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Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Volume 3, Number 2, October 1985,pp. 121-136 (Article)

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Toward a Redefinition of GreekRomanticismElizabeth Constantinides

The whole question of Greek Romanticism—its particular charac-teristics, its representatives, its chronological limits—needs reexami-nation now that the passage of time has given us historical perspec-tive. Such a reexamination is especially appropriate in view of therecent publication in Greece of two noteworthy collections of studies,K. Th. Dimaras' Ελληνικός ϕωμαντισμός, and a special number ofthe periodical Εέα Εστία devoted to Greek Romanticism. The essaysin these volumes bear incontrovertible witness to the enormous influ-ence of Western European letters and thought on the writers of nine-teenth-century Greece. It is my purpose in this paper to examine cer-tain widespread assumptions that underlie Greek scholarly writingon Romanticism and to suggest a somewhat different approach. Mydiscussion is to be taken as a schematic overview; I intend to elabo-rate this material elsewhere.

A few words are in order about the nature of Romanticism ingeneral. The meaning of Romanticism has been a subject of contro-versy since the word "romantic" was first popularized around 1800as a term applied to a type of literature by the Schlegel brothers andby Madame de Staël. By the 1830s, after decades of manifestoes,quarrels, and debates, so many meanings had been attached to theterm that Alfred de Musset in 1836 composed a satirical piece, Lettresde Dupuis et Cotonet, making fun of the confusion. The first of these"letters" describes the determined efforts of two fictional gentlemento discover the real meaning of romantisme: is it a disregard of theunities of Aristotle and other "classical" norms? A commingling ofthe tragic and the comic? An imitation of the gloom, melancholy andghoulishness found in English and German poetry? Or of the blood-soaked Spanish poetry? And so on. The discussion continued in Eu-ropean literary circles for one hundred years and produced, as onescholar wryly remarked, 11,396 books on Romanticism (Lucas, 3).In 1924 an important article by the philosopher A. O. Lovejoyclaimed that Romanticism had no single meaning, indeed that it

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meant so many things when applied to different authors that it wasbest used in the plural, "romanticisms," if at all (232-234). The dis-tinguished comparatist René Wellek argued in 1949 against Love-joy's thesis and posited three broad characteristics that distinguishedthe writers of the Romantic Age: "imagination for the view of po-etry, nature for the view of the world, and symbol and myth forpoetic style" ("Concept" 161). Earlier, in 1943, Jacques Barzunhad assumed the essential unity of the movement in his Romanticismand the Modern Ego, as had Paul Van Tieghem in Le Romantisme dans lalittérature européenne (1948). Since Wellek's article the majority ofscholars have come to accept the conclusion he argued, that therewas such a thing as a Romantic Movement in Europe, and that, withvariations in individual countries, it was a unified Europeanmovement.1

Greek scholars and critics are in unanimous agreement thatthere was indeed such a thing as a Romantic Age in Greek literaturealso. With hardly any exceptions they limit the period to the years1830-1880. Although they see Romantic influences and traits in thepoetry of Dionysios Solomos, Andreas Kalvos, and the other Hep-tanesians, they use the term romantiki almost exclusively to signify thewriters of the so-called Old Athenian School, whose main spokesmenwere the brothers Alexandros and Panayiotis Soutsos, Yeoryios Za-lokostas, Alexandros Rangavis, and Achilleas Paraschos. This pe-riod is considered to have ended with the maturation of Kostis PaIa-mas and his generation. Occasionally critics notice some vestiges orprolongations of Romanticism in the works of Palamas and his con-temporaries, but the so-called generation of 1880 is hailed as a newperiod in Greek literature, to be sharply distinguished from the writ-ers of the preceding one.

As recent examples of this periodization, I shall mention firstthe work of two eminent scholars, K. Th. Dimaras and Linos Politis,whose views are noteworthy because they have written histories ofthe entirety of Modern Greek literature as well as special studies ofthe Greek Romantic period. The histories of both Dimaras and Po-litis discuss the works of Solomos and Kalvos apart from their sec-tions on Romanticism. Dimaras includes the other Heptanesian andthe Athenian poets under the general heading of "Greek Romanti-cism" (Ιστοϕία, 269-309), but Politis reserves this title only for hischapter on the Athenian School (Ιστοϕία, 168-183). As witnessed by

'Wellek (1963) discusses the recent scholarship. A useful collection of defini-tions and descriptions of Romanticism is found in Gleckner and Enscoe. (The selec-tions included in the two editions of this book differ somewhat.)

