Teaching, publishing and deteriorating health On 23 April 1933, he was appointed teacher at a school in the village of Vrakë or
Vraka, seven kilometers from Shkokër, until 1934 when the school closed. It was during this period that he also began writing prose sketches and verses. under his new pen name
Migjeni, an acronym of Millosh Gjergj Nikolla. In the summer of 1935, Migjeni fell seriously ill with tuberculosis, which he had contracted earlier. He journeyed to
Athens,
Greece in July of that year in hope of obtaining treatment for the disease which was endemic on the marshy coastal plains of Albania at the time but returned to Shkodra a month later with no improvement in his condition. In the autumn of 1935, he transferred for a year to a school in Shkodra itself and, again in the periodical Illyria, began publishing his first epoch-making poems. In a letter of 12 January 1936 written to translator
Skënder Luarasi (1900–1982) in
Tirana, Migjeni announced, "I am about to send my songs to press. Since, while you were here, you promised that you would take charge of speaking to some publisher, 'Gutemberg' for instance, I would now like to remind you of this promise, informing you that I am ready." Migjeni later received the transfer he had earlier requested to the mountain village of
Puka and in April 1936 began his activities as the headmaster of the run-down school there. The second edition, published in 1944, was missing two old poems
Parathanja e parathanjeve ("Preface of prefaces") and
Blasfemi ("Blasphemy") that were deemed offensive, but it did include eight new ones. The main theme of Migjeni was misery and suffering, a reflection of the life he saw and lived which was evident in
Free verse. in
Shkodër. Some poems, such as
Të birtë e shekullit të ri ("The sons of the new age"),
Zgjimi ("Awakening"),
Kanga e rinis ("Song of youth") and
Kanga e të burgosunit ("The prisoner's song"), are assertively declamatory in a left-wing
revolutionary manner. In those works, Migjeni gives readers a precursor of socialist verse or rather, in fact, as the zenith of genuine socialist verse in Albanian
letters, long before the so-called liberation and
socialist period from 1944 to 1990. Migjeni was, nonetheless, not a socialist or revolutionary poet in the political sense, despite the indignation and the occasional clenched fist he shows us. For this, he lacked the
optimism as well as any sense of political commitment and activity. He was a product of the 1930s, an age in which Albanian intellectuals, including Migjeni, were particularly fascinated by the West and in which, in Western Europe itself, the rival ideologies of communism and fascism were colliding for the first time in the
Spanish Civil War. Migjeni was not entirely uninfluenced by the nascent philosophy of the right either. In
Të lindet njeriu ("May the man be born") and particularly, in the
Nietzschean dithyramb Trajtat e Mbinjeriut ("The shape of the Superman"), a strangled, crushed will transforms itself into "ardent desire for a new genius," for the
Superman to come. To a
Trotskyist friend,
André Stefi, who had warned him that the communists would not forgive for such poems, Migjeni replied,
"My work has a combative character, but for practical reasons, and taking into account our particular conditions, I must maneuver in disguise. I cannot explain these things to the [communist] groups, they must understand them for themselves. The publication of my works is dictated by the necessities of the social situation through which we are passing. As for myself, I consider my work to be a contribution to the union of the groups. André, my work will be achieved if I manage to live a little longer." . Part of the 'establishment' which he felt was oblivious to the sufferings of humanity was the
Church. Migjeni's religious education and his training for the Orthodox priesthood seem to have been entirely counterproductive, for he cherished neither an attachment to religion nor any particularly fond sentiments for the organized Church. God for Migjeni was a giant with granite fists crushing the will of man. Evidence of the repulsion he felt towards God and the Church are to be found in the two poems missing from the 1944 edition,
Parathania e parathanieve ("Preface of prefaces") with its cry of desperation
"God! Where are you?", and
Blasfemi ("Blasphemy"). In
Kanga skandaloze ("Scandalous song"), Migjeni expresses a
morbid attraction to a pale nun and at the same time his defiance and rejection of her world. This poem is one which helps throw some light not only on Migjeni's attitude to religion but also on one of the least studied aspects in the life of the poet, his repressed sexuality.
Eroticism has certainly never been a prominent feature of Albanian literature at any period and one would be hard-pressed to name any Albanian author who has expressed his intimate impulses and desires in verse or prose. Migjenis verse and his prose abound with the figures of women, many of them unhappy prostitutes, for whom Migjeni betrays both pity and open sexual interest. It is the tearful eyes and the red lips which catch his attention; the rest of the body is rarely described. Passion and rapturous desire are ubiquitous in his verse, but equally present is the specter of physical intimacy portrayed in terms of disgust and sorrow. It is but one of the many bestial faces of misery described in the 105-line
Poema e mjerimit ("The poem of the misery"). == Legacy ==