'LA FLAMA DEL CANIGÓ', FIRE THAT JOINS CATALAN LANDS

La Flama del Canigó

June 23. The Grandma is going to participate in one of her favourite traditions, La Flama del Canigó.

Every year, she participates in this traditional event, carrying the flame some kilometres. It is her way to collaborate in this tradition that evokes the common roots of the Catalan Countries.

Due to the current situation, The Grandma has taken all the possible precautions, but she has reached her goal. Today, she wants to talk about this tradition linked to the summer solstice and Sant Joan, the patron of the Catalan Countries.

La Flama del Canigó is a Catalan tradition linked to the summer solstice that takes place in various places in the Catalan Countries every year, between 22 and 23 June.

It begins with the renovation of the fire at the top of the Canigó and culminates with the lighting of the bonfires on the night of Sant Joan after the flame, carried by volunteers, spread throughout the country.

It is related to other summer solstice fire festivals in the Pyrenees, such as the Isil, Alins, Durro, Vilaller, Barruera, Pont de Suert and Andorra faults or the Haro burn of the Val d'Aran, where the fire coming down from the mountain is also the protagonist of the night. But beyond this festival, the Canigó Flame has a symbolism linked to the persistence and vitality of Catalan culture.

More information: Omnium

In 1955, Francesc Pujada, a villager from Arles de Tec (Vallespir, Northern Catalonia), driven by his enthusiasm for the Canigó massif and inspired by the epic poem by Jacint Verdaguer (Canigó, 1886) took the initiative, together with Esteve Albert and Josep Deloncle, to light the fires of the Night of Sant Joan at the top of this mountain and, from there, to spread the flame throughout all the regions of the Catalan Countries.

Thus began the tradition of the Canigó Flame, which connected with the millennial celebration of the summer solstice linked to fire and its collective significance.

The new tradition gained strength in a short time, so that, according to Òmnium Cultural, today it is practically impossible to find a single bonfire in Northern Catalonia that is not lit with the Canigó Flame.

La Flama del Canigó

In 1966 the fire crossed the border between the French and Spanish states for the first time and reached Vic. Despite the Franco dictatorship, the tradition spread throughout the Principality of Catalonia, often underground, as a symbol of the survival of Catalan culture.

Gradually the network spread, and the fire that descends from the Canigó also reached the Valencian Country and Balearic Islands.

There are currently dozens of organizations that celebrate the festival by spreading the flame that is lit on the beautiful top of the Canigó and is preserved in the Castellet de Perpinyà. Barcelona receives the flame in Plaça de Sant Jaume with the cobla, the eagle and the giants of the city, and from there it goes to the neighbourhoods.

In Terres de l'Ebre and the Priorat, every year a different village welcomes it, and people from the neighbouring counties gather there, who go in a caravan of cars, with the heir and heiress of the major festival of each locality. Alacant has kept alive the tradition of the fires of Sant Joan in the Valencian Country. Other cities also have their tradition, such as Tarragona in the Serrallo.

Every June 22, a group of hikers from the Cercle de Joves de Perpinyà catch the fire that has been lit in the kitchen of the Casa Pairal Museum, in Castellet de Perpinyà, since 1965, and climb to the top of the Canigó, 2,784 metres, where they light a new bonfire, after reading a manifesto.

At dawn on June 23, they begin the descent with the renewed Flame. Together with the group of hikers of the Cercle Jove many other people gather at the top to catch the flame and thus begin the journey to different parts of the Catalan Countries doing relays on foot, by bike, by car and even in lute in the Ebre to make it possible for the Flame to spread through towns and cities and arrive in time to light the bonfires on the night of Sant Joan.

Every year, the Canigó Flame is received by the Parliament of Catalonia in an institutional event, as well as by town councils, county councils and cultural, social and sports organizations in more than 350 municipalities in the Catalan Countries.

In this way, and thanks to hundreds of volunteers, the fire coming from the mountain illuminates the popular festivals that take place around the fire. It is estimated that about 3,000 bonfires were lit that night with the fire coming from the top of the Canigó.

