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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
For some centuries in Greece poetry had tended towards the vernacular, unlike prose, which had exclusively used the learned language. Early Cretan texts were written, as Professor Robert Browning puts it, ‘in the inherited amalgam of spoken Greek and flosculi from the learned tongue characteristic of the popular poetry of the late Byzantine period, with only occasional and unsystematic use of dialect features’. The poets Chortatzis and Kornaros, being chronologically late Cretans, largely did away with the learned characteristics and attempted to remain faithful to the forms of the Cretan dialect. The early nineteenth century poets, Vilaras from Epiros, Christopoulos from Macedonia, and Solomos from Zakynthos, tried to use a language not dissimilar to that of the folk songs and in many respects close to the spoken idiom of uneducated villagers — an idiom which presented phonological, morphological and lexical variations according to geographical location.
1. Browning, R., Medieval and Modem Greek (London, 1969), p. 95.Google Scholar
2. This view is also put forward by Spyros Evangelatos in his introduction to 
(Athens, 1972), pp. xxv-vii.
3. Its initiator Korais, however, believed that it was the common language and called it ‘koini’. For a comprehensive study of the language question from a historical perspective, see P. Bien, Kazantzakis and the Linguistic Revolution in Greek Literature (Princeton, 1972).
4. Ioannis Vilaras, 
ed. G. A. Vavaretos(Athens, [1935?]), p. 2.
5. Ibid., pp. 4–5. To judge from this poem as a whole (it is three pages in length), there is no reason to believe that the poet had any intention of being humorous.
6. The term 
is used in Epiros to mean ‘couplets’ or what the Cretans call 
See editor’s note in Vilaras’s 
p. 17.
7. Ibid., pp. 9, 17, 18.
8. Ibid., p. 65.
9. Ibid., pp. 65–6. According to the editor of this edition the first two poems of the collection 
were the only ones written in two alternative versions. They are at the end of the MS., as if the poet came to write them later, giving the impression that he was going to continue translating the whole collection (see ibid., p. 67).
10. Athanasios Christopoulos explains for example that he tried to translate Homer into rhyming verse but that he found it impossible. 
Thus he used blank verse. A. Christopoulos, 
ed. H. S. Raphtanis (Zakynthos, 1880), p. 241.
11.
p. 244.
12. Ibid., p. 246.
13. Ibid., p. 255.
14. Ibid., p. 248.
15. Ibid., p. 256.
16. K. Th. Dimaras has argued that this collection of poems may not have been written by Vilaras – see his 
(Athens, 1947), p. 46. (Here as well as in several other instances I am grateful to Dr. Peter Mackridge of King’s College, London, who read this article and made a number of valuable suggestions and corrections.) Whoever the author was, these poems about the cucumber and garlic are based on an enumeration of the qualities which make up the metaphoric usage of these vegetables, as if the poet is intentionally playing with their hidden meaning. Similarly, Vilaras plays with the metaphoric usage of the words 
and so forth. He has written a separate poem on each (see 
pp. 27–61), as if trying to write poems on the nature of the metaphor itself.
17. The rigidity of the metaphoric usage of 
is such that when referring to the actual vegetable, peasant folk often either apologize for its usage or refer to it euphemistically as 
For an interesting discussion of the multiple connotations of the cucumber in world literature, see
Norrman, R. and Haarberg, J., Nature and Language: A Semiotic Study of Cucurbits in Literature (London, 1980 [in press]).Google Scholar
18.
p. 168.
19. A. Karkavitsas, 
2nd ed. (Athens, 1980), p. 21.
20. Equally it could be argued that it might have been the villagers themselves who, for the sake of emphasis, have given the word a masculine gender. But it is known from present-day experience that neither in Peloponnesos nor in Rumeli (the two areas whose diction Karkavitsas usually uses) do villagers use the word in its masculine gender. What remains, however, as a fact is the rigid meaning of the metaphor as far as peasant folk are concerned.
21.
p. 247.
22. No doubt by repetition a great deal of the established folk songs have become part of our everyday speech; in other words we are inured against noticing the possibility of humorous implications. N. Politis, on the other hand, has argued that the author of each folk song could only be one person of exceptional intelligence and education, and that the improvisation and repetition of the folk song by the people is likely to spoil it (see 
2nd ed. (1925) I, pp. 8–9). It is true, however, that each folk song can be found in a number of versions, and the versions vary considerably in quality. Politis’s effort was to choose subjectively what he called the ‘Urtext’, the best lines through which he could form the folk songs of his collection. One should not forget that Politis’s criteria were those of an educated man.
23. See L. Politis, 
(Thessaloniki, 2nd ed., n.d.), pp. 53–4.
24. D. Solomos, 
ed. L. Politis (Athens, 1948), I, p. 185. The MS. reads 
and 
see D. Solomos, 
ed. L. Politis (Thessaloniki, 1964), I, p. 15.
