Fatmir Terziu: Vangjel Zafirati represents a living laboratory of the artistic use of language

LEXO SHQIP-READ IN ALBANIAN

Vangjel Zafirati represents a living laboratory of the artistic use of language

Overall, Zafirati’s poetic discourse is characterized by a careful linguistic economy that privileges suggestion over explanation, a dense use of figuration (metaphor, personification, synaesthesia), a constant interweaving between nature and human experience, and a movement from the concrete to the abstract.

The poetry of the poet from Sarandë, Vangjel Zafirati represents a living laboratory of the artistic and intentional use of language, where the word is not only a carrier of meaning, but a sensitive body that produces multiple experiences: emotional, sensory and intellectual. His poetic discourse is built on a constant tension between silence and explosion, body and soul, nature and memory, making language a space of transformation.

In the poem “Rebirth”, the use of language is focused and symbolic. The short phrases “fearful gaze”, “enslaved worm” creates an immediate emotional density. Here we have a discursive shift from victimization to empowerment: the woman goes from “widow” to a figure who “stepped over death”. This transformation is accomplished through a linguistic economy that avoids explanation and opts for suggestion, leaving the reader space to experience the resurrection as an internal act. The word “resurrection” is not just a metaphor, but a performative act: it itself realizes the process it names. In “The Green Lawn”, the poetic discourse shifts towards the sensory and visual. Silence (“He did not speak…”) functions as a rhythmic and semantic structure, creating a void that is filled by the “voices” of colours. Here, language operates through synaesthesia: the colours “speak”, while the female figure becomes a screen on which nature is projected. The use of the epithet “teenage poppies,” “virgin pansies” is not merely decorative; it creates an anthropomorphising of nature that brings it closer to the life and emotional cycle of man. The discourse here is gentle but charged with an implicit eroticism and a silent melancholy.

In “Autumn Pomegranate,” the language becomes more corporeal and dramatic. Verbs like “shook,” “trembled,” “burned” construct a choreography of the body in relation to the season. Autumn is not just a backdrop, but a force that strips, encompasses, and consumes. The metaphor of “exploding pomegranates” creates a double image: fertility and destruction. The discourse here is divided between the observer and the subject, creating a distance that heightens the aesthetic and intellectual tension. The poet does not simply describe the scene; he problematizes the act of seeing.

In “Summer Morning,” the economy of language reaches a minimalist peak. Short, clipped lines that mimic breathing and movement. The act of immersion (“He immersed…”) is accompanied by a rupture of light and perception. Here we have a liminal experience, where the boundaries between body and nature dissolve. The language creates a cinematic effect, where each image is a brief frame, but charged with intensity.

In “In Orikum”, the discourse takes on mythical and cosmic dimensions. The reference to the “Argonauts” and the presence of the moon that “walks barefoot” create a space where historical and mythical time intertwine. Here, the language is not only descriptive but invoking: it invokes an archetypal universe. The final question “what to do with all this light?” shifts the poem from aesthetic experience to philosophical reflection, making the reader a co-participant in a crisis of meaning.

In “Seahorse”, the metaphor of the waves as “foamy knights” is a powerful example of poetic animism. The language here is dynamic, full of energy and movement. The reference to Zeus adds an epic dimension, elevating the natural experience to a mythological level. The discourse creates a sense of uncontrollable power, where man remains a spectator.

In poems like “The Desert” and “The Peaceful Church,” the language becomes more restrained and elegiac. Here, a discourse of memory and absence dominates. Elements like “the basil of longing” or “the pale flame of the candle” are signs of a Christian and traditional symbolism, which connect the individual to a spiritual heritage. Silence and ruins become forms of communication, while language functions as a bridge between the living and the absent.

In “Melancholy,” the poet reduces everything to a pure emotional state. Here, the discourse is more abstract, more focused on sensation than on image. Melancholy is defined as something desired, which creates a paradox that stimulates intellectual reflection.

Finally, in “In Her Bed,” the language reaches a sensual and philosophical climax. The female figure and the Vjosa River merge into a double identity. The reference to the idea that “I do not step into the same water twice” approaches the concept of Heraclitus, introducing poetry into a dialogue with the philosophical tradition. Here, language is at once corporeal and metaphysical, creating a profound aesthetic experience. This makes his language a multiple instrument: it does not only describe the world, but also reconstructs it in the reader’s consciousness, producing an experience that is both sensory and reflexive.

