Theorems

Markos Avgeris (the pen name of Giorgos N. Papadopoulos) was born in 1909 in Karitsa, Epirus, and died in 1971.

He graduated from the Medical School of the University of Athens in 1907 and practised as a doctor in private clinics. In 1927, he was appointed to the Ministry of Education. In 1929, he left for further training in Paris. In 1926, he was appointed to the Ministry of Labour as an occupational health inspector.

In 1933, he married Galatea Kazantzakis-Alexiou, the sister of Elli Alexiou and the first wife of Nikos Kazantzakis.

He continued to work at the Ministry of Labour until 1947, a post from which he was removed in 1947 for political reasons; even before the declaration of the Metaxas dictatorship, Avgeris had joined the Left and, during the German occupation, took part in the National Resistance, remaining faithful to his ideology until the end of his life.

He made his first appearance in the literary world in 1904 in the columns of Nouma, where he published the poem ‘I, Tassia, weep’. In the same year, Kostas Christomanos staged Avgeris’s play (drama) In Front of the People at the ‘Nea Skini’ theatre in the Piraeus Municipal Theatre.

His poetic output can be divided into two periods: his early and his late work, between which there is a long gap from 1908 to 1969, when his collection *Antidrama kai Parallela* was published privately, considered by literary critics to be his most significant, with most of the poems written after 1960. His early work is situated within the realm of idealism and the tradition of Solomos-style poetry, as developed by the interwar poets in Greece. In his later period, he turned towards modernist poetry and renewed his expressive means and orientation, whilst maintaining the foundation of his poetic perspective unchanged.

At the same time, Avgeris engaged in literary criticism within the framework of Marxist literary theory, whilst his work in literary and theatrical translation is also significant.