MODERN GREEK LITERATURE

Modern Greek literature refers to literature written in the Greek language from the 11th
century, with texts written in a language that is more familiar to the ears of Greeks today than is
the language of the early Byzantine literature, the compilers of the New Testament, or, of course,
the classical authors of the fifth and fourth centuries BC.

1 The emergence of modern Greek literature 5.1 E. Roidis, G. Vizyinos

(11th - 15th century) 5.2 1880s Generation or New Athenian
1.1 Acritic songs School
1.2 Romances 5.3 C. Cavafy
1.3 Tales set in the classical world 5.4 Neo-romanticism or Neo-
2 Cretan literature (15th-17th centuries) symbolism
3 Enlightenment era (17th century-1821) 5.5 N. Kazantzakis
4 19th century literature (1821-1880) 5.6 K. Varnalis, A. Sikelianos
4.1 Ionian or Heptanese School of 6 20th century literature (1930-1981)
Literature 6.1 1930s Generation (‘30)
4.2 Historiography 6.1.1 Poetry
4.3 Folklore 6.1.2 Prose
4.4 Romantic or First Athenian School 6.2 The Surrealists (Late 1930s)
of poetry 6.3 Postwar literature (1944 1974)
5 Late 19th - Early 20th century literature 6.4 Contemporary literature (1974 -)
(1880-1930)

The emergence of modern Greek literature (11th - 15th century)

The main forms and themes of this period include scholarly and popular epic songs
celebrating the new champions of Hellenism; long compositions; verse romance, which bore the
stamp of influence from western courtly tradition, but a genre nevertheless rooted in the
Hellenistic and Roman imperial ages; ancient stories reviving mythical and historical figures such
as Achilles and Theseus and Alexander the Great; and didactic, sardonic texts, concerned with
philosophy and the allegory of daily life, with birds and animals taking the leading roles. But
these will prove to be also the mainstay of modern Greek literature, modified, of course, by the
various aesthetic and other values specific to each era.

Acritic songs
The cultural context within which the first known works of vernacular literature were
created was undoubtedly Byzantine. The earliest group of such works dates mainly to the twelfth
century: known as the Ptochoprodromika, the moralizing poem Spaneas, the autobiographical
and didactic verses written in prison by Michael Glykas, the verse Eisiterion (a poem welcoming
Princess Agnes of France), and a few examples of heroic poetry such as the Song of Armouris
and the epic Digenis Acritas. The overwhelming majority of literary works in the vernacular has
survived anonymously. Furthermore, it has proved difficult to assign a precise date to many of
them, a problem exacerbated by the fact that the form in which the works have survived is often
somewhat protean. Many have survived in a number of manuscripts, each of which preserves
substantial variants or a different version. It can be attributed to the methods by which texts
were copied and disseminated in the age of the manuscript; in some cases, differing manuscript
traditions may provide evidence of oral as well as written transmission of texts.

Romances
Verse romances are among the finest achievements of Byzantine literature, continuing as
they do the long tradition of the love story whose roots go back to the Hellenistic and Late
Antiquity periods. The Byzantine romance began its revival in the 12th century with Ysmine and
Ysminias by Eustathios Makrembolites, Rodanthe and Dosikles by Theodoros Prodromos, Drosilla
and Charikles by Niketas Eugenianos and Aristandros and Kallithea by Konstantinos Manasses.
The differences (and similarities) in the case of the romances of the 13th and 14th centuries are
clear. The plot has been reduced considerably; only Livistros and Rodamne maintains a sub-plot.
The element of adventure becomes less prominent as the description of the action is reduced.
The number of characters taking part in the action also becomes smaller. The social origins of
the protagonists changes: no longer simply well-to-do, they derive for the most part from royalty.
Furthermore, fairy tale elements like dragons, winged horses and magical objects are
incorporated into the story while the erotic aspect of the romance is given particular emphasis,
like the sensuality of the bathing scene in Kallimachos and Chrysorrhoe, the passionately
entwined Velthandros and Chrysantza whose cries of pleasure echo around the garden, and the
obvious erotic symbolism of Achilles’ entry with his lance into the maiden’s garden in the
Achilleid. The heroes are either of Byzantine or Roman lineage, though the co-stars are
sometimes of eastern origin. The action no longer evolves within a Mediterranean, classical
setting; the scenery is contemporary, but with obvious utopian elements and a liking for the
scenery of the folktale.
A number of scholars have termed the Greek romances as chivalric, yet they appear neither to
imitate nor to have assimilated anything of the western chivalric ideal. The similarities of the
central hero to the knight of the western courtly romance are limited to the external
characteristics of the noble knight, in his capacity both as a warrior and as a hunter, and to his
exceptional valour and beauty. The codification of the system of values of feudal society as
expressed in the ideal of western chivalry is absent from Byzantine and post-Byzantine works.
Furthermore, the ideal of love that is portrayed is substantially different to the standards of
courtly love in the western tradition, while there is considerable difference with regard to the
subject of adultery, which appears only very rarely and was quite foreign to the Byzantine notion
of love. Apart from the story of Helen and Paris, which in any case was handed down from
antiquity, as related in the Tale of Troy, the notion of love is encountered only in Livistros and
Rodamne, where the sub-plot concerns an adulterous relationship.

