Kostis Palamas

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The Poets (1919) by Georgios Roilos . Various poets of the generation from 1880 are shown; in the middle Kostis Palamas.

Kostís Palamás ( Greek Κωστής Παλαμάς , born January 13, 1859 in Patras ; †  February 27, 1943 in Athens ) was a modern Greek man of letters and worked as a poet, prose writer, playwright, historian and literary critic. He is considered to be the most important representative of the generation of 1880 and with his poetry made a decisive contribution to the fact that the modern Greek vernacular could prevail over the classical high-level language in literature. The literary movement around Palamas and his contemporaries Georgios Drosinis and Nikos Kambas is known as the New Athens School .

Life

Palamas, whose parents came from Mesolongi , was born in Patras in 1859 as the second of three brothers. On the father's side, Palamas' family tree already showed some scholars, for example his great-grandfather Panagiotis Palamas (1722-1803), who founded the Palamic School in Mesolongi , or his grandfather Ioannis Palamas, who taught at the Academy of the Patriarchate in Constantinople .

At the age of six, Kostis Palamas became an orphan and from then on lived with his two brothers with close relatives in Mesolongi. After high school completion to Palamas 1875 was in Athens down to there Jura to study, but he soon turned from the legal doctrine, and the literature. At the age of nine he had already written his first poem, which he later characterized as a poem for laughing ("ποίημα για γέλια"). From 1875 he published other works in newspapers and magazines and finally submitted his collection of poems Ερώτων Έπη ( Epics of Liaisons ) to a poetry competition in 1876 . At that time Palamas still wrote in an antiquing language ( Katharevousa ), which was strongly influenced by that of the first Athens school . Although his poems were rejected as "lifeless rhymes", Palamas' first independent publication followed in 1878, the poem Mesolongi (Μεσολόγγι).

Since 1898 Palamas worked together with his fellow students Nikos Kambas and Georgios Drosinis with the political-satirical magazines "Ραμπαγάς" ( Rambagas ) and "Μη χάνεσαι" ( Don't get lost ). They felt that the time was ripe for an innovation in modern Greek poetry and that the old Athens school with its romance and ancient language had had its day. The long-established poets, on the other hand, ridiculed Palamas and his colleagues as childish upstarts.

In 1886 Palamas published a collection of poems for the first time, the songs of my homeland (Τραγούδια της Πατρίδος μου). It is written in the vernacular and stylistically a prime example of the new Athens school. In 1887 Kostis married Palamas Maria Valvi, with whom he had three children. In 1889 he published the hymn to Athena dedicated to his wife (Ύμνος εις την Αθηνάν) and received a prize in the same year at the Philadelphian poetry competition; also in the following year 1890 he received this award. In 1896 he was commissioned to write the text of the hymn for the Olympic Games in 1896 , which was set to music by Spyros Samaras and which today represents the Olympic hymn . A year later he was appointed to an honorary position at the University of Athens , which he held until 1928. Another collection of poems followed with iambs and anapäste (Ίαμβοι και Ανάπαιστοι).

Palamas' son Alkis died in 1898 at the age of four, which was a decisive experience in the poet's life and which he tried to process in his lyrical work Das Grab (Ο τάφος). In the following years he published other important collections of poetry: Immovable Life (Ασάλευτη Ζωή, 1904), The Twelve Songs of the Gypsy (ο Δωδεκάλογος του Γύφτου, 1907), The King's Flute (Η Φλογέιά τ10οαλιά τ10οαλυ τιο. In 1918 Palamas received the National Prize for Literature and the Arts (Εθνικό Αριστείο Γραμμάτων και Τεχνών). In 1926 he became a member of the Academy of Athens and in 1930 its president.

Kostis Palamas died after a long illness on April 27, 1943, 40 days after his wife. His funeral, which was attended by thousands of Greeks, turned into a historical event that embodied the unity and love of freedom of the Greek nation ruled by the German occupation . The famous funeral oration was given by the poet Angelos Sikelianos .

Artistic creation

Kostis Palamas is considered one of the most productive modern Greek writers. He published a total of 18 collections of poetry as well as numerous plays, critical and historical essays , comparative studies and book reviews, all of which, however, do not come close to the importance of his lyrical work. The bibliography Kostis Palamas by Giorgos K. Katsimbalis counts 2500 "essays, articles and notes".

Among the poets of the generation of 1880, Palamas stood out for the fact that he decisively advanced poetry and dared something new in each of his collections.

His first two collections of poetry, Songs of My Homeland (Τραγούδια της Πατρίδος μου) and The Eyes of My Soul (Τα μάτια της ψυχής μου), still showed traces of the Athenian school as well as some Katharevousa elements. The first real milestone in Palamas' poetry was the collection iambs and anapaests (Ίαμβοι και Ανάπαιστοι, 1897), mainly due to their new metric , the iambic and anapaests combined with each other, but also because of their scarcity and stringency in the expression. The following work, Das Grab (O τάφος, 1898), consists of lamentations that he wrote on the occasion of the death of his son Alkis. Palamas' first creative phase ends with the Unmoved Life collection (Ασάλευτη Ζωή, 1904), which is a synthesis of his previous work. Above all, the poems Die Palme (Η Φοινικιά, from a lyrical point of view perhaps his most flawless work), The Askraier (O Ασκραίος, = Hesiod ) and the sonnets Heimat (Πατρίδες, first published in 1895) should be mentioned here.

