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{{Short description|Greek poet (1896–1928)}}
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[[File:Kostas Karyotakis self portrait.jpg|thumb|300px|Kostas Karyotakis, self-portrait]]
[[File:Optimism Kostas Karyotakis manuscript.jpg|thumb|''Optimism'', hand written manuscript by Kostas Karyotakis in 1929|300px|right]]
[[File:Kostas Karyotakis self portrait.jpg|thumb|250px|Kostas Karyotakis, self-portrait]]
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[[File:Kostas Karyotakis in Preveza.jpg|thumb|Kostas Karyotakis in Sykia village of Corinth, with his sister, nephew, and his brother's sister-in-law, year 1927|300px|right]]
[[File:Greek lyrics of the poem-song PREVEZA (1928).png|thumb|Kostas Karyotakis poem "Preveza" lyrics (1928) in Greek, designed by Harry Gouvas|300px|right]]
<!-- Deleted image removed: [[File:A free translation of the poem Preveza of Kostas Karyotakis.png|thumb|The Poem ''Preveza'' of Kostas Karyotakis in free translation by Kimon Friar (1973) designed by Harry Gouvas (2013)|300px|right]] -->


'''Kostas Karyotakis''' ({{lang-el|Κώστας Καρυωτάκης}}, October 30, 1896 – July 20, 1928) is considered one of the most representative [[List of modern Greek poets|Greek poets]] of the 1920s and one of the first poets to use iconoclastic themes in Greece. His [[poetry]] conveys a great deal of [[nature]], [[image]]ry and traces of [[expressionism]] and [[surrealism]]. The majority of Karyotakis' contemporaries viewed him in a dim light throughout his lifetime without a pragmatic accountability for their contemptuous views; for after his [[suicide]], the majority began to revert to the view that he was indeed a great poet. He had a significant, almost disproportionately progressive influence on later Greek poets.
'''Kostas Karyotakis''' ({{lang-el|Κώστας Καρυωτάκης}}, 11 November [OS October 30], 1896 – 20 July 1928) is considered one of the most representative [[List of modern Greek poets|Greek poets]] of the 1920s and one of the first poets to use [[iconoclasm|iconoclastic]] themes in Greece. His [[poetry]] conveys a great deal of [[nature]], [[image]]ry and traces of [[expressionism]] and [[surrealism]]. He also belongs to the Greek [[Lost Generation]] movement.<ref>John S. Koliopoulos and Thanos M. Veremis ''Modern Greece: A History since 1821'' ("John Wiley & Sons"), p. 98<!-- ISSN/ISBN needed --></ref> The majority of Karyotakis' contemporaries viewed him in a dim light throughout his lifetime without a pragmatic accountability for their contemptuous views; for after his [[suicide]], the majority began to revert to the view that he was indeed a great poet. He had a significant, almost disproportionately progressive influence on later Greek poets.


== Biography ==
== Biography ==
Karyotakis gave existential depth as well as a tragic dimension to the emotional nuances and melancholic tones of the neo-Symbolist and new-Romantic poetry of the time. With a rare clarity of spirit and penetrating vision, he captures and conveys with poetic daring the climate of dissolution and the impasses of his generation, as well as the traumas of his own inner spiritual world.
Karyotakis gave existential depth as well as a tragic dimension to the emotional nuances and melancholic tones of the neo-Symbolist and new-Romantic poetry of the time. With a rare clarity of spirit and penetrating vision, he captures and conveys with poetic daring the climate of dissolution and the impasses of his generation, as well as the traumas of his own inner spiritual world.


