POST-BYZANTINE GREEK POETRY
AND
THE TRENDS OF THE LAST FIFTY YEARS
Aʼ Short schematic tour of the Epoch of Greek-written poetry
A01. – If we observe, in a geographical way, Hellenik poetry from its beginning approximately 4.000 years before until the present, the poetry that has been written in Greek during the past 50 years can be represented by a mass of scattered mountains, low and medium in heighth which probably are unknown to the non – specialized in Greek poetry , and multifont, humble, anonymous hills and knolls which does not present important hypsometric differences. The flora of these mountains and hills ( i.e. the elaboration of verse) is brought from the West during the last 80 to a 100 years, more or less, results in an assortment already mixed with romanticism, symbolism, , modernism,
, social realism, existentialism and the beatnik generation.
AO2. – Now we turn our backs on the low mountains and the small hills as we look at the scenery, we can see, from a fluctuant distance of 50 to 150 years a mountainous proportion, with obvious higher tops in between which some are most certainly known to the ʽsufficient readerʼ of the world poetry, as for example, the vertices Konstantinos Kavafis, Nikos Kazantzakis, George Seferis (Nobel prize 1963) and Odysseas Elytis (Nobel prize 1979). The flora remains more or less the same, with thee exception of Kavafis in which the sprouting is indigenous – endemic, diligently nurtured by the ramifications of the main Hellenistic period. With its vivid colors of decadence of the bourgeois European civilization and its explicit analogies along with the similar ʽspeciesʼ grown by Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. As proffesor of Byzantine and modern Greek in the University of Oxford, Constantine A. Trypanis wrote: “An Alexandrian by birth, Kavafis discerned behind present-day Alexandria the linements of the decadent Hellenistic past, out of which he built his ʽmythʼ of a perssonal and at the same time perennial human condition. Perhaps no other Greek poet has expresed the tragedy of life more sensually, or felt sensuality more tragically; but elements of relief abound, exquisssitely lyrical and often ironical. His writings have been widely translated, and universally acknowledged”.
AO3. – Looking even further back as far as 200 years ago, up until 1000 years we can see extending the well – known to the 18th and 19th century foreing traveller, mountainous region of the folk – songs (demotika tragoudia), with their many indigenous noble mountain tops and greenery. Other than the mountainous volume of folk songs corresponding to the high level of the Cypriote and Cretan poetry of the 16th and 17th century, with greenery introduced from the royal gardens of Western chivalrous romance.
AO4. – At the same distance and even further back, at a length of a 1000 years or more, stretches the dreary plain of words that Byzantine poetry amputates itself spot by spot from the hills and cosmic knolls laboratories or verse for the common man. At the weary lowlanders and at the few peaks or greenery main completions from ancient Greek type culture to friendly greenhouses.
AO5. – Further from the weary lowlanders of Byzantine poetry at its beginning of the mountain chain of the Hellenistic period. Mountains of middle great height with famous, continuous, gentle peaks, from which the most famous being the Menander (? 343 – 293 BC), the Callimachos (310-c, 240 BC), the Theocritos (c. 316-c 260 BC) and the Apollonius Rhodius (295 – 215 BC), overgrown by low idyllic, indigenous vegetation.
AO6. – In the depths of time visible from all parts of the horizon and all towns, you detect the imposing mass of the Himalayas of Western poetry. Its enormous peaks which are ancient and well-known. Legendary names and indefeasible: Homer (date unknown), Hesiod (date unknown), Arhilochus (fl. 648 BC), Sappho (fl. ? 600 BC), Pindar (522 – ? 448 BC), Aeschylus (525 – 456 BC), Sophocles (495 – 406 BC), Euripides (480 – 406 BC) Aristophanes (445 – 388 BC) from up close are several others, comparatively lower but still most definitely with much higher peaks. The vegetation here is so old that it may be considered indigenous to the land from centuries long ago.
B Works and definitions of Greek-spoken poetry from approx. 150 BC to the present day.
BO1. – The progrecive move of the economics and politics of the past as well as the cultural center shifted from Athens, to Pergamo, Rhodes, Efesso, Antioch and above all Alexandria to Rome. The integration of various Greek dialects that were created by the conquests of Alexander the Great (Iskanter, Iskenter, Sikanter, in Arabic, in Turkish, and the Persian equivalents), resulted in common contemporary Greek. This has become the culmination which has created the Greek of the contemporary -Scripture-. The onset invasion of Christianity and the creation of the New Rome/Constantinople/Istanbul, the linguistic Hellenization of the Eastern Roman Empire. This was later known as Byzantine. Its collapse and Ottoman conquest caused its tectonic alterations where much later (at the beginning of the 19th century) dramatic conscientious partitions took place, and ever since they separated the Greek-speech into ancient and modern, in which history, the language and the letters became ancient and modern.
