Georgios Vizyinos

Georgios Vizyinos (1849-1896), a poet and prose writer, was born in Vizyi, Eastern Thrace. After finishing elementary school, he initially worked in a tailor shop in the city for about three years. In 1867, with the help of Cypriot merchant Yiangos Georgiadis, he went to Cyprus to become a clergyman and attended the Greek School of Nicosia. In 1872, he accompanied the Bishop of Cyprus, Sophronios, to the Phanar for ecclesiastical reasons and enrolled as a theology student at the Theological School of Halki. With the assistance of the Phanariot poet Elias Tantalis, he published his first poetry collection titled "Poetika" in 1873. This collection helped him meet the wealthy Greek George Zarifis, who provided him with the financial means to travel to Athens and enroll in the final grade of high school. That same year, the poet won first prize in the Voutsinaio poetry competition with the poem "Kodros." After graduating, he enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Athens but chose to continue his studies in philosophy in Göttingen, Germany. He continued writing poems and won first prize in the Voutsinaio competition with the poetry collection "Arais, Marais, Koukoumarais," which he later renamed "Bosporides Avrai." From May 1877 to August 1878, he continued his philological studies in Leipzig, with a particular interest in the history of philosophy, aesthetics, and psychology. In 1880, he began writing his doctoral dissertation on "Play from a Psychological and Pedagogical Perspective." In 1883, he went to London, where he started writing his short stories, beginning with "My Mother's Sin." The others include "Between Piraeus and Neapolis" (1883), "Who Was My Brother's Killer" (1883), "The Consequences of an Old Story" (1884), "May Day" (1884), "The Only Journey of His Life" (1884), "Why the Apple Tree Didn't Become an Apple Tree" (1885), and "Moskov Selim." In London, he also wrote his habilitation thesis titled "The Philosophy of the Good According to Plotinus" and published his new poetry collection "Attides Avrai." In 1884, due to the death of G. Zarifis, he returned to Athens and was appointed a high school teacher. In 1885, he was unanimously declared a lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy, but due to rivalries, his academic career did not succeed. Literary circles scorned him, and suddenly, without reason, he was dismissed from his teaching position. To make a living, he worked as a professor of Dramaturgy at the Athens Conservatory and wrote for Barth and Hirst in the "Lexikon Encyclopaedikon." In 1890, symptoms of a nervous disorder began, and he went for spa treatments in the central Alps of Austria, but his condition did not improve. Returning to Athens, he continuously wrote: a study on Zeller's History of Philosophy and translations of well-known European ballads. At the age of 40, the author fell deeply in love with a fourteen-year-old girl, whom he proposed to marry, but his proposal was rejected by her mother. This was followed by distressing episodes that led to Vizyinos being confined to the Dromokaiteio Psychiatric Hospital, where he died in April 1896.