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Andréas
Ioannídis Kálvos, (born April 1792, Zacynthus,
Venetian Republic [now Zákinthos, Greece]—died Nov.
3, 1869, London), Greek poet who brought an Italian Neoclassical
influence to the Ionian school of poets (the school of Romantics
from the seven Ionian islands).
Kálvos
was brought up at Leghorn, Tuscany (1802–12), and lived
most of his life in Italy and England. While in Italy he became
secretary (1812–17) to the Italian poet and patriot Ugo
Foscolo, a fellow native of Zacynthus, who exercised great
influence on his writings. In fact, Kálvos’ first
works, including two tragedies, were written in Italian. In 1826
he went to Corfu, where he founded his own private school. He
spent his last years in England.
Kálvos
published 20 patriotic odes in two fascicles: Líra (“The
Lyre”) at Geneva in 1824 and Néas Odás (“New
Odes”) at Paris in 1826. He wrote of an idealized Greece, a
Greece of the old virtues but a Greece viewed from outside.
Although he sometimes used Demotic Greek (the vernacular tongue),
he was generally a purist given to an austere and moralizing
poetry and to various archaisms. The Italian Neoclassical
influence was evident mainly in poetic paraphrases, extending
metaphors, and artificial language and metres. Although admired
by some, Kálvos was not a strong force in subsequent Greek
literature.
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