The Other Self
Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches Series Editor: Gregory Nagy, Harvard University Assistant Editor: Timothy Power, Harvard University On the front cover: A calendar frieze representing the Athenian months, reused in the Byzantine Church of the Little Metropolis in Athens. The cross is superimposed, obliterating Taurus of the Zodiac. The choice of this frieze for books in Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches reflects this series’ emphasis on the blending of the diverse heritages-Near Eastern, Classical, and Christian-in the Greek tradition. Drawing by Laurie Kain Hart, based on a photograph. Recent titles in the series are: Nothing Is As It Seems: The Tragedy of the Implicit in Euripides’ Hippolytus by Hanna M. Roisman Lyric Quotation in Plato by Marian Demos Exile and the Poetics of Loss in Greek Tradition by Nancy Sultan The Classical Moment: Viewsfrom Seven Literatures Edited by Gail Holst-Warhaft and David R. McCann Nine Essays on Homer Edited by Miriam Carlisle and Olga Levaniouk Allegory and the Tragic Chorus in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus by Roger Travis Dionysism and Comedy by Xavier Riu Contextualizing Classics: Ideology, Perjormance, Dialogue Edited by Thomas M. Falkner, Nancy Felson, and David Konstan The Pity of Achilles: Oral Style and the Unity of the Iliad by Jinyo Kim Between Magic and Religion: Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Mediterranean Religion and Society Edited by Sulochana Asirvatham, Corinne Ondine Pache, and John Waltrous Iambic Ideas: Essays on a Poetic Traditionfrom Archaic Greece to the Late Roman Empire Edited by Antonio Aloni, Alessandro Barchiesi, Alberto Cavarzere The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, Second Edition by Margaret Alexiou revised by Dimitrios Yatromanolakis and Panagiotis Roilos Homeric Variations on a Lament by Briseis by Casey Dut Imagining Illegitimacy in Classical Greek Literature by Mary Ebbott Tragedy and Athenian Religion by Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood The Usable Past: Greek Metahistories Edited by K. S. Brown and Yannis Hamilakis The Other Self: Selfhood and Society in Modern Greek Fiction by Dimitris Tziovas
The Other Self Selfhood and Society in Modern Greek Fiction
Dimitris Tziovas
LEXINGTON BOOKS
Lanham Boulder New York Oxford
LEXINGTON BOOKS Published in the United States of America by Lexington Books A Member of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 PO Box 317 Oxford OX2 9RU. UK Copyright 0 2003 by Lexington Books
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData Tziovas, Dimitris. The other self : selfhood and society in modem Greek fiction / Dimitris Tziovas. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7391-0625-2 (alk. paper) 1. Greek fiction, Modem-19th century-History and criticism. 2. Greek fiction, Modern-20th century-History and criticism. 3. Literature and society-Greece-History-19th century. 4. Literature century. 5. Self in literature. I. and society-Greece-History-20th Title. PA5265.T938 2003 889'.3209384--dc21 2002 156256 Printed in the United States of America @TM
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSUNIS0 239.48-1992.
“Je est un autre.” Arthur Rimbaud
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Contents
ix
Preface
1
Introduction National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism in Greek Fiction
13
Palaiologos’s 0 Polypathis: Picaresque (Auto)biography as a National Romance
55
Selfhood, Natural Law, and Social Resistance in The Murderess
83
Individuality and Inevitability: From the Social Novel to Bildungsroman
103
A Hero without a Cause: Self-Identity in Vasilis Awanitis
135
The Poetics of Manhood: Genre and Self-Identity in Freedom and Death
153
Tyrants and Prisoners: Narrative Fusion and the Hybrid Self in The Third Wedding
175
Defying the Social Context: Narratives of Exile and the Lonely Self
195
Fool’s Gold and Achilles’ Fianckee: Politics and Self-Representation
215
vii
...
Vlll
Contents
10 “Mosc6.v-Selim” and The Life of Ismail Ferik Pasha: Narratives of Identity and the Semiotic Chora
249
Afterword
273
Index
277
About the Author
289
Preface
Having taught modern Greek fiction for a number of years, I have come to the realization that a book on the subject is urgently needed as students constantly complain about the lack of studies on individual novels or on Greek fiction as a whole. As there is an increasing interest in Greek fiction and a growing number of English translations, the need for a scholarly study of the Greek novel becomes more apparent. This study attempts to address such a need and to offer a fresh look at some key texts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This book has two related starting points. The first is the gradual transition of Greek culture from the notion of community to an increased emphasis on the individual, and the other is the postmodern challenge to rigid totalities and grand narratives by emphasizing relativity and subjectivity. This book seeks to map out the transformation of Greek society and its impact on recent Greek fiction and at the same time to embark on a rereading of the Greek narrative canon. The readings in this volume are not intended to cancel out earlier ones, but to show how the interpretation of literary texts might be adjusted to the cultural and ideological developments of each period. I would like to thank a number of people who have read the whole book or parts of it and made useful comments: Professor Venetia Apostolidou, Professor Roderick Beaton, Dimosthenis Kourtovik, Gerasimia Melissaratou, Valerie Nunn, Professor Christopher Robinson, Dimitris Paivanas, Dr. Marianna Spanaki, and David Vere. I am particularly grateful to Professor Peter Mackridge who read the typescript and alerted me to a number of pitfalls. I wish also to express my gratitude to the Onassis Foundation (USA) for the opportunity to try out portions of my argument at Columbia, Arizona, San Francisco, Ohio, and Maryland Universities as senior visiting fellow in February ix
X
Preface
and March 2002. Special thanks are due to the organizers of conferences on Kazantzakis (Hania 1997), Vizyenos (Komotini 1997), and Papadiamantis (Athens 2001) for giving me the opportunity to present earlier versions of parts of this book. 1 would also like to thank Dr. David Holton and Professor Peter Mackridge for inviting me to give lectures in Cambridge and Oxford respectively where material from this book was presented. I am grateful to the audi; ences on all the above occasions for the feedback they offered me as well as to my students over the years for their stimulating ideas and questions. 1 am grateful to Leo Marshall for his translations of the Greek passages of 0 Polypathis and to Maria Kakava and Professor Eugene W. Bushala for allowing me to quote from their unpublished translation of The Double Book. Finally, 1 would like to express my deep gratitude to Professor Gregory Nagy for including my book in his Greek Studies series. With his broad vision of Hellenic Studies he has generously supported the study of modern Greek literature and culture and offered me tremendous encouragement.
Introduction
Fiction has been described as the ‘Cinderella’ of modern Greek literature and in the past it attracted little interest from scholars and translators. Apart from Nikos Kazantzakis, who enjoys international status, few modern Greek writers are well known outside the country. Greece has traditionally been considered as a culture of poetry, including poets who achieved global reputation and influence (e.g., C. P. Cavafy) even-in two cases-becoming Nobel laureates (George Seferis, Odysseas Elytis). Prose writers have remained for years the underdogs of Greek literature and with the exception of Kostas Tachtsis, whose Third Wedding is the only modem Greek novel to have been published by Penguin, or Vassilis Vassilikos, who owes his reputation partly to the success of the film 2 and has been widely translated, other writers are little known on the international stage. Over recent years there has been an explosion of fiction in Greece as publishers and the public turn their attention away from poetry to fiction. This transition is indeed telling in respect of recent cultural developments and may throw light on deeper changes in Greek society at the turn of the twentyfirst century. The reassessment of fiction has even extended to the past and rehabilitated undeservedly forgotten novels of the nineteenth century such as 0 Polypathis,which is discussed in this volume. This growing emphasis on and reevaluation of Greek fiction has been accompanied by an increasing scholarly interest. However, this has been focused on studies of a historical or bibliographical nature rather than on an analysis of the novels themselves.’ In other words, though the resurgence of 1. In this respect the anthology and author-by-author overview of Greek fiction from 1830 to 1967 published by Sokolis Publications in twenty-seven volumes from 1988 to 1999 is indeed a very useful reference tool, but it does not offer close readings or rigorous analyses of the novels.
2
Introduction
interest in Greek fiction has rightly diverted attention to unduly neglected writers, it has not produced, as one would expect, sufficient new readings of novels to highlight the complexity and subtlety of Greek fiction and thus shake off its image as the poor relative of poetry. Hence, there are few books, even in Greek, which focus on analyzing and interpreting the novels, as most studies still concentrate on the study of literary context and do not engage in close readings of the novels themselves. As a result there is a dearth of scholarly readings of Greek novels and readers still have to rely on outdated analyses, while in English the only book available on Greek fiction is a volume of conference proceedings published in 1988.2Although in recent decades some interesting nanatological or comparative approaches on Greek authors or genres have appeared, new and challenging interpretations of key Greek narrative texts are few and far between in book form. On the other hand, in recent years a trend has emerged among younger scholars toward a modernist or even postmodernist reassessment of early twentieth-century and more recent texts or authors (Dimosthenis Voutiras, Melpo Axioti, Yannis Skarimbas, N. G. Pentzikis, Nikos Kachtitsis). It tends to establish an alternative, nonrealist, Western-oriented canon due to the rather formalist, self-referential, and noncontextualist approach employed. The aim is to elicit the nonrepresentational character of certain texts and to show that they do not lag that far behind other European experimental narratives. Though it has contributed significantly to reviving interest in Greek fiction and to reshaping the contours of Greek modernism, this trend risks going too far in the westernization of Greek fiction and attempting to build a tradition of modernist or experimental fiction in Greece out of isolated texts and cases, ignoring historical complexities and cultural specificities. Though acknowledging these two trends (the historical/contextualist on the one hand and the nonrepresentational/self-referential on the other), the present study attempts to cut through and transcend them, arguing that they are either excessively historical with insufficient analysis of the texts themselves or too formalist with insufficient emphasis on a thematic or contextualist reading. In this study various manifestations of identity are explored and successive stages in the development of the Greek fictional autobiography are traced: the picaresque (0 Polypathis), Bildungsroman (Leonis and The Sun of Death), and the women’s novel of self-discovery and awakening (Fool’s Gold and Achilles’ Fiance‘e).Although the novels discussed here range from the picaresque to the confessional, most of them can be described as novels of formation that try to maintain a balance between society and selfhood. Follow2. Roderick Beaton, ed., The Greek Novel ADZ-1985 (London: Croom Helm, 1988).
Introduction
3
ing Marianne Hirsch’s argument, this study treats the novel of formation as situated between these two genres: While the picaresque novel is turned outward toward society and the confessional novel is turned inward toward consciousness, the novel of formation maintains a peculiar balance between the social and the personal and explores their intera~tion.~
One of the main features of the novel of formation is that it focuses on one central character and hisher development within the context of a defined social order. By and large the novels discussed here share this feature, and, therefore, can be seen as belonging to this broad category and its related genres. This volume does not aspire to offer a comprehensive study of the Greek novel, but a close reading of some key texts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, addressing questions of self-identity, autobiography, and the role of society in determining the development of an individual character. In the past the emphasis has been placed on contextual analyses and some readings here attempt to show that a different approach is also possible. They are intended to offer alternative insights into important Greek novels and to challenge readings that are informed either by heroic, and at times even ethnocentric, approaches or that focus exclusively on the self of the protagonist and thus ignore the historical context. For example, 0 Polypathis has been read simply as the Greek version of GiZ Blas, namely as the adventures of a constantly displaced rogue and not as a national allegory. On the other hand, Vasilis Arvanitis and Freedom and Death have been read from a male and patriotic perspective that treated the protagonists as national heroes and not as vulnerable individuals with an identity crisis. Alexandros Papadiamantis’s The Murderess has also been read more as social drama than as the drama of an individual consciousness while Dimitris Hatzis’s stones have been read as social portraits, ignoring the bitter and frustrating loneliness of the characters. It might be argued that some of the texts discussed in this book, however popular or canonical they might be, should now be considered old-fashioned by dint of being closer to the realist tradition and less innovative in terms of narrative technique. Yet such texts can more clearly demonstrate how alternative readings can be applied to Greek fiction and how they can acquire a new lease of life. 3. Marianne Hirsch, “The Novel of Formation as Genre: Between Great Expectations and Lost IIlusions,” Genre 12 (fall 1979): 299. Thomas Mann makes a connection between the Bildungsroman and the adventure novel by saying that the former involves “the rendering inward and sublimation of the adventure novel.” Cited in Todd Kontje, Privare Lives in the Public Sphere: The German Bildungsroman as Meta$crion (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 8.
4
Introduction
My aim in this study is not simply to reverse or deconstruct the existing readings of these texts, but to show that different interpretations can emerge depending on the perspective adopted. So far the context within which these texts have been read has dictated their readings and thus historical, patriotic, or social approaches have prevailed. What links the novels under discussion in this book is that almost all of them have protagonists who really stand out and engage with their context in different ways while negotiating their subjectivity." Most of these characters are defiant, eccentric, or nonconformist and tackle the challenges of their society in an absorbing way. Greek fiction is thought of as lacking memorable characters. In spite of this it is still possible to trace the construction of selfhood and the development of individuality by studying the ways in which individuals conform to or more often resist social conventions. Individual freedom and social constraints are at odds in a number of the novels included in this study, and by exploring this conflict I hope to throw a different light on Greek fiction as a whole. Focusing on the characters, their autobiographies, identities, or their psychological makeup is one way of reconsidering these texts from a different and fresh point of view. This does not mean ignoring the context, but finding new ways of exploring forms of engagement between self and society. Hence, this study is as much about decontextualizing as it is about recontextualizing the self. By exploring the construction of subjectivity from a psychoanalytical rather than an historical or ethnocentric perspective, the texts discussed yield new and challenging readings. In this respect recontextualization involves rereading texts by setting them in a new framework, by approaching them from a different perspective and with a fresh set of theoretical principles in mind. Though I am not espousing the 'new historicist' notion that literature needs to be studied in relation to the social context in which it was written, neither am I completely rejecting this idea. Contexts can be restrictive but they can also be liberating as long as we treat them as constantly replenishing and reconstituting themselves. By placing a text in a different historical, social, or intellectual context new interpretations can emerge that may highlight the subtlety of the texts. The study of the Greek novel needs this kind of recontextualization in order to show its polyphony and diversity. The aim of this book, therefore, is to demonstrate that Greek fiction has a richness and complexity that deserves serious study for the insights into Greek culture it offers that other kinds of writing cannot. The readings here do not aspire to be canonistic or definitive, but aim to show that Greek fiction is informed by the dialogics of self and 4. With the exception of 0 Polypathis,Kutudikos, and To Diplo Vivlio all the texts considered here are available in English translation.
Introduction
5
context, individuality and society. This study does not aim to privilege the self over the context or vice versa. Therefore it may be useful to outline its theoretical premises by looking into how selfhood has been perceived over the centuries. Here the focus will be on western perceptions of selfhood whereas in the next chapter it will be on Greek attitudes to individuality. Western medieval philosophy defined personhood in terms of the relationship to God, and the concept of the soul evolved into a forerunner of the concept of the inner self. The main reason for the relative indifference to individuality during this period was the firm Christian view of “life on earth as imitative or derivative of the ultimate, otherworldly realitie~.”~ As John Lyons points out “before the fulcrum of the mid-eighteenth century the point of personal narrative was to make one’s peace with God; afterward it was to make one’s peace with himself.”6 With Enlightenment secularization and rationalism, the locus of the ideals about personhood shifted from the will of God to the rational mind. Premised on Cartesian dualities of mindhody and self/other, individualistic ideologies embarked on the pursuit of personal freedom and autonomy as a substitute for theological doctrine. Bentham, Mill, and Rousseau “saw society as the aggregate of individuals striving to maximize self-interest, and perceived the social as a threat to authentic, independent self-reali~ation.”~ The Enlightenment’s oppositional dichotomy that prioritizes the individual over society, formed the basis of liberal individualism.*Secularization, rationalism, and individualism have contributed to the western idea that the true self is an innate property and personal responsibility. This essentialist ideal in respect of the inherent qualities of selfhood has been challenged over the years and the self is no longer treated as a permanent essence but as protean and constantly rein~ented.~ 5. Roy F. Baumeister, Identity: Cultural Change and the Struggle for Self(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 30. 6. John 0. Lyons, The Invention of the Self: The Hinge of Consciousness in the Eighteenth Century (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), 55. Lyons argues that the self was invented shortly after the middle of the eighteenth century and perhaps the new focus on the self during this period “is a compensation for the realization that the individual is such a mite before the carelessness of natural and historical laws” (p. 39). See also Aaron Gurevich, The Origins of European Individualism, trans. by Katharine Judelson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). 7. Jennifer de Peuter, “The Dialogics of Narrative Identity,” in Michael Mayerfeld Bell and Michael Gardiner, Bakhtin and the Human Sciences (London: Sage, 1998), 32. 8. Richard Sennett in The Fall of Public Man (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974) argues that “before the 19th century, the realm close to the self was not thought to be a realm for the expression of unique or distinctive personality” (p. 89). 9. Jean-FranGois Lyotard in his influential book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986) argues that “a self does not amount to much, but no self is an island; each exists in a fabric of relations that is now more complex and mobile than ever before. Young or old, man or woman, rich or poor, a person is always located at ‘nodal point’ of specific communication circuits, however tiny these may be” (p. 15).
