TWO POEMS

by

MIRASH IVANAJ
Albanian poet, politician and intellectual (1891-1953)

 

translated by Zana Toskaj and Anthony Weir

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THE POET’S CRY FROM THE PRISON HE DIED IN

Farewell O life, farewell O world!
Ploughed with poison, soaked with tears,
Ground with flesh, kneaded with blood -
O dreamworld strangling me for food.

Executioners, what is your joy ?
O jailers always watching me,
What kind of heart or soul have you ?
What ‘heart’ is you cannot know!

In my whole life I never laughed,
From birth till now just misery
And bitterness, tears and lament -
Such is the time that I have spent.

God, how can you bear to see the ruin
‘Your’ creatures make of what you made ?
Or have you handed your control
To any strong man with no soul ?

(1953)

 

Mirash Ivanaj (born in 1891) was one of two highly-talented brothers who both were members of King Zog's pre-war government. Mirash was for two years the Albanian Minister of Education before being exiled with Zog when Italy annexed Albania in 1938. He was responsible for terminating future dictator Enver Hoxha's scholarship in France - a common enough action in the days when Zog locked up, exiled or assassinated his opponents.
He was born in Podgoritsa (later Titograd) in Montenegro, where, as in Kosova until Miloshevich's time there was a substantial number of Albanian and Turkish speakers. He went to school in Belgrade and was awarded doctorates in Literature and in Jurisprudence at Rome. He started the first secular state school in the Northern Albanian town of Shkodra (Shkodër, Scutari) where he was Principal before he moved into government. He wrote in Albanian, Serbo-Croat and Italian.
After the war, which he spent mostly in (neutral) Istanbul and (British) Jerusalem, Ivanaj returned to Albania to reclaim his important library and to work as a teacher. Hoxha - unsurprisingly - very had him arrested in 1947 as an ex-Zogist threat to the national security of the People's Republic, and he died in prison in 1953 at the age of 62 .

At the early age of seventeen he was writing almost as bitterly.
The following poem was written in Serbian (apparently with his brother) when he was in Belgrade, and this is a fairly free translation from (I'm afraid) an Albanian translation.

 

SONG FOR FINALITY

Poison ivy marches from my grave
As the wooden cross slowly decays
A timeless shield above past misery
A living fence protecting what once was me

Creeper rooting in cold wood-rot
Couch-grass tangling on the mound
Corpse that neither knows nor cares
Whether violets bloom or not

Withered grass the colour of death
Mouldering fence that someone bought
Humble weeds with deadly leaves:
Life poisoned by unspoken thought.

(1908)

ALBANIAN VERSION

KENGË PËR TE FUNDMIN…

Dikur do kalbet drur'i kryqit tim
E mbi varr gjithkah hithrat do vërshojnë,
Si mburojë e lashtë, mbi këtë hidhërim,
Gardh'i gjallë do më qëndrojnë.

Kryqin e kalbur urthi do ta shtjellë,
Mbi varr grëm e egjër do t'i kem përherë,
Kurr mes tyre s'do shohë te çelë,
E njoma, e kaltra manushaqe plot erë.

Bari i vyshkur ngjyrë vdekje do jetë
E njerzit nga gardhet do ti dëbojë,
Nëse hithra e njomë, me t'egrën fletë,
Helmin e jetës në heshtje do tregojë.

__________________

 

TRIFON XHAGJIKA

 

FROM TWO VAGABONDS IN ALBANIA by JAN AND CORA GORDON (London, 1927) - a rare gem of a book.

 

« Even its warmest admirers would not claim that the Government of Albania is as yet an admirable model. Here is at once a republic and an autocracy: in a condition similar to the smaller South American republics of romantic memory. The condition is not, in truth, blamable to Government alone. Albania is now some five or six years old. Before the inception of this self-governing republic the peasants lived almost untaxed and almost free from military service. Set a chilf of six years old to be its own parents, guardians, and schoolmaster and you would hardly expect success. The foundation of proper government is money, or work in lieu of money. But the peasants and merchants have the strongest objections to paying adequate taxes, and are quite ready to revolt in order to find a Government that will run the country without taxes. Government officials, from highest to lowest, aware of the risky tenure of their posts, are tempted to make their places a means of immediate profit, garnering against the future disaster when they will have to flee the country. It is difficult, morevover, to blame much to a country that has not learned the word Nationality from its cradle, and which has no notion of what 'Public Service' can imply. It is difficult to blame it for its first tottering attempts in the art of self-government. The people are also divided into four religions, all of whom despise each other - Orthodox Mohammedans, Bek-ta-shees , Greek Church, and Catholics.

« The present dictator, Ahmed Zogu [who became King Zog] chief of the Mati tribe, is admitted by most to be a patriotic, hard-working and sincere man, but his hands are tied, and he is controlled by the members of his suite, his ministers, and deputies. Whatever reforms he may believe to be possible, he has no instrument with which to carry them out. The Christians, who are his most eager enemies, and who are most clamorous for the development of the country, have made that development impossibler, since a general political peace is the only condition under which the dictator could substitute for the many venial amongs his supporters more honest though less powerful partisans. How is it possible to build up an efficient public service when not one believes in the permanency of the State ?

« In this welter of bribery, office-seeking and corruption a little group of English ex-army officers has been engaged as advisers to the police. They have no real power whatever, but popularly in Albania they are thought to be almost all-powerful. They are naturally hated by a large group of ministers and deputies, who see in them an obstacle to their own political and selfish projects and who will do anything to prevent, for their own ends, the propagation of any reforms for which these Englishmen are struggling and which the President himself may really desire. »