Με αφορμή μια ανέκδοτη επιστολή του Γ. Κ. Κατσίμπαλη προς το Γ. Ζερβό: Παλαμάς versus Σολωμός

Abstract

Please note: This article is in Greek. From the personal archives of the Kalymnian writer Yiannis Zervos, we present an unpublished letter dated 1929 of the well-known critic Katsibalis. In this letter Katsibalis criticizes the work of Solomos, the poems of Zervos and other well known critics of the 20th Century. In this paper we analyse Katsibalis’ letter with respect to the critique of the poet Yiannis Zervos. It was evident in the letter that Katsibalis believed that Zervos possessed the literary potential to revolutionarise Greek poetry. Katsibalis attempts to persuade Zervos to follow in the steps of Palamas and not Solomos. We place this preference within the aesthetic, artistic and literary canon of “alithophaneia” which although had its genesis between 1850 and 1880 still continued to infl uence the Greek critics of the first half of the 20th Century. The correspondence of the above mentioned writers ceased suddenly in 1932, two years after the publication of Serefi s’ “Strofi ” where Katsibalis realised that the revoluntionary change to Greek literature was brought about by the collection of poems in Seferis’ work entitled “Strofi ”.