Myths and realities
Man likes to look for reality in fiction and the voyage of Ulysses described by Homer in theOdyssey has given rise to many geographical interpretations. Whatever the case, and even if Ithaca is in fact Cephalonia, another of the Ionian islands, as some historians suggest, the archipelago still seems to be the point of departure - and the point of arrival! - of the famous mythical hero. His epic has, in any case, proved decisive for world literature because it is one of the pillars, it marks the passage from oral tradition to written transcription. The "Homeric question" has also occupied the minds since the eighteenth century. But if the blind poet has, finally, neither really existed nor lived in the eighth century BC, it is still associated with a place of birth - most often Smyrna - located on the Ionian coast that we must be careful not to confuse with the eponymous islands, the first finding place in modern Turkey, while the second dotted the western Greece. The life of another poetess, Sappho, born in Mytilene on the island of Lesbos in the seventh or sixth century BC, seems less questionable, although her biography is just as fragmentary. According to Menander (playwright of the IVth century BC) who puts her in scene in his play Leukadia, it is in Leucade that she would have found the death, jumping of a cliff while pursuing her lover. The place and the memories preserved the memory of this fall in love, involving dangerous tradition and artistic leitmotiv. Literature, for its part, has kept track of the poetic work of Sappho, even if only her Hymn to Aphrodite has reached us in its entirety.
It is then a temporal leap that we must take to meet Nicolas Voulgaris, a scholar born in 1634 in Corfu, a city that will welcome him in its literary academy for his writings, mainly religious. He will thus write offices in honor of Saint Jason and Saint Sosipatre, who had evangelized the island in the first century, and will work on a report of the transfer of the relics of Saint Spydridon to Constantinople, celebrating the ancient bishop who became patron of Corfu. The family tree that links him to Eugene (born in 1716) keeps its secrets but the descent is honorably assured by the one who will become the worthy representative of the Corfu Spirit of Enlightenment. Eugène Voulgaris indeed left an eclectic and abundant work (philosophical or mathematical treatises, correspondence and poems), and his immoderate taste for travels led him to leave his mark on all the territories where he lived, up to distant Russia where he ended his days in 1806.
A detour to Zante
After Corfu, it is Zante that the literature honors of its gifts, it sees thus being born successively Nicolas Chiefala (about 1770 - towards 1850), Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827), Andreas Calvos (1792-1869), Dionysios Solomós (1798-1857) and Elizabeth Moutzan-Martinegou (1801-1832). If the first became a sailor - and a fighter at the time of independence - before taking up the pen to tell of his many travels, all his successors made their mark in letters. Thus, Ugo Foscolo - whose name and nationality recall that the island was then under Venetian domination - composed Odes to Luigia Pallavicini while polishing his epistolary novel Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis. Although he was interested in politics, he was one of the Italian precursors of Romanticism, a legendary destiny that was not contradicted by his last years, when he went underground in London to escape his creditors before succumbing to tuberculosis, nor by the fact that his remains were repatriated to Florence, 44 years after his death, to be buried in the Basilica of Santa Croce, the "Italian Pantheon. Before that, his secretary was a fellow countryman, Andreas Calvos, who was just as whimsical in his life, and just as innovative in his style. He is indeed recognized as one of the great initiators of modern poetry because he knew how to free himself from the straitjacket of the rhymes and from the one of the ancient metric, notably in his collection Elpis Patridos and in his new Odes. Another national poet venerated in the mausoleum of Zante which is dedicated to them, Dionysios Solomos is son of his time: he will write in Italian his Rime improvvisate but in Greek his Hymn to Freedom and his unclassifiable The Woman of Zante to be obtained in bilingual edition to the beautiful editions Le Bruit du temps. Finally, Elizabeth Moutzan-Martinegou will find, in her desire to write thwarted by her parents who wanted to marry her, a source of inspiration for her feminist writings. She died at the age of 31, two weeks after her first childbirth, and had just enough time to produce about twenty plays and to compose some poems.
Exiles and immigrants
Aristotélis Valaorítis was born in 1824 on the island of Lefkada and it is perhaps from the illustrious philosopher from whom he takes his first name that he inherits a strong inclination for politics that will make him a member of parliament. Epic in his time, he will also be in his poetry, but when he will know the disappointment of international decisions, it is the way of withdrawal that he will choose by settling on a tiny confetti, Madourí, to devote himself to his art. In contrast, his compatriot Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) chose very early to travel the world. Son of a Greek mother and an Irish father, he died Japanese after taking the nationality of his last stop. Although he wrote about islands other than Lefkada, where he was born, his texts can still be discovered with delight in French(Lettres japonaises published by Pocket, Insectes published by Editions du Sonneur, Chita published by Gallimard, etc.).
The year 1900 saw Albert Cohen leave Corfu for Marseilles when he was only 5 years old. Three novels of his famous tetralogy (which includes the unmissable Belle du Seigneur) are partly set in Cephalonia: Solal, Mangeclous and Les Valeureux (Folio editions). Grand Prix de l'Académie française, he is undoubtedly one of the most important writers of the twentieth century, and it is in Geneva that he will die in 1981, finally giving in to the death that had long pursued him. Finally, two brothers have certainly given to Corfu their most beautiful pages, thanking the island that had welcomed them with their family, at 24 years for the eldest - Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990), the author of In the shadow of the Greek sun (Quinzaine littéraire), Greek Islands (Bartillat) and, on another theme, of the Quartet of Alexandria (Le Livre de poche) -, to 10 years for the youngest - Gerald Durrell (1925-1995) - future distinguished naturalist, who will deliver in his Trilogy of Corfu (editions of the Round Table) his tender memories of this blessed time.
