Dionysios Solomos
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Dionysios Solomos (Greek: Διονύσιος Σολωμός) (1798 - 9 February 1857) was a Greek poet from Zakynthos. He is best known for writing the Hymn to Liberty (Greek: Ὕμνος εἰς τὴν Ἐλευθερίαν Ýmnos eis tīn Eleutherían), of which the first two stanzas became the Greek national anthem He was the central figure of the Heptanese School of poetry, and is considered the national poet of Greece - not only because he wrote the national anthem, but also because he contributed to the preservation of earlier poetic tradition and highlighted its usefulness to modern literature. Other notable poems include Ο Κρητικός (the Cretan), Ελεύθεροι Πολιορκημένοι (The Free Besieged) and others. A characteristic of his poems is that no poem except the Hymn to Liberty was completed and almost nothing was published during his lifetime.
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[edit] Early Life and Education
Born in 1798, Dionysios Solomos was the illegitimate child of a wealthy count, Nikolaos Solomos, and his housekeeper, Angeliki Nikli. Nikolaos Solomos was of Cretan origin; his family were Cretan refugees who settled on Zakynthos in 1670 after Crete's conquest by the Ottoman empire in 1699. The Italian version of the family name is recorded as: Salamon, Salomon, Solomon,Salomone. It is possible that his mother Angeliki Nikli came from the region of Mani. Count Nikolaos Solomos was legally married to Marnetta Kakni, who died in 1802. From that marriage, he had two children: Roberto and Elena. Since 1796, Nikolaos Solomos had a parallel relationship with his housekeeper Aggeliki Nikli, with whom he had one more son apart from Dionysios, Dimitrios (born in 1801). His father married Dionysios' mother a day before he died on the 27 February 1807, making the young Dionysios a legitimate and co-heir of the estate with his half-brother. The poet spent his childhood years on Zakynthos until 1808, under the supervision of his tutor abbey Santo Rossi, an Italian refugee. After his father's death, count Dionysios Messalas gained Dionysios' custody, whereas his mother married Manolis Leontarakis on the 15th of August of the same year. In 1808, Messalas sent Dionysios to Italy in order to study law, in line with the Ionian islands' tradition among nobility but possibly also because of Dionysios' mother's new marriage.
[edit] Studies in Italy
Dionysios Solomos went to Italy with his tutor who returned to his homeland Cremona. Initially he was enrolled at the Lyceum of St. Catherine in Venice. Howewer, he had adjustment difficulties because of the school's strict discipline. For that reason, Rossi took Dionysios with him to Cremona, where Dionysios finished his high-school studies in 1815. In November 1815, Dionysios was enrolled at Pavia's Universitys Faculty of Law, from which he graduated in 1817. Given the interest the young poet showed in the flourishing Italian literature and being a perfect speaker of Italian, he started writing poems in Italian. One of the most important first poems written in Italian during that period of time was the Ode per la prima messa (Ode to the first mass) and La distruzione di Gerusalemme (The destruction of Jerusalem). During the mean time, he acquainted himself with famous names of the Italian literature (possibly Manzoni, Monti etc). As a result, he was easily accepted in the Italian literary circles and evolved into an excellent poet of the Italian language. Ugo Foscolo from Zakynthos was also one of Dionysios' friends.
[edit] Return to Zakynthos
After 10 years of studies he returned to Zakynthos in 1818 with a solid background in literature. On Zakynthos, which at that time was well-known for its flourishing literary culture, Solomos acquainted himself with people interested in literature. Antonios Matesis (the author of Vasilikos), Georgios Tertsetis, Dionysios Tagiapieras (doctor, supporter of the dimotiki and also a friend of Vilaras) and Nikolaos Lountzis were some of Solomos' most well-known friends. They used to gather in each other's homes and amused themselves by making up poems. Solomos became famous as a poet during this time, while still a young man. His education in Greek was minimal, which kept him free of any scholarly influences, that might have led him to write in katharevousa, a "purist" language heavily influenced by ancient Greek. Instead he wrote in the language of the common people of his native island. The result was the first extensive body of literature written in the Demotic dialect, a move whose influence on subsequent writers cannot be overstated.
