Ο Χριστός ανάμεσα τών Εμπόρων τού Ναού, μπορεί να μην βοήθησε τη Κρήτη να ελευθερωθεί.Νομίζω ότι οι Κρήτες ωφελήθηκαν από τον Ερωτόκριτο και την Αρετούσα, είτε αυτός που έγραψε τους στίχους ήταν Βενετο-Κρητικός είτε Έλληνας.
Τις υπηρεσίες τού Δομήνικου για την Ελευθερία τής Κρήτης και την ανεξαρτησία τής Ελλάδος και τού Ελληνισμού [τού Ελληνικού Πνεύματος], θα πρέπει να τις ερευνήσουμε.
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Αδαμάντιος Κοραής
Humanist scholar, the father of Modern Greek literature, whose advocacy of a revived classicism laid the intellectual foundations forthe Greek struggle for independence. His influence on the modern Greek language and culture has been compared to that of Dante on Italian and Martin Luther on German.
Koraïs, the son of a merchant, studied medicine at the University of Montpellier, France, and in 1788 moved to Paris to pursue a literary career. His first works were editions of ancient medical writers, particularly Hippocrates, and the Characters of the philosopher Theophrastus. His main literary works were a 17-volume Library of Greek Literature, collected between 1805 and 1826, and the 9-volume Parerga, collected between 1809 and 1827. The Library included historical, political, philosophical, and scientific works by classical writers, for which he wrote prefaces in Modern Greek. He also edited the first four books of Homer's Iliad and translated the historian Herodotus into Modern Greek.
Convinced that contemporary Greeks could find strength and unity only through a revival of their classical heritage, Koraïs made his writings an instrument for awakening his countrymen to the significance of that heritage for their national aspirations. His most enduring contribution was the creation of a new Greek literary language: purifying the vernacular (Demotic) of foreign elements, he combined its best elements with Classical Greek. His Atakta, composed between 1828 and 1835, was the first Modern Greek dictionary, and later Greek writers are indebted to him for his linguistic innovations.
A witness of the French Revolution, Koraïs took his primary intellectual inspiration from the Enlightenment, and he borrowed ideas copiously from the philosophers Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as well as from the historian Edward Gibbon, whose thesis that a new classicism must arise after the passing of the Dark Ages particularly attracted him. As an advocate of secular liberalism, Koraïs thus rejected both the Orthodox Christian heritage of the Byzantine Empire and the liturgical language of the church as a basis for a new Greek language. Although his influence in the Greek world was strong, his religious skepticism alienated him from Greek patriots who saw the war of independence as a struggle to restore the primacy of the church over the Muslims and to recapture Constantinople.
Koraïs remained in France throughout most of his life, and during the War of Greek Independence he wrote pamphlets, raised funds, and was one of the founders of the Paris Philhellenic Society. During the July revolution of 1830 in France, he suggested that the marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American Revolution, be asked to assume the presidency of Greece.
Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette
born Sept. 6, 1757, Chavaniac,Fr.
died May 20, 1834, Paris
Lafayette also spelled La Fayette French aristocrat who fought with the American colonists against the British in the American Revolution. Later, by allying himselfwith the revolutionary bourgeoisie, he became one of the most powerful men in France during the first few years of the French Revolution.
Born into an ancient noble family, Lafayette had already inherited an immense fortune by the time he married the daughter of the influential duc d'Ayen in 1774. He joined the circle of young courtiers at the court of King Louis XVI but soon aspired to win glory as a soldier. Hence, in July 1777, 27 months after the outbreak of the American Revolution, he arrived in Philadelphia. Appointed a major general by the colonists, he quickly struck up a lasting friendship withthe American commander in chief, George Washington. Lafayette fought with distinction at the Battle of Brandywine, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 11, 1777, and, as a division commander, he conducted a masterly retreat from Barren Hill on May 28, 1778. Returning to France early in 1779, he helped persuade the government of Louis XVI to send a 6,000-man expeditionary army to aid the colonists. Lafayette arrived back in America in April 1780 and was immediately given command of an army in Virginia. After forcing the British commander Lord Charles Cornwallis to retreat across Virginia, Lafayette entrapped him at Yorktown in late July. A French fleet and several additional American armies joined the siege, and on October 19 Cornwallis surrendered. The British cause was lost. Lafayette was hailed as “the Hero of Two Worlds,” and on returning to France in 1782 he was promoted maréchal de camp (brigadier general). He became a citizen of several states on a visit to the United States in 1784.
