Chameria is between 150,000 and 300,000.
Today they have formed their own Albanian patriotic and cultural association based in Tirana and which is active right across Albania. Among other they are asking from the Greek government in Athens-Greece, to be repatriated and their lands and other assets be returned to them as well as compensations for the usage of the lands for the past 50 years. Also they are rallying for the opening of Albanian schools to the Albanians living in Chameria.
The policy of expulsion of Cham Albanians from Chameria had started earlier than 1944. Greeks as well as Serbs followed the same pattern in politics with respect to Albanians. Often they had signed documents with the Turkish government for the exchange of Muslims with Christians. During all this not a single Cham Albanian was asked! As a result of such policy around 850,000 Cham Albanians from Chameria were sent to Turkey, where they are settled in the region of Asia minor in Turkey.
Prior to WWI and WWII, the population in Çameria was around 93% Albanian, the rest were other ethnic groups such as Greeks, Vlachs, gypsies, etc.. On the 19th century, 80% of the Albanian population in Çameria was of Muslim Religion (the process of conversion to Islam started in the 18th century) and a 20% Christian Orthodox, however the first world war, found the the Albanian community as made up of 50% muslim and 50% orthodox believers (this shift happened in a matter of 70 years). After the world wars a fraction of the Muslim Populations was expelled by the Greek special forces, leaving intact the mainly orthodox Albanian population (50%) and a small fraction of molsims(13%) who by now mostly converted to orthodoxy to survive. The conversion back and forth from one religion to the other, before the World War I, was common among families!
However both Albanian religious communities were extremely close to each-other before the war and to this day, the Greek government has not managed to assimilate the Albanians of Çameria. The Albanian language is spoken indoors and outdoors as much as on everyday working places, but the Greek government with very little pressure from outside refuses to recognize Albanian minority in Greece and refuses to open schools on Albanian language.
The region is officially known as Epirus by the Greek government, but on the further north western corner of Greece, every single people knows the place as Çameria. Anyone from this region stating that he or she is a Çam, makes a political statement saying that he or she is an Albanian. That's why the Greek government doesn't know officially the region as Çameria. The heartland of Çameria is also called Thesprotia.
My own opinion is that this region has still an Albanian majority (since many people of other ethnic groups have emigrated away, which has compensated somehow for the displacement of some Albanians during WWI and WWII!) and all the Çams expelled unjustifiably from Greece are very welcomed by all the Albanian people here, there is a UN resolution which asks the Greek government to repatriate our brothers and sisters back to their homes, where they belong among the rest of us.

2008-01-07T23:17:00.000-08:00

Bashkim Braho

Choreographer and International Dance Instructor
Awarding ceremony with Albanian ambasodor, Aleksander Sallabanda
Choreographer Bashkim Braho began his dancing career in 1962 as a student at the School of Music and Dance in Tirana, Albania. While at School he was a student of the premier Albanian dance instructor, Gezim Kaceli, who trained in Moscow for five years. Braho danced professionally in the Theater of Opera and Ballet in Tirana for twenty-six years. In 1989 he was recruited as the choreographer for the Folk Ensemble 'Wing of the Eagle'. The Ensemble has had huge success throughout Albania as well as in many other countries. They have successfully performed numerous interpretations of ancient Albanian folklore in Croatia,Turkey, and Spain, where they received a medal of honor from the Spanish Counsel of the Arts for their performance. From 1986 to 1995 he was a professor at the School of Ballet ;in Tirana, Albania. His long artistic career includes successful world tours in sixteen countries throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia.His arrival in Boston in 1995 did not stop his dancing career, on the contrary it marked the foundation of the dance group which under his direction, continues to perform Albanian dances from all regions.
AWARDS
The Gratitude Medal awarded to Bashkim Braho by President of Albania, Alfred Moisiu.
2001 Neighborhood Superstar Award, by the Mass. Governor's Committee.Click on the picture to enlarge, to read the award letter.
Award won in Turkey click on the picture to enlarge.
Awards won.

2008-01-07T23:14:00.000-08:00

The Albanian Dance Group Bashkimi

"Bashkimi" Dance group, established in Boston, was created in 1996. After his arrival in Boston from Tirana, Albania, Bashkim Braho, who is the group's choreographer, formed this dance group by bringing together young Albanians from Boston. Thanks to his work and dedication and the will of the dancers, this group has lately reached the level of a real dance troupe. The group practices every Sunday, this way enriching the repertoire of their dances. Aside from the dancers who come from different regions of Albania, many Albanian-Americans and other individuals interested in the Albanian culture have had the opportunity to experience the Albanian dance by being part of the group. The group itself has always been and continues to be very welcoming of anyone interested in its activities. Most of the dancers in this dance group are students who have either finished or are continuing their studies in various universities in Boston. Even though they often find themselves overwhelmed by their academic priorities, they continue to show enthusiasm regarding their role as members of this group.

Thanks to these efforts, the group has had the opportunity to attend in various events in Massachusetts and New York. A few of them are:

The Annual Albanian Festival in Bronx, New York.
The Annual Albanian Flag Day Celebrations in Boston.
The Annual Balkan Festival in Concord, MA.
The New England Folk Festival in Natick, MA.
Albanian American National Organization Basketball Tournament in Waltham, MA.
The Annual Boston International Festival at the Bayside Expo Center.
In the event organized by "Motrat Qiriazi" in New York
The events mentioned above are only a few in which the group has performed. The dances performed by the “Bashkimi” dance group include dances that represent various Albanian regions. Recently the group performed in front of 1500 spectators, at the 15th Albanian Festival in Bronx, New York, where they were very successful and were honored with a prize. The above achievements have been possible due to the hard work, the passion and dedication of the group’s choreographer, Bashkim Braho. These successes a few to add to his long list achieved during his activities in Albania. To read more about Bashkim and his achievements, please visit Choreographer.
"Bashkimi" Dance Group is available for all Albanian events in America and abroad. The dance group has also had the pleasure of attending in weddings and family celebrations.
For more information contact us at webmaster.

Awards

17th Albanian Festival NY, 2007

17th Albanian Festival NY, 2007

16th Albanian Festival NY, 2006

Thank You letter from NAAC, 2003

Thank You letter from Roca, 2001

2008-01-07T04:11:00.000-08:00

Bilal Xhaferri

The Albanian Kosovo

The time has come for the Serbian hegemonies to face once and for all the plain truth that Kosovo is an Albanian land, inhabited by the Albanians ever since the dawn of European civilization, preceding all other people in Europe, the Greeks, the Romans, the Celts, continually to the present.

We understand the Serbian national sentiment concern in Kosovo which they still call "Stare Serbia" (Old Serbia), but from an historical viewpoint there arises here an important question: Just how old is this "Old Serbia?"

Only in the twelfth century after Christ did the Serbian tribes finally establish a kingdom, (which disappeared as soon as it was created) in Kosovo-in our land, which has had flourishing Albanian (Illyrian) kingdoms and prince polities since long before the 12th century B.C. Comparatively, Old Serbia doesn't seem to be very old.

It is about time that those who are dreaming of "Greater Serbia" understood history. More importantly, they must understand the realities. Their assimilations policies have failed in Kosovo, and the days of Serbian colonial rule are over in our land. We Albanians don't make good slaves.

Ethnically, we Albanians in Kosovo are not Yugoslavs and don't belong to the Yugoslav Federation. We are not a Slavic people to begin with. The issue of our national identity is so clear, so obvious that it would be sheer idiocy to consider us a nationality in Kosovo, for we are Nation -.we are part of the Albanian Nation. Our land is a natural extension of Albania and our history is part of the history of the Albanian people. There is no force on earth that can separate us from Albania.

Sometimes, it seems, we tend to mention least the things we mean the most. But the Kosovo Spring uprising forcibly brought it into the open for the world to see what the Albanian people mean the most in Kosovo.

Our ultimate goal in Kosovo is the unification of the province with the Albanian fatherland. There are no tricks played here, and we shouldn't go beating around the bush but say it straight, in plan language. By seeking an elevation in autonomous province's present status to that of an independent republic within the Yugoslav federation, we are not trying to outsmart Belgrade but only want to make the transition period of the unification as smooth and peaceful as possible.

This is the work of a whole nation, not only of "the Albanian Nationalists", "the Albanian separatists", and "the Albanian irredentists". But the Yugoslav leaders don't want to understand it. They don't want to understand the Albanian national rights, the Albanian national sentiment the history of the Albania people and the destiny of the Albanian nation. By trying to keep Kosovo chained by force to their communist empire, they are undermining the very principles the claim the Yugoslav state was founded on-as a federal republic made up with voluntary United Nations-the principles of democracy, national equal rights, freedom, and brotherhood.

