Filip Shiroka

Who was Filip Shiroka?

Filip Shiroka was a classical Rilindja poet whose verse was first to become known in later years. He was born and raised in Shkodër and educated there by the Franciscans. Among his teachers was poet Leonardo De Martino, whose influence is omnipresent in Shiroka's verse. His earliest verse publication, All'Albania, all'armi, all'armi!, was a rather weak nationalist poem on the defence of Ulcinj, which was written in Italian and printed in the Osservatore Cattolico of Milan in 1878. Like many Albanian intellectuals of the late nineteenth century, Filip Shiroka spent much of his life in exile. In 1880, after the defeat of the League of Prizren, he emigrated to the Middle East, and settled in Egypt and Lebanon where he worked as an engineer in railway construction.

Shiroka's nationalist, satirical and meditative verse in Albanian was written mostly from 1896 to 1903. It appeared in journals such as Faik Konitza's Albania, the Albanian periodicals published in Egypt, and the Shkodër religious monthly Elçija i Zemers t'Jezu Krisctit. Shiroka, who also used the pseudonyms Geg Postrippa and Ulqinaku, is the author of at least sixty poems, three short stories, articles and several translations, in particular of religious works for Catholic liturgy. His verse collection, Zâni i zêmrës, Tirana, 1933, which was composed at the turn of the century, was published by Ndoc Nikaj two years before Shiroka's death in Beirut.