Georgios Vizyenos was born in 1849 in the small town of Vizye (Vize in Turkish), to the north-west of Constantinople (Istanbul). His whole life was a struggle with family and personal tragedy. His father died when the boy was five years old; two of his sisters perished in early childhood; and one of his brothers died in mysterious circumstances. Despite these inauspicious beginnings, he studied in Germany and became one of the leading Greek poets and short-story writers. Eventually, however, his psychological traumas took their toll, and he spent his last four years in Daphni mental asylum, where he died in 1896.
