_And then I saw that I am the poet, surely a poet among many
a mere soldier of the verse, but always the poet who desires
to close within his verse the longings and questionings of the
universal man, and the cares and fanaticism of the citizen. I
may not be a worthy citizen; but it cannot be that I am the
poet of myself alone. I am the poet of my age and of my race.
And what I hold within me cannot be divided from the world
without._
KOSTES PALAMAS, Preface to _The Twelve Words of the Gypsy_.
_Kostes Palamas ... is raised not only above other poets of
Modern Greece but above all the poets of contemporary Europe.
Though he is not the most known ... he is incontestably the
greatest._
EUGÈNE CLEMENT, _Revue des Études Grecques_.
I
THE STRUGGLE
Kostes Palamas! A name I hated once with all the sincerity of a young
and blind enthusiast as the name of a traitor. This is no exaggeration.
I was a student in the third class of an Athenian Gymnasion in 1901,
when the Gospel Riots stained with blood the streets of Athens. The
cause of the riots was a translation of the New Testament into the
people's tongue by Alexandros Pallis, one of the great leaders of the
literary renaissance of Modern Greece. The translation appeared in
series in the daily newspaper _Akropolis_. The students of the
University, animated by the fiery speeches of one of their Professors,
George Mistriotes, the bulwark of the unreconcilable Purists, who would
model the modern language of Greece after the ancient, regarded this
translation as a treacherous profanation both of the sacred text and of
the national speech. The demotikists, branded under the name of [Greek:
Malliaroi] "the hairy ones," were thought even by serious people to be
national traitors, the creators of a mysterious propaganda seeking to
crush the aspirations of the Greek people by showing that their language
was not the ancient Greek language and that they were not the heirs of
Ancient Greece.
Three names among the "Hairy Ones" were the object of universal
detestation: John Psicharis, the well known Greek Professor in Paris,
the author of many works and of the first complete Grammar of the
people's idiom; Alexandros Pallis, the translator of the Iliad and of
the New Testament; and Kostes Palamas, secretary of the University of
Athens, the poet of this "anti-nationalistic" faction. Against them the
bitterest invectives were cast. The University students and, with them,
masses of people who joined without understanding the issue, paraded
uncontrollable through the streets of Athens, broke down the
establishment of the _Akropolis_, in which Pallis' vulgate version
appeared, and demanded in all earnestness of the Metropolitan that he
should renew the medieval measure of excommunication against all
followers of the "Hairy Ones."
Fortunately, the head of the Greek Church in Athens saved the
Institution which he represented from an indelible shame by resisting
the popular cries to the end. But the rioters became so violent that
arms had to be used against them, resulting in the death of eight
students and the wounding of about sixty others. This was utilized by
politicians opposing the government: fiery speeches denouncing the
measures adopted were heard in Parliament; the victims were eulogized as
great martyrs of a sacred cause; and popular feeling ran so high that
the Cabinet had to resign and the Metropolitan was forced to abdicate
and die an exile in a monastery on the Island of Salamis. It was then
that I first imbibed hatred against the "Hairy Ones" and Palamas.
About two years later, I had entered the University of Athens when
another riot was started by the students after another fiery speech
delivered by our puristic hero, Professor Mistriotes, against the
performance of Aeschylus' _Oresteia_ at the Royal Theatre in a popular
translation made by Mr. Soteriades and considered too vulgar for
puristic ears. This time, too, the riot was quelled, but not until one
innocent passer-by had been killed. I am ashamed to confess that on that
occasion I was actually among the rioters. It was the day after the riot
that I first saw Palamas himself. He was standing before one of the side
entrances to the University building when my companion showed him to me
with a hateful sneer:
"Look at him!"
"Who is it?"
"The worst of them all, Palamas!"
I paused for a moment to have a full view of this notorious criminal.
Rather short and compact in frame, he stood with eyes directed towards
the sunlight streaming on the marble covered ground of the yard. He held
a cane with both his hands and seemed to be thinking. Once or twice he
glanced at the wall as if he were reading something, but again he turned
towards the sunlight with an expression of sorrow on his face. There was
nothing conspicuous about him, nothing aggressive. His rather pale face,
furrowed brow, and meditative attitude were marks of a quiet, retiring,
modest man. Do traitors then look so human? From the end of the
colonnade, I watched him carefully until he turned away and entered the
building. Then I followed him and walked up to the same entrance; on the
wall, an inscription was scratched in heavy pencil strokes:
"Down with Palamas! the bought one! the traitor!"
