Body, Sacred Language and Poetic Form in Contemporary Albanian Poetry: The Case of Ledia Dushi

Abstract

Abstract: This article examines the poetry of Ledia Dushi as a distinctive case of contemporary Albanian poetic expression in which body, sacred language, and poetic form are closely interwoven. Focusing primarily on Ave Maria bahet lot [Ave Maria Turns into Tears] and selected later developments in Dushi’s poetry, the article argues that her work does not use bodily, natural, and liturgical imagery as decorative material, but transforms them into a coherent poetic system. Her authorial use of Gheg Albanian—understood here as Dushi’s individualized and formally organized use of the dialect rather than as a fixed technical category—functions not merely as a dialectal marker, but as an aesthetic structure that shapes rhythm, intimacy, sound, and embodiment. Through close reading, the article analyses how images of the body, animals, natural elements, sacred figures, and liturgical objects produce a poetic universe in which the boundaries between the sensual and the spiritual, the human and the natural, and voice and silence remain deliberately unstable. The study also considers Dushi’s movement from early figurative intensity toward a more restrained consciousness of form, fragmentation, and poetic silence.