Architecture and Environment  in the Greek Poetry

                                                    By Anthony C.Antoniades , AlA, AICP
                                                                         

The environment of Greece, its mountains, its seas, the cities
and its villages, houses, neighborhoods, churches and remote chapels,
ancient temples along with taverns and popular bars, the whole and
the detajls of the built world, represent elements of constant re-
ference in the expression of the country's poets. Romantic poets
such as Costas Krystallis, Lambros Porphyras, George Drosinis and
Pavlos Nirvanas, described, praised and sang the beauty of the
natural elements of the country in the same manner as they referred
to the people, their habits and customs. Their approach was largely
descriptive and sentimental.. Others went deeper. They saw, they
were moved and they searched deep into the guts of the earth and of
themselves;(l) their poetry sprung out of the secrets and the apocrypha
of the land, the art and architecture that flourished on it, the
language and the collective existence of the country. Such poets
were few, yet their work indicates that the spirit of the country
and themselves became one;Andreas Kalvos, Dionysios Solomos,

Kostis Palamas, Angelos Sikelianos,
Constantines Cavafy, George Seferis, Odesseus Elytis, Costas Varnalis,
and Yannis Ritsos, became, in a collective sense, the "Genius loci'(2) of
the Greek landscape and space, architecturally conceived.                                                                                                                                                  
The honor for such reference regarding the Greek mainland should
go to Kostis Palamas.(3) He frequently referred to landscape and archi-
tectural creations while he employed architectural allegory on many
occasions in his poetry. The same is true for the Poet Constantine
Cavafy, only that he is the poet of the "Broader Greek Space"; the
poet of the Hellenic Diaspora, a Diaspora that owes its existence to
the constant attraction excerted on it by the motherland, the meaning
of "Greece" which recognizes no boundaries of geographic or historic
limitations. Palamas is characterized by an attitude of objectivity
in his use of architectural allegory. He often steps aside leaving

the talk to the landscape, the monuments and the buildings. They
often "speak" directly, narrating what they "see" from the events of
the historic passage they've witnessed.(4) In contrast, Cavafy is
very subjective in similar endeavor. The filter through which he
presents buildings, environments and situations, literally or meta-
phorically, is his own persona. The same subjectivity is also
observed in the case of Angelos Sikelianos. First among all the
others he articulated the very subjective relationship of the Greek
of the mainland to his landscape, to its seas and sun and subsequently,
to its architecture; this subjectivity was further articulated by
poets such as Seferis and Elytis who addressed even the minutest
details of the Greek space;
Sikelianos first expressed this relationship as follows:
"The sea's sound floods my veins,
above me the sun
grinds like a millstone
the wind beats its full wings;
and the sea grows calm to the sand's edge
and spreads deep inside me."5
Seferis and Odysseus Elytis following Sikelianos' footsteps
us through their personal manner towards a hierarchical appreciation
of the Greek space. Their poetry becomes the stimulating source of
inexplicable feelings caused through the sound of the names of places
such as those coming from Elytis lyre:
"Sifnos, Amorgos, Alonnisos
Thasos, Ithaka, Santorini,
Kos, Ios, Sikinos."6
Similar feelings are caused through the poetry of Seferis, just
through the mention of names alone: Hydra, Aegina, Poros, Santorini,
Athina, Maroussi, Kifissia. Seferis eventually can be singled out as
the eclectic of Greek space, the international hero who leaves away
from the fatherland, who visits her on occasions to leave again and
contemplate in remembering;7 his poetry is born through the transub-
stantiation of the excitement caused to him from his personal exper-
iences in the Greek sea, the islands and the places he loved, such as
those mentioned above, along with a few others, Anaphiotika, Plaka,
mansions of Kifissia,8 or popular houses of the countryside, such as
the house of Rodaki,9 houses that appear small upon the return of the
exile from abroad.10
Other poets such as Varnalis and Ritsos gave us some details
of the Helladic Space: the joints of the working people, the
Taverns(11),  the Evening Bars (12) the Cafes, the cemetaries (13), the
places of political exile...in other words they painted and expressed
the places of everyday life, places and spaces of gloom and grief,
thus completing the portfolio of the Greek space. These two poets
were daring like Cafavy, perhaps more daring than him; their poetry
evolved as a result of their struggle for the free expression of
their political and social ideology which was prohibited by the
status quo; this poetry sprung out of the mud, the blood of their
flesh, the ever present bad health, the mal-treatment and the exile.