6
Introduction
According to Michael R. Wood and Louis A. Zurcher “the fundamental assumption of modernity, which ran through Western civilization since the sixteenth century, was that the social unit of society was the person, rather than the city, the tribe, the guild, or the group.”1° Over the last two centuries there has been a radical change in the meaning of the individual from a being to a self, and from eternalism (being) to temporalism (becoming). The relationship of the single self to society underwent a crisis during the nineteenth century. The individual could no longer be equated with his or her position in society. According to Roy F. Baumeister “the growing belief that inner selves were different from overt behaviour also detached the individual from the position in society. People came to believe in an inner self separate from the social self. Social mobility and belief in internality thus undermined the belief that the person was equated with social position.”” Gradually, and more particularly during the nineteenth century, individuality came to mean something inner and hidden which is in long-term conflict with society: The point is that Western culture increasingly placed a value on private, inner experience, and this value was connected to individuality. . . . Indeed, during the Victorian era (the late nineteenth century), the private family home became a bulwark against the chaotic and threatening world of public society. Rugged individualism, disillusionment with society, the secularized work ethic of competitive capitalism, and the emphasis on family life-all of these express the belief that it was now up to the individual to define the meaning of his own life; society had let him down by failing to do it for him. Fulfilment was associated with private, even inner, life-with individuality.‘*
Thus, identity has been equated since the nineteenth century with the hidden, inner and, in turn, true self, though the former represents the latter’s definition and interpretation. The contemporary sense of the self based on the notions of impulse and process is similar to the “untrammelled self’ of 10. Michael R. Wood and Louis A. Zurcher Jr., The Development of a Postmodern Self(New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 36-37. See also Daniel Bell, The Culturul Contradictions qf Capitalism, 2d ed. (London: Heineman, 1979). 11. Baumeister, op. cit., p. 253. 12. Baumeister, op. cit., p. 145. According to Georg Simmel, On Zndividuality and Social Forms, Selected Writings, ed. Donald N. Levine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971) the notion of individuality in the eighteenth century differs from that of nineteenth-century Romanticism. In the first, the emphasis is on what people have in common; “the idea of a uniform human nature that is present in everyone and that only requires freedom for its emergence” (p. 272). In the second, the emphasis lies on what separates people and the denial of equality. “By and large, one can say that the individualism of simply free personalities that are thought of as equal in principle has determined the rationalistic liberalism of France and England, whereas the individualism that is based on qualitative uniqueness and immutability is more a concern of the Germanic mind” (p. 225).
Introduction
I
nineteenth-century Romanticism that was a self of spirit, feeling, and transcendence. Indeed Romanticism promoted the idea of the essential or authentic self that has to be recovered and expressed. Later, however, as a reaction to Romanticism “the idea develops that a self is something that one creates, makes up, so that every life should be an art work whose creator is, in some sense, his or her own greatest rea at ion."'^ The two major dominants in the western world, cultural humanism and economic capitalism, share a similar conception of the relation of the individual to the social whole. For humanism the individual is unique and autonomous, also partaking of general human nature, and for capitalism the celebration of individualism conceals methods of mass manipulation and conformity. Both humanist and capitalist notions of selfhood and subjectivity have been called into question by the ‘decentering’ trend of postmodernism. This study does not seek to retrieve an authentic selfhood, but treats subjectivity as an undetermined, productive instance that is simultaneously dependent on a social and cultural structure. It puts forward a relational concept of identity where sameness and otherness are not mutually exclusive, but are recognized as equally important aspects of an effective sense of self. Replacing ontology with discourse as the foundation of individuality, the self is presented here as continuously shifting and dialogic. It is essentially constituted within a social context. Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogic conception of the self balances and brings closer the constituent parts of older dualities such as self/other, individual/society, identity/difference. Instead of focusing on one pole of the opposition or trying to highlight their conflict, the dialogic conception of this duality emphasizes their interaction and their antagonistic or symbiotic encounter. Therefore, this study is not trying to privilege any of the constituent agents of the polarities mentioned above, but to explore how all these agents operate in the texts under discussion. Dialogism seeks the liminal self that is enacted on the boundaries of self and other, identity and diversity, with each dialogic partner defining the other through varying degrees of contextual power. As Bakhtin himself has put it: “A person has no internal sovereign territory, he is wholly and always on the boundary; looking inside himself, he looks into the eyes of another or with the eyes of another. . . . I cannot become myself without another; I must find myself in another by finding another in myself (in mutual reflection and mutual a~ceptance).”’~
13. K. Anthony Appiah, “Identity, Authenticity, Survival: Multicuknrdl Societies and Social Reproduction,” in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 155. 14. M. Bakhtin, “Toward a Reworking of the Dostoevsky Book (1961),” in Problems O ~ D C J S I ~ J evsky’s Poetics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 287.
8
Introduction
For Bakhtin the other “is formative of the self in the sense that one is not able to know oneself without the interacting presence of the other.”I5 Similarly we come to know and understand texts and characters through the (re)reading capacity afforded by the otherness of the context(s). The other is the prism through which the world is refracted for the self and vice versa. The confluence of the self and other makes their boundaries fluid and cross-fertilization between them possible. Meaning is realized at the interstices of the self and other as each specifies and is grounded in the other. As the title of this study suggests, it relies on the dialogical conception of the self and tries to go beyond the modernist centripetal tendencies on the one hand and the postmodernist centrifugal tendencies on the other. Dialogism rejects the bias toward a dialectical synthesis and the privileging of the co-articulation of centripetal and centrifugal forces. By challenging the supremacy of the interiority of selfhood or its treatment as simply an outcome of the context, the dialogics of self perceives the self as ‘becoming’ on the boundaries of self and other, identity and difference. The ‘postmodern self’ may represent the shift from unity, cohesion and authenticity to dispersion, multiplicity, and contradiction, but this trend still presupposes the Enlightenment’s hegemony of the rational mind which, when faced with irreconcilable contradiction, collapses into fragmentation and multiplicity.I6 Modernity was involved in the project of mastery and determination of the other while postmodernity marks a shift in the priority of the self over the other. Underlying these shifts, according to Gerard Delanty, is a certain scepticism as to the durability of any narrative of the identity of the self “The reinvention of the Self under the conditions of difference is one of the central tasks in the new ‘social’ postmodernism, a project which in fact can be seen as a return to the modern discourse of the Self, but under the conditions of a more radicalized reflexivity whereby a relational conception of the Self emerges.”I7 The dialogic alternative treats the forces of synthesis and dispersion, order and disorder as equal partners in a dynamic tension that enables the dialogical self to be unfinalizable, emergent, and ongoing. Bakhtin demolishes the notion of the atomic self and treats the self as essentially social and poly-
15. David K. Danow, The Thought of Mikhail Bakhtin: From Word to Culture (London: Macmillan, 1991). 60. 16. Terry Eagleton points out that “the stalely familiar opposition between ‘humanist’ and ‘decentred’ subjects is quite misleading, since to be decentred in one sense of the term, constituted through and through by otherness, belongs to our human natures. It is by restoring this social dimension of subjectivity that we can avoid both the humanist mistake of simply modelling political solidarity along the lines of a singular self-determining subject, now suitably collectivized but otherwise largely unaltered, and the myopia of a subject which suspects solidarity itself as some oppressively normalizing consensus.” The Illusions of Postmodernism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 91-92. 17. Gerard Delanty, Modernity and Postmodernity: Knowledge, Power and the Self(London: Sage, 2000), 3.
Introduction
9
phonic; a view that accords with the treatment of the narrative text as multivocal and dialogic. He put forward a regenerated idea of the author and the text as embodying both an individual perspective and a sense of collective experience. Individuality and by extension self-identity is not simply a predetermined essence, but is shaped by the situation. Self-identity is not a collection of traits possessed by the individual, nor something that is just given, but something that according to Anthony Giddens “has to be routinely created and sustained in the reflexive activities of the individual.”’* The question of self-identity presumes a narrative and autobiography is at its core as “a corrective intervention into the past, not merely a chronicle of elapsed events.”I9 As Giddens has argued “the self is not a passive entity, determined by external influences; in forging their selfidentities, no matter how local their specific contexts of action, individuals contribute to and directly promote social influences that are global in their consequences and implications.”20 The self could also be conceived here as other; as an alternative to the idea of a monolithic national cultural totality, representing its potential breakdown and transformation into a pluralistic conglomerate of individuals. This contextual diversity does not necessarily lead to the fragmentation of the self or to its disintegration into multiple ‘selves’; rather, in many circumstances, it can promote its reinstatement. The other in this study is conceived both in Bakhtinian terms as social and in Lacanian terms as somatic and psychological. Lacanian analysis resonates with ideas that Bakhtin developed in his work, such as the always incomplete formation and dialogic structure of the self or the emphasis on process and becoming.21Both thinkers resist any kind of system and argue for the deferral of truth in all acts of representation. Kristeva’s work, which is used extensively in the last chapter, could be seen as providing the link between Bakhtin and Lacan. All of them share a view of the subject as structured by language. Their basic premise is that language and subjectivity are social. To judge from the following examples of their writings, language mediates between self and other, facilitating the internalization of the other and the other’s word: Quests for my own word are in fact quests for a word that is not my own, a word that is more than myself.22 18. Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Selfand Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 52. 19. Ibid., 72. 20. Ibid., 2. 21. See William R. Handley, “The Ethics of Subject Creation in Bakhtin and Lacan,” in David Shepherd, ed., Bakhtin: Carnival and Other Subjecrs (Critical Studies vol. 3, no. 2-vol. 4, no. 1/2) (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 1993), 146. 22. M. Bakhtin, “From Notes Made in 1970-1971,” in Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, trans. by Vern W. McGee, ed. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 149.
10
Introduction
What I seek in the Word is the response of the other. What constitutes me as subject is my question.23 In Lacan’s view, the ego cannot be centered on itself (as in ego psychology) because it is formed in an identification with an ‘other’ that produces the illusion of wholeness. William R. Handley argued that in Bakhtin as in Lacan the point “is not that the other gives the subject the truth about himself, but that the self’s self-understanding depends upon a certain untranslatability, a certain internalised f ~ r e i g n n e s s . For ” ~ ~dialogism and psychoanalysis, the self emerges as the result of one’s identification and negotiation with or opposition to other(s). Though psychoanalysis is considered the apogee of the development of individualism in western culture, it shares with dialogism the notion of the self as relational and inters~bjective.~~ The notion of the self is based on a decentered identity where it is thought of as located in a dynamic relational network. “By individuality,” as Ian Burkitt argues, “Bakhtin is not referring to something internal and given to self, but to the biography of an individual who has a social and historical location. A person will always bring something of his or her own biography and socially formed self into a dialogue with others.”26Bakhtin’s dialogism suggests that the subject is constituted by both the self and the other, in and through its dialogical relations with others and the world at large. This study insists on the sociohistorical immersion of the subject retaining simultaneously a degree of freedom. In a Bakhtinian sense the self is caught, but not trapped by the context. The text is seen as the site in which the interaction and dialogic engagement between the self and the other, individuality and society is effected. Like Bakhtin’s double-voiced discourse, this book is doubly directed towards subjectivity and context, self and other, and tries to show how the one is grafted onto the other. Having as its premise that dialogism is not a dualism, it acknowledges the multifaceted nature of the text in the same way the ‘other self’ seeks to highlight the unfinalizability of the characters. This study 23. Jacques Lacan, “The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis,” in Speech und Languages in Psychoanalysis, trans. Anthony Wilden (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), 63. 24. Handley, op. cit., p. 150. 25. As Nancy Julia Chodorow points out “when we investigate psychoanalytic theory and practice, we see a historical progression from a view favoring a pure, differentiated individuality based on rigid notions of autonomous separateness toward a relational individualism.” Nancy Julia Chodorow, “Toward a Relational Individualism: The Mediation of Self through Psychoanalysis,” in Reconstructing Individualism, ed. by Thomas C. Heller, Morton Soma, and David E. Wellbery (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986). 207. 26. Ian Burkitt, “The Death and Rebirth of the Author: The Bakhtin Circle and Bourdieu on Individuality, Language and Revoluton,” in Michael Mayerfeld Bell and Michael Gardiner, Bakhtin and the Human Sciences (London: Sage, 1998), 16667.
Introduction
II
explores the other side(s) of the fictional characters, who, like writing, are not finalized objects of understanding, but unfolding events and processes of becoming or, in Lacanian terms, the very writing of desire that is never completed. It calls for more probing into latent aspects of their subjectivity or identity as they are conditioned by or resist the formative forces of society. In this respect, the ‘other’ in the title could also stand for female subjectivity and the deconstruction of the myth of woman as Other, thus inviting an alternative approach to the texts themselves. The analysis of the Greek novels in this study should be set against a wider paradigm shift that has been taking place in Greece. Thus the first chapter seeks to explore and outline this shift from collectivity to individuality that informs to some extent the readings offered here. The emergence of a ‘new individualism’ is becoming a global phenomenon and sociologists such as Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck associate it with the retreat from tradition and custom in our lives and pressures toward greater democratization. Having abandoned collectivism, according to Anthony Giddens, the politics of the ‘third way’ “looks for a new relationship between the individual and the community, a redefinition of rights and obligation^."^^ In Greece the retreat from collectivism also has wider cultural implications that require careful investigation, since a cultural shift normally entails a reconsideration of critical approaches and a change in the ways we read the texts. In this respect, the readings offered here should be seen within the broader shift occurring in Greek culture and fiction in general. Although societies might display features akin either to collectivism or individualism, literary texts or other cultural products could be used either to enhance a sense of collectivity or to demonstrate the exact opposite: the manifestation of individuality. A case in point is the Greek klephtic songs which have customarily been treated as the celebration of national resistance against the Turks, whereas a number of scholars tend to see them now as songs of individual bravery and the klephts as solitary rebels who refused all allegiance and social obligations.28Consequently, the collective or individualist character of a society is not inherent or fixed, but to a certain extent a matter of interpretation. This suggests that a particular perception of a society could be promoted or played down depending on the use or reading of certain cultural forms or activities that in the past have been approached differently. By this I am not trying either to undermine the distinction between collectivist and individualist 27. Anthony Giddens, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 65. See also Ulrich Beck, Democracy wirhour Enemies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998) and The Brave New World of Work (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000). 28. Roderick Beaton, Folk Poetry of Modern Greece (Cambridge University Press, 1980), 107-1 I and Alexis Politis’s introduction to the volume To A ~ ~ o T L K TparyoliSi: O: KAC~TLKLY (Athens: Ermis, 1973).
12
Introduction
societies or to deny that they can change by gradually moving from one type of society to another, but to implant the idea that the relationship between society, literature, and selfhood is intricate indeed. What is important to be stressed at this point is that because the waning of collectivism in Greek society and fiction occurred rather recently, this change coincides and is often conflated with the introduction into Greek fiction of postmodern notions of subjectivity and r e l a t i ~ i t yThis . ~ ~ might be accounted for by the swift transformation of Greek culture that involves a rapid, and not always contradictions-free, transition from a premodern collectivity to a postmodem celebration of diversity and atomization. It is not necessary to treat this trend in terms of belated modernization or westernization, but as a more complex case in which the fast pace of change often leads to unfamiliar phenomena. Therefore, the process of individuation in Greek society cannot be seen as identical to western individualism. I think this constitutes the hallmark of recent social and cultural developments in Greece and singles Greek society out from other western ones. Hence, the first chapter of this book provides the wider framework necessary to an assessment of cultural and intellectual changes and to reconsidering the relationship between the individual and society over the last two centuries within the context of Greek fiction.
29. It will he useful here to clarify the difference between individuality and subjectivity by referring to how poststructuralist theorists define the subject with the emphasis on its constructedness. According to The Columbia Dictionary of Modem Literary and Cultural Criticism, eds. Joseph Childers and Gary Hentzi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995) “in contrast to the term individual, which connotes a certain amount of autonomy and unity, subject indicates a being who is constituted in and by language or ideology, who is not determined merely by consciousness” (p. 292).
Chapter One
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism in Greek Fiction
INDIVIDUALISM AND IDENTITY Individualism is an elusive concept and there are at least three distinct, but potentially interconnected, aspects as pointed out by Michel Foucault in his account of the Hellenistic and Roman world: (1) an exaltation of individual singularity; (2) the positive valuation of private life; and (3) the intensity of the relation to self.’ As a term it was invented in the 1 8 2 0 ~though ,~ in all ages and societies some people have been ‘individualists’, flaunting their egocentrism, difference or independence of mind. However, as Ian Watt points out, the concept of individualism involves much more than this: It posits a whole society mainly governed by the idea of every individual’s intrinsic independence both from other individuals and from that multifarious allegiance to past modes of thought and action denoted by the word ‘tradition’-a force that is always social, not individual. The existence of such a society, in turn, obviously depends on a special type of economic and political organization and on an appropriate ideology; and more specifically, on an economic and political I . Michel Foucault, The Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality, vol. 3, trans. Robert Hurley (London: Penguin, 1986), 41-43. 2. Niklas Luhmann, “The Individuality of the Individual: Historical Meanings and Contemporary Problems” in Reconstructing Individualism, ed. by Thomas C. Heller, Morton Sosna, and David E. Wellbery (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), 318. Raymond Williams points out that “‘Individual’ meant ‘inseparable’, in medieval thinking, and its main use was in the context of theological argument about the nature of the Holy Trinity,” The Long Revolution (London: Chatto & Windus, 1961), 73. Karl Joachim Weintraub traces the gradual emergence of the notion of individuality as a specifically modern form of self-conception in his book The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). There he draws a distinction between individualism as “the conception of the appropriate relationship between an individual and society” and individuality as “the form of self that an individual may seek” (p. xvii).
