Europeanity and Greekness in the “generation of the ’30s”

The lack of cultural reality that characterizes the life of the Modern Greeks up to our days is the reason why the “generation of the ’30s” is constantly reappearing in public discourse. Knowledgeable and critical observers of Greek and European political reality and intellectual tradition, the writers and intellectuals of the generation played a leading role in the public sphere during a difficult period for Hellenism, a period with obvious symptoms of crisis in all areas of national life. It was this climate of defeatism that the generation of people who were just emerging from the devastation of the First World War and a national catastrophe undertook to stir up. Based on what was good from the long tradition of Hellenism and on whatever modernizing influence from the great intellectual tradition of Europe could fertilize their spirit, the young people of the 1930s showed the way to the renewal of the modern Greek mentality. ‘Europeanity’ and ‘Greekness’, two issues inextricably linked in the case of the generation, were approached not in terms of polarisation but through the discourse of mediocrity. In this way, they succeeded in leaving a modern national ideology to posterity, which helps them to escape from introversion and insecurity, while at the same time showing them the way to an outward-looking and equal participation in the European project, which remains relevant to this day. Greeks and Europeans at the same time.