BO2. – Poetry specifically begins to decline by the end of the 1st century BC. Slowly, slowly, it ceases to incite and define. Gradually, it eventually ceases being called Greek. Up until about 200 years ago, where it breaks away literary (by the foreigners, but also, from the masochistic mania of the Greek ) from its linguistic deposits, the above mentioned, Himalayas of the Western literature, and called romeiki , (from certain few advocates towards the end of the 18th century) at the beginning and ends up at the Neo-Hellenic (modern Greek), (starting at the turn of the 19th century).
BO3. – The term modern Greek partly states the political and spiritual resurrection of the Greeks into the “New World”, so to speak, in a world that was created with the breakup of the medieval or old-fashioned political and spiritual culture. Historically terminating the political and spiritual discontinuity of the Greeks. What is also of value, is the fact that the adjectives neos, nea, neo (new) locally assigned excerpts, large villages, cities and settlements of the Hellenic state never meant imperialist epopee infiltrates the forces in the metropolitan centers onwards towards new colonized countries, as has happend in the history of other peoples (i.e. New York, New World, New Zealand, etc.). It is always about a loss of territory a shrinkage and colonization elsewhere, migrating populations to the so-called , that is to say, to the crippled Greek dominion.
BO4. – The distinction of the Greek language, in its ancient, archaic, purist, and modern form (namely written and spoken) is significative in its literal use. The linguistic evolution of Greek dialects, is charged for already 2000 years, with intense ideological burden and established central cross-road points of its understanding, almost schizophrenic, ambiguity, that deplores the Greek-spoken scolars and , generally, when they call to state who they are and what relationship they have with those Greeks, the originals (the antiques ).
BO5. – Under Byzantioum to be Hellenized the < ελληνιζειν (Hellenizin)>, so to say, the mimic and the adoption of Greek ways and perceptions, during the first centuries were seen as unaccepted and Christian, swerving towards idolatry. From the 5th century onwards, it implied certain ramifications. However, the one and only language of the church, (which was the language of the Holly Fathers) and, advancing the time the administration language became Greek. The literate Greeks seen as the educated, who wrote mostly Attic dialect, from the illiterate Christians did not write at all but spoke common at first and slowly, slowly, the popular dialect (demotiki) which, was more or less, as is spoken today. This also vindicated the difference between scholar and popular or common poetry.
ΒΟ6. – This fact, that for 1000ʼs of years an entire world of all scholars (the Byzantine) wrote the mundane, the dogmatic-theological and the mass-ecclesiastic, namely their faith, wrote their texts in one language the classical Attic which, step by step, ceased to be spoken and which original denotations censored and (denounced, accused) as undermining their faith, so to speak, their identity, consisting in itself on a psychological level, trembling factor of every attempt of intergrating a neat self-awareness, regarding social contract intense conformism lasting to this day. Also on the grounds of scholar expression, a rehearsal power of every renovative creative trend.
BO7. – The overcoming of the impasse that hindered the uncoiling, of scholar expression towards giving birth for the first time to creating ways, was succeeded, by a tragical event and with the irony of historical luck of the Greek-speakers, with the violent abolition by the Turks of the Byzantine theocracy. However, it was never overcome by the scholars in the regions which remained under the Turks occupation , instead by the Greek Cypriots that were governed by Frankish knights, and mainly in Crete that was then governed by the Venetians (15th – 17th century).
BO8. – The LIBERATION of the language of administration and the notary transactions (which by now was directed to the central Venetian administration and in the bilingual tranacting parties) from the Attican-spoken tongue of the Byzantine beurocracy, removed advancing the time the Greek Cypriots and Cretans from the scholar dialect allowing the creative minds to express themselves in the spoken tongue and to create works influenced from Frankish and Italian prototypes, though, written in rich, succulent, popular tongue, which made it easyer the memorization by the lower class almost for 500 years until the present day, mainly in Crete.
BO9. – Crete and Cyprus were conquered later by the Turks. The language of the administration, remained in the way it was spoken in ancient times. The stagnation of the ecclesiastic bureaucracy and of the educated Greeks/Romioi of Constantinople who were in service of the Ottoman Sublime Porte as high-ranked political officials and Great Interpretors. The first letters were taught by the ecclesiastic texts, then the educated continued the language of Byzantine teaching. The working forces that overcame the works of the Cretan and Cypriote period discontinued the poetical words, thus dissipated almost to extinction.
