9 minutes ago75 years from the death of “The Queen of the Mountains”
Periskopi(7 years ago)
(7 years ago)On November 15, 1944, British Mary Edith Durham-artist, a traveler, died at 80 years of age, who became famous for her anthropological studies of Albanian life at the beginning of the 20th century. Edith Durham was the eldest of eight children. She had a very tiring youth; when [...]
On November 15, 1944, British Mary Edith Durham-artist, a traveler, died at 80 years of age, who became famous for her anthropological studies of Albanian life at the beginning of the 20th century.
Edith Durham was the eldest of eight children. She had a very tiring youth; when her father died, Edith had to take care of the entire family while taking care of self-education and developing talent as a painter when she was 25 years old, her work became part of the Cambridge Natural History Museum.
In 1913 her health weakened, and the doctor recommended her rest away from her daily troubles. So Edith Durham left London in Trieste, Kotor, on the coast of Dalmatia, and then by land route to Montenegro. This was the first contact with the Balkans to fill the rest of her life.
Mary Edith Durham traveled extensively to the Balkans over the next 20 years, focusing especially on Albania, then one of Europe's most unknown and underdeveloped areas. Durham worked for many relief organisations, designed, painted and wrote, collecting Albanian art and folklore.
Her work was of genuine anthropological importance, and Edith Durham was accepted as a member of the British Royal Anthropological Institute. But it was also her writings that gave her special fame. She wrote seven books on Balkan issues, from which “High Albania” (1909) is more familiar, and which still continues to be considered by foreigners as a guiding book to recognize and understand the customs of the northern highlands.
With her work, Mary Edith Durham came, increasingly comparing herself with the Albanian issue; she was a supporter of the idea of uniting the Albanian people. But Durham also had numerous criticisms. For example, it was repeatedly attacked by supporters of the Yugoslav state who supported Kosovo's involvement in Serbia. This made Durham increasingly anti-Serb, coming out with the expression “, the Serbian parasitivity”, which aims not to create a Yugoslavia but to meet the goals of a Greater Serbia ... Not for the liberation of the peoples but to make them more oppressed than before”.
Some pro-Serb British intellectuals sharply criticised her views. For example, Rebecca West (with just a few months of travel experience in Yugoslavia wrote the renowned pro-Serbian book “Black Falcon...”) called Durham “a traveler describing massacre Albanians massacred”. While the renowned historian RW Seton-Watson commented that “constantly criticised Balkan thinking, it became part of this think tank”.
For their part, Albanians highly value Edith Durham, giving her the name “The Queen of the Mountains”. Asdren devoted a poetic volume to her, whereas when Durham died in 1944, King Zog in exile said: “She gave us her heart and became a voice in the ear of our highmen” In years of communist rule (particularly during very close Albanian-Yugoslav relations), M. Edith Durham was silent, despised, banned. In 2004, President Alfred Moisiu named Edith Durham one of the most prominent personalities of the Albanian world during the 20th century.
