Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Life in the Tomb by Stratis Myrivilis Stratis Myrivilis. Efstratios Stamatopoulos [lower-alpha 1] (30 June 1890 – 19 July 1969) was a Greek writer. He is known for writing novels, novellas, and short stories under the pseudonym Stratis Myrivilis . [lower-alpha 2] He is associated with the "Generation of the '30s". [1] He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times (1960, 1962, 1963). [2] Contents. Biography [ edit | edit source ] Myrivilis was born in the village of Sykaminea (Συκαμινέα), also known as Sykamia (Συκαμιά), on the north coast of the island of Lesbos (then part of the Ottoman Empire), in 1890. [3] There he spent his childhood years until, in 1905, he was sent to the town of Mytilene to study at the Gymnasium. In 1910 he completed his secondary education and took a post as a village schoolmaster, but gave that up after one year and enrolled at Athens University to study law. However, his university education was cut short when he volunteered to fight in the First Balkan War in 1912. After the Balkan Wars, he returned home to a Lesbos free from Turkish rule and united with the motherland Greece. There he made a name for himself as a columnist and as a writer of poetry and fiction. He published his first book in 1915: a set of six short stories collected together under the general title of Red Stories . In World War I, Myrivilis saw active service in the army of Eleftherios Venizelos' breakaway government on the Macedonian front and also in the Asia Minor Campaign which followed. He returned to Lesbos in 1922, after the Campaign's catastrophic end. On 28 June 1920 he married Eleni Dimitriou. They had three children. From April 1923 to January 1924, Myrivilis published, in serialised form, the first version of his First World War novel Life in the Tomb in the weekly newspaper Kambana . A longer, revised version was published in Athens in 1930, and almost overnight, Myrivilis became famous throughout Greece. Life in the Tomb established him as a master craftsman of Greek prose, and the work itself was seen as a turning point in the development of Greek prose fiction, marking its coming of age. [4] After the success of Life in the Tomb , Myrivilis settled in Athens where he worked as editor of the newspaper Demokratia . The newspaper ceased publication after one year however, and he made a living writing columns and short stories for various newspapers and periodicals. In 1936, he was made General Programme Director for the Greek National Broadcasting Institute—a post which he held until 1951, excluding the period of German occupation when he resigned after a final broadcast in which he reminded the Greek people of their noble resistance to the Italian invasion of Greece and called on them to continue resisting with dignity and unity. After the occupation, he was given a post in the Library of Parliament and, in 1946, he founded the National Society of Greek Writers and was elected its first president. During the Greek civil war he became one of the most strong opponents of the communists. In 1958, after having been nominated unsuccessfully six times, he was finally made a member of the Academy of Athens, a belated recognition of his important contribution to Greek literature. ISBN 13: 9781932455052. "Life in the Tomb" a war novel written in journal form by a sergeant in the trenches, has been the single most successful and widely read serious work of fiction in Greece since its publication in serial form in 1923-1924, having sold more than 80,000 copies in book form despite its inclusion on the list of censored novels under both the Metaxas regime and the German occupation. Published in nearly a dozen translations, it is the first volume of a trilogy containing "The Mermaid Madonna" and "The Schoolmistress with the Golden Eyes, both of which have been available in a variety of languages. "Life in the Tomb" has moments of great literary beauty and of more than one kind of literary power. In 1917, Myrivilis was twenty-five. "Before I entered the trenches I had not the slightest inkling of life's true worth. From now on, however, I shall savour its moments one by one. " This. truthful fiction. [makes] one see. It is antiheroic and completely convincing. - Peter Levi [Peter Bien] has turned a Greek masterpiece into something not much less than an English one. - C.M. Woodhouse, "Times Literary supplement" "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. Shipping: US$ 3.77 Within U.S.A. Other Popular Editions of the Same Title. Featured Edition. ISBN 10: 0704300397 ISBN 13: 9780704300392 Publisher: Interlink Publishing+group Inc, 1987 Softcover. Cosmos. 2004 Softcover. Customers who bought this item also bought. Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace. 1. Life in the Tomb. Book Description Condition: New. book. Seller Inventory # M1932455051. Greatest Greeks. An online archive of the greatest Greeks in history. Recent Posts. Photios Theon of Smyrna Apollodorus of Damascus Stilpo Chrysostomos of Smyrna Dimitri Nanopoulos. Archives. Categories. (139) (38) (48) (50) Recent Comments. DR STAN SAVAS on Constantine XI Palaiologos Theon of Smyrna… on Archytas Theon of Smyrna… on Eudoxus of Cnidus Theon of Smyrna… on Plato Telemachus Odysseide… on Isidore of Miletus & Anthe… Στατιστικά. 84,880 επισκέψεις. Stratis Myrivilis. Writer (1890 – 1969) Stratis Myrivilis’ true name was Eustratios Stamatopoulos. He was one of the most important representatives of the Generation of the 30’s, a generation of writers, artists and scholars who flourished during the first half of the 20 th century. Myrivilis belongs to the generation of Greeks who lived all the major wars fought by Greece, developed a deep patriotic esteem and made Greece reach an internationally recognised level in literature. He participated as a volunteer in the 1 st and 2 nd Balkan Wars, where he was injured. Later, he fought in the 1 st World War and the Greco- Turkish War of 1919-1922. He settled in Athens and worked in a number of newspapers, radio stations and as a librarian in the Greek Parliament. He founded the National Society of Literary Writers of Greece as well as the Greek Society of Literary Writers. Myrivilis was primarily noted for his novels and short stories. His first novel, Ἡ Ζωὴ ἐν Τάφῳ ( Life in Tomb ) in 1924, was written during the Balkan Wars and was about the atrocities of war, which Myrivilis had personally experienced. It was followed with The Schoolmistress with the Golden Eyes in 1933, which tells the story of a man returning from war and falling in love with his friend’s widowed wife and The Mermaid Madonna in 1948, a story about the struggle of the refugees from Asia Minor to find a new home in the island of Lesbos. All three of his novels have powerful anti-war messages. A big part of his work consists of short stories, novellas, essays and children’s books. Most of them were translated into foreign languages and gained worldwide followers. Characterized by a strong sense of realism, lyricism and tradition, Myrivilis drew inspiration from his own life experiences and from Hellenism, the eternal source of influence. He believed very much in the Megali Idea (the Great Idea), the liberation of the subjugated Greek territories and as a patriot, he strongly opposed communism. Myrivilis was awarded the National Prize of Prose in 1940 for his novella The Turquoise Book . In 1958 he became a member of the Academy of Athens while in 1959 he was honoured with the Order of George I. He was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1960, 1962 and 1963. Η Ζωή του Μεγάλου μας Πεζογράφου . Στράτης Μυριβήλης. Stratis-myrivilis.weebly.com. Web. Στράτης Μυριβήλης 1890 -1969. Σαν Σήμερα. Sansimera.gr. Web. Κοινοποίηση: Like this: One thought on “ Stratis Myrivilis ” Hi. John Philoponus was not Greek, and Plotinus was from upper Egypt. Recently, some enthusiastic Greeks alleged St Anthony was Greek. As an Alexandrian Coptologist, I have respect for Greeks, many are married into my family. The Greek Consul in Alexandria is dean of the diplomatic Corpus, because we feel Alexandria was Egyptian and Greek simultaneously, and that mathematics is Alexandrian (not Greek). By the way, Euclede is for sure Alexandrian, but Kline confirms , but if he worked on conic sections, where could he find them other in Alexandria. Of course intellectuals of third world nations are looking for assurance, You cannot acquire by imagination. I love the Mythical Greece. Greek Thebes (of Seven gates) was a simulation of the glorious Thebes of 100 gates. Stratis Myrivilis. Efstratios Stamatopoulos, better known by the pseudonym Stratis Myrivilis, was born in the village of Sykamnia on the north coast of the island of Lesbos in 1890.[1] There he spent his childhood years until, in 1905, he was sent to the town of Mytilene to study at the Gymnasium. In 1910 he completed his secondary education and took a post as a village schoolmaster, but gave that up after one year and enrolled at Athens University to study law. However, his university education was cut short when he volunteered to fight in the 1st Balkan War in 1912. He was wounded twice, in the leg, at the battle of Kilkis in 1913 and was taken to a hospital in Thessaloniki where one bullet was removed. He played host to the other (as he used to put it) for sixteen years—it was not removed until 1929. After the Balkan Wars, he returned home to a Lesbos free from Turkish rule and united with the motherland Greece. There he worked as a journalist, making a name for himself as a columnist and as a writer of poetry and fiction, and acquiring a large and enthusiastic personal following in the town of Mytilene—so much so that one