No form of the New Testament, except of course for Jesus and the Theotokos, has been such a strong magnet for poets as the figure of Mary Magdalene. And no other figure from the New Testament has had its story so distorted as hers.

Major, minor, and insignificant poets find in the persona of Magdalene elements suitable for expressing certain core emotions, and when they do not find them, they invent them. The depiction of Magdalene by Greek poets as a repentant sinner, with few exceptions, is largely due to the influence of Western literary portrayals of Magdalene.

However, if we consider that poets such as Sikelianos, Varnalis, Kazantzakis, Ritsos, or Karouzos were deep scholars of the evangelical word and Greek religious tradition, we cannot help but think that the number of modern Greek portrayals of Magdalene as a former sinner is excessively large; and that the multitude of these portrayals must also arise from the fact that the theme of the woman returning to the path of virtue is poetically more appealing than the theme of the woman who broke Christianity, no matter how much she benefited from Christ or how great her love for Him was.