The Poetics of Pain

Modern Greek poetry has been influenced by a tradition of lament that is still practiced in rural Greece, and by the tragic events of modern Greek history. In contrast to the elegiac tradition, laments and their women practitioners ascribe a positive value to pain. Male poets of the generation of 1930 made use of the imagery of folk lament in their poetry, and women poets of the second half of the 20th century addressed the dead directly as their village counterparts still do. The Asia Minor catastrophe of 1922 dominated 20th-century modern Greek literature and drew on another traditional poetic form, the “lament for lost cities.” More recently, songwriters have mourned the political and economic tragedies of contemporary Greece in lyrics that seem much closer, in their expression of pain, to the tradition of lament than to elegy.