Greek poets 9781587659119, 1587659115

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Critical Survey of Poetry

Greek Poets Editor Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman Charleston Southern University

Salem Press A Division of EBSCO Publishing, Ipswich, Massachusetts

Cover photo: Homer (© PoodlesRock/Corbis)

Copyright © 2012, by Salem Press, A Division of EBSCO Publishing, Inc. All rights in this book are reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews or in the copying of images deemed to be freely licensed or in the public domain. For information address the publisher, Salem Press, at [email protected].

ISBN: 978-1-58765-911-9 ISBN: 978-1-42983-660-1

CONTENTS Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv Greek Poetry in Antiquity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Greek Poetry Since 1820. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Macedonian Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Archilochus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Callimachus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Constantine P. Cavafy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Odysseus Elytis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Ugo Foscolo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Hesiod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Nazim Hikmet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Homer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Nikos Kazantzakis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 Leonidas of Tarentum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Meleager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Nikos Pentzikis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Pindar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Yannis Ritsos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 Sappho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 George Seferis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Dionysios Solomos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Theocritus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 Theognis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 Checklist for Explicating a Poem . Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . Guide to Online Resources . . . . Geographical Index . . . . . . . Category Index . . . . . . . . . . Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . .

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CONTRIBUTORS Peter Bien University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth J. R. Broadus University of North Carolina Peter Constantine New York, New York Carrie Cowherd Howard University J. Madison Davis Pennsylvania State CollegeBehrend College

Sarah Hilbert Pasadena, California Tracy Irons-Georges Glendale, California Maura Ives Texas A&M University Rebecca Kuzins Pasadena, California John M. Lee James Madison University Richard Peter Martin Princeton University

Andonis Decavalles Fairleigh Dickinson University

Laurence W. Mazzeno Alvernia College

Desiree Dreeuws Sunland, California

Vasa D. Mihailovich University of North Carolina

Jack Ewing Boise, Idaho

Christina J. Moose Pasadena, California

Daniel H. Garrison Northwestern University

Adriano Moz Spring Hill College

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Evelyn S. Newlyn Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman Charleston Southern University Minas Savvas San Diego State University Thomas J. Sienkewicz Monmouth College James Stone Shaker Heights, Ohio George Thaniel University of Toronto Karen Van Dyck Columbia University Michael Witkoski University of South Carolina

GREEK POETRY IN ANTIQUITY The earliest Greek poetry was unlettered, oral, and traditional. For centuries before the appearance of the alphabet in the eighth century b.c.e., Greek poets were creating songs, probably in dactylic hexameter, for entertainment, ritual, and religious purposes. Some of these poems were probably short lyrics and others were longer tales about their heroes and gods. Most, if not all, were probably intended for public performance by individuals or by choruses. Especially in longer, narrative poetry, fixed phrases such as epithets and formulas were used as mnemonic devices and compositional tools to tell and retell tales through generations. Homer While the texts of the earliest surviving Greek poetry, the Homeric epics Iliad (c. 750 b.c.e.; English translation, 1611) and Odyssey (c. 725 b.c.e.; English translation, 1614), were probably not written down in definitive form until the eighth century b.c.e., the tales on which they are based may have existed in oral form at least by the late second millennium b.c.e. Although the very existence of their author is clouded in controversy, few challenge their author’s debt to a long chain of earlier poets who helped establish tales about a ten-year-long war between the Greeks and the Trojans and the troublesome homecomings of the Greeks after their victory. Homer’s Iliad deals only with the tenth year of the war and the consequences of the quarrel between the Greek leader Agamemnon and his chief warrior Achilles. The Odyssey focuses on the ten-year wanderings of the Greek warrior Odysseus following the war and the troubles he faced when he finally arrived home in Ithaca. Many other tales surrounding these events were part of a tradition called Trojan cycle. Some were concerned with the events leading up to the war or with the nine years of conflict prior to the Iliad, others with events following the Iliad and with the end of the war. There were also other homecoming tales besides that of Odysseus, and even stories about other wars, such as that known as the Seven Against Thebes, but none of these survives except in fragments. Also surviving under Homer’s name, but probably written by a number of anonymous authors, are the Homeric hymns, a collection of thirty-three songs to individual Greek deities. Thought to have been sung as preludes or introductions, especially for performances of Greek epics, these hymns use the dactylic hexameter and vocabulary of Homer and usually include the traditional parts of a prayer, with an invocation, sanction, and entreaty to the god. A few of these hymns, specifically those to Demeter (2), Apollo (3), Hermes (4), Aphrodite (6), and Dionysus (7), incorporate significant narrative sections telling stories about these deities.

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Hesiod In his two surviving poems Theogonia (c. 700 b.c.e.; Theogony, 1728) and Erga kai Emerai (c. 700 b.c.e.; Works and Days, 1618), the poet Hesiod (fl. c. 700 b.c.e.) also uses the hexameter and language of Homer but in an often personal, didactic tone. In Theogony, Hesiod focuses on the birth of the gods and the violent succession of divine rulers from Uranus to Cronus to Zeus. Works and Days, usually described as a farming manual, is rather a statement of Hesiod’s own philosophy and worldview. In his personal poetic voice, he celebrates the justice of Zeus, describes the evils of women, and reflects on his own divine calling to be a poet. Other well-known myths told by Hesiod in these poems include the stories of the Titan Prometheus and of the first woman, Pandora. First-person poetry Hesiod’s poetry marks a transition in the seventh century b.c.e. from the traditional, oral poetry represented by the surviving Homeric epics to shorter, more individualized verse that often uses this traditional language in novel ways. In most cases, this poetry, like the Homeric epics, continues to be composed for performance rather than for publication. Most of this poetry survives only in short fragments culled from references in later works or found on scraps of Egyptian papyri. These poems are written in a variety of meters, styles, and dialects. Some, like elegy, use the traditional dactylic hexameter, but accompanied by a second line, in dactylic pentameter, to form an elegiac couplet. It is possible that the origin of the word “elegy” is derived from a non-Greek word for flute. This poetry was, in fact, often sung to the accompaniment of such musical instruments. Occasionally the Greeks themselves mistakenly assumed that the word meant “lament,” but such poetry is especially associated with commemoration of the dead only in the Greek tombstone inscription tradition. Ancient Greek poems written in a variety of other meters are usually called “lyric,” after a stringed-instrument the Greeks called the lyre. A third important type of personal verse used an iambic meter especially for invective or poetry of personal attack. While metrical form and theme are closely associated in Greek poetry, such metrical features are rarely discernible in English translation. All of these varied verse forms, however, share an emphasis on personal self expression, reflection, and, especially, the use of the first person. Archilochus One of the earliest surviving poets of elegiac and iambic was Archilochus (c. 680-c. 640 b.c.e.). In a famous fragment about losing his shield in battle, Archilochus used Homeric vocabulary to question traditional Greek military values and priorities, which demanded that a warrior return either with his shield or on it. Archilochus argued that saving his life and being able to fight again for his country were more important than the shield, which he lost. Much of Archilochus’s poetry seems to have centered on his relationship with a woman named Neobule. When her father Lycambes suddenly broke off 2

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Archilochus’s engagement to his daughter, the poet turned to violent, abusive invective against both father and daughter, who are said to have committed suicide as a result of Archilochus’s attacks. An alternative interpretation of this invective poetry, usually written in a metric form called iambic, is that such poetry is actually ritualistic rather than personal and autobiographical. The relationship between the name Lycambes and iambic argues strongly in favor of such a ritualistic context for Archilochus’s poetry. Semonides Greatly influenced by Archilochus’s invective iambic poetry was Semonides of Amorgos (fl. late seventh century b.c.e.). His most significant surviving fragment is a strongly misogynistic iambic poem in which various animals are compared to different types of women. Only the industrious woman, compared to a bee, earns the poet’s approval. Sappho and Alcaeus Sappho and Alcaeus, both of Lesbos, wrote their lyric poetry in the early sixth century b.c.e. Both experimented with metric forms and created meters named after them. Both suffered exile from their homeland due to political upheavals on the island during the reigns of the tyrants Myrsilus and Pittacus. Alcaeus replied to Archilochus by losing his shield in one of his poems. In addition to contemporary politics, the poet wrote drinking songs, love songs, and hymns. He is best known as the possible inventor of the “ship of state” metaphor. Sappho is one of the few female voices in ancient Greece. Her poetry deals occasionally with politics and myth, but especially focuses on apparently autobiographical themes, especially her love for other women. Her only complete poem is probably her “Prayer to Aphrodite,” which transforms the public prayer poem into a description of a personal relationship with the goddess. Alcman The lyric poet Alcman worked in Sparta in the late seventh century b.c.e. and wrote hymns to the gods, love poems, and especially songs for choruses of young women. These choral songs, probably sung at festivals and perhaps in competition, may have used a central mythic narrative to make a moral point. Anacreon Anacreon of Teos (c. 571-c. 490 b.c.e.) is especially associated with the courts of the tyrants Polycrates of Samos and Hipparchus of Athens, for whom he wrote joyful and reflective lyrics about love, drinking songs, and occasional elegiacs. While his surviving fragments occasionally refer to the political turmoil of his day, Anacreon’s poems seem to seek escape from such concerns in the sophisticated pleasures of the aristocratic symposium or drinking party. 3

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Theognis One of the few Archaic elegists whose work survives substantially in manuscript is Theognis (c. seventh century-c. sixth century b.c.e.). Theognis’s poetry is addressed to a friend named Cyrnus and includes drinking and love songs. Theognis’s emphatic aristocratic bias is revealed in his strong feelings about politics and morality. Other early poets The poetry of other early elegists reflects the frequent warfare of the period as Ionian Greeks struggled to resist the great empires of the East and generations of Spartans fought on the Greek mainland against their neighbors the Messinians. Poets like Tyrtaeus of Sparta (fl. seventh century b.c.e.), Callinus of Ephesus (fl. early seventh century b.c.e.) and Mimnermus of Colophon (fl. 632-29 b.c.e.) wrote about war and exhorted their contemporaries to fight on behalf of their cities. Occasionally Mimnermus turned to more personal themes, such as the difficulties of old age. Archaic Greek poetry was also used for philosophic and political purposes. The preSocratic philosopher Xenophanes of Colophon (fl. late sixth century b.c.e.) wrote in a variety of poetic forms, including epic, elegy, and satirical iambics and hexameters. His surviving fragments challenged many of the assumptions and norms of Greek society, including the anthropomorphism of the Greek gods and the honors awarded to Greek athletes. The Athenian statesman Solon (fl. early sixth century) used poetry to justify the political and economic reforms he instituted as archon in 594-593 b.c.e. The classical period The fifth century b.c.e. saw the finest flowering of poetry in Greece. The tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides and the comedies of Aristophanes are the bestknown and most influential products of this period, associated with the civic life of Athens, which grew to be the center of Greek culture of the time. Practitioners from many places in the Greek-speaking world, however, helped to raise poetry to a high state in the century that saw the defeat of Persia and the downfall of democratic Athens. Pindar’s brilliant choral odes celebrating victors in the national games, important philosophical verse, elaborate dithyrambic poetry—all had their roots and flourished outside Athens. Although the achievement of Athenian dramatists came to overshadow the other poetry of the period, a true appreciation of their highly synthetic art form requires a sense of the fifth century poetic “climate”; only then can what is innovative and fresh in the drama of the period be contrasted with that which continues Archaic trends. Popular poetry and skolia The parties, or symposia, at which Greek men gathered regularly to discuss the latest politics, to drink, and to talk on all topics, from the trivial to the philosophical, often featured informal songs as well. Plato’s dialogue Symposion (fourth century b.c.e.; Sympo4

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sium, 1701) offers a look at the procedures on such occasions: Each member of the party must contribute a performance, poetic or rhetorical. An antiquarian writer of the second century c.e., Athenaeus, preserved about twenty-five examples of various types of songs that might be sung on such occasions. The topics that most occupied the minds of the Athenian leisure class are in kernel form here. It should be remembered that this class gave Athens its preeminent writers and that, in general, Greek literature was the creation of an elite. The audience for the public poetry of the drama, however, was mixed in a democratic fashion because admission was provided by the city-state; on other occasions, the poetry was performed at free festivals. What might a fifth century Greek have sung, then, at an evening’s entertainment? He might well have chosen a poem by a sixth century lyric poet such as Anacreon or Alcaeus, a poem celebrating the joys of drinking and sporting among friends. For variety, the participants in a symposium, especially those with good voices, might have invented new words for a traditional tune, or they might have had verse-capping contests (like those of Japanese party poetry, renga) in which the song would zigzag among the guests. Both of these latter sorts of entertainment seem to have fallen under the heading of skolia (crooked songs). Politics, love, social life, and light philosophy were the most popular subjects of skolia. In these occasional poems, several points of interest appear. First, the political allusions, although they may refer to figures of a century earlier, concern the present day: The continuing call for isonomia (equal portioning) was a democratic slogan in Athens, so that this skolion was no doubt sung among members of the political clubs opposed to aristocrats. Again, the songs reveal glimpses of alternative myths (also a powerful political weapon in Greek culture): Nowhere in the tragedy of the Iliad, for example, is it hinted that Achilles will survive death at the hands of the Trojans, but a skolion on this theme has a different version. One is reminded that popular Greek culture knew hundreds of myths and bits of lore, many more than have survived, all of which provided an essential background to an understanding by Athenians of Greek tragedy, where some dramatists used alternative versions for the sake of making dramatic points. Thus, the skolia serve as reminders of the bulk of fifth century Greek poetry, which has been lost to later generations. Tragedy also deals with the ethical values of the group, as represented by the polis (city-state), and here also, popular poetry can offer insights, providing evidence for a view of life that might have been held by many Athenians in the audience of a dramatic performance. What is a crisis, in ancient Greek terms? Does it resemble anything so terrible as the fates of tragic heroes? One might revise the answer to these questions on reading in a skolion that “for a mortal, health is the first best thing; second, fine looks; third, honest wealth; and fourth—to be among friends and be young.” These are far from the heroic virtues that many critics take tragedy as teaching. The friends (philoi) mentioned above indicate that in the fifth century, the ethics of 5

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an earlier age had not died out. The bulk of extant verse from the Archaic period was meant for performance before friends and directed toward the consolidation of the group which constituted the audience. Such friend groups still determined the course of politics and social life in Greece at a later stage. The fifth century songs continue this emphasis on knowing who one’s friends are (although they fail to mention the usual Archaic converse of the statement—that one should hate one’s enemies). One poem expresses the wish to open up and look inside the heart of a man in order “to consider, by his guileless mind, whether a man is dear [philos]”; other verses call on companions to “drink with me, be young with me, with me love and wear festive crowns; go mad when I’m out of my mind, and be sober when I am.” Finally, a short poem warns, in the manner of earlier didactic poetry: “Friend, a scorpion’s under every rock; make sure that he doesn’t strike you. All treachery goes with what is hidden.” This constant urge to bring out into the light the hidden spaces of the heart—among friends at least—is at the root of Athenian drama, it might be said; tragedy, the highest art form of Greece, is the bringing forth in public (where the friends are those of the city/audience) what is hidden in the souls of enigmatic heroes such as Ajax and Oedipus, so that the public can learn. Although the genres differ widely in scale and occasion, they share a common ideology and a goal of group consolidation. Elegaic poetry The historic events of the fifth century b.c.e. brought new demands for such social cohesion as poetry could offer. In the early part of the century, the Greek city-states banded together under the lead of Sparta and Athens to defeat the might of the Persians, first in 490 b.c.e., then in a more protracted struggle ending in 480 or 479 b.c.e. with Greek victories at Salamis and Plataea. This surprising outcome ushered in an era of self-confidence and inspired serious high art that attempted to understand the world system anew: What kind of virtue did Greece have that it could win against such odds? The drama of Aeschylus (525-456 b.c.e.), which attempted to reconcile cosmic problems by pointing to the example of Athens’s institutions, is but one indication of this trend. Aeschylus also wrote the only surviving Greek tragedy that deals with a historical rather than a mythic event: His Persai (The Persians, 1777), produced in 472 b.c.e., only eight years after the Athenian victory at Salamis, pictures that battle as the inevitable result of the clash between Athenian piety and godless Persian arrogance. As always in Greece, poetry and politics mixed. Many battles of the Persian War were commemorated shortly after they occurred, as cities paid poets to honor those who had fallen. For this purpose, the type of verse used was an old form called elegiac, dating at least to the seventh century b.c.e. and consisting of couplets in the form of a dactylic hexameter followed by a dactylic pentameter. Elegy had long been used for consolatory or lament poems, but it was also a vehicle for light verse, as examples by Archilochus show, and for instructional poetry, as in the work of Theognis, in the sixth century b.c.e. 6

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The examples of the genre in the fifth century b.c.e. are mainly serious in tone, with a laconic expressiveness that arises from the contrast between the longer first line and the pungent, short second line of the couplet. Simonides of Ceos (556-468 b.c.e.) is credited with the best epitaphs written for Persian War heroes. A poet with a wide reputation in his time for both choral and elegiac verse, his is the famous inscription for three hundred Spartan dead at Thermopylae: “Friend, to the Spartans report that here, obedient to their words, we repose.” Poignant brevity and understatement are the mark of Simonides’ craft; to the memory of the entire Greek force buried at Thermopylae were inscribed his words: “Here, once, fought against three hundred thousand, four thousand from the Peloponnese.” For a contingent of sailors who died in the last naval battle of the war, he wrote: “Friend, once we lived in the town that had good harbors—Corinth; now the island of Ajax holds us—Salamis.” When read in bulk, this sort of elegiac verse, most often the work of anonymous poets, offers glimpses of Greek feeling on the heroic, on death, and on the afterlife, in an unvarnished manner. Those who died in battle were often given the status of “hero”—a word usually indicating a revered warrior of the distant past. Tragedy looks back to the Trojan War era for its heroes and makes them contemporary with the Athenian fifth century; just so, elegiac verse enshrines contemporary heroes in the tradition of the past, so that there is recompense for their having died—the granting of fame through poetry. Paradoxically, the complex art form of tragedy is most successful when it attains the elegant simplicity of sentiment and expression characteristic of such epitaphs. Aeschylus and Sophocles are known to have written some elegiac verse, and it perhaps benefited their art. At any rate, this is another instance of the influence of the “poetic climate”: A Greek audience, imbued with the spirit of inscriptional verse encountered daily, would be properly primed to appreciate the clarity and seriousness of tragic drama, the convention that left the worst out of view (murder, for example, which was never displayed on stage). Sepulchral verse hardly mentions the fact of dying but renders its significance. Finally, the premise of the epitaphs—that the dead live or are speaking to passersby—illuminates central assumptions that underlie tragedy: One must reenact the hero’s sufferings onstage because heroes still “live,” at least in annual cult observances. Indeed, so many Greek tragedies actually deal with the death or burial of the hero and so much detail is accorded to the burial site in the plays—as in Aeschylus’s ChoTphoroi (458 b.c.e.; Libation Bearers, 1777), for example—that it has been suggested that tragedy grew out of the religious act of hero worship, a ritual process which took place at tombs throughout Greece. Thus, the connections between epitaph and tragedy may go deeper than an affinity of tone. Philosophical poetry Greek tragedy is philosophical poetry; both in the choruses and in the speeches of actors, humanity’s fate, a person’s relation to the gods and to other people in the polis, con7

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tinually occupies the minds of the tragedians. How does one reconcile God and humans? What takes precedence, the family or the city? These and other questions force Greek tragedy to become thoughtful, wide-spirited, and therefore universal. Philosophy in poetic form, however, was by no means confined to tragedy. Both the popular poetry of the symposium and the laconic art of tombstone verse reveal a particular Greek fascination with the large questions of life. Choral poetry (to be discussed below) also traditionally is interwoven with philosophical statements in the form of “gnomes”—pithy moral statements such as that by Alcman: “From the gods comes retribution.” Simonides Simonides, who also wrote elegiac poetry, was much admired in the fifth century for verse that attempted to deal with ethical questions. His poetry, which explores and expands on common gnomic statements, might well be labeled philosophical. His poem in praise of the Thessalian aristocrat Scopas seems to have been particularly well known, so much so that Plato, in his philosophical dialogue Prftagoras (fourth century b.c.e., Protagoras, 1804), could represent his master Socrates and other intellectuals as alluding to Simonides’ poem as though each knew the verses by heart. “For a man to become truly good, shaped four-square and blameless in foot, hand and mind, is hard,” wrote the poet. Like a philosopher, he proceeds to take issue with earlier formulations: He voices disagreement with the saying of the wise man Pittacus, that “It is difficult for a man to be good.” It is noteworthy that the professional philosopher Protagoras, in Plato’s dialogue, treats Simonides as an equal and begins to argue that the poet was inconsistent in preferring his own statement to that of Pittacus. The correct explanation must be that Simonides intentionally contrasted his verb use (to become good) with his predecessor’s (to be good), for, as the poet goes on to say, “it is hard for one to avoid being bad if unfightable chance overcomes him.” Only a god can choose to be good, while man must evolve from a given lot determined by the divine: He can become good, not be good. Simonides concludes that the most one can hope for is not to do shameful things willingly—“even the gods do not contest coercion.” The poem is cast in an Archaic fashion, with the poet arguing that one side is to be praised, another blamed, as Archilochus and Alcman did two centuries earlier when the existence of an oral culture made the meting out of proper reputation the primary task of the poet. Simonides, therefore, finds fault with Pittacus; he praises those who act ethically. Moreover, the entire composition is framed as a praise poem to Simonides’ patron, in a centuries-old genre. Finally, the poem treats themes with a long history in Greek lyric and epic: The idea of being good in diverse activities is found in the Iliad, and the notion that fate and the gods are “unfightable” (amTkhanos) is a key theme from the seventh century on. What, then, is new about Simonides’ poem? Surely to devote an entire poem to gnomic morality, rather than using these state8

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ments as asides, is innovative, but also fresh is the fashion in which Simonides attempts to make precise linguistic revisions in the statements of his predecessors. The art of “correct speaking” was actually a discipline practiced by the word-conscious members of the Sophistic movement, the most important intellectual movement in fifth century Greece. The Sophists (some of whom figure in the dialogue of Plato discussing this poem) claimed to be able to teach anything, for a fee, including how to become virtuous. Tragedy, politics, history, and rhetoric were to feel the effects of the Sophists’ teachings, but it was primarily poetry which became the battleground of old and new in Greek culture, for, even into the early fifth century, poets laid claim to practice the highest form of wisdom (sophia) and to be called wise. With the coming of Sophistic philosophy, poets faced a challenge for the title. Simonides, accepted as sophos (wise) by both poets and philosophers, represents the coming trend of intellectualizing poetry; although he clung to established poetic forms, he extended the limits of poetry in attempting to make it do the work of analytical thought. Parmenides The fusion of traditional forms with startlingly new content also characterized the work of two fifth century pre-Socratic poets, Parmenides of Elea (writing about 490 b.c.e.) and Empedocles of Acragas (active in mid-century). Both were from the colonies of Magna Graecia (southern Italy and Sicily), and both sought, in different ways, to solve the problem that preoccupied Simonides in the poem on virtue: the conflict between being and becoming. Some critics might object to a consideration of their writings as poetry, because it is clear that the pre-Socratic poets were interested mainly in argument rather than poetic form. However, they had good precedents if they had wanted to write prose philosophy; that they chose verse is important to understanding fifth century poetry as a whole. It is another indication of the seriousness attached to poetic craft and marks the difference in social structure that in ancient Greece allowed poets to be regarded as serious thinkers. There are further implications in their choice of verse rather than prose. Using epic meter, the two philosophers immediately signaled their connection with the oldest Greek literary tradition (and it must be remembered that Homer, too, was often treated as a philosopher). Parmenides, in fact, often recalls by his diction several passages in the Odyssey as he describes his own journey toward enlightenment in his preface to the poem “The Way of Truth.” Like Odysseus, he poses as the “knowing man” who is carried through many towns by the influence of a goddess (unnamed here; compare Athena in the Odyssey) until he reaches the gates of Night and Day. There the goddess promises that he will learn “the unshaken heart of rounded truth” as well as the untrustworthy opinions of humans. For Parmenides, then, the Odyssey is a model of plot (featuring, as it does, a return to the land of light and the living) as well as of diction, but the truth, as Parmenides has it, is the opposite of Homer’s notion and is, in fact, an enemy of poetry, it seems. Homer 9

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takes the world as it appears, describing it in shining epithets; Parmenides considers sense impressions to be inherently false. Working from a premise that “not-being” is unthinkable, the philosopher denies the void, the existence of divisions in nature, and such phenomena as opposites, which imply change (for example, night and day). The possibility which Simonides holds out to humans, that of “becoming,” is in Parmenides merely another misperception of helpless humans, based on illusion. Here, then, is a final reason for Parmenides’ use of poetry as vehicle: Seeing so clearly, he is on the side of the gods; although his thought seems to undercut the possibility of poetry to express truth, his instinct is to use the voice of authority and tradition. After all, the divine oracles of Delphi were always composed in dactylic hexameter. Empedocles Empedocles’ two poems of several thousand lines each, Peri physefs (fifth century b.c.e., On Nature, 1908) and Katharmoi (fifth century b.c.e., Purifications, 1908), remind one at every turn of Homeric epic, but once again the insistent logical argumentation bears the mark of the fifth century intellect. One example from the more completely preserved nature poem will suffice to point out the gulf between the philosopher and the epic poet. In explaining how he believes respiration works, Empedocles introduces a simile much in Homer’s lengthy manner. The blood and air regularly interchange through the pores, pushing one another, he explains, just as when a girl plays with a klepsydria [water clock] of gleaming brass. When she puts the mouth of the pipe against her shapely hand . . . no liquid enters the vessel, but the bulk of air within holds it back until she uncovers the dense stream.

The close observation of everyday scenes is a virtue of Homeric poetry, one which may have helped later Greek poetry by developing a language for seeing things, but never does Homer go this far or use description thus for its own “scientific” ends. Empedocles, however, rightly uses poetry for his vehicle of expression. His system, a refinement of that of Parmenides, explains change and motion within Being as caused by the constant rearrangement of four eternal elements; this, in turn, is effected by the actions of Strife and Love. By employing the key words of the Iliad (which is about strife between a soldier and his chief, resolved through the love of the soldier’s companion), Empedocles defines the phenomenal world as a grand Homeric struggle. Dithyrambic poetry Parmenides and Empedocles represent one extreme in fifth century poetry—its highly intellectual strain. A Greek audience, for whom the Delphic maxim “nothing in excess” was usually an unattained ideal, could find a counterbalance in another extreme form of poetry—dithyramb. This highly emotive art form, thought to have begun with worship of the revel god Dionysus (patron of poets), remains important for students of 10

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Greek literature because, according to Aristotle, the genre gave birth to tragedy. In fact, at the annual Dionysian festivals of Athens, at which tragedy and comedy were performed in the fifth century, dithyrambic competitions still had a place of honor, and huge choirs strove to win singing prizes. During the course of the century, dithyramb declined as a serious form as its offspring tragedy reached its zenith, so that, near the end of the century, the comic poet Aristophanes could poke fun at the dithyrambists as either effeminate or crazy. He parodied their art in songs such as this one from Ornithes (414 b.c.e.; The Birds, 1824): “Thou author of Aitna, Father/ At whose dire doom do foregather/ All the high hierarchs—Och! wad, thy nod, some giftie/ gi’e me: I don’t care what, just a token of your regard.” Seeking to compete with the tragedians, the dithyrambists merely produced a stiff and highly mannered art. Earlier fifth century dithyramb, however, must have retained some of the vigor that had led, in distant times, to the creation of tragic poetry. It had dialogue, used episodes from myth, and most important, often divided portions between a chorus and a chorus leader. This led to the existence of similar features in tragedy, which was still performed for the Dionysian religious rites in the fifth century. Some idea of the state of dithyrambic art at mid-century can be gained from the poems of Bacchylides, the nephew of Simonides, who excelled in the genre. A poem of his on the Athenian hero Theseus’s encounter with Minos of Crete employs an unusual meter, with many short syllables in succession, to create an atmosphere of excitement. One episode in the mythical visit is focused on Minos’s challenge to Theseus to prove that he is the son of Poseidon, god of the sea, by diving to recover a sunken ring. Direct speech enlivens the narrative, giving it an epic tone, while newly coined compound adjectives distance the poem from Homeric epic. Perhaps the most original feature of the work is Bacchylides’ incorporation of a dramatic audience within the poem in the form of the group of fourteen youths whom Theseus is bringing as a tribute to Minos. They tremble in fear at their leader’s dive and shout in joy as he returns from undersea. It is not difficult to see how dithyrambic art that had attained this stage earlier—using a chorus to sing about a chorus in myth—could have led to the beginnings of drama. Bacchylides himself, in fact, wrote other dithyrambs entirely in dialogue form, which could easily be acted. The main nontragic element in the poems is not in their outward form but in the particular selection of mythic moment. Rather than centering his compositions on the life-or-death crises of the hero, enlarging the drama by speeches in the mouths of main actors, Bacchylides picks small details in heroic life stories to dramatize. It is miniature art, in contrast to the large-scale Athenian drama, anticipating the Alexandrian Greek art of the epyllion (little epic) of the third century b.c.e. Victory odes Bacchylides had a nearly contemporary rival, the Boeotian poet Pindar (c. 518-c. 438 b.c.e.), who competed for patronage from great aristocratic families all over Greece 11

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by writing dithyrambs, maiden songs, praise poems, and, most important, odes to commemorate the victories of youths at the four national games. Competitions were held in events ranging from boxing to flute playing, and victors, although rewarded only with crowns of leaves, gained instant reputations all over the Greek world. Like much Greek poetry, victory odes were performed at religious occasions, since the games were sacrosanct (even warring states suspended hostilities to attend) and were thought to have been instituted by heroes at sites sacred to particular gods. In Pindar’s words, the ode itself was “repayment” for the agony of the athlete in winning. That agony (from the Greek agon, meaning “contest”) was in Greek terms itself a repayment for the similar trials of the distant hero: Because heroes suffered, carrying out martial or civilizing acts, the athlete, representing the community, did likewise in memory of his predecessors. This complex set of ideas underlies tragedy also, because there are indications that in some city-states, dramas were staged to reenact the sufferings of a god or hero. Like the dithyramb, odes coexisted with tragedy and served a functional purpose on the local level. An athlete could be accompanied home from the games by a poet paid to sing his praises, or spontaneous odes might be performed on the site of the victory itself, at the crowning ceremonies in Olympia, for example. Here again, it is important to note the way in which Greek poetry associates the contemporary in all its homely detail with the heroic past. A good example is provided by one of the surviving forty-five odes, written for a victor from Pindar’s favorite city-state, Aegina. Phylakidas had won the pancratium event at the Isthmian games in Corinth around 480 b.c.e. In his ode, Pindar combines the three main elements of choral poetry: mention of the specifics of the occasion, myth, and transitional gnomic statements, relating victory to myth. After beginning with an invocation to Theia, divine light, mother of the sun, Pindar immediately shifts his focus to the victor: “In the struggle of the games he has won the glory of his desire.” In a fashion characteristic of choral poetry and especially of his own, Pindar then abruptly shifts his attention again, to the lesson which the victor’s example illustrates: “Men’s valor is judged by their fates, but two things alone look after the sweetest grace of life—if a man fares well and hears his good name spoken. Seek not to become Zeus.” The sudden shift to the warning is understandable in the context of the occasion, because success, according to Greek views, tempted the anger and jealousy of the gods. Tragedy continually reinforces the same message by showing the fates of those heroes who sought to become godlike. After enumerating Phylakidas’s past and present victories, the poet proceeds to the victor’s homeland, Aegina, and its accomplishments. He praises its wealth of heroes, including the forebears of Achilles. He concludes with a reference to the recent Battle of Salamis, where sailors from Aegina had played a large part in gaining the victory. Because Aegina had such heroes in the past, it still produces hero-sailors and hero-athletes, Pindar implies. For the poet, as for Greek poetry in general, the past is continuous with the present and explains it. 12

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Hellenistic poetry After the Peloponnesian War and Athens’ surrender to Sparta in 404 b.c.e., Greek poetry gradually becomes less public and performative and more scholarly and literary. One exception is comedy, which continued to thrive, especially in Athens, for much of the fourth century and into the third century b.c.e. The only surviving comic writer is the Athenian Menander (c. 342-c. 291 b.c.e.), some of whose work was rediscovered on papyri in modern times. Together with a number of scenes from other plays, his complete Dyskolos (317 b.c.e.; The Bad-Tempered Man, 1921; also known as The Grouch) reveals an emphasis on contemporary, everyday concerns. Unlike the often biting political satire of Aristophanes’ Old Comedy, Menander’s New Comedy deals with problems with children, spouses, money, and slaves. Like the earlier dramatic tradition, New Comedy is written in a variety of metrical forms, often with musical accompaniment. The period following the reign of Alexander the Great (336-323 b.c.e.) is marked by a revolution in Greek poetry, which becomes more cosmopolitan, more sophisticated, and more learned as the Greek world expands to include the eastern half of the Mediterranean. The center of this new Hellenistic poetry was the Ptolemaic city of Alexandria in Egypt. To this city and its famous library flocked poets from all over the Greek world. Two poets, in particular, define the poetic milieu. Callimachus (c. 305-c. 240 b.c.e.) emphasized short, learned poetry like the aetiological legends he collected in an elegaic poem called Aitifn (n.d.; Aetia, 1958), while his student and rival Apollonius Rhodius (between 295 and 260-late third century b.c.e.) used the more traditional epic form in his Argonautica (third century b.c.e.; English translation, 1780) about the legendary quest of the Argonauts for the Golden Fleece and the story of the Greek hero Jason and his relationship with the Colchian witch Medea. Related to the shorter, highly polished poetry of Callimachus are the bucolic or pastoral poems produced by Theocritus of Syracuse (c. 308-c. 260 b.c.e.), Bion of Phlossa (fl. c. 100 b.c.e.), and Moschus of Syracuse (fl. 150 b.c.e.). Probably based on traditional songs sung by shepherds, usually with flute accompaniment, these more sophisticated Hellenistic poems incorporate singing contests between shepherds, laments, refrains, and stanzaic structures into highly refined, dramatic, and descriptive verse. Occasionally the rural setting is replaced by more urban themes. The iambic mimes of Herodas (fl. third century b.c.e.) share with pastoral poetry an emphasis on the dramatic and the descriptive. Little is known about the author or the context of his work, which may have even been intended for performance, but the surviving seven poems create vivid pictures of various character types, including a bawd, a pimp, a schoolmaster, and a shoemaker. Another significant use of poetry in the Hellenistic period is for learned, didactic treatises. Aratus of Soli (c. 315-240/239 b.c.e.) produced the Phaenomena, a poem about astronomy which was widely read and imitated for centuries. Nicander of Colophon (fl. second century b.c.e.) used epic hexameters in a variety of poems, including 13

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the surviving Theriaca (about poisonous snakes and their antidotes) and Alexipharmaca (about other poisonous substances and their antidotes). The Greek lyric tradition, especially the epigram, continued in the Hellenistic period. Some important representatives of the genre in this period are Asclepiades of Samos (fl. 290 b.c.e.), who introduced the theme of love to the epigram and may have been the first to give Eros (Cupid) wings; Anyte of Tegea (fl. early third century b.c.e.), best known for her tombstone epigrams; Corinna of Tanagra (of uncertain date), whose choral lyrics with a narrative element were probably written for women; Philodemus of Gadara (c. 110-c. 40/35 b.c.e.), an Epicurean philosopher whose highly polished but racy love poems may have influenced the Roman poets Horace and Ovid; and Meleager (c. 140-c. 70 b.c.e.), a Cynic philosopher noted not only for his lost Menippean satires, in which he mixed prose and poetry, but also for his love epigrams. The survival of many lyric poems from the Hellenistic period as well as Archaic and Classical periods, is due to Meleager’s publication of the first poetic anthology, Stephanos (c. 90-80 b.c.e.; Fifty Poems, 1890; best known as Garland) in which he included outstanding examples from approximately fifty earlier poets, including Archilochus and Anacreon, as well as his own work. Unfortunately, Meleager’s Garland survives only within anthologies of later date. The Roman period and late antiquity The Hellenistic Age is usually said to end with the defeat of Anthony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium by the Roman Octavian (later, Augustus) in 31 b.c.e. Rome’s annexation of Egypt following the death of Cleopatra marked the final stage in the Roman conquest of the eastern Mediterranean in the second and first centuries b.c.e. During the subsequent Roman period, Greek literature in general, and poetry in particular, went into decline. Several anthologies of Greek lyric and epigram in the tradition of Meleager’s Garland were made during this period. The most comprehensive of these was probably done by Constantinus Cephalas, a Byzantine official in Constantinople in 917 c.e. Like Meleager’s earlier Garland, however, Cephalas’s anthology survives only in the Greek Anthology, the work of an unknown scholar (or scholars) in the late tenth century c.e. This anthology of approximately thirty-seven hundred epigrams, arranged thematically in fifteen books, includes works from all periods, from the Archaic through the Byzantine. Some of the thematic groupings include ekphrasis, or descriptive poems, love poems, dedicatory poems, homosexual love poems, and poems of Christian devotion. One of the few major pieces of Greek poetry in the Roman period is the Dionysiaca of Nonnus of Panopolis in Egypt (fl. fifth century c.e.), an epic in forty-eight books about the god Dionysus, and, especially, his conquest of India. In 529 c.e., the emperor Justinian ordered the closing of the Academy in Athens. 14

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This event effectively marks the end of the ancient Greek world and the beginning of Byzantine history. Bibliography Budelmann, Felix, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. A collection of twenty essays, grouped by subject matter. Includes maps and illustrations, chronology, glossary, and index, as well as lists of editions, commentaries, translations, lexicons, and bibliographies. Extensive bibliographical references and excellent index. Constantine, Peter, et al., eds. The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. Introduction by Robert Hass. A landmark publication, containing more than one thousand poems by two hundred poets. Essential for any student of Greek poetry. Map. David, A. P. The Dance of the Muses: Choral Theory and Ancient Greek Poetics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. A new theory of ancient Greek poetry, which is based on harmony rather than metrics and emphasizes the importance of dance in performance. Well reasoned. Bibliography, general index, and index locorum. Ford, Andrew. Homer: The Poetry of the Past. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992. The Homeric poems are used to define the nature of traditional Greek poetry, especially the Homeric epics, and the role of the oral poet in society. In five chapters, Ford deals, in succession, with the function of traditional poetry as a means to transmit the past, epic poetry as a record of the past known only in full by the Muse, the poet as performer, the relationship between oral song and written text, and a view of ancient poetry as a form of “divine singing.” Indexes. Green, Ellen, ed. Women Poets in Ancient Greece and Rome. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005. The first collection of essays to examine the poetry written by Greek and Roman women, based mostly on surviving fragments, and accounts of their creative lives, as reported by their male contemporaries. Bibliography and index. Green, Peter. Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Several chapters in this sweeping history of the Greek world—from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 b.c.e. to the victory of Augustus over Anthony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 b.c.e.—deal with Greek poetry. Of particular interest are chapter 11, “The Poet as Critic,”, on Callimachus, Aratus, and Lycophron; chapter 13, “Armchair Epic,”; on Apollonius of Rhodes’ and chapter 15, “Urbanized Pastoralism,” on Theocritus and Herodas. Thirty maps, chronology, four genealogical tables, 217 figures, notes, bibliography, and index. King, Katherine Callen. Ancient Epic. Malden, Mass.: John Wiley, 2009. An introduction to six epics, including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Includes chronologies, map, 15

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chart of Olympian gods, glossary, and index. A source that is both reliable and accessible. Nagy, Gregory. Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. A prominent scholar of Greek and Homeric poetry traces the development of the Homeric poems from oral performances in the mid-second millennium b.c.e. to the composition of written texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Nagy describes a process that assumes not a single, original text, but rather a “multitext” or series of coexisting oral variants. Includes significant observations on the composition of lyric poetry such as that of Sappho. Preface, bibliography, and index. Raffel, Burton, trans. Pure Pagan: Seven Centuries of Greek Poems and Fragments. New York: Random House, 2004. Introduction by Guy Davenport. Part of the Modern Library Classic series. Works by poets highly regarded in their historical period but now almost forgotten have been re-created by an award-winner translator, making them available to English-speaking readers for the first time. Biographical sketches and a “Finding List.” Taplin, Oliver, ed. Literature in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A New Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. This collection of seventeen essays by twelve classical scholars is arranged chronologically, beginning with Homer and ending with the culture wars of the second century c.e. and beyond. The authors offer a special focus on audiences and the way that this literature was received by its readers and spectators. Special attention is given to Greek poetry in the essays on Homer, Archaic Greek poetry, Greek literature after the classical period, and Greek literature in the Roman period. Includes eleven maps, forty illustrations, a time line of chapters, a detailed chronology, a bibliography, and an index. West, M. L., trans. Greek Lyric Poetry. 1993. Reprint. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Contains a large collection of poems written between 650 and 450 b.c.e., many of them never before translated. Generously annotated. Bibliography and index. Richard Peter Martin and Thomas J. Sienkewicz

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GREEK POETRY SINCE 1820 Editors’ note: This essay uses the system of transliteration recommended by the Modern Greek Studies Association, in which stress marks are eliminated. Essays in the Critical Survey of Poetry: European Poets on individual modern Greek poets use a system of transliteration that comports with the most often cataloged forms of titles and names seen in the Library of Congress. The index for Topical Essays uses the latter form to conform to all other indexes in Critical Survey of Poetry. In an essay written around 1950, the poet George Seferis defined one of the major obstacles to a contemporary understanding of modern Greek poetry: The rarest thing in the world is a foreign author . . . who knows Greek. Even now, according to the general perception of foreigners, and perhaps of our own people, classical Greece, Byzantine Greece, and modern Greece are countries which are unrelated and independent. Thus, everyone is limited in his own area of specialization.

As Seferis argued, in order to appreciate the full scope of modern Greek poetry one must see it as “a living art which belongs to a living tradition”—a tradition that extends from ancient Greece through the centuries of the Byzantine Empire to the renaissance of Greek poetry in the twentieth century. Historical overview and the language problem Modern Greek poetry has its roots in a vernacular tradition that is unique among European literatures. Throughout its long history, the Byzantine Empire (300-1453) strongly discouraged the development of a written vernacular. Instead, the fledgling nineteenth century nation-state despots imposed the difficult and exclusive language of purist Greek (katharevousa, an artificial derivative of the classical Attic dialect of 500 b.c.e.). The language of the common person, demotic Greek, was officially nonexistent. With the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Byzantine domination gave way to Turkish rule. In addition, the Turks conquered all Greek territories formerly occupied by the Venetian Empire: Rhodes (1522), Crete (1669), and Corfu (1716). From 1453 to 1821, Greeks lived under the Ottomans. During these centuries of oppression, the demotic poetry of the Greek folk song expressed the yearnings, joys, and laments of a people who had once defined the principles of Western democracy and freedom. Throughout the early years of the Greek state—and, with few exceptions, for most of the twentieth century—the purist tongue has been the official language of the nation, the language taught in schools and used for all official communications. Finding little of lasting value in this oligarchical tradition, Greek poets for the most part wrote in demotic, laying the foundation for a regeneration in the poetry of their new republic, which manifested itself in the twentieth century, when Greece earned two Nobel Prizes and became a leader in the art of the “poetic word.” 17

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Foundations of demoticism The first Greek to grapple with the split identity of the Greek language strictly in terms of poetry was Dionysios Solomos, recognized today as the founder of modern Greek poetry. The story of his achievements begins in 1822, when Spyridon Trikoupis, a well-known Greek diplomat, historian, and libertarian, paid the young aristocrat a visit at Solomos’s birthplace on Zakynthos, one of the Ionian Islands. Trikoupis’s selfassigned mission was to find and promote a Greek poet who would speak out for a liberated Greece in the Greek vernacular. The Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire had begun in 1821. Solomos had recently published a slender volume of poetry in Italian (Rime improvvisate, 1822), and Trikoupis knew him to be a man with revolutionary sympathies. During one of their first meetings, Solomos (who demanded that they speak only of poetry) recited his most recent Italian composition. After an uncomfortable silence, the young poet demanded a response. Trikoupis answered by assuring Solomos that he would certainly secure an undisputed position among the great Italian poets. The diplomat added, however, that “the Greek Parnassus has not yet found its Dante.” Dante had released Italian literature from the strictures of Latin and had solidified the written foundations of his native Tuscan (the lingua vulgaris which eventually became modern Italian) through his bold and expert style. Five centuries later, Solomos struggled against the use of katharevousa to rescue the Greek vernacular from possible extinction as a written form of expression. For centuries, Italy and Greece had dragged along the linguistic chains of their ancestry: the one in classical and church Latin, the other in an imitation of the formal (unspoken) dialect of Plato and Demosthenes. Solomos’s early exposure to Dante’s victory over Latin proved decisive for the future development of a poetic idiom which, for the first time, reached out to the vast majority of Greeks, who neither understood nor had any hope of understanding katharevousa, the language of the few. At the time of Trikoupis’s first visit, there was still a significant language barrier for the young poet; although he spoke Greek, his formal education had taken place in Venice (from 1808 to 1818), where he was trained exclusively in Latin and Italian. Solomos’s lessons in the Greek vernacular began immediately following his first interview with Trikoupis. His new tutor taught Solomos the rudiments of his native tongue. Trikoupis must have known that this isolated struggle for written expression in a language that all Greeks might understand would meet with formidable opposition. Most of Solomos’s contemporaries, in politics as well as literature, scorned demotic speech with its vulgarities and grammatical irregularities. In his only surviving prose work, Dialogos (1824), Solomos stated the problem in Greece with simplicity and exasperation: “Our own learned men want us to write a language that is neither spoken now, nor has ever been spoken in any other period, nor shall ever be spoken in the future.” The most important features of demotic Greek for the evolution of a written poetic 18

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idiom were its simplicity and widespread usage among Greek-speaking people, in both Greece and the countries of the Hellenic diaspora. Their long oral tradition provided a wellspring of folk songs and ballads, narrative poems, and early mystical church literature. In the absence of a poetic mentor in his own time, Solomos turned to whatever he could salvage from the demotic past. For his textbooks in Greek prosody, he studied the two narrative masterpieces of the Cretan Renaissance (1600-1669): Erofili (c. 1585), by George Chortatsis, and, in particular, Erotokritos (1713; The Erotocritos, 1929), by Vitzenzos Kornaros, an epic romance of 10,052 lines. These works, in addition to an immense body of demotic folk songs, provided the linguistic guidelines for Solomos’s instinctive sense of metrical balance and line structure. Through his poetic genius, the standard fifteen-syllable line of the demotic folk song gained deeper tones and new dimensions of meaning. Written in 1823, shortly after his first lessons with Trikoupis, Imnos is tin Eleftherian (1823; The Hymn to Liberty, 1825), a poem of 158 quatrains and Solomos’s first work in modern Greek, received immediate international recognition. Among its early admirers were Victor Hugo, Alphonse de Lamartine, and François-René de Chateaubriand, while Johann Wolfgang von Goethe hailed the young Greek as “the Byron of the East.” The first few quatrains of The Hymn to Liberty were soon put to music and, after Solomos’s death in 1857, were established as the national anthem of the new republic. Solomos’s major accomplishments, however, began to take shape only after 1824. During these years, many of them spent in Corfu, he completed his most sustained and influential poems: “Sack of Psara,” “The Dream,” Lambros (1834, 1859), “The Poisoned Girl,” “The Nun,” To Kritikos (1859; the Cretan), and Porphyras (1859). He completed the third sketch of Eleftheri poliorkimeni (1859; the free besieged) in 1848. This poem preoccupied him for nearly twenty years and is considered his finest and most mature work. In the last version of Eleftheri poliorkimeni one can detect the outline of Solomos’s entire poetic development, from the early patriotic eulogies to the adoration of nature that characterized his middle period to the intense mysticism that infused his later works. It is characteristic if unfortunate that most of the aforementioned poems are, to greater or lesser degrees, fragmentary or incomplete. Nevertheless, poetically as well as linguistically, Solomos achieved his goals, giving the vernacular of his people a firm base of inspiration and poetic invention for generations to follow. An isolated struggle for expression In 1824, one year after the appearance of Solomos’s The Hymn to Liberty, Andreas Kalvos (1792-1869) published ten poems in a volume titled I Lira (lyre) and in 1826 another collection of ten poems under the title Lirika (lyrics). These two thin books represent his only contribution to Greek poetry, but of their generation, these twenty poems 19

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had an impact on twentieth century Greek poetry second only to that of Solomos. Kalvos, also from Zakynthos, was born six years before Solomos, in 1792. Kalvos’s mother was an aristocrat of the Zantiot landed gentry, while his father was a villager who could not adjust to the aristocratic way of life. When Kalvos was only ten years old, his father took him and his younger brother away from their birthplace and their mother to live in Livorno, Italy. Kalvos never saw his mother again. After his father’s death in 1812, Kalvos settled for a short time in Florence, where he worked as a private tutor. There, he met Ugo Foscolo, the eminent Italian-Greek poet and libertarian, who hired Kalvos as his personal secretary. In 1816, Kalvos dedicated his first poem to Napoleon Bonaparte. What is significant about his first composition is not the dedication or the subject matter, but the poet’s decision to write in Greek. Kalvos had no formal knowledge of written or spoken Greek; his everyday means of communication was Italian. As a result, the diction of the poem is strained and uneven, mixing elements of demotic, classical, and purist Greek. Still, the poem embodies a potency of expression that foreshadows Kalvos’s later achievements. By 1820, Kalvos had lived in Zakynthos, Italy, Switzerland, and England, where he parted company with Foscolo. Kalvos then returned to Florence to become a member of the Carbonari, the most radical and progressive political force in Italy at the time. He was so active that the Italian government banished him from the country in the year of his return. Having gone back to Geneva, Switzerland, in 1821, Kalvos immediately involved himself with the movement for Greek independence. There, among the Philhellenes, he attempted to coordinate a revival of classical Greek culture with the movement for Greek independence. By then twenty-nine years old, Kalvos had spent his most impressionable years among devoted if not fanatic European intellectuals. For these French and English Philhellenes, the independence of Greece symbolized a return to the ancient glory that had spawned Western civilization. While in Europe, Kalvos shared this political fervor. In his poetry, however, Greece was to be transformed into a spiritual landscape of magical and mythical elements. In 1824, while still residing in Geneva, Kalvos issued I Lira. It is noteworthy that these ten poems were accompanied by detailed commentary, footnotes, and a lexicon, all in French. It was important to Kalvos that his audience be international and that his poems communicate universal messages, even though they expressed patriotic sentiments in support of the Greek revolution. His second collection, Lirika, was published in 1826 in Paris, where he lived for one year before his first return to Greece after twenty-four years of an active but difficult absence. Kalvos went directly to Nafplion, the first capital of the new state and a hotbed of political activity. He was, however, quickly disillusioned and left after a few days. His abrupt departure from Nafplion marked the end of his involvement with the movement for Greek independence. Embittered by the political infighting that he encountered in Nafplion, he also stopped writing poetry. 20

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For the next twenty-six years, Kalvos lived in Corfu (not far from Solomos), where he taught, wrote philosophical articles, and eventually became a professor at the Ionian Academy. Little else of his life there is known except that his temperament was irascible, and his poetic silence was absolute. In 1852, after having been expelled from the Ionian Academy, Kalvos departed once again, this time for Great Britain, where he spent the last years of his life. In this self-imposed exile, he married an Englishwoman, helped her run a girl’s school, and translated religious texts into English for the Anglican Church. Kalvos died in 1869 and was buried in Louth, England. In his poetry, Kalvos attempted to release his exile’s longing for a free fatherland. His idealistic vision of Greece was rooted in the austere mythological world of Pindar. Often Kalvos mentions the Olympian gods—not for ornament but to indicate the living presence of a timeless mythic reality. His twenty odes extol the struggle for liberty, the virtue of a heroic death, and similarly exalted themes characteristic of the Romantic poetry that was flooding Europe throughout the early nineteenth century. Kalvos’s distinctive genius emerged not from his subject matter but from his unique mode of expression. He confronted the same problem that challenged Solomos—isolation from the mother tongue—but Kalvos’s solution was drastically different. Whereas other poets of this period tried to unite form and romantic emotion in harmony, Kalvos accentuated their opposition. In contrast to the harmonic, lilting flow of Solomos’s poems, Kalvos’s odes were classically concise and rigid. He utilized a strict verse form (unrhymed stanzas of four seven-syllable lines and a last line of five syllables) modeled after the Pindaric odes. With severe formal simplicity, Kalvos expressed his intense longing for an end to his own exile. Although Kalvos had a thorough knowledge of classical Greek, the vernacular was a foreign language to him. His twenty poems are studded with words and phrases borrowed from classical lexicons and old texts. Though the syntax is basically demotic, his inclusion of archaisms and grammatical elements of classical Greek reveal his need to create his own rules out of a language that had many conflicting personalities: classical, Byzantine, purist, demotic. The undercurrent of Kalvos’s lyrical genius infuses this awkward, artificial language with poetic substance and vitality. Though Kalvos was far from prolific, and his devotion to the art of poetry shortlived, his work served as a stepping-stone for many Greek poets of the twentieth century. Odysseus Elytis was one of the first modern Greek poets to discuss the contemporaneity of Kalvos’s unusual technique, while George Seferis speculated as to what new peaks of poetic expression Kalvos would have reached if he had continued to write for the duration of his life. Kalvos finally received recognition as a major national poet when his burial place was moved from Great Britain to Zakynthos in 1960, a year that was officially declared as the Year of Kalvos.

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Kostis Palamas Kostis Palamas (1859-1943), a native of the Greek mainland (Missolonghi), is one of the greatest poets in the history of modern Greek literature. With his first publication of poems in 1886, he quickly surpassed his contemporaries and established himself as a central figure in Greek letters. In the poetry he wrote between 1880 and 1920, Palamas embodied the living heritage of Solomos and consolidated what his Ionian predecessor had left unfinished. Throughout these years, Greek literary life broadened its perspectives beyond the limits of the Romantic school and the aging followers of Solomos. As founder of the New School of Athens, Palamas pioneered new directions in the development of a contemporary demotic poetry. Recognizing humanity’s spiritual and social fragmentation in his own time, Palamas attempted to reconcile the divisive forces of twentieth century history through his poetry and critical studies in Greek and world literature. While other poets at the turn of the century were able to adopt surface elements of the works of Solomos or the European Romantics, Palamas aspired to integrate the essence of these influences into the main body of his work. One of his greatest desires was to bring the demotic tradition into the mainstream of European art and literature. Palamas achieved his goal by looking in two complementary directions. For linguistic continuity, he turned to Solomos and the evolution of the demotic tradition, which, for Palamas, could be traced back from Solomos through The Epic of Digenis Akritas (1100-1150) to the epic narratives of Homer. Palamas’s philosophical perspective, which is consistent throughout his work, emerged from a lifelong adoration of Goethe, who stirred Palamas to poetic inspiration and discipline much as Dante had awakened Solomos to his final purpose. Although Romantics such as Lord Byron and Victor Hugo continued to influence Greek literature toward the end of the nineteenth century, of greater immediacy and impact for Palamas were the French movements, Parnassianism and Symbolism, while in his later years Palamas turned to the lyric mysticism of Rainer Maria Rilke. One could go on for pages listing the poets and thinkers whose works Palamas knew better and more intimately than any of his contemporaries in Greece. This vast accumulation of knowledge is unified by his ability to synthesize and subordinate these influences to the demands of his deep visionary voice. After having published his first book of poems Tragoudia tis patridos mou (songs of my homeland), in 1886, Palamas titled his next volumes O imnos tis Athinas (1888; hymn to Athena) and Ta matia tis psychis mou (1892; the eyes of my soul), the latter a phrase borrowed from Solomos. This last choice of title indicates how strongly Palamas felt about establishing a bond of continuity between his own efforts and those of his Ionian predecessor. Unlike the epigones of Solomos, Palamas’s works were not mere imitations of the father of Greek poetry; instead, Palamas used Solomos’s works as stepping-stones to radical innovations in the poetry of his own time. 22

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With Iamvi ke anapesti (iambs and anapests) in 1897, Palamas broke from the traditional demotic form of the fifteen-syllable line and, for the first time, introduced Symbolism into Greek poetry. In addition, the stanzaic structure of these poems (three quatrains each, composed of four interchanging anapestic and iambic lines) reveals the unmistakable mark of Kalvos. Indeed, Palamas was the first poet-critic not only to recognize Kalvos publicly as a major Greek poet, but also to acknowledge his poems as a determining influence on his own work. In 1904, Palamas published I asalefti zoi (Life Immovable, 1919, 1921), a large collection of poems that included many written a decade earlier. At a critical stage in the evolution of a Greek poetic idiom, these new poems confirmed a world of poetic truth in a lyrical realization of the Greek poet’s personal and historical endurance. The volume constituted Palamas’s first mature attempt to create a unified metaphysical domain. In reference to these poems, the foremost scholar of Palamas, Thanasis Maskaleris, has maintained that “the whole collection is a song of all life elevated to the harmony and immutability of poetic sublimation.” Finally, it was in his long visionary poem, O dodekalogos tou giftou (1907; The Twelve Words of the Gypsy, 1964), that Palamas made his most sustained contribution to modern Greek poetry. Published in 1907, thirty-six years before his death in 1943, these twelve cantos of brilliant metrical diversity bring together the wisdom, lyricism, and visionary acuity that Palamas had been striving for in his constant struggle for selfexpression and universal transference. The Gypsy-Musician, the protagonist of the poem, records his metamorphosis as a symbol for freedom and art, against the historical background of Byzantine Greece prior to the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. First, through an agonizing process of renunciation, he becomes a Greek patriot who finally embraces a mystical vision that allows him to become a true Hellene—a citizen and teacher, not of one nation, but of all the world. Palamas’s preoccupation with the universal emerges with great intensity throughout the poem. Once again, it is the poet’s lyric genius that provides this poem with its greatest source of energy and impact. Permeating the poem is a dreamlike flow of time that foreshadows much of modern poetry’s conscious disorder and disregard for the classical concept of chronological narrative. The Twelve Words of the Gypsy is an epico-lyrical dream narrative, certainly the first of its kind and quality in modern Greek literature. By the time he died in 1943, Palamas had published eighteen volumes of poetry and nearly 2,500 essays and articles concerning Greek and world literature. Some critics have suggested that Palamas should be remembered primarily for his contribution as an incisive, knowledgeable critic, and not so much for his poetry. Today, however, there is little question among Greek poets and scholars of contemporary literature that his influence as a poet has been paramount. As Seferis was to observe not long after the death of Palamas: “. . . the work of Palamas is the landscape in which the total realization and resurrection of the Greek poetic idiom take place in life itself.” 23

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Constantine P. Cavafy By the turn of the century, Athens had evolved into the center of political, cultural, and intellectual life for the Greek people. The climate was often frenetic, sometimes violent. In 1901, the New Testament was published for the first time in demotic. Rioting was the initial response at the University of Athens. Such a translation was considered a sacrilege by the conservative establishment; students’ lives were sacrificed, and many were seriously wounded. At this time, demoticism began to stand for much more than simply a radical change in the language; it suggested social and political alternatives as well. Until recently, demotic was the official language of the Greek Communist and Socialist parties, while katharevousa was employed by Greek royalists and other rightwing parties. Another orientation, unassociated with the demotic-purist controversy, was needed in order to awaken Greek poetry to the universal crisis of meaning and art that was preoccupying the masters of twentieth century world poetry. While the demoticists were still singing the praises of the Greek landscape and Greek history in terms of borrowed European models, their contemporaries abroad were weighing the existence and validity of the poetic word itself. The demotic tradition—alone or in combination with European models of Romanticism, Parnassianism, or Symbolism—no longer sufficed as a “center” for Greek poetry. It took a Greek poet who spent practically his entire life outside Greece, in Alexandria, Egypt, to perceive this problem and propel Greek poetry into the mainstream of twentieth century poetry: Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933). Untouched by the constant turmoil and linguistic confusion in mainland Greece, Cavafy created a mythic world that enabled him to see beyond the temporal issues into the heart of the universal. From his vast readings in Hellenic and Alexandrian history, Cavafy pieced together a poetry not of glory or heroic conquests, but of defeats, human frailties, decadence, and the often ironic tragedies behind every conquest and success. As the poet and critic Howard Moss has observed, Cavafy’s slim oeuvre embodied “the commonplace life of the streets and the splendor of ancient tales and legends, in which the ordinary man of the first could become the unwitting hero of the second” (Whatever Is Moving, 1981). Cavafy was born in Alexandria in 1863; his family was of a long line of wealthy Alexandrian aristocrats. When the father died in 1869, the Cavafy family inherited the dignity of their lineage but not its fortune. Three years later, at the age of nine, Cavafy began his most extended stay outside Alexandria. Hoping to find better opportunities for her older sons, the mother took Constantine and his brothers to Great Britain. After seven years there, the Cavafy family returned to its beloved city. At the age of sixteen, Cavafy was fluent in English and French and precociously familiar with European history and culture. With the exception of two years of forced exile in Constantinople and four short trips to Europe and Greece, Cavafy spent the remainder of his uneventful life as a civil servant in Alexandria. 24

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Later in his life, Cavafy referred to the poems he wrote before 1900 as “trash.” Most of this verse was clearly a result of both his early exposure to French and English Romanticism and his initial use of katharevousa. In contradiction to his blunt rejection of his early work, however, several poems written between 1896 and 1900 indicate another direction in his poetics that eventually led to masterpieces such as “The God Abandons Anthony” and “Alexandrian Kings.” During these years, Cavafy wrote five poems that characterized the fruits of this metamorphosis: “Walls,” “Candles,” “The First Step,” “The Horses of Achilles,” and “The Funeral of Sarpedon.” His early romantic tendencies vanished, to be replaced by a unique, historical sensibility that preferred the stark truths of man’s ironic failures and tragic dignity. Between 1900 and 1904, his art came into full flower, with poems such as “Thermopylae,” “The City,” and, in 1904, “Waiting for the Barbarians,” the poem that would place him beside T. S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, and Ezra Pound. In this same year, he printed a pamphlet of fourteen poems, including the aforementioned, for private distribution to friends and loyal readers. During this period, Cavafy was also writing more lyrical and erotic poems such as “Voices,” “Desires,” “He Swears,” and “One Night.” In his maturity, Cavafy delineated three categories to which all of his completed poems could be individually referred: historical, erotic, and philosophical. Although these boundaries may apply to the form and manifest content of his poems, beneath the surface there is a constant overlap and interaction among these three categories. What Cavafy called his historical poems had the greatest impact. They all emerge from an ancient city which, in the poet’s mind, is of mythic though always human proportions. They are gestures of history that reveal the repetitive conditions of human existence and the humble dignity required to “bid her farewell, the Alexandria that is leaving.” In 1911-1912, Cavafy printed three poems that established him as Greece’s first poet with a thoroughly modern sensibility: “The God Abandons Anthony,” “Philhellene,” and “Alexandrian Kings.” In this last poem, Cavafy’s ironic bite could not be more incisive or less understated. Of the Alexandrians praising Caesarion, Cavafy observes: Him they hailed oftener than his younger brothers, him they hailed King of Kings. The Alexandrians understood of course that these were only theatrics and mere words.