=== Early life ===
===Early life===
[[File:Kostas Karyotakis house.jpg|thumb|left|The poet's birthplace in Tripoli]]
⚫
Karyotakis was born in [[Tripoli, Greece|Tripoli]], [[Greece]], his father's occupation as a [[county]] [[engineer]] resulted in his early childhood and teenage years being spent in various places, following his family’s successive moves around the Greek cities, including [[Argostoli]], [[Lefkada]], [[Larisa]], [[Kalamata]], [[Athens]] and [[Chania]]. He started publishing poetry in various [[magazine]]s for children in 1912. It is solely rife speculation that he had felt deeply betrayed that a girl he had cared for in Hania in 1913 had married and sent him into melancholy. After receiving his degree from the [[National and Kapodistrian University of Athens|Athens School of Law and Political Sciences]], in 1917, he did not pursue a career as a lawyer. Karyotakis became a clerk in the Prefecture of [[Thessaloniki]]. However, he greatly disliked his work and could not tolerate the [[bureaucracy]] of the state, which he wrote about often in his poems. His [[prose]] piece ''Catharsis'' ('purification') is characteristic of this. For this reason he would often be removed from his posts and transferred to other locations in Greece. During these removals he became familiar with the boredom and misery of the country during [[World War I]].
Karyotakis was born in [[Tripoli, Greece|Tripoli]], [[Greece]], his father's occupation as a [[county]] [[engineer]] resulted in his early childhood and teenage years being spent in various places, following his family's successive moves around the Greek cities, including [[Argostoli]], [[Lefkada]], [[Larisa]], [[Kalamata]], [[Athens]] and [[Chania]]. He started publishing poetry in various [[magazine]]s for children in 1912. It is solely rife speculation that he had felt deeply betrayed that a girl he had cared for in Hania in 1913 had married and sent him into melancholy.


⚫
After receiving his degree from the [[National and Kapodistrian University of Athens|Athens School of Law and Political Sciences]], in 1917, he did not pursue a career as a lawyer. Karyotakis became a clerk in the Prefecture of [[Thessaloniki]]. However, he greatly disliked his work and could not tolerate the [[bureaucracy]] of the state, which he wrote about often in his poems. His [[prose]] piece ''Catharsis'' ('purification') is characteristic of this. For this reason he would often be removed from his posts and transferred to other locations in Greece. During these removals he became familiar with the boredom and misery of the country during [[World War I]].
⚫
=== Adulthood and career ===
⚫
[[File:Kostas Karyotakis in Preveza.jpg|thumb|Kostas Karyotakis in Sykia village of Corinth, with his sister, nephew, and his brother's sister-in-law, year 1927|300px|right]]
⚫
In February 1919 he published his first collection of poetry: ''[[The Pain of Men and Things]]'' ({{lang-el|Ὁ πόνος τοῦ ἀνθρώπου καὶ τῶν πραμάτων}}), which was largely ignored or badly criticized by the critics. In the same year he published with his friend [[Agis Levendis]] a [[satire|satirical]] [[review]] called ''[[The Leg]]'', which despite its success was banned by the police after the sixth issue. In 1921 he published his second collection called ''[[Nepenthe]]'' ({{lang-el|Νηπενθῆ}}) and also wrote a musical [[revue]] called ''[[Pell-Mell]]'' ({{lang-el|Πελ-Μελ}}). In 1922 he began having an affair with the poet [[Maria Polydouri]] who was a colleague of his at the Prefecture of [[Attica]]. In 1923 he wrote a poem called ''"[[Treponema pallidum]]"'' ({{lang-el|Ὠχρὰ Σπειροχαίτη}}), which was published under the title "Song of Madness" and gave rise to speculation that he may have been suffering from [[syphilis]], which before 1945 was considered a [[chronic illness]]<ref>{{cite book |last=Brown|first=Kevin|authorlink=Kevin Brown (historian)| year=2006 | title=The Pox: The Life and Near Death of a Very Social Disease | location=Stroud | publisher=WSutton | pages=85–111, 185–91}}</ref> with no proven cure for it. George Skouras, a physician of the poet, wrote: "He was sick, he was syphilitic" and George Savidis (1929–1999), professor of the [[Aristotle University of Thessaloniki]], who possessed the largest archive about Greek poets, revealed that Karyotakis was syphilitic, and that his brother, Thanasis Karyotakis, thought the disease to be a disgrace to the family.<ref>Κοντόκωστας Κίμωνας & Κουσούλης Αντώνης, 2008. ''Η σύφιλη στην ιστορία και στις τέχνες''. Αθήνα: Ιατρικές εκδόσεις Γιάννη Β. Παρισιάνου. ISBN 978-960-89486-7-9</ref> In 1924 he traveled abroad, visiting [[Italy]] and [[Germany]]. In December 1927 he published his last collection of poetry: ''[[Elegy and Satires]]'' ({{lang-el|Ἐλεγεῖα<!--plural of τὸ ἐλεγεῖον; not to be confused with ἡ ἐλεγεία--> καὶ Σάτιρες}}). In February 1928, Karyotakis was transferred to [[Patras]] although soon afterwards he spent a month on leave in [[Paris]] and in June 1928 he was sent yet again to [[Preveza]] by ship.

