I admired Nietzsche
a flame untamed,
a mind that bowed to none;
yet in his light I saw the shadow,
in his voice the weariness of the soul.
He spoke of the will to power,
of the man who walks above his fear,
but he forgot
a man without love
is a superman broken from within.
Schopenhauer stood beside him,
to name the world a burning hell,
to call despair a law of nature.
But life, dear Nietzsche, is not to be accepted
it is to be ignited,
a light against the night that drowns us.
You said: “God is dead.”
Perhaps you saw only
the shadow of a man
who no longer believed in love.
You said: “Life is absurd.”
Yet you missed the sky breathing over flowers,
the laughter of a child
without philosophy.
And still we follow you,
for in every doubt burns a spark,
in every denial, a longing for light.
You dreamed of the Übermensch,
I dream of the man who forgives,
who walks wounded,
yet keeps love alive.
Nietzsche, your final message
was not the void
it was the search for light
in the darkness of the human soul.
About the Poet
Lan Qyqalla is a contemporary Albanian poet, writer, translator, and professor of Albanian language and literature. He has made a distinguished contribution to education and literary culture in Kosovo and beyond. Since 2017, he has been a member of the Academy of Albanian–American Arts and Sciences in New York. As of October 2025, Lan Qyqalla has published 19 literary works in both poetry and short fiction, written and translated into Albanian, French, Romanian, Swedish, Polish, English, Turkish, and Croatian.
Some of his poetry collections have been officially promoted in Paris by the World Union of Francophone Critics, as well as in Gothenburg (Sweden), Finland, Skopje, Tirana, and Pristina.