25. For a defence of Solomos’s ungrammatical Greek spelling, cf. L. Politis, 
(1938–1958) (Athens, 1958), pp. 32–6.
26. Of course the expression 
has been used in folksongs as well. It is, however, far less common than the words 
or 
27. The MS. has one full stop at the end of the 8th line and two commas, one after 
and the other after 
Cf. facsimile edition of D. Solomos’s 
ed. L. Politis (MS. 
I (Thessaloniki, 1964), p. 15.
28. Ibid.
29.
Grassetti, G., Grammatica della lingua greca modema sequita da un dialogo sopra la lingua e da un discorso sulla metrica (Malta, 1853)Google Scholar. Here he includes some extracts from Solomos’s 
– such as 
For references to Grassetti’s quotations of Solomos, see L. Politis, 
pp. 152, 154, 195 (n. 1). The problem becomes exceptionally complicated when one looks at Solomos’s MSS.: the above 8 lines (which I have quoted and analysed here) are written in the hand-writing of someone other than Solomos, as are several other poems amongst his MSS.
30. D. Solomos, 
I, p. 217.
31. Ibid., p. 234.
32. V. Kornaros, 
ed. S. A. Xanthoudidis(Iraklion, 1915), p. 41 (A. 1121–1122).
33. It is interesting that a number of Greeks have criticized Kalvos for being ungrammatical – for example see the article by N. Veis (
(Athens, 1948), pp. 60–1) who quotes Z. Papantoniou about Kalvos’s incorrect language. Cf. also article by K. Palamas, 
(Athens, 1913), pp. 19–48.
34. A. Kalvos, 
(Alexandria(?), 1942), p. 180.
35. Cf. also note in Seferis’s introduction to this edition, p. 47, where he suggests that the above remark seems to correspond to other details of Kalvos’s art as well as to the metre.
36. Ibid., pp. 125–6.
37. Solomos, 
p. 139. There is also another version reading 
(see Solomos, 
[Athens, 1901], p. 99, n. 1)-a more prosaic image. The MS. for this poem has not survived.
38. These passages are quoted by Polylas; see 
ed. G. Valetas, 2nd ed. (Athens, 1959), pp. 279–80. I am referring here simply to the differences of thought pattern between demotic and katharevousa in a case where the subject is identical. The original reads as follows:
See Tasso, Torquato Gerusalemme liberata, Aminta, rime scelte e versi dalla Gerusalemme conquistata dal Rinaldo e dal Mondo creato (Turin, 1961), p. 68.Google Scholar
39. Professor L. Politis quotes from P. Soutsos’s 
two passages in demotic, of which this is one; he remarks that from the time of the first version in 1831 Soutsos went on changing these demotic passages into katharevousa. This may be true (I have not had access to the first version), but the passages he quotes from the first version differ very little, apart from spelling. The two versions are as follows:
1831 version:
The latter version, as published in Fexis’s edition of 1 g 16, reads:
(See P. Soutsos, 
(1915), pp. 85–6 and 93; and L. Politis, 
(Thessaloniki, n.d.), p. 113). This proves the point that by the fifth and sixth decades of the nineteenth century, although poetry can be classified as katharevousa or demotic in terms of its morphology, as far as poetic imagery is concerned there was a strong tendency towards the popular thought pattern, as one can observe, for example, in a number of Zalokostas’s and Karasoutsas’s poems. It is also worth remembering that the poetry competitions demanded katharevousa, a fact which no doubt obliged most of the poets to comply with rules by mere manipulation of morphology rather than thought pattern.
40. For more about the free use of caesura, see Palamas’s article 
(written in 1894) in 
(1904).
41. A. Valaoritis, 
(Athens, 1916), p. 397.
42. The meanings of the words 
and 
indeed meet in the word 
43. K. Palamas, 
2nd ed., (Athens, 1931 [?]), p. 61 (1st pubd. in 1886).
44. It is worth considering the fact that those who first fought against rhyme were people like Korais (see N. Veis, 
Nea Estia [Christmas, 1943], pp. 47–8). To write in unrhymed verse was a characteristic of the supporters of the purist language; although, of course, both Solomos and Valaoritis had already experimented with unrhymed verse.
45. Palamas was fascinated in those early days by the variety of adjectives one came across or could even make in the people’s language. He criticized Kalvos for instance for having ignored the wealth of epithets in the vernacular -K. Palamas, 
p. 39 (the articlewas written in 1888).
46. It is said that this collection was circulated in 1896 – see N. Veis, Nea Estia, Christmas, 1943, p. 46.
47. K. Palamas, 
2nd ed. (Athens, 1920), p. 36.
48. A. Kalvos, 
p. 99.
49. K. Palamas, 
p. 39.
50. A collection of some of these statements can be found in Emm. Chourmouzios, 
, I, pp. 371–89.
51. K. Palamas, 
2nd ed. (Athens, 1920), p. 71.
52. A. Sikelianos, 
ed. G. P. Savidis (Athens, 1965), p. 94.