Andreas Karavis
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Andreas Karavis was a non-existent Greek poet and creation of Canadian poet David Solway.
On October 1999 Books in Canada published an article "Modern Homer" about a newly-founded Greek poet Andreas Karavis, with an interview, a photograph and an essay by David Solvay, who had translated his poems to English. Solvay claimed that he had hunted the reclusive fisherman-poet for years until he had finally met him 1991 and began to translate his poems in 1993.
According to Solvay, Karavis was (born 1932 in Chania, Crete; lived on the Dodecanese island of Lipsi). After his education on Serifos, disrupted by World War II and the civil war, he became a fisherman and settled on Amorgos, selling his books of poetry in local harbors. After having laboured in obscurity for the greater part of his life, with the appearance of the Dream Masters, he had become one of the country's most acclaimed and admired writers.
In fact, Karavis was the creation of David Solvay, the fact he soon admitted. However, other people joined the joke. In the next issue there was a letter from self-declared expert of Greek poetry "Fred Reed". He did not dispute Karavis' existence but claimed that Karavis was in fact a smuggler, not a fisherman, and that the first poems were nothing else that pirated translations from a group of expatriate Canadians.
Later a press attaché Yiorgos Chouliaris of the Greek embassy wrote to Solvay to congratulate him for "imaginative effort". Solvay convinced him to join the hoax.
Fame of Karavis spread. There were reports of international conferences about his poetry in Thessaloniki and Coimbra. Solvay met a writer who claimed that he had admired Karavis for many years and someone who said that Karavis was more worthy of the Nobel Prize than more famous Greek poets. He even received two postcards from Karavis.
In 2000 the Greek embassy in Montreal hosted a party for the publication of Karavis' new book Saracen Island: The Poetry of Andreas Karavis. A man who claimed to be Karavis appeared, wearing a fisherman's cap and speaking something that at least sounded like Greek.
Soon afterwards Matthew Hayes, a columnist of The Globe and Mail wrote an article Karavis - Greek god of Poetry of Literary Hoax. In 2001 in the Lingua Franca magazine David Solvay finally confessed in public that he had invented the poet and that the man who had appeared as Karavis was actually his dentist.
Solvay claims that he had created Karavis as an "alter ego and heteronym" to gain new inspiration for his poetry.
Books of and about "Karavis"
Works:
Works (in English translation):
- Saracen Island, The Poetry of Andreas Karavis, 2000 (translated by David Solway)
About Andreas Karavis:
- Constantine Makris: The Wild Emerald, The Poetry of Andreas Karavis, (in preparation)
- David Solway: An Andreas Karavis Companion, 2000
External links
- "Who is Andread Karavis?" (http://www.vehiculepress.com/karavis.html)
- (Guardian Unlimited - Modern Homer unmasked as a mythical figure (http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,6000,461850,00.html)