Education
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
minister politician university professor
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Born in Chios, Greece, Trypanis received his education at The Classical Gymnasium, Chios and the Universities of Athens, Berlin and Munich. He received a doctorate from the University of Athens in 1937. From 1939-1945 he taught at the University of Athens and, in 1947, moved to Britain where he began teaching at Exeter College in Oxford as the as Bywater and Sotheby professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek.
lieutenant was also in England that Trypanis" met and befriended the poet Ian Fletcher, whom Trypanis afterwards referred to as "the master," with Trypanis himself "as the pupil".
In 1968 Trypanis relocated to Chicago, after acting as a visiting professor at various other American universities, where he taught Classical Literature until 1974. In 1974 he returned to his native Greece, serving as Minister for Culture and Sciences until 1977.
He remained in Greece until his death. He died in Athens in 1993.
His poetry was also acclaimed by the likes of Theodore Roethke, West. H. Auden and John Wain.
His poetry was first published while he was living in England, and it was also while in England that he began to develop a poetic circle of his own. He wrote his poetry (at least that portion which was published) in English, his second language, which perhaps opens the door to comparisons to the likes of Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov, both of whom wrote in English, despite being native speakers of Polish and Russian, respectively. Much of Trypanis" poetic writings were centered on the artifacts, history and mythology of antiquity, especially that of Classical Greece and Rome, though others of his poems centered on aspects and events of his contemporary world.
Academy of Athens.