To make this ritual possible, on the weekend before Sant Joan, hundreds of people from all over the Catalan Countries and, especially, from Northern Catalonia, are in the Cortalets refuge, in the Cadí valley, at the foot of the Canigó. They arrive on Saturday night and stay at the shelter or camp with tents nearby.

The next morning they perform the first ritual of the Focs de Sant Joan: go up to the top of the Canigó and leave the small bundles of firewood that each one has brought from their city, town, village or orchard. The branches and twigs are tied with a ribbon that bears the name of the place where they come from, and some have drawings and writings with wishes to burn at the bonfire of Sant Joan. All these bundles of firewood are left stacked around the iron cross at the top of the mountain until the night the bonfire is lit.

More information: Ajuntament de Barcelona

Ja les podeu fer ben altes
les fogueres aquest any
cal que brillin lluny i es vegin
els focs d'aquest Sant Joan.
Cal que es vegin de València,
de Ponent i de Llevant...

I en fareu també en la Serra
perquè els vegin més enllà...
i el crit d'una sola llengua
s'alci dels llocs més distants
omplint els aires encesos
d'un clamor de Llibertat!

Joan Maragall

THE LAKI VOLCANO, VATNAJÖKULL NATIONAL PARK (IS)

The Laki volcano

Great changes in history have often arrived accompanied by great natural tragedies.

The COVID is going to change a lot of things in our routines, especially in some European citizens who are going to live incredible events in their lives in a closer future.

A lot of interesting things are going to happen and we must be ready to confront them and see them as a great opportunity to improve our lives, our economy and put our culture in the place it deserves.

On a day like today in 1783, a poisonous cloud caused by the eruption of the Laki volcano in Iceland reached Le Havre in France.

The most part of historians say that this was the event whose consequences originate the French Revolution. This is, perhaps, one of the best examples of the affectation of nature over our history.

The Grandma, who is very interested in these future changes, wants to talk about these past events that changed our history finishing a long dark season of feudal system and starting a new one.

Laki or Lakagígar, Craters of Laki, is a volcanic fissure in the western part of Vatnajökull National Park, Iceland, not far from the volcanic fissure of Eldgjá and the small village of Kirkjubæjarklaustur.

More information: British Geological Survey

The fissure is properly referred to as Lakagígar, while Laki is a mountain that the fissure bisects. Lakagígar is part of a volcanic system centered on the volcano Grímsvötn and including the volcano Thordarhyrna. It lies between the glaciers of Mýrdalsjökull and Vatnajökull, in an area of fissures that run in a southwest to northeast direction.

The system erupted violently over an eight-month period between June 1783 and February 1784 from the Laki fissure and the adjoining volcano Grímsvötn, pouring out an estimated 42 billion tons or 14 km3 of basalt lava and clouds of poisonous hydrofluoric acid and sulfur dioxide compounds that contaminated the soil, leading to the death of over 50% of Iceland's livestock population, and the destruction of the vast majority of all crops. This led to a famine which then killed approximately 25% of the island's human population. The lava flows also destroyed 20 villages.

The Laki eruption and its aftermath caused a drop in global temperatures, as 120 million tons of sulfur dioxide was spewed into the Northern Hemisphere. This caused crop failures in Europe and may have caused droughts in North Africa and India.

On 8 June 1783, a 25 km long fissure with 130 craters opened with phreatomagmatic explosions because of the groundwater interacting with the rising basalt magma.

The Laki volcano

Over a few days the eruptions became less explosive, Strombolian, and later Hawaiian in character, with high rates of lava effusion.

This event is rated as 4 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, but the eight-month emission of sulfuric aerosols resulted in one of the most important climatic and socially repercussive events of the last millennium.  The eruption, also known as the Skaftáreldar, Skaftá fires or Síðueldur produced an estimated 14 km3 of basalt lava, and the total volume of tephra emitted was 0.91 km3. Lava fountains were estimated to have reached heights of 800 to 1,400 m. The gases were carried by the convective eruption column to altitudes of about 15 km.

The eruption continued until 7 February 1784, but most of the lava was ejected in the first five months. One study states that the event occurred as ten pulses of activity, each starting with a short-lived explosive phase followed by a long-lived period of fire-fountaining".

