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Robert Elsie and Janice Mathie-Heck
Songs of the Frontier Warriors: Këngë Kreshnikësh
Albanian epic verse in a bilingual English-Albanian edition
Edited introduced and translated from the Albanian
by Robert Elsie and Janice Mathie-Heck
ISBN 0-86516-412-6
Bolchazy-Carducci
Publ., Wauconda, Illinois 2004
xviii + 414 pp.
 INTRODUCTION
The present volume offers the reader
a selection from the best-known cycle of Albanian epic verse,
the Songs of the Frontier Warriors (Këngë Kreshnikësh).
As the product of a little-known culture and a difficult, rarely
studied language, the Albanian epic has tended to remain in the
shadow of the Serbo-Croatian, or more properly, Bosnian epic,
with which it has undeniable affinities. This translation may
thus be regarded as an initial attempt to rectify the imbalance
and to give scholars and the reading public in general an opportunity
to delve into the exotic world of the northern Albanian tribes.
The Songs of the Frontier Warriors were
first recorded in the early decades of the twentieth century
by Franciscan priests and scholars serving in the northern Albanian
mountains. Preeminent among them was Shtjefën Gjeçovi
(1874-1929), who is now regarded as the father of Albanian folklore
studies. Gjeçovi was born in Janjeva, south of Prishtina
in Kosova, and was educated by the Franciscans in Bosnia. He
returned to Albania in 1896, having been ordained as a priest,
and spent his most productive years (ca. 1905-1920) among the
highland tribes in various rugged mountain settlements where
he collected and compiled material on oral literature, tribal
law, archaeology and folklore in general. Though he is remembered
primarily for his codification of the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini,
the best known code of Albanian customary law, his achievements
in the field of oral literature are actually no less impressive.
From 1919 onwards, Gjeçovi's work
in the collection of oral verse was continued by another Albanian
Franciscan, Bernardin Palaj (1894-1947). Born in the Shllak region
of the northern highlands and trained in Austria, Palaj was ordained
in 1918. Like Gjeçovi, he collected folk songs on his
travels on foot through the mountains and wrote articles on Gheg
(northern Albanian) lore and tribal customs. He was particularly
taken by the Songs of the Frontier Warriors, to which he devoted
much of his energy. Together with Donat Kurti (1903-1983), he
published the most important collection of Albanian epic verse
to date, the Kângë kreshnikësh dhe legenda
(Songs of the Frontier Warriors and Legends), which appeared
in the Visaret e Kombit (The Treasures of the Nation)
series in 1937 to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Albanian
independence.
The work of the Franciscans and Jesuits
in Shkodra gave direction to the study of Albanian culture from
the late nineteenth century up until the Second World War. It
was their research that inspired Father Gjergj Fishta (1871-1940),
another Franciscan scholar and poet, to write his masterful 15,613-line
literary epic Lahuta e Malcis (The Highland Lute), which
was published in a definitive edition in the same year as the
aforementioned collection of Palaj and Kurti.
This golden age of Scutarine culture
and scholarship was brought to an abrupt end by the communist
takeover of Albania in 1944. All the cultural and educational
institutions of the Catholic Church were shut down and most of
Albania's best scholars and writers, among whom Bernardin Palaj,
Ndoc Nikaj (1864-1951), Vinçenc Prennushi (1885-1949),
Anton Harapi (1888-1946) and Gjon Shllaku (1907-1946), were physically
liquidated or died in prison. The immediate post-war period had
become an apocalypse for Albanian writers and intellectuals.
The father of Albanian folklore, Shtjefën Gjeçovi,
for his part, had been murdered by Serb extremists two decades
earlier near Zym in Kosova.
Parallel to the interest shown by Albanian
scholars in the epic of the northern highlands were the publications
of Yugoslav writers on Bosnian and Serbo-Croatian epic and heroic
verse. Significant in the appreciation of the Balkan epic was
also the work of foreign writers in this period.
