Kostis Palamas

 

The 2008 Beijing Olympics will commence in August. The following is a brief biography of the man who wrote the words to the Olympic Hymn.

 

Kostis Palamas

The Poet who wrote the Olympic Hymn

Kostis Palamas (1859 — 1943) was one of the greatest Greek poets of the modern era, the man who along with his great contemporaries – Ioannis Polemis, Georgios Drosinis, and Nikos Kampanis – ushered in the modern revivalist movement in Greek poetry during the final decades of the 19th century. Palamas also has the distinction as the author of the words to the modern Olympic Hymn.

Kostis Palamas was born in the Achaean city of Patras to a wealthy family belonging to Mesolonghi in the province of Aetolia-Acarnania. After Palamas lost both his parents by the age of seven, he was brought up by an uncle Dimitrios Palamas in Mesolonghi, where he began to study law, continuing his law studies at the University of Athens from 1876.

Palamas soon gave up the study of law and started working as a journalist in the 1880s, devoting himself increasingly to literature and poetry. During the same period he married Maria Valvi, his childhood sweetheart, and became the father of three children. Tragedy soon struck his family when the youngest child died at the age of five, an event that would deeply affect him for the rest of his life.

Palamas was appointed as the Secretary of the University of Athens in 1897, a position he was to hold until 1926, a position that was to give him lifelong financial security, allowing him to devote wholeheartedly to poetry and literature.

After experimenting with poetry in the archaic “Katharevousa” version of the Greek Language (“Love Epics”), Palamas began to write poetry in the Modern Greek of the common people. His first collection of poetry, titled “The Songs of My Fatherland,” was published in 1886. His work “Hymn to Athena” (1889) was the winner in a prestigious poetry contest.

The major works of the prolific Palamas include “The Eye of My Soul” (1892), “The Tomb” (1898), “The Salutations of the Sun-born (1900), “The Static Life” (1904), and “Twelve Sayings of the Gypsy” (1907). Palamas also has a work of prose to his credit, “The Death of the Young Man.”

Palamas was given the prestigious post of President of the Athens Academy at the age of 70. He spent his final years loved by his family and friends, away from the public glare, but adored and venerated by lovers of literature as well as the general public.

Kostis Palamas died in 1943 during the German occupation of Greece. His funeral in Athens became a rallying point for the Greek resistance, with vast numbers of mourners (said to be over 100,000) singing his songs, and even singing the banned Greek national anthem, as an expression of protest against the Nazis.

Regarded as the national poet of Greece, Palamas exemplified the Greek spirit and culture in full measure. He bestrode the Greek literary scene like a colossus for over 30 years. His literary struggles, along with his compatriots of the “revivalist” movement, against the proponents of “purist” language in literature then prevailing, profoundly influenced and vivified the intellectual scene of his country. The great French writer and Nobel laureate Romain Rolland even regarded Palmas as the greatest poet of Europe of his time. Kostis Palamas never won the Nobel Prize for Literature, even though he was nominated several times.

The lyric Palamas wrote for the Olympic Hymn was set to music by the Greek composer Spyros Samaras. It was commissioned for the first modern Olympic Games,  the Summer Olympics of 1896. The Hymn was not used again until the 1960 Summer Olympics, during which period each host city was allowed commission its own original Olympic Hymn. The  original version by Samaras and Palamas was declared the official Olympic Anthem in 1958, and since 1964 it has been performed at each edition of the Summer Olympics.

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