...One has difficulty to single out a body of poetry that dealt with
the physical world and architecture in more metaphysical way than the
poetry of twentieth century Greece.(14) And since the "Architect" is
the poet of space par-excellence, it is inevitable to seek relief and
companionship in the struggle for the creative process, inspiration
and stimulation and even a point of departure, through the study and
reference to the creations of the poets who dealt with spatial con-
cepts or specific spatial concepts of the Environmental Space at
large or the architectural space in particular.
The poetry of Greek poets is a treasure of reference for the
architect.
This poetry has distilled popular notions and understanding
.regarding space that are fundamental in the making of architecture:
"My oId friend, what are you looking for?
After years abroad you've come back
with images nourished
under foreign skies
far from your own country."15
These few lines of Seferis touch in the heart of issues troubling
the architects regarding the concepts of "significant" and "signified"
as related to the "meaning" of architectural works. They point out
the elements of relativity of the environmental impact (or perception}
on people. In subsequent lines, the poet addresses in crystal clear
manner the concept of scale in architecture:
"I am looking for myoId garden;
the trees come to my waist
and the hills resemble terraces
yet as a child....
I used to play on the grass
under great shadows
and I would run for hours
breathless over the slopes."16
Finally the last two lines of the poem will tell us most clearly
what it took numerous books to convey, regarding the theory of
environmental adjustability and human engineering.
"My old friend, rest
you'll get used to it little by little;..."17
The "House" is one of man's holiest artifacts. Nobody addressed
this notion so convincingly thus far than Gaston Bachelard.(18) His
great book on the "poetics of space" is and will still be around
for years to come. Bachelard referred to poets, especially the
poets of France, in his effort to support his arguments on the
meaning and the "Poetics of the House". A reference to him is a
must. In further support to Bachelard's arguments and through
another people, one can see "the house" again. Greek poetry treats
it with revery. A holy artifact, the center of man and the world.
"Houses" are like human beings themselves, extensions of their inhab-
itants, representative of those who built them, with their own worries
and sorrows, smiling, youthful or adult, old houses that will survive
you to extend a greeting to the visitor offering him the printing of
your palm on their stucco wall.(19) The "house" envelopes the memories
of beloved persons who passed away; "memories on the walls, the
mirrors and the icons". The "house" that gets haunted(20) after death,
or that remains desolate to consult those alive by leaving the 'spirit
of the young child that died to enter the premises like
"...a gentle Zephyr
and a sweet kiss."2l
Houses in the islands, in the suburbs of Athens, simple and modest,
or palatial and wealthy~...homes that nurtured the sensitivities of
the poets...so much give and take between them and the poets and so
much complexity in their typology and temperament that they are
eventually rendered incomprehensible, beyond psychological analysis,
beyond prescribed norms of classification and taxonomy, similarly to
the advanced and multifaceted human beings. George Seferis, who
lived in many houses and who thought of the "house" so highly that
at one instance he equated his whole poetry to one of them, the house
of Rodakis in Aegina,(22) eventually concluded
"...I don't know much about houses,
I know they have their own nature, nothing else.
...1 don't know much about houses,
I remember their joy and their sorrow.23

So Cavafy would seek help through this metaphoric dimension of God,
so widespread among his people. The whole act of creation is seen
through the metaphor or construction. God's creations are his build-
ings. The real builders and their works are devine excuses for the
poet's expression. Streets, houses, walls, windows, the builders,
and eventually the whole city with its harbor and surburbs become
the excuses and filters for the expression of the poet.(29)
The physical metaphors of the Cavafian poetry evoke similar
images and stimulate an atmosphere similar to the one evoked through
the contemplation of the paintings of De Chirico. An ode to life and
an elegy to death is his poem for the roads and the pedestrians.
"The walk of the first pedestrian...
the lively shout of the first vendor,
the opening of the first window,
of the first door is the ode
the roads have in the morning
the footsteps of the last pedestrian,
while the shout of the last vendor,
the shutting of the doors and the windows
is the voice of the elegy
the roads have in the evening."30
Ode and Elegy are the brackets of the poets day. The day which is
helped by the "window" through the connection it provides with the
external world, especially in the calm of autumn occasions when he
sits by the open window in absolute quietness sipping through the
window's opening visions of his past memories while staring at the
"unknown world"(3l), the "corruptible world"(32).
