Barnales, Kostas

Born Feb. 14 (26), 1884, in Burgas, Bulgaria. Greek writer and public figure.

Barnales attended lectures on philology and aesthetics in Paris. His first collection of verses, The Honeycomb (1905), is imbued with aestheticism. Under the influence of the Russian October Revolution and the defeat of Greece in the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-22, Barnales realized the necessity of a revolutionary change in society, which he expressed in his verse collections The Light That Scorches (1922) and Beleaguered Slaves (1927); his satirical pamphlet-stories The Eunuch People (1923), The True Apology of Socrates (1931), and The Diary of Penelope (1947); his collection of pamphlets Dictators; and his political articles. Barnales exposed the exploiters and the hypocrisy of bourgeois morality, religion, and idealistic philosophy. The sketches Solomos Without Metaphysics (1925), the literary portraits Real Live People (1939), and the articles in his collection Aesthetics and Criticism (1958; Russian translation, 1961) laid the groundwork for Greek social and revolutionary poetry and prose. Barnales suffered persecution from the reactionaries for his democratic views. He was awarded the International Lenin Prize “For Strengthening Peace Among Nations” in 1958.