Notes about the book “Sinful Angel” of the poet Mirela Rapi

“Sinful angel” (Engjëll mëkatar) is titled the first poetic volume of 18-year-old Mirela Rapi, but it can nicely fit the synonymy “Deceived Eve” (Eva e mashtruar). Surprisingly all teenagers have a sorrow, disappointment of first love. They love to the partner the wonderful image that their sensory world creates and when they face, the majority of cases, the common qualities of the loved one, they feel disappointed and cheated as Eve, the first woman on earth, after she bite the prohibited apple, lured by devil. Disappointment, plague as a mass suffocating darkness in their soul, so that at times, it seems hopeless the exit from that night. Most of the courageous girls, finally manage to find the light of salvation in themselves and then they turn their back to despair, run toward the true love with real dimensions. Such is the heroine of the young poet Mirela Rapi, a “Sinful Angel” (Engjëll mëkatar) or a “Cheated Eve,” which requires her “Paradise” in this sinful world, even far in the new galaxy of fantasy.

Notes about the book “Zeus” of the historian Rasim Bebo

1.
Many historical theses during the communist historiography period had created a kind of taboo, so they were untouchable and unchangeable, although historians could bring abundant factual material, argued with scientific objectivity, in reverse of their existence. It is understood that this historiography had its iron frame, which, for the sake of truth, he could not break them easily. Based on the ideological axis and the guidelines that were given from above, the communist historiography in most of the time, was made spokeswoman of orders and options that dictated the policy and the party ideology, as everywhere, even on historical issues.
With the collapse of communism there were created spaces that scientific conclusions to be unfold as it came out from the research and in depth study of facts and historical documents. Therefore, during these years of democracy, inter alia, has taken vigorous development even the study of the Cham problem, which is inseparably linked to historical origin of the Albanian people during the centuries.
This issue, especially in recent years, is focused on optics of many current historians. Dozens of scientists, Albanian and foreign, in their studies, bringing abundant facts and arguments, have tried and are trying that this issue, with significant historical importance, give a more accurate and argued solution to point out that even Cham territories in Greece are populated from thousands of years by a nation, who is a descendant of Ilir, that these have derived from the ancient Pelasgians. This thesis that naturally waits to be proved even better with factual material and other arguments from different fields of historiography, which will be revealed and gathered with devotion by the future historians, no doubt that it will conclude the resolution of Cham issue and will audit the conclusions of Greek historiography, that by manipulating the facts and historical documents, requires to wine itself in the history of ancient and modern Greece, calling cham “immigrants” in their homes, a population without identity, that has unjustly occupied the Greece. Here is the place to mention the words of the father of the Greek historiography, Herodotus, who said that “in the territories of Greece a very old people that called Pelasgian have lived before the ancient Hellenes”. These people at that time had a stretch in Europe and beyond.
2.
One of the Albanian authors and scholars, that in his historical books, aims to prove the ancient authenticity of Cham population in Greece is even Mr. Rasim Bebo. Although at an advance age, he has never had and doesn’t have lack of energy and commitment to carry through to the end the authenticity of the origin of Cham population, which is entirely Albanian, as from the language and even from the traditions, customs and habits. In his new book “Zeus”, (Zeusi) Rasim Bebo sinks in the ancient depths of the history to point out his historical conclusions. He has made them subject in scholarly books that has written. However, it is not only this the goal of the author of “Zeus” (Zeusi). He, thank to a scrupulous study of tens and tens of works of the Albanian and foreign authors, which he quoted in abundance in his book, argue with Greek historians and those who support them, reminding that today’s Greek in the territories where historically live, are much younger than the Albanian Chams in their homes. Even these Greeks have a history as descendants of the old Helen, but the arrival of many of them in Greece from other countries has occured, at least, about 1200 years ago, a very young date if we compare with the stories and deeds that the greatest poet of evolution, Homer, describes in his famous works “Iliad” and “Odysseus”.
