It is less known to the general public that, more than four centuries ago, when Crete was under Venetian rule, a masterpiece was born in the form of a versified romantic story that marked the beginning of modern Greek literature: ”Erotokritos and Aretousa”. Written by Vincenzo Cornaro around 1600, despite not being among the famous universal love stories, Erotokritos and Aretousa is a Renaissance monumental work often compared to ”Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare and also a living artistic theme in Cretan culture.
The romantic epic poem, consisting of 10,012 rhyming fifteen-syllable couplets verses penned in the Cretan dialect, tells the story of the young nobleman Erotokritos (or Rotokritos) and his forbidden love for Princess Aretousa. With a remarkable refinement of language and literary technique based on the Greek poetic tradition (especially in the Cretan folk novels called "mantinades") Cornaro assembles the challenges and dramas suffered by the two young people in love and thirsty for life as in a theatrical play, through a succession of five acts whose intrigue, subtly sprinkled with dialogues and exploring the most subtle facets of the human soul brilliantly supports the reader's interest.
The plot revolves around the love between Erotokritos, the main hero, and Aretousa, the daughter of the King of Athens. Erotokritos was the son of Pezostratos, an adviser of the King. Knowing that his lower social rank will not allow him to openly express his feelings, Erotokritos disguises himself and starts singing serenades under her window in the evenings. And slowly the princess falls in love with the unknown singer. But the King attempts by any means to stop her from the blind and dishonorable love. Erotokritos, escaping from the guards sent to arrest him, flees into exile, to forget Aretousa. During a visit to the house of Pezostratos, Aretousa discovers the letters and songs written by Erotokirtos to her, realizing that he was her secret admirer. The king-father organizes knightly tournaments to drive her sadness away and find princely suitors to win her interest, but all his attempts fail. A cascade of dramatic events follows for the couple in love, which, unlike Romeo and Juliet, come to a fortunate close: the enamored re-unite and vow eternal happiness with the king's blessing, thus inheriting the throne of Athens.
Cornaro borrowed the love tale idea from an Italian prose translation of a medieval French romance "Paris et Vienne" by Pierre de la Cypède, but in a true Renaissance manner, he used the themes of love and war to emphasize moral virtues such as devotion, friendship, patriotism, heroism, faith, and honor, proving to be a skilled storyteller and a sensitive interpreter of the human heart. Serenades, gallantries, secrets and revelations, tears and desperation, hidden vows of love, imprisonment, fatal duels, and chivalrous tournaments, but also forgiveness and happiness serve as ingredients for composing the story of the brave, madly in love hero and the lady of his heart.
Vincenzo Cornaro (Greek: Vitsentzos Kornaros) (1553-1613 / 14) is considered to be the greatest Cretan poet and one of the most significant and influential poets of Greece. A successor of the Cretan branch of the noble Venetian Cornaro family, Vicenzo was born in the province of Sitia and received a good education, according to the customs of the aristocratic society of the time. After the marriage, he moved to Chandax (the Venetian name of the city of Heraklion), and together with his brother, the writer and scholar Andrea Cornaro, he founded "L 'Accademia degli Stravaganti" / Academy of the Weird, an Italian-oriented philological association that would consistently contribute to the flourishing of medieval Cretan culture. The masterpiece Erotokritos places Cornaro with his contemporaries William Shakespeare and Miguel Cervantes in the gallery of the great European Renaissance writers.
The work circulated a lot in the 17th century, reproduced and multiplied in the form of transcripts of the original manuscript, which was unfortunately lost. After its first printing in 1713 in Venice, the epic poem Erotokritos is widespread in all territories inhabited by Greeks. A copy of this first printed series is housed in the Gennadius Library in Athens and a manuscript from 1710 is kept at the British Library of the British Museum in London, in the collection of precious documents that contributed to the founding of the institution. The 1713 edition was reprinted in 1737, of which today there is one copy in the National Library of Athens. The first modern reproduction of the work appeared in 1915, by Stefanos Xanthoudides, and since then, several important Greek and foreign authors have published translations in verse and prose.
Transmitted orally from one generation to another, the love story between Erotokritos and Aretousa has earned its place in folk erotic poetry and music, giving rise, even today, to many theatrical performances, musical concerts, or visual art exhibitions. Erotokritos became a revered folk hero, and the medieval masterpiece that stood the test of time played on lyre chords and sung by well-known voices such as Nikos Xylouris continues to gently caress hearts wounded by unfulfilled love. The story was also a source of inspiration to the national poet Dionysios Solomos (author of the poem Hymn to Liberty, which became the National Anthem of Greece) and influenced various Greek poets such as Kostis Palamas, Kostas Krystallis, and George Seferis. At the beginning of the 19th century, the famous Greek humanist scholar Adamantios Koraes called Vincenzo Cornaro, "The Homer of Popular Literature."
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