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some of the essays in the Nea Estia volume, this classification still gen-erally holds: for example, M. G. Meraklis' article on nineteenth-century Greek Romanticists deals exclusively with the AthenianSchool (2-20). G. Valetas assumes that Greek Romanticism ap-peared on the scene in 1831 with the poetic drama O Οδοιπόϕος (TheTraveler) of the Phanariot Panayiotis Soutsos (Πϕοανάκϕουσμα, 276).George Savidis' chronology of Greek Romanticism follows, as hesays, the conventional dates of 1830 to 1880, though he hints that thewhole topic of boundaries should be carefully reviewed (Ελληνικός,279-80).

This rigidity of definition, confining the term romantikos to thewriters of the Athenian School and the term ellinikos romantismos to theperiod 1830-1880, raises problems for anyone wishing to studyGreek literature in the context of European literature, especiallysince the history of the term is one of ever greater inclusiveness. Letus begin with a specific example, Solomos' poetry. (I shall limit mydiscussion to poetry, since until the last quarter of the nineteenthcentury that was the dominant mode of literature in Greece.)

There is general agreement that Solomos' Lambros is a charac-teristically romantic work, with its Byronic hero, its victimizedwomen (particularly the Ophelia-like Maria), its dwelling on suicideand madness, and its grizzly apparitions of avenging ghosts. Yetsuch a sensitive critic as Politis considers the romanticism of Lambrosas incompatible with the limpidity of Solomos' verse. This was a ro-manticism, he says, from which Solomos was able to "free himself(Ιστοϕία, 145). But Solomos—the whole of Solomos' work, it seemsto me—is linked to the great European Romanticists in a multitudeof ways.

Solomos' impassioned defense of liberty (Hymn to Liberty) and,more important, the exaltation of patriotic sentiments (especially inThe Free Besieged and The Cretan) are akin to those found in many ofthe great poets of that period. That freedom from oppression,whether social or political, was one of the principal themes of thegenerations immediately before and after the French Revolutionscarcely needs mentioning. Poems hymning liberty were plentiful:Shelley wrote three odes on the subject between 1818-1821, Hugoand Lamartine each wrote a Liberté, Hölderlin, a Hymne an die Freiheit,and Byron's Sonnet on Chillón deals with the same subject. Character-istic of the many works in which oppressors are denounced and revoltis sanctioned are several of Alfieri's tragedies, Schiller's Die Räuber,Don Carlos, and Wilhelm Tell, Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, Scott'sWaverley, Hugo's Hernani, and Manzoni's ode Marzo 1821. Similarly,the exaltation of patriotism and the love of one's native land, so

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prominent in Solomos, are also found everywhere: for example, inHölderlin's Hyperion, Foscolo's Ultime Lettere dijacopo Ortis, Leopar-di's All'Italia and Sopra il Monumento di Dante, and in many ofWordsworth's sonnets written during the Napoleonic wars. For ob-vious historical reasons Greek poetry of much of the nineteenth cen-tury was intimately connected with heroism and patriotism.

Solomos draws on traditional folk narrative for his poetic forms,as do Bürger, Goethe, Heine, Hugo, Scott, Wordsworth, and Cole-ridge in their ballads. On the question of the proper language forpoetry, Solomos unreservedly takes his stand with the majority ofEuropean Romanticists—with Wordsworth in England, with Burnsin Scotland, with Hugo in France, with Manzoni in Italy—on thevalue and effectiveness of the spoken tongue. Not only in his poemsdid Solomos show his preference, but he also stoutly defended it inprinciple in his Dialogos, as did Wordsworth in the "Preface" to theLyrical Ballads and Hugo in the poems Réponse à un acte d'accusation andSuite.