⚫
===Adulthood and career===
⚫
In February 1919 he published his first collection of poetry: ''The Pain of People and of Things'' ({{lang-el|Ὁ πόνος τοῦ ἀνθρώπου καὶ τῶν πραμάτων}}), which was largely ignored or badly reviewed by the critics. In the same year he published, with his friend Agis Levendis, a [[satire|satirical]] review, called ''The Leg'', which, despite its success, was banned by the police after the sixth issue. In 1921 he published his second collection called ''[[Nepenthe]]'' ({{lang-el|Νηπενθῆ}}) and also wrote a musical [[revue]], ''Pell-Mell'' ({{lang-el|Πελ-Μελ}}). In 1922 he began having an affair with the poet [[Maria Polydouri]] who was a colleague of his at the Prefecture of [[Attica]]. In 1923 he wrote a poem called ''"[[Treponema pallidum]]"'' ({{lang-el|Ὠχρὰ Σπειροχαίτη}}), which was published under the title "Song of Madness" and gave rise to speculation that he may have been suffering from [[syphilis]], which before 1945 was considered a [[chronic illness]]<ref>{{cite book|last=Brown|first=Kevin|authorlink=Kevin Brown (historian)|year=2006|title=The Pox: The Life and Near Death of a Very Social Disease|location=Stroud|publisher=WSutton|pages=85–111, 185–91}}</ref> with no proven cure for it.

George Skouras, a physician of the poet, wrote: "He was sick, he was syphilitic" and George Savidis (1929–1999), professor of the [[Aristotle University of Thessaloniki]], who possessed the largest archive about Greek poets, revealed that Karyotakis was syphilitic, and that his brother, Thanasis Karyotakis, thought the disease to be a disgrace to the family.<ref>Κοντόκωστας Κίμωνας & Κουσούλης Αντώνης, 2008. ''Η σύφιλη στην ιστορία και στις τέχνες''. Αθήνα: Ιατρικές εκδόσεις Γιάννη Β. Παρισιάνου; {{ISBN|978-960-89486-7-9}}</ref> In 1924 he traveled abroad, visiting [[Italy]] and [[Germany]]. In December 1927 he published his last collection of poetry: ''Elegy and Satires'' ({{lang-el|Ἐλεγεῖα<!--plural of τὸ ἐλεγεῖον; not to be confused with ἡ ἐλεγεία--> καὶ Σάτιρες}}). In February 1928, Karyotakis was transferred to [[Patras]] although soon afterwards he spent a month on leave in [[Paris]] and in June 1928 he was sent yet again to [[Preveza]] by ship.
⚫
[[File:Optimism Kostas Karyotakis manuscript.jpg|thumb|''Optimism'', hand written manuscript by Kostas Karyotakis|300px|right]]

==Suicide==
{{more citations needed|section|date=December 2017}}
Karyotakis lived in [[Preveza]] only for 33 days, until his suicide on 21 July 1928 at age 31. His work was in Prefecture of Preveza, in the Palios mansion, 10 Speliadou street, as a lawyer for control for land donations from State to refugees from the [[Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922)|Asia Minor War of 1922]]. From [[Preveza]] he sent desperate letters to friends and relatives describing the misery he felt in the town. His family offered to support him for an indefinite stay in Paris, but he refused knowing what a monetary sacrifice like this would entail for them. His angst is felt in the poem ''"Preveza"'' ({{lang-el|Πρέβεζα}}) which he wrote shortly before his suicide. The poem displays an insistent, lilting anaphora on the word Death, which stands at the beginning of several lines and sentences.{{citation needed|date=December 2017}}

It is shot through with a pungent awareness of the gallows, in the tiny mediocrity of life as Karyotakis felt it, mortality is measured against insignificant, black, pecking birds, or the town policeman checking a disputed weight, or identified with futile street names (boasting the date of battles), or the brass band on Sunday, a trifling sum of cash in a bank book, the flowers on a balcony, a teacher reading his newspaper, the prefect coming in by ferry: "If only," mutters the last of these six symmetrical quatrains, "one of those men would fall dead out of disgust".{{Citation needed|date=October 2021}}

