Thoughts on war: Greek soldier Giorgos Sarantaris on death in war, 1940 (Published on 05/03/2026)
The Greek writer Giorgos Sarantaris
Giorgos Sarantaris, born on 20/04/1908 in Constantinople (now Istanbul), died on 25/02/1941 in Athens, was a Greek poet, philosopher, and essayist who is considered one of the most important pioneers of the literary “Generation of the 1930s”. He grew up in Bologna, Italy, where he studied law, and returned to Greece in 1931. His close connection to Italian culture allowed him to bring a unique European perspective to Greek literature. Sarantaris served as a soldier on the Albanian front during the Greco-Italian War, where he had to fight against Italy, the country of his youth, from October 1940 onwards.
Poem from war
The following poem from this period has been preserved, in which he describes the loss of comrades in war (Source: Bähr, Die Stimme des Menschen – Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der ganzen Welt 1939 – 1945 [“Man’s Voice – Letters and Notes from Around the World, 1939 – 1945”] (1961), p. 152 [translation from German language]):
That we all rise up
I have not yet been able to shed a tear over the misfortune,
I have not yet properly looked at the dead,
I have not yet been able to feel that they are missing in my company,
that they have lost the air I breathe,
and that the music of the flowers,
the humming of the names that possess things,
does not reach their ears.
The horses that will take me to them did not neigh yet,
that I address them,
cry with them,
and then lift them up,
that we all rise up,
like one person,
as if nothing had happened,
as if the battle had not rolled over our heads.
Early war-related death
Giorgos Sarantaris did not live to see the end of the war, which ended on 23/04/1941 with Greece’s defeat following Germany’s Balkans campaign and subsequent occupation lasting until 1944. He died in early 1941 at the age of only 33 from the effects of typhoid fever, which he had contracted during his military service.
(Head picture: Gravestone at the German military cemetery Brandau/Odenwald,
inscribed “Ein unbekannter Kriegstoter” [“An unknown war dead”],
August 2025)
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