Stefanos Kumanudis e i Sette Sonetti per Venezia

The scholar Stefanos Koumanoudis (1818‑1899), throughout his long academic career primarily devoted to lexicography, epigraphy and archaeology, did not fail to experiment with poetic activity as well, in which he gave voice to his political vision and Enlightenment ideals. In 1851 he published the poem Stratis Kalopìchiros and, between 1845 and 1848, he composed a series of seven sonnets dedicated to the city of Venice. In these compositions with their passionate tone, he explored the Greek visitor’s feelings of admiration for the former ruler of his people, now fallen into foreign hands. The complex author’s soul movements emerge, a mixture of attraction and repulsion towards the homeland that, until a few decades earlier, had kept Greece under the yoke of slavery and which now finds itself similarly subjugated. This contribution aims to investigate this complexity, highlighting the stylistic traits thanks to which Koumanoudis translates his political thought into verse and gives the reader a rather peculiar image of Venice in the mid-nineteenth century.