Grímsvötn volcano, from which the Laki fissure extends, was also erupting at the time, from 1783 until 1785. The outpouring of gases, including an estimated 8 million tons of hydrogen fluoride and an estimated 120 million tons of sulfur dioxide, gave rise to what has since become known as the Laki haze across Europe.

More information: Oregon State University

The consequences for Iceland, known as the Móðuharðindin or Mist Hardships, were disastrous. An estimated 20–25% of the population died in the famine and fluoride poisoning after the fissure eruptions ensued. Some sources specify a death toll of 9,000 people. Approximately 80% of sheep, 50% of cattle and 50% of horses died because of dental fluorosis and skeletal fluorosis from the 8 million tons of hydrogen fluoride that were released. The livestock deaths were primarily caused by eating the contaminated grass; the subsequent famine claimed many of the human lives that were lost.

The parish priest and dean of Vestur-Skaftafellssýsla, Jón Steingrímsson (1728–1791), grew famous because of the eldmessa, fire sermon, that he delivered on 20 July 1783. The people of the small settlement of Kirkjubæjarklaustur were worshipping while the village was endangered by a lava stream, which ceased to flow not far from town, with the townsfolk still in church. 

There is evidence that the Laki eruption weakened African and Indian monsoon circulations, leading to between 1 and 3 millimetres less daily precipitation than normal over the Sahel of Africa, resulting in, among other effects, low flow in the River Nile.

More information: The Guardian

The resulting famine that afflicted Egypt in 1784 cost it roughly one-sixth of its population. The eruption was also found to have affected the southern Arabian Peninsula and India.

An estimated 120,000,000 long tons of sulfur dioxide was emitted, about three times the total annual European industrial output in 2006 but delivered to higher altitudes, hence more persistent, and equivalent to six times the total 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption.

This outpouring of sulfur dioxide during unusual weather conditions caused a thick haze to spread across western Europe, resulting in many thousands of deaths throughout the remainder of 1783 and the winter of 1784.

The volcanic Canyon and Laki craters

The summer of 1783 was the hottest on record and a rare high-pressure zone over Iceland caused the winds to blow to the south-east.  

The poisonous cloud drifted to Bergen in Denmark–Norway, then spread to Prague in the Kingdom of Bohemia -now the Czech Republic by 17 June- Berlin by 18 June, Paris by 20 June, Le Havre by 22 June, and Great Britain by 23 June.

The fog was so thick that boats stayed in port, unable to navigate, and the sun was described as blood coloured.

Inhaling sulfur dioxide gas causes victims to choke as their internal soft tissue swells -the gas reacts with the moisture in lungs and produces sulfurous acid. The local death rate in Chartres was up by 5% during August and September, with more than 40 dead.

In Great Britain, the east of England was most affected. The records show that the additional deaths were among outdoor workers; the death rate in Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire and the east coast was perhaps two or three times the normal rate. It has been estimated that 23,000 British people died from the poisoning.

The weather became very hot, causing severe thunderstorms with large hailstones that were reported to have killed cattle, until the haze dissipated in the autumn. The winter of 1783–1784 was very severe; the naturalist Gilbert White in Selborne, Hampshire, reported 28 days of continuous frost. The extreme winter is estimated to have caused 8,000 additional deaths in the UK. During the spring thaw, Germany and Central Europe reported severe flood damage.

More information: The Ultimate History Project

The meteorological impact of Laki continued, contributing significantly to several years of extreme weather in Europe.

In France, the sequence of extreme weather events included a surplus harvest in 1785 that caused poverty for rural workers, as well as droughts, bad winters and summers. These events contributed significantly to an increase in poverty and famine that may have contributed to the French Revolution in 1789.

Laki was only one factor in a decade of climatic disruption, as Grímsvötn was erupting from 1783 to 1785, and there may have been an unusually strong El Niño effect from 1789 to 1793.

In North America, the winter of 1784 was the longest and one of the coldest on record. It was the longest period of below-zero temperatures in New England, with the largest accumulation of snow in New Jersey, and the longest freezing over of Chesapeake Bay, where Annapolis, Maryland is, then the capital of the United States; the weather delayed Congressmen in coming to Annapolis to vote for the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the American Revolutionary War. A huge snowstorm hit the South; the Mississippi River froze at New Orleans and there were reports of ice floes in the Gulf of Mexico.

