Sikelianos, Angelos

Born Mar. 28, 1884, on the island of Leukas (now Levkás); died Apr. 19, 1951, in Athens. Greek poet.

Sikelianos’ first collection was The Clairvoyant (1907). His poems of the 1920’s and 1930’s are permeated with pagan worship of life’s beauty. On the eve of the Italo-Greek War he wrote the drama The Sibyl (1940), whose theme was the capture of Hellas by the Romans; this drama may be considered the beginning of Greek Resistance literature. Sikelianos later wrote the dramas Christ in Rome (1946) and The Death of Digenis (1947).