author
Ioannis Psicharis
1854–1929
A fierce champion of everyday Greek, this writer and philologist helped turn the language question into one of the liveliest literary debates of his time. His best-known book, My Journey, mixed travel writing, fiction, and argument in a way that left a lasting mark on modern Greek letters.
2 Audiobooks
Το Ταξείδι μου
by Ioannis Psicharis
Ρόδα και Μήλα, Τόμος Α'
by Ioannis Psicharis
About the author
Born in Odessa in 1854 to a Greek family, he spent much of his life in France and was also known in French as Jean Psychari. He became a philologist as well as a creative writer, moving between scholarship and literature with unusual ease.
He is remembered above all for promoting Demotic Greek, the spoken form of the language, at a time when Greek public life was deeply divided over what kind of Greek should be written and taught. His 1888 book My Journey became the work most closely linked with that cause, and his arguments made him one of the central figures in the modern Greek language debate.
Alongside his literary work, he taught and carried out academic research in France. He died in 1929, but his name remains closely tied to the movement that pushed Greek writing toward a more living, spoken style.