Kostas Karyotakis

Kostas Karyotakis was one of the most distinctive and influential poets in 20th-century Greek literature, whose work initiated a powerful wave of modernist pessimism and social satire.

Working as a frustrated provincial civil servant, Karyotakis turned his sharp poetic wit against bureaucratic absurdity, romantic sentimentality, and existential despair in collections such as 'Elegies and Satires'.

His tragic suicide in Preveza at age thirty-one sent shockwaves through the literary world, giving rise to 'Karyotakism', a lasting cultural and literary current in modern Greek poetry.