PHILOLOGY AND PHILOLOGISM IN THE ALBANIAN AREA OF MACEDONIA

Imer ALILI

Abstract

Considering the fact that the discipline which "technically educates the critical disposition of man and that it is nothing but criticism […], and that only in philology criticism is exercised in its entirety, and that the aim of philology is history", each historian must also be a philologist (Friedrich Schlegel), and such must be, first of all, anyone who deals with those particular 'historical' facts, of those fundamental evidences of civilization which are artistic and literary productions; thus, to make the verification of the truth and the correct understanding of the texts and documents without detaching from the scientific rigor. Schlegel also claimed that even just reading is "clearly a philological act" (ibid.). For what, the totality of studies that moving across different sectors and relying on different research instruments, but always based on a critical observation of texts, documents and evidence, aiming at an accurate and detailed understanding of the text itself in a precise historical-cultural setting and even to present the integral knowledge and the reconstruction of a historical period or of one or more civilizations by studying the language, literature and various cultural manifestations. Furthermore, the philologist should engage in more detailed traces, e.g., in the critical analysis of a position, where there is an essayistic doubt about a particular verse, makes the identification of a source, the sharpest and most functional research identification of a punctuation mark, verification of a chronological record, etc. Such a philological study and quite valuable and detailed in connection, for example, with the issue of putting in the case of gender at the beginning of the poetic verse has been done by the worthy teacher and excellent connoisseur of Albanian language and literature, Arbëresh Zep Gradilone (it. Giuseppe Gradilone). In his volume “La letteratura albanese e il mondo classico” (Quattro studi) (Albanian literature and the classical world, Four studies), Bulzoni editor, 1983 Rome, in which he develops valuable scientific studies and linguistic evaluations of some great protagonists of Albanian language and literature, such as Jeronim De Rada, Zef Skiroi, Gjergj Fishta, that is, of the era of the revival of Romanticism in Europe. We will not go into the merit and evaluation of the work quite meticulous for the categorization that the Author makes there in relation to his critical view of the works of the authors in question, but of course we will emphasize his view of the grammatical aspect or more precisely of that syntactic one which has placed in its volume. However, it seems like a novelty and therefore an impetus to look at from this aspect the literature produced and quite enriched already and in particular the Albanian language used in the Pan-Albanian literary treasury.

Pages: 89 - 99