Frances Trix
Canadian scholar Dr. Robert Elsie passed away at age of 67 in Bonn, Germany on 2 October 2017. He was the author of 60 books and numerous articles on Albanian literature and history, and translations of important texts from Albanian into English and German. As requested, he will be buried in Albania, the country to whose people and culture he devoted his life.
Robert Elsie was trained in Classics and Linguistics at the University of British Columbia. He did post-graduate research in Europe in universities in Ireland, Paris, and Germany, finishing his doctorate (Dr. Phil.) in Linguistics and Celtic Studies at the University of Bonn in 1978. But already he had traveled to Albania, a country few western scholars had visited, and had become intrigued by its language and people. At one point when I asked Robert why he had not continued his interest in Celtic Studies, he mentioned that the rain had gotten to him. Whereas when he went to Albania in the southwest Balkans, and to the Arbreshe, Albanian speakers whose ancestors had gone to Italy in the 15th century, there was so much sun. Albanian is a very old Indo-European language, related either to ancient Illyrian or Thracian.
Dr. Robert Elsie was a brilliant linguist who was attracted to relatively obscure foreign languages and cultures. He realized in the 1970s that Albanian was little studied, and indeed the country itself had been so isolated that little was known about its culture or its people. He worked to remedy that, first in publishing on its literature, as in An Elusive Eagle Soars: Anthology of Modern Albanian Poetry, London 1993; History of Albanian Literature, Boulder, Colorado, 1995; and Neither a Wound nor a Song: Poetry from Kosova, New York, 2003. His most important contribution here is his translation of The Highland Lute: The Albanian National Epic, London 2005, by Father Gjergj Fishta (1871-1940). It was written in the northern Gheg dialect of Albanian which made it especially difficult to translate.
He also published on Albania’s history as in Early Albania: A Reader of Historical Texts, 11th-17th Centuries, Wiesbaden, 2003; Kosovo: In the Heart of the Powder Keg, 1997; The London Conference and the Albanian Question (1912-1914). The Dispatches of Sir Edward Grey, edited with Bejtullah Destani 2016. A more recent interest was in early Albanian photography as in Writing in Light: Early Photography of Albania and the Southwestern Balkans, Prishtina, 2007.
There are not many academic positions for scholars of Albanian. In Germany there is only one at the University of Munich and when Dr. Elsie came to Germany it was already filled. He became an independent scholar and interpreter for high-level negotiations (German government, European Union, United Nations, NATO, Council of Europe). From 2002 to 2011 Dr. Elsie worked primarily for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague, where he was simultaneous interpreter for the trial of Slobodan Milosevic among others.
Dr. Elsie spoke of the remarkable stress in interpreting for Kosovar witnesses during the Milosevic trial. It was most difficult to translate legalese English into Albanian understandable for Kosovar villagers, and then to translate the Albanian dialects of the villagers back into standard English. He recounted that only the constant stress helped him not absorb the horror of the testimonies that were being given on a daily basis. He had great respect for the villagers who came to testify at the trial and what they had been through.
Dr. Elsie came to Michigan in the 1990s where I taught at a major urban university in Detroit. He lectured to our students on the situation in Kosovo, and afterwards my students took him on a tour of Detroit. They reported back how much they enjoyed being with him. Despite his being an international scholar, he had put them at ease by telling them of his background, similar to theirs, in Vancouver. That was typical of Dr. Elsie. In other ways, his kindness shone through. He always put his articles, books, and interviews on his website for scholars to download, knowing full well that many graduate students, and especially those from Eastern Europe, had limited resources to buy books. He also hoped that other western scholars would do the same. The world is much poorer for the loss of a scholar of the intellect, the dedication, and the kindness of Dr. Robert Elsie.
Frances Trix is professor emerita of Linguistics and Anthropology and has long worked and studied in Albanian communities in Michigan and the Balkans.
