Stratis Myrivilis

Efstratios Stamatopoulos was born on 30 June 1890 in Sykaminea, a village on the north coast of Lesbos, which was then still part of the Ottoman Empire. He went to Athens to study law and literature, but in 1912, when the Balkan Wars broke out, he volunteered for the army. He fought in the Balkan Wars, on the Macedonian front in the First World War, where he was wounded, and in the Asia Minor campaign of 1919–1922. Ten years of soldiering gave him his subject.

Back in Mytilene after the Asia Minor catastrophe, he founded and edited the newspaper Καμπάνα (The Bell) and serialised in it the war diary that became Η ζωή εν τάφω. The first edition was printed in Mytilene in 1924; the expanded Athens edition of 1930 made him famous overnight. In 1932 he moved to Athens with his family and lived by journalism, publishing novels, short stories and newspaper columns for the next forty years. He worked for Greek national radio, was president of the National Society of Greek Writers, and in 1958 was elected to the Academy of Athens.

He wrote under the pen name Myrivilis from the beginning of his career. His anti-war novel was banned under the Metaxas dictatorship and again during the German occupation. He died in Athens on 19 July 1969, but his heart remained in Sykaminea, whose cliffs, fishing boats and olive groves fill every book he wrote.

Η ζωή εν τάφω (Life in the Tomb, 1924, final form 1930) is presented as the notebooks of Sergeant Antonis Kostoulas, found after his death at the front in Macedonia and written for the woman he loves. In short, vivid chapters he describes the trenches near Monastir, the mud and lice, the gas attacks, the Slav-speaking villagers who shelter the soldiers, and the slow loss of faith in the war. The title comes from the Good Friday hymn «Ἡ ζωὴ ἐν τάφῳ» (Life in the tomb), and the trench is the tomb. It remains the most powerful Greek book about the First World War.

Η δασκάλα με τα χρυσά μάτια (The Schoolmistress with the Golden Eyes, 1933) continues the story in peacetime: a soldier returns to Lesbos and falls in love with the widow of his dead comrade. Η Παναγιά η Γοργόνα (The Mermaid Madonna, 1949) is set in a fishing village modelled on Skala Sykamineas, where refugees from Asia Minor build a new life around a tiny chapel on a rock; its icon shows the Virgin Mary with a mermaid's tail. These three novels are usually read as a trilogy about war and its aftermath. The novella Ο Βασίλης ο Αρβανίτης (Vasilis the Arvanite, 1943) portrays a proud, violent, magnetic village strongman. Myrivilis also published volumes of short stories, Το πράσινο βιβλίο (The Green Book), Το γαλάζιο βιβλίο (The Blue Book) and Το κόκκινο βιβλίο (The Red Book), whose colours became a trademark. His prose is lush and sensual, rooted in the island dialect, with long descriptions of light and sea.

Pages from Η ζωή εν τάφω are in the Greek school anthology, and the novel is reread whenever Greeks debate war and peace; it has been translated into English and many other languages. Go to Skala Sykamineas on Lesbos: the chapel of the Panagia Gorgona really stands on a rock in the harbour, and the old mulberry tree where Myrivilis liked to sit and write, η μουριά του Μυριβήλη, still shades a taverna by the water. His house in Sykaminea is marked, and streets in Mytilene and Athens carry his name. The title Η ζωή εν τάφω has become a phrase in its own right, used by journalists for any life lived in a hole, and Η Παναγιά η Γοργόνα gave the island one of its best-known images.

• The title Η ζωή εν τάφω is the first line of the Good Friday lament sung in every Greek church, which the novel turns into a description of the trenches.
• He served as a soldier for roughly ten years, from the Balkan Wars of 1912 to the retreat from Asia Minor in 1922.
• His three story collections are named simply after colours: green, blue and red.
• The chapel in Η Παναγιά η Γοργόνα exists: pilgrims and tourists still climb the rock at Skala Sykamineas to see it.