Novel
Thanos Vlekas
Θάνος Βλέκας
Pavlos Kalligas · 1855
Synopsis
In Phthiotis in the early years of the kingdom, Thános cultivates his land and wants to live by his labour. His mother prefers his brother Tássos, who went from the national guard to banditry, and whose daring seems to her the true Greek virtue. Tássos prospers, buys complicities and takes the place of the former Ottoman landowners.
Context
The text appeared in serial form in the journal Pandora from 15 October 1855. Founded six years earlier by Nikólaos Dragoúmis, Konstantínos Paparrigópoulos and Aléxandros Rízos Rangavís, it was still edited that year by the last of the three. The subject, borrowed from the peasant life of the moment, stood out in a body of work devoted entirely to romanticism and the national past. An American missionary serves in it as a gauge of the good sense the characters lack; he probably owes something to Jonas King, whom the author had defended in court. Thomas Doulis translated it into English for Northwestern University Press in 2001.
Who it is for
No French translation to date: one has to go through English, German or the learned Greek of 1855. The story is short and the plot moves quickly.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the country's first social realist novel, and as the forerunner of the ethography that would dominate its prose thirty years later.