ABSTRACT
The social-imaginary institution of the nation is by definition ideological; it constitutes a social reality whose very existence implies the non-knowledge of its participants as to its essence. In order to justify my discussion of it as a utopia in the poetic work of Dionysios Solomos. The nationalization' of Solomos in the course of his multifaceted reception obscured the initial, historically very specific grounds of his canonization as the national poet of Greece by the Heptanesians. The utopian element in Solomos's late poetry emerges clearly through comparison with his early work. The different realization of the national at the different stages of Solomos's poetic career is suggestive of the evolution of his poetics. The Hymn to Liberty and the Ode on the Death of Lord Byron engage with contemporary events in a largely documentary way, in order to serve the cause of the War of Independence.