[edit] Later Life and Death
At the end of 1828 he left Zakynthos and settled in Kerkyra ("Corfu") in order to dedicate himself to poetry. Solomos died in February 1857 from apoplexy. His remains were transferred to Zakynthos in 1865.
[edit] Literary Influences and Major Works
Solomos was heavily influenced by European romanticism, including Byron and Leopardi. He was also exposed to the cultural and political ferment of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution, and he identified with Italian national sentiments for unification and liberation from the Habsburgs.
Solomos' only complete major works are two long poems (of 158 and 166 stanzas respectively). The first was the epic Hymn to Freedom, the first two stanzas of which became the Greek national anthem. This work salutes the War of Greek Independence, started in 1821, by invoking the personified image of Liberty, reborn and renewed out of "the sacred bones of the Greeks." Of particular interest to non-Greeks are references to all the great powers of the time, which include the "heartfelt joy of Washington's land" that "remembered the irons that bound her as well", and a savage dig at the Austrian Eagle "that feeds on the entrails of the Italians to grow wings and talons" and does his best to harm Liberty. Solomos' own Ionian islands, under British rule at the time, are described as being "artfully chained" and having "'False Freedom' written on their foreheads." The poem does not shrink from the savagery of the war, and ends with exhortations to the revolutionaries to maintain unity and avoid civil war, which had already erupted at the time of writing.
The second long poem, On the Death of Lord Byron, is labeled lyrical and was written after Byron died during the siege of Mesolongi, but the subject matter and form are epic.
In both works there are several direct and indirect references to Byron's works. A good example is a reference (in Solomos' own footnotes) to Byron's Don Juan, where in Canto the Third (The Greek Isles 15) a Greek poet says:
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade --
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.
By contrast, in the Hymn to Liberty Solomos rejoices in the sight of "lily-fingered virgins" whose "breasts are preparing the sweet-suckled milk of bravery and freedom."
The other romantic impulse (melancholy, gothic and supernatural, influenced by both Byron and Leopardi) comes out in two other poems, of which only fragments remain: Lambros and Porfyras.
Solomos' most ambitious work, The Free Besieged, is about the heroic siege and sally of Mesolongi. There are three fragmentary drafts of this unfinished work which show glimpses of what the finished poem could have been; yet the three drafts are considered possibly the finest moment of modern Greek poetry. Another ambitious but fragmentary long poem is The Cretan.
[edit] Minor Works
Solomos also wrote translations of Italian poetry and Desdemona's song from Shakespeare's Othello, epigrams, other miscellaneous verse, satirical poems in Zakynthian patois, and two prose works, including the tragic/mystical The Woman of Zakynthos. Of his attempts to translate parts of the Iliad into modern Greek only a couple of dozen lines remain.
[edit] Formal Elements
The poet used different metrical and rhyme forms, starting with some influenced by Italian poetry (sonnet form, rhymed trochaic terameters) and settling into the standard forms of Greek folk songs (iambic 15-syllable blank verse). His epigram on the destruction of Psara (see War of Greek Independence), influenced by classical forms, is a marvel of rhythm and brevity in six lines of anapaest.
[edit] Surviving Works at His Death
Sadly, the poet's work at his death was mostly unfinished and in fragments, and was edited and published by his friend and fellow poet Iakovos Polylas. Whether Solomos was never satisfied with his work and kept little of it, whether large parts of his manuscripts ware lost (something Polylas implies), or whether he had difficulties fleshing out the ambitious structure of his planned works is not clear, but the fragments show a huge disconnect between intention and surviving work: The Cretan begins with a fragment of Canto 18 and ends with Canto 22, and none of them are complete; Lambros was conceived with at least 38 cantos (of some of them only a prose summary survives), with the shortest poetic fragment consisting of a single line, and the longest containing 33 stanzas; the second draft of The Free Besieged consists of 61 fragments, of which 27 are single lines, seven are two lines, and two are half-lines.
[edit] Legacy
Solomos is commonly referred to as Greece's "national poet" for his important legacy to Greek literature and national identity.
