Eva Palmer Sikelianos: A Life in Ruins

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The first biography of a visionary twentieth-century American performer who devoted her life to the revival of ancient Greek culture This is the first biography to tell the fascinating story of Eva Palmer Sikelianos (1874-1952), an American actor, director, composer, and weaver best known for reviving the Delphic Festivals. Yet, as Artemis Leont

Reviews

"One of the Times Literary Supplement's Books of the Year 2019"
"[Eva Palmer Sikelianos] dazzled as biography and scholarship. . . . Few page-turners are so thoroughly indexed and annotated. Leontis rescues her subject from stiff hagiography ('the most influential philhellene after Lord Byron'), and stirs her to life like a breeze through drapery."---A. E. Stallings, Times Literary Supplement
"This is a powerful reclamation of a life it has suited others to place in the shadows, and a well-deserved appreciation of Evas own legacy."---Liz Gloyn, Times Higher Education
"[A] fascinating account. . . . All of Eva's varied, determined life is crafted together by Leontis. . . . [T]his Life has something of the quality of Evas own determined artistry."---Oliver Taplin, Times Literary Supplement
"A well-researched and well-written look at the life of the woman who brought ancient Greek culture from an idea into practice in the modern era."---Eleni Sakellis, National Herald
"An enlightening, important biography of a woman who could be both brashly anachronistic and remarkably current."---Brigit Katz, Hyperallergic
"Fascinating."---Mary Norris, CommaQueen.net
"[Artemis] Leontiss biography of Eva Palmer Sikelianos, on whom she must be regarded as the supreme authority, is a passionate and yet objective analysis of a complex figure whose triumphs were also her tragedy and whose life, so acutely mapped here, was a chronicle of vision, confusion, passion and disillusion, compellingly illuminating episodes in modern Greek cultural history. . . . Read this book."---Richard Pine, C.20 An International Journal
"In Artemis Leontis's beautiful new book, Eva Palmer Sikelianos will find her rightful seat at the center of numerous critical debates across scholarly fields."---Samuel N. Dorf, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
"Leontis has written an important book that ideally illustrates the extremely complex personality of Eva Palmer Sikelianos, the American heiress and wife of Greek poet Angelos Sikelianos, and as a result has readjusted the focus on several areas of the cultural landscape of Greece in the early decades of the 20th century, proving Palmer Sikelianos' intimate association to and pivotal influence over them. At the same time, Leontis' cultural biography of Palmer Sikelianos pointedly underlines the necessity of applying multidisciplinary approaches to the proper understanding of complex cultural concepts, such as the effort to comprehend and define Hellenism in the 20th century."---Sophia Papaioannou, Classical Journal
"[A] gripping, deeply researched biography of Eva Palmer Sikelianos . . . Leontis has created not just the scope of a life, but a compelling study of the role of Eva Palmer Sikelianos in transforming the cultural landscape of Greeceand, to an extent, the Wests perception of ita century ago."---Robert L. Pounder, Journal of Modern Greek Studies
"Eva Palmer Sikelianos succeeds in telling a different story, a story about a brilliant, self-driven, singular woman, no ones appendage, who was instrumental in reintroducing ancient Greek arts in modern Greece and AmericaLeontiss compelling portrait of Palmer as a formidable, courageous, and determined lesbian woman, who charted life through Greek ruins, will certainly prompt others to study, discuss, and build on Leontiss groundbreaking retrieval."---Linda Ben-Zvi, Ergon: Greek/American Arts and Letters
"An important book. . . . Leontis cultural biography of Palmer Sikelianos pointedly underlines the necessity of applying multidisciplinary approaches to the proper understanding of complex cultural concepts, such as the effort to comprehend and define Hellenism in the 20th century."---Sophia Papaioannou, Classical Journal

Author Bio

Artemis Leontis is professor of modern Greek and chair of the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Topographies of Hellenism and the coeditor of What These Ithakas Mean...: Readings in Cavafy, among other books. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.