Modern Greek Literature, Inside (and) Out
It has never been possible to speak of Greece in terms of a simple opposition between what it contains on the inside, and what lies beyond its borders. Even before the founding of the Greek state in 1830, independence was actively pursued by bourgeois, cosmopolitan Greeks living in cities as far-flung as Istanbul, Alexandria, Odessa, and Marseilles. Greece was, then, an idea long before it was a reality an idea promoted, in large part, by the literature of ethnic insiders living outside the geographical region of what would become the Greek state. The borders of that state only assumed their current configuration in 1923. In the interim, as the country expanded, it experienced significant internal migration from the provinces to the cities, as well as the first waves of emigration abroad. Countless Greeks sought work in the U.S. during the early part of the twentieth century and in Germany, Belgium, and Australia after the Second World War