B10. – During the 18th and 19th century, centuries of financial, spiritual and political of the Greek (that is, all that lived out of the Ottoman Empire) a lot of great Greek-speaking spiritual centers (Ioannina, Constantinople, Chios, Smirni, Bucharest) at the limits of the Ottoman Empire, and the so-called linguistic matters exacerbated causing great ideological battles between the puritists, who introduced the resurgence of the ancient language, as a prerequisite to the resurrection of the
and the users of demotic, who judged that the
will be revived only if the spoken language becomes the written language. Under this period appeared the first works, ancient dialects and the common verse – imitations of poetical styles stemming mainly from the French literature.
B11. – On the ideological field, where the literary conflicts take place, the linguistic stereotypes are no longer perceived as different as to the philosophical holistic survey of the world and faith. The linguistic polarity no longer differentiates between Idolaters and Christians, but during the duration of the 19th century, there is a separation of Greek scholars into and
, on one side and into
and on the other. At the turn of the century (1890 – 1900 and onward) with the diffusion of Socialist and Marxist ideas, the establishment of
and societies and Socialistic political parties of those who wrote in puristic form were considered as , , and those who wrote in and likely in in pure (language inveteed)
B12. – In 1828, after the Greek war of Independence against the Ottoman rule that held 7 years, the Greeks founded the New Hellenic state which formerly extended gradually towards the Ottoman state and previously in the past shrinking, or renouncing the present boundaries that decided what would be the language of administration and the education that would console the civil service.
B13. – The demand was by the enforcement of a language that which the administration and education of the officialese , a language that held to an intense level the ancient characteristics, and from the dictionary of the commons many words won from the ancient, inspired with Greek-spoken neologisms declarative terms of science, of administration rt and of technology. The supremacy of the pure Greek as official language of the state and language of the held from 1833 until 1979, thus as language of the state, the newspapers, the , and the ignorant, surfaced de jure or , which de facto had already been dominated from the beginning of the 19th century.
B14. – The creation and the strengthening of the Greek state, the elementary institutional schools and second degree scools, the publishing of newspapers and magazines, and mainly the foundation of the University of Athens, the spiritual forces of the Greek-speakers were concentrated in Greece, moving from the Ottomans the Western-European ways originated the so-called
, that is, letters and sciences and, as was natural information about the new poetical trends.
B15 – Henceforth defining, the Greek-speaking poetry, progressively and with 2 to 10 years distance, from the ways of the French, the Italian (alike the poetry of the Ionian islands that are located across Italy, were not captured by the Turks and remained successively from Venetian, French and English occupation until 1864 that is embodied in the Greek dominion) and lately (from 1930 until today) from the ways of English-American poetry.
B16 – Especially the first 60 years, roughly, of the 19th century, Romanticism dominated, and the state, with the exception of words of the Ionian islands, that keep from the Creto-Venetian tradition, they follow the Italian poetical things and are written under the rules of the (folk, popular). From the Ionian islands were the founders of the Neo – Hellenic poetry were born , the count Dionysios Solomos, and the petit bourgeois Andreas Kalvos, who are both of first poetical class, eventhough they are completely different artists in their idiosyncratic art form. D. Solomos studied in Italy, defined from the German idealistic philosophy and fought relentlessly the puritans. His poetry as part of its vision and rhetoric is placed between romanticism, as towards the musical quality and the perfection of his verse results as a prelude to Symbolism. At the same period, A. Kalvos wrote exquisite poems of a quality higher and measures unparalleled by our present poetry. I mean that he was linguistically variant and from a purist form and from a popular Orthodoxy bringing together words of ancient value with common ones, also in a way unprecedented by our present poetry.
B17 – From the last quarter of the 19th century until approximately 1930, Parnassismos (approx. 1880 – 1900) initially dominated Symbolism. The exepeption is Kavafis human attitude and sensual feelings of the historical situation of the people, and the aesthetic eroticism, expressed in a direct language, mixed (words and ways of the common folk together with those of purists also interweaved with the idioms of the colonized – Egyptian-Hellenic) counter-poetry for his time, it covers the symbolic extent of his poetry, creating a realistic feeling rendering historical events and erotical circumstances. Kariotakis was also an exception whose poetics shivers the traditional harmony of the verse and linguistically declinates from the common orthodoxy that Palamas had imposed, daring to use words and ways of the pure language, and ideologically attacking it with crude accusations and sarcastic hints, under the mass of deceiving Neo-Hellenic valuation, undermining the stereotypes of Symbolism.
