Spaho: Llazar Fundo's satirical sketches convey a message for the society of the time

2025-05-16 13:10:00, Aktualitet CNA

Spaho: Llazar Fundo's satirical sketches convey a message for the society

Dean Jonela Spaho

The Dean of the Faculty of Education and Philology, Prof.As.Dr. Jonela Spaho, has stated that Llazar Fundo is a prominent figure of Albanian intellectual thought.

Spaho stated in a statement to CNA that powerful personalities of Albanian thought should come to light and their figure should be reevaluated in today's context but also in other horizons of expectation.

Spaho said he focused on Llazar Fundo's satirical sketches, which touch on acute problems of Albanian current affairs.

With his pen, with the analysis he makes of the elements of this reality, such as the educational system, the army, the Albanian mentality, the way of life, wounds such as blood feud, poverty, marriages between two religions that were still taboo at the time, took their place in his satirical sketches and conveyed a message for the society of the time which had just begun to emancipate itself and look at its wounds even in a satirical, ironic way, just as Zai Fundo used the experience and reflected them in his writings.

"Llazar Fundo is a prominent figure of Albanian intellectual thought. For a long time this figure has remained silent, unrevealed in its dimensions for subjective or objective reasons, but I think the time has come for these powerful personalities of Albanian thought to come to light and for their figure to be reevaluated in today's context but also in other horizons of expectation.

In general, I have focused on Llazar Fundo's connections with literary writing, let's say, his satirical sketches published in the Korça Newspaper in 1923 when he had just returned from graduating from the Sorbonne, with an admirable intellectual background, with the ideas of the French Revolution, with the experience of great world and French writers, many of whom he had been friends with, and it is precisely with this background that he comes and contributes to the press of the time, especially in the Korça newspaper, with his satirical sketches that touch on acute problems of Albanian current affairs.

With his pen, with the analysis he makes of the elements of this reality, such as the education system, the army, the Albanian mentality, the way of life, wounds such as blood feud, poverty, marriages between two religions that were still taboo at the time, take their place in his satirical sketches and convey a message for the society of the time which had just begun to emancipate itself and to look at its wounds even in a satirical, ironic way, as Zai Fundo used the experience and reflected them in his writings. This tradition that he opened, would be followed by the constellation of writers of the 1930s, Nonda Bulka, Qemal Stafa, etc., in the sense of building such a type of satirical writing where they could hit the sharpest problems of the reality of that time. Zai Fundo has the merit of being among the first to open this path in the Albanian press", said Spaho./ CNA