Stratis Myrivilis a major figure in the literary history of 20th Century Greece, is the pseudonym of Efstratios Stamatopoulos. He wrote mostly fiction: novels, novellas, and short stories.

Biography

Myrivilis was born in the village of Sykamnia on the north coast of the island of Lesbos in 1890. There he spent his childhood years until, in 1905, he was sent to the town of Mytilene to study at the Gymnasium. In 1910 he completed his secondary education and took a post as a village schoolmaster, but gave that up after one year and enrolled at Athens University to study law. However, his university education was cut short when he volunteered to fight in the First Balkan War

First Balkan War

The First Balkan War, which lasted from October 1912 to May 1913, pitted the Balkan League against the Ottoman Empire. The combined armies of the Balkan states overcame the numerically inferior and strategically disadvantaged Ottoman armies and achieved rapid success...

 in 1912.

After the Balkan Wars

Balkan Wars

The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe in 1912 and 1913.By the early 20th century, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia, the countries of the Balkan League, had achieved their independence from the Ottoman Empire, but large parts of their ethnic...

, he returned home to a Lesbos free from Turkish rule and united with the motherland Greece. There he made a name for himself as a columnist and as a writer of poetry and fiction. He published his first book in 1915: a set of six short stories collected together under the general title of Red Stories.

In World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, Myrivilis saw active service in the army of Eleftherios Venizelos

Eleftherios Venizelos

Eleftherios Venizelos was an eminent Greek revolutionary, a prominent and illustrious statesman as well as a charismatic leader in the early 20th century. Elected several times as Prime Minister of Greece and served from 1910 to 1920 and from 1928 to 1932...

' breakaway government

Movement of National Defence

The Movement of National Defence was an uprising by Venizelist officers of the Hellenic Army in Thessaloniki in August 1916 against the royal government in Athens. It led to the establishment of a separate, Venizelist Greek government in the north of the country, which entered the First World...

 on the Macedonian front

Macedonian front (World War I)

The Macedonian Front resulted from an attempt by the Allied Powers to aid Serbia, in the autumn of 1915, against the combined attack of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. The expedition came too late and in insufficient force to prevent the fall of Serbia, and was complicated by the internal...

 and also in the Asia Minor Campaign which followed. He returned to Lesbos in 1922, after the Campaign's catastrophic end.

On 28 June 1920 he married Eleni Dimitriou. They had three children: Χαρη, Δροσουλα, and Λαμπης (Hari, Drosula, and Labis).

From April 1923 to January 1924, Myrivilis published, in serialised form, the first version of his First World War novel

War novel

A war novel is a novel in which the primary action takes place in a field of armed combat, or in a domestic setting where the characters are preoccupied with the preparations for, or recovery from, war...

 Life in the Tomb in the weekly newspaper Kambana. A longer, revised version was published in Athens in 1930, and almost overnight, Myrivilis became famous throughout Greece. Life in the Tomb established him as a master craftsman of Greek prose, and the work itself was seen as a turning point in the development of Greek prose fiction, marking its coming of age.

After the success of Life in the Tomb, Myrivilis settled in Athens where he worked as editor of the newspaper Demokratia. The newspaper ceased publication after one year however, and he made a living writing columns and short stories for various newspapers and periodicals. In 1936, he was made General Programme Director for the Greek National Broadcasting Institute-a post which he held until 1951, excluding the period of German occupation when he resigned after a final broadcast in which he reminded the Greek people of their noble resistance to the Italian invasion of Greece and called on them to continue resisting with dignity and unity.

During the civil war, was one of the strongest opponents of the communist partisans. He was given a post in the Library of Parliament and, in 1946, he founded the National Society of Greek Writers and was elected its first president. In 1958, after having been nominated unsuccessfully six times, he was finally made a member of the Academy of Athens

Academy of Athens (modern)

The Academy of Athens is Greece's national academy, and the highest research establishment in the country. It was established in 1926, and operates under the supervision of the Ministry of Education...

--a belated recognition of his important contribution to Greek literature.

He died, after a long illness, in an Athens hospital on 19 July 1969.

Major works

Novels

• Life in the Tomb (1923-4, 1930)
• The Schoolmistress with the Golden Eyes (1933)
• The Mermaid Madonna (1949)

Novellas

• Vasilis Arvanitis
  Vasilis Arvanitis
  Vasilis Arvanitis is a novella by the Greek writer Stratis Myrivilis set on the island of Lesbos in the first decade of the Twentieth Century.- Publication history :...
  
  (1943, 1944)
• The Pagana (1945)
• Pan (1946)

Short story collections

• Red Stories (1915)
• Short Stories (1928)
• The Green Book (1936)
• The Blue Book (1939)
• The Red Book (1952)
• The Cherry Red Book (1959)

Translations into English

• Life in the Tomb tr. P. Bien (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1977) (repr. 1987 London)
• The Schoolmistress with the Golden Eyes translated by Philip Sherrard (London: Hutchinson, 1964)
• The Mermaid Madonna translated by Abbot Rick (London: Hutchinson, 1959)
• Vasilis Arvanitis
  Vasilis Arvanitis
  Vasilis Arvanitis is a novella by the Greek writer Stratis Myrivilis set on the island of Lesbos in the first decade of the Twentieth Century.- Publication history :...
  
  translated by Pavlos Andronikos. (Armidale: University of New England Publishing Unit, 1983)
• The Step-daughter (short story) translated by Theodore Sampson, in Modern Greek Short Stories vol. 2 (Athens: Kathimerini, 1981, pp. 65–83)
• The Cat's Eye (short story) translated by Irvin Ziemann, in Introduction to Modern Greek Literature: An Anthology of Fiction, Drama, and Poetry ed. Mary P. Gianos (New York: Twayne, ©1969, pp. 193–206)

External links

• "Stratis Myrivilis: A Brief Biography" by Pavlos Andronikos
• http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/pdf/uploads/GLnews_winsum2005.pdf
• The Seas of Love
• The schoolmistress with the golden eyes