Influenced by the book’s material, the author has organized its construction according to particular chapters, starting from the ancient history to end in nowadays. Thus in the first chapter is talked about Pelasgians and their origins, for Zeus and the birth of a deity, and create a picture for this nation so ancient, which is the forerunner of many other nations, among which even Illyrians. Further in the book it comes to the symbols of Zeus, for paganism, pre-helen heritage etc.
In the third chapter, deepening in the ancient history of Greece, the author mentions the plated Mikena, Knosi, legends of Tezeu and the Trojan War. His conclusion is that all these that mentions are related to the origin of the ancient Pelasgians. One of the roads that Mr. Bebo uses to prove the thesis of the Pelasgian origin of Ilir, of the Albanians, is that he cites many authors, in conclusion of which, especially in their linguistic research, he finds similarities between the words and the old labels with the today’s Albanian language. Thus, according to him and the authors that cites, the word Zeus comes from the word za-ze. The name of the goddess Aferdita, recalls the albanian words “the day came”, the name of the Greek capital, Athina, from albanian- said, the Dodona name, from the roar of the bell-don, don, don, the Odhise name, from the Albanian word, leader and so on. Even for the old Etruscan population, Mr. Bebo, says that it is related with Pelasgians.
The book continues with other chapters and interesting writings, which are always associated with an abundant documentary material, that the author has collected from many books of different historians. Thus in the loops of the book chapters it even speaks about Pyrros of Epirus, for the Trojan war, for the Pelasgian civilization, for the Odyssey return in the hometown, in Ithaca, for the legend of Oedipus, for the War of Thermopylae, it is given a long list of Arvanites villages in Greece and a picture of ancient Epirus. Of interest in the book are even the loops of Chapter X, Illyrian kingdoms, the Roman conquest and conquest of Greece.
In chapter XI is made a description of Roman empires, Byzantine and Ottoman, in chapter XII the author speaks of the origin of Christianity and makes a short portrait to the Illyrian emperors. Chapter XIII deals with the Slavic invasion, mentions in it a special stitch the Arabs and are described the Crusaders of that time. In the two loops of the Chapter XV are portrayed the proudest figures of Albanians, Scanderbeg and Mother Teresa, while Chapter XVII has a stitch with a title as impressive and significant, which can be considered as the main basis for historical conclusion of the new book of the researcher Rasim Bebo. The title of this stitch is: “Chameria of Dodona and Zeus”.
Chapter XVIII and closing of the book includes some loops and sub-headings that speaks about the history of our people since 1945 till in our days.
No doubt with this book the researcher Rasim Bebo gives a new assistance to the lighting of some earlier historical periods, not studied in depth, reaching in his own conclusions and many of today’s researchers for the Albanian origin and especially of Chams’, aiming to put the origin of our people in very ancient historical foundation to come in the major conclusion that the Albanians, descendants of the Illyrians of these ancient Pelasgians, are indigenous in their lands, and for more as people are among the oldest, if not the oldest in the Balkans. And today in the world, many Albanian and foreign historians have brought this conclusion in their works, and now they see the studies that are being made for this problem in a new optic.

Sokol Jakova

Notes about the “Do not remind me death” of the poet Rudina Hasa

The young 18-year-old poet Rudina Sami Hasa with the first poetic volume, “Do not remind me death” (Mos ma kujtoni vdekjen), is presented to the reader with that burst of feelings that every creator would envy her. On the whole, her volume resembles to a crying with feminine tones as fragile and songful as well as heartfelt, like the shout of a hind, after overcoming of an extremely mortal risk. Squawk of a teenage soul who madly loves life, and madly hate with the whole girlish power everything that somehow evoke death. Rudina is very young and as such too eager to live life, in all joyful colors, in all the rainbow spectrum, far from the grey that she inherits in this transitional period, from that darkness where you could suffocate. Death of the deaths! Not natural death, accidental death that cruelly take human life that have just overcome the childhood threshold. Death to the deaths that secretly lurk life in every step. This is the motifs of Rudina’s poetry. Do not remind death to the youth, remind them the successes that are waiting for them in every turn of life. We also wish Rudina a life full of surprises with happy endings and even more to achieve the “Kilimanjaro” of poetry.

