Lasgush Poradeci
Memories that unravel the poet
In these memories, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth, many stories and events from the poet’s life are being revealed for the first time—those things that Lasgushi would tell only to a friend. What was his childhood like, the years in Athens, his studies, how he experienced the war, his secret cooperation with the partisans and the confrontation at the end of the war with Mehmet Shehu, the accounts of family life, his two daughters and his wife Nafije, how he пережived her death and what the poet’s final days were like...
In these memories, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth, many stories and events from the poet’s life are being revealed for the first time—those things that Lasgushi would tell only to a friend. What was his childhood like, the years in Athens, his studies, how he experienced the war, his secret cooperation with the partisans and the confrontation at the end of the war with Mehmet Shehu, the accounts of family life, his two daughters and his wife Nafije, how he experienced her death and what the poet’s final days were like...
BY NASHO JORGAQI
I first encountered Lasgush in one of the cafés of Tirana, when I was a student. I do not know who pointed him out to me from afar, but I remember that I stood for a moment facing him. I could not believe my eyes! This was Lasgushi, the poet so delicate and refined, the “bird of the skies,” the myth of Albanian lyric poetry. He sat slouched in a chair, legs stretched out in front of him and a cane between his knees, with an old hat pulled down over his head, beneath which only half of a wrinkled, pale face could be seen. He kept company with himself, if one did not count the dog, a puppy that stayed by his feet. Later, I would see the poet again only alone and, once in a while, in the company of others, always withdrawn into himself, his gaze cast forward, a gaze almost absent and completely indifferent. Two details from that first encounter have stayed in my mind: the striking brilliance of his eyes and the three straps tightened around his waist. It is little to say that I was shaken, and although this further stirred my youthful curiosity, I still never managed to see him while I was a student. But fate or chance brings what it will into a person’s life, especially when he is at the beginning of his path. And what had never crossed my mind happened: after completing my studies, I was appointed editor at ...
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