PROFILES OF ALBANIANHOOD IN THE FOCUS OF BRITISH ROMANTIC LENSES

Due to various political, social and economic reasons,unfortunately, Albanian culture, literature and history at large, have long beentraced and written by foreigners rather than Albanians. Although often labeledas a "mute" people who cannot express themselves because of thedisappearance of historical sources, for the sake of truth, there has always beena considerable collective memory among Albanian people which has quitefrequently been used by prominent writers and albanologists. The prototype ofthe romantic poet, Lord Byron, and British albanologist, Edith Durham, areprobably the two main credentials in their efforts to serve as spokespersons ofthe Albanian life in the early nineteenth and early twentieth century in the eyesof the civilized world. The purpose of this paper is to present profiles ofAlbanianhood as recorded in the British romantic diary of Durham’s “Theburden of the Balkans” held during her first lengthy expedition, on horsebackand on foot, through the wilds of southern and central Albania and the longpoem by Lord Byron “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage”- Canto II. What bringsthese two names together despite the century-long span of their literarycreativity seems to be the fact that their life ideology was led by the cult ofindividual freedom and at the same time by the romantic conviction that it isnot acceptable, not even in the nature of things that the world remain immobile.The perception of the Albanian world according to these two perspectives hasmany converging points that do nothing but reinforce the truthfulness of bothaccounts although made in two very different genres of literary writing. Thefeaturing of these compliances as well as graphic and photographicalillustrations of the issues referred to remain within the scope of the presentpaper.