Andreas Kalvos

Andreas Kalvos (also Kalbos or Kalwos, Greek Ανδρέας Κάλβος, * 1792 on Zakynthos, † November 3, 1869 in Louth, Lincolnshire ) was a Greek writer of the 19th century.

Life

Kalvos was born as the son of an impoverished aristocrat in Zakynthos, which still was under Venetian rule. When he was ten years old, his father moved him and his brother to Livorno, where there was a large Greek community at that time. Kalvos was trained Italian and could write better in this language than in the Greek. When he was 20, his father died and he met the Italian poet Ugo Foscolo in Florence and became his private secretary and companion. Kalvos was strongly influenced by Foscolo and took over his devotion to classicism as well as its liberal political positions. He wrote three tragedies, treated the classical Greek themes, Theramenes, Danaides and Hippias.

In June 1816 Kalvos traveled to Foscolo in Switzerland and it with him to London, where they separated and estranged. 1819 Kalvos married an Englishwoman Marie Therese Thomas, who died soon after. He returned to Florence, where he joined the Carbonari and was recognized for it. Then he settled down in 1821 in Geneva, from where he moved on to Paris in 1824. In 1824 he published ten patriotic odes under the name of Lyra, in 1826 another band with ten odes entitled Lyrical. In his odes he treated the struggle of the Greeks against the Ottomans. In 1826 he settled in Corfu, where he lived for the next 26 years as a teacher of philosophy and Italian literature at the Ionian Academy. As a poet he was to publish nothing more.

Kalvos began to turn black dress and black paint his furniture. The circle around Dionysios Solomos took no notice of Kalvos, and he lay with many writers in the dispute. In 1852 he returned to England, where he married twenty years younger than Charlotte Augusta Wadams and headed with her in Lincolnshire a girls' school. He died on 3 November 1869. His work was forgotten and was rediscovered later Kostis Palamas, among other things. Of his poems have been translated into French, Spanish and Italian.

In 1960 his remains were transferred to Zakynthos.

Works (selection)

• Andrea Kalvou Odai, 1-20. hermēneutikē ekdosē. Vivliopōleion tēs Hestia ID Kollarou, Athens 1976.
• Ανδρέα Κάλβου Ωδαί. Κριτική έκδοση: Filippo Maria Pontani, εισαγωγή: Κωνσταντίνος Θησέως Δημαράς γλωσσάριο, Anna Gentilini. Ikaros, Athens, 1988.
• Odi ( Oden ). Università di Palermo, Istituto di filologia Greca, Palermo 1988.
• Hapanta. Ekdoseis " Kyrenia ", WBC 1988, ISBN 9963-7658-6-6.
• ¢ Ionia. Synecheia, Athens 1992, ISBN 960-7196-03-1.

• Giorgio Zora (ed.): Andrea Calbo. Opere italiane: Teramene, Le Danaidi e scritti minori. Rome 1938.
• Mario Vitti (ed.): A. Kalvos ei suoi scritti in italiano: Ippia, Teramene, Le stagioni dell'abate Meli, Le Danaidi e Pagine sparse. Napoli 1960.