SIKELIANS, ANGELOS

born March 28, 1884, Leucas island, Greece died June 19, 1951, Athens one of the leading 20th-century Greek lyrical poets. Sikelians' first important work, the Alafroskotos (The Light-Shadowed), was published in 1909, and revealed his lyrical powers. It was followed by a group of outstanding lyrics. His next period was introduced by the philosophic poem Prlogos ts zo (1917; Prologue to Life) and includes the long works Meter Theou (Mother of God) and Pascha ton Hellenon (The Greek Easter), culminating in the Delphiks lgos (1927; Delphic Utterance). In the last, Greek tradition and the national historic and religious symbols are given a mystic turn and a universal significance. In the 1930s and 1940s there appeared a second group of lyrics, which display the full power of Sikelians' art. They express in rich and incisive language and with forceful imagery the poet's belief in the beauty and harmony of the world. The tragedies of Sikelians (Sibylla, Daedalus in Crete, Christ in Rome, The Death of Digenis and Asklepius, which are introduced by the long dramatic poem The Dithyramb of the Rose) are more notable for their lyric than their dramatic qualities. In his mature works Sikelians tried to express in poetry the aspirations of the Demotic movement of the 1880s, which sought to combine Greek tradition with Western thought, and to introduce as a consciously literary language the idiom of the people. Although occasionally Sikelians' grandiloquence blunts the poetic effect of his work, some of his finer lyrics are among the best in Western literature.