The Albanian Ideal

Mit'hat Frashëri in his study.

Mit’hat Frashëri was the son of Abdyl and nephew of Sami and Naim Frashëri, three of the most important leaders of the Rilindja (Renaissance) movement, and, in his own right, arguably the most insightful Albanian thinker of the 20th century. He begins his 1924 work Plagët Tona (Our Wounds) by describing what ideal the Albanians ought to uphold as they begin the painful process of nation-building. The text is a foundational document in the modern history of the country.

"A people cannot live without an ideal, without a push, an objective that makes them march forward, toil and progress. Man is born active by nature: movement and rocking are necessities to him since the cradle; the sick man restrained to his bed or the prisoner locked in his cell fall into monotony and melancholy. Confinement is in itself a most strenuous hardship. Man needs to walk, to work and converse.

But the effort and activity of man as an individual is in vain if humanity proves itself incapable of cooperating and directing their efforts in a single direction. Only then can ten people be as powerful as a hundred, even a thousand.

This objective, followed by the members of a nation, becomes its ideal and moral force. Without such a moral force, without a goal toward which they must unite their efforts, nations wither and slowly perish.

Consider other nations: the Englishmen’s ideal is to live prosperously, freely, and to rule the world. This ideal gives them unity and strength, makes them truly capable, as toward this goal are funneled the efforts of the common folk, writers, journalists, the government and its politicians; in a word, of every Englishman from the oldest to the youngest, from the baby in the cradle to the old man giving his last breath, whether in England itself or as far as the South Pole.

The Romans of old held as their ideal the conquest of the world and mastery over other peoples. This force of the soul, this desire, led them to create the largest and most powerful empire on Earth. This came because they worked with faith in their stars, willfully, convinced that Fate and their gods had called upon Rome to be the center of the Earth.

Christianity advanced quietly and tenderly, through suffering and martyrdom; it was a great force, a purely spiritual one that inspired in humanity a hope in a heavenly life through faith in the preacher of Nazareth. The example of suffering on the cross given by Christ in Golgotha was a source of strength, a sense of consolation for the martyrs, who took their joy and glory in sacrificing for the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The Arabs of Prophet Muhammad formed their peculiar empire, building a blossoming civilization that stretched from India to Spain, by believing that God had tasked them with spreading the word of the Qur’an across the Earth. This faith gave them material strength and instilled in them the spirit they needed to conquer the world and give birth to an extensive civilization.

The Turks began as a band of soldiers convinced that Islam needed the strength of their swords. And nothing could stand in their way, from the Volga to the Danube, from the steppes of Russia to the Sahara desert and from the Gulf of Persia to Morocco. When the ideal and one’s belief in fate is lost, when the objective and the omen fades, the body turns into a corpse whose soul has departed, and it falls just as a sack whose flour has spilled would. History provides us with more than enough such examples.

Let us, however, bring the discussion closer to ourselves: Greece awakened from her Turkish captivity when her people began to believe that they were indeed the descendants of the Hellenes, that the Orthodox cross would, through their arms, defeat the forces of Muhammad; that God had called upon them to restore Byzantium and to enjoy the blessings of freedom and good fortune. The Greek wars from 1770 up to 1829 are insightful examples of the power that having an ideal, working with hope, willpower and fate in one’s destiny can gift to man.

The Bulgarians brought themselves forth into the light when they remembered Boris I and Ivan Shishman, believed Methodius and Cyril to be their predecessors and proclaimed that Bulgaria, Eastern Rumelia and Macedonia ought to make up a single, strong and prosperous state. This ideal gave the Bulgarians of Macedonia the strength needed to tolerate the Turkish yoke, to hold their tongues under the shackles of the Greeks and the Serbs, to not despair even when their homes and villages were burned ten times over. The hope of something wonderful awaiting made them sacrifice the life and joy of the present.

Serbia grew and expanded when its poets really convinced her that the entire nation would enjoy the destiny of the happy rich man Dušman. This faith let them see open lands stretching before them and made them courageous in the face of any danger, like a capable knight who mounts a good horse and feels no fear, whether from the trench or the levee.

Hope is maintained through work and through an ideal. He who does not have an omen has no power; he is sick. Enthusiasm comes from a strong desire, from love and willpower. It is this that makes us want to live, to rejoice in life. This makes us, again, sacrifice our own lives for the dream and the ideal.

What ought to be our ideal?

It ought to be the greatness and the honor of the Albanian, the oneness and unity of the nation, its general prosperity and progress.

If we agree that we ought to be a civilizing factor in the Balkans, that we ought to turn our land into a blossoming corner of the Earth, equipped with every material and moral gem, that we will make our nation one regarded with honor and praise, then, doubtlessly, we will march forward, we will progress, united and strengthened, because we will have a light shining upon us; that light which comes from the desire for a common honor and greatness, the desire to claim our place in history, to create an honorable land with our own civilization, literature, art and our own material prosperity. The strength of the spirit, the national ideal, will push us toward material prosperity, too. Personal shortcomings will no longer make us despair, as we will think of common success. We will show patience and methodology in work, far from falling into despair and discouragement.

Then, when this warm fire is lit in our hearts, we will see that the union of our desires and strengths is a necessity for us, that the sacrifice of egoism will be a joy, that we will see each other as brothers and partners in our common effort: that of making strong the foundation of our greatness."