Tales set in the classical world

An outstanding example of the adaptation of the figure of Alexander the Great to the
literary needs of the age is provided by the 14th century Alexander Romance, consisting of 6120
lines of political verse. The vernacular literary production of the fourteenth century also includes
three long verse accounts of the Trojan War, each presenting a different treatment of the
subject. The most popular of these, judging by the seven manuscripts preserving the text, was
the War of Troy, an anonymous work that in essence comprises a loose translation, or
paraphrase, in 14,400 lines of fifteen-syllable political verse, of the "Roman de Troie" by Benoît
de St. Maure. The second of these works, the Tale of Troy (the so-called "Byzantine Iliad") by an
anonymous author, also observes the conventions of the romance. The third work, a vernacular
paraphrase of the Iliad made by Constantine Hermoniakos at the court of the despotate of Epirus
in about 1330, seems to follow the Homeric text fairly closely. However, in the twenty-four books
of 8800 non-rhyming eight-syllable lines of Hermoniakos’ paraphrase, the narrative also relates
the events that preceded the action described by Homer as well as the sequel to the sack of
Ilium, all in an affected idiom composed of both vernacular and learned linguistic features.

Cretan literature (15th - 17th centuries)

Erotokritos is undoubtedly the masterpiece of this period, and perhaps the supreme achievement
of modern Greek literature. It is a verse romance written around 1600 by Vitsentzos Kornaros
(1553-1613). In over 10,000 lines of rhyming fifteen-syllable couplets, the poet relates the trials
and tribulations suffered by two young lovers, Erotokritos and Aretousa, daughter of Heracles,
King of Athens. It was a tale that enjoyed enormous popularity among its Greek readership and
succeeded in making itself something of a folk hero, whose pedigree was as brother to Digenis
Acritas and Alexander the Great. The poets of this period use the spoken Cretan dialect, freed of
the medieval vernacular. As dictated by the pseudo-Aristotelian theory of decorum, the heroes of
the works use a vocabulary analogous to their social and educational background. It was thanks
to this convention that the Cretan comedies were written in a language that was an amalgam of
Italicisms, Latinisms and the local dialect, thereby approximating to the actual language of the
middle class of the Cretan towns.
The flourishing Cretan school was all but terminated by the Turkish capture of the island in
the 17th century. The ballads of the klephts, however, survive from the 18th century; these are
the songs of the Greek mountain fighters who carried on guerrilla warfare against the Turks.

Enlightenment era (17th century - 1821)

After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 the only Greek regions which had not fallen to the
Turks were Crete, Cyprus, Rhodes and the Ionian Islands, which were already under Venetian
control. In these islands, and especially in Crete, literary production continued uninterrupted to a
very high standard, in contrast with the Turkish occupied territories. This period of approximately
150 years from the fall of Crete (in 1669) to the beginning of the Greek War of Independence (in
1821) produced some of the greatest texts of the Greek Enlightenment, texts produced by Greek
humanists, lay and clerical, which were not only portents of the national revival but also sought
for the education and training of the subjugated nation which would guide them through a
process that was to achieve a national consciousness and full independence.
The Korakistika (1819), a lampoon written by Jakovakis Rizos Neroulos and directed
against the Greek intellectual Adamantios Korais, is a good example of its kind. Until recently,
the first satire in the modern Greek tradition was thought to be the Anonymous of 1789. Today,
however, an earlier work, dated 1785, and bearing the title Alexandrovodas the Callous, can
claim to be the first of this genre in Greek. Written by Georgakis Soutsos-Dragoumanakis, the
target of its invective is Alexander Mavrokordatos, ruler of Moldavia, referred to in the work as
the Fugitive.
The turn of the century saw the rise of two major authors. Rigas Feraios and Adamantios
Korais. Rigas was born in Velestino, Thessaly, in 1757, where he received his basic education.
With the capture of Bucharest by the Austro-Russian alliance he moved on to Vienna for a period
of six months (1790), and it was there that he printed his first book: The School for Delicate
Lovers. It brought the climate of pre-Romanticism and the ‘new sensibility’ to modern Greek
prose writing, while at the same time it constituted a fiery declaration of the radical ideas that
were shaking Europe. Marriage that broke the barriers of social class, demands for social
equality, a new role for women – indeed, the entire programme of the Enlightenment – filled the
sensuous tales of The School for Delicate Lovers, which, ‘giving pleasure and instruction’, can be
seen to belong to the wider programme of social change and reform of the day.
Adamantios Korais spent most of his long life outside the bounds of the Ottoman state.
Born in Smyrna in 1748, he learnt foreign languages at an early age and grew up in an
environment that fostered respect for learning and literature. His translations and publishing
activity were governed by a desire to give his countrymen access to the learning of the West and
also to arouse their interest in the literature of their ancient forebears. In 1804, he gave material
evidence of his interest in the ancient writers by publishing an edition of Heliodorus’ Aithiopika,
the first in a series of ancient writers that was given the title Elliniki Vivliothiki (Greek Library).

