Georgios Vizyinos

Georgios Vizyinos (Greek: Γεώργιος Βιζυηνός [viziiˈnos]; born as "Georges Syrmas";^[1] March 8, 1849, Vize – April 15, 1896, Athens) was a Greek short story writer and poet.^[2] His poems, which are considered influential in Greek literature, focus on ethnography and he was referred to as a "painter of souls".^[1] Most of his writings are self-narrative and self-investigative in nature.^[1]

Georgios Vizyinos
Born	Georges Syrmas (1849-03-08)March 8, 1849 Vize, Ottoman Empire
Died	April 14, 1896(1896-04-14) (aged 47) Psychiatric Hospital Dromokaition, Athens

After a rough childhood and unsuccessful attempts to marry a 14-year old student while he was in his 40s, Vizyinos tried to commit suicide and was admitted to a mental institution, where he died in 1896 at age 47, likely from syphilis.

Biography

Vizyinos was born as Georges Syrmas in Vize, to the north-west of Constantinople.^[1][2] He was one of five children from a destitute family.^[1] His father, Michael Syrmas, worked in lime kilns and died of typhus when Vizyinos was five years old;^[3] two of his sisters died in early childhood, including Anna, who died from accidental suffocation by her mother; and one of his brothers died in mysterious circumstances.^[4]

In 1860, at age 10, he was sent to Constantinople to live his uncle and learn tailoring.^[2][1] When he was 18, as a protégé of the Archbishop of Cyprus, Sophronios II, he moved to Cyprus.^[3] In 1872, he was admitted to the Halki seminary on the island of Halki, where he studied religion and literature under poet Ilias Tantalidis.^[3][2]

He was introduced to George Zarifis, who funded his studies of philology in Athens; in 1874 and 1875, he studied at the Athens School of Philosophy. He was awarded a doctorate in Leipzig, Germany, where he studied under Wilhelm Wundt.^[2][1] In 1881, he completed his dissertation paper, titled "The Relation of Psychology and Pedagogy with the Children’s Play".^[1] He returned to Athens, where he was treated with disbelief and ridicule by the literary circles.^[3] He moved to Paris in 1882 and then London, where he mingled with Greek authors and became changed his craft from poems to short stories.^[3]

After Zarifis died in 1884, Vizyinos had to earn a living on his own.^[5] He became a secondary school teacher and, beginning in 1890, a professor of rhythmics and drama at the Athens Conservatoire.^[5] There, he fell in love with a 14-year old student, Bettina Fravasili, but the love was unrequited love, and after being cruelly rejected by the student's mother in a proposal to have her married, his mental illness was triggered.^[5][3]

In 1892, Vizyinos was in such a state of delusion that he dressed up and prepared for a wedding. When it did not happen, he tried to commit suicide and was instead saved by a friend.^[3]

Vizyinos was admitted to Psychiatric Hospital Dromokaition in Athens in April 1892.^[4]

He died there in 1896, aged 47, desolate, four years after being admitted, likely from syphilis.^[4][1][3] He received a public funeral with eulogies given by Aristotelis Kourtidis and Kostis Palamas. After his death, Vizyinos's mother cried so much that it led to blindness.^[3]

Works

• To Ptochon tis Kyprou (Το πτωχόν της Κύπρου) (1867) - describes eating halloumi cheese in a village.^[6]
• Poetica Protoleia (Juvenile Poems) (1873) - won first prize in the Voutsinaios Literary Competition (1874)
• Diamanto (1875)
• Ares, Mares, Koukounares (renamed Vosporides Avra) (1876)
• Araps and his Camel (1879) - a children's story
• My Mother’s Sin (1883) - focuses on themes of forgiveness, guilt, and atonement; inspired by the accidental suffocation of his sister by his mother^[1]
• Between Piraeus and Naples (1883)
• Who was my Brother’s Murderer (1883)
• The Only Journey of His Life (1884)
• Intellectual Geniuses (1885)
• Moskov-Selim (published 1895) - published while he was institutionalized; set in Thrace, it contains ethnographic and psychobiographic elements, narrating the adventures of Moscov-Selim, a Turkish soldier who is persecuted and tantalized.^[1]