Ioannis D. Kondylakis

Ioannis Kondylakis (1861-1920). Ioannis Kondylakis was born in Ano Viannos, Crete, into a well-known family of fighters on the island. As a child, he sought refuge with his family in Piraeus and returned to his birthplace in 1869, where he received his early education. He then began his secondary education in Heraklion and graduated from the Varvakeion Gymnasium in Athens in 1884. His studies were interrupted from 1877 to 1883, during which time he participated in the Cretan Revolution, worked at the Court of Appeals and the Justice of the Peace in Chania, and at the port authorities in Sitia, while also starting his journalistic career in Chania newspapers. In 1884, he was distinguished in a short story competition by the magazine Estia with his work "The Cretan Orphan" and published his first collection of short stories titled "Stories." He enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy in Athens, but due to financial difficulties, he could not complete his studies. He returned to Crete, worked as a teacher in Modi, Kydonia, but soon resigned and pursued journalism initially in Chania and later in Athens, where he fled in 1889 due to the patriotic content of his works, which led to persecution by the Turkish authorities. In Athens, he collaborated with many newspapers (Asty, Efimeris, Skrip) and from 1865 became a permanent editor at the magazine Empros under the pseudonym Diavatis. He was a regular at the literary café of Zacharatos and was particularly popular in literary circles. He was a founding member and the first president of the Union of Greek Editors. The First World War had a profound impact on his psyche. In 1918, he left again for Crete and visited Alexandria. He returned to Chania in 1919 in a very poor psychological state, and a year later, he suffered from hemiplegia and died at the Pananeio Hospital in Heraklion. In journalism, Kondylakis mainly focused on the chronicle, publishing approximately 6,000 chronicles in total, thus cultivating the genre and giving it literary value. He also wrote feuilletons, school readings, and revolutionary memoirs, completed the "History of the Cretan Revolutions" by Zampelios and Kritovoulidis, and translated French novels and the Complete Works of Lucian. In literature, he mainly engaged with short stories and novellas. His works are set within the framework of ethnographic prose with notable psychological and psychographic elements and a distinct sense of humor. His language is a unique blend of formal expression and Cretan dialect. His most famous works include "Patouchas," "First Love," and "When I Was a Teacher." For more biographical details on Ioannis Kondylakis, see Kostiou Katerina, "Kondylakis Ioannis," World Biographical Dictionary 5. Athens, Ekdotiki Athinon, 1986, Mavroeidi-Papadaki Sofia, "Kondylakis Ioannis," Great Encyclopedia of Modern Greek Literature 8. Athens, Hari Patsi, n.d., and Stergiopoulos Kostas, "Ioannis Kondylakis," Our Older Prose; From its beginnings to the First World War VI (1880-1900), pp. 324-391. Athens, Sokolis, 1997. (Source: Archive of Greek Writers, EKEBI).