Alexandros Argyriou

The critic and literary historian Alexandros Argyriou (1921-2009) was born in Alexandria, Egypt. His real name was Alexandros Koumpis. He studied civil engineering at the National Technical University of Athens. Simultaneously, he showcased his literary talents by collaborating as a book critic with the magazines "Elefthera Grammata" (November 1947 to June 1949) and "Poetiki Techni" (1947-49). In 1950, he completed his service in the (Royal) Navy "without a blue stripe." From then on, he worked professionally on structural studies (1950-1992). Concurrently, he began writing book reviews for newspapers such as "Dimokratikos Typos" (1950), "Dimokratiki" (1951), "Imera" (1952), and magazines like "Stochos" (1951), "Anglo-Hellenic Review" (1953-54, under G. P. Savvidis), "Kainouria Epohi" (1957-58), "Epoches" (1963), "Tachydromos" (1965), "Nea Poreia" (1959-2009), "Kritiki" (1961), and "I Sinecheia" (1973). He wrote the "Introduction to Post-War Poetry" in the "Anthology of Post-War Poets" by Dinos Giorgoudis and K. Gennatas (1957). He regularly published columns in the newspaper "To Vima" (1971-73 and 1979-85), and occasionally in "Mesimvrini" (1965) and "I Kathimerini" (1976-1980). He was responsible for the entries on 20th-century authors in the ten-volume dictionary of "Ekdotiki Athinon." He taught the history of interwar literature for a semester at the University of Crete, in Rethymno (1963-64). He was part of the editorial committee that published "Eighteen Texts" (1970), "New Texts 1 and 2" (1971), and the magazine "I Sinecheia" (1973). Three copies of his studies were published "outside of commerce" (1957-1962), along with three books with his "editing" and "extensive introductions" in anthologies-literary histories (1969-1988) and five volumes of essays-studies (1984-1996). He compiled, edited, and "retrieved" the material from 1929-1939 in the volume "Nicolas Calas: Texts of Poetics and Aesthetics," 1982. He participated in twenty-seven "Symmeikta" volumes on various topics of literature and its history (1961-1997). The fruit of his vast experience and continuous study is the eight-volume "History of Greek Literature and Its Reception (1918-2000)," which serves as a fundamental resource for the study of Greek letters. Unlike other significant Literary Histories, his places less emphasis on narrative and more on bibliographic completeness. Its originality lies in reflecting the image of Greek literature in the eyes of its contemporaries through numerous excerpts. Gentle as a person, consensual and never extreme, he helped countless researchers and writers in their early steps. His broad acceptance is reflected in many honors, being named an honorary doctor of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Thessaloniki (1999), receiving the First Prize for Criticism-Essay for his book "Successive Readings of Greek Surrealists" (1984), the Grand Prize of the Ministry of Culture, and for his overall contribution, the Ouranis Prize of the Academy of Athens (2004). He passed away in Athens from health complications on May 22, 2009, at the age of 88.