A Discourse on Albanian Humanism

Every book about great things presupposes a journey that shares that greatness with it – or, to put it in another way, it should share it. When the historian Jordanes, for example, set out to pay heed to the now famous history of the Goths in the mid-sixth century AD, he writes that it was his wish to glide alone in his little boat by the edge of the peaceful shore and “to catch little fishes from the pools of the ancients.” But yet, it was his “brother” Castalius who sent him sailing toward “the deep.”¹ Then Thucydides, – the historian of the war between noble Athens and warlike Sparta, – is not ashamed to tell us, from the very first sentence, that he began his history when they first took up arms. With the belief that it would be a great and memorable above any previous war.² And I do not think we need to remember the historian Tacitus, and his choice to turn to memory of bringing oratory back to mind in Rome – to say the same thing in three different ways.³

Although I was fortunate enough to edit the book, I never asked Albert who and what his Castalius-brother, beginning-of-the-war, and bringing-of-oratory was when he decided to write about the Albanian (arbën) humanists. The introduction to the book doesn’t help us either. Indeed, nor does anything else in it – at least not openly so. At first glance, Albert’s knowledge of the classical languages; his familiarity with the original sources; his ability to collect facts (and their interpretations) from the time they happened to the present day – gives one the impression that one is reading a historian who adheres to the scientific method, because one is truly reading such historian. But this does little to help us find our answer.

Hegel, the German – who never left history alone – philosopher, trying to successfully show why philosophical works do not need an introduction (and choosing to do so confusingly in an introduction to a philosophical work), writes that: “the bud disappears in the bursting-forth of the blossom, and one might say that the former is refuted by the latter.”⁴ Whatever Hegel’s intention and his success, I think this sentence can help us to find what we are looking for. That is, we must read Albert’s book on great things carefully, to understand the “great” journey that he brings through them. And we must do this with the full courage to admit that a historian who does not know which sentence should describe the drum of war from that of marriage; who knows how to worship more than to describe; who doesn’t mind if one is not in tune with the truth of one’s sources – such historian shouldn’t write about great things at all. In other words, we have to deny the greatness of the book’s subject, to understand if there is any greatness within the book at all.

By the end of Albert’s book, we recognize that the point of view he has taken is that of Caspar Hirschi, who shares the approach to “nation” in disregard for both modernism (now generally accepted) and primordialism (now generally not accepted). We recognize some Gheg traces that are unmoved from their conclusions – “Arbën” as the main example of this, followed by the refusal to use “Venecia” instead of “Venedik.” The anachronistic refusal to use the word “shqiptar” when this word was not used to denote those belonging to “Arbënia.”⁵ And further, refusing to see Christianity as detached from the role that Skanderbeg then had; refusing to see the humanists as having nothing to say about the nation; and refusing to bow down, like a worthy medievalist, to contemporary theories that deny “universalism” only to turn around and judge history by universal standards that we have only recently found. It is not just a coincidence that Professor Drançoll, a renown Albanian medievalist, writes a preface to this book, these theoretical steps in the field of Albanian history look down from the shoulders of the giants. Albert Bikaj is simply not confused: he bears the responsibility that only a historian who tries to show the truth of the sources can bear.

The early Nietzsche somewhere writes that – “We need history, certainly, but we need it for reasons different from those for which the idler in the garden of knowledge needs it, even though he may look nobly down on our rough and charmless needs and requirements. We need it, that is to say, for the sake of life and action, not so as to turn comfortably away from life and action, let alone for the purpose of extenuating the self-seeking life and the base and cowardly action. We want to serve history only to the extent that history serves life.”⁶ What other proof of a history that serves life do we have in this book, other than when history itself changes Albert’s language; tunes his mind to sounds a little different from those “accepted” today; when humbly lines him up fearlessly behind his own conclusions – because he has given due honor to the sources?

And if at the very end we remember why we have to think so deeply even after reading the book to find the greatness in this journey of the historian, Mr. Albert himself, about great things like the Albanian humanists. Then we must remember that great things, first of all, as the Greeks themselves show us with their only sin – one should not have the pride (húbris) to answer such a question. And, then, that secondly, in the temple of Delphi one of the maxims was “Εὔφημος ἴσθι” (euphemos isthi), translated this roughly corresponds to “be well-spoken (euphemistic).” That is, what is the non-greatness (humility) of the book, not the fall into the song of nostalgia, not the fall into the masochistic mythophilia of patriotism – it is precisely the euphemistic traces that make this book great. To see this greatness is not to see pride in one’s blood or feelings. To see this greatness is not to be proud of the greatness of the subject of the book. The work of a worthy historian should not be judged by the subject of the books (even if these subjects, for some of us, are still enchanting). To see this greatness of the book, you must simply be a good reader.

The Origins of National Thought: The Discourse of Albanian Humanists During the Renaissance
By Albert Bikaj
Botimet Koliqi, 2025

Note: English translation due 2026 or 2027

References

1. – Jordanes. (1915). The Gothic History of Jordanes in English Version (C. C. Mierow, trans.). Princeton University Press: London. F – 51.

2. – Thucydides. (1919). History of the Peloponnesian War: Books 1–2 (C. F. Smith, trans.). William Heinemann LTD: London. (Loeb Classical Library No. 108). F – 3.

3. – Tacitus, C. (1914). Dialogus, Agricola, Germania (M. Hutton & W. Peterson, trans., revised by E. H. Warmington, R. M. Ogilvie, & M. Winterbottom). William Heinemann Ltd: London. (Loeb Classical Library No. 35.) F – 19.

4. – Hegel, GWF (1977). Phenomenology of Spirit (A. V. Miller, trans.). Motilal Banarsidass Publishers: Delhi. F – 2.

5. – Albert’s use of Gheg dialect suffixes and vocabulary (such as “arbën” instead of “shqiptar,” a relatively recent noma by which Albanians denote themselves) remains faithful to the way the humanists and their contemporaries actually knew themselves as, called these places, and spoke.

6. – Nietzsche, FW (2017). Untimely Meditations (R. J. Hollingdale, trans., edited by D. Breazeale). Cambridge University Press: New York. F – 59.

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