2008-01-07T03:24:00.000-08:00

Edgar Allan Poe

THE BLACK CAT

For the most wild yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not-and very surely do I not dream. But tomorrow I die, and today I would unburden my soul.
My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences these events-have terrified-have tortured-have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but horror too many they will seem less terrible than baroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the com place-some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive in the circus stances I detail with are, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.
From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond animals and was indulged by my parent with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time, al never was as happy as when feeding an caressing them. This peculiarity of character grew with my growth, and, in my manhood, I derived from' one of my principal sources of pleasure. To those who have cheered affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explainer the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus derivable. There is something in-the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship arid gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no I opportunity cit procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We had bird’s gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.
This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious', upon this point-and I mention the matter at all for', no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be remembered.
Pluto-this was the cat's name-was my favorite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me-wherever I went about the house. It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through the streets.
Our friendship lasted in this manner, for several years, during which my general temperament and character-through the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance-had I blush to confess it experienced a radical alteration for the worse I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless" of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use i intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets, of course, 1 were made to feel the change in my disposition. Ii not only neglected, but ill-used them. For Pluto, however I still retained sufficient regard to restrain: me from maltreating him, as I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog, when, by accident, or through affection, the came in my way. But my disease grew upon me-for what disease is like Alcohol!-and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old and consequently somewhat peevish-even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper.
One night, returning home, much intoxicated from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin nurtured, thrilled every fiber of my frame.-j took from my waistcoat-pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.
When reason returned wilt -the morning-when I had slept off the fumes of the night's debauch, I experienced a sentiment half of horror haft of 'remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; built was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, ;'and the soul remained untouched. I again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed.
In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket at the lost eye presented, it is true, and a frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared to suffer any "pain. He went about the house as usual, but, as might be expected, fled in extreme throat my approach; hack so much of hyoid heart left, as to be first grieved by this evident dislike on the part, of a creature 'which had once so loved me. But this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, tars if to my final and irrevocable overthrow the spirit or PERVEKSENESS. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not surer that my soul lives: than I am that perverseness is one of, the, primitive impulses at the human heart-one to the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual in culmination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we under tend it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this un fathomable longing of the soul to vex itself – to offer violence to its own nature-to do wrong for the wrong's sake only-that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unfurling brute. One morning, in cold blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree;-hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes and with the bitterest remorse at my heart;-hung it because I knew that it had loved me and because I feet it had given me no reason of offence;-hung it because I knew that in so doing I as committing a sin-a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it-if such a thing were possible-even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.
On the night of the day on which this most cruel deed was done, I was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames, the whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife, a servant, and myself, made our escape from the conflagration. The destruction was complete. My entire worldly wealth was swallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforward to despair. I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity. But I am detail ling a chain of facts -and wish-not to leave even-a possible link imperfect. On the day, succeeding the fire, 1 visited the ruins. The walls, with one exception, had fallen in. This exception was found in a compartment wall, not-very thick, which stood afoul the middle of the house, and against which had rested the head of my bed. The plastering had here, in great measure, resisted the actor; of the fire-a fact vanish I at tribute to its having been recently spread. About this wall a dense crowd was collected, and man persons seemed to be examining a particular portion of it with very minute and eager attention. The words strange, singular and other similar expressions excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven in bas-relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. The impression was given with accuracy truly marvelous. There was a rope about the animal's neck.
When I first beheld this apparition-for I could scarcely regard it as less-my wonder and my terror were extreme. But at length reflection came to maid. The cat, I remembered, had been hung in I garden adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had been immediately filled by the crowd-by some one of whom the animal must have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into my chamber. This had probably been done with the view of arousing me from sleep. The falling of other walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into the substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which, with the flames;-and the ammonia from the carcass, had then accomplished the portraiture as I saw it.
Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my conscience, for the startling fact just detailed, it did not the less fail to make a deep impression upon my fancy. For months I could not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat; and, during this period, to beer came back into my spirit a half-sentiment that seemed, but was not, remorse. I went so far as to regret the loss of the animal, and to look about me, among the vile haunts which I now habitually frequented, for another pet of the same species, and of somewhat similar appeasable, with which to supply its place.
One night as I sat, half stupefied, in a den of more than infamy, my attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon the head of one of the immense hogsheads of gin, or of rum, which constituted the chief furniture of the apartment I had been looking steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes, and what now caused me surprise was the fact that I had not .sooner perceived the object thereupon, I approached it, and touched it with my hand. It was a black cat-a very large one -fully as large as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon any portion of his body: but this cat had a large, although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole region of the breast.
Upon my touching him, he immediately arose, purred loudly, rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my notice. This, then, was the very creature of which I was in search. I at once offered to purchase it of the landlord; but this person made no claim to it-knew: to thing of it -had never seen it before.
I continued my caresses; and where I prepared to go home, the animals evinced a dissection to accompany me. I permitted-it to do so, occasionally stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it reached the house it domesticated it to do so once, and became immediately a great favorite with my wire.
For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was just the reverse or what I had anticipated; but-I know not how or why it was-its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed me. By slow degrees these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former: deed of cruelty, preventing me from physically abusing it.
I did not, for some weeks, strike, or other violently ill use it; but gradually-very gradually.
I came to look upon/it with unutterable loathing and to flee silently from its odious presence, from the breath of a pestilence. What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the be, was the discovery, on the morning after I brought home, that, like Pluto-it also had been deprived one of its eyes. This circumstance however, Or endeared it to my wife who, as I have already saps eased, in a high degree, that humanity of feel which had once belie my distinguishing the Source of many of my simplest and pun pleasures."
With my aversion to this cat, however it’s, partial for myself seemed to increase. It followed my for steps with a pertinacity which it would be deficit to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I it would crouch beneath my chair, or spring up my knees, covering me with its loathsome caresses. If I arose to walk it would get between my feet al thus nearly throw me-crown, or, fastening its long and sharp claws in my dress, camber, in this manner to my breast. At such times although I longed destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld from so doing, partly by a memory of my former crime, but chiefly-let me confess it at once-by absolute dread of the beast.
This dread was not exactly a dread of physic evil I and yet I should be at a loss how otherwise I define it. I am almost ashamed to own-yes, even in this felon’s cell, I am almost ashamed to own -that the terror and. horror with which the amino inspired me, had been heightened by on of the merest chimeras it would be-possible to conceive My wife had called my attention, more than once, t the character of the nark of white hair, of which have spoken, and which constituted the sock visible difference between -the strange beast anyone had destroyed. The reader will remember that this mark, although large, had been originally very indefinite; but, by sow degrees-degrees near! imperceptible, and which for a long time my read so struggled to reject as fanciful-it had, at length assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline. It way now the representation of an object that I shudder to name -and for this, above all, I loathed, any dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster had I dared-it was now, I say, the image of hideous-of a ghastly thing-of the GALLOWS!-oh, mournful and terrible engine of Horror and of rime-of Agony and of Death!
And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity. And a brute beast-whose fellow I had contentiously destroyed-a brute beast to work out for me-for me, a man fashioned in the image of the High God-so much of 'sufferable woe! Alas! Neither by day nor by night new I the blessing of rest any more! During the former the creature left me no 'loments alone, and the latter I started hourly from dreams of un terrible fear to find the hot breath of the thing pond my face, and its vast weight-an incarnate nightmare that I had no power to shake off-in unbent eternally upon my heart!
Beneath the pressure of torments such as these the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates-the darkest most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatched of all things and of- all mankind; while from the sudden, frequent, and
ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas, was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers.
One day she accompanied me, upon some house mold errand, into the cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing I headlong, exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting in my wrath the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, maimed a blow at the animal, which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal had it descended, wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand it my wife. Goaded by the interference into a rage, re than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot without a groan.
This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and with entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I knew that I could not remove it from the house, either by day or by night, without the risk of being observed by the neighbors. Many projects entered my mind. At one period I thought of cutting the corpse into minute fragments, and destroying them by fire. At another, I resolved dig a grave for it in the floor of the cellar, Again, I deliberated about ca.s1iog it in the well in the yard -about packing it in a box, as if merchandise, with the usual arrangements, and so getting a porter to take it from the house. Finally I hit upon what I considered a far better expedient than either of these I determined to wall it up in the cellar, as the monks of the Middle Ages are recorded to have walled up their victims.
For a purpose such as this the cellar was well: adapted. Its walls were loosely construe teed, and had lately been plastered throughout with c rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had prevented from havening. Moreover, in ailed of the walls was a projection, caused by a false chimney, or fireplace, that had been filled up and If lade to resemble the rest of the cellar. I made no doubt that I could readily displace the bricks at this point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole up as before, so that no eye could detect any thing suspicious.
And in this calculation I was not deceived. By means of a crowbar I easily dislodged the bricks, and" having carefully deposiieafl1eooayaj: faiths the inner wall, I propped it in that position, while with lit e trouble re-laid the whole structure as it originally stood. Having procured mortar sand, and hair, with every possible precaution, I prepared a plaster which could not be distinguished from the old, and with this very carefully went over the new brick-work, When I had finished, I felt satisfied that all was right. The wall did not present the slightest appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor Wills picked up with the minutest care. I looked around triumphantly, and said to myself: "Here at least, then, my labor has not been in vain."
My next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause of so much wretchedness; for I had, at length, firmly resolved to put it to death, Had I been able to meet with it at the moment, there could have been no doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty animal had been alarmed at the violence of my previous anger, and forbore to present itself in my present mood. It is impossible to describe or to imagine the deep, the blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom. It did not make its appearance during the night; and thus for one night, at least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul.
The second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came not. Once again I breathed as a freeman. The monster, in terror, had fled the premises for ever! I should behold it no more! My happiness was supreme! The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some few inquiries had been made, but these had been readily answered. Even a search had been instituted-but of course nothing was to be discovered. I looked upon my future felicity as secured.
Upon the fourth day of the association, a party of the police came, very unexpectedly, into the house, and proceeded again to mike rigorous in visitation of the premises. Secure, however, in the inscrutability of my place or concealment, I felt no embarrassment whatever. The officers bade me ac. company them in their search. They left no nook or corner unexplored. At length, for the third or fourth time -they descended into-the cellar. I quivered not in a muscle. My heart beat calmly as that of one who slumbers in innocence walked, the ceil a from end to end. I faded my arms upon bison, arrogated easily to and fro. The police were thoroughly satisfied and prepared to depart. The glee at my heart was too strong to be restrained, burned to say if but one word, by way of triumph, and to reorder doubly sure their assurance of my gutlessness,
"Gentlemen," I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, "I delight do have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health and a little more courtesy. By the bye, gentlemen, this-this is a very welcome strutted house," (in the rabid desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at ail-"I may saran excellently well constructed house.
This walls-are you going, gentlemen these wall are solidly put together; and here, through the mere frenzy of bravado, I rapped heavy with a cane which I held in my hand; upon that very portion of the brickwork behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.
But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the Arch-Fiend! No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence, than I was wired by a voice from within the tomb- by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a, held, anew then quickly swelling into one long, loud, anew continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman -a howl-a wailing shriek, half of horror and hall of triumph, such as might have arisen only out oi hell, conjointly from the throats of the damned in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation.
Of my own thought’ it is folly to speak. Swooning I staggered to the opposite wall. For one instant the party on the stairs remained motionless through extremity of terror and awe. In the next a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already great decayed and cotter with stood erect before the eyes or the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder and whose in forming voice had consigned me to the hangman had walled the monster up within the tomb.

2008-01-06T23:52:00.000-08:00

HUNDREDS OF POLITICAL ARTICLES
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Albania: Cam Representatives Say Euro MPs To Help Seek Solution of Cam Issue
Report by Denion Ndrenika: "Euro MPs: Greek Citizenship for Cams"
Originally published on 10/29/2006 by Shekulli in Albanian
Representatives of the Cams, ethnic Albanians expelled from Greece at the end of World War II, said in Tirana yesterday that they had obtained from Euro MPs a promise to work for the solution of their problems along two important lines.

Muhedin Tahiri, head of the Party for Justice and Integration [PDI], said that free travel to the ethnic Albanian region of Cameria [in Greece] and the restoration to its former inhabitants of Greek citizenship, of which they were divested in 1953, were two of the issues the Euro MPs said they would work for.

Along with PDI Secretary General Amos Dojaka and other PDI officials, Tahiri presented yesterday [ 28 October] the results of their mid-week visit to the European Parliament and answered questions from a Shekulli correspondent about two issues: first, the restoration of Greek citizenship to the Cams, and second, the assessment of whether the 1996 Treaty of Friendship with Greece contributes to the solution of the Cam issue.

