Life Immovable Part 24

FOOTNOTES

[1] This essay is republished, with a few changes, from _Poet Lore_, vol. xxviii, no. 1, pp. 78-104.

[2] My translation of it originally appeared in the _Stratford Journal_, from which I quote it in its entirety.

[3] Tigrane Yergate, _op. cit._, p. 710.

[4] Jean Moreas, _Voyage de Grece_, 1898.

[5] On Patras, the birth-place of the poet. See Introduction, p. 13.

[6] On Missolonghi, the place of the poet's childhood. See Introduction, p. 15.

[7] On the Island of Corfu, one of the most important centers of the literary renaissance of modern Greece.

[8] Iacobos Polylas, 1826-98, translator of the _Odyssey_ and of parts of the _Iliad_, and an important figure in the struggle for the vernacular. He has also translated some of Shakespeare's plays.

[9] Dionysios Solomos, born in Zante, 1748, died in Corfu, 1857. He is the first great poet of modern Greece. He has written lyrics in Italian and in Greek. Several of his songs have spread as folk songs throughout the Greek world. He is mainly known as the poet of the modern Greek national hymn to Liberty.

[10] Gerasimos Markoras, born in Cephalonia, 1826, died in Corfu, 1911, a lyric and epic poet. His poem "Oath" was inspired by the Cretan struggle for freedom.

[11] On Egypt, whence the first lights of civilization dawned on Greece.

[12] On Mt. Athos, the Holy Mountain of the modern Greeks, inhabited by about ten thousand monks. Although called by its hermits "the virgin's garden" no female creature is allowed to enter its ground.

[13] Panselenus, a famous Byzantine painter, who is believed to be the author of some of the Madonnas and Christs found in the monasteries of the mountain.

[14] On cla.s.sic Greece, in contrast with the following sonnet which refers to the spirit of Greece throughout the ages, from the cla.s.sic period to the time of the Byzantine Empire.

[15] The Islands of the Ionian Sea.

[16] The hero of medieval Greece, Digenes Akritas, who is supposed to have lived on the slopes of the Taurus mountains in Asia Minor and to have fought against the invading Saracens. There are a great number of folk-songs about him not only in Greek but in Turkish, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Albanian as well.

[17] The word, meaning "blessed one," is here applied to ideal womanhood and must not be confused with Makaria of p. 103, the mythical Theban princess.

[18] The translator of Homer and Shakespeare. See notes 8 and 9, p. 80.

[19] A pseudonym for Constantine Chatzopoulos, one of the leading literary figures in Athens to-day. He has written poems under this pseudonym. But he is now mainly known as a master of short stories which he has published under his real name, and as the translator of Gothe's _Faust_ and of Hofmannsthal's _Electra_. This poem dedicated to him was written during the unfortunate Greco-Turkish war of 1897.

[20] Maviles was born in Ithaca, 1860, and fell in the battle of Driscos, November 29, 1912. He is the writer of exquisite sonnets and the successful translator of various foreign poems. The Cretan Revolution of 1896 is here alluded to, which led to the Greco-Turkish war of 1897. Maviles was one of the first to hasten to Crete to help in the struggle for liberty.

[21] Alexandros Pallis is one of the greatest literary figures of contemporary Greece, who, like Psicharis, has lived mostly far from Greece. He is a poet, a critic, and a satirist. But his fame is mainly due to his translation of the _Iliad_ and that of the _New Testament_. The publication of the latter caused the student riots of 1901.

[22] The poet had in mind the following lines of Sully Prudhomme from his _Stances et Poemes_, L'ame:

Tous les corps offrent des contours, Mais d'ou vienne la forme qui touche?

Comment fais-tu les grands amours, Pet.i.te ligne de la bouche?