The metaphor of the window is utilized by the poet to describe
joyous "situations with life encounters, past memories and to express
feelings of tranquility and calm". The walls on the contrary serve
different purpose. The walls have been built to shut him out of the
world, to keep him inside, prisoner; they were built "without consi-
deration, without pity, without shame", they were built by others
around us..."we never heard the noise of the sound of the builders"(33).
The "walls" of Cavafy. address, in a sense, the oppression excerted
upon people by the rules of oppression built by any system through
processes on which the individual has no control. The "builders"
are the others, people only find themselves surrounded. In the
analogue to the physical world, such "walls" are built daily repre-
senting the slabs of inhuman mass housing, office buildings or new
towns of alienation and anxiety. One wonders why it is that the
architects of the Avant Garde such asLeo Krier, Aldo Rossi, Mathias
Ungers prefer the grandiose solutions of the deadly walls of the
Cavafian Agony rather than walls of liberation, life and enjoyment;
the current "wall culture" in architecture, expecially as interpreted
through the case of linear contemporary buildings has not yet pro-
duced democratic, joyous result as it was, for instance, the intension
of some of Le Corbusier's early sketches and as he tried to achieve
through his Marsheilles block. 
Cavafy, who is a landmark individual regarding human communication
through the use of his written expression represents nothing more but
another human being who had a secluded life, whose beliefs were
Iexpressed through the filter of introversion. Cavafy, therefore,
in spite of his Olympian status as a poet, should not be considered
as a savior, nor his poetry should be taken as the gospel. This poet
becomes freer in his relationship wi th the "exterior" .Then he becomes
indeed the "genius loci", the poet and critic of Alexandia and its
related localities. The city, as Edmund Keely has so successfully
~argued, represents the poet's li'felong concern, the cradle of his
life and his stimulation. She influenced him on many levels of
connotation, "literal" , "metaphoric" and "sensual" (34). It is the
city that represents the center of gravity of his evolution as a poet.
Although such statement has been further elaborated by Cava fy's
students and biographers, it is further verified by the fact that he
dwelt on his poem "The City" for a good many years(35), writing and re-
writing, refining its form, while at the same time inquiring further
into his relationship with his city. Eventually, he will conclude:
"...You will find no new lands, you will find no
other seas.
The city will follow you...
...Always you will arrive in this city. Do not
hope for any other -
There is no ship for you, there is no road..."(36)
Cavafy's city is perhaps the "city" of every Greek, the city of
Ulysses, the city of" eternal return, the one that inspite of its
Tyrannical excertion on you, she keeps you prisoner to her memory
and her charms and she always calls you to return. It is the city
that needs your flesh to renew her soil. She needs your intellect
in order to shape the spirit of her time. In this sense she is a
Y uJ.rrerent from many others, especially those who push you away,
to the roving of mobility and the search for the newanr] unknown
frontiers. Cavafy's "city" has nothing to do with the industrial
city and Cavafy's notions about the "city" have nothing to do with
the cities of mobile North America. The concept of his city is based
on Topophilia (love for a place) .Other cities do not know such
charms (or decease?) .In this city, Cavafy, as every Greek, will
find the things he loves. His temples or his churches, the pagan
and Christian together, the sequence of eternity and civilization.
In similar manner to Sikelianos, who equated Christ to Dionysus(37),
Cavafy will sing Christianity through reference to pagan paraphenalia
and the fragrances of the church.
" I love the church -its hexapter iga ,
the silver of its sacred vessels, its candlesticks,
the lights, its icons, its pulpit..."38
He will get drunk through the fragrance of burning essence, and the
hymns of the liturgy. It is the sensual feeling, the memory of the
past and the race, along with attachment to the place, that arouses
his "love of the church". It is not religion, or mankind, it is
just the summary of religion and mankind, the summary of a period of
Greek civilization, the period and the glory of Byzantine Tradition
as manifested through the Temple and the pagan world (Diakosmo-
decoration) in it that stires the poetic attention. His city offers
him churches, the harbor, the Taverns, and the "Houses" he frequents.
