Lorenzos Mavilis

     The life of warror poet Lorenzos Mavilis from Corfu. He was the  grsndson of a Spanish diplomat as and he was one of the of the last poets of the do called Eptanessian ( seven islands) school,  famous at that time for his sonnets.

     An ardent partiot, he had participated to the disastrous 1897 Greek Turkish war.Even though he was then quite old ( and MP) he volunteered to fight in the 1912 -1913( First Balkan) War alongside to the Garibaldini volunteers and he died fighting with them ....
     PS Nowdays he is quoted ( and misquoted) for his intervention during during one of the debates about the ratification of the 1911 Constitution .The debate was whatever the official idiom was to be one based to the language actually spoken by the people ( demotic) or the one that was more closely connected to the medievaυl/ Coine idiom , the so called "purified" idiom ( kathareiussa) .Mavilis, as all the poets and writers of the Eptanessian school was ardent supporter of the demotic and to sneers of the supporters of the kathareoussa that demotic was a " bad" language, unsuitable for official purposes, he quipped " there is no such a thing as bad language, but there is only bad people " .He lost the debate then , but in the next constitution of 1974 ( the current one ) it was his opinion that prevailed, and so he had the last laugh , beyond the grave....