Greek writer
George Katsimbalis
(
Greek
: Γι?ργο? Κατσ?μπαλη?
Giorgos Katsimbalis
; 1899 ? July 25, 1978) was a
Greek
intellectual, editor and writer, and member of the
Generation of the '30s
. He was known as "
The Colossus of Maroussi
" owing to
Henry Miller
's
work of the same title
.
Biography
[
edit
]
George Katsimbalis was born in
Athens
in 1899.
[1]
His father, Constantine Katsimbalis, was a professor who studied in Paris. His mother was a Greek woman from the Gousios family of
Romania
. The Katsimbalis family originated in
Katsibali
. Katsimbalis had a sister, Soso, who committed suicide as a young adult.
Katsimbalis's father, his wife and two children, moved from Greece to Paris in 1916. That same year, George Katsimbalis left the family to fight for Greece in World War I. He left by ship from Marseilles to Greece, but the ship was torpedoed by a
German Navy
submarine, Surviving the attack, Katsimbalis ended up in Egypt. He eventually reached
Thessaloniki
, then served as a second lieutenant in the
Greek Army
on the
Macedonian front
.
At the end of World War I, Katsimbalis returned to France. He attended courses at the
Sorbonne University
Law School, but did not graduate. After the
Greco-Turkish War
started in 1919, Katsimbalis returned again to Greece to fight. He fought with the Greek Army in the unsuccessful invasion of Turkey. In 1924, the entire Katsimbalis family returned to Greece for permanent settlement.
In 1939, Katsimbalis married Aspasia Sakorrafo, the daughter of a university professor. The couple adopted a son, Giorgos Katsimbalis.
[2]
During
World War II
, Katsimbalis served in the Greek army as an artillery lieutenant.
Katsimbalis died in
Athens
on June 25, 1978. He was buried in the first cemetery of Athens.
[2]
Literary work
[
edit
]
Katsimbalis published 43 bibliographical works, 19 Greek and 14 foreign scholars, while already in 1925 he presented in London, a translation of poems.
Katsimbalis was introduced to
Henry Miller
in the late 1930s in Athens by their common friend and writer
Lawrence Durrell
. Miller and Katsimbalis became close friends and that is described in Miller's book
The Colossus of Maroussi
.
[3]
Patrick Leigh Fermor
in an interview in 1978 said that George Katsimbalis' stories and friendship have greatly influenced his writings.
In the 1930s,
Konstantinos Tsatsos
was constantly pressuring Katsimbalis to write until one day Henry Miller pulled him aside and said, "Stop asking him to write. Katsimbalis will never write, he is a story teller and story tellers do not have any urge or need to write".
[
citation needed
]
References
[
edit
]
Literature
[
edit
]
- Κατσ?μπαλη? Γι?ργο?
, in:
Παγκ?σμιο Βιογραφικ? Λεξικ?
, vol. 4, Athens, Εκδοτικ? Αθην?ν, 1985
- Αλ?ξη? Ζ?ρα?:
Κατσ?μπαλη? Γι?ργο?
, in:
Λεξικ? Νεοελληνικ?? Λογοτεχν?α?
, Athens, Εκδ?σει? Πατ?κη, 2007
External links
[
edit
]
|
---|
International
| |
---|
National
| |
---|
Other
| |
---|