Guillaume Apollinaire, Faik bey Konica and Annie Playden

The most important Albanian who lived in London is, without a doubt, Faik bey Konica. He lived in this house, which I photographed a few years ago, in Islington. The other house is in Chingford. The two houses have entered history also because Konica's friend, the famous French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, used to visit there, where he wrote the two poems ("La Chanson du Mal-Aime" and "L'Emigrant de Landor Road") that are considered among the best ever written.

Albanians, every time they hear the name London, they probably immediately think of Faik bey Konica and Isa bey Boletini. Konica can be presented to us as an arrogant but elegant intellectual, with a book or newspaper in his hand. Isa Bey can be remembered for his famous entrance with a cobra to the Parliament, although there is no evidence that such an event took place. However, Konica remains not only the first Albanian in London, but also the last in terms of greatness.

Not much is known about Konica's life in London since he did not write much about his events in this important metropolis of the world. The most interesting stories about Faik bey Konica have remained from the writings of Apollinairet, the French genius of this world's letters. The popular French poet has written about Konica on several occasions since their first meeting in London.

Konica, with his general knowledge and manners, no doubt fascinated Apollinaire, who in his day was the biggest star of poetry not only in Paris, but wherever it was read. Apollinaire, such remained until today. Konica and Apollinaire seem to have had some characteristics in common and that is why the two had become friends. The most powerful reason that united them was their love and knowledge of literature, culture and languages. Apollinaire had visited Konica twice (1903 and 1904) when the latter had moved from Brussels to London.

In the French poet's writings about London and Konica, an Englishwoman named Annie Playden, who was also the poet's muse, has entered, surprisingly. It seems that Apollinaire was madly in love with this young girl, as poets are. Annie was an ordinary English girl with an ordinary (average) education. The poor thing had never known that she had been in love with a genius. Even Apollinaire, the man who spurred the development of cubism that supported Picasso and new European ideas, often seemed crazy to her.

So Apollinaire had two reasons for visiting London. It is not easy to distinguish which of the reasons was more powerful. There is evidence to believe that the first reason was his friend Konica, and the second, the love he had in his heart for Annie Playden. (Or vice versa). From Apollinaire's published and unpublished notes, one learns the power that a man (man or male) can have for society and for the love of women. Every evening Annie Playden came to meet her French 'boyfriend' at the house of an Albanian in Islington, London. Late in the evening, Apollinaire drove his girlfriend to her home on Landor Road in Clapham. He accompanied him, often walking, and talking (philosophizing, of course) all the way.

Actually it seems that she didn't like Apollinaire that much. She refused to sleep with him before they were married. Nowadays this is extreme nonsense, but English and European society lived within these rules at the beginning of the last century. Thus, Apollinaire went back to sleep late. And he woke up late, like his friend Faik did. Apollinaire and Konica spent the rest of the night discussing their endless topics. When they woke up, they ate something (anything) they called breakfast. Then, Konica would take a chair, sit in front of his friend to chat with him in Albanian.

Konica would bring out the wind instruments (oboe, clarinet, English horn and maybe even the harp or fiddle) and start performing for the guest. When he performed the executions with wind instruments, he brought out a bowed or multi-stringed instrument, the name of which Apollinaire did not know. Play the song in a "concert" that the host himself organized and performed every day just for one viewer. When the "concert" was over, the host would start preparing lunch. Even the lunch was "all Albanian". By the time lunch was cooked and ready, dusk was falling. There was no time left to visit any museums. Then the routine began. Annie would come, the conversation would begin, and again Apollinaire would accompany the muse lecturing them, as usual.

Sometimes they had time to go out to the "pub". They often met people of their rank there. At one point, in front of a group of English intellectuals, Apollinaire had introduced Konica as an editor-in-chief of a very powerful newspaper that the sultan also read. "The Sultan does not fall asleep without reading Albania" Apollinaire told the English in this case. Such anecdotes are numerous. Obviously, Apollinaire took these 'stories - anecdotes' from his host and treated them as truth.

In another visit that Apollinaire made to Konica, he learns about an interesting detail. This time Konica lived in Chingford, a neighborhood in north-east London. Here he had a garden and tended several chickens that he kept for fresh eggs. "All the chickens were left without feathers and looked terribly like they had been slaughtered," writes Apollinaire. But, here Konica is described as a married man, or at least as a man who lived with an English woman.

Even Annie Palyden used to come to Chingford when Apollinaire was there. The first night he had arrived, Konica's wife had prepared his bed for him to sleep with the poet. "No, no way he does that. I have to return home before 9 o'clock because my mother is waiting for me," said the Englishwoman. And, for Annie Playden, Apollinaire wrote "La Chanson du Mal-Aime" (Song for poor lovers). This work gained such popularity that it became the love poem of the century. The road where Annie Playden lived was also popularized by entering history because of the poem that Apollinaire wrote entitled "L'Emigrant de Landor Road" (The Emigrant of Landor Road). In fact, both poems are considered among the best that exist and both were written in Konica's house.

But all this is described with incredible surprise. Annie, whom Apollinaire had described on one occasion as "a woman with a beautiful ass and breasts", very late understood the importance of Apollinaire's personality. She knew Apollinaire by his real name which was Wilhelm de Kostrowitzky or Kostro. Annie remembered Kostro as an educated man who had stuck by her side and never let her down since they had met somewhere in Germany in an aristocratic house where she worked as a children's educator and Apollinaire as a teacher. He had followed him all the time until he was "liberated" only after he had emigrated to the USA. Because of the high ideals of a superior intellectual, Apollinaire volunteered for World War I and left the war to die on the day peace was signed in 1918.

Annie Playden, due to severed connections, learned this fact late. In 1951, journalists and literary academics tracked down Annie Playden, and interviews followed. By then she was well into old age and living alone in a house on Long Island. There, she spoke about the memories she had of Apollinaire and Konica, two people who still seemed strange to her. When reporters asked her if she understood the extent of these two people's fame, she shrugged. The poor thing didn't know anything because he knew Apollinaire by another name.

Annie, however, clarified a dilemma that researchers had had about Konica, who was unknown in the world of Anglo-Saxon literature until that time, as it continues to be in part even today. In Apollinaire's notes, Konica's personality is grandiose and equally opportunistic, who had many nicknames and used them according to the situation. He boasted that he had an aristocratic background and shared it with Ali Pasha Tepelena, the Lion of Ioannina. He mostly used the title bey, which in fact it was. But it also presented itself as members of an old Catholic family, which in fact was not. Readers have often mistakenly thought that such a man must have been a fictional character of Apollinaire. Annie Playden proved a fact to these researchers and removed their dilemma: that man existed and was Faik bey Konica. /Telegraph/