During the next five years, Lafayette became a leader of the liberal aristocrats and an outspoken advocate of religious toleration and the abolition of the slave trade. Elected as a representative of the nobility to the States General that convened in May 1789, Lafayette supported the manoeuvres by which the bourgeois deputies of the Third Estate gained control of the States General and converted it into a revolutionary National Assembly. On July 11 he presented to the Assembly his draft of a Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. After extensive revisions the document was adopted on August 27. Meanwhile on July 15, the day after a crowd stormed the Bastille, Lafayette had been elected commander of the newly formed national guard of Paris. His troops saved Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette from the fury of a crowd that invaded Versailles on October 6, and he then carried the royal family to Paris, where they became hostages of the Revolution.
For the next year, Lafayette's popularity and influence were at their height. He supported measures that transferred power from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie, but he feared that further democratization would encourage the lower classes to attack property rights. Hence, he became alarmed as republicans began to assail the new system of constitutional monarchy. When a crowd of petitioners gathered on the Champ de Mars in Paris (July 17, 1791) to demand the abdication of the King, Lafayette's guards opened fire, killing or wounding about 50 demonstrators. The incident destroyed his popularity, and in October he resigned from the guard.
Appointed commander of the army at Metz in December 1791, Lafayette hoped to suppress the radical democrats (and perhaps rule in the King's name) after France went to war with Austria in April 1792. His plans failed, and on Aug. 10, 1792, the monarchy was overthrown in a popular insurrection. Lafayette would have been tried for treason had he not defected (August 19) to the Austrians, who held him captive until 1797. When Napoleon Bonaparte came to power in 1799, Lafayette returned to France and settled down as a gentleman farmer. He sat in the Chamber of Deputies during most of the reign of King Louis XVIII (1814–24), and in 1824–25 he visited the United States, where he was received with wild adulation. In July 1830 he commanded the national guard that helped overthrow King Charles X and install Louis-Philippe on the throne. Lafayette retired six months later.
Κορνάρος, Βιτσέντζος
(1553-1613 ή 1614)
Ο πιθανότερος ποιητής τού Ερωτοκρίτου, σύμφωνα με τις νεότερες έρευνες. Κατάγεται από τους ευγενείς Κορνάρους της Σητείας και ήταν ο μικρότερος από τους πέντε γιους του Βενετοκρητικού Ιακώβου Κορνάρου. (Για το πρόβλημα της ταύτισης του ποιητή του Ερωτοκρίτου βλ. και ΕΡΩΤΟΚΡΙΤΟΣ). Γεννήθηκε στις 26 Μαρτίου 1553 στο χωριό Τραπεζόντα που απέχει λίγα μόνο χιλιόμετρα από τη Σητεία, όπου η οικογένεια του διατηρούσε μεγάλη περιουσία. Έμεινε στην περιοχή της Σητείας, κυρίως στα χωριά Τραπεζόντα και Πισκοκέφαλο, ως το 1587-1590, δηλαδή ως τα τριανταπέντε περίπου χρόνια του, «ζώντας τη ζωή του φεουδάρχη γαιοκτήμονα, μέσα σ' έναν πολυπρόσωπο κόσμο υπηρετών και δουλοπάροικων, που ήταν όλοι τους ελληνορθόδοξοι». Λίγο πριν το 1590 εγκαταστάθηκε στον Χάνδακα, κοντά στους δύο αδελφούς του, τον Ιωάννη Φραγκίσκο και τον Αντρέα. Αιτία ίσως της εγκατάστασης του στην πρωτεύουσα ήταν ο γάμος του με τη Μαριέτα Zeno, από τον οποίο απέκτησε δύο θυγατέρες, την Κατερούτσα και την Ελενέτα.
