Zakynthos has a long tradition of literature and culture. The list of world renound writers is long. Since the 1500's writers Zakynthos has boasted some of the most famous Greek writers since anciant times. Dimitrios Zinos, Tzannes Koronalos, Georgios Serras, Andreas Vendotis, Athanassios Tsangaropoulos, Antonios Martelaos, Dimitrios Gouzelis, Antoniios Matesis, and Georgios Tersetis.

An outstanding expositor of the European enlightenment and patriotic revolution was the poet Hugo Foscolo who was born in Zakynthos in 1778, to an Italian father and a Greek mother. Italy still honours him as one of her great men of letters.

The greatest of the Zakynthos writers, and famed throughout Greece and the world, was Dionyssios Solomos (1798 - 1857). He was the author of the Hymm to Liberty (1823), the verses of which, set to music by Nikolaos Mantzaros, have become the Greek national anthem:

Solomos Studied in Italy, and returned to Zakynthos in 1818. He was sworn in as a member of the Philiki Etairia in the church of Aghios Georgios, and stood foremost in the uprising of his time to win liberty for Zakynthos. He wrote a number of works in Italian before he embarked on his major work in the Greek language. His best known poems, apart from the Hymm to Liberty, are On the Death of Lord Byron, The Free Besieged, Lambros, The Destruction of Psara, The Cretan, Porphyras; and the prose works The Woman of Zakynthos and Dialogue between a Poet, a Friend, and an Intelectual. Solomos' remains have been entomed int the mausoleum of the Museum of Dionyssios Solomos and Famous Zakynthians.

Zakynthos. The Flower of the East

Back to the Zante Home Page