Notes about the book “Stars of dreams” (Yjet e ëndrrave) of Etleva Shahini

Who didn’t live adolescence and didn’t feel the caprice of this critical age, when you feel as a child and manly, as fleeting and wise, although neither children nor young, nor man. Adolescence is an unstable weather, rain and sun, precipitated windstorm and spring breeze, frost and scorching heat; a myriad of opposites that strangely coexist within a soul. Understand, if you want that what nomocracy acts in the teenage soul, where the crazy spring, winter, sun, snow, breeze and wind, overblow in lava that define the characteristic of this age.
Such is Etleva Shahini.
Being at the same time a poetess, her soul even more strongly demonstrates caprice of age. And these highly original caprices are also embodied in the verses of her first book “Stars of dreams” (Yjet e ëndrrave).

Notes about the book “Confessions of a thief” of the writer Shefki Hysa

1. Our short prose even in these years of transition has point out new occurrences, innovations that are evident in the creativity of many young and old prose writers, who have made name with their books, have got readers’ attention and have been appreciated by them.
In this sense even Shefki Hysa’s creations, widely known by the reader and which have left traces in the literary circles, should be analyzed. And certainly, a varicolored creativity, written with an emphatic realist spirit, where are entwined even elements of contemporary prose like surrealism and magical realism, with a deep and complex view in the reality of time, with a variety of individualized personages, through pointed artistic situations and a rich literary language, is impossible not to get our critique and scholars’ attention. This creativity gives a hand and opens the way to an artistic analysis, because precisely some of the most positive characteristics of contemporary Albanian prose are part of it.
2. Republication has been always an important test of creativity, to understand once again how deep it has nested in readers’ heart and mind. That is why the republication of “Confessions of a thief”, stories-miscellanea of writer Shefki Hysa, is in addition a new venture for the author when he confronts the readers, to give them again the impressions and the emotions aroused by the stories of the miscellanea, where are artistically recreated tableaus from different periods of life and where are vivified really interesting personages, who have been sculpted with an artistic taste and mastery.
The two opening tales of the miscellanea “The horror of Aids” and “Confessions of a thief” (Rrëfimet e një hajduti) are a bit similar at their composition. The episodes in them are evolved in a situation and the artistic discovery is displayed in the end, leaving the reader in anxiety and curiosity, during the reading, until he knows the end of the story, discovers its message and especially the personages’ features. The girl in the first story appears differently from the way the young journalist imagines her with her drama that maybe in a certain sense is dirtier than Aids, while the robber boy in the second story discovers all of a sudden his unchangeable character in a special situation, joyful as well as grotesque. It is important that the two stories have naturally evolved, with a vital verity and a satisfactory tempo-rhythm, evidently felt during the reading, due to the author’s experience and ability.
While “The emperor of idols” is more a sketch or essay, with an allegoric meaning, the story “The black widow” catches the eye as one of the most beautiful and prominent of the miscellanea. In this prose, you can find in miniature all the characteristic features of Shefki Hysa’s creativity; a narration full of artistic color, a lithesome and dense dialogue, the tempo-rhythm of his way of telling, elements of surrealism of modern literature, the derisory and jeering subtext that reaches the margins of grotesque, and above all the varicolored drawing with special colors of the widow’s figure, whose portrait stays in your memory for a long time. With an exquisite finesse and artistry the author has succeeded in weaving an interesting subject that keeps alive readers’ curiosity and in bringing to light all of a sudden in the end a rare artistic discovery, which gives an unmasking exquisite whip to the black widow’s figure, this woman with dimensions of a monster in life as well as in sex. That is why the erotic scenes of the story are given with the function of discovering the personage’s character and of displaying the author’s message. The black widow remains a prominent and rare personage in the gallery of the most striking personages ever realized in our short prose.