Δυστυχώς, ως τώρα δεν έχουμε συγκεκριμένη μαρτυρία για τον γάμο του αυτόν. Ασφαλώς θα έγινε στον Χάνδακα. Η έλλειψη μαρτυρίας οφείλεται στο μεγάλο κενό που παρουσιάζουν τα βιβλία γάμων των ευγενών της Κρήτης κατά τη δεκαετία 1583-1593, την περίοδο δηλαδή κατά την οποία πρέπει να τελέστηκε ο γάμος του Βιτσέντζου. Όμως, δύο έμμεσες μαρτυρίες μας βεβαιώνουν, πως ο Βιτσέντζος Κορνάρος του Ιακώβου παντρεύτηκε στην πόλη ή στο διαμέρισμα του Χάνδακα: α) το ότι η οικογένεια της γυναίκας του είναι παλιά, γνωστότατη καστρινή οικογένεια, με μεγάλη κτηματική περιουσία στην περιοχή του Χάνδακα, και β) το ότι στο γαμήλιο συμβόλαιο της θυγατέρας του Κατερούτσας, που συντάχθηκε στον Χάνδακα στις 24 Απριλίου 1614, η Κατερούτσα υπόσχεται στον μέλλοντα άντρα της Μιχαήλ Demezzo ένα «μετόχι» στο χωριό Βούτες Μαλεβιζίου, που είχε δοθεί ως προίκα στον πατέρα της Βιτσέντζο από τη μάνα της Μαριέτα Zeno, και σπίτια στον Χάνδακα κοντά στην εκκλησία του Αγίου Γεωργίου του Κάβουρα, τα οποία ανήκαν κι αυτά στη μητέρα της. Εκτός όμως από τις έμμεσες αυτές μαρτυρίες, σώζονται και πάμπολλα άλλα στοιχεία, που δείχνουν κατά τρόπο αδιαμφισβήτητο πως από το 1591 και πέρα ο Βιτσέντζος ήταν' εγκαταστημένος στην πρωτεύουσα της Κρήτης, στον Χάνδακα, και ότι στην περιοχή εκείνη είχε αποκτήσει, από προίκα ή με αγορές, αξιόλογη κτηματική περιουσία στα χωριά Ζωοφόρους, Θραψανό, Βόνη, Γούρνες, Γκαγκάλες, Βούτες, κ.α.
Από το 1591 περίπου συμμετέχει ενεργά στη δημόσια ζωή και ασκεί διάφορα διοικητικά λειτουργήματα, ενώ κατά την περίοδο της φοβερής πανούκλας των χρόνων 1591-1593 ανέλαβε καθήκοντα υγειονομικού επόπτη στην πόλη και στο διαμέρισμα του Χάνδακα. Μετά τον γάμο του και την μόνιμη πια εγκατάσταση του στην πόλη αυτή, ο Βιτσέντζος επισκέπτεται τακτικά και ως τον θάνατο του την ιδιαίτερη πατρίδα του τη Σητεία. Μάλιστα, για ένα μεγάλο χρονικό διάστημα, από το τέλος του 1598 ως το τέλος του 1600, βρίσκεται κυρίως στην περιοχή της Σητείας, όπου εξακολουθούσε να διατηρεί σημαντική περιουσία. Είχε ζωηρά φιλολογικά ενδιαφέροντα και ήταν ένα από τα πιο δραστήρια μέλη της Ακαδημίας των Stravaganti, που είχε ιδρύσει ο αδελφός του Αντρέας. Πέθανε στον Χάνδακα μετά τις 12 Αυγούστου 1613 και πριν από τις 24 Απριλίου 1614, και θάφτηκε στο μοναστήρι του Αγίου Φραγκίσκου.