13
14
Chapter One
organization which allows its members a very wide range of choices in their actions, and on an ideology primarily based, not on the tradition of the past, but on the autonomy of the individual, irrespective of his particular social status or personal capacity. It is generally agreed that modem society is uniquely individualist in these respects, and that of the many historical causes for its emergence two are of supreme importance-the rise of modem industrial capitalism and the spread of Protestantism, especially in its Calvinist or Puritan forms.3
Although some scholars, even before Ian Watt, do link the rise of individualism with the emergence of the modern novel: others have challenged this assumption either by detecting a Eurocentric bias or by claiming “that the Novel as a form of literature in the West has a continuous history of about two thousand year^."^ Even if the connection between individualism and the rise of the novel holds true for western societies, there is the question of nonindustrial or non-Protestant countries, such as Greece, where the rise of forms of literature associated with individualism, like the novel, emerged later or followed different paths. In social theory the question of individualism has been subsumed under the dualisms: community versus society, tradition versus modernity. For some earlier social theorists, such as the German Ferdinand Tonnies, ‘community’ (Gemeinschaft) represents the organic and cohesive world of a traditional, culturally integrated totality as opposed to ‘society’ (Gesellschaft), which refers to the fragmented world of modernity with its rationalized and individualized structures.6 The idea of community thus suggests a strong sense of place, proximity, moral order, and solidarity while society suggests fragmentation, individualism, citizenship, and contractual relations. It is significant that today we witness the revival of the idea of community in the context of politics, sociological theory, or even postmodernism in societies in which the idea of civil society has been well established and which now experience the fragmentation of the social structure and the disintegration of mass culture.’ 3. Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding (London: Penguin, 1981), 66-67. 4. Clemens Lugowski, Form, Individuality and the Novel: An Analysis of Narrative Structure in Early German Prose, trans. John Dixon Halliday (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990) first published in German in 1932. 5. Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story ofthe Novel (London: Fontana Press, 1997). 1. 6. Ferdinand Tonnies, Community and Society, trans. C. P. Loomis (New York Harper and Row, 1963). This translation was previously published under the title Community and Association (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955). Louis Dumont in his book Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspecrive (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986) draws a distinction between individualism and holism as an ideology that valorizes the social whole and neglects or subordinates the human individual. 7. Gerard Delanty in his book Modernity and Postmodernity: Knowledge, Power and the Self (London: Sage, 2000), 120 points out that the appeal to community was central to Bill Clinton’s election campaign of 1992, and Tony Blair’s election campaign of 1997 and states that “if liberal individualism was the ideology of the 1980s, community was the ideology of the 1990s.”
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism
15
In Greece, however, where the sense of community has survived longer, many reformists argue that the development of a ‘civil society’ is still incomplete.8 Hence one could argue that the appeal of a civil society in Greece has not run its course as in other western countries, and, therefore, Greek cultural politics is entering the liberal-communitarian debate rather belatedly. In various fields and disciplines it has gradually been established that Greek culture and identity relies on and fosters collectivity and social intimacy rather than indi~iduality.~ This, it could be argued, informs the national imaginary (which refers to the ability of a nation to imagine itself and to form its cultural model in cognitive, normative, and aesthetic dimensions). In accounting for this phenomenon, anthropologists tend to highlight the connection between identity and kinship whereas political scientists examine the impact of the national imaginary at an institutional level.’O The cherishing of the collective mentality in Greece could be attributed to the centrality of the role of the nation-state, which, in turn, has impeded the development of civil society, and to the dematerialization of national culture and identity that appears to precede and transcend human organization. Greek identity is more of an abstract cultural ideal than a formation process, stemming from specific institutions and material conditions. Moreover, the Greek Left, particularly after World War 11, played a significant role in maintaining this idea of collectivity by idealizing the people (Zuos) as an authentic community and abstract authority and by promoting a sense of duty toward it as the ultimate moral principle for ensuring social solidarity and ideological conformity. In an interview in 1972, Stratis Tsirkas, a leading leftwing writer and critic, emphasized the social responsibility of the writer by saying: “Yes, a writer has a social function of a high order, more demanding than a priest. . . . You write in order to fulfil your social role. And your social role is to keep an account of what has happened to men, what is going to happen to them tomorrow. . . . And because the writer feels his function to be a social one, he cannot but reflect those feelings of the people he is writing 8. Nicos Mouzelis’s article, “The Concept of Modernization: Its Relevance for Greece,” in Journal of Modern Greek Studies 14, no. 2 (October 1996): 215-27 points to the need for the democratic modernization of present-day Greek society and argues that “the way for Greece to maintain its national identity within Europe is to pursue a type of integration where ‘catching up with the West’ refers less to mindless consumerism and more to deep democratization-it., to the spread of rights from the top to the bottom of the social pyramid” (p. 226). 9. The retreat from a collective mentality in Greece today is similar to the decline of Christianity and its moral scheme in westem culture during the eighteenth century, which opened the way for the rise of individuality. Another sign of the movement toward individuality was the decline of vendetta justice (as can be seen on the island of Crete) and its replacement with the more modem form of justice that punishes only the offender. Thus the practice of justice switched from identity based on family and lineage to individual identity. See Roy F. Baumeister, Identity, Cultural Change and the Struggle for Self(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 3940, 51. 10. Anthropologists often describe Greece as a society largely based on kinship. See Peter Loizos and Evthymios Papataxiarchis, Contested Identities: Gender and Kinship in Modern Greece (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991).
16
Chapter One
about and writing for.”” While a dialectical synthesis and transcendence of the opposition between the individual and the society is envisaged, individualism is often perceived by left-wing intellectuals and critics as antihumanist.I2 However, the balance between public and private life has become a vexed issue in Greece in recent years as the public culture was apparently being eroded. On the other hand, “to know oneself has become an end, instead of a means through which one knows the world” l 3 and this suggests that gradually public culture is fractured and supplanted by narcissistic individualism and a growing atomization of the social. Dimosthenis Kourtovik recently argued that in Greek fiction of the 1990s there has been an explosion of individuality and a shrinking of collectivity. As a result, the social novel has witnessed a decline in Greece and writers do not make reference to the national identity but to their personal feelings.14 Moreover, a few years ago at a conference on postwar Greek fiction and the ‘historical reality’, one contributor suggested that the private and the personal in contemporary Greek fiction is steadily gaining the upper hand at the expense of the public and the political.I5 This argument was put forward as a stimulus for further research and it seems to me worthwhile to put it to the test by exploring wider developments in Greek society and fiction over time. This retrospective analysis will set recent phenomena into a broader cultural and literary context and will trace perceptions of the self and society in Greece. In order to explore the wider implications and ramifications of the supremacy of collective mentality over individualism in the Greek context, I shall focus on the views of scholars who represent different disciplines and ideological standpoints. In a pioneering article in 1965,Adamantia Pollis embarked on the task of exploring the modern Greek concept of self and its political implications. She argued that self-definition in Greece had to be seen in group-related terms since existence as an individual separate from a group was inconceivable. In other words, whereas in the West the self is conceived intra-individually,in Greece it
11. N. Germanakos, “An Interview with Three Greek Prose Writers (May 1972),” Boundary 2, vol. 1, no. 2 (1973): 288, 299. For the tension between individuality and collectivity exhibited in the work of certain left-wing writers the lines of Aris Alexandrou’s poem ‘AAE&VG~OUT~<’, written in exile in 1949, are characteristic: MES U T ~ Vop&8a F ~ ~ O U V I I A X P ~ U T T&UTOL/%XV OS Cva uau./rLa T T ~ okh8a Eipouv/homos T&vra/uav T ~ I Vx A T ~ O E L ~ . 12. See Eratosthenis G. Kapsomenos, “H uxCuq ~ T ~ ~ C I I J - K ~ L U W V ~ U I X ST ~Y E O E A A ~ U L K T ~ X O Y O T E X V ~ C U : ‘Eva ‘rrp6pAqpa UOULCXXLUTLKT~S O ~ w p i a s ” , 0Vro.rria 46 (September-October 2001): 117-26, and for a different view Takis Theodoropoulos “K&TwT(Y KE(P&ALOI”, Ta Nea, 10 January 2003. 13. Richard Sennett, The Full of Public Man, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 4. U T ~pCpos)”, Ta NccU-Ilpocro.na, 5 Jan14. Dimosthenis Kourtovik, “H a86pvpq E T ~ Y V C ~ U T C ~(20 UTO IIapahO6v”, H KaO~p~piv$, 13 uary 2001, pp. 34-35. See also Elisavet Kotzia, “ETLUT~O(PT~ May 200 1. 15. Panayotis Moullas, “O~LOOETT~UELS K(YL ALEVK~LU~UELS” in IUTOPLK~) U ~ I P ( Y ~ ~ (KY ~T LL K NEOEAA~UL II~(oypacpia KI~ (1945-1995) (Athens: Etaireia Spoudon, 1997), 4 6 4 7 .
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism
17
can only be understood inter-individually.According to Pollis, t h s explains why Greeks often confound freedom and national sovereignty and as a consequence “freedom as a personal attribute of man stemming from a view of the self was lost in the fight for independence and national ~overeignty.”’~ She also pointed out that in the West self-fulfilment is attained through personally defined goals whereas in Greece it comes through one’s role within a greater whole. This helps to explain why in the West one experiences guilt and in Greece, shame: In the West an individual is his own critic, judge and at times executioner. Guilt is the punishment meted out for the transgression of internalized values. Since one is responsible to oneself, guilt operates psychologically whether or not the undesirable behaviour is known to or affects others. In Greek culture, shame is the psychological device employed to ensure conformity, and shame is the emotion a person’s transgressions engender in him.”
This interesting distinction, which Pollis applies to Cavafy’s poetry, saying that it reflects and reveals feelings of shame but not guilt, can be a useful guideline for the study of Greek literature in comparison to other literatures. It also shows that Greek society does not so much operate on the basis of a personalized and internalized notion of individual guilt as in conformity to external social sanctions and by using derision as a weapon of ensuring this. According to Pollis “the Greek view of self and of his relations with others and with the world around him, have precluded the notion of the existence of an individual qua individual.”Is In a more recent study on Greek national identity Pollis returned to the question of individualism and argued that ‘‘historically, the dominant ideology in Greece considered the basic social unit to be the extended family, not the autonomous individ~al.”’~ The notion of the individual self was not developed and, as a result, “continued to be understood in terms of ‘family’, to which was added another layer: that of the organic modem state.”20According to Pollis, 16. Adamantia Pollis, “Political Implications of the Modem Greek Concept of Self,’’ British Journal of Sociology 16 (1965): 3 1. 17. Ibid., 33. 18. Adamandia Pollis, “The Impact of Traditional Cultural Patterns on Greek Politics,” Greek Keview of Social Research 29 ( I 911): 3. 19. Adamantia Pollis, “Greek National Identity: Religious Minorities, Rights, and European Norms,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 10, no. 2 (October 1992): 173. Similarly Constantine Tsoukalas argues that “in full contrast to liberal ‘normative differentiations’, traditional Greek rnorrrl standards are not centered on the individual but on the group. The internalization of the individuals’ claims and responsibilities follows a hierarchically organized system of reciprocal ‘bonds’ stretching from the nuclear family to the extended kin and clan, the local village community, the region, and finally to the yivos.” “‘Enlightened’ Concepts in the ‘Dark’: Power and Freedom, Politics and Society,’’ Journal of Modern Greek Studies 9, no. 1 (1991): 13-14. 20. Pollis, “Greek National Identity,” 173.
18
Chapter One
this was a legacy of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires that isolated the Greeks from western rationalism and reinforced eastern spiritualism. She maintained that there was often a tension and a contradiction in Greece between a western institutional and legal framework, predicated on the primacy of the individual, and the traditional frame of mind that prioritized the group (family, nation). Such an organic conception of society and the transposition of traditional communalism to the nation-state rendered individual autonomy irrelevant and this had major consequences for individual rights and freedoms. The philosophy of legal positivism, largely imported from Germany, further strengthened the ideological denial of individual autonomy and the legal subordination of the individual to the nation-state, since it saw the state as the source of rights rather than seeing them as the birthright of every individual. According to Pollis, the persistence since the early nineteenth century in Greece of an organic conception of society and identity does not simply create the potential for the violation of individual human rights, it also reveals a serious deficit of pluralism and diversity. However, in recent years there have been signs that the Greek worldview of society as an organic entity is breaking down in the domains of culture, society, and legislation as Greece becomes a more integrated part of the European Union.21 Roy Panagiotopoulou argues that “Greek society is dominated by the stereotypes of an ‘anarchic individualism’ in which freedom is seen as synonymous with complete irresponsibility toward the law and toward othersthat is, toward ‘outsiders’.”22According to her, western individualism and its moral code have not succeeded in penetrating Greek social relations and, therefore, the concept of the self as individual is not recognized. Hence, the individual is defined neither as possessing specific rights nor as a subject determined by his own will and responsibility. The Greek notion of ‘self’ is conceived as an organic part of the nuclear family and their kindred. Outside the family, individuals construct their identities through relations with the (local) community and the nation. Consequently, the boundaries of identity are marked by the distinction between ‘kith and kin’ (Le., nuclear family, kindred, people of shared geographical origin, other Greeks) and ‘outsiders’ (all those outside the above categories). This creates powerful dichotomies of inclusion and exclusion that have had a decisive effect on the social integration of those who migrated to the urban centers or abroad, often making it easier for 21. Renee Hirschon maintains that “the notion of the single individual as it is understood in the West may still be inappropriate for understanding contemporary Greek society, even with the rapid changes which have occurred in the 1980s,” Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social Life of Asia Minor Refugees in Pirueus (New York: Berghahn Books, 1998), 141. 22. Roy Panagiotopoulou, “Greeks in Europe: Antinomies in National Identities,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 15, no. 2 (1997): 354-55.
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism
19
them to integrate smoothly into the new social environment. This traditional concept of the mutual responsibilities of the individual and society cuts across social classes and permeates every sphere of social and political activity.2’
She also points out that Greek villagers migrating to large cities are often directed to urban neighborhoods where relatives or fellow villagers already live, while in Athens the phenomenon of local associations is truly striking. However, these practices of maintaining social cohesion, traditional values, and the sense of a community are gradually receding, pointing to wider changes in Greek society and mentality. Another sign of Greek society’s transition to individualism is the increasing emphasis on birthdays rather than on name days, particularly by young people who prefer the individuality of their birthday rather than the collective sharing of a name day and its Christian connotations. On the other hand, conversion from Orthodoxy to other religions in Greece is rare, seen not as a matter of individual choice, but as a form of betrayal and a breaking away from the Orthodox community. Indeed, there are those who proudly claim that the tradition of communalism constitutes the distinctiveness of Greece against western individualism. Christos Yannaras, for example, argues that “Greek society is supposed to emerge out of an age-long cultural tradition which is the opposite of western individualism and ~tilitarianism.”~~ This is the communal heritage of Orthodoxy that is alien to the spiritual heritage of Calvinism or Puritanism and in a wider context to western rationalism, which was able to contain egocentric tendencies through the creation and imposition of disciplinarian institutional structures.25Greeks, on the other hand, neither belong to nor are shaped by this rational and individualistic tradition, as they tend to rediscover and value the communal ethos and empiricist tradition, of Orthodoxy against the rational individualism, conceptual abstraction, and moralistic legalism that emerged as a result of the Enlightenment’s modernity. Although there is no clear consensus among philosophers and theologians, the concept of prosopon (in opposition to the western persona) is crucial in order to understand how the Orthodox Christian tradition defined the self and perceived its relationship to the community. What is important here is that the concept of prosopon, being constantly directed towards God, involves a spiritual 23. Ibid., 354. 24. Christos Yannaras, H ~ a p a ~ p Lus j l T ~ ~ K ~ (Athens: V C T ~Nea Synora-A. A. Livani, 1999), 158. 25. Christos Yannaras, Finis Grueciue (Athens: Domos, 1987), 71-77. Stelios Ramfos in his book 0 K q p & TOV Ev&: K ~ c p ~ i h aT q~sa@ X L K ~ ~ FL C T T O ~ ~ CTOY U F Ehhrjvwv (Athens: Armos, 2000) discusses the rise of individualism in contemporary Greek society and links individuation with selfawareness. With reference to Yannaras’s views and other philosophers and theologians, he also discusses personalistic theories in the context of Orthodox theological thought and argues that the individuation process in the Byzantine East was halted while it was developing in the West.
