Takis Sinopoulos
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Takis Sinopoulos was born in 1917 in the Peloponnese. He served as a military doctor in the Greek Civil War from 1946 to 1949; his experiences of fratricide and excessive violence had a lasting impact on him and his work. He died in 1981 in Pyrgos in the Peloponnese.
He was born in Agolinitsa, the first-born son of philologist Giorgos Sinopoulos and Roussa-Veneta Argyropoulou. He studied medicine at the University of Athens, graduating in 1944. In 1934, under the pseudonym Argyros Roubanis, he published the poem “Betrayal” and the short story “The Revenge of a Modest Man” in the Pyrgio newspaper “Nea Imara”. In 1941, he was drafted as a medical sergeant in Loutraki. [3] During the occupation, he published translations of French poets and some essays on poetry. In 1942, he was briefly imprisoned by the Italians as a resistance fighter. During the civil war, he was a doctor in an infantry battalion. After the end of the civil war, he began working as a doctor in the capital. In 1951 he published his first collection of poems, entitled Metaihmio. He was a member of the editorial staff of Eighteen Texts, New Texts 1-2, Deposition ’73, and the journal The Continuation. He also collaborated with numerous journals (Nea Estia, Filologika Chronika, Odysseas (Pyrgou), Kochlias, Piraika Grammata, Anglohelleniki Epitheoresis, Kainouria Epochi, Zygos, Epochen, Tram, O Tachydromos, etc.). He belonged to the first post-war generation. He was particularly influenced by T.S. Eliot, Seferis, and Ezra Pound. In general, his poetry is lyrical, epigrammatic, and characterized by tragic self-awareness and pessimism. In his final years, a shift in the use of linguistic material toward an anti-poetic, aggressive, and often ironic discourse was observable. He donated a large part of his library to the University of Thessaloniki.
Sinopoulos spent his student years in Pyrgos and went to Athens to study medicine in 1934. He made his first appearance in the literary world in 1934 with the publication of the poem “Betrayal” and the short story “The Revenge of a Modest Man” in the Pyrgos newspaper “Nea Imera” under the pseudonym Argyros Roubanis. His first book of poetry, titled “Metaihmio,” was published in 1951. The first poem in this volume, “Elpinor,” was written in 1944.
A pioneering figure of the “Generation of the 1950s,” Sinopoulos authored a number of poetry collections, essays, and book reviews throughout his creative career, which shaped the country’s intellectual life in the post-war years. He is a tragedian par excellence. The emphasis on the tragic “stigmatizes” his entire poetry, the drama, the decay, the death, the suffering and the alienation, and embodies the tragic historical events he experienced (the dictatorship of Metaxas, the war occupation, the civil war, the 1967 dictatorship, the coup and the invasion of Cyprus).
He also wrote the poetry collections “The Song of Joanna and Constantine,” which won the 1961 State Prize for Poetry, “Acquaintance with Max,” and “Night and Counterpoint,” as well as various studies and essays on the work of Seferis, such as “Strofi.” He was awarded the 2nd State Poetry Prize in 1962 for “The Song of Joanna and Constantine.”
He died on April 25, 1981 (Easter Eve 1981) in Pyrgos. He was married to Maria Dotta, who in 1995 donated the house she lived in in the municipality of Nea Ionia to the Takis Sinopoulos Foundation as accommodation. A bust of the poet stands in the square in front of his house on Takis Sinopoulos Street in Perissos.
https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2017/03/poet-of-a-pitiable-time-takis-sinopoulos.html
