The Drama of Quality

Zissimos Lorenzatos (1915-2004), during his last years, was generally acknowledged to be the most important man of letters in Greece. An essayist, poet and thinker, he was perhaps the last of his generation with a vision that is both deeply religious and humane. His profound knowledge of European literature and thought, and his familiarity with the writings and philosophy of the East, along with his thorough assimilation of the long Greek tradition, enabled him to explore, with unusual insight, the spirit both of Europe and of modern Greece. This second selection of his essays to be published in English includes his studies on the Greek writers Papadiamandis, Sikelianos and Capetanakis, and on the architect Dimitris Pikionis; and it concludes with a lengthy and penetrating discussion of the American poet Ezra Pound, who called himself the "apostle of Europe", and who visited Greece and met Lorenzatos in 1965. As Dr David Ricks writes of these essays in his foreword: "No-one who aspires to understand modern Greek culture should ignore them".