Judging all this variety of ways of writings the author of the miscellanea “Confessions of a thief” has been able to create with artistic mastery and emotive pathos the story “Didini”, which remains one of the strongest pillars of this book. As one researcher of this author’s creativity, Bardhyl Maliqi, emphasizes by rights “Didini”… is an artistic model of masterly using the magical elements, an expression of the magical realism in our literature”. The hero of the story “Didini”, a progeny of a nationalist family is depicted in this work with the best qualities and characteristics a young guy, with life and future dreams, can have. But in those war times the tragedy of the nationalist teenager was inevitable because those who leaded the war, the communists, were adversaries to death with the Albanian nationalists. Fighting with a file against partisans, Didini becomes their slave and in the end, due to his convictions, is massacred by the partisan commandant “The pine”.
The whole story is displayed in retrospect. The utilization of magical elements has given a hand to the author to put as pivot of the book the main personage, not Didini, but the disturbed soul of the guy massacred during the war. This fantastic as well as conventional discovery has deeply affected the whole artistic structure of this prose evidently realized. So, the whole vital material is enlaced round the soul-personage, who goes by himself as a turbulent dust cloud everywhere in the regions of his homeland and brings back in mind those past and stormy times. We don’t exaggerate if we point out, being familiar with author’s and his family’s turbulent life and childhood, that Shefki Hysa, with Didini, has aimed to artistically create a portrait of his ideals, “embroidering” the personage, that we can feel he loves so much. The guy, Didini, is given to us as a man with a rare human spirit, courageous and spitfire, who has freely wandered all his life, like the roe of the mountains around.
“Soul-Didini was invaded by the sensation of a distention of sorrow inside that invisibility roll that used to determine his existence. He wanted to hate and he couldn’t hate. He wanted to rebel and he couldn’t rebel. Surprisingly, unlike other souls that had escaped, Didini’s soul doesn’t contain in itself the criminal inclination per se, the embryo of phantasm that suddenly explodes at nights the soil of the tomb and magically rushes on the human peace with all the power of evil. Even the basilisk souls, every time they met the soul-Didini while flying, used to tease, deride and make fun of him about his deaf-and-dumb weakness. The basilisks wondered why runaway souls, in stead of revenging themselves used to observe quietly the human world from that deaf-and-dumb as well as air angelic roll. Neither devil nor angel and however a homeless soul, lost in its deafness and dumbness, in the swirl of its sorrow. Even Didini himself was sometimes astonished at his passive existence. What meaning could that kind of resistance between sky and earth have, when he couldn’t undertake anything to change a little the fatal flow of events, as the souls escaped from hell could do?! And to give him his due he had to revenge himself for that perfidious murder. With bullet. Behind his back, in the twinkling of an eye?!… (“Didini, pg.55-56).
It’s excessive to say how much compassion the reader feels and how much down-hearted the reader is for the tragic destiny of this personage who nests at people’s hearts with his rich inward world and his humanism.
We find this human character in the story “Qopeku”, uncle Miho in “The old man of the lakes”, Hido and Leta in “Saturday afternoon”, Xheki and Dudija in “Destiny game”, Lirika in the story with the same title.
The story “The olives” evolves in another olive. It treats an event of the past years. The author, like a subtle and astute watcher of life, in this story glances over in that time, when the population was clenched under the oppression of dictatorship.
The subject of the story is simple as well as shuddering. A young girl, sixteen years old, pushed by her mother and poverty, which induces her to do a squalid work just to gain something. She goes in the cooperative land, at Habibi’s grass-plot, to steal olives. And the girl commits this act, but she falls prey to the brigadier of the arboriculture, Rauf, who tries, incited by sexual lust, to rape her. It is understood, his infamous and criminal gesture toward a woman is more infamous than secretly stealing a sack of olives. The author, through a figurative parallelism with the pigeons, emphasizes forcibly this message in the end: “The girl, who envied the flight of those pigeons, imagined for a while herself as a pigeon that has already escaped from the falcon’s wings. And she broke down in tears again. They were tears of joy. She felt free, free, and free”… But this story interests us even in another view; written some years before, it discovers clearly the author’s non-conformism with the method of socialist realism, with his aim to break the frames of that method and to reveal even the eyesores of the acrid reality in that period, when the heroine of the story, in the end “whispered again thinking that the reality was more acrid than the olive”…
