Faik Konica

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Faik Konitza

Born	March 15, 1875(1875-03-15)
Died	December 15, 1942 (aged 67)

Faik Konitza (Albanian: Faik Konica, March 15, 1875 – December 15, 1942), was one of the greatest figures of Albanian culture in the early decades of the twentieth century. Prewar Albanian minister to Washington, his literary review, "Albania", became the focal publication of Albanian writers living abroad. Faik Konitza wrote little in the way of literature, but as a stylist, critic, publicist and political figure he had a tremendous impact on Albanian writing and on Albanian culture at the time.

Konitza was born on 15 March 1875 in the now village of Konitsa in the Pindus mountains in northern Greece, not far from the present Albanian border. After elementary schooling in Turkish in his native village, he studied at the Jesuit Saverian College in Shkodra which offered him not only some instruction in Albanian but also an initial contact with central European culture and Western ideas. From there, he continued his schooling at the eminent French-language Imperial Galata secondary school (Galatasaray Lisesi) in Constantinople.

In 1890, at the age of fifteen, he was sent to study in France where he spent the next seven years. After initial education at secondary schools in Lisieux (1890) and Carcassonne (1892), he registered at the University of Dijon, from which he graduated in 1895 in Romance languages and philology. After graduation, he moved to Paris for two years where he studied Medieval French literature, Latin and Greek at the famous Collège de France. He finished his studies at prestigious Harvard University in the United States, although little is known of this period of his life. As a result of his highly varied educational background, he was able to speak and write Albanian,Greek, Italian, French, German, English and Turkish fluently.

Konitza strove for a more refined Western culture in Albania, but he also valued his country's traditions. He was, for instance, one of the first to propagate the idea of editing the texts of older Albanian literature. In an article entitled "Për themelimin e një gjuhës letrarishte shqip", (On the foundation of an Albanian literary language), published in the first issue of "Albania", Konitza also pointed to the necessity of creating a unified literary language. He suggested the most obvious solution, that the two main dialects, Tosk and Gheg, should be fused and blended gradually. His own fluid style was highly influential in the refinement of southern Albanian Tosk prose writing, which decades later was to form the basis of the modern Albanian literary language (standard language).

In 1903-1904, Faik Konitza was resident at Oakley Crescent in Islington, London. There he continued to edit and publish, under the pseudonym Thrank Spirobeg, the dual language (French/Albanian) periodical "Albania" that he had founded in Brussels in 1897. He contributed bitingly sarcastic articles on what he saw as the cultural backwardness and naivety of his compatriots.

"Albania" helped to spread awareness of Albanian culture and the Albanian cause across Europe, and was highly influential in the development and refinement of Southern Albanian prose writing. In the words of the famous French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, "Konitza turned a rough idiom of sailors inns into a beautiful, rich and supple language".
Whilst in Brussels, Konitza had a correspondence with Apollinaire regarding an article published by the poet in L'Europen. When Apollinaire came to London seeking to regain the affections of Annie Pleyden, an English governess he had met and fallen in love with in Germany, he stayed with Konitza at Oakley Crescent.

Apollinaire published a memoir of Konitza in the Mercure de France on 1 May 1912, which begins: "Of the people I have met and whom I remember with the greatest pleasure, Faik Bey Konitza is one of the most unusual". He recalls: "We would have lunch the Albanian way, which is to say, endlessly. The lunches were so long that I could not visit a single museum in London, as we would always arrive when the doors closed, and the attention and care with which Konitza edited his articles meant that the journal always came out very late. In 1904, only the issues for 1902 appeared; in 1907, the issues for 1904 came out at regular intervals. The French journal L'Occident is the only one that could compete with 'Albania' in that respect".

He died in Washington on 15 December 1942 and was buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston. After the fall of the Communist regime dictatorship in Albania, his remains were transferred to Tirana and interred in a park at the edge of the city.