B18 – From 1930 to 1940, the general inclination was order of the past 1920ʼs, converging and stabilizing in the worded poetry which basically constituted of Seferiʼs Modernism (that was transferred in Greek, French and English in expressionistic ways and ends up with the archetype of the so-called generation of the 30ʼs). He was followed by the genial Surrealist Eliti and the intense Empirco.
B19 – From then until today, we have the period of the ʽsuccesorsʼ (the first so-called post-war generation, the generation of defeatists, 1945 – 1955), the period of
(the second, so-called, post-war generation, the generation of lost poets, 1956 – 1965), the period of the (the third post-war generation, generation of the 70ʼs, or, generation of dispute, 1966 – 1975) and the generation of the (the forth post-war generation, generation of the 80ʼs, or, generation of the privatl vision, or simply, generation of Neo-romanticism, 1976 – 2000).
B20– Besides their differences, the post-war poets which remain on the heaviest level of these poets are those of the generation of the 30ʼs, whom repeat, variations of the poetical ways, wandering like satellites (of course at different elliptical paths) others around Seferi, others around Eliti, others around Empirico and still others around Ritso, who by age belong to the generation of the 30ʼs but do not share the same ideology.
B21 – The poetical ways of the post-war poets express mainly the different aspects of Modernism, with a slight inclination towards the naïve interpretation of Socialistic Realism in some early works of those committed to Marxist – Socialist ideals, poets of the period between 1945 – 1955, who wrote with a more intense and more permanent stance towards Surrealism a significant number of poets during the fourth period (1945 – 2000).
B22. – The rhyme, that came to Greece with the crusaders (11th – 13th century), consolidated with the Frankish occupation and dominated until about 1940, has all but disappeared. The rhetorical tones have fallen (with exception of the , not expressively, the rhetoric of the Surrealists, and the rhetoric of the civil war poets, who took side in the resistance during German occupation and the civil war that followed and were defeated and the tonic development of poems progressed under certain the communist party order. Claimed exception results or coincidence of the very talented poet Tasos Livaditi, poet of the < generation of defeatists>, who from the Socialrealistic rhetoric of his youth, ended up in delirium rhetoric of maturity, converting to the blowing of the horn of the social reformer to the lauthers and cries of a completely ruined man. Sui Generis is, such is the case of the genius Nikos Karouzos,a poet with strong talent, acute feeling of the language, great iconoplastic force, metaphysical conseption of the real, denouncement of common delicacy and peculiar profound lyricism, that if left boosted he has from achieved a devout and higher spirituality, even when he plays or swears.
B23. – The textual and semantic structure of poems mixed, from the simple coherence to the full disorganization, the iconoplastic is mixed in relation with them and the language, demotic by rule (though with strong projections of the pure languedge (Kathareuousa) in the poetry of the Surrealists) vascillating from the simple everyday idiom to the overdemanded, cryptical, sectional language detached from the so called ʽglosokenrtikiʼ those – who focus on the language.
B24. – Finally, with the exception of the generation of 1880, that disowned Romanticism, and the generation of 1930, that recommended Modernism, if something differs between of the NeoHellenic poets it is not the aesthetic trends and realization, but the language and the social ideology.
B25. – Close to 100 years, the conduct of the ideological juxtaposition is found in the linguistic field and the poets are seen in two fighting teams: the puritans and the demoticistes.
B26. – With the predominance of the popular idiom in literature, the dominance is obliged to the giant, linguistic, work of the leading poet and critic of the generation of 1880 who regulated for 50 years our poetical effects, Costi Palama, ideological polarization moved from the language of the social-politic field: the Socialists and the Marxists, self-assigned as
, accuse the Non-Marxist bourgois and small-bourgois, who are named as . The battle was won by the and soldierly order beat them in the civil war, 1944 – 1949), and politically, their class, still governs in some way, and aesthetically, (according to the boursoi poetical ways wrote and the Marxists) although in their disposition, the so-called generation of defeatisists, had many good and unique true defining poets (Varnali, who did not actually belong to their generation,although he was the first who mentioned from the Marxist view, social problems, the very good, who did not belong to these genaration, Ritso, who narrates with exemptible poetry Greece of the last 70 years, Anagnostaki, Alexandrou, and many others).