young lady reader named her pet lamb after him! He published his first book early in 1915: a set of six short stories collected together under the general title of Red Stories. The volume received some critical acclaim on the island but did not become well known elsewhere. Nevertheless it was a fine and promising collection—the work of a mature, if youthful, intelligence—which shows Myrivilis to be already a careful craftsman of the written word and a keen observer of human motivation and behaviour. Peace did not last long. Events in Europe had been moving steadily towards war, and Myrivilis saw active service in the army of Venizelos’ breakaway government on the Macedonian Front and also in the Asia Minor Campaign which followed the end of World War I. He returned to Lesbos in 1922, after the Campaign’s catastrophic end, disillusioned, and physically and mentally exhausted. The Asia Minor Disaster, as the defeat of the Greek army by the Turkish nationalists came to be known, marked the end of an era: the Great Idea, the dream of a greater Greece which had sustained Greek nationalism for over a century, had collapsed irrevocably and it was time to review the past and to create a new vision for the future. Myrivilis set about making his contribution to the task with the founding of the weekly newspaper Kambana, which described itself as serving the interests of the returned reservists and the people of Lesbos. Its slogan, a line from a poem by Kostis Palamas, was: “We too want a place in the sun”. It was in Kambana that Myrivilis published, in serialised form, the first version of his remarkable novel Life in the Tomb (April 1923 - January 1924) and this was immediately followed by the serialisation of another, equally remarkable work, Ilias Venezis’ The Number 31328 —a work which might never have been written had it not been for Myrivilis’ insistence that Venezis must write an account of his horrific experiences as a hostage in Turkey.[2] Although the first version of Life in the Tomb was highly praised, it was not until a longer, revised version was published in Athens in 1930 that the novel acquired the wide readership it deserved. Almost overnight, Myrivilis became famous throughout Greece. Life in the Tomb established him as the master craftsman of Greek prose and the work itself was seen as a turning point in the development of Greek prose fiction, marking its coming of age. It was, many felt, the first Greek prose work comparable “to any foreign work”.[3] Life in the Tomb is an extremely powerful novel. In its exact portrayal of the sheer horror of modern warfare it is unequalled; but it is not so much an anti-war novel as a novel about the failure of belief and the intensity of the desire simply to live, and to live free, which wells up when all ideals are gone. In the novel, the background to the actions of men and machines is always nature—vast, infinite, and all-powerful, man’s element and man’s loss. It is within that nature that man’s place in the sun is to be found: “I want to live”, says one of the novel’s main characters, “I want to live under the sky like a blade of grass, yes, like a small insect. I have that right, don’t I?”[4] The statement sums up a theme which Myrivilis was to return to again and again and which is especially prominent in Vasilis Arvanitis. After the success of Life in the Tomb, Myrivilis settled in Athens where he worked as editor of the newspaper Demokratia . The newspaper ceased publication after one year however and he had to make a living writing columns and short stories for various newspapers and periodicals. It must have been a period of hardship for Myrivilis; it is notoriously difficult for writers in Greece to earn their living solely through their writing, and he had by that time a family to support. His financial situation was eased somewhat when, in 1936, he was made General Programme Director for the Greek National Broadcasting Institute—a post which he held until 1951, excluding the period of German occupation when he resigned after a final broadcast in which he reminded the Greek people of their noble resistance to the Italian invasion and called on them to resist with dignity and unity the German armed forces sent by Hitler to accomplish what Mussolini’s troops had failed to accomplish.[5] After the occupation, he was given a post in the Library of Parliament and, in 1946, he founded the National Society of Greek Writers and was elected its first president. In 1958, after having been nominated unsuccessfully six times, he was finally made a member of the Academy of Athens—a belated official recognition of his important contribution to Greek literature. He died, after a long illness, in an Athens hospital on the 19th of July, 1969. Apart from Life in the Tomb , Myrivilis wrote two other full-length novels, The Schoolmistress with the Golden Eyes (1933) and The Mermaid Madonna (1949), which with Life in the Tomb form a loose trilogy covering the crucial period from the 1st World War to the Asia Minor Disaster and the period of readjustment which followed.