Tahiri explained that the restoration of Greek citizenship was of great importance for the Cams and that [Jorgo] Chatzimarkakis, a German Euro MP of Greek extraction, had committed himself to resolving this problem, that is, to take up this issue with the Greek Government in order to see whether something could be done for the restoration of the Cams' former Greek citizenship, a right of which they were collectively deprived by Greece in 1947 and by the People's Assembly of Albania in 1953 (with the result that about 70% of the Cam refugees have a "common" birthday -- 1 January of that year).

Tahiri said that the 1996 Treaty of Friendship with Greece has never functioned, as it offered no scope for the restoration of the Cams' property in Greece.
He stressed that this [meeting with Euro MPs] was "the first important step on the difficult road to the implementation of the behests of our forefathers."

The PDI leader said: "we presented no title deeds on our olive groves or other property [in Cameria] to the European Parliament, but asked it to work for a political solution to our problems."

In addition, Tahiri underlined that "this was the first time in Albanian political history that a delegation of an Albanian party had succeeded in putting to the European Parliament the 62-years-long concern over the unresolved problem of the Cam population," and that "it was the first time representatives of the European Parliament had heard the voice of the Cam people and listened directly to their requests as expressed by a party that has as part of its program the democratic resolution of the Cam question."

The restoration of Greek citizenship by the Assembly of Albania would force Greece to allow the ethnic Albanians expelled from Greece to return to their land regardless of the illegal rulings by [Greek] courts on the length of residence outside the country (Greece) (that is, exile), whereby after 30 years property rights are supposedly lost.

There are at least eight reports by international -- not Albanian -- lawyers or students dealing with the Cam issue. They figure among the documents contained in the file handed to the Euro MPs. The reports come from, among others, such students [of the issue] as Miranda Vickers, Tom J. Winnifrith, and James Pettifer of the Defense Academy of the United Kingdom. The file contains "political analyses by international experts, historical studies, and proposals for the solution of this forgotten problem," Tahiri said.

He described as "very important" the promise given at the 13th meeting of the EU Parliament and Albanian delegations (25-26 October) for a prospective hearing with the participation of the two sides -- Cams and Greeks -- as well as the possibility of the adoption of a resolution on the Cam issue.

He also said that, this year, his party would expand its activities, including historical and juridical studies. There were two experts -- a lawyer and a historian -- who would work in this direction. They would examine the historic and legal problems in detail in order to facilitate the solution of the problem, which, following Tahiri's meetings with Euro MPs, was still "at the letter A, before the other 35 letters of the Albanian alphabet."

"We have obtained from Euro MPs the promise that they will work for the solution of the Cam question, as well as for the examination of its history. The European Parliament will henceforth keep the very serious Cam question under its consideration," Tahiri said.

The eviction of the Cams from the ethnic Albanian region of Cameria is known to the United Nations, which, through UNRRA [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration] (the predecessor of the current Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR), gave the Tirana government $26 million in August 1948 in aid for refugees coming from Greece. Cameria, with its four districts -- Ioannina, Thesprotia, Arta (former center of the Greek troops who occupied the region in 1986 [as published; should be 1886], and Preveza -- was given to Greece provisionally by the 1913 London Conference of Ambassadors, and then definitively by the 1923 Lausanne Conference.

Tirana Shekulli in Albanian -- major independent daily

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The European Union must request Greece to recognize the genocide that has taken place against the Cams, ethnic Albanians living in Greece. This request was addressed by the Party for Justice and Integration [PDI] to EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn. PDI Secretary General Amos Dojaka told a Shekulli correspondent yesterday that the letter was filed by Rehn's office, and now they are waiting for a response, all the more so as Olli Rehn was informed of the Cam issue and confirmed its existence. Dojaka said that "we believe that there can be no durable peace without justice" and that "just as Turkey has been requested to recognize the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians for it to make progress toward its EU membership, the same must also be done with Greece." "Reminding Mr. Rehn that just as the PDI backs EU initiatives requesting Ankara to recognize the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians in 1915-1918 as a precondition for its access to the EU, it holds that Athens too must be requested to recognize the genocide perpetrated by the Greeeks against the innocent and defenseless Cam population in the years 1944-1945," the letter addressed to EU Commissioner Rehn said.
"The genocide against the Cams, ethnic Albanians living in Greece, started as early as 1876, as Greek troops occupied Arta, the main city of the ethnic Albanian region of Cameria. The PDI refers to what it calls a 'strategy' for the elimination of the Cam population in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, in 1915-1918, exactly at the same time as the genocide of the Armenians, which was recognized by the France's National Assembly in the 1990s, was being perpetrated. Informing the European Commission that the strategy for the elimination of the Cam population started in the same years as those of the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians and that the painful events the Cams had to go through and their dimension coincide with the European Commission's definition of genocide, the PDI asks for a rational response on the part of the Commission," the letter continued.

The PDI also recalls what happened in the years 1944-1945 which was the last stage of the Greek genocide against the Cam population, a crime which, on 30 June 1944, the Assembly of Albania formally decided to commemorate as the Day of Greek Genocide, which reached its culmination point with the Paramithia massacres of 27 June 1944 (see Presidential Decree, No. 885, dated 12.07.1994).

Dojaka explained that this request was based on international law and the rights of peoples that have been victims of genocide.

At the request of Hilary Clinton, in September 2002 a hearing session took place at the US Helsinki Commission in the presence of the representative of the Greek Helsinki Committee, Panayiotis Dhimitras who was questioned by Counselor Chadwick Gore about the Cam issue.
According to Dojaka, the PDI addresses its request to the European Commission in order to make Greece recognize the genocide as a sign of respect for the victims of chauvinist violence and for the restoration of justice. The PDI says that it believes that the European Commission entertains no political preconceptions about nationalities, religions, or states, but that, on the contrary, it acts in respect of the universal principles of justice. So, according to Dojaka, "the PDI is waiting for a response from the Albanian and Greek governments, and the European Commission in the spirit of respect for the fundamental human rights of the Cam population."

Tuesday, 1 November 2005, 18:30 GMT
Albania protest halts Greek visit The Çamis say they were badly treated by Greece Greek President Karolos Papoulias has cut short a visit to neighbor Albania, after a minority group's protest which Athens described as disruptive.

Up to 200 demonstrators from the Albanian Muslim Çamis clan gathered outside a hotel where Mr. Papoulias was due to meet counterpart Alfred Moisiu.

The Greek foreign ministry said Albania had not taken steps to ensure a trouble-free meeting.
Albania said the protest was peaceful and Greece's decision unjustified.
"We express our deep regret after this hasty and unexplained decision of the Greek delegation, based on misinformation despite assurances given by the Albanian side," said presidential spokesman Aferdita Sokoli.

'Unacceptable issues'

The two presidents were due to meet in the southern Albanian town of Sarande, opposite the Greek island of Corfu, on Tuesday afternoon.
We want basic rights; we want to be back at our land
Rexhep Ceno, demonstrator

But Mr Papoulias waited at a Greek consulate in another town, Gjirokaster, after hearing about the protest, and left for home when demonstrators failed to disperse.

"The Albanian authorities... did not take measures to deter known extreme elements, who in their effort to block the smooth development of the countries' ties present unacceptable, non-existent issues at a time when Albania is taking steps towards completing its European expectations," a Greek foreign ministry statement said.

Around 35,000 Çamis were expelled from Greece after World War II after being accused of collaboration with the Nazi occupation, they say. They were given Albanian citizenship in 1953.
The demonstrators, carrying banners reading "We want justice" and "Stop the indifference", were demanding compensation for or restitution of properties confiscated by the Greek government.

"We want basic rights. That is our land, our property. We thank the Albanian people for keeping us until now but we want to be back at our land," demonstrator Rexhep Ceno told AP news agency.

Albanian officials and local media said the demonstration was peaceful and under police control. Radio Free Europe,

Çamis Still Pressing For Return of Greek Citizenship, Property
Over the past few years, relations between Albania and neighboring Greece have shown marked improvement. But the two countries are still officially driven by the World War II-era Law of War imposed by Athens after Albania allowed Italian soldiers to transit its territory en route to Greece. The law today is largely a formality and has not prevented the two countries from signing a friendship and cooperation treaty and enjoying healthy trade relations. But until Athens agrees to dissolve the war law, it will continue to control the land and property of some 30,000 mostly Muslim Albanians who were forcibly deported from the province of Çamëria in 1944-45. RFE/RL correspondents Alban Bala and Ulpiana Lama report from Tirana and Prague.

Tirana; Prague, 19 September 2002 (RFE/RL) -- Qani Biraci, a 65-year-old musician living in the Albanian capital Tirana, was just 7-years-old when he and his parents -- along with some 30,000 mostly Muslim Albanians -- were forcibly expelled from the province of Çamëria in Greece.

The expulsion followed Greece's declaration of a Law of War in 1940, after Athens accused Tirana of allowing Italian forces to cross through Albania to Greece. The war law had a brutal impact on the ethnic Albanians of Çamëria, or Çamis -- with Greek army and paramilitary troops forcibly emptying towns in a sweep of violence that left many residents dead and mutilated. Biraci still remembers vividly his own experience nearly 60 years ago:

"When I was seven, I left the town of Filat together with my parents. Passing through [one neighborhood], where the biggest slaughter took place, I witnessed a tragedy, severed heads, pregnant women whose unborn children were cut out of their body and crushed on the ground -- such monstrous crimes. I remember the cleavers, the long carving knives that they used to sharpen in front of us."

Biraci now heads the Political Association of Çamëria, based in Tirana. The group's aim is to help forcibly expelled Albanians to regain Greek citizenship and reclaim some 200,000 hectares of land and property held by Athens since the expulsions. Biraci's group says the value of the sequestered property in Çamëria -- also known by its Greek name of Thesprotia -- amounts to $2.8 billion.

Albania has repeatedly sought to resolve the Çamis issue by pressing Greece to lift the war law. Recently, Albanian Prime Minister Fatos Nano addressed the Çamëria question during a meeting with Greek Deputy Foreign Minister Andreas Loverdos.

Greece, however, has consistently dismissed the Çamis question. Following a Çamis rally in Tirana last year, a Greek Foreign Ministry official said: "There is no Çamis issue, and certain parties want to contribute to the destabilization of the region by raising such nonexistent issues. Such matters have been dealt with by history."

Furthermore, a law on the registration of assets passed in 1998 has left Çamis with no legal way to reclaim seized property other than through a lengthy and expensive court procedure.
But Albanian authorities refuse to let the matter rest. Republican parliamentary Deputy Sabri Godo is the country's most outspoken politician on the Çamis issue. He says the issue is sufficiently important to take to an international court should the two countries fail to resolve it on a bilateral level:

"I am of the opinion that the Albanian government, the Albanian parliament, should insist on opening discussions in the proper time and manner. We are not conditioning Greece for further development of relations. If the Greeks are going to categorically refuse to confront this very real problem, then the assistance of a third party might be required."

