From: Ndue Dedaj

The language of relics must be deciphered to "say" what words cannot fully express. If you see them as dead, mere museum objects, then you have not captured their essence.

Migjen's manuscripts of poems and prose, notes related to his service as head teacher in Puka, letters to friends and family, photographs, etc. are drawn to Migjen. In one of the publications of his work, in a photo are the fountain pen and the watch used by the poet. Each has its own meaning, but placed so close together, as if to say that where his fountain pen stopped on the paper, the hour of the poet's immortality began. A watch that would never stop. This is the symbolism that we want to see in this very ordinary object. There are many watches that have stopped with the death of the person who wore it, statesmen, scholars of science, orators, writers, but not Migjen's, who, although he was born at an hour that was not at all favorable in terms of longevity, had already been born as a creator of the art of words. His hour would not be mythological, superstitious, but an aesthetic-historical hour. He would always be there, in his writing temple, in the literary academies and literature classes of his century and the next.

In the anthology of Albanian poetry, along with Budi, Bogdani, De Radë, Serembe, Naimi, Mjeda, Asdren, Fishta, Noli, Mekul, Poradeci, etc. his name could not even be discussed by editorial boards, juries, literary commissions, etc. It has been rightly said that Migjeni is incomparable and inimitable as a writer, an inexplicable literary phenomenon, while he would say of himself “I am the volcano that sleeps in the fascists”. There may have been poets who wished to be “Migjeni”, but this would not happen, since the verses with their social pathos were not enough to “clone” among them a poet like him, who had rebellion poetic and not pathetic. All poets have asked for the night to become d(r)ight, but perhaps none like Migjeni with the proverbial cry: “A little light! A little light! A little light, o friend, o brother”.

Migjeni was that kind of writer who wrote with the same quality in both poetry and prose, which is rare. He created his own figurative discourse system, unaffected by previous, contemporary or popular poetry. Arshi Pipa wrote that for him "metaphor is the natural form of expression", which is also seen in such figurative constructs as "the mountain that does not turn", "the allegorical sun", "the proud pain of the kanga", "the bitter limbs of the land called a state", etc. It is surprising how all of his creativity is "orchestrated" with the same rhythm, nerve and creative background: urban, mountainous, gloomy, melancholic, without the apotheosis of gods, as if it had all been written in twenty-four hours. The titles of his poems and short prose are enough to create a unique literary mosaic. As an author, he had the ability to say a lot in a few lines.

His writing was “programmed” and just waiting for hours and days to be put on paper. It was both a sculpture, a black and white canvas, and a pentagram of human pain - an “ideal painting.” “The human race is a living guitar,” the poet writes.

His literary-linguistic style is a separate optic, where the most distinctive feature is the prose woven with the filigree of poetry, the abundance of tropes, stylistics and the deeply original narration. In Migjeni we have the beauty that “kills”, the “fatal” beauty, but also the hope that one day songs woven “in a thousand beautiful colors that do not die” will be born. “Unsung songs” is the authentic Migjeni anthem synthesized in the verse “I - your cradle, maybe your grave”, where the cradle yes, but not the grave. Even though he wrote “My Unlucky Inspiration”, he remains one of the luckiest poets.

Albanian literature has never had a more sensitive writer than him. “Every day I see more clearly and more clearly and I suffer more deeply”. “Migjeni writes and feels, feels and writes”, Lazër Radi would say in 1938. A free poet, without traditional clichés, as if he did not listen to the old Homeric muses, who himself created a new muse. Migjeni was not a provincial poet, but sang “the songs of the world”, even though he writes: “But I do not believe in the words of this world tonight”. “The Poem of Misery” is not simply the Albanian mountainous landscape of the early 20th century, but one of the poems of humanity, even today, so it has no time, only context. Much has been written about Migjen, surpassing the volume of works with writings, monographs and studies dedicated to him, by Skënder Luarasi, Arshi Pipa, Rinush Idrizi, Alfred Uçi, Jup Kastrati, Xhevat Lloshi, Moikom Zeqo, Albana Ndoja, etc.

Ismail Kadare's well-known essay "The Arrival of the Migrant in Albanian Literature", which he calls "an interrupted hurricane", is a seminal work. And yet every writer wants to have their say about this writer, who did not have the fate of Fishta, Koliqi, Konica, Haxhiademi, to be once knocked down and then to rise again, nor the exclusion for life of Poradeci, Kutel, Asllani, etc. No, he has always had the status of an authentic, undisclosed writer, except once in his lifetime, when his "Free Verses" were banned in 1936. His literary formation is surprising, where he excelled in literature when he was only 20-27 years old and no matter how much biographers have sought to approach him, they have not found his "companion" anywhere in Balkan literature or beyond. Writers are aware that they will not always be understood, misunderstood, prejudiced, censored, or banned, and will still take their rightful place in the literary pantheon. This is the "rule," no matter how few prominent writers have been applauded while alive.

