40 years ago, Eqrem Çabej (1908-1980), one of the most prominent Albanian researchers of all time, passed away.
He has laid foundation stones with his great contributions in the field of linguistics and beyond. Such monumental works as: "Etymological studies in the field of Albanian" with 7 volumes, the transcribed and transliterated critical edition with 2 volumes "Meshari" by Gjon Buzuku, "Introduction to the history of the Albanian language", "Historical phonetics of Albanian" etc.
These and a number of other linguistic studies have opened the horizon to determine the antiquity of the Albanian language and its connections and contacts, in the context of Indo-European languages. In addition to them, he has also published several literary studies such as: "On the genesis of Albanian literature", "Albanians between East and West", etc.
Inseparable from his interest in Albanian literature, there has also been Arbëresh literature, which he has researched and interpreted/classified as a natural and simultaneously enriching part of the Albanian literary system.
Eqrem Çabej's interest in Albanian literature has been one of the manifestations of his great philological and scientific obsession in general, to go down and research the roots of the Albanian cultural ethnos.
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In these historical imprints, he saw the opportunity to investigate and penetrate through phenomena, to some extent solidified, conserved in the course of centuries, which allow from here to reconstruct the earliest levels of the trunk, ie.. of the native hearth, on the linguistic and historical-cultural level.
Meanwhile, these historical imprints give the opportunity to show a multitude of cultural layers - under the influence of the local reality, namely the Italian one, and Latin culture in general.
Thus, this Arbëresh cultural unit gained the status of an impressive renaissance, within its own grace and within the great Italian culture. As such, she received the authority to, in addition to carrying everything from the origin, take upon herself the giving mission towards her, that is. to appear with the original attributes of influence - for where it was born it was cut off, under known tragic circumstances. Not coincidentally, one of Çabej's rather synthetic and short essays is titled "Vatra d bota na poezine e De Radë" (1964), published on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the poet's birth from Maqi.
It is precisely in this double dimension that Çabej examines the phenomenon of Arbëresh culture, especially its literary flow. This literature proved to convey and circulate towards Albanian literature, models of Western creative practices, in a natural way and with an emancipatory function for it.
So, Arbëresh literature, in many aspects, turned out to be: the daughter of all-Albanian literature, but at the same time, it was also a nourishing and rejuvenating lymph for it.
Çabej's direct contacts with Arbëresh literature began as early as the summer of 1932, when he began to collect material for his doctoral thesis on Hora e Arbëreshë (Sicily), this thesis, which, according to dr. Hermann Őlberg, defends it brilliantly in Vienna in 1933, before the commission composed of prominent albanologists such as: P. Kretschmer, N. Jokl and K. Patsch.
Interesting announcements about his doctoral thesis "Italo-Albanian Studies", the well-known researcher from Arbër, prof. Francesco Altimari, who had the opportunity to consult the Vienna manuscript, consisting of 145 pages, divided into 5 chapters. Although this is a study of the mainly linguistic level, it is important to underline the sensitivity that begins to develop in young Çabej - for Arbëresh literature, initially for the folklore texts of this community, which he included in a separate chapter.
In later years, in the context of the problematic of his literary studies, Arbëresh literature will become an inseparable and important object of study and interpretation.
From a chronological point of view, Çabej's studies of Arbëresh literature would last as long as he devoted himself to literary studies as a whole, that is. from the beginning of the 30s until the end of the Second World War.
In these studies, he not only formulates a multitude of theses, which even to this day, remain not only irreproachable, but also impressive and intriguing enough to be elaborated in the expected extensive studies. This comes because his studies, among others, have an essayistic spirit, that is, they transmit and release as in a chain reaction, quite a synthesis and meaning, which seem to be concentrated almost at the level of postulates and programmatic structures. for further studies.
Çabej has the merit of having investigated Arbëresh literature as a natural structure, within the system of Albanian literature, recognizing its common elements, the giving and receiving position with it, but at the same time also the distinguishing elements, which came as a result of specific historical circumstances -literary, in which that literature was created.
For this researcher, Italo-Albanian (Arbëresh) poetry is a Balkan subject cast in the form of a novel; its authors, in the aesthetic plane, are fundamentally guided by the West. According to this thesis, a difference is made between this literature and the rest of Albanian romantic literature. It is even possible to distinguish it, even against the romantic literature of the Balkan languages, where it agrees with the view of its application in them - of the so-called realistic romanticism.
With this realistic romanticism, he has in mind the fact that, due to specific circumstances, in the romantic literatures of the Balkan peoples (including naturally the Albanian one), a strong national-political tendency developed in them, where the writers often took on the mission of the educator and missionaries of freedom, becoming with their art direct spokespersons of the national and social movements of their time and countries. Whereas in Arbëresh poetry, he specifically mentions: the cult of the individual in contrast with society, the cult of feeling, of distant longing, of life as in a dream, of women, religious feeling and mystical idealism, romantic irony...