It was the Homeric scholar Milman Parry
and his assistant Albert Lord from Harvard University who captured
the imagination of a whole generation of scholars with their
discovery of illiterate bards in Bosnia and the Sanjak who, in
true Homeric fashion, were able to recite epic verse for hours
on end. After an initial visit to Yugoslavia in 1933, Parry returned
to the Balkans for a longer stay from June 1934 to September
1935, this time with his assistant Albert Lord. During their
stay in Bosnia, Hercegovina, Montenegro and the Sanjak, they
recorded 12,500 texts, many of which were preserved as sound
recordings on aluminium disks. This material formed the basis
for their two-volume seminal publication Serbocroatian heroic
songs (Cambridge MA & Belgrade 1954, 1953).
Interestingly enough, four out of the
five singers whose songs appear in this volume were Albanians:
Salih Ugljanin, Djemal Zogic, Sulejman Makic and Alija Fjuljanin.
These singers from Novi Pazar in the Sanjak were willing and
able to reproduce the same epic songs in Bosnian (Serbo-Croatian)
and Albanian. In 1937, after the untimely death of Parry, Albert
Lord returned to the Balkans by himself, began learning Albanian
and travelled through the Albanian highlands, where he collected
a substantial corpus of Albanian heroic verse, now preserved
in the Milman Parry Collection at Harvard University. Of this
undertaking, he wrote:
"While in Novi Pazar, Parry had recorded several Albanian
songs from one of the singers who sang in both languages. The
musical instrument used to accompany these songs is the gusle
(Albanian lahuta) but the line is shorter than the Serbian
decasyllabic and a primitive type of rhyming is regular. It was
apparent that a study of the exchange of formulas and traditional
passages between these two poetries would be rewarding because
it would show what happens when oral poetry passes from one language
group to another which is adjacent to it. However, there was
not sufficient time in 1935 to collect much material or to learn
the Albanian language. While in Dubrovnik in the summer of 1937,
I had an opportunity to study Albanian and in September and October
of that year I travelled through the mountains of northern Albania
from Shkodra to Kukësi by way of Boga, Thethi, Abat and
Tropoja, returning by a more southerly route. I collected about
one hundred narrative songs, many of them short, but a few between
five hundred and a thousand lines in length. We found out that
there are some songs common to both Serbo-Croatian and Albanian
tradition and that a number of the Moslem heroes of the Yugoslav
poetry, such as Mujo and Halil Hrnjica and Djerdjelez Alija,
are found also in Albanian. Much work remains to be done in this
field before we can tell exactly what the relationship is between
the two traditions."
Research in the field of Albanian
oral literature resumed in Albania in the 1950s with the founding
of the Albanian Institute of Sciences in Tirana, forerunner of
the Academy of Sciences. A new generation of experts was trained,
expeditions to the north were carried out, and a series of monographs
and anthologies was published, which documented the results of
research activities. In 1961, a special Folklore Institute (Instituti
i Kulturës Popullore) was set up in Tirana which, despite
the continued political isolation of the country, managed to
carry on research and publishing activities at a satisfactory
scholarly level. Here, the Albanian epic has been the focus of
research in particular by Zihni Sako (1912-1981), Qemal Haxhihasani
(1916-1991), Alfred Uçi (b. 1930), Jorgo Panajoti, Gjergj
Zheji (b. 1926) and Shaban Sinani (b. 1959).
Equally or perhaps more significant for
Albanian oral literature was the foundation in 1967 of the Albanological
Institute (Instituti Albanologjik) in Prishtina. The Folklore
Section of this institute has published a good number of works
on the Albanian epic. Despite the forceful eviction of the Institute
from its premises, the savage beating of scholars and staff members
by Serb paramilitaries on 8 March 1994, and the wilful destruction
of much Albanian folklore material and recordings during the
final grim months of the Serb occupation of Kosova, the Albanological
Institute has survived and is continuing its work. Mention may
be made in particular of the publications of Anton Çetta
(1920-1995), Demush Shala (1929-1988), Rrustem Berisha (b. 1938),
Anton Berisha (b. 1946), Zymer Neziri (b. 1946) and Enver Mehmeti
(b. 1948).
