Poetry
Ο Φωτεινός
Not translated into English
Aristotelis Valaoritis · 1891
Opening lines
- Πάρ᾿ ἕνα σβῶλο, Μῆτρο,
καὶ διῶξ᾿ ἐκεῖνα τὰ σκυλιά, ποὺ μοῦ χαλοῦν τὸ φύτρο.
“Take a clod, Mitros,
and drive off those dogs that are spoiling my shoots.”
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from el.wikisource.org
Synopsis
Lefkada, in 1357, under Frankish rule. Photinos, a seventy-year-old peasant and former captain of arms, throws stones at the dogs of the lord Gratianos Tzortzis, which are ravaging his sown fields. He is arrested for this act, beaten, humiliated; the old man's honour is wounded, and he takes to the mountain. The poem breaks off before the outcome.
Context
The poem remained unfinished at its author's death, in 1879: he had written only the first three cantos, shortly before. It appeared only in 1891, in the second volume of his posthumously published works, from a manuscript he had not finalised; successive editions give different states of it. It draws on the oral traditions of Lefkada, which the author had himself gathered from the island's peasants, and it is written in the everyday language, at a time when the State imposed an archaising form on letters.
Who it is for
A narrative poem in the spoken language, little translated. The Greek language question sheds light on what is at stake in this choice.
Prizes and reception
It shows the moment when Greek narrative poetry moves to the spoken language, half a century after lyric poetry had done so, and Greek schoolchildren still learn it.