for the sake of my sanity, i will only endeavour to describe her life as best as i can. i will not go into too much detail regarding the different philosophies and ideas that surround the events i will describe. i may end up writing another piece or even more, discussing the Delphic Idea or describing the Delphic Festivals in more detail. this, however, is simply a description of the life of eva palmer.

eva palmer.

When I found out about Eva Palmer, I was truly shocked that I had not come across her earlier. Even just looking at her life on face value: how was it possible that there was a woman in the twentieth century who lived like an Ancient Greek and I had never seen her pop up on my screen anywhere? I read a lot of books about mythology, but mostly historical fiction. This has really inspired me to start reading books not only within the mythological world, but set in the ancient world. If someone could go so far as to actually live like an Ancient Greek, why can’t we?

I then started doing research about her life and - to say the least - I had underestimated her. Here I was, thinking I had found someone who wore chitons and ate figs when instead I had found someone who had actually had gone so far as to create an own philosophy regarding the Greeks. I had found someone who had actually embodied the idea of the Greeks and added her own “modern” thoughts to it, who tried to revive ancient ideas and traditions. It almost felt as though I had found the real life version of the characters in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.

Eva Palmer’s full name was Evelina ‘Eva’ Palmer-Sikelianos. She was born on the ninth of January in 1874 in New York City. She died at the age of 78 in Delphi, on the fourth of June.

Eva1 devoted her entire life to the promotion of classical Greek culture. She was invested in weaving, theatre, choral dance and music.

Like most people, her personality had been influenced by those who surrounded her. Eva was inspired by - among others - Isadora Duncan, Ted Shawn, Colette, Natalie Barney and Sarah Bernhardt.

Eva ended up marrying the Greek poet and playwright Angelos Sikelianos, with whom she worked on the revival of the Delphic Festivals. Together, their goal was to create peace and harmony in Greece and beyond.2 Their medium was ancient culture, more specifically music and theatre productions.

childhood.

Eva was one of five children, born into a family of eclectic intellectuals and gifted artists. This background already set her on the right track to become an extremely eccentric person herself.

Her family promoted liberal thought, unconventional education and her parents tried to stimulate the exploration of music, theatre and literature.

Her father founded The Nineteenth Century Club. Eva grew up listening to this group of people discuss politics, religion and morality. She later wrote that witnessing these discussions laid the seeds of her own thoughts as a young woman and adult.

In I888, her father died of appendicitis and her mother remarried. Her new husband was Robert Abbe. During family holidays to Bar Harbor, Eva became acquainted with Natalia Barney3.

The two started a relationship during one of such trips and they became young lovers. Eventually, they both moved to Paris and were neighbours there. Natalia compared Eva to “a medieval virgin”, probably because of her ankle-length red hair.

Being exposed from a young age to unconventional education, Eva studied independently. She examined music theory and Greek choral arrangements. Eventually - at an older age - she entered the Bryn Mawr College4 and read literature and theatre arts. However, she did not complete her degree. Instead, she followed her brother Courtlandt Palmer Jr. - a musical prodigy - to Rome to study independently there.

paris.

Eventually, Eva moved to Paris and settled in Neuilly. She worked on her fluency in French by attending theatre. She also sometimes joined in with productions that her former lover and neighbour Natalia Barney hosted in her back yard. During such “fêtes”, she met Sarah Bernhardt and performed with Collette.

During a brief visit to London, she got offered a place in a theatre production by Mrs Patrick Campbell but refused.

Afterwards, she met Raymond Duncan (the brother of Isadora Duncan) and his wife Penelope. The Duncans ended up moving in with Eva and they soon realised that the three of them had a similar view of the world.

During her time in Paris with the Duncans, Eva started gaining more interest in all aspects of ancient Greek culture and built a loom. It was then that she started to dress in traditional ancient clothing, woven herself.

Penelope often read fragments of poetry, written by her brother who lived in Greece. Eva found herself intrigued by the poetry and eventually she followed the Duncans to Greece where Penelope introduced her to her brother Angelos.

greece.

Eva settled with the Duncans at the base of the Hymettos mountains, around five miles east of Athens. She met Angelos and they quickly found out that they had similar thoughts and ideas. They managed to navigate the language barrier and it was in those first conversations that the seeds for reviving the Delphic Idea5 and Festival were planted.

Eva then followed Angelos to Lefkas - an Ionian island. There, she had a loom made for her and continued to wear her homespun dresses.

In 1907, they went to America for the purpose of asking her parents for blessing for their marriage. The pair was married in Bar Harbor in Maine on the ninth of September 1907.

While in America, Eva received a lot of press attention thanks to her peculiar attire. She had not realised that she was being discussed in such a way, with people referring to her father and her eccentric way of living. She found herself often angered by the things people wrote about her.

Eventually, the two returned to Greece where they settled in Athens and had a son called Glafkos. They kept a house on Lefkas where they would go on holiday.

spiritual quest.

Angelos and Eva (now Eva Palmer-Sikelianos) continued building the idea of the Delphic Festivals. Eva studied with Konstantinos Psachos, learning about Greek Ecclesiastical Music. She was fascinated by the complexity of Greek music, and by the fact that it cannot been written in western notation but needs Byzantine notation. Konstantinos and Eva raised the funds for building a harmonium - which got the name Evion Panharmonium. It was destroyed during the second world war, but smaller versions remained.

A friend of Angelos - Takis Dimopoulos - wrote a poem about their relationship, titled “the poet and Eva”. In it, he explains that Angelos was on a spiritual quest towards the embodiment of the Delphic Idea and that Eva assisted him.

Eva became a “true Greek Bacchant”. She focused on the organisational and practical parts of the Festival, giving Angelos space to focus on his vision. She composed all the music for the tragedies and sewed all the dresses.

the end.

Both Festivals were successful, but left Angelos and Eva with a lot less money. Eva travelled to America in search for finance. In her absence, Angelos fell out of love.6

This resulted in their separation in 1934, when Angelos met and remarried Anna Karamani. By this time, Eva had reached a height in spirituality in Angelos’ mind. She had been Daughter, Wife and Sister. Now, she was Mother. Angelos even asked Eva for her blessing for the marriage.

In 1952, Eva suffered a fatal stroke while attending a theatrical performance. She was 78 years old and was buried in Delphi.

The Delphic Idea still lives on in the form of the International Delphic Council.

1 i don’t know why, but i feel as though eva and i are on first name terms

2 in my mind, i compare them to john lennon and yoko ono: the same goals and eccentricity

3 also an extremely interesting woman from this time, take time to look her up!

4 Bryn Mawr College is a private women’s liberal arts college founded in 1885, in Pennsylvania

5 maybe i’ll end up writing something going into more detail about this

6 !!! this is simplified: there’s some spiritual stuff behind it !!!