Despite the wealth of material which
has now been published in Albanian in Prishtina, Tirana and elsewhere,
the language barrier has prevented the Albanian epic from becoming
known to the international public. A few good introductory monographs
on the subject have, nonetheless, appeared in English, among
them: Albanian and south Slavic oral epic poetry (Philadelphia
1954, New York 1969) by Stavro Skendi (1905-1989), Albanian
folk verse, structure and genre (Munich 1978) by Arshi Pipa
(1920-1997), and most recently The bilingual singer, a study
of Albanian and Serbo-Croatian oral epic traditions (New
York 1990) by John Kolsti of the University of Texas in Austin.
Still of use is the German-language Die Volksepik der Albaner
(Halle 1958) by Maximilian Lambertz (1882-1963).
The Serbo-Croatian epic, as a living
tradition, seems to have died out since the days of Parry and
Lord. There are no more illiterate singers to be found in the
coffee houses of Novi Pazar or Bijelo Polje and there is no one
able to carry on the tradition of southern Slavic oral epic verse.
The Albanian epic, however, to many people's surprise, is still
alive and kicking. Even as the twenty-first century dawns, one
can still find a good number of lahutars in Kosova, in
particular in the Rugova highlands west of Peja, and in northern
Albania, as well as some rare souls in Montenegro, who are able
to sing and recite the heroic deeds of Mujo and Halili and their
thirty Agas. These are singers who have inherited their repertoires
as part of an unbroken oral tradition passed down from generation
to generation. One can safely assume that these elderly men constitute
the very last traditional native singers of epic verse in Europe!
Unfortunately, the 1997-1999 war in Kosova
left deep scars, in particular in the present homeland of epic
verse, the Rugova highlands. Many Albanian villages there were
destroyed by their Slav neighbours who had come over the mountains
from nearby Montenegro to raid and plunder. Most other settlements
were systematically razed to the ground by Serb troops and paramilitaries.
The whole population was put to flight, with many villagers having
to escape on foot in the deep snows of winter. Countless Albanians
were robbed, raped and murdered as they fled their smouldering
villages, and it is easy to imagine that the toll was heaviest
among the elderly people. It is still too early to assess the
impact of this wanton destruction upon the traditional tribal
culture of the Rugova highlands. The Albanians of Kosova are,
however, extremely attached to their country and their national
traditions, much more so than are the people of the Republic
of Albania. In Albania itself, the native culture of the northern
mountains was given the last blow, so to speak, by the 1997 uprising
which resulted in a final wave of mass emigration of the highland
population to the shantytowns of Tirana, Durrës and other
coastal towns.
In order to preserve the heritage of
these last native singers of epic verse in Europe, the Albanological
Institute of Prishtina embarked in 1979-1988 on an ambitious
publishing project entitled Epika Legjendare e Rugovës
(The legendary epic of Rugova), based on over 100,000 lines of
material collected. Each volume in the series is devoted to one
singer and his works, and is thus designed to provide a comprehensive
overview of the state of Albanian epic and heroic verse before
its inevitable extinction. Because of the deteriorating political
situation in Kosova and Yugoslavia through the eighties and nineties,
leading to the 1998-1999 war, only one volume has appeared as
yet. This was devoted to the lahutar Haxhi Meta-Nilaj
(1912-1994) of Shtupeq i Vogël. Among other leading lahutars
of the region are Ramë Çaushi-Elesaliaj (1908-2000)
of Shtupeq i Madh, Misin Nimani-Sejdaj (b. 1912) of Kuqishta,
Rrustem Tahiri-Metujkaj (1919-2000) of Rieka e Allagës,
Isuf Veseli-Dreshaj (1926-2000) of Bogët, Rrustem Bajrami-Imeraliaj
(b. 1932) of Shtupeq i Madh, and Isë Elezi-Lekëgjekaj
(b. 1947) of Koshutan. Mustafë Isufi-Broçaj (1939-1998)
of Shtupeq i Vogël, student of the noted lahutar Shaban
Groshi-Husaj (1923-1997) of Shkreli, was shot together with his
sister by the Serbs. Although much of the recorded field material
at the Albanological Institute was stolen by Serb forces who
occupied the building in the spring of 1999, it is to be hoped
that a substantial part of the project can still be completed.