On 19 July 1928, Karyotakis went to Monolithi beach and kept trying to drown in the sea for ten hours, but failed in his attempt, because he was an avid swimmer as he himself wrote in his suicide note. In the subsequent morning he returned home and left again to purchase a [[revolver]] and went to a little [[café]] in the place Vryssoula (near today Hotel Zikas). After smoking for a few hours, and drinking cherry juice, he left 75 drachmas as a gratuity, while the cost of the drink was 5 drachmas, he went to [[Agios Spyridon]], where, under a [[eucalyptus]] tree, he shot himself through the heart. His suicide letter was found in his pocket:
<ref>{{cite book|last=Merry|first=Bruce|title=Encyclopedia of modern Greek literature|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q-lr20SuvfIC&pg=PA216|accessdate=17 June 2009|year=2004|publisher=Greenwood Publishing group|isbn=978-0-313-30813-0|pages=216–217|chapter=Karyotakis, Kostas}}</ref>

"It is time for me to reveal my tragedy. My greatest faults were unbridled curiosity, a diseased imagination, and my attempts to become acquainted with every emotion without being able to feel most of them. However, I despise the base act that is attributed to me. I experienced but the ideation of its atmosphere, the ultimate bitterness. Nor am I the suitable person for that profession. My entire past will show that much. Every reality to me was repulsive.

I felt the rush brought on by danger. And with glad heart I shall accept the coming danger.

P.S. And, to change the tone: I advise those who can swim never to try to commit suicide in the sea. All night and for ten hours I was battered by the waves. I drank much water but, by and again and without me knowing how, my mouth would surface. Perhaps some time, given the opportunity, I shall write down the impressions of a drowning man."


One of his most famous poems is "Preveza", about the place where he committed suicide.
== Last month in Preveza city and suicide ==
:''Death is the bullies bashing''
'''Kostas Karyotakis''' lived in [[Preveza]] only for 33 days, until his suicide on July 21, 1928. His work was in Prefecture of Preveza, in the Palios mansion, 10 Speliadou street, as a lawyer for control for land donations from State to refugees from Asia Minor War of 1922.
:''against the black walls and roof tiling,''
From [[Preveza]] he sent desperate letters to friends and relatives describing the misery he felt in the town. His family offered to support him for an indefinite stay in Paris, but he refused knowing what a monetary sacrifice like this would entail for them. His angst is felt in the poem ''"Preveza"'' ({{lang-el|Πρέβεζα}}) which he wrote shortly before his suicide. The poem displays an insistent, lilting anaphora on the word Death, which stands at the beginning of several lines and sentences. It is shot through with a pungent awareness of the gallows, in the tiny mediocrity of life as Karyotakis felt it, mortality is measured against insignificant, black, pecking birds, or the town policeman checking a disputed weight, or identified with futile street names (boasting the date of battles), or the brass band on Sunday, a trifling sum of cash in a bank book, the flowers on a balcony, a teacher reading his newspaper, the prefect coming in by ferry: "If only," mutters the last of these six symmetrical quatrains, "one of those men would fall dead out of disgust".<ref>Harry Gouvas:"History of Preveza Prefecture", edition 2009, ISBN 978-960-87328-2-7</ref> On July 19, 1928 Karyotakis went to Monolithi beach and kept trying to drown in the sea for ten hours, but failed in his attempt, because he was an avid swimmer as he himself wrote in his suicide note. In the subsequent morning he returned home and left again to purchase a [[revolver]] and went to a little [[café]] in the place Vryssoula (near today Hotel Zikas). After smoking for a few hours, and drink cherry juice, he left 75 drachmas as a gratuity, while the cost of the drink was 5 drachmas, he went to a nearby seashore called [[Agios Spyridon]] (today Benzine Station of Greek Army) and there, under a [[eucalyptus]] tree, he shot himself through the heart. His suicide letter was found in his pocket.,<ref>{{cite book|last=Merry|first=Bruce|title=Encyclopedia of modern Greek literature|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=Q-lr20SuvfIC&pg=PA216&lpg=PA216|accessdate=17 June 2009|year=2004|publisher=Greenwood Publishing group|isbn=978-0-313-30813-0|pages=216–217|chapter=Karyotakis, Kostas}}</ref><ref>Harry Gouvas:"History of Preveza Prefecture", edition 2009, ISBN 978-960-87328-2-7</ref>
:''death is the women being loved''
:''as if onion peeling.''