The women portrayed by Solomos have their close counterpartsin Western literature. Abandoned women and mad mothers, for in-stance, make frequent appearances in Wordsworth's poems (TheThorn, Her Eyes Are Wild, Ruth, The Female Vagrant). Solomos' virginallove-suicides (H Φαϕμακωμένη, H Φαϕμακωμένη στον Άδη,Εεκϕική ωδή) are reminiscent of Madame de Staël's Delphine andChateaubriand's Õtala. When considering Solomos' idealizedwomen, those pure creatures of a brighter world (όμοϕφος κόσμοςηθικός αγγελικά πλασμένος, "a beautiful spiritual world formed byangels," as he says in his poem to Frances Frasier), one is remindedof Lotte in Goethe's Werther, of Mathilde in Novalis' Heinrich von Of-terdingen, of Wordsworth's Lucy, of Poe's Eleonora, of Balzac's Ma-dame de Mortsauf (in Le Lys dans la vallée), and of many another. Thesad end of many of these young women illustrates another constantmotif of Romantic literature: the premature death of the young andtender. The divine females that are recurrent figures in Solomos'work, the Μεγαλόχαϕη of The Free Besieged, the beatific vision, Φεγ-γαϕοντυμένη, of The Cretan, the "Donna velata" that appears in oneof his Italian sketches (Άπαντα 11:229), are paralleled by such numi-nous presences as Moneta in Keats' Fall of Hyperion, the "göttlicheWeib" in Goethe's Zueignung, the deified Emily of Shelley's Epip-sychidion, and the visionary nature goddess in the second part of Ner-val's Aurélia.

It has been shown that Solomos was influenced by Schiller,Fichte, Hegel, and other German thinkers (e.g., Varnalis, 57-85;Lazanas, 218-224). These men were part ofthat general movement

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in Germany between 1770 and 1830 that in retrospect, in the broadEuropean context, constitutes the German Romantic era (Barzun,7-8, 30-32, 92-94, and passim; Van Tieghem, 125-126; Wellek,"Concept" 161-165). In a more general sense, Solomos shares withmany other Romanticists (e.g., Coleridge, Shelley, Nerval, Novalis,Hugo) what we might loosely call a Platonic vision of the world, Pla-tonic in that—at least in certain moments—they saw the sensibleworld, the world of appearances, as a reflection or a creation ofthatother world, the unseen world of eternal and perfect essences. Solo-mos' Thoughts (Στοχασμοί) on The Free Besieged express this duality as"the unseen Sole Ruler" (αόϕατο Μονάϕχη) as against the world ofthe temporal (μέσα στα όϕια του καιϕοϕ), the Idea as against thatwhich is born from it, namely the world of nature (το φυσικό).

Solomos, then, can be unhesitatingly called a Greek Romanti-cist poet: he is in fact the quintessential Greek Romanticist. Yet thecritics, with few exceptions, avoid the word romantikos when speakingof Solomos. His work is considered a successful blend of romanticand classical elements (Dimaras, Ιστοϕία 227; Varnalis, 14-15;Kriaras, 18). He is called a klassikoromantikos (Panayiotopoulos, 123),a poet whose early romantic stage was followed by something betteror loftier (Politis, Σολωμός 20, 32). Even Mario Vitti, one of the fewcritics to indicate the underlying unity between Athenian and Hep-tanesian Romanticism, calls Solomos the "new man" who created aperfect balance between the powerful surge of the romantic and theself-control of the classic (Ιστοϕία 177).

The difficulty here is, I think, not hard to diagnose. These mod-ern critics are judging Solomos' work against the background of thegrand debate on the Classic and the Romantic that dominated liter-ary discussions among the continental Romanticists themselves—adebate that began in Germany, spread to Italy, then to France, andwas taken up by men of letters in other parts of Europe, includingGreece. Solomos expressed a preference for the classic style, al-though he considered a combination of classic and romantic as hav-ing some merit:

Σκέφου καλά αν τοϕτο θα γένη ϕωμαντικά, ή, αν είναι δυνατό,κλασσικά, ή εις είδος μιχτό, αλλά νόμιμο. Του δευτέϕου είδουςάκϕο παϕάδειγμα είναι ο Όμηϕος ' του πϕώτου ο Σέικσπηϕ ' τουτϕίτου, δεν γνωϕίζω.Consider well if this will be done in the romantic fashion or, if possible,in the classical, or in a mixed fashion, but one which is legitimate. Ofthe second fashion the chief example is Homer; of the first, Shake-speare; of the third I do not know.

