ABSTRACT
The sphere formed by modern Greek poetry has, it could be said, as every sphere, two poles: the north and the south. At one end is Dionysios Solomos, who, from the point of view of expressiveness, succeeded – before the appearance of Mallarmein European letters – in formulating with complete consistency and rigour the idea of a poesie pure with all its consequences. At the other pole is C. P. Cavafy, who, like T. S. Eliot, arrived at extreme economy of expression, at the greatest possible precision, eliminating all excess in the expression of his personal experiences. Between these two poles, some nearer to one some nearer to the other, lie the other major poets: Andreas Kalvos, Kostis Palamas, Angelos Sikelianos, Nikos Kazantzakis and George Seferis. This is an approximate and as schematic an outline as possible of the map of modern Greek poetry.
