Poetry
He has been informally called the "national" poet of Greece and was closely associated with the struggle to rid Modern Greece of the "purist" language and with political liberalism. He dominated literary life for 30 or more years and greatly influenced the entire political-intellectual climate of his time. Romain Rolland considered him the greatest poet of Europe and he was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature but never received it. His most important poem, "The Twelve Lays of the Gypsy" (1907), is a poetical and philosophical journey. His "Gypsy" is a free-thinking, intellectual rebel, a Greek Gypsy in a post-classical, post-Byzantine Greek world, an explorer of work, love, art, country, history, religion and science, keenly aware of his roots and of the contradictions between his classical and Christian heritages.
Read more about this topic: Kostis Palamas
Famous quotes containing the word poetry:
“The wisest definition of poetry the poet will instantly prove false by setting aside its requisitions.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For poetry makes nothing happen:”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“If poetry should address itself to the same needs and aspirations, the same hopes and fears, to which the Bible addresses itself, it might rival it in distribution.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)