It is there where he remembers and thinks in systematic and sentimental
way. Special places, unique spaces with unique activities are
necessary to make him think of death and life or of conditions of
oppression and inequity; because death seems unfair and inexplicable
when it attacks youth. And he needs the harbor of his city to inspire
him on the subject and also help him articulate his thoughts into
resolve:
"Ayoung man...
during the voyage, he fell ill and soon
as he disembarked, he died. His burial, the
very poorest, took place here. A few hours before
he died, he murmured something about "home", about
"very old parents."
...But who they were nobody knew,
nor which his country in the vast panhellenic world
It is better so. For in this way, though
he lies dead in this little harbor,
his parents will always go on hoping he is alive."39
The constant encounter of the poet with circumstances of alienation
and yet final glory, as immortality can be achieved even through
the poorest burials in unknown harbors.
The architect searches for the "authenticity" of the cities or
for the "uniqueness", the intellectual essence, the meaning of "the
house", the "window", the "door", the "wall", the "nooks" and
"corners", or other minute details of the project under construction;(40)
good architects do not accept recipies and prescribed solutions.
Creation in the poetic sense and as Jean Lescure has argued, must be
based on. pure beginnings and be "an excercise in freedom".(4l) The
knowledge of the Discipline, the knowledge through history, the know-
ledge through the study of precedents must "be accompanied by an
equal capacity to forget knowing. Not knowing is not a form of
ignorance, but a difficult transcedence of knowledge".(42) And as an
artist in his effort to achieve the "possibility of afresh impact"(43)
"must not create the way he lives", but he must "live the way he
creates";(44) Poetic architects, that is creative, fresh architects
research objectively, but also search inside them. They try to see
all the parameters of their problem; the tangible and intangible
aspects of architecture. The ones that must be mastered and forgotten
if the result is to transcend the spheres of expedient triviality and
become a true poetic creation, a unique creation, or statement of
freedom.
The anonymous Greek architects who produced the architecture of
the islands, those architects who were equated by Aris Konstantinidis45
to the "people" and the people of Alexandria, not Alexander the Great
and his city planners, were the main shapers of the life and character,
the urban uniqueness of Alexandria. A city which is the summary of
the Greek spirit, the beliefs and life style of the race. Referring
to the works of the poets that express such people, it is as if we
refer to the body of architectural criticism as stated by the people
themselves; because the poets represent the collective psychi of the
people, they are the voices of the collective spirit. Greek poetry,
therefore, represents a treasure of such criticism; when the poets
speak it is as if one encounters the commentary and the thoughts of the
whole of the people. (46) The "Basement Tavern" of Varnalis represents
an archetype of the social life of Greece of a period gone by. A
piece of history and of an atmosphere encountered among the social
class that was oppressed and of a humanity that could be experienced,
nurtured and protected by the basement tavern.
The Cafeneion played a similar role; Yannis Ritos speaks about
other aspects of humanity and its associated problems through reference
to the space that witnesses them and acts as a daily public forum in
the life of its patrons; all of them, friends or not, yet companions
in the particular period of civilization they live,
"...old men,
failed actors with dyed hair and painted eyes,
spent their days and nights
...sketching on their cigarette boxes, swords,
laurel wreaths, tragic masks...
"...forgetting time, believing that the statue
in the cafe
"...depicts their true selves in their true age."47
The "cafe" as painted by Ritsos and the "Taverna" of Varnalis
are the social centers of Greek Urbanity, elements of the space
where people come in touch with people, to relay past memories and
keep them alive. Spaces that may be adjusted to the taste and temper-
amental variation of their specific clientel, sometimes pure Greek,
other times influenced by foreign elements and loaded with immitations,
yet still, places of the Greeks where the "cosmopolitan" meets wi th
the "local" and shapes an evolved -image. The poet accepts such
evolution which the purist might reject as bastardization of the
original. It is the poem on the "Evening Bar" where Ritsos presents
the visual case of Evolutiori (or decadance) of this particular space.
This bar is a space with "chairs, glasses, sheets, oily from cheese
pies", where a whole world finds existence: those who knew, "the
innocent ones" and where
"on a table with many glasses, alone the young stable
boy was sketching with a red iencil a whole rowof
crosses on a paper napkin..." 48
Crosses, death, the civil war of 1945-49, dictatorships, refuge
abroad, exile, loneliness, return, custom houses, love and hate,
the drama of the Greek people. A metaphysics of everyday life
through space, the actors in it, the symbols and their customs.
