AGELOS SIKELIANOS
writes: Nana Latsi
Great, visionary, blessed you say from the muses,
rhetorical, wintery, grandiose, big-mouthed and exuberant. The Lord of our lalia, as the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seferis called
him, was born in 1884 in Lefkada and was the seventh and last child of Hariklia and Ioannis Sicilianos, a professor of French and Italian with roots from Sicily. His mother came from an urban family and had a French education (he was educated in
Arsakio, Athens). And it suited him. He could have been named Apollo or Orpheus, and those names would have gone to him. This boy was about to become one of the leading visionary creators. In his hometown he was taught the first letters in elementary school and then in high school. There he wrote at the age of just thirteen and his first poems. In 1901 he left for Athens where he enrolled as a student at the Law School, but never attended classes. He was a born poet. Unforgettable and decisive for his development and subsequent orientation were the walks with his father in the white oli
ve groves.Here the father will introduce him to ancient Greek mythology, in its absolute relationship with Greek nature and will introduce him in a very nat
ural way to the history and culture of antiquity. , pro-state philosophers, Plato, Aeschylus but also the Bible and foreign writers like D’Annuncius. An important milestone in Sicilian’s life was his acquaintance and marriage, in 1907, to the American Eva Palmer, who was studying Greek archaeology and choreography in Par
is.In 1909 he published his first poetic collection “Alafroiskiotos”, which caused a special seNanation in literary circles, recognized as a station work in the history of Modern Greek letters.
Sicilian’s literary work served his grandiose worldview for the role of poet as a devotee and missionary of a religious ideology. Sicilian subjected his expressive means. He adopted a pre- and anti-logical expression in both poetry and his tragedies and assimilated a variety of spiritual influences. In his texts there are elements that refer to the currents of romance, aesthetics, symbolism but also to the ancient Greek orphic and pro-state philosophers.
In Ano Boyani Parnassos in 1922 he learns the news about the Asia Minor Disaster. He closes in on his room and cries. He composes the Oath of The Communities in Mana Greece.
In 1927 Sicilian and his wife Eva carried out his vision of the “Delphic Idea” with the revival of the “Delphic Feasts”, aimed at the brotherhood and peace of the peoples. Since then it has been established for the first time to play the works
of classical tragics in ancient theatres. revived the performances of Prometheus Bond (1927) and Iketides (1930) of Aeschylus directed and taught by the poet, Eva Sicilianou taught dance and made all the c
ostumes of the show on her own in clay. , a global union for the fellowship of peoples and the Delphic University, whose aim would be to compose into a single myth the traditions of all peoples. In 1929, the Academy of Athens awarded him a silver medal for the valiant effort to revive the Delphi games.
When the Second World War began, he spoke on the radio the “Pan-Human March of Greece”, while writing non-stop to inspire the fighters of Pindos and all the Greek people. In the years of the Occupation, again, he publis
hed – illegally
– a newspaper entitled “Freedom.” essays, tragedies, poems, etc.
What can I say about his wanderi
ng abroad, in the Holy Land he walked where Christ, in Greece from end to far and often dense on Mount Athos, what can I say about his work which is huge. :Alafroiskiot
os – Abroad – The Dithyramvos of the Roa
d, Ascending to The Great Nostos – To Makryianni – Spiritual Interventi
on, to A Lost Love.
In closing, a timely excerpt from the “Spiritual March”
“Forward, you help to lift the sun over Greece,
You’re helping to lift the sun over the world!
What do you see, his wheel’s gone deep in the mud,
And, you see, he’s got his axon deep in the blood!
Come on, guys, and it’s not convenient for the sun to come up on its own,
push with a beard and chest, get him out of the mud,
Push with your chest and your neck, let’s get him out of the earth.
Tie up, we’re leaning on him, his blood brothers!
Come on, brothers, and he’s got us with his fire.
And his flame wrapped us up, my brothers!”
“10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 Your porter momentum
Style with heads and feet, don’t let the sun sink!
You’re helping me and brothers, so I don’t sink in the back!
What’s on me and inside me and around
What am I going back to a holy vertigo with him?
A thousand bulls hold his base.
Biceps, and he’s on top of me.
his wings and groans his salage
in my head side and in my soul
And the long and the sima for me is one!
Unheard of, heavy, I’m living Harmony! All right, comrades.
Help her get up, make the sun pnemma!