19th century literature (1821 - 1880)

This period, which begins with the struggle for independence in 1821 and ends sixty years later
when the fledgling Greek State was confronting new situations and challenges, is marked by
many important literary works.

Ionian or Heptanese School of Literature

Dionysios Solomos, born in Zakynthos in 1798, is generally recognised as the leading
spokesman for the great values which inspired the struggling nation. His first considerable
achievements, the lyrical poetic composition Lambros (1824 and after) and the satirical prose
poem Woman of Zakynthos (1826 and after) brought him to the forefront of modern Greek and
European literature.
The poetic work of the Ionian islander Andreas Kalvos, also born in Zakynthos in 1792,
consists of twenty Odes written in the Greek language. He penned a total of twenty Odes about
the Greek revolution. The language he used is highly poetic, his versification classical, and the
ideology expressed within these lines worthy of great poetry. They are contained in two
collections he published at a young age, The Lyre (Odes 1-10 headed by a short invocation to the
Muses in verse) and Lyric Poems (Odes 11-20). These twenty poems together bear the title of
Odes. During the rest of his life Kalvos published no other poems.

Historiography
Makriyannis (1797 - 1864) was a distinguished memoir writer. Ioannis
Triantaphyllodimitris, or Triantaphyllou, his real name, was born in the village of Avoriti in Doris.
His turbulent life, driven by a fighter’s spirit and passion and endowed with the genuine
sensibility of simple folk, has been rightly seen as a symbol of modern Hellenism. Makriyannis’
Memoirs were initially published as an important historical document. His need to record the
events he had lived through persuaded him to acquire just enough knowledge of reading and
writing to enable him to set down his memoirs; he was untouched by scholarly tradition.
However, that they have been acknowledged and survived is not only because of their
importance as an historical source of information or because of their ideology. It is also because
of the language in which they were written.
If any one individual were to be considered responsible for the image the Greeks have
about themselves and their history, that person would be Constantine Paparrigopoulos (1815 -
1891). He wrote his five-volume History of the Greek Nation between 1860 and 1874 and, since
then, his ideas have been promulgated in every conceivable way: incorporated into other texts,
repeated by thousands of lecturers, memorised by generations of students and eventually
absorbed by the nation, which gradually saw itself in the image conceived by Paparrigopoulos.

Folklore
The publication of the first volume of Study of the Life of Modern Greeks and of Modern
Greek Mythology by Nikolaos Politis (1852 -1921) in 1871 constitutes the birth certificate of
folklore as a science. Its young author had recently been awarded a prize for his essay On the
customs and lore of modern Greece in comparison with those of ancient Greece.

Late 19th - Early 20th century literature (1880 - 1930)