In many other stories of the miscellanea, the author weaves the subjects putting in the center of attention the problem of love. We can see how the author, through clear-cut artistic tools, succeeds in describing emotional situations and a lot of romanticists of love with a limpid, human, gentle and vital purity. Love is conceived as a sacred, divine feeling, but anyway, when the author wants to whip the personages, he knows how to describe even physical love relations, as it happens in the story “The beautiful beast”, where the main personages of the work, who have been highlighted by the author, are whipped and unmasked through a derisive and grotesque description of love relations and a banal vocabulary.
3. Critics have pointed out that prose writer Shefki Hysa in his creativity has often utilized many autobiographical data to weave the subjects of his creations. This ascertainment is right because there is no writer, well-known or unknown, who doesn’t utilize his life’s memories and impressions in his own creativity. It’s important that the artistic recreation of that past, as literary art gives you this opportunity, should be at higher, deeper and more thrilling dimensions than the reality of life it describes gives you.
Owing to his origin, his painful, dramatic and disturbed life and owing to the talent that characterizes him, the author of the miscellanea “Confessions of a thief” (Rrëfimet e një hajduti) has successfully succeeded at spreading in some stories, with a special dramatization, with a variety of staring colors and with a hair-raising pain, tableaus of the unlucky Cham population’s past life, on whose back the flow of time threw sufferings, misery and tragedies rarely heard. The phrase that often in art, great works come out of big pains is not futile. We think that the artistic value of the story “Bota Saddle”, which is one of the main pillars of the miscellanea, can be interpreted in this sense. The author has written this work with a special love and inspiration, because he feels precisely near himself, his life and origin in it, because this life’s painful and shocking impressions and memories, which has been fanatically and perseveringly saved in subconscious, have created a strong impulse and a rare inspiration to pour in paper a creation realized with artistic values.
In fact the subject of this story is simple, without many situations, as are in general the subjects of Shefki Hysa’s books. He is not inclined toward extraordinary events but otherwise he focuses the attention on his short prose, on the expressive figurative narration, on the symbol and allegory, in a word on the figurative tools, which highly help him for the emotive discovery of the events and personages’ characters. The famous saddle or Bota saddle can be viewed as a salient symbol of the story, which serves in the artistic meaning for the organization of the compositional structure. The figurative parallelism between two periods, of that period when the ill-fated Cham refugees used to climb over this saddle, which separates two countries, and nowadays when hundreds and thousands refugees push through thorny bushes in mountains to find the “paradise” in the neighboring country, can be explained this way. The author himself reinforces this artistic occurrence when he points out in the story that “the tragedy of the Cham refugees is being repeated, here, at Bota Saddle… Although it is said that history comes back in a comic way, the only thing that an acrid smile can cause in this new history of refugees is maybe the fact that, while the Chams were persecuted by the foreigners, the new refugees, figadhes, as the Greek calls them, are persecuted by our people… Yes, yes, our chair-inclined people, as the journals of opposition describe them!… (Bota Saddle, pg.84)
So, comparing in a figurative way two historical periods, separated by some decades, a mature compositional discovery this, the author opens the way in the story to confess us with realism what kind of horrible and monstrous jobs have happened and are happening in this saddle, or as the author describes it: “Bota Saddle looked passably like that secret door of the tale that connects our world with the one beyond tomb, dead with live persons”. (Bota Saddle, pg.78).
After he has “paved” the way of his narration, Shefki Hysa permeates in the tissues of the story, recreating artistically, through his extending narration, where is saved the tempo-rhythm, some dramatic and very painful situations. Through two boundary soldiers and the hidden refugee who is looking forward to crossing the border, we find out some tragic jobs, rare in their kind. This is warned by the augural caws of death, of the black ravens, which pulse in the work as bad augury. Look what the old boundary soldier says in the story: “If it begins to rain you will see across the Saddle tens and tens of horrifying flames exploding suddenly. As epilepsies and boggles are seizing you and you wait for them thrusting their claws on your throat. It’s dangerous because you can go crazy if you are alone, in this Saddle, at rainy nights. That immensity of flames jumping upwards, here and there, is caused by the phosphor of the remains, which is activated by moisture. To the bushes, among blackthorns and the grass that covers this land, if you search, you will find many human remains’ bones and skulls. Unburied people’s cadavers have remained since then in this Saddle. But, as it is said, the Cham refugees, in 1945, victimized by the Greek bands, have left many dead to the alleys of this Saddle. They died exhausted by wounds, illnesses, cold, hunger and sufferings that a normal man’s mind can’t perceive.
