Freed Verses by Migjeni
Vargjet e Lira Migjeni
Migjen’s poetry, an innovative poem, became a powerful expression of dissatisfaction with reality, hatred of violence and exploitation, of political and social deception and hypocrisy. Bursting directly from living life, she reflected on the Albanian world in the 1930s with protests, pain, dreams and hopes for the future. Migjen opened his volume “Free Verses” with the poem “Preface of Prefaces”, where his joy erupts that the century has begun to be liberated from spiritual slavery. After that, Migjeni divided his poems into six cycles: “Songs of Resurrection”, “Songs of Misery”, “Songs of the West”, “Songs on their own”, “Songs of Youth” and “Last Songs”. The first cycle includes five of Migjen’s best poems. The thread that unites these works is the joy of the birth of the “new man.”
Milosh Gjergj Nikolla known as Migjeni was born on October 13, 1911 in Shkodra in a poor civic family; died August 26, 1938 at the age of 27 in a sanatorium near Turin in Torre Peliche. He was a poet and prose writer. He completed primary school in his hometown, in 1928 – 1932 he attended theological high school in Bitola.
In the years 1933 – 1937 he worked as a primary school teacher in Vraka, Shkodra and Puka. This is also the time when he developed his literary activity. He published his first articles in 1934, collaborated in the magazines “Illyria”, “Bota e re” etc. In 1936 he summarized his poetic creations in the book “Free Verses”, which censorship did not allow to circulate. At the end of 1937 he went to Italy to be cured of lung disease. He left an important part of his prose in the manuscript.
