| Abstract |
The aim of this work is to examine the motif of voyage in the poetry of Nikos Kavvadias, a poet who not only deals exclusively with the fictional voyage, but also with the factional voyage, as he was also radio operator in merchant navy. In this essay, we will not stay on the factual voyage not because we generally reject any reaction between fact and fiction, but mainly because in Nikos Kavvadias’s, and other neoromantic poets, it is fiction which outlines the fact, not the opposite.
Voyage is a permanent and a dynamic motif in his poetry. The shifts of voyage relate to the qualities of the poetic genre and, in particular, to the artistic movements that defined his era. After a brief introduction to the voyage in modern times, in the first chapter we trace back to the decadent voyage poets, Charles Baudelaire and Tristan Corbiere, who influenced Nikos Kavvadias, and we make a comparative approach to each other. In the following chapters, we focus on Nikos Kavvadias’s poetry, by mainly concentrating on the way the ideas of the artistic movements, by which he was affected, sketched the motif of voyage.
The units of this work reflect the interaction between fictional voyage and artistic movements in Nikos Kavvadias’s poetry. In the second chapter, we consider the poems of escape, an imaginery form of voyage, as well as its relation to symbolism. From the second to third chapter, we observe the transformation of imaginery voyage towards a materialized and a “realistic” one. We consider this form of voyage an “heterotopia of deviation” (a Michel Foucault’s term), and we analyze its relations to decadent, voyage poets. In the last chapter we see the transformation of the materialized voyage from a realistic veneer to a supernatural realm in the modernist supernatural voyage poems.
Secondly, we attempt to review some general views about the poetry of Nikos Kavvadias, especially his classification as a pre-modernist poet, an idea that enjoyed great popularity among critics. In this way, we examine stylistic and metric issues, since obscure writing and free verse are considered as distinguishing features of modern poetry.
Through an overview of voyage, we come to conclusions for Kavvadias’s poetry and neoromantic voyage poetry in general. Voyage, as never before, is not a timeless and universal symbol, but it is a ‘heterotopia of deviation’ where the poet belongs to and his poetry is formed. Thus, voyage poetry is revealed as a self-referential discourse.
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Σπουδή Θαλάσσης : το ταξίδι στο ποιητικό έργο του Νίκου Καββαδία
