POETS OF FREEDOM
By DEMETRIOS CAPETANAKIS
GREAT BRITAIN and Greece have always understood one another when freedom was in question. On this subject they speak the same language. It cannot be by mere chance that the two most important national poets of Greece have sung of freedom and of Great Britain in the same breath, and that the English poet with the most startling vitality—Lord Byron—gave to the cause of Greece's independence not only his verses but his life itself.
Lord Byron is considered by the modern Greeks as a national hero associated with people like Themistocles or Achilles. His name has been hellenised ; it is written limo r, pronounced as Veeron, and given by some parents to their children as a Christian name. I had a friend at school called Byron. What would surprise an Englishman is not surprising at all for a Greek. A part of Athens is called Byron district, and the various monuments to the poet—among which there is an ugly one at the centre of the Greek capital—make of him a very familiar figure in Greek everyday life. The average man may not know what Byron wrote, but everybody thinks of " Veeron " as of a kind of demi-god, sacrificed for Greece, whose divinity and love were the natural emanation of the country whence he came. Byron was, and still is, considered as the significant pledge of Great Britain's protecting friendship to Greece. The two greatest poets of Greece have consecrated long poems to the English poet, who became a Greek hero. The first of these poets, Solomos, was made known to this country some months ago by the book of Mr. Romily Jenkins. It is about the second —whose name is Andreas Calvos—a genuine poet of freedom, that I want to say something here.
Calves was born at the end of the eighteenth century in Zanthe, one of the loveliest Ionian islands, restored to Greece and to freedom some years after his death by Great Britain. Although he was brought up in Italy, he left her for England, where, as he says, " the rays of the so sweet freedom " nourished him. Here he lived for many years. Married twice, both times to an English woman, he was deeply influenced by the mane, the thought, the poetry of this country, and here he died. But in spite of that—or perhaps because of that—he is one of the two great national poets of Greece. When his native country—so weak against such a powerful enemy— rose in the desperate determination to die or to Regain her freedom, he was so much stirred by the greatness of the event that he became a poet to proclaim its meaning to the world.
The only portrait we have of the poet is a poetic self-portrait, that is the expression of the attitude described above:
No passion disturbs me I strike the lyre And I stand upright By the open mouth Of my grave.
This self-portrait shows clearly that Calvos was a stoic, a man not easily inflamed, a man who must have hated grandiloquence. And if his poetry is full of great words, there must have been sufficient reason for them. Today, when we see Greece fight- ing for freedom once more, if we read Calvos' Odes, we find that what we thought some time ago as great words, seem very small in comparison with the greatness of the deeds performed and the ideas believed. Perhaps it is no coincidence that for the last four or five years Calvos has been the favourite poet of the young Greek intellectuals. Although all his poetry was a long song in praise of the desperate fight for freedom, we used to disregard this, to separate special images and lines from their context and enjoy them merely aesthetically. We thought that we admired him for such verses as this startling one:
My. son, you saw me breathing ; The sun revolving, Like a spider, folded me, In light and in death Incessantly.
I remember that when some years ago I spoke about Calvos' poetry at the literary celebration of his memorial at the " Parnassos " of Athens, I described him as the poet of loneli- ness and despair. The young men agreed with me, but the older people dissented. They found that the purely aesthetic point of view was too narrow to do justice to Calvos' poetry as a whole. And now I think that the more experienced ones were right. As I read Calvos today, he is revealed to me as the poet of freedom. And it seems to me that the young intellec- tuals, who supposed that they read him because of pure aesthetic reasons, perhaps deceived themselves in thinking so, and that they loved him really because of an apprehension of the approaching danger. They saw in him the power that could help them in the coming hard moments of decision.
Calvos does not mean something merely aesthetic any more. He appears as a prophet, and he explains much of the noble attitude of Greece we are watching. The verses that did not mean much to us before the trial, move us now much more deeply than his more daring images:
0 Greeks, 0 divine Souls, that in the great Dangers reveal Untiring energy And high nature!
The similarity of situation gives to the time-faded lines their original brightness. Even the prose of the dedication of the second series of the Odes to the General Lafayette who fought in America for freedom has a fascinating significance today: " The day you were venturing your lives in America, you did not fight only for the sake of the independence of that country ; the principles of justice and morality, upon which the nations ought to base their prosperity, were before your eyes. . . . Too poor to be able to feed our army and our fleet, without guns to place on our rocks, shall we yield? No—God and our despair support us. A nation that looks on her enemies with contempt, her grave with indifference, cannot be vanquished." I do not know what else a Greek could find to say today.
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