So much of the natural atmosphere of Athens and Attica. But the
Athenians themselves, their thoughts, life, and dreams have not proved
less important nor less effective for the poet's growth. The spiritual
and intellectual currents moving the Greek nation of today start from
this city. Here politics, poetry, and philosophy are still discussed in
the old way at the various shops, the coffee houses, and under the plane
trees by the banks of Ilissus. The "boulé" is the centre of the
political activity of the state. The University with its democratic
faculty and still more democratic student body is certainly a "flaming"
hearth of culture. Only, its flames are sometimes so ventilated by
current events and political developments that the students often assume
the functions of the old Athenian Assembly. In the riotous expression of
their temporary feelings, the students are not very different from the
ancient demesmen. In my days, at least, the most frequent greeting
among students was "How is politics today?", with the word "politics"
used in its ancient meaning. Any question of general interest might
easily be regarded as a national issue to be treated on a political
basis. Thus it happened that when the question of language was brought
to the foreground by Pallis' vernacular translation of the New
Testament, the students took up arms rather than argument.
Into this world, the poet came to finish his education. In one of his
critical essays (_Grammata_, vol. i), he tells us of the literary
atmosphere prevailing in Athens at that time, about 1879. That year,
Valaorites, the second great poet of the people's language, died, and
his death renewed with vigor the controversy that had continued even
after the death of Solomos, the earliest great poet of Modern Greece.
The passing away of Valaorites left Rangabes, the relentless purist, the
monarch of the literary world. He was considered as the master whom
every one should aspire to imitate. His language, ultra-puristic, had
travelled leagues away from the people without approaching at all the
splendor of the ancient speech. But the purists drew great delight from
reading his works and clapped their hands with satisfaction on seeing
how near Plato and Aeschylus they had managed to come.
Young and susceptible to the popular currents of the literary world,
Palamas, too, worshipped the established idol, and offered his
frankincense in verses modelled after Rangabean conceptions. In the same
essay to which I have just referred, he tells us of the life he led with
another young friend, likewise a literary aspirant, during the years of
his attendance at the University. The two lived and worked together.
They wrote poems in the puristic language and compared their works in
stimulating friendliness. But soon they realized the truth that if
poetry is to be eternal, it must express the individual through the
voice of the world to which the individual belongs and through the
language which the people speak.
This truth took deep roots in the mind of Palamas. His conviction grew
into a religion permeated with the warmth, earnestness, and devotion
that martyrs only have shown to their cause. Believing that purism was
nothing but a blind attempt to drown the living traditions of the people
and to conceal its nature under a specious mantle of shallow
gorgeousness, he has given his talent and his heart to save his nation
from such a calamity. In this great struggle, he has suffered not a
little. When the popular fury rose against his cause, and he was
blackened as a traitor and a renegade, he wrote in words illustrating
his inner agony:
I labored long to create the statue for the Temple
Of stone that I had found,
To set it up in nakedness, and then to pass;
To pass but not to die.
And I created it. But narrow men who bow
To worship shapeless wooden images, ill clad,
With hostile glances and with shudderings of fear,
Looked down upon us, work and worker, angrily.
My statue in the rubbish thrown! And I, an exile!
To foreign lands I led my restless wanderings;
But ere I left, a sacrifice unheard I offered:
I dug a pit, and in the pit I laid my statue.
And then I whispered: "Here, lie low unseen and live
With things deep-rooted and among the ancient ruins
Until thine hour comes. Immortal flower thou art!
A Temple waits to clothe thy nakedness divine!"
And with a mouth thrice-wide, and with the voice of prophets,
The pit spoke: "Temple, none! Nor pedestal! Nor light!
In vain! For nowhere is thy flower fit, O maker!
Better for ever lost in these unlighted depths.
"Its hour may never come! And if it come, and if
Thy work be raised, the Temple will be radiant
With a great host of statues, statues of no blemish,
And works of thrice-great makers unapproachable.
"To-day was soon for thee; to-morrow will be late.
Thy dream is vain; the dawn thou longest will not dawn;
Thus, burning for eternities thou mayest not reach,
Remain, Cloud-Hunter and Praxiteles of shadows!
"To-morrow and to-day for thee are snares and seas.
All are but traps for drowning thee and visions false.
Longer than thy glory is the violet's in thy garden!
And thou shalt pass away; hear this, and thou shalt die!"
And then I answered: "Let me pass away and die!
Creator am I, too, with all my heart and mind;
Let pits devour my work. Of all eternal things,
My restless wandering may have the greatest worth."
The same idea, though expressed in a more familiar figure, is found in
another poem published among _The Lagoon's Regrets_.