The present edition of Albanian epic
verse in English translation comprises twenty-three songs based
on the above-mentioned Visaret e Kombit edition of 1937.
They range in length from 80 to 674 lines. Whether the term 'epic'
is appropriate to oral verse of this length is a question which
has been dealt with by various authors. In his 1958 edition,
Lambertz used the term Kurzepen 'short epics.' Albanian
scholars have used a variety of terms to describe the genre:
epic verse, heroic verse, heroic legendary verse, epic legendary
verse, etc. Albert Lord expressed himself as follows:
"The word 'epic' itself, indeed, has come in time to
have many meanings. Epic sometimes is taken to mean simply a
long poem in 'high style.' Yet a very great number of the poems
which interest us in this book are comparatively short; length,
in fact, is not a criterion of epic poetry. Other definitions
of epic equate it with heroic poetry. Indeed the term 'heroic
poetry' is sometimes used to avoid the very ambiguity in the
word epic which troubles us. Yet purists might very well point
out that many of the songs which we include in oral narrative
poetry are romantic or historical and not heroic, no matter what
definition of the hero one may choose."
If length is not a criterion of epic
poetry, as Lord suggests, there is no reason not to define the
Songs of the Frontier Warriors as epic verse. It should be noted
at any rate that songs much longer than the ones included in
this volume do exist.
Much has been written about the antiquity
and origins of Albanian epic verse and about its relationship
to the Bosnian epic. From the narrative and for other reasons,
there is general consensus nowadays that the Songs of the Frontier
Warriors crystallized in the 17th and 18th centuries in a border
region of the Balkans which separated Christendom from the Islamic
world, though many much older strata are present in the songs.
We are dealing, as such, primarily with a literary reflection
of the Türkenkriege between the Ottoman Empire and
the Habsburgs. Our heroes are Muslim rebels living in the krahina
who delight in crossing the mountains to go raiding in the krajli,
the Kingdom of the Christians, and in outwitting the 'king' and
his Slavic warriors. The place names referred to in the songs,
Jutbina and New Kotor etc., have been identified as being in
the region of the Lika and Krbava valleys to the east of Zadar
in Croatia, not far from the present Bosnian border. Reference
is also made to the River Danube and to Hungarian guards and
clothing, all of which are remote from areas of traditional Albanian
settlement. From this and from conspicuous Slavic terms in some
of the songs, it would seem evident that we are dealing with
a body of oral material which, probably after centuries of evolution,
crystallized in a southern Slavic milieu and which was then transmitted
by bilingual singers to (some would say back to) an Albanian
milieu. It is understandable therefore that there are many parallels
between Albanian and Bosnian epic verse. They have a common origin
and, in essence, reflect a common culture. After transmission,
however, the Albanian epic evolved in a solely Albanian milieu
and took on many purely Albanian characteristics, values and
extra-linguistic forms of expression, and it is this that makes
it particularly fascinating. Though the toponyms remained, the
background conflict in the narrative shifted from warfare between
the Muslims and the Christians to warfare between the Albanians
and the shkjas, i.e. the Slavs.
Albanian scholars, ever ready to assert
the antecedence of their culture over that of the Slav, point
to old elements of Albanian heroic culture which may have influenced
the development of this verse long before the period of crystallization.
They stress that epic verse of this type evolved only among the
Slavic tribes that lived in close geographical proximity to the
indigenous, pre-Slavic population of the Balkans, i.e. the ancestors
of the Albanians, and some observers have supposed a pre-Slavic
stratum. Unfortunately, however, discussion on the origins of
Balkan epic verse has evolved in a typically Balkan way, along
the lines of 'I got there first!' After centuries of parallel
development and contacts, it is unlikely that we will ever obtain
a clear and unequivocal picture of the stratification of the
epics.
Despite transmission from a Bosnian Slav
milieu, the Songs of the Frontier Warriors are by no means simply
translations of Serbo-Croatian epic verse. They have undergone
continuous and independent evolution since the period of crystallization
and are thus neither Bosnian, Montenegrin, Hercegovine, Serb,
nor southern Albanian for that matter, but a product of the creative
genius of the northern Albanian highlands.
