Dhimitër Pasko

Dhimitër Pasko , (b. 13 September 1907, Pogradec, Albania – d. 4 May 1967 Tirana, Albania), alias Mitrush Kuteli (or Janus), was an Albanian writer and translator from Dukat.

Dhimiter was the son of Pandi Pasko.Their family was from Dukat. After leaving Dukat they settled in Romania and then in Pogradeci.

Dhimitër Pasko studied at a foreign language school in Greece, later moving to Bucharest where, in 1934, he graduated with a doctorate in economics.

While in Bucharest he became a journalist with the Albanian weekly newspaper Shqipëri' e re (New Albania), using the pseudonym Janus. In 1937 he published Lasgush Poradeci's collection of verse, Ylli i zemrës (The Star of the heart), and the following year, the first edition of his first authored book, Nete shqipëtare (Albanian nights), a compilation of eight tales of village life from his native Pogradec. This edition was largely destroyed by a fire, and only became widely read through a second edition published in 1944.

He returned to Albania in 1942, and during World War II wrote and self-published most of his major works. At the end of the war he founded the short-lived literary periodical, Revista letrare (Literary Review), with Nexhat Hakiu, Vedat Kokona and Sterjo Spasse, joined the editorial board of Bota e re (New World), the first Albanian post-war literary journal, and became a founding member of the Albanian League of Writers and Artists.

Dhimitër Pasko died of a heart attack in 1967, leaving a novel on an Illyrian theme unfinished.

The Albanian Communist Party took power after World War II, but by 1947 was in the control of Yugoslavia. Pasko, an official Albanian delegate to Yugoslavia, disapproved of a proposed currency and customs union agreed between the two countries, and of a Serbian re-occupation of Kosovo; an earlier 1944 Pasko poem, "Poem kosovar" (Kosovar poem), asserted his criticism of Serbian actions. Upon the Albanian delegation's return from Yugoslavia, Pasko was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for his criticism, during which he attempted suicide. Following the freeing of Yugoslavia's hold over Albanian party politics, Pasko was released and worked as a translator for Naim Frashëri Publishing House, the state-owned Tirana publishing company.

Pasko, as with other Albanian writers of the time, accommodated the imposed cultural doctrine of Zhdanovism by translating Soviet-approved Russian authors, although he found himself able to translate his favorite Russian, Romanian, and Spanish writers, publish tales and verse for children, and adapt Albanian oral verse to prose.

• Lasgush Poradeci - 1937
• Net shqiptare (Albanian nights) - 1938
• Pylli i gështenjave (The Chestnut forest) - 1958
• Ago Jakupi e të tjera rrëfime (Ago Jakupi and other stories) - 1943
• Sulm e lotë (Attack and tears) - 1943
• Shënime letrare (Literary Notes) - 1944
• Havadan më havadan (From peak to peak) - 1944
• Kapllan aga i Shaban Shpatës (Kapllan agha of Shaban Shpata) - 1944
• Dashuria e barbarit Artan (The love of Artan the Barbarian) - 1946
• Xinxifilua (Gingerman) - 1962
• Tregime të moçme shqiptare (Old Albanian tales) - 1965
• Tregime të zgjedhura (Selected stories) - 1972
• Baltë nga kjo tokë (Mud from this land) - 1973
• Në një cep të Ilirisë së poshtme (In a corner of southern Illyria) - 1983
• Këngë e britma nga qyteti i djegur (Songs and cries from the burnt city)
• E madhe është gjëma e mëkatit (Great is the lament of sin) - 1993

• A Sportsman's Sketches from Turgeniev
• St Petersburg tales and Dead Souls (Dead Souls) from Gogol
• The Golovlyov Family from Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin