As Mars blossomed in Greece, the sweet Muse also flourished alongside him, wrote Palamas in 1888, linking Solomos with Kalvos. Were the two not alone? Many others soon emerged beside them, feeling that something had to change in the poetic landscape immediately after the outbreak of the Struggle.
During the years of the Revolution, the songs of the illiterate people were noted and published, not by Greeks, though. Alongside literature, thought also flourished. A leading figure here was Korais; modernity invaded the Greek space at the very moment when people fought to maintain the freedom they quickly gained in 1821, but they also had to keep it alive.
From the printing machines sent by Philhellenes to Roumeli, the Peloponnese, and the islands, newspapers, political pamphlets, and books emerged, all oriented towards European values: free thought, democratic ideals, and absolute freedom of the press. Most were translated works of the great masters of the Enlightenment, but there were also some original works alongside them.
However, the explosive dynamism did not survive; Solomos and Kalvos fell silent, the new paths faded away, and the restart attempted in 1830 by Panagiotis Soutsos and Alexandros Rizos Rangavis did not continue. The legacy of the Revolution stood as the foundation of the new momentum brought by the generation of 1880.
