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A
special poetic type with the deepest roots and the widest
impression in the simple people, continues even today to flourish
on Crete presenting a spectacular elation. This type of poetry
(folk Cretan couplets) even though is also met in other regions
of islular Greece, it can be considered as a endemic type
of poetry from Crete. The fact that the couplets are a popular
poetic expression and are connected to the astonishing aptitude
of the residents of the island to promote them, is connected
not only with their widest diffution but it is also accompanied
with the risk of their maltreatment.
The folk couplets are not simply a typical verse process,
or a certain technical practice that is evaluated with the
rhyme and the phrasal impressiveness.
It is mainly an expression of the soul and an outcome of a
long-lasting internal process that is associated unbreakably
with the personal sensitivity, the inspiration and the high
aesthetics.
With this data, it is very likely that couplets of bad taste
are presented as folk couplets that have as a unique trait
the occasionally unsuccessful rhyme and the extreme ambition
of the author to make out his presence. But, the Cretan folk
couplets are a purely poetic creation with all the criteria
and characteristics of poetry. However, many times they tend
to change into a cheap fabrication that undermines their own
personality and mislead those who do not have a deeper affiliation
to them.
Nevertheless,
what balances this negative reality is the fact that each
day more and more intellectual people seek to approach the
couplets and comprehend the structure and their substantial
meaniong. This of course will help in the long run to the
re-establishment of their importance, but their survival will
depend exclusively on the action taken from the sentimentalist
and dreamers of the remaining mountainous Crete. Because,
the couplets flourish mainly in the mountainous apartments
of island and constitute an extension of psychism and they
are a component of intellectual behavior of the residents
of these regions. In availability that is inherent in the
intellectual horizons of the Cretans and is connected with
the multiple and long-lasting contact mainly with the Erotokritos
of V. Kornaros, the couplets found their natural shelter in
Crete and in here they met their greatest glory.
If today there are a lot of appreciable representatives of
Cretan folk couplets in the urban centres of the island, this
does not mean that the previous opinion is reversed. And this
is because they carry in them all their experiences and memories
from the countryside. They draw from their ainner iconography
and the inexhaustible place of their childhood's memories.
When these pictures will fade out and our life in the rhythms
of homogeny will be absolute standardised, then the couplets,
if they exist as type, they are obviously going to be completely
different from the current ones. For the time being however
we are glad as long as there is this phenomenon. We should
try to protect this poetry from symptoms of improvisation
and mistreatment and try to stop all those that with insolence
pillage this splendid poetic expression of our place.
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