Pashko Vasa

Pashko Vasa Shkodrani (born 1825, Shkodër, Albania - June 29 1892, Beirut, Lebanon) was an Albanian writer, poet and publicist of the Rilindja Kombëtare.

From 1842 to 1847 he worked as a secretary for the British consulate in that northern Albanian city where he had an opportunity to perfect his knowledge of a number of foreign languages: Italian, French, Turkish and Greek. He also knew some English and Serbo-Croatian, and in later years learned Arabic.

In 1847, full of ideals and courage, he set off for Italy on the eve of the turbulent events that were to take place there and elsewhere in Europe in 1848. There are two letters written in Bologna in the summer of that revolutionary year in which he expresses openly republican and anti-clerical views. We later find him in Venice where he took part in fighting in Marghera on 4 May 1849, part of a Venetian uprising against the Austrians. After the arrival of Austrian troops on August 28 of that year, Pashko Vasa was obliged to flee to Ancona where, as an Ottoman citizen, he was expelled to Constantinople.

He published an account of his experience in Italy the following year in his Italian-language "La mia prigionia, episodio storico dell'assedio di Venezia", Constantinople 1850 (My imprisonment, historical episode from the siege of Venice).

In Constantinople, after an initial period of poverty and hardship, he obtained a position at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whence he was seconded to London for a time, to the Imperial Ottoman Embassy to the Court of St James's. He later served the Sublime Porte in various positions of authority.

In 1863, thanks to his knowledge of Serbo-Croatian, as he tells us, he was appointed to serve as secretary and interpreter to Ahmed Jevdet Pasha , Ottoman statesman and historian, on a fact-finding mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina which lasted for twenty months, from the spring of 1863 to October 1864. The events of this mission were recorded in his "La Bosnie et l'Herzégovine pendant la mission de Djevdet Efendi", Constantinople 1865 (Bosnia and Herzegovina during the mission of Jevdet Efendi).

A few years later he published another now rare work of historical interest, "Esquisse historique sur le Monténégro d'après les traditions de l'Albanie", Constantinople 1872 (Historical sketch of Montenegro according to Albanian traditions).

Despite his functions on behalf of the Porte, Pashko Vasa never forgot his Albanian homeland. In the autumn of 1877 he became a founding member of the Central Committee for the Defence of the Rights of the Albanian People in Constantinople. Through his contacts there, he also participated in the organization of the League of Prizren in 1878. He was no doubt the author of the Memorandum on Albanian Autonomy submitted to the British Embassy in Constantinople.

Together with other nationalist figures on the Bosphorus, such as Hodja Hasan Tahsini, Jani Vreto and Sami Frashëri, he played his part in the creation of an Albanian alphabet and in this connection published a 16-page brochure entitled "L'alphabet latin appliqué à la langue albanaise", Constantinople 1878 (The Latin alphabet applied to the Albanian language), in support of an alphabet of purely Latin characters. He was also a member of the Society for the Publication of Albanian Writings, founded in Constantinople on October 12 1879 to promote the printing and distribution of the Albanian-language books.

In 1879, Pashko Vasa worked in Varna on the Black Sea coast in the administration of the vilayet of Edirne with Ismail Qemal bey Vlora. He also acquired the title of Pasha and on July 18 1883 became Governor General of the Lebanon, a post reserved by international treaty for a Catholic of Ottoman nationality, and a position he apparently held, true to the traditions of the Lebanon then and now, in an atmosphere of Levantine corruption and family intrigue. There he spent the last years of his life and died in Beirut after a long illness on June 29 1892.

In 1978, the centenary of the League of Prizren, his remains were transferred from the Lebanon back to a modest grave in Shkodra.

To make the Albanian language better known and to give other Europeans an opportunity to learn it, he published a "Grammaire albanaise à l'usage de ceux qui désirent apprendre cette langue sans l'aide d'un maître", Ludgate Hill 1887 (Albanian grammar for those wishing to learn this language without the aid of a teacher), one of the rare grammars of the period. Pashko Vasa was also the author of a number of literary works of note. The first of these is a volume of Italian verse entitled "Rose e spine", Constantinople 1873 (Roses and thorns), forty-one emotionally-charged poems (a total of ca. 1,600 lines) devoted to themes of love, suffering, solitude and death in the traditions of the romantic verse of his European predecessors Giacomo Leopardi, Alphonse de Lamartine and Alfred de Musset. Among the subjects treated in these meditative Italian poems, two of which are dedicated to the Italian poets Francesco Petrarch and Torquato Tasso, are life in exile and family tragedy, a reflection of Pashko Vasa's own personal life. His first wife, Drande, whom he had married in 1855, and four of their five children died before him, and in later years too, personal misfortune continued to haunt him.

In 1884, shortly after his appointment as Governor General of the Lebanon, his second wife Catherine Bonatti died of tuberculosis, as did his surviving daughter Roza in 1887. "Bardha de Témal, scènes de la vie albanaise", Paris 1890 (Bardha of Temal, scenes from Albanian life), is a French-language novel which Pashko Vasa published in Paris under the pseudonym of Albanus Albano the same year as Naim Frashëri's noted verse collection "Lulet e verës" (The Flowers of Spring) appeared in Bucharest. 'Bardha of Temal,' though not written in Albanian, is, after Sami Frashëri's much shorter prose work 'Love of Tal'at and Fitnat,' the oldest novel written and published by an Albanian and is certainly the oldest such novel with an Albanian theme. Set in Shkodra in 1842, this classically-structured roman-feuilleton, rather excessively sentimental for modern tastes, follows the tribulations of the fair but married Bardha and her lover, the young Aradi. It was written not only as an entertaining love story but also with a view to informing the western reader of the customs and habits of the northern Albanians. Bardha is no doubt the personification of Albania itself, married off against her will to the powers that be. Above and beyond its didactic character and any possible literary pretensions the author might have had, 'Bardha of Temal' also has a more specific political background. It was interpreted by some Albanian intellectuals at the time as a vehicle for discrediting the Gjonmarkaj clan who, in cahoots with the powerful abbots of Mirdita, held sway in the Shkodra region. It is for this reason perhaps that Pashko Vasa published the novel under the pseudonym Albanus Albano. The work is not known to have had any particular echo in the French press of the period.

Though most of Pashko Vasa's publications were in French and Italian, there is one poem, the most influential and perhaps the most popular ever written in Albanian, which has ensured him his deserved place in Albanian literary history, the famous "O moj Shqypni e mjera Shqypni" (Oh Albania, Poor Albania). This stirring appeal for a national awakening is thought to have been written in the period between 1878, the dramatic year of the League of Prizren, and 1880.

Published works

*"Barda de Témal", (Paris, 1890)
*"O moj Shqypni" (1880)
*"Esquisse historique sur le Monténégro d'après les traditions de l'Albanie", (Constantinopol, 1872)
*"La vérité sur l'Albanie et les Albanais", (Paris, 1879)
*"Bosnie et Hercegovine pendant la mission de Djevdet Effendi", (Constantinopol, 1865)
*"L'alphabet latin appliqué à la langue albanaise", (Constantinopol, 1878)
*"Grammaire albanaise à l'usage de ceux qui désirent apprendre cette langue sans l'aide d'un maître", London, 1887)
*"Rose e spine" (1873)

ee also

*Rilindja Kombëtare
*Albanian literature

External links

* [http://www.albanianliterature.com/html/authors/vasa.html Robert Elsie, Pashko Vasa]
* [http://www.intratext.com/Catalogo/Autori/Aut1154.htm Pashko Vasa's works] : text, concordances and frequency list (Albanian and English)