Angelos
Sikelianos ΑΓΓΕΛΟΣ
ΣΙΚΕΛΙΑΝΟΣ
Born
in Levkas, 1884 Died
in Athens, 1951
Section 18, Number 1A
The First Cemetery accommodates many great
Greek artists and some of its most famous poets. Nobel prize winners George
Seferis and Odysseas Elytis are here and so is the great lyric poet Angelos
Sikelianos. He was a man with an inspiring message and the prodigious talent to
deliver it. But with the bow, comes the
wound … in the later part of his life, he suffered economic hardship, and was
denied the ultimate accolade, the Nobel Prize for Literature, not once, but 5
times and, according to many of his supporters, it was because of the
interference of his own government.
One of Greece’s Great Lyric Poets
His
Life
Born in March
1884 on the island of Levkas Angelos Sikelianos was the youngest child of
French teacher Ioannis Sikelianos and Hariklia Stefanitsi. He was born into a liberal
minded family (His sister Penelope would become a brilliant interpreter of
Greek music.). After a childhood spent on Levkas, he went to Athens to study
law, but that didn’t last long. He wanted to write poetry. His first poem
was published in 1902 when he was eighteen. He then spent the next few years traveling
and immersing himself in Homer, Pindar, the Bible, and contemporary poets. Theatre
became a passion too – all of this a prelude to one of the pivotal moments in
his life – meeting Eva Palmer.
How
to describe Eva? She was arresting in appearance, beautiful even, an American
heiress with remarkable cascading red hair. He stepped over a threshold into
her life in 1906 when he came to visit his sister Penelope who was living with
her naturalist husband Raymond Duncan in a country house built to resemble a
Mycenaean villa. (1) Raymond’s sister, the dancer Isadora Duncan had had it built
and Eva, escaping an intimate relationship with Natalie Barney, had come from
Paris to Greece with Penelope and Raymond. In the Duncan household, wearing
ancient Greek apparel was the rule, as were hand-made leather sandals, all part
of Raymond’s eccentric philosophy of ‘natural’ communal living.
Eva
was ten years older than Sikelianos, 32 to his 22. She was immediately taken by
his charisma and Byronic good looks.
Both were seekers.
Eva was intelligent, well educated, well connected, and schooled in both archaeology
and dance. She had experimented with life in Paris dance world and acting in England
but had felt something missing – something she hoped to find in Greece.(2) Angelos was already in the process of formulating
a philosophy of life which his poetry would make manifest, - one that involved a
revival of ancient Greek culture (art, music, dance and theatre), a renaissance
that he believed would lead to cultural salvation in a world where advancing
technology and materialism threatened to obliterate the wisdom of the great
myths that had sustained pre-industrial societies.
It was a meeting of true minds. He would become the philosopher and poet of the movement;
she would become his partner – and his banker.
Natalie
Barney had written her advising against marriage to Sikelianos. Eva responded by
saying that although, she still loved her, she had made up her decision, to marry,
live in Greece, and stage Greek drama, dance, and music.
The
couple married in 1907 in Bar Harbour Maine and in 1908, they moved to Athens. Apparently they communicated in French until
Eva became proficient enough in Greek.
The
company they kept during this period makes for fascinating reading. It brings
to mind the famous Shelley-Byron interlude in Italy, only this time it was happening
in Greece. Imagine: Isadora Duncan in a peplos dancing atop the acropolis, Eva
wandering in the center of Athens in ancient dress, Penelope hard at work re- introducing old musical forms
and ancient culture, and Angelos, along with other up and coming intellectuals,
writing poetry and planning the cultural
renaissance.
Isadora on the
Acropolis in 1920 (by Edward Steichen)
In
1909 he published his first collection of poems, Alafroískïotos
(Light-Shadowed); it was hailed by critics as a very important work.(3) In the
same year, Glaukos, their only child, was
born.
Children of unusual parents have very few choices as
youngsters…
Sikelianos
was not an ivory tower intellectual. He took an active part in the society he
was trying to elevate. During the Balkan wars, (1912-3) he fought as a regular
soldier in Epirus.
1914 was an important
year. Work began on a house they had planned together in Sykia, a beach suburb
of Xylocastro on the Corinthian Gulf. It was intended to reflect their tastes and
it did - from the ancient columns at the front, to the windows arched in the
Byzantine style, and the Venetian inspired balcony where Angelos would write some
of his most famous works. The house on
the Gulf would host such Greek luminaries as Nikos Katzantakis, Costis Palamas, YannisTsaroukis and Costas Kariotakis and it was here that Sikelianos and Eva would
formulate their plan for the Delphic Festivals, events that would be the
culmination of their dream.
