Margarita Lymperaki

Margarita Lyberaki (1919-2001). Margarita Lyberaki was born in Athens. As a child of divorced parents, she was raised by her grandfather, publisher Georgios Fexis, who instilled in her a love for books. During her childhood, she traveled to Paris for the first time and learned French. She graduated from the Arsakeio High School and studied at the Law School of Athens, from which she graduated in 1943. She also engaged in painting. Lyberaki married the writer G. Karapanos, with whom she had a daughter, Margarita Karapanou, who also became a writer. She made her literary debut in 1945 as Margarita Karapanou (using her husband's surname) with the novel "The Trees," and a year later published the work that made her widely known, the novel "The Straw Hats" (translated into French in 1950 as "Trois etes"). In 1946, she divorced and moved with her daughter to Paris, where she connected with Castoriadis, Kamba, Axelos, Elytis, and came into contact with the avant-garde European artistic movements of the time. In Paris, she completed "The Other Alexander" (1950), and in 1952 she began her involvement in playwriting, sometimes in French and sometimes in Greek. In literature, Lyberaki initially focused on psychological portraiture with an emphasis on female nature. With "The Other Alexander" and especially her theatrical works, she transitioned to a more transcendental space, moving to the boundaries of symbolism with ritualistic Dionysian writing, in her effort to define the position of modern Greece between Europe and the East through archetypal myths. A similar concern dominates her last prose work titled "The Mystery." She also wrote screenplays for the films "Magic City" by Nikos Koundouros (1955) and "Phaedra" by Jules Dassin (1962) and was involved in literary translation. She collaborated with the newspaper "Ta Nea" (1975). She was a member of the Society of Authors and the Society of Greek Playwrights. For more biographical details on Margarita Lyberaki, see Lizy Tsirimokou, "Lyberaki, Margarita," in the "World Biographical Dictionary," vol. 5, Athens, Ekdotiki Athinon, 1986; Georgia Farinou-Malamatari, "Margarita Lyberaki," in "Post-war Prose; from the War of '40 to the Dictatorship of '67," vol. E, pp. 130-177, Athens, Sokolis, 1988; Fr. Farmakis, "Lyberaki, Margarita," in the Great Encyclopedia of Modern Greek Literature, vol. 9, Athens, Hari Patsi, n.d.; Xanthy Katsari, "Margarita Lyberaki: Life and Work," in the program of the performance of Lyberaki's work "The Secret Bed or Telegonus" by the Municipal Regional Theater of Komotini, 1995, pp. 11-16; and Alexis Ziras, Walter Puchner, "Lyberaki, Margarita," in the "Dictionary of Modern Greek Literature," Athens, Patakis, 2007, pp. 1292-1293. (Source: Archive of Greek Authors, EKEVI).