Based on these four fundamental pillars of Vangjel Zafirati’s poetic discourse, one can further deepen the way in which his language is not simply a means of expression, but a mechanism for constructing aesthetic experience. First, the careful linguistic economy, which privileges suggestion over explanation, creates a poetry that does not immediately consume meaning. Instead of providing answers, it opens horizons. The short, often fragmented verses function as interrupted emotional impulses, requiring completion from the reader himself. This technique approaches a silent form of communication, where what is not said is as important as what is articulated. In this sense, language becomes a space of resonance, not a closed structure of meaning.

Second, the dense use of figuration is not just a stylistic ornament, but a way of poetic thinking. Zafirati’s metaphors are often double in function: they create an image and simultaneously shift meaning. The personification of nature – waves like horses, colours that speak, the moon that walks – takes the reader to a world where the boundaries between subject and object dissolve. Meanwhile, synaesthesia creates a sensory blend that intensifies the experience: sight becomes hearing, colour becomes sound, light becomes touch. This multiplicity of perceptions transforms poetry into a bodily experience, not just a mental one.

Third, the combination of nature with human experience is one of the most enduring features of this discourse. Nature is not given the role of background, but of co-protagonist. It feels, reacts, transforms just like man. Autumn is not just a season, but a state of mind; the sea is not just a space, but a force that absorbs and reburns. This combination creates a kind of “emotional ecology”, where man and nature are connected in a common cycle of existence. In this way, individual experience is universalized without losing its intimacy.

Fourth, the movement from the concrete to the abstract is a continuous trajectory in his poetry. Often the poem begins with a tangible image – a body, a flower, a coast – and gradually moves towards a broader reflection on life, time or being. This transition is not immediate, but fluid, almost invisible. The reader finds himself moving from a sensory experience to a philosophical meditation without feeling the cut. This technique gives the poem a layered depth, where each reading can reveal a new level of meaning.

In this context, it can be said that Zafirati’s discourse operates in a space between sensation and thought, keeping both in a delicate balance. He does not explain the world but suggests it; he does not define emotion but provokes it; he does not separate man from nature but unites them in a single experience. This brings his poetry closer to a broader aesthetic and philosophical tradition, where meaning is not a fixed point, but a continuous process. In this sense, it can be read in the light of the thought of Martin Heidegger, for whom language is the “house of being”, in Zafirati’s, language does not only describe being but makes it visible through a poetic experience that intertwines with silence, image and nature. In the end, what remains is a poetry that does not seek to be understood immediately, but to be experienced, a poetry that acts as an open space, where the reader enters not to find answers, but to discover himself through language. In this line of reading, the figure of Vangjel Zafirati takes on an even fuller dimension when seen in the context of his creative bilingualism. Writing in Albanian and Greek is not simply a communication skill in two linguistic codes, but an expansion of the poetic space itself. Each language carries its own rhythm, cultural memory and symbolic charge; as the poet moves between them, he creates a third territory, a personal poetic language that transcends the boundaries of each separately.

This bilingualism does not fragment his voice; on the contrary it enriches it. In it one can discern different nuances of sensitivity, a more internal and earthly intimacy that is often associated with Albanian, and an opening towards a broader Mediterranean tradition that can be articulated through Greek. But in both cases, the essence remains the same, a poetry built on suggestion, image and experience.

The fact that his poetry has been translated into several other languages ​​proves that this discursive structure has a universal potential. However, translation, no matter how careful, always carries a slight loss of that inner tension that is created by the play with the sound, rhythm and cultural load of the word in the original. Precisely for this reason, the assessment of Zafirati should emphasize above all his creative dimension as a poet, more than the geographical scope of the translations.

He is not simply an author who “passes” from one language to another, but a poet who builds his own universe, where language is a living and malleable matter. In this universe, the word is not subject to reality but constantly recreates it. This places Zafirati in a space where his value is not measured only by international presence, but by the intensity and originality of poetic discourse.

Ultimately, he must be appreciated as a voice that, through a subtle linguistic economy, rich imagery, and a deep sensitivity to nature and being, manages to create poems that belong not only to one language or one culture, but to a universal human experience. And this is precisely where his greatest weight lies: in the creative act, where language becomes poetry and poetry becomes a way of being.