Aleksander Stavre Drenova

Devoted to Edith Durham a friend of Albania, his second collection of again 99 poems, Ëndrra e lotë, displayed a wider range of themes and motifs as well as his more astonishing maturity. On the 30th of June 2021 the new 10000 Lekë banknote was issued by the Bank of Albania with the main portrait being that of Asdreni.[4]

• Name — Asdreni • Pen Name — Asdreni • Birth Name — Aleksandër Stavre Drenova • Born — 11 April 1872 • Birthplace — Drenovë, Ottoman Empire (present day Albania) • Died — 11 December 1947 • Place of death — Bucharest, Romania • Occupation — * Poet • rilindas • translator • writer • Language — * Albanian • Romanian • Genre — * Realism • Romanticism • Movement — Albanian Renaissance • Relatives — Stavri Thimiu (father)

Asdreni was born as Aleksandër Stavre Drenova on 11 April 1872 into an Albanian peasant family of Eastern Orthodox faith in the village of Drenovë close to the city of Korçë in what was then part of the Ottoman Empire and is now Albania.[5] In his native village he properly received his early formal education at a Greek primary school and had just started secondary school in Korçë subsequently his father, Stavri Thimiu, died leaving him fatherless.[6] The surrounding region Korçë had been a prime source of Albanian migration which was additionally strengthened by an earthquake in 1879. He consequently migrated to Bucharest in 1885 and rejoined his more elderly brothers where he also commenced his short-living studies at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Bucharest. In the new country, Asdreni came into liaison with other Albanian intellectuals and writers with whom he started to strengthen the Albanian diaspora in Romania for the struggle of national liberation. Prior to that, he was strongly inspired by Girolamo de Rada and Naim Frashëri as well as by the Albanian Renaissance in which the Albanians came to acknowledge themselves as a nation deserving the right to govern themselves. Asdreni died in 1947 in Bucharest. He was initially buried there, at the Sfânta Vineri Cemetery (where Nikolla Naço is also buried), but his remains were brought to Albania and buried in Drenovë in 1974.[7]

Aleksander Stavre Drenova is recorded with the occupation freedom fighter. Classed in the genre Romanticism. Recorded as poet, writer, journalist, diplomat and freedom fighter. Associated with Albanian National Awakening. Identity and origins. He also worked under the name Asdreni. The authorities additionally record the headings Asdreni and Alexander Stavre Drenova. His recorded languages were Albanian, Romanian and Aromanian.