At last my humanity was aroused, and the first rays of sympathy began to
dispel my hatred. That remorseless inscription could not be true of this
man, I thought, and I hurried to the library to read some of his work
for the first time that I might form an opinion about him myself.
Unfortunately, the verses on which I happened to come were too deep for
my intellect, and I had not the patience to read them twice. I was so
absolutely sure of the power of my mind that I ascribed my lack of
understanding to the poet. Then his poems were so different from the
easy, rhythmic, oratorical verses on which I had been brought up. In
Palamas, I missed those pleasant trivialities which attract a boy's mind
in poetry. One thing, however, was clear to me even then. Dark and
unintelligible though his poems appeared, they were certainly full of a
deep, passionate feeling, a feeling that haunted my thoughts long after
I had closed his book in despair. From that day, I condescended to think
of him as of a sincere follower of a wrong cause, as of a sheep that had
been led astray.
Years went by. I was no more in Greece. I had come to another country,
where a new language, a new history, a new literature opened before me.
Here, at last, I began to assume a reasonable attitude towards the
question of the language of my old country, and here first I could read
Palamas with understanding. Gradually, his greatness began to dawn on
me, and, finally, my admiration for him had grown so much that when on
April, 1914, I reached Greece as a travelling fellow from Harvard
University, I had decided to concentrate my studies during the five
months I was planning to spend there upon him and his work. With his
work, I did spend many long and pleasant hours. But him I visited only
once. The man from whom I had once shrunk as from a monster of evil, now
I shunned for fear I had not yet learned to admire in accordance with
his greatness. Owing to the urgent demand of an old classmate, Dr. Ch.
N. Lambrakis, who knew the poet, I went to see him one April afternoon
in his office at the University with my friend and fellow traveller, Mr.
Francis P. Farquhar. Mr. Palamas was sitting at his official desk; but
as soon as we entered he rose to receive us and then sat modestly in the
corner of a sofa. He had changed very little in appearance since the
time of the riots, and the more I looked at him the more I recognized
the very same image which I had kept in my mind from the first encounter
I had with him in the University colonnade ten years before. Perhaps,
the furrows of his brow had now become deeper; the white hairs, more
numerous. His eyes were still the same fiery eyes penetrating wherever
they lit beneath the surface of things and often turning away from the
present into the world of thought. His hands moved quietly; his voice
was clear and sonant; his words were few and polite. Unassuming in his
manner, he seemed more eager to receive knowledge than to talk about
himself and his work. He asked us questions about America and its
literary life: Is Poe read and appreciated? Is Walt Whitman still
popular? He admired them both; he had a great craving for the new; and
to read things about America fascinated him. When we rose to leave, we
realized that we had been doing the talking, but on both of us the
personality of the man, reserved and unobstrusive though he was, had
made a deep and lasting impression.
This was the only visit I had with him. But I saw him more than once
walk in the streets of Athens and among the plane trees of Zappeion by
the banks of Ilissus, or sitting alone at a table of some unfrequented
coffeehouse, always far from the crowd. It was only after I had returned
to America that I wrote to him for permission to translate some of his
works. The answer came laden with the same modesty which is so prominent
a characteristic of the man. He is afraid I am exaggerating the value of
his work, and he calls himself a mere laborer of the verse. Certainly he
has been a faithful laborer for a cause which a generation ago seemed
hopeless. But through his faith and power, he has snatched the crown of
victory from the hands of Time, and he may now be acclaimed as a new
World-Poet.
"The poetic work of Kostes Palamas," says Eugène Clement, a French
critic, in a recent article on the poet, "presents itself today with an
imposing greatness. Without speaking about his early collections, in
which already a talent of singular power is revealed, we may say that
the four or five volumes of verse, which he has published during the
last ten years raise him beyond comparison not only above all poets of
Modern Greece but above all poets of contemporary Europe. Though he is
not the most famous--owing to his overshadowing modesty and to the
language he writes, which is little read beyond the borders of
Hellenism--_he is incontestably the greatest_. The breadth of his views
on the world and on humanity, on the history and soul of his race, in
short, on all problems that agitate modern thought, places him in the
first rank among those who have had the gift to clothe the philosophic
idea in the sumptuous mantle of poetry. On the other hand, the vigor and
richness of his imagination, the penetrating warmth of his feeling, the
exquisite perfection of his art, and his gifted style manifest in him a
poetic temperament of an exceptional fulness that was bound to give
birth to great masterpieces."
II
LIFE INFLUENCES