Silence on the Page: The Usage of Blank Space in the Greek Poetry
in the 20th century

The emergence of free verse in the late 19th century together with
the typographical revolution proclaimed by the Italian futurists in the 1910’s
have resulted in re-consideration of the poetry’s visual aspect. The first postwar
decades are known to be the peak of discussions about blank space as “silence”
or “unspoken”. Typographical experiments of futurists on one hand and the
ideogrammatic method of E. Pound on the other have broken the line as a necessary
element of poetic writing which resulted in the appearance of such movements
as concrete, visual and language-centered poetry with nonlinearity often
being their distinctive feature. Such a move from a line to a word and from
a narrative to a dynamical interaction of the text with the space is introduced in
the new semiotical strategy of reading. Greek avant-garde, which emerged with
a sufficient delay, not only adopted the existent practices, but had to develop its
own techniques due to the different environment and circumstances it has been
evolving in. This study is the first attempt to examine the development of blank
space as a poetic tool in the Greek poetry throughout the 20th century. Starting
from the experience of modern Greece’s best known poets C. P. Cavafis, G. Seferis and O. Elytis and the “occasional” avantgardists of the first half of
the century, such as the author of the Greek futurist poems F. Giofyllis and
P. Psaltiras known for his complicated typographical experiments in pattern
poetry, it moves on to the postwar radical avant-garde movements, focusing on
the theoretical aspects and their implementation in practice. The variety of attitudes
towards the usage of blank space in postwar Greek avant-garde poetry,
such as C. Giannoulopoulo’s and M. Mitra’s own versions of concrete poetry,
“unspoken” of A. Pagoulatos and the stream of language of N. Valaoritis
demonstrates that its importance has been increasing as the national avant-garde
search developed. These dynamics of the transition of “silence” on the page
from the auxiliary to the active element of poetic writing, which it became for a
number of postwar avant-garde practices, allows to conclude about the importance
of this aspect in the study of modern Greek poetry, as well as about its
potential impact on the development of Greek literature in the 20th century.