Migjeni

Millosh Gjergj Nikolla (13 October 1911 – 26 August 1938), commonly known by the acronym pen name Migjeni, was an Albanian poet and writer, considered one of the most important of the 20th century.

After his death, he was recognized as one of the main influential writers of interwar Albanian literature.

Migjeni is considered to have shifted from revolutionary romanticism to critical realism during his lifetime.

He wrote about the poverty of the years he lived in, with writings such as "Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread", "The Killing Beauty", "Forbidden Apple", "The Corn Legend", "Would You Like Some Charcoal?"

etc., severely conveyed the indifference of the wealthy classes to the suffering of the people.

Migjeni was born on 13 October 1911 in the town of Shkodër at the southeastern coast of Lake of Shkodër.

Some scholars think that Migjeni had Serb origin further speculating that his first language was Serbo-Croatian.

Angjelina Ceka Luarasi, daughter of Migjeni's younger sister Olga stated in her book Migjeni–Vepra, co-authored with Skënder Luarasi, that Migjeni was of Albanian and not of any Slavic origin and Migjeni spoke only Albanian as his mother tongue and later learned to speak a Slavic language while growing up.

Angjelina states that the family is descended from the Nikolla family from Debar in the Upper Reka region and the Kokoshi family.

Angjelina maintained that the family used many Slavic names because of their Orthodox faith.

He attended an Orthodox elementary school in Scutari.

His mother Sofia Kokoshi (d. 1916), a native of Kavajë, was educated at the Catholic seminary of Scutari, run by Italian nuns.

His maternal uncle Jovan Kokoshi taught at the Orthodox seminary in Bitola.

Milosh had a brother that died in infancy, and four sisters: Lenka, Jovanka, Cvetka and Olga.

His grandfather was one of the signatories of the congress for the establishment of the Albanian Orthodox Church in 1922.

From 1923 to 1925, he attended a secondary school in Bar, Montenegro (in former Yugoslavia), where his sister Lenka had moved.

At 14 years of age, in autumn 1925, he received a scholarship to attend secondary school in Monastir (Bitola) (also in former Yugoslavia), from where he graduated in 1927, then entered the Orthodox seminary of St. John the Theologian.

He studied Old Church Slavonic, Russian, Greek, Latin and French.

The proliferation of his creativity gained a special momentum after World War II, when the communist regime took over the full publication of works, which in the 1930s had been partially unpublished.

He continued his training and studies until June 1932.

His name was written Milosh Nikoliç in the passport dated 17 June 1932, then changed into Millosh Nikolla in the decree of appointment as teacher signed by Minister of Education Mirash Ivanaj dated 18 May 1933.

On 23 April 1933, he was appointed teacher at a school in the village of Vrakë or Vraka, seven kilometers from Shkokër, until 1934 when the school closed.

It was during this period that he also began writing prose sketches and verses.

Migjeni made his debut as a prose writer, authoring about twenty-four short prose sketches which he published in periodicals mainly between 1933 and 1938.

In May 1934, his first short prose piece, Sokrat i vuejtun apo derr i kënaqun (Suffering Socrates or a satisfied pig), was published in the periodical Illyria, under his new pen name Migjeni, an acronym of Millosh Gjergj Nikolla.

In the summer of 1935, Migjeni fell seriously ill with tuberculosis, which he had contracted earlier.

He journeyed to Athens, Greece in July of that year in hope of obtaining treatment for the disease which was endemic on the marshy coastal plains of Albania at the time but returned to Shkodra a month later with no improvement in his condition.

In the autumn of 1935, he transferred for a year to a school in Shkodra itself and, again in the periodical Illyria, began publishing his first epoch-making poems.

In a letter of 12 January 1936 written to translator Skënder Luarasi (1900–1982) in Tirana, Migjeni announced, "I am about to send my songs to press. Since, while you were here, you promised that you would take charge of speaking to some publisher, 'Gutemberg' for instance, I would now like to remind you of this promise, informing you that I am ready."

Migjeni later received the transfer he had earlier requested to the mountain village of Puka and in April 1936 began his activities as the headmaster of the run-down school there.

The clear mountain air did him some good, but the poverty and misery of the mountain people in and around Puka were even more overwhelming than that which he had experienced among the inhabitants of the coastal plain.

Many of the children came to school barefoot and hungry, and teaching was interrupted for long periods because of outbreaks of contagious diseases, such as measles and mumps.

After eighteen difficult months in the mountains, he was obliged to put an end to his career in order to seek medical treatment in Turin in Northern Italy where his sister Ollga was studying mathematics.

He arrived in Turin before Christmas Day where he hoped, after recovery, to register and study at the Faculty of Arts.

The breakthrough in the treatment of tuberculosis, however, would come a decade later.

In the revised birth certificate dated to 26 January 1937, his name is spelt Millosh Nikolla.

After five months at San Luigi Sanatorium near Turin, Migjeni was transferred to the Waldensian hospital in Torre Pellice where he died on 26 August 1938.

Robert Elsie writes that "his demise at the age of twenty-six was a tragic loss for the modern Albanian letters".

The author had chosen the nom-de-plume Mi-Gje-Ni, an acronym formed by the first two letters each of his first name, patronymic and last name.

His surname derived from his grandfather Nikolla, who hailed from the region of Upper Reka from where he moved to Shkodër in the late 19th century where he practiced the trade of a bricklayer and later married Stake Milani from Kuči, Montenegro, with whom he had two sons: Gjergj (Migjeni's father) and Kristo.