More information: Wired

Remind me that the most fertile lands

were built by the fires of volcanoes.

Andrea Gibson

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, 'EXISTENTIALISM IS A HUMANISM'

Jean-Paul Sartre

The COVID-19 pandemic is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease that has affected millions of people around the world.

The Grandma is affected with this situation that has shown how fragile is the human condition against the nature.

When a tragedy like this occurs it is normal to think in life from a point of view of existentialism. Why have some people suffered this terrible disease and not me? How is life a lottery? How much pain is suffering my neighbours in silence? How can we help people who have suffered this disease and have got terrible consequences or how can we help those people who have lost someone?

It is very sad when you realize how only great tragedies pay the attention of the great part of the population, especially, if they are affected. Individualism is a terrible thing in our society but not now, it is a constant in our history.

The Grandma has been thinking about all these things and she has rereading L'Être et le Néant, in English Being and Nothingness, a masterpiece written by Jean-Paul Sartre that talks about existentialism and phenomenology. It is a good way to think about the past, the present, and the future of our societies and a wonderful way to homage this French philosopher who was born on a day like today in 1905.

Download L'Être et le Néant/Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (21 June 1905-15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic.

He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism and phenomenology, and one of the leading figures in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism.

His work has also influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to influence these disciplines.

Sartre was also noted for his open relationship with prominent feminist and fellow existentialist philosopher and writer Simone de Beauvoir. 

Together, Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged the cultural and social assumptions and expectations of their upbringings, which they considered bourgeois, in both lifestyle and thought.

The conflict between oppressive, spiritually destructive conformity and an authentic way of being"became the dominant theme of Sartre's early work, a theme embodied in his principal philosophical work L'Être et le Néant, 1943. Sartre's introduction to his philosophy is his work L'existentialisme est un humanisme, 1946 originally presented as a lecture.

Jean-Paul Sartre

He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honours and that a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution.

Jean-Paul Sartre was born on 21 June 1905 in Paris as the only child of Jean-Baptiste Sartre, an officer of the French Navy, and Anne-Marie (Schweitzer). His mother was of Alsatian origin and the first cousin of Nobel Prize laureate Albert Schweitzer, whose father Louis Théophile was the younger brother of Anne-Marie's father. 

When Sartre was two years old, his father died of an illness, which he most likely contracted in Indochina. Anne-Marie moved back to her parents' house in Meudon, where she raised Sartre with help from her father Charles Schweitzer, a teacher of German who taught Sartre mathematics and introduced him to classical literature at a very early age.

When he was twelve, Sartre's mother remarried, and the family moved to La Rochelle, where he was frequently bullied, in part due to the wandering of his blind right eye, sensory exotropia.

In 1939 Sartre was drafted into the French army, where he served as a meteorologist. He was captured by German troops in 1940 in Padoux, and he spent nine months as a prisoner of war -in Nancy and finally in Stalag XIII-D, Trier, where he wrote his first theatrical piece, Barionà, fils du tonnerre, a drama concerning Christmas.

More information: BBC

It was during this period of confinement that Sartre read Martin Heidegger's Sein und Zeit, later to become a major influence on his own essay on phenomenological ontology. Because of poor health, he claimed that his poor eyesight and exotropia affected his balance, Sartre was released in April 1941. According to other sources, he escaped after a medical visit to the ophthalmologist.

After coming back to Paris in May 1941, he participated in the founding of the underground group Socialisme et Liberté with other writers Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Toussaint Desanti, Dominique Desanti, Jean Kanapa, and École Normale students.

In his essay Paris under the Occupation, Sartre wrote that the correct behaviour of the Germans had entrapped too many Parisians into complicity with the occupation, accepting what was unnatural as natural.

Jean-Paul Sartre

The first period of Sartre's career, defined in large part by L'Être et le Néant (1943), gave way to a second period -when the world was perceived as split into communist and capitalist blocs- of highly publicized political involvement.

