Everything about Faik Konica totally explained
Faik Konitza (
March 15 1875 –
December 15 1942), was one of the greatest figures of
Albanian culture in the early decades of the
twentieth century. Prewar Albanian minister to
Washington, his literary review, "Albania", became the focal publication of Albanian writers living abroad. Faik Konitza wrote little in the way of literature, but as a
stylist,
critic,
publicist and
political figure he'd a tremendous impact on Albanian writing and on
Albanian culture at the time.
Konitza was born on 15 March 1875 in the now village of Konitsa in the
Pindus mountains in northern
Greece, not far from the present Albanian border. After elementary schooling in
Turkish in his native village, he studied at the Jesuit Saverian College in
Shkodra which offered him not only some instruction in Albanian but also an initial contact with central
European culture and
Western ideas. From there, he continued his schooling at the eminent French-language Imperial Galata secondary school (
Galatasaray Lisesi) in
Constantinople.
In 1890, at the age of fifteen, he was sent to study in
France where he spent the next seven years. After initial education at secondary schools in
Lisieux (1890) and
Carcassonne (1892), he registered at the University of
Dijon, from which he graduated in 1895 in
Romance languages and
philology. After graduation, he moved to
Paris for two years where he studied
Medieval French literature,
Latin and
Greek at the famous
Collège de France. He finished his studies at prestigious
Harvard University in the
United States, although little is known of this period of his life. As a result of his highly varied educational background, he was able to speak and write
Albanian,
Greek,
Italian,
French,
German,
English and
Turkish fluently.
Konitza strove for a more refined
Western culture in
Albania, but he also valued his country's
traditions. He was, for instance, one of the first to
propagate the idea of editing the texts of older
Albanian literature. In an article entitled "
Për themelimin e një gjuhës letrarishte shqip", (On the foundation of an Albanian literary language), published in the first issue of "Albania", Konitza also pointed to the necessity of creating a unified
literary language. He suggested the most obvious solution, that the two main
dialects,
Tosk and
Gheg, should be
fused and
blended gradually. His own
fluid style was highly influential in the
refinement of southern Albanian Tosk
prose writing, which decades later was to form the basis of the modern Albanian literary language (
standard language).
In 1903-1904, Faik Konitza was resident at Oakley Crescent in
Islington,
London. There he continued to edit and publish, under the pseudonym
Thrank Spirobeg, the dual language (French/Albanian) periodical "
Albania" that he'd founded in
Brussels in 1897. He contributed bitingly sarcastic articles on what he saw as the cultural backwardness and naivety of his compatriots.
"
Albania" helped to spread
awareness of Albanian culture and the Albanian
cause across
Europe, and was highly influential in the development and refinement of Southern Albanian prose writing. In the words of the famous French poet
Guillaume Apollinaire,
"Konitza turned a rough idiom of sailors inns into a beautiful, rich and supple language".
Whilst in Brussels, Konitza had a
correspondence with Apollinaire regarding an article published by the poet in L'Europen. When Apollinaire came to London seeking to regain the affections of Annie Pleyden, an English
governess he'd met and fallen in love with in
Germany, he stayed with Konitza at Oakley Crescent.
Apollinaire published a
memoir of Konitza in the Mercure de France on 1 May 1912, which begins: "
Of the people I've met and whom I remember with the greatest pleasure, Faik Bey Konitza is one of the most unusual". He recalls: "
We would have lunch the Albanian way, which is to say, endlessly. The lunches were so long that I couldn't visit a single museum in London, as we'd always arrive when the doors closed, and the attention and care with which Konitza edited his articles meant that the journal always came out very late. In 1904, only the issues for 1902 appeared; in 1907, the issues for 1904 came out at regular intervals. The French journal L'Occident is the only one that could compete with 'Albania' in that respect".
He died in
Washington on 15 December 1942 and was buried in
Forest Hills Cemetery in
Boston. After the fall of the
Communist regime dictatorship in
Albania, his remains were transferred to
Tirana and interred in a park at the edge of the city.
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