And it is Ritsos again, more painter than the painters this time,
more metaphysic than De Chirico or Magritte,to shake us up from the
lethargy of the daily alienation that burdens our daily lives. The
whole situation through the impact of a few lines and reference to
the "door", the element of the world generally associated with the
understanding of "interior" and "exterior", basic situations of the
world we live.
"Along side the street an enormous trjangular,
utterly alone, without a garden or an iron
gate house"49
"The door" which is "utterly alone", from in out, or out in,
from here to there, and nobody to go through. Loneliness, the zero
condition. Poetic paintings that capture the drama of many a people
through architectural metaphors. Doors without gardens or houses.
"Doors" of nothingness, even though we could get to places through
them.
Odysseus Elytis, the poet who in his epic poem "Axion Esti"
refers to God as his "Master Builder", will also refer to the city,
the sea, the house and its elements. He perceives the landscape of
his country as a summation of
"...walls hand in hand with the waves..."50
where houses are settled solidly on the ground,
subordinate to the great power of the unique light,
"...light-devouring
a house like an anchor down in the depths"51
and where his house is
"...old with lizards
and melted candles on the chest of drawers"
with its doors and windows opened. An old house
that unloads "the burden of solitude in the night.  52
The elements of built world, man the builder this time, resting on
God's creation, the Rock of Greece. Windows that don't stay mute.
Openings that speak, articulating beautiful crystal words;
it is poetry of the open window, through which the poet heard
"...words that broke like almonds
cactus
castor
condor
falcon"53
And then of all the details, the corner inside. Although Elytis
wrote a whole poem dedicated to a certain Villa Natassa, it was only
a specialoorner which drew his attention and established the vantage
point of contemplati.on .
"Here, in a corner where I sat
To smoke my first cigarette in freedom..."54
The smokes of the cigarette carry the poet to the heavens to see
the earth and all that covers it. He sees the rock of his country
descending into the sea like a dry grape leaf embracing snow-covered
mountain peaks and nurturing in her plains the fragrance of civiliza-
tions: Karyatides side by side with Technology and the new. The
secret corner of Villa Natassa becomes the desire to achieve a view
to a further heaven, to see the God in face. Yet this never stood
possible. The youth is back to his corner again, down on earth,
unable to see the ultimate. God doesn't want us to see him.
"My God, how much blue you spend to stop us from
seeing you:"55
This exclamation is., in fact, the poet's ultimate line in one of his
most direct efforts to address beauty directly. Beauty, the dangerous,
fragile and most holy concept that floods the vains of his body and is
the aura of his surroundings. Yet, the poet will always find consola-
tion; even from heaven, above of which there is another one, more
blue with the God beyond, he will look down, to the blue sea of Greece,
a gift of paradise with
"...a house on the sea
...with a large bed and a small door"56
A small house that will be transformed later to "a temple with four
stones, some sea water"57with a "large hall" with curtains, statues,
and peristylia 58, with trees outside whose branches touch the northern
window...The woman will arrive from there, the poets visions will enter
the house. "The House" of Elytis needs years to be built. It. grows
and transforms, it has additions, details, texture, it speaks, it
has fragrance, interior, exterior, furniture, looks at the sky, it
is anchored on the earth, plays with the sunlight; it is a house
that is built along with his poetry, in years, over many years,
through many poems. Over many years and many efforts similar to the
real houses, as built by the people, the architects and builders of
their own adobees. It is a house with
"...all white courtyards, where the south wind blows
whistling through vaulted arcades..."59
The poet builds his .house "using the stones that he collects from
around. Stones thrown at him by
Those who stoned him and live no longer :
"With their stones I built a fountain."60
The evil act of the others is transformed by the good poet into a
useful work to refresh the universe. Elytis needs the metaphor of
built work in order to convey higher meaning of the word. George\
Seferis acts similarly. He can not find a better way to speak
about the writing of one of the writers he admires, Makriyannis,
but an architectural and construction analogue. He equates the
writing of Makriyannis to an old wall
"...on which, if you observe carefully from a close
up you will distinquish every movement of the builder,
how he made the stones fit to each other, how each
stone is placed in harmony with what was done before
and how it is in harmony with what is about to follow
making a finished building which testifies the
adventures of an endless human act."61
The above observation of Serferis demonstrates the reciprocal rela-
tionship that exists between poetry and architecture. Architecture
can make the poets and poets can also make architecture. Architecture
needs poetry and poetry needs architecture. There is no better proof
to that than the case of the Poet Kostis Palamas; he is the most
representative and most sophisticated in the use of architectural
references, buildings, monuments, landscapes, works of Art.