20
Chapter One
relationship between the self (human beings) and God as an Other that precedes any social one. In other words, the self is presocially relational and open to otherness.26Contemporary Greek Orthodox thinkers articulated ideas and underlined oppositions that had been adumbrated earlier by scholars such as Philip Sherrard, who focused on the function of poetry and the role of the artist in traditional and western societies. Sherrard argued that the interest in individual styles or an impertinent curiosity regarding an artist’s private life are associated with the exaggerated individualism that typifies the ‘humanist’ culture of the last two centuries and the collapse of traditional society. According to him, the break with the traditional pattern of society occurred in the West at the time of the Renaissance when a shift from the inner to the outer world, from vision to observation, from the universal to the individual took place. He argues that with the Renaissance, “art as the expression of private and individual thoughts and feelings began to take the place of art as the expression of the universal ~erities”~’ and he charted the process of the increasing individuation of art and its loss of symbolic and mythological nature. Myth for Sherrard is “the natural language of the supra-individual world”28and the gradual inability to respond to the mythological content of great art is indicative of the break that took place in the intellectual life of Western Europe at the time of the Renaissance. Basically this break represents the transition from the collective and universal to the individual and private or in Sherrard’s words “the study and analysis of individuality has acquired an importance both for the artist and for the critic quite unknown to those cultures in which the merely individual and separate self is regarded as an anomaly from which deliverance is Making a plea for the recovery of man’s universal nature and the breaching of the limits of individuality and the shackles of his ‘psychophysical’ self, he concludes that individualism is related to the ‘age of reason’ whereas the myth is “the world of the everpresent and primordial r e a l i t i e ~ . ” ~ ~ Greece, for Sherrard, did not experience this break and as a result “never lost her traditional roof^.''^' This means that Greece never went through the process of individuation that has taken place in Western Europe since the Re26. See Ioanna Tsivakou, To O ~ O L T O ~ LTOV K ~ mvrozi VTOY xhpo 9 s ~ p y a u i a (Athens: s Themelio, 2000), 80-83, 299-365. 27. Philip Sherrard, “The Poetry and the Myth,” in The Marble Threshing Floor: Studies in Modern Greek Poetry (Limni, Evia: Denise Harvey, 1992), 234. 28. Ibid., 235. 29. Ibid., 235. 30. Ibid., 243. 31. Ibid., 235. Here one can he reminded of what T. S. Eliot referred to as the ‘dissociation of sensibility’ (the phrase was used in his essay The Metaphysical Poets [1921]) to describe how preseventeenth-century classicism had become fragmented through a dislocation of cognition and affect. For Eliot ‘sensibility’ was a kind of organic ‘essence’ that has been lost, giving place to private languages and particularistic imagery.
National Imuginury, Collective Identity, and Individuulism
21
naissance and as a result has remained a ‘traditional’ culture, retaining its supra-individual character and not subscribing to the individualistic, ‘humanist’ art of the West. In cultures in which tradition is strong, individual artists tend to be immersed in that tradition and internalize it. Also the influence of this tradition induces the poet “to value more highly his own inner and subjective experience, than the ‘facts’ of the external world and his own reactions to them.”32 In Sherrard’s view, in traditional societies, such as modem Greece, the role of the poet is to give expression to certain archetypal patterns of experience, through his use of myth and symbol. Moreover he argues that in the context of a traditional culture, poetry “has something of the function of a ritual drama; and the poet regards himself less as an individual expressing himself than as a mystagogue, a psychopompos, whose concern is through his poetry to communicate an awareness of an underlying pattern in life, the knowledge of which will help his readers towards personal f~lfilment.”’~ What emerges from the above is that Sherrard separates Greek society from other Western European societies, by arguing that Greek culture still maintains a collective, traditional ethos rather than giving in to western ind i v i d ~ a l i s mAccordingly, .~~ the poet in Greece has a mediating role in conveying universal and mythological truths by acting not as an autonomous individual, but like a priest. The corollary of this argument is that in a society that has to communicate traditional patterns and archetypal myths to its members, the poet is in a better position to play the role of the mystagogue than a prose writer. The novel has been seen as the product of western individualism and therefore unsuitable for traditional societies as described above by Sherrard. In his discussion of four Greek poets (Solomos, Palamas, Sikelianos, and Seferis), Sherrard implies that by means of poetry a return to the mythical, primordial, and universal status quo can be achieved, while individualism is identified with reason, modernity, and, by extension, prose. The implication of these views is that Greece’s condition as a traditional and organic society, uncontaminated as yet by rampant western individualism, is best expressed by her poets and only threatened by the novelist^.^^ He defines Greece as a culture that eschews individuality and thrives on collectivity, and though 32. Ibid., 237. 33. Ibid., 242. 34. For a discussion of the development of western individualism see Brian Moms, Wesfern Conceptions of rhe Individual (New York: Berg, 1991) and his Anthropology ofthe Self: The Individual in Cultural Perspective (London: Pluto Press, 1994). 35. Odysseas Elytis in his essay “Things Public and Private” (1983) argues: “Significance in this life lies beyond the individual. With the difference that, if one does not fulfil himself as an individual-and everything in our age works against it-he is unable to go beyond this.” Carre Blanche: Srlecred Writings, trans. David Connolly (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999). 66.
22
Chapter One
Sherrard was writing back in 1954, his conclusion can be corroborated if we look at Greek culture from a different and more recent perspective. Another way of exploring the distinct nature of a society is to study the quality of the relationships among its members, including patterns of politeness predominant in this particular culture. By using Brown’s and Levinson’s theory, based on the concept of ‘face’ (defined as “the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself’) Maria Sifianou compared politeness in England and Greece and pointed out that: “The English seem to place a higher value on privacy and individuality, i.e., the negative aspect of face, whereas the Greeks seem to emphasize involvement and in-group relations, i.e., the positive aspect.”’6 Negative politeness is essentially avoidance-based and is characterised by self-effacement, formality, and restraint while requests and wishes are expressed more elaborately and indirectly. Positive politeness, on the other hand, is less obvious and on the verbal level more direct. Verbalizations of thanks and requests tend to be more imperative, which leads to negative stereotypical comments such as “the Greeks are impolite” or “the English are hypocritical.” Sifianou’s study suggests that patterns of politeness can be used to distinguish societies where people depend on each other more and where overt manifestations of standard expressions of politeness become less necessary than in societies that place greater emphasis on the individual. Although, as she rightly argues, positive and negative politeness interact in intricate ways, she concludes that “Greeks tend to use more positive politeness devices, especially to their in-group members, as opposed to the English who seem to prefer more negative politeness devices.”37One might find this distinction schematic, but it is useful as it provides the linguistic evidence to reach through a different route the conclusion established by scholars of other disciplines that Greek society is based on the collective mentality and in-group spirit as opposed to the more individualistic nature of many western societies. Patterns of politeness can be linked to patterns of social behavior. Social psychologists such as Harry C. Triandis draw a distinction between collectivist and individualist cultures, pointing out, however, that within any culture there are collectivist and individualistic elements.38Individualism involves a focus on the self as a unique entity, and collectivism involves a focus on the self embedded in group mernber~hips.~~ Individualism presupposes interper36. Maria Sifianou, Politeness Phenomena in England and Greece: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 41. 37. Ibid., 43. 38. Harry C. Triandis, Individualism & Collectivism (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995). 39. William B. Gudykunst, Yuko Matsumoto, Stella Ting-Toomey,Tsukasa Nishida, Kwangsu Kim, and Sam Heyman, “The Influence of Cultural Individualism-Collectivism, Self-Construals, and Individual Values on Communication Styles across Cultures,” Human Communicarion Research 22, no. 4 (June 1996): 51 1. See also William B. Gudykunst, “Methodological Issues in Constructing TheoryBased Cross-Cultural Research,” in Helen Spencer-Oatey, Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport rhrough Talk across Cultures (London: Continuum, 2000), 293-3 15.
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism
23
sonal relationships and is linked to modernity and normative looseness, while collectivism privileges intergroup situations and is often associated with lack of human rights and normative tightness. The trend in collectivist cultures is allocentric and in individualist, idiocentric. Identity among collectivists is defined by relationships and group memberships. Individualists base identity on what they own and their experiences, concerned as they are with pleasure and their emphasis on high self-esteem, may lead to narcissism. According to Triandis one can identify collectivism when group goals have priority and individualism when personal goals have priority.40History is more important to collectivists than to individualists, as the former see themselves as links in a long chain that consists of ancestors and descendants. With these distinctions in mind it could be said that traditional Greek culture was more collectivist than individualistic, a conclusion that can be reinforced if we look at this matter from another per~pective.~’ I have argued elsewhere that until recently Greek culture was a culture of residual ~ r a l i t yOne . ~ ~ of the basic features of orality is empathy and the almost total absence of the separation between the artistlperformer and the audience that distinguishes a culture with a high-degree of literacy. In an oral culture the artist and the audience, the sender and the receiver are in very close proximity to each other, which makes them operate within the same mental framework and system of beliefs. The separation of the sender and the consumer of culture presupposes not only a society with a high degree of emphasis on written rather than oral communication, but also its transition from collectivity to i n d i v i d ~ a t i o n . ~ ~ Oral culture is a culture of shared experience and poetry has been regarded as best suited to convey this sense not only as a literary form, but also as a performance involving public recitals and setting to music. In oral cultures, poetry has been treated as a more public genre and hence the notion of the national poet or the poet laureate has been deeply embedded. When a culture, like the Greek, gradually loses its oral character, then the importance of poetry as the conveyor of collective myths, experiences, and aspirations declines. Prose, on the other hand, and particularly the novel, is based more on 40. Ibid., 43. 41. The cultural dualism, outlined by Nikiforos Diamandouros, involving a traditional xenophobic ‘underdog’ culture on the one hand and a liberal, secular, and reformist culture on the other, could also be associated with the collectivist and individualistic cultural patterns. See P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, “Politics and Culture in Greece, 19741991: An Interpretation,” in Richard Clogg, ed., Greece, 1981-1989: The Populist Decade (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 1-25. 42. Dimitris Tziovas, “Residual Orality and Belated Textuality in Modem Greek Literature and Culture,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 7 (1989): 321-35. 43. Walter J. Ong argues that for “an oral culture learning or knowing means achieving close, empathetic, communal identification with the known. . . . Writing separates the knower from the known and thus sets up conditions for ‘objectivity’, in the sense of personal disengagement or distancing.” Oraliry and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982). 4 5 4 6 .
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Chapter One
the individual than on the collective e ~ p e r i e n c eThe . ~ ~novel might represent social developments, but its distinctiveness has been associated with the individuality of the characters and the privacy of its readers. The novel requires critical distance and the recognition of social fragmentation to a greater extent than poetry does. One could argue that an oral culture relies on the artist/producer/sender who as a spokesman articulates and expresses common experience and ideals that the audience can easily treat as its own. A written culture, on the other hand, privileges the audience/consumer/receiver and, therefore, the emphasis lies not so much on a shared culture as on the individual perception and understanding of various cultural forms and activities. Oral culture associated and represented mainly by poetry relies on empathy, shared experience, and common codes of meaning.4s Written culture, and particularly its emblematic form the novel, relies on critical distance, individual experience, and a complex system of decoding and interpretation. This is the reason why in literate cultures questions of interpretation and meaning and, in turn, plurality acquire more importance, while in oral cultures the idea of community, tradition, along with collective myths, and ideals become dominant. In oral cultures generally, the sense of community is stronger as the pattern of communication brings speaker and audience very close, whereas writing alienates and separates them.46In addition, this sense of community was reinforced in Greece by historical and political experience. National catastrophes and wars brought Greeks together, and even political conflicts (national schism, civil war, dictatorships) or cultural controversies (language question) strengthened the sense of belonging to a national community or to a large ideological camp or linguistic group. Since 1974 Greece has enjoyed its longest ever period of peace and democracy and saw the language controversy settled. As a result the old sense of community, which had to some extent a defensive or an alliance character, gradually receded. 44. According to Ian Watt’s classic theory, the novel involves secularization as well as individualism, and its rise reflects the individualist reorientation of the western society ‘because until the end of the seventeenth century the individual was not conceived as wholly autonomous, but as an element in a picture which depended on divine persons for its meaning, as well as on traditional institutions such as Church and Kingship for its secular pattern,” Watt, op. cit., p. 94. 45. Cf T. S. Eliot’s view that “poetry has primarily to do with the expression of feeling and emotion; and that feeling and emotion are particular, whereas thought is general. It is easier to think in a foreign language than it is to feel in it. Therefore no art is more stubbornly national than poetry.” See “The Social Function of Poetry,” in On Poetry and Poets (London: Faber & Faber, 1957), 19. 46. According to Ong, op. cit., p. 74, “Writing and print isolate. There is no collective noun or concept for readers corresponding to ‘audience.’ . . . The spoken word forms unities on a large scale, too: countries with two or more different spoken languages are likely to have major problems in establishing or maintaining national unity, as today in Canada or Belgium or many developing countries.”
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism
25
Greek culture, by being primarily an oral culture, fostered the expression of collective experience in literature and until recently writers wrote with a more or less homogeneous national audience in mind, an audience which could easily understand and identify with what they were reading. As Greek society becomes increasingly individualized and diversified, the literary audience is also gradually fragmenting and diversifying and this results in writers having to acknowledge the fact that they are writing for a larger but less homogeneous audience. While in the past the historical experience of national struggles, wars, or political conflicts potentially guaranteed a writer an almost national audience that could empathize with his expression of common ordeals or aspirations, in the last few years the identification of writer (sender) and audience (receiver) has begun to break down. The collective historical experience that served as common ground is fading away; linguistic registers proliferate, cultural differences become prominent and as a result the bond between the writer and the general public becomes tenuous and precarious. The writer ceases to act as the symbolic embodiment of collective visions or generational anxieties and gradually loses the role of the symbolic spokesman. The transition from orality to textuality or visuality that is taking place in Greece entails the transition from the writer to the readerhpectator. With the increasing devaluation of collective myths the writer, as their ideal agent, gives way to the readerhpectator and concomitant notions of increased choice, pluralism, and consumerism. While in the past the distance between the writer (sender) and the readers (receivers) was minimal and literature relied on their shared experience and even identification, now the readerkpectator becomes the dominant factor as he becomes dissociated from the writer. In other words, the communication pattern in Greek literature and culture is changing. Whereas in the past, collective historical experience provided the shared code between artist and audience, in more recent decades this code has become dysfunctional as a diversity of codes is emerging, and the national audience itself has become fragmented and individ~alized."~ This has to do with the increasing liberation and dominance of the receiver and the widening gap between audience and writer. In the past the audience in Greece was taken for granted, treated as a mass, subject to manipulation by the writers and requiring either education or indoctrination. The devalued status of the receiver in traditional Greek culture can be demonstrated by the absence of any tradition of comic or entertaining novels or the embryonic development 47. Frequently Greek critics and scholars refer to modem Greek literature as 'our literature', thus implying a community of readers which does not include non-Greeks. Expressions such as this suggest that the notion of collectivity is often identified with the national community by excluding ethnic or cultural otherness.
26
Chapter One
of interpretation as a critical activity. With the elevation of the role of the receivedaudience, more entertaining forms of fiction have appeared and as a result Greek literature and culture have become more commercialized. The transition from writer to reader and from collectivity to individuation is related in large degree to the fact that Greek society is becoming more pluralistic, diversified, and consumerist, which in turn is a consequence of a wider transition from a generally coherent and homogeneous oral culture to a more complex and diversified culture of print and spectacle. A distinction drawn by Fredric Jameson between First World and Third World cultures could be relevant here. He argues that all Third World texts could be read as ‘national allegories’ since the relation between the subjective and the public or political in Third World cultures is wholly different from that of the First World.48Third World texts, even those that are seemingly private, are to be read in primarily political and social terms in the form of national allegory. As Jameson points out, in a Third World culture “the story of the private individual destiny is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the public Third World culture and society”;49in other words “the telling of the individual story and the individual experience cannot but ultimately involve the whole laborious telling of the experience of the collectivity itself.”50 This explains why in Third World cultures the intellectual is always in one way or another a political intellectual whereas in the West the very term ‘intellectual’ withered away once political commitment became psychologized or subjectivized. According to Jameson, First World cultural dynamics “reduces its subjects to the illusions of a host of fragmented subjectivities,to the poverty of the individual experience of isolated monads, to dying individual bodies without collective pasts or futures bereft of any possibility of grasping the social t~tality.”~’ This dichotomy between placeless individuality and Third World situational and materialist collective spirit could help us to understand the role of the public-private split in Greek culture and the gradual shift from a Third World to a First World structural cultural pattern. Collectivity can be associated to a ‘totalizing’process and any challenge to the notion of collective representation could entail a challenge to the totalizing idea of historical continuity. As Linda Hutcheon argues “to challenge the impulse to totalize is to contest the entire notion of continuity in history and its writing.”52 48. Fredric Jameson, “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,’’Social Text 15 (fall 1986): 65-88. Aijaz Ahmed in his book, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London: Verso, 1994) challenges Jameson’s argument claiming that “the ideological conditions of a text’s production are never singular but always several” (p. 122). 49. Ibid., 69. 50. Ibid., 85-86. 51. Ibid., 85. 52. Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism (London: Routledge, 1989), 66.
