Kostas Ouranis (1890–1953), a Greek poet and essayist, lesser known abroad, was regarded as one of the first to introduce “travel writing” in Greece. As a correspondent of different newspapers, he ...travelled to many countries in Europe and abroad and recorded his impressions in travel books, of which the best known is his travelogue on Spain, Sol y sombra (1934). However, the book that is of special interest as regards the Greek perspective of the writer, is Travels in Greece (Ταξίδια στην Ελλάδα, 1949), where Ouranis describes impressions from his travels in his homeland which took place in 1930. In the present paper, basing on the brief chapter on Monemvasia from the above-mentioned book, I will shed some light on the reception of Byzantium in Ouranis’ view, trying to answer, among others, the question whether the writer conveys any specific knowledge of the subject. In my opinion, his view of Byzantine heritage deserves special attention as regards the broad framework of the European approach to the legacy of the Eastern Roman Empire. Firstly, because his impressions on this Byzantine town constitute a vivid example of a clearly Greek perspective in this regard, which is relatively poorly known. Secondly, his deeply personal account on Monemvasia reveals the general attitude of the Greeks to their legacy and as such it may be regarded as a characteristic miniature which, like a lens, focuses their approach to the past.
Kazantzakis’ Odyssey – apart from the abundance of philosophical as well as ideological influences of many different sources which the writer tried to unify into a universal cosmotheory – constitutes ...a large-scale attempt by a Modern Greek writer to respond to Homeric epic. Yet, the author of Zorba the Greek sketched another epic composition that, according to his vision, aimed at reaching further than his magnum opus. His ambition was to encompass the long-lasting period between Ancient and Modern Greece, namely that of the Byzantine empire and its radiating influence on Greek consciousness and identity. He entitled his project Akritas, thus directly alluding to the only epic poem in Byzantine Greek literature, Digenes Akritas, and its protagonist as well as to acritic songs from Cyprus, where the latter’s name appears. In the present paper I would like to shed some light on Kazantzakis’ approach to Byzantium and its significance in defining the Greek identity through this unfinished sketch that the writer in fact never began.
In my paper I focus on the well-known John Cuthbert Lawson’s study about Modern Greek folklore (1910) and I venture to verify if it may be regarded as a reliable source of information about Greek ...folk beliefs. I base my argument on the eschatological remarks Lawson made concerning the personification of Death – Charos and his relationship to the Christian Angels. Confronting Lawson’s views and his source material with other similar demotic songs, mainly from the collections he had had access to, I try to show in what way the older collections of folk-songs might have distorted or falsified the eschatological images of Charos and the Angels, and what he overlooked while analyzing the sources. I also shed some light on possible influences of Byzantine orthodoxy on Modern Greek folk tradition to which Greek demotic songs belong.
The imagery of fragmentary sculptures, statues and stones appears often in Modern Greek Poetry in connection with the question of Modern Greeks’ relation to ancient Greek past and legacy. Many famous ...poets such as the first Nobel Prize winner in literature, George Seferis (1900-1971), as well as Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990) frequently use sculptural imagery in order
to allude to, among other things, though in different approaches, the classical past and its existence in modern conscience as a part of cultural identity. In the
present paper we focus on some selected poems by a well-known Cretan poet Giorgis Manousakis (1933-2008) from his collection “Broken Sculptures and
Bitter Plants” (Σπασμένα αγάλματα και πικροβότανα, 2005), trying to shed some light on his very peculiar usage of sculpture imagery in comparison with the earlier Greek poets. We attempt to categorize Manousakis’ metaphors and allusions regarding the symbolism of sculptures in correlation with existential motives of his poetry and the poet’s attitude to the classical legacy.
This article analyses all Polish translations of the well-known poem by Constantine P. Cavafy (1863– 1933), Ithaca (Ιθάκη). Comparing the beginnings of the first stanza and the last stanza, which are ...fundamental to the comprehension of the poem, I demonstrate main differences between the original and its Polish versions. In my analysis I concentrate on the idiosyncrasies of Cavafy’s language, so challenging to translators of this poetry. My parallel reading of the translations by Zygmunt Kubiak, Nikos Chadzinikolau, Czesław Miłosz and Antoni Libera reveals striking discrepancies between the original text and the proposed versions, most noticeably in Libera’s.
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