Πότε;

Η Μαρία Νεφέλη λέει:

Je m'en vais te mener dans la foret des hommes
et pour toi j'y danserai nue avec tams-tams et masques
et je me donnerai a toi dans les clameurs et les hurlements
je te montrerai l'homme BAOBAB
l'homme PHAGUS CARNAMENTI
la vieille CIMMULIUS et toute sa tribu

(transl. X.Bordes, R. Longueville, 1982)

Θα σε πάω στο δάσος των ανθρώπων
και θα σου χορέψω γυμνή με ταμ-ταμ και προσωπίδες
και θα σου δοθώ μέσα σε βρυχηθμούς και ουρλιάσματα
Θα σου δείξω τον άνθρωπο Baobab
και τον άνθρωπο Phagus carnamenti
τη γερόντισα Cimmulius και το σόι της όλο
....
Μια δυο σημειώσεις:
1. η μορφή του μπαομπάμπ: δέντρο αλλόκοτο, τερατώδες, γιγάντιο. Σα να έχει τις ρίζες του για κλαδιά. Υπάρχουν μύθοι για τη μορφή του.
α. Σύμφωνα με τον πρώτο, σαν ο Θεός (ή ένας θεός) τέλειωσε με τη δημιουργία, εκνευρίστηκε με την αρχική, κανονική μορφή του. Το ξερίζωσε και το φύτεψε τ'απάνω κάτω. Οι καταβολάδες πιάνουν πάντα άμα είναι από το σωστό χέρι. Φαντάζομαι ότι το αποτέλεσμα δεν ήταν λιγότερο αποκλίνον από τη θεία αισθητική. Πάντως έτσι κι έμεινε. β. Δεύτερος μύθος, δεύτερη κοσμογονία: Οι θεοί ανέθεσαν σε κάθε ζώο να φυτέψει κι από έναν σπόρο. Το μπαομπάμ έπεσε στα χέρια-πόδια της ύαινας. Εκείνη από πικρία το κακοφύτεψε και το κακοπότισε κι έτσι πήρε το παράδοξο σχήμα του.
2. η πραγματολογία του μπαομπάμπ: τα πρώτα τριακόσια χρόνια μεγαλώνει ταχύτατα. Δύσκολο να παρατηρήσει ο ερευνητής την ετήσια ανάπτυξή του γιατί αλλάζει το πάχος και το ίχνος των στοιβάδων. Μετά, για τις επόμενες δύο χιλιετίες, επιβραδύνει τους ρυθμούς του. Στη σκιά του μπορεί να ριζώσει και να ανθίσει, να παρακμάσει και να χαθεί ένας ολόκληρος πολιτισμός, οι κατακτητές του και οι ιστορικοί των παραπάνω περιόδων.
3. παρατηρώ κι εδώ τη ρυθμολογία του έρωτα: καταβύθιση/αιωνιότητα, σαρκοφάγο ανάλωση, και σκωροφαγωμένη γερόντισσα μνήμη, με το σόι της, όλο.

Show me again 'n' again

I have noticed that we get either dramatically silent or dramatically eloquent in exposing "truth" and the "politics of truth" about our story, momentarily paused and interpreted retrospectively for others. Defensive, cryptic, too subjective or too theoretical. As if we are a specimen of an extinct species, giving its final testimony. And indeed, we are, but it just happens so that everyone else is too. This note follows the logic of the previous post and will be reworked in Greek under the category "Structure- in numerous parts".
What we show, let it be the skeleton box, the hidden garden, the window as a frame for an instance of life, or as a frame for the curtain that depicts a scene of life, or conceals a whole perspective of life, is a lot of quicksand. Selective and partial as we are, we can easily shake the impression of others. Almost no one knows us, and we know almost no one. "I know him": what a pompous overstatement, after all...

