Novel
Ο ζητιάνος
Not translated into English
Andreas Karkavitsas · 1896
Opening lines
Το Νυχτερέμι δεν είνε και από τα μεγάλα χωριά της Θεσσαλίας.
Nychteremi is not one of the big villages of Thessaly.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from el.wikisource.org
Synopsis
Tziritókostas, a professional beggar from the Kravara, arrives in Nychterémi, a village on the Thessalian plain by the Peneus. He settles there with his servant, learns who fears what, sells herbs and remedies, whispers fear of the revenant, and makes the sharecroppers pay for each of their terrors.
Context
The text appeared in fifty-four instalments in Estia, from 9 April to 8 June 1896, and in volume the following year at the Typographeion tis Estias. The author had taken its material from his service as a doctor at Ámpliani. Five chapters, one of them on the mysteries of begging and another on the revenant. Written entirely in the popular language, it came after its author's disavowal of his own learned language. The defeat of 1897 loaded it with a meaning it did not have: the sharecroppers of Thessaly came to beg in Athens.
Who it is for
About a hundred pages, translated into French in 2009. It helps to know that Thessaly had just been annexed to the kingdom and that its peasants were sharecroppers there.
Prizes and reception
Its hero was the most famous figure in Greek letters until Zorba the Greek appeared; Fótos Polítis saw in him the portrait of the shrewd Greek of his time.