About Kostis Palamas
Kostis Palamas (; Greek: Κωστής Παλαμάς [palaˈmas]; 13 January [O.S. 1 January] 1859 – 27 February 1943) was a Greek poet who wrote the words to the Olympic Hymn. He was a central figure of the Greek literary generation of the 1880s and one of the cofounders of the so-called New Athenian School (or Palamian School, or Second Athenian School) along with Georgios Drosinis and Ioannis Polemis. == Biography == Born in Patras, in the same house as born the Italian novelist Matilde Serao, he received his primary and secondary education in Mesolonghi. In 1877 he enrolled at the School of Law, Economics and Political Sciences of the University of Athens, but he soon abandoned his studies. In the 1880s, he worked as a journalist. He published his first collection of verses, Songs of My Fatherland, in 1886. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature on 14 occasions, but never received it. He held an administrative post at the University of Athens between 1897 and 1926. Palamas died on 27 February 1943, during the Axis occupation of Greece in World War II. His funeral at the First Cemetery of Athens on the next day became a major symbolic event of the Greek resistance against the occupation. In a service spontaneously attended by several thousand people, the funerary poem composed and recited by fellow poet Angelos Sikelianos roused the mourners and culminated in a major public demonstration of defiance of the occupying powers, whose representatives, come to lay a wreath at the poet's tomb, were greeted by the crowd with the Greek national anthem and shouts of 'Long Live Freedom'.
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