In the service of his irony, Cavafy developed a new poetic idiom that cultivated, for the first time in modern Greek poetry, some of the qualities of prose. The musical cadences of the demotic tradition are absent in these antimelodic poems. Their characteristic rhythm is that of a man speaking in a matter-of-fact voice, objectively recording the tragic and necessary ironies of the human condition. 25

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Although his mode of expression is fundamentally demotic, Cavafy often adds a touch of realism by including colloquial phrases of katharevousa that had become just as much a part of everyday speech as demotic. In keeping with his devotion to “Mythic Alexandria,” he also gave linguistic authenticity to his narrative poems with his discreet use of the Alexandrian idiom and spelling. Cavafy’s frank, erotic poems express irrepressible memories of sensual longings that excite the senses but torture the mind. Although many of these poems reflect his much-discussed homosexuality, Cavafy’s eroticism has a universal relevance. Often, his seemingly distant but detailed recollections of fleeting erotic encounters provide the only redeeming element in the otherwise monotonous flow of time and destiny. Cavafy’s philosophical poems, such as “Thermopylae,” are often historical as well: Here, the categories break down. As a whole, this group reflects Cavafy’s belief in the ineluctability of fate and in the dignity to be won when humans encounter and accept the dramas of their tragic nature. The first publicly available edition of Cavafy’s collected poems did not appear until 1935, the same year that Seferis issued his third collection of poems, Mythistorema (English translation, 1967). Seferis was thirty-five years old at the time; Cavafy had died two years before, at the age of seventy. Seferis was perhaps the first poet of his generation to recognize and understand Cavafy’s essential breakthrough into modern poetry. In the following decades, Cavafy’s Alexandrian voice became increasingly influential; today, widely translated, he is recognized as one of the major poets of the twentieth century. Ahead of his time, in almost magical isolation, Cavafy paved the way for a new generation of poets who would make Greek poetry one of the richest literatures in modern Europe. Angelos Sikelianos In the early years of the twentieth century, most young Greek poets of the mainland were overwhelmed by a Baudelairean obsession with ennui and self-annihilation. Born on the Ionian island of Leucas, Angelos Sikelianos (1884-1951) was an important exception. Disregarding the melancholy of his contemporaries, Sikelianos celebrated life and death through intensely lyrical realizations of ancient oracular mythology and folk religion. Rooted in the pre-Socratic metaphysics of Ancient Greece, his best poems unveil the confluence of the natural and the supernatural. Sikelianos believed the poet must assume the role of prophet, oracle, and teacher; so strong was this belief that he actively promoted the reestablishment of Delphi as a contemporary center for mystagogues of all persuasions. Here, Sikelianos envisioned the emergence of “the universal soul of the world.” Although this vision was never fully realized, it provided him with the spiritual fortitude and poetic resources to create an affirmative alternative to the Greek version of Baudelaire’s “generation of the damned.” The pre-Socratic tradition remained archetypal for Sikelianos throughout his life. 26

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The teachings of Pythagoras, the Mysteries of Eleusis, Orphism and the cult of Dionysus, and the mantic center at Delphi represented the four main bodies of mystic wisdom that Sikelianos sought to enshrine in his poetry. He perceived this wisdom as the primal undercurrent of the Greek Christian ethos; consequently, Sikelianos had no qualms about including “my Christ, and my Dionysus” in one breath. Similarly, in “The Village Wedding,” the poet invokes both the Christian “Word of God” and “Leto giving birth to Apollo. . . .” In the folk rituals of Greek Orthodoxy, Sikelianos discovered the subconscious continuation of the religious principles he derived from the pre-Socratic world of ancient Greece. From the rich language of his demotic heritage, Sikelianos assembled his poetic visions. His vocabulary is rooted in the vernacular, particularly in the dialectal variations of his birthplace in the Ionian Islands. In early poems such as “Return” and “The Horses of Achilles,” Sikelianos experimented with free-verse alterations of the normal pattern of modern Greek metrics (the fifteen-syllable line). The new rhythms he created served to stress his central motifs of iconoclastic and pantheistic concerns. It is unfortunate that translations cannot capture the forceful and intensely lyrical cadences that flow, unimpeded, through the original Greek of these poems, for it was in his rhapsodies of religious feeling that Sikelianos established himself as a virtuoso of modern Greek poetry. For the most part, Sikelianos was a traditional poet. By 1920, he had rejected free verse, focusing his attention instead on formal structures of poetic composition: sonnets, fifteen-syllable couplets, and other strict forms of his own devising. Of his short poems, “Songs of Victory I” (a series inspired by the Balkan Wars), “Pan,” “Thalero,” and “The Mother of Dante” are among his best. By 1917, with the completion of “Mother of God,” Sikelianos also had mastered the long poem. “Mother of God” has been praised as the most musical poem written in Greek since the death of Solomos. Three years before the composition of “Mother of God,” Sikelianos’s beloved sister, Penelope, died. In the poem, Sikelianos gathers symbols of Christianity, matriarchal goddesses, divinities of the natural world, and the spirit of his dead sister to provide a new consciousness of death that might release humans from their futile efforts to comprehend death in their own limited terms. The poet’s reconciliation with death is a central concern in his poems written between 1927 and 1942. Sikelianos’s output during these years was sporadic, for he began to devote his energies to establishing a Delphic university and Delphic festivals that would feature performances of classical Greek tragedies, exhibitions of folk art, Byzantine music and dancing, even naked athletic contests in the original stadium of ancient Delphi. Though the combined efforts of Sikelianos and his wealthy American wife, Eva Palmer, were originally rewarded with success, the venture was doomed to failure by eventual lack of support and the German occupation of Greece from 1940 to 1945. From 1935 to 1942, however, Sikelianos made great strides in his poetry. The symbolic texture is tighter and the language more deeply reflective in poems such as “The Sa27

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cred Way,” “Attic,” “Apology of Solon,” and “Agraphon.” In the last ten years of his life, Sikelianos turned to the composition of lengthy tragedies that were unwieldy and difficult to stage. His zenith as a mystical poet with a tragic vision had already been reached in “Mother of God” and in the shorter poems written during the 1930’s and early 1940’s. By the time of his death in 1951, Sikelianos had established an international reputation. In 1946, he had been nominated by the Society of Greek Writers for the Nobel Prize, and a year later he was elected president of this same society. Many of his finest poems had already been translated into Italian, French, and English. In its lyrical spontaneity and its religious identification with nature, his work has been instructive and influential for many Greek poets of subsequent decades. Kostas Varnalis Another poet whose work remained unscathed by the engulfing despair that characterized Greek poetry in the 1920’s was Kostas Varnalis, born in Pirgos, Bulgaria, in 1884. As a student in Bulgaria, Varnalis nurtured an idealized vision of Greece, sustained by his early and intensive studies in the classics. His first poetic compositions were in katharevousa, with traditional form, meter, and rhyme. When he arrived in Greece for university studies at the age of nineteen, his romantic conception of Greece soon gave way to a bitter and ironic realism. From 1913 on, Varnalis chose to write only in demotic, completely rejecting his early purist orientation. Moreover, like Palamas and Sikelianos, he began to accept the influences of the Parnassians and the Symbolists. Adhering to the strict forms of the sonnet and the quatrain, Varnalis reconstructed his dreams of classical glory. Images of ancient Greece abound in poems such as “Alcibiades,” “Orestes,” and “Aphrodite.” In this last poem, however, the satiric mood of his later and more significant work begins to surface. Sarcasm, parody, and invective satire eventually became the vehicles for Varnalis to express his growing disenchantment with modern Greece and the futility of his earlier nostalgic hopes. By 1920, after a year of studies in the postwar atmosphere of Paris, Varnalis came to embrace dialectical materialism and the Marxist ideology of historical and social change. The tragic outcome of the Balkan Wars and the Asia Minor Catastrophe in 1922 solidified his new political radicalism. Nevertheless, his finest poems lacked the bombast and rhetoric that characterized the emerging wave of leftist writings in the early twentieth century. While still in Paris, Varnalis had written “The Burning Light,” a poem in three parts which combined his early lyricism with poignant satire. Prometheus, Christ, and a contemporary leader of the proletariat are depicted as carriers of the burning light through ages of darkness and repression. Introducing himself, the leader shouts: “for I am the child of Necessity and the mature offspring of Wrath.” “The Burning Light,” published in 1922, was the first important left-wing poem to be written in Greece. 28

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Varnalis’s next major project was “The Enslaved Besieged,” an obvious parody of Solomos’s major poem, Eleftheri poliorkimeni (the free besieged). Divided into four sections, the poem is long and epic in scope. The poet lashes out against an ideology that promoted the mass acceptance of enslavement and fascism. Varnalis described the essence of the poem as “antiwar and anti-idealistic.” Apart from his original poetry, Varnalis is also widely known in Greece for his brilliant and witty translations of Aristophanes. In addition, Varnalis wrote a great deal of literary criticism informed by his Marxist beliefs. He died in 1969 during the dictatorship of the Colonels (1967-1974). Kostas Karyotakis The life and death of Kostas Karyotakis (1896-1928) had two strikingly different consequences for the development of twentieth century Greek poetry. His reputation as a melancholy and dispirited poet along with his dramatic suicide in 1928 inspired a large following of poets who, unlike Sikelianos or Varnalis, remained outside the mainstream of modern Greek poetry. Karyotakis’s poetry itself, however, became a strong undercurrent in this mainstream, from which emerged the voices of Seferis (1900-1971), Elytis (1911-1996), Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990), and Andreas Embirikos (1901-1974). In contrast to these strongly individual poets, the epigones of Karyotakis were content to repeat clichés of romantic and confessional despair. Indeed, in recent years the term karyotakismos, or Karyotakism, has denoted the Greek offspring of Baudelaire’s “generation of the damned.” Whereas their last echoes were heard in about 1940, the poems of Karyotakis continue to influence even the current generation of leading Greek poets, such as Lefteris Poulios, Yannis Kondos, Vasilis Steriades, and Jenny Mastoraki. It is therefore essential that Karyotakism be clearly distinguished from Karyotakis’s poetry which has established itself as a haunting presence on the contemporary scene. Karyotakis wrote and published three books of poems in his lifetime. The first, O ponos tou anthropou ke ton pragmaton (1919; the pain of men and things), maps out the domain of his concerns; at every destination there is fear and oblivion. In his second book, Nipenthe (1921), Karyotakis continued his stark explorations of hopeless and self-deceiving lives. Published in 1927, one year before his death, his last book, Elegia ke satires (elegies and satires), was both his finest and most unsettling. In its pages were grim and mournful expressions of a voice that found no solace in demotic or classical literature. Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Bau delaire, and Jules Laforgue influenced Karyotakis more than his Hellenic heritage. For Karyotakis, human existence was a limitless void. Beauty existed, but only as a mocking reminder of “the tears, the sweat, and the vast sky’s nostalgia, all the bleak wastelands.” In the structured verse of rhymed stanzas, he re-created the emotional abyss that eventually overpowered him. However, in this formal style that exemplified the end of French Romanticism in Greek poetry, Karyotakis experimented, taking unusual liber29

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ties with diction, imagery, and rhythms, for only by pushing to its limits this already exhausted poetics could he make room for the utter desolation he so effectively expressed. In place of the self-pity that abounded in the works of his contemporaries, Karyotakis adopted a satirical self-abnegation that would not allow for sentimental flirtations with romantic despair. His unique brand of satire is humiliating and tragic. Most of his images are derived from Greek life in the provinces (which he regarded as a kind of Hell). In this landscape, Karyotakis found his characters, bringing to the surface the painstaking routine of their empty lives. The actual story of this poet’s death hauntingly reflects the burden of having been the most profound Greek spokesperson of the “generation of the damned.” On the night of July 21, 1928, the poet attempted, for several hours, to drown himself in the sea. The next day, having purchased a pistol, he sat in a seaside tavern, the Heavenly Garden, wrote a suicide note, and then, in the shade of a nearby eucalyptus tree, shot himself. Like his poems, the details of his death are satiric and uncomfortably self-conscious. He concluded his suicide note with the following postscript: “I advise all those who swim well not to try death by drowning. . . . At the first opportunity I shall write of my impressions as a drowned man.” Although many younger poets were drawn to his work by the dramatic nature of his death, others were deeply disturbed by the poetic impasse that his poems exemplified. Generation of 1930 In 1931, at the age of thirty-one, Seferis published a small book of poems titled Strofi (Turning Point, 1967). In its subject matter and tone, Turning Point signaled the first significant turn away from the unrelenting, romantic despair of the previous generation; in spirit and sensibility, these poems were much closer to the tragic dignity of Cavafy. In fact, throughout his life, Seferis considered Cavafy to be his truest and, sometimes, most overwhelming forerunner. Seferis became the primary force in the modernization of Greek poetry for the next twenty-five years. George Seferis George Seferis (the pen name of Giorgos Stylianon Seferiades) was born in 1900, in Smyrna, a city of Asia Minor widely known as an intellectual center for Greeks of the Hellenic diaspora. In 1914, the Seferiades family moved to Athens, where the poet completed his secondary education, and from 1918 to 1924, he studied law in Paris. Encouraged by his father, a professor of law, to familiarize himself with all facets of European customs and thought, Seferis spent an additional year (1924-1925) in London, where he first became acquainted with the works of Eliot. During these formative years abroad, Seferis became increasingly aware of the intellectual and poetical forces that changed the accepted forms of literature soon after World War I. As a young student in Paris, he learned of the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the violent destruction of his beloved birthplace, 30

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Smyrna. In his later poetry, this experience helped define one of his central motifs: the constant urge to return to a home that exists only in terms of a frayed and bitter memory. Seferis returned to Athens in 1926 and immediately entered the diplomatic service, in which he made a lifelong career. From 1936 to 1962, his work took him to Albania, Egypt, South Africa, Italy, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. His last post was as ambassador to Great Britain from 1957 to 1962. In 1946, Seferis was awarded the coveted Palamas Prize. In 1960, he received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University, and in 1963, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Honorary doctorates soon followed from Oxford, Thessaloníki, and Princeton universities. Finally, an honorary fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences gave him the opportunity to study, lecture, and write for six months as a poet in residence at Princeton University (1966). From this time onward, he lived in retirement in Athens until his death on September 20, 1971. Although unique in their content and austere tone, the poems of Turning Point and those of Seferis’s subsequent collection I sterna (1932; The Cistern, 1967) were thoroughly traditional in form. In particular, Seferis proved himself a contemporary master of the fifteen-syllable line in the longest and most lyrical poem of Turning Point, “Erotikos Logos.” The influence of both The Erotocritos and Solomos is evident in Seferis’s melodic and sensitive use of the demotic language. Unlike the narcissistic ego that is heard in the poetry of Karyotakis, Seferis’s voice is collective, expressing a personal drama that is elevated to the general character of universal tragedy. It was not until 1935, however, with the publication of Mythistorema (English translation, 1960), that Seferis was able to inject the poetry of his time with elements that would alter decisively the course of modern Greek poetry. Perhaps the most significant element that Seferis introduced in the poems of this collection was a free-verse form perfectly suited to a simple but intensely lyrical demotic idiom and spelling. Sikelianos had experimented with free verse but only for a short period. Varnalis also had abandoned free verse early in his career, while Karyotakis took few chances in the framework of his European influences. In contrast, from 1935 to the end of his career, Seferis used free verse almost exclusively. Mythistorema, which can mean either “novel” or “myth” of history, consists of twenty-four parts. The physical and spiritual landscape of this poem is rooted in Greek mythology. In the persona of the poet himself, the characters who travel endlessly in the dry world of Mythistorema have been lost in other times as well: the Argonauts, Odysseus, Elpenor, Orestes, Agamemnon, Astyanax. As they search for signs of life and light, their dreamlike anxieties reflect the real anxieties of contemporary man: I woke up with this marble head in my hands; it exhausts my elbows and I don’t know where to put it down.

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In Seferis’s next collection of poems, Imerologio katastromatos I (1940; Logbook I, 1967), the apprehension of war is accompanied by a sure and tragic awareness of whom its victims will be. There is an atmosphere of anxiety and decay, but also of historical resolve and the courage to endure, a persistent characteristic of Cavafy’s finest poems as well. In the last poem of this volume, “The King of Asine,” Seferis presents the image of an ancient mask behind which is the void and “the poet a void.” Unlike the rootless desperation of Karyotakis, however, the despairing feelings in this poem are mythic in context and therefore more historically enduring and tragic. This mythic aspect persists in all of Seferis’s poetry. Imerologio katastromatos II (Logbook II, 1967), completed in 1944, is a poetic summation of Seferis’s bitter war experiences. Written in the places of his diplomatic exile during the war, many of these poems are dated with the names of the foreign cities that provided his exiled government with political asylum while the Germans occupied Greece: Transvaal, October, 1941; Pretoria, 1942; Cairo, August, 1943. The speaker of these poems, who speaks for many, expresses the fragmented identity of the wandering exile. Logbook I and Logbook II record Seferis’s journey through the spiritual netherworld of World War II Europe. In 1946, Seferis completed a major poem that had been incubating for years. He titled it “Thrush,” after the name of a ship sunk by the Germans in the harbor of Poros, the island where Seferis actually wrote the poem. The ship is a symbolic vehicle for the continuation of a voyage that Seferis had begun to chart in Logbook I. The tapestry of images and symbols in this poem reflects the influence of Eliot and especially of Cavafy, with “beds . . . that can haunt you” and “images in the mirror, bodies once alive, their sensuality.” The publication of this four-part work (Seferis’s longest poem) in 1946 was followed by a poetic silence that lasted for ten years. A decade later, in 1955, Emerologio katastromatos III (Logbook III, 1967) appeared—another mythic journey of wandering spirits, inspired by Seferis’s close ties to the island of Cyprus. In the best-known poem of this collection, “Helen,” myth surfaces as actuality; Seferis addresses Teucer (brother of Ajax in the Iliad) as his own brother, and finally asks him: “What is god? What is not? And what is there between them?” Although several collections of Seferis’s poems were issued between 1940 and 1961, after Logbook III, no new poems appeared until 1966, with the publication of Tria krifa piimata (Three Secret Poems, 1969). These relatively short poems are regarded by many critics as Seferis’s most esoteric. His central motifs of light and dark, which are heard with a disturbing clarity in “Thrush,” are emphasized again in the staccato verse of Seferis’s last major composition. Throughout his life, Seferis also contributed enormously to the growth of modern Greek poetry with his critical writings. Dokimes (1962; the collected essays of George Seferis) includes penetrating and contemporary appraisals of The Erotocritos, Cavafy, 32

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Kalvos, Solomos, the sixteenth century painter El Greco, the Homeric hymns, and an important record of Seferis’s discussions with Eliot. Seferis’s principal prose works are Treis meres sta monasteria tes Kappadokias (1953; three days in the monasteries of Cappadocia), Delphi (1962; English translation, 1963), Discours de Stockholm (1964), and ‘E glossa stèn poiésé mas (1965) and volumes of personal diaries which reveal the painstaking groundwork that preceded each of his published poems. Also significant were his translations into Greek of Rimbaud, Paul Valéry, Paul Éluard, Yeats, Pound, Archibald MacLeish, and, in particular, The Waste Land (1922) of Eliot. In one of his essays, Seferis pointed to the three peaks of modern Greek poetry: Solomos, Kalvos, and Cavafy. By consensus, his own name must be added to this list. Andreas Embirikos While Seferis linked modern Greek poetry with its rich native heritage, another strong current in modern Greek verse was defined by its radical break with indigenous traditions. Surrealism made its first appearance in Greece in 1935 with the publication of a series of prose poems titled Ipsikaminos (blast furnace), by Andreas Embirikos (1901-1975). From 1925 to 1931, Embirikos lived in Paris, closely allying himself with André Breton and his school of Surrealist painters and poets. During these crucial years in the European capital of artistic and literary activity, Embirikos also devoted himself to the study of psychoanalysis. Born on September 2, 1901, in Braila, Romania, Embirikos was brought to Athens in his infancy. There, he completed his primary and secondary education, going on to study philosophy at the University of Athens. In 1922, he moved to London, where he worked three years for a steamship company owned by his family of international shipbuilders and shipowners. After these years in London, he joined his father in France until 1932, when he returned to Greece. In 1934, Embirikos resigned from the family business and established himself as Greece’s first practicing psychoanalyst. He retired in 1951, devoting the rest of his life to writing and photography. The poems of Ipsikaminos were received in Athens with ridicule and critical antagonism. Few were able to understand the often startling but productive method of “automatic writing.” In the poem “Light on a Whale,” Embirikos begins: “The original form of woman was the braiding of two dinosaurnecks.” By juxtaposing images that seemed to bear little or no relationship to each other, the poet was not simply trying to surprise or shock the reader. Rather, his intent was to provide a flow of subliminal motifs drawn from the creative and unifying wellspring of the subconscious. Embirikos’s preoccupation with female sensuality and its mythic origins provided a focal point for his later growth as a poet who could no longer make use of the formless nature of pure Surrealism. In his second collection of poems, Endohora (1945; the hinterland), symbols of the Freudian libido appear frequently and with great urgency: “erupting shock of a huge volcano,” “the canals’ lips,” “a very small daughter . . . fon33

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dling the day’s nipples,” “the breasts of youth,” “petals of pleasure.” These sexual images come to life in mystical exaltations of eroticism that bind humanity to nature in joyful and immortal embraces. A master of both demotic and purist, Embirikos often used puns and other forms of wordplay to bolster the latent meanings of his consistently Freudian interpretation of humans and nature in the modern world. Endohora consists primarily of poems written in highly structured but idiosyncratic verse forms. This emerging need for form indicated his growing distance from pure Surrealism. Nevertheless, Embirikos always perceived himself as a child of Surrealism. From the beginning of his lifelong involvement with poetry, Embirikos repudiated the self-annihilating pessimism of Karyotakis. For Embirikos, life always triumphs in love—the spiritual apprehension of the universally erotic. As a result, his poetry also rejected the tragic necessity of guilt voiced by Cavafy and Seferis. Embirikos was not alone in his discovery of Surrealism. There were other important Greek poets who also used the principles of Surrealism to create poems of intense vision and lyric power. Among the most outstanding of his contemporaries were Nikos Engonopoulos (1910-1985) and Nikos Gatsos (1911-1992), whose only book, Amorgos (1943), has been translated four times into English. Odysseus Elytis In 1935, a new literary periodical titled Nea grammata, published under the direction of Andreas Karandonis and George Katsimbalis, began to promote the forthcoming masters of twentieth century Greek poetry. Finding an audience responsive to their work, Cavafy, Sikelianos, Seferis, Gatsos, and Embirikos appeared frequently in its pages. Toward the end of 1935, Nea grammata also published the first poems of Odysseus Elytis, who until his death in 1996 reached new heights of poetic expression with each passing decade. Born on November 2, 1911, in Iraklion, Crete, Elytis (the pen name of Odysseus Alepoudhelis) was truly a child of the Aegean Islands. Even though his family moved to Athens in 1914, Elytis spent his summers on the Aegean Islands between Crete and Lesbos, where his family had originated. It is the natural and historical elements of this brilliant, ancient landscape that later provided the foreground for his most important achievements in poetry. After completing his secondary education in 1928, Elytis decided to study law at the University of Athens in 1930. At about the same time, he began reading the poems of the French Surrealist Éluard, who opened a whole new vista of poetic experience and feeling for the young, impressionable Elytis. In 1935, while still a student at law school, he heard Embirikos’s first lecture on Surrealism and its potential significance for modern Greek poetry. During this year, which also saw the first important publication of his poems, Elytis withdrew from law school, having chosen to devote the rest of his life to poetry and art. Even the advent of World War II could not deter Elytis from pursuing his dream. In 34

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1940, he served as a second lieutenant on the Albanian frontier to help organize Greek resistance against Benito Mussolini’s impending invasion of Greek territory. Elytis’s experience at the front became the subject of a long elegiac poem, Azma iroiko ke penthimo yia ton hameno anthipolohago tis Alvanias (Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign, 1965), which was first published in 1945. Later, discouraged by the violent repercussions of the war in his own country (the Greek Civil War, 1946-1949), he went to live in Paris (1948-1952). There, he spent much of his time among poets and painters such as Breton, Éluard, Tristan Tzara, René Char, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, and Giorgio de Chirico. Many of these artists had also befriended Embirikos, who was to be Elytis’s first Greek mentor and a lifelong friend. Since 1952, Elytis has lived primarily in Greece, traveling once to the United States in 1961 and shortly afterward to the Soviet Union. During this period, he has played a leading role in Greek literary and artistic life as president of the Greek Ballet (1956-1958) and as a governing member of Karolos Koun Art Theater (1955-1956). In addition to writing art criticism, he has also translated the works of Éluard, Pierre-Jean Jouve, Federico García Lorca, Rimbaud, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and others. Elytis’s contribution to modern poetry, increasingly recognized abroad as well as in his native land, was decisively acknowledged with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1979. With the publication of his first two books, Prosanatolizmi (orientations) in 1939 and Ilios o protos, mazi me tis parallayies pano se mian ahtidha (sun the first) in 1943, Elytis unveiled a poetry of Surrealistic inspiration brimming with images from his mystical experiences of the Aegean Islands. His early relationship with Surrealism served as a catalyst, allowing him to express the inherently lyric spirit not only of his youth but also of Greece itself. The tone of these poems is highly personal, full of celebration, movement, and metamorphosis. In his poem, “Windows Toward the Fifth Season,” for example, Elytis exemplifies his belief in the sensuality of poetic thought: “How beautiful she is! She has taken on the form of that thought/ which feels her when she feels it devoted to her. . . .” Elytis’s major poem, Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign, depicts in patriotic and lyrical language the Greek defense against Mussolini’s invasion of Greece in October of 1940. The Italian invasion is remembered in Greece for its unifying effect on the Greek people. Against seemingly insurmountable odds, the Greeks managed to defeat the Italians quickly, pushing them back into Albania. In the midst of the oppressive years that followed, Elytis felt the need to account for and praise this sudden burst of mass heroism. Divided into twelve cantos, this poem, fertile with images of a living landscape and its magical properties, takes the reader through a verbal metamorphosis from dead body to the living and immortal spirit. By the end of the poem, the lost soldier has been resurrected and deified as “He ascends alone and blazing with light.” These twelve songs mark the poet’s first important 35

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encounter with the tragic elements that distiguish the poems of his maturity. Though first published in 1960, the poems of Exi ke mia tipsis yia ton ourano (Six and One Remorses for the Sky, 1974) were written between 1953 and 1958. The dominant voice is somber, finely attuned to the desolating aftermath of both World War II and the Greek Civil War that immediately ensued. The joyful, unhampered spirit of Elytis’s early poems is here tempered by a greater consciousness of “dark forces” and their human price. Following the composition of this collection, Elytis completed To axion esti (1959; The Axion Esti, 1974), a work much longer and more intricate than anything he had written before. The title phrase, meaning “worthy it is,” is a Greek Orthodox ecclesiastical expression dating back to the early years of the Byzantine Empire. More specifically, the phrase was used for both the title of a Byzantine hymn glorifying the Virgin Mary and the name of a holy icon depicting her. The religious connotations of this expression along with its suggestions of song and image suggest the complex intention of the poem: a spiritual quest of music and imagery leading to a victorious emergence from the “Vast Dark Places.” Even the formal structure of the poem is tightly modeled after the structures of Byzantine liturgy and hymnology. In all of its features, this poem illustrates the poet’s growing faith in the absolute purity of poetry and its sanctified nature as a means of expression and communication. The Axion Esti is divided into three sections. In the first, called “Genesis,” the persona is born, and grows toward awareness and acceptance of mythic identity. The second section, titled “The Passion,” charts the development of a now less innocent but unified consciousness through the experiences of World War II and its tragic aftermath. The last part, “The Gloria,” is a long group of hymns that praise and celebrate everything from “the light and man’s first prayer carved out of rock” to “a woolen sweater left to the frost.” This ambitious composition is also rich in allusions to Elytis’s predecessors in the Hellenic tradition. In the struggles and praises of The Axion Esti, there are echoes of Homer, Heraclitus, Byzantine hymnographers, Saint John, Solomos, Kalvos, and the heroes of the Greek War for Independence, whom the poet sanctifies as saints. Because of its musical construction and contemporary breadth of vision, The Axion Esti was soon set to music by Mikis Theodorakis, who, in 1964, orchestrated and conducted the piece with a full choir and orchestra. Since then, the poem has received international recognition. At about the same time that Elytis finished The Axion Esti, he began preparing yet another long poem, Maria Nefeli (Maria Nephele, 1981), which did not appear in its entirety until 1978. It consists of two parallel monologues spoken respectively by Maria, a symbol for the younger generation, and the Antiphonist, a more ancient, atavistic persona. These voices represent two divergent personalities that nevertheless belong to the poet himself. Though they search along different paths, their goal is the same: “to be 36

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slowly united with the grandeur of sunrise and sunset.” The most distinctive characteristic of Elytis’s productive commitment to poetry has been his belief that devotion to art, in its purest form, might counterbalance the forces of horror and evil in the modern world. His efforts have often been incorrectly labeled as naïve; even a cursory inspection of a work such as The Axion Esti reveals that Elytis is no more a naïve optimist than was Eliot in his Four Quartets (1943): Both works seek metaphysical salvation through a poetic realization of tragedy. To achieve this end, Elytis has created a poetry grounded in a synthesis of complementary realities: contemporary, ancient, mythic, surreal, religious. The concatenation of these realities in his poems is always informed by his unique sensibility. Yannis Ritsos Although Yannis Ritsos belongs to the Generation of 1930, he did not participate in the intellectual exchange and ferment that characterized the early years of Nea grammata, around which poets such as Seferis, Elytis, Embirikos, Nikos Gatsos, and George Sarantaris had enthusiastically clustered. Nevertheless, by the 1950’s it was clear, especially in Europe, that Ritsos had added an important dimension to the poetry of his times. Born on May 14, 1909, his life story is one of family tragedy, sickness, and political persecution. His constant exposure to the presence of death and suffering forced him to confront the essential problems of human existence. Poetry for Ritsos did not serve as a kind of introspective consolation but as sustenance essential to the life of his body and spirit. In his work, especially in his later poems, personal experience is transformed into metaphor. His growth as a poet was characterized by his efforts to learn and create from the wounds of his experience. Even Ritsos’s childhood was scarred by misfortune and loss. His father was a chronic gambler who squandered the family fortune and later suffered a breakdown so severe that he was committed to an asylum in the late 1920’s. When Ritsos was twelve years old, his mother and eldest brother died of tuberculosis, the same disease that has tormented the poet himself throughout his life. Afflicted for the first time in 1926, he spent most of the next five years confined to various sanatoriums and clinics. In 1931, Ritsos moved to Athens, where he became involved with Marxist groups. His commitment to Marxism emerged from the overcrowded conditions and mass suffering he witnessed and shared during his years of confinement. Ritsos’s first book of poems, Trakter (tractor), appeared in 1934. Traditional in form and belligerent in tone, these early poems reflected his conversion to Marxism. The titles alone provide obvious clues: “To Marx,” “To the Soviet Union,” “To Christ,” “The Intellectual,” “The Undecided.” Evident throughout is the desperation of Karyotakis and the politically satirical bite of Varnalis, who was Ritsos’s first teacher and a lifelong friend. In their poetry, Ritsos and Varnalis had much in common at first. Later, however, Ritsos developed a style indicative of a more profound and introspective orientation. 37

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Ritsos’s first major poem, Epitaphios (1936), divided into twenty songs written in the rhymed couplets of the traditional Greek folk lament, is the dirge of a mother whose son has been killed in a street riot during the calculated and murderous breaking of a strike by government forces in 1936. Issued the same year, the poem elicited such an immediate and empathetic response from the Greek people that the presiding dictator, General Joannes Metaxas, banned the book and ordered that it be burned before the Temple of Zeus in Athens. The title of the poem is taken from the Greek Orthodox liturgy, from the lament of the Virgin Mother kneeling before the dead Christ. Though political on one level, the poem is fundamentally religious, echoing the mourning of a collective psyche. The years between 1936 and the advent of World War II marked Ritsos’s final break from the confinements of traditional form. The four books that were issued during this period all had controlling musical themes: To tragoudi tis adelfis mou (1937; the song of my sister), Earini symphonia (1938; spring symphony), To emvatirio tou okeanou (1940; the march of the ocean), and Palia mazurka se rythmo vrohis (1943; old mazurka to the rhythm of rain). In many of these poems, such as “Rhapsody of Naked Night” and “A Glowworm Illuminates the Night,” the poet’s synthesis of Surrealism, Impressionism, and Imagistic continuity overshadows the early political rhetoric and pessimism of Trakter. During the Nazi occupation of Greece in World War II, Ritsos played an active role as cultural liaison for the resistance organization EAM-ELAS, whose purpose was to undermine the Nazi regime and reinstate democracy in Greece. Written between 1945 and 1947, Romiosyne (1954; Romiossini: The Story of the Greeks, 1969), his last long poem of a revolutionary spirit, captured the pain, the longing, and spiritual sacrifice of the war years. Published a number of years later and set to music by Theodorakis in 1958, this poem served as a symbolic reference point for the members and sympathizers of the Greek resistance. With praise and exaltation, Ritsos links the courage and heroism of these rebel forces with the enduring nature of their ancestors, such as Odysseus and the Byzantine folk hero Digenis Akritas. Because of his active membership in EAM-ELAS, Ritsos was exiled to government detention camps between 1948 and 1953. It was during this bleak period of his life that he turned away from the doctrinaire and theoretical concerns that characterized much of his earlier work. Under the oppressive circumstances of prison life, Ritsos began to write with more urgency than before, often jotting his poems on scraps of paper which he would stuff into bottles or tin cans to be retrieved at a later date. These were primarily short pieces that record his existential struggle for sanity and resolve in the face of constant physical and psychological deprivation. At times cryptic, these poems are consistently subtle and poignant, indicative of the poet’s expanded consciousness of human suffering and solitude. In the next fifteen years following his liberation in 1952, Ritsos wrote prolifically, 38

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gaining international acclaim from writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Neruda, Ilya Ehrenburg, and Louis Aragon, who insisted that Ritsos was “the greatest living poet.” One of his finest poems of this period is the dramatic monologue I sonata tou selinofotos (1956; The Moonlight Sonata, 1979). The speaker is a woman dressed in black who yearns to leave her home, which she describes as stifling and decadent—a house that “persists in living with its dead.” However, by the end of the poem, she has chosen to remain. No longer capable of change, this person is trapped by her own fears and memories of a past which is embedded in the house itself. This haunting poem depicts solitude that engenders slow internal decay, leading finally to complete impotence. Throughout the 1960’s, Ritsos concentrated on expanding the poetic dimensions of the dramatic monologue. His efforts were productive, resulting in four consecutive masterpieces of the genre: Philoktetes (1965; English translation, 1975), Orestis (1966), Ismene (1972 ; English translation, 1977), and “The Return of Iphigenia.” In each poem, a character taken from the ancient tragedies of Aeschylus and Euripides is transformed into a lonely spokesperson for contemporary reality. Through the dramatic realization of each character’s true identity in metaphorical terms, Ritsos reveals the tragic uncertainties of human existence. In 1967, when the junta of the Colonels seized power, Ritsos was quickly arrested. In exile on the barren landscape of Yiaros and Leros, the poet reached further into himself, distilling short poems in a language that is extremely compressed. Their tone is often reminiscent of Cavafy, who inspired Ritsos to write Twelve Poems for Cavafy, published in 1974. These poems, like those from O tihos mesa ston kathrefti (the wall in the mirror), also written in 1974, confirmed Ritsos as a master of irony, metaphor, and understatement—all the qualities he admired in Cavafy. During the military dictatorship from 1967 to 1974, the government banned Ritsos’s books, but before and after that period, he received a number of honors: the Grand International Prize for Poetry of the Biennale of Knokkele-Zoute, Belgium, 1972; the Alfred de Vigny Poetry Prize, Paris, 1975; the Etna-Taormina International Poetry Prize, Italy, 1976. The most meaningful honor of all came, finally, from Greece itself in 1976 when Ritsos was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Salonika. In addition, he was frequently been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize. In keeping with the high and difficult standards of his generation, Ritsos produced a body of work that is destined to influence contemporary poetry on an international scale. He died in 1990. Nikos Kazantzakis Another important poet of the prewar generation was Nikos Kazantzakis (18831957), internationally celebrated for novels such as Vios kai politeia tou Alexe Zormpa (1946; Zorba the Greek, 1952) and O Cristos xanastaronete (1954; The Greek Passion, 1953; also known as Christ Recrucified), who initially made a name for himself in Greece for his poetry and drama. In 1938, he published a modern sequel to Homer’s Od39

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yssey in the form of a remarkable epic of 33,333 seventeen-syllable iambic verses, Odysseia, which took him fifteen years to complete. The nihilistic Odyssean hero encounters in his travels various modes of thought that he explores, but that end in nihilism. Kimon Friar spent many years translating this epic, published in English to much acclaim in 1958 as The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. Takis Sinopoulos In the minds of most critics familiar with modern Greek poetry, Takis Sinopoulos (1917-1981) stands firmly beside the more widely known poets such as Cavafy, Seferis, Elytis, and Ritsos. Of these four poets, Sinopoulos often contrasted his work to the poetry of Elytis. For both, the sun is a recurrent image that plays a central and unifying role in their poetry. For Elytis, the sun illuminates reality with its purity, grandeur, and beneficence. The sun of Sinopoulos, on the other hand, is invested with a demoniac power that burns, maims, and transforms the surrealistically bucolic landscapes of Elytis into a ravaged geography of the dead that will not permit the poet to forget. The devastating qualities of this light, which is Sinopoulos’s most prominent leitmotif, are derived in part from his intense involvement as a medical officer serving the government forces during the Greek Civil War of 1944 to 1949. Throughout these years of fratricidal horror, Sinopoulos, who had graduated from medical school in 1944, was confronted by death in a ruthless way. His poems are populated with the dead and their living gestures. Sinopoulos’s first book of poems, Metehmio I (midpoint I), appeared in 1951. At this time, he had just begun to set up his practice as a physician in the Athens area, attempting to start a new life after his horrifying experiences on the front. The wounds were still fresh, as evidenced in this first book of poems, which begins: “Landscape of death. Sea turned to stone, black cypress trees/ low sea-shore ravaged by salt and light” (“Elpenor”). So pressing was the physician’s need to express his rage and his tragic impressions of the war years that he published five more books of poems within the decade: Asmata I-XI (1953; cantos I-XI); I gnorimia me ton Max (1956; acquaintance with Max); Metaichmio II (midpoint II) and Eleni (1957); and I nihta kei antistihi (1959; night and counterpoint). Many of these poems draw on ancient Greek literature and mythology; as in the works of Seferis and Ritsos, ancient characters emerge frequently, always to express loss and tragic realization. Another important feature of Sinopoulos’s verse is his highly personal and imagistic awareness of his roots in the landscape of his birthplace, Pirgos, in Ilias. The specific nature of this landscape is not so much symbolic as it is a common reference point for the unity and continuity of his most important motifs: time, memory, and human frailty. In “Origin,” published in 1962, Sinopoulos concludes: “This is where I was born. This is where I grew up./ So these are what I need for my rage and my pride/ in order to hold and be held./ I have no gods. No fear.” 40

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The publication of “Deathfeast” in 1972 solidified Sinopoulos’s permanent place beside his already famous contemporaries. This poem—the title piece of a collection—is Sinopoulos’s most moving tribute to the comrades and loved ones whom he lost during the war. Scarred, dismembered, and disoriented, these ghosts of his tormented memory approach him. Their names appear as in a Homeric catalog of the dead. In the introduction to his translation of Sinopoulos, Landscape of Death (1979), Kimon Friar observes: The guests who have come unbidden to this deathfeast are not those so grandiloquently summoned by Ángelos Sikelianos in his “Greek Supper for the Dead,” to a table spread with silver candelabra, scarlet roses, and crystal cups, but are like those who herd around a fire or a pit of blood and beg for resurrection in the poet’s memory.

“Deathfeast” echoes not only Sinopoulos’s sense of fragmentation and guilt but that of an entire generation still hounded by its memories of war and devastation. During the last years of his life, Sinopoulos became one of the first Greek poets to exploit fully a subtle combination of prose and poetry. He had used this technique in I piisi tis piisis (1964; the poetry of poetry), a collection of aphorisms that expose the awesome but sustaining nature of his art. More so than in his later works, this small book reveals another, less desperate side of the poet’s characteristically dark preoccupations. Like Cavafy, it is only in the strange domain of poetry that Sinopoulos finds his “myth of reality, where things rejoice in the absurd aspect of their existence.” This introduction of prose elements into poetry characterizes much of the work that Sinopoulos completed in the late 1970’s, including To hroniko (1975; the chronicle), O hartis (1977; the chart), and Nihtologio (1978; the nightlogue). The consciousness that emerges in these works is dreamlike and, as the poet himself often indicated, cinematic. Although they are written in diary form as recollections of his past, they do not follow chronological sequence. Dream, memory, thought, and feeling mingle freely in these “notes toward a poem” as they do for the poet in reality. In structure and content, Nihtologio and O hartis reveal the influence of the French poets Char and Maurice Blanchot. Like Sinopoulos, they too were men with war-torn memories who constantly sought the most effective means to express the necessity of poetry in times of destruction and human waste. Considered by many critics to be Sinopoulos’s most mysterious and obscure poem, “The Grey Light” (1980) was also the last work he completed before his death in 1981. Divided into eight short sections, it is an intricately organized web of personal experiences, places, and objects which are linked together to provide a kind of mystical order for the fragmented but meditative reality in which Sinopoulos lived and created. “The Grey Light” is also a final homecoming; it takes Sinopoulos back to “the sky of Pirgos” beneath which “the river sleeps by your side.” The poets who represent the next generation of modern Greek poetry came to regard Sinopoulos as the father of the postwar period. This is confirmed not only by his poetry 41

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but also by his personal involvement as a mentor and guide for many of the younger poets. During the oppressive years of the Colonels’ regime, the doors of his home in suburban Athens were always open to writers and poets who were in need of guidance and support. Aside from his taxing profession as a physician and the constant demands of his poetry, Sinopoulos also found time to write criticism, edit literary publications, translate, and paint. What is most striking about his contribution as a poet is the high degree of excellence that he was able to maintain throughout his work, from his first publication in 1951 to his last, just prior to his death in 1981. Postwar years The horror of World War II and the civil war that followed was also visible in the work of Sinopoulos’s contemporaries—Manolis Anagnostakis (1925-2005), Miltos Sahtouris (1919-2005), Eleni Vakalo (1921-2001), Nikos Karouzos (1924-1990), Aris Alexandrou (1922-1978), and Ektor Kaknavatos (born 1920). Along with Sinopoulos, these were foremost among the poets known as the First Postwar Generation. Like Sinopoulos, they were affected by the Symbolist trends of the previous generation, although they wrote largely in free verse and were interested in more experimental forms and diction. Manolis Anagnostakis Manolis Anagnostakis was a schoolboy during the war years, and came of age toward the end of the German occupation of Greece. He belonged to a leftist group of students in Thessaloníki who established the literary magazine Ksekinima (beginning) in 1944 and took part in the leftist resistance. During the Greek Civil War, he, along with numerous other freedom fighters, was arrested by the right-wing government and was sentenced to death. Though he was later released, many of his fellow students and comrades in arms were executed. As the Greek critic Dimitrios Tsakonas put it, Anagnostakis was “a dead man who survived the firing squad, or rather a man with multiple rifle wounds made by the bullets that killed others.” If Sinopoulos’s poetry is the reaction of a young man facing horror and carnage at the front, Anagnostakis’s poetry is the more desperate reaction of the adolescent facing horror and carnage at home. His first book of poetry, Epohes (the times) was published at the end of World War II in 1945. In it there is no sign of joy at Greece’s newfound freedom from the Germans. Instead, his poetry expresses a helplessness and feeling of defeat, the individual falling victim both to the injustice of the powers that be and the evil within himself. In his poem “Epilogue” (translated by Connolly), Anagnostakis writes: These verses may well be the last The last of the last that will be written For the future poets are no longer living Those who would have spoken all died young. . . .

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Anagnostakis expressed the despair of his generation, which fought for freedom in the resistance only to face persecution after the war. Among the poets of the First Postwar Generation, Anagnostakis painted the most vivid picture of the fatal split within Greek society after World War II. Greek critics have described his poetry as a personal version of wilder and more desperate postwar Karyotakism. Miltos Sahtouris Miltos Sahtouris is considered, along with Sinopoulos and Anagnostakis, to be one of the more important poets of the First Postwar Generation. In his first three books of poetry, I Lismomenin (1945; the forgotten woman), Paraloges (1948; ballads), and Me to prosopo ston tiho (1952; with the face against the wall), one can see panic stemming from the chaos of a confused and shattered world. The stylistic trademark that sets Sahtouris apart is his distilled and succinct verse. He continued prewar Surrealism, but in a new direction: The transformation of humanity, combined with a personal dimension that has strong undertones of sexuality—the private, sensitive person within a murderous society. In the poem “Desolate” (again in a translation by Connolly), he writes: . . . crows have dressed in red like whores the church cracked under the heavy rain saints were to be found running in the streets.

Eleni Vakalo Eleni Vakalo, the foremost woman poet of the First Postwar Generation, dealt with the terrors of war by turning her back on civilization and focusing on nature, but in stark language that rejects lyricism. European civilization had brought war and destruction. The human beings she evokes are people in their pristine form, stripped of their Europeanness. Vakalo was particularly interested in visual arts and was considered a major art critic, the effects of which can be seen in her poetry. Her attention to the poetics of postmodernism left a mark on the poetry of the next generation of poets, particularly the women poets of the generation of the 1970’s. Nikos Karouzos Nikos Karouzos distanced himself from the Surrealist, Symbolist, and political poetry of his generation. His poetry is wild and passionate, containing an uneasy and very original mixture of religious and sexual themes. One of Karouzos’s interesting characteristics is the use of elements of purist Greek (katharevousa), which gives his poetry a controlled and cerebral dimension even at its most passionate. 43

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Second Postwar Generation The Second Postwar Generation spent their childhood in war and civil war, but came of age in the mid to late 1950’s. Some of the notable poets of this generation are Kiki Dimoula (born 1931), Nikos Fokas (born 1927), Vyron Leondaris (born 1932), and Titos Patrikios (born 1928). These poets were interested in keeping and developing the Greek tradition, but after the disruptive years of war were also interested in allying themselves with international poetry movements. The 1960’s and 1970’s In the late 1960’s, politics once more played a crucial role in the development of Greek poetry. The 1950’s and early 1960’s had been a period of relative calm, as Greece set about rebuilding the infrastructure shattered by World War II and the civil war. On April 21, 1967, a right-wing military junta seized power in a coup d’état. One of the new government’s first actions was the enforcement of strict censorship. Some major poets, such as Karouzos, continued publishing, as did Elytis, who avoided the censor by publishing abroad, but the majority of Greek poets, following the example of Seferis and Ritsos, countered the new strictures by refusing to publish their work. In November, 1969, the Junta government abolished official censorship, replacing it with an equally stringent Press Law, which stipulated that a headline or the title of a book had to correspond exactly to the content. The first book of poetry representing the generation of the 1970’s was consequently titled Eksi piites (six poets). The poets were Lefteris Poulios (born 1944), Vasilis Steriades (born 1947), Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke (born 1939), Nana Isaïa (born 1934), Tasos Denegris (born 1934), and Nasos Vayenas (born 1945). Other important anthologies followed: Katathesi ‘73 (deposition ‘73) and Katathesi ‘74 (deposition ‘74). The new generation of poets was the first to attempt a full demystification of ancient Greek myth, recasting it within the parameters of modern reality. The poets were influenced by Western European and American trends, particularly American Beat poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. While earlier generations of Greek poets had striven to retrieve and re-create the traditions of the Greek past, the new generation juxtaposed these traditions with the increasingly ubiquitous popular culture, weaving classical motifs into modern reality. One of the poems that best demonstrates the clash of old and new (translated here by Karen Van Dyck) is from Jenny Mastoraki’s first poetry collection, Diodia (tolls): Then the Trojan horse said no, I refuse to see the Press and they said why, and he said he knew nothing about the massacre after all, he always ate lightly in the evening

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Greek Poetry Since 1820 and in his younger days he had worked a stint as a wooden pony on a merry-go-round.

Of the generation of the 1970’s, Yannis Kondos (born 1943) proved himself master of the short epigram as well as of satire and wry humor, while Poulios reflected the alienation and rhetoric of the American Beat generation. Poulios was most closely associated with the Beat movement, although while the American “beatniks” were reacting against the strictures of daily life in American society, Poulios was reacting to the strictures of an increasingly dominant alien culture—American and Western European— which was making ever deeper inroads into modern Greek culture. While the generation of the 1970’s was primarily centered on society and the city, Anghelaki-Rooke stood out as a nature poet grounded in the physicality of the female body. In the early 1970’s, she was perceived as the Greek poet with the closest affinity to the contemporary nature poets of northern Europe and the United States. The poetry of Mihalis Ganas (born 1944), on the other hand, focused on themes that centered on the life of provincial Greece, particularly Ioannina, relying on provincial idiom and images. The Junta fell in 1974, after which freedom of expression was restored. Interestingly, it was the women poets—Vakalo, Dimoula, Anghelaki-Rooke, Rea Galanaki, Maria Laina, and Mastoraki—who continued experimenting with the elliptical language that had been a product of the censorship period, creating compelling and innovative work. The 1980’s onward The generation of the 1980’s saw a greater diversity of poetic themes and forms than ever before. Among its foremost poets were Nikos Davettas (born 1960), Thanassis Hatzopoulos (born 1961), Yorgos Houliaras (born 1951), Dyonisos Kapsalis (born 1952), Ilias Lagios (born 1958), Stratis Paskalis (born 1958), Haris Vlavianos (born 1957), and Spiros Vrettos (born 1960). In the 1990’s, Dimoula’s work gained attention for its linguistic playfulness and specifically Greek themes—particular appealing for readers who are wary of the threat of Greece’s losing its cultural and linguistic integrity with the increasing homogenization of Europe. In an era when the Greek language is seen as vulnerable to the onslaught of English—as evidenced by the deep opposition to the proposal in 2001 that English be the second official language in Greece—Dimoula chooses topics viewed by many as privately Greek and untranslatable, in the sense that the poems have a topical meaning for the Greek reader. “Single-Room Symptom” (translated by Connolly) offers an example: 45

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No different in Pylos either the same disorderly retreat from Syros the year before twice as bad in Kalamata last year the train was full and the weeping demanded we go back to Athens on foot.

An interesting phenomenon has been the increase in the number of Greek poets living and writing outside Greece, often referred to as the poets of the Greek diaspora. Notable among these are the Australian poet Dimitris Tsaloumas (born 1921) and the American poets Olga Broumas (born 1949) and Eleni Sikelianos (born 1965), the latter the great-granddaughter of Angelos Sikelianos. Bibliography Beaton, Roderick. Introduction to Modern Greek Literature. Rev. ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 2004. The second revision of the volume published in 1994, which had the distinction of being the first book-length study of modern Greek literary works—those published since 1821. Greek quotations are translated into English. Maps. Bien, Peter, et al., eds. A Century of Greek Poetry, 1900-2000. Bilingual edition. Westwood, N.J.: Cosmos, 2004. Includes 456 poems by 109 poets, including Greece’s two winners of the Nobel Prize. This collection is especially significant because many of the poets are relatively unknown outside Greece, and many of the poems have not previously been translated. Constantine, Peter, et al., eds. The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. Introduction by Robert Hass. Covers three millennia of Greek poetry and includes more than one thousand poems, many in new translations. Essential. Map. Hadas, Rachel. Merrill, Cavafy, Poems, and Dreams. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. A wide-ranging collection of essays by a noted poet, translator, and scholar, many of them pointing out how Greek myths and themes have influenced other writers, such as the American poet James Merrill. Includes essays on Constantine P. Cavafy, George Seferis, and Kostas Karyotakis. Keeley, Edmund. Inventing Paradise: The Greek Journey, 1937-1947. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2002. A noted scholar and translator recalls a time before the war when he was a member of a literary group that included George Katsimbalis and George Seferis. Though it is rich in biographical details and scenic descriptions, along with a good deal of literary criticism, the primary purpose of the volume is to suggest how literature helped the Greek spirit to survive the Nazi occupation intact. Nagy, Gregory, and Anna Stavrakopoulou, eds. Modern Greek Literature: Critical Es46

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says. New York: Routledge, 2003. Essays on various subjects, including the poetry of Constantine P. Cavafy and bilingual elements in the works of Theodor Kallifatides. Bibliographical references and index. Ricks, David, ed. Modern Greek Writing: An Anthology in English Translation. London: Peter Owen, 2003. A selection of Greek prose and verse written since 1821. Introductory notes on each writer. Valaoritis, Nanos, and Thanasis Maskaleris, eds. An Anthology of Modern Greek Poetry. Jersey City, N.J.: Talisman House, 2003. The editors of this outstanding collection, who are both noted poets and critics, translated most of the works included. Almost a hundred poets are represented, some of them established, others relatively new. Van Dyck, Karen. Kassandra and the Censors: Greek Poetry Since 1967. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998. Focusing on poetry produced since 1967, the author shows how the tactics women poets used to deal with censorship were also helpful as they sought to change traditional assumptions about gender and replace them with feminist ideas and ideals. Indexes. _______, trans. The Rehearsal of Misunderstanding: Three Collections by Contemporary Greek Women Poets. Lebanon, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1998. Includes Greek and English versions of Keik (The Cake), by Rea GalanakT; Histories gia ta vathia (Tales of the Deep), by TzenT MastorakT, and Diko tTs (Hers), by Maria Laina. Bibliographical references. James Stone; Peter Constantine Updated by Karen Van Dyck

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MACEDONIAN POETRY Like the Slovenes, the Macedonians have had to travel a rocky historical path. After their early state was subjugated in the eleventh century by the Byzantines and, later, by the Turks, they did not enjoy independence until 1945. During those long centuries, however, they were able to maintain their identity, both ethnically and culturally; when conditions became favorable at the end o2f World War II, they began to produce their own literature. Despite this long history of oppression, Macedonian culture can trace its heritage back to the earliest Slavic writings, which appeared in the ninth century in the language of the Macedonian Slavs around Salonika. Centering on the lively activity of Macedonian missionaries, led by Klement Ohridski and Naum Ohridski and their disciples, early Macedonian literature was exclusively related to the Church. Indeed, for many centuries, the only Macedonian literature that was not directly connected with the Church was oral folk literature, which was as abundant in Macedonia as in other South Slavic lands. Much of this literature was in poetic form, but because of its oral nature, not much has been preserved. Today, folklorists are making concerted efforts to record and document what remains of this tradition, and at least some of the folk literature that can still be heard has been handed down for generations. Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries The first known verses in Macedonian were written by Kiril Peychinovich-Tetoec (c. 1770-1845). The beginning of known Macedonian poetry coincided with the revival of national awareness and the struggle against the Turks and the Greek clergy, who had tried strenuously to suppress the Mace inot (1820-1882), Dimitrije Miladinov (18101862), Konstantin Miladinov (1830-1862), Rajko inzifov (1839-1877), and Grigor Prli5ev (1830-1893). The Miladinov brothers were especially active in their efforts to introduce Macedonian in schools and in collecting and publishing folk poetry. For their nationalistic activity, they both died in a prison in Constantinople. inzifov, a talented poet and an erudite scholar (he was graduated from Moscow University), was also instrumental in collecting and translating folk poetry, and his own poetry is not without merit. The most talented of these writers was Prli5ev. As a student of Greek, he wrote in Greek the epic poems Serdar (1860; The Sirdar, 1973) and Skender beg (1861; Skender Bey), which he later translated into Macedonian. He also translated Homer’s Iliad (c. 750 b.c.e.; English translation, 1611) and Odyssey (c. 725 b.c.e.; English translation, 161) into his native language. The poetry of all of these poets, being so closely connected with the struggle of their people for independence, has more historical than artistic value. By writing in their own language, they helped to preserve it in literature after centuries of suppression. They also drew heavily from folk poetry, bringing that cultural treasure into focus and perhaps saving it from oblivion. 48

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Twentieth century onward In the creation of Yugoslavia at the end of World War I (the new nation of the Southern Slavs was not known by that name until 1929), the Macedonians were denied their nationality once again. Their writers were again forced to live and write outside their native land, for writing and publishing in Macedonian were not allowed. Among these émigré writers, three stand out: Kosta Racin (1908-1943), Venko Markovski (19151988), and Kole Nedelkovski (1912-1943). By far the most important of the three, Racin was the first to publish a collection of poems in Macedonian, Beli mugri (1939; white dawns). Here, Racin depicts the plight of his countrymen, who were often forced to go for long periods to other countries, especially the United States, to look for work. The recognition of Macedonian nationality within Yugoslavia at the end of World War II triggered a burst of cultural and literary activity. A single dialect was chosen to serve as the basis for Macedonia’s literary language, and books began to be published in great numbers. More important, several writers and poets of unmistakable talent emerged, laying the foundation of contemporary literature and poetry. Among these, three stand out: Slavko Janevski (1920-2000), Bla.e Koneski (1921-1993), and Aco Šopov (1923-1983). Janevski’s poetry, whether about his war experiences or about his intimate concerns, is characterized by a picturesque quality, originality, boldness, and a touch of black humor. In form, he is just as bold, imaginative, and innovative. The author of the first Macedonian novel, he is active in other genres, although poetry remains his main interest. Koneski, an academician who has done pioneering work in the field of the Macedonian language, writes direct, intimate, and meditative poetry. Macedonian motifs— mythical, folkloric, and contemporary—are frequently found in his somewhat traditional and subdued poems. Koneski is a master of controlled pathos and understatement. Šopov published the first Macedonian book of poetry after World War II and thus started, along with Janevski and Koneski, the process of establishing the right of Macedonian poetry to exist. A subtle lyricist, a sensitive observer, and a poet of intense personal experience, Šopov enriched Macedonian poetry at the very beginning of the new period, thus creating models for the younger poets. He was also one of the first to liberate Macedonian poetry from nonaesthetic criteria in the late 1940’s. After these three poets, the road was open for a large number of remarkably capable poets. Mateja Matevski (born 1929) and Gané Todorovski (born 1929) were the leaders in the second generation of contemporary Macedonian poets. Matevski contributed to the transformation of declarative, descriptive, and confessional Macedonian poetry into a meditative and abstract approach bordering at times on the surreal. Influenced by French poets, he paid great attention to form, attempting to strike a balance between an abundance of impressions and an economy of expression. Todorovski’s poetry shows a peculiar sensitivity and strong linguistic ability. 49

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Radovan Pavlovski (born 1936) and Bogomil Gjuzel (born 1939) belong to the third wave of modern Macedonian poets. Pavlovski is a poet of extraordinary imagistic invention and an almost animistic approach to the natural world. His images seem to rise out of the unconscious with echoes of folklore and rural life. The sense of nostalgia, of loss, that one experiences in reading his verse recalls the spirit of anonymous folk poetry, yet Pavlovski gives his expression a thoroughly modern and sophisticated tone. Gjuzel is a more contemplative poet, but with equally close ties to his native soil. In his work, one can see the beginnings of a conscious effort to organize the Macedonian experience and sensibility. His poems impress the reader by their formal excellence and the evocative and sensuous quality of his language. The vitality of the poetic tradition in Macedonia is evident in the fact that every August for almost five decades, the southern Macedonian city of Struga has held an international poetry festival that attracts poets from all over the world, as well as scholars, literary critics, and translators. Struga Poetic Evenings (SPE) was launched in 1962, when several Macedonian poets presented readings in honor of Konstantin and Dimitar Miladinov. By 2009, SPE had become a four-day event, attended by more than eighty poets from fifty countries. The festival always opens with a reading of Konstantin Miladinov’s poem “T’ga za jug” (“Longing for the South”). Among the activities that follow are poetry readings and performances, multimedia presentations, symposia, concerts, and the presentation of awards for poetic achievement, among them, the naming of an SPE laureate. The festival is followed by a Caravan of Poetry, a series of poetry readings in other Macedonian cities, which ends in Skopje, where the SPE laureate is made an honorary member of the Macedonian Poetry Association. Bibliography Barac, Antun. A History of Yugoslav Literature. Ann Arbor. Mich.: Joint Committee on Eastern Europe Publication Series, 1973. A standard history of all Yugoslav literatures and poetry, including a brief discussion of Macedonian poetry, by a leading literary scholar. Although somewhat outdated, it still provides reliable information, especially of the older periods. Dimkovska, Lidija. Do Not Awaken Them with Hammers. Translated by Ljubica Arsovska and Peggy Reid. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Ugly Duckling Press, 2006. The first of this highly acclaimed writer’s four poetry collections to be translated into English. Complicated poems, often humorous, but all infused with the poet’s identity as a woman living in Eastern Europe at a time of change. George, Emery, ed. Contemporary East European Poetry: An Anthology. 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Thirty-two newer poets have been added to this edition of the massive 1983 volume. Macedonian poets are discussed in the introduction to the Yugoslavian section, which includes translated poems by Slavko Janevski, Bla e Koneski, Aco Šopov, Mateja Matevski, and Gané Todorovski. 50

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Janevski, Slavko. The Bandit Wind: Poems. Translated by Charles Simic. Takoma Park, Md.: Dryad Press, 1991. A bilingual collection of works by one of Macedonia’s most highly regarded poets, noted for his bold experimentation, his vivid characters, and his dreamlike imagery. The translator is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. Kizer, Carolyn. Carrying Over: Poems from the Chinese, Urdu, Macedonian, Yiddish, and French African. Translated by Kizer. Port Townsend, Wash.: Copper Canyon Press, 1989. This unusual book consists of entries from the journal of the author, a noted poet, along with her beautifully crafted translations of poems that she found especially appealing. The section on Yugoslavia includes Kizer’s prose poem on translation and nine poems translated from Macedonian, six of them by Bogomil Gjuzel and the other three by Radovan Pavlovski, Mateja Matevski, and Anté Popovkski. Mihailovich, Vasa D. A Comprehensive Bibliography of Yugoslav Literature in English, 1593-1980. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1984. Consult also the author’s First Supplement, 1981-1985 (1988), the Second Supplement, 1986-1990 (1992), and the Third Supplement, 1991-1998 (1999). All are indispensable research tools. Osers, Ewald, ed. Contemporary Macedonian Poetry. Translated by Eward Osers. London: Kultura/Forest Books, 1991. English translations of works by twenty-five poets, selected from volumes published since the early 1970’s. Padron, Justo Jorge. “Contemporary Poetry in Macedonia.” Equivalences, no. 17 (1989): 7-21. Interesting views on Macedonian poetry by a Spanish poet and publisher, thus offering an outsider’s perspective. Szporer, Michael. Introduction to Streme 30, nos. 4/5 (1986): 223-239. The editor of an important anthology of Macedonian poetry, Szporer writes down his views and impressions of this poetry, seeing different waves of poetic generations, and including women poets and younger poets hitherto inadequately represented. Vasa D. Mihailovich Updated by Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman

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ARCHILOCHUS Born: Paros, Greece; c. 680 b.c.e. Died: Paros(?), Greece; c. 640 b.c.e. Also known as: Archilochos; Archilochus of Paros Principal poetry Archilochos, 1959 (Max Treu, editor) Other literary forms Archilochus (or-KIHL-uh-kuhs) is remembered only for his poetry. Achievements Archilochus was well known in antiquity as an innovator, especially in metrics. His metrical forms include iambic trimeter, elegiac couplets, trochaic tetrameter, epodes (poems in which a longer metrical unit is followed by a shorter one), and asynartete (verses consisting of two units having different rhythms). Although he is traditionally said to have been the inventor of iambic and epodic poetry, it is possible that poems in these meters were written earlier but failed to survive. Archilochus’s technical innovations, rather, may be seen in the skilled combination of established meters in his epodes and asynartete. Archilochus writes mostly in an Ionic Greek, imbued with the language and especially the vocabulary of the epic tradition. In fact, he was frequently admired by the ancients for his successful imitation of Homer, and Homeric influence, on both theme and vocabulary, can be seen in Archilochus’s surviving fragments. The view that Archilochus is an anti-Homeric poet, at least in his rejection of epic standards and values, is increasingly questioned today. Archilochus’s elegiac poems generally reflect the martial or hortatory themes found in other Archaic Greek elegists, including Tyrtaeus and Theognis; elegy was not specifically associated with lament until the fifth century b.c.e. In general, Archilochus’s poems are unbound by any rigid restriction of particular themes to particular meters. Not all his elegiacs are about war, and not all his iambics possess the invective or satirical mood to which that meter was restricted later in the Hellenistic period. Nearly all of Archilochus’s poetry is written in the first person, and he has often been called the first European lyric poet. Modern scholars, however, are becoming increasingly convinced that Archilochus’s invective poetry was part of an oral tradition of iambus, or Greek blame poetry, possibly cultic in origin and in performance and at least as old as the epic tradition, which used stock characters and the first-person persona in a conventional way. If this is true, Archilochus’s “lyricism” in the modern sense of “expressing individual emotions” is much more formal and limited in scope than has heretofore been realized. 52

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Archilochus’s meters and style were imitated by later monodic Greek poets, including Alcaeus and Anacreon , but ancient admiration of Archilochus’s skilled manipulation of meter was balanced by the poet’s perhaps unjustified reputation for violent and abusive verse. The fifth century lyric poet Pindar himself criticized Archilochus for such violence in a Pythian ode. There is a suggestion that Archilochus was the butt of some later Greek comedy. Archilochus’s poetry was evidently very influential on the iambics of the Hellenistic poet Callimachus, on the satirical poems of Catullus, and especially on the Epodes (c. 30 b.c.e.; English translation, 1638) of Horace. The poet was also the subject of several pieces in the Palatine Anthology. Archilochus’s influence on more modern poets has been limited by the fragmentary preservation of his poetry. Biography A general biographical sketch of Archilochus can be drawn from the extant fragments, as well as from ancient sources that were clearly dependent for information on Archilochus’s poetry. Particularly informative are several third and first century b.c.e. inscriptions that were found on Archilochus’s native Paros and are usually called the Monumentum Archilochium. These inscriptions were mounted in a sanctuary of Archilochus, the Archilocheion, founded in the third century b.c.e., and are evidence of the poet’s posthumous appeal to the inhabitants of his birthplace. Unfortunately, nearly all the available biographical information concerning Archilochus must be qualified by its ultimate poetic source. Although Archilochus does use the first-person persona and often provides apparent autobiographical information in his poetry, there is little that can be verified by independent sources. Modern scholars tend to argue that many of Archilochus’s personal statements, especially in iambus, are actually conventions of the genre and provide little information about the life of the poet himself. Even the dating of Archilochus is much debated. The poet’s reference to a full eclipse of the sun in poem 74 D. suggests a date of either 711 or 648 b.c.e. The discovery in Thasos of the late seventh century tombstone of Archilochus’s friend Glaucus (see, for example, poem 56 D.) makes the later period more likely for the poet’s floruit. It is, therefore, probably safe to assume that Archilochus lived during the mid-seventh century b.c.e., perhaps from 680 to 640 b.c.e. Traditionally, Archilochus is said to have been the son of Telesicles, a Parian aristocrat, and a slave woman, Enipo, but this bastard status may be a fictional poetic stance (“Enipo” may be derived from enipe, an epic word for “rebuke” or “invective”). It is fairly certain, however, that both Archilochus’s life and his poetry reflect the history and rich Ionian tradition of Paros, the Aegean island on which he grew up. In the seventh century b.c.e., Paros organized a colony on the gold-rich island of Thasos, and it is probable that both Archilochus’s father and the poet himself were involved in this venture. Mention of both islands occurs frequently in the surviving fragments. Archi lochus’s common martial themes mirror the military concerns of the Greek Archaic 53

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Age, when colonization and intense rivalry between city- and island-states led to frequent warfare. The tradition that Archilochus was a mercenary soldier may be a misinterpretation of his own poetry, but the evidence suggests that he was often called on to fight, both for Paros and Thasos, against the Thracians, Euboeans, and Naxians. He is said to have been killed in battle by a Naxian named Corax, but this name, too (which means “crow”), may be derived from the invective tradition. The bulk of Archilochus’s extant fragments do not support the antimilitaristic sentiment that some have noted in such poems as “On My Shield,” but rather suggest the patriotic sentiments of an Archaic Greek who knew his human weaknesses on the battlefield. Archilochus does not reject the martial world, but rather sees himself as a “soldier-poet.” The Monumentum Archilochium provides the mythic tale of how Archilochus as a boy met the Muses, who gave him a lyre in exchange for the cow that his father had sent him to sell. This etiology of Archilochus’s poetic inspiration may have been derived from the poet’s own work and is almost certainly an imitation of Hesiod’s encounter with the Muses. The best-known portion of Archilochus’s poetry is concerned with his aborted engagement to Neobule, the daughter of Lycambes. According to tradition, Lycambes, said to have been an acquaintance of the poet’s father, agreed to a match between Neobule and Archilochus. For unknown reasons, Lycambes later changed his mind, and Neobule married someone else. Much of Archilochus’s invective poetry is directed against Lycambes and two of his daughters (the Lycambides), who are said to have hanged themselves as a result of the poet’s bitter attacks. The entire Neobule story has by many scholars come to be considered spurious autobiographical material, despite the apparent confirmation of the tale suggested by a Hellenistic epitaph poem for the Lycambides. The suicide theme could be the result of the “killing-satire” tradition. In addition, the morphological relationship between Lyc-amb-es, i-amb-os, and dithyramb-os suggests to some modern scholars, including Martin West, that Lycambes and his daughters were not historical personages but rather stock characters in a traditional iambus, or blame poetry, possibly with some original cultic link with Dionysus and Demeter. The establishment of the Archilocheion sanctuary on Paros gives some confirmation of the poet’s possible cultic connections. Analysis Archilochus’s poetry sprang from the rich oral poetic heritage of prehistoric and Archaic Greece, and especially of Ionia. It was influenced not only by the impersonal, formulaic, epic tradition ending with Homer, but also by a parallel oral tradition of more personal expression that led, beginning with Archilochus in the mid-seventh century b.c.e., to Greek iambic, elegiac, and lyric poetry. It is probable that the invective mood, animated dialogues, and vivid expression of personal feelings that fill Archilochus’s poems were not inventions of the poet, but rather his inheritance from the iambic and 54

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elegiac traditions, which Archilochus utilized in his own distinctive, usually unorthodox, manner. Interaction between the epic and lyric traditions is particularly evident in Archilochus’s poetry, in which the poet not only uses but also often semantically transforms Homeric words, epithets, and even scenes. Archilochus’s poetry is filled with metaphors that are often derived from Homeric, martial sources, but which are abrupt and violent in their poetic context; the much-discussed metaphor of a woman taking a town by storm through her beauty is one example. Archilochus can also be seen to use conventional themes in unconventional ways: for example, his “On My Shield,” in which he revises traditional military values; his unorthodox propemptikon or “bon voyage” poem (fragment 79a D.), which is really a wish for an evil voyage for a personal enemy; and his seduction poetry, which has, at least once, in the Cologne Epode, an unconventional climax. His poetry also shows a fondness for animal fables in the tradition of Aesop; Archilochus uses these fables, often in unusual contexts, as brief metaphors or extended allegories. The biographical Archilochus may lie hidden behind the persona of his poetry, but the poetry itself reveals the talents of an original and unorthodox mind whose contributions to the Greek iambic and elegiac traditions are monumental. There may have been a lost “lyric” tradition before Archilochus, but through his personal, first-person poetry, a distinctive form of poetic expression developed that lies at the beginning of the European lyric tradition. The fragments of Archilochus’s work reveal a dynamic poetry that uses the vocabulary and themes of the oral epic and iambic traditions to create the impression of a personal voice on which modern lyric poetry is ultimately based. It is especially through his unconventional use of standard words and concepts that Archilochus’s style develops its forceful and unexpected turns of thought and expression. Although critical discussion of Archilochus’s life and poetry may never be free from the controversies occasioned by the lack of primary evidence, enough of his work survives to show his original contributions to the European poetic tradition, especially in the areas of metrical experimentation, iambic or invective poetry, and lyric or first-person expression. Fragment 67a D. Fragment 67a D. is a trochaic tetrameter example of the hortatory poem usually expressed in elegiacs. It forms part of a thematic group in Archilochus’s poetry on tlesmosyne or “endurance” (fragments 7 D., 68 D., and 58 D.). Significantly, this group is not bound to a particular meter and is composed of both elegiac and trochaic tetrameter. The exhortative theme is distinctive in 67a D. in that it is an introspective address to the poet’s thumos, his “heart,” rather than to another person (such as Glaucus in 68 D.). Address to one’s own thumos and reflection on one’s own state of mind are found in such epics as the Odyssey (c. 725 b.c.e.; English translation, 1614), but Archilochus’s adaptation of this epic trope to the first-person persona reveals the ability to distance oneself from one’s poetic persona, an ability that is essential to the lyric mode. In 67a D., 55

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Archilochus addresses his heart in a military or nautical context, as if his heart is under siege or at sea: “thrown into confusion” (kukomene); “ward off” (alexou). The vocabulary is Homeric, but the context is original. The poet’s advice to his heart is climaxed in lines 4 through 6 with a pair of parallel imperative phrases. The first pair, “don’t in victory openly gloat” and “nor in defeat at home fall in grief,” is balanced not only in sentiment but also in word order, where Greek participial references to victory (nikno) and defeat (nikTtheis) are completed in meter and in sense by the imperative forms “gloat” (agalleo) and “grieve” (odureo). In the second pair of imperative phrases, the emphasis is not so much on the contradictory imperatives “rejoice” (chaire) and “give sorrow” (aschala) or on the objects of these actions, “good fortune” (chartoisin) and “evils” (kakoisin), but on the adverbial qualification of these commands at the beginning of the last line, “at least not excessively” (mT liTn). This plea for moderation in the expression of emotion was a traditional Archaic Greek sentiment, best known in the form of the Apollonian dictum “nothing in excess” (mTden agan), but Archilochus sums up this concept, in the rest of the last line, by a final imperative phrase semantically charged in a striking way: “Recognize what a rhythm of order controls human life.” Archilochus’s use of rhusmos, an Ionic form of the Greek word rhuthmos, is ambiguous. The primary meaning of this word is “measure” or “order,” but eventually the word developed a secondary meaning of flux, or change. Both meanings of the word may be operative in the poem and result in a paradoxical reading of the human situation: The order (rhuthmos) of human life is the constant change (rhuthmos) that Archilochus exhorts his heart to accept. Fragment 67a D. thus demonstrates Archilochus’s original use of Homeric vocabulary and concepts as well as the hortatory mood of Greek elegy in a distinctive meter. “On My Shield” “On My Shield,” composed of a pair of elegiac couplets, is Archilochus’s bestknown piece, in which he abandons his shield in battle. The shield, “untarnished by arms,” that is, “brand-new,” is left beside a bush where it is picked up by an enemy Saian (a Thracian). The poet’s preference for saving his own life over keeping his shield (which he says he can always replace) has usually been interpreted as an outright rejection of epic, martial standards in favor of a more personal, self-centered attitude. Even in antiquity, this poem was contrasted with the Spartan woman’s command to her man to return from battle “with his shield or on it,” and Archilochus was known, derogatorily, as a rhipsaspis, or “shield-thrower,” “deserter.” Several later poets, including Alcaeus, Anacreon, and Horace, imitated this poem. It should be noted, however, that, unlike some of his later imitators, Archilochus does not actually throw away his shield but rather hides it under a bush. Archilochus’s act is not a frantic gesture in the midst of headlong flight but a calculated attempt to save his life and, possibly, his shield. The sentiment is certainly different from the Homeric 56

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battle standard but only in emphasis. Archilochus, whose military adventures clearly speak through these lines, is not spurning martial values, but rather placing his emphasis on the preservation of life instead of gear. The noble value that the shield possesses in epic (for example, the importance of the shield of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, c. 750 b.c.e.; English translation, 1611) is certainly undermined by Archilochus, who says of his shield that he can buy a “better one” (ou kakio), but the underlying implication of this purchase is that Archilochus is prepared to enter battle again in the future. On the level of language, there appears to be a contrast in the poem between standard Homeric expressions and their unconventional contexts. The poet’s lighthearted attitude toward the loss of his shield is reinforced in several ways. First, he uses the derogatory Homeric word erreto (to hell with it) in an emphatic position in reference to the shield. The epithet amometon (blameless), used for the lost shield, is also significant, for the poet’s preference for a rare Homeric form of “blameless” instead of the more common epic form amumona is perhaps deliberately and comically unorthodox. Archilochus uses an even rarer form (amomon) of this epithet in the Cologne Epode. Finally, the contrast between loss of shield and saving of life may be underscored by the possible phonological pun, unintelligible in translation, of Saion and exesaosa. Fragment 112 D. Archilochus also expresses personal, unconventional views in an unconventional way in fragment 112 D., which is metrically an example of his asynartetic poems, using a combination of dactylic tetrameter, ithyphallic, and iambic trimeter catalectic. Here the poet is describing not a martial experience but an emotional one, but this personal theme is expressed in a vividly Homeric vocabulary: Eros (Passion), which in Archaic Greek poetry was still an emotion rather than the anthropomorphic mythological figure (Cupid) of later periods, is “coiled beneath the heart” of Archilochus. The word elustheis (coiled) verbally recalls the epic scenes in which Odysseus was coiled beneath the Cyclops’s sheep and Priam at Achilles’ feet. In the second line, “Eros pours a thick mist over the poet’s eyes,” the words “pour” (echeuen) and “mist” (achlun) both invoke epic passages where the mist of death pours over a dying warrior. The Homeric vocabulary thus implies a vivid metaphor for Eros, which has a deathlike grasp on the poet and is depicted, like death, as an external rather than an internal force. Archilochus continues this unconventional use of Homeric vocabulary in the last line, where Eros “steals the tender heart from his breast .” Once again epic formulas for death are applied to Eros, but the epithet “tender” (hapalas) may be intentionally ambiguous; a secondary meaning of the word, “weak/feeble,” is perhaps implied by Archilochus as a subtle transformation of the Homeric epithet into a significant expression of the poet’s helplessness in the face of violent passion.

