Guljem Deda, translator, was born in Shkodër. He was born in Shkodër, in 1915, in a well-known intellectual and patriotic family. In 1937, he graduated from the University of Padova, in the field of literature and philosophy. He graduated with the study on the language of Cuneus Profetarum (“The group of prophets”) by Pjetër Bogdani, with honours. Returning to Albania, he was appointed professor of the Albanian language and of Greek and Latin literature at the high school of Shkodra, until 1939. In 1942, he founded and published the magazine “Balli i Kombit”, which he directed until 1943, a magazine for Albanian youth with selected content and national spirit. With the establishment of the communist system, six members of his family were shot. In December 1944, he was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison with hard forced labor, confiscation of property and deprivation of electoral rights “for crimes against the state”. He was released in 1950, after working in the labor camps, and was sent to the Tarabosh mountain quarry. In 1954, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Shtyllas camp, together with 50 other intellectuals from Shkodra, where they opened the Vjosë- Levan -Fier Canal. From here he is isolated in the camp of Kuçi in Vlora. There he began the translation of Lodovico Ariosto’s epic-heroic poem L’Orlando furioso. In impossible conditions and with great shortages, after 17 years of uninterrupted work, he managed to translate into Albanian this masterpiece of Italian literature of 40,000 verses. He spent almost his whole life between prisons and internment camps. In 1990, he went to Italy, sick and exhausted from severe suffering. (In the photo: Guljem Deda)
Text: Encyclopedic dictionary of victims of communist terror – Vol. II , “West Print”, Institute for the Study of Crimes and Consequences of Communism, Tirana, 2013, page 68.
Photo: © Institute for the Study of Crimes and Consequences of Communism
Graphic processing: AHCF
