Melpo Axioti

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Melpo Axioti ( Greek Μέλπω Αξιώτη ; * July 15, 1905 in Athens ; † May 22, 1973 ibid) was a Greek writer who professed communism. She wrote in modern Greek. She spent most of her exile from 1947 to 1964 in the GDR.

life and work

The daughter of a musician and composer grew up on the Greek island of Mykonos from an early age without a mother. From 1918 to 1922 she attended the Ursuline School on the island of Tinos . After a brief marriage with her theology professor Vassilis Markaris, she went to Athens in 1930, where she soon made her debut with short stories in the magazine Mykoniatika Chronika . First of all, she is one of the pioneers of Greek surrealism . In 1939, she received first prize from the Women's Association of Letters and Arts for her first novel, Schwere Nights , published in 1937 .

She has since become a member of the Communist Party. During the occupation she took part in illegal work within the framework of the National Liberation Front. When her endangerment became too great, she decided to go into exile in France in 1947, where she a. meets Louis Aragon , Pablo Neruda and Pablo Picasso . Expelled in 1950, she was accepted into the GDR, only interrupted by a short stay in Warsaw . While she is teaching Modern Greek and the history of modern Greek literature at East Berlin's Humboldt University , several Axiotis books are translated and published by GDR publishers.

Your widely read novel 20th Century (from 1946) is about the uncompromising and correspondingly loss-making resistance of Greek women against fascism (and the German armed forces ). Her poem Contraband (from 1959) leads to friendship and collaboration with Giannis Ritsos. In 1964, Axioti uses an official entry permit to return to her Greek homeland. However, it is increasingly struggling with diseases. She died in 1973 and was buried in the Zografou cemetery in Athens . In 1989 Gay Aggeli presented a 35-minute documentary entitled The Life and Work of Melpo Axioti .

Works

  • Diskoles Nychtes (Heavy Nights), novel, 1937
  • Symptose (chance), Langes Gedicht, 1939
  • Thelek na chorepsume, Maria? (Maria, would you like to dance with me?), Roman, 1940
  • Chronicles , Reports, 1945
  • Twenthies Century / 20. Jahrhundert , Roman, 1946 (Berlin 1949; also French, Bulgarian, Czech, Polish, Italian)
  • Eikostos a ionas , Roman, 1946 (German tears and marble, Berlin 1949)
  • Syntrophoi Kalemera! (Good afternoon, comrades!), Stories, 1953 (In the shadow of the Acropolis, Berlin 1955)
  • Kontrabando , 1959 (German contraband: A seal, Berlin 1961)
  • Antigone is alive: Modern Greek. Stories , Berlin 1960
  • My home , report, 1965
  • Kadmo , prose piece , Athens 1972

as well as other essays, translations and publications as editor.

literature

  • C. Robinson: Greece , in: M. Arkin et al. Barbara Shollar (Ed.): Longman Anthology of World Literature by Women: 1875-1975 , New York 1989
  • Maria Kakavoulia: Interior monologue and its discursive formation in Melpo Axioti's Dyskoles nychtes , Institute for Byzantine Studies and Modern Greek Philology at the University of Munich 1992
  • Melpo Axioti, Mimika Kranaki: Writing in Exile , in: E. Close, M. Tsianikas, G. Frazis (Eds.): Greek Research in Australia: Proceedings of the 4th Biennial Conference of Greek Studies , Flinders University Adelaide 2003, pp. 359-380
  • Externalizing Internal Experiences: Interior Monologue in Virginia Woolf's “Mrs Dalloway” and Melpo Axioti's “Difficult Nights” , King's College London, Dissertation 2009

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Website of the Serres Central Library , accessed on January 3, 2011
  2. ↑ Encyclopedia of modern Greek literature , accessed January 3, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Axioti, Melpo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Αξιώτη, Μέλπω (Greek)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 15, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Athens , Greece
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 1973
Place of death Athens , Greece