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Cologne Epode A papyrus find that was published as the Cologne Epode in 1975, not only added forty precious lines to the corpus of Archilochus but also has greatly advanced knowledge of the poet’s epodic and invective style. This epode, a composition of iambic trimeters, hemiepes, and iambic dimeter, is most easily accessible in this English translation by John Van Sickle. The papyrus, the beginning of which is lost, appears to pick up in the middle of a dialogue between a man and a woman. The conversation is being narrated by the man. Only the last four lines of the woman’s speech survive. The bulk of the extant poem is devoted to the man’s response, “point by point,” to the woman. The general background is an attempted seduction in which the woman argues against and the man for immediate physical union. The poem climaxes in a narration of sexual activity, the precise nature of which has been greatly debated. (Full intercourse and “heavy petting” are the apparent choices of interpretation.) A similar use of dialogue within narrative is employed by Archilochus in another recent papyrus find, which is also a seduction scene. The narrative in the Cologne Epode demonstrates Archilochus’s skilled use of a structure well suited to the tone of Ionian iambus, the genre of personal expression and ridicule in which the poet is here operating. The world of Homer is not far to seek, in both the vocabulary and themes of the Cologne Epode. The use of the matronym “daughter of Amphimedo” is good epic diction, and the phrase “I shall obey as you order” is another obvious example of Homeric phraseology. Thematically, the epode is a close iambic adaption of Hera’s seduction of Zeus in the Iliad, book 14. The revelation in line 16 of the epode that Archilochus is probably talking to Neobule’s sister makes the issue of autobiographical experience particularly pressing, but comparison of the epode to book 14 suggests that it is not so much the narration of a spontaneous and emotional event as it is an artistic, stylized variation of a Homeric seduction. The Cologne Epode, perhaps more than any other extant Archilochean fragment, suggests the presence of an artificial rather than an authentic first-person persona. Formality is especially evident in the depiction of the woman in a bucolic setting and the contrasting use of images from several Archaic Greek professions and activities in an erotic context. Although Archilochus’s adaptation of the bucolic setting from Homer is evidenced by the fact that both poems associate sexual union with wildly blooming flowers, Archilochus has integrated this association of the woman with the fertility of nature in a more basic way, into the very fiber of his vocabulary and imagery. The woman herself is described as “beautiful and tender” (kalT tereina), while her sister Neobule feels the brunt of Archilochus’s invective in her description as a withered flower (anthos d’ aperruTke). The final stage of this natural process is represented by the woman’s late mother, Amphimedo, “who now is covered by the mouldering earth.” The concept and vocabulary, originally Homeric, is manipulated by Archilochus here into an unorthodox and subtle metaphor arguing in favor of the masculine demand 58

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of immediate sexual gratification. At the same time, the narrator disguises his eroticism behind references to various professions: rhetoric (“answering point by point”); architecture (“the coping stone” and “architrave”); navigation or horse racing (“I’ll hold my course”); war (“reconnoitering”); wrestling (“seizing her”); and animal husbandry (“hasty bitch, blind pups”). The last reference, to an old Greek proverb, also underscores Archilochus’s fondness for the use of animal fables as exempla. The proverb, arguing against hasty action, is a subtle ploy on the part of the narrator to disguise his own ambitions. Bibliography Bartol, Krystyna. “Where Was Iambic Performed? Some Evidence from the Fourth Century b.c.” Classical Quarterly 42, no. 1 (1992): 65. A discussion of the performance of iambic poetry in the fourth century b.c.e. Poems by Archilochus and Homer may have been presented during poetic competitions as suggested in a text by Heraclitus. Burnett, Anne Pippin. Three Archaic Poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho. London: Bristol Classical Press, 1998. Explores the paradoxical career of Archilochus as both a professional soldier and poet, the combination of “Ares and the Muses,” as Burnett phrases it. This book also provides an even-handed view of Archilochus’s use of obscenity in his poems. Burnett points out that during the time Archilochus was writing, obscenity was seen not as an end in itself but as part of ritual, verbal attacks on enemies. As such, Archilochus undoubtedly regarded his use of obscenity as a poet in the same way he considered his use of weapons as a warrior. Both were means to the same end: triumph over an adversary. Davenport, Guy. Introduction to Archilochos, Sappho, Alkman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. The placement of Archilochus among his contemporary poetic peers helps establish both his debt and contributions to the developing Greek poetic tradition. Davenport, who also translated and illustrated the selections in this volume, provides a brief but useful overview of Archilochus’s place in early Greek literature, pointing out that “Archilochus is the second poet of the West” (after Homer). Because Davenport himself is both a creative writer and a scholar his translations tend to be more interesting than traditional, academic efforts. Finglass, P. J., C. Collard, and N. J. Richardson, eds. Hesperos: Studies in Ancient Greek Poetry Presented to M. L. West on His Seventieth Birthday. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. This collection of essays on ancient Greek poetry contains several essays that examine Archilochus’s works and the time in which he lived. Gerber, Douglas. Introduction to Greek Iambic Poetry from the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries B.C. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. A solid essay that places Archilochus in the context of his times and his specific poetic genre. Gerber, 59

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who also provided the translations for the volume, offers a learned but accessible commentary on the techniques and methods of Greek verse of the period. Serving also as editor, Douglas has compiled a very useful volume. Irwin, Elizabeth. “Biography, Fiction, and the Archilochaen Ainos.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 118 (1998): 177-183. An examination of the historicity of characters in Archilochus’s poetry. The question of the possible autobiographical nature of the poems remains open. Rankin, H. D. Archilochus of Peros. Park Ridge, N.J.: Noyes Press, 1977. A good, indepth review of the poet’s career and achievements, with an emphasis on the themes and content of his verse. Rankin points out that Archilochus was the “first poet in our literary tradition to use sexuality in a conscious and deliberate way as a main theme in his poetry.” Rankin’s frank discussion of Archilochus’s use of sexual themes and imagery helps the reader understand that the poet was not simply trying to shock the reader. In this and other areas, Rankin is especially helpful in his discussion of the role of poetry in Greek society of the time. Will, Frederic. Archilochos. New York: Twayne, 1969. This volume provides a solid introduction to the study of the poet, his work, and his world. Because few of the basic facts known about the poet have changed—and little, in that sense, has been added—most of the material remains useful and can complement later works on Archilochus dealing more extensively with the interpretation of his work and his poetic techniques. Thomas J. Sienkewicz Updated by Michael Witkoski

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CALLIMACHUS Born: Cyrene, North Africa (now Shahhat, Libya); c. 305 b.c.e. Died: Alexandria, Egypt; c. 240 b.c.e. Also known as: Kallimachos Principal poetry Aitifn, n.d. (Aetia, 1958) EkalT, n.d. (Hecale, 1958) Epigrammata, n.d. (Epigrams, 1793) Hymni, n.d. (Hymns, 1755) Iamboi, n.d. (Iambi, 1958) Lock of Berenice, 1755 Other literary forms Callimachus (kuh-LIHM-uh-kuhs) was a scholar and literary critic as well as a poet and wrote prose monographs on subjects as diverse as the names of tribes, rare words, barbarian customs, and marvelous occurrences throughout the world. Unfortunately, none of the prose is extant. Achievements Callimachus is the preeminent Alexandrian poet, the most daring, technically skilled, and prolific among the writers practicing their art in that Hellenized Egyptian city during the third century b.c.e. Like his contemporaries Theocritus and Apollonius Rhodius, Callimachus wrote allusive, learned, yet dramatic poetry; unlike these two fellow Alexandrians, however, he seems to have deliberately mined the widest variety of genres. Moreover, he alone among the poets whose work survives from this period crafted and refined throughout his career a poetic dogma, a highly developed notion of what a poem should be. In this, one could compare him to Ezra Pound among modern poets, continually urging his colleagues to “make it new” and exerting a powerful influence on subsequent generations of poets. Callimachus, who was also like Pound in being a scholar of poetry, renewed the Greek poetic tradition in two ways: He cultivated forms that had fallen into disuse (such as the hymnic), and he infused traditionally nonpersonal poetry with allusions to his own time and condition. A hymn, for example, could become a vehicle for praise of the patron monarch Ptolemy and for pronouncements on style, while purporting to praise Zeus or Apollo; a funerary epigram might be turned in the poet’s hands to serve as a sophisticated joke. It was Callimachus’s achievement to compose poetry that satisfied a discerning, restricted audience—the royal court at Alexandria and other scholar-poets— without be61

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coming hopelessly obscure or dated. Instead, his poetry in all genres usually attains the ideal he set: Lightness of tone is wedded to brevity, urbane manner, erudite content, and exclusive allusions. That these qualities were prized in poetry is evidenced by the many papyrus fragments later discovered to contain works by Callimachus—far more than those of any other author, including the very popular Euripides. Ironically, this “exclusive” poet obtained a far-from-exclusive audience, perhaps because his verse challenged the reader as it simultaneously offered rare pleasures. His influence extended even beyond the Greek-speaking lands; the verse of the Roman poets Quintus Ennius, Catullus, Horace, Vergil, and Sextus Propertius , and the poetic stance that each assumes, would be unthinkable without the example of Callimachus. In turn, from the poets writing during the reign of the Emperor Augustus, the English “Augustans” inherited the Callimachean poetic ideal; Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock (1712, 1714) echoes the Alexandrian poet’s Lock of Berenice, although Pope added the mock-epic tone. Indeed, Callimachean aesthetic principles are so much a part of the European literary tradition that they may be taken for granted. Whenever a new poetic movement (Imagism, for example) challenges outworn canons of taste, jettisons tedious narrative, and turns instead to highly crafted “small” verse forms, the creators of the new poetry are treading the path first cleared by the Alexandrian poet. Biography Callimachus was not a native Alexandrian; he grew up and seems to have begun composing poetry in Cyrene, a Greek city of North Africa. From a commentary on a lost portion of his long poem, the Aetia, it appears that Callimachus represented himself as once dreaming that he was transported from his boyhood home in Libya to Mount Helicon, the place on the mainland of Greece which was considered the traditional home of the Muses. He thus alludes to an early initiation into his art. Neither his date of birth nor his parentage is known, but Callimachus’s family apparently prided itself on being descended from Battus, the legendary eighth century b.c.e. founder of Cyrene. From this assumption, it may be deduced that his education was that of an aristocrat. On moving to Alexandria, however, which was one of the main cultural centers of Hellenistic Greek civilization, Callimachus was initially a marginal figure; family connections did not help. He held the position of schoolmaster in the suburb of Eleusis, which was not a lucrative job. Several of his epigrams that mention his poverty have been thought to date from this period (c. 280-270 b.c.e.); nevertheless, it should be remembered that the topic of poverty (penia) was a convention in Greek literature as early as Hesiod (fl. 700 b.c.e.), a poet whom Callimachus admired and imitated. When, therefore, the poet addresses a lover in Epigram 34 M., “You know that my hands are empty of wealth . . . ,” and proceeds to beg affection, the words are most likely those of a persona rather than of the poet himself. At some later point, Callimachus received an appointment to the great library at Al62

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exandria, perhaps after an introduction to Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the library’s royal patron (who ruled from 285 to 246 b.c.e.). Callimachus’s groundbreaking compilation of the 120-volume Pinakes (tablets), a catalog of the library’s hundred thousand or so papyrus scrolls of Greek literature, entailed far more than merely listing titles, involving him in decisions about genre, authorship, authors’ biographies, and the arrangement of sections within each work. This extensive piece of literary history provided the poet with a wealth of material—often obscure—from which to fashion learned verse. Despite his important contributions there, Callimachus was never appointed head of the library. Some controversy may have been involved, as literary infighting was surely a part of his life, but the details of his arguments with various contemporaries remain vague. Ancient commentators mention a feud between Callimachus and Apollonius Rhodius, the author of the epic Argonautica (third century b.c.e.; English translation, 1780). Callimachus’s preference for brevity and disdain for pseudo-Homeric epic apparently prevailed for a time: Apollonius is said to have left, humbled, to live on the island of Rhodes. Callimachus’s Ibis, now lost, a piece of darkly worded invective that Ovid later imitated, may have hastened its victim’s departure from Alexandria. Other personal enemies apparently were attacked through allusions in the revised prologue of the Aetia. Although much of his poetry continues such artistic debates, several of Callimachus’s poems might best be understood in a different light—as responses to occasions at the royal court that demanded expression on the part of an “attached” poet. The Lock of Berenice, for example, commemorates an actual event, the dedication of a wife’s lock of hair to petition the gods for the safe return of her husband, Ptolemy III, as he departed for war in 247 b.c.e. (This is the only datable poem extant.) Again, court happenings might be alluded to in that portion of the Hymns to Zeus that mentions Zeus’s rule over his older brothers; the entire composition may be an elaborate, halfveiled praise of Callimachus’s patron. It is surely not a real hymn meant for ritual recitation. Unfortunately, nothing is known of the poet’s relation with the royal family other than that their patronage extended until his death at an advanced age. This social situation in its broader implications must be kept in mind: What appears to be Callimachean allusive indirection often might have resulted from politic discretion. Analysis Because the legacy of Callimachus lies so much in his theory of style, it is best, first, to examine several of his extended metaphors describing the ideal style; then his major works can be evaluated according to his own aesthetic standards. Epigram 30 M. In most cases, Callimachus’s pronouncements about poetry are blended skillfully with other topics. Epigram 30 M. is a good example. The seven-line poem builds on the poet’s exclusive tastes: 63

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Critical Survey of Poetry I hate a cyclical poem, take no delight in the road That carries many to and fro. I detest A lover that wanders, nor do I drink from a well; All held in common I abhor. . . .

Then the poet dramatically changes tack. What began as a literary manifesto ends abruptly as a bitter personal love poem: LysaniT, you are beautiful, beautiful . . . But before Echo speaks this, someone says “Another possesses him.”

The reader is left in suspense, yet he could eventually conclude that the poet, true to his lonely principle in life as in art, is here abandoning the one thing he does not hate. The long, undistinguished epic poems, called cyclic because they complete the Trojan War myth cycle, represent for Callimachus all that one should avoid in verse. Even though his Hymn to Apollo uses the centuries-old Homeric meter and epic diction, the poem in praise of the god is startlingly fresh and compresses details of geography, ritual, history, and myth into a dramatic framework. The final lines, which express Callimachus’s aversion for the epic form, are spoken by the god of poetry himself, using the images of Epigram 30 M. again—wide thoroughfares and water. To “Envy” (Callimachus’s unnamed detractors), whispering in Apollo’s ear like a court sycophant about the hateful poet “who does not sing as many things as the sea” (that is, vast epics), the god replies with a kick. He cites the filthiness of the “great stream” Euphrates; in an oracular tone, he says that Demeter’s shrine is watered by “bees” (priestesses of the goddess) that carry water only from pure, undefiled streams. Envy is thus defeated. Purity of water, insectlike artisanship—these are metaphors for Callimachus’s light, unencumbered verse . The two images are combined once more in the combative prologue to the “collected poems” edition of the Aetia. After acknowledging the objection that he has not written “one long poem,” Callimachus again uses the dramatic mask of Apollo to defend his own application of techne (skill) rather than bulk and big noises: As a youth, he saw the god, who instructed the poet to “nourish a slender Muse,” to imitate the cicada. Callimachus’s final prayer to become “the light one, the winged,” living on dew, takes on a more personal note, for now he desires the insect’s levity to shake off burdensome old age. Aetia How does Callimachus in his verse attain this cicada-like freedom of expression? The Aetia itself can show. Although nearly half the length of Homer’s Iliad (c. 750 b.c.e.; English translation, 1611) when extant in full, this was certainly not “one long poem” but rather an episodic meandering through every sort of Greek ritual lore, a poem that explained (like the poet’s prose works) curious customs—why the Parians, for ex64

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ample, sacrifice without flute music, or why the Lindians honor Heracles with blasphemy. A scholar’s poem, the Aetia has the dramatist’s voice behind its narrative, choosing exact details and often breaking into direct speech. Here Callimachus’s novel narrative technique appears to be built on deliberate random changes of topic, like the flitting of an industrious insect. The story of Acontius and Cydippe, one of the longer, completely separable stories within the Aetia, illuminates the Callimachean method very well. An introduction, sprinkled allusively with obscure proper names, relates the legendary beauty of this pair of lovers and tells how Acontius by means of an inscribed apple contrived to bind Cydippe on oath to love him, so that her attempts to marry others are all divinely thwarted. Then the poet focuses on one such attempt at marriage with another. Seeming to lose the narrative thread, however, he begins to describe the history of the ritual prenuptial sleep that Cydippe and her husband-to-be must take; but the poet breaks off: “Hold back, shameless soul, you dog!” Such rituals are too holy to tell; “having much knowledge is bad for one who does not control the tongue,” he says. Clearly, the aposiopesis (falling silent) technique is employed only to show off, in elegant manner, a vast erudition, and at the same time it is a technique that prevents the reader from being bored with the extraneous details of the digression. Finally, the poet makes his transition to another topic by a surprising bibliographical reference, an unheard-of device in serious epic poems: “Cean, your clan, the Acontiadae, dwell in honored numbers at Iulis still. This love-match we heard from old Xenomedes, who set down once the entire island in a mythological history.” At one stroke, the scholar-poet gives the aetion (cause) that he set out to tell—the origin of this clan—and turns his narrative to other Cean myths with a librarian’s remark. The levity of Callimachus can be appreciated in other ways; it is not merely narrative flightiness. Indeed, he sometimes employs old conventions for the sake of elaborate jokes. A few of his epigrams have their origin in this technique. There were generic social precedents for these short poems: the inscription-verses on tombs and on dedicated shrine offerings. The poet subverts both. A four-line poem poses as a tombstone epitaph to commemorate a youth who allegedly was putting garlands on his stepmother’s tomb (“thinking now that she had changed life and her nature as well”) when the woman’s stTlT toppled and killed him. The last line is both traditional in its address to passersby, and humorous: “O step-sons, shun even a step-mother’s grave.” In imitation of a dedicatory object, Callimachus wrote another poem that plays on the similarity in Greek between the word for sea and the word for salt. Like a shipwrecked sailor who traditionally offered an oar or clothing to the gods who saved him from drowning, the speaker, Eudemus, in Epigram 48 M. dedicates his saltcellar: Now he has become rich and no longer eats frugally and so is “saved from the salt.”

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Epigram 2 M. Lest it be thought that the poet only plays, one other epigram might be mentioned to acknowledge the elegiac strain and the ability to evoke intense feeling also to be found in Callimachus. Perhaps his most famous short poem, Epigram 2 M., is that addressed to Heraclitus: Someone told me of your death, Heraclitus, and put me In tears; I remembered the many times we both By conversing put the sun to sleep. . . .

Although his friend has been “ashes long since now,” Callimachus in recalling him affirms the love of the art of poetry that the two friends shared: But your nightingales are still alive; Hades, who snatches all, will not put hand on them.

The light touch—of tone, as in many epigrams, of allusiveness and narrative pace, as in the Aetia—characterizes Callimachus’s approach to other genres as well. Never satisfied with remaining at work in any single verse form, he seems to have intended to appropriate all, even writing tragedy and comedy (now lost). Doubtless this approach was criticized by his contemporaries as evidence of a lack of staying power; it was scorned as polyeideia (writing in many forms). Today, one sees this method as the prime virtue of Callimachean art. Three other works—Iambi, Hymns, and Hecale—show the advantages Callimachus derived from this stylistic tenet. Iambi The thirteen poems of the Iambi present a much modulated form of the invective traditionally associated with the genre of poetry written in this meter as practiced by Archilochus and Hipponax in Archaic Greece. Attacks on personal enemies are replaced in these compositions by a mild correction of received opinion: The true story of a well-known proverb occupies Iambus 11 T., and similar antiquarian interests take up the description of statues, the origin of a footrace on Aegina, the reason that sows are slaughtered in a certain Aphrodite cult. These Iambi show Callimachus, as in the Aetia, crossing prose genres of historiography and mythology with disused poetic forms to create something new. In the few Iambi that mention contemporaries, the names in question are tangential to the poem. Thus, Iambus 2 T. relates one of Aesop’s fables about the way in which animals lost their voices to men; only at the end does the poet intrude: “Eudemus, therefore, has a dog’s voice, Philton a donkey’s. . . .” Such a technique, distancing the original purpose of the iambic form, allows Callimachus to expand its range. He adapts it thereby to the changed social conditions of the third century b.c.e., in which the cosmopolitan court, rather than the tightly knit city-state, is the intended audience. 66

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Hymns and Hecale The Hymns and Hecale, finally, allow Callimachus’s light handling to be traced through two interrelated effects. First, there is once again generic innovation; second, the innovation is tied to narrative methods of compressing, arranging, and ordering point of view, all of which are new. The hymn, since the time of Homer, was a narrative commemorating the deeds of a particular divinity; it was framed by praises of the god. Callimachus, however, in the Hymn to Apollo and other hymns re-creates dramatically the god’s epiphany at his shrine. The poem adopts a second-person narrator, rather than the more distant, epicsounding, third-person narration. Immediately noticeable, too, is the way in which Callimachus allies poetry with secret and holy ritual: to hear the poem, one must be an initiate, like the worshipers of Apollo. It is not far from such poetry to the Roman lyricist Horace’s claim to be “priest of the Muses.” The Hecale, on the other hand, rather than being a reworking of an old genre, is a completely new form, the epyllion, which arose in the Alexandrian period of Greek literature. Who invented this form is not known with certainty. Theocritus wrote several; Callimachus may simply have perfected the use of this form. The purpose of the “little epic” is not to tell all the deeds of a hero, for that ambition would require the scope of the detested “cyclic” poem. Instead, only one, often little-known episode in the life of a hero, one with plenty of local-color possibilities, is selected. In the case of the Hecale, it is Theseus’s capture of a destructive bull that has been ravaging Marathon, near Athens. The scale of the narrative is further reduced by the poet’s intense focus on the events of the night before the heroic feat, rather than on the deed itself. Theseus’s visit to the rustic hut of an old woman named Hecale, the simple supper she prepares for him, their conversation—all are described in painstakingly realistic detail. There is pathos (the hero returns later to find the woman has died), erudition (the origin of the Hecale-feasts is explained), and a good deal of stylistic tour de force (into the “heroic” hexameter the poet fits the words “bread-box,” “baking oven,” and other commonplace terms). Although most of the poem survives in fragments, it was intact and widely imitated from Vergil’s time to the thirteenth century. Fragmentary as the Hecale remains, it is nevertheless a fitting testament to its author’s lifelong urge to distill, renew, and perpetuate essential and lively poetry. Other major work nonfiction: Pinakes, n.d. Bibliography Bing, Peter. The Well-Read Muse: Past and Present in Callimachus and the Hellenistic Poets. Rev. ed. Ann Arbor: Michigan Classical Press, 2008. An examination of Callimachus’s poetry and its themes along with the works of other Hellenistic poets. Blum, Rudolph. Kallimachos: The Alexandrian Library and the Origins of Bibliogra67

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phy. Translated by Hans H. Wellisch. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. In his study of the Alexandrian Library, Blum argues that Callimachus, the second director of the library, was the inventor of two essential scholarly tools: the library catalog and the biobibliographical reference work. Cameron, Alan. Callimachus and His Critics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995. A wide-ranging survey of Callimachus’s literary reputation over the centuries, noting that his elaborate verbal precision has become his hallmark. Cameron shows how, and to some extent why, Callimachus worked so diligently to achieve that literary effect. Ferguson, John. Callimachus. Boston: Twayne, 1980. This general survey of Callimachus is interesting and thorough. Ferguson pieces together fragments of gossip to make a coherent life of Callimachus, and he includes the fragments of the poems. Callimachus’ social and cultural background is treated. Ferguson compares Callimachus with T. S. Eliot. Contains an excellent bibliography. Gutzwiller, Kathryn. Poetic Garlands: Hellenistic Epigrams in Context. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Although it concentrates most of its attention on Callimachus’s Epigrammata, this work goes beyond that to look at the poetic convention of the epigram in the larger realm of classical literature. Harder, M. A., R. F. Regtuit, and G. C. Wakker, eds. Callimachus II. Dudley, Mass.: Peeters, 2004. Literary criticism and analysis of Callimachus that arose as part of the sixth Gröningen Workshop on Hellenistic poetry. Hollis, A. S. Introduction to Callimachus’ “Hecale.” Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1990. The Hecale, Callimachus’s retelling of the story of how the Athenian hero Theseus tamed the bull of Marathon, was the poet’s effort to show that he too was capable of crafting epic verse. Hollis places this key work of Callimachus into both the poet’s canon and the Western poetic tradition, helping to explain its importance and enduring achievements. Hunter, Richard. The Shadow of Callimachus: Studies in the Reception of Hellenistic Poetry at Rome. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Examines the influence of Greek poetry on the Romans, focusing on the works of Callimachus. Kerkhecker, Arnd. Callimachus’ Book of Iambi. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. An extended discussion of Callimachus’s collected Iambi, arguably one of the earliest surviving Greek “books of poetry.” Williams, Frederick. “Callimachus and the Supranormal.” In Hellenistica Gronigana: Proceedings of the Gröningen Workshops on Hellenistic Poetry, edited by Annette Harder. Gröningen, Germany: Egbert Forster, 1993. Because Callimachus can be as much noted for his works based on myths and legends as for his lyric poetry, this study provides an interesting and useful review of how the poet deploys the supranormal world and events in his works. Richard Peter Martin 68

CONSTANTINE P. CAVAFY Konstantionos Petrou Kabaphes Born: Alexandria, Egypt; April 17, 1863 Died: Alexandria, Egypt; April 29, 1933 Principal poetry PoiTmata, 1935 (Alexander Singopoulos, editor) The Poems of C. P. Cavafy, 1951 The Complete Poems of Cavafy, 1961 (Rae Dalven, translator) PoiTmata, 1963 (George Savidis, editor) K. P. KabaphT: Anekdota poiemata, 1968 (Savidis, editor) Passions and Ancient Days, 1971 Collected Poems, 1975 (Savidis, editor) Before Time Could Change Them: The Complete Poems of Constantine P. Cavafy, 2001 The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy, 2006 (Aliki Barnstone, translator) Other literary forms Except for a few essays on literary topics and short notes on language and metrics to be found in his papers, Constantine P. Cavafy (ko-VO-fee) did not work in any literary form other than poetry. Greek poet George Seferis, in On the Greek Style (1966), quotes Cavafy as having said, near the end of his life, “I am a historical poet. I could never write a novel or a play; but I hear inside me a hundred and twenty-five voices telling me I could write history.” Achievements Constantine P. Cavafy did not achieve public acclaim during his lifetime. The fortunes of war, however, marooned two English novelists—E. M. Forster and Lawrence Durrell—in Alexandria during World War I and World War II, respectively. Forster had one of Cavafy’s best poems, “The God Abandons Antony,” translated and printed in his Alexandria: A History and Guide (1922) and spread his name among such literary figures as T. S. Eliot, T. E. Lawrence, and Arnold Toynbee, so that after Forster’s stay in Alexandria, Cavafy received many European visitors. Durrell modeled aspects of Cavafy in the figures of the brooding old poet of the city and the homosexual physician, Balthazar, important characters in his masterwork The Alexandria Quartet (includes Justine, 1957; Balthazar, 1958; Mountolive, 1958; Clea, 1960). Thus, the Alexandria that tantalizes the imagination of the modern Western reader is to no small degree the city as imagined by Cavafy. 69

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Cavafy remained almost unknown in Greece until after his death. In 1963, the centenary of his birth was marked by the publication of a collected edition of his works, including both his poetry and volumes of previously unpublished prose and other prose. The 1968 publication of seventy-five previously unpublished poems was the major literary event of the year in Athens. Adding weight to Cavafy’s reputation was W. H. Auden’s statement in 1961 (in his introduction to The Complete Poems of Cavafy, translated by Rae Dalven) that Cavafy had influenced his writing for more than thirty years. Auden singled out for praise “the most original aspect of [Cavafy’s] style, the mixture, both in his vocabulary and his syntax, of demotic and purist Greek,” and paid tribute also to Cavafy’s rich evocation of Alexandria and of Hellenic culture. In the early 1880’s, when Cavafy began to write, the official language of Greece— the language employed by the government and taught in the schools—was Katharevousa or purist Greek, “a language,” in the words of Linos Politis in A History of Modern Greek Literature (1973), “based on popular speech, but ‘corrected’ and ‘embellished’ on the model of the ancient.” At the same time, there were in Greece passionate advocates of the demotic or spoken tongue, who believed that it alone should be the language of Greek literature and the Greek state. Although this linguistic controversy persists in Greece, modern Greek writers have overwhelmingly adopted the demotic. The tension between a demotic base and borrowings from purist, classical, and the other evolutionary forms of the language accounts in part for the remarkable vitality of modern Greek poetry—a development in which Cavafy played a significant role. Cavafy himself said, “I have tried to blend the spoken with the written language . . . trembling over every word.” The remarkable result was a poetic diction that not only draws on the traditions of Greek from its entire history but also, on occasion, is able to combine phrases and whole lines of ancient Greek with the modern, demotic language and yet remain entirely clear and understandable to any educated Greek reader. Cavafy’s distinctive language can be appreciated only in the original Greek, but even a reader who knows Cavafy’s poems in translation can appreciate one of his principal achievements: the creation, in Auden’s words, of a unique “tone of voice, a personal speech . . . immediately recognizable.” Cavafy’s poetic voice represents a “style of deliberately prosaic quality, simple, concentrated, almost dry, economical, unadorned, divested of every element which would cause it to deviate from the strictest austerity—at its best inevitable,” as Petroula Ruehlen puts it in Nine Essays in Modern Literature (1965). It is above all Cavafy’s voice that, in translation, has exercised a powerful influence on contemporary American poetry. Biography Constantine Peter Cavafy was born Konstantionos Petrou Kabaphes, the youngest and most beloved son of a wealthy Alexandrian merchant; both Cavafy’s father and his 70

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mother came from prosperous families in Constantinople. By the time of Cavafy’s birth, his father’s business in cotton, grain, and buffalo hides had benefited from the Crimean War and the family had settled in a luxurious house in the fashionable rue Cherif in Alexandria. The poet’s first seven years were spent in a household accustomed to elaborate balls and parties and the company of wealthy businesspeople and professionals of various nationalities. A generous man of European outlook who had lived for some time in England, Cavafy’s father saw to it that the children were tended by an English nurse, a French tutor, and Greek servants. Unfortunately, he died in 1870 without leaving the family well provided for; though the family was always “respectable,” and though the Cavafy brothers retained the cachet of a wealthy, upper-class milieu, the family fortune was severely reduced. In 1872, Cavafy’s mother, Haricleia, took the family to Liverpool. Because of the economic crisis of 1876 and the three eldest sons’ inexperience and ill-advised speculation, the family farm had to be liquidated in 1879, whereupon the Cavafys returned to Alexandria actually impoverished. Cavafy had thus spent seven formative years, from the age of nine to the age of sixteen, in England, where he acquired an excellent facility with the English language and a lifelong love for the works of William Shakespeare, Robert Browning, and Oscar Wilde. For the rest of his life, Cavafy spoke Greek with a slight English accent and often spoke or corresponded in English with his brothers; in the position he held for thirty years immediately under British superiors in the Irrigation Department of the Ministry of Public Works in Alexandria, he was valued for his ability to teach Egyptian employees the English language. Upon his return to Alexandria in 1879, Cavafy enrolled for three years in a business school, the Hermes Lyceum. In 1882, political and military disturbances by Egyptian nationalists seeking to end foreign rule and expel foreigners led to the bombardment of the city by British warships anchored in the harbor. Along with many Europeans, the Cavafy family left, this time for Constantinople and the home of Haricleia Cavafy’s father, George Photiades, a wealthy diamond merchant. While living in Constantinople from 1882 to 1885, Cavafy wrote his first poetry and had his first sexual experiences with men. These two activities were to become the chief concerns of his life. He wrote both prose and poetry in French and English as well as in Greek. It was also during this period in Constantinople that Cavafy first became familiar with demotic Greek. In 1885, Haricleia Cavafy moved the family back to Alexandria for the last time; Cavafy really never left the city again. He took several trips at odd intervals, once visiting France and England and a number of times journeying across the Mediterranean to Athens, but his attachment to Alexandria was profound. When asked late in his life to move to Athens, Robert Liddell reports that Cavafy replied: “Mohammed Aly Square is my aunt. Rue Cherif Pacha is my first cousin and the Rue de Ramleh my second. How can I leave them?” He lived with his mother until her death in 1899, when he was thirtysix, then with his brother Paul, taking in 1907 an apartment on the third floor of 10 rue 71

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Lepsius. This apartment was to remain Cavafy’s residence until his death twenty-six years later. In 1891, the death of Cavafy’s second eldest brother led him to seek a permanent position in the Irrigation Department, where he had been working part time for three years. At the same time, he began a chronological listing of all his poems to date—a list that shows how many he wrote but did not publish. From 1892, Cavafy’s life assumed the routine in which his poetry, work, and personality took their characteristic form. His hours as a bureaucrat were not long, from 8:30 in the morning until 1:30 in the afternoon, but the work was tedious and paid minimally; more often than not, Cavafy came to work as much as an hour late. He was reasonably dutiful, if often too scrupulous about his responsibility for all European correspondence; a “trifle overdeliberate” is the phrase cited in his record for 1913, and his subordinates complained that he was overly strict in requiring fastidiously correct records and translations. Cavafy recognized the cost to his art; Liddell quotes him from 1905: “How often during my work a fine idea comes to me, a rare image, and sudden ready-formed lines, and I’m obliged to leave them, because work can’t be put off. Then when I go home and recover a bit, I try to remember them, but they’re gone.” He never forgot that he was the son of a rich man. Nevertheless, records show that regular increases in pay and annual leave (finally reaching twelve weeks) marked his path to the position of subdirector of his section. He also supplemented his income by speculation on the Egyptian Stock Exchange, occasionally with great success. Away from his job, Cavafy’s life centered on his apartment at 10 rue Lepsius, where friends and literary figures visited, and on his nocturnal activities in the cafés and shady quarters of Alexandria. While still living with his mother, Cavafy had bribed the servants or persuaded his brothers to ruffle up his bed so that it looked as if he had spent the night at home. Then he had to cross from the respectable section of the city where he lived with his mother to the area of taverns, bars, and brothels. Living alone after 1910, he enjoyed greater freedom; the old Greek quarter called Massalia, to which he had moved, gradually deteriorated, so that at some point a brothel occupied the ground floor in his building. Cavafy did not have a single long-standing relationship during his entire life; his closest friends, Pericles Anastassiades (as of 1895) and Alexander Singopoulos (whom he met in 1915), were both considerably younger. He did not dislike or avoid women, however, counting several among his closest friends. Cavafy never published his most explicitly erotic poetry during his life. It is clear that he suffered some guilt concerning his sexuality, perhaps in part because of his genteel background and his desire to maintain a certain social standing. A secretive and engaging poseur, Cavafy was extremely vain, about both his looks (cultivating his boyish demeanor past middle age) and his literary reputation, which he often urged others to spread, but he was also a lively and informed conversationalist. His method of distributing his poetry, with its calculated air of mystery, suggests the mixture of arrogance and reticence that 72

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characterized both his life and his work. Cavafy died at the age of seventy from cancer of the larynx and was buried in the family plot in the Greek cemetery in Alexandria. Analysis To enter the world of Constantine P. Cavafy’s poetry is to embrace simultaneously the significance of historical, artistic, and erotic experience, to enter a world with an “atmosphere of refinement and passion . . . just perceptible pathos . . . reserve . . . mystery” in Marguerite Yourcenar’s memorable phrasing. This is possible because, as C. M. Bowra points out, Cavafy risks no stunning effects. His is a great poetry strictly truthful and circumstantial and realistic, concerned above all to present human nature as it is and to make its presentation entirely convincing not merely to the imagination but to the intelligence. This quiet air, which looks so easy to maintain and must have in fact demanded the greatest self-control and critical judgment, is Cavafy’s special triumph.

George Seferis, an important younger contemporary of Cavafy, explains how Cavafy’s poetic language makes this possible: “Cavafy stands at the boundary where poetry strips herself in order to become prose.” Because he is an “unpoetic” poet, his poetry is both easy and difficult to translate—that is, he rarely employs such devices as internal rhyme, alliteration, simile, or metaphor. Instead, he employs unadorned, factual description. His preference after 1900 for free verse reinforced the deliberately prosaic quality of his poetry. Cavafy himself classified his poetry thematically into three categories: the historical, the artistic or philosophical, and the erotic, though it is essential to remember that these three kinds of experience often appear in the same poem. Many other divisions are also possible: sequences of poems sharing similar themes, drawn from the same historical period or incident, using the same real or similar imaginary characters. The sum of Cavafy’s experience, however, as well as his own statement, make the poet’s own classification illuminating. Cavafy identified both one of the historical periods most important for his work and his own method of using history when he said that the Byzantine historians “cultivated a kind of history that has never been written before or since. They wrote history dramatically.” These historians created a sense of the living presence of figures and events, transcending time and assuming eternal significance, just as the Byzantine mosaic artist represented life in timeless, two-dimensional forms. To read about the Alexandrians in 100 b.c.e. today, for example, is to compress the two thousand years between the two epochs and to share the experience of both periods simultaneously. Cavafy’s method of dramatizing history is marvelously economical; he need not draw explicit comparisons between the past and present, for he makes the past present by depicting people and events of universal human significance. 73

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“Waiting for the Barbarians” In “Waiting for the Barbarians,” for example, one of Cavafy’s best-known poems, two imaginary citizens in an unspecified Roman city discuss events in the local senate on a day when the barbarians are coming to take power. No speeches are being given, no laws are being passed. All the political leaders have adorned themselves in their finest attire; bedecked with jewels, they have prepared a scroll to give to the barbarians. The poem is in the form of a dialogue between the first speaker, who asks naïve questions, and the second, apparently as worldly-wise as the first is unknowing, who answers in a dry, flat tone, matter-of-fact to the point of testiness, as if speaking to a child. Lacking any description of events in the third person, the poem creates a sense of live observation with its dialogic form. The naïve questioner is as awed by the splendid throne, garments, and jewelry he asks about as the seemingly more knowing speaker is unimpressed, but the poem’s penetrating irony is that both are blind to the truth of their corruption—the first in refusing to see it, as his repeated “why” shows, the second in accepting it so readily with a self-conscious air of world-weary sophistication. Cavafy thus implies that the final truth of a historical situation can never be known, creating a double irony for the reader: The truth is that the truth cannot be known. Nevertheless, on the surface, the poem merely records a simple conversation. “Exiles” The dialogue is not as common a form in Cavafy’s poetry as the dramatic monologue, which offers him, in Yourcenar’s words, “the possibilities of acting in every sense of the word . . . to have his own emotions confirmed by another mouth.” Two such dramatic monologues are “Exiles,” in which the speaker accepts the surface of political or historical events with the culpable naïveté of the questioner in “Waiting for the Barbarians,” and “Phihellene,” in which the speaker is another self-deluded sophisticate. Exiled to Alexandria by political events in Constantinople in the ninth century, the speaker of “Exiles” is overly certain that he and his fellow exiles will be able to overthrow the Macedonian usurper Basil, who, in reality, ruled for twenty-two years after killing his co-emperor, Michael III. The activities of the exiles are a kind of game: Their use of fictitious names and their superficial enthusiasm in studying literature both suggest their immaturity. Their confidence that they will overthrow Basil is clearly unfounded, and much of the irony of the poem derives from the speaker’s complacency, from his tone of voice. “Phihellene” Quite different is the cutting, ironic realism of the speaker of “Phihellene,” who thinks he knows all the world’s tricks. The speaker is the insignificant monarch of an unspecified territory on the eastern fringe of the Roman Empire; the poem consists of his instructions to a subordinate concerning a coin that is to be minted in his honor. The in74

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scription that will accompany his image on the coin, he specifies, should not be “excessive or pompous—/ we don’t want the proconsul to take it the wrong way;/ he’s always smelling things out and reporting back to Rome—/ but of course giving me due honor.” For the obverse of the coin, he suggests a depiction of a “good-looking” discus-thrower, but above all (“for God’s sake,” he urges, “don’t let them forget”), he is concerned that the inscription testify to his appreciation of Hellenic culture—“that after ‘King’ and ‘Savior,’/ they add ‘Phihellene’ in elegant characters.” The central irony of the poem is the consuming desire of this petty monarch to be celebrated as a man of culture, a desire that has its counterpart in the cultural pretensions of many twentieth century dictators. Historical and political perspectives In several poems on Marc Antony, Cavafy further manipulates dramatic situation and point of view to present the unusual perspectives on historical figures for which his poetry is noted. The speaker of “In a Township of Asia Minor” has just dictated a lavishly flattering proclamation in honor of Antony’s anticipated victory at Actium. Learning that Octavius has defeated Antony, the speaker merely instructs his amanuensis to substitute Octavius’s name for Antony’s, adding “It all fits brilliantly.” In “Alexandrian Kings” and “In Alexandria, 31 b.c.e.,” Cavafy also shows the superficiality and triviality of politics, here in the third person. The Alexandrians, faced with the parade of Cleopatra’s children, who all receive important titles, “knew of course what all this was worth,/ what empty words they really were, these kingships.” Just as calmly, they allow a peddler from a nearby village to sell his perfumes for the celebration of Antony’s triumph because “someone tosses him the huge palace lie:/ that Antony is winning in Greece” (“In Alexandria, 31 b.c.e.”). In “The God Abandons Antony,” Cavafy uses the second person to give Antony advice. Whether the speaker lives in Antony’s or Cavafy’s time does not matter; he tells Antony right to his face to accept courageously his loss of Alexandria. Antony should not mourn his luck or “say/ it was a dream”; rather, he should “go firmly to the window/ and listen with deep emotion” to the city’s “exquisite music,” confirming the city’s delights and his pleasure in them. Here, Cavafy speaks in the poetic voice of an Alexandrian who has dignity, confidence, and self-knowledge. Artistic process as theme In the second major category of his poems, Cavafy shows artists at work and presents some of his ideas on the artistic process. Although Cavafy cannot automatically be identified with the speakers of these poems, it is clear that many of them do, in fact, express his attitude toward his art. The need for craftsmanship and the relationship between art and reality are recurring themes in this group of poems. Two poems concerning the relationship between art and life are “I’ve Brought to Art” and “Melancholy of Jason Kleander, Poet in Kommagini, c.e. 595.” In the first 75

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poem, the poet says he has brought life to art, “desires and sensations . . ./ indistinct memories/ of unfulfilled love affairs,” and art has known how “to shape forms of Beauty,/ almost imperceptibly completing life,/ blending impressions, blending day with day.” In the second, in the voice of the poet Jason Kleander, he says that art has “a kind of knowledge about drugs:/ certain sedatives, in Language and Imagination,” which relieve the pain of the “wound from a merciless knife” that age inflicts. In many of the poems in this group, Cavafy reveals the sense of secrecy and isolation underlying his art. The first-person speaker in “Hidden Things” says he will be understood only “From my most unnoticed actions,/ my most veiled writing,” but that “Later, in a more perfect society,/ someone else made just like me/ is certain to appear and act freely.” “Walls,” written as early as 1896, indicates just how isolated Cavafy may have felt. His oppressors, identified only as “they,” have built walls around him: “But I never heard the builders, not a sound./ Imperceptibly they’ve closed me off from the outside world.” In “The First Step,” however, another early poem, he speaks of the necessary difficulty of art: Theocritos rebukes a young poet who says that he has “been writing for two years/ and . . . [has] composed only one idyll”; even the artist who has completed only one work is “above the ordinary world/ . . . a member of the city of ideas.” Here, the artist’s isolation from the “ordinary world” becomes a badge of pride. The erotic poems The private world of Cavafy’s art is nowhere seen more clearly than in the third division of his work, the erotic poems, the most explicit of which he never published himself. Cavafy perhaps believed that he could publish “Pictured” and “When They Come Alive” within three years of their composition because both justify imaginary erotic experience by the art that it helps to create and nurture. In “Pictured,” a writer, discouraged by the slow progress of his work, gazes at a picture of “a handsome boy/ . . . lying down close to a spring.” The picture revives the poet’s inspiration: “I sit and gaze like this for a long time,/ recovering through art from the effort of creating it.” Though it could be argued that there is little art in the picture, the image of the youth has nevertheless inspired the very poem that describes it. “When They Come Alive” is addressed to an unidentified poet (perhaps Cavafy, addressing himself?); the poem begins: “Try to keep them, poet,/ those erotic visions of yours,/ . . . Put them, half-hidden, in your lines.” The poem concludes by urging the conscious cultivation of such erotic fantasies. It is interesting to compare these two poems with another erotic poem, “At the Theatre,” written before them but never published in Cavafy’s lifetime. Here, erotic reverie is not justified as a stimulus to artistic creation but is rather celebrated for its own sake. Addressed to a young man whose “strange beauty” and “decadent youthfulness” have aroused the speaker’s “mind and body,” the poem concludes: “in my imagination I kept picturing you/ the way they’d talked about you that afternoon.” In “Half an Hour,” another poem never published by Cavafy, the speaker recounts a “totally erotic” half hour 76

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at a bar in which the sight of “your lips . . . your body near me” were all his imagination needed. As the poet says, “we who serve Art,/ sometimes with the mind’s intensity/ can create pleasure that seems almost physical”—as strong a statement of the power of imagination as could be asked for. Another poem unpublished during Cavafy’s lifetime, “And I Lounged and Lay on Their Beds,” again justifies debauchery for the sake of art. The poet says that “When I went to that house of pleasure/ I didn’t stay in the front rooms where they celebrate,/ with some decorum, the accepted modes of love”; instead, in “the secret rooms,” he “lounged and lay on their beds”—a line more suggestive than any fuller description of the experience would be. It was a consummate artistic touch to begin the title with “And,” here deliberately ambiguous: It may suggest that much more took place than is explicitly described in the title. In Cavafy’s poetry, all experience takes on the sacred value of ancient and mysterious temple rites. A final poem, “Craftsmen of Wine Bowls,” serves to show how Cavafy combined erotic, artistic, and philosophical themes in a single poem. In a dramatic monologue, a silversmith describes how his memory, which he begged to help him, enabled him to see “the young face I loved appear the way it was”—a difficult achievement, because “some fifteen years have gone by since the day/ he died as a soldier in the defeat at Magnesia.” Magnesia was the battle that established Rome’s supremacy in the Hellenized East; thus, the trouble the silversmith takes to commemorate his fallen love seems justified by the nobility of the soldier’s cause. Carved on what is only a small bowl, the figure is of a “beautiful young man,/ naked, erotic, one leg still dangling/ in the water,” an appropriate image for Cavafy’s delicate, refined, and passionate art. Bibliography Anton, John P. The Poetry and Poetics of Constantine P. Cavafy: Aesthetic Visions of Sensual Reality. Newark, N.J.: Gordon & Breach, 1995. Discusses Cavafy’s early development and the creation of his own original poetic voice. Includes autobiographical elements and background of ancient Alexandria as a way to further the understanding of the poetry. Jeffreys, Peter. Eastern Questions: Hellenism and Orientalism in the Writings of E. M. Forster and C. P. Cavafy. Greensboro, N.C.: ELT Press, 2005. A critical analysis of the works of Cavafy and E. M. Forster in relation to Hellenism and Orientalism. Jusdanis, Gregory. The Poetics of Cavafy: Textuality, Eroticism, History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987. Discusses Cavafy’s conception of the poet; his conception of his audience; his formalistic concerns, especially within the context of the redemptive powers of art; and his language and textuality. Explores Cavafy’s affiliations with modernism and Romanticism, and his poetics and poetic concerns, especially the role of the poet and the value of art. Keeley, Edmund. Cavafy’s Alexandria. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 77

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1996. Important study of Cavafy’s deployment of the city of Alexandria in his poetry, which demonstrates that from 1911 to 1921 Cavafy developed his own imaginative version of his home city of Alexandria. Suggests Cavafy’s image of Alexandria is a various one, including visions of Alexandria as a contemporary homoerotic Sensual City, a Metaphoric City, and a Mythical, Hellenistic City. Liddell, Robert. Cavafy: A Biography. London: Duckbacks, 2002. Gracefully written and appreciative biography of Cavafy and an important resource for all Cavafy scholars. Discusses Cavafy’s family background, his early years, his relationship with his mother, his life in Alexandria, his homosexuality, his poetry, and his last years. Numerous illustrations and bibliography. John M. Lee

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ODYSSEUS ELYTIS Odysseus Alepoudhelis Born: Iraklion (also known as Heraklion), Crete; November 2, 1911 Died: Athens, Greece; March 18, 1996 Principal poetry Prosanatolizmi, 1939 Ilios o protos, mazi me tis parallayies pano se mian ahtidha, 1943 Azma iroiko ke penthimo yia ton hameno anthipolohagho tis Alvanias, 1945 (Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign, 1965) To axion esti, 1959 (The Axion Esti, 1974) Exi ke mia tipsis yia ton ourano, 1960 (Six and One Remorses for the Sky, 1974) To fotodhendro ke i dhekati tetarti omorfia, 1971 To monogramma, 1971 (The Monogram, 1974) O ilios o iliatoras, 1971 (The Sovereign Sun, 1974) The Sovereign Sun: Selected Poems, 1974 (includes Six and One Remorses for the Sky, The Monogram, The Sovereign Sun, and various selections from his other collections) Maria Nefeli, 1978 (Maria Nephele, 1981) Ekloyi, 1935-1977, 1979 Odysseus Elytis: Selected Poems, 1981 What I Love: Selected Poems of Odysseus Elytis, 1986 Ta elegia tes oxopetras, 1990 (The Oxopetra Elegies, 1996) The Collected Poems of Odysseus Elytis, 1997 Ek tou plision, 1998 Eros, Eros, Eros: Selected and Last Poems, 1998 Other literary forms Principally a poet, Odysseus Elytis (EH-lee-tees), in the eminently pictorial, imagistic, “architectural” nature of his verse, revealed his other, parallel propensity. Had he received any formal artistic education, he might have been a distinguished painter as well. As early as 1935, he produced a number of Surrealist collages; in 1966, he painted some thirty-odd gouaches, all but four of which he destroyed; and in the years from 1967 to 1974, the period of the dictatorship of the “colonels,” he produced about forty remarkable collages, nineteen of which are reproduced in Ilías Petropoulous’s book Elytis, Moralis, Tsarouhis (1974). Elytis’s longstanding interest in the arts and his friendship with some of the most prominent modern artists in Greece and France have qualified him as an acute art critic as well. 79

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Odysseus Elytis (©The Nobel Foundation)

Elytis translated poets as varied as Le Comte de Lautreamont, Arthur Rimbaud, Pierre-Jean Jouve, Paul Éluard, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Federico García Lorca, and Vladimir Mayakovsky. Elytis’s prose works include essays and monographs on sympathetic writers and painters. His most important work in prose, an invaluable companion to his poetry, is Anihta hartia (1974; Open Papers, 1995), a work of widely ranging, often aphoristic reflections, in which Elytis spoke extensively about his poetics and his development as a poet.

Achievements Odysseus Elytis’s constantly renewed originality, his wise optimism, and his glorification of the Greek world in its physical and spiritual beauty have gradually won for him wide popularity and recognition as well as several distinctions, honors, and prizes— most notably the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1979. He won the National Poetry Prize in 80

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1960 for The Axion Esti and the Order of the Phoenix in 1965. He was honored with several honorary doctorate degrees from institutions such as the University of Thessaloníki (1975), University of Paris (1980), and University of London (1981). In 1989, he was made a commander in the French Legion of Honor. Biography The offspring of a family originating on the island of Lesbos (or Mitilini), in the eastern Aegean, Odysseus Elytis was born Odysseus Alepoudhelis in Iráklion, Crete, in 1911, the sixth and last child of Panyiotis Alepoudhelis, a successful soap manufacturer, and Maria Vranas, of Byzantine extraction. In 1914, the family had settled permanently in Athens, where Elytis went to high school, but summers spent in Lesbos, Crete, and other Aegean islands provided him with what was to be his poetic world in terms of imagery, symbols, language, and cultural identity. Elytis’s early literary interests were given an outlet and direction through his chance discovery of the poetry of Paul Éluard in 1929. From 1930 to 1935, Elytis attended the law school of the University of Athens but never graduated. His meeting with the orthodox Surrealist poet Andreas Embirikos in 1935 decidedly enhanced his own Surrealist inclinations. That same year, Elytis published his first poems in the periodical Nea Ghramata, recently founded by the poet and critic Andréas Karandonis; under Karandonis’s editorship, Nea Ghramata soon became the rallying center of the new poetry and prose in Greece. Elytis’s first collection of poems, Prosanatolizmi (orientations), appeared in December, 1939. Fascist Italy attacked Greece from Albania in 1940, and in 1940-1941, Elytis served as a second lieutenant on the Albanian front, where he almost perished in a military hospital from typhoid. During the Nazi occupation of Greece, his second book of poetry, Ilios o protos, mazi me tis parallayies pano se mian ahtidha (sun the first, together with variations on a sunbeam), was published, followed, soon after the liberation, by Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign. In 19451946, Elytis served as director of programming and broadcasting for the National Broadcasting System in Athens. From 1948 to 1952, Elytis lived in Paris, where he studied literature at the Sorbonne, and traveled in England, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. During this period, he associated with André Breton, Éluard, Tristan Tzara, Pierre Jean Jouve, Henri Michaux, Ungaretti, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, and Giorgio de Chirico. In 1950, Elytis was elected as a member of the International Union of Art Critics, and in 1953, after his return to Greece, he was elected to the Poetry Committee of the Group of Twelve, which annually awarded prizes for poetry. Elytis served once again as director of programming and broadcasting of the National Broadcasting System in Athens until 1954. From 1955 to 1956, he was on the governing board of the avant-garde Karolos Koun Art Theater, and from 1956 to 1958, he was president of the governing board of the Greek Ballet. 81

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The publication of his two epoch-making books of verse, The Axion Esti and Six and One Remorses for the Sky, broke Elytis’s poetic silence and won for him the National Poetry Prize in 1960. A selection from The Axion Esti, set to music by the composer Mikis Theodhorakis in 1964, brought the poet wide popularity. In 1961, Elytis visited the United States for three months at the invitation of the State Department, and in 1962, he visited the Soviet Union on the invitation of its government. From 1965 to 1968, he was a member of the administrative board of the Greek National Theater. In 1967, the government of Greece was toppled by a military coup. For the next seven years, the colonels (as the ruling junta was known) ruthlessly suppressed opposition to their regime, exercising severe censorship and otherwise curtailing civil rights. From 1969 to 1971, Elytis lived in France, primarily in Paris. Following his return to Greece, he published seven poetry books, including The Monogram, The Sovereign Sun, and To fotodhendro ke i dhekati tetarti omorfia (the light tree and the fourteenth beauty), as well as the prose work Open Papers. Elytis was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1979, and in 1980, he received an honorary doctorate from the Sorbonne. He died in Athens, Greece, on March 18, 1996. Analysis The suicide of the Greek poet Kostas Karyotakis in 1928 may be said to have marked the end of an era in Greek poetry, which had long abided in Parnassianism, poésie maudite, Symbolism, and poésie pure. A spirit of discomfort, decadence, and despair prevailed, intensified by the military defeat suffered by Greece in Asia Minor in 1922. The year 1935 has generally been considered to mark the beginning of a great change in modern Greek poetry—a renaissance in which Odysseus Elytis, along with George Seferis and others, was most instrumental. Rejecting a tired traditionalism, these modernists invigorated Greek poetry by the adoption and creative assimilation of Western trends. The renaissance that they initiated is still flourishing; indeed, twentieth century Greek poetry is as rich as that of any nation in its time. Adopting Surrealism as a liberating force with his extraordinary lyrical gifts, Elytis brought to Greek poetry a spirit of eternal youthfulness, beauty, purity, sanity, and erotic vigor. His inspiration sprung from nature, particularly from the Aegean archipelago, as well as from the Greek world throughout the centuries. At the same time, however, Elytis’s mature vision was shaped by his experiences in World War II, which enriched and deepened his brilliant, careless, pictorial lyricism with historical awareness—an awareness of suffering as an essential and unavoidable part of life, which it is the poet’s duty to recognize and transcend. A moderated Platonic idealism, earthly in its roots, characterized most of Elytis’s work. Elytis’s early poetry broke new ground in Greek verse. Its youthful, optimistic freshness; genuine, powerful lyricism; and free Surrealistic associations, as well as the grace82

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ful richness of its imagery drawn from nature—all conspired to liberate Greek poetry from its Symbolist melancholy and despair. In Surrealism, Elytis found a force of sanity and purity, of liberating newness, but he quickly abandoned the automatism of Surrealist orthodoxy, choosing instead to subject the effusions of his unconscious to formal demands. Inspired by the Apollonian clarity of the Greek sunlight but also including its mystical, Dionysian essence, he thus accomplished an imaginative, creative assimilation, an acclimatization of the positive elements in Surrealism to the Greek world, its reality and spirit. The physical elements of the Aegean archipelago, its landscapes and seascapes, provided Elytis with the material for a radiant, sun-drenched poetic realm, a setting in which adolescent youths learn of Eros as the all-mastering, all-penetrating, all-revealing, all-uniting procreative and inspiring force. Elytis identified humans with nature in terms of analogies existing between them: Nature is anthropomorphized in a joyful exchange that no deep sorrow dares to tint. Throughout his long career, with its constant experimentation, inventive metamorphoses, renovations, and striking changes, Elytis remained faithful to certain fundamental beliefs concerning the objectives of his art: The lesson remains the same: it is sufficient to express that which we love, and this alone, with the fewest means at our disposal, yet in the most direct manner, that of poetry.

