Adamantios Korais
April 27, 1748 – April 6, 1833
Adamantios Korais was a Greek scholar credited with laying the foundations of modern Greek literature and a major figure in the Greek Enlightenment during the period preceding and after the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire. His activities were instrumental in assisting the Greeks to wage their War of Independence that commenced in 1821 and the subsequent emergence of a purified form of the Greek language, known as Katharevousa.
Korais was born in Smyrna, in 1748. His father Ioannis, of Chian descent, was a merchant and official elected by the Greek community.
He was exceptionally passionate about philosophy, literacy and linguistics and studied greatly throughout his youth. He initially studied near his birthplace, where he graduated from the Evangelical Greek School of Smyrna.
In 1771, he moved to Amsterdam where he studied and eventually became a merchant.
In 1778, he returned to Smyrna and worked as a trader/merchant until 1782 when he decided to continue his studies in France at the school of medicine of the University of Montpellier from 1782 to 1787. After 1788, he spent most of his life as an expatriate in Paris. While in Paris, he was witness to the French Revolution in 1789 and was influenced by the revolutionary and liberal sentiments of his age. He admired Thomas Jefferson and exchanged political and philosophical thoughts with the American statesman.
Despite his studies in medicine, he was much more passionate about other subjects. In addition to studying ancient Greek and Latin, he also studied the Jewish, Dutch, French and English languages. He translated the writings of ancient Greek authors and produced thirty volumes of those translations, being one of the first modern Greek philologists and publishers of ancient Greek literature.
As classical scholar, Korais was frustrated by the Byzantine influence on Greek society and was a fierce critic of the lack of education among the clergy and their subservience to the Ottoman Empire. However, he did concede that it was the Eastern Orthodox Church that preserved the national identity of Greeks.
Korais believed Western Europe was the heir of the ancient Greek civilization, which had to be transmitted to the modern Greeks through education.
Having witnessed the French Revolution in 1789 while living n France, he raised the European consciousness about the plight of Greeks under the Ottomans long before the start of the Greek War of Independence. Korais believed that Europe was indebted to the Greeks because it inherited Greek ideals which were instrumental in Europe’s Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries. His influence in Europe was a vital contribution to the Greek War of Independence. During the war, he wrote pamphlets, raised funds, and galvanized many influential Europeans to support the war and was one of the founders of the Paris Philhellenic Society which promoted a love of Greece and its culture.
Korais believed that education would ensure not only the achievement of independence but also the establishment of a proper constitution for the newly liberated Greek nation. He envisioned a democratic Greece, recapturing the glory of the Golden Age of Pericles. In summary, the purpose of his 84 years of life was the enlightening of his people and the liberation of the Greeks from the rule of the Ottoman oppressors.
In 1833, Korais died in Paris at the age of 84. His grave is in the cemetery of Montparnasse, Paris. There, is his copper bust with a sepulchral inscription carved by Korais himself: “I, Adamantios Korais from Chios, am buried in the foreign land of Paris, which is as dear to me, as Greece, my land of birth”. Eventually, his remains were sent to Greece where he was buried in Athens.