The house is still there. I took this photo in 2019
In
1914 he became acquainted with writer Nikos Katzantakis. That
year they would spend some days on Mount Athos (4) getting a taste of the
ascetic life, and travel through Greece together the following year. Their
temperaments were very different. Sikelianos was an optimist at heart and
Katzantakis (as he put himself) tended to see the skull behind the face. But a belief
in the power of art to elevate the human spirit was something they had in
common.
1917 saw the publication
of “Prologue to Life” (Ο Πρόλογος στη Ζωή) which included two of his famous poems “Mother of God” (Μήτηρ Θεού)
and “The Greek Easter” (Το Πάσχα των
Ελλήνων ).
Sikelianos and the Balkan Idea
Sikelianos was an
internationalist, this at a time when Greece was involved in wars with its
neighbours. Months before the Smyrna disaster, while Greece was still at war with
Turkey, he had written an open letter to the Greek king promoting the necessity for “cordial and
honourable unity among the warring factions”. Quixotic, perhaps, bu ttypical of
his fervor! Even after the debacle in
the summer of 1922, when Smyrna burned to the ground, he felt the same way. He believed
that Greece during this era had lost its way and by its own actions was breaking
the spirit of its people and damaging the body politic. At the time, many thinkers agreed although
this movement has largely been forgotten today.
What
was the Balkan Idea?
Essentially, the “Balkan Idea” foresaw a large federation in which all Balkan nations
would live in harmony. It involved a belief that Balkan nations had more in
common than the issues which divided them and that such a federation would also
act as a bulwark against European interference. It was not inconsistent with Sikelianos’
belief in the healing power of Greek culture because, for the most part, proponents
of the ‘Balkan Idea’ saw Greek culture as the uniting force. (5)
This idea may seem naïve to many today, but it
did offer an alternate vision of a future that, of course, never happened. For Sikelianos,
the silver lining of the Smyrna catastrophe was the resulting ‘death’ of the ‘Great
Idea’ and the possibility of a phoenix-like regeneration from its ashes. Being the poet he was, he saw the issue in cosmic
terms often casting his poetic persona as a voice from the gods (including the
Christian one) or from the ancient past.
In 1927 and The First Delphic Festival,
accomplished with Eva’s financial and artistic support, was held.
It
had been a long time coming. As early as 1924 Eva had supervised the building
of their second home in Delphi, the sacred spot they hoped would again become
the cultural navel of the world.
The first event consisted of Olympic contests,
a concert of Byzantine music, an exhibition of folk art as well as a
performance of Prometheus Bound.(6) It was held with no state aid, so the
financial burden was Eva’s. She had taken a very hands-on role in the
choreography of the festival to ensure that the dancing would reflect the
spirit of the ancient plays. Because of this Festival, the Greek Academy awarded
Angelos Sikelianos their silver medal In
1929.
Eva at Delphi
In 1930
a second festival was held. But then acute economic hardship ended any
attempt to continue.
This
may have heralded the end of their partnership-marriage as well. Informed
gossip said that Sikelianos blamed Eva in part for the lack of success of the
festival, although it had been well received in many circles. She had been intimately
involved in the choreography and the program, something Sikelianos thought (in
retrospect at least) had been a problem – that the Greek world was not ready
for such feminine interference. What Eva
thought about that, would be interesting to know. She departed for America almost
immediately after the festival and did not return to Greece until 1952 when Angelos
was already dead.
Their
wonderful house in Xylocastro was auctioned off because of debt and the house
in Delphi slowly became a picturesque ruin.
A
Photo from the 60s by Efthimios Tsiknis
Their
relationship did not end, however. She admired him always– nor did she refuse a
divorce when he fell in love with Anna Karamanis in 1938 and then married her in
1940.(7)
After
the divorce, she kept his name. Not at all well off herself during that period,
she nonetheless tried to assist them during the terrible years of the German
occupation and after. Sikelianos continued writing, this time with Anna by his
side.
The German
occupation: A Letter and a Funeral
From
1943 to 1945 he was the head of the Greek
Writer’s Association (Εταιρίας Ελλήνων Λογοτεχνών) and, as its head, bravely signed Archbisop
Damaskinos’ letter (some say he composed it too) to the Germans against the
deportation of Athenian Jews. And was a pall-bearer at the funeral of the
beloved poet Costis Palamas held in the First Cemetery on February 28, 1943.
His speech at the graveside (and his now famous poem to Palamas) provided light
and hope during one of Greece’s darkest moments and the day ended in a defiant
rendition of the Greek National Anthem sung by all - in spite of the presence
of the delegation of Germans who had been
sent to attend to funeral.
