Jean Moréas was a Greek

Greeks

The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....

 poet, essayist, and art critic

Art critic

An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...

, who wrote mostly in the French language

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 but also in Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 during his youth.

Background

Moréas was born into a distinguished Athenian

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 family. His ancestors included two well-known men of the Greek War of Independence

Greek War of Independence

The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution was a successful war of independence waged by the Greek revolutionaries between...

, namely his paternal grandfather and namesake Ioannis Papadiamantopoulos

Ioannis Papadiamantopoulos (elder)

Ioannis Diamantopoulos was a Greek revolutionary leader during the Greek War of Independence .-Early life:...

 (1766–1826), born in Corinth

Corinth

Corinth is a city and former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Corinth, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit...

 but of ultimately Epirote

Epirus

The name Epirus, from the Greek "Ήπειρος" meaning continent may refer to:-Geographical:* Epirus - a historical and geographical region of the southwestern Balkans, straddling modern Greece and Albania...

 ancestry, (he was executed after the fall of Missolonghi) and his maternal granduncle Iakovos Tombazis

Iakovos Tombazis

Iakovos "Yiakoumakis" Tombazis was a merchant and ship-owner from the Greek island of Hydra who became the first Admiral of the Greek Navy during the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire . Tombazis' date of birth is not known but some historians suggest 1782. He was the son of...

 (c. 1782-1829), a renowned Arvanite from Hydra

Hydra, Saronic Islands

Hydra is one of the Saronic Islands of Greece, located in the Aegean Sea between the Saronic Gulf and the Argolic Gulf. It is separated from the Peloponnese by narrow strip of water...

, who became the first admiral of the Greek navy. Moreas' father was Adamantios Papadiamantopoulos, a judge, scholar and poet. He received a French education, and went to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 in 1875 to study law at the University of Paris

University of Paris

The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...

. While in France, he began associating with literary circles, and became acquainted with Les Hydropathes, a group of French writers that included Alphonse Allais

Alphonse Allais

Alphonse Allais was a French writer and humorist born in Honfleur, Calvados.He is the author of many collections of whimsical writings. A poet as much as a humorist, he in particular cultivated the verse form known as holorhyme, i.e. made up entirely of homophonous verses, where entire lines rhyme...

, Charles Cros

Charles Cros

Charles Cros was a French poet and inventor. He was born in Fabrezan, Aude, France, 35 km to the East of Carcassonne....

, Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents....

, and Léon Bloy

Léon Bloy

Léon Bloy , was a French novelist, essayist, pamphleteer and poet.-Biography:Bloy was born in Notre-Dame-de-Sanilhac, in the arondissement of Périgueux, Dordogne. He was the second of six sons of Voltairean freethinker and stern disciplinarian Jean Baptiste Bloy and his wife Anne-Marie Carreau,...

. He was also an acquaintance of the Greek artist Demetrios Galanis

Demetrios Galanis

Demetrios Galanis was an early twentieth century Greek artist and contemporary and friend of Picasso. In 1920, the year he completed his `Seated Nude', he exhibited alongside such major figures of modern art as Matisse and Braque, while from 1921 on he also exhibited alongside Juan Gris, Dufy,...

 and the Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

n poet Ion Minulescu

Ion Minulescu

Ion Minulescu was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, short story writer, journalist, literary critic, and playwright. Often publishing his works under the pseudonyms I. M. Nirvan and Koh-i-Noor , he journeyed to Paris, where he was heavily influenced by the growing Symbolist movement and...

.

Works

Moréas published poetry in his publications Lutèce and Le Chat noir, and collected his poems into two editions, Les Syrtes ("The Sandbanks") and Cantilènes, which were strongly influenced by Paul Verlaine

Paul Verlaine

Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...

.

He was initially a practitioner of the style of Symbolism

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

, and wrote the Symbolist Manifesto

Symbolist Manifesto

The Symbolist Manifesto is a French work published in 1886 in France by the Greek poet and essayist Jean Moréas. It defines and characterizes Symbolism as a style whose "goal was not the ideal, but whose sole purpose was to express itself for the sake of being expressed." It names Charles...

(1886

1886 in literature

The year 1886 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:* MLN: Modern Language Notes, an academic journal founded with the intention of introducing European literary criticism into American scholarship, is founded at the Johns Hopkins University.-Books:*Louisa May Alcott - Jo's...

), which he published in the newspaperLe Figaro

Le Figaro

Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...

, partly to redeem the reputation of the new generation of young writers from the charge of "decadence

Decadent movement

The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.-Overview:...

" that the press had implied. He was considered one of the most important Symbolist poets until the early 1890s.

In 1891, as Symbolism became more openly associated with anarchism

Anarchism

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...

, he published Le Pèlerin passioné which rejected Northern Europe

Northern Europe

Northern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. Northern Europe typically refers to the seven countries in the northern part of the European subcontinent which includes Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Finland and Sweden...

an and Germanic

Germanic languages

The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...

 influences, such as Romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 (as well as some aspects of Symbolism), in favor of Ancient Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 and Ancient Greek

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

 influences. This work helped initiate the École Romane, the aesthetic of which provided Charles Maurras

Charles Maurras

Charles-Marie-Photius Maurras was a French author, poet, and critic. He was a leader and principal thinker of Action Française, a political movement that was monarchist, anti-parliamentarist, and counter-revolutionary. Maurras' ideas greatly influenced National Catholicism and "nationalisme...

 with the ideology necessary for the far-right philosophy Action Française

Action Française

The Action Française , founded in 1898, is a French Monarchist counter-revolutionary movement and periodical founded by Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois and whose principal ideologist was Charles Maurras...

.

Moréas also wrote Les Demoiselles Goubert, a novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

, in association with Paul Adam. His most important publications were:

• Les Syrtes (1884)
• Les Cantilènes (1886)
• Le Pèlerin passioné (1891)
• Stances (1893)
• Contes de la vielle France (1904)

Further reading

• A. Embiricos. Les étapes de Jean Moréas. Lausanne, 1948.
• R. Georgin. Jean Moréas. Paris, 1930.
• Jean de Gourmont. Jean Moréas. Paris, 1905.
• J. Weber. Jean Moréas u. die französische Tradition. Nuremberg, 1934.

External links

Moréas' Poems