Emmanuel Roidis (1836 - 1904), distinguished cosmopolitan writer and great stylist of
katharevousa, became famous at the age of thirty, following the publication of his provocative
novel, Pope Joan, in 1866. This sensational book was translated immediately into many European
languages and was, until the mid-20th century, the most widely translated Greek novel.
Numerous Greek editions have been published up to the present day as well as many new
editions of the translations. Lawrence Durrell and Alfred Jarry are two of the many distinguished
translators of Pope Joan. An astonishingly original and fascinating work, Pope Joan is the female
Greek version of Don Juan. Roidis’ ambitious and cynical heroine wanders around medieval
Europe in the ninth century.
Georgios Vizyinos (1849 - 1896), author of poems, short stories, children’s literature and
essays of philosophical, psychological and ethnological subject matter, is thought of as the
pioneer of modern Greek prose. According to Costis Palamas, he is a "short story writer-poet",
who "has a penchant for novel writing" and his texts, "if published in a community better
prepared to receive them, would constitute a great and unforgettable event". In a span of merely
fifteen months (1883-1884) Vizyinos wrote and published five short novels in the magazine
Hestia, thus opening the way for a new literary form and at the same time demonstrating unique
thematic, narrative and structural inventiveness.
1880s Generation or New Athenian School
The poet and critic Costis Palamas dominated the Greek literary scene for almost fifty
years, from about 1880 until 1930. With his eighteen books of poetry published between 1886-
1935 and the abundance of essays and articles that he wrote during the same period, he is
considered the chief proponent of the fundamental changes. The poem "Palm Tree" is held to be
the epitome of his work. It is a short composite poem of thirty-nine eight-line stanzas written in
1900 and published in The Inert Life in 1904.

C. Cavafy
In Alexandria, Egypt, on the south-eastern periphery of the Greek diaspora there lived
Constantine Cavafy wrote the poetry that was to earn him international recognition as one of the
most important poets of the twentieth century. The one hundred and fifty-four poems that
comprise Cavafy’s recognized work (some thirty additional examples were left unfinished at his
death) fall into three categories, which the poet himself identified as follows: poems which,
though not precisely ‘philosophical’, “provoke thought”; ‘historical’ poems; and ‘hedonistic’ (or
‘aesthetic’) poems. Many poems may be considered either historical or hedonistic, as Cavafy was
also careful to point out. The poems of the first category (to which belong some of Cavafy’s best-
known pieces, such as The City and Ithaca), all published before 1916, often display a certain
didacticism.

Neo-romanticism or Neo-symbolism
In Greece, the decade of the 1920s signalled a period of manifold crises: ideological,
political and social. The experience of national discord and the Asia Minor catastrophe of 1922
seriously injured the concept of Greek ‘grand idealism’. The dictatorship of Pangalos (1925 -
1926) and a succession of governmental crises (1926-1928) created an atmosphere of
widespread instability and insecurity. Kostas Karyotakis gave existential depth as well as a tragic
dimension to the emotional nuances and melancholic tones of the Neo-symbolist and Neo-
romantic poetry of the time. Elegies and Satires (1927) is his last and most complete collection
of poems published by Karyotakis.

N. Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis is paradoxically the best-known Greek novelist outside Greece:
paradoxically, because he himself rated his poetry and dramas far above his novels, to which he
devoted himself seriously only during the last decade of his life. His wanderings temporarily
halted by the occupation of Greece during the Second World War, Kazantzakis in the winter of
1941-1942, at the age of fifty-eight, began work on the novel that would mark his second début
in Greek literature. This was Zorba the Greek. Zorba was the first of seven novels that
Kazantzakis wrote in his final years, and on which his international reputation now principally
rests.

20th century literature (1930 - 1981)

Poetry
Mythistorima is the most definitive work of George Seferis and the most truly
representative text of Greek Modernism. It is a composite poem comprising 24 sections in free
verse –- a poem that contains the basic concepts and recurring themes of the poetry to follow:
‘common’, almost unpoetic speech, a familiar, narrative but also dramatic voice; a continued
intermingling of history and mythology as everyday figures parade through the poem in the
company of mythical “personae” and symbolic figures.
Odysseus Elytis, winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize for Literature, was born in Heraklion,
Crete, in 1911 and died in Athens in 1996. A major poet in the Greek language, Elytis is also one
of the most outstanding international figures of 20th-century poetry. Elytis’ later work consists of
ten collections of poems and a substantial number of essays. Outstanding among them are The
Monogram (1972), an achievement in the European love poem tradition, and The Oxopetra
Elegies (1991), which include some of the most difficult but profound poems written in our times.
It is significant that in these mature works the tone is no longer jubilant. Melancholy, reflection
and solemnity gradually prevail, although the poet’s faith in the power of imagination and the
truth of poetry is still unshakeable.

The Surrealists (Late 1930s - )

Postwar literature (1944 - 1974)

Manolis Anagnostakis, critic and poet, confronted the chaotic period of the Greek Civil War in his
two major poetry series, the Epoches, and the Synecheia. Publishing and writing while
imprisoned, Anagnostakis explored the role of the poet under tyranny. His award-winning work
was arranged by composer Mikis Theodorakis and thereby continue to influence Greek poets and
songwriters in the present.