Sartre tended to glorify the Resistance after the war as the uncompromising expression of morality in action, and recalled that the résistants were a band of brothers who had enjoyed real freedom in a way that did not exist before nor after the war.

For a time in the late 1940s, Sartre described French nationalism as provincial and in a 1949 essay called for a United States of Europe.

As an anti-colonialist, Sartre took a prominent role in the struggle against French rule in Algeria, and the use of torture and concentration camps by the French in Algeria. He became an eminent supporter of the FLN in the Algerian War and was one of the signatories of the Manifeste des 121.

More information: Your Story

In 1964 Sartre renounced literature in a witty and sardonic account of the first ten years of his life, Les Mots. The book is an ironic counterblast to Marcel Proust, whose reputation had unexpectedly eclipsed that of André Gide, who had provided the model of littérature engagée for Sartre's generation. Literature, Sartre concluded, functioned ultimately as a bourgeois substitute for real commitment in the world.

In October 1964, Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature but he declined it.

Sartre's physical condition deteriorated, partially because of the merciless pace of work and the use of amphetamine he put himself through during the writing of the Critique and a massive analytical biography of Gustave Flaubert, both of which remained unfinished.

He suffered from hypertension, and became almost completely blind in 1973. Sartre was a notorious chain smoker, which could also have contributed to the deterioration of his health.

Sartre died on 15 April 1980 in Paris from edema of the lung.

More information: Quartz

Man is condemned to be free;

because once thrown into the world,

he is responsible for everything he does.

Jean-Paul Sartre

SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE & THE TELEGRAPH PATENT

Samuel Morse

Today, The Grandma has been downloading new applications to work with her mobile phone. She has thought how important is having a mobile nowadays because it has becoming a must in our lives. The Grandma has thought in Samuel Morse, the American inventor who received the patent for the telegraph on a day like today in 1840. The telegraph was as important for old generations as mobile phone is for ours.

The Grandma wants to talk about Samuel Morse and the telegraph, one of the most important invents of the 19th century.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791-April 2, 1872) was an American inventor and painter.

After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs.

He was a co-developer of Morse code and helped to develop the commercial use of telegraphy.

Samuel F. B. Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the first child of the pastor Jedidiah Morse (1761-1826), who was also a geographer, and his wife Elizabeth Ann Finley Breese (1766-1828). His father was a great preacher of the Calvinist faith and supporter of the American Federalist party.

College to receive instruction in the subjects of religious philosophy, mathematics, and science of horses. While at Yale, he attended lectures on electricity from Benjamin Silliman and Jeremiah Day and was a member of the Society of Brothers in Unity. He supported himself by painting. In 1810, he graduated from Yale with Phi Beta Kappa honors.

While returning by ship from Europe in 1832, Morse encountered Charles Thomas Jackson of Boston, a man who was well schooled in electromagnetism. Witnessing various experiments with Jackson's electromagnet, Morse developed the concept of a single-wire telegraph. He set aside his painting, The Gallery of the Louvre.

More information: Time

The original Morse telegraph, submitted with his patent application, is part of the collections of the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution.

In time the Morse code, which he developed, would become the primary language of telegraphy in the world. It is still the standard for rhythmic transmission of data.

Meanwhile, William Cooke and Professor Charles Wheatstone had learned of the Wilhelm Weber and Carl Gauss electromagnetic telegraph in 1833. They had reached the stage of launching a commercial telegraph prior to Morse, despite starting later.

In England, Cooke became fascinated by electrical telegraphy in 1836, four years after Morse. Aided by his greater financial resources, Cooke abandoned his primary subject of anatomy and built a small electrical telegraph within three weeks.

The Telegraph

Wheatstone also was experimenting with telegraphy and most importantly understood that a single large battery would not carry a telegraphic signal over long distances.

He theorized that numerous small batteries were far more successful and efficient in this task. Wheatstone was building on the primary research of Joseph Henry, an American physicist. Cooke and Wheatstone formed a partnership and patented the electrical telegraph in May 1837, and within a short time had provided the Great Western Railway with a 13-mile (21 km) stretch of telegraph. However, within a few years, Cooke and Wheatstone's multiple-wire signaling method would be overtaken by Morse's cheaper method.

