Jeronim de Rada published the work entitled “Songs of Milosao”, the first work of Albanian romantic literature with great artistic value, evaluated by Victor Hugo as a “perfectly romantic work”. This poem, typologically, stands between the novel in verses and that type of lyrical poem known as “love song”. The spiritual dramas of the individual and his conflict with the moral institutions of the time, expressed with a unique lyricism, make this work of De Rada a lyrical novel. The subject centers on the story of a young couple from different classes who come together after many obstacles, but are separated again by the untimely death of the daughter, followed by the death of the son in the war. Two parallel themes are thus combined in the work: the theme of love hindered by the social environment and its mentality and the theme of duty to the motherland, which express two ideas: the idea of the equality of people and the right to love and the idea of subordinating feeling to duty . The poem is creatively influenced by Arbersh folklore, which gives it incomparable freshness. (In the photo: Front page of the book “Songs of Milosao”, 2009 edition.)
Text: Albanian encyclopedic dictionary – Vol. 1 , Academy of Sciences of Albania, “Kristalina-KH”, Tirana, 2008, page 422.
Graphic processing: AHCF