According to this thesis, the bold idea that Arbëresh literature had the attribute and privilege to convey, not only in the trunk of Albanian literature, but also in the context of Balkan literature, elements of western puro-romanticism, is revealed implicitly. And this is defined as its distinguishing feature, but also as an added value in the context of Albanian literature.
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So, this essential feature of this (Arbëresh) literature, the researcher appreciates as an important element of enrichment and not isolation or alienation, between it and the entire Albanian literature. The integral character of this literary flow - with the native literary trunk, Çabej has never even put it up for discussion, with all the specifics he knows about it, as a literary reality created in specific circumstances.
In fact, its basic converging and non-divergent position - in relation to Albanian literature, is an important support of his other thesis, precisely that of the periodization of Albanian literature - on the basis of cultural-literary circles, where the Italian-Albanian circle, namely Arbëresh literature is evaluated as a significant converging factor in the arrival of the resultant of the National (National) Literature of the century. XIXth. E. Çabej's thesis on the periodization of Albanian literature on the basis of cultural circles continues even today to remain highly appreciated for its comprehensive, systematic and historical character.
Of course, this periodization remains one of the classification models of Albanian literature, alongside other later models, built according to the criteria of genres, currents, literary schools, etc.
Although in his literary studies Çabej prefers to be a reviewer mainly of the theoretical tendency and integral syntheses, ie. without intending to follow so much textual analysis, in any case, in his critical writings, there are also many attitudes and evaluations on specific authors and works.
So, within the syntheses, the works and concrete literary phenomena that are undertaken to be examined are clearly felt. Thus, e.g. according to him, such well-known works as "Song of Milosau" by De Rada and "Kënga e sprasme e Balë" by Gavril Dara, are among the most beautiful poems of Albanian romanticism, and the poem "Te dheu i huaj" by Zef Skiroi, it is, to some extent, the attempt to create the national epic of the Albanians of Italy. For De Rada's masterpiece, unlike the views of some other researchers, he puts forward the idea that mosaicism (that is, the mosaic structure of the work), synthesis and a certain darkness that is created by them, are connected to the typical romantic character of the work, which, as a work with an innovative conception, it avoids the chronological description of events and where there are no realistic representations of people with flesh and bones..., as the researcher would say.
According to him, here we have romantic heroes, who go through life as dreamers. "They live in contrast with the harsh world and break in this contrast. In this, the poet remained true to himself. Even in the drawing of these, De Rada turns out to be a true offspring of the romantic school. The characters are described as dark and with few lines. The poet is far from presenting heroes with well-defined contours …”
He values Arbëresh poets as typical romantics, where the figures created by them are a reflection of the subjective self. "These figures, themselves generally, cannot fit into the world, but pursued by national destiny, or by some other destiny, or driven by their own demon, they die in life.
Pessimism permeates all these works. Even life itself in these colonies full of boring traditions, founded in a foreign environment far from the land of the ancestors, pushes these poets even more strongly on the path of romantic pessimism. The feelings of the nature of Southern Italy, the description of the life of the Albanian village, which is located in this country, gives these works their special appeal...".
In such definitions, it is difficult to find gaps to fill in, or rather, it is difficult to find general phrases. In a very synthetic way - but clearly, the point of view is laid on the features of a literature, which, so to speak, has two cultural sources as it was created and addressed to two levels of readers. Thus, it seeks to be appreciated as a non-eclectic, but very original creativity, therefore, it articulates and remains a rich artistic creativity: multicultural and multifunctional at the same time.
Here we really see this literary flow as a sui generis phenomenon, which encourages and invites researchers to research aspects that have not been treated as much and as they should. In a broader sense, the evaluation is conveyed that Albanian literature, in addition to its well-known difficulties, had the great chance that in its beginnings, i.e., to be conceived as genuine literature, it also had a natural limb nearby - Arber literature.
That literature, with its specific position, managed to be conveyed to Balkan Albania, occupied by the Ottoman Empire, more than just as literature and more than just as culture.
It is in the formation and work system of this researcher that he takes a comparative look at the phenomena and processes he examines. It is noted that this conception and this comparative methodology are realized internally, within the creativity of an author, within the system of Arbëresh literature and within the entire macrosystem of Albanian literature.
Even, moving on to wider comparisons, with Balkan and European literatures. The external comparison is also quite present, ie. the investigation of the connections of literature with geohistorical and ethnocultural factors in general, showing sympathy for contextual interpretation, which he remained a follower of until the end, even in the field of linguistics, where he realized the highest levels of his scientific activity.
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Principle of comparison, it has the investigation of common and different/distinct elements between them. Here we have in mind, for example, the definition of Serembe as the typical European romantic poet of melancholy and removed from the real world; the assessment of Skiroi as the last romantic and with the outstanding attempt to break the targets of the Arber dialect (trying towards a linguistic koine); or the definitions about other Arbëresh poets, who live in the shadow of folk poetry and convey in poetry the first time of the country - from where their great-grandfathers moved.
And never forgetting the land of their forefathers, with the great and unstoppable dream of returning there one day, even through memories - firmly preserved in rituals and poured into literature/ Ymer Çiraku, The day.