Οι έρευνες του Ν. Μ. Παναγιωτάκη στα αρχεία και στις βιβλιοθήκες της Βενετίας και της Φλωρεντίας μας αποκάλυψαν είκοσι τουλάχιστον λυρικά ποιήματα, τα οποία αποδίδονται στον Βιτσέντζο Κορνάρο του Ιακώβου, όλα γραμμένα στην ιταλική. Ένα απ' αυτά μάλιστα τυπώθηκε και σε βιβλίο, όσο ζούσε ο ποιητής.
Διγενής Ακρίτας
also called Digenis Akritas Basileios, Byzantine epic hero celebrated in folk ballads (Akritic ballads) and in an epic relating his parentage, boyhood adventures, manhood, and death. Based on a historical character who died about 788, the epic, a blend of Greek, Byzantine, and Oriental motifs, originated in the 10th century and was popularized by itinerant folksingers; it was recorded in several versions from the 12th to the 17th century, the oldest being a linguistic mixture of popular and literary language.
Digenis Akritas, the ideal medieval Greek hero, is a bold warrior of the Euphrates frontier, the son of a Saracen emir converted to Christianity by the daughter of a Byzantine general; he was a proficient warrior by the age of three and spent the rest of his life defending the Byzantine Empire from frontier invaders. The feeling for nature and strong family affections that permeate the epic anticipate the great Cretan national romance, Erotókritos (mid-17th century) by Vitzéntzos Kornáros, and much modern Greek popular poetry.
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Modern Greek literature (after1453)
Post-Byzantine period
After the Turkish capture of Constantinople in 1453, Greek literary activity continued almost exclusively in those areas of the Greek world under Venetian rule. Thus Cyprus, until its capture by the Turks in 1571, produced a body of literature in the local dialect, including the 15th-century prose chronicle Recital Concerning the Sweet Land of Cyprus by Leóntios Machairás and a collection of translations and imitations in elaborate verse forms of Italian poems by Petrarch and others. Crete, which remained in Venetian hands until 1669, became the centre of the greatest flowering of Greek literature between the fall of Constantinople and the foundation of the modern Greek state. There a number of authors developed the Cretan dialect into a rich and subtle medium of expression. In it were written a number of tragedies and comedies, a single pastoral tragicomedy, and a single, anonymous religious drama, The Sacrifice of Abraham, mostly based on Italian models. The leading playwright was Geórgios Chortátsis. In the first half of the 17th century Vitséntsos Kornáros composed his romance, Erotókritos. These Cretan authors composed their works almost entirely in the 15-syllable iambic verse of the Greek folk song, whose modes of expression influenced them deeply.
In the Ottoman-ruled areas of Greece the folk song, which concisely and unsentimentally conveyed the aspirations of the Greek people of the time, became practically the sole form of literary expression.
Toward the end of the 18th century, however, a number of intellectuals emerged who, under theinfluence of European ideas, set about raising the level of Greek education and culture and laying the foundations of an independence movement. The participants in this “Greek Enlightenment” also brought to the fore the language problem, each promoting a different form of the Greek language for use in education. The leading Greek intellectual of the early 19th century was the classical scholar Adamántios Koraïs, who in voluminous writings on Greek language and education, argued for a form of Modern Greek “corrected” according to the ancient rules.