I was reading Harold Pinter these days, a favorite playwright to me, and his "Betrayal" in particular. Three people (this is the Dorian structure he prefers, A, B, C mixing and becoming the truth formula to each other) negotiate on events of betrayal. What is the correct presentation of the links among them? 1.Jerry and Robert are best friends from college, publishers of the literary magazines of their universities, colleagues later on in the publishing business. 2. Emma is married to Robert, 3. Jerry and Emma have a long affair, after she got married to Robert, and almost for most of her married life. Fine. So the issue is: when did the other part know? When did Robert know? When did Emma admit it to him? When did Jerry know that Robert knew? When did Robert admit to Jerry that he knew? When did Emma told Jerry that Robert knew? The facts are simple as that. But here again , it is the moment of admitted knowledge that makes the truth. It is not a play about betrayal as a sexual/moral violation, but a betrayal about the instance of revelation. Partial knowledge is the raw material for a multilayer betrayal, and time is its artisan. The majesty in Pinter's lines is his simple style. It goes as follows:
a. 1977: Emma and Jerry meet after long time in a pub, and they discuss the end of their affair, some two years ago. She says that she divorces Robert, and by the way she admitted to him her affair with Jerry.
b. 1977 (later): Jerry meets Robert rather anxious, to discuss or even to apologize for having an affair with his almost ex-wife. Robert says that Emma told him some four years ago, so he knew all this period that they were behaving "normal".
c. 1975: Emma and Jerry meet in their love-nest-flat. They discuss how things got different. How and why they stopped meeting. They decide to quit the flat and the relationship, to sell for "few quid" the furniture.
d. 1974: Jerry visits Robert and Emma at home. They discuss work, he talks about his overloaded schedule. Emma suffers and Robert is supportive to her.
e. 1973: Robert and Emma are in Venice. They plan a short trip. At some point, Robert says she has a letter at the poste restante, he did not pick it for her. She says that it is from Jerry. Robert knew from the handwriting. Emma admits her relationship to him and gives all the details (the flat, the duration...)
f. 1973 (later): Jerry and Emma in their flat, after her return from Venice. They are in love, she does not tell him about the revelation that took place in Venice. It shows that Jerry is not willing to change his life for being constantly with her.
g. 1973(later): Jerry and Robert meet for lunch, in an Italian restaurant. They discuss work, Venice, and Robert does not confess to Jerry that he knows.
h. 1971: Jerry and Emma in their flat-love nest. They are crazily in love. Emma is worried whether Judith (Jerry's wife) suspects anything. Jerry denies that. They admit that they are faithful to each other (in their affair.)
i. 1968: Jerry visits the newly married couple (Robert and Emma). At a moment, while heavily drunk, he has a go on her. He compliments, he proposes, he begs. She reacts quietly, reminding him of the setting in their relations. Robert comes at some point. He takes the whole thing lightheartedly and reassures Jerry about him being his most dear friend.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm... Time makes all the job. When? (and secondarily Who? What?) In retrospection all the previous certainties get dynamically undermined. The spectator wonders, trying to remember and reinterpret what he has already watched happening.
Pinter is great, and his televised speech "Art, Truth and Politics" for the Swedish Academy at the Nobel Prize Award event (December 2005) is of the strongest texts I have read during the past few years, especially when it gets aggressive towards the US policy during the last 5 decades, a policy of aggression:

'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art.

