February 21, 2021, from 13:00 to 15:00, the Branch of the HFC will take part in a musical and poetic meeting held in the I. Franko Central Municipal Library, which is organized by the Department of Culture and Tourism of the Odessa City Council in celebration of the International Mother Language Day as part of Odessa’s participation in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.
During the event, the BHFC will present Vitsentzos Kornaros’ poem “Erotokritos” written on the island of Crete in the middle of the 17th century (1645-1669), which is nowadays studied in all schools in Greece.
UNESCO has included this first classical work in the Modern Greek language in the list of 300 masterpieces of world literature.
Translation of “Erotokritos” from Greek into Ukrainian was made by Vasylii Stepanenko (Kyiv). He began working on the text almost 40 years ago, and in 2016 his translation of V. Kornaros’ “Erotokritos” was published in Kiev by “Veselka” Publishing House thanks to the financial assistance from Greek benefactors.
An excerpt from the poem will be recited in Greek by Nataliia Tolkunova, a student of the Modern Greek language courses at the Branch of the Hellenic Foundation for Culture.