Prosanatolizmi Elytis’s first book, Prosanatolizmi, experimental in manner and form, features rhythmical free verse, gently sensual and mostly of imagery set in motion. Although this collection does not delve into thought and emotion, it contains some poems of exquisite beauty and power, including “Anniversary,” “Ode to Santorini,” “Marina of the Rocks,” and “The Mad Pomegranate Tree,” which won instant acclaim and lasting popularity, earning Elytis the title of the poet of the Aegean. Ilios o protos, mazi me tis parallayies pano se mian ahtidha In Elytis’s second book, Ilios o protos, mazi me tis parallayies pano se mian ahtidha, the idealized “countryside of open heart,” the paradise of carefree and unaging youth, the world of an eternal present that ignores the past and hopes in the future, is more consciously mastered and revealed. This early collection demonstrates the poet’s conscientious craftsmanship and sensitivity to the Greek language in all its expressive power, its visual and musical richness and beauty. A more thoughtful tone is apparent here as well. The Axion Esti The experience of the war, reflected in the long poem Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign, permanently altered Elytis’s vi83

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sion. Fourteen years passed between the publication of this wartime elegy and the appearance of Elytis’s The Axion Esti (its title, meaning “worthy it is,” appears in the liturgy of the Greek Orthodox Church as well as in several Byzantine hymns). The Axion Esti may be viewed as the worldly equivalent of a Greek Orthodox mass, with its three parts corresponding to Christ’s life, the Passion, and the Resurrection. The poem is not a Christian epic in the strict sense of the term; it is, however, much indebted to Byzantine hymnology. Its middle section consists of three types of poetic units corresponding to liturgical ones. Eighteen “psalms” alternate, in strictly mathematical, symmetrical order, with twelve “odes” and six “readings.” The readings are objective, powerfully realistic prose accounts of representative scenes and episodes of the 1940’s, while the psalms, in free verse, are lyrical and thoughtful reactions, and the odes are songlike in their various intricately metrical stanzas. On the whole, the poem is a tour de force in the technical variety of its forms and modes, in the richness of its language and imagery, and in its superbly conscious craftsmanship; it was on this poem in particular that the Swedish Academy bestowed its highest praise in awarding the Nobel Prize to Elytis. In this epic in lyric form, the poet of the impulsive unconscious presented a poetry that is described by Andreas Karandonis as “highly programmed, totally directed to a final goal, and measured in its every detail as if with a compass.” Thematically, this epic may be said to have its first conception in Elytis’s heroic elegy on the Albanian campaign, for it returns in part to the suffering and the heroism that he witnessed in the war, yet in its epic grandeur and technical variety, The Axion Esti widens to embrace the physical and spiritual identity of the Greek nation and the Hellenic world. Of the three major sections of this poem, the first, “Genesis,” is an imagistic and lyrical account of how light, the Aegean sunlight, defined the physical, ethical, spiritual, and psychological characteristics of the Greek world. Parallel to the growth of Greek culture and the Greek nation is the poet’s own growth, for in him a personified sun, the divine creator, has its axis. This identification of the poet with the giver of life establishes the rhythm of the poem, which shifts constantly from the individual to the archetypal, from the microcosm to the macrocosm. The small world of Greece is identical with the “great world,” as the “now” is with the “ever.” Following this account of the past, “The Passion”—the centerpiece of the poem, the longest, most stylistically varied, and most significant of the three sections— turns to the present, to the war decade (1940-1949), during which the “created world” is submitted to a major test of suffering. The third and last section, “Gloria,” is highly lyrical and prophetic, earthy yet “meteoric,” physical yet metaphysical. The disturbed and challenged world is waiting to be restored to its inherent beauty and worth as a “regained paradise,” enriched by the lessons learned through hardship. Speaking of the insistent “search for paradise” in his work, Elytis has remarked: “When I say ‘paradise,’ I do not conceive of it in the Christian sense. It is another world which is incorporated into our own, and it is our own fault that we are unable to grasp it.” 84

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Almost always connected with Elytis’s notion of paradise are the “girls” ever present in his poetry, embodiments of beauty and inspirers of Eros, both physical and transcendental. Elytis’s informing vision was described as a “solar metaphysics,” the metaphysics of Greek sunlight. As Elytis remarked: “Europeans and Westerners always find mystery in obscurity, in the night, while we Greeks find it in light, which is for us an absolute. . . . Limpidity is probably the one element which dominates my poetry at present,” where “behind a given thing something different can be seen.” To fotodhendro ke i dhekati tetarti omorfia Elytis’s solar metaphysics found seminal expression in the collection entitled To fotodhendro ke i dhekati tetarti omorfia. These poems depict “the full miniature of a solar system, with the same tranquillity and the same air of eternity, the same perpetual motion in its separate constituent parts.” The senses reach their “sanctity,” becoming organs of poetic metaphysics and extensions of the spirit. In suggestive dreams, Elytis’s “girls” became angelic phantoms, not earthly any more but inhabitants of a paradise that grows melancholy and mysterious. The “light tree” mentioned in the title, which Elytis once saw magically growing in the backyard of his childhood home, is symbolic of the light of life, of revelation and inspiration, of love and communion with the universe; when in his old age he returns in search of it, the tree is gone. In a series of nostalgic, intimate, imaginative recollections of his childhood and youth, he tried to recapture and decipher the meaning of his experience. These poems are apparently progressive stages in the day or week of his whole life, starting from a Palm Sunday morning, progressing to the sunset, then passing into night and the astral metaphysics of his old age. There, with mystical and occult insinuations, all opposites meet and are reconciled. Maria Nephele A work that was later regarded to be the summa of Elytis’s later writings, Maria Nephele was initially received by a hesitant public. As one critic noted, “some academicians and critics of the older generations still [wanted] to cling to the concept of the ‘sundrinking’ Elytis . . . the monumental Axion Esti, so they [approached it] with cautious hesitation as an experimental and not-so-attractive creation of rather ephemeral value.” The issue lay with its radically different presentation. Whereas his earlier poems dealt with the almost timeless expression of the Greek reality that were not directly derived from actual events, Maria Nephele was based on a young woman he actually met. Moreover, unlike the women from his earlier work, the woman in Elytis’s poem had changed to reflect the troubled times in which she lived, becoming a new manifestation of the eternal female. Maria stands opposed to the more traditional women figures of his early poems by serving as an attractive, liberated, restless, and even blasé representative of today’s young woman. American youth radicalism hit its apex in the late 1960’s, but it took another decade for its force to be felt in Greece. In Maria Nephele, the tensions 85

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produced from the radicalism interact with some more newly developed Greek cultural realities: increased cosmopolitanism (with its positive and negative aspects), technological advances, and concern with material possessions. As one critic wrote, the urban Maria Nephele “is the offspring, not the sibling, of the women of Elytis’s youth. Her setting is the polluted city, not the open country and its islands of purity and fresh air.” The poem consists of the juxtaposed conversations of Maria Nephele, who represents the ideals of today’s emerging woman, and Antifonitis, or the Responder, who stands for more traditional views. Maria forces the Responder to confront issues that he would rather ignore. Both characters are sophisticated and complex urbanites who express themselves in a wide range of styles, moods, idioms, and stanzaic forms. Other major works nonfiction: O zoghrafos Theofilos, 1973; Anihta hartia, 1974 (Open Papers, 1995); I mayia tou Papadhiamandi, 1976; Anafora ston Andrea Embiríko, 1978; Ta dimosia ke ta idiotika, 1990; En lefko, 1992; Carte Blanche: Selected Writings, 1999. translation: Dhefteri ghrafi, 1976 (of Arthur Rimbaud and others). Bibliography Books Abroad. (Fall, 1975). A special issue devoted to Elytis, examing his life and works. Bosnakis, Panayiotis. “Ek tou plision.” World Literature Today 74, no. 1 (Winter, 2000): 211-212. A critical analysis of Elytis’s posthumously published Ek tou plision (from close). Decavalles, Andonis. Odysseus Elytis: From the Golden to the Silver Poem. New York: Pella, 1994. These seven essays analyze Elytis’s work, interpreting his poetry as it transforms from the personal to the national. Friar, Kimon. Modern Greek Poetry: From Cavafis to Elytis. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973. Informative introduction, an essay on translation, and annotations to the poetry by the editor. Includes bibliography. Glasgow, Eric. “Odysseus Elytis: In Memory of a Modern Greek Poet.” Contemporary Review 270, no. 1572 (January, 1997): 33-34. A brief article written after the poet’s death, remembering his life and works. Hirst, Anthony. God and the Poetic Ego: The Appropriation of Biblical and Liturgical Language in the Poetry of Palamas, Sikelianos, and Elytis. New York: Peter Lang, 2004. Hirst examines the role of religion in the works of Elytis, KfstTs Palamas, and Angelos Sikelianos. Ivask, Ivar, ed. Odysseus Elytis: Analogies of Light. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981. A collection of critical essays on Elytis’s work. Andonis Decavalles Updated by Sarah Hilbert 86

UGO FOSCOLO Born: Zante, Ionian Isles, Greece; February 6, 1778 Died: Turnham Green, near London, England; September 10, 1827 Principal poetry Bonaparte liberatore, 1797 Poesie, 1803 Dei sepolcri, 1807 (On Sepulchers, 1835, 1971) Le grazie, 1848 Other literary forms Ugo Foscolo (FAWS-koh-loh) is best known for his Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis (1802; Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis, 1970), an epistolary novel written after the Treaty of Campoformio (October 17, 1797), in which Napoleon Bonaparte ceded Venice to the Austrians. Napoleon’s action shocked Foscolo, who had previously written an ode entitled “A Bonaparte liberatore” (“To the Liberator Bonaparte”). In this autobiographical novel written in the form of letters from the student Jacopo Ortis to his friend Lorenzo Alderani, eroticism and politics (of a strong anti-Gallic strain) are merged. In the same year, Foscolo wrote a tragedy, Tieste (pr. 1797), in the style of Vittorio Alfieri, the success of which owed much to its revolutionary democratic spirit. Between 1804 and 1805, while in France, Foscolo began work on an Italian translation of Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey (1768). This translation was finished in 1813 in Pisa and was published as Viaggio sentimentale di Yorick lungo la Francia e l’Italia concurrently with an autobiographical work, Notizie intorno a Didimo Chierico (1813; news about Didimo Chierico). On January 22, 1809, in support of his nomination for a professorship at Pavia University, Foscolo published an important work titled Dell’origine e dell’ufficio della letteratura (about the origin and function of literature), in which he promotes a sociohistorical approach to literature. Among Foscolo’s most important nonlyric works are the tragedies Aiace (pr. 1811) and Ricciarda (pr. 1813). Aiace was not successful at its premiere but has come to be considered one of Foscolo’s best works. Foscolo’s Epistolario (1949-1970; letters) is outstanding, from both a literary and a political standpoint, and is characterized by sincerity even in the most intimate matters. In Switzerland, Foscolo published his speeches under the title Della servitu d’Italia (1823; on the servitude of Italy), a work that shows Foscolo’s pessimism concerning the then-fermenting Risorgimento, the movement for the unification of Italy. From 1816 until his death in 1827, Foscolo lived in England and dedicated himself to producing scholarly, critical works such as Saggi sul Petrarca (1821; Essays on 87

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Petrarch, 1823). Through these works, Foscolo helped to initiate in Italy a modern critical awareness of the psychological and sociohistorical background of literature. Achievements Ugo Foscolo was a man of strong commitment and even stronger will, never afraid to follow the path of truth in the pursuit of the ideals he held worthy. Like many Italian writers from Petrarch and Dante on, Foscolo brought a strong thread of classical culture to the Romanticism that dominated the entire European scene during the early 1800’s. His personal experiences and his cultural background became the raw material from which he worked all his life. Foscolo’s writings, in some sense, summed up much of the achievement and many of the trends of Italian literature of his day (the critical studies of Dante, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio are notable in this respect), and he stood as a significant milestone for writers of succeeding generations. His burial at the Church of Santa Croce in Florence, where he is entombed among the greatest figures of Italian literary and political history, suggests his place in Italian culture and letters. Biography Niccolò Ugo Foscolo was born to parents of mixed heritage; his mother, Diamantina Spaty, was Greek, while his father, Andrea Foscolo, was Venetian. When Foscolo was ten years old, his father died. He and his mother then moved to Venice, where he stayed until 1797, during which time he began to attend political and literary gatherings such as those of the Countess Isabella Teotochi. In this period, he developed an admiration for the revolutionary doctrines of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alfieri, and Robespierre while attending classes taught by Melchiorre Cesarotti at Padua University. In 1797, because of his political ideas, Foscolo was forced to flee to Bologna, where he received the nomination of honorary lieutenant for the French army in Italy. He performed this role as a strict republican until the infamous Treaty of Campoformio, which caused Foscolo to hate Bonaparte so much that he moved to Milan, where he lived from 1797 to 1815. In Milan, Foscolo made the acquaintance of Vincenzo Monti and Giuseppe Parini, and he also pursued love affairs with Teresa Pickler, Isabella Roncioni, and the Countess Antonietta Fagnani Arese. When, in 1798, the second coalition of the Austrians and Russians reconquered northern Italy from Napoleon (who was at that time in Egypt), Foscolo fought against this action under General Jean-Étienne Championnet, but his open aspiration for Italian independence provoked great hostility from the French. Nevertheless, he went to France for two years (1804-1806) and made the acquaintance of the famous Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni, as well as an English girl, Fanny Emerytt, by whom he had a daughter, Floriana. Returning to Milan in 1806, Foscolo pursued more love affairs and dedicated himself to various writing activities. In 1812, after the presentation of his second tragedy, Aiace, in which certain characters were seen as anti-French, the poet was 88

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forced to flee to Florence. There, Foscolo involved himself in the circle of the countess of Albany until the Austrians took Milan in 1813. Unable to pledge allegiance to the Austrian government, Foscolo went into voluntary exile in Switzerland in 1815. One year later, he moved to England, where he collaborated in the publication of magazines and journals, gave classes in literature, and was reunited with his daughter, Floriana. He quickly exhausted Floriana’s savings, some three thousand pounds, and remained deeply in debt until his death in 1827. Only in 1871 was his body brought to Florence and buried, as requested in his will, in the Church of Santa Croce, next to the tombs of Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Alfieri, and Galileo. Foscolo’s achievements were acknowledged during his lifetime, but it was only after his death that his writings were fully recognized as a milestone in Italian literature. He succeeded in detaching himself from the regionalism of his predecessors. From political realism, he went on to pessimism, though he never espoused the fatalism expressed by his younger contemporary Giacomo Leopardi; Foscolo’s was a dynamic pessimism that organized his heroic and lyric behavior. If the function of poetry, as Natalino Sapegno states in his Disegno storico della letteratura italiana (1973), is to discover amid the contradictions of this earthly life that universal harmony by which humans restore their own existence, Foscolo, amid a troubled life, found support in his art and created a personal vision of the sublime. Analysis The Romantic movement dominated Italian literature during the first half of the nineteenth century, and Ugo Foscolo, along with other writers, such as Vincenzo Monti and Alessandro Manzoni, was part of it, though at a rather different level. Foscolo’s personal life and his involvement in the political, social, and literary history of Italy are closely meshed in his poetry. “Sonetti” Foscolo’s twelve sonnets (known collectively as the “Sonetti”), which combine the strength of Dante and the melancholy of Petrarch, have much in common with his novel Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis: the oppressive influence of Fate on politics and personal life, hints of suicide, the pleasures and despair of love, and a sense of hostility against the invaders of Italy. There is in these sonnets, however, a new sense of nature, a more ironic and melancholic approach to the political problems of Italy, and a more lyric treatment of autobiographical themes such as love, exile, death of loved ones, and exhortations to achieve glory through poetry. In the sonnet “Te nudrice alle muse” ( “You Nurturer of the Muses”), addressed to Italy, Foscolo complains about the proposed abolition of the Latin language, a proposal made by the legislature of the Cisalpina Republic. This sonnet at first appears to be academic and traditional in structure, theme, and style, reflecting the influence of Alfieri 89

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and the neoclassical literary forms of the late eighteenth century. There is, nevertheless, an innovative element in this sonnet: the first use by Foscolo of a technique, later perfected in On Sepulchers, by which the various sections of a poem are related by larger, “historical” logic rather than by conventional syntactic logic. The two quatrains of this sonnet refer to the past, while, without any apparent connective tissue, the tercets ironically address Italy on the inconveniences that would be caused by the abolition of the Latin language. The logic that related quatrains and tercets reflects the overlying concept that there can be no contemporary Italian language and culture without reference to the language and culture of the past. The sonnet “E tu?” (“And You?”) also contrasts quatrains and tercets: The quatrains have an abba-abba rhyme scheme and are historical in content, while the tercets rhyme aba-cbc and are erotic in theme and mood. The poet starts by using heroic, quasiOssianic terminology to recall the medieval fights in Florence; then, in a more lyric fashion, he praises Florence as the dwelling place of his beloved. “Ne più” (“Never Again”), another sonnet from this collection, speaks of the tragedy of the exiled Foscolo. The poet, though Italian by birth and education, will never be able to forget that he was born of a Greek mother in the luminous and wooded Zacinto, and that his poetry echoes Homer and Theocritus. Foscolo recalls his island and the myths of Venus and Ulysses with a surge of melody in full rhymes. The first statement nostalgically affirms that he will never again set foot on the sacred shore of his native island and, unlike Ulysses, will not be granted burial in his native land. The last tercet, however, brings the consolation that, if not his body, at least his song will return to Zacinto: Poetry will be his means of immortality. The Foscolo of the “Sonetti” reaches a climax of poetic inspiration when he turns from history and mythology to treat his personal life or naturalistically perceived objects. A vein of melancholy emerges in sonnets such as “Perché taccia il rumor di mia catena” (“To Hush the Clangor of My Chain”), “Forse perché della fatal quiete” (“Perhaps Because of the Fateful Quiet”), and “Un dì, s’io non andrò sempre fuggendo” (“One Day, Should I Not Always Flee”). In these sonnets, for example, there are autobiographical references to his unfortunate love for the Florentine Isabella Roncioni and to the death of his brother John, which reminds him of his exile. The sonnet “Perhaps Because of the Fateful Quiet” is a dialogue with the evening; it moves in a thickly harmonious structure from the proposal of the theme through a central part to the conclusion. Its merit, as Foscolo himself said, lies in producing, through a broken structure, the same effects that musicians achieve through dissonance and painters achieve through shading. The poem starts with monosyllables and bisyllables, pauses at the fourth line in perfect lyric hendecasyllables until the eighth line, and then begins again the tormented rhythmic pattern. In a fashion reminiscent of Edward Young and Giuseppe Parini, Foscolo writes of the evening that is dear to him because it is the image of death; it keeps the secret paths of his heart, promising rest for his ever-warring spirit. 90

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“To Louise Pallavicini Fallen from a Horse” During the same years in which these sonnets were composed (1800-1802), Foscolo also wrote two odi: “A Luigia Pallavicini caduta da cavallo” (“To Louise Pallavicini Fallen from a Horse”) and “All’amica risanata” (“To the Healed Friend”), for Antonietta Fagnani Arese. These two odes praise the beauty of and virtually deify the two women to whom they are dedicated. The autobiographical elements and controlled poetic expertise of the sonnets continue in these odes, which are additionally characterized by literary eclecticism and imagery drawn from pagan mythology. The first ode describes a fall that the beautiful Louise took from a horse and expresses the wish that she will recover and become more beautiful than before. The whole poem is supported by mythic prototypes: Venus stung on the foot while leaning over the dead body of Ado, the “bath of Pallas,” the intervention of Neptune against the enraged horse, and finally the fall of Diana into the volcano Etna, followed by her recovery. Though the poem’s structure (eighteen stanzas of six lines each) is taken from Carlo Frugoni, and its imagery is inherited from poets such as Ludovico Ariosto, Poliziano, and Alfieri, Foscolo proves his mastery of form, style, and imagination by achieving a certain degree of seriousness in a lyric genre which in eighteenth century Italy had a rather light, occasional status. In Foscolo’s work, goddesses care for human suffering and exchange feelings of love with mortal creatures. The highly artificial tone characteristic of occasional verse does not diminish the sense of beauty and serenity which this ode evokes, foreshadowing Foscolo’s more mature work in Le grazie. “To the Healed Friend” The second ode, “To the Healed Friend,” usually viewed in relation to the passionate letters that Foscolo wrote to Antonietta Fagnani Arese, is, by contrast, carefully controlled in emotion. The process of deification is more stylized here than in the ode to Louise Pallavicini. The poet begins with a description of the healing of his beloved, again using mythological allusions. The deification reaches its climax when the poet declares that his verses will be the woman’s salvation from death and from the jealousy of others. The conclusion reiterates the mood of the earlier sonnet to his native island, “Ne più mai toccherò le sacre sponde” (“I Will Never Touch Again the Sacred Shore”) and anticipates the poem Le grazie with a recollection of the spirit of Sappho and the sound of Greek poetry. As in the first ode, Foscolo contemplates evil and death only to distance himself from them, to aspire to a higher sense of beauty and eternity. On Sepulchers In considering On Sepulchers, Giovanni Getto, in La composizione dei “Sepolcri” di Ugo Foscolo (1977) , observes that the three images—suggesting nature, civilization, and death—presented at the beginning of the poem, represent the complex symbol of On Sepulchers’s entire figurative world. The poem draws together all the poetic motifs 91

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of Foscolo’s earlier work into a new and powerful synthesis. The dialectic of this poem is, ultimately, between death and immortality. If the evils of this life cannot be avoided, immortality may be attained through memory, as evidenced by burial monuments, for after death, the hero will obtain at least this measure of glory. In the various shadings of On Sepulchers, Foscolo continuously fuses images and contrasting tones and creates the highly individual syntax that distinguishes his verse. On Sepulchers is infused with a sense of melancholy, mystery, and historicism. After evoking life, nature, poetry, and hopes broken by death, Foscolo blames the new Napoleonic law for having placed the bones of great men and those of thieves in the same tomb. He remembers then the sensible pagan rituals in honor of the virtuous dead, contrasting them with the superstitious rites of Christianity, which are characterized by a fear of the next world. He then passes to a historical vision in praise of Florence, where Dante and the parents of Petrarch were born, and where Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and Galileo are buried in Santa Croce. The sense of heroism and of the regeneration of the Italian nation comes from a tie between the living and the dead. This is why the heroic spirits of the past inspired Homer, especially the spirit of Hector, the greatest and most unfortunate of all heroes. For Foscolo, poetry was one of the most pure and significant achievements of humankind. His translations from Homer in the period preceding the composition of On Sepulchers inspired him to celebrate the heros of the past in order to unite former times with the present in an ineffable harmony. The occasional, the meditative, the narrative, and the fantastic impulses all converge in this poem. Unlike Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis, which echoes the Titanism of Alfieri, and unlike the “Sonetti,” which expresses the solitude and the horror of Foscolo’s life, On Sepulchers testifies to the poet’s liberation from his past passions. From the beginning, the reader of On Sepulchers has in front of his eyes not a bare tomb but a sepulcher comforted by the tears of the living, because “Hope, the last Goddess, flees the sepulchers.” From reason to fantasy, from the past to the present, from the dead to the living, from autobiographical references to the recollection of the great poets and heroes of the past, Foscolo develops his themes like a symphony. The initial rhetorical question in On Sepulchers, in which the desolation of death is clearly stated, is finally transformed into the attitude that all people worthy of glory, such as Hector, will have the “honor of tears as long as the sun will shine over human afflictions.” Le grazie The interrelationship between poetry and the other arts, while present in Foscolo’s earlier poetry, becomes central in Le grazie. The vision of poetry that eternalizes heroism through emulation of living people , as found in On Sepulchers, is here replaced with poetry that focuses on beauty, which educates the human spirit to reveal the secret consonance of the universe. Aldo Vallone, in Le Grazie nella storia della poesia foscoliana (1977), has re92

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marked that the neoclassicism of On Sepulchers becomes for Foscolo in Le grazie the natural way of composing poetry. The expressive elements contained in this ambitious allegorical and didactic poem, which remained unfinished at Foscolo’s death, reveal his absolute mastery of his material. By technical devices such as the usage of certain prepositions, of narrative sections, and of repetition of key words, Foscolo suggests at one moment the shading of the verse, while at another moment he reestablishes equilibrium among the various segments of the poem, producing an effect of musical lyricism. Composing Le grazie while at the villa Bellosguardo, near Florence, Foscolo was inspired by the Venus of Canova and the statuary group of the Graces. The poem also reveals the influence of the neoclassical aesthetics of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, and marks Foscolo’s passage from pure to critical lyric. This is not to say that there is any lack of images or lyric pleasure; on the contrary, critical and poetic thoughts are here combined. The philosophical intuition of reality as harmony goes side by side with passion and melancholy. In the tradition of Homer and Callimachus, three hymns compose Le grazie. The first hymn is dedicated to Venus, goddess of beauty, the second to Vesta, goddess of the hearth, and the third to Pallas, goddess of the arts. According to Le grazie, aesthetics were born in Greece, and with them civilization began. Italy became the major theater of civilization, and there music, dance , lyric language, greatness of mind, and physical beauty gave rebirth to the Graces—that is, to Harmony. This concept is presented in the second hymn and poetically developed by the image of a sacrifice made by three of the women Foscolo loved: Nencini, with a harp; Martinetti, with a honeycomb; and Bignami, with a swan. The last hymn takes the reader to the middle of an ocean on an ethereal Earth. Pallas, in fact, weaves a veil that exalts youth, love, hospitality, maternal affection, and filial piety. With this veil, she covers the Graces so that they can protect themselves from passion. The form of the three hymns seems to be less impetuous than that of On Sepulchers: Dissonances are softened, and the verse has a smoother and less luminous modulation. Other major works long fiction: Ultime Lettere di Jacopo Ortis, 1802 (Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis, 1970). plays: Tieste, pr. 1797; Aiace, pr. 1811; Ricciarda, pr. 1813. nonfiction: Orazione a Bonaparte pel Congresso di Lione, 1802; Dell’origine e dell’ufficio della letteratura, 1809; Notizie intorno a Didimo Chierico, 1813; Essay on the Present Literature of Italy, 1818; Saggi sul Petrarca, 1821 (Essays on Petrarch, 1823); Della servitu d’Italia, 1823; Discorso storico sul testo del “Decamerone,” 1825; Discorso sul testo e su le opinioni diverse prevalenti intorno alla storia e alla emendazione critica della “Commedia” di Dante, 1825; On the New Dramatic School in Italy, 1826; Epistolario, 1949-1970 (7 volumes). 93

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translations: La chioma di Berenice, 1803 (of Callimachus’s poetry); Esperimenti di traduzione della “Iliade” di Omero, 1807 (of Homer’s Iliad); Viaggio sentimentale di Yorick lungo la Francia e l’Italia, 1813 (of Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey). Bibliography Cambon, Glauco. Ugo Foscolo: Poet of Exile. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980. A critical study of the works of Foscolo. Includes index. Franzero, Charles Marie. A Life in Exile: Ugo Foscolo in London, 1816-1827. London: Allen, 1977. A biography focusing on Foscolo’s life in London. Magill, Frank N., Dayton Kohler, and Laurence W. Mazzeno, eds. Masterplots: 1,801 Plot Stories and Critical Evaluations of the World’s Finest Literature. 2d ed. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 1996. Contains an in-depth analysis of On Sepulchers. Matteo, Sante. Textual Exile: The Reader in Sterne and Foscolo. New York: Peter Lang, 1985. A study of Foscolo and Laurence Sterne. Substantial bibliography. O’Neill, Tom. Of Virgin Muses and of Love: A Study of Foscolo’s “Dei sepolcri.” Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1981. In-depth study of On Sepulchers. Includes bibliographical references and index. Parmegiani, Susan. Ugo Foscolo and English Culture. London: Maney, 2010. Focuses on Foscolo’s experiences in England and the effect on his writings. Radcliff-Umstead, Douglas. Ugo Foscolo. New York: Twayne, 1970. An introductory biography and critical analysis of selected works by Foscolo. Includes bibliographic references. Adriano Moz

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HESIOD Born: Ascra, Greece; fl. c. 700 b.c.e. Died: Ozolian Locris, Greece(?); date unknown Principal poetry Erga kai Emerai, c. 700 b.c.e. (Works and Days, 1618) Theogonia, c. 700 b.c.e. (Theogony, 1728) Works of Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns, 2005 Other literary forms Hesiod (HEE-see-uhd) is remembered only for his poetic works. A number of poems are erroneously attributed to Hesiod, among them Shield (c. 700 b.c.e.) and Catalogue of Women (c. 700 b.c.e.). Achievements Hesiod was respected, next to Homer, as a leading poet-teacher of the early Greeks, and his reputation stood all but unchallenged throughout Greco-Roman antiquity. For lack of a better term, he is sometimes described as a didactic poet, although neither of his poems follows the strict definition of a genre that took shape more than four centuries later in the Hellenistic age. Hesiod adapted the formulaic style, meter, and vocabulary of the Homeric epic to two ancient genres from the Near East. The Theogony is Hesiod’s version of the type of creation epic found in the opening chapters of the biblical Genesis, and it had a formative influence on the great classical poets from Aeschylus to Ovid, similar to the hold that the book of Genesis has had on poetic imaginations in the Christian era. The Works and Days springs from an equally ancient genre, the protreptic “wisdom literature” that influenced several books of the Old Testament and that can be traced back as far as the third millennium b.c.e. In Greece’s more secular civilization, Hesiod’s works never attained the status of holy writ; it was never supposed that the Theogony or the Works and Days was divinely inspired (save in a general way by the Muses) or that the myths contained in them were canonical. Hesiod’s writings have a religious and moral fervor, however, and his version of Greek mythology, although far from complete, remains the most important systematic account of the Olympian deities to the present day. Biography Most of the available information about Hesiod’s life comes from his own poetry. In the Works and Days, he says that his father came from Cyme, an Aeolian Greek town on the west coast of Anatolia about thirty miles southeast of Lesbos, and worked as a mer95

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chant seaman until hard times forced him to relocate to a homestead across the Aegean, in poor country northeast of Mount Helicon, in Boeotia. Hesiod was born and reared on his father’s farm in Ascra, which he describes as “nasty in winter, disagreeable in the summer, and never good.” In the Theogony, he describes his investiture as a poet by the Muses while he was herding sheep at the foot of Mount Helicon. The parallels to this scene are Eastern, recalling the shepherd Moses, called by God away from his sheep, and Amos, summoned from his herds to prophesy. Another passage in the Works and Days tells of winning a trophy for a hymn at a festival in Chalcis on the nearby island of Euboea. Several references to a dispute with his brother Perses in the Works and Days indicate that Perses bribed the authorities when their father’s estate was divided and took more than his share, but squandered his ill-gotten gain and came begging to his brother. In the Works and Days, Hesiod uses the occasion of Perses’ unjust behavior as the context for his discussion of DikT (justice) and Hybris (violence). The traditional belief that Homer and Hesiod once met in a poetry contest and a supposed text of the contest (the Agon) are rejected by modern scholars. Thucydides adds that Hesiod was killed in Ozolian Locris, just west of Delphi, by local inhabitants in the precinct around the temple of Nemean Zeus; Hesiod was taken off guard because an oracle had told him he would suffer this fate at Nemea, a prophecy that he had interpreted literally as meaning the city itself. Pausanias and other sources say that a tomb of Hesiod could be seen at Orchomenos, in northwest Boeotia. Much of this, even the autobiographical passages in Hesiod’s works, must be approached with reservations. Greek and Roman tourists would pay well to see “Hesiod’s tomb,” and the story of his death conforms to standard features of the cult of the poethero (such as the death of Orpheus). The dispute with Perses is impossible to reconstruct clearly, although its literary function is easily understandable. That Perses was an actual individual living in Hesiod’s day has sometimes been questioned; his name may be fabricated from the root perth-, pers- to suggest “waster” or “spoiler.” The meeting with the Muses of Mount Helicon speaks for itself, and even the name “Hesiod” may be a generic nom de plume, “he who emits the voice” (as “Homer” may be interpreted as “he who fits [the song] together”). What remains of the life of Hesiod is probably better founded in truth. One of the few ancient poets who came from humble origins, Hesiod grew up in poverty; it is speculated that he adopted the trade of a rhapsode, reciting and composing poetry in central Greece. Unlike his fellow Boeotian Pindar, Hesiod never embraced the values of the nobility with their contempt for the peasant, although in the Theogony, he acknowledges the Muses’ scorn of rustics. Throughout his two masterpieces, Hesiod retained the little man’s distrust of corrupt “kings,” the peasant’s grim view of life’s realities, and a democrat’s belief in an abstract justice that is indifferent to social rank.

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Analysis Judged purely as literature, Hesiod’s work falls short of the highest rank. His writing is rambling and structurally undisciplined; his values are sometimes quaint, his lists of gods or seasonal farm chores tedious. Hesiod was more than a compiler of myth and wisdom, however; his lofty ideals, connecting justice with a vision of growing divine order, break through the catalog form with striking force; his unsentimental view of life, in which just behavior and hard work are the chief determinants of every person’s destiny, is forceful and intentionally inspirational. Hesiod’s writing is less graceful than robust; much of its power is derived from a vision that made it a cornerstone of Greek thought and an influential component in the classical reading of neoclassical poets from the Renaissance through the Romantic era. Because nothing is known of Hesiod’s immediate literary context, it is hard to say how much is new in his two poems. It is sometimes rashly said that he was the first Greek to make a systematic account of divine mythology, the first to introduce Eros as a divinity, the first to engage in philosophy, and the like. There is no evidence for such claims, and although it may be reasonable to speculate with scholar G. S. Kirk that Hesiod came “near the beginning of a Boeotian poetical renaissance,” it is hard not to see him as the culmination of a long oral tradition in Greece. His adeptness with formal battle pieces, tales of giants and monsters, and catalogs (a form often linked to Boeotia in particular), his self-consciousness in his vocation as a poet and his emphasis on the Muses and the poet’s craft mark him as the practitioner of an already well-established and popular art. Attempts to link him with the subsequent development of philosophy in Ionia should be qualified by the fact that Hesiod’s thought is still more theological and mythical than rational. Indeed, it fits the character of his thought better to study him as a theologian, although it is a matter of speculation that theological constructs are uniquely his. It is also appropriate to perceive Hesiod as an essentially oral poet in the sense that (like Homer’s) his style is formulaic to a high degree and his manner of organizing material is paratactic, “being often based” as Kirk says, “on the exploitation of casual associations rather than on the principle of strictly logical development.” In The Winged Word: A Study in the Technique of Ancient Greek Oral Composition as Seen Principally Through Hesiod’s “Works and Days” (1975), Berkley Peabody explores the ramifications of the allegedly oral composition of Hesiod’s poems, but because the rigid distinctions that Milman Parry and A. B. Lord attempted to draw between oral and literary compositions have been found inapplicable in other traditions, it is no longer considered possible to define orality with absolute rigor. Hesiod’s tradition and style are undeniably oral, but he may have used writing, and, as Eric Havelock has long since argued, the permanence of the written word (introduced to Greece in about 750 b.c.e.) may well have inspired him to compose the kind of works he left behind.

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Theogony The earlier of Hesiod’s poems, the Theogony (genealogy of the gods) gives an account in about one thousand lines of dactylic hexameter of the origin of the world and the forces that control it: gods, Titans, monsters, and personified abstractions, down to the establishment of Zeus’s world order. Although the original shape of Hesiod’s poem has been confused by later additions to the text, it was clearly his intention to represent as his main theme the progressive emergence of order from disorder. Kirk states that through a rambling and digressive narrative, the reader can detect “some idea of a gradual progress, not only from more abstract cosmogonical figures to more concrete and anthropomorphic ones, but also from cruder and more violent gods to cleverer and more orderly ones.” The core around which Hesiod’s divine order forms is the succession of three generations: the first parents Uranus (sky) and Gaea (earth), then Cronus, then Zeus. Friedrich Solmsen has suggested an additional theme: The series of events which make up the history of the divine dynasty from the birth of Uranus and Gaea to Zeus’s advent to power has been determined by, and owes its intrinsic unity to, the idea of guilt and retribution. It forms one great conception.

After a long poem in the form of a hymn to the Muses, Hesiod starts his account with a brief cosmogony beginning with Chaos (void) and after him Gaea, Tartarus, and Eros (the primal generative force). Here and throughout his poem, Hesiod does not distinguish clearly between places (Tartarus), conditions (Chaos), physical entities (Gaea), and forces (Eros). Following a common instinct of Greek thought, Hesiod admits them to his narrative as characters first and in addition whatever else that their names, genealogy, or actions might imply. Cosmogony therefore quickly fades into theogony as the process of generation takes over. Chaos gives birth to Erebus and Night, who in turn couple and beget Aether and Day. Gaea gives birth to Uranus, the Hills, and Pontus (the sea) before coupling with her son Uranus (in the primordial union of earth and sky) to produce six male and six female Titans, three Cyclopes, and three Hundred-Handers. As Uranus tries to prevent the birth of these last three, Gaea conspires with Cronus, the youngest of her Titans, who cuts off his father’s genitals as Uranus attempts to couple once more with Gaea. The blood from this mutilation falls to earth to beget the Furies, the Giants, and the tree nymphs. Cronus hurls his father’s severed genitals into the sea, where the foam that spreads around them produces Aphrodite (the foam-, or aphro-, born goddess), who steps ashore at Cyprus attended by Eros and Himeros (longing). There follows a catalog of some three hundred gods descended in two separate lines from Chaos and Gaea: from the former, the troublesome children of Night; from the latter, the three sons and three daughters of Pontus, who, in turn, spawn some fifty nymphs and a variety of other gods, sprites, and monsters. The catalog culminates in the birth of Zeus, son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea. Fearing a predicted overthrow by one of his children, Cronus swallows his offspring until their mother contrives to feed him a stone 98

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in the place of her youngest child, Zeus, who is kept safe in a Cretan cave. When Zeus comes of age, he forces Cronus to disgorge his three sisters Hestia, Demeter, and Hera and his brothers Hades and Poseidon. He also frees his uncles the Cyclopes, who in gratitude give him the thunder and lightning with which to win and maintain his rule. Hesiod’s genealogy concludes with an account of the progeny of the Titan Iapetus, with particular attention to the story of Prometheus, an etiological myth, explaining first, why the gods are served the bones and fat of a sacrifice rather than the good meat; second, how Prometheus stole fire for man; and third, how Zeus contrived woman for mortals as a curse to offset the Promethean blessing of fire. The general lesson of the Prometheus myth, with the chaining of the trickster-Titan who dares to match wits with Zeus, is the impossibility of escaping the wrath of Zeus. This intimation of Zeus’s knowledge and power leads to an account of the great battle by which Zeus established his power in the world, the Titanomachy, a showpiece of action poetry that became the prototype of John Milton’s War in Heaven. As earlier in the poem Zeus had freed the three Cyclopes, so he now frees the Hundred-Handers to fight as his allies against the Titans. The blazing, crashing, thundering battle that ensues has a Wagnerian quality and may well have been a great crowd pleaser at Hesiod’s recitations. It is followed by an equally impressive vision of the underworld to which Zeus consigns the conquered Titans. In a final battle (perhaps composed as a kind of encore to the Titanomachy), Zeus overcomes the last challenge to his power, the monster Typhoeus, a storm god who is defeated and, like the Titans, thrown into Tartarus. The poem concludes with Zeus’s dispensation of titles and privileges to the Olympian gods and a series of seven marriages that consolidate his regime. In this genealogical coda, numerous younger gods are born, including the motherless Athena and the fatherless Hephaestus. At some point after this, perhaps with the list of goddesses who have lain with mortal men, the genuine work of Hesiod is believed to give way to the work of post-Hesiodic redactors intent on grafting the Catalogue of Women onto the Theogony. Although it is not agreed exactly where the break comes, the composition becomes looser near the end, and scholar Kurt Von Fritz states: “The text constantly deteriorates, till at the end it just dissolves.” Literary and mythic influences It is likely that theogonic poetry was well established in Greek oral tradition for generations before Hesiod, possibly as early as the Mycenaean age. Accounts of the origin of the world, the birth of the gods, and the establishment of the present order occur in archaic cultures from Iceland to the Pacific. More specifically, according to M. L. West, Hesiod’s “succession myth,” tracing the transfer of power from Uranus to Cronus to Zeus, “has parallels in Oriental mythology which are so striking that a connection is incontestable.” A Hurrian succession myth, preserved in Hittite texts four centuries before Hesiod, and the Akkadian Enuma Elis (early second millennium b.c.e.), the official theogonic text used in the Babylonian New Year festival, provide mythic parallels so 99

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close as to justify the conclusion that the core of Hesiod’s Theogony is a synthesis of Eastern stories known to the Greeks since the Minoan-Mycenaean period or somewhat later. This is not to say that Hesiod merely imitated Eastern poetry; like everything else that the Greeks borrowed, it was refashioned into a document of Greek culture. Works and Days The same is true of the Works and Days, which might be called “The Wisdom of Hesiod” because of its affinity with works of exhortation and instruction attested in Sumeria as early as 2500 b.c.e., with Akkadian and Babylonian texts from c. 1400 b.c.e. and with Egyptian Middle Kingdom “instruction” texts from about the same time. In fact, “wisdom literature” is nearly as widespread in world cultures as is theogonic poetry. Hesiod’s Works and Days shows a particular affinity with Eastern parallels: The myth of the five races of man has counterparts in Persia, India, and Mesopotamia; instruction in Hesiod’s poem comes from a victim of injustice, as in a number of Egyptian wisdom texts, one of them more than one thousand years earlier than Hesiod; and the fable of the hawk and the nightingale points to the Near East, where the animal fable goes back to the Sumerians. These affinities, among others, argue that the Works and Days is not only cognate with Near Eastern poetic themes but was actually influenced by them. The Works and Days is not narrative in outline, as is the Theogony. Instead, it is presented as a miscellany of advice and instructive stories to Perses, the poet’s wastrel brother, who had bribed the “kings” and cheated him in the division of their father’s estate. Its two themes are justice and work, and Hesiod makes it his business to show how they are intertwined in the life of a successful man. After a short poem to Zeus, Hesiod corrects what he had said in the Theogony about Eris, or Strife, daughter of Night. There are not one but two types of strife—one evil, the other good. Good strife is the healthy competition that urges men on to greater efforts in their work. Hesiod repeats the story of Prometheus to explain why humans have to work for their livelihood, elaborating the account of Pandora as if to imply that woman is the ultimate and definitive curse upon humanity. As an alternative explanation of the wretched lot of humanity, Hesiod next offers the myth of the five races of man. This entropic version of human history, each generation being of a baser metal than its predecessor, contrasts significantly with the progressive history of the divine world in the Theogony and emphasizes the sense of hopeless distance between humans and gods that runs through much Greek poetry, especially tragedy. The fable of the hawk and his helpless victim, the nightingale, points to the supremacy of force in the animal world; as for the human world, Perses is asked to consider how justice wins out over violence because of the actions of Zeus. The role of Zeus as a punisher of injustice can be seen early in Homer’s Iliad (c. 750 b.c.e.; English translation, 1611), and a passage in Homer’s Odyssey (c. 725 b.c.e.; English translation, 1614) contains the idea that good crops and abundant livestock are rewards given to a just ruler. 100

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What is remarkable in Hesiod is the forcefulness with which he links justice, prosperity, and the role of Zeus as the embodiment of a just providence. It is justice that separates human life from that of the beasts: This nomos, or sacred law, is the decree of Zeus, and the success or failure of a person’s life is the final proof that nothing escapes the eye of Zeus. If this assertion seems more a statement of religious belief than an observation of fact, it is tempting to look anachronistically forward to some of the teachings of Calvinism, especially those that associated virtue with prosperity. A significant comparison can also be made with biblical wisdom literature, where the association of virtue with prosperity is standard, as in Proverbs 13:22, 13:25, and 14:11, for example. The next section of the Works and Days may seem a step closer to such a comparison: Hesiod preaches a work ethic in his famous exhortation to Perses, which represents hard work as the virtue that brings prosperity and idleness as the vice that brings ruin (see Proverbs 6:6-11). In the world that Hesiod depicts, therefore, justice and hard work are the route to success, violence and idleness the guarantors of disaster. Obviously, the latter precept concerning work versus idleness is less religious than pragmatic, and the poem perceptibly shifts its emphasis at this point from the mythical, moral, and metaphysical to the practical. The lines that follow are a series of proverbs on how to keep what you have, beginning with moral and religious maxims and ending with prudent social and personal advice, such as that against sweet-talking women who are after a man’s barn. The rest of the poem consists of specific advice to the farmer, a sketchy kind of almanac telling when to plow and reap and what equipment to use, Hesiod outlining farming techniques, winter procedures, and other seasonal chores. He offers advice to the farmer who goes to sea to sell his goods; on when and how to marry; and on social, personal, and ritual hygiene. Finally, there is a list of good and bad days of the month. Judged as a purely literary performance, the Works and Days is uneven, especially in the latter sections containing advice on farming, but students of the poem see a unity of conception and a dour kind of vigor that offsets some of its literary shortcomings. Occasioned by an act of injustice, the poem adheres to a single theme: Good farming is as much a part of justice as good statecraft would be for Plato in the Politeia (fourth century b.c.e.; Republic, 1701). Moreover, Hesiod’s qualified pessimism and the vividness with which he reveals the harsh life of the farmer are an essential background to the stern values he preaches; there is little of the “pastoral” here. Hesiod lacks the aristocratic magnanimity of Homer and never achieves the smooth, leisurely expansiveness of Homeric narrative. In this respect, Hesiod’s curt style is suited to the bleak life he represents. On the other hand, the explicit force of Hesiod’s ethical vision surpasses anything in Homer. This is partly because the political context is more real to the modern reader: Instead of the “feudal” society of warrior-kings and their dependents, whose chief virtues lie in loyal service, Hesiod depicts independent men whose dignity lies in their abil101

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ity to take care of themselves, their households, and their farms. The Works and Days is a moral and political tract that contrasts the justice of work not only with the idleness of fools but also with the corruption of “gift-devouring kings” who enjoy indolence at the expense of others. The poem is thus more than an interesting glimpse of eighth century b.c.e. Boeotian farm life; it is a valuable cultural document. Its significance for the Hellenic civilization then taking shape lies in the assertion of a divine and impersonal justice working for the common person as well as for the great. The ideal of a universal, evenhanded law was essential not only to the political life of the Greeks but also to the idea of early Greek tragedy, where DikT is as inevitable as the other workings of nature. Bibliography Clay, Jenny Strauss. Hesiod’s Cosmos. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. A scholarly study of Hesiod’s works and their expression of early Greek religious thought. Edwards, Anthony T. Hesiod’s Ascra. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Edwards examines how Hesiod depicted Ascra in Works and Days, finding the village to be autonomous and recasting the dispute between Hesiod and Perses as a disagreement over the inviolability of the community’s external border. Gotshalk, Richard. Homer and Hesiod: Myth and Philosophy. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2000. A study of the nature and function of the poetry of Homer and Hesiod when their work is considered in historical context as developments of poetry as a distinctive voice for truth beyond religion and myth. Hunter, Richard, ed. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. A team of scholars attempt to explore the meaning, significance, and reception of a poem formerly attributed to Hesiod. Lamberton, Robert. Hesiod. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.: Hermes Books, 1988. An accessible introduction to Hesiod’s works. Historical background of the poems and problems of dating them are discussed. Major subsidiary works are analyzed. Marsilio, Maria S. Farming and Poetry in Hesiod’s “Works and Days.” Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2000. Demonstrates how Hesiod and Vergil viewed the farming lifestyle as a system of belief unto itself. Includes a translation of Works and Days by esteemed translator David Grene. Montanari, Franco, Antonios Rengakos, and Christos Tsagalis, eds. Brill’s Companion to Hesiod. Boston: Brill, 2009. A collection of essays about Hesiod and his writings, including an analysis of poetry and poetics in his works and a look in to ancient scholarship on Hesiod. Nelson, Stephanie A. God and the Land: The Metaphysics of Farming in Hesiod and Vergil. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Shows how Hesiod as well as Vergil viewed the farming lifestyle as a religion unto itself. Penglase, Charles. Greek Myths and Mesopotamia: Parallels and Influence in the Ho102

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meric Hymns and Hesiod. New York: Routledge, 1997. Examines how Mesopotamian ideas and themes influenced Greek religious mythological works, including the Homeric hymns to the gods and the works of Hesiod. Stoddard, Kathryn. The Narrative Voice in the “Theogony” of Hesiod. Boston: Brill, 2004. Looks at the narrative voice in Theogony, discussing whether it is autobiographical and who the implied author is. Daniel H. Garrison

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NAZIM HIKMET Born: Salonika, Ottoman Empire (now Thessaloniki, Greece); January 20, 1902 Died: Moscow, Soviet Union (now in Russia); June 3, 1963 Principal poetry Güneli içenlerin türküsü, 1928 835 satir, 1929 Jokond ile Si-Ya-U, 1929 1 + 1 = bir, 1930 Varan 3, 1930 Sesini kaybeden lehir, 1931 Benerci kendini niçin öldürdü?, 1932 Gece gelen telgraf, 1932 Portreler, 1935 Taranta Babu’ya mektuplar, 1935 Simavne Kadisi oglu Leyh Bedreddin destane, 1936 (The Epic of Sheik Bedreddin, 1977) Moskova senfonisi, 1952 (The Moscow Symphony, 1970) Poems by Nazim Hikmet, 1954 Kurtulus Savale destane, 1965 (expanded as Kuvayi Milliye, 1968) Piraye için yazilmis saat 21-22 liirleri, 1965 Lu 1941 yelenda, 1965 Dört hapisaneden, 1966 Rubailer, 1966 (Rubaiyat, 1985) Yeni liirler, 1966 Memleketimden insan manzaralari, 1966-1967 (5 volumes; Human Landscapes, 1982) Selected Poems, 1967 The Moscow Symphony, and Other Poems, 1970 Son liirler, 1970 The Day Before Tomorrow, 1972 Things I Didn’t Know I Loved: Selected Poems of Nazim Hikmet, 1975 Kerem gibi, 1976 The Epic of Sheik Bedreddin, and Other Poems, 1977 Selected Poetry, 1986 A Sad State of Freedom, 1990 Beyond the Walls: Selected Poems, 2002

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Other literary forms Although he is remembered primarily for his poetry, Nazim Hikmet (HIHK-meht) also became known early in his career for his plays; among the most notable of these are Kafatase (pb. 1931; the skull) and Unutulan adam (pb. 1935; the forgotten man), which deal with the practice of psychology and the conflict between worldly recognition and inner dissatisfaction. Other works in this genre, however, have been criticized for a facile identification of personages with political and social standpoints that they were meant to represent. Hikmet subsequently moved in other directions in his dramatic writing, first with works such as Bir alk masale (pb. 1945; a love story), which attempted a modern interpretation of traditional Middle Eastern characters. Other plays involved experiments with old and new technical forms, as a part of the author’s effort to adapt classical literary themes to contemporary concerns. Among later plays, by far the most widely known was Evan Evanoviç var meyde yok muydu? (was there or was there not an Ivan Ivanovich?), which was written in exile and was first published in a Russian translation in 1956. In this contribution to the literary “thaw” in the Soviet Union, the author took issue with the personality cult and rigid, unswerving norms of criticism that had dominated creative writing under dictator Joseph Stalin. Hikmet’s narrative fiction is rather uneven; there is some moving and effective writing in Sevdale bulut (1968; the cloud in love), which brings together short pieces, including children’s stories, written over many years. His novels tend to display his ideological concerns. Of these perhaps the most interesting is Yelil elmalar (1965; green apples), which deals with crime, corruption, and penal detention. Also of interest as a semiautobiographical effort is Yalamak güzel ley bekardelim (1967; The Romantics, 1987). Works of political commentary furnish direct statements of the author’s views on leading issues of his time; his treatises on Soviet democracy and on German fascism, both originally published in 1936, are particularly revealing in this regard. Other insights into the writer’s thought may be gathered from his collected newspaper columns and compilations of his personal letters. Achievements Throughout his creative lifetime, Nazim Hikmet was regarded as a politically controversial figure whose poetry expressed ideological concerns that situated him well to the left among Turkish writers of his generation. Although officially he was almost invariably out of favor in his own country—indeed, much of his adult life in Turkey was spent in prison, and work from his later years was composed under the shadow of Soviet cultural standard-bearers—his experiments with versification produced poetic forms that, more than any other works, announced the introduction of modern techniques into Turkish writing in this genre. During the last years of the Ottoman Empire, major innovations had been attempted by leading literary figures; language reform movements proceeded alongside the development of literary vehicles suitable for wider circles of 105

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readers among the masses. Enlarging on the earlier efforts of Mehmet Tevfik Fikret and other important writers, Nazim Hikmet devised new and strikingly resonant verse patterns that in their turn pointed to the possibilities that could be achieved with the use of free verse. Moreover, while admittedly experimental, his verse was distinctive in the unusual confluence of models chosen: Hikmet’s poems show the influence of Soviet post-Symbolists while, in some notable works, recalling classical Islamic traditions in modern, reworked guises. Hikmet’s poetry is alternately strident in its political declamations and intensely personal in its evocations of the writer’s sufferings and innermost wants. Many of his prose works, while never really descending to the level of Socialist Realism, are somewhat more narrowly symptomatic of the ideological persuasions that guided him. Apart from his literary fame, Hikmet became well known from the political charges for which he served an aggregate of seventeen years in Turkish prisons. In 1949, an international committee was formed in Paris to press for his release; among others, JeanPaul Sartre, Pablo Picasso, Louis Aragon, and Paul Robeson petitioned for the reopening of the Turkish government’s case against him. In 1950, the Soviet Union conferred its World Peace Prize on Nazim Hikmet, an award he shared with Pablo Neruda. During the last years of Hikmet’s life, he made a number of public appearances in Moscow, Warsaw, and capitals of other Soviet bloc countries. After his death, his work became the subject of lively discussion, much of it favorable, in his native Turkey, and important writings once more were published. Students of and specialists in Turkish literature have widely acknowledged his leading position among modern poets. Biography On January 20, 1902, Nazim Hikmet was born in Salonika, the port city in Thrace that was then part of the Ottoman Empire. His father was a physician who had held government appointments; his mother was a painter, and his grandfather, Nazim Pala, was a poet and critic of some note. As a boy, Hikmet was introduced to local literary circles. His first poems were written when he was about seventeen. He was educated in Istanbul, at the French-language Galatasaray Lycée and at the Turkish Naval Academy. Although poor health precluded a military career, he went oxn to Moscow during the early period of Soviet-Turkish friendship; between 1922 and 1924, he studied at the University of the Workers of the East. He derived inspiration from the events of the Russian Revolution and probably was influenced as well by the bold new literary ventures of Soviet poets such as Sergei Esenin and Vladimir Mayakovsky. Upon his return to his native country, Hikmet joined the Turkish Communist Party, which by then had been forced into a clandestine existence; in Izmir, he worked for a left-wing publication and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. He fled to the Soviet Union and returned only after a general amnesty was proclaimed in 1928. By that time, his first book-length collection of poems had been published in Soviet Azerbaijan. In Turkey, the Communist 106

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Party had been formally outlawed, and Hikmet was arrested forthwith. Nevertheless, Turkish publishers brought out verse collections such as 835 sat r (835 lines) and others; his works were deemed inflammatory by the authorities, who claimed that they incited workers against the government. He was imprisoned twice and later was able to find work mainly as a proofreader, translator, and scriptwriter. Indeed, some of his early poems refer to the tedious routine of his daily work, to which he was effectively restricted because of his political convictions. Although his plays won critical recognition and some acclaim for their introduction of new, unconventional dramatic forms—here Hikmet may in some ways have followed the technical innovations of Bertolt Brecht— political writings and newspaper columns had to be published under a pseudonym. He turned to historical topics, which nevertheless allowed range for his leftist populist outlook: The last work published in Turkey during his lifetime was The Epic of Sheik Bedreddin, and Other Poems, which includes a long poem narrating events surrounding the life and death of the leader of a fifteenth century peasant revolt. In January, 1938, new charges were brought against Hikmet; because copies of his poems were found in the possession of military cadets, he was arraigned for inciting unrest in the armed forces. A military court found him guilty, though the original sentence of thirty-five years was reduced to twenty-eight. During his imprisonment in Bursa, Hikmet embarked on his poetic magnum opus, Human Landscapes, which was to be published only after his death, in a five-volume edition of 1966-1967. This monumental, and sometimes disjointed, work was circulated in parts among the poet’s friends, family, and confidants; some portions of it were confiscated by the Turkish police or otherwise disappeared. Much of the writing Hikmet produced in prison has a musing, poignant, indeed bittersweet quality that was not so pronounced in his earlier works. On the other hand, some poems alight on world events of which he had heard in passing: Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, in 1941, and the United States’ use of an atom bomb against Hiroshima at the end of World War II, are discussed in his verse from this period. In 1949, in spite of having suffered a heart attack, Hikmet undertook a hunger strike that lasted seventeen days. In response to international pressure, the Turkish government released him from prison in 1950, but shortly thereafter, to curb the expression of his political views, he was made liable for conscripted military service. The following year, Hikmet fled the country alone in a small fishing boat; he was taken on board a Romanian ship in the Black Sea and eventually made his way to Moscow. During his years in exile, the last period of his life, Hikmet lived for some time in the Soviet capital and in Warsaw; he took out a Polish passport under the name Borzecki, after a family to which he had traced some of his ancestors. Sometimes he also used the added surname Ran. He traveled widely and attended literary congresses in other Soviet bloc countries; he also spent much time in Paris. He visited China, Cuba, and Tanganyika. Once he was refused a visa to enter the United States. Although he was not a literary conformist, he continued to uphold Soviet positions on international security. Some 107

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of his works from this period did him little credit, though they dealt with issues similar to those of his earlier activist poems. He suffered from angina pectoris, which had developed during his longest prison term, and other chronic health complaints arose later. While he lived in Turkey, he had married three times; his imprisonment had made settled family life impossible. In Moscow, he took up residence with a fetching young “straw blonde” Vera Tuliakova. Some of his later poems wistfully call back images of the women in his life or point to the hopes he still cherished in spite of his advancing age and his problematical physical state. After a final heart attack, Hikmet died in Moscow on June 3, 1963. Homage was rendered him from leading literary figures in many countries. Since his death, his reputation among Turkish writers has grown apace. Analysis According to some estimates, the poetry of Nazim Hikmet has been translated into at least fifty languages. Perhaps more than that of any other Turkish writer, his work transcended the bounds of stylized Ottoman versification. At their best, his poems call to mind settings the author knew well, while extending a universal appeal on behalf of his social beliefs. Lyrical and rhetorical passages occur alternately in some of his major works; his epics exhibit narrative powers that in some segments are used to depict events from the distant past or to evoke those from the author’s lifetime. Moreover, though early in his career he came to be known as much for his outspoken ideological positions as for his literary achievements, Hikmet’s poetry conveys the sudden dramatic impact of historical occurrences; social issues are depicted in ways that can be felt beyond the strict limits of party politics. On a more personal level, romantic yearnings, whimsical observations of street scenes and travel, and indeed nature and the weather are discussed in simple yet deeply felt lines that complement Hikmet’s more directly expressed political concerns. Some of his poems communicate the loneliness and anxiety he felt as a political prisoner, without indulging particularly in self-pity. On the whole , he cannot be classified purely as a rationalist or a romantic; rather, his works combine elements of both inclinations. Language From the outset, Hikmet’s poetry was brash, vibrant, and politically engaged; defiantly casting aside traditional poetic styles, the author’s work exuberantly mixed ideology and amorous inclinations in lines that at first glance resemble dismembered declarative sentences punctuated by crisp, staccato repetitions of phrases and nouns. Statements begun on one line are carried forward, with indentations, to the next, and sometimes further indentations are inserted before the thought is concluded. Question marks and exclamation points enliven stirring passages in which the author seems to be carrying on a dialogue with himself, if not with nature or society. The vowel harmony characteristic of the Turkish language is used to impart added 108

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force and velocity to some passages; moreover, the author’s writing drew from folk songs, time-honored national sagas, and other sources in eclectic and distinctive combinations. Colloquial expressions, lower-class idioms, and outright vulgarisms appear from time to time. This approach, which seems ever fresh and lively in the hands of a talented practitioner, is notably well suited to Hikmet’s subject matter. One early poem, evidently composed in a devil-may-care mood, contrasts the author’s straitened and difficult circumstances—his many monotonous hours as a lowly proofreader were rewarded with a pittance—and the effervescent sensations of springtime, with Cupid urging him after a comely girl. Jokond ile Si-Ya-U Considerable powers of creative imagination were called on in early poetry of a political character. In the long poem Jokond ile Si-Ya-U (the Gioconda and Si-Ya-U), various narrative transitions are conjoined with abrupt changes of setting, from Paris to the open sea to Shanghai under the white terror; eventually the author’s summary is presented from his vantage point in Europe. Some of Hikmet’s experiences during his travel—he had met Chinese revolutionaries during a visit to France—appear in an ultimately fictional and somewhat fantastic form. The author, who is bored and chafing at what he regards as hidebound aesthetic classicism in the Louvre, comes upon a modern Gioconda in a most unusual guise. Her modern incarnation is exotic and remote, but deeply concerned about mass upheaval that aims at the transformation of traditional Asian society. Still inscrutable, she is made to stand by as the soldiers of nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek execute a Chinese Communist spokesperson. Ultimately the Gioconda is tried and found guilty by a French military court; hers is a fate quite different from spending centuries on canvas as a creation of Leonardo da Vinci. Other works express Hikmet’s proletarian views of art: Beethoven’s sonatas, he maintains, should be played out on wood and metal in the workplace. The raw power of the industrial age is reflected in his taut descriptive lines about iron suspension bridges and concrete skyscrapers. However, the workers in his native Turkey were invariably badly off: They were bound to an unthinking routine and could afford only the lowest quality of goods. Taranta Babu’ya mektuplar One early composition took up the cause of striking transportation workers in Istanbul in 1929. At times Hikmet considered events that were not too far removed from his own experience; his sojourns in Russia during the early years of the Soviet government probably furnished impressions recaptured in verses about the revolutionary events of 1917. Poems collected in Taranta Babu’ya mektuplar (letters to Tarantu Babu) raised another problem in world politics; they are letters in verse purportedly written by a young Italian to a native woman caught up in the Ethiopian war launched under Benito Mussolini. The author’s commentary on the brutal excesses of fascism reveals a mea109

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sure of political prescience as well as an expanded sense of solidarity with like-minded people in many nations. The Epic of Sheik Bedreddin Historical dimensions of class struggle are explored in The Epic of Sheik Bedreddin. Government pressure by this time had restricted Hikmet’s choice of subject matter, making it almost impossible for him to publish work on contemporary issues, so the author turned to more remote ages with the avowed intent of rescuing major events from the antiquarian dust that had gathered around them. This epic, based on a book he had read during one of his early prison terms, was given added intensity by the author’s experience of seeing a man hanged outside the window of his cell. While set in the early fifteenth century, Hikmet’s work underscores the solidarity that brought together Turkish peasants, Greek fishermen, and Jewish merchants. In places, he suggests that though historical works had depicted this era as the prelude to an age of imperial greatness, it in fact was rife with social unrest and discontent provoked by inequality and injustice. Ten thousand common people took up arms to oppose the sultan before the rebellion was finally put down. The eventual execution of his protagonist, one of the insurgents’ leaders, was a grim, bloody business that Hikmet recounts in unsparing detail but with impassioned sensitivity. This long poem, one of the most celebrated in Turkish literature of the twentieth century, is also notable for the author’s broadening concern with different verse techniques, which reached fruition with his works combining modern usage with classical Persian meters. Prison poems During Hikmet’s longest period of imprisonment, between 1938 and 1950, works displaying other facets of his poetic consciousness were composed. His outlook seemed to become more deeply personal, though perhaps not so brash and self-assertive as in some of his first poems. His meditations on the springtime reveal a sense of yearning and melancholy that was previously absent. For a time, he was held in solitary confinement. He wrote of singing to himself and watching shadows on the wall; simple things began to matter more to him. There are a number of touching passages in prison poems that he addressed to Piraye, his second wife; brief, bittersweet phrases recall their shared joys together, aspects of her appearance, and simple pleasures that mattered most to him. The long period of his incarceration led to some brooding reflections on the transitory and changeless issues of this life. In some poems, there is speculation on the seasons that have come and gone, children who have been conceived and grown since he entered prison; mountains in the distance, however, remain fixed points separated by specific spatial intervals. There are also some ironic musings on the fates of common criminals from among his fellow prisoners: One of them was held for murder but was 110

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paroled after seven and one-half years; after a second, much shorter, sentence for smuggling, he was released for good and eventually married. The couple’s child would be born while much of Hikmet’s term, as a political prisoner, still remained to be served. Angina pectoris, followed by a heart attack, aroused uncertainty about the author’s physical condition. He wrote poems reaffirming the necessity to go on living, particularly with half his heart devoted to social concerns in Turkey or to political struggles in Greece and China. Some works that begin by marking the passage of time in prison contain brief but intense reactions to events of World War II, including bombing raids, the liberation of concentration camps at Dachau, and the dawn of the nuclear age. Rubaiyat One collection of poems, Rubaiyat, written in 1945 but published posthumously in 1966, reveals the author’s search for further literary forms that would express the ideological and philosophical content of his thought. Beginning with the example of the thirteenth century Sufi poet and religious thinker Jal3l al-Dtn Rnmt, Hikmet took up the position in effect that mysticism is merely a veiled means of approaching material and social reality. Hikmet purposely adopted the quatrain, on a pattern similar to that used by Omar Khayyám, specifically to take issue with the Persian poet’s supposed hedonism. In some lines, counsel to take wine and be joyful is contrasted with the harsh, inescapable routines of working-class life. Elsewhere the philosophical idealism of classical writers is challenged by Hikmet’s own commitment to dialectical materialism; in poems dedicated to Piraye, the poet asks whether the images he retains of her correspond to the material reality he remembers. On a technical level, this work is notable as well for the author’s provocative insertion of colloquial language in passages that otherwise conform to time-honored standards of versification. Human Landscapes Contemporary history on a panoramic scale is taken up in Human Landscapes, which was written during the author’s prison years but was published several years after his death. Beginning with an epic study of Turkish history during the twentieth century, at intervals the poet’s narrative also turns to major events in adjoining regions, notably naval action of World War II in the Mediterranean and the work of Soviet forces against Nazi invaders. His commentary on the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1922) stands in stark contrast to the heroic national themes repeatedly invoked by other writers of that period. In Hikmet’s view, it would seem that the people as a whole contributed to final victory but only through an inchoate mass rising that did not also lead to a social revolution. Indeed, many passages suggest that class differences remained acute but were altered by Turkey’s changed status in the world economy. There are a number of brief sketches of individual lives, both from the wealthy and from the lower orders, often to state unpleasant truths about the people’s living situation. Some characters, it is 111

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recorded, died of disease at early ages; farmers retained their land but lost all means of production. Many of the personages are war veterans from one conflict or another. There is much attention to dates, but not in the sense of commemorating events with patriotic connotations; important occurrences in individual lives are accorded the same emphasis as major developments in the nation’s history. There is also a fair amount of random, seemingly senseless violence: Family quarrels lead to murder; after a man kills his wife, children use the head as a ball in a macabre game. A wrenching, gripping scene records the lynching of a Turk who had collaborated with the British occupation forces. There are some sardonic religious references that call to mind folk superstitions; in some later passages, Turks of a pro-German inclination speculate about whether Adolf Hiler could be a Muslim. Leading Turkish statesmen and thinkers figure as portraits on the walls of business offices; the memories associated with them are quirky bits of characterization that are far from flattering. The work as a whole darts about and circumambulates historical epochs as they affected different, indeed opposing, social classes. After nearly fifteen years of national independence, homeless and desperately hungry men are to be found outside a newspaper office; if wealthy businessmen cannot turn a profit in some branches of the export trade because of government restrictions, they move readily to other sectors where their fortunes can be augmented. Some of them end up dealing with both the Allied and the Axis powers during World War II. The incidence of suicide on either side of the class divide is fairly high; among the poor, childbirth is difficult, painful, and sometimes ends in tragedy. Although this exercise in historical realism, based on the author’s own observations of Turkish life, does not seem to hold out any immediate hopes for a better future, the poet’s descriptions of nature and simple joys serve to leaven an otherwise grim and unsentimental saga. Some later segments of this work are essentially similar to portions of The Moscow Symphony, and Other Poems, an imaginative lyrical reconstruction of German-Soviet fighting that in the first instance was probably based on news stories that Hikmet received in prison. After allowance for the different languages, it may be argued that some passages would do credit to a Soviet wartime poet: the anxiety of the war’s first year, the vast human drama of armies locked in combat, and the camaraderie of soldiers brought together in common struggle are evoked in brisk, telling lines. Hikmet’s own allegiances are discussed in another section, which depicts the execution of an eighteenyear-old Russian girl for partisan action against the Nazis. He wrote, “Tanya,/ I have your picture here in front of me in Bursa Prison,” and, before returning to the Turkish settings where his epic had commenced, he added: Tanya, I love my country as much as you loved yours.