Show me your sceleton box

handcuffs, now holding time
Well... this is an awesome event I would like to attend: It takes place these days in Berlin. An exhibition of personal tokens from love stories that came to an end. Divorced, departed, alienated, after the fever of closeness. What happened to you after you "broke up", "split", "fell apart"? Everyone has to go through different paths, to come to terms with the events, the reasons of the breaking up, the precise details, the anniversaries that come and go, torturing, uninhabited, but still like long abandoned archaeological sites, "there" but not standing anymore in their vivid actuality. Apart from this difficult turning point in our private lives (on which the nation of therapists, analysts, healers, astrologists, make a fortune) there is the cruelty of the material indications of what used to be and it is not anymore. What may happen with all these gifts, the photographs, the CDs, the souvenirs? This is why some philosophers accused materiality for cruelty. The more it grows, the heavier we get. The idea of the exhibition was conceived when two Zagreb artists, Olinka Vistica and Drazen Grubisic, split up and decided to try to heal their wounds by showing in public the proofs of their finale. In Bosnia-Herzegovina the exhibition attracted many supporters. People donated 300 objects to add to the initial core of the collection. In Germany, in Berlin, already appeared 30 objects-tokens, a wedding dress, the axe that a deserted lover used for destroying the furniture of his "ex-", Valentine underwear. The experience of loss and depression is universal.
the bike he used while leaving her
The episodes which occur on the borders of private/public draw my particular attention: how the rules of making sense of private stories mix with the rhetorics of public exposure. The public sphere, expanding to the fragments of the personal territory, with the spicy curiosity of a voyeur is something common with time. Take a glimpse, for instance, at the story of the final days of Diana "the Princess of the People", or its repetition, in a more hilarious manner, with Britney Spears. Private details about the emotional life of someone on the scene, attract grave-robbers and the flash of the cameras, the pressing questions aiming at some irritated reaction, the cheap journalism of motorcycle hunting, may culminate even in tragedies.
1. A public sphere which tackles nothing big, that does not inspire and does not educate, 2. A bored, dull and mentally unmotivated public which is so much enclosed in its personal routine details, that are lived out in the way of a dramatic series, 3. Technical means which allow an easy and daily intrusion into private spaces and the publication of their finds, all of the above and other factors I cannot think of right now, contributeto this transformation of life into a daily series of "The Bold and the Beautiful" type of impression.
Come on, let us not theorize too much, fellow-voyeurs and victims/persecutors. What would you contribute to the exhibition, if it was to appear somewhere next door, or some doors further down? (Because I feel it might be different our donation in those two cases). What would I give if it was to be set in Jabal al Webdeh, what if in Thessaloniki, or Birmingham? Cigarette boxes painted by those beloved hands, a post valentine postcard (commemorating the first year of being apart), the almond tree flowers with which i was showered during some ancient spring, falling on the wooden floor and then picked carefully by the hand of the .
Why on earth have I kept all these, and many many more?

Icons for Life, Images of Death

This is a postponed note, because Argyris had sent me his link in time, concerning an article on Ilias Petropoulos' "Graveyards of Greece" last spring. I could not touch the topic, being so preoccupied with the fear of death myself. Primum vivere, deinde phisophari, as Latin would put Aristotle in its infinitives.
Nevertheless, I did not take any step; I just posted him my thanks and shared some personal point of view concerning Petropoulos. I was so pleasantly shocked to know that in 2003 he took his steps to their honest end, asking a friend, after the cremation of his corpse to dispose the ashes in the sewer of Paris. Wise as always, he knew that, first, some virtuous voices would not allow that in Greece, or would spoil the dignity of death with their virtue, and, second, that the places where we spend long years, big proportions of this mess which is cut and trimmed in biographies, and is named "life", become in principle suitable fatherlands for death. I have to get this volume, I had a look at it, it looked great with all these photographs he had been obsessively gathering and taking from graves, processions, tombstones, reliefs, the short and definite Curricula Vitarum on marble, wood, cement, stone, a common nothingness on occasions of extreme pressure or poverty. And his comments. Most of the times, the arrangement and the selection were adequate texts by themselves. It has to be gotten during one of my "Flying Dutch" adventures.
Since the 1960s he gathered much (10.000 photographs), he pondered a lot and he found meaningful this sociology and cult of death, in the sense that it was commenting more on life than its negation. I remind myself here that this is also true in "Les Dances Macabres" of the late Middle Ages. By fearing the end, we find the vitality to live some instances of forced difference and meaning, out of the gray zone of work-home-pension-future- to-secure-for-children-and-for-the- hard-times-to-come-Gracious- God-spare-us. And He/She never does. Does He/She? The critics and reviewers underline his achievement: to prove that Greece as a concept of Life at its human scale, crazy and wise, as a Golden Principle shown basically through its violations and the human compassion to them (English uses the wrong term Empathy for the above described condition), to the imperfection (knowing the value of Perfection)is to be found in the towns, villages, working class areas, the mixed racially customs of some regions. Athens and Thessaloniki (the central graveyards, this is) are so linear and boring in the way the extend their hand to bid a farewell to their departing citizens.
Petropoulos is a strange combination of a folklore studies scholar, of a philologist, a theorist and a sociologist. Let me mention here some of the titles of his books: Songs of the Greek Underworld: the Tradition of Rebetika, Old Salonica, Wooden Doors, Iron Doors in Greece, Of the Prison, Underworld and Karagkiozis, The Turkish Coffee in Greece, Kaliarda: the Jargon of the Greek Homosexuals, the Brothel, The Holy Weed, Le kiosque Grec, Cages a Oiseaux en Grece, Les Juifs de Salonique: In Memoriam, and many-many-many more.
For me, apart from the bliss of reading good texts on prohibited, or red-zone issues, he is special in this way: Perhaps there is hardly any contemporary intellectual in my language engaged with the great values of Enlightenment, continuing this French bred tradition: I mean secularism, freedom in writing and exploring, criticism to nationalism as a system that violates or, simply, obscures the Social Pact foundations of Equality, and of the Rights beyond colour, language, faith, religious convictions and so on. At the same time, he possesses the passion of romanticism and its reiteration or specification in Realism and, especially, Naturalism. His interest in the underworld, the suffering ethnic groups, the classified "deviations" of human sexuality, indicate a strange mixture of the two gladiators of theory. The eyes of Zola but the interpellation of Voltaire.

