Born in
Patras, in the same house as born the Italian novelist
Matilde Serao, he received his primary and secondary education in
Mesolonghi. In 1877 he enrolled at the School of Law, Economics and Political Sciences of the
University of Athens, but he soon abandoned his studies. In the 1880s, he worked as a journalist. He published his first collection of verses,
Songs of My Fatherland, in 1886. He was nominated for the
Nobel Prize for Literature on 14 occasions, but never received it. He held an administrative post at the
University of Athens between 1897 and 1926. Palamas died on 27 February 1943, during the
Axis occupation of Greece in
World War II. His funeral at the
First Cemetery of Athens on the next day became a major symbolic event of the
Greek resistance against the occupation. In a service spontaneously attended by several thousand people, the funerary poem composed and recited by fellow poet
Angelos Sikelianos roused the mourners and culminated in a major public demonstration of defiance of the occupying powers, whose representatives, come to lay a wreath at the poet's tomb, were greeted by the crowd with the
Greek national anthem and shouts of 'Long Live Freedom'. ==Work==