Andea Frantzis (1945-2024) / The inspiring poet is gone

Gentle, tall, with a persistent look and black hair, a woman who knew how to search for the inner self in her poetry and the special paths in modern Greek poetry. Inspired and always devoted to a good cause, Andea Frantzis, a tender poet and solid philologist with a significant contribution to the study of modern Greek literature, professor emeritus of the AUTH, passed away at the age of 79 after a long adventure with her health. Her civil funeral took place today at 12.30 pm. in the First Cemetery of Athens. Instead of wreaths, her desire was to strengthen the only secondary education institution of Greek education in occupied Cyprus, the Rizokarpasos High School.

Such was Andea Frantzis, sensitive and active citizen, critical spirit, self-enlightened creator and enlightened teacher at AUTH and at the University of Cyprus. who was visiting professor at the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. Personal friend of Manolis and Nora Anagnostaki, curator of the work of the leading poet, A. Frantzis watered Christos Papoutsakis’ Anti with spirit and ideas from 1975 until the magazine’s closure and, together with the unforgettable publisher, spearheaded the founding of the Manolis Anagnostakis Friends Group. Everyone remembers her figure at Dimoharous 60, in the offices of Anti, which she took care of as its last issue. Her presence is felt both in her critical texts and in the publication of the six-volume anthology of Balkan poetry “Blood” in Albanian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Greek, Romanian and Serbian by the publications of the Friends of the magazine “Anti”.

She took a part of our youth with her

“Andea took with her a part of our youth” characteristically notes Alexis Ziras, writer, literary critic and former president of the Writers’ Society. Summarizing her contribution, she underlines: “Although Andea was not at all distant from the various mobilizations and politicizations, supporting, as far as I can remember, with girlish fervor and with the feminine attitude of moderation the “renewing Left”, in the poetry she wrote at the time , in ’76-’77, chose to stand farther, from the position of a cooler observer. Focusing more on the internal, let’s say transformation, rather than the direct description of an emotion. Something that I would say did not change in the following years. She was carried along, for example, by the “scattered life” of Matsis Hatzilazarou, perhaps she shared the wasted but also fertile passion for the men in her life, from Andreas Empirikos and Andreas Kamba to Javier Vilatos, the love flame that burns everything . But it held for her, and upon it she built her own dense poetic language, the transience of experience, what remains as the spirituality of the body, at least in the manner of her late sonnets in Crown (1993). This lack of haste, the keeping of a distance, the hesitation, the circumspection, I think, determined the “reserved” process with which her studies at the Sorbonne then proceeded, as well as her low-key career at the university. But did they also determine her life itself, or was it the other way around and it was her temperament that set her own pace for everything?’

Kalliopi-Andea Frantzi was born in 1945 in Athens. He studied at the Department of History and Archeology of the University of Athens and was a doctor of Modern Greek Philology with postgraduate studies at the University of Paris IV at the Sorbonne. In addition to the Department of Philology, he also collaborated with the Theater Department of AUTH, while he worked as a researcher at New York University and at Columbia University in New York in the USA. She first published poetry in 1975. She has published eight books of poetry (and a collected edition of her poems in 2010), a children’s book, as well as volumes of essays, literary studies, critical editions and translations from English. After 1975 she was a systematic contributor to Anti magazine. From 1995 to 2008 he participated in the organizing committee and coordinated the publication “Aimos. “Anthology of Balkan poetry” published by the Friends of “Anti” magazine.

He was a member of the Theatriki Syntechnia union, the cultural society Friends of the magazine “Anti”, the Non-Profit Society “Manolis Anagnostakis” and the Archives of Contemporary Social History. Condolences were expressed by the Society of Writers, of which he was also a member.