Kostis Palamas

Kostís Palamás was a Greek poet who was a central figure of the Greek literary generation of the 1880s and one of the cofounders of the so-called New Athenian School (or Palamian School, or Second Athenian School) along with Georgios Drosinis and Ioannis Polemis. He was born in Patras, in the same house as the Italian novelist Matilde Serao, and received his primary and secondary education in Mesolonghi. In 1877 he enrolled at the School of Law, Economics and Political Sciences of the University of Athens, but he soon abandoned his studies. In the 1880s, he worked as a journalist and published his first collection of verses, Songs of My Fatherland, in 1886. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature on 14 occasions, but never received it. He held an administrative post at the University of Athens between 1897 and 1926, and died during the German occupation of Greece in World War II. His funeral was a major event of the Greek resistance: the funerary poem composed and recited by fellow poet Angelos Sikelianos roused the mourners and culminated in a demonstration of 100,000 people against Nazi occupation. Palamas wrote the lyrics to the Olympic Hymn, composed by Spyridon Samaras. It was first performed at the 1896 Summer Olympics, the first modern Olympic Games. The Hymn was then shelved as each host city from then until the 1960 Winter Olympics commissioned an original piece for its celebration of the Games, but the version by Samaras and Palamas was declared the official Olympic Anthem in 1958 and has been performed at each celebration of the Games since the 1960 Winter Olympics. Palamas has been informally called the "national" poet of Greece. He was an influential voice in Greek literature for more than 30 years, and greatly influenced the entire political-intellectual climate of his time. Romain Rolland considered him the greatest poet in Europe. His works include collections of poems, such as Eyes of my Soul, Iambs and Anapaests, The Grave, The Greetings of the Sun-born, and The Motionless Life; dramas, such as The Twelve Lays of the Gypsy, The King's Flute, and The Dodekalogos of the Gypsy; and prose works, such as The Legend of the Century, The Hours of my Life, and The Twelve Words of the Gypsy.