Maria Polydouri dies at Sotiria sanatorium

Maria Polydouri was a poet, the creator of some of the most beautiful love poems in modern Greek literature. Her poetry struggles for the ideal and the unattainable. She stood against the taboos and the social norms of her time, the fake morality, and the prejudice of the male-dominated Greek society of the 1920s. She wrote freely, her verse talked about burning desire, passion, and lust and, yet, it wasn’t melodramatic. In her short life (1902-1930), Maria Polydouri became greatly influenced by the poet Kostas Kariotakis, and she was called the "sick rose" of Greek poetry. She celebrated love with ecstatic eroticism, poetic spontaneity, and a revealing disposition. She died of tuberculosis at Sotiria sanatorium in 1930.