Through them he unfolds and develops his whole attitude towards
hellenism. Architecture occupied such strong appreciation in the
mind of Palamas that he did not hesitate to use architectural meta-
phors when explaining or referring to his own poetic evolution.
Referring to his two major epico-lyric works, "the Dodecalogue of
the Gypsy" and "the King's Flute" he stated: "The Dodecalogue of
the Gypsy is the gateway, the Propylaea, through which we enter
into The King's Flute."62
Finally, it is architecture through which he expresses his
Theses towards ancient Greece and the due Notion of Hellenism in
its twentieth century state. The Doric temple of the Parthenon,
"The Simple and Hudge", the "Temple" as he calls it, the one on
"The Rock", that is to say the Rock of the Acropolis, represent
the two filters of reference of Palamas Poetic dissertation. He
describes the process of Greek civilization through monuments that
are built from one "people, to "change clothes"(63)  and be transformed
to serve other utilities and beliefs of other people, the conquerors
of the country.
Each time Fate pitilessly
Strikes at the race,
the heart of the race, the temple,
will first take the blow,
will shake and deeply crack.
The Byzantine will turn the temple Christian,
the Frank will make it Catholic,
the Moslem will force it to wear the turban:
each race will plunder it with rage. 64
Through reference to architecture, always Parthenon, he will lament
the death of all classical beauty as caused by subsequent events of
history. Parthenon and The Rock of the Acropolis which are initially
perceived and presented by the poet as works of immortal Art, are
vested by life and voice by the poet's pen (65). The poet writes
his work and puts his creations to talk to him and to every other about
the miracle of the classical civilization.
As "The Rock" speaks he talks about what he sees; landscape
details, the sky, the people, the Panathenean procession, the crowds
that approach him, friendly at first, hostile later.
The Poet speaks through arch1tecture and landscape, and they in
return speak to him about everything else, making in the process the
poetry of the Poet. The "Rock" and the "Temple" move him and make
him compose, while in return, he offers them back in gratitude voice
and spirit to make them talk in his place. The stone, the marble,
the artifact, are given feelings, ability to see, voice, ability to
perceive. The Rock sees the details of events of history, conquerors
and advancing armies
"The sweat of a thousand roads drips from their bodies,
in their glances the fires of a thousand war burns,
a crowd difficult to measure, daring..."66
The End of Classical Greece, till years later, many years later the
New World. Will it succeed Europe? But the issue here is Athens.
"Athens is no more. Europe now exists. Give her, O
Europe, give from your vitals to her who is born
again." 67
Reference to history is absolutely necessary for Palamas. It is only
through her that he defines the present. Yet he is doing it in a
unique way. He is not a mimetic historicist but a creator. One
who views his own work as apiece in the thread of historic continuity.
-
He needs not only history and the place where he lives, but the
whole universe. His work is the work of a man of one place and
time, which are however particles of the whole world. He needs,
therefore, the whole world, the whole of history. Kavafy made
equal use of history; he needed history just to define himself.
He was, however, historically nostalgic, although equally universal
regarding the geographic and cultural boundaries of his historic
references. It is important to point out that the historicism of
the Greek poets was not imitative or romantic, but it was one of
true concern for the understanding of the present and the creation
of the new. Historicism represents another fundamental necessity
employed by architects as well. In that sense, both Greek
poets and Greek architects, good poets and good architects in
general, have another thing in common. The good architect must
not negate history, nor should turn back, arid become formal immi-
tator of history, plagiarist of gone by styles or romantic set-
designer of the absurb. Palamas and Cavafy are, in a sense,
paradigms in terms of historic reference as a force to creative
action. The work of the Greek poets also teaches that universalism
and concern for international forces and multi-civilizational
aspects of mankind do not have to be antithetical or counterproductive
regarding the creation of localized, fit, original works. The work
of Palamas, for instance, is highly and uniquely Greek. Yet, the
poet never stopped caring, referring, studying, admiring, and.