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Last poems Hikmet’s last poems in some ways chronicled the tribulations of exile; many works had to do with his travels about the Communist world, as well as into Switzerland and to Paris. The impression arises that he considered many of his destinations as way stations; hotel balconies, train depots, arrivals and departures are recorded repeatedly and almost mechanically. His political works from this period, albeit written in countries that were openly receptive to his views, were lacking perhaps in the combative spirit that had distinguished the poems written in Turkey. Among such productions, there may be found some caustic observations in verse on the Korean War—he deplored Turkey’s participation in that conflict—as well as more positive and uplifting efforts composed for May Day celebrations or in response to the Cuban revolution. One poem was meant to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the foundation of the Turkish Communist Party. His personal concerns, perhaps, were handled more effectively in his later works. One poem describes his meeting with a young blonde woman in an express train; as the sights pass by outside afterimages of her hair and eyelashes and of her long black coat repeatedly appear before his eyes. Some poems expressed his desire to be reunited with his lover, Tuliakova, after journeys about various East European countries. In other works, there are somewhat sour comments on his physical condition, which continued to deteriorate during his years in exile. Although he continued to cherish the values of this existence, some passages became dour and premonitory. Toward the end of his life he speculated: Will my funeral start out from our courtyard? How will you take me down from the third floor? The coffin won’t fit in the elevator, and the stairs are awfully narrow.

Legacy For many years, Hikmet was regarded as Turkey’s best-known Communist; his conspicuously partisan poetry on behalf of the working classes created more controversy than the pronouncements of many political figures. His importance as a poet, however, may be measured by the extent to which his works have been read even as interest in his ideological agitation, the long-standing scandal of his imprisonment, and his life in exile have become past concerns. While it is possible to distinguish major phases in his career as a poet—and arguably within those periods he was subject to variable moods— there are also elements of continuity that in their turn point to the enduring features of his work. Although some of his efforts may have aged more gracefully than others, his concerns with social justice and with the struggle against fascism in Europe certainly would find sympathy with many subsequent readers. He maintained that Marxism interested him largely for its literary possibilities and that his work was involved largely in 113

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the basic human issues of his time. His poems are quite possibly the most readily recognized of those from any Turkish writer of the twentieth century. Aside from his political fame, or notoriety, it may be contended not only that he had discovered forms by which modern free verse might be composed in Turkish but also that he had come upon themes and techniques that have been found to be intrinsically appealing on a much wider level. Other major works long fiction: Kan konulmaz, 1965; Yelil elmalar, 1965; Yalamak güzel ley bekardelim, 1967 (The Romantics, 1987). short fiction: Sevdale bulut, 1968. plays: Ocak balenda, pb. 1920; Kafatase, pb. 1931; Bir ölü evi yahut merhumun hanesi, pb. 1932; Unutulan adam, pb. 1935; Bir alk masale, pb. 1945; Evan Evanoviç var meyde yok muydu?, pb. 1956, in Russian (pb. 1971 in Turkish); Enayi, pb. 1958; Enek, pb. 1958; Estasyon, pb. 1958; Yusuf ve Zeliha, pb. 1963; Sabahat, pb. 1966; Yolcu, pb. 1966; Damokles’in ke le ce, pb. 1971; Fatma, Ali ve balkalari, pb. 1971; Her leye ragmen, pb. 1971. nonfiction: Alman falizmi ve erkçe lege, 1935; Sovyet demokrasisi, 1936; Et ürür kervan yürür, 1965; Cezaevinden Mehmet Fuat’a mektuplar, 1968; Kemal Tahir’e mahpusaneden mektuplar, 1968; Oglum, canim evladim, Memedim, 1968; Bursa cezaevinden Va-Nu’lara mektuplar, 1970; Nazim ile Piraye, 1975. miscellaneous: Bütün eserleri, 1967-1972 (8 volumes; collected works). Bibliography Balak, Ergil. The Image of Nâzim Hikmet and His Poetry: In Anglo-American Literary Systems. Istanbul: Nâzim Hikmet Culture and Art Foundation, 2008. The work, from the Turkish perspective, looks at how Hikmet is portrayed in Europe and America. Göksu, Saime, and Edward Timms. Romantic Communist: The Life and Work of Nazim Hikmet. 1999. Reprint. New York: Gardners Books, 2006. The authors propose in this biography of Hikmet that his life and career form a microcosm of twentieth century politics. Göksu and Timms explore Hikmet’s life chronologically through ten well-researched chapters. The clear structure helps the narrative to flow from one chapter to the next and allows the reader to grasp both the detail and the broad picture. Includes bibliographical references and index. Halman, Talât Sait. Rapture and Revolution: Essays on Turkish Literature. Edited by Jayne L. Warner. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press/Crescent Hill, 2007. This study on Turkish literature contains a chapter that notes Hikmet’s importance in Turkey and sees him as the voice of iconoclasm. Kinzer, Stephen. “Turkish Poet Is Lauded, but Stays Exiled in Death.” The New York Times, February 27, 1997, p. A4. As Turkey settles into what is likely to be an ex114

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tended confrontation between secular and pro-Islamic forces, symbols take on exaggerated political importance for both sides. Perhaps no individual crystallizes the conflict better than Hikmet, atheist and Communist and also one of the greatest literary figures ever to emerge from this country. J. R. Broadus

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HOMER Born: Possibly Ionia, Asia Minor (now in Turkey); c. early eighth century b.c.e. Died: Greece; c. late eighth century b.c.e. Principal poetry Iliad, c. 750 b.c.e. (English translation, 1611) Odyssey, c. 725 b.c.e. (English translation, 1614) Other literary forms Homer is noted only for his magnificent epic poems. Achievements Homer’s extant poetry consists of the Iliad, an epic of about sixteen thousand hexameter lines, and the Odyssey, a twelve-thousand-line poem in the same meter. A number of other poems attributed to Homer in late antiquity—the epigrams (twenty-six short poems contained in the Life of Homer that were attributed to Herodotus), Margites, Batrachomyomachia (battle of the frogs and mice), and the Homeric Hymns (thirty-three narrative hexameter poems in honor of various Greek divinities)—can be shown on the basis of style to postdate him. These latter poems may be either imitations or independent compositions in the general epic mode of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Despite minor inconsistencies of detail—“even Homer nods,” explained the Roman poet Horace—both the Iliad and the Odyssey give the impression of being complete compositions, unified in theme and elaborate in structure, which combine the powers of dramatic narrative poetry with the delicacy and nuance of lyric. Their aim is nothing less than to offer to posterity the world of the heroic past. This they accomplish with such force and conviction that the imaginative representation of the Trojan War and its aftermath becomes a kind of immortality: Just as the heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey predict that they will become the subject of song, so Homer’s song lives on. The supreme self-confidence of the genre, which exhibits heroes battling to gain the glory of being mentioned in epic poetry, must have been built on the facts of social life in a highly critical, reputation-conscious culture. Homer was the ultimate representative of that culture. More than anything else, literacy may have caused its decline. It was Homer’s achievement, then, to have composed so well that his work survived the onset of a new order, in which the poet’s status as arbiter of the heroic, repository of tradition, and sole source of history, was drastically reduced. In terms of intellectual history, Homer may have been the genius who translated what was essentially “oral poetry” into a new medium: the written word. Although his art is on a much larger scale, Homer still resembles the bards whom he 116

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Homer (Library of Congress)

portrays: Demodocus, Phemius, and Odysseus himself in the Odyssey and Achilles in book 9 of the Iliad. Like Achilles, who sings the heroic deeds of the ancestral heroes while sitting in his tent, Homer produces commemorative poetry. The naming of all the combatants in the Trojan conflict, in book 2 of the Iliad, is a relic of the sort of “catalog poetry” that must have been predominant in the traditional poetry of Greece before Homer. Comparative study has shown that the long and detailed battle scenes of the middle books in the Iliad represent a poetic genre that is paralleled by the heroic verse of many other cultures. Who fought a particular battle, which side won, and what the exploits were that brought about victory—these are the main concerns of such epics. Homer surpasses these martial epics. In the Iliad, he produces a poem that, while commemorating the fall of Troy (a historical event well known to ancient Greeks), dwells more on the problem of human mortality and its ramifications than on national pride over victory. One senses a profound and sympathetic poetic intelligence at work as Homer portrays the deaths of Hector and Patroclus and prefigures the death of Achilles. This universal sympathy extends even to the minutiae of the incessant killings in Iliadic 117

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battle scenes. There, no one dies without remark: One warrior is described as handsome, another’s wife and children at home are mentioned, a third is an only son. It is difficult to judge Homer’s achievement because nothing of his predecessors’ poems survives, but it is clear from other epic verse, ancient and modern, that the Iliad is a masterpiece of the genre precisely because it goes beyond generic constraints and refuses to be mere praise of battle glory. Like Odysseus, who narrates his adventures for the pleasure of the Phaeacian court in the Odyssey, Homer also delights his audience. In this, he surpasses comparable “adventure” narratives in both complexity and tone. His art lies in his ability to combine the themes of revenge, escape, initiation, and reunion in the Odyssey, in the same way that Demodocus, the Phaeacian bard, recounts epic tales (the Trojan Horse story) as well as amatory tales (the Ares and Aphrodite story). The Odyssey, then, shows that side of Homeric poetry that most resembles Odysseus himself, the “man of many turnings.” It weaves multiple plots, centered on three major characters (Telemachus, Odysseus, and Penelope), whereas the Iliad concentrates on the single theme of Achilles’ wrath and its consequences. The tone, also, of the Odyssey distinguishes it from the folktales, romances, and picaresque tales of travel with which it is often compared. The Odyssean sense of purpose gives moral value to the poem: Odysseus must return home to affirm the value of Greek culture. His slaying of the suitors, often criticized as excessive in Homer’s rendering, is justified as divine retribution for the mistreatment of strangers (Odysseus himself being the “stranger” in his own land). Thus, the poem is aesthetically and culturally satisfying, although in a different mode from that of the Iliad: Odysseus, and by implication Greek intelligence, is seen to be invincible. Versatility in approach, attention to detail, control and seriousness of tone, the ability to incorporate and exceed earlier generic elements of his tradition—these are only a small part of Homer’s achievement. More than this, Homer may be credited with crystallizing for later generations of European poets the genre of epic, regardless of whether those poets imitated him. In fact, many did. His influence on later Greek, Latin, and vernacular literature is enormous, a fact well documented by such scholars as Gilbert Highet. Apollonius Rhodius, Ennius, Vergil, Dante, Ludovico Ariosto, Pierre de Ronsard, Edmund Spenser, John Milton, and Ezra Pound are among the epic poets in his debt. Drama from Aeschylus on, lyric poetry, history, and the modern novel often reflect the brilliance of Homer’s creations. This is not surprising; Aristotle had seen that the poems exemplify certain universal tendencies of plot, which he classed in the Poetics (probably between 334 and 323 b.c.e.) as tragic (Iliad) and comic (Odyssey). A writer in any mode that touches these two views of life, therefore, could conceivably use Homer as a model. In terms of his own culture, Homer’s achievement is best illustrated by the paucity of epic poetry not contained in the Iliad or Odyssey that survives today. Various literary and critical sources, among them Attic tragedy and Alexandrian commentaries, make 118

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clear the existence in ancient Greece of a body of traditional epic concerning the Trojan War and surrounding events. Of this wealth of material, only fragments under the collective title of the Epic Cycle survive. Clearly, the prestige of Homer’s compositions eventually effaced all other poetic treatments of the Trojan War story, leaving only hints in the works of some ancient authors that there had once been other stories told of Achilles, Odysseus, and the other heroes of Homeric epic. Biography Although the Iliad and the Oydssey are attributed to Homer, nothing is known for certain about the poet (or poets) who wrote these works. It should be noted that in ancient times, as well as in modern scholarship since the nineteenth century, opinion has varied on whether both epics were the creation of one poet. In Alexandria during the third and second centuries b.c.e., a group of critics known as the Chorizontes (separators) denied that one person composed both poems; at the same time, Aristarchus, one of the most influential editors of the text of the poems, maintained that the cross-references from the Odyssey to the Iliad do show the epics to be the work of one poet. It is not impossible that the works are by different poets, each a master; it is perhaps wiser to side with Aristarchus and the majority opinion of antiquity in attributing the Iliad and the Odyssey to one composer. The British scholar D. B. Monro demonstrated in the nineteenth century that the Iliad and the Odyssey never describe the same minor incidents relating to the Trojan War but instead form a series of similar vignettes. “Monro’s Law,” as this phenomenon has come to be called, might indicate that Homer consciously sought to avoid repeating himself; on the other hand, one could argue that the two poems represent narrative traditions so well known in the world of early Greece that any composer, while working on one poem, would automatically avoid a topic that he knew to be in the other one. Thus, the question of authorship remains open to debate, part of the larger Homeric question that continues to fascinate students of these poems. The dearth of biographical detail that might have explained the genesis of these remarkable works, although perplexing to scholars since antiquity, may actually have helped the poems to survive, for it enabled Greeks of all city-states to adopt them as their own “history”—one that clearly did not favor one region at the expense of another, or the traditions of one city-state exclusively, but rather attempted to integrate all the various versions of the Trojan War. Homer could never be dismissed as a biased observer whose local associations led him to trim the truth. The anonymity of Homer is that of the epic genre itself. Evolving over generations of oral performance before an audience that knew poetry well, the art form that culminated in the Iliad and the Odyssey conventionally made no mention of its performers. It is not accidental that even the name of Homer soon became a subject of speculation among the Greeks. Some ancient sources equated Homeros (the Greek form of the poet’s name) with a noun meaning “hostage” and appended a story about the poet’s early life to sup119

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port the etymology. Others said that the word meant “blind.” There is no evidence to support either guess. Indeed, the traditional picture of the blind bard is exactly that: a tradition—which is to say that it is still important “evidence” but not an established fact. It may reflect an ideology that conceives of the poet as “blind” to all contemporary, external influence, one who depends instead on what he “hears” from the Muse whom Homer addresses in the prologues of both poems. The Muse (another obscure word, perhaps related to the Greek root meaning “to remind” or “to remember”) embodies and transmits Greek traditional stories through the epic poet. In the final analysis, then, for both Greeks and moderns, who Homer was is not important; what he transmits, is. Freed from the biographical method of criticism, the student of Homer can concentrate on the poetry itself. The tradition of Homer’s blindness can also be interpreted on another level— the social. The composition and performance of poetry was perhaps one of the few crafts available to the sightless in early Greek society. The figure of the blind bard Demodocus in the Odyssey (sometimes taken to be Homer’s “self-portrait”) could reflect a real situation: Such poets may have sung for aristocratic courts. Therefore, a conventional picture of the blind bard or an actual description (in general terms) may lie behind the story of Homer’s handicap. The problem of convention versus actuality (or individual observation of reality) is the main critical problem of Homeric poetry. How much is actually Homer’s “invention” and how much belongs to the long tradition that he inherited? To what extent does Homer defy the tradition? The question is partially unanswerable, since Homer’s predecessors have not survived. Nevertheless, some light is shed on Homeric innovations in traditional motifs by the comparative study of epic poetry. Thus Albert B. Lord, in his The Singer of Tales (1960), is able to bring parallel motifs from modern Serbo-Croatian heroic songs to the interpretation of certain episodes in the Iliad and Odyssey. The absence and return of Achilles, for example, can be seen as a “story pattern” that Homer has conflated with another pattern, the “death of the substitute”—in this case, Patroclus. Such studies have increasingly shown that the poems are almost entirely “traditional” in their themes and motifs; at the same time, they exhibit a distinctive dramatic control that has modified themes so as to develop essential meanings. Thus, while Homer may have inherited the story of Achilles’ wrath or Odysseus’s wandering, only his own arrangement must be responsible for final narratives that, by a sophisticated counterpoint of themes—war and peace, life and death, fathers and sons—create complex worlds of significance. Although one knows nothing about the poet, his presence is immanent in the poems. Analysis Before proceeding to analyze Homer’s poems themselves, something must be said about the nature of the poetry. That the Iliad and the Odyssey bear the marks of oral tra120

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ditional poetry is now generally admitted, although opinions differ concerning the way in which this “oral” poetry was transcribed and transmitted. An understanding of oral poetics helps one to appreciate certain features of Homeric epic, such as repetition, which might be faulted were the poetics of written literature applied to the texts. The origin of Homeric verse in oral poetry, composed before the art of alphabetic writing was brought to Greece (probably in the eighth century b.c.e.), has been the subject of academic discussion since the time of German philologist Friedrich A. Wolf, whose Prolegomena ad Homerum of 1795 began the modern era of Homeric study. Scholarship in the century after Wolf, however, chose to mine the larger vein that Wolf had opened in his work—namely, the thesis that the Homeric poems, as they exist, represent a collection of shorter lays on simple themes such as the wrath of Achilles that were edited or expanded early in antiquity. Thus, following Wolf, “analyst” criticism (as it came to be known) developed in response to the bulk and complexity of Homer’s poems. A highly literate society’s Romantic ideas of the “primitive,” illiterate bard did not accord well with these elaborate epics, so it was denied that one masterful poet produced both the Iliad and the Odyssey, or even one of them, alone. It is true that about a third of the poems, taken together, are repeated lines. Nineteenth century analyst criticism explained these internal repetitions as “borrowings” done by a series of editor-poets who had read other parts of the poems when those parts existed as individual lays. In a way, analyst criticism foreshadowed modern work on oral poetics, which can show that individual themes develop distinctive phraseological patterns that are then repeated whenever the theme recurs (although sometimes in modified form): a scene of sacrifice, for example, or the launching of a ship; a scene of taking a bath or giving a gift—all contain similar language whenever they appear in the poem. Such occasions were nearly ritual or, often, were ritual; it is only to be expected that traditional language describes them repeatedly, and it is no artistic fault. Analyst critics, however, having no field experience of living oral traditions, did not realize that heroic poems of a great many verses are attributable to single poets (Kirghiz bards, for example, have produced 125,000-line epics), nor did they realize that repetition is a key element in the effects of heroic epic, where it produces a rhythm in the composition parallel to the rhythm of the audience’s own world. It was left to a young American philologist, Milman Parry, to explain the real significance of such Homeric phenomena as repeated whole verses, scenes, and phrases. His demonstration showed that one class of repeated elements, the “formulas” or “groups of words regularly used under the same metrical conditions to express an essential idea,” formed a system. Parry made detailed comparisons of noun-epithet combinations (“wily Odysseus”; “swift-footed Achilles”). His classifications showed that adjectives with proper names were determined by the demands of Homeric meter rather than by sense in a particular passage. In other words, “cloud-gathering Zeus” differs from “Zeus 121

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who delights in thunderbolts” or “Zeus, father of men and gods” not because Homer, in any one line, intends a different picture of the supreme Olympian god, but because the three noun-phrases can fill up different positions in the highly complex dactylic hexameter verse. His system demonstrated that almost every major figure in the poems has a set of adjectives to modify its name (with minute exceptions), but that only one nounadjective combination exists for any given metrical position. Parry concluded that such a widespread but economical system must have evolved over a long period of time. A single poet in a literate culture—Vergil, for example— would have no need to devise such a system, even if he could, but oral poets, under the pressure of improvised composition, might be expected to create just such aids to their art. Parry, with help from his assistant, Albert Lord, was able to find modern analogies for his theory in the coffee houses of Muslim communities in Yugoslavia, where oral poets entertained. “Formulas” could be identified in the Serbo-Croatian songs that Lord and Parry heard; singers discussed their art with them. In short, the analogy with modern oral poetry, used with caution, adds immensely to a study of Homer. The ability of oral poets to transmit, combine, and modify inherited themes, as well as language, seems perfected in the poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Iliad “Sing, goddess, the ruinous anger of Achilles, Peleus’s son”—the Iliad’s opening lines contain in essence the plot of the following twenty-four books of the poem. It is Achilles’ wrath at being deprived of the woman Briseis, his prize of war, by the Greek commander Agamemnon, which causes Achilles’ withdrawal from the fighting before Troy and the subsequent death of many of his companions. Among these is his beloved friend Patroclus, who dies in Achilles’ stead, attempting to ward off destruction from the Greeks while Achilles, defending his own standard of honor as a hero, waits for Agamemnon to make suitable recompense for the stolen woman. Only Patroclus’s sacrifice is able to stir Achilles to fight. He proceeds to kill Hector, the mainstay of Troy and the slayer of Patroclus, and thereby chooses his own destiny: death at a young age, with undying fame. The anger causes ruin, then, for thousands of Greek and Trojan warriors, for Patroclus (whom Achilles least expects to harm) and ultimately for Achilles himself. His death, though not described within the narrow time-limits of the Iliad (the main actions occur within the space of a few days), is rehearsed in the precisely delineated killing of his comrade. Apollo plays a supporting role in causing Patroclus’s death in book 16, as he will when Achilles later is fatally wounded by Paris, whose abduction of Helen from Greece precipitated the Trojan War. Hector, in his own death speech, foretells the scene. Thus, the three deaths are inextricably linked: Anger kills the angered. Achilles’ anger might first be mistaken for youthful impetuosity or even childish resentment, but as Achilles’ speeches to the entreating embassy of book 9 show, the 122

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hero’s anger is fundamental to his nature as hero. Achilles rejects his society with an idealist’s moral clarity—rejects that world in which a young man must war for an older man’s stolen wife, under the command of an inferior man (Agamemnon) who takes “by right” the young man’s own woman. This is the Iliad’s tragic irony. It is compounded by the irony that the wrath of the hero is sanctioned and justified by Zeus, who has agreed to further Achilles’ request for compensatory honor; yet not even Zeus can save Achilles from the consequences of being born half divine and half human. His latter heritage ensures that Achilles must grieve and die. Achilles, son of the divine sea-nymph Thetis and the mortal Peleus, is genetically unfit to live in either world, and the Iliad depicts his magnificent attempt at integration. His heritage, in the form of the father-son theme, is prominent throughout the poem. The opening line, with its patronymic “son of Peleus” hints at the theme; the ending in book 24 makes the theme explicit. In this regard, the Iliad moves from the influence of the mother to that of the father. Thetis is the one who, in book 1, persuades Zeus to honor her son by making the Greek warriors feel his need as they are hard-pressed in the fight. Yet this possibility of winning the highest glory, of being recognized as best of the Greeks— the divine stature akin to Thetis’s divinity—fails to take into account the hero’s humanity. Once he realizes that it is time to die, Achilles is dominated by the remembrance of his father. In this reading of the poem, fathers are the lowest common denominators of the human. With increasing insistence, the theme recurs in the Iliad: Book 6 contains two examples. First, Glaucus and Diomedes, despite opposite affiliations, can find in their fathers and grandfathers common friends. This inherited bond becomes their reason for avoiding the slaying of each other. Next, in the same book, the completely mortal Trojan counterpart of Achilles, Hector, meets his wife Andromache on the city wall. Hector’s doomed infant son, Astyanax, is also present, and the poet arranges the scene so that the fate of Troy finds its symbol in the baby. He will not grow up to be “lord of the town” as his name signifies (and as his father is) but will be taken when the town falls, and both Hector and his wife know this. In this, their final conversation, the relationship of Hector with his son is placed in the wider context of paternal relations, as each partner recalls a father: Andromache mentions Eetion, killed in a raid by Achilles early in the war; Hector says that he is fighting not only for his own but also for Priam’s glory, although he knows that the effort is in vain. This consciousness of genealogy and relation gives the Iliad much of its impression of depth, revealing as it does inherited motivations. The heroic imperative, always to excel, is partly motivated by competition with fathers—filial piety is only part of the reason why heroes fight—and this side of the theme is not neglected. A father’s example or instructions shame several heroes to join battle. Agamemnon goading Diomedes in book 4 and Odysseus goading Achilles in book 9 make use of the theme; Nestor, in book 11, unwittingly uses it to send Patroclus off to his death. In the final book of the poem, Priam also uses the common experience of fathers: 123

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On a night mission to the Greek camp to retrieve his son’s corpse, the old man prompts Achilles to remember Peleus, his father. This time the purpose of the reminder is peaceful, and it succeeds; the poem ends in reconciliation, at least on the level of the individual. Achilles’ new realization of his own mortality enables him humbly to accept a father’s wish—in pointed contrast, no doubt intentional, to Agamemnon in book 1. If the father-son theme emphasizes Achilles’ mortal side, the theme of anger, from the poem’s beginning, emphasizes the divine. The interaction of human and divine is one of the most important Homeric themes; Achilles is a paradigm for the way in which such interaction occurs. A Greek audience would have been attuned to the word that Homer uses to describe Achilles’ state. MTnis (the first word of the poem) is not ordinary anger; it connotes divine wrath. In fact, Achilles is the only mortal of whom it is used. There is, then, inherent antagonism between Achilles and the divine. Achilles, like any man, will inevitably lose in this contest because he must die. Gregory Nagy has shown that the theme of god-hero antagonism underlies the Greek concept of the hero in both poetic narratives and actual cult practices. Achilles’ death, therefore, can be seen not only as the result of his human commitment but also as the logical result of his neardivine status, his encroachment on divine prerogatives when he indulges his ruinous wrath. This explains why Apollo joins Paris in the killing of Achilles (as Hector predicts in book 22). For many readers, the role of the gods in both the Iliad and the Odyssey is problematic. If events are predetermined, as the poet seems at times to say, how can a hero such as Achilles choose his destiny? Again, there appear to be levels of divine necessity. The will of Zeus is carried out in the poem, according to the prologue in book 1; yet Zeus himself must bow to restraint in accepting the predetermined death of his son Sarpedon later in the poem. The great span of time that led to the crystallization of Homeric poetry could account for the variant notions in the poems, from meteorological gods to moral forces: Zeus can thus without contradiction be both the “cloudgatherer” and the god who punishes the violators of guest-host relations. Then again, Homer is free to choose to emphasize whatever aspect of divinity best suits his poetic needs at a given point: He is not bound by a theology. In fact, the mention of “fate” can often be taken as the poet’s way of saying “This is the way in which the plot goes”; the epic poet has Zeus’s omniscience, thanks to the Muses. Actually, the Homeric picture is remarkably consistent in one aspect: Gods act as mortals. They drink, deceive, laugh, love, hold grudges, have favorites; they merely do not die. Homer repeatedly develops the dramatic possibilities of this basic contrast, especially in “interlude” portions that do not significantly advance the plot. (The key plotforwarding books are 1, 9, 11, 16, 19, 22, 23, and 24.) Thus, book 5 contains episodes of deadly serious fighting as Diomedes has his heroic hour at the Trojans’ expense, but the book ends with the comic assaults on Ares and Aphrodite. The effect is only to underscore how much mortals stand to lose in war. 124

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At times the parallelism of divine and human worlds means that many actions appear to be caused by both human desires and divine will. For Homer, this is not a contradiction; the gods play a part in the world of men, but human beings are still free to make up their own minds—these are self-evident facts to the poet. This “double-motivation,” the dual point of view that perceives events from both divine and human perspectives, creates in the epic a sense of heightened pathos balanced by impersonal tragic resignation. In a way, the duality reproduces that of the divinely inspired and objective poet as he sings, again and again, the one-time, life-or-death crisis of his hero. The special beauty, then, of traditional poetry like the Iliad emerges in even such a brief analysis as this, where it has been shown that even the first line of the poem plunges one into thematic depths. Because of the nature of the medium, the same could be said of almost any line in the epic. Odyssey Homer’s Odyssey, when contrasted with the Iliad, might well appear to be the work of another poet. It represents another world, the world of peaceful existence. In space and time it is the Iliad’s opposite, ranging widely over twenty years and dozens of locales, rather than describing only a few days. Its hero, Odysseus, is also the polar opposite of Achilles; a hero of intelligence rather than might, he survives the war and the homecoming, unlike Achilles or even Agamemnon. Whereas in the Iliad one manifestation of the hero’s character predominates—his wrath—the Odyssey presents Odysseus as the possessor of a number of qualities and abilities. It is not accidental that more epithets beginning in the Greek word for “many” (poly-) attach to Odysseus than to any other figure in the epics. His “many turnings” are at one time essential to the plot of the poem (the many turns he takes) and to his disposition (as a man of much-turned thought) and so make a proper subject for the first line of the Odyssey: “Tell me, goddess, the man of many ways who was much buffeted after he sacked Troy.” The main plot of the poem—the return of the absent husband to his faithful wife, despite the odds—must have existed in folktale form before Greek epic appropriated it for the story of the homecoming Odysseus. The story can be paralleled in tales of many cultures, ancient and modern. Subplots, such as the encounters with the giant (Cyclops) and the witch (Circe), are also clearly from the common stock of popular narratives. Homer’s fashioning of these materials is what makes the Odyssey unique. First to be noticed is the small scope actually given such adventure motifs in the poem as a whole. They occur only in Odysseus’s own narration of his experiences, books 9 through 12. His relationship with Calypso, the divine nymph who wished to detain him and make him immortal, is described not as a wonder-tale but in natural terms. The only unusual aspect of her island home, Ogygia, is its lush vegetation, symbolic of the excessive life she offers. The hints of Elysium in the description of the island (the land of the dead), and of her own darker nature (Calypso means “the hider” and con125

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notes burial) are only undertones, subtly managed by the poet. Similarly, Scheria, the island of the Phaeacians who send Odysseus back to Ithaca on the last leg of his voyage, is described as a believable, realistic social setting—albeit for an unusual society. The reader is far from the nightmarish world of Cyclops, Circe, the Lotus Eaters, Scylla, and Charybdis. The primary distinguishing mark is the absence of danger; Ogygia and Scheria pose more spiritual temptations, offers to abandon the centripetal voyage home. For Odysseus’s temperament such dangers equally threaten extinction. Without establishing his place as ruler of his Ithacan home, the hero has no reason to live. He must keep in motion until that rest. Another unique feature of the Odyssey is tied to the adventure tales: Odysseus, not the poet, tells them. As noted earlier, Odysseus acts as a bard in the poem about him, and in so doing he creates a curious doubling of narrators. Two effects follow: First, time is artfully disarranged, so that a composite picture of Odysseus—past and present— emerges; second, irony enters the poem. By distancing the events through a second narrator, the poet leaves open the possibility that the tales of Odysseus are tailored by him, a possibility that gains credibility when the reader sees Odysseus tell at least five lies during the tale-telling in the second half of the poem. If the irony of the device is admitted, it can be seen to accord with other artful displacements in the structure of the Odyssey, such as the so-called Telemacheia, or “story of Telemachus” (books 1 through 4). Why, in a poem about Odysseus, does the hero not appear until book 5? Why does his son hold the stage? Again, the answer lies in Homer’s desire for sophisticated and ironic narration. The reader sees Telemachus setting out on his own odyssey, starting the process of initiation into manhood; at the same time, one sees the final step in his father’s voyage back. From the divine prologue to this tale of crossed paths, the audience knows that Athena has arranged both the miniature odyssey of the son to Pylos and Sparta to learn of his father, and the journey of Odysseus himself. Yet neither participant in the plan knows about it. What seems to them to be hazardous appears to the audience as divine providence. The technique is, in fact, comic. The “happy” ending of the Odyssey also reminds readers of comedy: The bad are punished (the suitors killed), the good rewarded, and a wedding of sorts takes place. It might be noted that Homer once again uses the father-son theme to accomplish the poem’s final reconciliation: Not only is Odysseus reunited with Telemachus (and thus the beginning of the poem is joined with the end), but also Laertes, Odysseus’s father, joins in the final battle. There is no better definition of what survival meant to a Greek: the reintegration into a social setting of family and community. The Odyssey is thus aesthetically and culturally satisfying. Although it is often compared unfavorably with the Iliad—one ancient critic compared the Iliad to the sun at midday and the Odyssey to sunset, claiming that the latter was composed in Homer’s old age—the Odyssey is perhaps less restricted by the presuppositions of Homeric Greek culture. The Iliad has had few successors in outlook; the 126

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Odyssey’s are legion. Both poems present a complete view of life: one as tragic, one as transcending tragedy. Bibliography Alden, Maureen J. Homer Beside Himself: Para-Narratives in the “Iliad.” New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Advises students and others new to the Iliad on how to read, understand, and absorb the poetry, and then offers an analysis. Bloom, Harold. Homer. Rev. ed. New York: Chelsea House, 2007. A collection of critical essays, including one on the epic as a genre, that examine Homer and his works. Brann, Eva. Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the “Odyssey” and the “Iliad.” Philadelphia: Paul Dry, 2002. A close and witty exploration of the experience of reading Homer. Carlisle, Miriam, and Olga Levaniouk, eds. Nine Essays on Homer. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999. This collection of essays offers insight into Homer’s themes and style. Dalby, Andrew. Rediscovering Homer: Inside the Origins of the Epic. Norton, 2006. Dalby speculates that Homer was a woman. Speculation aside, this is an excellent introduction to the history and historicity of the Trojan War and its companion epics. Kim, Jinyo. The Pity of Achilles: Oral Style and the Unity of the “Iliad.” Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. An argument for the unity of the Iliad that surveys recent scholarship. Bibliography. Lord, Albert B. The Singer of Tales. 2d ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. This edition offers a new introduction and a CD-ROM containing audiovisual material from research in the Balkans by Milman Parry, who recorded and studied a live tradition of oral narrative poetry to find how Homer had composed his two monumental epic poems. Lord’s book, based on Parry’s research, intends to demonstrate the process by which oral poets compose. Nagy, Gregory. The Best of the Achaeans. Rev. ed. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Sophisticated and stimulating analysis of the hero in Greek civilization and how the language of Greek epic defines his role. Powell, Barry B. Homer. 2d ed. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2007. A concise introduction by a professor of classics writing with students in mind. Considers the Homeric question by reference to recent scholarship. Good bibliography. Reece, Steve. Homer’s Winged Words: The Evolution of Early Greek Epic Diction in the Light of Oral Theory. Boston: Brill, 2009. Reece uses oral theory to examine the works of Homer. Richard Peter Martin

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NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS Born: Iraklion, Crete, Ottoman Empire (now in Greece); February 18, 1883 Died: Freiburg, West Germany (now in Germany); October 26, 1957 Principal poetry Odysseia, 1938 (The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, 1958) Iliad, 1955 (modern version; with Ioannis Kakridis) Odysseia, 1965 (modern version; with Kakridis) Other literary forms Although Nikos Kazantzakis (ko-zont-ZO-kees) himself always regarded The Odyssey as his crowning achievement, he has received international acclaim primarily as a novelist; in addition, he is recognized in his own country and to a lesser extent throughout Europe as a playwright, essayist, translator, and writer of travel books. His travelogues of Russia, Spain, and Great Britain combine vivid description with political and cultural commentary. A prolific translator, he has provided his countrymen with modern Greek renditions of many Western writers, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Jules Verne, Charles Darwin, Henri Bergson, and Dante. Kazantzakis collaborated on a modern Greek translation of Homer’s Odyssey (c. 725 b.c.e.; English translation, 1614) and Iliad (c. 750 b.c.e.; English translation, 1611). Kazantzakis’s published novels include Toda Raba (1929; English translation, 1964); De tuin der Rotsen (1939, better known as Le Jardin des rochers; The Rock Garden, 1963); Vios kai politeia tou Alexe Zormpa (1946; Zorba the Greek, 1952); Ho Christos xanastauronetai (1954; The Greek Passion, 1953, also known as Christ Recrucified); Ho Kapetan Michales (1953; Freedom or Death, 1956; also known as Freedom and Death: A Novel); Ho teleutaios peirasmos (1955; The Last Temptation of Christ, 1960; also known as The Last Temptation); and Ho phtochoules tou Theou (1956; Saint Francis, 1962; also known as God’s Pauper: Saint Francis of Assisi). Achievements Though for English-speaking readers, Nikos Kazantzakis’s achievements as a novelist may continue to overshadow his performance as a poet, anyone wishing to understand the success of the novels both as literary masterpieces and as philosophical documents must turn to The Odyssey to discover the roots of Kazantzakis’s genius. Readers who become acquainted with Kazantzakis in translation cannot fully appreciate one of the most significant aspects of his work. Modern Greek is actually two languages: demotic, or spoken Greek, which is highly colloquial, and Katharevousa, or purist Greek, which is much more formal, containing many words not used in everyday 128

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speech. Among partisans of demotic, Kazantzakis was a member of the most radical group. He campaigned to have it adopted as the official language of the nation—the language used in schools. He wrote educational materials in demotic, as well as essays and popular articles advocating its use; he intransigently employed words and constructions rejected by all but the most extreme demoticists. Nowhere is Kazantzakis’s passion for demotic demonstrated more clearly than in The Odyssey. He composed this masterwork over a period of fourteen years, during which he spent much time traveling the back roads of his own country, gathering words in the way a more traditional scholar might gather old letters or documents. Indeed, The Odyssey has been described by author Peter Bien as a repository of demotic words and phrases, an encyclopedic compendium of the spoken language gathering the pungent idioms of Greek fishermen and shepherds, country people and common folk. Hence, at its best, The Odyssey has an immediacy and a freshness in its imagery that truly makes it a rival of its classical forebear. At its worst, however, as many critics have been quick to point out, the language of the poem violates the very principles that it is supposed to embody, for Kazantzakis’s extreme demoticism led him to employ many rare words—words that the Greek reader is unlikely to have encountered anywhere else, either in speech or in writing. Nevertheless, the popularity of The Odyssey with the general public in Greece attests the overall success of Kazantzakis’s project. The Englishspeaking reader is fortunate to have Kimon Friar’s gifted translation, which preserves the simple, colloquial nature of Kazantzakis’s original Greek. Friar also mirrors Kazantzakis’s meter in English by using iambic hexameter in his translation. The ability to synthesize the apparently conflicting philosophical views of Nietzsche and Bergson and to transform this new view of humanity into art is Kazantzakis’s unique achievement as a writer. Nowhere does that synthesis become more apparent than in The Odyssey, where these two opposing philosophies appear almost at war in a plethora of images that vivify abstract philosophical principles. In the poem, one can see the idea of the human existential struggle to assert individuality and importance in a world without meaning portrayed with insight and technical skill. Kazantzakis’s Odysseus, like the heroes of his later novels, appears larger than life, for Kazantzakis believed that the truly great man always rises above the limitations of the flesh and works toward a state of complete spirituality, setting himself apart from the masses, who are content to live without questioning the meaning of their existence. Like other great writers of the twentieth century, Kazantzakis has been able to mine the events of his own life, the history of his nation, and the myths of Western culture with equal success to produce poetry that strikes the reader with its penetrating insight into universal human problems. Biography Nikos Kazantzakis was born in 1883, in a land that had for centuries been the site of bitter struggles for independence from the Turks. One of his first memories was of a 129

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night when, at the age of six, while with his family hiding from the Turks, his father made him swear to help kill the women of their family rather than let the marauders have their way with them. Fortunately, Kazantzakis did not have to carry out the promise. In 1902, Kazantzakis left Crete to study at the University of Athens. Upon graduation in 1906, he departed for Paris, where he was introduced to the works of Nietzsche and Bergson. Kazantzakis returned to Athens, where he presented his dissertation on Nietzsche to the faculty of the university to gain a teaching position there. A proponent of “positive nihilism,” Kazantzakis saw himself as a prophet who would use his art to “save” the world. Until 1921, he remained in Greece, writing (primarily plays) and taking an active part in business and government. For a brief period, he was a member of the Greek government under prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos, but when Venizelos fell from power, Kazantzakis, disillusioned, left for Paris. Kazantzakis spent much of the remainder of his life in restless travel. Even when he was relatively settled on the island of Aegina, he often went away, either to the mainland of Greece or to other parts of Europe. His 1907 marriage to Galatea Alexiou lasted only briefly, and he enjoyed a succession of female companions in the various places he visited. His relationship with Helen Samiou, which began in 1924, finally culminated in marriage in 1945. In the mid-1920’s, Kazantzakis traveled in France, Germany, Austria, and Italy, and later to the Middle East and Egypt, living on the scant revenues from works submitted to Greek magazines. His professed communism caused him some trouble at home but secured for him an invitation to the tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution in Moscow in 1927. His experiences there provided the material for a book in which he explained his theory of “metacommunism.” During the 1920’s, Kazantzakis decided to embody his own beliefs about the role and destiny of modern humanity in a long sequel to Homer’s Odyssey. In 1924, Kazantzakis began the first draft of the poem. For the next fourteen years, he worked on this project diligently, carefully revising and shaping the work he was to consider his masterpiece. The poem went through numerous revisions—including seven major drafts—but always Kazantzakis had in mind his goal of re-creating in the Homeric character a concrete representation of modern humanity’s struggle to give meaning to life. During these years, Kazantzakis’s own life was something of a struggle. He spent part of the time in Gottesgab, Czechoslovakia, part in other areas of Europe, especially Spain, constantly engaged in other works to support himself and Helen Samiou so that he could continue with his poem. The experiences garnered during these years of travel found their way into The Odyssey, too, as Kazantzakis himself pointed out in letters to numerous friends. In 1938, an American patron was so moved by the beauty of the poem that she offered to fund the publication of a limited edition. Kazantzakis accepted, and in that year a press run of three hundred copies was issued under the supervision of Helen Samiou. Though the 130

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poem was slow to gain critical acceptance, the young people of Greece and Crete found much to like in Kazantzakis’s epic. Kazantzakis’s personal odyssey took him to Great Britain in 1939, then back to Aegina, where he spent the war years writing and translating and quietly supporting the resistance movement against the German occupation force. Although in 1941 he had said that he was not comfortable working as a novelist, in 1943, Kazantzakis turned to that form to portray a part of his personal history; the result was his most famous work, known to English-speaking readers as Zorba the Greek. In 1946, the Greek Society of Men of Letters proposed Kazantzakis for the Nobel Prize in Literature. That nomination was repeated several times in succeeding years, and men such as Thomas Mann and Albert Schweitzer supported Kazantzakis’s candidacy. Though he never received the Nobel Prize, Kazantzakis seemed unaffected. The postwar years saw him resume his travels on the Continent and in Great Britain, and in 1947, he was appointed director of UNESCO’s Department of Translation of the Classics. During the final years of his life, he resurrected old manuscripts and returned to subjects that had haunted him for years, producing a series of novels. He continued to write plays as well and planned several major dramas that never materialized. During the 1950’s, sponsorship by literary figures such as Max Tau in Germany, Borje Knos in Sweden, and Max Schuster in America provided opportunities for Kazantzakis’s works to reach audiences throughout Europe and the English-speaking world. By 1952, Kazantzakis’s health had begun to fail, and in 1954, he enrolled in a clinic in Freiburg, where he was diagnosed as suffering from a form of leukemia. Undaunted, he continued to write and travel, returning to Freiburg for treatment when necessary. On a tour of Japan and China in 1957, he received a bad vaccination; though he returned immediately to Freiburg for medical attention, he died in the clinic there on October 26. Analysis It has been said that Nikos Kazantzakis tells one story and that his novels, plays, and poems merely provide different historical backdrops to a single universal theme: the struggle of humans to learn the truth about themselves and about God. There is little doubt that humankind’s search for God is at the center of all of Kazantzakis’s writings, and his early philosophical tract, Salvatores Dei: Asketike (1927; The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises, 1960), provides a gloss for his entire life’s work. Initially a follower of Nietzsche, who had proclaimed the death of God, Kazantzakis adopted the belief that the God of the Christian and Jewish traditions was indeed dead, that the hard facts of evolution had proven conclusively that traditional beliefs were inadequate to explain or justify the human condition. Nevertheless, Kazantzakis did not abandon the notion of God altogether; rather, for him the term “God” represented a kind of omega point, a teleological focus for all of humankind’s endeavors toward self-fulfillment. In a curious twist of logic, Kazantzakis saw God as needing humans as much as humans need him, 131

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for God is created by humans as the embodiment of all that humans hope to be. Ultimately, though, humans must come to the realization that life is essentially meaningless and that whatever meaning they give to their existence is purely self-imposed. It is the fate of the truly heroic individual to pursue the quest for meaning in spite of his knowledge that the quest is futile, to raise a cry against this horrible fact that the only end for humans is the abyss of nothingness that awaits them at death. It should not be surprising, then, to find that the poem Kazantzakis considered his greatest literary achievement deals with religious and philosophical questions, and that his hero wrestles with metaphysical issues. The Odyssey The reader first confronting Kazantzakis’s The Odyssey is most often struck by its length; twice as long as its Homeric namesake, the poem is consciously epic both in scope and in structure. Kazantzakis employed traditional conventions, but he did so in a way that was distinctly modern. The hero’s voyage and quest provide the structural framework in which dozens of seemingly disparate adventures reveal character and illuminate themes. The diversity of action and the cast of characters are exceptionally great, as is the geographical sweep of the poem: Odysseus begins his second great voyage in Greece, travels across the Mediterranean Sea and the African continent, and ends his wanderings in the Antarctic. The Odyssey can best be classified as part of a tradition started soon after Homer composed his Odyssey, that of the “continuation” epic. The poem relates the further adventures of Odysseus, who as early as the fifth century b.c.e. was considered by readers of Homer’s epic to be ill suited to a life of leisure on Ithaca after twenty years of wandering about the Mediterranean basin. From his classical source, Kazantzakis has taken not only his main character, but also others whose stories he chooses to complete (Telemachus, Laertes). Kazantzakis has also gone to the Iliad for a handful of other Homeric figures (Helen of Troy, Menelaus, Idomeneus). Figures from Greek mythology such as Heracles, Tantalus, and Prometheus figure prominently in the work as well. Following the long-standing tradition of Homeric continuations, Kazantzakis begins The Odyssey with his hero already returned to power in Ithaca, having killed Penelope’s suitors. Odysseus’s wanderlust leads him to reject quickly the domestic life on his island (his people, including Telemachus, find him unbearable as well). Odysseus assembles about him a band of adventurers with whom he departs on a journey he knows will end in death. In succession, he travels to Sparta, where he abducts a willing Helen, languishing at home with Menelaus; to Knossos, where he helps topple a society that, though once the cradle of Western civilization, is now hopelessly corrupt; to Africa, where he fights to overthrow the ineffectual and decadent Pharaoh and his court; and through the African desert and up the Nile to its source, where he constructs a city for his followers, a band that now numbers in the hundreds. His utopian city is destroyed 132

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by an earthquake, however, and at that point Odysseus abandons all his followers and becomes a great ascetic, wandering alone about Africa until he reaches the ocean. There, he embarks on a ship built in the shape of a coffin, sailing south to the Antarctic; in that southern clime, he has one last brush with civilization, in an Eskimo-like village whose inhabitants are all killed by a natural disaster just as Odysseus leaves them. The hero then sails alone until he meets his death on an iceberg. This short summary hardly does justice to the wide variety of incidents that make up the poem. Throughout, however, Kazantzakis gives his work unity through a series of images that constantly remind the reader that the poem is more than mere adventure. As Kimon Friar points out in the introduction to his translation, “sun, flame, fire, and light compose the chief imagery” in the poem; these symbolize for Kazantzakis pure spirit— the real goal of Odysseus’s search. Perhaps almost as important is Kazantzakis’s use of birds to suggest both the various qualities of human characters and the constant struggle of humanity to emerge from the physical world and enter the realm of the purely spiritual. Most important among these references are those that associate human characteristics with specific species. Odysseus’s mind is described on more than one occasion as a “hovering hawk” or a “hunting hawk”; the hero calls himself a “black crow” patiently waiting to wreak destruction; on another occasion, he speaks of his mind as “an eagle, grasping Africa in its claws.” Helen is a “decoy-bird”; Odysseus’s heart is like a “caged bird”; he is told by a wise craftsman in Knossos that freedom makes one’s soul soar like “a giddy bird.” On numerous occasions, bird imagery is used to explain the nature of God himself. One example is particularly illustrative. Speaking with a fellow prisoner in Egypt, Odysseus says that God “spreads the enormous wing of good from his right side,/ the wing of evil from his left, then springs and soars./ If only we could be like God, to fly with wayward wings! ” The nature of Odysseus as hero Perhaps the best way to appreciate both the poetry and the philosophy of Kazantzakis’s epic is to examine the nature of his hero. Though modeled closely on Homer’s Odysseus, Kazantzakis’s Odysseus carries a greater symbolic load than his classical predecessor. First, he is a representative of the author himself. During the years when Kazantzakis was first composing the poem, he once referred to himself as Don Odysseus, and indeed the experiences Kazantzakis gleaned from a lifetime of travel are embodied in his hero. Furthermore, Odysseus is presented as a type of Everyman—or better, of the existential person. His external travels are paralleled by the internal struggle he constantly faces within himself as he tries to free himself from the entanglements of the flesh and “ascend to God.” Odysseus is constantly reminding himself and others that nothing in life has any real meaning, but the struggle to establish meaning (even while knowing that the attempt will end in failure) motivates him and gives him real stature among men. 133

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Always fond of adjectives, Kazantzakis uses them lavishly to describe Odysseus. The epithets that characterize Kazantzakis’s hero reveal similarities with his Homeric predecessor and establish his position as a Kazantzakian seeker for God and truth. At times, he is the crafty, ruthless warrior of Homer’s Odyssey, called by various sobriquets, such as “archer,” “fox-minded man,” “much-traveled man,” “worldwide roamer,” “double faced,” “resourceful,” “sly,” and “swifthanded.” He is, unlike the classical Odysseus, also a “soul seizer,” “soul leader,” “deep-sighted man,” the “man of seven souls,” often a “heaven baiter” and a “mind battler.” He takes on the characteristics of other famous characters, or meets with them in various guises in the course of his wanderings. In the crucial books of the poem immediately preceding the construction of his ideal city (books 12 through 15), he shares many characteristics with the biblical Moses, leading his people out of Egypt, communing with his “God” atop the mountain, entering into a promised land and establishing a utopian community. Later, he meets with Captain Sole (Don Quixote) and the black fisher boy (Christ), with whom he debates about the right way to face the trials of life. Face them he does, directly and uncompromisingly, in a fashion distinctly Kazantzakian. Odysseus at times indulges almost to excess in the pleasures of the flesh; at other times, he eschews such activity with intensity and sincerity. In him, perhaps more than in any other character in the canon of Kazantzakis’s works, one can see the twin tendencies toward asceticism and sensuality that Kazantzakis perceived to be the essence of the human condition. Odysseus’s clear vision of the human condition causes him to act ruthlessly at times, even with his God. For him, humans’ greatest task is to defy their fate and assert their independence: “I drink not to the gods,” he tells his people upon returning to Ithaca, “but to man’s dauntless mind!” “The awesome ancient gods are now but poor bugbears,” he says on another occasion. When Menelaus tells him that humans become a kind of god by following their fate, Odysseus replies: “I think man’s greatest duty on earth is to fight his fate,/ to give no quarter and blot out his written doom./ This is how mortal man may even surpass his god!” Clearly, Odysseus’s “God” is not the traditional Christian deity; rather he is the God Kazantzakis conceived of early in his own life, described in The Saviors of God as a deity dependent on humanity for his existence as much as humanity is traditionally thought to depend on God. Thus, Odysseus proclaims a new set of commandments for the existential world. The “ten commandments” he chisels in stone in his new city in Africa provide a capsule of Kazantzakis’s own philosophy: “God groans, he writhes within my heart for help”; God “chokes” in the ground, and “leaps from every grave”; God “stifles” all living things, and all living things “are his cofighters.” Man himself must “love wretched man at length, for he is you, my son.” Additionally, he must “love plants and beasts . . . the entire earth.” Man must each day “deny [his] joys, [his] wealth, [his] victories, all” because “the greatest virtue on earth is not to become free/ but to seek freedom in a ruthless, sleepless strife.” 134

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Beside his commandments, Odysseus carves an arrow shooting toward the sun, symbolizing man’s ascent toward the special God that Kazantzakis conceives of as one with man in the struggle to make meaning of his existence. By these rules, Kazantzakis’s hero lives his own life; by them, Kazantzakis suggests that modern humans may come to give meaning to their lives, not because life has meaning, but because the struggle to achieve human perfectibility will itself provide joy (the Bergsonian élan vital) in the midst of the tragedy that Kazantzakis, following Nietzsche, sees at the root of the human condition. Other major works long fiction: Ophis kai krino, 1906 (Serpent and Lily, 1980); Toda Raba, 1929 (English translation, 1964); De tuin der Rosten, 1939 (better known as Le Jardin des rochers; The Rock Garden, 1963); Vios kai politeia tou Alexe Zormpa, 1946 (Zorba the Greek, 1952); Ho Kapetan Michales, 1953 (Freedom or Death, 1956; also known as Freedom and Death: A Novel); Ho Christos xanastauronetai, 1954 (The Greek Passion, 1953; also known as Christ Recrucified); Ho teleutaios peirasmos, 1955 (The Last Temptation of Christ, 1960; also known as The Last Temptation); Ho phtochoules tou Theou, 1956 (Saint Francis, 1962; also known as God’s Pauper: Saint Francis of Assisi); Hoi aderphophades, 1963 (The Fratricides, 1964). plays: Xemeronei, pr. 1907; Melissa, pr. 1939; Kouros, pr. 1955; Christophoros Kolomvos, pr. 1956; Three Plays: Melissa, Kouros, Christopher Columbus, 1969. nonfiction: Salvatores Dei: Asketike, 1927 (The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises, 1960); Ispania, 1937 (Spain, 1963); Ho Morias, 1937 (serial; 1961, book; Journey to the Morea, 1965); Iaponia-Kina, 1938 (Japan/China, 1963); Anghlia, 1941 (England, 1965); Anaphora ston Greko: Mythistorema, 1961 (autobiography; Report to Greco, 1965). Bibliography Bien, Peter. Kazantzakis: Politics of the Spirit. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989. This study focuses on the evolution of Kazantzakis’s personal philosophy up to the point of his publication in 1938 of The Odyssey. Includes a rich international bibliography, a detailed chronology, and an index of names and titles. _______. Nikos Kazantzakis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972. A reliable scholarly introduction to Kazantzakis’s life and work, with a useful bibliography. Dombrowski, Daniel A. Kazantzakis and God. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. Contains chapters on the Bergsonian background, transubstantiation, eating and spiritual exercise, the new Middle Ages, theism, mysticism, method and purpose, and panexperientialism and death. Dombrowski also has an appendix on Friedrich Nietzsche’s place in Kazantzakis’s thought. Includes notes, bibliography, and an index of names. 135

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Kazantzakis, Helen. Nikos Kazantzakis: A Biography Based on His Letters. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968. A valuable collection of letters and photographs arranged chronologically. The letters are only lightly annotated. Lea, James F. Kazantzakis: The Politics of Salvation. University: University of Alabama Press, 1979. Presents an overview of the writer’s career; closely examines his use of language; studies his poetry, prophetic style, and political philosophy; and discusses his search for order in chaos. Chapter 5 concludes with his vision of freedom and hope. With detailed notes and bibliography. Middleton, Darren J. N. Broken Hallelujah: Nikos Kazantzakis and Christian Theology. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2007. An examination of Kazantzakis’s religious beliefs and how they affected his writings. Newton, Rick M. “Homer and the Death of Kazantzakis’ Odysseus.” Classical and Modern Literature 9, no. 4 (Summer, 1989): 327-338. This study contrasts Homer’s Odysseus with Kazantzakis’s more extensive treatment of the hero’s voyage. Provides insights into Kazantzakis’s poetics. Stanford, W. B. The Ulysses Theme: A Study in the Adaptability of a Traditional Hero. 2d ed. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1963. This book contains some valuable insights into Kazantzakis’ poem, particularly with reference to his concept of the hero. Only some twenty pages are given to his work, however, mostly in comparison with Joyce. Laurence W. Mazzeno

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LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM Born: Tarentum (now Taranto, Italy); fl. early third century b.c.e. Died: Place and date unknown Principal poetry Epigrams, third century b.c.e. Other literary forms Leonidas of Tarentum (lee-AHN-ihd-uhs uhv tuh-REHN-tuhm) is not known to have written anything but epigrams. Achievements Although a poet of the second rank in a period of scant literary achievement, Leonidas of Tarentum is notable for his attention to classes of people who had been ignored before the Hellenistic era. He was greatly admired by later epigrammatists, as is shown by scores of imitations produced in subsequent generations. More than any other Hellenistic writer, Leonidas can be credited with the expansion of poetry’s vision to include the poor, the farmers, hunters, fishermen, tradesmen, merchant seamen, prostitutes, weavers, and others whose lives, although in no way remarkable, bore the common stamp of humanity in their labors. Although he did not limit his scope to the working world, Leonidas made proletarian life his special preserve, much as Theocritus made singing shepherds his poetic domain. Judging by the number of his immediate imitators, in fact, it would appear that Leonidas had a greater influence in his own time than the more celebrated Theocritus. When Vergil revived the pastoral, Theocritus had inspired barely two imitators (Bion and Moschus), whereas Leonidas’s followers, both before and after Vergil’s time, were legion. The great paradox of Leonidas’s achievement is his remarkable affinity for elaborate language to describe simple people. His poetry is full of ornamental adjectives and novel compounds and is characterized by a vocabulary that appears nowhere else in ancient Greek. His style is commonly characterized as baroque, exuberant in its highly calculated arrangement of words and ideas. Leonidas is an excellent Hellenistic example of the phenomenon of a writer vastly popular and influential in his own time but virtually unread today. Modern estimations vary widely: Gilbert Highet has called him “the greatest Greek epigrammatist of the Alexandrian era,” but C. R. Beye finds him “heavy-handed, pedantic, and [overly] detailed”; Marcello Gigante sees him as the high-minded prophet of a new egalitarian society, and A. S. F. Gow as “a competent versifier, [but] hardly ever more than that.” Whatever his merits as a poet, Leonidas deserves a careful reading by anyone who wishes to understand the dynamics of the age that gave classical Humanism its definitive shape. 137

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Biography Leonidas of Tarentum’s biography, like that of most Hellenistic poets, is strictly conjectural and, in the absence of contemporary references to him, is completely dependent on the evidence of his epigrams, in which he says very little about his own life. Most authorities place him in the first or second generation of Hellenistic poets, either early in the third century b.c.e., with Asclepiades, Callimachus, and Theocritus, or nearer the middle of the century, closer to such poets as Dioscorides and Antipater, whose epigrams echo his style. An epigram purporting to be his own epitaph (epigram 715 in book 7 AP. or Leonidas 93 G.-P.) represents him as a wanderer who died far from his native Tarentum, itself a plausible claim, because his one hundred-odd surviving epigrams represent people and places scattered all over the Greek-speaking world, the eastern Mediterranean littoral loosely referred to as the oikoumenT. Though a native of Italy, Leonidas (like the Sicilian Theocritus) was in every sense of the word a member of the Greek world. His city (the modern Taranto) was colonized at the end of the eighth century b.c.e. by Spartans, and from the middle of the fifth century b.c.e. it was the leading Greek city of southern Italy. By the end of the next century, however, Tarentum came under pressure from Italian tribes to the north and depended on various mercenary leaders for protection. The last of these was Rome’s famous adversary Pyrrhus , who left Tarentum to the Romans in 275. From about that time until the Hannibalic wars at the end of the century, the city regained stability and prosperity under Roman rule. Leonidas’s supposed departure from Tarentum has been linked to the period of insecurity early in the third century, though, like other literary and intellectual figures from the Greek west, he would have been naturally attracted to such Greek capitals as Athens and Alexandria. His epigrams do not, however, suggest residence in any particular place, but rather an itinerant existence and a life shared mainly with the rural poor. Would-be biographers have leapt to the conclusion that Leonidas was in fact a destitute wanderer by choice who wrote about people with whom he shared his meager existence. This speculation is strengthened by occasional suggestions in Leonidas’s epigrams that he was an admirer of the Cynic philosopher Diogenes and shared Cynic beliefs concerning poverty, simplicity, and the frailty of human life. It is possible that he followed in the footsteps of the popular Cynic philosopher Crates, adopting poverty as a way of life and traveling about the oikoumenT spreading a gospel of voluntary poverty and independence and consoling the victims of hardship, perhaps by celebrating their simple lives in his epigrams. Crates himself is said to have written poetry as a vehicle of his teaching, and some students of Leonidas see him as playing a similar prophetic role in his poetry. Such speculation is difficult to reconcile with the highly sophisticated style of Leonidas’s actual poems, which are seldom as austere or simple as the people he liked to write about. There is also the cosmopolitan range of his subjects, which include the most celebrated artistic, literary, and intellectual events of his time and, indeed, of previous 138

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generations. Wherever he spent his time, Leonidas did not isolate himself from the tastes or the events and concerns of his age. The public for whom he wrote was urban and well educated, with a sophisticated nostalgia for the simple lives of peasants and rural tradespeople. Like Theocritus’s shepherds, Leonidas’s working folk are as much a product of imagination as of observation, and there is no need to speculate that he spent most of his life among them. In short, no solid facts can be drawn from the epigrams to illuminate the mystery of Leonidas’s life. Analysis It is not known in what form Leonidas of Tarentum published his epigrams. A large number were published after his death in the Garland of Meleager, an anthology of epigrams put together early in the first century b.c.e., but it is probable that Meleager himself depended on earlier collections. Meleager’s Garland is lost, although large parts of it were included when Constantine Cephalas, a church official in the palace at Constantinople in the late ninth century c.e., made a larger anthology of Greek epigrams. Within a century, Cephalas’s collection (itself also lost) became a source of a still much larger anthology of Greek epigrams from the Byzantine, Roman, and earlier Greek eras, now known as the Greek Anthology or the Palatine Anthology. Cephalas’s collection was also the source of an independent selection of epigrams put together in 1301 by the Byzantine monk Maximus Planudes. Eight or nine epigrams by Leonidas are extant only in the Planudean Anthology. The Palatine Anthology is so called because of its rediscovery in the Count Palatine’s library at Heidelberg in 1606; modern editions are based on that tenth century codex as supplemented by the later Planudean collection. The numbering system used for references is either that of the Palatine Anthology (AP.) or that of the standard edition, The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams (1965), edited by A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page (G.-P.). The epigram form Historically and etymologically, an epigram is an inscription on something, usually a tomb, a statue, or a dedicatory plaque. At an early stage, epigrams were sometimes set to verse, and in time it was customary to write them in elegiac couplets consisting of a dactylic hexameter followed by a shorter pentameter line. The conciseness required of an inscription on metal or stone was a special challenge to the first epigrammatists, and from these circumstances evolved a miniature literary form that became extremely popular in the Hellenistic age, whose reading public was tired of rambling heroic poetry and prized concise workmanship. One effect of this development was that by Hellenistic times, the epigram had become more or less independent of its origins as an inscription, not being intended for actual writing on anything more substantial than a piece of paper; still, it sometimes retained vestiges of its origins by masquerading in the form of an inscribed dedication or epitaph. 139

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New types were also invented: The epideictic, or display, epigram is a versified comment about a statue, poem, or any other object, such as a fig tree or a carved piece of incense. The love epigram is a short poem about love, often not even ostensibly inscriptional or memorial in character. The protreptic, hortatory, or admonitory epigram is likewise not formally associated with an object; it is simply a versified bit of wisdom—“what oft was said but ne’er so well expressed”—usually in Hellenistic times a commonplace of popular Stoic, Cynic, or Epicurean philosophy. The tone as well as the type could vary, from somber to declamatory, playful, or mocking. Greek Anthology Leonidas of Tarentum’s epigrams are arguably all epideictic, although most of them take the form of an epitaph or a dedication. If any were actually inscribed, however, it was probably after the fact and beyond the intentions of the author. The Greek Anthology preserves them, scattered among epigrams by other authors, under three main categories: Book 7, devoted to epitaphs or sepulchral epigrams, includes the largest number; book 6, containing dedicatory epigrams, has nearly as many; fifteen are preserved as epideictic epigrams in book 9. These three books of the Greek Anthology account for nearly all of Leonidas’s epigrams, with a dozen others distributed elsewhere, chiefly in Planudes’ collection. The assignment of categories in the Greek Anthology is often careless, however, and is useful only as the most general guide to the kind of poems that Leonidas wrote. Rural themes Too much attention to Leonidas’s special interest in peasants, artisans, and the poor can obscure the fact that these subjects account for scarcely more than one-third of his epigrams. He can be credited with the “discovery” of simple folk as a subject of epigram, and he made himself their poet laureate, so to speak, but he did not limit himself to that subject any more than Theocritus limited himself to the poetic shepherds that made him famous. As has already been noted, Leonidas’s complex style seems made for purposes other than the depiction of simple folk. A survey of Leonidas’s poems reveals, more than anything else, a love of complexity and variety. His work is a miscellany of people, places, and events that would seem novel to his city readers: They enjoyed reading about subjects outside their usual cosmopolitan ambit in Tarentum, Syracuse, Athens, or Alexandria. Hence the prominence of rural artisans, seamen, and the countryside and the significant absence of urban scenes and subjects. Hellenistic life was concentrated as never before in the cities, but taste was for anything but the here and now. Hence, also, the love of paradoxes, novelties, and curiosity items in Leonidas. He had no special loyalty to the class of people he put in his epigrams, no political posture, and no philosophical ideology with which to indoctrinate his readers. Everything was subordinated to writing an epigram that his audience might find interesting, clever, and unconventional. 140

