Modernism: Representations of National Culture

Ioannis Psicharis: My journey

IOANNIS PSICHARIS: MY JOURNEY Title: Τό ταξίδι μου (My journey) Originally published: Αθήνα, n. p., 1888 Language: Greek The excerpts used are from EÉωάννης Ψυχάρης, Τό ταξίδι μου, ed. by Alkis Agelou (Athens: EÅστία: Νεοελληνική Βιβλιοθήκη, 1993), pp. 37–39, 64–67, 75–76, 89. About the author Ioannis (Jean) Psicharis [1854, Odessa – 1929, Paris]: writer, linguist and critic. Psicharis was born to a well-off family. After his mother’s early death his father brought him to Istanbul in 1860, where he spent his childhood. His native language was Russian and it was only in Istanbul that he studied French and Greek at the French Lycée Bonaparte. In 1869, he left for Marseille to conclude his high school education. From there, he moved to Paris to study literature at the Sorbonne, to Bonn where he studied medieval and German literature, and back to Paris, where he specialized in modern Greek literature and linguistics at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. In 1884, he was appointed lecturer of Greek literature and linguistics at the same school. He soon married Ernest Renan’s daughter Noemi, whom he divorced in 1892. He was also in close contact with writers such as Victor Hugo, Leconte de Lisle and Hyppolite Taine. In 1904, after the death of his mentor Emile Legrand (1841–1903), a major figure in modern Greek philology, he succeeded him as a professor of linguistics at the Ecole des langues orientales vivantes, where he taught medieval and modern Greek. In 1886 he visited Greece for the first time. Before visiting Athens, he traveled to Istanbul, to represent the Ecole des Hautes Etudes at the conference of the FÅλληνικός Φιλολογικός Σύλλογος Κωνσταντινουπόλεως (Greek philological society of Constantinople). It is exactly this trip that he described in his ‘My journey.’ After this, he returned to Greece several more times. Psicharis began writing while he was a student. In his work, he sought to connect his literary activity to the creation of modern Greek literature and the reconstruction of intellectual life in Greece. The main instrument to this effect, he believed, was a simple and flexible language. He thus became the major figure of the first phase, the so-called literary phase, of the demoticist movement. His basic principle on the ‘Language Question’ was that in order to develop culturally, the Greek nation needs to have its own language . This language would be the one used by the people itself, which was not vulgar as the purists claimed. His purpose was to consolidate demotic (from the ancient 252 AESTHETIC MODERNISM AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES word demos, meaning ‘the people’) as the language of education and science. When Psicharis shook the stagnant Athenian literary circles, many saw him as a prophet. However, his very polemical attitude regarding the ‘Language question’ caused fierce reactions. In particular, during the process of his being appointed to Legrand’s chair, Psicharis was fiercely attacked by a large part of the purist Greek press as being totally inappropriate to teach Modern Greek. Even after his appointment, there were vivid debates in the Greek Parliament and a request for a protest at the French government, which never materialized. In fact, the demotic version of Greek, which became established only with the 1976 Reform, was not the one proposed by Psicharis , but rather a compromised one. However, he is still considered to be the leading figure of Greek demoticism. Main works: Essai de phonétique néo-grecque (1884); Jalousie (1884); Essai de grammaire historique néo-grecque (1886); Τό ταξίδι μου [My journey] (1888); Etudes de philologie neo-grecque (1892); Τό ”νειρο το™ Γιαννίρη [Gianniri’s dream] (1897); La croyante (1899); Ρόδα και Μyλα 5 vols. [Roses and apples] (1902–1909), Ζωή καί Pγάπη στή μοναξιά [Life and love in solitude] (1904); Τά δύο Pδέρφια [The two brothers] (1911); Le crime de poète (1913). Context During the 1870s and 1880s, the reforms introduced by successive governments of the most important nineteenth century Greek politician, Harilaos Trikoupis, had brought new hope for the future of Greek society. Despite the alienation of the rural population, these reforms encouraged various groups in the urban centers to participate in political and intellectual life. The intellectual atmosphere of the 1880s was also marked by Nikolaos Politis’s contributions to the study of folk culture. Moreover, Athens witnessed the emergence of a new generation, the so-called ‘Athenian school of the 1880s,’ which abandoned the austere classicism of the post-revolutionary period. Instead , the group adopted the Ηerderian concept of the nation and sought to explore the authentic culture and the language of the people. As a result, this generation dropped καθαρεύουσα (katharevousa) and expressed itself...