giving credit to the best of the international colleagues he knew
and whose work had studied. He makes open reference to other
"Fatherlands" in his work "Lyrical Paths" (68).The poet is a catalyst
of civilization. And if the civilization of a Fatherland is to be
kept in healthy state, it must exist in harmony with those of
exterior universes, the rest of the world. Palamas loved the poets
of France, Germany and America. They were sons of their own lands,
equally carrying for the world themselves. And it is not strange
that he speaks about his international colleagues through reference
to the landscapes that produced them. He speaks admiringly of
Walt Whitman and he can't find a better way to describe him but
through equating him to the rivers and the canyons of America (69).
Walt Whitman becomes a landscape "a Niagara striking the Lyre"(70);
and elsewhere he praises Whitman's ability "to receive every
sensation directly from nature without an interpreting medium."(71)
As it has also been pointed out by others "Emerson.s essays
on nature, man, and art were treasures of wisdom for Palamas."(72)
The same was true regarding his attitude towards Goethe, Schiller,
Heine, and Rilke and certainly Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge,
Carlyle, Tennyson and Swim Bume. Asketicism in Greece never produced
any great poetry. The poet needs the world to operate. He needs the
universe. The same is absolutely true for the architect.
Architecture is like poetry. They are both intellectual and
civilizational indeces. The one is written, the other is built.
The pen and the trowel are their tools. The architect will find no
discriptive building hymns in the Greek poetry. Even Paul the
Silentiary, the poet of Hagia Sophia went beyond the surface of
description and he gave us the twin greatness of church and state
of Byzantine life that took place and was greatly symbolized by
this great building (73). The good Greek poets went way beyond the
surface of description. They did not speak of the form, the texture,
Ithe materials and the decoration of architecture alone, in fact, they
rarely did so. They gave us the essence, the authenticity, the
meaning, the spirit of the architectonic works they employed as
metaphors in their poetry. It is the pursuit of the "essence" and .
the "spirit" where the two poetries meet each other.
Because of that it is advisable, I believe, that archi-
tects search for the poets in the effort to stimulate their imagina-
tion in a creative process so that the works produced may be in
context with the intellectual and spiritual fit of the place. As
for the case presented here, I consider it to have been a happy
circumstance that the Greek architects have the Greek poets for
reference in the   task.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

NOTES

1. Reference to the poet Angelos Sikelianos who actually "dug the
Greek earth", through his personal excavations in Delphi.
2. See Jan Lagoudis Pinchin "Alexandria Still, Forster, Durrell and
Cavafy", Princeton University Press 1977, p.3. Also Peter Bien
"Constantin Cavafy", Columbia University Press 1964, p.3 where
he refers to Durrell who first considered Cavafy as the "Genius
loci" of his Quartet taking place in Alexandria.
3. There is general agreement on this point by the critical scholars
of Greek poetry. See Trypanis C.A. "Medieval and Modern Greek
Poetry", Oxford Univ. Press 1951 p.lv, also Maskaleris Thanasis
"Kostis Palamas" Twayne Publishers Inc. 1972 p. 138, also Philip
Sherrard "The Marble Threshing Floor", Vallentine, Mitchell 1956,
pp. 39-81.
4. Reference to the seventh song from "The King's Flute".
5. Angelos Sikelianos, from the poem "Return", see Edmund Keeley
and Philip Sherrard "Angelos Sikelianos, selected Poems".
Princeton University Press, 1979, p.2.
6. "Odysseus Elytis" Chosen and Introduced by Edmund Keeley and
Philip Sherrard, Penguin Books, 1981, p.60.
7. For actual cases regarding the experiences of the poet in specific
Greek places see: George Seferis, "A poet's journal: days of
1945-1951" translated by Athan Anagnostopoulos, The Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press, 1974. See also George Seferis "Three
secret poems", Walter Kaiser translater, Harvard University Press,
1969.
8. Seferis, "A poet's journal".
9. Ibid.
10. George Seferis "Collected Poems 1925-55" translated, edited and
introduced by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Princeton
University Press, McMLXVII 1967, p. 214.