:''Death the squalid, unimportant streets''
===Researches in Preveza===
:''with their glamorous and pompous names,''
There are available three researches about Kostas Karyotakis, accomplished in [[Preveza]].
:''the olive-grove, the surrounding sea, and even''
* First of them is the television Documentary film of '''Freddie Germanos''' in 1981 performed by the Greek State Television ERT. In this research is available the interview of old shepherd Taxiarchis Nitsas, who saved Kostas Karyotakis in the Mytikas Beach and also the interview of his house owner Penelope Lygouri. Penelope was a young girl in 1928 and said ''"Mister Kostas had three French costumes and no books at home. After his death I found some papers, but I didn't know that was poems, so I throwed them as litter"''.<ref>Freddie Germanos: "Kostas Karyotakis in Preveza", ERT TV Documentary Film, 1981</ref>
:''the sun, death among all other deaths.''
* The second research in [[Preveza]] about Kostas Karyotakis is work of Dr. '''Harry Gouvas''' from 1990–2009, which contains 3 interviews of persons who knew Kostas Karyotakis, in his book "History of Preveza Prefecture". Harry Gouvas's office is today in the same building where Kostas Karyotakis was working.<ref>Harry Gouvas:"History of Preveza Prefecture", edition 2009, ISBN 978-960-87328-2-7</ref>
* The third recearch in Preveza belongs to cinema director '''Tassos Psaras''', who made the TV serial "Kostas Karyotakis" during year 2009.<ref>Tassos Psaras: "Research about Kostas Karyotakis", Speech in Kyani Akti cinema, Preveza, 21 July 2009</ref>


...
== Legacy and Karyotakism ==
Today, there is general agreement on the importance of Karyotakis’ work, despite the fact that, for a long period, it was undervalued on ideological grounds. Greek idealists as well as spokesmen for the Leftist movement reproached him for being both pessimistic and decadent and some contemporary writers (F. Skouras, A. Papadimas) considered him seriously neurotic and they tried to stifle the striking effect he had on the younger generation. Despite being labeled as a minor poet by critics and philologists until 1970, poets amongst the Communists and surrealists of the inter-war, post-war and later years nevertheless recognized his leading role in the shaping of modern Greek poetry.


:''If at least, among these people,''
The writing of Karyotakis, was characterized by his own personal language similar to that of [[Constantine P. Cavafy]], which adopted verbal acrobatics between archaism and demotic language, as well as a deep pessimism, which is usually inflected by irony and set a fashion for melancholy and sardonic verse that became known as ''Karyotakism''. Poets who adopted his style increased, especially after his swan song ''Elegies and Satires (1927)'', with followers such as Angheliki Varvitsiotis-Konti, Spyros Gouskos and Sotos Skoutaris.
:''one would die of sheer disgust''
:''silent, bereaved, with humble manners,''
:''at the funeral we'd all have fun.''<ref>[https://allpoetry.com/Kostas-Karyotakis Profile], allpoetry.com; accessed 7 December 2017.</ref>


== Works ==
== Works ==
Line 47: Line 69:
*''Prepare'' (1923) published in «Espero» (3)
*''Prepare'' (1923) published in «Espero» (3)
*''Elegies and Satires'' (1927) published by printing press "Αthena"
*''Elegies and Satires'' (1927) published by printing press "Αthena"
*''Optimism'' (1929) [Posthumously]'' «Nea Estia» (6, 63)
*''Optimism'' (1929) [Posthumously] «Nea Estia» (6, 63)
*''Sunday'' (1929) [Posthumously]'' published in «Pnoe» (1)
*''Sunday'' (1929) [Posthumously] published in «Pnoe» (1)
*''Preveza'' (1930) [Posthumously]'' published in «Nea Estia» (8, 88)
*''Preveza'' (1930) [Posthumously] published in «Nea Estia» (8, 88)
*''When we get down the stairs...'' (1933) [Posthumously]'' published in «Beginnings» (7, July 1933)
*''When we get down the stairs...'' (1933) [Posthumously] published in «Beginnings» (7, July 1933)


