Modern Greek Literature - Enlightenment Era (17th Century - 1821)

1821)

After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 the only Greek regions which had not fallen to the Ottomans were Crete, Cyprus, Rhodes and the Ionian Islands, which were already under Venetian control. In these islands, and especially in Crete, literary production continued uninterrupted to a very high standard, in contrast with the Ottoman occupied territories. This period of approximately 150 years from the fall of Crete (in 1669) to the beginning of the Greek War of Independence (in 1821) produced some of the greatest texts of the Greek Enlightenment, texts produced by Greek humanists, lay and clerical, which were not only portents of the national revival but also sought for the education and training of the subjugated nation which would guide them through a process that was to achieve a national consciousness and full independence.

The Korakistika (1819), a lampoon written by Iakovakis Rizos Neroulos and directed against the Greek intellectual Adamantios Korais, is a good example of its kind. Until recently, the first satire in the modern Greek tradition was thought to be the Anonymous of 1789. Today, however, an earlier work, dated 1785, and bearing the title Alexandrovodas the Callous, can claim to be the first of this genre in Greek. Written by Georgakis Soutsos-Dragoumanakis, the target of its invective is Alexander Mavrokordatos, ruler of Moldavia, referred to in the work as the Fugitive. Two works from the mid 18th century, the Stoicheiomachia (1746) and the Bosporomachia (1766), printed by Eugenios Voulgaris and attached to a verse translation of Voltaire’s Memnon were the products of Phanariot circles. Both texts display a growing awareness of the natural landscape and foreshadow the age of lyricism that was to follow, while also legitimizing to an extent the mixed linguistic register of the Greek then spoken in Constantinople, with its mingling of a great number of Turkish words, a feature that was to appear in Phanariot poetry a few years later.

The turn of the century saw the rise of two major authors. Rigas Feraios and Adamantios Korais. Rigas was born in Velestino, Thessaly, in 1757, where he received his basic education. With the capture of Bucharest by the Austro-Russian alliance he moved on to Vienna for a period of six months (1790), and it was there that he printed his first book: The School for Delicate Lovers. It brought the climate of pre-Romanticism and the ‘new sensibility’ to modern Greek prose writing, while at the same time it constituted a fiery declaration of the radical ideas that were shaking Europe. Marriage that broke the barriers of social class, demands for social equality, a new role for women – indeed, the entire programme of the Enlightenment – filled the sensuous tales of The School for Delicate Lovers, which, ‘giving pleasure and instruction’, can be seen to belong to the wider programme of social change and reform of the day. The literature of enlightenment which Rigas undertook to bring to the knowledge of his fellow Greeks constantly sought to find a balance between the didactic, the new ideology, and the social, thematic and technical innovations of a new literariness. The popular, Constantinopolitan language, as well as the interposed verses, many of which are to be found in the manuscript anthologies of the Phanariots, served to familiarize the readership with the new literary genre of the novella or short story.

Adamantios Korais spent most of his long life outside the bounds of the Ottoman state. Born in Smyrna in 1748, he learnt foreign languages at an early age and grew up in an environment that fostered respect for learning and literature. His translations and publishing activity were governed by a desire to give his countrymen access to the learning of the West and also to arouse their interest in the literature of their ancient forebears. In 1804, he gave material evidence of his interest in the ancient writers by publishing an edition of Heliodorus’ Aithiopika, the first in a series of ancient writers that was given the title Elliniki Vivliothiki (Greek Library). The books in this series, which included authors such as Aristotle, Plutarch, Isocrates, Xenophon and Plato, were prefaced with scholarly introductions and supplemented with detailed commentaries. Following the Franco-Turkish rapprochement, Korais came to believe that his people required systematic long-term preparation, above all in the field of learning, in order through their own efforts to gain independence.