Thymeli - Volume II

Angelos Sikelianos (1884–1951). Angelos Sikelianos was born in Lefkada, the son of Ioannis Sikelianos and Charikleia, née Stefanisi. He received his early education from his father. In Lefkada, he completed primary school, the Greek School and secondary school. During his adolescence, he began to engage with poetry for the first time. In 1901, he left for Athens, where he enrolled at the Law School. In Athens, he came into contact with Konstantinos Christomanos’s ‘Nea Skini’ theatre, where he worked as an actor.In 1902, he published his first poems in literary journals of the time, including Dionysos and Panathinaia, whilst a year later he collaborated with Nouma.In 1904, he began his journey towards a more ambitious poetic style through the pages of Akritas, and a year later he left for Libya, where he wrote “Alafroiskio”, which was published in 1909 to great acclaim.In 1906 he returned to Lefkada. It was then that he began living with Eva Palmer, whom he had met in 1905 at the home of his sister Penelope, and whom he married in 1907 in America. After the wedding, the couple settled in Athens and became acquainted with literary circles. The following year, their son Glafkos was born.In 1910, Sikelianos took part in the founding of the Educational Society, and the following year he published the Delphic Hymn and left with his wife for Paris, where they attended a performance of ancient drama by the Duncan couple. His father died that same year. In early 1912, he visited Paris again. That same year, he enlisted in the Balkan Wars. After his return to Athens in 1913, he continued to publish poems in Nouma until November 1914, when he met Nikos Kazantzakis, with whom he formed a deep friendship, and set off with him for Mount Athos and a tour of Greece. Together with Kazantzakis, they sided with Venizelos in 1915 during the Greek politician’s rift with the Palace. In 1917, his sister Penelope died. In the summer of that same year, he visited Prastova in Mani with Kazantzakis, and in 1919, Olympia and Epidaurus.In 1920, he stayed with his wife in Sykia, Corinth, and in 1921 he set off on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He returned to Sykia and, in the same year, turned towards a comprehensive conception of the Delphic Idea, influenced by the Asia Minor Campaign, the aftermath of the First World War and the outbreak of the Russian Revolution.In the summer of 1922, he left for Agoriani, where he studied the practical application of the Delphic Idea and learnt of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. The following year, he gave twenty lectures at the Law School on the expression of the idea of world peace and brotherhood throughout the ages.In 1924, he settled with his wife in Delphi, where they continued the groundwork for the realisation of the Delphic Idea. His mother, who died a year later, was buried in Delphi. Sikelianos had earlier invited intellectuals from all over the world to the future International Centre of Delphi. In June, he recited the Ode to Valaoritis during the celebrations marking the centenary of the poet’s birth in Lefkada.In May 1927, the Delphic Festivals were inaugurated; they were a great success in Greece and attracted attention abroad. Two years later, an article was published in the Ionian Anthology proposing Sikelianos for the Nobel Prize, and the Academy of Athens honoured the Sikelianos couple for the revival of the Delphic Festivals.In 1930, the second Delphic Festivals took place in the presence of political figures and were just as successful as the first. Over the next two years, the Delphic Union was established with state support, Sikelianos was invited to Paris, where he met Paul Goncourt and Paul Valéry; on his return to Greece, he published an educational manifesto for the Delphic Union and the book The Delphic Idea: A Prelude.In 1933, two performances of Sikelianos’s tragedy *The Dithyramb of Rhodes* took place, directed by him in collaboration with Eva. The following year, there were some government efforts to establish the Delphic Centre, but these were not completed. In Paris, Louis Roussel brought Sikelianos to prominence with a series of articles in the magazine Libre. In 1936, Sikelianos issued a proclamation calling for the organisation of the Delphic Festivals and the Delphic Cultural Centre.In 1938, he met Anna Karamani, whom he married in Eleusis in 1940. That same year, he wrote “Sibyl”. With his second wife, he settled in Athens and travelled to Aegina.In 1943, he recited the poem “Sound the Trumpets” during the funeral of Kostis Palamas. In 1944, he began to experience health problems.In 1946, he was nominated twice by the Society of Greek Writers for the Nobel Prize, the second time jointly with Kazantzakis, and together with the latter they welcomed Paul Éluard at his honorary reception in Athens.In 1947, he was elected president of the Society of Greek Writers and was nominated again – this time by a group of European writers – for the Nobel Prize. In 1950, he suffered a stroke and died in 1951.Sikelianos’ literary work served his grand cosmology regarding the role of the poet as a devotee and missionary of a religious ideology, which, by incorporating the tradition of the world’s journey through the ages, envisions the reconnection of humanity with the archetypal Myth of the unified psychosomatic entity.Sikelianos subordinated his expressive means to this theoretical reflection. He adopted a pre- and anti-logical mode of expression in both his poetry and his tragedies, and assimilated a variety of intellectual influences. His writings contain elements that refer to the currents of Romanticism, Aestheticism and Symbolism, as well as to the ancient Greek Orphic and pre-Socratic philosophers. For further biographical details on Angelos Sikelianos, see Anton John P., ‘Sikelianos, Angelos’, World Biographical Dictionary 9a. Athens, Athens Publishing, 1988 and Tetradia Efthinis 11. Athens, 1980.