Martin Vulaj is a member of the National Albanian American Council in New York, which is lobbying to bring the Çamis question before the U.S. Congress. Vulaj says he hopes to move the Çamis issue out of the purely political realm and treat it as more of a human rights issue. He says the U.S. may prove a valuable partner in Albania's struggle to see rights and property restored to displace Çamis:

"I think that the U.S. Congress can help in a lot of ways. Greece is a U.S. ally -- they're both NATO members, so they have strong relations. And Albania has quickly emerged as a stronger ally for the U.S. in the Balkans as well. And U.S. credibility in both nations and America's status as an honest intermediary can facilitate the discussions and encourage resolutions of not only the [Çamis] matter but other issues as well, and can foster an environment where proper relationships can be formed."

Some say unyielding attitudes in Greece may be tied to concern that the restoration of property in the northern Çamëria province may pave the way for a reconfiguration of the Greek-Albanian border. But Mentor Nazarko, a spokesman for former Albanian President Rexhep Meidani, dismisses such speculation:

"In asking for the return of or compensation for their land and property, Albanians are in no way asking for a redefinition of the border, absolutely not. The Greeks might be interested in presenting this way in order to cast Albanians in a negative light, but in fact Albanians' only claim is on the question of property rights."

Biraci of the Çamis political association in Tirana agrees, saying: "All we are asking for is the return of our land, the recognition of our legal property rights."
2 Maj 2006

Et Albanian Daily News No. 3033 2006 October 28-29

Albanian Parliament to Lobby in Favor of Cham Community's Requests "The Cham issue has never been and will never be archived, but it will be resolved in the framework of the international conventions as well as based on the experiences regarding such matters," said Zogaj.

TIRANA - After the deliberations of the European Parliament, which discussed on Thursday the Cham issue forwarded to the Euro-deputies by the head of the Party of Justice and Integration, Tahir Muhedini, the head of the Parliamentary Committee of Foreign Affairs, Preç Zogaj reacted on Friday, saying that official Tirana will be the advocate of the Cham question in Strasbourg. "The Cham issue has never been and will never be archived, but it will be resolved. This issue is not only a bilateral matter between Albania and Greece and it is going to be resolved in the framework of the international conventions as well as based on the experiences regarding such matters. The Albanian state has constantly tried to keep this case opened, respecting the relations with Greece and it has requested, in the context of the friendship that exists between our two countries, the resolving of the problem property and movement of Chams," said Zogaj.

Further on he said that "the Cham community has found the proper solution by directly addressing the European institutions. This is an issue that can be solved with their collaboration because Greece, being a member of the European Union, has some obligations that derive from the membership."

According to Zogaj, the resolving of the Cham issue will strengthen the existing relation between Greece and Albania. The 13th round of the talks held in Strasbourg by the European Parliament with the Albanian parliamentary delegation ended on Thursday with the Cham question being high on the agenda of the proceedings.

When it was discussed the item on minorities, the demand of the Greek Cypriot deputy, Demetriu Panajotis, for the respect of the Greek minority in Albania faced the reaction of all the Albanian deputies who said that whereas the situation of the human rights of the Greek minority is good, Greece continues to not recognize the rights of the Cham population who were forcefully expelled from their lands in Greece during the Second World War.

The chairman of the Socialist Movement for Integration, Ilir Meta, a former Premier, said that generally the Greek minority has the same problems like all the Albanian citizens, which have mainly social and economic character but Greece should resolve the question of the Cham community.

He was backed by the other Albanian lawmakers like Majlinda Bregu of the Democratic Party, Arian Madhi of the Republican Party etc. In her comment, Doris Pack, head of the delegation of the European Parliament for South East Europe, said Greece should allow the representatives of this community to visit their fatherland. "This is a great human problem," she said, adding that the Cham community should visit and put flowers on the graves of their predecessors. The file of Chams has already arrived in Europe and calls for a democratic solution, she concluded.
After Pack's comment, Demetriu Panajotis said Greece as an EU country should absolutely find a solution to this problem and respect the human rights and values. A four-member delegation of the Party for Democracy and Integration, which represents the interests of the Cham community, was in Strasbourg where they had meetings with EP deputies raising the awareness of them on that question.

2008-01-06T23:35:00.000-08:00

Edgar Allan Poe
(1809-1849)

American poet, critic, short story writer, and author of such macabre works as “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1840);

I looked upon the scene before me - upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain - upon the bleak walls - upon the vacant eye-like windows - upon a few rank sedges - and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees - with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium - the bitter lapse into everyday life - the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it - I paused to think - what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher?
Contributing greatly to the genres of horror and science fiction, Poe is now considered the father of the modern detective story and highly lauded as a poet. Walt Whitman, in his essay titled “Edgar Poe’s Significance” wrote;
Poe’s verses illustrate an intense faculty for technical and abstract beauty, with the rhyming art to excess, an incorrigible propensity toward nocturnal themes, a demoniac undertone behind every page. … There is an indescribable magnetism about the poet’s life and reminiscences, as well as the poems.
Poe’s psychologically thrilling tales examining the depths of the human psyche earned him much fame during his lifetime and after his death. His own life was marred by tragedy at an early age (his parents died before he was three years old) and in his oft-quoted works we can see his darkly passionate sensibilities—a tormented and sometimes neurotic obsession with death and violence and overall appreciation for the beautiful yet tragic mysteries of life. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.—“Elonora”. Poe’s literary criticisms of poetry and the art of short story writing include “The Poetic Principal” and “The Philosophy of Composition”. There have been numerous collections of his works published and many of them have been inspiration for popular television and film adaptations including “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Black Cat”, and “The Raven”. He has been the subject of numerous biographers and has significantly influenced many other authors even into the 21st Century.
Edgar Poe was born on 19 January 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of actors Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins (1787-1811) and David Poe (1784-1810). He had a brother named William Henry (1807-1831) and sister Rosalie (1811-1874). After the death of his parents Edgar was taken in by Frances (d.1829) and John Allan (d.1834), a wealthy merchant in Richmond, Virginia.
Young Edgar traveled with the Allans to England in 1815 and attended school in Chelsea. In 1820 he was back in Richmond where he attended the University of Virginia and studied Latin and poetry and also loved to swim and act. While in school he became estranged from his foster father after accumulating gambling debts. Unable to pay them or support himself, Poe left school and enlisted in the United States Army where he served for two years. He had been writing poetry for some time and in 1827 “Dreams”—Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream! first appeared in the Baltimore North American, the same year his first book Tamerlane and Other Poems was published, at his own expense.
When Poe’s foster mother died in 1829 her deathbed wish was honoured by Edgar and stepfather John reconciling, though it was brief. Poe enlisted in the West Point Military Academy but was dismissed a year later. In 1829 his second book Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems was published. The same year Poems (1831) was published Poe moved to Baltimore to live with his aunt Maria Clemm, mother of Virginia Eliza Clemm (1822-1847) who would become his wife at the age of thirteen. His brother Henry was also living in the Clemm household but he died of tuberculosis soon after Edgar moved in. In 1833, the Baltimore Saturday Visiter published some of his poems and he won a contest in it for his story “MS found in a Bottle”. In 1835 he became editor and contributor of the Southern Literary Messenger. Though not without his detractors and troubles with employers, it was the start of his career as respected critic and essayist. Other publications which he contributed to were Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine (1839–1840), Graham’s Magazine (1841–1842), Evening Mirror, and Godey’s Lady’s Book.
After Virginia and Edgar married in Richmond in 1836 they moved to New York City. Poe’s only completed novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym was published in 1838. The story starts as an adventure for a young Nantucket stowaway on a whaling ship but soon turns into a chilling tale of mutiny, murder, and cannibalism.
It is with extreme reluctance that I dwell upon the appalling scene which ensued; a scene which, with its minutest details, no after events have been able to efface in the slightest degree from my memory, and whose stern recollection will embitter every future moment of my existence.—Ch. 12
Poe’s contributions to magazines were published as a collection in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840) which included “The Duc de L'Omelette”, “Bon-Bon” and “King Pest”. What some consider to be the first detective story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” was published in 1841;
Now, brought to this conclusion in so unequivocal a manner as we are, it is not our part, as reasoners, to reject it on account of apparent impossibilities. It is only left for us to prove that these apparent ‘impossibilities’ are, in reality, not such.
Poe’s collection of poetry The Raven and Other Poems (1845) which gained him attention at home and abroad includes the wildly successful “The Raven” and “Eulalie” and “To Helen”;
Lo, in yon brilliant window-nicheHow statue-like I see thee stand,The agate lamp within thy hand,Ah! Psyche, from the regions whichAre Holy Land!
Poe continued to write poetry, critical essays and short stories including “Ulalume”, “Eureka” and “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846);
It must be understood, that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.
Now living in their last place of residence, a cottage in the Fordham section of the Bronx in New York City, Virginia died in 1847. Poe turned to alcohol more frequently and was purportedly displaying increasingly erratic behavior. A year later he became engaged to his teenage sweetheart from Richmond, Elmira Royster. In 1849 he embarked on a tour of poetry readings and lecturing, hoping to raise funds so he could start his magazine The Stylus.
There are conflicting accounts surrounding the last days of Edgar Allan Poe and the cause of his death. Some say he died from alcoholism, some claim he was murdered, and various diseases have also been attributed. Most say he was found unconscious in the street and admitted to the Washington College Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He died soon after, on 7 October 1849, and was buried unceremoniously in an unmarked grave in the Old Westminster Burying Ground of Baltimore. On this original site now stands a stone with a carving of a raven and the inscription;
Quoth the Raven, Nevermore
Original Burial Place of Edgar Allan PoeFromOctober 9, 1849UntilNovember 17, 1875
Mrs. Marian Clemm, His Mother-In-LawLies Upon His Right And Virginia PoeHis Wife, Upon His Left. Under TheMonument Erected To Him In ThisCemetery
In a dedication ceremony in 1875, Poe’s remains were reinterred with his aunt Maria Clemm’s in the Poe Memorial Grave which stands in the cemetery’s corner at Fayette and Greene Streets. A bas-relief bust of Poe adorns the marble and granite monument which is simply inscribed with the birth and death dates of Poe (although his birthdate is wrong), Maria, and Virginia who, in 1885, was reinterred with her husband and mother. Letters from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Lord Alfred Tennyson were read, and Walt Whitman attended. The mysterious Poe Toaster visits Poe’s grave on his birthdays and leaves a partially filled bottle of cognac and three roses.
All that we see or seemIs but a dream within a dream.—A Dream within a Dream
Biography written by C.D. Merriman for Jalic Inc. Copyright Jalic Inc. 2006. All Rights Reserved.
The above biography is copyrighted. Do not republish it without permission.
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Recent Forum Posts on Edgar Allan Poe
Three Tales ... which never quite emerged
Since the 1960's I have loved Poe (first memory being that of the Roger Corman/Vincent Price version of Pit and the Pendulum which I saw in 1967 and found truly frightening). Of course I discovered his poetry, satire and so on in later years and came to appreciate him more than an author of morbid tales. :D In 1995 I had an idea to compose a series of three pieces for Cello and Orchestra, each descriptive of one of Poe's stories. One of my friends was Principal Cellist of the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg and told me that, if I could get the work written and send him a score, they might get a performance. I entitled the work Three Tales after Poe for Cello and Orchestra and selected (1) The Cask of Amontillado, (2) The Descent into the Maelstrom, and (3) The Masque of the Red Death. Composition did not go well and during the Summer of that year decided to work "from the back inwards," so to speak so I began working on The Masque of the Red Death, and made a great deal of progress. I was going to turn my attention to the other parts of the work and told my friend in Germany that it would likely be finished in 1996 so it might be premeired in 1997 at the latest, but at this point my Mother took ill with heart disease and passed away (mid-September 1995). And for some strange reason, inspiration simply vanished. Within 3 years I'd lost all the desire to write music. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever try again. I wonder. ...
Posted By Isa at Tue 20 Nov 2007, 10:24 PM in Poe, Edgar Allan 0 Replies
To
To I heed not that my earthly lot Hath little of Earth in it, That years of love have been forgot In the hatred of a minute: I mourn not that the desolate Are happier, sweet than I, But that you sorrow for my fate Who am a passer-by Just reading through a collection of Poe's work that I have, when I happend upon this poem, and there is something about it which I quite like That years of love have been forgot In the hatred of a minute: I think these lines are amazing and speak such volumes of truth. I think this poem is very deep for such a short work. His writing is always so rich and soulful.
Posted By Dark Muse at Fri 9 Nov 2007, 2:43 AM in Poe, Edgar Allan 1 Reply
Fall from the House of Usher Question
Was the Usher bloodline, inbred? "I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch ; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain."
Posted By Diavolo at Fri 2 Nov 2007, 2:12 PM in Poe, Edgar Allan 1 Reply
Poe symbology
I need to write an essay about powerful word, image, or symbol that is common among Poe's works. Im thinking about choosing darkness as a symbol. Anyone have any other suggestions, or good examples of Darkness in Poes works. Another thing is how do you think the meaning of that work would change if darkness were to be substituted with another symbol?
Posted By bennyboy391 at Thu 1 Nov 2007, 10:40 PM in Poe, Edgar Allan 0 Replies
A couple of Poe questions.....
Hey everyone. This is a great little site. I just stumbled upon it a few days ago. It's a FANTASTIC was for me to catch up on the literature that I have never read for one reason or another. I'm VERY new to reading literature so I'm an ultra "newb" when it comes to who said what, who writes what genre, etc. My first question is, are Poe's works in the public domain now? The second one is, what writers compare to Poe, in terms of his macabre and dark style? Are there any literary writers that delve into even darker and more sinister stories? Thanks for the help in advance guys and gals! :idea:
Posted By Diavolo at Thu 1 Nov 2007, 10:32 AM in Poe, Edgar Allan 10 Replies
Edgar Allen Poe "The Raven"
i would like to discuss what these two stanzas of Edgar Allen Poes' the raven mean to everyone else and why, also why do you think he structured them in the order and phrasing he did, so that it seems that he is sure its nothing, but that he calls out to someone? And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain thrilled me, filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; so that now, to still the beating of my heart, i stood repeating "tis some vistitor entreating entrance at my chamber door-- some late cisitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;-- this is it- and nothing more" presently my heart grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, sir said I or madam, truely your forgiveness i miplore; but the fact is i was napping and so gently you came rapping, so fainly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, that i scarce was sure i heard you"--here i opened wide the door; darkness there and nothing more
Posted By stephofthenight at Tue 30 Oct 2007, 11:29 AM in Poe, Edgar Allan 1 Reply
Techincal Problems
Hi, I'm trying to interpret The raven by Edgar Allan Poe. I counted 18 Stanzas with each six lines and I was wandering if this is a special type of poem? (You know, like a sonnet has 3 quatrains and a couplet!?) Ben.
Posted By Benyameen at Wed 17 Oct 2007, 12:08 PM in Poe, Edgar Allan 2 Replies
Poe and women
Hey everybody, I'm writing a biographical term-paper on Poe and his relationship to women, especially his wife and his mother. I want to analyze this relationship by thoroughly looking at some clues he provides in the poems The Raven and Anabel Lee. I think there are quite a few lines that deal with this subject in particular. However, I'm looking for advice! I haven't started yet, so anything would be helpful (secondary literature, essays, comments, anything that deals with this subject). What do YOU consider the best Poe biography? Any recommendations? Please help me, I'd like to get your opinion!! Ben.
Posted By Benyameen at Mon 15 Oct 2007, 4:33 AM in Poe, Edgar Allan 3 Replies
edgar poe
I have to present an arugument for or against the claim that poe was a scientist and a mathmatician
Posted By classroom5 at Tue 2 Oct 2007, 10:43 PM in Poe, Edgar Allan 1 Reply
Stag image from a Poe work
I am trying to find a story or poem I read some time ago (hehehe...that would be about 40 years ago...) that I found in a collection of works by Poe, but I cannot remember the title. The work had, as a central image, a stag in a forest. It was extremely well-described, as one expects from the master, and was one of his early works. I remember it as a prose poem, but can't remember anything else. I'd love to find it. Can you help?
Posted By Hagridore at Tue 28 Aug 2007, 10:20 AM in Poe, Edgar Allan 1 Reply

