The Drama of Quality

Selected Essays

by Zissimos Lorenzatos

Zissimos Lorenzatos (1915–2004)is generally acknowledged to have been one of the most important men of letters in Greece of the twentieth century. An essayist, poet and thinker, he was perhaps the last of his generation with a vision that was 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 selection of his essays 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 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: ‘Zissimos Lorenzatos writes about things that matter in a way that matters. . . . No-one who aspires to understand modern Greek culture should ignore them.’

Cover type: Soft
231 pages
Edition #1 published in 2000 by Denise Harvey.
ISBN: 960-7120-16-7