Pericles Giannopoulos is an obscure figure for most Greeks today. Unfortunately, the same was partly true during the period when he lived and was active as a writer in Attica.
THE EARLY YEARS
Born in Patras in 1870, the son of an apparently well-off family. His father came from Messolonghi, while his mother from the Cretan Byzantine family of the Chaeretis. His uncle was Emmanuel Chaeretis, also an important thinker, who according to Mr. Dimitris Lazogiorgos-Elliniko in his book << Manuel Th. Chaeretis: The Unknown Prophet of Hellenism>> was, if not the first, one of the first preachers of Greek Self-Knowledge.
So, at the age of 17, Pericles went to Athens to attend medical courses for a year at the University of Athens, and then left for Paris to continue his studies there. After two years of residence, with the death of his father, he abandoned medicine and went to his brother in London, where he stayed for a few months studying English and French Literature.
Eventually, he returned to Athens where he enrolled in the Law School in 1893. There he was involved in translating and publishing Dickens, Poe, Baudelaire, etc., as well as his own prose poems.
THE PROJECT AND ITS VIEWS
In 1899, he began publishing his thoughts, opinions and all that essence of his study in various newspapers and magazines by writing articles. Generally, he used particularly imaginative pseudonyms such as: Apollonius, Neohellin, Th. Thanatos, Maeandros, Lotos.
His views were controversial for his time, but also for every era, let alone ours. A lover of Hellenism, he laid the foundations of what would later be called Hellenocentrism. A lover of youth and beauty, he believed in a revolution in all sectors, with all that this entails. This collective and multidimensional revolution, he believed, would lead the Nation, but also the state, to a Renaissance. According to him, Hellenism needed a profound SPIRITUAL REVOLUTION, which entails a MORAL REVOLUTION, that is, a social, ideological, artistic, individual, political and philological Revolution. A collective revolution, therefore, as mentioned above in a few words.
In addition, he believed that in order to achieve all of the above, xenomania (which he hated) had to be eliminated and the Greek had to return to the values of his culture and his place. All this original and, in my humble opinion, interesting way of thinking was reflected in his most important texts. Some of them are the following:
XENOMANIA
Towards the GREEK RENAISSANCE
Greek Color
Greek Line
Greek Music
As well as his books: "New Spirit" (1906) and "Appeal to the Panhellenic Public" (1907).
"Wake up. Rise up. And rebel against yourselves. And be rebaptized in the divine light of your Earth and in the Paradise Greek waters. You will come out ALIVE AND YOU WILL COME OUT GREEKS."
"We, the most beautiful, IDEAL - REALIZED and most outrageous of the fools on Earth."
"Xenomania is rustic. It is vulgarity. It is slovenliness. It is dishonor. It is unpatriotic. And it is recklessness. And it is ignorance."
A DEATH TAKED OUT OF A FAIRY TALE
Giannopoulos, as a lover of beauty and youth, and always a romantic, had always felt an attraction to this unknown called death. So on April 10, 1910, he galloped on a horse into the deep blue sea of Skaramangas, dressed in white and crowned with wildflowers. He had weights on him. The horse turned towards the shore, while he shot himself in the water.
His body was found after about 15 days. The main reason that pushed him to commit suicide is not known and probably never will be. Some argued that he never wanted to grow old, others that perhaps because his works did not have such a great impact or because he ultimately understood that he could never change the situation in Greece.
Finally, the most likely version, according to some sources, is his inglorious love affair with Sofia Laskaridou, an artist, who due to her studies abroad could not be together. Perhaps a combination of the above.
However, according to a report by Freddy Germanos from the distant 1961, a few days before Sofia's departure for Munich, the two of them were lying under the pine trees in Skaramangas and looking calmly and peacefully at the ashen sky.
Then Pericles whispered to her: "If I ever lose you, I will kill myself in this place. I will leave secretly and beautifully. I will disappear. I will go to meet Charon who will be waiting for me in his boat at sea. And I will have my ferries ready." He laughed nervously. "As for a penny, I hope it is in my pocket." He was only 41 years old at most.
EPILOGUE
Pericles Giannopoulos, then. A man who haunted and was haunted by his intelligence, his concerns and his emotions. A classic form of a philosopher of antiquity, born in the wrong era.
They wrote about Giannopoulos:
Grigorios Xenopoulos: "For the ideologists of the future, every phrase of Giannopoulos is capable of giving birth to an entire book."
Ion Dragoumis: "It seemed to me like the frozen north wind, furiously sweeping the air dirty with microbes and cleansing the world of every filth or garbage... I emphasize my life in this rhythm."
Kostis Palamas: "The Antinous teenager, the most brilliant who ever lived."
Angelos Sikelianos: "And fame brought... the sun as a monk-judge."
Miltiades Malakasis: "In reverent memory, oh Apollonius, live, Young and Ancient Together."
Myrtiotissa: "Our noble friend..."
SOURCES:
Pericles Giannopoulos - Wikipedia
The dead-end love and suicide of Pericles Giannopoulos - LIFO
The insane style of Pericles Giannopoulos (1869-1910) - Andro
WITH GREEK IDEOLOGY: Modern Greek Spiritual Heroes - Nikolaos Karras
Dimitris Lazogiorgos- Hellenic: "Manouil Th. Chaeretis: The unknown prophet of Hellenism".
Photo Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/ - https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/
