"Je suis
bien-heureux de ce signe de fraternite poetique et politique entre vous
et moi. La poesie est venue de vos rivages et doit y retourner. . . ."
Hermann Buchholtz discovers scenic changes worthy of Shakespeare, and
passages of Aeschylean grandeur, in his tragedy "Sofonisba." Carnet
compares him with Dante, and the omniscient Mr. Gladstone wrote in
1880 - a post card, presumably - belauding his disinterested efforts on
behalf of his country. He was made the subject of many articles and
pamphlets, and with reason. Up to his time, Albania had been a myth. He
it was who divined the relationship between the Albanian and Pelasgian
tongues; who created the literary language of his country, and
formulated its political ambitions.
Whereas the hazy "Autobiologia" records complicated political intrigues
at Naples that are not connected with his chief strivings, the little
"Testamento politico," printed towards the end of his life, is more
interesting. It enunciates his favourite and rather surprising theory
that the Albanians cannot look for help and sympathy save only to their
brothers, the Turks. Unlike many Albanians on either side of the
Adriatic, he was a pronounced Turco-phile, detesting the "stolid
perfidy" and "arrogant disloyalty" of the Greeks. Of Austria, the most
insidious enemy of his country's freedom, he seems to have thought well.
A year before his death he wrote to an Italian translator of "Milosao"
(I will leave the passage in the original, to show his cloudy language):
"Ed un tempo propizio la accompagna: la ricostituzione dell' Epiro nei
suoi quattro vilayet autonomi quale e nei propri consigli e nei propri
desideri; ricostituzione, che pel suo Giornale, quello dell' ottimo A.
Lorecchio - cui precede il principe Nazionale Kastriota, Chini - si
annuncia fatale, e quasi fulcro della stabilita dello impero Ottomano, a
della pace Europea; preludio di quella diffusione del regno di Dio sulla
terra, che sara la Pace tra gli Uomini."
Truly a remarkable utterance, and one that illustrates the disadvantages
of living at a distance from the centres of thought. Had he travelled
less with the spirit and more with the body, his opinions might have
been modified and corrected. But he did not even visit the Albanian
colonies in Italy and Sicily. Hence that vast confidence in his
mission - a confidence born of solitude, intellectual and geographical.
Hence that ultra-terrestrial yearning which tinges his apparently
practical aspirations.
He remained at home, ever poor and industrious; wrapped in bland
exaltation and oblivious to contemporary movements of the human mind.
Not that his existence was without external activities. A chair of
Albanian literature at San Demetrio, instituted in 1849 but suppressed
after three years, was conferred on him in 1892 by the historian and
minister Pasquale Villari; for a considerable time, too, he was director
of the communal school at Corigliano, where, with characteristic energy,
he set up a printing press; violent journalistic campaigns succeeded one
another; in 1896 he arranged for the first congress of Albanian language
in that town, which brought together delegates from every part of Italy
and elicited a warm telegram of felicitation from the minister
Francesco Crispi, himself an Albanian. Again, in 1899, we find him
reading a paper before the twelfth international congress of
Orientalists at Rome.
But best of all, he loved the seclusion of Macchia.
Griefs clustered thickly about the closing years of this unworldly
dreamer. Blow succeeded blow. One by one, his friends dropped off; his
brothers, his beloved wife, his four sons - he survived them all; he
stood alone at last, a stricken figure, in tragic and sublime isolation.
Over eighty years old, he crawled thrice a week to deliver his lectures
at San Demetrio; he still cultivated a small patch of ground with
enfeebled arm, composing, for relaxation, poems and rhapsodies at the
patriarchal age of 88! They will show you the trees under which he was
wont to rest, the sunny views he loved, the very stones on which he sat;
they will tell you anecdotes of his poverty - of an indigence such as we
can scarcely credit. During the last months he was often thankful for a
crust of bread, in exchange for which he would bring a sack of acorns,
self-collected, to feed the giver's pigs. Destitution of this kind,
brought about by unswerving loyalty to an ideal, ceases to exist in its
sordid manifestations: it exalts the sufferer. And his life's work is
there. Hitherto there had been no "Albanian Question" to perplex the
chanceries of Europe. He applied the match to the tinder; he conjured up
that phantom which refuses to be laid.
He died, in 1903, at San Demetrio; and there lies entombed in the
cemetery on the hill-side, among the oaks.
But you will not easily find his grave.
His biographer indulges a poetic fancy in sketching the fair monument
which a grateful country will presently rear to his memory on the snowy
Acroceraunian heights. It might be well, meanwhile, if some simple
commemorative stone were placed on the spot where he lies buried. Had he
succumbed at his natal Macchia, this would have been done; but death
overtook him in the alien parish of San Demetrio, and his remains were
mingled with those of its poorest citizens. A microcosmic illustration
of that clannish spirit of Albania which he had spent a lifetime in
endeavouring to direct to nobler ends!
He was the Mazzini of his nation.
A Garibaldi, when the crisis comes, may possibly emerge from that
tumultuous horde.
Where is the Cavour?
XXV
SCRAMBLING TO LONGOBUCCO
A driving road to connect San Demetrio with Acri whither I was now bound
was begun, they say, about twenty years ago; one can follow it for a
considerable distance beyond the Albanian College. Then, suddenly, it
ends.
