Culture heritage and Albanian as a priority

Tirana Times
By Tirana Times May 9, 2019 16:47

Culture heritage and Albanian as a priority

Story Highlights

  • As an International Assembly is taking place at the National History Museum on the course of four days about the history and continuation of our language, the Academy of Albanological Studies has organized a cycle on Albanian cultural heritage, folklore, tradition and arts.

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TIRANA, May 9- Businessman Stefan Pinguli recounts how the first International Assembly “The Historical-Language and Ethnocultural Continuity of Albanians Through Millennia,” which will take place from May 9 to 12 in Tirana and will be organized by the National Center “Our Roots.” . About 90 reference reporters, academics, scholars, but also ordinary people will address different topics in these areas throughout the four days at the National History Museum. Pinguli says that through this initiative will be said those truths that so far have not been said  from academics-officials for various reasons.

Stefan-Pinguli

Pinguli said that several conferences have been made so far, but throughout about a year they have been organizing this congress, which started as a national, but turned out international because of the great interest shown from Albanians everywhere in the world. He also added that even within the country there are many scholars who are hidden in the thought that “each one thinks for himself.”

“We thought that we would expand the freedom of thought by deciding that this assembly should not have a purely scientific character, but also an encyclopedic character that paves the way to free international opinion of all the historical truths that have not been said to date,” said Pinguli who is president of the assembly.

In this assembly there will be guests who will express their opinions, even if opposed to those that are officially recognized. Pinguli mentioned that within these academic cadres there are very well-versed people, but the assembly hopes to provoke the national feeling and get their best opinion, uninspired by the famous psychological genre of being careful of what has been already said. 90 reference reporters have signed so far, which have very important theses. The Assembly will also record all academic writers or historians, history, linguistics and etymology of our country, because members of the assembly believe they are a group of people that have not been echoed almost at all.

During the assembly Pinguli thinks a few theses will be proposed, but there will be no debate about them. However, a great deal of attention will be paid especially to the theses related to the Albanian language. Two of the main theses that will be proposed will not be debated, because it is not an assembly of scientific debate, but it is an assembly of freedom of thought regarding linguistics, history and etymology. The language to date is studied language in its comparative form. The linguistic predecessors, such as à‡abej, Domi, etc., without a doubt have made a great contribution to this style of discovery, although Cabej writes that “we know what we got out of the world, but we do not know what we have given the world.” On this basis, there are young scholars who see our language not only as a comparative language, produced by comparative folklore, but also as an embryonic language, in which essence is the history of languages. A second objective is that, since 1972, the Scripture Congress which is considered to be extremely important basis, has been out of attention for about 50 years.

“The language needs to be enriched, because over 50 percent of our country is from the North. The introduction of new gege structures would enrich and make them more comprehensible by international scholars, who reach a point on language but do not go further because they do not know the rest of the language,” said Pinguli.

On the other hand the Folklore Dpt. from the Academy for Albanological Studies organized the cycle “Trage” (Trails) which aims to bring together scholars, artists, research and artistic projects that deal with different expressive forms and practices. “Trampled trails, trails slightly trampled and not at all; trails that trace how certain expressions or concepts come back into an identity and cultural emblem; sometimes in conflicts and controversies, and at times in sources of regeneration and social-cultural revitalization,” writes the Academy in its website explaining the cycle. It also adds that they are encouraged to explore the conceptual and real world links between cultural heritage, folklore, tradition and arts; the links between secular and vernacular forms of expression and understanding between cultural policies as well as research and discourse derived from folklore, ethnomusicology, linguistics, history, anthropology and audiovisual studies.

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The first discourse was held at the “Rrok Zojzi” hall of the Institute of Anthropological Culture and Art Studies. The first lecture of the “Trage” cycle was held by Prof. As. Dr. Merita Bruci on Francesco Anton Santori (1819-1894), a highly productive Arberesh writer of the 19th century, whose contribution is briefly mentioned and taken into account. Santori lived and wrote in a period when romantics of all Europe populations were given after the collection and publishing of folk songs. This spirit of time was embraced even by many Arberesh writers who managed to awaken the bonds with the land of the ancestors, as a land and a collective memory, to avoid the danger of oblivion. They developed and kept alive the Albanian identity, elaborating the means to do so. Santori, as a contemporary and cooperative with Jeronim De Rada, was unavoidably involved in this national revival project through collecting and publishing folklore. This folkloric material served him as a starting point that made many motives. These became the basis on which he made drama, tragedy and novel. Santori is the second author behind De Rada who has left a rich collection, perhaps the richest we inherit, on popular songs of the Arbresh of Italy, which is preserved in several variants. Manuscript variants are found scattered in Kozenca and Copenhagen, and some of them were presented by Dr. Bruci during the lecture.  

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Tirana Times
By Tirana Times May 9, 2019 16:47