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Timelessness For these reasons, Johannes Geffcken’s attempts to read historical allusions into Leonidas and Gigante’s discovery of revolutionary protosocialist sentiment in the epigrams has had a cool reception among students of Hellenistic poetry. Leonidas is anything but topical; his epigrams, although often ostensibly tied to specific events, such as a fisherman’s death or the dedication to Bacchus of some casks of wine, are almost always timeless or look back to an event in the distant past. A small number of epigrams may be exceptional in this regard, such as a pair of quatrains dedicating spoils taken from Tarentum’s ancient enemies, the Lucanians (epigrams 129 and 131 in book 6 AP. and Leonidas 34 and 35 G.-P.), but Leonidas’s language is not specific enough to permit a definite dating within his probable lifetime; the epigrams may well be epideictic and patriotic rather than specific to a certain battle. An epigram on the occasion of Antigonus Gonatas’s defeat by Pyrrhus in 273 b.c.e. (epigram 130 in book 6 AP. or Leonidas 95 G.-P.) is a much better candidate for specific contemporary dating, if the ascription to Leonidas is correct. Of the poets and artists celebrated in some eleven epigrams, only one belongs to Leonidas’s own century: Aratus, the author of a poem on astronomy, the Phainomena, written shortly after 277 b.c.e. In his tendency to avoid the contemporary, Leonidas is like other poets of the third century: They preferred to write about the timeless or the mythical, and they tended to find only the poets and artists of earlier generations to be fit subjects for their praise. Escapism This affinity with things set apart from the poet and his audience was not entirely new to Greek poetry; Homer wrote about events that took place nearly five centuries before his own time, and the Greek tragedians used even older myths for their plots. However, the comedies of Aristophanes were unabashedly topical at the end of the fifth century b.c.e., and in the fourth century, Menander’s comedies were also set in contemporary times (although they were not as politically topical). A certain escapism distinguishes Hellenistic poetry from that of earlier periods. Although some of their classical predecessors had used remote settings and characters only as a background for the presentation of their own immediate concerns and controversies, the Hellenistic poets— Leonidas, Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius, and Theocritus—used similarly removed situations as a means of turning away from their own milieu, which held little interest for them, to worlds more to their liking. Poetry as craft As a corollary of this impulse, art was cultivated for art’s sake rather than for the traditional purposes of education and inspiration. When it inspired, it inspired disengagement rather than the heroic commitment that was typical, say, of Sophoclean tragedy. 141

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Poetry came to be viewed more as a craft than as a vehicle for great ideas. The many epigrams that Leonidas and his contemporaries composed in praise of ancient poets and artists suggest something like a cult of the artist whose art transcends rather than reflects. At the same time, they felt inferior to the geniuses of the past, and, rather than try to compete with them in epic or tragic poetry, the better poets sought uncharted territory for themselves, new kinds of poetry in which they would not be in the shadow of the grand masters of the past. With something of a pioneering spirit, every poet of talent sought to bring his readers something new and distinctive. In this way, Hellenistic poetry was a means of escaping the past as well as the present. Subject matter Leonidas’s novel attention to common people attracted many imitators—and, one must assume, a large audience. Some of what he provided his readers is now found in “human interest” journalism: “Man Half-Eaten by Sea Monster Buried Today” (epigram 506 in book 7 AP. or Leonidas 65 G.-P.), “Lion Takes Refuge with Herdsmen” (epigram 221 in book 6 AP. or Leonidas 53 G.-P.), “Four Sisters Die in Childbirth” (epigram 463 in book 7 AP. or Leonidas 69 G.-P.). Others are less sensational curiosities, such as a die carved on a gambler’s tombstone (epigram 422 in book 7 AP. or Leonidas 22 G.-P.) or a fisherman who dies a natural death after a lifetime in a perilous trade (epigram 295 in book 7 AP. or Leonidas 20 G.-P.). Most of Leonidas’s subjects are bland in themselves: Three sisters dedicate their spinning and weaving implements to Athena on retiring from their labors (epigram 289 in book 6 AP. or Leonidas 42 G.-P.); a gardener prays to the nymphs to see that his garden is well watered (epigram 320 in book 9 AP. or Leonidas 6 G.-P.). The tone of such imaginary epitaphs and dedications is predictably calm; rarely does Leonidas inject the emotion expressed in epigram 466 in book 7 AP. or Leonidas 71 G.-P., where a father grieves for his son, dead at eighteen. More often, there is a humorous note of mockery, as in the imaginary epitaph of a lady who drank too much and has a cup on her tomb: Her only regret in death is that the cup is empty (epigram 455 in book 7 AP. or Leonidas 68 G.-P.). There are other joke epigrams, such as epigrams 236 and 261 in book 1 AP. or Leonidas 83 and 84 G.-P., in which a statue of the tutelary god Priapus threatens to abuse troublemakers with his overgrown phallus. Sometimes an epigram will be built around a paradox: a cult statue of Aphrodite bearing warlike gear (epigram 320 in book 9 AP. or Leonidas 24 G.-P.); a figure of Eros carved in frankincense that will be burned, although not with the fires of love (epigram 179 in book 9 AP. or Leonidas 28 G.-P.). For the most part, Leonidas avoids erotic topics, although they were a favorite preoccupation in nearly all Hellenistic art and literature. He shows a greater interest in the commonplaces of Cynic philosophy; his longest poem is a sepulchral elegy of sixteen lines made up of Cynic sentiments on the frailty of life (epigram 472 in book 7 AP. or Leonidas 77 G.-P.). Leonidas is not always consistent 142

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in his Cynic views, however, especially on the subject of poverty. Sometimes he praises it in good Cynic fashion because it implies independence and self-sufficiency, but in a rare autobiographical moment he prays that Aphrodite will save him from his “hateful poverty” (epigram 300 in book 6 AP. or Leonidas 36 G.-P.). Moreover, he is as ready to make fun of a ragged Cynic guru (Sochares in epigrams 293 and 298 in book 6 AP. or Leonidas 54 to 55 G.-P.) as he is to mock a man who goes to his grave without ever drinking too much (Eubulus or “Wiseman,” in epigram 452 in book 7 AP. or Leonidas 67 G.-P.). Less a philosopher than a poet, Leonidas shifts his point of view to suit his subject. Challenges of translation Without reading Leonidas’s epigrams in the original Greek, one is not likely to understand why they were read, copied, and imitated, even by generations whose tastes were not those of the modern world, because so much of Leonidas’s art is invested in his use of language itself. The literary qualities most admired by Hellenistic readers and authors were highly formal, with relatively little emphasis being placed on the substance of a piece of writing. What mattered was not so much what one said, but how well one said it. In translation, most of Leonidas’s poetry will seem intolerably bland—as it will even in Greek, so long as one reads for propositional content. To read Leonidas as his admirers did, one must read through Hellenistic eyes focused on felicity of phrasing, effective manipulation of word order (which is much more flexible in Greek than in English), freshness of diction, and creative management of the reader’s expectations to stimulate curiosity, evoke surprise, and elicit humor. In his subordination of content to form, Leonidas (like many of his contemporaries) can be called a poet’s poet. Christopher Dawson has shown by close analysis of several epigrams how successfully Leonidas exploited his material for maximum effect and, in particular, how he arranged his epigrams for a climactic focus at the end. His creation of poems leading up to a play of wit at the end took the epigram a step closer to the modern form first fully realized by the Roman poet Martial. Bibliography Bing, Peter, and Jon Bruss, eds. Brill’s Companion to Hellenistic Epigram. Boston: Brill, 2007. Part of the Brill’s Companions in Classical Studies series, this work brings together many experts to create an introduction to all aspects of the epigram. Provides context and touches on Leonidas. Clack, Jerry. Asclepiades of Samos and Leonidas of Tarentum: The Poems. Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy, 1999. A collection and translation of the complete extant works of these two Greek epigrammatists, who set the course for this particular genre of poetry. As the book points out, for Leonidas the poetic form of the epigram went be143

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yond the purely personal feelings of the author and allowed for social commentary, often alluding to the suffering and miseries of the poor, the infirm, and the aged. Fowler, Barbara Hughes. The Hellenistic Aesthetic. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989. A general survey of the artistic thought and movements of the period that produced Leonidas. Although slight in its treatment of the poet and his individual poems, it is valuable for placing him and his work into an overall context. Gutzwiller, Katheryn. Poetic Garlands: Hellenistic Epigrams in Context. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. A full-length study of the later, more literary Greek epigrams written by professional poets such as Leonidas. Gutzwiller traces the themes in Leonidas’s work, including death, eroticism, and morality, and comments particularly on his epigram for the sponge-fisher Tharsys, attacked and halfeaten by a shark and so buried on both land and sea. White, Heather. New Essays in Hellenistic Poetry. Amsterdam: Gieben, 1985. A good study of Leonidas and his contemporaries. The essay on Leonidas’s work is useful, although somewhat technical in its examinations of the poetic and linguistic devices of the works of Leonidas. This is the sort of resource best used in conjunction with other more general studies of the poet and his writing. Daniel H. Garrison

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MELEAGER Born: Gadara, Syria (now Umm Qays, Jordan); c. 140 b.c.e. Died: Cos, Greece; c. 70 b.c.e. Also known as: Meleager of Gadara; Meleagros Principal poetry Stephanos, c. 90-80 b.c.e. (Fifty Poems, 1890; best known as Garland) Other literary forms Meleager (mah-LEE-gur) specialized in collecting and writing epigrams, as understood in the original meaning of the word: short, pithy phrases intended to be chiseled on monuments and temples to commemorate important events, religious celebrations, or the lives of political and military leaders. He is known to have engaged in literary forms other than epigrams and short poetry, particularly satires in the style of his countryman Menippus (fl. third century b.c.e.), whom he admired, but these have not survived. Achievements Meleager’s chief claim to fame is his invention of the concept of the poetry anthology, both in form and in name; a later compiler called such collections anthologies, from the Greek words anthos, meaning “flower,” and logia, meaning “gathering,” preserving both the intent and definition of Meleager’s the Garland. The idea of the anthology has been extended to cover collections of short stories, novels, comic strips, and other literary works. Though others before him had collected witty sayings and poetical inscriptions , Meleager was the first to put together a comprehensive, systematic collection of significant writings gleaned from buildings , statuary, and cemeteries that attributed the words to their proper authors. His Garland gathered the encapsulated ideas and well-turned phrases from Greek writers, encompassing the work of predecessors from past centuries, as well as the work of contemporaries. In the process, Meleager demonstrated that epigrams were a literary form in their own right and need not be confined solely to engravings on stone. Although the manuscript of the Garland has been lost, it has formed the basis for later anthologies. In 917, Constantinus Cephalas, a Byzantine official in Constantinople, compiled an anthology that included Meleager’s Garland with collections made by other poets. However, Cephalas’s anthology survives only in the Greek Anthology, discovered in a library in Heidelberg in 1606. In modern editions, the fifteen-volume Greek Anthology contains thirty-seven hundred epigrams from the Archaic through the Byzantine periods, grouped by themes. 145

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Biography Meleager was born in Gadara, the major metropolis of a Macedonian colony between the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River then in Syria. The ruins of the ancient settlement—referred to as the land of the Gadarenes in the New Testament—can be found near modern-day Umm Qays, Jordan. Meleager was the son of Eukrates and may have had a Syrian mother. He probably grew up speaking Aramaic and undoubtedly learned Greek and Phoenician. At some point, he became enamored of the work of Cynic poet and satirist Menippus, a fellow Gadarene. At the age of twenty, Meleager moved north to the ancient cosmopolitan Phoenician port city of Tyre (now in Lebanon), where he received his higher education. While biographical details are scarce, it is supposed that Meleager followed Cynic philosophy, shunning fame and fortune, and lived in self-sufficient poverty. He began writing poetry and satires in Cynic style, combining the elements of the serious and the frivolous in his work. It is presumed that while residing in Tyre, he began recording the inscriptions of his Greek predecessors from cemeteries, monuments, statues, and buildings; it is unknown how far afield he may have traveled to add to his collection. When he had sufficient material, Meleager published his anthology, the Garland, probably as a papyrus scroll, the usual form for literary works of the time—typically produced in small quantities, since each copy had to be made by hand. Meleager probably published other writings, but they, like the Garland, have since been lost. Late in life, Meleager continued migrating north and settled on the Greek island of Cos, a few miles off the southwestern shores of Turkey, where he died. It is unknown whether he married or produced heirs. Analysis Although the original no longer exists, Meleager’s Garland is nonetheless significant for several reasons. It is considered the first true poetry anthology and as such is the prototype for countless anthologies that followed—including at least five different versions of what is now called the Greek Anthology—that incorporate parts of the Garland. Prefaced with another first, the thematic introduction, the collection presents the work of early and contemporary Greek poets, both major and minor, many of whom would otherwise be unknown. The Garland preserves a peculiarly Greek art of expression, the epigram: a brief, often witty or poignant poetic statement that can be committed to memory and perpetuated by recital. As reproduced in later anthologies, the Garland is the only extant source of Meleager’s own poetry. Although in modern times any short, memorable, well-phrased statement (such Mark Twain’s wry observations, Ambrose Bierce’s sly definitions, Oscar Wilde’s bon mots, or Dorothy Parker’s clever witticisms) can be called an epigram, in Meleager’s day, the rules of composition were more formal. Epigrams were traditionally composed in hexameter, in rhyming couplets. Ideally, a single couplet was sufficient for express146

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ing a complete, memorable idea, though slightly longer poems consisting of three or four elegiac couplets that expanded a poetic conceit also found favor. Epigrams were originally an outgrowth of spoudaiogeloion (from the Greek words for “serious” and “comical”), a satirical form employed from the time of Aristophanes (c. 450-c. 385 b.c.e.), combining high-flown subject matter with playful style. The serious-comedic blend was particularly appropriate for simple-living Cynics like Meleager, who could criticize specific aspects of society in terse verse, while including enough humor so as not to give undue offense. Though it is unknown exactly how many individual epigrams were included in the original manuscript of the Garland, it presented the works of some forty-eight poets, including Meleager, who incorporated more tha n one hundred of his own epigrams. Meleager presented the epigrams in alphabetical order (from alpha to omega of the Greek alphabet) and included poets from the seventh to the first centuries b.c.e. The subject matter is diverse; however, most poems could be grouped under a few general headings: odes to nature, paeans to the gods, praise of the famous, epitaphs for departed humans and pets, musings on fate and death, celebrations of historical events, and verses dealing with the intricacies of love. Meleager’s particular forte was in the last category: Of some 140 of his epigrams that have survived, about 80 percent comment on the author’s intimate relationships. Meleager may have lived a no-frills existence as a Cynic, rejecting wealth, recognition, and power, but he apparently led a rich love life. The poet addressed epigrams to a profusion of women (such as Heliodora) and to a succession of young men and boys (such as Alexis). Meleager was skilled at capturing elusive, almost inexpressible emotions through extended metaphor, invoking bees, gnats, arrows, lamps, and other commonplace beings and items in making subtle, imaginative comparisons to his feelings. This ability is most evident in Meleager’s introduction to the Garland, in which he compares each poet in the anthology to an appropriate flower or plant that might be woven into a celebratory floral display. Meleager, in a few pointed words, makes a critical comment on each entry, which can be better understood through a knowledge of the ancient symbolism of the selected botanical specimen. An egalitarian, he incorporates a fair number of female poets. The more recognizable names that have come down to the present, and the garden item with which they are linked include: Anyte (lilies), Sappho (roses), Simonides (vine blossom), Alcaeus (hyacinth), Erinna (crocus), Plato (golden bough), Callimachus (myrtle berry), Anacreon (honeysuckle), Leonidas of Tarentum (ivy clusters), and Antipater of Sidon (Phoenician cypress). The Greek Anthology That the work of Meleager exists at all is courtesy first to another Greek writer of epigrams. Philippus of Thessalonica, more than a century after the death of Meleager, produced a collection of short poems incorporating the Garland, adding to it the writings of 147

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a dozen Greek poets—from the intervening years between the two editions—deemed worthy of inclusion. Philippus was allegedly the first epigram compiler to use the term “anthology” for his collection. Unfortunately, this cannot be proved, since Philippus’s work, like his mentor’s, has been lost to time. A century later, Diogenianus of Heracleia selected the satirical lines from the work of Meleager and Philippus, added examples of contemporary wit, and produced a fresh offshoot of the original. Likewise, in the third century, Straton of Sardis gleaned homoerotic verse from all previous anthologies for his Mousa paidike (also known as Musa puerelis; “boyish muse”; Puerilities, 2001). In the fourth century, a collection of Christian epigrams—and less offensive samples from prior works—appeared. In the following century, poet and historian Agathias of Myrina, re-edited and updated the Greek Anthology, including about a hundred of his own epigrams. The definitive edition of the Greek Anthology, containing most of the earlier collections of epigrams as well as new material, was compiled in 917. It was the work of Cephalas, a Byzantine official, who divided the material by subject. The entire fifteenbook manuscript is preserved in the Palatine Library at the University of Heidelberg, thus it is often referred to as the Palatine Anthology. This is to distinguish it from the bowdlerized, augmented Planudes Anthology, the work of fourteenth century monk Maximus Planudes. Many editions of each of these anthologies have since been published, in many different languages. Both versions have served as inspiration to generations of writers seeking instruction in the art of concision. Bibliography Branham, R. Bracht, and Marie-Odile Goulet Cazé. The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy. Berkeley: University of California Press , 2000. A collection of essays with appendices, this work traces the history, development and influence of the Cynical tradition since its inception to the present, from social, ethical, and cultural perspectives. Clack, J. Meleager: The Poems. Mundelein, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1992. An overview of the poet, this text reproduces and discusses 132 of Meleager’s epigrammatic verses—more than 90 percent of his known works. Greene, Ellen, ed. Women Poets in Ancient Greece and Rome. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005. This is a collection of scholarly essays focusing on the work of many of the female Greek writers from Meleager’s original Garland, including Sappho, Erinna, Moero, Nossis, and Anyte. Gutzwiller, Kathryn J. A Guide to Hellenistic Literature. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2007. Presents the full panoply of literature from Greece’s Golden Age against the backdrop of history, showing how events shaped the form and function of writing. Many of the poets from the Garland—Posidippus of Pella, Erinna of Teos, Asclepiades of Samos, Callimachus, Meleager, and others—are discussed. The indexed 148

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work is supplemented with illustrations, maps, and chronologies. _______. Poetic Garlands: Hellenistic Epigrams in Context. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Beginning with a reconstruction of Meleager’s Garland, Gutzwiller fully examines the development of the epigram as a literary medium throughout three centuries of the Hellenistic era following the death of Alexander the Great. Hine, Darryl, trans. Puerilities: Erotic Epigrams of “The Greek Anthology.” Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001. This collection presents, in original Greek with English translations, the anthology of Straton of Sardis, which incorporates many sexually oriented epigrams that first appeared in the Garland, including a number by Meleager, a master of the form. Skinner, Marilyn B. Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture. Malden, Mass.: WileyBlackwell, 2005. This study examines ancient Greek and Roman attitudes toward such permitted—and at times widely accepted—activities as homosexuality, pedophilia, and male and female prostitution. Skinner discusses sexuality in general and in the context of respective cultures, comparing ancient and modern civilizations through the use of a wide range of examples from art, architecture, and literature, including epigrams from Meleager’s Garland. Jack Ewing

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NIKOS PENTZIKIS Born: Thessaloníki, Greece; October 30, 1908 Died: Thessaloníki, Greece; January 13, 1993 Principal poetry Ikones, 1944 Anakomidhi, 1961 Paleotera piimata ke neotera, 1980 (includes Ikones and prose pieces) Psile e perispomene, 1995 Other literary forms Nikos Pentzikis (pehnt-ZEE-kees) might be called the odd case of modern Greek literature, for he combines in his poetry as well as in the much larger body of his prose a restless and inquisitive spirit typical of the modern era with a kind of pre-Renaissance, more particularly Byzantine, religious mysticism. The young hero of his first novel, Andréas Dhimakoudhis, published in 1935, suffers from unrequited love and commits suicide. This death is symbolic of Pentzikis’s own early disappointments in love, the “death” of his sentimental self. His second book, O pethamenos ke i anastasi (wr. 1938, pb. 1944; the dead man and the resurrection), a stream-of-consciousness narrative, deals again with a young man (unnamed this time, but an obvious persona of his creator), who, though he regains his trust in life, regains it at the level of myth. He upholds the religious traditions of his country and accepts a metaphysical explanation of the world while returning and developing his sense of the concrete, his love for the world of shapes and colors. From that time on, Pentzikis cultivated his metaphysical and physical certainties in the parallel activities of writing and painting. Pentzikis’s love of the concrete is particularly evident in his book Pragmatognosia (1950; knowledge of things), which deals mostly with the realities of Thessaloníki, his native town, and in two works in diary form, Simiosis ekato imeron (1973; notes of one hundred days) and Arhion (1974; filing cabinet). These idiosyncratic works catalog dry data of all kinds, from skin diseases to bus fares and theater tickets (the writer sorts out and reorders cartons of souvenirs); they also rework religious information from old Greek Orthodox texts. The methodology behind these as well as other, stylistically more traditional works, such as Arhitektoniki tis skorpias zois (1963; architecture of the scattered life), Mitera Thessaloniki (1970; Mother Salonika, 1998), Sinodhia (1970; retinue), and Omilimata (1972; homilies), is based upon the so-called copying memory. Pentzikis spurns self-consciously aesthetic writing, which he finds hubristic. Instead, he favors an itemized record of reality as a fitting homage to God for the world which is his handicraft. The beautiful and the ugly, the banal and the exalted—all must find a place in Pentzikis’s 150

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work, under the unifying veil of Christian myth, especially its Greek Orthodox version. Pentzikis’s later narrative method also incorporates a system of numerology. He writes or paints in clustered units of words, both religious and secular, that are ordered by their numerical values as defined by ancient Pythagorean and Neoplatonic tenets. The method is mechanical but true to his belief that a writer cannot rely entirely on his own mind but must have some external reference hallowed by time and practice. Achievements Nikos Pentzikis’s principal achievement was to have survived at all as a writer, to have persisted in his own idiosyncratic ways of seeing the world and so registering it in his poetry and prose. In his unswerving commitment to an utterly individual metaphysical vision only tangentially shaped by the currents of his time, Pentzikis shared affinities with Elias Canetti and Jorge Luis Borges. In the context of modern Greek letters, Pentzikis successfully integrated national and personal memory with the stuff of his everyday experience, producing prose narratives and poems which explore both the human condition and the nature of writing. In the words of the distinguished translator Kimon Friar, Pentzikis’s texts are a dizzying depository of words that are demotic, purist, formal, colloquial, archaic, modern, medieval, ecclesiastical, obsolete, scientific—all strung together in an eccentric syntax of his own devising. By flying beyond convention and good taste, by concentrating on things and not on rhythms or cadences or composition, he has evolved an inner style of his own, a “nonstyle” that is the man.

Biography Nikos Gabriel Pentzikis was born in Thessaloníki, Greece, on October 30, 1908. Pentzikis’s father operated a successful pharmaceutical business; his sister, Zoe Karelli (née Hrisoule Pentzikis), became a poet and translator, an active figure on the Greek literary scene. Pentzikis completed his elementary schooling at home and, beginning in 1919, attended a regular high school. Two years later, he was writing his first poems. Between 1926 and 1929, while studying pharmacology in Paris and Strasbourg, he read extensively in literature, particularly the Symbolists. Returning to his native city to take charge of the family business (his father had died in 1927), Pentzikis published some of his writings, but dissatisfied with the reaction they provoked, he burned them. Pentzikis’s first book, Andréas Dhimakoudhis, reflected his student days in France and his emotional, restless nature. His second publication in book form, O pethamenos ke i anastasi, marked his return to, and conscious acceptance of, the traditions of his native land, particularly the traditions of the Greek Orthodox Church. This reconciliation was also evident in his collection of poems Ikones (icons). The war years, although difficult for Pentzikis, were also formative for his subsequent literary production and rich 151

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in contacts with other Greek writers. Between 1945 and 1947, he issued—with the help of others—the literary journal Kohlias, an avant-garde publication that welcomed both original material and translations. By 1950, Pentzikis had achieved a measure of stability in his life. Married in 1948, he was professionally secure as the representative in northern Greece of Geigy, the Swiss pharmaceutical company. Both his prose work Pragmatognosia and the poems which he wrote and published in the late 1940’s and throughout the 1950’s exuded a new self-confidence, celebrating the concrete realities of his land, his native city, and the religious and folk traditions of his people. During this period, Pentzikis was also active as a painter. He began to concentrate on his own work and rarely translated or reviewed the work of others. An exception, in 1960, was his brief but incisive article on the poet George Seferis, a man and a writer very dissimilar to himself. In the 1960’s, Pentzikis continued to write and paint and began lecturing and giving interviews about his work. In 1970, he published no fewer than three books, to which he added three more between 1972 and 1974. After 1976, he concentrated on producing revised and expanded editions of his earlier works and also began painting steadily. Having retired with a pension from Geigy, he devoted all his time to his literary and artistic work, which continues to be controversial and is still rejected by many readers and critics for its apparent shapelessness. For Pentzikis, however, this was his askissi, his own way of practicing the solitary, virtually monastic life of the visionary artist. It must be noted that, over the years, Pentzikis managed to enlarge, albeit slightly, the circle of his readers and admirers. A small but growing readership has discovered the wisdom and the flashes of genius sometimes obscured by the forbidding surface of his work. Analysis Poetry is often a substitute or corrective for life. Nikos Pentzikis rounded out his first collection of poems, Ikones, during the difficult years of World War II. His family’s diminished status and his own disappointments had already induced him to find solace in Christianity, particularly in the Greek Orthodox faith, and not, like so many other men of his generation, in political engagement. If life seemed absurd, he would espouse the Christian myth, whose special kind of absurdity harked back to Tertullian’s early declaration of faith: “Credo quia absurdum” (“I believe because it is absurd”). Pentzikis’s poems, however, proved that being a Greek Orthodox writer did not necessarily mean the conventional repetition of religious formulas and articles of faith. He shunned such abstractions and aimed, instead, for the concrete. In long, flowing verses which one could compare to deep breaths, he named all objects that had set his senses in motion, even the most humble, in order to place in relief the universal sympathy that governs them. He copied or reaffirmed objective reality in a way that helped him dissolve or forget his ego. The “I” became “we” or remained “I” in relation to others, not in isolation from them. 152

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Ikones Ikones comprises responses to old letters, photos, and other souvenirs stored in a carton. (Much of Pentzikis’s work has taken its inspiration from the miscellaneous contents of such cartons.) The Greek title, Ikones, is ambiguous; it might mean “images,” “pictures,” or “icons” proper (that is, Byzantine religious paintings). In his introduction to the collection, Pentzikis stated that all but the last poem had been written while he was looking at a number of photos of sculptures from the Louvre. He then took great care to list all those items, filling nearly a page, but not before he expressed some thoughts that made the list more meaningful. He believed that he should get down to basics, that his reactions to the world should be unclouded by emotions and thoughts, which tend to compartmentalize and distort reality. The Ikones are not self-contained poems, based more or less on mood or offering a particular message; they are rather stages in a process, tentative attempts at developing an objective relationship with the world: By dying I myself become an object, a statue of life, a replica like the face which I now hold before me admiring it, as the artist of the Renaissance admired a vertebra of the human body. The truth of the human body’s life with all its possible variations excels over any idea.

Working with a pile of mementos in front of him, Pentzikis both challenged and surrendered to his memory. He was deliberate when he extracted from memory its secrets, but he also found in memory an escape from actuality—in the case of Ikones, the actuality of war and personal failure. The dual mechanism of memory is clear in “Dhidhahi” (instruction), the first poem of the volume. The impatient and heavily charged lines of this poem suggest the struggle waged by the observing mind with its memories. These, like roses pressed between the pages of an old book, preserve enough of their fragrance to interfere with the mind’s resolution to break out into a state of pure essence, an indivisible objective reality. The poetry of Ikones is much more angular than mere summaries or descriptions of it can show. In its convolutions, one discerns Pentzikis’s constant and insistent search for a rhythm. He looked for a pattern, a method of living that would honor both the complexity and the simplicity of life. This search is more explicit in the sixth poem (which, like all the poems in the volume except the first and the last, is untitled): I must not fail anything more of the components of being in the matrix that is being put together the beautiful in simple forms simplicity and complicated structure progressing all the time

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This is the vital flow—often undercut or reversed by its own rashness but persistent—of the subject to the object. As Pentzikis writes in the fourth poem, “the object has its own value/ if I love life I should not subdue it/ its not coming to see me does not matter.” The last poem in Ikones, “Rapsodhia skeseon” (rhapsody of relationships), comprises more than five hundred lines. In a brief note appended to the poem, Pentzikis informed his readers that its composition had been bracketed by two deaths, that of a cousin of his mother and that of an old lady who used to clean his drugstore. One death heralded the poem and another underscored it. The poem itself also contains visions of death, among which is a recollection of the funeral of Pentzikis’s own father. Dryly descriptive scenes alternate with meditative passages in which the experience of death is reevaluated in the light of religion. The middle poems Between 1949 and 1953, Pentzikis published in successive issues of the journal Morfes a series of poems which one might call his “middle poems,” because they fall between Ikones and the later series of poems, Anakomidhi (transferal of relics) and were given no general name. The “middle poems” are more lyric and topical than the poems of Ikones; they tell stories and evoke legends associated mostly with Greek Macedonia, describing various geographical areas and combining reality with myth in an effort to enlarge upon the central theme by means of concrete detail. The poem “Topoghrafia” (topography) is in free verse, but the lines are grouped in quatrains. As its title promises, the poem provides an exact topographical and historical description of a particular spot in Thessaloníki, but the description ends on a sentimental note which is the secret core of the poem. Here, Pentzikis confounds the reader’s expectations. He might have started with the image of the sitting girl, the poet’s beloved, and then located or described the surrounding landscape outward. Instead, he progresses from the borders to the center of the scene, through allusions to the life and martyrdom of Saint Demetrius, Thessaloníki’s patron saint. Thus, the image of the sitting girl at the end of the poem comes as a revelation. It is a lyric image, but the sentiments it evokes have been colored and deepened by the girl’s precise placement in a space hallowed by time. In the much longer poem “Symvan” (event), a group of soldiers on leave visit a country chapel. One of the soldiers narrates an old story of the miraculous rescue of Thessaloníki by Saint Demetrius from a hostile invasion from the north. The soldiers gain a vision of the city not as a group of buildings but as a living person. The past comes alive, and the present becomes meaningful. Pentzikis uses the same method in the poem “Messa ston paleo nao” (in the old church), in which he describes the interior of a church while musing on the faith which motivated the church’s builders. Not all these “middle poems,” however, structure and control the poet’s feelings around some historical or topographical reality. In the poem “Strophil” (“Turn,” or “Turning Point”), exclamation seems to be the dominant note: 154

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Pentzikis, Nikos I want to sing of you, flowers of the earth as I plunge my hand in the past of the race through heaps of fallen dead leaves to the stem that raises its head high. The head that will be reaped at some moment to the most heartfelt satisfaction of God reading it we are able to die serene in our intimacy with another life.

The message is similar to that of a number of the “middle poems”—indeed, of Pentzikis’s entire oeuvre: The “other” life, the truer life, can be gained via death. The manner of this particular poem, however, is unusually lyric, like a dance. It expresses no doubts; Pentzikis lets himself go on simple faith. Anakomidhi In the later series of poems, Anakomidhi, Pentzikis reverted to a looser and more abstract form. He no longer grouped lines in stanzas of four lines each but ran them consecutively. The poems collected in Anakomidhi are very much like pieces of prose, but they are also dense and allusive. They reminded Pentzikis’s readers of Ikones, with which they are linked by the introductory poem, “Horos kimitiriou” (space of cemetery). This poem was written in the late 1940’s, while the other thirteen poems in the collection—twelve of them numbered with Greek numerals and the thirteenth entitled “Sinanastrofi sinehis” (constant association)—were written in 1960 and 1961 in response to the transferal of the remains of Pentzikis’s mother. The spade which unearths the bones of the dead mixes deeply buried memories and feelings with the soil. The poems are like bones, so to speak, suddenly exposed to light together with the contents of the grave. Images, thoughts, impressions, and sentiments jostle against one another and at the same time struggle to cohere. All the poems in Anakomidhi are transpositions of things into poetry, avenues of traffic between the present and the past, between life and what is wrongly thought to be dead and gone. A similar rhythm can be felt throughout Pentzikis’s verse as he moves up into the realm of myth and down into the world of doubt and despair, the world of perishable things, which he rediscovers and embraces only in the light of myth. Thus, for Pentzikis, a human being is insignificant, a particle of dust or a “garbage can,” but also a vehicle of memory and a reflection of the Godhead. Other major works long fiction: Andréas Dhimakoudhis, 1935; O pethamenos ke i anastasi, pb. 1944 (wr. 1938). nonfiction: Pragmatognosia, 1950; Arhitektoniki tis skorpias zois, 1963; Mitera Thessaloniki, 1970 (Mother Salonika, 1998); Sinodhia, 1970; Omilimata, 1972; Simiosis ekato imeron, 1973; Arhion, 1974; Pros ekklesiasmo, 1986. 155

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Bibliography Friar, Kimon. Modern Greek Poetry. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973. Translations of Greek poetry in English with some commentary on the biographical and historical backgrounds of the poets. Thaniel, George. Homage to Byzantium: The Life and Work of Nikos Gabriel Pentzikis. St. Paul, Minn.: North Central, 1983. A critical study of Pentzikis’s work . Includes bibliographic references and an index. Voyiatzaki, Evi. The Body in the Text: James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and the Modern Greek Novel. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2002. While this text concentrates on the modern novel, it features a chapter on Pentzikis, which sheds light on his poetry. George Thaniel

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PINDAR Born: Cynoscephalae, near Thebes, Boeotia, Greece; c. 518 b.c.e. Died: Argos, Greece; c. 438 b.c.e. Also known as: Pindaros; Pindarus Principal poetry Epinikia, 498-446 b.c.e. (Odes, 1656) Other literary forms Pindar (PIHN-dur) is remembered only for his poetic achievement. Achievements Pindar’s victory odes are among the greatest achievements of ancient Greek poetry, but they are also probably the most consistently misunderstood. Composing in a genre (epinikion) and mode (choral lyric poetry) foreign even to later Greek audiences, Pindar stands alone as the chief Archaic Greek poet whose works survive in any bulk. The Archaic Age itself—that period from the time of Homer in the eighth century b.c.e. to the rise of classical literature in fifth century b.c.e. Athens—is relatively obscure. The events, manners, and traditions of the period were not those of later times, so that it is hard to extrapolate from literary activity at Athens when analyzing the work of Pindar. The additional difficulty of having little to compare with Pindar’s work in his own genre (only some poems by his contemporaries Bacchylides and Simonides) means that any assessment of his achievement is necessarily limited. What comparison one can make shows Pindar to have a distinctive style, complex and exciting. So highly compressed is the style, in fact, that the general opinion of Pindaric odes, from antiquity on, can be summed up in the remark of the English poet Abraham Cowley: “If a man should undertake to translate Pindar word for word, it would be thought that one madman had translated another.” However, Cowley is only one among a number of poets who have been fascinated by Pindar, in whom they have found a model for “inspired” verse (Pierre de Ronsard and Friedrich Hölderlin are among the great poets deeply influenced by Pindar). Even Horace, the astute transposer of old Greek lyric verse into Roman poetry, failed to get beyond the fixation on Pindaric style, which later led to Pindar’s image as that of a rather wild, raving, “natural” bard: Rushing down like a mountain stream Which rains have swollen over its known banks, Unmeasurable Pindar boils and flows, deep mouth. . . .

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seem odd at best and at worst, incomprehensible. In his own terms, however, Pindar might best be judged by determining whether he has achieved what he set out to do. In that case, he has been a successful composer of epinikia, because he has fulfilled the promise that lies behind this genre: He preserves the names and victories (often otherwise unknown) of fifth century aristocrats who desired the prestige of Pindar’s poetry to commemorate their participation in the Panhellenic games. Pindar, like the epic poet Homer before him, conferred immortality on heroic deeds, this being the ideology behind his poetry as expressed in Nemean Ode 7: if a man succeeds in an exploit, he casts a delightful theme upon the streams of the Muses for great deeds of strength, if they lack songs, are sunk in deep obscurity.

Biography Little is known about Pindar beyond what has been recorded by ancient scholars in elucidating the circumstances of composition for various poems. This produces a sort of lifelong itinerary around the Greek world rather than a clear biography of the poet. Clearly, his life was spent in aristocratic circles. He was born into a socially superior family having connections with the Aegid clan, a far-flung kinship group that included members of the Spartan ruling elite. Ancient tradition records that Pindar went to Athens for schooling in the art of choral poetry; the district of Boeotia was apparently backward in such matters (as Pindar implies, referring to the old insult “Boeotian sow,” that his poetry has cast aside). Pindar’s first recorded poem, Pythian Ode 10, was written when he was about twenty and performed in Thessaly for an aristocratic patron. Pindar’s later life was ruled by this pattern. He traveled throughout the Greek world at the invitation of local tyrants, self-made absolute rulers (not despots, as implied by the modern sense of the word), who were at that time in the process of replacing hereditary kings as the supreme authority in the Greek city-states. They needed the prestige that an internationally known poet such as Pindar could bring to their accomplishments—not only athletic, but military and political as well. Pindar was not the first poet to be patronized by tyrants: The sixth century poet Ibycus and, later, Simonides and Bacchylides also celebrated the deeds of these wealthy and powerful men. All, including Pindar, were certainly paid for their efforts, in money and lavish hospitality. Pindar would either write a choral ode for his patrons, then oversee its performance, or send a poem with instructions for the accompanying song and dance, while he himself remained in Thebes. Pindar seems, at times, to have accompanied the victor from the games to his hometown, where the ode would then be performed at festival occasions. It is even possible that a few odes were actually composed extempore at the games. These compositions survive, it appears, because the aristocratic patron families 158

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handed down manuscripts as treasured heirlooms. The Alexandrian scholars Zenodotus and Aristophanes helped to collect Pindar’s poetry in the third century b.c.e. Further, acquaintance with one aristocratic family often led to commissions from others. Thus, after celebrating the victory of Xenocrates at Delphi in 490 b.c.e., Pindar became known to the family and, in 476 b.c.e., was invited to compose epinikia for Xenocrates’ brother Theron and for Hieron, another tyrant, in Sicily. In such a fashion, Pindar’s patrons came to include aristocrats in Sparta, Rhodes, Corinth, Cyrene, and Athens. His international reputation is reflected in the geographical distribution of the epinikia: Only five of the surviving forty-five poems are addressed to victors from Pindar’s home state of Thebes; fifteen are for Sicilians and eleven for victors from the island of Aegina, for which Pindar had a special affection. The patron-poet bond, however, based as it was on traditional Panhellenic codes of behavior, led to conflicts for Pindar when the political situation during the years of the Persian invasions of 490 b.c.e. and 480 b.c.e. polarized the Greek city-states. Pindar tended to identify his patrons’ families with their homelands. In praising Athens, then, as he did in Nemean Ode 2, the poet risked offending the citizens of Aegina, with whom Athens was at war during the decade after Marathon in 490 b.c.e. Similarly, his continuing affirmations of support for the Theban oligarchy, even when it joined with the Persians against most of the other Greek states, posed problems of loyalty. Nevertheless Pindar, in most instances, was able to reconcile his conflicting affiliations by an appeal to the common Greek ideals and myths; references to both occur frequently in the epinikia. Once, however, shortly after the Persians were repulsed, the jealous rivalry between Thebes and Athens did affect Pindar, resulting in the levy of a heavy fine on the poet by the Thebans after he praised Athens in a dithyramb, calling it “defense of Greece, Athens renowned, divine citadel,” and recalling the Athenian naval victory over the Persians at Salamis in 480 b.c.e. Although Pindar fascinates historians because of the unusual perspectives he offers on the turbulent events of the fifth century b.c.e., to look to his poetry for reasoned historical judgments would be as much in vain as it would be to seek therein a coherent picture of his life. His poetry was not meant to be either biography or chronicle, but rather a celebration of a series of victorious moments, which, by their semisacred nature, move personal and political history into the background. Analysis Of the seventeen books representing Pindar’s vast production in a variety of poetic genres, only four books of one genre, the victory odes (epinikia), survived antiquity intact. These odes are named for the periodic Panhellenic festival games held at Olympia (the Olympian odes), Delphi (the Pythian odes), Nemea (Nemeans), and Corinth (Isthmians). The remaining books of Pindar survive as several hundred fragments, some of them 159

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only a line long. As was usual in Greek Archaic poetry, his compositions were most often meant for public performance, and the now lost books were arranged by third century b.c.e. editors according to the social occasions for which the poems were written: encomia (praise poems), threnoi (dirges), hymns, paians (hymns to Apollo), dithyrambs (to Dionysus), hyporchemata (dance songs), parthenia (maiden songs), and prosodia (processionals). While the modern reader might regret the loss of the huge mass of verse Pindar wrote, the fragments of these other genres make it clear that the Pindaric style known from the epinikia is representative of his works as a whole. Victory odes To understand the epinikia requires an appreciation of both their occasional nature and the nature of those occasions for which they were written. The most prestigious games—Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian—occurred at regular intervals and united the independent Greek city-states as few other traditions, with the exception of Homeric poetry, could. So important were these Panhellenic athletic and musical contests that a sacred truce prevailed whenever they were held. To their local communities, victors became heroes; although their immediate reward at the games consisted only of a wreath of laurel leaves, their later perquisites very often included free meals at public expense, statues, coins with their imprint, and inscriptions. In this context, poetry was yet another reward for victory. In many ways, Pindar’s odes mimic the rituals they celebrate. For example, just as a sacred herald would proclaim the victor, the event won, and the city and father of the winner in footraces, wrestling, boxing, pancratium, pentathlon, or chariot, horse, or mule races , so Pindar was obliged to include these details in the program of his poem for the victor. The epinikia are thus amplified announcements of the event. Pindar, on the other hand, also associates himself with the athletic victor and the poem with a feat of skill (in Pindar, sophia, “skill,” is used with respect to both poetry and other forms of wisdom, including the knowledge which trainers impart to athletes): “Let someone dig me a wide jumping pit . . . there’s a spring in my knees,” exclaims the poet as he embarks on one song of praise. This extended metaphor implies that the victory provides an opportunity for Pindar to compete in performance with the victor, as he attempts to produce a poem as perfect as the feat that it commemorates. Odes as performance art Performance was central to the epinikia, so that the text of each poem in fact represents only a third of Pindar’s work. That each poem was sung and danced by a trained chorus explains much about the form of the compositions: usually a repeated series of strophe, antistrophe, and epode, representing dance instructions (literally, “turn,” “counterturn,” and “added song”—all performed while standing in place). Gestures probably highlighted the often tersely narrated myths which Pindar employs. Perhaps 160

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most important, the poet could use the chorus, as in Greek tragedy, to reflect upon the greater implications of the hero’s victory for the city-state, which the chorus personifies. Since Archaic Greek ethical thought constantly reminds one that wealth, good fortune, and all types of victory are threatened by jealous gods (as one author writes, “The tallest trees are struck by lightning”), the danger of the victor’s newly acquired status must be kept before his eyes by his lesser fellow citizens, the chorus: Again, as in Greek tragedy, the chorus warns. Finally, the presence of the chorus means that the “I” which appears commonly in the epinikia should not be taken as equivalent to the poetic self. It is more often a sort of shorthand for the opinion of the chorus; it can also simply be a device for making transitions within the poem, from praise to narrative myth to gnomic utterances. Ritual function of the odes Thus, the ode both incorporates the heroic athlete into the community (by warning of excess in good fortune) and distances him from it (by praise). In Pindar’s hands, the poetry of victory also integrates the past with the present, as the poet draws on local mythological examples in comparing the celebrated athlete with the city-state’s earlier heroic figures. Again, both praise and warning are served by the myth: The victor is like Achilles or Heracles or Pelops, Pindar says; he should avoid being like Ixion or the ungrateful Tantalus. In this, Pindar’s use of myths, though idiosyncratic and innovative in details that he considers sacrilegious, fairly represents the outlook of much Archaic Greek poetry from Homer on; it is conventional and traditional. As Frank Nisetich explains in Pindar’s Victory Songs (1980), “to see the general behind the particular, to grasp one thing by contrast with its opposite, to trace human vicissitudes to the will of the gods and explain, appreciate, or find the right response to a present situation through reference to myth or proverb”—these purposes represent the dominant forms of style in Archaic poetry; they are certainly Pindar’s. Pythian Ode 10 In his earliest surviving epinikion, Pindar constructs the poem in the manner in which he will become adept: Praise of a victor precedes and follows a mythical narrative, which is in some way related to his topic. In Pythian Ode 10 (498 b.c.e.), the victor Hippokleas has won a race for boys: Both his name and the event are mentioned in the first series of strophe-antistrophe epode. The poem begins, however, with a bit of complex mythological genealogy, in the fashion Pindar sometimes follows: “Lacedaemon is happy, Thessaly is blest; both have their kings descended from one father, Heracles. . . .” This reference to the kinship bonds of Spartan and Thessalian royal houses ends suddenly, with a transition question in the first person, another Pindaric device: “Why am I declaiming in this way?” Pindar answers that he was commissioned to write; yet he includes Pytho (that is, Delphi, home of Apollo’s sacred shrine and site of the Pythian 161

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games) as his inspiration. The appearance of spontaneity is important to Pindar, and he often downplays, as here, the more mercantile aspects of his craft in favor of the almost mystical lure of the games and their ideals and the effect victory has on him, compelling his praises. In the first counterturn of this ode, Pindar typically uses a gnomic statement to direct attention to a new topic—in this case, from the victor to the victor’s father. The statement here acknowledges the role of the gods in bringing human deeds to fulfillment; with them, the victor’s father “has found all the happiness our mortal race can come to.” A contrast immediately follows: the happy race which mortals cannot reach, the mythical Hyperboreans, who live (as their name denotes) beyond the North Wind, feasting and singing continually, freed from the fear of death. Pindar works his way into describing them by reference to the Gorgon slayer, Perseus, who is said to have dined with this race. Is this relevant? Contemporary notions of a poem’s unity would probably reject the detail; here, the aesthetics of Archaic Greek poetry differ. In social context, Perseus’s myth is exactly right for the occasion, since he was the great-grandfather of Heracles, the mythical progenitor of the very family Pindar is praising (and of the rulers of Sparta, mentioned earlier). Poetically, Perseus fills the role of the praiseworthy athlete, corresponding to his descendant in real life. As the victor has returned from Delphi northward to his Thessalian home, so Perseus, in the myth, once moved north to the celebrations of the immortal race; Pindar makes the comparison implicit and complimentary. The poem’s conclusion contains more praise, this time of Hippokleas’s beauty; a warning (“there is no telling what will be a year from now”); and an affirmation of the social bond between patron and poet, expressed in athletic imagery (the patron Thorax has “yoked the chariot of the Muses”). Already in Pythian Ode 10, the imagery is Pindaric by being animated—that is, a static image (counterturn two: one cannot reach the Hyperboreans on a ship) becomes part of the “piloting” of the poem by Pindar: “Stay the oar now,” says the poet as he steers clear of a digression in the third epode. The poem, after being a ship, immediately becomes a bee, digressively flitting; his song is honey, the poet says; then the poem is a chariot; finally, the ship image returns at the end of the poem, when Pindar praises Thorax’s brothers: “In their hands belongs the piloting of cities. . . .” Olympian Ode 1 A highly developed, rapidly shifting scheme of imagery is characteristic of Pindar. Olympian Ode 1 (476 b.c.e.), one of his finest and most difficult compositions, shows the technique in abundance, illustrating how Pindar can redouble the messages of gnomic utterance and myth by the way in which he chooses and structures images. Consider, for example, the constellation of images which opens the poem in symphonic fashion:

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Pindar Water is preeminent and gold, like a fire burning in the night, outshines all possessions that magnify men’s pride. But if, my soul, you yearn to celebrate great games, look no further for another star shining through the deserted ether brighter than the sun, or for a contest mightier than Olympia. . . .

Water and fire will recur in the myth that Pindar proceeds to tell (how Pelops was allegedly cut and boiled in a pot); gold and the sun echo each other within this passage, as primary elements, one by day, one by night. Beyond this, however, the arrangement of images is itself a contest: Pindar names the “victor” substances in each sphere, and the contest of Olympia wins. There are few more exciting collocations of imagery that enacts its subject. Mention of the Olympian victor (Hieron), his horse, and his kingly status brings Pindar shortly to tell of “Pelops’s land”—Olympia itself—and thus of the myth of Pelops. Here one notes a characteristically Pindaric way of retelling the old story: He claims that the received version is wrong, that the gods could never have chopped up the boy and consumed him; this, says Pindar, is a myth concocted by jealous neighbors upon the boy’s disappearance to become cup-bearer of Zeus, a great favor to the boy’s family. Pindar typically does not tell the story in straightforward manner, even when not revising the myth; here he also backtracks to tell of the misfortunes of Tantalus, Pelops’s father, which caused Pelops to be cast out of Olympus, the home of Zeus, back into the world of men. Then Pindar leaps ahead to Pelops’s marriage to Hippodameia; as in Pythian Ode 10, the young hero of myth, striving against obscurity, becomes an ideal image of the young athlete-king for whom the poem is performed. As Pelops won a chariot race to win his bride, so Hieron wins fame by victory in a horse race. Finally, Pindar ends Olympian Ode 1 with another redoubling of imagery within the poem: Pelops had prayed to Poseidon to win the strength for a victory; thus, in conclusion, Pindar prays for a double boon (again, victor and poet are united): that Hieron win another victory with the gods’ favor, and that he himself “consort with victors, conspicuous for my skill among Greeks everywhere.” This is indicative of growing confidence in his art. Pythian Ode 8 Pindar’s last datable poem, Pythian Ode 8 (446 b.c.e.), shows the effects of controlled compression of myth, in a format reminiscent of the ending of Olympian Ode 1; this time, the entire poem is a prayer. It opens with an address to Hesychia (Peace); at turn four, Pindar prays to Apollo to help in the singing of the song; next, the gods in general are invoked to “look with unjealous eyes” upon the fortunes of the victor’s father (again, the warning motif occurs); finally, the poem ends with invocations of Aegina, 163

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the nymph who gave her name to the island home of the victor, and to Zeus and several heroes of the city-state, that they guide the island’s fate. Evident here is a significant aspect of Pindar’s mature art. The myth itself is expressed in direct quotation of a mythical figure: Amphiarus, a prophet and soldier, is given oracular words of wise counsel, ostensibly to the second wave of invaders against Thebes (his son among them), but clearly intended to remind the athletic victor of aristocratic ideals. The prophet is quoted as saying that “the spirit of the fathers lives in their sons”; Pindar himself has often said the same thing, but here he makes it more dramatic by placing the sentiment in a hero’s mouth. Pythian Ode 8 represents the most concise statement of Pindar’s ideas on his own art, while at the same time showing him distancing himself from the moralizing maxims inherent in the genre. Thus, he claims, after narrating the Amphiarus myth, to have actually met the hero’s son, Alcman, and to have received a true prophecy from him. Pindar says elsewhere, in a poetic fragment, that he is “prophet of the Muses”; here he dramatizes that status. Because he can foretell the future, he can make the victor fly ahead into that time on the “wings of devising.” In the end, he foresees that his poetic/athletic ideal—for it is one notion—will survive. The expression of his confidence can serve as the capstone to Pindar’s lifework: “What is someone? What is no one? Man: A shadow’s dream. But when god-given glory comes, a bright light shines upon us and our life is sweet. . . .” Bibliography Boeke, Hanna. The Value of Victory in Pindar’s Odes: Gnomai, Cosmology, and the Role of the Poet. Boston: Brill, 2007. Examines gnomai and cosmology in the odes of Pindar. Bowra, C. M. Pindar. 1964. Reprint. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. This classic work on Pindar remains the standard introduction to the poet and his works. Currie, Bruno. Pindar and the Cult of Heroes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Combines a study of Greek culture and religion, in particular the hero cults, with a literary study of Pindar’s odes. Hamilton, John T. Soliciting Darkness: Pindar, Obscurity, and the Classical Tradition. Cambridge, Mass.: Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University, 2003. An examination of Pindar’s works as they fit into the larger tradition of Greek poetry. Hornblower, Simon. Thucydides and Pindar: Historical Narrative and the World of Epinikian Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Hornblower argues that there is a relationship between the writings of Thucydides and Pindar, finding stylistic similarities and shared values. Hornblower, Simon, and Catherine Morgan, eds. Pindar’s Poetry, Patrons, and Festivals: From Archaic Greece to the Roman Empire. New York: Oxford University 164

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Press, 2007. This collection of essays examines the festivals, the games, and the patronage system, as well as Pindar’s odes. Itsumi, Kiichiro. Pindaric Metre: “The Other Half.” New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. A close examination of the meters used by Pindar in the original Greek. Mackie, Hilary. Graceful Errors: Pindar and the Performance of Praise. Ann Arbor: University of Mich igan Press, 2003. Mackie looks at Pindar’s odes as public performances and argues that Pindar had to take into account the various groups in his audience as well as balance an athlete’s accomplishments against those of a mythical figure. Rutherford, Ian. Pindar’s Paeans: A Reading of the Fragments with a Survey of the Genre. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. The paean, or sacred hymn to Apollo, had a central place in the song-dance culture of classical Greece. The most celebrated examples of the genre in antiquity were Pindar’s paeans. Rutherford offers a comprehensive reevaluation of the poems. Richard Peter Martin

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YANNIS RITSOS Born: Monemvasia, Greece; May 14, 1909 Died: Athens, Greece; November 11, 1990 Principal poetry Trakter, 1934 Pyramides, 1935 Epitaphios, 1936 To tragoudi tes adelphes mou, 1937 Dokimasia, 1943 Agrypnia, 1954 Romiosyne, 1954 (Romiossini: The Story of the Greeks, 1969) E sonata tou selenophotos, 1956 (The Moonlight Sonata, 1975) Poiemata A’, 1961 Poiemata B’, 1961 To nekro spiti, 1962 (The Dead House, 1974) Martyries, A’ seira, 1963 Poiemata G’, 1964 Philoktetes, 1965 (English translation, 1975) Martyries, B’ seira, 1966 Orestes, 1966 Gestures, and Other Poems, 1971 Cheironomies, 1972 E Elene, 1972 Petres, epanalepseis, kigklidoma, 1972 Tetarte diastase, 1972 (The Fourth Dimension, 1993) Chartina, 1974 Selected Poems, 1974 E Kyra ton Ampelion, 1975 (The Lady of the Vineyards, 1978) Poiemata D’, 1975 Ta epikairika, 1975 Chronicle of Exile, 1977 The Fourth Dimension: Selected Poems of Yannis Ritsos, 1977 Gignesthai, 1977 To Makrino, 1977 Monemvasiotisses, 1978 (The Women of Monemvasia, 1987) Phaidra, 1978 Ritsos in Parentheses, 1979 166

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Scripture of the Blind, 1979 Diaphaneia, 1980 Monochorda, 1980 (Monochords, 2007) Oneiro kalokairinou mesemeriou, 1980 Subterranean Horses, 1980 Erotika, 1981 (Erotica, 1982) Monovasia, 1982 (English translation, 1987) Selected Poems, 1983 Exile and Return: Selected Poems, 1967-1974, 1985 Antapokriseis, 1987 Yannis Ritsos: Selected Poems, 1938-1988, 1989 Yannis Ritsos: Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses, 1991 Arga, poly arga mesa ste nychta, 1992 (Late into the Night: The Last Poems of Yannis Ritsos, 1995) Yannis Ritsos: A Voice of Resilience and Hope in a World of Turmoil and Suffering, Selected Poems, 1938-1989, 2001 Other literary forms Although known almost exclusively as a poet, Yannis Ritsos (REETS-ohs) published prolifically as a journalist and translator, and less prolifically as a critic and dramatist. His collected criticism, available in Meletemata (1974; studies), includes, in addition to essays on Vladimir Mayakovsky, Nazim Hikmet, Ilya Ehrenburg, and Paul Éluard, two invaluable commentaries on Ritsos’s own work. Among his translations are Aleksandr Blok’s Dvenadtsat (1918; The Twelve, 1920), anthologies of Romanian, Czech, and Slovak poetry, and selected poems by Mayakovsky, Hikmet, and Ehrenburg. Achievements Ignored or banned for decades by the establishment, Yannis Ritsos gradually became recognized, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize three times, although, unlike his compatriots George Seferis and Odysseus Elytis, he never received that honor. He received many others, however, including the International Dimitrov Prize (Bulgaria, 1974), an honorary doctorate from the University of Thessaloníki (1975), the Alfred de Vigny Poetry Prize (France, 1975), two of Italy’s International Prizes for Poetry (1976), the Lenin Peace Prize (1977), Italy’s Mondello Prize (1978), and honorary doctorates from Greece’s Salonica University (1975) and the University of Birmingham, England (1978). In addition to his prolific output (nearly one hundred volumes of poetry), Ritsos continues to enjoy a growing reputation as more of his work is translated into English; were he not a poet of modern Greek, a minority language, his work would be as important a part of the comparative literature curriculum in Anglo-American colleges as is 167

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that of his more thoroughly translated and celebrated compatriots, such as Seferis, Elytis, Constantine Cavafy, and Nikos Kazantzakis. Perhaps more important than such recognition is the contribution Ritsos made to his homeland: More thoroughly than any other Greek writer, Ritsos amalgamated the two ideologies that divided his country, the communist and the bourgeois. Though he espoused Marxist Leninism early in his career and remained faithful to the party to the end, he nevertheless borrowed from Western literary movements, especially Surrealism, and struggled frankly with the Western attractions of individualism and subjectivism. All in all, because he presents a communist orientation expressed through techniques that have evolved in ways typical of noncommunist authors, he speaks for and to the entire Greek nation. Ritsos proved himself a virtuoso in technique. His range was enormous: from the tiniest lyric to huge narrative compositions, from impenetrable surrealistic puzzles to occasional verse promulgating blunt political messages, from poetry of almost embarrassing sensuality to rarefied philosophical meditations. He is also greatly esteemed because of his personal integrity, demonstrated over years of persecution, exile, and imprisonment. As he said in 1970 when interrogated by the ruling junta: “A poet is the first citizen of his country and for this very reason it is the duty of the poet to be concerned about the politics of his country.” Biography Yannis Ritsos was born into a wealthy landowning family of Monemvasia, but he did not have a happy childhood. His father’s fortunes declined because of the land reforms under Eleftherios Venizelos in the early 1900’s, and their wealth was obliterated by the Asia Minor campaigns between 1919 and 1922, when labor was unavailable for the harvests. In addition, Ritsos’s father gambled compulsively, accelerating the family’s decline. As if this were not enough, Ritsos’s older brother and his mother died of tuberculosis when Ritsos was only twelve—a prelude to the hardships and suffering that would mark his adult life. Upon his graduation from high school in the town of Gythion, Ritsos moved to Athens; the year was 1925, a time when that city was desperately trying to assimilate a million and a half refugees from Asia Minor. He managed to find work as a typist and then as a copyist of legal documents, but in 1926, he returned to Monemvasia after coughing blood. There he devoted himself to painting, music, and poetry, completing a group of poems that he called “Sto paleo mas spiti” (in our old house). He returned to Athens in 1927, but a new crisis in his health confined him to a tuberculosis sanatorium for three years, during which, while continuing to write poems, he also began to study Marxism. By 1930, he had committed himself to the communist cause. Transferred to a sanatorium in Crete, he found conditions there so abominable that he exposed the facility’s managers in a series of newspaper articles; this led to the removal of all the patients, in168

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cluding Ritsos, to a better facility, where his disease came under temporary control. Back in Athens, Ritsos directed the artistic activities of the Workers’ Club, appearing in in-house theatricals and also on the stage of the Labor Union Theater. Meanwhile, his father was confined to an insane asylum. While eking out a living as actor, dancer, copy editor, and journalist, Ritsos published his first two collections, Trakter (tractor) and Pyramides (pyramids). His career took a leap forward when, in May of 1936, he composed his Epitaphios immediately after the slaughter of twelve tobacco workers by Thessaloníki police during a strike. Issued in ten thousand copies, this became the first of Ritsos’s poems to be banned. The dictatorship of Yannis Metaxas, when it began in August, publicly burned the 250 unsold copies at the Temple of Olympian Zeus. In this same year, Ritsos composed To tragoudi tes adelphes mou (the song of my sister), after his sister Loula was committed to the same asylum that housed their father. This private dirge, balancing the public one for the slain strikers, so impressed Kostis Palamas, Greece’s most influential poet at the time, that he hailed the young poet as his own successor. Ritsos suffered a brief recurrence of his tuberculosis, requiring another period in a sanatorium, after which he worked again as an actor, all the while publishing new collections of verse. During the period of the Albanian Campaign, the German invasion, and the Axis Occupation of Greece (1940-1944), Ritsos—now confined to bed almost continuously— wrote without respite but was unable to publish freely. Among the works produced was a long novel burned during the second round of the Civil War (December, 1944) and another prose composition, never published, titled “Ariostos o prosechtikos aphegeitai stigmes tou biou tou kai tou ypnou tou” (careful Ariostos narrates moments from his life and his sleep). After the second round of the Civil War, Ritsos fled to northern Greece with the defeated communist forces . While in Kozani, he wrote plays for the People’s Theater of Macedonia. The Varkiza Accord (February 12, 1945) enabled him to return to Athens, where he regularly contributed poems, prose pieces, translations, and dance criticism to the periodical Elefthera grammata, as well as collaborating with the artistic branch of the communist youth movement. It was at this time that he began to write Romiossini and The Lady of the Vineyards, his twin tributes to the Greek Resistance. In 1948, Ritsos was arrested because of his political activities and sent to various concentration camps on Greek islands. Under the worst of conditions, he nevertheless wrote about his privations, burying manuscripts and notes in bottles to hide them from the guards. Naturally, his work was banned. An international protest by figures such as Pablo Picasso, Louis Aragon, and Pablo Neruda led to his release in August, 1952. Free again in Athens, he joined the newly founded party, the EDA (United Democratic Left), wrote for the left-wing newspaper Avgi, married Falitsa Georgiadis in 1954, and became the father of a daughter in 1955. The following year, he visited the Soviet Union, traveling outside Greece for the first time. Epitaphios was reissued in a twentieth169

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anniversary edition, and The Moonlight Sonata brought him his first public recognition since Palamas’s early enthusiasm, in the form of the State Prize for Poetry. This, in turn, led to international acclaim when Aragon published The Moonlight Sonata in Les Lettres françaises, accompanied by a flattering notice. In Greece, the publishing firm Kedros began to bring out all the work that could not be published earlier and planned for a multivolume collection of Ritsos’s poems. In 1960, the popular composer Mikis Theodorakis set eight sections of Epitaphios to music, making Ritsos a household name in Greece. In 1962, Ritsos traveled again, this time to Romania, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, as a result of which he became acquainted with the Turkish poet Hikmet and his anthologies of Balkan poets. Despite a relapse of his tuberculosis, Ritsos composed prolifically during this period. In May, 1963, he journeyed to Thessaloníki to participate in the vigil for the parliamentary deputy Gregory Lambrakis, who had been mortally wounded by right-wing thugs. The following year, Ritsos himself stood for parliament as an EDA candidate. In 1966, he traveled to Cuba. Theodorakis set Romiossini to music, again with immense popular success. On April 21, 1967, the day of the Colonels’ Coup, Ritsos was arrested and again sent into exile on various islands, his works once more under ban. Protests poured in from around the world, leading to his transfer to house arrest in his wife’s home in Samos. A group of seventy-five members of the French Academy and other writers, including several Nobel laureates, nominated him for the Nobel Prize. Translations of his poetry multiplied, especially in France. Offered a passport by the junta to attend a poetry festival in England in 1970—on the condition that he refrain from all criticism of the regime—Ritsos refused, but later in the same year, owing to his health, he was allowed to return to Athens to undergo an operation and to remain there. In 1971, he joined others in publishing in Ta nea keimena in defiance of the regime. After the relaxation of censorship in 1972, Ritsos’s works written in exile came out in a flood of publication that increased after the junta’s fall in 1974. Thereafter, Ritsos continued to write poetry, but largely of a different sort; in the absence of a police state and finally out of prison, his concerns turned to more lyric and personal works. He produced some of his best work in this mode—attesting to the difficulty of pigeonholing him as a political poet. He died in Athens, Greece, on November 11, 1990, fatefully on Armistice Day as well as the eve of the Soviet Union’s dissolution. Despite his communist politics, Greece’s president Constantine Mitsotakis announced that this nationally mourned poet would be buried with full state honors. Analysis Greece produced at least three world-class poets in the mid-twentieth century: Seferis, Elytis, and Yannis Ritsos. The first two received the Nobel Prize and are bour170

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geois; Ritsos received the Lenin Prize and was a communist. However, it would be entirely wrong to call him Greece’s leading leftist poet or even a political poet. His range is so immense, his career so diverse, the traditions from which he draws so eclectic that these or any other labels distort his contribution. Though the leftist element is clearly present in Ritsos’s work, he shares with bourgeois poets an interest in nature, in personal anguish, even in Christianity, and he participates as fully as they do in pan-European movements such as Surrealism and folklorism. In sum, Ritsos speaks not only to one camp but also to all humanity. Epitaphios It is clear, however, that Ritsos found his first voice only because he had aligned himself with the political Left. It was communism that transformed him, in the decade 1926-1936, from an imitator of others in content and style to a unique singer of revolution. Epitaphios provided the breakthrough. A dirge gasped out by a simple mother over the body of her son, slain by police in a labor dispute, this poem modulates from the dirge itself to the mother’s thirst for revenge and finally to her solidarity with the oppressed working class. Every aspect of the poem—not merely its content—is intended by the author to make it accessible to the common people and not just about them. Thus, it exploits diverse elements from their cultural storehouse, primarily their Greek Orthodox liturgy and their folk songs, melding a call to revolution with the Christian hope for Resurrection, and voicing all this through the tone, metrics, and imagery of the demotic ballads that were produced by anonymous folk poets throughout the centuries of Turkish rule. Ritsos did not do this self-consciously to erect a bulwark of tradition that would fortify national identity, but almost naïvely; the liturgy and the demotic ballads were friends with which he had grown up as a child. What he sought to avoid, and conversely to accomplish, is best expressed by his estimation of Hikmet in Meletemata: “His poetry is not just . . . ‘folkloristic’ (that is, extremely . . . ‘aesthetic’ on a so-called popular plane—hence nonpopular) . . . but essentially popular because of participation . . . in popular forces, which it expresses not in their static, standardized forms . . . but . . . in their dynamic motion.” To tragoudi tes adelphes mou It is characteristic of Ritsos’s own dynamic motion that the mode of Epitaphios was never to be repeated. The poet broadened his range immediately—owing to the external circumstances of Metaxas’s censorship, which confined Ritsos to nonpolitical subjects. However, even when he returned to political poetry after the dictator’s death early in 1941, Ritsos did so in a different way, if only because he had liberated his technique in the meantime from the constraints of rhyme and strict stanzaic form. To tragoudi tes adelphes mou is the chief fruit of the Metaxas period. The first of many extended elegies about family members or others, chiefly women, overcome by misfortune, it matches 171

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Epitaphios in that it shows how pain can lead to illumination, here the lamenting poet’s conviction that poetry itself—the very act of singing of his sister’s insanity—will save both him and her: The poem has subdued me. The poem has granted me the victory. . . . I who could not save you from life will save you from death.

