43 Facts About Dionysios Solomos

Dionysios Solomos is best known for writing the Hymn to Liberty, which was set to music by Nikolaos Mantzaros and became the Greek and Cypriot national anthem in 1865 and 1966 respectively.

Dionysios Solomos was the central figure of the Heptanese School of poetry.

Dionysios Solomos is considered the national poet of Greece, not only because he wrote the national anthem, but because he contributed to the preservation of earlier poetic tradition and highlighted its usefulness to modern literature.

Nikolaos Solomos was of Cretan origin; his family were Cretan refugees who settled on Zakynthos in 1670 after Crete's conquest by the Ottoman Empire in 1669.

Dionysios Solomos's father married Dionysios' mother a day before he died on 27 February 1807, making the young Dionysios legitimate and a co-heir to the count's estate, along with his half-brother.

Dionysios Solomos went to Italy with his tutor, who returned to his home town, Cremona.

In November 1815, Dionysios Solomos was enrolled at Pavia University's Faculty of Law, from which he graduated in 1817.

Dionysios Solomos's improvised Italian poems during that period of time were published in 1822, under the title Rime Improvvisate.

Dionysios Solomos' encounter with Spyridon Trikoupis in 1822 was a turning-point in his writing.

Dionysios Solomos explained to Trikoupis that his Greek was not fluent, and Trikoupis helped him in his studies of Christopoulos' poems.

The first important turning point in the Greek works of Dionysios Solomos was the Hymn to Liberty that was completed in May 1823-a poem inspired by the Greek revolution 1821.

Thanks to this poem, Dionysios Solomos was revered until his death, since the rest of his work was only known to his small circle of admirers and his "students".

However, Dionysios did not leave Zakynthos solely because of his family problems; Solomos had been planning to visit the island since 1825.

Between 1833 and 1838, having restored the relations with his brother, Dionysios Solomos' life was perturbed by a series of trials where his half-brother Ioannis Leontarakis was claiming part of their father's legacy, arguing that he was the legal child of count Nikolaos Dionysios Solomos, since his mother was pregnant before the father's death.

On Corfu, Dionysios Solomos soon found himself at the admirers' and poets' center of attention, a group of well educated intellectuals with liberal and progressive ideas, a deep knowledge of art and with austere artistic pretensions.

The most important people Dionysios Solomos was acquainted to were Nikolaos Mantzaros, Ioannis and Spyridon Zampelios, Ermannos Lountzis, Niccolo Tommaseo, Andreas Mustoxydis, Petros Vrailas Armenis, Iakovos Polylas, Ioulios Typaldos, Andreas Laskaratos and Gerasimos Markoras.

Polylas, Typaldos and Markoras were Dionysios Solomos' students, constituting the circle referred to as the "solomian poets", which signifies Greek's poetry flourishing, several decades before the appearance of the New Athenian School, a second poetical renaissance inspired by Kostis Palamas.

Serious health problems made their appearance in 1851 and Dionysios Solomos' character became even more temperamental.

Dionysios Solomos alienated himself from friends such as Polylas and after his third stroke the poet did not leave his house.

Dionysios Solomos's fame had reached such heights so when the news about his death became known, everyone mourned.

Dionysios Solomos was exposed to the cultural and political ferment of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution, and he identified with Italian national sentiments for unification and liberation from the Habsburgs.

In 1824, Dionysios Solomos composed The Dialogue, dealing with the language issue.

Dionysios Solomos's arguments are based on the French Age of Enlightenment on the subject of the use of national languages and on examples of Italian poetry, by which he tries to prove that no word is vulgar in itself but gets its meaning by the poem's context.

Between 1826 and 1829, Dionysios Solomos worked on the prose-like poem I Gynaika tis Zakynthos, a work of a satirical character, that mainly analyses the Evil.

In 1833, Dionysios Solomos wrote his first important work during his maturity, O Kritikos, in iambic fifteen-syllable verse, as a result of the Cretan's literature influence.

Dionysios Solomos is described as the 'goddess' and reads in his heart the story of his heroic and ultimately futile struggles against the Turks in his native island which all but charms him out of his mortal body.

Between 1833 and 1844, Dionysios Solomos edited the second draft of The Free Besieged, a poem inspired by the Third Siege of Missolonghi and the heroic exodus of its inhabitants, written in a rhyming fifteen-syllable verse.

Since the beginning, Dionysios Solomos was in the center of the literary circles of Zakynthos.

Dionysios Solomos shone like the most beautiful gem of Greece's poetical crown.

The funeral orations of Dionysios Solomos' students were of course more essential and referred to the poet's unpublished works, many of which they had heard their teacher reciting.

The perception of Dionysios Solomos' work changed radically after the long-awaited publication in 1859.

Dionysios Solomos's uncompleted work was an unpleasant surprise and created puzzlement to the newspapers which praised the greatest Greek poet after his death did not mention anything about the publication of the works.

Valaoritis wrote to Constantinos Asopius in 1859 after the poet's death: "the nation's hopes were deceived" and in 1877 in a letter to Emmanouil Roidis he wrote that Dionysios Solomos left us "only a hymn and some incoherent verses".

Dionysios Solomos's epigram on the destruction of Psara, an event of the Greek War of Independence, influenced by classical forms, is a marvel of rhythm and brevity in six lines of anapaest.

The only works published during Dionysios Solomos' lifetime were the Hymn to Liberty, an extract from Lampros, the Ode to the Nun and the epigram To Francisca Fraser.

Dionysios Solomos was constantly editing his works and was striving towards total perfection of form, making efforts to get rid of anything excessive that destroyed their essential lyrical substance.

Dionysios Solomos's manuscripts do not comprise engrossed works; on the contrary, they reveal all stages of editing, without their latest version being the final one.

Sometimes Polylas added verses that he had heard Dionysios Solomos recite and wrote down some alternative versions.

Only in the beginning of the 20th century was it made clear that no more manuscripts existed and that Dionysios Solomos had not completed his poems.

Later on, Dionysios Solomos was considered by several poets and critics as the forerunner of "pure poetry" and the fragmented nature of his work did not "disturb" any more; on the contrary, it was considered as an advantage.

Dionysios Solomos is commonly referred to as Greece's "national poet" for his important legacy to Greek literature and national identity.

Dionysios Solomos has been interred in the mausoleum since 1968.

Dionysios Solomos sees visions of Solomos as he travels around Thessaloniki.