The ghost behind the arras

The title of this study, ‘the ghost behind the arras’, adapts Eliot’s metaphor (1917) for the latent presence of metre in free verse-poetry. In the work of nine major twentieth-century Greek poets (Cavafy, Seferis, Embiricos, Elytis, Gatsos, Ritsos, Sachtouris, Mastoraki, and Ganas), the predominant Modern Greek verse form, the ‘political verse’ (politikos stichos) can be seen as ‘the ghost behind the arras’. This study examines in some detail the ways in which each of these poets appropriates the inherited metre in new contexts and asks what they contribute to the understanding of each poet’s poetics. It will be argued that the most dominant ‘ghost’ is Palamas’ The Emperor's Flute (1910) mirroring the poets’ attempts to communicate their response to the demise of the ‘Great Idea’; but the latent appearances of the political verse in twentieth-century Greek poetry have many other dimensions also.