The following two works are great epic-lyrical compositions with national symbolism, reflecting the disappointment of the 1897 war. The "Gypsy" in The Twelve Songs of the Gypsy (O Δωδεκάλογος του Γύφτου, 1907) breaks with all traditional idols and creates new ones with the help of a violin (representative of art). The most characteristic part of the work is the "eighth song", the foresight (Προφητικός), which expresses the certainty about the rebirth of the nation. The King's Flute (Η φλογέρα του βασιλιά, 1910) takes place in the Byzantine Empire and tells of the journey of Basil II to Athens . Palamas himself considered The Twelve Songs of the Gypsy and The King's Flute to be his two most important works.

Later Palamas returned to smaller literary forms back and released the grief of the lagoon (Οι καημοί της Λιμνοθάλασσας) The city and the loneliness (Η Πολιτεία και η Μοναξιά, 1912), altars (Βωμοί) and Satirical exercises (Σατιρικά γυμνάσματα). In his last collections of poetry ( The cycle of quatrains - Ο κύκλος των τετράστιχων, 1929; The Nights of Phemios - Οι νύχτες του Φήμιου, 1935) Palamas came up with lyrical innovations. In the last ten years of his life, Palamas no longer wrote poetry.

Palamas and demoticism

Palamas 'appearance as a poet coincided with the bitterest phase of the Greek language dispute ( Psycharis' Meine Reise - Tο Ταξίδι μου was published in 1888 ). While the vernacular gradually established itself in poetry (especially the New Athens School ) , Katharevousa dominated both prose and official correspondence. As a representative of the vernacular, Palamas judged Psycharis' my journey benevolently and already one day after reading it wrote the article The revolutionary book by Mr Psycharis (Το επαναστατικόν βιβλίον του κ. Ψυχάρη), in which he praised the work, but also his (to ) mentioned extreme views. Palamas was constantly and energetically committed to the establishment of the Dimotiki by working with the demoticist paper Νουμάς ( Noumas ) from the beginning and writing his entire own literary production (including the few prose stories) in the vernacular and, last but not least, friends like the Greek Harvard philologist and translator of his poems into English Aristides Phoutrides moved to the appreciation of the Dimotiki. This brought him into professional difficulties several times, as on the one hand he was known as a supporter of the Dimotiki, on the other hand, as the university secretary, he was forced to write official documents in strict Katharevousa.

Reception and aftermath

Kostis Palamas was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize for Literature , but never received it. After the Second World War he was next to Dionysios Solomos as the most important modern Greek poet; Today literary studies still recognize him as a great poet, but do not attach such a central role to him as Konstantinos Kavafis or Giorgos Seferis, for example . The importance of Palamas is seen less in his poetry as such, but above all in the position he occupied in the intellectual life of Greece over the decades: he was the figurehead of a literary upswing, pioneer of a new generation of poets and, on an intellectual level, such an extraordinary one determining personality like Eleftherios Venizelos in politics at the same time .

Works

Poetry

  • Songs of my homeland - Τραγούδια της Πατρίδος μου (1886)
  • Hymn to Athena - Ύμνος εις την Αθηνάν (1889)
  • The eyes of my soul - Τα μάτια της ψυχής μου (1892)
  • Iambs and Anapäste - Ίαμβοι και ανάπαιστοι (1897)
  • The grave - O Τάφος (1898)
  • Greetings from the Sunborn - Οι χαιρετισμοί της Ηλιογέννητης (1900)
  • Immobile life - Ασάλευτη ζωή (1904)
  • The twelve songs of the gypsy - Ο Δωδεκάλογος του Γύφτου (1907)
  • The King's Flute - Η φλογέρα του Βασιλιά (1910)
  • The mourning of the lagoon - Οι καημοί της λιμνοθάλασσας (1912)
  • Satirical Exercises - Σατιρικά Γυμνάσματα (1912)
  • The city and solitude - Η πολιτεία και η μοναξιά (1912)
  • Altars - Βωμοί (1915)
  • The Outdated Poems - Τα παράκαιρα (1919)
  • The fourteen -liners - Τα δεκατετράστιχα (1919)
  • The Five Silver - Οι πεντασύλλαβοι (1925)
  • The poignant whisper - Τα παθητικά κρυφομιλήματα (1925)
  • The wolves - Οι λύκοι (1925)
  • Two flowers from abroad - Δυό λουλούδια από τα ξένα (1925)
  • The shy and cruel verses - Οι δειλοί και σκληροί στίχοι (1928)
  • The cycle of quatrains - Ο κύκλος των τετράστιχων (1929)
  • Greetings and passing - Περάσματα και χαιρετισμοί (1931)
  • The Nights of Phemius - Οι νύχτες του Φήμιου (1935)
  • Evening fire - Βραδινή φωτιά (1944, posthumous edition, edited by his son Leandros)

prose

  • Death of a Pallicar - Θάνατος παληκαριού, story, (1901)
  • Stories - Διηγήματα, 1920

Plays

  • Trisévgeni - Τρισεύγενη, drama (1903)

Reviews and essays

  • Kalvos of Zakynthos - Κάλβος ο Ζακύνθιος (1889) in Estia , essay, the rediscovery of the work of Andreas Kalvos contributed

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Palamas, Kostis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Palamás, Kostís
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek author
DATE OF BIRTH January 13, 1859
PLACE OF BIRTH Patras
DATE OF DEATH February 27, 1943
Place of death Athens