Zef
Serembe
(1844-1901)
Italo-Albanian lyric
poet Giuseppe Serembe, known in Albanian as Zef Serembe, was a
restless soul destined to bear the heavy burden of human suffering.
The atmosphere of despair and tragedy that haunted him throughout
his life surfaces time and time again in his verse.
Serembe was born
on 6 March 1844 in San Cosmo Albanese (Alb. Strigari) in the Calabrian
province of Cosenza and studied at the college of Saint Adrian.
At an early age, he fell in love with a girl from his native village
who emigrated to Brazil with her family and subsequently died.
Obsessed by this loss and by the thought of finding at least her
grave, Serembe set sail for Brazil in 1874 in search of a new
life. With the help of a letter of recommendation from Dora d'Istria
, he was received at the court of Emperor Dom Pedro II . After
a brief love affair there, he returned to Europe, disappointed
and dejected. On his arrival in the Old World in September 1875
his fortunes took yet another turn for the worse. Robbed of all
his money, apparently in the port of Marseille, he was forced
to return to Italy on foot, and is said to have lost many of his
manuscripts on the way. In Leghorn (Livorno), Demetrio Camarda
provided him with train fare for the rest of his journey back
to Cosenza. Despair, arising no doubt from chronic depression
or some other form of psychic disorder, accompanied him wherever
he went and rendered him solitary and insecure. He took refuge
in the dream of the land of his forefathers, a vision marred by
the reality of Turkish occupation in Albania and by the indifference
of the Western powers to its sufferings. In his emotional isolation,
Italy became more and more the foreign land.
In 1886, Serembe
visited Arbėresh settlements in Sicily and in 1893 travelled to
the United States where he lived for about two years. A volume
of his Italian verse was published in New York in 1895. In 1897,
he emigrated from his native Calabria to South America a second
time and tried to start a new life in Buenos Aires. The following
year he fell ill and died in 1901 in Sao Paolo.
Many of Serembe's
works (poetry, drama and a translation of the (Psalms of David),
which he constantly altered and revised, were lost in the course
of his unsettled existence. During his lifetime he published only:
Poesie italiane e canti originali tradotti dall'albanese,
Cosenza 1883 (Italian poetry and original songs translated
from the Albanian) in Italian and Albanian, Il reduce soldato,
ballata lirica, New York 1895 (The returning soldier, lyric
ballad), verse in Italian only, and Sonetti vari, (Naples
189?), an extremely rare collection of forty-two Italian sonnets
with an introduction, all crammed onto four pages of tiny print.
One poem also appeared in Giuseppe Schirņ's journal Arbri i
ri (Young Albania) on 31 March 1887. Thirty-nine of his Albanian
poems were published posthumously in Vjersha, Milan 1926
(Verse), by his nephew Cosmo Serembe. Other works have
been found in various archives and manuscripts in recent years
and some of his poems indeed survived in oral transmission among
the villagers of San Cosmo Albanese. This sign of his popularity
at home is rather surprising in view of the fact that he spent
much of his life away from his native village.
Serembe's verse,
despondent and melancholic in character, and yet often patriotic
and idealistic in inspiration, is considered by many to rank among
the best lyric poetry ever produced in Albanian, at least before
modern times. His themes range from melodious lyrics on love to
eulogies on his native land (be it Italy, land of his birth, or
Albania, land of his dreams), elegant poems on friendship and
the beauties of nature, and verse of religious inspiration. Among
his romantic poems of nostalgic nationalism, which cement the
literary link with the rising generation of Rilindja poets in
nineteenth-century Albania, are lyrics dedicated to his lost homeland,
to Ali Pasha Tepelena, Dora d'Istria and Domenico Mauro. Patriot
though he may have been, Serembe was not an intellectual poet
who could provide us with a poetic chronicle of Albania's past.
He was a poet of sentiment, primarily of solitude and disillusionment.
Vrull
Zogj tė bukur
kėndojnė me hare,
po zemra do t'mė plase mua nė gji.
I helmuar e shkoj jetėn te ky dhe,
mėrzitem nė katund, nė vetmi.
Hapet pėrpara
meje deti i shkėlqyer,
qė zgjon nė trutė e mi mendime shumė,
e shqetėsimi zemrėn time ējerr,
aq sa vetėm pushoj kur bie nė gjumė.
Arbėri matanė detit
na kujton,
se ne tė huaj jemi te ky dhe.
Sa motė shkuan! E zemra nuk harron,
qė nga turku mbetem pa mėmėdhe...