[6] He also wrote three novellas, of which Vasilis Arvanitis is one, and numerous short stories. Pavlos Andronikos. This brief biography is from Vasilis Arvanitis by Stratis Myrivilis, trans. P. Andronikos (Armidale: University of New England Publishing Unit, 1983.) Unfortunately this book is out of print at present, and seems likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. If you need a copy, please contact me, and I may be able to help. Footnotes. It used to be thought that Myrivilis was born in 1892, but George Valetas argues convincingly for an 1890 birthdate. See G. Valetas, “Investigation into the Year of Myrivilis’ Birth”, Aiolika Grammata , 2(1972), 306-7. See G. Valetas, “Myrivilis of Mytilene: His Early Years and His First Great Creative Period”, Nea Estia 88(1970), 949-50. Much of the information for this brief biography of Myrivilis is drawn from Valetas’ article. Andreas Karandonis, “The Prose of Stratis Myrivilis”, trans. J. A. Case-Kessissoglou, The Charioteer , 1(1960), 92. Life in the Tomb (Athens: Estias, 1959), p.153. See Stratis Myrivilis, The Literary Quarter of an Hour (Athens: Estias, n.d.), pp. 17-25. All three of Myrivilis’ novels have been translated into English: Life in the Tomb by Peter Bien (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1977), The Schoolmistress with the Golden Eyes by Philip Sherrard (London: Hutchinson, 1964), and The Mermaid Madonna by Abbot Rick (London: Hutchinson, 1959). Leopard. With the beginnings of World War I well prepared by the two Balkan wars of 1912-1913 (briefly discussed in my review of Richard C. Hall's The Balkan Wars 1912-1913: Prelude to the First World War) and with the Great Powers raring to go at each other after decades of planning and amassing weapons, at the beginning of August, 1914, Germany invaded Belgium and Luxembourg on its way to deliver a first and final blow to France (Home Before the Leaves Fall: A New History of the German Invasion of 1914 by Ian Senior) while Austro-Hungary invaded Serbia to put a swift end to the Slavic upstarts' pretensions (The Gardeners of Salonika: The Macedonian Campaign, 1915-1918, by Alan Palmer). None of it went according to plan. Greece, triumphant in both of the Balkan wars against its Ottoman and Bulgarian arch-enemies (the enmity towards the Bulgarians going back even further than that against the Turks), was torn between standing at the side of the powers who were responsible both for its liberation from the Ottoman Empire in the 1820's and for some of the territorial gains the Greeks had made at the cost of the Turks in the meantime (this faction was led by the on-again, off-again Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos) or with the Central Powers (the King of Greece was related to the Kaiser's family and to the British royal family, but he and the Greek high command were strongly bound by admiration for Prussian military values to Berlin) and officially opted for neutrality. However, the Entente had "legal" rights on the Greek peninsula dating back to treaties made during Greece's war of independence, and French and British divisions soon landed at Salonika (Thessaloniki) on the Macedonian coast won by the Greeks in the wars of 1912-1913. Alan Palmer gives an excellent history of the politics and warfare taking place in southeast Europe after this point in The Gardeners of Salonika, including the formation of a rival government by Venizelos and the subsequent forced abdication of the Greek King. His son came around to Venizelos' point of view. So, finally, Greece came into the war against the Bulgarians, Austro-Hungarians, Turks and Germans,(*) providing a weight of numbers which was important to the final collapse of the Central Powers on the southeastern front. Efstratios Stamatopoulos (1890-1969) - Stratis Myrivilis was his nom de plume - served as a soldier in both the first Balkan War and the Macedonian campaigns of WWI, and Life in the Tomb - first serialized during 1923-1924 and then published in final form in 1930 - is based upon his experiences on the front in WWI. It is reportedly one of the most important books in modern Greek literature, both in its popular resonance and in its literary qualities. Presented in the (not seriously sustained) pose of a journal written by a Greek soldier for his fiancée back home, Life in the Tomb is told in a figurative language which contrasts mightily with the very direct diction spiced with soldier's argot used by Maurice Genevoix to describe his WWI experiences in Sous Verdun, Août - Octobre 1914. In fact, for my taste Myrivilis sometimes gives us too much of a good thing, as in this excerpt from a passage