(From "Thoughts" on The Free Besieged)

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At about the same time (1837) the Phanariot Alexandros RizosRangavis in the prologue to his play Phrosyne proclaimed himself a"Romantic." Rangavis defended his Romanticism in words remi-niscent of passages in Victor Hugo's "Préface" to his play Cromwell,considered then as now one of the great manifestoes of Romanticism(Dimaras Ρωμαντισμός, 150-153).

Modern critics, in speaking of Solomos' classicism, are adopt-ing the poet's own terminology. They are also avoiding the use of theword romantikos to refer to a poet of great stature, since this label hasoften carried with it a pejorative sense. This is especially the case inGreek literary history. The self-proclaimed and unquestionably "ro-mantic" poetry of the Athenian School has, as a body of work, beenjudged by the almost unanimous verdict of posterity to be at bestmediocre. Descriptive terms commonly applied to it are "exagger-ated romanticism," "rhetorical bombast," "unbearable wordi-ness," "tearful sentimentality," "shallowness of concept," and thelike. This opinion, whether entirely just or not, is intimately con-nected with that ancient Gorgon of Greek letters, the "languagequestion." The Athenian poets favored the archaizing tongue, or,more exactly, did not embrace wholeheartedly the demotic tongue asdid the Heptanesian poets, but maintained a variety of other views inthe matter of poetic diction. In his earlier years Rangavis, for exam-ple, wrote in both the demotic and the katharevousa but produced in1864 a narrative poem, The Voyage of Dionysus, that was archaic indiction, reaching back beyond the katharevousa to ancient Greek.Panayiotis Soutsos made several revisions of his Odiporos, of whichthe 1851 and 1853 versions show a progressively more archaizingdiction. Zalokostas and Valavanis used indifferently both demoticand archaizing Greek. Hence, Solomos, by virtue not only of his ex-cellence but also of his diction, was separated from the Romanticfold.

A number of modern critics now consider the dichotomy classic/romantic no longer useful in a discussion of nineteenth-century po-etry, primarily because the word "classic" has had as many mean-ings assigned to it as its assumed opposite "romantic."2 Classicismhas been interpreted to mean a penchant for ancient Greece as sub-ject matter; or, use of ancient poetic forms (such as the ode); or, asearch for measure, harmony, and balance; or, sometimes nothingmore than an inclination to satire. It used to be standard practice forGerman scholars to term Goethe and Schiller their Klassiker, as op-

2 Wellek (1965) traces the varying meanings of the word.

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posed to a younger generation of Romantiker} Hölderlin, Foseólo,Leopardi, and even Byron have at times been labelled by somescholars as fundamentally classicist, not romantic, yet nowadaysmost critics have no difficulty in calling all these men Romanticists(especially in a larger European context) and recognize that evenwriters opposed to each other's principles during their lifetimes are,from our vantage point, part of a larger Romantic Movement.

One such case in Greek literature is Andreas Kalvos. He too hasbeen called klassikos. He imitates ancient poetic forms: he writesodes, arranges his stanzas to look like sapphics, and rejects rhyme.He uses a multitude of ancient words and phrases, especially fromancient poetry. He alludes to figures of classical mythology and an-cient history, and draws his inspiration from classical notions oí arete(meaning both virtue and bravery). Nonetheless, Kalvos' appeal tothe national past, particularly in Ode II (references to the PersianWars) and in Ode XIV (mention of ancient worthies), his awarenessof the living present, his lofty patriotism, his underlying melancholy,his experimentation with diction—all these declare him a Romanti-cist, writing for a Romantic age. Many perceptive critics have sensedhis basically Romantic sensibility. Karandonis says Kalvos possessed"a deeply romantic spirit and imagination" (Κάλβος, 48). Dimarasalso emphasizes the romantic, or more precisely the "pre-romantic"element in Kalvos, which links his work to Young's Night Thoughtsand to Macpherson's Ossian poems (Ρομαντισμός, 103ff.; cf. Ιστο-ϕία 222).