Independence and after
Old Athenian School
The Greek state established as a result of the Greek War of Independence (1821–29) consisted only of a small section of the present-day Greek mainland and a few islands. Athens, which became the capital of Greece in 1834, soon came to be the chief cultural centre, gathering together writers from various areas, particularly Constantinople. The Soútsos brothers, Aléxandros and Panayótis, introduced the novel into Greece, but they are best known for their Romantic poetry, which as time went by moved gradually away from the Demotic (“popular”), or commonly spoken, language toward the Katharevusa (“purist”) form institutionalized by Koraïs. The work of these writers, which relied greatly on French models, looks back to the War of Independence and the glorious ancient past. Their melancholy sentimentality was not shared by Aléxandros Rízos Rangavís, a verbose but versatile and not inconsiderable craftsman of Katharevusa in lyric and narrative poetry, drama, and the novel. By the 1860s and '70s, however, Athenian poetry was generally of poor quality and was dominated by a sense of despair and longing for death. Prose throughout the period was monopolized by the historical novel. Emmanuel Roídis' novel called I Pápissa Ioánna (1866; Pope Joan) is a hilarious satire on medieval and modern religious practices as well as a pastiche of the historical novel. Pávlos Kalligás, in Thános Vlékas (1855), treated contemporary problems such as brigandage. In Loukís Láras (1879; Eng. trans., Loukis Laras) Dimítrios Vikélas presented a less heroic view of the War of Independence.
Heptanesian School
Meanwhile more interesting developments had been taking place in the Ionian Islands (Heptanesos). During the 1820s two poets from the island of Zacynthus made their name with patriotic poems celebrating the War of Independence. One of these, Andréas Kálvos, who composed his odes in neoclassical form and archaic language, never wrote poetry afterward, while the other, Dhionísios Solomós, went on to become one of the greatest of modern Greek poets. Dealing with the themes of liberty, love, and death, Solomós embodied a profoundly Romantic sensibility in extraordinary fragments of lyrical intensity, which gave a new prestige to the Demotic language. Solomós' followers continued to cultivate the Demotic, particularly Antónios Mátesis, whose historical social drama, O vasilikós (1859; “The Basil Plant”), was the first prose work of any length to be written in the Demotic. Aristotélis Valaorítis continued the Heptanesian tradition with long patriotic poems inspired by the Greek national struggles.
Demoticism and folklorism, 1880–1922
From the 1880s onward the New Athenian School, inspired by the revived interest in folklore as a survival of ancient Greek culture, began to react against the sterile bombast of the Katharevusa versifiers, producing instead a more intimate poetry based on the language, customs, and beliefs of the Greek peasantry, and in particular on Greek folk songs.
The leading ideologist of this “demoticist” movement, which aimed to promote traditional popular culture at the expense of the pseudo-archaic pedantry fashionable in Athens, was Yánnis Psicháris (Jean Psichari), whose book My Journey (1888) was partly a fictionalized account of a journey around the Greek world and partly a belligerent manifesto arguing that the Demotic language should be officially adopted as a matter of national urgency. The demoticist movement inspired poets to enrich the Greek popular tradition with influences from abroad. Chief among these was Kostís Palamás, who dominated the literary scene for several decades with a large output of essays and articles and whose best poetry appeared between 1900 and 1910. In his lyric and epic poems he attempted to synthesize ancient Greek history and mythology with the Byzantine Christian tradition and modern Greek folklore in order to demonstrate the essential unity of Greek culture. Angelos Sikelianós continued this enterprise in effusive and powerful lyric poetry of a profoundly mystical nature.
In prose, the folklore cult fostered development of the short story, written initially in Katharevusa, with Demotic gradually taking over in the 1890s. These stories, and the novels that accompanied them, depicted scenes of traditional rural life, sometimes idealized and sometimes viewed critically by their authors. The pioneer of the Greek short story, Geórgios Vizyenós, combined autobiography with an effective use of psychological analysis and suspense. The most famous and prolific short-story writer, Aléxandros Papadiamándis, produced a wealth of evocations of his native island of Skiáthos imbued with a profound sense of Christian tradition and a compassion for country folk; his novel I fónissa (1903; The Murderess) is a fine study in psychological abnormality. The novel O zitiános (1896; The Beggar), by Andréas Karkavítsas, satirically depicts the economic and cultural deprivation of the rural population. From about 1910 this critical attitude is further reflected in the prose writing of Konstantínos Chatzópoulos and Konstantínos Theotókis. Meanwhile Grigórios Xenópoulos wrote novels with an urban setting and devoted considerable effort to drama, a medium that received a substantial boost from the demoticist movement.
