Antōnēs Dekavalles

Andonis George Manganaris-Decavalles (Greek: Αντώνης Γιώργιος Μαγκανάρης-Δεκαβάλλες; January 25, 1920 – June 9, 2008), known under his pen name of Andonis Decavalles, was a Greek-American poet and professor of literature. Described by M. Byron Raizis as "the outstanding poet of the Greek diaspora in America," Decavalles published poetry, translations, and literary essays in a wide variety of American and Greek journals and was the author of 5 volumes of original poetry in Greek. A volume of his selected poems was translated into English by Kimon Friar. He authored Greek translations of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets and the poetry of W. H. Auden, and he translated works of Greek writers into English, including Odysseus Elytis. In 1977 he was awarded the Academy of Athens Poetry Award for his book Armoi, Κaravia, Lytra [Greek: Αρμοί, Καράβια, Λύτρα; Joints, Ships, Ransoms], the first writer of the Greek diaspora to be so honored.

Decavalles is a poet in the modernist tradition. He came to prominence through his translation into Greek of Eliot's Four Quartets. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on another modernist poet who influenced Eliot, Ezra Pound. Among Greek poets, Decavalles was most influenced by Giorgos Seferis and Odysseus Elytis, both identified with the modernist movement. Decavalles's own poetry exhibits many of the main traits of modernism, according to translator and critic Kimon Friar. He plays with, or mixes, genres (as in his self-described "festive elegies"). He offers complex symbols for readers to ponder and interpret—a Greek trireme, a well, an urn. While his poems are deeply personal, in the lyric tradition, he engages the personal with larger issues and contexts. His poems do not confine themselves to formal structures, but in "the organic shape that each particular poem imposes on the poet," which "has more to do with the manipulation of images, meaning, and musicality than with deliberate structure" originally from the Cycladic island of Sifnos. Decavalles came from a line of Greek patriots. His paternal great-grandfather George Manganaris and great-granduncle Deacon Avramios received the Prize of Valor for their part in the Greek War of Independence. Nikolaos Chrysogelos (1780–1858), his maternal great-granduncle, was a fighter in the War of Independence in 1821 and, later, was the first Minister of Education in the newly formed independent Greek State. Decavalles spent most of his childhood and adult summers on Sifnos. Decavalles adopted his mother's family name as his nom de plume in honor of his maternal grandfather, a poet of local prominence.

Education and early career Decavalles's early education was in the Greek schools in Alexandria.

Graduate studies and academic work In 1954, he was awarded a Schaffer fellowship for Graduate English studies at Northwestern University, where he received his M.A. and PhD in 1960. His doctoral dissertation was Ezra Pound and the Mediterranean World. During his doctoral studies, he taught at the University of Massachusetts (1958–1959), The City College of New York (1959), New York University, and Brooklyn College (1959–1960); upon completing his degree he was appointed to the faculty at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, N.J. He taught comparative literature there from 1961 to 1992. He retired as an Emeritus Distinguished Professor. From 1960 to 1983 he was the Executive Editor as well as a contributor of articles and translations to The Charioteer: An Annual Review of Modern Greek Culture.

Marriage and children In 1961 Decavalles married Kallioppe Kokinos, a Greek born in Romania. They had three daughters, Anna Nausicaa (b. 1963), Maria Daphne (b. 1964), and Georgia Artemis (b. 1966).

Death Decavalles died at home in Madison, N.J. on June 9, 2008, and was buried on Sifnos.

Published works From 1947 to 1949, with the encouragement of novelist Stratis Myrivilis, he wrote the poems that were published in his two first books: Nimoule-Gondokoro [Νιμούλε-Γοντοκόρο] in 1949 and Akis [Ακίς] in 1950. At the same time he was hard at work on the challenge of translating T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets into Greek, a task that took four years. He also is responsive to his adopted homeland in the northeastern United States, its beauties and its dissonances. In "Subway," a poem from his Ransoms to Time volume, Decavalles depicts a violent encounter in the New York subway. According to Anastasia Stefanidou, the violent man in the encounter stands for an aspect of contemporary America: a “contradictory, complicated, and even paranoid person who resorts to violence in order to disguise his anxieties and fears.” His language is rich and allusive.

Critical reception Kimon Friar included Decavalles in a mini-anthology of post-war Greek poets in Poetry Magazine in 1981, noting Decavalles’ second appearance in that venue. Critic John Taylor describes Decavalles as a member of the "Generation of Anguish," poets of a generation "which saw its “youth taken away," “its dreams destroyed," and its "ideologies betrayed by WWII and the Greek Civil War (1946–49) that followed." According to Taylor, his festive elegies can be situated "alongside so many other European poetic struggles with affirming and negating…. Decavalles explores the ‘dark recesses’ of affection, the deep ‘turnings’ of love, and the ‘unexpected crevices called death."

Another label applied to Decavalles by Anastasia Stefanidou is that of "a Cosmopolitan Exile"

Awards and citations In 1961, he was a contributor to a series of broadcasts on modern American poetry for the Voice of America; in 1969 he served as Temporary Consultant to the Library of Congress for their Modern Greek collections. In 1977 he was awarded the Academy of Athens Poetry Award for his book Armoi, Karavia, Lytra. In 1978 he was visiting professor of Modern Greek literature at Columbia University. On August 4, 2019, Decavalles's memory was honored at the Cultural Center of Sifnos with a symposium, "Love of a Lifetime: From Sifnos to America and Back.” His work for the promotion of Greek literature and letters in the United States was lauded, as well as his extensive writings on the poet Odysseus Elytis. Selected poems by Decavalles were read at the event, which included a photographic record of his life.