Dionysios Solomos Poems

The poems of Dionysios Solomos

Dionysios Solomos (Greek: Διονύσιος Σολωμός, 8 April 1798 - 9 February 1857) was a Greek poet from Zakynthos.

He is best known for writing the Hymn to Liberty (Greek: Ύμνος Εις Την Ελευθερίαν), of which the first two stanzas, set to music by Nikolaos Mantzaros, became the Greek national anthem in 1865. He was the central figure of the Heptanese School of poetry, and is considered the national poet of Greece - not only because he wrote the national anthem, but also because he contributed to the preservation of earlier poetic tradition and highlighted its usefulness to modern literature. Other notable poems include Ο Κρητικός (Τhe Cretan), Ελεύθεροι Πολιορκημένοι (The Free Besieged) and others. A characteristic of his work is that no poem except the Hymn to Liberty was completed, and almost nothing was published during his lifetime.

Dionysius Solomos has been called by many the "father of modern Greek poetry" in that it was he who, in the opening decades of the nineteenth century, rebaptized Greek poetry in the ancestral springs of inspiration and language and gave it an orientation that has been followed by such major poets as Palamas, Sikelianos and Seferis. "With Solomos," Zissimos Lorenzatos has written, "the problem of artistic expression enters our cultural life, as the problem of independence entered our national life."

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Ο Διονύσιος Σολωμός (8 Απριλίου 1798 - 9 Φεβρουαρίου 1857) ήταν Ζακυνθινός Έλληνας ποιητής, περισσότερο γνωστός για τη συγγραφή του ποιήματος Ύμνος εις την Ελευθερίαν το 1823, οι πρώτες δυο στροφές του οποίου έγιναν ο ελληνικός εθνικός ύμνος. Κεντρικό πρόσωπο της Επτανησιακής σχολής, ο Διονύσιος Σολωμός θεωρήθηκε και θεωρείται ο εθνικός ποιητής της Ελλάδας, όχι μόνον γιατί έγραψε τον Εθνικό Ύμνο, αλλά και γιατί αξιοποίησε την προγενέστερη ποιητική παράδοση (κρητική λογοτεχνία, Δημοτικό τραγούδι) και ήταν ο πρώτος που καλλιέργησε συστηματικά τη δημοτική γλώσσα και άνοιξε τον δρόμο για τη χρησιμοποίησή της στη λογοτεχνία, αλλάζοντας ακόμη περισσότερο τη στάθμη της.