Migjeni punches the state to make it more humane, he ironizes the clergy to make it more active, all in the name of resurrection, which is the greatest event in the world. It is not for nothing that his first poetic cycle is “Songs of the Resurrection”. The resurrection is the Bible itself. So, everything is nothing more than the expression of his own literary church, which is literature. Migjeni had left the Orthodox seminary and had surrendered to another “religion”, writing. If he were to compromise with any institution, he would not be Migjeni. He is a poet of freedom and his verses are free not only as prosody, but also as philosophy. He is for a free conscience, a new idea, a new century, a new world, a new man, according to his formation and not any political affiliation. He does not mention the word socialist anywhere (we say this because socialist ideas were boiling at that time), but he does mention the word national.

Migjeni is earthly in terms of describing and describing poverty, want, suffering, greed, drinking, prostitution, but he is above reality in terms of ideas. He wants to go back and forth to hell, not to be interesting, but because he cannot accept a world that he cannot change. Time matures people and docks, replacing them with new ones, even scientific discoveries are often surpassed, but it seems that religion, philosophy and literature are not subject to this law. Prominent literary names who have excelled in their youth, such as Migjeni, are becoming more and more masters of the literary environment and beyond. This is noticeable in his verses that turn into postulates, like no other poet, where among the most important would be: "Laugh, youth, laugh, the world is yours", "Oh, how I don't have a strong fist to hit the heart of the mountain that didn't make it", "Wickedness does not want mercy, but only justice" and other ethical and philosophical sentences.

Migjeni is the writer who understood the beginning of Albanian existence in the depths of the abyss and his poetic calls aim to elevate man, to make him aware of going beyond the existential limit of survival. An elite writer who comes and returns to the consciousness of his nation. Personally, I would call him a poet of the sublime, of victory, of hope, of light and scandal. In the emblematic poem “We the children of the new century”, he writes: “We do not want to lose / in the bloody game of human history, / No! no! we do not want our own losses - / we want to win! / win, conscience and free thought”!

Migjeni loved Shkodra, but this did not prevent him from fearlessly revealing his city in its entirety, and that "naked". He brought to Albanian literature the highlander of his time beyond any exoticism and glorification, "only with a legendary shirt and panties on his body", which has a recital, which is nothing other than a Migjenian testament to the change that the 20th century itself carried. "Under the flags of melancholy", he contemplated an unidealized Albania: "In our country .../ no one can say/ that here lives / a people who build / something new..."! The ideological canonization of his social message would be untrue on the aesthetic level. As much as he has his time, he is also timeless.

Migjeni had no literary ancestors, so he is not like any other writer. He was a critic, just like his contemporaries, but with a different style of discourse. Fishta, in addition to epic and lyric, proceeds with irony and satire, in parodying parliamentarism, etc., Noli mainly through the flogging of the figure of "Barabai", Konica through comic life descriptions and stigmatization of the vices of the civil service, Migjeni through the flogging of the oppressive reality, daring like no one else to point the finger at the institutions responsible for the poverty, the stagnant situation and the lack of perspective of the Albanians. He is a dramatic writer, even though he did not write plays, where many of his prose are vivid theater or film scenes, such as “The Little Flower”, “City Ballad”, “Forbidden Apple”, “Do You Want Coal, Lord?”, “The Story of One of Them”, etc., just as his short life itself was a drama with a tragic ending. He wrote prose woven with the fabric of biting sarcasm, such as “The Beauty That Kills” and “The Legend of the Corn”, or irony, such as “Socrates Suffering or Happy Pig?”, “Congratulations on 1937”, etc. When you have a life with writers / their work, even if it is voluminous, there comes a moment when you believe that you have nothing new to say about them, while Migjeni has a hidden energy, which makes him always unfinished, which surely has to do with his creative genius.

Albanian poets have their own hour, different from each other, they have their own “sibyls” of 4-5 centuries, while Migjen’s is the hour of immortality. Even though the world of letters today faces the loss of the reader, who has diminished or alienated himself to online readers, Migjen will continue to be a widely read poet. It is difficult to say what will happen exactly in this approach, but Bogdani had very few readers in his lifetime, just like all old literature, which gained a reader in the 20th century, with the new cultural dimension created by the Albanian school. This is of course related to reading in the 21st century, where it is certain that it will no longer be the classic one ... /Gazeta “Panorama”/

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