Photo Anniversary

How to celebrate one hundred instances, one hundred notes on various doubts, on minimal certainties and on daylights that now overshadow the personal sense of time?
By exposing my fixed idea:

"Do you think I have anything else in mind, except freedom and language?"
Dionysios Solomos
- - - - -
Πράγματι είναι έμμονη ιδέα, ένας μικρός τόπος, με χρώματα της δικής μας φύσης, όπως με επίφοβη τέχνη θα τα ξεδιάλεγε μια μνήμη Δρ. Φράνκενσταϊν. Ο εκούσιος εγκλεισμός: με την νυχτερινή υπομονή των αναγνώσεων. Η συνείδηση: με την ελευθερία να νιώσω και να πω ό,τι νιώθω χωρίς κανέναν λογοκριτή... Εδώ, βέβαια, αστειευόμουν φτιάχνοντας με το τίποτα, και για το τίποτα, μιαν επέτειο των ψιθύρων μου. Αστεία-αστεία όμως, βρήκα με τι θα ξεκινήσω το χαιρετισμό μου στην τελετή για την επίδοση των τίτλων ελληνομάθειας (τη μέρα του εορτασμού της 28ης Οκτωβρίου αφού έτσι το ήθελε ο πρέσβης, χίλιες φορές έτσι παρά σε εκείνο το κλειστό πράγμα του Orthodox Club). Και το πιο ενδιαφέρον, τα λόγια είναι σε γραμματόσημο με την αξία σε μονέδα που κανείς δεν αγοράζει.

Where did you dine?

On Wednesday I had my dinner at the VIP restaurant of the University (a place visited quite frequently after all, thanks to all those official visits we have been receiving along the years- ministers, professors, ambassadors, delegations...)

[My weirdest memory from the place has been an evening coffee during which the President of that time invited the staff of the Faculty to discuss his agenda for the starting academic year- I think it was late October or early November- it was thoroughly in arabic, I could get quite much of the question-answer roll and could feel the shy tension of those professors who were addressing the Rector. I felt that the details of the particular issues that our Departments were facing could not be discussed. Therefore, I relaxed drinking my qahwa turkiyeh medium-sweet and eating a small petit four. Strangely enough, after ten days the president was replaced. Timing contains always the seeds of tragedy and farse.]

