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How Twentieth Century Greek Scholars Influenced the Works of Nineteenth Century Greek Translators of ‘The Poems of Ossian’ by James Macpherson
English Brutal Colonisation of the Seven Islands: The Poems of Ossian by James Macpherson
After the failure of the first strike of the 1821 Greek Revolution against the Ottoman Empire, which began in Moldovia in February, it continued in the Peloponnese one month later. The uprising resulted in victory with the formation of the Modern Greek state; its President was Jianis Capodistria, a Corfiot. Greece was a state born mutilated in 1828 as it excluded: Epiros, Thessalia, Chios Mytilene, Samos, Crete and the Dodecanese Islands under Ottoman rule. The Ionian Islands were under English control, ostensibly known as the 'British Protectorate'. The second expansion of the Greek state in the nineteenth century was engendered by Radical Ionian Greeks who rebelled against the Englsh who had tyrannised the Seven Islands for almost fifty years until 1864 when they united with Greece. The influence of Celtic literature through the works of The Poems of Ossian by the Scottish antiquarian James Macpherson and Irish Melodies and 'Imitation of Ossian' by the Irish scholar Thomas Moore inspired the works of Seven Islands radical intellectuals, which provide hidden code that coincided with political events at the time to unite the oppressed. The main translator of The Poems of Ossia was Panayiotis Paqas, a Kephalonai scholar. He was the successor of Rhigas Velestinlis, the protomartyr of the Greek Revolution and follower of the national poet, the Zakynthian Dionysius Solomos. Panas aimed to unite and spiritually uplift the people by conveying the hope of living under freedom, equality, and fraternity; to live under democracy, without a monarchy. Neglected by the Greek Academy in the twentieth century do these translations of this Celtic literature and its influence remain in obscurity in this century? To what extent did the English have the right legally to gift5 the Seven Islands to Modern Greece in 1864? Has the sacrifice and patriotism of those who fought for the union of the Seven Islands with Greece been included in the school curriculum.
You lovely moon—I remember coming here, so anxious, to this hill to stare at you at the turning of the year. How you loomed there, how you do; how when you do, you shine! But now I shiver, clouded, from the tears that soak my lashes: and then your face smiles in my eyes. My life has been so painful, and so it is; and its style stays the same, oh moon, my lover moon. And yet the memory delights me, and the memory of the epoch of my grief. In time of youth (when hope still has so far a way to go, and memory so short), which needs the thankful remembrance of things past, how sad those things still are—and how the panic lasts!
Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837) was an Italian poet of the early nineteenth century. He possessed formidable talents in a range of other fields as well, including philosophy and linguistics. His enormous commonplace book, or Zibaldone, was recently published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the first time in English in 2013.
Spencer Lenfield has reported and written essays for Harvard Magazine, Open Letters Monthly, and the Atlantic Online, including a recent profile of the poet/translator David Ferry. A native of Michigan, he read Classics at the University of Oxford.
The Bibliography of George Tertsetis. Hellenic Dimiourgia
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Rhigas Velestinlis et les Transformations Juridiques
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Cordahi, A., 2002. Rhigas Velestinlis et les Transformations Juridiques. In: Rhigas
Vélestinlis (1757-1798): Intellectuel et combattant de la liberté, Actes du
Colloque International UNESCO, 12 et 13 décembre 1998. Paris:
Unesco/Desmos, pp.226-256.
Translations of Novels and Short Stories (1830-1880). Athens: Periplous
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Denisis, S., 1995. Translations of Novels and Short Stories (1830-1880). Athens:
Periplous. [in Greek]