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism
27
Adherence to the notion of collectivity could be seen as the ‘grand narrative’ of Greek society that gradually evaporates,giving way to postmodern plurality and a heterogeneity of individual narrative^.^^ Individualism in Greece has remained atrophic due to the fact that national identity has been defined defensively in relation to a hostile ‘other’. This hostile other is variously considered to be the neighbors, the West, the minorities, the immigrants and so This nebulous and external ‘other’, like Cavafy’s barbarians, fostered the construction of a strong sense of belonging based on conviction as well as fear. This kind of defensive conception of national identity tends to promote a strong collective identity, making no allowance for individual aberrations or concessionsto a ‘civil society’ and its aims, which are to protect individual human rights and to question institutional practices.55Considering that all identity is constructed across difference, individual identity cannot be easily equated with collective identity. It is important to recognize the different positionings from which different people or groupings view reality and themselves. National identity, as Julia Kristeva argues, can be defined either on the basis of a model stemming from the French Enlightenment and Montesquieu’s esprit gknkrul or following the German Romantic tradition in which the nation is defined in terms of Volksgeist and is revered for its mystical and irrational power. Collective identity of the first type promotes citizenship and is open to foreigners whereas the other favors rooted community and hostility to otherness.56Adhering more to the latter type, Greek collective identity was based on the denial of the other, on the demarcation of inside from outside, and on establishing a distance between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Nevertheless, this sense of ‘national’superiority and intolerance to otherness and diversity is gradually receding. 53. Jean-FranGois Lyotard in The Postmodem Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986), 14-15 claims that the old poles of attraction represented by nation-states, parties, institutions, or traditions are losing their attraction without being replaced. Instead “each individual is referred to himself. . . . This breaking up of the grand Narratives . . . leads to what some authors analyze in terms of the dissolution of the social bond and the disintegration of social aggregates into a mass of individual atoms.” 54. Peter Mackridge and Eleni Yannakakis, Ourselves and Others: The Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity since 1912 (Oxford: Berg, 1997). 55. Dimitris Charalambis and Nicolas Demertzis argue that in “contemporary Greece, personal rights are not seen primarily as constituting the individual before and vis-i-vis the state; nor are they a human attribute to be gained from s t r u g g l e 4 r guaranteed, for that matter. Instead, owing to widespread mistrust of the state, personal rights are perceived chiefly as an exception; an ad hoc endowment or privilege. . . . In Greece, consequently, the public sphere is not recognized in and for itself, according to the mainstream perception. Instead, there is a utilitarian approach that subjugates the public sphere to the exigencies of the private. Thus Greek political culture is characterized by a merging of the public and the private-a privatization of the public and a publicization of the private.” “Politics and Citizenship in Greece: Cultural and Structural Facets,” Journal of Modem Greek Studies 11, no. 2 (1993): 223-24. 56. See Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, trans. Leon Roudiez (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991) and Nations without Nationalism, trans. Leon Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
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Chapter One
As Greek society becomes increasingly ethnically, religiously, and culturally diverse, the notion of a rigid and unyielding collective identity comes under pressure. Instead, individual diversity and cultural pluralism seem to be gaining momentum and to reflect more accurately changes in Greek society over recent decades. Gradually but steadily Greek society is losing its strong collective cultural identity based on the ideals of a historically inherited ethos, a shared tradition, and a common past; now Greek identity is emerging as something that can be negotiated or reinvented by individuals or groups. Consequently, competing notions of identity and the past are emerging in the place of the once coherent and all-encompassing national self-perception. This is a sign of a national ideology challenged and fragmented by the impact of individualism, otherness, and the recognition of cultural diversity. The recent debates in Greece about minorities and cultural or religious otherness show that Greek society is now more prepared to see itself as less homogeneous and holistic, acknowledging its pluralism and diversity and offering otherness the protection of the law.s7Greeks have often been described or referred to themselves as individualistic; this egotism, however, does not so much entail a devaluation of the idea of an organic community as it indicates a mistrust of the i n ~ t i t u t i o n sFreedom .~~ and personal autonomy are central to the Greek notion of self, which does not easily accept hierarchy or concede authority by being subject to another’s will. As Constantine Tsoucalas claims: “Distrustful of all institutional provisions, Greeks seem at least unwilling to see the eventual individual socioeconomic benefits they could have reaped from their personal commitment to collective rationalization. If anything, Greek rational individualism is a conscious free-rider individ~alism.”~~ 57. It should be stressed, however, that there is often a large discrepancy between the law on the one hand and popular attitudes and practices on the other, the former being in some cases more ‘liberal’ than the latter. 58. Keith R. Legg and John M. Roberts in their study, Modem Greece: A Civilization on the Periphery (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997), 196 point out that “the individualism so remarked upon by observers of Greek society has behavioral consequences far different from other forms of individuality found in Western liberal thought.” Moreover, Adamantia Pollis (“The Impact of Traditional Cultural Patterns on Greek Politics,” Greek Review of Social Research 29 (1977): 6, claims that “the image of the Greeks, as Zorbas, as free spirits, is an illusion fostered by the readiness with which they criticize and demean authority, by their argumentativeness and by the multiplicity of views expressed on any subject.” 59. Constantine Tsoucalas, “Greek National Identity in an Integrated Europe and a Changing World Order,” in Greece, the New Europe, and the Changing International Order, eds. Hany J. Psomiades and Stavros B. Thomadakis (New York Pella, 1993). 7 6 7 7 . He also argues that rational individualism “is less adaptable to societies where the socioeconomic system seems fragile and where the past can be looked upon as a golden age” (p. 58) while “the glorification of a non-normative ‘anarchic’ individualism, or, more accurately, familialism or even ‘clanism’ is only a remnant of prelibera1 organizational social forms” (p. 71). In another essay, “Free Riders in Wonderland: or, of Greeks in Greece,” in Dimitri Constas and Theofanis G. Stavrou, Greece Prepares for the Twenty-first Century (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995) he claims that in Greece “collectivity is only a potential source for personal benefit, a respondent for all kinds of claims, demands, or reclamations, never the embodiment or the herald of norms to be listened to and obeyed (p. 199).
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism
29
Greeks might invoke an abstract, idealized, and holistic notion of tradition or the nation, but at the same time they deplore the inefficiency and atrophy of the institutions and the services they offer. This discrepancy highlights the clash between the reality of everyday life and the sublimation of certain concepts such as tradition, nation, or people (Zuos). These totalizing concepts acted as an ideational and valuational shell outside of which the individual could not exist, pointing up the complex relationship between the individual and the community in Greece.
SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL IN GREEK FICTION Some critics perceive the novel and the nation to be closely linked since both emerged at about the same time (the eighteenth century) in the same place (Europe). Benedict Anderson, for instance, claims that the novel “provided the technical means for ‘re-presenting’ the kind of imagined community that is the nation.”60This link between the novel and the nation does not assume that the former merely takes the latter as its theme, but it is important for the birth of the imagined community of the nation. These developments, however, based on the impact of the printed word and changes in the conception of time, were characteristics of the capitalist West and not so much of Greece. On the other hand, the clashes of unique human possibility with the restraints of social convention have been seen by some theorists such as Georg Lukhcs and Northrop Frye as the defining characteristic of the novel. Frye, in particular, has argued that “its chief interest is in human character as it manifests itself in society.”61Also Milan Kundera has claimed that “the novel is the imaginary paradise of individuals.”62The novel, therefore, appears to be the representation of both the nation and the individual, but this does not mean that there is an intrinsic opposition between the self and society. Individuality presupposes sociability and as Kwame Anthony Appiah argues “to have individuality as a value is not, therefore, to refuse to acknowledge the dependence of the good of each of us on relationships with others.”63Collective 60. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), 30. 61. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957), 308. 62. Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel, trans. Linda Asher (London: Faber & Faber, 1988), 159. He also points out that “if European culture seems under threat today, if the threat from within and without hangs over what is most precious about it-its respect for the individual, for his original thought, and for his right to an inviolable private life-then, I believe, that precious essence of the European spirit is being held safe as in a treasure chest inside the history of the novel, the wisdom of the novel” (ibid., pp. 164-65). 63. Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Liberalism, Individuality, and Identity,” Critical Inquiry 27, no. 2 (winter 2001): 326.
30
Chapter One
identities are central to individual identities, helping to structure possible narratives of the individual self. In view of the above conception of the novel, the ways in which the relationship of the individual with its society is represented in Greek fiction is indeed an intriguing issue. How and why did this relationship change and how has individualism fared in Greek fiction over the last two centuries? These are questions that are worth exploring here, although this will entail a degree of generalization and schematization, as the focus will be more on periods or transitions than on individual cases. Generally speaking, it could be argued that individualism in Greek fiction has come under attack in three onslaughts that can be summed up as national, historical, and ideological. The first, the national, occurred during the last decades of the nineteenth century when there was a demand for the representation of national culture in Greek fiction (a continuation of the representation of Greek history in earlier or recent historical novels); the second, the historical, with the emergence of testimonial narratives and the recording of war or refugee experience from the 1930s onwards; and the third, the ideological, when writers of a left-wing orientation aimed at presenting the individual as part of a wider social transformation. From the 1880s onward Greek society faced a number of challenges to its coherence and used literature as a symbolic medium to diffuse them. The first threat to its coherence was the rapid urbanization during the period 1880-1920 and the development of a rift between urban and rural Greece. The second was the influx of refugees after the Asia Minor catastrophe in 1922 and the demand for social and ideological readjustments after the establishment of the borders and the end of the Great Idea. The third challenge came from political disputes that culminated in the divisions caused by the civil war (1945-1949). Literature engaged with these challenges by exploring the social and political rifts and trying to transcend them by sublimating folk culture, the memory of lost homelands, or an abstract notion of Greekness. In this way literature aspired to the construction of a symbolic social unity by highlighting the national, historical, and ideological formation of individuals and by promoting cultural origins (ethogruphiu), collective experiences and memories (testimonial narratives), or social determinism (ideological narratives). Consequently, wider processes overshadowed individual distinctiveness and fiction was prone to collective representations and the consolidation of social and ideological symbolisms. Having in mind these general developments, we can proceed to examine the relationship of the individual to society in Greek fiction in more detail. After independence and particularly during the period 1830-1 880 the sense of an organized civil society does not emerge in the Greek fiction of the period. And understandably so, as the Greek society of the time tends to be un-
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism
31
formed and fluid. Instead we witness the emergence of a romantic hero, ever wandering, lonely, and unattached, who seems to be at odds with the political system rather than society itself. There is no real interaction between the hero and society; the latter simply tests him rather than changing him, as the Promethean ego of high Romantic fervor finds its expression in Greek culture during this period. Although there is a tendency to move away from the corrupt cities to the freedom of nature and the countryside, this trend, which echoes Rousseau, reflects a political rather than a social opposition. Fictional characters of the period tend to be either restless and critical with few organic links with their society (Grigorios Palaiologos, 0 Polypathis [The Man of Many Sufferings] [ 1 839])64or they tend to die young from melancholy or romantic frustration. Moreover, the epistolary mode of some of the novels of this period (e.g., Panayotis Soutsos, 0 Leandrus [1834] and his followers Georgios D. Rodokanakis, 0 Megaklis 118401 and Epameinondas Frangoudis, 0 Thersandrus [ 18471) does not favor social representation, as the focus is on the consciousness of a melancholic, rebellious, and love-lorn indiv i d ~ a lAs . ~ the ~ Romantic artist, and particularly the poet, seeks solitude and retreats to the realm of the imagination, similarly romantic heroes tend to be otherwordly and antisocial. Generally speaking, in Greek Romanticism the search is for the authentic self, untouched by the corruption of urban life or power whilst the writers often lamented, in B yronic fashion, the contrast between the state of contemporary Greece and the idealized glory of classical antiquity. 66 The fiction of the period presents characters who either question and satirize the political and ideological framework of the newly established state or offer themselves as models of morality (Thanos Vlekas) or individual prosperity (Loukis Laras). Texts such as Thanus Vlekas (1855) by Pavlos Kalligas suggest that the individual cannot thrive in a politically corrupt systedsociety while Loukis Laras ( 1 879) by Dimitrios Vikelas celebrates the triumph of individualism and the entrepreneurial spirit over historical adversity. In his novel, Vikelas refuses to romanticize the War of Independence and focuses instead on the individual success of his character Loukis Laras as a businessman. It could be argued, therefore, that two main types of engagement between the individual and his social context are reflected in the fiction of the period 1830-1880. The first type is oppositional and 64. Novels available in English translation are often mentioned with their English titles only. 65. In 0 ACav8po~(Athens: Idryma Ourani, 1996) it is claimed that the shepherd is happier than the “enslaved social man” (p. 82) and that “society is a plough which disciplines the cattle” (p. 86). 66. Panayotis Moullas argues that the two basic motifs of Greek Romanticism, which are manifested mainly in lyrical poetry, are collective, heroic exaltation and personal despair (P7jt&s K ( Y L ~ U V & & L E S : MEACTEF ~ L ( YTOU 190 a ~ h v a(Athens: ) Sokolis, 1993), 51.
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Chapter One
rejectionist, represented by disillusioned and escapist characters, the other type is reformist and constructive, offering positive examples of moral behavior and individual success. The formation of a civil and prosperous society is the main preoccupation at the time and is reflected in the fiction of the period. Individual characters aspire to contribute to this formative process either as critics or as models. On the whole, during the period 1830-1880 the political aspect tends to be predominant as individual characters express their opposition to a corrupt and inefficient political framework or are shown to thrive in adverse conditions. The aim during this period, which is reflected in the fiction, is to create a healthy political and social framework for the individuals to thrive and prosper. The territory in which the individual characters move and act in Greek fiction of the period up to 1880 is not always Greek society but the world at large (see, for example, A. R. Rangavis’s stories). Like their characters, most of the writers of this period did not have organic links with Greek society, as most of them lived abroad. Their volatile, critical, or reformist attitudes toward their country are reflected in their fiction in the relationships between individual characters and their social and political contexts. The dominance of historiography and memoirs during the nineteenth century demonstrates the tension between the holistic and the particularistic mode of thought, as these two types of writing express two opposing conceptualizations of the world. Historiography aspires to be more comprehensive and detached whereas the memoir is more subjective and partial. While historiography and the historical novel in general focus on the collective experience and memory, memoir and autobiography foreground the personal experience and vision. If in the mid-nineteenth century the collective was identified more with the historical past, from the 1880s it is identified with the social and is increasingly opposed by the subjective and autobiographical. Greek society gradually acquired the form of a totality that became more defensive against foreign influences (particularly the corrupting influence of European novels) and began to threaten individual autonomy. The emergence of the social as a shaping force coincides with the consolidation of fictional autobiography, represented mainly by writers such as Georgios Vizyenos and Alexandros Papadiamantis. In Vizyenos, in particular, the emphasis is placed on the inner self, private experience, and personal relationships. What clearly emerges out of his stories is one’s own perception of reality that transgresses and challenges its conception as constructed by national, religious, and gender stereotypes. He creatively explores the incompatibility between individual aberration and conventional ideas, confessional narrative and social prejudice by highlighting the complexity of the private world of his characters against a backdrop of deeply embedded public prejudices. It has been argued
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism
33
that “if the collective memory usually effaced the narrator from the historical novel, individual memory restored him in the ethographic realist story.”67In turn, the increasing rise of autobiographical writing at the end of the nineteenth century in Greek fiction foregrounded authenticity and personal experience at the expense of imagination and inventiveness. It also signalled the deep social entanglement of the individual characters as more writers focused on family and social issues. In the period immediately after Independence, Greek prose writers tend to see their society from abroad as outsiders, contrasting past glory with present decline through the prism of a classical ideal, while toward the end of the nineteenth century they approach it from within, focusing on social rifts. It is interesting to examine the expectations fictional characters have of Athens during this period. Most of them rely on an idealized image of Athens similar to that of foreign travellers, who contrasted their classical ideal with the disappointing contemporary reality. Toward the end of 0 Polypathis, the protagonist comes back to Athens from Europe with great expectations that Greece can reclaim her past glory, but soon becomes disillusioned by the political corruption, inefficiency, and factionalism. Similarly, the main character of Stratiotiki zoi en Elludi [The Soldier’s Life in Greece] (1870), a Greek from outside the Greek kingdom, comes to Athens for the first time with great expectations and upon arrival realizes that the reality is completely different from what he had imagined: “The entrance to Athens made at that time through Ermou Street did not match the idea I had formed of the city.”68 Then again the account of his heroine’s visit to Athens in Emmanuel Ro’idis’s ZPapissa Zoanna [Pope Joan], published in 1866, provides him “with the opportunity to present Westerners’ views of Byzantium, as they are known from medieval sources and later writings.”69 In this account, Joan and her monk-lover Froumentios are called ‘children of the North’ or ‘children of the West’ and look for vestiges of ancient Athens, but the monuments left have been turned into Christian churches. The visit to Athens is presented in Roidis’s text from a western and classicist perspective as the ‘children of the West’ find very little to admire in contemporary Athens compared to the classical one. As Ruth Macrides rightly claims: “In Pope Joan Roidis chose a
67. Panayotis Moullas in his introduction to the volume A. Illcu~a~%ap&vrr)s A v T o ~ L o ~ ~ ~ ~ (Athens: Ermis, 1974), 27. See also his introduction to the volume G. M. Vizyenos, NEOEAA~VLKC A ~ q y f p a(Athens: ~a Ermis, 1986),46-49 and his book P ~ ~ [ E K L~ F SUV~XELEF; L MEACTESy ~ TOV a 190 a ~ w v aop. , cit., p. 25. 68. Anonymous [now identified as Hristakis D. Skordos], H Z T ~ T L W T L K EV~EhhdG~, ~ ed. Mario Vitti (Athens: Errnis, 1990), 8. 69. Ruth Macrides, “‘As Byzantine Then as It I s Today’: Pope Joan and Roi’dis’s Greece,” in David Ricks and Paul Magddlino, Byzantium and the Modern Greek Zdenrify (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998),86.