This time, the setting was quite different. The new President (Khalid Al Karaki) attended with some delay the occasion and I found him genuinely polite and dynamic. I found myself sitting with the German Section people, a further confirmation about my preference to German, among many Europeans. Next to us, the tables of the buffet, a big vase with artificial flowers, made of cucumber, tomatoes, lemons and oranges, it reminded me of that "Vatel" film with Gerard Depardieu. Quite impressive. Two young men were playing traditional tunes on an electrical Oud (first time I saw it so Dorian in appearance) and keyboards. The organizers delivered their speeches. A post graduate student recited poetry (wataniyeh- of the fatherland- but nice in its images). And, then, the President greeted the guests, ignoring formalities, and focusing on his guest of honour. An emeritus professor, Nasser (I tried to find his full bio and name, but up to now I have not succeeded), who in 1963 along with other six professors established literally the University, by founding the Department of Arabic Language and Literature. I was impressed by the warmth of the Rector's speech and the way professor Nasser received the honour. The way a teacher is honoured by his student. It felt nice and it showed some changes that have occurred meanwhile. He described a different geography of the city, a different feeling of pride and optimism about the passion for language and philology.

Then, because the evocation of the past was honest and the years of the reverse journey were many (40 almost), it started raining. A strong, yet calm, rain, as it happens when memory gets strong and honest. I reach home, half soaked, but it felt right.

Perdus... (reviewing)

Aldebaran is the brightest star of Taurus, my constellation, Alpha Tauri according to Bayer designation. But in the novel of Jean-Claude Izzo, Les Marins Perdus, it is the name of the cargo ship at the port of Marseilles. Unable to continue its route, due to the greed of the owner. A cargo ship fixed in front of a moving, lively and open city. Marseilles is a hero in the novel, aging, falling apart and growing in charm. The ship (deck and cabins) and the city make a good scenery for exploring the rules of entropy.
Here we are, watching the Lebanese captain, Abdul Aziz, the Greek second captain (ship's mate) Diamantis, and the Turk sailor Nedim remembering, constructing their interpretations and inventing or canceling future, according to their origins, their age, their impetus for survival. The Greek translation has not been successful in all its details, I could read the hasty misreadings in this flat language that should be used mostly for the rose sugar romance novels sold at train stations and international airports. The first two march heavy with details of a shared past to the stage of retirement, the third is of the peasant nature and, supposedly, would rather be at his village. The dramatic finale proves his desire right.
Abdul Aziz, during his long career, has been escaping the adamant rules of the firm land: this Arabic iron hand of correctness and contempt, a father, a brother, an expanded territory of silence concerning the genuine self. Diamantis is the son of Ulysses, a second, cross-time Telemachus. Even his native island is Psara, few miles next to Chios, where Homer supposedly saw the blinding light at birth. He travels to discover himself, to make sense of all the fragments as parts of a thorough melody. Nedim is young, his life is his sexual drive, and the difficulty to enter the grounded reality of adulthood and its roles. This crew is what remains once the final decision of the company is announced to keep the cargo anchored. The rest take some small compensation and depart each one to different aims and directions. Only those three samples from the Eastern Mediterranean pot stay on board till the end, searching for an end.
Women are the secret power of the plot: some appearing from the past- Amina, was renamed to Gabi according to the changes in her life. Melina stayed away, she could not bear the role of a traveler's wife. Sefe stopped being the welcoming harbor. Aizel undertook the task of waiting for her sailor. Other appear now to shake everything and to promise stability. But the great female figure of the book is the Mediterranean. Not the Ocean. (In Greek, let us note, Thalassa is feminine, and Okeanos masculine)
I find Izzo's book sweet and old-fashioned: although it is published in 1997 (Flammarion), it brings along an old taste of humanism. He was, anyway, so much engaged himself with the regional issues of Marseilles and the Left. There is a strong touch of naturalism combined with an open minded approach to cultural diversity, somewhere between the meridian of orientalism and romanticism. No approach prevails in the end. The routes are personal, as if each life is a different cargo, on a different map, of a different planet. Now, I find the way of representing Abdul Aziz's figure ambivalent and summarizing some of my thoughts concerning the middle eastern essence, if there is any. It was a pillow book for part of my Ramadan siestas.
Izzo concludes his novel by asking those who hold power in the region to read Fernand Braudel and Predrag Matveyevic. I wonder if they did.