Rilindja literature of the Albanian national awakening (19th cent.)


The struggle for political autonomy within the languishing Ottoman Empire and the will for cultural identity and survival among a backward and religiously divided people crystallized in the second half of the nineteenth century into the Rilindja (Alb: ‘rebirth’) movement of national awakening. This Rilindja period, which in its classical phase spans the years from the formation of the League of Prizren in 1878 to the declaration of Albanian independence in 1912, woke the Albanian people and united them into one linguistic identity, one culture and one nation. There was an intrinsic link between the goals of the nationalist movement in this period and the creative force of Albanian literature. Romantic nationalism accordingly became a dominant trait of expression in Rilindja literature. The cultural awakening, which went hand in hand with the national and political consciousness raising, stimulated and presupposed of necessity the use of Albanian in all walks of life, in particular in writing as well as for Albanianlanguage education, forbidden by the Porte.

Here lies the main reason for the sluggish evolution of Albanian literature throughout the Ottoman period. The Empire was divided not into national or ethnic groups, but into religious communities. The non-Muslim inhabitants of the Balkans enjoyed a certain degree of cultural autonomy, whereas the Muslim residents were considered by the authorities to be Turks and were thus forced to use Turkish. As such, the Greeks, Serbs, Romanians and Bulgarians of the Balkan peninsula, all Orthodox, were able to set up schools, to print books and newspapers in their native languages, to institutionalize their native cultures, and indeed to attain independence or at least a certain degree of political autonomy within the Empire. The Albanians, the majority of whom were now Muslims, did not have this right. As nationalist resistance grew, the Porte regarded all Albanian-language education, school and publications as subversive and continually reinforced its ban on them, thus plunging the whole country into unremitting darkness and ignorance. Any Albanian-language schools which did manage to open were soon shut down. Even into the twentieth century, the Ottoman authorities often went so far as to open people’s handbags and correspondence, and search homes for anything written in Albanian.

Naim Frashëri (1846-1900) is nowadays widely considered to be the national poet of Albania. He spent his childhood in the village of Frashër where he no doubt began learning Turkish, Persian and Arabic and where, at the Bektashi monastery, he was imbued with the spiritual traditions of the Orient. In Janina (Iôannina), Naim Frashëri attended the Zosimaia secondary school which provided him with the basics of a classical education along Western lines. Here he was to study Ancient and Modern Greek, French and Italian and, in addition, was to be tutored privately in oriental languages. As he grew in knowledge, so did his affinity for his pantheistic Bektashi religion, for the poets of classical Persia and for the Age of Enlightenment. His education in Janina made of him a prime example of a late nineteenth-century Ottoman intellectual equally at home in both cultures, the Western and the Oriental. Naim Frashëri is the author of a total of twenty-two works: four in Turkish, one in Persian, two in Greek and fifteen in Albanian. In view of his sensitive position as director of the board of censorship of the Ottoman Ministry of Education, Naim Frashëri deemed it wise not to use his full name in many of his own publications, and printed only a ‘by N.H.’, ‘by N.H.F.’ or ‘by N.F.’ Since the Porte would not tolerate the publication of Albanian-language books in Constantinople, Naim Frashëri’s best known works were published in Bucharest, where a substantial Albanian colony had settled and was flourishing and where an Albanian printing press had been set up by the Shoqëri e të shtypuri shkronja shqip (Society for the publication of Albanian writing) in 1886. The poetry volume for which he is primarily remembered, Bagëti e bujqësija, Bucharest 1886 (Bucolics and Georgics), is a 450-line pastoral poem reminiscent of Vergil and laden with the imagery of his mountain homeland. It proved extremely popular among Frashëri’s compatriots and was smuggled into Albania in caravans. Istori’ e Skenderbeut, Bucharest 1898 (History of Scanderbeg), is an historical epic of 11,500 verses which Frashëri must have written in about 1895 in his last creative years and one which the author himself regarded as his masterpiece. The figure of the Albanian national hero Scanderbeg, the symbol and quintessence of resistance to foreign domination, held a particular fascination for the intellectuals of the Rilindja period and for the common people. Though a fundamental work of Albanian romantic nationalism of the period, Istori’ e Skenderbeut does not stand the test of time as a national epic. It suffers from the same artistic weaknesses to be found in Frashëri’s other works and in many works of twentieth-century Albanian literature up to the present day: didactic and moralizing rhetoric and a black and white polarization of the protagonists into absolute saints and absolute demons huddling under a grey cloud of tear-jerking sentimentality. The significance of Naim Frashëri as a Rilindja poet and indeed as a ‘national poet’ rests not so much upon his talents of literary expression nor upon the artistic quality of his verse, but rather upon the sociopolitical, philosophical and religious messages it transmitted, which were aimed above all at national awareness and, in the Bektashi tradition, at overcoming religious barriers within the country. His influence upon Albanian writers at the beginning of the twentieth century was enormous. Many of his poems were set to music during his lifetime and were sung as folk songs. If one compares the state of Albanian literature before and after the arrival of Naim Frashëri, one becomes aware of the major role he played in transforming Albanian into a literary language of substantial refinement.

It can be asserted without any hesitation that the Rilindja period was one of inestimable significance for Albania’s political and cultural survival. In its political history, Albania evolved from an obscure and primitive backwater of the Ottoman Empire to take its place among the nation-states of Europe. Through its literature and cultural history, this age of ‘rebirth’ created an awareness for national identity and made the Albanian language the matter-of-course vehicle of literary and cultural expression for the Albanian people. It was the Rilindja period, more than any other, which moulded Albanian literature and determined many of its subsequent characteristics. What followed in the independence years up until the Second World War was, to a large extent, simply the growth and refinement of a sturdy and thriving plant rooted in the blood-stained soil of that troubled and decisive age. Rilindja literature thus laid the foundations for the development of modern Albanian literature, not only in journalism and poetry, the élan vital of the period, but also in prose, drama and essays, which for the first time evolved into solid if not overly sophisticated literary genres. Twentieth-century Albania cannot be comprehended at all without an understanding of the Rilindja period and its culture.

Courtesy of Albanologist Dr.Robert Elsie from his Article
Albanian literature: an overview of its history and development.
in: Österreichische Osthefte, Vienna, 45, 1-2 (2003), p. 243-276.
Source: http://www.elsie.de/pdf/articles/A2003AlbLitOsthefte.pdf