== Translations ==
== Translations ==
Line 62: Line 84:
* {{cite web| script-title=el:Τέλλος Ἄγρας, Δοκίμιο γιὰ τὸν Καρυωτάκη| url=http://www.ellopos.gr/reading_/agras-karyotakis-essay.asp| language = Greek}}
* {{cite web| script-title=el:Τέλλος Ἄγρας, Δοκίμιο γιὰ τὸν Καρυωτάκη| url=http://www.ellopos.gr/reading_/agras-karyotakis-essay.asp| language = Greek}}
* {{cite web| script-title=el:Η Συνάντηση Κώστας Καρυωτάκης - Μαρία Πολυδούρη | url=http://www.focusmag.gr/id/view-user-article.rx?oid=411105 |language = Greek}}
* {{cite web| script-title=el:Η Συνάντηση Κώστας Καρυωτάκης - Μαρία Πολυδούρη | url=http://www.focusmag.gr/id/view-user-article.rx?oid=411105 |language = Greek}}
* {{cite book | author = Agras. T. Petros Charis, and Kleon Paraschos. | title = "Κώστας Καρυωτάκης" ["Kostas Karyotakis") | publisher = Νέα Estia 16, 17. and IX (1928): 726-835}}
* {{cite magazine | author1 = Agras. T. Petros Charis |author2= Kleon Paraschos | script-title=el: Κώστας Καρυωτάκης |trans-title=Kostas Karyotakis | magazine = Nea Estia |volume= 16, 17. and IX |date=1928 |pages= 726–835 |language=el}}
* {{cite book | author=Skouras F |title="Ό Καρυωτάκης, μπροοτά στό φράγμα της νευρώσεως" ("Karyotakis, Faced by the Barrier of Neurosis")|publisher= Nea Estia 15 (May 1943)}}
* {{cite magazine |last1=Skouras |first1=F. |script-title=el:Ό Καρυωτάκης, μπροοτά στό φράγμα της νευρώσεως |magazine=[[Nea Estia]] |date=15 May 1943 |volume=396 |pages=5–9 |trans-title=Karyotakis, Faced by the Barrier of Neurosis |language=el}}
* {{cite book | author = Hadas. Rachel | title = Enjoying the Funeral: Constanine Caryotakis | publisher = Grand Street 3. no. I (autumn 1983): 153-160}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Hadas |first1=Rachel |title=Enjoying the Funeral: Constantine Caryotakis |journal=Grand Street |date=1983 |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=153–160 |doi=10.2307/25006570 |jstor=25006570}}</ref>
* {{cite book | author = Harry Gouvas | title = "History of Preveza Prefecture, Greek edition" 2009, ISBN 978-960-87328-2-7| publisher= "The Museum of Arts and Sciences of Preveza Greece" | year = 2009}}
* {{cite book | author1 = John S. Koliopoulos |author2= Thanos M. Veremis | title = Modern Greece: A History Since 1821 | publisher= John Wiley & Sons | year = 2007}}


== External links ==
== External links ==
* [http://www.phys.uoa.gr/~nektar/arts/tributes/kwstas_karywtakhs/index.htm Tribute to Kostas Karyotakis]
* [http://www.phys.uoa.gr/~nektar/arts/tributes/kwstas_karywtakhs/index.htm Tribute to Kostas Karyotakis]
* [http://users.ox.ac.uk/~shil0124/poems/nepenthe.htm Poems from ''Nepenthe'' and ''Elegies & Satires'']{{dead link|date=September 2014}} (translated by Peter J. King and Andrea Christofidou
* {{Librivox author |id=8544}}
* {{Librivox author |id=8544}}


Line 75: Line 96:


{{DEFAULTSORT:Karyotakis, Kostas}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Karyotakis, Kostas}}
[[Category:Greek poets]]
[[Category:Modern Greek poets]]
[[Category:Modern Greek poets]]
[[Category:Expressionism]]
[[Category:Expressionist writers]]
[[Category:Poets who committed suicide]]
[[Category:Suicides by firearm in Greece]]
[[Category:Suicides by firearm in Greece]]
[[Category:Surrealism]]
[[Category:Greek surrealist writers]]
[[Category:1896 births]]
[[Category:1896 births]]
[[Category:1928 deaths]]
[[Category:1928 suicides]]
[[Category:Preveza]]
[[Category:Preveza]]
[[Category:People from Tripoli, Greece]]
[[Category:People from Tripoli, Greece]]
[[Category:20th-century Greek people]]
[[Category:20th-century Greek people]]
[[Category:20th-century poets]]
[[Category:20th-century Greek poets]]
[[Category:1928 deaths]]

Latest revision as of 19:31, 16 July 2023

Kostas Karyotakis, self-portrait

Kostas Karyotakis (Greek: Κώστας Καρυωτάκης, 11 November [OS October 30], 1896 – 20 July 1928) is considered one of the most representative Greek poets of the 1920s and one of the first poets to use iconoclastic themes in Greece. His poetry conveys a great deal of nature, imagery and traces of expressionism and surrealism. He also belongs to the Greek Lost Generation movement.[1] The majority of Karyotakis' contemporaries viewed him in a dim light throughout his lifetime without a pragmatic accountability for their contemptuous views; for after his suicide, the majority began to revert to the view that he was indeed a great poet. He had a significant, almost disproportionately progressive influence on later Greek poets.

