Modernism and (Italian) Hermeticism in Contemporary Albanian Poetry: The Poetry of Zef Zorba

Abstract

This article focuses on the poetry of Zef Zorba which is a contemporary Albanian poet and one of the representatives of Albanian literature that was written under the extreme communist censorship in the period 1945-1990. Zef Zorba is considered as spokesperson of modernism and hermeticism in Albanian poetry. He is a key representative of a phenomenon that scholars in Albanian Studies refer to as “literature of the drawer” since this is a literature that was written secretly during communism and was never made public under any circumstance due to the extreme censorship over literature and the brutal punishments of writers. The article designates a comparative approach between Zorba’s poetry and the poetry of the eminent Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti. This comparative approach could contribute to further research in the theoretical realm i.e. the history of Albanian literature and world poetry during the twentieth century. It could also bring significant help in the didactic aspect because it gives more ground to analysis and synthesis of hermeticist poetry which is known for its obscurity that cause difficulty to students when analyzing it. The method used in this paper is the culturological one and text analysis.

DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2014.v4n6p477