Migjeni

Migjeni’s father, Gjergj Nikolla (1872-1924) was a respected member of the city’s orthodox community and a representative at the Berat conference in 1922 andhe insisted his son attend a Serbian Orthodox elementary school in Shkodra and then, from 1923 to 1925, a secondary school in Bar Montenegro’s principal seaside resortt, where his eldest sister was living.
In the autumn of 1925 Migjeni won a scholarship to a secondary school in Monastir (Bitola) in southern Macedonia where he studied Slavonic, Russian, Greek, Latin and French. He Graduated from this school in 1927 and entered the Orthodox Seminary of St. John the Theologian where he spent the next 5 years and, despite health problems, he completed his studies.
On 23 April 1933, Migjeni was appointed teacher of Albanian at a small school in Vraka, 7Km from Shkodra. It was here that he began his literary career, writing prose sketches and verse which reflect the life of the region. This is seen by many as the satrt of contemporary Albanian poetry.
In May 1934 he published his first short prose piece, Sokrat i vuejtun apo derr i kënaqun (Suffering Socrates or the satisfied pig), in the periodical Illyria using his pen-name for the first time. The next year he became seriously ill with a recurrent bout of tuberculosis. The disease was endemic on the marshy coastal plains of Albania at the time and, despite a brief move to Athens seeking treatment, he returned to Shkodra. In the autumn of 1935, he transferred for a year to a school in Shkodra itself and, it was at this time he began publishing his first epoch-making poems (again in the periodical Illyria,).
In January 1936 Migjeni was transferred, at his own request, to the mountain village of Puka and on 18 April 1936 began his activities as the headmaster of the run-down school there. The clear mountain air did a little good but teaching was interrupted for long periods of time because of outbreaks of contagious diseases, such as measles and mumps broke out amongst the children in the area who were living in veryu poor circumstances. In less than rwo years the consumptive poet had to cut short his teaching career (and his writing) in order to seek medical treatment in Turin, northern Italy arriving there in December 1937. He hoped that the treatment would enable him to register and study at the Faculty of Arts. However after just five months at San Luigi sanatorium, Migjeni was transferred to the Waldensian hospital in Torre Pellice where he died a few months later on 26 August 1938.