Greek Romanticism, then, begins with its greatest representa-tive, Solomos, and secondarily with Kalvos. If one wishes to indicatea time, then that time would be the 1820s. Solomos' Hymn to Libertywas composed in 1823 and appeared in print in 1825. Kalvos' firstbook of odes was published in 1824, and his second in 1826.

To his compatriots in the Heptanese, Solomos was the Poetnonpareil, and a number of Heptanesians consciously and reverentlyfollowed in his footsteps. The two principal representatives of thegroup, Ioulios Typaldos and Gerasimos Markoras, clearly embody,as poets of the second rank often do, the dominant characteristics oftheir period. Romanticism appears undiluted in Typaldos' delicate,melancholy lyrics, with their longing for ideal love, their coupling of

3 This highly specialized use of Klassik in German literary scholarship is author-itatively examined—and found not very useful—by Gerhard Schulz (ix-xi, 59-69).Wellek (1970: 74-87) also discusses the narrow and not very satisfactory applicationof Klassik in German literary history.

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love with death, their empathy with the world of the child, and theirview of nature as an extension of man's inner life (e.g., To πλάσματης φαντασίας, H επιθυμία, Δϕο άγγελοι, To παιδί και ο χάϕος, Hφυγή). Likewise, Markoras' principal work, O όϕκος (The Oath), along narrative poem set in the time of the Cretan rebellion of 1866,combines and interweaves four characteristically romantic strands:love, patriotism, death, and the search for the ideal. Both poets, likeSolomos before them, often use meters and motifs derived from tra-ditional folk material.

The position of another eminent Heptanesian, Aristotelis Va-laoritis, is somewhat different. Although the bulk of his work is, likethat of Solomos, concerned with patriotic themes, he drew his inspi-ration from the heroic and kleftic traditions of the mainland, particu-larly of Epirus. All his important narrative poems (H Κυϕά Φϕοσϕνη,Αθανάσης Διάκος, Αστϕαπόγιαννος), with the exception of the lastone he wrote (Φωτεινός), treat of personages who lived immediatelybefore or during the Greek Revolution. He wrote in the demotictongue, but not in the dialect of Solomos, nor in his limpid, sparestyle. His diffuseness, blood-and-thunder subjects, his galloping me-ters, his open admiration and imitation of Hugo, his private reserva-tions about Solomos' poetry (Valaoritis I: 191-192, 285), all set himagainst the practices and beliefs of other contemporary Heptane-sians. Valaoritis did not consider himself a Romantic (I: 61, 107;"Prolegomena" to Kyra Frosyne, II: 306), thus seeking to separatehimself from the Athenian School and the mal du siècle (I: 194). Hethought his function was to write heroic poetry based on the facts ofhistory (II: 299, 306). He was, however, as Dimaras says (Ιστοϕία,319), as much a Romantic as any poet of the Athenian School. Hisview of his art underlines this:

Whoever is born a poet should not expect a happy life. And if he isnot unhappy, he must through his imagination [φαντασία] create un-happiness, because without it there is no poetry. At the same time,however, he must recognize that in finding a poetic image or express-ing a lofty thought there is the sort of spiritual satisfaction that cannotbe obtained by any other undertaking.

(from a letter, 1872, I: 148)

I feel, however, that an inclination to write poetry is in itself adisease—serious, strange, and incurable—and one carries it into theworld at birth. I, at least, admit that each moment of inspiration is amoment of madness.

(letter to Roidis, 1877, I: 194)

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That Greek Romanticism ends in 1880 with the coming of ageof Palamas and his generation is a determination made by Palamashimself. It was he more than anyone else who, in the last decade ofthe nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century,gave modern Greek literary history its shape. No one disputes Pala-mas' dominance as poet and critic of Greek letters during that pe-riod. That he was the first, in 1888, to appreciate Kalvos' worth(Άπαντα 2: 27-59), that he recognized the fullness of Solomos' ge-nius (Σολωμός), that he perceived the extreme refinement and ideal-ism of Typaldos and Markoras (Άπαντα 6: 112-122; 2: 59-80), thathe refused to lower the poetic reputation of Valaoritis by invidiouscomparisons with Solomos (Άπαντα 8: 174-177, 265-272)—allthese positions must set him among the most perceptive critics ofnineteenth-century Greek poetry. There is little doubt, though, thatby his militant espousal of the demoticist cause and by his many neg-ative remarks about the Athenian School (particularly Rangavis andParaschos) he damaged even further the reputation of Romanticism.Two characteristic quotations from his essays, one from the years ofhis prime and one from the period of his old age, are illustrative of hisviews. In his essay on Achilleas Paraschos, written in 1895, he says:

This tyrannical domination of the self [του εγώ] is a result of the abnor-mal growth of sentiment in relation to the other spiritual and intellec-tual powers. It is not the only, but certainly one of the chief, character-istics of Romanticism as it developed in Europe from the beginning ofthis century. This dominance of the self, which arises from so abnormala growth, is almost the sole characteristic of modern [i.e., nineteenthcentury] Greek poetry and the mark that distinguishes it from the po-etry of other peoples.

(Άπαντα 2: 422)Almost forty years later (in 1934) he says: "Our poetry in the ka-tharevousa from its earliest years to its last gasps, from 1830 to 1880,to use round numbers, from the Soutsoses to the Paraschoses, roseand set as a Romantic phenomenon" (Άπαντα 8: 503-516).

Now, Palamas believed that he and his contemporaries markedthe beginning of a new era in Greek literature, an era that in poetryrejected the katharevousa once and for all, that welcomed and some-times adopted new modes of expression, particularly the Parnassianand the Symbolist, and that saw itself as the rightful heir of Solomosand his Heptanesian followers (Άπαντα 1: 11-27). We, however,from our perspective of a century later, should ask whether Palamasand his contemporary poets did indeed reject Romanticism as we un-derstand it, or whether they were simply the last wave of the Roman-

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tic Movement, themselves late Romanticists. I would argue that intheir premises, language, and subject matter, Palamas, Drosinis,Krystallis, Eftaliotis, Polemis, Porfyras, and many others of thetime, were fundamentally Romanticists. It is true that around theturn of the century Greek poets were aware of developments inFrench poetry, then the most innovative in Europe, and occasionallyundertook to write in the Parnassian and Symbolist styles, especiallythe latter. Efforts in this direction, however, by Stefanos Stefanou,Constantine Hatzopoulos, and Apostólos Melahrinos proved abort-ive or undistinguished (Karandonis Εισαγωγή 134-141; PolitisΙστοϕία 223-224). It is also true that Ioannis Gryparis successfullyadopted symbolist techniques and that Palamas wrote a few of hisbest lyrics (Οι χαιϕετισμοί της Ηλιογέννητης, H φοινικιά, Οι αλυσίδες)in the new symbolist style. But these poems are not representative ofthe period: most poets of the time, and Palamas most of the time,continued to write in the lyrical modes of Romanticism.

Palamas' two most ambitious works, The Twelve Words of theGypsy and The King's Flute, have the discursive, even diffuse qualitywe find in nineteenth-century romantic poetry. The Twelve Words inparticular is a conglomeration of Romanticist topoi: its hero is a wan-derer, an outcast, a revolutionary, a destroyer/creator; its concernsare deeply patriotic; it describes scenes from the medieval (Byzan-tine) past; it speaks of a brighter world to come; it finds inspiration inthe world of nature; it contains a folk-tale. Its exultation in the un-changing, rigid laws of science strikes a note far more characteristicof the latter half of the nineteenth century than of the Modernistsaround 1900, who reacted sharply against the notion that the uni-verse was ordered only by scientific laws.4

One of Palamas' closest associates in the battle for the demotictongue and a new poetic idiom was Yeoryios Drosinis, even though,as Drosinis himself graciously acknowledged to his great contempo-

4Eleni Politou-Marmarinou, in her published doctoral dissertation about theinfluence of the French Parnassian poets on Palamas, has shown that his praise ofscience in The Twelve Words echoes the sentiments of Sully-Prudhomme, whom Pa-lamas avowedly admired (308ff). Although she makes a good case for a strong Par-nassian influence on Palamas' work as a whole, her view of Romanticism is far toonarrow, limited as it is to France, and there only from 1830 to 1850 (23-25). Anumber of "Parnassian" qualities she discusses, e.g., inspiration from classical an-tiquity, exoticism, the autonomy of poetic creation, are also found in earlier Euro-pean Romanticism. Parnassianism, as Brereton says (166), "is better regarded asan extension, or late phase, of Romanticism, rather than a negation of it." Cf.Peyre, (22Iff,). In any case, the poetic self is far more present in Palamas than iscompatible with the Parnassian ideal of objectivity and impersonality.