Morse received a patent for the telegraph in 1847, at the old Beylerbeyi Palace in Istanbul, which was issued by Sultan Abdülmecid, who personally tested the new invention.

He was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1849. The original patent went to the Breese side of the family after the death of Samuel Morse.

In 1856, Morse went to Copenhagen and visited the Thorvaldsens Museum, where the sculptor's grave is in the inner courtyard. He was received by King Frederick VII, who decorated him with the Order of the Dannebrog for the telegraph. Morse expressed his wish to donate his Thorvaldsen portrait from 1831 in Rome to the king. The Thorvaldsen portrait today belongs to Margrethe II of Denmark.

More information: Mental Floss

The Morse telegraphic apparatus was officially adopted as the standard for European telegraphy in 1851. Only the United Kingdom with its extensive overseas empire kept the needle telegraph of Cooke and Wheatstone.

In 1858, Morse introduced wired communication to Latin America when he established a telegraph system in Puerto Rico, then a Spanish Colony.

In the United States, Morse held his telegraph patent for many years, but it was both ignored and contested.

In 1853, The Telegraph Patent case-O'Reilly v. Morse came before the U.S. Supreme Court where, after very lengthy investigation, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that Morse had been the first to combine the battery, electromagnetism, the electromagnet, and the correct battery configuration into a workable practical telegraph. However, in spite of this clear ruling, Morse still received no official recognition from the United States government.

Artist's portrayal of Samuel Morse sending

The Supreme Court did not accept all of Morse's claims. The O'Reilly v. Morse case has become widely known among patent lawyers because the Supreme Court explicitly denied Morse's claim 8 for any and all use of the electromagnetic force for purposes of transmitting intelligible signals to any distance.

The Supreme Court sustained, however, Morse's claim to such telecommunication when effectuated by means of Morse's inventive repeater apparatus. This was an electrical circuit in which a cascade of many sets comprising a relay and a battery were connected in series, so that when each relay closed, it closed a circuit to cause the next battery to power the succeeding relay, as suggested in the accompanying figure.

This caused Morse's signal to pass along the cascade without degrading into noise as its amplitude decreased with the distance traveled. Each time the amplitude of the signal approaches the noise level, the repeater in effect, a nonlinear amplifier boosts the signal amplitude well above the noise level.

This use of repeaters permitted a message to be sent to great distances, which was previously not feasible.

More information: Mid-Day

The Supreme Court thus held that Morse could properly claim a patent monopoly on the system or process of transmitting signals at any distance by means of the repeater circuitry indicated above, but he could not properly claim a monopoly over any and all uses of electromagnetic force to transmit signals.

The apparatus limitation in the former type of claim limited the patent monopoly to what Morse taught and gave the world. The lack of that limitation in the latter type of claim both gave Morse more than was commensurate with what he had contributed to society and discouraged the inventive efforts of others who might come up with different and/or better ways to send signals at a distance using the electromagnetic force.

The problem that Morse faced the deterioration of the signal with distance and how he solved it is discussed in more detail in the article O'Reilly v. Morse. In summary, the solution, as the Supreme Court stated, was the repeater apparatus described in the preceding paragraphs.

The importance of this legal precedent in patent law cannot be overstated, as it became the foundation of the law governing the eligibility of computer program-implemented inventions, as well as inventions implementing natural laws, to be granted patents.

He died in New York City on April 2, 1872, and was interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

More information: The Vintage News

If the presence of electricity can be made visible

in any part of the circuit, I see no reason

why intelligence may not be transmitted

instantaneously by electricity.

Samuel Morse

ANGELOS SIKELIANOS & THE GREEK DELPHIC FESTIVALS

Angelos Sikelianos

Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. After these days of pandemic it is time to think about the future and evaluate the present. Dark times are coming and she has decided to read Greek poetry because nothing better than Greek culture to know better what a tragedy is.

The Grandma has chosen Άγγελος Σικελιανός, the Greek lyric poet and playwright whose incredible works include titles like Sibylla and Daedalus in Crete and who died on a day like today in 1951.