Biography[edit]

Karyotakis gave existential depth as well as a tragic dimension to the emotional nuances and melancholic tones of the neo-Symbolist and new-Romantic poetry of the time. With a rare clarity of spirit and penetrating vision, he captures and conveys with poetic daring the climate of dissolution and the impasses of his generation, as well as the traumas of his own inner spiritual world.

Early life[edit]

The poet's birthplace in Tripoli

Karyotakis was born in Tripoli, Greece, his father's occupation as a county engineer resulted in his early childhood and teenage years being spent in various places, following his family's successive moves around the Greek cities, including Argostoli, Lefkada, Larisa, Kalamata, Athens and Chania. He started publishing poetry in various magazines for children in 1912. It is solely rife speculation that he had felt deeply betrayed that a girl he had cared for in Hania in 1913 had married and sent him into melancholy.

After receiving his degree from the Athens School of Law and Political Sciences, in 1917, he did not pursue a career as a lawyer. Karyotakis became a clerk in the Prefecture of Thessaloniki. However, he greatly disliked his work and could not tolerate the bureaucracy of the state, which he wrote about often in his poems. His prose piece Catharsis ('purification') is characteristic of this. For this reason he would often be removed from his posts and transferred to other locations in Greece. During these removals he became familiar with the boredom and misery of the country during World War I.

Kostas Karyotakis in Sykia village of Corinth, with his sister, nephew, and his brother's sister-in-law, year 1927

Adulthood and career[edit]

In February 1919 he published his first collection of poetry: The Pain of People and of Things (Greek: Ὁ πόνος τοῦ ἀνθρώπου καὶ τῶν πραμάτων), which was largely ignored or badly reviewed by the critics. In the same year he published, with his friend Agis Levendis, a satirical review, called The Leg, which, despite its success, was banned by the police after the sixth issue. In 1921 he published his second collection called Nepenthe (Greek: Νηπενθῆ) and also wrote a musical revue, Pell-Mell (Greek: Πελ-Μελ). In 1922 he began having an affair with the poet Maria Polydouri who was a colleague of his at the Prefecture of Attica. In 1923 he wrote a poem called "Treponema pallidum" (Greek: Ὠχρὰ Σπειροχαίτη), which was published under the title "Song of Madness" and gave rise to speculation that he may have been suffering from syphilis, which before 1945 was considered a chronic illness[2] with no proven cure for it.

George Skouras, a physician of the poet, wrote: "He was sick, he was syphilitic" and George Savidis (1929–1999), professor of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, who possessed the largest archive about Greek poets, revealed that Karyotakis was syphilitic, and that his brother, Thanasis Karyotakis, thought the disease to be a disgrace to the family.[3] In 1924 he traveled abroad, visiting Italy and Germany. In December 1927 he published his last collection of poetry: Elegy and Satires (Greek: Ἐλεγεῖα καὶ Σάτιρες). In February 1928, Karyotakis was transferred to Patras although soon afterwards he spent a month on leave in Paris and in June 1928 he was sent yet again to Preveza by ship.

Optimism, hand written manuscript by Kostas Karyotakis

Suicide[edit]

Karyotakis lived in Preveza only for 33 days, until his suicide on 21 July 1928 at age 31. His work was in Prefecture of Preveza, in the Palios mansion, 10 Speliadou street, as a lawyer for control for land donations from State to refugees from the Asia Minor War of 1922. From Preveza he sent desperate letters to friends and relatives describing the misery he felt in the town. His family offered to support him for an indefinite stay in Paris, but he refused knowing what a monetary sacrifice like this would entail for them. His angst is felt in the poem "Preveza" (Greek: Πρέβεζα) which he wrote shortly before his suicide. The poem displays an insistent, lilting anaphora on the word Death, which stands at the beginning of several lines and sentences.[citation needed]

It is shot through with a pungent awareness of the gallows, in the tiny mediocrity of life as Karyotakis felt it, mortality is measured against insignificant, black, pecking birds, or the town policeman checking a disputed weight, or identified with futile street names (boasting the date of battles), or the brass band on Sunday, a trifling sum of cash in a bank book, the flowers on a balcony, a teacher reading his newspaper, the prefect coming in by ferry: "If only," mutters the last of these six symmetrical quatrains, "one of those men would fall dead out of disgust".[citation needed]