11. 12. 13. Titles of Poems by Kostas Varnalis and Yannis Ritsos.
14. Palamas had also a deep knowledge of world literature and he
admired Whitman and Emerson. See Maskaleris op.cit. p. 134.
15. George Seferis op.cit. p. 214.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid. p. 214.
18. See Gaston Bachelard "Poetics of Space" .Beacon, Press ) Boston, 1969
19. Reference to the house of Rodakis in Aegina. Rodakis, who was
the owner, architect and builder of the house, left the inprint
of his palm on the wall to greet the occasional visitor after
his death. See George Candilis "Batir la vie", editions stock,
Paris, 1977, pp. 11,12.
20. Labros Porphyras "Lacrimae Rerum", see Trypanis, op.cit. p.201.
21. Kostis Palamas "The Grave", see Maskaleris op.cit., p.27.
22. George Seferis "A poet's journal" op.cit. p. 62.
23. George Seferis: The house near the sea from the poem "Thrush"
see Seferis, collected poems, op.cit. pp. 312, 313.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. See Antoniades, Anthony, "Architecture and Allied Design"
Kendall/Hunt, 1980, pp. 124-142.
27. Cavafy C.P. "The Complete Poems of Cavafy" Translated by Rae
Dalven, with an introduction by W. H. Auden, Harcourt, Brace
and World, Inc., New York, 1961, p. 198.
28. Odysseus Elytis, "selected poems" selected and introduced by
Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Penquin books, 1981. p. 56.
29. Poem by Cavafy with titles taken from the realm of the built.
world: "The City" , "by the open window" , "The builders" , "windows" ,
"walls" , "The Harbor" , "in the church'. , '.house of the soul" ,
"Chandelier", etc .
30. Cavafy op.cit. p. 198.
31. From the poem "by the open window", Cavafy op.cit. p. 197.
32. Ibid.
33. Cavafy "walls",  in Cavafy op.cit. p. 17.
34. Keely E. "Cavafy's Alexandria" op.cit. pp. 13-75.
35. Ibid. p. 15.
36. Cavafy "The City'., in Trypanis op.cit. p. 224-225.
37. Keeley E. and Sherrard Philip '.Angelos Sikelianos" op.cit. p.XVI
38. Cavafy, poem "in church".
39. Cavafy "The Harbor" Cavafy op.cit. p. 81.
40. See Gaston Bachelard op.cit. pp. XXXIV.
41. Ibid. p. XXIX and Jean Lescure "Lapic~ue'., Galanis, Paris, p. 78.
41. (cont.) See also Amos in Tiao Chang "The Tao of Architecture"
Princeton University Press, 1981 printing on "Creative Forgetful-
ness", pp. 70-71-72.
42. Bachelard, Ibid, p. xxix.
43. Ibid.
44. Bachelard, Ibid, p. XXIX, also credit to Jean Lescure, op.cit.
45. See Aris Ronstantinidis "Dio Choria ap ti Mycono" or
"Palia Athenaika spitia".
46. Reference to poems by Rostas Varnalis.
47. Yannis Ritsos "Scripture of the Blind" translated by Rimon
Friar and Rostas Myrsiades. Ohio State University Press.
Columbus 1979. From the poem, "The Statue in the Cafe", p. 230.
48. Ibid. p. 214.
49. Ibid. p. 110.
50. Elytis, op.cit.p.59
51. Elytis,op.cit.p.60
52. Elytis op.cit. p. 96.
53. Ibid. p. 93. ,
54. Ibid. p. 98.
55. Ibid. p. 104.
56. Ibid. p. 80.
57. Ibid. Ibid. p. 81.
58. Ibid. p. 81.
59. Ibid. p. 21.
60. Ibid. p. 28
61. Seferis excert translated by the author.
62. Maskaleris op.cit. p. 69.
63. Ibid. p. 95.
64. Maskaleris op.cit. £rom Palarnas "The Ring's Flute".
65. Ibid. p. 88.
66. Ibid. p. 89.
67. Ibid. p. 101.
68. Ibid. p. 24 and p. 30.
69. Ibid. p. 134 and Palamas "My Poetics", Works X p. 479.
70. Ibid.
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid.
73. See Trypanis op.cit. Paul the Silentiary "Description of the
Church of Hagia Sophia" p. 63.

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