Angelos Sikelianos, in Greek Άγγελος Σικελιανός (28 March 1884-19 June 1951) was a Greek lyric poet and playwright.

His themes include Greek history, religious symbolism as well as universal harmony in poems such as The Moonstruck, Prologue to Life, Mother of God, and Delphic Utterance.

His plays include Sibylla, Daedalus in Crete, Christ in Rome, The Death of Digenis, The Dithyramb of the Rose and Asklepius. Although occasionally his grandiloquence blunts the poetic effect of his work, some of Sikelianos finer lyrics are among the best in Western literature. From 1946 until 1951, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

More information: Ellines

Sikelianos was born in Lefkada where he spent his childhood. In 1900, he registered to the Athens Law School but never graduated.

In the course of the following years, he traveled extensively and devoted himself to poetry.

In 1907, he married the American Eva Palmer in the United States; the couple moved to Athens in 1908.

During that period, Sikelianos came in contact with Greek intellectuals, and in 1909 he published his first collection of poems, Alafroískïotos, which had an immediate impact and was recognized by critics as an important work.

He also befriended fellow writer Nikos Kazantzakis, and in 1914 they spent forty days on Mount Athos, visiting most of the monasteries there and living the life of ascetics. The following year, they embarked on a pilgrimage through Greece. The two writers were kindred spirits, but also very different in their respective views on life.

The Grandma visits Sikelianos's house, Delphi

Sikelianos was a man of the world, full of optimism, and with a steadfast faith in his abilities as a writer.

Kazantzakis was the taciturn and reclusive counterpart who was doubt-ridden, and had, as he himself admitted, a tendency to focus on the skull behind the face. Together, however, they shared the mutual concern of attempting to refine and elevate the human spirit through artistic pursuits.

In May 1927, in collaboration with his wife, Eva Palmer-Sikelianos, Sikelianos held the Delphic Festival as part of his general effort towards a revival of the Delphic Idea.

Sikelianos believed that the principles which had shaped classical civilisation, if reexamined, could offer spiritual independence and serve as a mean of communication among people.

The event consisted of athletic contests (in classical fashion, reminiscent of the Pythian Games) a concert of Byzantine music, an exhibition of folk art as well as a performance of Prometheus Bound.

The Delphic Festivals were acclaimed by critics, many of them invited to attend, and despite a lack of state assistance, they were repeated three years later. The revival was then permanently abandoned due to the excessive organization costs.

In honor of the memory of Angelos and Eva Sikelianos, the European Cultural Centre of Delphi bought and restored their house in Delphi, which is today the Museum of Delphic Festivals. Later, Eva Palmer-Sikelianos left for the United States, and Sikelianos married Anna Karamani.

More information: Angelo Sikelianos Museum

During the German occupation (1941–44), he became a source of inspiration to the Greek people, especially through his speech and poem that he recited at the funeral of the poet Kostis Palamas.

It was he who composed the letter which was spearheaded by Archbishop Damaskinos to save the lives of Greek Jews by appealing directly to the Germans. The letter was signed by many prominent Greek citizens in defense of the Jews who were being persecuted. There is no similar document of protest against Nazi occupiers during World War II that has come to light in any other European country.

In 1945 he was a founding member of the Greek-Soviet friendship union among Nikos Kazantzakis, Nicolas Kitsikis, Yanis Kordatos, Aimilios Veakis, Ilias Iliou, Patroklos Karantinos, Athanase Apartis, George Zongolopoulos and others.

Sikelianos suffered from a chronic disease for several years; he died accidentally on 19 June 1951 in Athens from inadvertently drinking Lysol after having requested Nujol a medicine. He was buried in the First Cemetery of Athens.

Sikelianos published his poetic work in three volumes in 1946 and 1947. The collection's title was Lyric Life. He left, however, several poems unpublished. In 1965 G.P. Savvides, a leading Greek philologist, started to publish the entire poetic work of Sikelianos, which finally comprised five volumes.

More information: Polysemi

With her hair closely cropped up to the nape
Like Dorian Apollo’s, the girl lay on the narrow
Pallet, keeping her limbs stiffly frozen
Within a heavy cloud she could not escape...

Angelos Sikelianos