On 19 July 1928, Karyotakis went to Monolithi beach and kept trying to drown in the sea for ten hours, but failed in his attempt, because he was an avid swimmer as he himself wrote in his suicide note. In the subsequent morning he returned home and left again to purchase a revolver and went to a little café in the place Vryssoula (near today Hotel Zikas). After smoking for a few hours, and drinking cherry juice, he left 75 drachmas as a gratuity, while the cost of the drink was 5 drachmas, he went to Agios Spyridon, where, under a eucalyptus tree, he shot himself through the heart. His suicide letter was found in his pocket: [4]

"It is time for me to reveal my tragedy. My greatest faults were unbridled curiosity, a diseased imagination, and my attempts to become acquainted with every emotion without being able to feel most of them. However, I despise the base act that is attributed to me. I experienced but the ideation of its atmosphere, the ultimate bitterness. Nor am I the suitable person for that profession. My entire past will show that much. Every reality to me was repulsive.

I felt the rush brought on by danger. And with glad heart I shall accept the coming danger.

P.S. And, to change the tone: I advise those who can swim never to try to commit suicide in the sea. All night and for ten hours I was battered by the waves. I drank much water but, by and again and without me knowing how, my mouth would surface. Perhaps some time, given the opportunity, I shall write down the impressions of a drowning man."

One of his most famous poems is "Preveza", about the place where he committed suicide.

Death is the bullies bashing
against the black walls and roof tiling,
death is the women being loved
as if onion peeling.
Death the squalid, unimportant streets
with their glamorous and pompous names,
the olive-grove, the surrounding sea, and even
the sun, death among all other deaths.

...

If at least, among these people,
one would die of sheer disgust
silent, bereaved, with humble manners,
at the funeral we'd all have fun.[5]

Works[edit]

Poems and collections[edit]

  • Xeprovodisma (1919) published in «Noumas» (638)
  • When you Came... (1919) published in «Noumas» (650)
  • Your Letters (1920) published in «Noumas» (671)
  • The Pain of Men and Things (1919)
  • Nepenthe (1921)
  • Song (1922) published in «Pharos» (82)
  • Lycabettus ( 1922) published in «Noumas» (765)
  • Treponema pallidum (1923) published in «New Life» (322)
  • the Ash beyond the Horizon... (1923)) published in «Noumas» (771)
  • Varium et Mutabile (1923)) published in «Easter Anthology, 1923 (together with one of his friends Agis Leventis).
  • Escape (1923) published in «New Life» (324)
  • Prepare (1923) published in «Espero» (3)
  • Elegies and Satires (1927) published by printing press "Αthena"
  • Optimism (1929) [Posthumously] «Nea Estia» (6, 63)
  • Sunday (1929) [Posthumously] published in «Pnoe» (1)
  • Preveza (1930) [Posthumously] published in «Nea Estia» (8, 88)
  • When we get down the stairs... (1933) [Posthumously] published in «Beginnings» (7, July 1933)

Translations[edit]

1. Elegias e Sátiras/Ελεγεία και Σάτιρες, Théo de Borba Mossburger (Trans.), (n.t.) Revista Literária em Tradução, nº 1 (set/2010), Fpolis/Brasil, ISSN 2177-5141

Notes and references[edit]

  1. ^ John S. Koliopoulos and Thanos M. Veremis Modern Greece: A History since 1821 ("John Wiley & Sons"), p. 98
  2. ^ Brown, Kevin (2006). The Pox: The Life and Near Death of a Very Social Disease. Stroud: WSutton. pp. 85–111, 185–91.
  3. ^ Κοντόκωστας Κίμωνας & Κουσούλης Αντώνης, 2008. Η σύφιλη στην ιστορία και στις τέχνες. Αθήνα: Ιατρικές εκδόσεις Γιάννη Β. Παρισιάνου; ISBN 978-960-89486-7-9
  4. ^ Merry, Bruce (2004). "Karyotakis, Kostas". Encyclopedia of modern Greek literature. Greenwood Publishing group. pp. 216–217. ISBN 978-0-313-30813-0. Retrieved 17 June 2009.
  5. ^ Profile, allpoetry.com; accessed 7 December 2017.

Sources[edit]

External links[edit]

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