Vitsentzos Kornaros

Vitsentzos Kornaros (Greek Βιτσέντζος Κορνάρος ) (* 1553, † 1613 or 1614) was a Greek poet. He is one of the most important representatives of Cretan literature and was the author of the narrative poem Erotokritos. The attribution of religious drama Η Θυσία του Αβραάμ ( German: The sacrifice of Abraham) to him is not maintained by recent research in favor of an anonymous author.

Biography

About the origin of Kornaros there is no absolutely secure information. The traditional representations are based on the statements that are the poet himself at the end of his work: he called the name Vitsentzos, the family name Kornaros, as the birthplace to Sitia and the town of Kastro (Heraklion ), in which he has married. Regarding his family and his life, say the latest research shows that he was born on March 26, 1553 in Sitia, the son of Iakovos Kornaros and Zambeta Demetzo. He came from a presumably very rich Hellenized noble Venetian family ( cf. Cornaro ). His brother, Andrew Kornaros had a history of Crete wrote that was never published.

He lived in Sitia to about 1580, when he retired (now Heraklion) to Chandakas. There he married Marieta Zeno, with whom he had two daughters: Eleni and Katerina. Until 1591, he held administrative offices, and at the time of the plague ( 1591 to 1593 ), he took over the office of the Health Officer. He was also a member of a literary society, the Academy of Strange, who had founded his brother Andrew.

He died in 1613 or 1614 in Heraklion and was buried in the monastery of St. Francis, the exact cause of death is not known.

Erotokritos

The most important work Kornaros ' was Erotokritos (Greek Ερωτόκριτος ), a rhymed novel by about ten thousand fünfzehnsilbigen verses. His language is the Cretan dialect, however, so that it represents a particular literary tool, and with a verse -based folk songs, though the work is still very different from them at the same time.

Direct template for the work is the very popular in the 15th century Paris et Vienne by Pierre de la Cypede. However, the Erotokritos is not just a simple copy, but a creative variation with better internal structure, as compared to the original French, it has a solid structure and less reps. Kornaros knew the French plant apparently as an Italian translation, because it seems very unlikely that he was of French powerful.

Content

The story takes place in ancient Athens, but the description of the era goes better with Western chivalry. The contents can be divided into the following five sections:

Handwritten and printed version

The work was very popular and was circulated in manuscript form in the 17th century. In 1713 it was printed in Venice from a Cretan who had collected many manuscripts on which it was based, to create a sufficiently faithful and credible version. None of the manuscripts has been preserved, is but one fragment from 1710, but the less opaque with the Venetian edition. Probably the inscription was aborted after the printed version appeared in 1713.

Distribution and reverberation

First to notice its effects in Cretan " mandinades " ( Greek: μαντινάδες ). In Crete there also an almost mythical tradition has created: The names of the heroes have until today continued to live as Christian name and in the popular imagination, the term " palace of Hercules " for the temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens. The large spread is due to intellectual travelers throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, which claimed that people of Crete had memorized the whole work. Also Giorgos Seferis noted that in Smyrna beginning of the 20th century, was the understanding of the text, just in spite of the strong idiomatic language.

But the greatest proof of his influence is the impact it has on the gahabt modern Greek poetry. Examples of poems that were beeinflosst of versification, are The Cretans of Dionysios Solomos, Our Lady of Angelos Sikelianos, the Epitaph of Giannis Ritsos and the New Erotokritos Pantelis Prevelakis.

Negative assessments of the work have of course no lack. Many scholars of the 18th century considered it an inferior reading because of its popular language, especially Dionysius Fotinos had converted the factory in scholarly, higher, as he thought, language form. Andreas Kalvos regarded it as monotonous and Iakovos Polylas rejected it because of its idiomatic language.

1929 was directed by D. Synadinos a play based on the Erotokritos. 1966 filmed Nikos Koundouros the work. The poem was also often set to music and is very popular in Crete in this form. The Cretan composer Nikos Mamangakis wrote the opera in 1985 Erotokritos and Aretousa.

Expenditure

• Βιτσέντζος Κορνάρος: Ερωτόκριτος. Επιμέλεια Στυλιανού Αλεξίου. Εστία, Αθήνα 1995 ( Νέα Ελληνική Βιβλιοθήκη ); first: Βιτσέντζος Κορνάρος: Ερωτόκριτος. Κριτική έκδοση, εισαγωγή, σημειώσεις, γλωσσάριο. Μεγάλη έκδοση: Ερμής, Athens 1980 μικρή έκδοση: Ερμής, Athens 1985.