Ioannis Psycharis

Woodcut portrait of Giannis Psycharis from the magazine Ποικίλη Στοά from 1888

Ioannis or Giannis Psycharis ( Greek Ιωάννης or Γιάννης Ψυχάρης ; * May 15, 1854 in Odessa ; † September 30, 1929 in Paris ), in France also Jean Psichari, was a Greek philologist and writer .

Life and teaching

Psycharis was born in Odessa, Russia, in what is now Ukraine , and grew up in Constantinople . At the age of 15, after completing his school education, Psycharis left the city to move to his uncle in Marseille , where he first attended the Lycée and then began his studies. He studied philosophy , philology and linguistics at the Sorbonne University in Paris and German , medieval and neo-Greek studies in Germany.

From 1885 he taught the Modern Greek Language as Directeur d'études at the École pratique des hautes études , and from 1903 to 1928 he taught as the successor to Émile Legrand as Professor of Modern Greek Language at the École des langues orientales . He died in 1929 after a long illness.

Work and commitment in the Greek language question

Giannis Psycharis left numerous literary works. He wrote poems, short stories, novels, plays and essays on the Greek language dispute , which was also his greatest tribute to the Greek language. He persistently fought for the recognition of the despised vernacular, the Dimotiki ( Greek δημοτική [γλώσσα] "vernacular"), as the official language of the Greek state, and made a decisive contribution to the linguistic debate in Greece restarting at the end of the 19th century came.

Since the beginning of the Greek Revolution of 1821, various writers and enlightenmentists had tried to establish the Dimotiki as the state language. A few years later, in May 1823, Dionysios Solomos wrote the Ode to Freedom , today's Greek national anthem, in the Dimotiki. But it was only through Giannis Psycharis that demoticism learned the direction and strength it needed to oppose the conservative forces that tried to resurrect the ancient Greek language .

In 1886 Psycharis traveled to Greece , both to areas that were already part of the Greek state and to areas that were still Ottoman, and was inspired by his experiences, which he implemented in 1888 in the prose work “Meine Reise” ( Greek Το ταξίδι μου ). The work was printed in France and was written throughout in a simple and orthographically simplified vernacular. Psycharis had studied the language of the people, the songs, the myths and the traditions and tried to show the system on which this language is based. But his standpoints differ greatly from other, more moderate advocates of the vernacular. Psycharis postponed education as a less urgent problem and regarded armament and expansion of the Greek nation as a priority task, which comes to the fore at some points in My Journey in the form of visions that glorify violence.

After "Meine Reise" he published a number of other stories, novels and six volumes with memoirs , reviews and scientific studies under the main title Ρόδα καὶ Μῆλα ( Eng . "Pomegranates and Apples"). His first linguistic work, which was published in 1886, is entitled "Essay on the modern Greek historical grammar" ( Greek Δοκίμιο τῆς νεοελληνικῆς ἱστορικῆς γραμματικῆς ). This was followed by numerous other studies on the subject of the Greek language question.

Fonts (selection)

Literary writings

• Το ταξίδι μου ( Eng . "My Journey"), prose
• Ζούλια ("Julia"), story
• Το όνειρο του Γιαννίρη ("Gianniris' Dream"), novel
• Ζωή κι αγάπη στη μοναξιά ("Life and love in solitude"), novel
• Στον ίσκιο του πλατάνου ("In the shadow of the plane tree"), story
• Αγνή ("Agnes"), novel
• Ρόδα και μήλα ("pomegranates and apples"), essays

Philological writings

• Δοκίμιο τῆς νεοελληνικῆς ἱστορικῆς γραμματικῆς ("Essay on the modern Greek historical grammar"), 1886.
• Simon Portius (Simone Porzio): Grammatica linguae graecae vulgaris. Reproduction de l'édition de 1638 suivie d'un commentaire grammatical et historique par Wilhelm Meyer with an introduction de Jean Psichari . E. Bouillon et E. Vieweg, Paris 1889 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
• Études de philologie neo-grecque. Recherches sur le développement historique du grec publiées par Jean Psichari . É. Bouillon, Paris 1892 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ; contains studies by various scholars).

literature

• Basil G. Mandilaras: John Psichari and his contributions to the modern Greek language In: Basil G. Mandilaras: Studies in the Greek language. Xenopoulos, Athens 1972, pp. 88-108.

Web links

• Literature by and about Ioannis Psycharis in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)