2008-01-06T23:22:00.000-08:00

Jack London
(1876-1916)

Jack London (born Jan. 12, 1876, died Nov. 22, 1916) is best known for his books The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea-Wolf, and a few short stories, such as "To Build a Fire" and "The White Silence." In fact, he was a prolific writer whose fiction explored several regions and their cultures: the Yukon, California, Hawaii, and the Solomon Islands. He experimented with many literary forms, from conventional love stories and dystopias to science fantasy. His noted journalism included war correspondence, boxing stories, and the life of Molokai lepers. A committed socialist, he insisted against editorial pressures to write political essays and insert social criticism in his fiction. He was among the most influential figures of his day, who understood how to create a public persona and use the media to market his self-created image of poor-boy-turned-success. London's great passion was agriculture, and he was well on the way of creating a new model for ranching through his Beauty Ranch when he died of kidney disease at age 40. He left over fifty books of novels, stories, journalism, and essays, many of which have been translated and continue to be read around the world

NOVELS
The Abysmal Brute (1911) [ available at The World of Jack London ]A prize fighter faces the corruption of civilization and finds redemption in the wilds of California.

Adventure (1911)Located in the Solomon Islands, this devastating portrayal of copra plantation slavery has scholars arguing whether London was criticizing the racism of the colonialists or approving of it.

Before Adam (1907)The modern narrator's dreams transport him to a prehistoric community. Illustrated.

Burning Daylight (1910)A tale of the Klondike Goldrush and the corrupting influence of high stakes capitalism. One of the "Sonoma County novels." Illustrated.

The Call of the Wild (1903) [A concordance is available for this work Audio Book version from LibriVox]The mythopoetic story of Buck, a sledge dog in the Klondike, and his journey of transformation.
The Cruise of the Dazzler (1902)[ available at The World of Jack London ]Escapades of the "Frisco Kid," a gritty and mischievous youth whose quick wit and courage see him through challenge and adventure.
A Daughter of the Snows (1902)London's first novel introduces the typical strong, independent, well-educated heroine that would run through much of his fiction. This file was provided by Dave Hartzell on his web site.

The Game (1905)This prizefight story is alleged to have prompted heavyweight champion Gene Tunney to retire from boxing after reading it in the late 1920s.
Hearts of Three (1918) [Available from the Internet Archive]Originally intended as a film scenario, this plot is an improbably adventure story that can't help but bring to mind the "Lost Ark" films of decades later!

The Iron Heel (1908) [A concordance is available for this work]A futuristic tale of facist tyranny and socialist revolution considered a classic work of American radical literature. Much admired by Eugene Debs, Leon Trotsky, and George Orwell.

Jerry of the Islands (1917)Jerry is a dog whose experiences reflect the cruelty and racism of colonial Melanesia.
The Kempton-Wace Letters (1903) With Anna Strunsky [available from Google Book Search]A epistolary novel, the only one London wrote with another. Strunsky wrote the letters of Dane Kempton, who presents a romantic view of love, disputed by London in the form of Herbert Wace.
The Little Lady of the Big House (1916)A triangle romance provides the basis for a questioning of the meaning of masculinity, as well as an examination of agribusiness in California. This file was contributed by Dave Maddock.

Martin Eden (1913) [A concordance and curriculum materials are available for this work ]Set in San Francisco, this is the story of Martin Eden, a seaman who pursues his dreams of education and literary fame.
Michael, Brother of Jerry (1917)This story of brutality toward animals inspired a movement known as the Jack London Clubs, which were devoted to the cause of animal welfare and humane treatment.
The Mutiny of the Elsinore (1914)Written during a time of tragedy, this novel of sea life fails in either its story or doctrinaire intentions.
The Scarlet Plague (1912) Audio dramatization from Radio Nostalgia Network.This novella explores life following a devastating plague that wipes out most of humanity. Here's a summary.

The Sea-Wolf (1904) [A concordance and curriculum materials are available for this work]Chronicles the voyages of a ship run by the ruthless Wolf Larsen, among the greatest of London's characters, and spokesman for an extreme individualism London intended to critique.

The Star Rover (1915)The great transmigration novel inspired by the experiences of an ex-prisoner's acount of coping with "the Jacket," a form of torture at San Quentin. London was a lifelong supporter of humane prison practices.

The Valley of the Moon (1913)Serialized in Cosmopolitan, April-December, 1913The first part of this novel exposes the struggles of the working-class of London's day, while the latter part is an exploration of the California landscape, with Sonoma Valley providing the "perfect spot" for the wandering lovers.

White Fang (1906) [A concordance is available for this work]An initiation story concerning the taming of a wild dog in the Klondike.
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
* = The collection is completely online.

Children of the Frost* (1902)Tales from the Klondike, including "The Law of Life" and "Nam-Bok, the Liar."

Dutch Courage and Other Stories* (1922)A collection of very early stories published posthumously, with a preface by his wife Charmian.