34
Chapter One
western medieval subject with a western heroine and a long tradition of western scholarship. In this way, he gave his Greek readers, who were better acquainted with Greek heroines who fought for Greek causes, a subject, a period, and a perspective hardly known to them.”70 These perceptions of Athens seem to have been shaped by collective ideals that often clashed with or were undermined by personal experience. They also show that images of Greek society in the fiction of the period tended to originate from outside, since in the first decades after Independence a number of writers came originally from outside the borders of the newly established state and, therefore, looked at Greek society and its institutions with the eyes of idealizing or critical outsiders. As a result, their visions of Greek society were formed from an idealizing or ironic distance and, in turn, there was a clash between the real and the ideal. The opposition between myth and reality or an ideal classical past and a deplorable present that characterizes much of the literature of the period 1830-1880, gradually gives way to the portrayal of social conflicts and the inequalities between the city and the countryside. If early nineteenth-century Athens was contrasted with a classical ideal, toward the end of the nineteenth century it represented the dream of peasants and islanders (see Emmanuel Roidis’s story “To Paraponon tou nekrothaptou” [ 18951) or poor girls (Mariora in Ioannis Kondylakis’s novel Oi Athlioi ton Athinon [Les MisCrables of Athens][ 18941) who come to Athens expecting a better and more prosperous life. For them, Athens is not so much the ideal classical city as the materialistic metropolis that promises a less penurious life~tyle.~’ In both cases individual characters end up disappointed. In the former case their disillusionment is political and cultural, whereas in the latter case they become socially alienated and financially impoverished by moving from their provincial homes to the metropolis. Although both situations involve the contrast between myth and reality, in the former situation it is the irony of illusion and the moral or political decline that is emphasized, whereas in the latter it is the social drama and the cruelty of personal frustration involved in the transition to Athens. This illustrates the tendency for characters in Greek fiction to be transformed from free-floating individuals with idealistic tendencies into social victims or outcasts. Hence, if during the period 1830-1880 the relationship between the individual and its context has a more political dimension, with ideological or ide-
70. Ibid., 86. 71. For the antithesis between Athens and the countryside see Pantelis Voutouris, (2s ELS K a O p C m q v . . . ~I~OT&UELS K ~ WL ~ O ~ C O E LyS ~ a q v E A A ~ U L K~I ~~ ~ o y p a c pTOY i a 19ov a ~ w v a (Athens: Nefeli, 1995), 263-74.
National Imuginary, Collective Identi@,and Individualism
35
alist overtones, in the subsequent period 1880-1930 the social dimension predominates, helped by the increasing introduction of realism and naturalism in Greek fiction. In the early stages, the opposition on the part of the individual character had a basically political motive, which then gradually developed into a social one. In the earlier period, writers and characters tended to side with moral or political idealism and either ignore reality or castigate and deplore society. This detached rejection of the social and political status quo gradually changes after 1880 as the writers become more acquainted with and embroiled in social problems. Themes such as the social fall, exclusion, or marginalization of the individual come increasingly to the fore, whereas they had not featured prominently in the fiction of the earlier period. Apart from migration from the regions to a metropolitan context, which often takes the form of the opposition between nature and culture and invariably has disastrous consequences for the individuals concerned, the other theme that dominates the fiction of this period is marriage. By taking the form of a social contract it exemplifies as a narrative closure the merging of individual and social interests. Marriage might have been the desirable happy ending of a platonic relationship between two lovers in the fiction of 18361880, but it was not considered at that stage a social institution that determined and changed the lives of individuals. From the 1880s the notion of marriage as a social problem and mechanism of social aspiration or assimilation becomes prominent in Greek fiction, indicating that the relationship between the individuals and their social context has changed. A number of stories of this period such as A. Karkavitsas’s I Lygeri [The Fair Maid] (1890), A. Papadiamantis’s I Fonissa [The Murderess ] (1903) K. Theotokis’s I timi h i to hrirna [Honour and Price] (1912) have the problem of marriage at the heart of their plot, where it serves as a metaphor for the incongruous relationship between the individual and the society. At the same time it is in this period that some of the most socially deviant and defiant characters of Greek fiction emerge. The social accommodation of the individual was one of the outstanding issues of contemporary Greek society, so to find it reflected in the fiction of the period is hardly surprising. Whereas in the period 1 8 3 6 1880 the individuality of the characters resides in their names that act as titles (Leandros, Thanos Vlekas, Loukis Laras), after 1880 the individuality of the characters is more often revealed through a social characteristic (The Beggar, The Murderess, Condemned) that serves as the title of the story. One could argue that migration from the regions to the metropolis and forced marriage constitute the two major themes of fiction in this period, involving the successful or painful accommodation of the individual to a new social or family context. Individual characters constantly try to negotiate their
36
Chapter One
position in a new environment into which they have been forced or transplanted due to social or financial hardships. Writers themselves were often undergoing the same process during this period, having to uproot themselves from their provincial homes to settle in Athens. For some (e.g., Papadiamantis) this proved to be rather difficult and ultimately unsuccessful. A national fiction competition in 1883 was an important stimulus to the growth of a sense of community and encouraged prose writers to concentrate on the representation of national treasures and the Greek ethos. The duty of Greek authors toward their community was clearly articulated in the announcement of this competition. Thus the context gained the upper hand over the individuality of the author. Nikolaos Politis was behind this competition for a ‘Greek short story’, which is usually seen as marking the start of the quest for ways of representing ‘authentic Greekness’ in literature and the beginning of ethography (which may be loosely defined as the realistic depiction of the Greek countryside and peasantry). Though folklore, as a field of study, seemed initially to serve a unifying national purpose, at the same time it aggravated social divisions, particularly the urbadrural opposition, creating ‘domestic exotics’ or ‘barbarians of our own’.72The Greek intelligentsia found it difficult to reconcile the idea of survivalism and its presentation of folk culture as evidence of cultural continuity with their view of the peasantry as a backward group in the population. In other words, when in 1884 Nikolaos Politis coined the Greek term laogra$a for the new discipline, the scholarly study of Greek folklore increasingly pointed up the divisions within Greek society and subsequently played a significant role in the development of Greek literary realism by encouraging fiction to address the representation of rural communities and traditional ways of life.73A few years earlier, in 1880, the translation of Nana, the first complete translation of a novel by Zola into Greek, had caused a lively debate as to the aims and orientation of Greek fiction, which also contributed to the development of Greek realism and naturalism. This translation, however, failed to render Zola’s use of free, indirect discourse and thus did not contribute to its introduction to Greek fiction that was gradually occurring at that time, culminating in K. Theotokis’s novel Sklavoi sta desma tous [Slaves in their Chains] (1922).74The free, indirect 72. As Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology through the Looking-Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins of Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 16 argues: “Nineteenth-century folklore studies conceived the paradox of an educated Mind formulating a folk culture in which it claimed participatory rights, but to which it was at the same time both exterior and superior.” 73. For more details about the literary developments during this period see Roderick Beaton, “Realism and Folkore in Nineteenth-Century Greek Fiction,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 8 (1982-1983): 103-22. L L~Y~ Y ~ ~ c Y Ted. o S. ~ N. o ~Philippidis ~ L Y ~(Herakleio: , Panepis74. See Massimo Pen, A O K ~ ~ A timiakes Ekdoseis Kritis, 1994), 45-137.
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism
37
discourse as a narrative mode could be seen as a subtle attempt to negotiate or fuse the individuality and inwardness of the characters with the social context represented by the narrator’s discourse. By enacting the separability between the speaker’s narration and the self’s expresssion, it “provides the grammatical basis for the dialectical constitution of the public over against the private.”75 During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a dialogue and conflict of ideas developed in Greece concerning social determinism and the individuality of the artist. This goes back to the debate between Emmanuel Roidis and Angelos Vlachos in 1877. The former, echoing the positivist theory of Hippolyte Taine, argued for the formative and dominant role of the social context, while the latter for the independence of the artist’s inspiration from contextual constraints. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this debate took a variety of forms.76On the one hand, there was the manifestation of a kind of romantic individualism, maintaining the uniqueness, and often superiority, of the artist, which flirted with Nietzsche’s ideas and made its dynamic appearance with the publication of the first exclusively literary, albeit short-lived, periodical I Tehni (1 898-1 899). At the very beginning of the twentieth century there is much talk and fictionalization of the notion of a liberated or aristocratic individual, a kind of superman with Nietzschean echoes and references to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s philosophy of self-reliance. On the other hand, nationalism and socialism recruited a number of enthusiastic supporters among intellectuals and writers who explored the relationship of these two ide~logies.~~ These developments suggest that the main ideological dilemma of the period concerns the contesting claims of exponents of the supremacy of the individual will and of the overriding determinism of the social and national 75. Michael McKeon, ed., Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 487. See also Ann Banfield, Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction (London: Routledge, 1983). 76. See Gerasimos Augustinos, Consciousness and History: Nationalist Critics of Greek Society, 1897-1914 (New York: East European Quarterly, 1977), Rena Stavridi-Patrikiou, A T ~ O T L K L KU( Y~L ~ S KOLUWULK~ np6/3Aqpa (Athens: Ermis, 1976), Haralambos-Dimitris Gounelas, H UOULffhL(TTLK7j m u c i S q q urvu E A A ~ u L AKO~~~O T E X U ~ C1897-1912 X, (Athens: Kedros, 1984). 77. Angela Kastrinaki argues that after the disastrous war of 1897, trends, with an emphasis on the individual and the autonomy of art, such as symbolism, aestheticism, and the appeal of NietLache’s ideas flourished in Greece for a short while, representing an antithesis to the dominant ethnocentrism, “‘0T O L T ~ T I ~ S~ i u ’o p~y&.XosT C X T ~ L D TH~ ~T ~! T’ T C TOW X ‘97 K(YL q av&6uoq p a s vdas KCAXLTEXVLK$S c r v v e i 6 ~ o ~ s ,in ’ ’ 0 IIOAspoq TOU 1897 (Athens: Etaireia Spoudon, I999), 193-214. On this matter and for the wider context of this period see also Dimitris Tziovas, The Nationism of the Demoricists and Its Impact on Their Literary Theory, 1888-1930 (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1986).
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Chapter One
context re~pectively.~~ Writers and intellectuals such as Kostis Palamas, Yannis Kambysis, Konstantinos Theotokis, Kostantinos Hatzopoulos, and Ion Dragoumis often conflate positivism, nationalism, socialism, and individualism or oscillate between them. Though their approaches might differ, their common aim, however, is social change. The clash between individual will and social destiny is a dominant theme in the fiction and drama of the period (see discussion of The Murderess in chapter 3 and Kutudikos [Condemned] in chapter 4).The emphasis on the representation of a socially marginalized or psychologically alienated individual is also related to the increasing translation into Greek of Scandinavian and Russian writers (Henrik Ibsen, Knut Hamsun, Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky, Ivan T ~ r g e n e v ) . ~ ~ The emergence of an aestheticist movement in Greece in the early 1890s or egocentric writers such as Yannis Psycharis made little impact on the literary figures and critics who were preoccupied with the analysis of social or national issues.80These lyrical, sensual, and self-centered writings did not attract much attention in a society obsessed with irredentism. The same could be said for novels influenced by European symbolism, such as K. Hatzopoulos, Fthinoporo [Autumn] (1919), which make a timid attempt to represent the psychological state or frustrated yearnings of individual characters and thus to shift attention to their inner world. It should also be noted that some aestheticist writers (Konstantinos Hristomanos, Nikos Kazantzakis, Platon Rodokanakis) employ the diary form for the representation of subjectivity, thus providing a link between the romantic individualism of the 1830s and 1840s, expressed in letters or diary fragments, and modernist diary fiction of the 1930s (Kosmas Politis, Stelios Xefloudas, George Seferis, George Theotokas).*’In this respect, diary fiction could be instrumental in tracing the genealogy of the representation of selfhood and the exploration of subjectivity in Greek fiction. On the whole, however, narcissistic and selfindulgent forms of art did not thrive in Greece, where the emphasis was continuously directed toward national or collective representations and social change. Although from 1883 onward there was an increasing emphasis on the bond between the author and his national community, the historical dimension was less emphasized and references to history in the fiction of the period 78. Kostis Palamas in the preface of his collection of poems H ~ O A L T EKLYL ~ L7) Y MOUCU.$L& [City and Solitude] (1912) argues that the poet is inspired from both his social context and his inner lonely self. 79. Gounelas, op. cit., p. 170. 80. Prose writers representing aestheticism in Greece include Nikolaos Episkopopoulos, Periklis Yannopoulos, Pavlos Nirvanas, Spilios Pasayannis, Nikos Kazantzakis (his early writings), Konstantinos Hristomanos, and Platon Rodokanakis. Interestingly Yannis Psycharis, in his influential book To TLY.$~SL pou [My Journey] (1888), wrote “When I use the word ‘I,, it’s a rhetorical formula; I am nothing, but the national spirit does mean something. Every once in a while I have tried to see what constitutes this spirit and, in speaking of myself, I am thinking of others” (Athens: Estia 1993), 39. 81. See Alexandra Samouil, 0 B d 6 s TOU KLyf3pCqq: 0 Andri Gide KLYL 7) ~ ~ L E ~ O A O Y L L Y puf3o?rAnu~icu uqv EAA&Sa (Herakleion: Panepistimiakes Ekdoseis Kritis, 1998).
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism
39
1880-1930 are few and far between. It is from the 1930s onward that the historical dimension will gradually assert itself and this trend will culminate during the 1940s and 1950s. It is during these decades that we find an increasing emphasis on testimonial narratives and the representation of common historical experience. A number of authors felt the need to share their wartime experiences with their readers and in this sense the emphasis on shared experience and collective memory outweighs individual difference. In the late 1920s and early 1930s Dimosthenis Voutyras and Ion Dragoumis were perceived as the authors of a shift in focus from society to individual. In spite of his nationalist outlook, Dragoumis was seen by writers such as George Theotokas as a romantic egocentric. Voutyras, on the other hand, has been described by Angelos Terzalus as a ‘subjective realist’, situated on the boundaries between realism and early modernism because of his use of dream and fantasy.82 Interestingly, figures such as the Gypsy in Kostis Palamas’s long narrative poem The Twelve Words of the Gypsy (1907), seen, when the poem was published, as the expression of the nation, was being celebrated as a triumph of individualism more than twenty years later. George Theotokas’s essay Free Spirit (1929) was instrumental in this shift from ethnocentric positivism to liberal individualism. Indeed it would not be unreasonable to regard it as the Greek manifesto of artistic individualism. He argued that the diversity and multiplicity of individual viewpoints highlights the multifaceted nature of reality itself and combats intellectual militancy. Theotokas espoused a theory of art based on the subjectivity of the artist; he revived a romantic conception of the work of art as a rebellious excess and manifestation of the inner self and treated it as a miracle. His individualistic conception of artistic creation is succinctly summed up in the following passage: “A work of art aims to express the deepest meaning of life from within an individual. It obeys the special law of this individual because it cannot live without the life offered by this law. . . . A work of art, an overflowing of internal life, is the most individualistic phenomenon. But the more individualistic it is, the deeper it sinks into life and reaches Using this as a premise, he rejected the narrow realism of ethogruphiu and praised the ‘pulse of individuality’ in Palamas and Dragoumis, arguing: “Nowhere in Greek ethography do we feel the pulse of individuality, the internal powers that seek their course in order to rush out into the light. These books do not have personal character. In none will you meet anything that reminds you, even remotely, of the pulse of the great individuality of Palamas which fills The 82. Angelos Terzakis, ‘AqpouOCvqs Bovrvp&s’, NCa Emia 16, no. 190 (15 November 1934): I0 15-22. 83. George Theotokas, “Free Spirit,” trans. Soterios G . Stavrou, Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 2 (1986): 179.
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Chapter One
Twelve Words ofthe Gypsy, or of Dragoumis that echoes even in his poorest pages and gives his uneven books their value.”s4 Theotokas’s essay signals a move toward introspection and a growing interest in the inner self. He forcefully and rigorously advanced the claim that literature is internally driven and an individual act of creation, which defies external constraints or social forces. Caught between the ideals of artistic autonomy and social representation, some writers of the 1930s (notably Theotokas and Terzakis) tried to manifest the individuality of the characters in relation to a broader social context. They often saw social reality as filtered through the individuality either of the characters or the artist. At the same time, other writers such as s. Xefloudas, G. Delios, M. Axioti, N. G. Pentzikis, and Y. Skarimbas focused on the individuality of consciousness and the interiority of the mental process. Though the former championed the individuality of the characterss5 they tended to compromise it by presenting them as socially conditioned, while the latter, through various modernist techniques (free association, stream of consciousness, and interior monologue), concentrated on the representation of the inner life of characters.86 During the 1930s individuality became nearly synonymous with the exploration of interiority, as becomes apparent in N. G. Pentzikis’s novel Andreas Dimakoudis (1935). Though the novel is a third-person narrative, Pentzikis is able to capture the suicidal loneliness of Dimakoudis and to follow his train of thought and perspective: “Andreas Dimakoudis was full of enthusiasm, feeling that without being able to express it he prepared in his thoughts an internal self like a home where he could feel comfortable among his own familiar thing^."^' The main character of this short novel seems to internalize the outer world through sounds, images, and memories and not so much through social interaction. The inward turn in such narratives suggests that the social context becomes less important than the probing into the state of mind of individual characters. Indeed, self-consciousness and the excavation of interiority distance the ‘individual’ from ‘society’, while characters in the modernist fiction of Pentzikis and Axioti tend to be fragmented and often unfinalized. 84. Ibid., 180. 85. See my article “George Theotokas and the Art of Fiction,” in Roderick Beaton, The Greek Novel AD1-1985 (London: Croom Helm, 1988), 70-80. 86. In discussing the relationship between character and form in modernist fiction Michael Levenson states: “Language is the most human and least individual of artifacts, yielding its secrets not to those who coerce it, only to those who submit to it. It does not register the history of individuals; it registers the history of a community; and the particular soul can only express itself through a surrender to this collective form.” Modernism and the Fate of Individuality: Character and Novelistic Form from Conrad to Woolf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 21. 87. Nikos Gavriel Pentzikis, A V T ~ ~AW ~~(YKoI% K(Y ~LF&AA&s pcxpmpks p p o d K(YL 8 d ~ ~ atuvorhicus p ~ s (Thessaloniki: ASE Publications, 1977), 32.
