term, originally rather disparaging, for the spoken language of true native-born Greeks, the Romioi.) The same limitations extended to his fiction writing. Psycharis later published many novels in his version of demotic, but they were widely considered unconvincing, largely because all the characters spoke like Psycharis himself. In this respect his attempt to teach the new language by example must be considered a failure; he could not demonstrate the full stylistic range that a living language needs (although he himself could not see this—he considered himself the greatest living fiction writer in Greece). It was evident that Psycharis, for all his cultural impact, was not himself a Dante who could remake a language with his own literary genius. This was generally acknowledged even by demoticists. In another 1893 interview, Andreas Karkavitsas—who would publish The Beggar, the first novel written in demotic, three years later—declared that Psycharis "looks at language from a scientific point of view, and thus he writes demotic without feeling it." Psycharis also gave little thought to the practicalities of establishing a new written language. He discouraged the translation of foreign works into his new demotic, on the grounds that this would somehow dilute the Romios spirit of the young nation. In this he completely disregarded the practical usefulness of translations to the dynamic modern state that other demoticists were hoping to build. In his single-minded pursuit of an ideal Greek language to express the soul of the Romios he also disregarded the political reality that many thousands of Greek citizens were not native Greek-speakers at all, for example the many Albanian speakers settled for centuries round Athens itself. This would have become even more of a problem in the Greater Greece that he hoped to create. In the event it was left to the demoticists of the Educational Association a generation later to tackle this crucial issue. Influence of Psycharis' personality Psycharis could be a difficult man to work with. "Psycharis was an obstinate and opinionated man, with a passion for grandiose schemes and a psychological need to impose his personality and his views on others. He felt he was practically the only person to have a clear understanding of Greece's problems and a mission to solve them more or less single-handed. ... Whenever his views were politely questioned by his allies or directly challenged by his enemies, he dug his heels in and consistently refused to