The Faith of Men & Other Stories* (1904)More stories from the north, including "The story of Jees Uck" and "The One Thousand Dozen."

The God of His Fathers & Other Stories * (1901)Northland tales, including "The Scorn of Women" and "A Daughter of the Aurora."

The House of Pride & Other Tales of Hawaii * (1912)South Sea tales including "Koloau the Leper" and "The Sheriff of Kona."

Lost Face * (1910)Includes "To Build a Fire."

Love of Life & Other Stories* (1907)Includes "Brown Wolf" and "The Story of Keesh."

Moon-Face & Other Stories* (1906)Includes "All Gold Canyon" and "Planchette."

The Night Born* (1913)A varied collection including "War," "The Mexican," and "To Kill a Man."

On the Makaloa Mat* (1919)The best Hawaii stories, and among London's best stories overall, including "Shin Bones" and "The Water Baby."

The Red One* (1918)Features the haunting title novella, well worth comparing to Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness."
Smoke Bellew (1912)Not yet available.But there is a version at The World of Jack London.
A Son of the Sun* (1912)A number of lesser-known South Pacific tales.

The Son of the Wolf* (1900) [A concordance is available for this work]The first Klondike tales, including "The White Silence."

South Sea Tales* (1911)Darker Pacific tales, including "Mauki" and "The Terrible Solomans."

The Strength of the Strong* (1914)Includes "The Dream of Debs," "South of the Slot," and "The Unparalleled Invasion."

Tales of the Fish Patrol* (1905)Stories set on the San Francisco Bay of London's youth, including "A Raid on the Oyster Pirates."

The Turtles of Tasman (1916)A minor collection that includes the amazing "Told in the Drooling Ward."

When God Laughs & Other Stories * (1911)This outstanding collection includes "The Apostate," "Just Meat," "A Piece of Steak," and "Chinago."

Uncollected StoriesStories never anthologized by London, including "A Thousand Deaths."
STORIES & ESSAYS
An incomplete list.

The Human Drift (1917)An eclectic mix of short stories like "Small-Boat Sailing" essays such as "The Human Drift", an introduction to Two Years Before the Mast, and a couple of dramatic sketches. One of London's most delightful humor pieces, "Navigating Four Horses Through the North Bay" is also included here.

Revolution and Other Essays (1909)Stories and essays that highlight London's Socialist thought.
PLAYS

The Acorn-Planter:A California Forest Play (1916)Features the fictional Nishinam tribe and their eventual encounter with explorers.
Daughters of the Rich: A One-Act Play (1915)Available at The World of Jack London, courtesy of David Hartzell.
Gold. (1972) With Herbert Herron, edited by James Sisson.Not yet available.
Scorn of Women (1906) [Available from Microsoft Book Search]Also available in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format from the Internet Archive.
NONFICTION WORKS
An incomplete list.
The Cruise of the Snark (1913)An autobiographical memoir of the 1907-09 voyage across the Pacific, with most emphasis upon Hawaii. For a less dramatized and detailed account of this voyage, see Charmian London's Log of the Snark and Our Hawaii.

John Barleycorn (1913)An autobiographical memoir that deals with the debilitating effects of alcohol as personified in "The Noseless One" (illustrated). Though some scholars have viewed this book to be fiction, London himself claimed it was truthful.

The People of the Abyss (1903) [A concordance is available for this work]Based on London's observations of the slums of London and illustrated with photographs taken by himself and others (illustrated).

The Road (1907)Tales of London's days as a hobo, profusely illustrated with (posed) photographs and drawings.

War of the Classes (1905)Mainly consisting of the texts of speeches London presented on behalf of socialism.

Jack London's JournalismNon-fiction newspaper and magazine pieces.
FIRST APPEARANCES

First Appearances of Jack London's StoriesThis web site by Carl Bell of Baylor University provides the first versions of many of London's stories that were published in magazines of the day.

2008-01-06T23:16:00.000-08:00

Jean-Paul Sartre
(1905-1980)