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism
41
This view gained some ground in the 1930s when we witness the development of two opposing trends. On the one hand there is a growing emphasis on the autonomy of the self, which is promoted by the rise of psychoanalysis and narrative modes such as interior monologue or diary fiction and on the other hand the historicity of the self is gaining ground, through the concepts of tradition, generation and, later, Greekness. Individual characters appear to become increasingly aware of their cultural and historical past. It is interesting to note that in the first testimonial war narratives, which emerge in the 1920s, (Stratis Myrivilis’s Life in the Tomb [1924/revised edition 19301 and Stratis Doukas’s, A Prisoner ofwar’s Story [1929]), the emphasis is on individual experience rather than a collective one, considering that the wider historical or national context is played down. This, in turn, fosters the universalization of the individual characters whose suffering acquires symbolic proportions. The sense of common fate or struggle that will feature in later testimonial narratives has not yet been developed here. It will develop gradually with Greece’s increasing involvement in war and its consequences. It should be borne in mind that the period from 1910 to 1974 was marked by wars, catastrophes, and dictatorships: the Balkan Wars (1912-191 3 ) , Greece’s entry into World War I (1917), the Asia Minor Catastrophe (1922), the Metaxas dictatorship (from 1936), World War I1 and the German occupation (1940-1944), the Greek civil war (1945-1949), and the military dictatorship (1967-1974).88 World War I1 and the German occupation played an important role in reinforcing the sense of belonging and emphasizing the role of history or folk tradition in shaping the development of individual characters, as will be seen in the discussion of George Theotokas’s Leonis and Pantelis Prevelakis’s The Sun of Death in chapter 4. Often the fiction of this period, particularly after 1944, assumed the role of historiography, not simply recording the events, but also trying to interpret or justify them, seeking historical or political truth. An additional indication of the collective and extrinsic approach to Greek fiction is that its periodization is heavily influenced by political and historical events. It should be noted that after 1944 a number of novels about the national past were produced that focused on the struggles of the Greek nation particularly during the Ottoman period. Writers such as Thanasis Petsalis-Diomidis (his fivevolume series entitled “The Novel of a Nation” started with Oi Mavrolykoi [The Mavrolykos Family] [ 19481 and I kambana tis Agia-Triadas [The Bell of Holy 88. It should be pointed out that the Metaxas regime was against individualism because it was associated with liberal democracy and promoted an anti-organic conception of society as an assembly of monads. See my book OL ~ C L E T C X ~ O P ( P ~ TOU UCLE ~ LO$v ~ u p o lKjC X L TO L B E O A ~ Y ? ) ~ C7X7 5 EAA?)VLK~TT~TCXF UTO ~ E U O T M C (Athens: LE~O Odysseas, 1989), 139-52.
42
Chapter One
Trinity] [ 1949]), M. Karagatsis (0kotzabasis tou Kastropyrgou [The Kodjabash of Kastropyrgos] [1944], and P. Prevelakis Kritikos [The Cretan] [ 1948-19501) tried through their fiction to enhance their readers’ historical awareness and sense of national belonging. Although these writers (particularly Karagatsis) do not ignore the individuality of their characters, their tendency to represent national history seems to be something imposed by the intellectual and political climate of the period and had a compromising effect on their narrative skills.8y Moreover, from this period onward the social determinism of the individual (already manifested in earlier social writers such as Konstantinos Theotokis, Konstantinos Hatzopoulos, Petros Pikros, and Kostas Paroritisgo) acquired a more clearly ideological dimension as Marxist writers such as Dimitris Hatzis started publishing their fiction. Hatzis can be seen as one of the most representative writers of the Greek Left who aspired to show the impact of society on individual lives, though his work can also be read from a different angle as will be shown in chapter 8. As Peter Mackridge has argued “from 1944 onwards Greek fiction is both greater in bulk and more overtly politicised than p r e v i o ~ s l y . ”It~is ~ significant in this respect that established writers of the 1930s, such as Kosmas Politis, now became more politicized and this transformation is reflected in their fiction ( e g , Politis’s To Gyri [ 1944-19451, Stou Hatzifrangou [In the Hatzifrangou Quarter] [ 1963]), which acquires a more realistic and social dimension with its emphasis on lower social classes. This politicization will ultimately culminate in later discussions about Greek fiction and its relation to ‘reality’ or politics. Individualism, social aloofness, and indifference to political reality were among the characteristics some postwar critics and writers discerned in the fiction of the interwar years. They suggested that a basic difference between interwar and postwar fiction is that a considerable part of the former can be characterized as individualistic, lyrical, or cosmopolitan, keeping a distance from political events. On the other hand, postwar fiction, at least until 1967 tends to be more involved with political events since a number of the writers were themselves actively involved in these events.92 89. For the ideological and political context of the revival of the historical novel during the late 1930s and early 1940s see K. A. Dimadis, dLKraropia-n6A&pog K ~ ne[oypacpia, L 1936-1944 (Athens: Gnosi, 1991). 90. Paroritis was arguing in 1930 that ‘modern art’ will have a social and collective character rather I7E{oypacpia, vol. 1 than an individualistic one. His views are reprinted in H MEUOTOAE~LKT~ (Athens: Sokolis, 1993),213-14. 91. Peter Mackridge, “Testimony and Fiction in Greek Narrative Prose, 1944-1967,” in Beaton, ed., op. cit., p. 93. 92. See discussions by Al.Argyriou, A. Kotzias, S. Plaskovitis, and S. Tsirkas, “H NEOEAAYYLK~ TP(UY~(UTLKI%~TCY K W q ~~l;oypacpia pas” in the periodicals &~.vvi,ye~a, no. 4 (June 1973) and by A. a qv T O ~ L T L K O T O ~ ~ ~ ~ , ’ Argyriou, A. Ziras, A. Kotzias, and K. Kouloufakos, “To o6uuqp6 ~ d p a a p m A ~ a p a i [no. ~ , 5 4 (November 197&February 1977): 62-83. Both are now reprinted in M E T ~ T O ~ E II&[oypacpia,vol. 8 (Athens: Sokolis, 1988), 32C79.
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism
43
During the 1940s and 1950s, fiction is seen as a political act and Lukics’s term ‘critical realism’ has been employed to describe the dominant narrative mode, particularly for male writers such as Dimitris Hatzis, I Fotia [The Fire] (1946), Alexandros Kotzias, Poliorkiu [Siege] (1953), Th. D. Frangopoulos, Tihomahia [The Battle around the Walls] (1954), Nikos Kasdaglis, Ta dontia tis milopetras [The Teeth of the Millstone] (1955), Andreas Frangias, Anthropoi kai spitia [People and Houses] (1955), Rodis Roufos Hroniko mias stuvroforias [Chronicle of a Crusade] (1954-1958), and Stratis Tsirkas, Nourentin Bompa ( 1957).93Some of these writers, notably Frangopoulos and Roufos, like Theotokas’s Leonis, depict the effort of young characters “to find their way against a background of politics (including war), love and art,” but on the whole these narratives are deeply embedded in the politics of the per i ~ dIn. the ~ ~overpoliticized context of this period, Renos Apostolidis’s Pyramidu ‘67 [Pyramid ‘671 (1950) can be seen as a manifestation of individualism and a reaction to collective political ideologies of the time.95However, it should be noted that during this period a number of women writers (Mimika Kranaki, Margarita Lymberaki, Tatianna Gritsi-Milliex, Galateia Saranti) cultivated an esoteric and lyrical mode of writing that was not so much concerned with political events and their ideological justification. Their style was more personal and introverted and this could explain why they have been largely ignored by the critics. Despite the marginalization of those writers who adopted an antirepresentational mode of writing, the fact that a number of Greek writers have been seen as combining realist prose with a poetic or lyrical language (Papadiamantis) or sliding from symbolisdmodernism into realism (K. Theotokis, G. Theotokas, K. Politis, M. Axioti) or from realism to (post)modernism (S. Tsirkas, D. Hatzis) indicates that realism has not always had unwavering or thoroughbred exponents in Greek fiction. This, in turn, suggests that social determinism in Greek literature has not enjoyed the support one would expect in a society with a strong collective mentality. Yet the orientation of Greek fiction toward the representation of collective historical and political struggles created a horizon of expectations that could not accommodate a number of writers and particularly Kazantzakis (who published his novels in the 1940s and 1950s) and his romantic worldview. The romanticism of Kazantzakis’s novels appealed to a European and 93. Andreas Frangias recently emphasized the collective character of his fiction, while Vangelis Hatzivasileiou argued that none of his fictional characters can stand alone as a clearly defined individual unit. See Michel Fais, ed., ‘Eva p ~ p h i o~ i v a&a~ a7~AwjkvoX C ~ mpos L X~LPETLCT~~: Mov6Aoyos TOW AVT~&X @ ~ C Y Y K Lpreface ~, by Vangelis Hatzivasileiou (Athens: Polis, 2001). 94. Mackridge, op. cit., p. 97. 95. Henri Tonnet, Hisroire du roman grec des origines Li 1960 (Paris: I’Harmattan, 1996), 256-58.
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Chapter One
American public immediately after the Second World War and heroes such as Alexis Zorbas and Captain Mihalis were treated as the embodiments of antirational spontaneity and courageous i n d i v i d ~ a l i t y . ~Although ~ Kazantzakis’s antirationalism and individual expressiveness was attractive to young Greeks, it was only welcomed by the Greek critics and older readers if it came in the framework of national struggle, as for example with Captain Mihalis (see chapter 6), who was hailed as an epic hero. Although Kazantzakis flirted with nationalism and communism, his “overwhelming concern was personal salvation”97 and his vision was subjective. This explains why Kazantzakis was quite popular outside Greece, as the horizon of expectations of foreign readers was shaped by western romantic individualism and not by the nationalistic patriotism of his fellow Greeks. Often in Greek fiction collective identity is invested with spatial memory and the manifestation of a place-bound nostalgia. Thus, the representation of a particular place, suffused with immemorial spatial memory, transcends history, time, and individual existence by becoming synonymous with the encapsulation of an agelong community (A. Papadiamantis’s stories, P. Prevelakis’s, The Tale ofa Town [1938], K. Politis’s, Stou Hutzifrangou [1963]).y8 In such narratives memory transforms time into place since the representation does not follow the linear time of individual lives, but a virtually unchanging cyclical pattern, focusing on the ordinary and the quotidian rather than the unique and the exceptional. Though during the early 1960s the treatment of fiction as political testimony or a historical chronicle continued with the publication of Dido Sotiriou’s Mutomenu Homutu [Farewell Anatolia] (1 962), Mitsos Alexandropoulos’s Nyhtes kui Avges [Nights and Dawns] (1961-1963), or Stratis Tsirkas’s trilogy Akyvernites Politeies [Drifting Cities] (1961-1965), which combines modernist techniques with the desire for historical and ultimately political truth concerning the events among Greeks in the Middle East (Jerusalem, Cairo, and Alexandria) during the Second World War, the narrative voice in a number of texts becomes more personal, confessional, and even humorous, particularly in Kostas Tachtsis, The Third Wedding (1962) and Yorgos Ioannou’s stories. Melpo Axioti returned to her experimental prose writing of the late 1930s with the publication in 1965 of her idiosyncratically autobiographical story To Spiti mou (My House), which was in sharp contrast to her politically committed novel Eikostos Aionas [Twentieth Century] (1946) and her Hroniku [Chroni96. See Peter Bien, Nikos Kazantzakis Novelist (Bristol: Classical Press, 1989), 2-6. 97. Peter Bien, Kazantzakis: Politics of the Spirit (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 4. 98. See Peter Mackridge’s introduction to Kosmas Politis, ~ T O UX a ~ < ~ y q p b y (Athens: ~ou Ermis, 1988). 40-50.
National Imaginary, Collective IdentiQ, and Individualism
45
cles] (1945) or to her stories Diigimutu [Stories] (1945-1946) and Syntrofoi kulimeru [Goodmorning Comrades]( 1953). In the early 1960s, as Greek prose writers gradually moved away from testimonial narratives about World War I1 or the civil war, a new type of fiction emerged based on allegory and the fantastic, encapsulating the existential anxieties of Greek society of the time. The subjectivity of perception and the mediation of consciousness in texts such as Kui idou ippos hloros [Behold a Pale Horse] (1963) by Tatianna Gritsi-Milliex shifts the focus from the representation of events (German Occupation) to the individual, thus emphasizing the subjective experience of collective events. At the same time, Greek society underwent major changes as it lost its rural character and became more urban and mobile. The increasing industrialization of Greece with its concomitant urbanization and proliferation of technology had some repercussions on Greek fiction, too. From the 1960s onward it is difficult to distinguish clearly the different ways in which individuals interact with their community in Greek fiction, although one can argue that in the early 1960s there is an onslaught on social conventions (K. Tachtsis, The Third Wedding), on the authoritarianism of the state (A. Samarakis, To Lathos [The Flaw] [1965]), and a manifestation of existential angst (S. Plaskovitis, To Frugmu [The Dam] [1961], V. Vassilikos, To Fill0 [The Plant] [1961], Y. Heimonas, Peisistrutos [ 19601, and I Ekdromi [The Excursion] [ 19641). It is as if the individual was trying to reclaim ground usurped at an earlier stage by the community, and thus the focus is on identity politics and the moral or metaphysical dilemmas of the individual. In some of these novels the setting is not specified and as the emphasis falls on the individual’s ethical stance, the narrative acquires a universalist and rather abstract character. At this point the focus on the relationship between the individual and history tends to shift to existential questions, to the authoritarianism of the institutions and to the defense of nature against culture. A number of novels of this period epitomized some sort of conflict between nature and culture, where the individual tends to ally himself or identify with the former against society and its institutions, represented by the latter. The novels that stand out in this respect and convey in their different ways this new relationship, shaped by echoes of Camus and Kafka, are Plaskovitis’s To Frugmu, Vasilikos’s To F i b , and Samarakis’s To Lathos. In the first two we see some sort of revenge wrought by nature on technology and new ways of life that seem to promise prosperity, but bring a host of problems in their wake. The main character in To Fillo shows incipient signs of social withdrawal and identification with nature (and his sexuality, as the title alludes to sex @lo]).His social awkwardness results in his becoming more and more introverted, almost autistic, as he increasingly identifies with his plant. In all these novels, as in Tachtsis’s The
46
Chapter One
Third Wedding, we see a growing interest in addressing universal problems, while at the same time examining the workings and the future orientation of Greek society. Earlier writers such as George Theotokas with his last novel Oi Kumbanes [The Bells] (1966) and Pantelis Prevelakis in his 0 Artos ton Angelon [The Bread of Angels] (1966) appear to tackle similar questions by trying to recapture a lost communal spiritualism represented mainly by Orthodoxy. As the main character of Prevelakis’s novel puts it: “Aesthetics replaced religion and individual inventions myth.”99It becomes apparent that the 1960s is the period in which we witness contradictory tendencies toward individual autonomy and social fragmentation on the one hand and nostalgia for a return to nature and a preindustrial condition on the other. A kind of existential angst seems to permeate the relationship between the individual and society and this can be seen to influence developments in the Greek fiction of the period. After 1974 we witness a more personal attitude toward history, society, and politics in a number of novels that “are not just, or even not primarily, about events: they are about the way in which particular individuals see these events and then narrate them.”’”” The notions of truth, objectivity, meaning, and identity are relativized, ironized, and personalized. It could be argued that Aris Alexandrou’s novel To Kivotio [Mission Box] (1974), an allegory about the Greek civil war, was instrumental in this process. The emphasis in this book is not on political or historical justification of events, but on a personal response and the construction of subjectivity through discourse. An individual in prison describes a secret mission during the civil war in a confessional manner, exposing through his frequent contradictions and elusive language the unreliability of meaning and history. This novel was instrumental in deconstructing the collective myths and grand narratives of the Greek Left by highlighting political absurdity and creating a Kafkaesque atmosphere.’”’ Such challenges to the conception of history as a coherent totality or as an heroic epic had an impact on literature in its transition from collectivity to individuality. This can be seen if we compare Tsirkas’s Drifting Cities and Valtinos’s Orthokosta (1994), which also deals with the Greek civil war. Despite the multiple perspectives and its seeming polyphony, Tsirkas’s classic early 1960s trilogy demonstrates a belief in the teleological course of history 99. P. Prevelakis, 0 A p r o ~rwv A ~ ~ ~ A w + & ~ L T ~ TUTI)V & L c I&?KI) I (Athens: Estia, 1993), 21 8. See also Zissimos Lorenzatos, The Lost Center and Other Essays in Greek Poetry, trans. Kay Cicellis (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980),originally published in Greek in 1961. 100. Roderick Beaton, An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1999), 284. 101. Dimitris Hatzis’s To ~ L T PLPALo A ~ (1976) and Andreas Frangias’s 0 A o i p k (1972) can also be seen as postmodem left-wing responses to the crisis of grand narratives. For a more detailed discussion see my book, To 1701Aip$1)~~0 71)sEAAI)YLK?~s Aq7jyr)ql)~ (Athens: Odysseas, 1993), 24475.