So, without help and protection, they used to huddle and give up the ghost, groaning near the shrubs and the brushwood. Other frightened people, used to climb over known and unknown people’s cadavers, to die, maybe, at the first curve of those ways, just created from the toes of the bloody feet or onward, in a sward or near a rock. So many cadavers of innocent victims in few days and weeks! The Saddle, used to reek of tainted meat from far away…”(Bota Saddle, pg.80-81). You can find such shocking descriptions that arouse even a feeling of horror, even in other lands of the story, not only for that acrid past of meanders, after the ouster of the Cham refugees from their lands, but also in the following years, when the poor Albanian refugees, who aimed to cross the border for a better future, were murdered on the border and as the author says: “the people of our government, wise as they are, had dispatched the dead persons on a car carriage. Without biers. Bloody, muddy, face-shredded by the bullets. An ugly death that could burst even the stone with its view, not less than human hearts made of meat and blood. (Bota Saddle, pg.83).
Aiming to be not only a writer, but also a rude protester for the tragedy with unimaginable dimensions of the poor Cham refugees, related by blood to him, Shefki Hysa has summarized in the book another salient and too much dramatic story. The story “The testimony” is in fact a shuddering testimony, which authentically discovers the monstrous massacres of the bands of Greek General Zerva against the undefended Cham population. Overfilled with inspiration by hatred and the strong rancor against these human-faced monsters, the author has poured in letter a situation that nearly drives you crazy for its macabre.
This situation, when gentle mother Fatije, to testify to the strangers of the commission the monstrous massacres of the cursed recreants of Zerva over the innocent Cham population, takes out before them the peeled scalp with a plume of hairs of her son’s head, slaughtered by the bands of the Greek General Zerva, although is a bit similar to the episode of granny Nice, who throws to the Italian general’s feet the sack with colonel Z’ remains, in the novel “The General of the dead army” of Ismail Kadare, remains anyway rare in the Albanian prose of today. This situation of the story “The testimony”, with almost unreal dimensions, expresses with an admirable density the quintessence of the sufferings, of the tragic and the prosecution that this Albanian population proved on its back in those horrific years. In front of it stay the inward beauty, humanism, love and the great nobility of the Cham mother and you shed tears, deeply shocked, when in the end of the story “Mother Fatija took with caresses and sorrow the scalp of her son’s head, winded it on with caution and care, unbuttoned the wrapper and put it on the breast, near the heart, as if she wanted to give her life from her life. She took a look at the people one more time with the tearful eyes and so, with the hands on the breast she turned her body, ready to go” (The testimony, pg.75).
4. We couldn’t conclude these notes without saying some words for the style and the rich artistic language that the author of the miscellanea “Confession of a thief” (Rrëfimet e një hajduti) has used in his stories. Shefki Hysa is one of those Albanian prose writers, who pay a special attention to this artistic form of their creativity components. And this fact confesses about the high professional requests that the talented author has toward his creativity. As researcher Bardhyl Maliqi notices “the realist character of Shefki’s prose is distinguished by a language rich of phraseological phrases, a dialectical language, jargons that are functionalized especially on the personages’ mouths. Besides the realist inclination of Shefki Hysa’s prose, we notice in it even elements and conceptions of a prose, which, based on the national creations and on contemporary literary techniques, appears complex as well as rich in its structures, apparently simple but too much expressive”…
In conclusion I emphasize that prose writer Shefki Hysa has his special voice in our prose, has his own individuality already artistically created and with his creations he occupies an enviable place in the Albanian realist prose.

