Alexandros Papadiamantis

Alexandros Papadiamantis was born on 4 March 1851 on Skiathos, a small island in the Sporades, the son of a priest. The family was poor and his schooling was slow and interrupted: he studied on Skiathos and Skopelos, then at the gymnasium of Chalkida, in Piraeus and finally at the Varvakeio school in Athens. In 1872 he spent several months on Mount Athos with a friend, an experience that shaped his deep attachment to Orthodox worship. He enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Athens but never finished his degree.

From the 1880s onwards he earned a thin living in Athens as a translator and writer for newspapers and magazines such as Εφημερίς and Ακρόπολις, translating English and French fiction, including Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment in 1889. He never married, lived in rented rooms, dressed shabbily and chanted at the little chapel of Agios Elisaios in Plaka alongside his cousin, the writer Alexandros Moraitidis. His shyness and piety earned him the nickname ο κοσμοκαλόγερος, the monk who lives in the world.

In 1908 he went home to Skiathos for good, worn out by drink and poverty. He died there of pneumonia on 3 January 1911, in the same house where he was born.

Papadiamantis began with historical novels published in instalments: Η Μετανάστις (The Emigrant Woman, 1879), Οι Έμποροι των Εθνών (The Merchants of Nations, 1882) and Η Γυφτοπούλα (The Gypsy Girl, 1884). His real form, though, was the short story. From Το Χριστόψωμο (The Christmas Bread, 1887) onwards he wrote around 170 of them, most set on Skiathos: fishermen, widows, shepherds, old women who know every chapel and every herb, children at Easter, ships lost in winter storms.

The masterpiece is Η Φόνισσα (The Murderess, 1903). Old Frangogiannou, after a lifetime of serving men, concludes that girl babies are nothing but misery for poor families and begins to kill them, convinced she is doing good; the story ends with her trapped between divine and human justice on a rock in the sea. Όνειρο στο κύμα (A Dream on the Wave, 1900) is a young shepherd's memory of a girl bathing in the moonlight; Το Μοιρολόγι της Φώκιας (The Seal's Dirge, 1908) is a drowned child mourned by a seal.

His language is his own: a supple, musical katharevousa for narration, demotic and Skiathos dialect for dialogue, with the rhythms of Byzantine hymns underneath. Nature, poverty and faith are never decoration; they are the whole world of the story.

Η Φόνισσα is read in Greek lyceums and has been filmed several times, most recently in 2023. Every Christmas and Easter, newspapers and websites reprint his festive stories, and reading Το Χριστόψωμο or Στο Χριστό στο Κάστρο aloud is a family tradition for some. On Skiathos you can visit the Papadiamantis House, the small two-storey home where he was born and died, now a museum, and the island's airport is named after him. The Greek state declared 2011, a century after his death, the Year of Papadiamantis. Streets called Παπαδιαμάντη exist in most Greek towns, and his phrase ο κοσμοκαλόγερος is still used for a pious person who lives simply in the world.

• The only well-known photograph of him was taken in 1906 by the writer Pavlos Nirvanas at Dexameni square in Athens; Papadiamantis reportedly agreed only reluctantly.
• He translated Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment into Greek in 1889 for a newspaper, from a French version, to earn his rent.
• His cousin Alexandros Moraitidis was also a well-known writer and chanter; the two were nicknamed 'the two Alexanders of Skiathos'.
• He wrote almost nothing about Athens itself; nearly all his stories return to the chapels, beaches and olive groves of Skiathos.