Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/28

 the martyr of the national cause who, in Bucharest, came into touch with French revolutionary ideas, or Italian, as in the case of Salomos, the author of a much more impressive hymn of liberty in the classical style. In her relations with the Latin West the Ionian Islands played the same role for Greece as Ragusa for the Serbs, in the 16th and 17th centuries, and as Poland and Transylvania for Roumania. But, soon after the creation of the Balkan States, the problem of the new literature presented itself in particularly pressing form. The writers of the former centuries used the old Hellenic forms which could no longer be retained if the Greeks of the predominating class, at least, were to have the privilege of understanding their own literature. For such as Zalakostas and Valaoritis, the forging of a new language was a matter of some difficulty, and each resolved the problem in his own manner. But no Tuscany was available for the Greeks and it was impossible to blend the particularities of very different districts in order to mould the national literature to a general form. Notwitstanding this, the importance of the question produced good results: instead of pursuing the path of servile imitation, the poets gave all their attention to the philological problem. Thus the poetry of Kostas Palamas is in the deepest sense of the word Greek — purely Greek.

As regards Serbia, the abandonment of over-hackneyed themes comprised within the cycle of Kossovo cried the need of new directives. Notwithstanding Serbia’s former relations with Austria and Hungary, they were not found there. After a period of indecision lasting for nearly a quarter of a century, and the vogue of the new heroic poetry, of a local character, by Zmaj Jovanović, the new French forms of the Parnassian school were adopted. Borrowing the vague style of Henri de Régnier, men like