Ζωή
Γεράσιμος Μαρκοράς, 1898
A Greek poet of the Ionian school turns birdsong, sea, mothers and lost youth into tight, singing stanzas — poetry that still has the smell of salt on it.
Γεράσιμος Μαρκοράς
1826–1911
Markoras writes the Ionian islands as weather and family: salt air, birdsong, a mother's voice, graves you keep returning to. His stanzas are tight and made to be sung, and grief in them comes out as tenderness rather than display. Start with «Ζωή» for the sea and youth, or «Ο Αρίονας» if you want the long narrative of Arion and the pirates, where music is what saves a life.
Feels like memory, tenderness and death.
Start with Ζωή.
Markoras was born in Cephalonia and spent much of his life in Corfu, where he moved in the same circles as Solomos and the Ionian poets, writing a rich, heavily accented demotic that resisted the Athens purists.
Flowers that bloom and die without a single person seeing them.
Λουλούδια οὐρανοπότιστα, ποῦ μὲς τὸ λόγγο βγαίνουνκ’ ἐκεῖ σκορποῦν τὸ μόσχο τους καὶ ἀγνώριστα πεθαίνουν·δάκρυα νεροῦ, ποῦ χύνειβρυσοῦλα ξερολίβαδου, καὶ ἡ γῆ τὰ καταπίνει.Φτωχό, πανέρμο χάλασμα, τὸ μάτι μου σὲ βρέχειμὲ τῆς καρδιᾶς τὰ κλάϋματα, καὶ τρέχουν τοῦτα, ὡς τρέχειτοῦ πόνου μου τὸ κῦμα,σὰ βλέπω δίχως ὄνομα χορταριασμένο μνῆμα. Books by Γεράσιμος Μαρκοράς
Χάρος
Γεράσιμος Μαρκοράς, 1898
Nineteenth-century Heptanesian poems on death, orphanhood and the dead we keep talking to — written by a poet who buried a brother and made elegy feel like tenderness.
Ο Αρίονας
Γεράσιμος Μαρκοράς, 1890
The poet Arion, thrown into the sea by pirates, sings for his life — a Greek romance of music, rescue, and a love that turns poison into honey.
Λυρικά
Γεράσιμος Μαρκοράς, 1890
A Heptanesian poet of the generation after Solomos writes of exile, graves and the small consolations of song — direct, musical, and startlingly modern in its grief.
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