Πέμπτη 2 Μαΐου 2019

Angelos Sikelianos





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 LifeΠρόλογος 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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