Sokol Jakova

The book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace” (Personalitete – Misionarë të Paqes)

The book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace” (Personalitete – Misionarë të Paqes) is a compilation of writings on specific figures of politics, art and Albanian literature. This collection looks like a monographs rather odd in the way it is conceived at the beginning and how it is composed later. So, in the form it differs from all summaries of different literary, artistic or scientific biography, it even differs with a monography on a particular topic that actually has this book and serves as a liaison yarn among various figures, as is the idea of the mission or missionary of peace. However, when you have read the entire book and have experienced for a little time the taste that reading has left you, you smile and it looks that you have in front of you a beautiful work carried out with collage techniques. It seem so, as to say, from the literary and vital material that the author Paulin Rranzi has used, by mixing within an idea, that of the mission of peace, three or four different areas of practice and human creation. Perhaps, this has made this summary more diversified and more attractive.
It is acted simply and carefully for the choice and the composition of the object of the book: the author has a close friend the writer Shefki Hysa and by the empathy he has for him, he looks round him events and personalities that can better serve his idea to join in a monographic narrative missions and Albanian missionaries that consciously have served this high and human eternal purpose: peace. Watching the book from this perspective, it doesn’t seem redundant the frequent quotation of the source of inspiration of the author, because it serves more as an element of truth in the stories that follow. Furthermore, I would say, in the confession about the meeting with Rugova, this “inspiration” of the author is exciting. And, in fact, the head “Rugova” is among the most beautiful and among the most significant of the book, along with that of Pjeter Arbnori and especially that of Ibrahim Daut Hoxha, which contains in itself a whole history for a life of sacrifices.
In the professional selection of the missionaries is noticed an equal ratio of selection between the literary and politicians, although some of them happened to be literary-politicians, who are really distinguished for their peaceful disposition in politics, as it comes to Ibrahim Rugova and Pjeter Arbnori, who also give the predominant hue to this book. An outstanding value this book gains by diversity of forms that, in my opinion, reminds the collage. For those personalities where takes place more their life through memories or episodes experienced by the author, the form is that of emotional narration. For others, where the idea of the peaceful message is extracted by their work, the form is somewhat cold, of academic style. Such, indeed, written as rarely before in our political journalism, are the descriptions for the politicians Shpetim Idrizi and Tahir Muhedini, where their political ideas are presented in a manner sufficiently clear and attractive to read. But there are also mixed forms of narration, like that of Namik Mane, where the quoted verses bring the breeze of a touching peace. A very special thing impresses very much in this book. There is not a special chapter for Bilal Xhaferri, but he is present throughout the book with his peaceful spirit and soul, adding it to the work, as without being felt, the missionary and inspiring force. The summary of Paulin Rranzi has, or seems to have, even a geographical distribution thought in the selection of personalities. Perhaps this is totally random, but in fact there are all the territories represented, from the south, in central Albania to Kosovo. Of course, the many are Cham, but this is justified, when it is known that more than all Albanians, the message of wisdom, patience and peaceful politics comes from Cham. Therefore, even those in this small book for Albanian missionaries of peace, stay enough good and as in their own house.
The book “Personalities – Missionaries of Peace” (Personalitete – Misionarë të Paqes), of the writer Paulin Rranzi, in his inside is crossed by a message of particular type, as it is the message of peace that carries in itself each of the characters as visionaries and peaceful at every step of their activity.

