"With the feathers of the white raven"/Martin Camaj's 100th anniversary commemorated

2025-07-22 14:48:00, Kulturë CNA

"With the feathers of the white raven"/Martin Camaj's 100th

A literary evening entitled "With the feathers of the white raven" was held at the premises of the "Marin Barleti" Public Library, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the most important figures in Albanian literature and Albanology, Martin Camaj.

This event honoring Camaj's life and work brought together scholars, writers, actors, and lovers of the written word, in an atmosphere of poetic reflection and historical memory.

" He is one of the most modern writers of Albanian literature who was anathema for more than 50 years but he continued to write in Albanian even though he was in emigration. His books were in the beautiful Albanian of his birthplace. He reflected all those customs, traditions, virtues of that area with certain problems in his works, from poems to novels, and gave them a modern spirit, preserving them as values and precious stones of his life but also of our Albanian literature. Martin Camaj owes Shkodra and Albania because even today he is a writer who is still unstudied. However, those works that have been published by him thanks to the language chair in Germany in Berlin are at least a reflection of the achievement of this man who remained faithful to Albanian and Albanian inspired him until the last moments. This activity of our "Marin Barleti" library is necessarily a homage and honor to his genius figure. This is an act as "civic as well as cultural ," said writer Xhahid Bushati.

" Camaj is an author who had the unique fate in world and Albanian literature of not meeting his reader and how can a writer exist without a reader and in fact even in the letters that Martin Camaj and Arshi Pipa send and exchange with each other he makes it clear that he is writing a work that is wonderfully competitive in all world poetics and this is Camaj's great strength and it is not by chance that Arshi Pipa, recognizing the values of Camaj's work and art, proposes him for the Nobel Prize. It is a letter written with the title Greetings Martin Camaj, friend of poetry and exile in which in the framework of the magazine Albanika he makes the proposal for the Nobel Prize for Martin Camaj, also stating the reason why Camaj's work is a work that deserves the Nobel Prize. Even in these letters sent by two personalities what is noticeable is the attempt to discuss essential issues of the Albanian life and at the same time the height with which they discuss other things and "the philosophical, European sense, the love for Albania, for Albanian studies, for everything Albanian to transmit it at its best and at the same time Camaj's effort and dedication towards the work that he is always transmitting, pointing out something that Camaj reached his Albanian reader only for one year, only in 1991. In March 1991, something is published in the Albanian press and then the poems come a little later and in 1992 he dies, so the meeting of a writer with his reader is almost non-existent and think about what weight and what work an author has conveyed who has not met the reader," said researcher Brikena Smajli.

Some of the actors from the "Migjeni" Theater sensitively performed excerpts from the works of the distinguished writer.

Martin Camaj, born on July 21, 1925 in Temal, Dukagjini, is considered the most important representative of Albanian postmodernism in literature, while he has headed the chair of Albanology at the University of Munich for decades. Although he lived far from his homeland, Camaj always remained connected to the linguistic, cultural and spiritual roots of Albania./ CNA