One major figure defies categorization for it was outside Greece, in Alexandria, that Constantine Cavafy lived and wrote. His finely wrought, epigrammatic poems, with their tragically ironic views of Hellenistic and Byzantine history, contain daring, sensuous glimpses of homosexual love.
Literature from 1922
The Asia Minor Disaster of 1922, in which Greece's expansionist designs on the Ottoman Empire were finally thwarted, brought about a radical change in the orientation of Greek literature. Before committing suicide, Kóstas Kariotákis wrote some bitterly sarcastic poetry conveying the gap between the old ideals and the new reality.
The reaction against the defeatism of 1922 came with the Generation of 1930, a group of writers who began publishing around that date. They reinvigorated Greek literature by discarding the old verse forms in poetry and by producing ambitious novels that were intended to embody the spirit of the times. Both poets and novelists sought to combine European influences with the best of what was Greek. The restrained poetry of George Seféris skillfully married references to ancient mythology with pensive meditation on man's modern situation, while his finely written essays recast the Greek tradition according to his own priorities. Odysseus Elýtis celebrated the Aegean scenery as an ideal world of sensual enjoyment and moral purity. Each of these poets won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Seféris in 1963 and Elýtis in 1979. Yánnis Rítsos adopted various new modes of writing in his celebration of the Greek partisans in World War II, in long dramatic monologues spoken by characters from Greek mythology, and in laconic poems depicting everyday, but often ironically presented, scenes.
The Generation of 1930 produced some remarkable novels, among them Strátis Myrivílis' I zoí en tafo (1930; Life in the Tomb), a journal of life in the trenches in World War I; Argo (2 vol., 1933 and 1936) by Yórgas Theotokás, about a group of students attempting to find their way through life in the turbulent 1920s; and Eroica (1937) by Kosmás Polítis, about the first encounter of a group of well-to-do schoolboys with love and death.
After World War II prose writing was dominated by novels reflecting the experiences of the Greeks during eight years of war (1941–49). Iánnis Berátis recounted his experiences of 1941 in an unemotional manner in To Platy Potami (1946; “The Broad River”). In a trilogy of novels entitled Akyvérnites politíes (1960–65; Drifting Cities), Stratís Tsírkas masterfully recreated the atmosphere of the Middle East in World War II. In the short story, Dimítris Chatzís painted ironic portraits of real and fictional characters in his native Ioánnina in the period before and during World War II, exposing their self-interested machinations.
Nevertheless, the most famous novelist of the period, the Cretan Níkos Kazantzákis, was a survivor from an earlier generation. In a series of novels, beginning with Víos ke politía tou Aléxi Zorbá (1946; Zorba the Greek ) and continuing with his masterpiece O Christos xanastavronetai (1954; Christ Recrucified), he embodied a synthesis of ideas from various philosophies and religions in larger-than-life characters who wrestle with great problems, such as the existence of God and the purpose of human life. Kazantzákis had earlier publishedhis 33,333-line Odísia (1938; Odyssey), an epic poem taking up the story of Odysseus where Homer had left off. Pandelís Prevelákis published a number of philosophical novels set in his native Crete, the most successful being O ílios tou thanátou (1959; The Sun of Death), which shows a boy learning to come to terms with death.
During the 1960s Greek prose writers attempted to explore the historical factors underlying the contemporary social and political situation. In the novel To tríto stefáni (1962; The Third Wedding) by Kóstas Tachtsís, the female narrator tells the story of her life with venomous verve, unwittingly exposing the oppressive nature of the Greek family. Yórgos Ioánnou's part-fictional, part-autobiographical short prose pieces present a vivid picture of life in Thessaloníki and Athens from the 1930s to the 1980s.
No individual poets of the post war generations tower above the rest; but Tákis Sinópoulos, Míltos Sachtoúris, and Manólis Anagnostákis, all marked by their wartime experiences of the 1940s, are among those with the greatest reputations.
Peter A. Mackridge
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