French novelist, playwright, existentialist philosopher, and literary critic. Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964, but he declined the honor in protest of the values of bourgeois society. His longtime companion was Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), whom he met at the École Normale Superieure in 1929.
"The bad novel aims to please by flattering, whereas the good one is an exigence and an act of faith. But above all, the unique point of view from which the author can present the world to those freedoms whose concurrence he wishes to bring about is that of a world to be impregnated always with more freedom." (from What Is Literature, 1947)
Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris. His father, Jean-Babtiste Sartre, was a naval officer, who died when Jean-Paul was fifteen months old. Sartre never wrote much about his biological father. More important person in his life was his mother, the former Anne-Marie Schweitzer, a great nephew of Albert Schweitzer. Sartre lived first with her and his grandfather, Charles Schweitzer in Paris, but when his mother remarried in 1917, the family moved to La Rochelle.
At school, Sartre was brilliant, but his behavior was behavior was often unpredictable and arrogant. When his friend Raymond Aron played tennis, Sartre preferred giant swings on the horizontal bar. He graduated in 1929 from the Ècole Normale Supérieure. From 1931 to 1945 he worked as a teacher. During this period he also traveled in Egypt, Greece, and Italy. In 1933-34 he studied in Berlin the writings of the German philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.
At the Left Bank cafés Sartre gathered around him a group of intellectuals in the 1930s. During WW II Sartre was drafted in 1939, imprisoned a year later in Germany, but released in 1941 (or he escaped). However, he lost his freedom he valued above all for a short time. In Paris he joined resistance movement and wrote for such magazines as Les Lettres Française and Combat. After the war he founded a monthly literary and political review, Les Temps modernes, and devoted himself entirely to writing and political activity. The magazine took its title from Chaplin's film. Sartre wrote both about and for the cinema. On a visit to the United States in 1945 he saw Citizen Kane and criticized Welles for using flashbacks. "Orson Welles’s oeuvre well illustrated the drama of the American intelligentsia which is rootless and totally cut off from the masses."
Sartre was never a member of Communist party, although he tried to reconcile existentialism and Marxism and collaborated with the French Communist Party. When Albert Camus, with whom Sartre was closely linked in the 1940, openly criticized Stalinism, Sartre hesitated to follow his example. The publication of Camus's novel The Rebel in 1951 caused a break between the two friends.
"Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth." (from L'Être et le Néant / Being and Nothingness, 1943)
Sartre's first novel , LA NAUSÉE (1938), expressed under the influence of German philosopher Edmund Husserl's phenomenological method, that human life has no purpose. The protagonist, Antoine Roquentin, discovers the obscene overabundance of the world around him, and his own solitude induces several experiences of psychological nausea. He is not only impressed by the solidity of the stones on the sea shore, but feels similar kind of horror when he contemplates the world of bourgeois banality. "Nobody is better qualified than the commercial traveller over there to sell Swan toothpaste. Nobody is better qualified than that interesting young man to fumble about under his neighbour's skirts. And I am among them and if they look at me they must think that nobody is better qualified than I to do what I do. But I know. I don't look very important but I know that I exists and that they exists. And if I knew the art of convincing people, I should go and sit down next to that handsome white-haired gentleman and I should explain to him what existence is. The thought of the look which would come on to his face if I did makes me burst out laughing." The rationality and solidity of this world, Roquentin thinks, is a veneer.
LE MUR (1938) was a collection of five stories and a novella, which concentrated on the theme of self-decption (or "bad faith"). In' The Childhood of a Leader' the pitiful hero, Lucien, believes that he does not really exists, he only an actor in his own life. He seeks a feeling of strength through a homosexual affair. Encouraged by his friend, Lucien ends up in the ultra-conservative organization of the Action Française, with a desire to purify the French blood and beat the Jews. Lucien's choices are not authentic, he acts in conformity.
In his non-fiction works L'ÊTRE ET LE NÉANT (1943, Being and Nothingness) Sartre formulated the basics of his philosophical system, in which "existence is prior to essence." Sartre made the distinction between things that exist in themselves (en-soi) and human beings who exist for themselves (pour-soi). Conscious of the limits of knowledge and of mortality, human beings live with existential dread. "Man is not the sum of what he has but the totality of what he does not yet have, of what he might have." (from Situations, 1947) Sartre developed his ideas further in L'EXISTENTIALISME EST UN HUMANISME (1946), and CRITIQUE DE LA RAISON DIALECTIQUE (1960). According to Sartre, human being is terrifying free. We are responsible for the choices we make, we are responsible for our emotional lives. In a godless universe life has no meaning or purpose beyond the goals that each man sets for himself. In Being and Nothingness Sartre argued that an individual must detach oneself from things to give them meaning.
Sartre's first play, LES MOUCHES (1943), examined the themes of commitment and responsibility. In the story, set in the ancient, mythical Greece, Orestes kills the murderers of Agamemnon, thus freeing the people of the city from the burden of guilt. According to Sartre's existentialist view, only one who chooses to assume responsibility of acting in a particular situation, like Orestes, makes effective use of one's freedom. In his second play, HUIS CLOS (1944), a man who loves only himself, a lesbian, and a nymphomaniac are forced to live in a small room after their deaths. At the end - although realizing that the "hell is other people" - they remain slaves to their of passions. The play was a sensation and was filmed in 1954. Sartre's screenplay TYPHUS, which he wrote in 1944, was produced in 1953, starring Michèle Morgan and Gérard Philipe. The director was Yves Allégret.
QU'EST CE QUE LA LITTÉRATURE (1947) is Sartre's best-known book of literary criticism. He grouped poetry with painting, sculpture, and music - they are not signs but things. One of the chief motifs of artistic creation is the need of feeling that we are essential in relationship to the world. A writer is always a watchdog or a jester, but the primarly function of the writer is to act in such a way that nobody can be ignorant of the world: a novelist cannot escape engagement in political and social issues. The reader brings to life the literary object - it is not true that one writes for oneself. On the other hand Sartre saw that literature is dying and alludes to newspapers, to the radio and movies. "The goal of art is to recover this world by giving it to be seen not as it is, but as if it had its source in human freedom." From 1946 to 1955 Sartre wrote several biographical studies, of which the most important was Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr (1952), about his friend Jean Genet (1910-1986), a convicted felon and writer.
After Stalin's death in 1953, Sartre accepted the right to criticize the Soviet system although he defended the Soviet state. He visited the Soviet Union next year and was hospitalized for ten days because of exhaustion. With his interpreter, Lena Zonina, he had a love affair. In 1956 Sartre spoke out on behalf of freedom for Hungarians, condemning the Soviet invasion, but not the Russian people, and in 1968 he condemned the Warsaw Pact assault on Czechoslovakia. In the Soviet Union, Sartre was privately criticized by the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. The O.A.S. (Organisation de l'Armee Secrete), engaged in terrorist activities against Algerian independence, exploded a bomb in 1961 in Sartre's apartment on rue Bonaparte; it happened also next year and Sartre moved on quai Louis-Blériot, opposite the Eiffel tower.
A superb conversationalist, Sartre unexpectedly lost his debate with the philosopher Louis Althusser, perhaps the only time in his public life. Althusser had joined the French Communist Party in 1948, and during the 1960s and 1970s he was considered the most influential voice in Western Marxism.
At the height of the student rebellion, which Sartre supported, his main interest lay on his four-volume study called L'IDIOT DE LA FAMILLE. The wide biography of Gustave Flaubert used Freudian interpretations and Marxist social and historical elements, familiar from his philosophical work. Sartre had been preoccupied with Flaubert since childhood. In this study, finished in 1971, Sartre showed how Flaubert became the person his family and society determined him to be, and how Flaubert's choices summarized the historical situation of his class. While writing this work, Sartre used Corydrane. The drug, a combination of aspirin and amphetamine, was popular among students and intellectuals. Also race bicyclists used it in the 1960s.
Sartre became also closely involved in movement against Vietnam War. In 1967 Sartre headed the International War Crimes Tribunal, set up by Bertrand Russell to judge American military conduct in Indochina. Among the New Left Sartre was a highly respected figure and his stand on the French colonial policy in Algeria was widely known in the Third World. One of his most powerful texts, written under the influence of Corydrane, was the foreword to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth (1961), published toward the end the of the Algerian War. The book was soon translated into seventeen languages.
In 1970 Sartre was arrested because of selling on the streets the forbidden Maoist paper La cause du peuple. Sartre was familair with the though of Mao Tse-tung and he had traveled in China in 1955 with Beauvoir, who decided to write a whole book about the country. However, in the early 1960s the Cuban economic and social revolution fascinated Sartre more. He also met Fidel Castro, but broke with his dictatorship later. In 1974 Sartre visited the terrorist Andreas Baader at the prison of Stammheim in Germany.
L'idiot was Sartre's last large work; it remained unfinished. According to Sartre, the fact that he will never finish it "does not make me so unhappy, because I think I said the most important things in the first three volumes." From 1973 the philosopher suffered from failing eyesight and near the end of his life Sartre was blind. Sartre died in Paris of oedema of the lungs on April 15, 1980. Arlette Elkaïm, Sartre's mistress whom he had adopted in 1965, received the rights to his literary heritage, not Simone de Beauvoir.
Like Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald after WWI, Sartre was considered after WW II the leading interpreter of the postwar generation's world view. In his essays Sartre dealt with wide range of subjects, sometimes in provocative manner. 'The Republic of Silence' starts, 'We were never more free than under the German occupation', explaining this later that in those circumstances each gesture had the weight of a commitment. In 'The Humanism of Existentialism' he condensed the major theme of existentialist philosophy simply "first of all, man exist, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself".
For further reading: The Psychology of Sartre by P. Dempsey (1950); Sartre, Romantic Rationalis by I. Murdoch (1953); Sartre: The Origins of a Style by Fredric Jameson (1961); The Theatre of Jean-Paul Sartre by D. McCall (1967); Sartre and the Artist by George H. Bauer (1969); Jean-Paul Sartre by Benjamin Suhl (1970); The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre by M. Contant and M. Rybalka (1974); Existential Marxism in Postwar France by Mark Poster (1975); Critical Fictions by Joseph Halpern (1976); The Existentialist Marxism of Jean-Paul Sartre by J. Lawler (1976); A Preface to Sartre by Dominic La Capra (1978); Sartre and Flaubert by H.E. Barnes (1981); Sartre: pelon, inhon ja valinnan filosofia by Esa Saarinen (1983); Writing Against by Ronald Hayman (1986, publ. in 1987 as Sartre: A Life); Jean-Paul Sartre: Freedom and Commitment by C. Hill (1992); Jean-Paul Sartre by P.M. Thody (1992); Siècle de Sartre by Bernard-Henri Lévy (2000) - Suom.: Sartrelta on suomennettu useita näytelmiä, esseevalikoimia ja lisäksi kokoelma Esseitä 1-2, joka sisältää tutkielman Mitä kirjallisuus on? - Esa Saarinen on julkaissut tutkimuksen Sartre: pelon, inhon ja valinnan filosofia (1983) - Other film adaptations: Les jeux sont faits, dir. by Jean Delannoy, 1947; Les orgueilleux, dir. by Yves Allégret, 1953 - See also: Soren Kierkegaard, Jean Anouilh, André Gide
Selected works:
L'IMAGINATION, 1936 - Imagination: A Psychological Critique
LA TRANSCENDANCE DE L'ÉGO, 1937 - The Transcendence of the Ego (trans. by F. Williams and R. Kirkpatrick)
LA NAUSÉE, 1938 - Nausea (trans. by Lloyd Alexander) - Inho (suom. Juha Mannerkorpi)
LE MUR, 1938 - The Wall (trans. by Andrew Brown) ä- Muuri (suom. Maijaliisa Auterinen, Jorma Kapari) - film 1966, dir. by Serge Roullet
ESQUISSE D'UNE THÉORIE DES ÉMOTIONS, 1939 - Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions
L'IMAGINAIRE: PSYCHOLOGIE PHÉNOMÉNOLOGIQUE DE L'IMAGINATION, 1940 - Psychology of Imagination
L'ÉTRE ET LE NÉANT, 1943 - Being and Nothingness (trans. by Hazel Barnes)
LES MOUCHES, 1943 - The Flies - Kärpäset (suom. Pirkko Peltonen)
HUIS CLOS, 1944 (prod.) - No Exit - Suljetut ovet (suom. Marja Rankkala) - film 1954, dir. by Jacqueline Audry, starring Frank Villard, Gaby Sylvia, Yves Denlaud, Arletty, music by Joseph Kosma
L'ÁGE DE RAISON, 1945 - Age of Reason
LE SURSIS, 1945 - The Reprieve
RÉFLEXIONS SUR LA QUESTION JUIVE, 1946 - Anti-Semite and Jew
MORTS SANS SÉPULTURE, 1946 - The Victors
L'EXISTENTIALISME EST UN HUMANISME, 1946 - Existentialism and Humanism - Eksistentialismikin on humanismia (suom. Aarne T.K. Lahtinen)
LA PUTAIN RESPECTUEUSE, 1946 - The Respectful Prostitute - Kunniallinen portto - film 1952, dir. by Charles Brabant & Marcello Pagliero
BAUDELAIRE, 1947 - trans.
LES JEUX SONT FAITS, 1947 - The Chips Are Down - film 1947, dir. by Jean Delannoy, screenplay by Sartre, Delannoy, Jacques-Laurent Bost, starring Micheline Presle, Michel Pagliero, Marguerite Moreno, Fernand Fabre
SITUATIONS I, 1947
THÉÂTRE, 1947
QU'EST-CE QUE LA LITTÉRATURE?, 1947 - What Is Literature? (trans. by Bernard Frechtman) - Mitä kirjallisuus on? (suom. Pirkko Peltonen, Helvi Nurminen)
LES MAINS SALES, 1948 - Dirty Hands - Likaiset kädet (suom. Toini Kaukonen)
L'ENGRENAGE, 1948 - In the Mesh
SITUATIONS II, 1948
ENTRETIENS SUR LA POLITIQUÉ, 1949
SITUATIONS III, 1949
LA MORT DANS L'ÂME, 1949 - Iron in the Soul
KEAN, 1951 - Kean; or, Disorder and Genius - Kean - näyttelijä (suom. Jorma Nortimo)
LE DIABLE ET LE BON DIEU, 1951 (prod.) - Lucifer and the Lord / The Devil and the Good Lord - Paholainen ja hyvä Jumala (suom. Ritva Arvelo)
SAINT GENET, COMÉDIEN ET MARTYR, 1952 - Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr (trans. by B. Frechtman)
L'AFFAIRE HENRI MARTIN, 1953
Literary and Philosophical Essays, 1955
NEKRASSOV, 1955 (prod.) - transl. - (suom. Helvi Nurminen)
QUESTIONS DE MÉTHODE, 1957 - Search for a Method
LES SÉQUESTRÉS D'ALTONA, 1959 (prod.) - Loser Wins / The Condemned of Altona - Altonan vangit (suom. Helvi Nurminen) - film 1962, dir. by Vittorio De Sica, starring Sophia Loren, Maximilian Schell, Fredric March, Robert Wagner, screenplay by Abby Mann, Cesare Zavattini, prod. by Carlo Ponti
CRITIQUE DE LA RAISON DIALECTIQUE, 1960 (tome 1) - Critique of Dialectical Reason, vol. 1 (trans. by A. Sheridan-Smith)
OURAGAN SUR LE SUCRE, 1960 - Sartre on Cuba
BARIONA, 1962 - Bariona; or, The Son of Thunder
Essays in Aesthetics, 1963
LES MOTS, 1964 - The Words (trans. by B. Frechtman) - Sanat (suom. Raili Moberg)
SITUATIONS IV: PORTRAITS, 1964 - Situations
SITUATIONS V: COLONIALISME ET NÉO-COLONIALISME, 1964
SITUATIONS VI: PROBLÈMES DU MARXISME 1, 1964 - The Communists and Peace
LES TROYENNES, 1965 - The Trojan Women
ŒUVRES ROMANESQUES, 1965 (5 vols.)
The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, 1965
SITUATIONS VII: PROBLÈMES DU MARXISME 2, 1965 - The Ghosts of Stalin
QUE PEUT LA LITTÉRATURE?, 1965
Essays in Existentialism, 1967
Of Human Freedom, 1967
L'IDIOT DE LA FAMILLE, 1971-72 ( 3 vol.) - The Family Idiot (trans. by Carol Cosman)
SITUATIONS VIII: AUTOUR DE 1968, 1972
SITUATIONS IX: MÉLANGES, 1972
Politics and Literature, 1973
UNB THÉÂTRE DE SITUATIONS, 1973 - Sartre on Théatrer
The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, vol. 2: Selected Prose, 1974
Between Existentialism and Marxism, 1974
SITUATIONS X, 1976 - Life/Situations: Essays Written and Spoken
ŒUVRES ROMANESQUES, 1981
LETTRES AU CASTOR ET Á QUELQUES AUTRES I-II, 1983
LES CARNETS DE LA DRÓLE DE GUERRE, 1983
CAHIERS POUR UNE MORALE, 1983 - Notebooks for an Ethics (trans. by D. Pellauer)
CRITIQUE DE LA RAISON DIALECTIQUE, 1985 (tome 2) - Critique of Dialectical Reason, vol. 2 (trans. by Quentin Hoare)
"What is Literature?" and Other Essays, 1988
VERITÉ ET EXISTENCE - Truth and Existence (trans. by A. van de Hoven)