In closing, I would like to add a few
personal remarks about the origins of this book. In May 1988,
during the final years of the Stalinist dictatorship in Albania,
I managed to get a rare personal visa to visit the country for
several weeks for research purposes. The difficulties in acquiring
the visa were more than compensated for by the hospitality of
my Albanian hosts when I finally got into the country. The Academy
of Sciences did its best to fulfil my every wish while I was
in Albania, and even put a car and driver at my disposal every
day to drive me the two hundred metres from my hotel to the national
library. It was during this visit that I met Professor Qemal
Haxhihasani (1916-1991), the leading Albanian expert on epic
and heroic verse. Our meetings took place in the coffee shop
of the venerable Hotel Dajti. In the climate of oppression and
anti-Western hysteria which reigned in Albania at the time, it
was more than courageous of Professor Haxhihasani to have agreed
to see me in the first place. Any meeting with a foreigner could,
as I later learned, result in days or nights of interrogation
by the omnipotent and ubiquitous secret police force, the Sigurimi.
Haxhihasani was delighted at my interest in the Albanian epic
and spoke proudly, though in a hush, of his meeting with Albert
Lord many years earlier. It was his unbound enthusiasm for the
Songs of the Frontier Warriors which actually gave birth to this
project, conceived if you will, under the watchful eye of the
Sigurimi. At a second meeting, he made concrete proposals
for a translation and provided me with the books and material
necessary for the project. Haxhihasani died three years later,
shortly after the fall of the dictatorship, and many years have
since passed. Other projects of mine took priority and the early
pages of the translation were left to gather dust on a shelf
before I was finally able to finish it. This delay, I must admit,
was due more than anything to my inability at the time to cope
with the Gheg dialect and exalted style in which the Songs of
the Frontier Warriors were composed. Finding an adequate form
for a translation for heroic verse from such an exotic culture
has not been an easy matter.
As opposed to most other Albanian verse,
which is in an octosyllabic (eight-syllable) form, the Songs
of the Frontier Warriors are composed for the most part in a
loose decasyllabic (ten-syllable) form, Alb. dhjetërrokësh,
often with a break after the fourth syllable. This corresponds
to the decasyllabic form of the Bosnian verse, the so-called
deseterac. A trochaic metre is standard and the verse
occurs in both rhymed and unrhymed forms, depending, it would
seem, on the whims and abilities of the singer involved. As decasyllabic
verse is rather difficult to reproduce in English, I chose more
standard verse patterns and more common metres for the translation,
mainly trochaic and dactylic feet. While endeavouring to maintain
a certain metre, and at least rhythm in the translation, I have
tried at the same time to be as faithful as possible to the narrative
contents of the original. As such, priority has been given to
fidelity of translation over metric concerns, and no attempt
has been made to rhyme where the original verse does so.
The Albanian texts are taken from the
above-mentioned Visaret e Kombit edition by Bernardin
Palaj and Donat Kurti, but in a modernized orthography, such
as that found in the 1966 edition, Epika legjendare (Cikli
i kreshnikëve) published by Qemal Haxhihasani.
Much remains to be done in the field
of Albanian epic verse and the present volume can only be one
small step forward. If it succeeds in arousing interest in this
field before the heroic culture of the Albanian highlands has
disappeared forever, its purpose will have been fulfilled.
Robert Elsie
The Hague, Holland
June 2002
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by Berkley Peabody
Introduction
1. Mujo's strength
2. The marriage of Gjeto Basho Mujo
3. Mujo's oras
4. Mujo visits the Sultan
5. The marriage of Halili
6. Gjergj Elez Alia
7. Mujo and Behuri
8. Mujo's courser
9. Young Omeri
10. Zuku Bajraktar
11. Arnaut Osmani and Hyso Radoica
12. Ali Bajraktari or the word of honour
13. Arnaut Osmani
14. Zuku captures Rusha
15. Mujo's wife is kidnapped
16. Mujo and Jevrenija
17. Halili avenges Mujo
18. Omer, son of Mujo
19. The death of Omer
20. Ajkuna mourns Omer
21. The death of Halili
22. Mujo wounded
23. After Mujo's death
Glossary of terms, personal names and place names
Sources
Bibliography
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