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rary (Απόκϕιση στον Παλαμά), his poems were slighter and less am-bitious than Palamas'. From the first of his collections (Ιστοί αϕά-χνης, 1880) to the last (Σπίθες στην στάχτη, 1940) subject matter,form, and tone are well within the bounds of nineteenth-century Ro-manticism. We have a rational, easy flow of ideas, direct emotionalstatement, frequent narrative, traditional prosody, and the virtualabsence of the modern urban world. His work has many features thatlink him to the Heptanesians and other European Romanticists: thenarrative in the form of a folk ballad (in the collection Αμάϕαντα),stirring patriotic verse (in the collection Πϕϕινη ϕομφαία), includingtwo poems on Napoleon and one on Byron; and a sequence of"graveyard" poems, not unlike those that swept from Englandthrough the continent in the late 1700s and early 1800s (in the collec-tion Φωτεϕά σκοτάδια). Like Tieck, Nodier, Keats, and other north-ern Romanticists, Drosinis was attracted by the folk tradition of"faery lands forlorn," though for the Greek poet the equivalent inhis native tradition was the Neraides. Especially striking is the reap-pearance in Drosinis of situations, even of the vocabulary, of his Ro-manticist predecessors,the Heptanesians. As in Solomos, a goddessrises from the sea (Χαϕά σ' εσένα in Φωτεϕά σκοτάδια); the poetmourns over the grave of a maiden, poisoned by her own hand(Άφωνη της ζωής σου in Φωτεϕά σκοτάδια); the poet dreams of hisbeloved and roses (Ήταν και θάμα κι" όνειϕο in Αλκυονίδες). As inTypaldos, the lover invites the lady to cast off with him in a bark(Εϕα μου καλή in Ιστοί αϕάχνης. Not only is Drosinis a Romanticistin the European sense, but he is a disciple and successor of the Hep-tanesian Romanticists. Likewise Romanticists are such minor poetsas Lambros Porfyras, Kostas Krystallis, Miltiadis Malakasis, Argy-ris Eftaliotis, Ioannis Polemis, and others, in whose works we findsubjects, themes, imagery, and diction similar to those of the Euro-pean Romanticists.

Indeed, given the weaknesses of almost all the Romantic poetryof the preceding Athenian generation (the official "Romantics"),and the relatively small bulk of the poetry of the Heptanesians, greatas it is, one could say that the generation of Palamas, with one trulyeminent poet and an abundance of other talent, represents the fullflowering of Greek Romanticism. In Greece, as in other nations, theRomantic age came to an end only with the triumph of a Modernistpoetics.

There is of course nothing unusual in characterizing as Roman-ticist a nation's literature of the late nineteenth century or even of theearly twentieth century. In English literary history the term "Victo-

132 Elizabeth Constantinides

rian," used for the literature of the last two-thirds of the century,obviously designates not a movement but a historical period. It isused merely for convenience, since by the 1830s the two generationsof the original Romanticists had almost entirely died off and a newgeneration was arriving on the scene. But those new poets, Tenny-son, the Brownings, Matthew Arnold, and others, were, as is gener-ally acknowledged, themselves in the Romantic tradition (see, forexample, Perkins, 4-6). "We were the last romantics," said WilliamButler Yeats (in his poem Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931), speaking ofhimself and Lady Gregory in the early years of this century. Andwhen the Modernists, Pound, Eliot, and the philosopher T. E.Hulme launched their attack on previous poetry, they saw the Victo-rians (and indeed many later poets) as basically continuing the poeticpractice of the first Romanticists.

Nor is the situation different in Italian literary history. Thethree great poets that dominate the late nineteenth century, Car-ducci, Pascoli, and D'Annunzio, are really late Romantics, and thefirst challenges to the dominant Romantic tradition came only in theyears around the Great War, with the Futurists and Ungaretti, thatis, with the Modernists (Spagnoletti, xiii, xvi, xxii). To be sure, thesituation is different in France, but it is, as all concur, precisely inthat country that the origins of modern poetry first appeared, andalready in the 1870s pioneering innovations were being made byVerlaine, Mallarmé, and Rimbaud.

