Stratis Myrivilis

Stratis Myrivilis

Stratis Myrivilis ( Greek Στρατής Μυριβήλης , pseudonym for Ευστράτιος Σταματόπουλος - Evstratios Stamatopulos ; born June 30, 1890 in Skamia on the island of Lesbos , at that time Ottoman Empire ; † July 19, 1969 in Athens ) was a Greek writer .

Life

Evstratios Stamatopulos was born on the Aegean island of Lesbos, which at that time still belonged to the Ottoman Empire, in the small village of Skamia. He attended high school in the island's capital, Mytilini . In 1912 he began studying philosophy and law in Athens. When the Balkan War began that same year , the young man volunteered for military service and was a soldier for ten years, first in the Balkans in Macedonia and Thrace and then in Asia Minor until the defeat of Greece. The war experiences had a decisive influence on his further life, so that he returned to Lesbos as a staunch pacifist . Here he worked as a journalist and writer. From 1930 he lived in Athens, where he was program director of the Greek radio from 1936 to 1951. Myrivilis was a member of the Academy of Athens and, after the war, president of the Greek Writers' Association. In 1960 he was proposed for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Stratis Myrivilis died in Athens in 1969.

Works

Stratis Myrivilis was one of the most important Greek prose authors of the 20th century. In addition to his extensive journalistic activities, he published his first stories as early as 1914 during the war. After his return he brought out the novel Life in the Grave , in which he processed his experiences from the war. This first work made Myrivilis the most important author of the so-called " Generation of 1930 " group. In 1933 the first actual novel The Teacher with the Gold Eyes was published . Various volumes of stories followed, all of which the author named after a certain color. His last and probably most mature work is the novel The Madonna with the Fish Body from 1949.

Myrivilis developed the Greek folk language Dimotiki further by being able to express great expressiveness and lyrical movement with it. His role model was the popular writer Alexandros Papadiamantis . Myrivilis wrote on the one hand strongly autobiographical on the subject of the war, on the other hand about the simple farmers and fishermen of his homeland Lesbos, which he was able to describe masterfully. Great descriptions of nature breathe a synthesis of Greek paganism and Christianity. A significant part of his works has also been translated into German.

• Κόκκινες ιστορίες , Red stories , stories 1915
• Η ζωή εν τάφω , Life in the Grave , novel 1924 (German 1986 ISBN 978-3-923728-11-4 )
• Η δασκάλα με τα χρυσά μάτια , The teacher with the golden eyes , novel 1933 (German 1998 ISBN 978-3-929889-25-3 )
• Το πράσινο βιβλίο , The Green Book , Stories 1935
• Το γαλάζιο βιβλίο , The Blue Book , Stories 1939
• Ο Βασίλης ο Αρβανίτης , Vassilis Arvanitis , story 1943 (German 1976)
• Η Παναγιά η Γοργόνα , The Madonna with the fish body , novel 1949 (translated from Modern Greek by Helmut von den Steinen . Manesse Verlag , Zurich 1955 ( Manesse Library of World Literature ), ISBN 978-3-7175-1982-9 )
• Το κόκκινο βιβλίο , The Red Book , Stories 1952
• Το βυσινί βιβλίο , The Wine Red Book , Stories 1959

literature

• Kiriaki Chrisomalli-Henrich : narrative technique, time organization and their influence on the formation of shapes. Studies on Myrivilis, Venesis and E. Fakinu with special consideration of the female figures. Hamburg, 1995 (Meletemata, 5).

Web links

• Literature by and about Stratēs Myribēlēs in the catalog of the German National Library