describing the excitement of the anti-royalist crowds on Lesbos when Venizelos' rebel government was announced: Commotion everywhere: waves of intoxicating uproar formed from a thousand disparate voices. The city's church bells had gone insane. They cried in exultation above our heads, over the red-tiled roofs, like a flock of frenzied, hooting archangels beating lances against brass shields and filling the air with a horrifying reveille. With their brazen voices and frightening wings they made the atmosphere as turbulent as a storm-lashed sea. "Frenzied, hooting archangels", "horrifying reveille"? Maybe not. But likening the rolling, deafening sound of a city full of pealing bells to "beating lances against brass shields" works very well for me, making the cliché "as turbulent as a storm-lashed sea" even more disappointing. However your personal taste may react to this passage, there is a good deal of this florid language in the novel. I don't know about Stamatopoulos himself (since this is the only book from his hand I have read), but his journal writer is a romantic, a poetaster who appeals often to the ideals of the educated middle classes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, of course including the Christian God and an idealized vision of his fiancée going beyond donning rose-tinted glasses into the ideological. So how does such a narrator react to the all-too-coarse reality of warfare? Though literary effusions with a distinct tendency towards hyperbole are never more than a paragraph or two away, war is very much present in this text - the forced night marches to avoid the notice of the reconnaissance aircraft, night after night after night; devastated towns shelled with poison gas and phosphorous; the nearly constant filth and lack of potable water; meals snuck in once a day; the tedium, discomfort and mortal danger of life in the trenches(**); the inevitable reduction of life to its lowest conceivable denominator. And then there are the random moments when the shells sweep in and one must cower and endure, or the rare moments when two bands of screaming maniacs try to murder each other. Only generals like Patton and Lee can love war; for the common soldier it is a misery without compare, alleviated only by the incredibly powerful bonds of comradeship such misery always forges between the men sharing these tribulations. Myrivilis captures all of this very well. He also gives all a Greek accent. Though so much is the same whether the sad sack in the trench is British or German or French, yet there are differences. The narrator shares his dugout in the trench with his younger brother (!); his memories and fantasies are cast back to the island of Lesbos; to the south, in neighboring Thessaly, the royalists were ready and eager to receive deserters from the rebels' ranks - as the weeks in the trenches became months and then years, they enfolded no small number in their welcoming arms. What better place than in the army to find a large cast of characters under extraordinary pressures, from pompous peacetime officers - murderously incompetent in war - to frightened, teenaged foot soldiers pining for their sweethearts or, failing that, their mothers? Additional characters come to life in the narrator's extended reminiscences of life on Lesbos, breaking the increasing tension in the main narrative. But, surely, the most memorable is the narrator himself, the man through whose eyes we see the world for 300 pages and whose initial fervor (all are volunteers in this Archipelago Division) shrivels: I engaged in insurrection against our lawful government in order to honor the Greek promise to stand by the Serbs as allies. Now I am helping the Serbs to enslave the Greeks of Monastir. I came here in order to stand side by side with the French and to be killed with them for the sake of democratic ideals. When I arrived I found them thrashing their black troops and heard them greet us in the trenches with the cry "chiens grecs". In spite of oneself, one becomes quite attached to this 22 year old disillusioned idealist, even though one knows from the first pages of the book that he dies a particularly horrible death. A novel of the failure of faith in ideals in the face of reality, of life under extreme stress, and what ordinary men do in order to continue, all seen through the quietly reflective eyes of the increasingly engaging narrator. I have to agree with the Greeks - this is a very fine book. (*) The Bulgarians came into WWI late in order to get some revenge on the Serbs and Romanians, their principal adversaries from the second Balkan War. It backfired badly. The Turks were mostly occupied elsewhere against the Russians and British (and the latter's Arab allies). (**) For also on this front months and years were spent in fixed positions with deadly squabbles over a 100 meters of useless ground.