Hysen Sinani

Notes about the book “Dodona, the ancient temple of Albania”, of the writer Rasim Bebo

It is said the once lived the Beauty of Soil. She sparkled herself and everything surrounding her sparkled. Her beauty could be compared neither day nor night: Come up sun to come out, come up moon to come out. It is said that the Beauty of Soil was called Pellazgji. It was so magnificient, gracious and bewitching that all neighbours and the remote ones, the civilized and barbarian which knew it, fell madly in love with it. But, Pellazgjia kept standing proud in its life. It honored and respected all those which came around it without being humbled to anyone. Thus, the barbarians became envied for its pride, values and treasures. And once they lashed out to defeat it with violence. The barbarians wrestled too long with it, abducted here and there also jeweleries and treasures pieces, however, Pellazgjia was not depress…
What remained after those predatory battles was called Illyria. Barbarians wrestled with Illyria as well, abducted other treasures, other jeweleries, but it did not gave those to them. It was already called Arbëri and it still inherited a part by the Beauty of Soil, a part of Pellazgjia. So graceful, like all the Beauties of Soil in fairytales, although being tired by long violator wrestles, the indomitable Arbëria radiated in the eyes of barbarians which couldn’t stand the light of its civilization. And they wandered how to defeat it. And they lashed out again and again, days and nights, during winters and summers, stole their jewelry, they wounded it, bleed it, broke their limbs and despite it was becoming smaller and smaller due to violence, it still did not surrender. So small and indomitable it newly looked beautiful and radiated civilization in the eyes of barbarian enemies that wanted to undo it with every cost.
Already some called it Albania and some others Shqipëri. Enemies always were highly vulnerable to attack it and monstrous lashed out to its beauty. The small Albania, for the vicious mind of barbarians was the former Pellazgjia which was still indomitabled by predatory violence, that’s why it must not be in peace. It must be disappeared…
This kind of Albania was or not the former Pellazgjia?!… Disputed and disputed its enemies and lashed it out to undo it in order to remain neither fame nor mole by the primeval Pellazgjia which was still vivid in Albanian’s genes… Even they coveted those few treasures that Albania inherited by the primeval Pellazgjia… Was or nor Pellazgjia?!… Already everything was rendered in legend. Pellazgjia, the Beauty of Soil was already a fairytale that was told to the kids during nights…
Meanwhile came out a brave man who decided to explore the legend’s areas. The brave man was called Rasim Bebo. Searching in the difficult tracks of the meditation in the legend’s twilight, the brave Rasim Bebo was discovering jewelerly’s pieces, valuable stones, diamonds and pearls which once used to compound the jewelerly treasures of Pellazgjia… The brave Rasim Bebo by searching, discovering and renovating the pieces of the stolen jewels through centuries by Pellazgjia’s body, succeded to redo its profile of a Soil’s Beauty. Slowly-slowly the legend is becoming reality. Search and you will find a part of this reality in the book “Dodona, the ancient temple of Albania” of the historian Rasim Bebo…
Honored Professor Rasim Bebo!
So, all this come in my mind since the moment I became familiar with the great values of your book… And continuously I have been thinking how to make my words sound more beautiful, to have them out by my mind and my soul at the same time. To have them as worthy, as mellow and to estimate the book “Dodona, the ancient temple of Albania” as it deserves. I believe that this book deserves a rare esteem like itself with the treasure of Albanian values it sumerizes. And I believe that such with be the esteem of any reader…
With this book you already are and will remain one of the historians that will be liked more by Albanian patriots, honored Professor Rasim Bebo… And, as your friend, I can say with a great belief that your work will be judged by the readers as a rare treasure…
May God always bless you!