ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the introduction by Iakovos Polylas to his first posthumous edition of Dionysios Solomos’s oeuvre in 1859, looks at from the perspective of cultural politics of national identity during the nineteenth century and beyond. It focuses on the twofold way in which Polylas presented Solomos’s relationship to music: on the one hand, by exalting the musicality of Solomos’s verse and, on the other, by combining his image as ‘national poet’ with that of the ‘national composer’ Nikolaos Mantzaros. In Polylas’s ‘Prolegomena’ the figures of Solomos and Mantzaros emerge as a ‘diptych’, as it were, in their search for ‘new genres’, each in his own art. Polylas’s role must be assessed within the context of the efforts made by the Heptanesians to claim a place in the grand narratives of the nation, which were being formulated at that time, especially by the two founding figures of national historiography, Spyridon Zambelios and Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos.