B27. – By the end of the decade of 1950, the wounds of the war, (1940 – 1941), of the German-Iatalian occupation, (1941 – 1944) and the civil war (1946 – 1949, slowly, slowly started to heal. A high percentage of young men and women left their ravaged countries and poor neighborhoods of the urban centers and emigrate in Germany, Australia, Canada, U.S.A, and any other country in which they could easily find work. Like so undoing their problems of unemployment the Greek governments of that time stood for order and strict rhythms of economical development. The poor, little wanting and spare and frugal. Greece altered into a growing, developed country, uncovering new needs and acquires new habits. The generations that came to the world of the twenties 1945 – 1965, passed their childhood years and lived their adolescence in an entirely different environment to the one before the war. They knew neither of war, famine, and unlike all who lack bodily suffering and living concerns, ] found out the poets of this generation, the delight of mental illness and the luxury of anxiety.
B28. – Here, really, the last two post-war generations differ,
and the : completely oblivious to everything, except their poetry (which all the more frequently, the more narcissistic, is self-explanatory), and their publicity, that seeks virulently, with everything in it and without any remorse .
B29. – Especially, the so-called is the first generation of poets who deny consciously to serve ideas. The Orthodoxy in language, the patriotic feelings, the social justice, and the Greek character, (the reflective agony assimilated to the foreign ways and the spiritual upgrating to all [currents] of the 3000ʼs literature and biotic tradition, runs through us underground of Greek/Romeikes awareness, as much as to save our ethnic characteristics without loosing our European orientation) successive, sequential requests – experimentation of consciousness and the art of the pre-war generations, not only left aside, indifferent, the poets of the but also intrigued, often, their irony and mockery.
B30. – ʽAs far as the so-called is concerned, with the exception of the sonnet, as a form of of the old free writing, it persists to offer to our letters its own understanding of lyricism, as an expression of
and its own perception about , as romanticism chambers.
B31. – The style of denial of the (as many as remain in the almost sexagenarian representatives) and the style of obstinence of the (who from the perspective of occupation and consumption of material things and service is more priviledge) remain interspersed in numerous magazines which nobody and nothing really represents. It did not lead to a shallow feeling with the aesthetics of the generations before, not even with their conformism (bourgeois of the generation of the 30ʼs, partly the generation of defeatists, from which are observed differences) of which, the reverse, adopted and with the necessary for their publishity cynicism is not sufficient as constituent of creational poetical generations.
B32. – The classification, categorization of the previous poetical generations, is fictious and arbitrary, since they did not manage to coordinate their voises, to concentrate cohesive poesy and ideology. A more general team to diversify effectively from the poets of the generation of the 30ʼs (who succeeded) and to result definitive in the poetical evolution.
B33. – The fictious, though, of their classification generations, does not discredit the quality and the authenticity of their poetry. They might not have shown leding personalities until the present day at least, into the leading forms and great sizes. They offered, however, twenty worthy, minor, poets and many other good poems and their poetry, more generally, by no means was not inferior to the currently written poetry and at the two coasts of the Atlantic, possibly even exceeding even that far.
Kostas Sofianos
Born 1945 in Athens.
Following secondary education in Merchant Navy School he graduated from the University of Athens Law School.
Lives in Athens where he practices Law since 1975. Has worked as a seaman (1963) proof – reader (1970 sgg) state radio producer (1983) editor of the law terms of the Papyros – Larousse – Britannica encyclopedia (1996 –1994) and college lecture on Law (1988 – 1993). First published in 1970 with a poetry collection.
In 1962 – 1972 assistant to the publication by Renos Apostolides (Nea Hellinika and Anthology) and editor of the Newspaper of Greek Jurists (1990 – 1994). Member of the publishing group of the literary review To Dentro (The Tree, 1978) along with K. Mavroudis, Y. Patilis and M. Ganas; along with Y. Patilis Ch Vrontos and Y.Zouganelis published the magazine Nissos -Mousiki kePoiisi (Island-Music and Poetry, 1982 –1985) and Kritiki ke Kimena ( Critique and Texts, 1984 – 1985). Since 1996 edits, along with Spyros Georgantas and Spyros Mandros, the web magazine Metatheseis (www.meta.gr).
Translated into Bulgarian, French, Italian and Russian.
Publications
POETRY
1970 Parergon (Side Lines Job)
1974 Simatoros (Singller)
1981 Apolafseis (Pleasures)
1994 To fantasma tou hepovolea (The Ghost of the Promper)
Contributed articles to the magazines he co-published as well as to the Literary reviews Pneumatiki Cyprus, To Dentro, I Lexi, Planodion and others. He also contributed the articles on Critique and Poetry of the Ekdotiki Athinon encyclopedia.
