Papadiamantis

There is no place in Greece that has identified so much with one of its writers as Skiathos by Alexandros Papadiamantis, who managed to become the senior ambassador of the life of his place.

Odysseas Elytis characteristically states that thanks to him "and about sixty square kilometers of its island with three thousand souls, came to acquire the importance of the whole continent».

This is Papadiamantis, who created the "Papadiamantis language", a language that carries layers of centuries, harmoniously assimilating ancient, Byzantine, ecclesiastical elements and composing the purgatory, modern Greek, and Skiathos local while creating the "World of Papadiamantis" and to highlight the local ethos in an aesthetic and spiritual event.

Ο Alexandros Papadiamantis (1851-1911) He was the son of a priest, he was born in Skiathos, he studied with many vacations, due to financial problems and poverty, in high schools in Chalkida, Piraeus and Varvakeio, and although he enrolled in university, for the same reasons, he did not finish it. He visited Mount Athos, got to know the harsh Mount Athos customs, but despite being fascinated by monasticism, he chose to live as a hermit in the crowd of Athens.

Papadiamantis was educated on his own, selectively attending lectures in Philosophy, as he learned English and French on his own to read in the original the great works of his time. Initially, he made a living by doing especially to students, and from 1879 collaborating with newspapers and magazines as a writer and translator. His pockets were perforated: with which he received his salary, he paid the rent for his room, he sent money to his family, he distributed to the poor, he kept nothing for himself.

During his lifetime, he was not happy to see even a small collection of his short stories printed in a book - they were all scattered in newspapers and magazines. His recognition came after his death both from Greece and abroad where his work has been translated into English, French, German, Spanish and Italian, but also into Bulgarian, Romanian, Catalan, the Danish.

Alexandros Papadiamantis turned with his stories to the losers of life, the inactive, the alcoholic, the poor, to those who live apart from the "civilized" people, feeling their struggle against disease, death, social exclusion . He found his material in the hearts of children, women, helpless elders and united it with the beauty of the sea and Skiathos, embracing in its descriptions all the sandy beaches, harbors, ravines, hills and "pink beaches" of the beloved island.

Alexandros Papadiamantis for whom Milan Kundera wrote that he is the most important Greek novelist, "Borrowed" the natural environment of his island, Skiathos, psychographing the lives of ordinary, humble but also suffering from their passions, made this small place a great place where the strange way of the Greeks is stored, the key to our national uniqueness , which we are still trying to define, sandwiched between West and East. It is no coincidence that he remains a field of reference of Greek literature 100 years after his death. Or house of Alexandros Papadiamantis, his family home, a humble Skiathos house - where he lived in recent years in Skiathos -, remains a place of pilgrimage for visitors to the island.

The house where Alexandros Papadiamantis was born does not exist today. It was sold and its buyers demolished it. Papadiamantis grew up and died in the new house his father built 1860, as stated on the wall inscription on one of its walls.

This house is located about 100 meters through the east beach of the city, in a narrow street that is a dead end, we could say that it is a lane of today's Papadiamanti Street.

It is bipedal, with its ascent and descent. Its source is an untouched space with a well in the middle. The attic consists of three rooms and a narrow entrance that leads to the three rooms.

On the left, as we enter is the winter room with historic fireplace of. There the great tenant of the house spent his dying moments.

On the fireplace there were two shelves with the cups and mugs of the house.

The smaller room to the right was originally papal. There the Pope Adamantios, Alexander's father, had his books and robes. Later, Alexander took it and made it his office and bedroom. It was a proper monastery cell with a window, a recessed cupboard on the wall and its narrow bed. Just opposite the entrance is the hall of the house with the unique luxury of a colored rhombus on the ceiling.