Poetry thus joins revolution as a wonder-working power for Ritsos, who in his espousal of an “aesthetic solution” joined hands with his bourgeois colleagues throughout Europe. “Engraving” In the many short poems written during this same period, Ritsos learned to escape the stridency still present in both Epitaphios and To tragoudi tes adelphes mou; he learned to distance himself from his material, to be laconic, to have poems “be,” not merely “say.” This he achieved chiefly through a painterly technique whereby motion, time, and sound were transfixed into immobility, space, and sight. Consider these lines: Lone chimes speak silence, memories in groups beneath the trees, cows sad in the dusk. Behind the young shepherds a cloud was bleating at the sunset.

In this Keatsian, cold pastoral, sound is frozen into a composition, time is spatialized. It is no wonder that the poem is titled “Engraving.” “The Burial of Orgaz” Similar techniques are more difficult to apply to longer works, which cannot help but evolve in time. One of Ritsos’s most successful works is an extended political poem written in September and October, 1942. Titled “The Burial of Orgaz,” it employs El Greco’s celebrated painting Burial of the Conde de Orgaz (1586-1588) as a static, twotiered composition, holding in place the extraordinarily varied figures of the poet’s political vision: on the earthly level, mutilated veterans of Albania, resisters executed by the Germans, innocent Athenians dying from famine; on the heavenly, in place of El Greco’s John the Baptist kneeling at Christ’s feet, robust workers building a new road— a Marxist paradise. Because of the painterly technique, the emotions are frozen into beauty; life is transformed into art. Later in his career—as in Philoktetes, for example— Ritsos was to achieve the same control over the mad flow of life’s images by superimposing them on a myth rather than on a painting. 172

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“The Burial of Orgaz” treats war tragically. It is ironic that Ritsos could treat it exultantly only after his side had met defeat in the second round of the Civil War and had then begun to suffer systematic persecution. Mortified at the discrediting of the Resistance by the Greek Right, he determined to apotheosize the heroes (communist or not) who had opposed the Axis throughout the Occupation period and to insist on their patriotism. In Romiossini, written between 1945 and 1947 but obviously not publishable until much later, he therefore amalgamated his twentieth century heroes with the historical freedom fighters in the Greek War of Independence and the legendary stalwarts who had harassed the Turks in preceding centuries. Ending as it does with the hope of a peaceful, loving tomorrow, the resulting ode combines visionary transcendentalism, realism, and epic exaggeration into a blend that energetically celebrates—along with The Lady of the Vineyards, written at the same time—Greece’s most difficult years. In the internment camps The exultant tone disappeared from Ritsos’s poetry during the four years (19481952) that he spent once more in internment camps. His aim was no longer either epic or transcendental; it was merely to encourage his fellow prisoners with simple verses that they could understand. There is an entire collection of these poems written in 1949 while he was on the infamous island of Makronesos, the “Makronesiotika,” available in Ta epikairika. Many more were composed on Agios Efstratios (Ai-Strati), the most celebrated being the “Letter to Joliot-Curie” of November, 1950, which was smuggled out of Greece at the time. It begins: Dear Joliot, I’m writing you from AiStrati. We’re about three thousand here, simple people . . . with an onion, five olives and a stale crust of light in our sacks . . . people who have no other crime to their account except that we, like you, love freedom and peace.

To his credit, Ritsos later realized that the comrades did have other crimes to their account, but the circumstances of imprisonment made such self-criticism inappropriate for the moment. What is remarkable, as Pandeles Prevelakes remarks, is that Ritsos “not only maintained his intellectual identity, but also prodded his sensibility to adjust to the conditions of exile.” More important is the tender poem titled “Peace,” written soon after Ritsos’s release. Here, the title word is no longer a political slogan; it expresses the poet’s genuine sense of tranquillity after four years of terror: 173

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Critical Survey of Poetry Peace is the evening meal’s aroma, when a car stopping outside in the street isn’t fear, when a knock on the door means a friend. . . .

The peaceful decade The years 1956 to 1966 were Ritsos’s most remarkable decade of artistic productivity and growth. The great outpouring of this period surely derived in part from unaccustomed happiness—this was the first outwardly peaceful decade of his life—but also, paradoxically, from a new, disagreeable condition to which his sensibility (along with that of all communists) had to adjust. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev denounced dictator Joseph Stalin in 1956, whereupon the Greek Communist Party immediately denounced its Stalinist leader, Nikos Zachariades. Later in the same year, the Soviet Union—presumably a lover of freedom and peace—invaded Hungary. Ritsos, who had sung hymns to both Stalin and Zachariades, was forced to step back from his previous commitments and certainties, to view them with doubt or irony. “The first cries of admiration,” he wrote in his introduction to his criticism on Mayakovsky, “have given way to a more silent self-communing. . . . We have learned how difficult it is not to abuse the power entrusted to us in the name of the supreme ideal, liberty. . . .” This new understanding, he continued, has led modern poets to a self-examination which is at the same time self-effacing and hesitant. Elsewhere, he spoke of his growing consciousness of all that is “vague, complicated, incomprehensible, inexplicable and directionless in life.” The Moonlight Sonata The first fruit of this new awareness of the complexity of life was The Moonlight Sonata, a nonpolitical poem constituting for Ritsos a breakthrough fully as significant as the one achieved precisely twenty years earlier by the quintessentially political Epitaphios. The 1956 poem, though once again a kind of elegy for a suffering woman, avoids all stridency and authorial assertion by hiding its tragic elements behind a mask of ironic impassivity. At the same time, however, it allows the woman’s anguished emotions to stir the reader’s emotions. Ritsos accomplishes this by making the major voice not his own but the woman’s and then by framing her dramatic monologue inside yet another nonauthorial voice, a narrator’s, which questions and neutralizes the emotions of the first voice. As a result, the reader is never quite sure how to feel about the poem or how to interpret it; instead, both emotionally and mentally, the reader is ushered into all that is “vague, complicated, incomprehensible. . . .” Philoktetes Philoktetes carries this process still further. It retains the technique of dramatic monologue inside a narrative frame but adds to it an all-encompassing myth that fulfills the same kind of “painterly” purpose served earlier by El Greco’s Burial of the Conde de 174

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Orgaz. At the same time, the myth connects Ritsos’s version of the Philoctetes story and hence the Greek Civil War (which is clearly suggested) not only with Homer’s Achaeans and Trojans but also with the Peloponnesian War, clearly suggested in Sophocles’ version. If one notes as well that the poem employs the surrealistic and expressionistic techniques that Ritsos had been perfecting in short poems dating from the same period (collected as Martyries, A’ seira; testimonies), it becomes clear that a work of such complexity is deliberately meant to make the reader feel uncomfortably suspended above nothing. That, in turn, is a perfect technical equivalent for the thrust of the poem, which dismisses every justification for Philoctetes’ collaboration in the Trojan War yet affirms his need to stand by his comrades even though he knows their perfidy. The poem thus examines Ritsos’s own dilemma as a Stalinist betrayed by Stalin, determined to bring his understanding and indulgence to the cause instead of merely defecting . It is a self-examination which is at the same time self-effacing and hesitant. Junta years: 1967-1974 The poet’s new stance was soon put to the test by imprisonment under the Colonels. Despite this provocation, Ritsos did not revert to the optimistic assurance displayed during earlier privations; the new poems of exile are exasperated, sardonic, even sometimes despairing. Bitten (like Philoctetes) by the snake of wisdom, he could never return to the propagandistic verse produced on Agios Efstratios. On the contrary, he felt the need to reaffirm the predominance of mystery. “The Disjunctive Conjunction ‘Or,’” written in exile on June 18, 1969, says this loud and clear: “O that ‘or,’” cries the poet, that “equivocal smile of an incommunicable . . . wisdom/ which . . ./ [knows] full well that precision/ . . . does not exist (which is why the pompous style of certainty is so unforgivable . . .)./ Disjunctive ‘or’ . . ./ with you we manage the troubles of life and dream,/ the numerous shades and interpretations. . . .” Later poems With the demise of the Colonels’ dictatorship in the mid-1970’s, Ritsos’s poetry understandably began to retreat from the subjects so compelling during his days in prisons and a police state. Still, he continued to grapple with mystery, asking basic questions but realizing that answers do not always follow: So many dead without death so many living corpses. You sit in a chair counting your buttons. Where do you belong? What are you? What are you doing?

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The sardonic element is still present, but so is a certain spirit of indulgence or clemency—precisely what Philoctetes brought to Troy. Furthermore, a parodistic flavor entered many of Ritsos’s poems, a kind of macabre humor that neutralizes the worst that life can offer. Ritsos thus stood above all that his compatriots had done to him, playing with his experience, turning it round beneath his philosophic gaze—a gaze annealed by hardship into resilience. He also began to compose domestic, amatory, or occasional lyrics; some of best love poems appear in 1981’s Erotica, for example. The epic, mythic, poems that mined Greece’s past to question its national present receded. It was not until near the end of his life that Ritsos returned to myth, and then the expression was intensely personal. As one of his chief translators, Peter Green, notes: Ritsos saw ‘the black double-oared boat with its dark boatman drawing near.’ . . . Ritsos paid more, over a long lifetime, than most writers are ever called upon to do, but the legacy that he left is imperishable.

Other major works plays: Pera ap ton iskio ton kyparission, pb. 1958; Mia gynaika plai sti thalassa, pr., pb. 1959. nonfiction: Meletemata, 1974. Bibliography Green, Peter. Review of Yannis Ritsos: Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses. The New Republic 205, no. 16 (October 14, 1991). This lengthy essay reviews not only Ritsos’s late work but also his entire career. An excellent resource in English. Keeley, Edmund. Inventing Paradise: The Greek Journey, 1937-47. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. Provides a discussion that casts light on the context for much Greek poetry during the turbulent middle of the twentieth century. Bibliography. _______. On Translation: Reflections and Conversations. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 2000. Offers non-Greek readers some insights into translations from modern Greek, important to any full understanding of Ritsos’s poetry. Pilitsis, George. Introduction to Yannis Ritsos: A Voice of Resilience and Hope in a World of Turmoil and Suffering—Selected Poems (1938-1989). Brookline , Mass.: Hellenic College Press, 2001. Pilitsis provides biographical background and critical analysis in his introduction to translations of poems by Ritsos. Savvas, Minas. “Remembering Yannis Ritsos.” Literary Review 36, no. 2 (Winter, 1993): 238-247. Savvas, who translated several of Ritsos’s works, recalls an early meeting with the poet and other aspects of their relationship. Peter Bien Updated by Christina J. Moose 176

SAPPHO Born: Eresus, Lesbos, Asia Minor (now in Greece); c. 630 b.c.e. Died: Mytilene, Lesbos, Asia Minor (now in Greece); c. 580 b.c.e. Also known as: Psappho Principal poetry Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta, 1955 Lyra Graeca, 1958 (volume 1) Sappho: A New Translation, 1958 Sappho: Poems and Fragments, 1965 The Poems of Sappho, 1966 The Sappho Companion, 2000 (Margaret Reynolds, editor) If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, 2002 (Anne Carson, editor) Other literary forms Sappho (SAF-oh) is known only for her poetry. Achievements One of the most admired poets of the ancient world, Sappho was widely popular not only during her lifetime but also for centuries after. Although she wrote nine books of poetry, very little of the corpus remains. Except for a very few phrases on vase paintings or papyri, Sappho’s poetry has been preserved primarily in small bits that happened to be quoted by other writers. Some 170 of these fragments are extant, and although there may be among them one or two complete poems, most of the fragments consist of only a few lines or a few words. For Sappho’s poem fragments, the numerical system of Edgar Lobel and Denys Page, Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta, is used. These fragments indicate that Sappho’s poems were largely lyrical, intended to be sung and accompanied by music and perhaps dance. Although her poetry was thus traditional in form, it differed significantly in content from the larger body of Greek verse, which was written primarily by men. Whereas other Greek poets were mainly concerned with larger and more public issues and with such traditional masculine concerns as war and heroism, Sappho’s poems are personal, concerned with the emotions and individual experiences of herself and her friends. In exploring and describing the world of passion, in particular, Sappho departed from conventional poetic themes. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that her poetry was so popular in the ancient world. Sappho’s work has continued to be popular, however, not only because of the timelessness of her subject matter but also because of the exactness of her imagery and the intensity of her expression. Although her style is simple, direct, and conversational, her 177

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poems are powerful in creating an impression or evoking an emotion. Her world is therefore not the larger world of politics or warfare, but the smaller world of personal feeling; nevertheless, in depicting the outer limits of that world—the extremes of jealousy as well as tenderness, the depths of sorrow as well as the heights of ecstasy— Sappho’s poetry sets a standard to which all later writers of lyrics must aspire. In addition to being well known for her subject matter, Sappho has come to be associated with a particular metrical form. Although she was probably not the inventor of Sapphic meter, it has been so named because of her frequent use of it. In Sapphic meter, the stanza consists of three lines, each of which contains five feet—two trochees, a dactyl, and two more trochees—with a concluding fourth line of one dactyl and one trochee. The first line of the “Ode to Aphrodite” in the original Greek illustrates this meter. This ode is thought to have been accompanied by music written in the Mixolydian mode, a musical mode with which Sappho is also associated. Plutarch, in fact, claims that this mode, which is said to arouse the passions more than any other, was invented by Sappho. Sappho’s enduring reputation is based, however, on the fragments of her poetry that remain. Although those fragments themselves indicate her poetry’s worth, ther e is in addition the testimony of other writers regarding the greatness of her accomplishment. She was praised and revered by a long line of ancients, including Solon, Plato, Aristotle,

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Horace, Catullus, Ovid, and Plutarch. Proving that imitation is the highest form of praise, some later poets actually incorporated her verse into their own compositions; Catullus’s Poem 51, for example, is a slight reworking of a poem by Sappho. Plutarch, who, like Catullus, admired this particular ode, described it as being “mixed with fire,” a metaphor that could accurately be applied to the entire body of Sappho’s remaining poetry. Biography There are few details about Sappho’s life that can be stated with certainty; the only evidence is what other writers said about her, and there is no way of knowing whether what they said is true. She is thought to have been of an aristocratic family of the island of Lesbos and to have had three brothers and a daughter named Cleis; dates of her birth and death, however, are not known. Athenaeus, writing around 200 c.e., claimed that Sappho was a contemporary of Alyattes, who reigned in Lydia from 610 to 560 b.c.e.; Eusebius of Caesarea, who was writing in the late third and early fourth centuries c.e., refers to Sappho (also known as Psappho) in his chronicle for the year 604 b.c.e. Other writers indicate that Sappho lived at the time of another poet, Alcaeus of Lesbos, who seems to have been born around 620 b.c.e. It seems safe, therefore, to conclude that Sappho was born sometime during the last quarter of the seventh century and lived into the first half of the sixth century b.c.e. Sometime between 604 and 592 b.c.e., Sappho seems to have been sent into exile in Sicily by Pittacus, who was then a democratic ruler of Mytilene on Lesbos ; an inscription on the Parian marbles of the third century b.c.e. provides confirmation. Although it seems likely that such an exile would have been for political reasons, there are no clear references in any of the fragments of Sappho’s poems to indicate that she was specifically concerned with political matters; in fact, based on those fragments, her poetry appears to have been very much apolitical. Whether Sappho was married is also uncertain; some say that she had a husband named Cercylas, but others believe this report to be a creation of the Greek comic poets. More suspect is the story that Sappho committed suicide by leaping from the Leucadian Cliff when rejected by a sailor named Phaon. To begin with, this story did not surface until more than two hundred years after her death, but more significant is the fact that Phaon has been found to be a vegetable deity associated with Aphrodite, and a god to whom Sappho wrote hymns. These hymns are thought to have provided the basis for this apocryphal account of her death. There are, however, some assumptions that can be drawn from Sappho’s own words. Her poetry indicates that she was the leader of a group of young women who appear to have studied music, poetry, and dance and who seem to have worshiped Aphrodite and the Muses. As the daughter of an aristocratic family, Sappho would probably not have conducted a formal school, but was more likely the informal leader of a circle of girls 179

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and young women. Scholars know from other references in her poetry that there were several such groups on Lesbos, with leaders who were rivals of Sappho. Many of Sappho’s poems also concern her romantic relationships with various women of her group, a fact that has evoked various responses throughout history, ranging from vilification to denial. Her reputation seems to have been first darkened in the fourth century b.c.e., long after her death, when she was the subject of a number of comic and burlesque plays; it is believed that many of the unsavory stories that came to be associated with Sappho were generated during this period. A serious and most unfortunate effect of this created and perhaps inaccurate reputation was that much of Sappho’s work was later deliberately destroyed, particularly by Christians whose moral sensibilities were offended by some of the stories that circulated in the second, fourth, and eleventh centuries c.e. Sappho’s reputation was also reworked by later scholars who admired her poetry but who were discomfited by her love for women; among their efforts to dissociate Sappho from her sexuality was the widely circulated story that there were in fact two Sapphos, one the licentious and immoral woman to whom all the unsavory tales applied, and the other a faultless and asexual woman who wrote sublime poetry. Most scholars today believe that there was only one Sappho, but they also believe that most of the stories told about her were untrue. Thus, because of the legendary tales that have come to be associated with Sappho, and because of the lack of reliable historical evidence, there is little knowledgeabout her life that is certain. It seems reasonable to assume that she lived on Lesbos, that she was a poet, and that she valued personal relationships, about which she wrote. Both during her lifetime and after, she was much admired; statues were erected in her honor, coins were minted bearing her likeness, and she is said to have been given a heroine’s funeral. Beyond these small pieces of information, scholars must turn to the fragments of her poetry for knowledge and understanding. Analysis Since Sappho’s poetry is largely personal, it concerns her immediate world: her dedication to Aphrodite, her love of nature and art, and her relationships with lovers, friends, and family. Her poetry reflects her enjoyment of beauty in the natural world and the close connection that existed between that world and the lives of herself and her friends. Their worship of Aphrodite, their festive songs and dances, are all celebrated with flowers from the fields and with branches from the trees. Her poetry also reflects her love of art, whether in the form of poetry, the music of the lyre, or the graceful movement of a maiden in a dance. Since these interests are, however, always presented through the perspective of a personal response, a chief defining characteristic of Sappho’s poetry is that it is highly emotional.

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“Ode to Aphrodite” Most of the extant fragments of Sappho’s poetry were quoted by later writers to illustrate some point of dialect, rhetoric, grammar, or poetic style, and those writers usually quoted only that portion of Sappho’s poem that was pertinent to their point. It is fortunate, then, that Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek writer of treatises who lived in Rome around 30 b.c.e., quoted in its entirety Sappho’s “Ode to Aphrodite,” to illustrate “the smooth mode of composition.” This poem, the longest of several by Sappho honoring Aphrodite, appears to be the most substantial complete work of Sappho that remains. The ode contains the usual components of a celebration prayer to Aphrodite: the Invocation, the Sanction, and the Entreaty. The Invocation to the goddess consists of a series of epithets, “Dapple-throned Aphrodite,/ eternal daughter of God,/ snare-knitter”; the Sanction asks the goddess’s generosity and assistance and reminds her of past favors she has granted; and the Entreaty urgently appeals to the goddess for aid in the present situation. Sappho employs this traditional form in a fresh way, however, not only by her use of vivid metaphors and lyrical language, but also by using the Sanction to reveal something of the goddess’s character as well as something of Sappho’s own psychology. As Sappho employs it, the Sanction is a narrative passage within which both she and the goddess move back and forth in time. After describing a past occasion when the goddess came to Earth in a carriage pulled by sparrows, Sappho then recounts the goddess’s questioning of her at that time. Using in her narrative the past tense and the indirect question, Sappho recalls the goddess’s remarks: “You asked, What ailed me now that/ made me call you again?” Abruptly, then, Sappho places the goddess’s gentle chiding within the present context; the poem shifts to direct discourse as the goddess questions Sappho directly: “Whom has/ Persuasion to bring round now/ to your love? Who, Sappho, is/ unfair to you?” This mix of the two temporal perspectives links and blends the present with the past, not only emphasizing Sappho’s recurring states of anxiety over new love but also illuminating the special and friendly relationship between the poet and the goddess: Aphrodite has obviously assisted Sappho before in similar matters of the heart. Continuing to reveal Sappho’s character, the goddess reminds her that they are beginning a now-familiar pattern: A bemused Aphrodite recalls, “If she [the desired lover] won’t accept gifts, she/ will one day give them; and if/ she won’t love you— she soon will/love.” Sappho, manipulating the tradition of the Sanction for new purposes of self-mockery and character revelation, thus discloses her love for the courting period, as well as the shift in attitudes that will inevitably occur between her and her new lover. After the goddess’s assurance that the sought-after lover will very shortly be seeking Sappho, the reader is then returned to the poem’s outer frame, the prayer, as Sappho begs the goddess to help at once, to “Come now! Relieve this intolerable pain!” Within the form of a traditional prayer honoring Aphrodite, the poem thus presents a 181

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delightful variety of tone. It discloses not only the intensity of Sappho’s passion for the desired lover, but also her wry recognition that this intensity will be limited by time and by her own nature. The poem similarly indicates not only the immensity of the goddess’s power but also her gentle amusement at the joys and woes of her followers; although Sappho’s present sufferings in love will soon be in the past, a pattern underscored by the poem’s movement between present and past time, there is every reason to believe that the goddess will assist Sappho once again in achieving the lover who will end her present suffering. In revealing not only something of the character of Aphrodite but also something of the character of Sappho, the poem thus transcends the limitations of its genre: It is a prayer, to be sure, and a narrative, but it is also a charmingly refreshing analysis of the poet’s own psychology. “Ode to Anactoria” Although there are a few other fragments of poems honoring Aphrodite, the largest number of Sappho’s fragments which remain are concerned with love, a subject that occupied much of Sappho’s attention. One love poem that may, like the “Ode to Aphrodite,” be nearly complete, is the large fragment sometimes called the “Ode to Anactoria,” although the poem may have been written for Atthis or even for some other woman whom Sappho loved. An unknown writer who has been labeled “Longinus,” in a Greek work believed to date from the first or second century c.e., quoted this fragment to illustrate Sappho’s mastery in depicting physical sensations. Extraordinary in its exquisitely precise delineation of the extremes of passion, the poem is also notable for the contrast between the control of its first section and the revealed intensity of its latter section, with the resulting alternations in tone as the speaker sits in the presence of two people, the woman she loves and the man who is evidently enjoying that woman’s attentions. Concisely and with control, the poem beings: He is a god in my eyes— the man who is allowed to sit beside you—he who listens intimately to the sweet murmur of your voice, the enticing laughter that makes my own heart beat fast.

This calm and steady beginning establishes an outer mood of control, an atmosphere of containment and casual social interplay; the poem turns, however, on the word “laughter,” and the rest of the fragment describes, rapidly and with great intensity, the physical symptoms of the poet’s great passion. All her senses are affected: Her “tongue is bro182

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ken,” and she sees nothing; she hears only her “own ears drumming” as she drips with sweat; and, as “trembling shakes” her body, she turns “paler than dry grass.” In one of Sappho’s most superb lines, she declares that “a thin flame runs under/ my skin.” Then, ending this rapid and graphic description of the physical results of intense emotion, the poet remarks, in a powerfully reserved manner, that “At such times/ death isn’t far from me.” Scholars have long debated the cause of Sappho’s passion, arguing whether it is love or jealousy or both; scholars have also quarreled over the identity of the woman and the relationship between the woman and the man who sits beside her. Such discussions are, however, ultimately irrelevant; the poet’s salient point is her own overpowering feeling for the woman to whom she is listening, a feeling that prevents Sappho from exercising over her body any control; it is the physical manifestations of that feeling, the effects on the body of great passion, which Sappho is recording. Within the poem, the effects of that passion are heightened by the contrast that turns on the word “laughter”; just as the poem is divided between the controlled description of the outer situation and the blaze of feelings within the poet, so Sappho and the man are divided in their response to the woman’s laughter; he “listens intimately,” calmly, while Sappho experiences a whole cascade of violent physical and emotional reactions. Sappho’s description in this poem of the effects of passion has not been surpassed, although a number of later poets, including Catullus, have imitated, translated, or adopted her ideas. None, however, has been able to convey such intensity of feeling with the economy and precision of Sappho. It seems safe to say that there are few who would dispute Longinus’s claim that this poem illustrates “the perfection of the Sublime in poetry.” 16 L.-P. In addition to considering the physical effects of love on the individual, Sappho also analyzes love’s nature and power. One such poem, 16 L.-P., which refers directly to Anactoria, appears on a papyrus of the second century. The poem begins with a paratactic trope, a common device that presents the theme as the culmination of a series of comparisons: Some say a cavalry corps, some infantry, some, again, will maintain that the swift cars of our fleet are the finest sight on dark earth; but I say that whatever one loves, is.

More than illustrating normal differences of opinion, this means of introducing the theme establishes, as well, a decided difference between male and female values: 183

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Sappho seems clearly to imply that while men would see the ideal of beauty to be things having to do with war, she sees the ideal of beauty to be the thing beloved—in this case, the absent Anactoria. Sappho then reinforces her contention that the beloved is the world’s most beautiful sight by a reference to Helen, who had her pick of the world’s men; in contrast to what one would expect, however, Helen was obliged, because of love, to choose “one who laid Troy’s honor in ruin,” one who “warped” her “to his will,” one who caused her even to forget the “love due her own blood, her own/ child.” Sappho uses the story of Helen to illustrate love’s power to make insignificant all ordinary considerations and constraints. Yet Sappho clearly intends no judgment against Helen; the purpose of her allusion is simply to demonstrate the power of love and, by analogy, Sappho’s love for her beloved. Only then, after establishing by example and comparisons the supremacy and strength of love, does Sappho reveal in an apostrophe the name of her beloved. Addressing Anactoria and expressing her fear that Anactoria will forget her, Sappho confesses that the sound of her footstep, or the sight of her bright face, would be dearer “than glitter/ of Lydian horse or armoured/ tread of mainland infantry.” In an intricate linking of end and beginning by means of metaphor and comparisons, the poem thus moves full circle, back to its starting place; the final sentence of the fragment reinforces the idea contained in the opening sentence as it simultaneously contrasts the tread of the infantry with the delightful sound of Anactoria’s footstep, and the glitter of armor with the bright shine of Anactoria’s face. In such ways, Sappho clearly exposes the conflicting value systems that underlie her poems and those of her male contemporaries. Several other fragments of varying size also treat the power of love, among them a particularly felicitous line quoted by Maximus of Tyre around 150 c.e.: “As a whirlwind/ swoops on an oak/ Love shakes my heart.” An overpowering natural phenomenon, love is presented here as an elemental force that completely overcomes the lover, both physically and emotionally. As the wind physically surrounds the oak, so does love overpower the lover physically as well as emotionally. Love, a force that cannot be denied, is thus depicted as a violent physical and emotional assault, to which one may well respond with mixed feelings. Sappho explores the ambiguity of the lover’s response to love’s violent assault in another fragment, quoted by Hephaestion around 150 c.e.: “Irresistible/ and bittersweet/ that loosener/ of limbs, Love/ reptile-like/ strikes me down.” Again, love is depicted as an absolute power and as a violent force—in this instance as a reptile that, attacking a passive victim, creates in her a weakened state. That state is not, however, altogether unpleasant, as is indicated by the exquisite sensuality of the adjectival phrase describing love as “that loosener of limbs.” Love’s duality—its violence and its sweetness—and the lover’s ambiguity of response—as the victim of assault and as reveler in love’s sensuality—are further underscored by the oxymoronic adjective “bittersweet,” an epithet for love that Sappho may have been the first to use. 184

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94 L.-P. In addition to analyzing the nature and effects of love, Sappho writes of love’s termination, of separation, loss, and grief. One such fragment, 94 L.-P., found in a seventh century manuscript in very poor condition, contains many lacunae and uncertain readings. Nevertheless, enough of the poem remains to prove that Sappho was defining the state of bereavement and the effectiveness of memory in alleviating that state. In the course of exploring these themes, however, the poem presents an enchanting account of the life led by Sappho and the members of her group as they worshiped Aphrodite, celebrated the beauty of nature, and gloried in one another. Like the “Ode to Aphrodite,” the poem uses a frame of present time to contain an account of past time; in this poem, however, the past time frames an even earlier period, so that three time periods are represented. Beginning in her present situation, Sappho, alone, reveals her emotional state at the loss of her beloved: “Frankly I wish I were dead.” Attempting then to console herself, Sappho recalls the occasion of their parting; at that time, in contrast to the present situation, Sappho controlled her grief to comfort her lover, who was overcome by weeping. On that occasion, Sappho urged her beloved to remember their former happiness and to comfort herself with the memory of their love. At this point in the past, the poem then removes to its third temporal setting, that idyllic period when the two were actually together. In a passage of great lyrical beauty, Sappho recalls the details of their life: think of our gifts of Aphrodite and all the loveliness that we shared all the violet tiaras braided rosebuds, dill and crocus twined around your young neck myrrh poured on your head and on soft mats girls with all that they most wished for beside them while no voices changed choruses without ours no woodlot bloomed in spring without song.

In re-creating, at the moment of their farewell, this earlier time of delight in love, nature, and each other, Sappho consoles her beloved by reminding her that the joys they shared are preserved in memories and that those memories can provide solace. At the same time, from her position in the outer frame of the poem—the present context—Sappho attempts to comfort herself by the same means. Although the poem, on one hand, asserts the consolation that memory can offer, it testifies as well to memory’s limitations. Even though Sappho has shared the joyful events of 185

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which she reminds her beloved, the poem indicates all too clearly that memory’s ability to ease grief is restricted. As Sappho tersely and flatly demonstrates by her opening statement, in no way can memory truly compensate for the beloved’s absence. Still, the enchantment of those memories remains, and even though they cannot totally eliminate the pain of parting, they can provide some surcease by powerfully evoking the time when the lovers’ joy in nature and in their love created for them an existence truly idyllic. In addition to these personal poems, private accounts of her own and her friends’ feelings and activities, Sappho also wrote some poems of a more public nature. Notable among these “public” poems are a number of fragments from her epithalamiums, or wedding songs. Some of these are congratulatory pieces honoring bride or groom, some appear to have been part of good-humored songs of mockery or wedding jest, and some seem to have been serious considerations of what marriage meant, especially for a woman. Of the latter, particularly worthy of comment are two fragments thought by some to be part of a single poem concerning the loss of maidenhood. As is true of other poems by Sappho, opinion is divided as to the poem’s ultimate meaning, some believing that it alludes to an ungentle lover who does not properly appreciate the maiden whose virginity he destroys, and others believing that the poem refers generally to the destruction of innocence and the loss of girlhood joys that marriage necessitates. The fragments employ two similes, the first comparing the blushing girl to a quince-apple ripening on a top branch in a tree top not once noticed by harvesters or if not unnoticed, not reached.

The location of the apple high in the tree permits it to ripen without disturbance, perhaps as a girl’s careful upbringing or superior social standing might shield her from importunate suitors. The second fragment compares the loss of the virginal state to a hyacinth in the mountains, trampled by shepherds until only a purple stain remains on the ground.

Through the powerful image of the delicate hyacinth roughly trod into the earth, the poem clearly delineates the destructive power of love and marriage. 112 L.-P. That image is countered, however, in another fragment from an epithalamium, 112 L.-P., which rejoices in marriage and celebrates the groom’s winning of the girl he de186

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sires. The bride is described as “charming to look at,/ with eyes as soft as/ honey, and a face/ that Love has lighted/ with his own beauty.” Sappho, clearly indicating her own opinion as to which is the lucky partner in the marriage, reminds the groom, “Aphrodite has surely/ outdone herself in/ doing honor to you!” Such songs were thought to have been written for the weddings of Sappho’s friends, and would have been accompanied by music and dance. Sappho’s legacy is meager in size, consisting of one or two poems that may be complete, together with a number of shorter fragments that tantalize by their incompleteness even as they enchant with what they do provide. These few pieces clearly manifest the enormous poetic talent that Sappho possessed: a genius for capturing a mood, for portraying an experience, and for depicting an emotion. Although her poetry is personal in dealing with her own responses to life, it is, paradoxically, also universal; the feelings she describes, even though they are her own, are shared by all human beings who ever love, lose, or grieve, or who experience jealousy, anger, or regret. One of the first poets to explore the range and depth of the human heart, Sappho well deserves Plato’s epithet for her, “the tenth Muse.” Bibliography Bowra, C. Maurice. Greek Lyric Poetry: From Alcman to Simonides. 2d ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1961. A classic review of seven Greek lyric poets stressing their historical development and critiquing important works. Offers groundbreaking theories of the poets as a group and as individual writers. Views Sappho as the leader of a society of girls that excluded men and worshiped the Muses and Aphrodite. Burnett, Anne Pippin. Three Archaic Poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983. Rejects theories of ancient Greek lyrics as either passionate outpourings or occasional verse. Describes Sappho’s aristocratic circle and critiques six major poems. DuBois, Page. Sappho Is Burning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. The title is taken from part of David A. Campbell’s translation of Sappho’s fragment 48, in which the poet’s heart is “burning with desire.” DuBois assumes and examines an aesthetics of fragmentation and veers to a strained “postmodern” appreciation of the poet. Greene, Ellen, ed. Reading Sappho and Re-reading Sappho. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. A two-volume collection of essays and articles (by writers such as Mary Lefkowitz, Holt N. Parker, and Jack Winkler) important in elucidating Sappho’s poetry. Jenkyns, Richard. Three Classical Poets: Sappho, Cat ullus, and Juvenal. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982. Stresses the relativistic view that no one theory can elucidate ancient poetry. Detailed analysis of Sappho’s principal poems and fragments, concluding that she is a major poet. 187

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McEvilley, Thomas. Sappho. Putnam, Conn.: Spring, 2008. A biography of Sappho that explores her life and works. Prins, Yopie. Victorian Sappho. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. Superb study of the presentations of Sappho in nineteenth century English literature. Exposes the imperfections of editions by Dr. Henry Wharton and Michael Field (pseudonym of Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper). Cogent chapter on Sappho and Swinburne in “Swinburne’s Sapphic Sublime.” Rayor, Diane. Sappho’s Lyre: Archaic Lyric and Women Poets of Ancient Greece. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. In most respects, this is the best available translation of Sappho. Includes fragments of nine women poets besides Sappho, along with poems and fragments of seven male lyric poets. Reynolds, Margaret, ed. The Sappho Companion. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Contains narratives of the way societies in different times have accepted or rejected Sappho’s works. Includes an introduction as well as translations of the fragments of the poems, a bibliography, and an index. Snyder, Jane McIntosh. The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989. Informative introduction to Sappho and eight female lyric poets of classical antiquity, with representative translations. Snyder, Jane McIntosh, and Camille-Yvette Welsch. Sappho. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2005. A woman-centered perspective on Sappho that looks at whether Sappho was a lesbian and how she related to other women. Yatromanolakis, Dimitrios. Sappho in the Making: The Early Reception. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, Trustees for Harvard University, 2007. An examination of Sappho and the world around her, examining how it shaped her poetry and how poetry was viewed. Evelyn S. Newlyn

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GEORGE SEFERIS Giorgos Stylianou Seferiades Born: Smyrna, Ottoman Empire (now Ezmir, Turkey); March 13, 1900 (old style, February 29, 1900) Died: Athens, Greece; September 20, 1971 Principal poetry Strophe, 1931 (Turning Point, 1967) E sterna, 1932 (The Cistern, 1967) Mythistorema, 1935 (English translation, 1960) Gymnopaidia, 1936 (English translation, 1967) Emerologio katastromatos I, 1940 (Logbook I, 1960) Tetradio gymnasmaton, 1940 (Book of Exercises, 1967) Emerologio katastromatos II, 1944 (Logbook II, 1960) Kichle, 1947 (Thrush, 1967) Emerologio katastromatos III, 1955 (Logbook III, 1960) Poems, 1960 (includes Mythistorema, Logbook I, II, and III) Tria krypha poiemata, 1966 (Three Secret Poems, 1969) Collected Poems, 1967, 1981, 1995 (includes Turning Point, The Cistern, Gymnopaidia, Book of Exercises, Thrush, and others) Other literary forms George Seferis (seh-FEHR-ees) earned distinction as a literary critic and translator in addition to his achievements as a poet. His collection of essays, Dokimes (1947), is regarded as one of the finest volumes of modern Greek literary criticism. His other principal prose works include Treis meres sta monasteria tes Kappadokias (1953; three days in the monasteries of Cappadocia), Delphi (1962; English translation, 1963), Discours de Stockholm (1964), and ‘E glossa stèn poiésé mas (1965). A selection of his essays was published in English as On the Greek Style: Selected Essays in Poetry and Hellenism (1966). Seferis translated T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922) and Murder in the Cathedral (1935; as Phoniko stèn ekklesia) into Greek, an achievement called “brilliant.” Following Eliot’s death in 1965, Seferis published a brief commemorative diary of their friendship. Seferis also “transcribed,” as he put it, the biblical Song of Songs and the Revelation of Saint John the Divine into modern language. Finally, Seferis’s A Poet’s Journal: Days of 1945-1951 was published in English in 1974. Achievements George Seferis initiated a new spirit in Greek poetry with the publication, in 1931, of his first book, Turning Point. Influenced by the styles of French and English poets, Seferis 189

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George Seferis (©The Nobel Foundation)

freed his verse from the excessive ornamentation that then encumbered Greek poetry, creating a simple, direct style in the modern idiom and bringing Greek poetry into a closer relationship with the modernism of Western Europe. Insisting that poetry should be written in the language of everyday speech, he exploited the forms, themes, and diction of folk verse. Very much aware of his heritage, he integrated the mythology and history of Greece with the situation of his country and of humanity in general in the twentieth century. Like Eliot, Seferis weaves a complex tapestry of allusion in deceptively simple language; like Eliot, he universalizes his profound sense of alienation, so that his poetry, though distinctively Greek, speaks to readers of all nationalities. The Greek sense of tragedy that informs Seferis’s work is not out of place in the twentieth century.

Biography George Seferis was born Giorgos Stylianou Seferiades in Smyrna (now Ezmir), Turkey. The city was largely populated by Greeks then, and Seferis’s memories of it served 190

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as an inspiration to him for the rest of his life. It was in Smyrna that he wrote his first poetry, at the age of fourteen. Shortly thereafter World War I began, and the Seferiades family left for Athens. There, Seferis continued his secondary schooling at the First Classical Gymnasium and graduated in 1917. His father, who also wrote a few poems and made a few translations, was an expert on international law and became a professor at the University of Athens in 1919. Seferis set out to follow in his father’s footsteps, studying law at the Sorbonne in Paris from 1918 to 1924. During this period, he became familiar with French poetry, especially the works of Paul Valéry, Jules Laforgue, and other Symbolists, while continuing to write a few poems of his own. After obtaining his degree at the Sorbonne, Seferis spent a year in London; anticipating a career in the Greek foreign service, he hoped to perfect his English. Thus, seven crucial years in Seferis’s youth were spent away from Greece. In 1922, while Seferis was abroad, the city of Smyrna was burned and the Greek population there displaced. The “home” to which he had clung in his memories had ceased to exist, and he began to see himself in an Odyssean light, as a wanderer in search of home. After his return to Athens, he began a long career as a diplomat, working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. While serving as vice-consul in London in 1931, he first became acquainted with the works of Eliot and Ezra Pound, which would play an important role in the development of his art. In the same year, he also published his first book of poetry, Turning Point, a volume that heralded the beginning of a new generation of poetry in Greece. His second volume, The Cistern, appeared in 1932; then, between 1934 and 1936, while Seferis was living in Athens, two more volumes of his poetry were published, Mythistorema and Gymnopaidia. From 1936 to 1938, Seferis served as consul in Koritsa, Albania, and then became a press attaché to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He married Maria Zannou in 1941. As the Nazis rolled over Greece, Seferis joined the government in exile, spending the war in Cairo, Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Italy. After Greece was liberated, he returned to Athens, receiving the Palamas Prize for Poetry in 1946. He worked there until 1948, when he became consul attached to the Greek embassy in Ankara. In 1951, he was appointed to the same position in London, where he became a personal friend of Eliot. In 1953, he was promoted to ambassador to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq, and took up residence in Beirut. During his three years as ambassador, he visited Cyprus on several occasions, visits that would prove important not only in inspiring his later poetry but also in his diplomatic role as a member of the Greek delegation to the United Nations during the 1957 discussion concerning Cyprus. Seferis was rewarded for his efforts with the ambassadorship to Great Britain. During his tenure there, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University, and in 1963, a year after he retired, he became the first Greek to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Many other awards soon followed, including honorary doctorates from Oxford, Thessaloníki, and Princeton. He was made an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and an honorary fellow of the Modern Language Associa191

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tion in 1966. Living in Athens at the end of his life, Seferis published very little, except for his Three Secret Poems. In March, 1969, he courageously attacked the Greek military dictatorship in a public statement; in the same year, he published one of his last poems, “The Cats of St. Nicholas,” in an anthology of antigovernment poetry and prose, Eighteen Texts. He died in the fall of 1971 of complications following an operation for a duodenal ulcer. His funeral provoked a large public demonstration against the ruling junta, with thousands of people shouting “Immortal!” “Freedom!” and “Elections!” Analysis George Seferis revitalized Greek poetry and brought it into the mainstream of twentieth century Western poetry. In his work, the long tradition of Greek poetry is wedded to the European avant-garde, producing (in the words of the Nobel Prize committee) a “unique thought and style.” As an “orphan” of Smyrna, Seferis experienced at first hand the sense of alienation that characterizes much of the poetry of the twentieth century. The Smyrna he had known was destroyed, and there was no “home” to which he could return; the world was therefore strange and unfamiliar to him, distorted in some fundamental way. Seferis’s life as a diplomat perhaps intensified his sense of alienation; at the same time, his wide experience allowed him to transcend individual sorrow to speak to the larger problems of the human condition. Seferis was keenly interested in the stylistic and tonal experiments of the French Symbolists, especially Valéry and his “pure” poetry. In London, Seferis became acquainted with the poetry of Pound and Eliot, recognizing in their works the next step in the stylistic evolution that he had already begun. He abandoned strict meter and rhyme and avoided any sort of embellishment, keeping his imagery sparse. Fundamentally, however, Seferis was Greek. His poetry springs from the traditions and heritage of his people, and though he altered substantially the shape of Greek poetry, he always worked from the raw materials provided by Greek folk songs, poetic forms, and mythology. In this approach, one immediately recognizes Seferis’s kinship with Pound and Eliot, who also layered their texts with allusions, quotations, and mythological and historical parallels, though Seferis is more scrupulous in his treatment of his sources. He attempted to use the traditional decapentasyllable (a line of fifteen syllables with a caesura after the eighth and main accents on the sixth or eighth and on the fourteenth) in the expression of a contemporary sensibility, though it is the principal meter of folk poetry, dating back to the Byzantine period. In addition, he was influenced heavily by Cretan literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially the seventeenth century epic romance Erotokritos, by Vitzentzos Kornaros. In this work, Seferis saw the possibilities of demotic Greek as a language for poetry. In addition to writing a brilliant commentary on Erotokritos, he incorporated phrases from it in his poem “Erotikos Logos,” establishing links between the language of modern Greece and the Greek past, much as Eliot incorporates in his verse phrases from Geoffrey Chaucer, 192

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William Shakespeare, and numerous other major English authors. As Lawrence Durrell has written, “When Eliot speaks of ‘getting every ounce of tradition behind each word,’ one thinks of Seferis, so deeply steeped in the ancient Greek tragedies, and yet so modern in his approach.” Fragments of the past litter the landscape, and in attempting to find what they mean, Seferis, like Eliot, finds himself face-to-face with the vacuum at the core of modern existence. Seferis published little in the last fifteen years of his life. His credo as a poet, at once consciously Greek and consciously international, is concisely stated in A Poet’s Journal: “The free man, the just man, the man who is the ‘measure’ of life; if there is one basic idea in Hellenism, it is this one.” Seferis’s vision is dark, full of suffering and haunted by a sense of estrangement, but it is redeemed by his humanistic faith that man is the “measure” of life. Turning Point and The Cistern Turning Point and The Cistern, Seferis’s first two collections, marked a dramatic departure from the Decadent-derived poetry of the 1920’s. Readers recognized in Seferis a different voice with something new to say. The poetry was stark, “Doric,” but filled with original and surprising imagery. Seferis later commented that when he published Turning Point, he was aware of two things: He knew that he wanted to write simple poetry, and he knew that people would not like it. Seferis had not yet discovered the creative possibilities of free verse, and despite the demotic, conversational quality of the two collections, they show a careful attention to rhyme and meter. The characteristic starkness and sharpness of Seferis’s work is already apparent in the first stanza of “Turning Point”: “Moment, sent by a hand/ I had loved so much,/ you reached me just at sunset/ like a black pigeon.” Consisting of only seventeen words (in the original Greek), the stanza is strongly evocative, emotionally powerful, yet finally enigmatic. As Peter Levi has observed, “There is a level at which the language of Seferis is simple, but with the apparent simplicity of ballads and chronicles, which is not simple at all.” This deceptive simplicity is further illustrated by the long poem “Erotikos logos,” which is included in Turning Point. Composed of decapentasyllables in stanzas of four lines, the poem ends with the words, “The world is simple.” Like Seferis’s verse, which strives to appear simple yet is not, the world itself is simple yet opaque. In one sense, each line of the poem is clear, but if one tries to pin down the meaning of a given line or phrase, one finds oneself in a labyrinth of inferences, connotations, and allusions whose relationships to one another are as complex as the relationships among things in the world. Life is ultimately a mystery, out of human control, and pretensions to understand it (its “simplicity”) finally only confirm humanity’s terminal alienation. The imagery of “The Cistern” expresses this modern sensibility: “We are dying! Our gods are dying!/ The marble statues know it, looking down/ like white dawn upon the victim/ alien, full of eyelids, fragments,/ as the crowds of death pass by.” 193

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Mythistorema Seferis’s third collection, Mythistorema, was the first work of his maturity. In this volume, he abandoned strict meter and rhyme to work in his idiosyncratic free verse. Aware of the building political tensions and the rise of totalitarianism in Europe, Seferis conflated Greek myth and history in twenty-four concise poems with disturbingly violent imagery and an extraordinary number of allusions to classical myth and ancient literature. In Seferis’s vision, the present is a desolate landscape of fragments. A coherent understanding of it is impossible, and one is left with the mere reverberations of voices from the past, echoes without meaning. “The King of Asine” One of the finest examples of Seferis’s mature poetry is “The King of Asine,” which ends Logbook I. The speaker of the poem relates that he has spent two years seeking the King of Asine, a Mycenaean ruler mentioned only once in Homer’s Iliad (c. 750 b.c.e.; English translation, 1611; book 2, line 560), during the famous catalog of ships. The speaker has found a citadel covered with vines and a long beach, but even the wild doves have gone. He and his party have also found a gold burial mask that, when touched, makes an empty sound: “Hollow in the light/ like a dry jar in dug earth/ the same sound that our oars make in the sea.” The King of Asine is a “void under the mask.” His children are statues, his desires “the fluttering of birds.” Though the mask replicates his face, a dark spot lies behind it—a dark spot symbolic of loss and the “void everywhere with us.” Nothing is left but “nostalgia for the weight of a living existence/ there where we now remain unsubstantial. . . .” The poet, too, is a void. Nothing exists behind the words, just as the King of Asine exists only because of two words in Homer. Language itself thus becomes reality; behind it, there is nothing. Book of Exercises and Logbook II Before fleeing the German invasion, Seferis published Book of Exercises, a collection of poems written between 1928 and 1937 that had not been included in his previous collections. A number of these poems involve a fictional character, Stratis Thalassinos (Stratis the Mariner), a persona used much as Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock and Pound’s Hugh Selwyn Mauberly are used. The collection also includes sixteen haiku, which, although not notably successful, are distinctively Seferis’s work. In particular, number 4 expresses his vision of the mystical relationship between past and present: “Is it the voice/ of our dead friends or/ the gramophone?” Logbook II was written in the various places of Seferis’s exile with the Greek government; here, one finds the poet chronicling his wanderings, giving impressions of the many locales, some very exotic, to which his odyssey took him. Stratis Thalassinos appears again; in “Stratis Thalassinos on the Dead Sea,” Seferis creates an image of Jerusalem during the war as a city of refugees with a Babel-like confusion of languages. 194

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People are shown as having little or no understanding of the city and its past and are led about like tourists with the refrain, “This is the place gentlemen!” One is reminded of T. S. Eliot’s repetition of “Hurry up please its time” in The Waste Land and the imagery of “Unreal City,” which Eliot derived from Charles Baudelaire. “Last Stop” “Last Stop,” written at the last place where Seferis waited before returning to Greece at the war’s end, has been called the most significant poem in the collection. His memories are painful, and it is not at all clear to him that the suffering of the war has been justified by the result. Nations lie in ruins, as they have in the past, some of them to be forgotten. Despite this, the poem’s closing lines recall a hero who left the hospital with his wounds still open; Seferis quotes this hero’s emblematic words: “‘We advance in the dark/ we move forward in the dark. . . .’” Other major works nonfiction: Dokimes, 1947; Treis meres sta monasteria tes Kappadokias, 1953; Delphi, 1962 (English translation, 1963); Discours de Stockholm, 1964; ‘E glossa stèn poiésé mas, 1965; On the Greek Style: Selected Essays in Poetry and Hellenism, 1966; A Poet’s Journal: Days of 1945-1951, 1974; A Levant Journal, 2007. translations: Phoniko stèn ekklesia, pb. 1935 (of T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral); T. S. Eliot, 1936; Asma asmaton, 1966 (of The Song of Songs); E Apokalypse tou Ioanne, 1966 (of The Apocalypse of St. John). Bibliography Beaton, Roderick. George Seferis. 1991. Reprint. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003. A critical study of selected works . Includes bibliographic references. Hadas, Rachel. Form, Cycle, Infinity: Landscape Imagery in the Poetry of Robert Frost and George Seferis. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1985. Compares the literary style and similarities of Robert Frost and Seferis. Includes a bibliography and an index. Kapre-Karka, K. Love and the Symbolic Journey in the Poetry of Cavafy, Eliot, and Seferis: An Interpretation with Detailed Poem-by-Poem Analysis. New York: Pella, 1982. A critical study of selected works by three poets. Includes an index and bibliography. _______. War in the Poetry of George Seferis: A Poem-by-Poem Analysis. New York: Pella, 1985. A critical study of selected works by Seferis. Includes an index and bibliography. Madias, Markos. George Seferis: The Strong Wind from the East. River Vale, N.J.: Cosmos, 1997. A biography, translated from the Greek, of Seferis that looks at the effect of Asia on the writer. 195

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Thaniel, George. Seferis and Friends. Toronto, Ont.: Mercury Press, 1994. Entertaining and informative correspondence from Seferis’s wide circle of friends and acquaintances, including Henry Miller, T. S. Eliot, and Lawrence Durrell. Tsatsou, Ioanna, and Jean Demos, trans. My Brother George Seferis. St. Paul, Minn.: North Central, 1982. An in-depth biography. Includes index. J. Madison Davis

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DIONYSIOS SOLOMOS Born: Zakynthos, Greece; April 8, 1798 Died: Corfu, Greece; November 21, 1857 Principal poetry Rime improvisate, 1822 Imnos is tin eleftheria, 1823 (The Hymn to Liberty, 1825) Is ton thanato tou Lord Byron, 1824 Lambros, 1834 (partial), 1859 Ta euriskomena, 1859 (collection of works including the foregoing as well as Eleftheroi poliorkimenoi, To Kritikos, and Porphyras) Hapanta, 1880, 1948-1960 (collected works) Faith and Motherland: Collected Poems, 1998 The Free Besieged, and Other Poems, 2000 Other literary forms Although verse was the major form of expression of Dionysios Solomos (saw-lawMAWS), he published two works of prose. Dialogos (1824) is Solomos’s defense of the demotic language of Greece, a kind of rebuttal to Adamantios Koras and other proponents of the katharevousa, the purist tongue. Solomos asserted that the language of the people belongs only to them, and no external forces can change it. It was also part of his credo that the poet, as a custodian of the language, must enrich and ennoble it from within. The twenty-five or thirty pages of Dialogos (one part of the work has been lost), written in the form of a conversation between a poet, a friend, and a philosopher, have served as the prototype of modern Greek prose. Solomos’s other prose work is I yineka tis Zakynthos (1927, 1944; The Woman of Zakynthos, 1982), an enigmatic, fragmentary work set at the time of the fall of Missolonghi. Achievements Dionysios Solomos is the national poet of modern Greece. The first four stanzas of his The Hymn to Liberty were proclaimed by King Otto in 1865 as the Greek national anthem, and Greek schoolchildren have been learning and memorizing Solomos’s verses for more than 150 years. His use of demotic Greek—the spoken language of everyday life—prepared the way for the extraordinary flowering of Greek poetry in the twentieth century. Solomos has been the subject of studies in Italian, Dutch, French, German, Romanian, and Turkish, as well as English. The critic M. Byron Raizis has estimated that scholarly works on Solomos “approach the one-thousand mark.” Because Solomos 197

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wrote in Italian in the early years of his apprenticeship, he has been especially interesting to Italian poets and critics. Solomos’s contemporaries acknowledged him as the founder of modern Greek poetry: He took it upon himself to become a Greek Dante, a poet who would use the vernacular, the language of the people, to praise his countrymen’s struggle for liberation and to sing of the pains, the values, and the joys of the land of his birth. What Alexander Pushkin, who was born a year later, came to mean to the Russians, Solomos came to mean to the Greeks. Like Pushkin’s lyrics, Solomos’s Romantic verse lauded freedom and castigated tyranny. Solomos is regarded as the quintessence of the national genius; it is no wonder that after his death, the Greek poet was given a state funeral, which was followed by public mourning throughout Greece. It is not only for his poetry, then, that Solomos is important. He was the bard of the Greek War of Independence; he introduced Romanticism to Greece; and perhaps most important, he gave dignity to demotic Greek, the language of the people, at a time when pretentious literati in Greece were working hard to impose the purist tongue on the recently freed, tormented country. In contemporary Greece, Solomos’s appeal transcends ideological boundaries: He is loved by conservatives, for he represents that old spirit of the disciplined artist, the pioneer of Hellenic values. The leftists honor him for praising the virtues of struggle and for dramatizing the plight of the oppressed. The Greek Orthodox Church has embraced him for praising the religious values of his land and for his acceptance of the Church’s role in the war of liberation from the Turks. He is admired by Greek youth, who respond to the youthful energy and simplicity of his patriotic and romantic verse. Solomos’s achievement as a Greek poet is unquestioned and unshakable. Biography After the fall of Constantinople in May, 1453, Greece, under oppressive Ottoman rule, remained a cultural wasteland for nearly four hundred years. When Crete fell to the Turks in 1669, the Solomos family migrated to the Heptanesian island of Zakynthos, having first been honored by the Venetian administrators in Crete with titles of nobility. After one generation, Count Nicholas Solomos, the poet’s father (acknowledged as count by the Venetian authorities of Zakynthos), succeeded in acquiring the tobacco monopoly of the island, and in a few years, the shrewd businessman had amassed a large fortune. Dionysios Solomos was born to Count Nicholas in 1798; at his birth, his father was sixty-one and his mother, the count’s maid, only seventeen years old. When Solomos was seven years old, he came under the tutelage of an Italian priest, Santo Rossi, then living in exile on Zakynthos because of his liberal views. Father Rossi taught the precocious boy not only the language of Italy but also its culture and literature. After the death of his father, Solomos (accompanied by Rossi) was sent to Italy for a more sophisticated, more systematic education. In 1807 and 1808, in Venice and 198

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Cremona, the youth studied Latin and Italian philology. He was introduced to liberal ideas, to Romantic aestheticism, and to the works of Vergil, Dante, and Petrarch, who were to influence his poetry. From 1812 to 1814, he wrote his first Italian verse. The fall of 1815 found the seventeen-year-old Solomos studying law at the University of Pavia. Although he received his first certificate of law, literature was his consuming interest. In Milan in 1817, Solomos met the famous poet and translator of Homer, Vincenzo Monti. Legend has it that the young Greek got into an argument with Monti over a certain passage in Dante’s Inferno (in La divina commedia, c. 1320; The Divine Comedy, 1802). “Nobody should rationalize so much,” Monti chastised the youth. “One should feel, feel.” Solomos’s reply has been repeated with pride by his biographers: “First the mind must understand vigorously, and then the heart must feel warmly what the mind has comprehended.” Solomos’s return to Zakynthos in August, 1818, presented him with a challenge: How could he thrive intellectually in a place that did not have the cultural fervor of the Italy of his adolescence? There were some intellectuals on the island, but not of the caliber of Ignazio Baretta, Mateo Butturini, or Monti. Nevertheless, Zakynthos was not intellectually barren: Andreas Kalvos, a contemporary of Solomos and a great poet himself, was born in Zakynthos, though there is no indication that he ever met Solomos. The island, too, was the birthplace of Ugo Foscolo (a half-Greek poet who wrote in Italian, a giant of the Romantic movement), whom Solomos did befriend, as in due course he befriended several other Zakynthos intellectuals. Italian gave way to the Greek language in Solomos’s verse soon after his return to Zakynthos. His sonnets and religious poetry still manifested his Romantic tendencies, along with the techniques of prosody that he had learned in Cremona and Venice. He had not yet achieved the mastery of the demotic that would distinguish his later verse. Solomos’s serious Greek verse began, in fact, when Spyridon Trikoupis visited Zakynthos. Trikoupis was a politician and the foremost historian of the Greek War of Independence. A relative of the Greek leader Alexandros Mavrokordatos, Trikoupis had come to Zakynthos to meet Lord Byron. When Trikoupis met Solomos at the end of 1822, the latter read him his Italian “Ode per prima messa.” Trikoupis fell silent for a moment and then told Solomos that what their country needed was a Greek poet. “Greece is waiting for her Dante,” exclaimed Trikoupis. Solomos must have been both flattered and challenged. He had not actively joined the fight against the Turks, partly because of his reclusive personality and partly because the Greek revolutionaries, though heroic, were cantankerous and uneducated villagers. There is no indication, in fact, that the poet ever visited the Greek mainland. The meeting with Trikoupis, however, sparked in the young poet a patriotic sense of literary duty. Though he never forsook his Italianate learning, he turned to Greek themes and the Greek language. Some six months after meeting Trikoupis, Solomos completed the 158 quatrains that constitute The Hymn to Liberty. The long poem (whose first stanzas became the Greek 199

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national anthem) reenacts scenes from the Greek War of Independence and exalts the glory of Greece and of Greek freedom. Solomos’s diligent effort to improve his Greek and to become the Greek poet par excellence must have also been inspired by the publication of Claude Fauriel’s Chansons populaires de Grece (1824), in which the Frenchman praised the Greek language as “the most beautiful of the European languages and the one . . . suited to perfection.” Fauriel further prophesied that “modern Greek will soon be a language which, without resembling ancient Greek more than it now resembles it, will have no reason to envy it.” Years later, Solomos would collaborate with Fauriel. In 1928, when most of Greece had been liberated, Solomos moved from Zakynthos to the island of Kerkyra (Corfu). By then, Solomos had become famous throughout Greece, and on Corfu, he found the solitude that he sought. There, he pursued more vigorously his studies in the German Romantic movement, in particular the works of Friedrich Schiller. Though a more prolific decade was behind him, the decade that followed was to be more impressive in terms of the quality of his work. On Corfu, Solomos honed and refined his poetry, working on his fragmentary The Woman of Zakynthos, on Eleftheroi poliorkimenoi (the free besieged), and on To Kritikos, revising his Lambros, and writing his serene “Funeral Ode” and “To an English Lady.” Temperamental, especially during his years on Corfu, Solomos manifested a disquieting propensity to leave his works incomplete. An extreme perfectionist, he destroyed almost as many manuscripts as he was able to complete. Kostis Palamas, Solomos’s successor as the poet of the Greek people, discerned a duality in Solomos’s nature: the dedicated, patient, profound creator opposed to the impetuous, bored, immature man who could not complete his work when he felt disheartened and unsatisfied. Other critics, in examining his character, have pointed to the distractions of a prolonged legal battle: John Leontarakis, Solomos’s half brother, sued to prove, both for inheritance purposes and out of vindictiveness, that he, John, was the only legitimate son of Count Nicholas. The trial that ensued lasted from 1833 to 1838 and embittered Solomos greatly, since he had helped his half brother both socially and financially. This humiliating episode, and the poet’s own restless nature, explain—as well as anything can explain—his inability to finish many of his poems. The litigation with his half brother—finally won by Solomos—caused the poet to retreat even more into his solitude. “There is no doubt,” he wrote to his friend George Markoras, “that one can live well only alone.” It was probably at this time that Solomos began drinking, which may well have affected both the quality as well as the quantity of his subsequent work. Solomos’s struggle for perfection, however, overcame all the crises that held him back. Indeed, he wrote his best poetry during the last twenty years of his life: To Kritikos, Eleftheroi poliorkimenoi, and Porphyras were written during this period. The obstacles in his life were counterbalanced by the recognition he received not only in Greece but also throughout Western Europe. In 1849, King Otto of Greece be200

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stowed on Solomos the Golden Cross of the Royal Order of the Savior. By then, Solomos was respected even among the envious mainland writers. Despite his preference for solitude, Solomos had a select group of friends while living on Corfu. James Polylas, who selflessly collected and edited Solomos’s works posthumously (in Ta euriskomena), was one of the most loyal; Nicholas Mantzaros, the composer who set the lyrics of The Hymn to Liberty to music, was another. Solomos never married, and no evidence of a love affair exists. From 1847 to 1851, Solomos returned to writing verse in Italian, which some critics see as evidence of his disappointment with his output in Greek. However, even when he wrote in Italian, most of his themes remained Greek (“To Orpheus,” “The Greek Mother,” “The Greek Vessel”). It was also during this period, between 1847 and 1849, that he wrote one of his greatest works in Greek, Porphyras. During the last decade of his life, Solomos’s health deteriorated. He suffered a cerebral stroke in 1851, and his niece’s suicide caused him further depression that year; fits of melancholy continued until his death. On November 21, 1857, he died of a stroke. It is alleged that on his deathbed, the poet remembered the beloved mentor of his youth, Rossi, and that in gratitude to him, he recited stanza 95 of The Hymn to Liberty, where Liberty is seen allegorically in imagery of light: Fiery gleams of flashing cluster Hang from lip, eye, forehead bright, Hand and foot are clothed in luster, And around you all is light.

Analysis It is unfortunate that Dionysios Solomos’s poetry is almost totally resistant to translation. Just as Robert Burns’s musical lines suffer greatly in translation into other languages, and just as Pushkin’s lyric Russian is frustrating to translators, so Solomos and his lyric rhyming lines lose a great deal in translation. It is difficult to convey the exquisite music of his stanzas, his struggle to achieve perfection with each poem, his admirable development in diction and form. A good translation will communicate only in part the energy of his language, but even in translation, one can still appreciate Solomos’s love of freedom and his loathing of oppression, his compassion for the humble and his bewilderment with the injustices of destiny. Solomos started to write seriously upon his return from Italy in 1818. His early poems, written in Italian, are more mature and precise than the naïve and imperfect poems that he wrote when he first experimented with the Greek language. His earliest poems were written in short, flexible trochaic and iambic lines; when he attempted decapentasyllabic couplets, in imitation of the Greek folk song, the prosody appeared contrived and superficial. 201

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Among these early poems, there are many that are pastoral in nature, such as “The Death of the Shepherd,” “Eurykome,” and “The Death of the Orphan Girl.” Most typical of Solomos’s work at this stage is “The Mad Mother,” a moving poem about the tragic death of a child; the Romantic elements are obvious. Here, Solomos employs a favorite theme: the suffering of a gentle woman at the hands of fate. “The Unknown Woman” and “Xanthoula” are two more sophisticated poems with this theme. In the best of these early poems, Solomos avoids emotional description, though emotional connotations are cleverly insinuated. The Hymn to Liberty Solomos was profoundly inspired by the revolution of 1821. In his Dialogos, he exclaimed: “Have I anything else in my mind but liberty and the language?” In 1823, he completed The Hymn to Liberty, a vigorous paean to Greek freedom that bought instant fame to the twenty-five-year-old poet. Here, the poet, surveying the ordeals and ideals of the enslaved Greeks, intertwines the essence of freedom with the whole destiny of the Greek nation, as he recounts, one by one, both the sacrifices and the achievements of the Greek fighters. The Hymn to Liberty begins as the poet, addressing Liberty, visualizes her rising from the bones of slain Greek heroes. He recognizes her from her gaze and from the sharpness of her sword; as she paces across the blood-soaked hills and valleys, he greets her with joy and pride: “Hail, oh Hail, Liberty!” The poem goes on to relate the Greeks’ struggles for freedom, and the blood shed on Liberty’s behalf—the Battle of Tripolis, the destruction of Corinth, the naval victories. The tempo is rapid, robust, and rolling; the trochaic stanzas move from image to image without sacrificing smooth transitions or unity. For 140 or so of the poem’s 158 stanzas, Liberty is both the inspiration and the unifying force. In the last section, however, the poem loses direction as Solomos summons the great powers of Europe to help “the defenders of the Cross.” The references to Liberty, her actions, words, and inspiring presence are abandoned as the poet chastises the larger powers of Europe for having turned their backs on Greece for centuries. Is ton thanato tou Lord Byron and “Katastrophi ton Psaron” Solomos’s next patriotic work, Is ton thanato tou Lord Byron (on the death of Lord Byron), is inferior to The Hymn to Liberty, which it resembles in both meter and subject matter. Though artistically a failure, this long poem served its purpose in expressing the gratitude of the Greek nation to the famous philhellene. That Solomos’s craft was not deteriorating at this stage of his career is manifested by the short poems written during this period, from 1824 to 1827. “Katastrophi ton Psaron” (the destruction of Psara) is a short lyric that all Greek children learn by heart (the town of Psara had just been burned to the ground by the Turks when the poem was written): 202

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Solomos, Dionysios On Psara’s dark and desolate stone Glory softly walks all alone Musing over her son’s noble deeds As her hair is adorned by a wreath Made of some yet unrazed weeds That remained on the wasted heath.

