Description
“We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, all have their roots in Greece.” Around the fiery philhellenic belief is built “Hellas”, the great – in extent but also ambition – lyrical drama of the great romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a close friend of Byron, written with enthusiastic speed in October 1821 in Pisa, Italy, place of his permanent residence, and published in February 1822 in London, with the aim of mobilizing British public opinion in favor of the Greek Revolution. Shelley greedily listens to the news from Greece in revolt, he is excited, worried, scared, dreaming, burning: he narrates with Homeric brilliance and frantic rhythm the events of the Greek Revolution, through the eyes of the defeated Turks, and sings with transparent lyricism “Clarity that Greece is”, the ancient but also the new, which “will follow the footsteps of the ancestors”, even though the outcome of the Revolution is still uncertain.
The work is published in a new translation by Orpheus Apergis, and includes both the poetic prologue that Shelley did not include in the final form of the work, as well as extensive notes and introduction, along with a detailed biographical chronology of the poet.