Sikelianos casting flowers on the casket of Palamas
A Disappointment
It was
when the war ended and the civil war began that Sikelianos came to be
considered by some as an enemy of the state. His contacts with EAM during the
occupation, and his outspoken beliefs as an internationalist made him suspect
to those in power at the time. He continued to write and be admired in many
circles but apparently the Greek government of the day sabotaged the efforts of
his friends and admirers at home and abroad to see him win the Nobel Prize for
Literature. He was nominated 5 times
between 1946 and 1950, sometimes alone, and sometimes in tandem with other
greats like T.S. Eliot or Nikos Kazantzakis, -but to no avail. The Greek
government did not want a left wing ‘sympathizer’ winning such a prize during Greek
civil war or in its aftermath.
Neither Sikelianos Nikos Katzantakis ever became
elected to the prestigious Greek Academy. That is a pity, not so much for them as for
the members of the Academy themselves. It is an irony of Greek history that so
many of its literary greats have been perceived as too left leaning at the
wrong political moment, only to have praise heaped upon them after they are safely
dead.
His Death
Sikelianos
died in hospital on 19 June 1951 in Athens. It was a horrendous death. By
mistake he had swallowed Lysol instead of his prescribed medicine.
When asked whom they should contact, his wife
Anna said “ Tell Solomos… Palamas…”
And truly he was in their company.
His Work and Impact
Sikelianos was a
prolific poet. Very little has been translated into English because he is so difficult
to translate. His
penchant for dense, multi-layered images with many possible meanings, are a
translator’s nightmare. His
‘vatic voice’ (straight
from the gods with the poet as a kind of conduit) sends words tumbling onto the
page with little regard for formal norms of rhyme or punctuation. I scramble
for co-relatives: a Gerald Manley Hopkins, a Delphic oracle, a T.S. Eliot, a
Yeats or perhaps a Keats whose ‘teeming brain’ he admired so much? The poet
George Seferis said it best during his acceptance
speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature:
He had something of the splendour of a bard of a
former age, but at the same time he was uncommonly familiar with our land and
the peasants. Everybody loved him. He was called simply «Anghelos», as if he
were one of them. He knew instinctively how to establish a relation between the
words and the behaviour of a Parnassus shepherd or a village woman and the
sacred world which he inhabited. He was
possessed by a god, a force made up of Apollo, Dionysius, and Christ.
For an excellent translation of three poems, see: Three poems of Angelos Sikelianos, translated by A. E. Stallings at
Honours Today
In honor
of the memory of Angelos and Eva Sikelianos, the European Cultural
Centre of Delphi bought and restored
their house in Delphi, and it is today the Museum of Delphic Festivals. See https://www.eccd.gr/en/facilities/virtual-tour-of-the-museum-of-delphic-festivals. There is also a museum dedicated to the poet in Levkas.
The Grave
Section
18, Number 1A
The grave is elegant in its simplicity. Anna is buried here as well. (Eva, who did return to Greece in 1952, suffered a stroke while attending a play at the ancient theatre. She is buried in Delphi.)
The Map
Footnotes
(1) The
house is still there in Byronas, a suburb of Athens. It was originally situated
on a bucolic hillside. It has been renovated and enlarged and now houses the
Isadora and Raymond Duncan Dance Foundation.
(2) In Paris Eva had socialized with the likes of
Sara Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan, James Frazer, James Joyce, Auguste Roden and,
of course the Duncans. While in England Mrs Patrick Campbell (no less) had
invited her to join her theatre company. In Paris she took part in the dance
recitals of Natalie Bernay. She was bisexual.
(3) Even the title of this early collection has
dense metaphorical possibilities. The word light-shadowed” “could literally
suggest the dappled countryside of Greece; metaphorically it refers to someone
who is literally ‘up with the fairies” and that is why in English some call the
collection “Moonstruck”. His poems invite endless interpretations and suggest multiple
meanings. The long list of his works, both poetic and theatrical, can easily be
found on the Internet.
(4)They spent 40 days on Athos – such a mystical and mythic
number! Was that intentional or just symbolic in retrospect?
(5) For an excellent discussion of the
Balkan Idea and Sikelianos see
.(6) I see the influence of Constantinos
Paparrigopoulos’ history here, one that united all periods of Greek history, including the
Byzantine. For more on that see:
(7) His passionate letters to Anna have
been published. He was 54 when they met and she was 38 and married to a well
known doctor. Different rules apply to artists. Apparently neither former
spouse held a grudge.
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