In Greek literature the first to speak in the Modernist fashion isConstantine Cavafy. In Cavafy we find the omnipresent irony, thewit, the absence of traditional "poetic" vocabulary, the prominenceof the urban world, the detachment from political and socialcauses5—all traits he shares with those poets of western Europe wecall Modernist. These traits are absent in Palamas and the others.Even in his copious output, Palamas resembles a Victor Hugo or aTennyson, whereas Cavafy and the other eminent Greek Modernist,Seferis, with their slender, scrupulously spare production, are in thecompany of Mallarmé, Valéry, and Eliot.

Cavafy himself was naturally aware of the innovative characterof his verse: even as late as 1932 he spoke of the poets in Greece who

sStratis Tsirkas has attempted to show that Cavafy was not so detached frompolitics as is usually supposed. However, even if he were as interested in Greekcauses and as influenced by his environment as Tsirkas argues, the poems them-selves are virtually free of contemporary political allusion and civic spirit, and cer-tainly in this respect stand in sharp contrast to Palamas' poetry. Robert Liddellthroughout his biography of Cavafy argues forcefully against Tsirkas' interpreta-tions.

Greek Romanticism 133

were his contemporaries as all being romantic.6 His distaste for Pala-mas, for all "lyric" poetry in fact, was well known to his friends.Palamas, in turn, though little given to public disparagement of hisfellow poets, did on one occasion in an interview (1926) characterizeCavafy's verse as "journalism from centuries past" (ϕεποϕτάζ απότους αιώνες) and "sketches of ideas that are going to become poems"(σκίτσα ιδεών που πϕόκειται να γίνουν τϕαγοϕδια). Those remarks in-tensified the acrimony between the Palamistés and the Kavafistés in Al-exandria and in Athens (Yalourakis, 1585). It should be noted thatPalamas was also not at ease with the poetry of Seferis, as he showedin a charming and perhaps somewhat condescending open letter headdressed to the author oí Strophe in 1931:

My dear Mr. Seferiades .... The poems of Strophe are cryptographic.One needs a key. I don't find it .... I send you my greetings andhold you in my affection and thoughts. And please forgive an old man'sarteriosclerosis.

Of course all periodization has an element of the arbitrary. Indealing with this question in "De Descriptione Temporum" CS.Lewis observed: "AU divisions will falsify our material to some ex-tent; the best one can hope is to choose those which will falsify itleast" (3). To falsify Greek Romanticism least, then, I am arguingthat, viewed in the European context, it is something much broaderand richer than traditionally represented. Greek Romanticism is notjust limited to the second-raters of the Old Athenian School and Va-laoritis and perhaps another Heptanesian or two. Judged by Euro-pean standards, Solomos, Kalvos, and all the other Heptanesianswere Romanticists. In the Romantic tradition also were the newAthenian poets, Palamas and the Generation of 1880. So viewed, theRomantic Movement in Greece makes its own rich contribution tothe great cultural flowering that was European Romanticism.

QUEENS COLLEGE, CUNY

6EtVm ϕομαντικοί! Ρομαντικοί! Ρομαντικοί! (spoken to Theotokas. See theepigraph of Savidis (O Σικελιανός, 92). From the rich store of Cavafy's mots re-corded by his friends and acquaintances, I give the following comments on Palamas:"Many poets are only poets. Porfyras, e.g., is only a poet. Palamas is not. He wrotestories. I am an historical poet." (Lehonitis, 19). "Palamas is a great lyric poet, myfriend—but Cavafy doesn't like lyric poetry. Abundant lyric poetry, enthusiasticpoetry, doesn't attract me. Palamas has many exalted states." (Malanos, 248)."That's the Palamas whiskey. As we're alone, I'll give you something better."(Liddell, 167). And finally, one from the late Evangelos Papanoutsos, the distin-guished philosopher and educator, who told the present writer that he had heardCavafy exclaim over a work of Palamas: "Is that poetry?"

134 Elizabeth Constantinides

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