13 Facts About Kostas Karyotakis

Kostas Karyotakis is considered one of the most representative Greek poets of the 1920s and one of the first poets to use iconoclastic themes in Greece.

Kostas Karyotakis's poetry conveys a great deal of nature, imagery and traces of expressionism and surrealism.

Kostas Karyotakis had a significant, almost disproportionately progressive influence on later Greek poets.

Kostas Karyotakis gave existential depth as well as a tragic dimension to the emotional nuances and melancholic tones of the neo-Symbolist and new-Romantic poetry of the time.

Kostas Karyotakis was born in Tripoli, Greece, his father's occupation as a county engineer resulted in his early childhood and teenage years being spent in various places, following his family's successive moves around the Greek cities, including Argostoli, Lefkada, Larisa, Kalamata, Athens and Chania.

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Kostas Karyotakis started publishing poetry in various magazines for children in 1912.

George Skouras, a physician of the poet, wrote: "He was sick, he was syphilitic" and George Savidis, professor of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, who possessed the largest archive about Greek poets, revealed that Kostas Karyotakis was syphilitic, and that his brother, Thanasis Kostas Karyotakis, thought the disease to be a disgrace to the family.

In February 1928, Kostas Karyotakis was transferred to Patras although soon afterwards he spent a month on leave in Paris and in June 1928 he was sent yet again to Preveza by ship.

Kostas Karyotakis lived in Preveza only for 33 days, until his suicide on 21 July 1928 at age 31.

Kostas Karyotakis's work was in Prefecture of Preveza, in the Palios mansion, 10 Speliadou street, as a lawyer for control for land donations from State to refugees from the Asia Minor War of 1922.

Kostas Karyotakis's family offered to support him for an indefinite stay in Paris, but he refused knowing what a monetary sacrifice like this would entail for them.

Kostas Karyotakis's angst is felt in the poem "Preveza" which he wrote shortly before his suicide.

On 19 July 1928, Kostas Karyotakis went to Monolithi beach and kept trying to drown in the sea for ten hours, but failed in his attempt, because he was an avid swimmer as he himself wrote in his suicide note.