2008-01-06T23:10:00.000-08:00

Alfred de Musset
(1810-1857)

French Romantic poet and playwright, remembered for his poetry. A love affair with the novelist George Sand between the years 1833 and 1835 inspired some of Musset's finest lyrics. Much influenced by Shakespeare and Schiller, Alfred de Musset wrote the first modern dramas in the French language.
"How glorious it is, but how painful it is also, to be exceptional in this world!" (from La Merle Blanc, 1842)
Alfred de Musset was born in the middle of old Paris, in a house on the Rues des Noyers near the Hôtel de Cluny. Both of his parents were descended from distinguished families, and his father had written several historical and travel works. Musset entered the Collège Henry IV, where his schoolmater included the Duke or Orleans, and graduated with honors in 1827. After hesitating between many professions, Musset abandoned medicine because of his distaste of the dissecting room. Instead, he studied painting for six months in the Louvre.
Musset began his career as a poet and dramatist in 1828 with the publication of a ballad called 'A Dream'. His first collection of poems, CONTES D'ESPAGNE ET D'ITALIE (1829), won the approval of Victor Hugo, who accepted Musset in his Romantic literary circle Cénacle.
Musset's following works showed the influence of Lord Byron. In 1830, at the invitation of the director of the Théâtre de l'Odeon, Musset wrote LA NUIT VÉNETIENNE, the first of his plays to be produced. After the humiliating failure on the stage, Musset refused to allow his other plays than historical tragedies and comedies to be performed. This decision partly liberated him from the thoughts of "technique"-he did not care whether the plays made an effect or no. At that time theatre, on the other hand, was for writers a good means to reach their audience. A theatre ticked was not so expensive than a book. Musset's relatively well-made books, which cost only 3.50 francs, still did not reach a public of petits-bourgeois, craftsmen, or workers, who earned little more than 4 francs per day.
In 1833 Musset met George Sand, with whom he started an intense relationship. His autobiographical work, LA CONFESSION D'UN ENFANT DU SIÈCLE (1835), a fictionalized account of the affair, reflects the mal du siècle, the disillusioned moral atmosphere in the period of strife between liberals and monarchists. "Everything that was no longer exists; everything that is to be does not yet exists," Musset once said. In 1834 Musset visited Venice with Sand; their journey was a turning point in Musset's life. They both became dangerously ill, but Sand fell in love with her physician, and Musset returned to France alone and in despair.
The stormy year inspired his plays ON NE BADINE PAS AVEC L'AMOUR and LORENZACCIO, which is sometimes considered his finest drama; the 'Lettre a Lamartine' from this period is considered one of the most beautiful pages of French literature. Lorenzaccio, written in 1834 and produced in 1896, was based on the murder of the Florentine tyrant Alessandro de'Medici by his cousin Lorenzo, known as Lorenzaccio. Idealistic Lorenzo wins the confidence of Alessandro in order to assassinate the tyrant. In the process, he loses his believes that the rebellious faction led by the Strozzis is capable of declaring a republic. He proceeds with the original plan and Cosimo de'Medici is declared the new ruler of Florence. Defeated in his hopes for justice and freedom, Lorenzo is finally assassinated in turn.
Musset became engaged to Aimée d'Alton in 1837. The relationship faded within a year and was followed by brief affairs. Throughout his life, Musset also frequented prostitutes and used occasionally opium. His health began to fail and after 1840s Musset's literary production as a dramatist diminished. However, POÉSIES NOUVELLES (1836-52) included 'Les Nuits', the series of lyrics for which Musset is best-known.
Musset was appointed librarian of the Home Office by the Duke of Orleans. The pay was small, 3,000 francs, and it has been said that there was no library at all. In 1845 Musset was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1845. From the late 1840s his plays, which were recognized for their profound grasp of the psychology of love, started to enjoy success on the French stage. Musset's later works include the patriotic song 'Le Rhin Allemand', and the popular comedy IL FAUT QU'UNE PORTE SOIT OUVERTE OU FERMÉE (1845). In 1852 Musset was elected to the French Academy. In the same year he entered into a love affair with Louise Colet, the former mistress of Gustave Flaubert.
For the last two years of his life, Musset was confined to his apartment near the Comédie-Française. His heart ailment, an unusual vascular malfunction that became known to scientist as the Musset symptom, was aggravated by drinking. He died in Paris on May 2, 1857. Nowadays Musset's popularity is considered second only to Racine and Moliere. "My glass is not big, but I drink out of my own glass," he once stated self-consciously. His influence is probably best seen in the plays of Jean Anouilh. Many of the titles for his works were taken from proverbs popular at the time.
Tristesse
J'ai perdu ma force et ma vie,Et mes amis et ma gaîté;J'ai perdu jusqu'à la fiertéQui faisat croire à mon génie.
Quan j'ai connu la Vérité,J'ai cru que c'était une amie;quand je l'ai comprise et sentie,J'en étais féjà dégoûté.
Et pourtant elle est éternelle,Et ceux qui se sont passés d'elleIci-bas ont tout ignoré.
Dieu parle, il faut qu'on lui réponde.Le seul bien qui me reste au mondeEst d'avoir quelquefois pleuré.
For further reading: Documents littéraire by E. Zola (1881); Les amants de Venise by Ch. Maurras (1902); Life of Alfred de Musset by A. Barine (1906); Un grand amour romantique: George Sand et Alfred de Musset by A. Feugère (1927); Le romantisme de Musset by P. Gastinel (1933); La vie privée de Musset by A. Villiers (1939); Musset: L'homme et l'oeuvre by P. van Teighem (1945); Alfred: The Passionate Life of Alfred de Musset by C. Haldane (1961); Etude historique et critique du théâtre de Musset by M. Vantore (1962); Vues sur le théâtre de Musset by A. Lebois (1966); The Dramatic Art of Musset by H.S. Gochberg (1967); Vie de Musset ou l'amour de la mort by M. Toesca (1970), A Stage for Poets by C. Affron (1971); The Poetry of Alfred De Musset: Styles and Genres by Lloyd Bishop (1987); Musset Et Shakespeare: Etude Analystique De L'Influence De Shakespeare Sur Le Theatre D'Alfred De Musset by Rex A. Barrell (1988); Paradigm and Parody: Images of Creativity in French Romanticism--Vigny, Hugo, Balzac, Gautier, Musset by Henry F. Majewski (1989); L'Esprit. Stylistique du mot d'esprit dans le Theatre de Musset by Jean-Jacques Didier (1992); The Romantic Art of Confession: De Quincey, Musset, Sand, Lamb, Hogg, Fremy, Soulie, Janin by Susan M. Levin (1998) - Note: Diane Kurys's film Enfants du siècle (1999), starring Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel, depicted the love affair of Alfred de Musset and George Sand. - Suom.: Suomeksi Mussetilta on julkaistu Novelleja, Rakkauden tiet, komedioita sekä runoja teoksessa Tuhat laulujen vuotta, toim. Aale Tynni (1974), sekä elämäkerta V.A. Koskenniemen kirjoittamana.
Selected works:
L'ANGLAIS MANGEUR D'OPIUM, 1828
LES MARRONS DE FEU, 1929
LA NUIT VÉNITIENNE, 1830 - A Venetian Night
CONTES D'ESPAGNE ET D'ITALIE, 1830
UN SPECTACLE DANS UN FAUTEUIL, 1832
LA COUPE ET LES LÈVRES, 1832 - The Cup and the Lip
À QUOI RÉVENT LES JEUNES FILLES, 1832 - Of What Young Maidens Dream
LAS CAPRICES DE MARIANNE, 1833 - The Follies of Marianne
GAMIANI, 1833
ROLLA, 1833
ANDRÉ DEL SARTO, 1833 - trans.
FANTASIO, 1834 - Fantasio: a Comedy in Two Acts (trans. by Maurice Baring)
ON NE BADINE PAS AVEC L'AMOUR, 1834 - No Trifling with Love
LORENZACCIO, 1834 - Lorenzaccio: a Drama in Five Acts (trans. by Edmund Thompson) - Lorenzo
LE CHANDELIER, 1835 - The Candle-Stick
BARBERINE, 1835
LES NUITS, 1835-37
LA CONFESSION D'UN ENFANT DU SIÈCLE, 1936 - The Confession of a Child of the Century (trans. by Kendall Warren) - Vuosisadan lapsen tunnustus (suom. V.A. Koskenniemi)
IL NE FAUT JURER DE RIEN, 1836 - You Can't Be Sure of Anything
LETTRE À LAMATINE, 1836
LETTRES DE DUPUIS ET COTONET, 1836-37
UN CAPRICE, 1837 - A Caprice
CONTES ET NOUVELLES, 1838
MARGOT, 1838
LE SOUVENIR, 1841
HISTOIRE D'UN MERLE BLANC, 1842
PIERRE ET CAMILLE, 1844
IL FAUT QU'UNE PORTE SOIT FERMÉE, 1845 - The Door Must Be either Open or Shut
MIMI PINSON, 1846
L'HABIT VERT, 1849 (with Émile Augier) - The Green Coat
LOUISON, 1849
CARMOSINE, 1850
BETTINE, 1851
PREMIÈRES POÉSIES, 1852
POÉSIES NOUVELLES, 1852
LA MOUCHE, 1853
COMÉDIES ER PROVERBES, 1853
ON NE SAURAIT PENSER À TOUT, 1853 - You Can't Think of Everything
L'ÂNE ET LE RUISSEAU, 1860 - The Donkey and the Stream
ŒUVRES COMPLÈTES, 1866-83
ŒUVRES, 1876
ŒUVRES POSTHUMES, 1881
Comedies, 1892
The Complete Writings, 1905
COMÉDIES ET PROVERBES, 1906
CORRESPONDANCE 1827-57, 1907
ŒUVRES COMPLÈTES, 1907-09
LETTRES D'AMOUR, 1923
CORRESPONDANCE ENTRE GEORGE SAND ET ALFRED DE MUSSET, 1930
COMÉDIES ET PROVERBES, 1945
ŒUVRES COMPLÈTES E PROSE, 1951
POÉSIES COMPLÈTES, 1951
THÈÂTRE COMPLET, 1952
TEXTES DRAMATIQUES INÉDITS, 1953
A Comedy and Two Proverbs, 1957
ŒUVRES COMPLÈTES, 1962
Seven Plays, 1962
THÉÂTRE COMPLET, 1964
Fantasio and Other Plays, 1993 (trans. by Michael Feingold)
Comedies & Proverbs, 1994 (trans. by David Sices)
Five Plays: The Moods of Marianne, Fantasio, Lorenzaccio, Don't Play With Love, Caprice, 1995
Historical Dramas of Alfred De Musset, 1997 (trans. by David Sices)