Lambros Lambros is a melodramatic tale about a young man (Lambros) who fathers three sons and a daughter out of wedlock with a teenage beauty named Maria. Lambros, while fighting the Turks, meets a young man who turns out to be a girl in disguise. He falls in love with her and seduces her, only to discover that she is the daughter he had long ago left behind. The daughter drowns herself in a lake, and Lambros returns to tell Maria what has happened. Grief is followed by their agreement to marry each other. As their three sons accompany them to the church, however, Lambros, overwhelmed by pain and shame, drowns himself, and Maria, after going insane, also drowns herself in the same lake. Though Lambros is maudlin by modern standards and though it lacks unity, there is robust emotion in it and much pathos. The Byronic influence is evident in the fifteen-syllable lines of its octaves. To Kritikos Like Lambros, To Kritikos (the Cretan) is a tragic narrative of romantic love. Its prosody and its theme were inspired by the Cretan epic Erotokritos (seventeenth century), and its musicality, simplicity, and skillful syntax have been highly praised by critics. An incomplete work, To Kritikos is oneiric in content and decapentasyllabic in meter. The passionate, musical, and well-controlled work is about a Cretan youth found at sea at night, trying to rescue his beloved. The girl is his only contact with life. Everyone in his family has been disgraced and destroyed by the Turks. His struggle with the irrational, unpredictable sea is juxtaposed to his struggle against the Turks in Crete. Early in the poem, there appears to the youth a “moonlight-dressed” maid. When she stares at the stars , they stop twinkling, and she makes the light seem brighter. The youth feels that he has seen her before; indeed, the girl is a “Platonic memory.” The Hungarian critic Andrei Horvat has said that she is an angel of beauty and goodness descended from the Platonic heaven. The young Cretan’s epiphany is accompanied by a heavenly sound, as if to complete the harmony of the senses. In keeping with classical Greek notions of form and concept, Solomos here weds the ideal and the real—an endeavor that would be successful in many of his poems. What Solomos intended to symbolize with the moonlight-dressed girl may be suggested by his later poem, Eleftheroi poliorkimenoi, in which a “light-vested” maid symbolizes life and nature, which, along with freedom, are most dear and most inspiring to the Cretan lad. 203

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After four thunderbolts strike the sea, a calmness reigns everywhere, and in his beloved’s embrace, the youth breathes a fragrance that he compares to a flower garden amid the silence. From that moment, the narrator-youth says, his hand can no longer grasp the knife: The warrior has turned poet and lover. In marvelous synesthesia, the youth hears his beloved’s eyes within him and is touched by her smile. Both tears and smile are inspirational, and the Cretan becomes more eloquent, so that the lines that follow are among Solomos’s most beautiful. Although the youth turns to his beloved only to find her dead, Solomos suggests that the Cretan has triumphed: He has experienced true wonder and beauty; he has become a poet. In both To Kritikos and Lambros, Solomos tried to prove that demotic Greek was capable of expressing the loftiest emotions and not merely mundane realities. Eleftheroi poliorkimenoi Eleftheroi poliorkimenoi is a long poem that many regard as Solomos’s finest work. Solomos’s intent was to show how moral strength triumphs over physical violence. The heroes of the poem are the masses, the people; the poet dramatizes the plight of the besieged at Missolonghi, who, for more than a year and against unbelievable odds, withstood the Turkish attacks. The lyricism of this work reaches heights unequaled in all Greek poetry. Though incomplete, Eleftheroi poliorkimenoi has the peculiar fascination of the fragmentary, a quality it shares with the Hermes of Praxiteles and the Venus de Milo. Solomos began the poem in 1826—the year when Missolonghi, after its inhabitants’ heroic stand, fell to the Turks—and worked on it until his death. The poem changes metric form as it moves along, and parts of it, in fact, are in prose. Spring in all its glory and the beauty of nature (“April of the golden hair is dancing with Eros”) aim to weaken the resolve of the Missolonghians to die fighting for their freedom (“on such a day dying is death a thousand times”). It is a time of the year when human beings would love to live forever. The besieged are confronted with the temptation to embrace the loveliness and pleasure surrounding them. The patriotic sense of duty that sustains them in the face of such temptation is best exemplified in the scene with a young orphan girl. An angel descends and offers the doomed girl, whose lover has already been killed in battle, a pair of wings with which to escape. She proposes to accept the wings, not to fly away, but to wrap them round her and wait for death in solidarity with the other heroic women. It was with such a sense of duty in mind that Solomos originally named his incomplete masterpiece “The Obligation.” The defenders of Missolonghi, like their ancestors in ancient tragedy, place glory above hope and duty above expedience. The overriding moral imperative is to live free or die. The poem’s theme is the struggle between ethical duty and merciless necessity. That the Greeks of Missolonghi will be defeated is not the issue; rather, the question is their actions in the face of defeat.

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Porphyras During the last decade of his life, Solomos composed Porphyras, which some critics regard as his masterpiece. Though incomplete, its greatness is evident: Its rhythms, diction, humane theme, and poetic treatment of ideas are superb. The poem was inspired by the news that an English soldier had been devoured by a shark (called porphyras by the islanders of Corfu) in the port of Corfu. Solomos makes the soldier, as he struggles between sea and sky, a symbol of spiritual strength fighting against the aggressiveness and obstinacy of matter—purity against barbarity. When the young Englishman is confronted with “reasonless and monstrous strength,” he finds in a moment of self-awareness the strength to resist and to acknowledge his being: “Before the noble breath was spent, his soul was filled with joy./ Suddenly in a lightning flash the young man knew himself.” Solomos must be seen not only as a poet but also as a patriot and a humanist, a man who preached a higher sense of morality. He must also be recognized as one of the major pioneers of modern Greek poetry. Other major works nonfiction: Dialogos, 1824; I yineka tis Zakynthos, 1927, 1944 (The Woman of Zakynthos, 1982). Bibliography Coutelle, Louis, Theofanis G. Stavrou, and David R. Weinberg. A Greek Diptych: Dionysios Solomos and Alexandros Papadiamantis. Minneapolis, Minn.: Nostos Books, 1986. A historical and biographical study of two nineteenth century Greek authors. Includes bibliographical references. Dimoula, Vassiliki. “The Nation Between Utopia and Art: Canonizing Dionysios Solomos as the ‘National Poet’ of Greece.” In The Making of Modern Greece: Nationalism, Romanticism, and the Uses of the Past (1797-1896), edited by Roderick Beaton and David Ricks. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2009. Describes Solomos as moving from the documentary to the utopian in his writings. Discusses the nature of nationalism in Solomos’s work and how he has been misinterpreted and misrepresented for political purposes. Especially informative as it brings in the viewpoints of many Greek critics. Mackridge, Peter. Dionysios Solomos. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Aristide, 1989. A biography and critical analysis of Solomos’s works. Includes bibliographical references. Raizis, M. Byron. Dionysios Solomos. New York: Twayne, 1972. An introductory biography and critical study of selected works. Includes bibliographic references. Tsianikas, MichalTs, and Vrasidas KaralTs, eds. Pages of Dionoysios Solomos. Blackheath, N.S.W.: Brandl and Schlesinger/Modern Greek Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand, 2002. Contains analysis of the life and poetry of Solomos in English and in Greek. Minas Savvas 205

THEOCRITUS Born: Syracuse, Sicily (now in Italy); c. 308 b.c.e. Died: Syracuse, Sicily (now in Italy); c. 260 b.c.e. Also known as: Theocritus of Syracuse Principal poetry Idylls, c. 270 b.c.e. (first pb. 1566; English translation, 1684) Other literary forms As an adherent to the Callimachean belief in short, polished poetic forms, Theocritus (thee-OK-ruht-uhs) probably did not attempt epic, dramatic, or didactic poetry— though a late reference work, the Suda (tenth century), does mention two supposedly large works or collections, The Heroines and The Daughters of Proetus, known only by their titles. Achievements Although Theocritus wrote in a variety of forms—pastorals, erotic lyrics, mimes, hymns, encomia, miniature epics, and epigrams—he is best known in the history of literature as the creator of pastoral poetry, which was to become a very sophisticated literary tradition in Western Europe. It has been argued that Theocritus himself produced and published a collection of his rustic poems, which established his identity and reputation as a pastoral poet, but there is no external evidence for such a collection. Rather than a fixed formula, the pastoral idyll was for Theocritus a loosely defined species of sketch set in the central or eastern Mediterranean countryside and peopled by herdsmen with a fondness for poetry and music. Love motifs are common in these rustic landscapes, as are recitations of poetry made up by herdsmen for some small occasion such as a casual singing match. It was for Vergil, writing nearly 250 years later, to add layers of sentiment and allegory to Theocritus’s semirealistic and self-contained country scenes, and it was largely through Vergil that Theocritus made his mark on European letters. Elements of the pastoral appeared here and there in earlier Greek literature: musical or poetic herdsmen in Homer and Hesiod, a lament for Daphnis in Stesichorus, rustic settings in Euripides and even in Plato’s Phaedros (fourth century b.c.e.; Phaedrus, 1792), mime in the works of Sophron and Epicharmus in the fifth century b.c.e., and the prominence of erotic motifs in much late classical poetry, drama, and fiction. It is hard, in fact, to assess the originality of Theocritean pastoral because so much of what was written in the fourth century b.c.e. has been lost, but it was early claimed and has never been disproved that Theocritus was the one who brought the elements of the pastoral or bucolic idyll together in a definitive way. 206

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Theocritus’s pastoral poems share with the other idylls a distinctive, pungent realism that gives his vignettes a flavor of authenticity, as if the reader were witnessing actual scenes of Hellenistic country and city life. The effect is achieved in part by Theocritus’s use of a Doric dialect like that of his native Sicily, chosen partly for its phonetic qualities, but also, no doubt, because it bypassed the literary Attic, Ionic, and Aeolian usages, which were associated in his readers’ minds with earlier Greek poetry. The realistic effect is also the result of his preference for everyday characters belonging to the lower social and economic ranks. A mythical King Oedipus or Medea could be representative of the human condition to a classical (or neoclassical) theater audience, but neither could be as typical as the Alexandrian housewives in idyll 15 or as real as the Coan peasantpoets in idyll 7. Theocritus’s achievement is therefore not confined to the creation of pastoral poetry. Of the twenty-two idylls attributable to him, only eight are pastoral, and no more than a half dozen of his twenty-six epigrams are rustic. The balance of his poems survived, one must suppose, because they are vivid and credible epiphanies of the Hellenistic world that Theocritus inhabited. Granted, Theocritus’s realism is not as literal as it is made to seem: His Doric Greek is an artificial patois drawn from a variety of dialects within the Dorian family, and his fictions are too artfully concocted to be real slices of rustic or urban life—this is the paradox of all literary realism. It is a more striking paradox that the creator of the genre that was to become the most artificial in European belles lettres should also have been one of the first great masters of literary realism. Biography Little is known with certainty about the life of Theocritus. Born in or near Syracuse around 308 b.c.e., he traveled as a young man to the Aegean island of Cos. The reasons for this sojourn are unknown. Family connections may have provided an initial foothold there, but the existence of a kind of medical center and school outside the city of Cos, the Asclepieion, where his friend Nicias was a student, could have been the main attraction for him. A detailed knowledge of eastern Mediterranean plant life in the Idylls suggests that Theocritus made a special study of botany in that age when plants were the chief source of medication. Another possible motive was the community of poets around Philetas, a distinguished scholar and poet who had been the tutor of the Egyptian monarch Ptolemy Philadelphus. Idyll 7, “The Harvest Festival,” is a lightly disguised tribute to this group, of which Theocritus counts himself a member under the alias Simichidas. The idea of a herdsman-poet may have evolved from a self-sufficient commune headed by Philetas, dedicated to the pursuit of writing in a setting that (like Epicurus’s famous garden in Athens) insulated its members from the distractions of city life. From this perspective, the combination of goatherding and poetry would have been a sensible expedient rather than the affectation it became in later ages. It was probably on Cos that Theocritus had his first success as the creator of a new 207

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style of poetry, the pastoral. He was noticed in Alexandria, and at some point, no doubt with the encouragement of his mentor Philetas, Theocritus sought the patronage of the royal court. Idyll 16 is evidence of an earlier unsuccessful bid for the patronage of Hiero II of Syracuse. With Ptolemy, Theocritus was apparently more successful, as his praises of the Egyptian monarch in idylls 14 and 17 suggest. It was during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246 b.c.e.) that Theocritus lived in Alexandria, some time between 278 b.c.e. and the summer of 270 b.c.e. The nature and extent of his contact with Callimachus and Apollonius Rhodius is uncertain, but it was fruitful, and together the three became the leading poets of the Hellenistic Age, placing an “Alexandrian” stamp on literary tastes for the two and a half centuries culminating with Vergil, Horace, and Ovid. Ptolemy himself promoted science and scholarship in Alexandria by establishing the museum and library in the royal quarter and gathering under his patronage one of the most remarkable assemblages of talent in history. In this most cosmopolitan of all settings, far from the fields of Cos, Theocritus was in the company not only of gifted literary contemporaries, but of Archimedes (a fellow Syracusan) and the geometer Euclid as well—and also enjoyed access to the largest library ever assembled to that date. Already famous for his pastoral poetry, Theocritus turned here to court poetry, epyllia (miniature epics), and mimes that dramatized the lives of ordinary city people. Nothing is known about the circumstances of Theocritus’s death, but most authorities believe he died around 260 b.c.e. Analysis Theocritus wrote in a number of poetic types, but the three most typical are the pastoral idylls (numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11), the mimes (numbers 2, 10, 14, 15), and the epyllia (numbers 13, 22, 24). Except for the epigrams, which are mostly in the elegiac couplets customary for fictive inscriptions in the Hellenistic Age, Theocritus’s poems are set in the same dactylic hexameter that Homer used. In English, they are called “idylls,” a somewhat misleading generic term suggesting peace, tranquillity, and an Arcadian pleasantness—associations relevant only to the pastoral idylls. Even the Greek eidullion was not Theocritus’s word; a diminutive of eidos (form), it means something like “little form,” or “short separate poem.” It is sometimes explained as meaning “little picture”; although Theocritean poetry is not especially pictorial, the poet did excel in drawing vignettes, and vivid presentation is a special Theocritean talent. The pastoral, or bucolic (from boukolos, “cowherder”), idylls are not written in accordance with strict rules; consequently, idylls 4 and 10 may or may not be considered strictly pastoral, the former because it has no song recited within it, the latter because the singers are agricultural workers, not herdsmen. In any case, the herdsman-poet is the hallmark of the genre, and some kind of poetic recitation usually occurs in the course of the poem. Exceptions are sometimes called rustic mimes, in accordance with the convention that poetry set in the country is not pastoral without the herdsman-poet and the 208

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song within the song. An early ancestor of pastoral song may be the Linos song performed in the vineyard on the shield of Achilles in book 18 of Homer’s Iliad (c. 750 b.c.e.; English translation, 1611). Closer to the literary beginnings of pastoral is the legendary Sicilian cowherd-poet Daphnis, whose death on the slopes of Mount Etna is the subject of Thyrsis’s song in idyll 1. Another source of pastoral is the singing matches observed in ancient and modern times in Sicily, southern Italy, and Greece. It is still sometimes said, on the weakest of evidence, that pastoral has ritual origins connected with a Sicilian cult of Daphnis, but such speculations have little to do with what Theocritus wrote. The rustic setting on which pastoral depends has moral overtones even in Theocritus, although they were given more explicit emphasis by Vergil and his successors. Theocritean shepherds do not moralize on the superiority of country to city life, but they are creatures of instinct whose fluency in describing their restful surroundings gave rise to a literary topos: the locus amoenus, or pleasant spot, where a spreading tree provides shelter from the noonday sun, cicadas chirp in the background, cool waters babble nearby, and grasses offer a natural couch in the shade. The locale is otherwise left to the reader’s imagination; Vergil placed his shepherds in Arcadia for its remoteness from Italy, but in Theocritus the locus amoenus could be anywhere in the eastern Mediterranean. Idylls 4 and 5 are in southern Italy, idyll 7 on Cos, the rest unspecified. Unlike earlier Greek poetry, which was addressed to a particular polis and therefore specific as to location, Theocritean pastoral is addressed to the oikoumenT, or civilized world in general, and downplays the specifics of place. Pastoral is an escape to any rustic spot where the sun shines, trees make shade, and shepherds sing. The timelessness of Theocritus’s themes and situations also contributes to pastoral’s escapism. Like the pleasant spots where they loaf, his shepherds belong to any generation or century; unlike their urban counterparts, they are in no hurry, having nowhere to go and nothing to do but watch their herds and sing about love. Eros was a favorite Hellenistic topic, being both timeless and apolitical, and in Theocritus, it is the chief disturber of the midsummer calm. Even love is toned down, however, to reduce its potential for tragedy or pathos. Daphnis dies because of love in idyll 1, but the reader is never told exactly how or why, and the whole business is only a shepherd’s prize poem, not a firsthand narrative. The goatherd’s serenade to Amaryllis in idyll 3 paints the lover’s country pathos in quaint rather than tragic colors, so that his threats of suicide are no more believable than his warning that the wolves will eat him. The one-eyed Polyphemus’s love for the sea nymph Galatea in idylls 6 and 11 is comic for the same reasons. The carnality in idylls 4 and 5 is no more than a whiff of goatishness to liven up a scene. The love stories in idyll 7 come naturally to the singers, who seem not at all involved in the tales they tell of unrequited love (pastoral love is always unrequited); it is only a song. Love ripples the serenity of pastoral life from time to time, but it never makes waves. 209

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In Theocritean pastoral, therefore, very little happens and nothing of much consequence is discussed. Its characters are unreflective, its actions involve no crisis and little tension, nor does the larger world of change, cities, wars, or politics intrude. In fact, most of the concerns that may be said to lie at the core of literature seem to be excluded from the Theocritean version of pastoral. Its underlying mythos, as Charles Segal has noted, is “a return to origins, to childhood, to simplicity, and to clarity of feeling.” Unlike (for example) much prose fiction of the American South in which a similar return is suggested, the Theocritean return contains few deep reverberations. Theocritus turns his back on the goings-on and the interests of his time: the passion for learning shared by his contemporaries Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius, Herondas, and others; the life of the great Hellenistic courts and the intrigues of their kings; the emotionalism of much Hellenistic poetry and art, the cosmopolitanism of the Hellenistic cities, and the expanding ethical horizons of the age in which he lived—all are forgotten in the quiet simplicity of the pastoral idylls. Recent scholarship has shown it to be a poetry of subtlety and some complexity, but it is a poetry that avoids depth of meaning. In one respect alone, it can be said that Theocritus brought his readers into contact with the serious thinking of his time. Both Stoic and Epicurean philosophies held that the highest truths lie in the rhythms of nature and the basic instincts common to humans and animals. By leading the way to a pastoral life of nature and instincts, Theocritus dramatized a simpler and perhaps better world for his citified readers. Pastoral is therefore essentially an urban form, and Theocritus’s initial success as a poet probably came from an urban audience’s vicarious participation in that simpler world. The line between pastoral and mime is not easy to draw, because all pastoral is also mime—that is, a dramatized scene with one or more characters, emphasizing character in a single situation rather than action in a plot. Pastoral mime typically brings two herdsmen together in a situation which elicits song. Sometimes—in the beginning of idyll 1 and throughout idyll 5—the speech is amoebean, with the second speaker trying to cap the verses of his rival. In idylls 6, 7, and 10, the singing contest takes the form of one song from each of two performers, a modification of the folk contests which must have influenced Theocritus in his creation of pastoral. In this perspective, both pastoral and mime are sketches from life, imaginary conversations done into verse and a madeup Doric dialect. Idyll 2 Idyll 2 is a dramatic monologue, but there is nothing pastoral about it, nothing of the male bucolic world in which women are mentioned only as objects of love’s unhappy passion. Here, for the first and only time in Theocritus, a single woman is the speaker, and the reader sees through her eyes Theocritus’s favorite theme: love’s unhappiness. The comic stage had begun in the previous generation to present love stories with happy endings, but romantic love was not yet a cultural attitude, and when Hellenistic poets 210

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wrote of love, it was more often than not in the tradition of destructive passion. It was the same tradition that produced the tragedy of Dido in the Aeneid (c. 29-19 b.c.e.; English translation, 1553). In idyll 2, the woman in love is Simaetha, recently struck with a sudden passion for Delphis, a young playboy, as he was walking back from the gymnasium. In his careless way, he has made love to her and gone on to other conquests, leaving her the victim of an aroused passion. However, Simaetha is not the victim of a male seducer. As her own account of the encounter with Delphis reveals, she is the one who suffered love at first sight and took all the initiative, to the point of pushing him down on her bed. Now she is given another traditionally male role to play—that of the forlorn lover—as she calls upon the feminine powers of darkness, Selene, Hecate, Aphrodite, and Artemis, to make her lover return or to hurt him if he refuses. For all this, she is a figure of pity; her nighttime monologue, punctuated by the refrains of her spells to bind a lost lover, could well be Theocritus’s masterpiece. It is an evocative and realistic portrayal of a woman in a state of passionate obsession, representative of the interest which Hellenistic poets shared in this subject. Idyll 15 Another Theocritean masterpiece, idyll 15, also looks to the life of women, but in a lighter vein. Gorgo and Praxinoa are two young matrons from Syracuse who are living in Alexandria. Here, Theocritus’s interest is not in a woman’s crisis, but in the ordinary life of lively but unsophisticated women. The occasion is the autumn festival of Adonis, the lover of Aphrodite whose death symbolized the annual withering of vegetation. Queen Arsinoe has opened the Ptolemaic palace for a public viewing of the artworks created for the occasion: the dead or dying Adonis represented in a tapestry, a couch with figures of Adonis and Aphrodite embracing, and an impressive array of surrounding adornments. The two ladies take this opportunity for time out from their domestic routine, and the reader overhears their conversation as they meet at Praxinoa’s house, walk through the streets of Alexandria, and marvel at the display before them in the palace. The scenes of everyday life include a singer performing an “Adonis” song, which Walker calls “a deliberately parodistic example of Alexandrian kitsch.” The whole is a tour de force of representation. The matrons are contemptuous of their husbands and sharp-tongued when jostled in the crowd, but Theocritus’s intent is not entirely malicious, and the reader gets a persuasive view of a subject that other Greek poets chose to ignore: “a page torn fresh out of the book of human life,” as Matthew Arnold called it. Idylls 10 and 14 Idylls 10 and 14 are skits of the male world, the first representing two hardworking reapers (not the idle herdsmen of the pastoral idylls) who exchange songs. The lovesick Bucaeus sings a clumsy ode to a skinny, sun-blackened girl named Bombyca (after the pipes she plays for the field hands), and the pragmatic Milon answers with a brace of 211

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Hesiodic couplets of advice to the farmer that sound as if they came from some ancient farmer’s almanac. The characters who converse in idyll 14 are also men, but through their conversation, the reader gets a glimpse of a woman, Cynisca, who has left the lovesick Aeschinas for a gentler boyfriend after he has beaten her up in a jealous rage. Thyonichus advises his friend to enter the service of Ptolemy as a mercenary to forget his troubles. Both mimes are humorous commentaries, the one on a lover’s blindness to his girl’s plainness, the other on a quick-tempered lover’s inability to treat decently a mistress he finds it so hard to do without. Idylls 13, 22, and 24 One important difference between Theocritus’s pastoral and his mimes is that the latter present their subjects in low mimetic style, with a characteristic capacity for irony, humor, and parody, while the pastorals temper those features with a lyricism in the presentation of pastoral life. The epyllion, or “little epic,” was a Hellenistic attempt to revive characters and stories of a high mimetic form in an age when the epic was becoming obsolete. Callimachus wrote a homey interlude in the exploits of Theseus in the EkalT (n.d.; Hecale, 1958), of which some fragments still survive. Theocritus’s “Hylas” (idyll 13) shows Heracles distraught over the loss of his young companion, taken by the nymphs of a pool where he had come for water during the expedition of the Argonauts. The point of this short narrative, addressed to the poet’s friend Nicias, is that although love can upset the stoutest heart, man—like Heracles in this story—must eventually return to his tasks. The episode also appears in the Argonautica (third century b.c.e.; English translation, 1780) of Theocritus’s contemporary Apollonius Rhodius, perhaps written before this version. Theocritus’s poem has been much admired. It is the subject of a well-known Victorian painting by J. W. Waterhouse, Hylas and the Nymphs, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was so moved by Theocritus’s poem that he is said to have exclaimed, “I should be content to die if I had written anything equal to this!” Idyll 22, “The Dioscuri,” describes in its first part an episode in the Argonautica involving a boxing match between Polydeuces and Amycus; the second part, describing a duel between Castor and Lynceus, is a pastiche of Homeric formulae from the Iliad and does its author little credit. “Little Heracles” is the title of idyll 24, apparently composed for a contest. It is a reworking of Pindar’s first Nemean ode (fourth century b.c.e.), in which the story is told of how the infant Heracles killed the snakes sent by Hera to devour him. The poem’s movement from the heroic to the domestic follows a Hellenistic tendency to domesticate epic themes, and Heracles’ emergence as what anthologizer Anna Rist calls “a Hellenistic gentleman, complete with all proper accomplishments” is a reminder that the royal house of Ptolemy, Theocritus’s patron, claimed descent from Heracles. Theocritus was a major writer in a period that produced no great literature. It is of little use to disparage his work as lacking in profundity, because it was subtlety and polish 212

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rather than scope and depth that the poets of the age prized. He was Hellenism’s keenest observer of men and women; he expanded the vision of the age with his choice of subjects, his lyric powers, and his detailed representations. Finally, his pastoral myth has provoked the imaginations of great poets for more than two millennia. Bibliography Burton, Joan B. Theocritus’s Urban Mimes: Mobility, Gender, and Patronage. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Burton presents sophisticated readings of Theocritus’s urban mimes. Unlike Theocritus’s bucolic poems, which focus on the male experience, all his urban mimes represent women in more central and powerful roles, reflecting the growing visibility of Greek women at the time. Gutzwiller, Kathryn J. Theocritus’s Pastoral Analogies: The Formation of a Genre. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. Examines Theocritus as the originator of the pastoral. Haber, Judith. Pastoral and the Poetics of Self-Contradiction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. A review of the origins and development of the pastoral tradition, with an especially acute focus on the criticism and interpretations of Theocritus over the centuries. Halperin, David. Before Pastoral: Theocritus and Ancient Tradition of Bucolic Poetry. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983. A reexamination of Theocritus’s place as the originator of the pastoral poetry. Halperin credits him with more originality and greater influence than do previous critics. Hubbard, Thomas. Pipes of Pan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. A review of the pastoral tradition from ancient Greece to the European Renaissance, with special attention paid to Theocritus as originator and prime exponent. Hunter, Richard. Theocritus and the Archaeology of Greek Poetry. 1996. Reprint. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. A study of the historical and literary context of the Greek Archaic Age from which Theocritus’s poems emerged. Focuses more on the hymns, mimes, and erotic poems of Theocritus than on his pastorals. Payne, Mark. Theocritus and the Invention of Fiction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Provides extensive analysis of Theocritus’s poetry and its legacy. Rosenmeyer, Charles. The Green Cabinet: Theocritus and European Pastoral Lyric. Bristol, England: Bristol Classical, 2004. Examines the pastoral poems of Theocritus and his influence on later pastoral poets. Walker, Steven F. Theocritus. Boston: Twayne, 1980. A study providing a solid introduction and background to the author, his world, and his works. Zimmerman, Clayton. The Pastoral Narcissus: A Study of the First Idyll of Theocritus. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994. Links Theocritus’s poem on Narcissus to the visual arts in the Hellenistic period. Daniel H. Garrison 213

THEOGNIS Born: Megara(?), Greece; c. seventh century b.c.e. Died: Megara(?), Greece; c. sixth century b.c.e. Also known as: Theognis of Megara Principal poetry Theognidea, seventh or sixth century b.c.e. The Elegies of Theognis, and Other Elegies Included in the Theognidean Sylloge, 1910 Other literary forms Theognis (thee-OG-nuhs) is remembered only for his poetry. Achievements The words of Theognis transcend their age, occasion, and audience. Although his images, assumptions, and advice were based on an archaic value system, much of what he wrote still has currency in the twenty-first century. Theognis predicted the universal acceptance and immortality of his poetry. Time has proved him an accurate seer. After all, poverty is still painful; youth is still fleeting; ships of state are still capsized; true friends are few. Biography Verses 22 and 23 of the Theognidea assert that they are “the words of Theognis the Megarian, known by name among all men.” This assertion provides most of the available information about him. No ancient biography survives, and perhaps none ever existed. The dates and even the place of his origin are disputed. Because Plato makes him a citizen of the Megara in Sicily, this view has had its adherents; most often, however, he is associated with Megara on the Isthmus of Corinth, near Athens. The few historical allusions in the Theognidea span a period from the seventh to the fifth century b.c.e. Passages that seem to anticipate a tyranny at Megara were presumably composed before the actual tyranny of Theagenes, which perhaps began about 630; the threat from the Medes in verses 764 and 775 should be the invasion of Xerxes in 480. Some medieval sources place the floruit of Theognis between 552 and 541 b.c.e. The tenth century lexicon, the Suda, gives the fifty-ninth Olympiad, 544 to 541, as his floruit. The dates of the 630’s and 544 to 541 have gained the most favor. Passages that seem earlier and later than the chosen floruit are explained as anonymous compositions included before about 300 b.c.e. among the genuine poems of Theognis. In verses 19 to 23 of the Theognidea, Theognis claims to put a sphregis, or seal, on 214

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his words so that it would be obvious if they were stolen. This sphregis is commonly assumed to be the name of Kyrnos, a youth to whom these verses are addressed. Accordingly, the name Kyrnos or his patronymic, Polupaides, in a poem identifies it as genuinely by Theognis. Thus, of almost fourteen hundred verses attributed to Theognis, about one-fourth are usually considered genuine, with Theognis’s name attached to the whole because of the predominance and prominence of the Kyrnos poems. A radically different view sees the name of Theognis as generic, traditionally associated with Megarian gnomological elegiac poetry. From this perspective, the chronological range of the poetry has no significance; the poetry was composed over time. The sphregis becomes the message of the poetry, the traditional code of behavior for the aristocracy. Analysis Named after Theognis, the Theognidea is a collection of elegiac poetry addressed to aristocratic audiences of Archaic Greece. The poems are paraenetic and didactic; that is, they seek to give counsel and to teach. One ancient name for the collection is Gnomology, a compilation of gnomic statements or maxims. Theognis’s favorite terms, “the good” and “the bad,” originally had connotations relating to birth, status, and politics; nevertheless, they are not tied down by names, events, or places. Because his advice was adaptable to time and circumstances, he spoke to “the good” everywhere. Many of Theognis’s observations are now so familiar as to seem clichés. Most were traditional wisdom even for the poet: There is no place like home; youth is fleeting; poverty is painful. On the other hand, some seem fresh. For example, the increasingly widespread phenomenon of coined money made an impact on Theognis’s poetry. Not found in Homer and Hesiod are such derivative images as Theognis’s counterfeit friend and need for a touchstone to test purity of character, images that were developed by Plato and others. Theognis is often cited for confirmation or quibbling in the works of ancient and medieval authors. The poems of the Theognidea, however, were transmitted through medieval manuscripts rather than from scattered citations, as was the case with most Archaic elegiac, iambic, and melic poetry. The perceived usefulness of the counsel undoubtedly contributed to its survival. Theognidea The Theognidea is divided into two books of unequal length. Scholar Martin L. West concludes that the division was made about 900 c.e. The second book contains fewer than two hundred verses, concerned with various aspects of pederasty. These verses had originally been scattered throughout the collection. The theme of pederasty is consonant with other preoccupations of the Theognidea: status and wealth, the faithfulness of friends, moderation and excess. The author of the elegies upholds the mores and privi215

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leges of the aristocracy against encroachment by an increasingly aggressive “middle class.” Most of the poems consist of one or two couplets. Two of the longer passages, 19 to 38 and 237 to 254, bound a core thought by all scholars to be genuine. The first of the longer passages begins with Kyrnos’s name, identifies Theognis as author, and introduces the problem of the seal. Within the core passage, the poet declares his intentions: Being well-disposed to you, I shall advise you, Kurnos, on such things as I myself learned from the good when I was a youth. Be wise; amass neither honors nor glories nor wealth at a price of either shameful or unjust deeds. Just know these things: do not associate with bad men, but keep yourself always with the good. Drink and eat beside them; sit with them and please them; their power is great. For from the noble you will learn noble things, but if you mix with the bad, you will lose even the sense you now have. Learn these things and associate with the good; at some time you will say that I give good counsel to my friends.

In verses 237 to 254, the poet claims to have given Kyrnos immortality. Kyrnos will be present at every banquet and feast, in poems sung to the accompaniment of an oboe. The immortality of Kyrnos assumes the immortality of Theognis’s poetry through its being sung at banquets and feasts—that is, at symposia. As the symposium was an institution of the leisure class, so the poetry passes on the values of this class. The good and noble are the aristocrats; the bad are those with unimpressive pedigrees, whose wealth requires that they be noticed. The poet cannot deny this notice, but it is hostile and scornful. The skolia As Plato’s Symposion (fourth century b.c.e.; Symposium, 1701) suggests, after the consumption of food and along with the consumption of wine, demonstrations of cleverness contributed to the entertainment on such occasions. The poems of the Theognidea agree in tone and content with the drinking songs, or skolia, collected in the Deipnosophists (second century c.e.; learned men at dinner) of Athenaeus. Some are riddles; some make observations on the symposium itself: A man who chatters all the time is a nuisance and is invited only by necessity. A guest should not be forced to go home or forced to stay. One who drinks too much also talks too much and makes a fool of himself. He who has drunk very much but is still sensible is unsurpassed. A symposium is 216

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pleasant when everything is said in the open and there are no quarrels. When drunk, the wise and foolish are indistinguishable. Wine shows the mind of a man. At a banquet, it is good for one to sit beside a wise man and to go home having learned something. Drink when people drink; when sad, drink so no one will know. Many are friends over food and drink, but few can be relied on in a serious matter. Friendship The task of distinguishing true friends from false requires the versatility of Odysseus. The poet adjures his heart to cultivate a changeful character, to be like his companion, to have the temperament of the octopus, which looks like the rock to which it clings. The poet frequently advises testing a friend before trusting him in a serious matter. The antitheses of tongue and deed and tongue and thought are marked; men love deceit. Kyrnos should, therefore, speak as if he were a friend to all but become involved with no one in anything serious. A man who says one thing and thinks another cannot be a good friend. Some friends are counterfeit; the poet longs for a touchstone. Blessed is he who dies before having to test his friends. Theognis’s apparent pessimism concerning friendship is part of a more general pessimism typical of Archaic poetry. In Homer’s Iliad (c. 750 b.c.e.; English translation, 1611), a generation of people is like a generation of leaves. The best possibility for humans is a mixture of good and evil. Theognis says that the best thing for those on Earth is not to be born; for one born, it is best to die as quickly as possible. Death is preferable to oppressive poverty, and poverty forces people into wickedness. Wealth confers honor; wealth and poverty should be distributed according to personal worth, but they are not. Divine favor gives money even to one completely worthless; few have virtue. Moderation Since wealth does not belong only to the good, it cannot carry a completely positive valence. The wealth of wicked men who lack sound judgment and are unjust leads to excess, to hubris. Examination of the passages in which hubris appears reveals that in the diction of the Theognidea, the context of hubris is always, although not always overtly, political. The greatest danger of hubris is that it causes the destruction of cities. For private gain, the bad give unjust judgments and injure the people; from hubris comes factionalism, internecine killings, and tyrants. On the other hand, the gods give political moderation, gnome, as the best thing for mortals; all things are accomplished through moderation. Theognis uses many other terms for political moderation. The most familiar, sophrosune, is explicitly opposed to hubris, but Theognis’s most striking call to political moderation begins with the phrase meden agan. The phrase meden agan (nothing in excess) was carved on the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi and was associated with the wisdom of the Seven Sages. Gnothi sauton (know yourself) was inscribed with 217

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meden agan; the two warnings against hubris are important for interpreting much of classical Greek literature, especially tragedy and the Historiai Herodotou (c. 424 b.c.e.; The History, 1709) of Herodotus. The middle way is urged in several poems beginning with meden agan: Do not in any way strive too eagerly; the middles of all things are best. The opportune moment is best for all the deeds of humans. Do not in any way too much glut your heart with difficulties or rejoice too much in good things, because it is the mark of a good person to bear everything. Comparison with other injunctions shows the pattern of the negative command followed by a reinforcing positive statement. These reinforcing statements are separable from the particular commands, and both are reusable. Since the diction of Solon, Hesiod, Homer, and others shows the same pattern, similarities of Theognis to other poetry can be attributed to the traditional nature of the language and the general importance of moderation in the Archaic value system. Sea and sailing imagery That the dominant metaphors in the Theognidea concern the sea and sailing is perhaps natural, because Greece is surrounded by water, and the major Archaic city-states all founded colonies overseas. Not only was sailing vital to Greek economic life, but also, as the Odyssey (c. 725 b.c.e.; English translation, 1614) suggests, it was vital to the Greek psyche. On the wings of Theognis’s poetry, Kyrnos will be universally known, borne easily over the boundless sea. The poet advises that doing a favor for a bad man is like sowing the sea. A bad man should be avoided like a bad harbor. Like a ship, the poet keeps his distance from one whom time has exposed as a counterfeit friend. A boy was rough but relented; after the storm, the poet rests at anchor with night coming. The ship can also be the ship of state. The first extant examples of this image are found in two fragments of the Greek poet Alcaeus; the best known is in the Augustan poet Horace. Theognis is an important link in the transmission of the metaphor. It appears in verses 575 to 576 and verses 855 to 856, but it receives extended treatment in verses 667 to 682. The wealth of the poet is not equal to his character. The state is beset by difficulties that could have been foreseen but were not. The skilled helmsman has been displaced. There is no order, no concern for the common good. The bad rule over the good. The ship is in danger of being swallowed by the waves. The poet calls his extended metaphor a code to the good, but one comprehensible even to a bad man if he is wise. Pederastic poems Pausanias’s encomium of Eros in the Symposion (fourth century b.c.e.; Symposium, 1701) of Plato sheds much light on the pederastic poems of the second book of the Theognidea. According to Pausanias, pederasty is acceptable in a context of moral improvement. The lover aims to make the young man better; the beloved gratifies his lover 218

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in the hope of becoming better. In Theognis, the situation is much the same. Through his association with the poet, the young Kurnos learns how to conduct himself, how to interact with his own kind, and what attitudes to adopt toward social inferiors. Because the role of beloved can be played for only a short time, he learns the part of the lover also, able to take his turn. As an institution, pederasty tightened the bonds of aristocratic solidarity. Many of the pederastic poems are facetious, befitting their sympotic setting. A boy is advised to quit running away, since he will not be of an age for long. As long as the boy’s cheek is smooth, the poet will fawn on him, even if the price is death. Love is bitter and sweet, hard and soft. The poet laments the public exposure of his love for a boy, but he will endure the attacks; the boy is not unseemly. Finally, in verses 1345 to 1350, the poet adduces a mythic exemplum: Loving a boy has been something pleasant since the son of Kronos, the king of the immortals, was in love with Ganymede. He snatched him up and carried him off to Olympus and made him a divinity while he had the lovely flower of his boyhood. So do not marvel, Simonides, that I too was shown conquered by love of a pretty boy.

Bibliography Compton, Todd. “Theognis: Faceless Exile.” In Victim of the Muses: Poet as Scapegoat, Warrior, and Hero in Greco-Roman and Indo-European Myth and History. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2006. A biography of Theognis that considers the poet a faceless exile. Edmunds, Lowell. “The Seal of Theognis.” In Poet, Public, and Performance in Ancient Greece, edited by Lowell Edmunds and Robert Wallace. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Traces the relationship of the poet and his work to his audience, who are seen as less readers and literary enthusiasts than fellow citizens in the polis and friends of the poet’s tribal group. The fundamental effect sought in Theognis’s work is therefore not aesthetic but political. Figueire, Thomas, and Gregory Nagy, eds. Theognis of Megara: Poetry and the Polis. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. This collection of essays examine a number of topics but focuses especially on the relationship between Theognis’s work and his native city of Megara. The result is a combination of poetic, literary, social, and historical insights. Hubbard, Thomas. “Theognis’ Sphregis: Aristocratic Speech and the Paradoxes of Writing.” In Politics of Orality, edited by Craig R. Cooper. Boston: Brill, 2007. Hubbard notes that although many modern scholars have come to view the works col219

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lected under the name of Theognis as a local tradition of aristocratic poetry, the sphregis, or seal, refers to an individual and casts doubt on this theory. He discusses the passage in detail. Schmidt, Michael. The First Poets: Lives of the Ancient Greek Poets. New York: Knopf, 2006. Contains a biography of Theognis that analyzes his work. Walker, Jeffrey. “Theognis’ Octopus: On Poetry as Rhetorical Transaction.” Rhetoric and Poetry in Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Study examines the poetry of Theognis, using his statement that he should be like the octopus, which adapts to its situation. Carrie Cowherd

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CHECKLIST FOR EXPLICATING A POEM I. The Initial Readings A. Before reading the poem, the reader should: 1. Notice its form and length. 2. Consider the title, determining, if possible, whether it might function as an allusion, symbol, or poetic image. 3. Notice the date of composition or publication, and identify the general era of the poet. B. The poem should be read intuitively and emotionally and be allowed to “happen” as much as possible. C. In order to establish the rhythmic flow, the poem should be reread. A note should be made as to where the irregular spots (if any) are located. II. Explicating the Poem A. Dramatic situation. Studying the poem line by line helps the reader discover the dramatic situation. All elements of the dramatic situation are interrelated and should be viewed as reflecting and affecting one another. The dramatic situation serves a particular function in the poem, adding realism, surrealism, or absurdity; drawing attention to certain parts of the poem; and changing to reinforce other aspects of the poem. All points should be considered. The following questions are particularly helpful to ask in determining dramatic situation: 1. What, if any, is the narrative action in the poem? 2. How many personae appear in the poem? What part do they take in the action? 3. What is the relationship between characters? 4. What is the setting (time and location) of the poem? B. Point of view. An understanding of the poem’s point of view is a major step toward comprehending the poet’s intended meaning. The reader should ask: 1. Who is the speaker? Is he or she addressing someone else or the reader? 2. Is the narrator able to understand or see everything happening to him or her, or does the reader know things that the narrator does not? 3. Is the narrator reliable? 4. Do point of view and dramatic situation seem consistent? If not, the inconsistencies may provide clues to the poem’s meaning. 221

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C. Images and metaphors. Images and metaphors are often the most intricately crafted vehicles of the poem for relaying the poet’s message. Realizing that the images and metaphors work in harmony with the dramatic situation and point of view will help the reader to see the poem as a whole, rather than as disassociated elements. 1. The reader should identify the concrete images (that is, those that are formed from objects that can be touched, smelled, seen, felt, or tasted). Is the image projected by the poet consistent with the physical object? 2. If the image is abstract, or so different from natural imagery that it cannot be associated with a real object, then what are the properties of the image? 3. To what extent is the reader asked to form his or her own images? 4. Is any image repeated in the poem? If so, how has it been changed? Is there a controlling image? 5. Are any images compared to each other? Do they reinforce one another? 6. Is there any difference between the way the reader perceives the image and the way the narrator sees it? 7. What seems to be the narrator’s or persona’s attitude toward the image? D. Words. Every substantial word in a poem may have more than one intended meaning, as used by the author. Because of this, the reader should look up many of these words in the dictionary and: 1. Note all definitions that have the slightest connection with the poem. 2. Note any changes in syntactical patterns in the poem. 3. In particular, note those words that could possibly function as symbols or allusions, and refer to any appropriate sources for further information. E. Meter, rhyme, structure, and tone. In scanning the poem, all elements of prosody should be noted by the reader. These elements are often used by a poet to manipulate the reader’s emotions, and therefore they should be examined closely to arrive at the poet’s specific intention. 1. Does the basic meter follow a traditional pattern such as those found in nursery rhymes or folk songs? 2. Are there any variations in the base meter? Such changes or substitutions are important thematically and should be identified. 3. Are the rhyme schemes traditional or innovative, and what might their form mean to the poem? 4. What devices has the poet used to create sound patterns (such as assonance and alliteration)? 5. Is the stanza form a traditional or innovative one? 6. If the poem is composed of verse paragraphs rather than stanzas, how do they affect the progression of the poem? 222

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7. After examining the above elements, is the resultant tone of the poem casual or formal, pleasant, harsh, emotional, authoritative? F. Historical context. The reader should attempt to place the poem into historical context, checking on events at the time of composition. Archaic language, expressions, images, or symbols should also be looked up. G. Themes and motifs. By seeing the poem as a composite of emotion, intellect, craftsmanship, and tradition, the reader should be able to determine the themes and motifs (smaller recurring ideas) presented in the work. He or she should ask the following questions to help pinpoint these main ideas: 1. Is the poet trying to advocate social, moral, or religious change? 2. Does the poet seem sure of his or her position? 3. Does the poem appeal primarily to the emotions, to the intellect, or to both? 4. Is the poem relying on any particular devices for effect (such as imagery, allusion, paradox, hyperbole, or irony)?

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BIBLIOGRAPHY General reference sources Biographical sources Jackson, William T. H., ed. European Writers. 14 vols. New York: Scribner, 19831991. Kunitz, Stanley, and Vineta Colby, eds. European Authors, 1000-1900: A Biographical Dictionary of European Literature. New York: Wilson, 1967. Magill, Frank N., ed. Critical Survey of Poetry: Foreign Language Series. 5 vols. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, 1984. _______. Critical Survey of Poetry: Supplement. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, 1987. Serafin, Steven, ed. Encyclopedia of World Literature in the Twentieth Century. 3d ed. 4 vols. Detroit: St. James Press, 1999. Criticism Coleman, Arthur. A Checklist of Interpretation, 1940-1973, of Classical and Continental Epics and Metrical Romances. Vol. 2 in Epic and Romance Criticism. 2 vols. New York: Watermill, 1974. Jason, Philip K., ed. Masterplots II: Poetry Series, Revised Edition. 8 vols. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 2002. The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies. London: Oxford University Press, 1931. Dictionaries, histories, and handbooks Auty, Robert, et al. Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry. 2 vols. Vol. 1, The Traditions; Vol. 2, Characteristics and Techniques. Publications of the Modern Humanities Research Association 9, 13. London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 1980, 1989. Bede, Jean-Albert, and William B. Edgerton, eds. Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature. 2d ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. France, Peter, ed. The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Henderson, Lesley, ed. Reference Guide to World Literature. 2d ed. 2 vols. New York: St. James Press, 1995. Oinas, Felix, ed. Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the World’s Great Folk Epics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.

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Poetics Gasparov, M. L. A History of European Versification. Translated by G. S. Smith and Marina Tarlinskaja. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Wimsatt, William K., ed. Versification: Major Language Types: Sixteen Essays. New York: Modern Language Association, 1972.

Classical Greek and Latin Briggs, Ward W. Ancient Greek Authors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 176. Detroit: Gale Research, 1997. Budelmann, Felix, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Constantine, Peter, et al., eds. The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. David, A. P. The Dance of the Muses: Choral Theory and Ancient Greek Poetics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Dihle, Albrecht, and Clare Krojzl, trans. A History of Greek Literature: From Homer to the Hellenistic Period. New York: Routledge, 1994. Green, Ellen, ed. Women Poets in Ancient Greece and Rome. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005. Harrison, Stephen, ed. A Companion to Latin Literature. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2004. Kessels, A. H. M., and W. J. Verdenius, comps. A Concise Bibliography of Ancient Greek Literature. 2d ed. Apeldoorn, Netherlands: Administratief Centrum, 1982. King, Katherine Callen. Ancient Epic. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Lefkowitz, Mary R. The Lives of the Greek Poets. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. Raffel, Burton, trans. Pure Pagan: Seven Centuries of Greek Poems and Fragments. New York: Random House, 2004. West, M. L., trans. Greek Lyric Poetry. 1993. Reprint. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Macedonian Osers, Ewald, ed. Contemporary Macedonian Poetry. Translated by Eward Osers. London: Kultura/Forest Books, 1991. Maura Ives Updated by Tracy Irons-Georges

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GUIDE TO ONLINE RESOURCES Web Sites The following sites were visited by the editors of Salem Press in 2010. Because URLs frequently change, the accuracy of these addresses cannot be guaranteed; however, long-standing sites, such as those of colleges and universities, national organizations, and government agencies, generally maintain links when their sites are moved. LitWeb http://litweb.net LitWeb provides biographies of hundreds of world authors throughout history that can be accessed through an alphabetical listing. The pages about each writer contain a list of his or her works, suggestions for further reading, and illustrations. The site also offers information about past and present winners of major literary prizes. The Modern Word: Authors of the Libyrinth http://www.themodernword.com/authors.html The Modern Word site, although somewhat haphazard in its organization, provides a great deal of critical information about writers. The “Authors of the Libyrinth” page is very useful, linking author names to essays about them and other resources. The section of the page headed “The Scriptorium” presents “an index of pages featuring writers who have pushed the edges of their medium, combining literary talent with a sense of experimentation to produce some remarkable works of modern literature.” Poetry Foundation http://www.poetryfoundation.org The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is an independent literary organization. Its Web site offers links to essays; news; events; online poetry resources, such as blogs, organizations, publications, and references and research; a glossary of literary terms; and a Learning Lab that includes poem guides and essays on poetics. Poetry in Translation http://poetryintranslation.com This independent resource provides modern translations of classic texts by famous poets and also provides original poetry and critical works. Visitors can choose from several languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Italian, and Greek. Original text is available as well. Also includes links to further literary resources.

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Greek Poets

Guide to Online Resources

Poetry International Web http://international.poetryinternationalweb.org Poetry International Web features information on poets from countries such as Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Iceland, India, Slovenia, Morocco, Albania, Afghanistan, Russia, and Brazil. The site offers news, essays, interviews and discussion, and hundreds of poems, both in their original languages and in English translation. Poet’s Corner http://theotherpages.org/poems The Poet’s Corner, one of the oldest text resources on the Web, provides access to about seven thousand works of poetry by several hundred different poets from around the world. Indexes are arranged and searchable by title, name of poet, or subject. The site also offers its own resources, including “Faces of the Poets”—a gallery of portraits—and “Lives of the Poets”—a growing collection of biographies. Western European Studies http://wess.lib.byu.edu The Western European Studies Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries maintains this collection of resources useful to students of Western European history and culture. It also is a good place to find information about non-Englishlanguage literature. The site includes separate pages about the literatures and languages of the Netherlands, France, Germany, Iberia, Italy, and Scandinavia, in which users can find links to electronic texts, association Web sites, journals, and other materials, the majority of which are written in the languages of the respective countries.

Electronic Databases Electronic databases usually do not have their own URLs. Instead, public, college, and university libraries subscribe to these databases, provide links to them on their Web sites, and make them available to library card holders or other specified patrons. Readers can visit library Web sites or ask reference librarians to check on availability. Canadian Literary Centre Produced by EBSCO, the Canadian Literary Centre database contains full-text content from ECW Press, a Toronto-based publisher, including the titles in the publisher’s Canadian fiction studies, Canadian biography, and Canadian writers and their works series; ECW’s Biographical Guide to Canadian Novelists; and George Woodcock’s Introduction to Canadian Fiction. Author biographies, essays and literary criticism, and book reviews are among the database’s offerings. 227

Guide to Online Resources

Critical Survey of Poetry

Literary Reference Center EBSCO’s Literary Reference Center (LRC) is a comprehensive full-text database designed primarily to help high school and undergraduate students in English and the humanities with homework and research assignments about literature. The database contains massive amounts of information from reference works, books, literary journals, and other materials, including more than 31,000 plot summaries, synopses, and overviews of literary works; almost 100,000 essays and articles of literary criticism; about 140,000 author biographies; more than 605,000 book reviews; and more than 5,200 author interviews. It contains the entire contents of Salem Press’s MagillOnLiterature Plus. Users can retrieve information by browsing a list of authors’ names or titles of literary works; they can also use an advanced search engine to access information by numerous categories, including author name, gender, cultural identity, national identity, and the years in which he or she lived, or by literary title, character, locale, genre, and publication date. The Literary Reference Center also features a literaryhistorical time line, an encyclopedia of literature, and a glossary of literary terms. MagillOnLiterature Plus MagillOnLiterature Plus is a comprehensive, integrated literature database produced by Salem Press and available on the EBSCOhost platform. The database contains the full text of essays in Salem’s many literature-related reference works, including Masterplots, Cyclopedia of World Authors, Cyclopedia of Literary Characters, Cyclopedia of Literary Places, Critical Survey of Poetry, Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Critical Survey of Short Fiction, World Philosophers and Their Works, Magill’s Literary Annual, and Magill’s Book Reviews. Among its contents are articles on more than 35,000 literary works and more than 8,500 poets, writers, dramatists, essayists, and philosophers; more than 1,000 images; and a glossary of more than 1,300 literary terms. The biographical essays include lists of authors’ works and secondary bibliographies, and hundreds of overview essays examine and discuss literary genres, time periods, and national literatures. Rebecca Kuzins; updated by Desiree Dreeuws

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GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX ASIA MINOR Sappho, 177 EGYPT Callimachus, 61 Cavafy, Constantine P., 69 GREECE Cavafy, Constantine P., 69 Elytis, Odysseus, 79 Foscolo, Ugo, 87 Hikmet, Nazim, 104 Homer, 116 Kazantzakis, Nikos, 128 Leonidas of Tarentum, 137 Macedonian Poetry, 48 Pentzikis, Nikos, 150 Pindar, 157 Ritsos, Yannis, 166 Sappho, 177 Seferis, George, 189 Solomos, Dionysios, 197 Theocritus, 206 Theognis, 214

ITALY Foscolo, Ugo, 87 Leonidas of Tarentum, 137 LIBYA Callimachus, 61 OTTOMAN EMPIRE Hikmet, Nazim, 104 ROMAN EMPIRE Theocritus, 206 Theognis, 214 SERBIA Macedonian Poetry, 48 SICILY Theocritus, 206 SYRIA Meleager, 145 TURKEY Hikmet, Nazim, 104 Seferis, George, 189

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CATEGORY INDEX ALEXANDRIAN POETS Callimachus, 61 Leonidas of Tarentum, 137 Theocritus, 206

GAY AND LESBIAN CULTURE Cavafy, Constantine P., 69 Meleager, 145 Sappho, 177

DRAMATIC MONOLOGUES Cavafy, Constantine P., 69 Ritsos, Yannis, 166 Theocritus, 206

HAIKU Seferis, George, 189 HELLENISTIC POETS Callimachus, 61 Leonidas of Tarentum, 137 Meleager, 145 Sappho, 177 Theocritus, 206 HYMNS Callimachus, 61 Foscolo, Ugo, 87 Hesiod, 95 Sappho, 177 Theocritus, 206

EKPHRASTIC POETRY Homer, 116 Ritsos, Yannis, 166 ELEGIES Callimachus, 61 Theognis, 214 EPICS Archilochus, 52 Callimachus, 61 Greek Poetry in Antiquity, 1 Hesiod, 95 Hikmet, Nazim, 104 Homer, 116 Kazantzakis, Nikos, 128 EPIGRAMS Callimachus, 61 Leonidas of Tarentum, 137 Meleager, 145 Theocritus, 206 EXPERIMENTAL POETS Elytis, Odysseus, 79 Seferis, George, 189 FABLES Archilochus, 52

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LOVE POETRY Archilochus, 52 Cavafy, Constantine P., 69 Sappho, 177 LYRIC POETRY Elytis, Odysseus, 79 Foscolo, Ugo, 87 Homer, 116 Pindar, 157 Sappho, 177 MODERNISM Hikmet, Nazim, 104 Kazantzakis, Nikos, 128 Pentzikis, Nikos, 150 Seferis, George, 189

Greek Poets

Category Index

NARRATIVE POETRY Archilochus, 52 Callimachus, 61 Hesiod, 95 Hikmet, Nazim, 104 Homer, 116 Ritsos, Yannis, 166 Solomos, Dionysios, 197 Theocritus, 206 NEOCLASSICAL POETS Foscolo, Ugo, 87

POLITICAL POETS Hikmet, Nazim, 104 Ritsos, Yannis, 166 Solomos, Dionysios, 197

ODES Pindar, 157 Sappho, 177 ORAL TRADITION Archilochus, 52 Greek Poetry in Antiquity, 1 Hesiod, 95 Homer, 116 Sappho, 177 Theognis, 214

SONGS Sappho, 177 Theognis, 214 SONNETS Foscolo, Ugo, 87 Solomos, Dionysios, 197 SURREALIST POETS Elytis, Odysseus, 79 SYMBOLIST POETS Seferis, George, 189

PASTORAL POETS Hesiod, 95 Theocritus, 206

TOPOGRAPHICAL POETRY Pentzikis, Nikos, 150

RELIGIOUS POETRY Elytis, Odysseus, 79 Solomos, Dionysios, 197 ROMANTICISM Foscolo, Ugo, 87 Solomos, Dionysios, 197

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SUBJECT INDEX 16 L.-P. (Sappho), 183 94 L.-P. (Sappho), 185 112 L.-P. (Sappho), 186 “A Luigia Pallavicini caduta da cavallo.” See “To Louise Pallavicini Fallen from a Horse" Aetia (Callimachus), 64 Aitifn. See Aetia Alcaeus, 3 Alcman, 3 Alepoudhelis, Odysseus. See Elytis, Odysseus Anacreon, 3 Anagnostakis, Manolis, 42 Anakomidhi (Pentzikis), 155 Apollonius Rhodius, 13 Archilochus, 2, 52-60 Cologne Epode, 58 “On My Shield,” 56 “At the Theatre” (Cavafy), 76 Axion Esti, The (Elytis), 36, 83 Book of Exercises (Seferis), 194 “Burial of Orgaz, The” (Ritsos), 172 Byron, Lord, 202 Callimachus, 13, 61-68 Aetia, 64 Epigram 2 M., 66 Epigram 30 M., 63 Hecale, 67 Hymns, 67 Iambi, 66 Cavafy, Constantine P., 24, 69-78 “At the Theatre,” 76

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“Craftsmen of Wine Bowls,” 77 “Exiles,” 74 “Phihellene,” 74 “Pictured,” 76 “Waiting for the Barbarians,” 74 “Walls,” 76 Cistern, The (Seferis), 193 Classical period, ancient Greece, 4 Cologne Epode (Archilochus), 58 “Craftsmen of Wine Bowls” (Cavafy), 77 Dei sepolcri. See On Sepulchers Demoticism (Greek vernacular), 18 Dimoula, Kiki, 45 EkalT. See Hecale Eleftheroi poliorkimenoi (Solomos), 204 Elegies, ancient Greece, 6 Elytis, Odysseus, 34, 79-86 The Axion Esti, 36, 83 Fotodhendro ke i dhekati tetarti omorfia, To, 85 Ilios o protos, mazi me tis parallayies pano se mian ahtidha, 83 Maria Nephele, 85 “The Passion,” 84 Prosanatolizmi, 83 Embirikos, Andreas, 33 Emerologio katastromatos II. See Logbook II Empedocles, 10 “Engraving” (Ritsos), 172 Epic of Sheik Bedreddin, The (Hikmet), 110 Epigram 2 M. (Callimachus), 66 Epigram 30 M. (Callimachus), 63 Epigrammata. See Epigrams Epigrams, ancient Greece, 14

Greek Poets Epitaphios (Ritsos), 38, 171 Erga kai Emerai. See Works and Days “Exiles” (Cavafy), 74 Fifty Poems. See Garland Folk poetry Greece, 19 Macedonia, 48 Foscolo, Ugo, 87-94 Le Grazie, 92 On Sepulchers, 91 “Perhaps Because of the Fateful Quiet,” 90 “Sonetti,” 89 “To Louise Pallavicini Fallen from a Horse,” 91 “To the Healed Friend,” 91 “You Nurturer of the Muses,” 89 Fotodhendro ke i dhekati tetarti omorfia, To (Elytis), 85 Garland (Meleager), 14, 146 Gjuzel, Bogomil, 50 Grazie, Le (Foscolo), 92 Greek Anthology (Leonidas), 140 Greek Anthology, The (Meleager), 147 Greek poetry antiquity, 1-16 since 1820, 17-47 Hecale (Callimachus), 67 Hellenistic poets, 13 Hesiod, 2, 95-103 Theogony, 98 Works and Days, 100 Hikmet, Nazim, 104-115 The Epic of Sheik Bedreddin, 110 Human Landscapes, 111 Jokond ile Si-Ya-U, 109 Rubaiyat, 111 Taranta Babu’ya mektuplar, 109

Subject Index Historical poetry, 25 Homer, 1, 116-127 Iliad, 122 Odyssey, 125 Human Landscapes (Hikmet), 111 Hymn to Liberty, The (Solomos), 19, 202 Hymni. See Hymns Hymns, Homeric, 1 Hymns (Callimachus), 67 Iambi (Callimachus), 66 Iamboi. See Iambi Idylls (Theocritus), 207 Ikones (Pentzikis), 153 Iliad (Homer), 122 Ilios o protos, mazi me tis parallayies pano se mian ahtidha (Elytis), 83 Imnos is tin eleftheria. See Hymn to Liberty, The Is ton Thanato tou Lord Byron (Solomos), 202 Janevski, Slavko, 49 Jokond ile Si-Ya-U (Hikmet), 109 Kabaphes, Konstandtionos Petrou. See Cavafy, Constantine P Kallimachos. See Callimachus Kalvos, Andreas, 19 Karouzos, Nikos, 43 Karyotakis, Kostas, 29 Karyotakism, 29 “Katastrophi ton Psaron” (Solomos), 202 Kazantzakis, Nikos, 39, 128-136 The Odyssey, 132 “King of Asine, The” (Seferis), 194 Koneski, Bla.e, 49 Kritikos, To (Solomos), 203 Lambros (Solomos), 203 “Last Stop” (Seferis), 195

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Subject Index Leonidas of Tarentum, 137-144 Greek Anthology, 140 Logbook II (Seferis), 194 Macedonian poetry, 48-51 Maria Nefeli. See Maria Nephele Maria Nephele (Elytis), 85 Matevski, Mateja, 49 Meleager, 14, 145-149 Garland, 14, 146 The Greek Anthology, 147 Memleketimden insan manzaralari. See Human Landscapes Moonlight Sonata, The (Ritsos), 39, 174 Mythistorema (Seferis), 31, 194 New School of Athens, 22 “Ode to Anactoria” (Sappho), 182 “Ode to Aphrodite” (Sappho), 181 Odyssey (Homer), 125 Odyssey, The (Kazantzakis), 132 Olympian Ode 1 (Pindar), 162 “On My Shield” (Archilochus), 56 On Sepulchers (Foscolo), 91 Palamas, Kostis, 22 Parmenides, 9 “Passion, The” (Elytis), 84 Pavlovski, Radovan, 50 Pentzikis, Nikos, 150-156 Anakomidhi, 155 Ikones, 153 “Perhaps Because of the Fateful Quiet” (Foscolo), 90 “Phihellene” (Cavafy), 74 Philoktetes (Ritsos), 174 Philosophical poetry, ancient Greece, 7 “Pictured” (Cavafy), 76

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Critical Survey of Poetry Pindar, 11, 157-165 Olympian Ode 1, 162 Pythian Ode 8, 163 Pythian Ode 10, 161 Porphyras (Solomos), 205 Prosanatolizmi (Elytis), 83 Protagoras (Simonides), 8 Psappho. See Sappho Pythian Ode 8 (Pindar), 163 Pythian Ode 10 (Pindar), 161 Racin, Kosta, 49 Ritsos, Yannis, 37, 166-176 “The Burial of Orgaz,” 172 “Engraving,” 172 Epitaphios, 38, 171 The Moonlight Sonata, 39, 174 Philoktetes, 174 To Tragoudi tes adelphes mou, 171 Roman period, Greece, 14 Rubaiyat (Hikmet), 111 Sahtouris, Miltos, 43 Sappho, 3, 177-188 16 L.-P., 183 94 L.-P., 185 112 L.-P., 186 “Ode to Anactoria,” 182 “Ode to Aphrodite,” 181 Seferiades, Giorgos Stylianou. See Seferis, George Seferis, George, 30, 189-196 Book of Exercises, 194 The Cistern, 193 “The King of Asine,” 194 “Last Stop,” 195 Logbook II , 194 Mythistorema, 194 Turning Point, 193

Greek Poets Semonides, 3 Sikelianos, Angelos, 26 Simavne Kadisi oglu Leyh Bedreddin destani. See Epic of Sheik Bedreddin, The Simonides, 8 Sinopoulos, Takis, 40 Skolia, 5 Solomos, Dionysios, 18, 197-205 Eleftheroi poliorkimenoi, 204 The Hymn to Liberty, 202 Is ton Thanato tou Lord Byron, 202 “Katastrophi ton Psaron,” 202 To Kritikos, 203 Lambros, 203 Porphyras, 205 Sonata tou selenophotos, E. See Moonlight Sonata “Sonetti” (Foscolo), 89 Sophists, 9 Šopov, Aco, 49 Stephanos. See Garland Sterna, E. See Cistern, The Strophe. See Turning Point Surrealism, 33

Subject Index Taranta Babu’ya mektuplar (Hikmet), 109 Tetradio gymnasmaton. See Book of Exercises Theocritus, 206-213 Idylls, 207 Theognidea (Theognis), 215 Theognis, 4, 214-220 Theognidea, 215 Theogony (Hesiod), 98 “To Louise Pallavicini Fallen from a Horse” (Foscolo), 91 “To the Healed Friend” (Foscolo), 91 Tragoudi tes adelphes mou, To (Ritsos), 171 Turning Point (Seferis), 193 Twelve Words of the Gypsy, The (Palamas), 23 Vakalo, Eleni, 43 Varnalis, Kostas, 28 Victory odes, 11 “Waiting for the Barbarians” (Cavafy), 74 “Walls” (Cavafy), 76 War poetry, 7, 35 Works and Days (Hesiod), 100 “You Nurturer of the Muses” (Foscolo), 89

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