Thimi Mitko

Thimi Mitko was one of the most prominent figures of the Albanian National Awakening and a pioneer of Albanian folklore studies. He was born in Korçë, then part of the Ottoman Empire, in 1820. He attended an Orthodox elementary school in Korçë and later a secondary school in Bar, Montenegro. He studied at the University of Florence, where he learned Italian, French, Greek, Latin, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian. He returned to Albania in 1836 and worked as a teacher in various towns. He was also involved in political and cultural activities, advocating for social justice and national identity. He wrote poems and stories that reflected the harsh realities of Albanian society at the time, such as poverty, oppression, corruption, and backwardness. He also experimented with new forms and styles, influenced by European modernism and realism. He published his first collection of poems, Free Verses, in 1836. His second collection, New Poems, was published posthumously in 1844. He also wrote a novel, The Unhappy Ones, which was unfinished and published after his death. He died of tuberculosis in 1840, at the age of 26, in Torre Pellice, Italy. He is regarded as one of the pioneers of Albanian literature and a symbol of the Albanian Renaissance.