Page 20 - Zakynthos Tourist Guide 2025

20

Ζakynthos

HOMELAND OF
IMPORTANT
PERSONALITIES
Dionysios Solomos

Zakynthos always maintained
a very high level of culture
and still does.

Dionysios Solomos but amid the altar of the soul.”
Our national poet Dionysios Solomos was On February 3, 1849 was decorated with the
Golden Cross of Christ, because “the poetry
born on April 8, 1798 in of the excited feelings of the people in the
Zakynthos , as the illegitimate child of Count struggle for national independence.”
Nicholas and maid of Angela Niclas. He died on February 9, 1957 in Corfu, fol-
At a very young age he lost and in 1808 he left lowing successive strokes. The bones were
to study in Italy, accompanied by the Italian transferred to Zakynthos in 1865 and initially
master Rossi. Seven years later took his diplo- placed in a small mausoleum on his grave
ma from the School of Cremona and enrolled Kalvou.
at the University of Pavia, where he reveived
his degree in Law. While studying at the Uni- Ugo Foskolo
versity, for which he never was interested, he Foscolo was born on the Ionian island of
began writing lyrics in Italian, and came into Zakynthos (Zante). His father was Andrea
contact with eminent philosophers, philol- Foscolo, an impoverished Venetian noble-
ogists and worthy representatives of literary man, and his mother Diamantina Spathis was
movement of the time. Greek.
In 1818 he returned to Zante, where he re- In 1788, on the death of his father, who
mained for ten years. There he began writing worked as a physician in Spalato, today Croa-
his first notable verses in the Greek language. tia (Split), the family removed to Venice, and
The first comprehensive Greek poem and at the University of Padua Foscolo completed
most well known is the Hymn to Liberty, an the studies begun at the Dalmatian grammar
extract of which was established as our Na- school.
tional Anthem. Shortly afterwards, he com- Among his Paduan teachers was the abbé
posed the lyric poem To the Death of Lord Cesarotti, whose version of Ossian had made
Byron followed the destruction of Psaron. The that work highly popular in Italy, and who
Farmakomeni, Lambros, In Nun, Cretan, The influenced Foscolo’s literary tastes; he knew
free beseiged, Purple. both modern and Ancient Greek. His literary
In late 1828 he moved to Corfu, continuing ambition revealed itself by the appearance
his study of poetry almost isolated. Nor did in 1797 of his tragedy Tieste—a production
a trip to Greece liberalized, because allegedly which obtained a certain degree of success.
“not esynithouse to theatrize national morale