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism
41
shaped by his socialist vision. Almost thirty years later this belief in history as an abstract totality and in its function as a metanarrative is being questioned through the inclusion of personal testimonies in texts such as that of Valtinos.Io2 During the late 1980s and 1990s, after the official recognition of left-wing contribution to the National Resistance against the German occupation, a more balanced attitude towards the civil war developed, suggesting that there were no innocent sides. Texts such as The Jaguar (1987) by Alexandros Kotzias or Orthokostu by Thanassis Valtinos contributed to this political agnosticism that challenged established discourses and representations of the past through multiple perspectives and individual oral narratives. In particular, the mostly anonymous narratives making up Orthokostu could be seen both as forming a collective voice and highlighting individual perceptions of events. A new sense of collectivity seems to be emerging out of the accumulation of individual narratives that does not conceal its construction and precarious articulation. Without the plurality of narrative and the contrasting juxtaposition of individual perspectives, an impassionate representation of controversial events cannot easily emerge. This suggests that the sense of narrative individualism is a sine qua non for an unbiased negotiation and treatment of the historical past. Considering the connection between individualism and perspectivism, which “conceives of the world from the standpoint of the ‘seeing eye’ of the i n d i ~ i d u a l , ” one ’ ~ ~ could argue that perspectivism in Greek fiction has been generally rather weak, as very few novels have utilized multiple or alternating focalization. Recently, however, writers have tended to introduce a form of perspectivism, and by extension relativism, by embedding diverse documentary material in their texts. In some narrative texts of the 1980s both context and past are fragmented, questioned, and ultimately relativized. Writers such as Alexandros Kotzias in Fantastiki Peripeteiu [Imaginary Adventure] (1985) or to a greater extent Thanassis Valtinos in Stoiheiu giu ti dekuetiu tou 60 [Data from the Decade of the Sixties] (1989) often use documentary material (extracts from newspapers, interviews, or other documents) in order to reconstruct the social or political context and the atmosphere of a period. Though this method could be seen as articulating the desire for a factual and objective representation, it also highlights the impossibility of a realistic reconstruction. By flaunting the fragmentariness and randomness of the material, authors express their scepticism as to ~ I SU T O ~ ~KOL W o Xdyos T ~ AOYOTFXY~OS: S Gopis O~OOKOCTT~. TOU Ouv6.uq BOATLVO~ KC~LU T T nsl;oypcycph ~ E~,(PGALw” in ZCTTOPLKT~I I ~ C Y ~ ~ C Y TKCYL LK N E~OTEIA~A ~I V L llE{oypacpicu K~) (1945-1995), op.
102. See Natia Charalampidou, “0Adyos T O V O P L X ~ ~ T O~ Uq~Lmopias q~ U T ~ V
TW
cit., pp. 249-11. 103. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 245.
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Chapter One
whether reality can be recaptured in an organically coherent and reliable manner. Moreover, the use of this material focuses attention on insignificant, everyday events and personal stories. Paradoxically, by means of this documentary style, history is personalized, as becomes clear in the novels by Mar0 Douka and Alki Zei discussed in chapter 9. The increasing use of oral accounts by ordinary people, often women (initiated by K. Tachtsis in The Third Wedding and continued by Thanassis Valtinos, Deep Blue Almost Black [1985], Pavlos Matesis in I Mitera tou skylou [The Dog’s Mother] [1990] and others) or ‘idiots’, as in Nikos Houliaras’s Faulknerian novel Lousius (1979), indicates a shift away from epic, monumental, and objectivity-seelung narratives to more personal and partial ones. They constitute subjective histories that focus on the banal, the everyday, and the peripheral and do not make any claims to an authoritative rendering of historical reality. Thus, the hierarchy of events is disturbed and their interpretation is relativized and personalized. These narratives, though not engaging directly or exclusively with political, historical, or social developments, shed a different light on such developments from the individual perspective of marginalized or off-center characters. This, however, cannot prevent readers from seeing the voices in these narratives as different manifestations of an ‘archetypal’ Greek character (The Third Wedding) or as paradigmatic of Greek popular discourse (laikos logos). It could be argued that in a number of post-1974 Greek novels there is an impulse to combat the disintegration of reality either through the documentary reconstruction of the social and historical context or through the process of self-discovery and search for identity at an individual level. Both tendencies can be seen at work in the novel Aftoviografia enos vivliou [Autobiography of a Book] (1994) by Michel Fais. In an elusive and precarious setting, individual characters turn in upon themselves seeking personal truth and identity. A characteristic example is Thomas Skassis’s Elliniko Stavrolexo [Greek Crossword] (2000) where the main character’s search for an identity and his missing father leads him to research postwar Greek history through newspapers, books, and interviews. In this case the synecdochic puzzle of Greek history does not aim primarily at recovering historical truth but to show how each person constructs his own personal identity and past. Even the way in which in the third part of the novel, documentary material, alternates with a personal diary and childhood memories contributes to this effect. Novels of this kind try to explore the articulation of the public and the private and in spite of the abundance of documentary material the reader senses that the perspective tends to be personal and the selection of the historical material subjective. As a realistic and objective representation has become increasingly problematic, neither society nor history can provide sound, ungen-
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism
49
dered, or unified backdrops against which to develop characters. Given that society, the past, and the subject appear equally negotiable and unstable, the search for a personal past and identity seems to be the best alternative to the unsustainable notion of coherent totalities. After 1974 an increasing number of women novelists started publishing their work and made their mark on the literary scene. By exploring female subjectivity and foregrounding the personal voice, women writers challenged patriarchal totalizations and male authority.lo4Thus the diversity of Greek society was highlighted and questions of identity and autobiography came to the fore. The autobiographical writing inspired by the women’s movement differs, however, from the traditional autobiography of bourgeois individualism, which presents itself as the record of an unusual but exemplary life. Precisely because of this uniqueness, the eighteenth-century autobiography claims a universal significance. Feminist confession, by contrast, is less concerned with unique individuality or notions of essential humanity than with delineating the specific problems and experiences which bind women together. It thus tends to emphasize the ordinary events of a protagonist’s life, their typicality in relation to a notion of communal identity.Io5
As will be seen in chapter 9, despite the emphasis on a communal identity and the interconnection of private and public, personal and political, female narratives map out the shift from politicization and social responsibility to self-discovery through a process of separation from male-defined values. In most of these stories the goal of the heroines is not social integration, but the recovery of a qualitatively different sense of self. Female narratives tend to explore women’s changing perceptions of self and their ‘subjective’ realism is often centered upon an experiencing consciousness, incorporating dreams and fantasies as part of its conception of the real. The conceptualization of female identities as an authentic point of origin from which the protagonist has become estranged rather than a goal to be worked toward often accounts for the symbolic and lyrical dimension of these narratives and the absence of linear
104. Maria Anastasopoulou in her article, “Bildung, Awakening and Self-Redefinition in Contemporary Greek Women Novelists,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook, vol. 7 (1991): 259-85 refers to the unprecedented burgeoning of writing by women novelists in the 1970s and 1980s. who have been “writing them-selves” in HCEne Cixous terms, and argues that “for the first time, perhaps, in the short history of their literary existence, Greek women novelists felt free to write about their, until then, unspoken experience as women in a male dominated society” (p. 260). 105. Rita Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Chunge (London: Hutchinson Radius, 1989), 94. She also argues that “the importance of subjectivity in the women’s movement is counterbalanced by an important dimension of communal solidarity absent from the liberal tradition of atomic individualism. Feminism is defined by a fundamental tension and interaction between individual and collective identity” (pp. 67-68).
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Chapter One
chronological development. The recovery of the latent or suppressed female self is a purely internalized and individual experience, not a social and public act.Io6 The work of certain, mainly female, writers such as Mar0 Douka, Evgenia Fakinou, or Maria Mitsora, who came to be known in the 1980s as the ‘Polytechnic Generation’ (after the campaign of resistance to the military regime by students at Athens Polytechnic in 1973), manifests signs of social withdrawal as the writers become disillusioned with politics and ideologies. Dimosthenis Kourtovik argues that the characteristic feature of this generation is “the overwhelming dominance of the self, of the first person, of the private experience which not infrequently tries to present itself as political or ideological ch~ice.”’~’ Rhea Galanaki’s trilogy (The Life of Zsmuil Ferik Pasha, [ 19891 Tha ypografo Loui [ 19931 and Eleni i o kunenas [19981) also suggests a transition from collective historical representations of periods or societies to focusing on individual stories and real nineteenth-century characters (in this case Ismail Ferik Pasha, Andreas Rigopoulos, and Eleni Altamoura) divided between countries, cultures, identities, names, and ideas (romanticism, nationalism, radicalism). Galanaki is not interested in the realistic portrayals germane to historical novels, but in personal agonies and dilemmas expressed in the thoughts, emotions, and conflicts of those individuals. Her novels, with their contemporary resonances, are more explorations of individual minds and troubled subjectivities than depictions of historical periods or mentalities. They highlight through the characters’ romantic individualism the (auto)biographical and personal aspects rather than the historical and the realistic. In short, Galanaki’s novels are narratives of the self as will be shown in the last chapter of this book. One of the few novels in the 1980s that does not follow this trend is Alexis Panselinos’s I Meguli Pompi [The Great Procession] (1985). He depicts the individual as becoming part of the social machinery and tries to revive in a new and challenging way the idea of the social formation of the individual, a concept explored earlier by writers of left-wing orientation. His young hero Notis, socially marginalized and frustrated, tries to overcome his social exclusion through his fantasies drawn from comics and having a touch of science fiction. The novel combines realism with allegorical fantasy as the narrative alternates between the mythical knight Lansetris (echoing Lancelot) and young Notis whose lives become intertwined. Eventually Notis’s opposition to his background ebbs away as his anarchic self surrenders to social pressure. Military service becomes the catalyst for the anticomformist hero’s 106. bid., 142, 107. Dirnosthenis Kourtovik, “H E A A I ~ L K m ~ ~ o y p a q i a197441988.” in H p & & u ~~ (~o p i a : K ~ i p ~ yv m a q v S A A ~ V L KAI o~ y o ~ ~ x v i 1986-1991 a, (Athens: Opera, 1991), 48.
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism
51
social submission, while the novel implies that the position of an idealistic knight is untenable in a modern world with its repressive mechanisms.Io8 Also, during the 1980s a group of young writers (Petros Tatsopoulos, Vangelis Raftopoulos, Aris Sfakianakis, Phaidon Tamvakakis) emerged and were dubbed the ‘angry young men of Greek fiction’. Echoing American fiction and lifestyle, they use a sarcastic or playful style to depict the insecurities and loneliness of young people. Defying established values and social conventions, these writers often focus on cynical and violent individuals who challenge the idea of society as a coherent totality and higher authority. On the other hand, there are still some writers such as Sotiris Dimitriou who hark back to an elusive primordial state and who contrast the shared ethos of rural communities with the violence and deprivation of urban low life. In post- 1974 Greek fiction, characters tend to be self-centered,self-indulgent, seeking private meanings, individual happiness, and personal ideals. They do not exhibit a sense of social duty or of a collective mission, a general concern for humanity or their nation. The wider existential reflections, moral dilemmas, and shared visions that can be found in the fiction after 1930 or the opposition to political authority, seen mainly after the Second World War, become less frequent after 1974. Political indifference, emphasis on the private and quotidian, and a quest for self-identity are the hallmarks of the characters in Greek fiction after 1980.’09 The position of the narrator becomes less distant and observational (a classic example of an aloof narrator is found in G. Theotokas’s Argo [1933-19361) as narrators become more directly involved and resort more frequently than before to first-person narratives. In other words, the narrative voice acquires a more personal, narcissistic, and confessional tone and demonstrates a less detached and authoritative stance. In overviews of the literary developments after 1974 there is a consensus that a gradual recession from the collective vision has taken place. The term ‘private vision’ has been coined to refer to the decline of collective myths in poetry and to demonstrate its disengagement from wider social issues and political aspirations.’1°Poets also tend to retreat to their own private sphere and 108. For Alexis Panselinos’s fiction and views on the role of the novel see K. A. Dimadis, “Modem Greek Reality and the Modem Greek Novel: The Case of Alexis Panselinos,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 10/11 (1994-1995): 717-39. as
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Chapter One
to shed ambitions of writing long and comprehensive poems with reference either to modern history or to antiquity.’” Their scope has narrowed in spatiotemporal terms and the tone become more personal and less ideologically charged as they focused on individual anxieties or existential angst to the increasing exclusion of social or political activity.’’2 Hence, poetic discourse over the last two decades of the twentieth century has become depoliticized and denationalized while the poets increasingly turn inward on themselves, becoming less interested in the close relationship between poetry and society at large. It has been argued that since the 1980s poetry has been more egocentric and confessional while increasingly expressing feelings of alienation and loneliness. Perhaps the revival of lyricism might be related to a more individualistic attitude as a result of the decline of collective myths and common political ideals.Il3 This decline in collectivity might be reflected in the use of terms such as ‘generation’. Although in respect of poetry the term ‘generation’ has been used or debated until recently as a tool of literary periodization and classification, in contemporary Greek fiction it has hardly ever been used, a sign that it has become obsolete as a result of the increasing individuation and fragmentation of Greek society. Among other things, there is an indication of the changes that have occurred in Greek fiction since 1974 in the reassessment of earlier Greek writers such as Melpo Axioti, Yannis Skarimbas, N. G. Pentzikis, or Nikos Kachtitsis who were once treated as eccentric or narcissistic modernists for not conforming to realistic expectations of social or historical representation. Most of these writers represent the ‘subjective’ and repressed side of Greek modernism that attempts to explore the inner world of individuals, as the selfreferential character of their novels often draws attention to the linguistic construction of identity and selfhood. The fragmented style and the discontinuous form of some of these texts undermines the notion of a unified self and foregrounds a crisis of subjectivity. The individuality in these texts is rather esoteric, involving a state of mind and depicting the consciousness of solitary characters. The self in these texts is not stable or granted but a problematic and textually defined category. Skarimbas’s characters, for example, attract the reader’s attention not as rounded or fully developed personages, but as grotesque antiheroes. His characters are impressed on the readers’ minds as a result of their unconventional 111. Pantelis Boukalas, “OL T O L ~ T ~ucxv S T E P L ~ ~ ~~ p T e~ ~S ~ i wH vK , ” c u B ~ ~ E25~June Lv~ 1996. ~, 112. Evripidis Garantoudis, AvBohoyicx N E ~ T E PE~ASA ~ V L K Lloigaqs ~~S 1980-1997: OL I T T L Y ~ CTOU ~ N~CTTOU (Athens: Nefeli, 1998), 208-9,228. 113. We might see the rereading of Manolis Anagnostakis’s poetry as more existential than political in this context, see Nasos Vayenas, “&V~~LI$&
National Imaginary, Collective Identity, and Individualism
53
behavior: they are restless flilneurs (Yannis in To Theio Tragi [The Divine Goat] [ 1933]), suicidal harlequins (Mariambas [ 1935]), or mentally disturbed (Antonis Souroupis in To Solo tou Figaro [Figaro’s Solo] [1938]). They constitute the focal point of the narrative since the sense of a plot is constantly undermined, the setting and time are rather vague, and reality is linguistically constructed. The novelists mentioned above, particularly Axioti and Pentzikis, are not preoccupied with tradition or Greekness as collective representations but often as subjective and personal conceptions, serving aesthetic purposes rather than ethnocentric obse~sions.”~ The rehabilitation of these writers suggests, in turn, deeper underlying changes that reflect a more individualistic orientation within Greek society and a growing trend toward nonrepresentational, antisocial, and self-referential artistic expression. This conclusion is corroborated by the increasing interest in autobiography, which is manifested in the number of (auto)biographies and the studies or special issues on autobiography, personal memory, or memoirs published during the last few years in The emphasis on autobiography as a self-reflexive and self-critical act signifies more a focus on individuality and selfhood rather than on sincerity and authenticity. The increasing concern with selfhood could be seen as a critical response to, but also as a refuge from, the perceived anonymity of modern mass society. Menis Koumandareas’s I myrodiu tous me kanei nu kluio [Their smell makes me cry] (1996) is a good example of this trend as it articulates the desire for communication, verging on self-confession, as a way to combat the isolation and depersonalization of modem life. The book consists of a series of nine tales by lonely, and often unhappy, men, who feel the urge to tell their stories to their barber. Their confessional style points to the loneliness of Athenian life and at the same time it conveys a nostalgia for the lost sense of a community in which storytelling was a form of social bonding. Koumandareas’s book highlights the growing fragmentation and alienation of Greek society and the desire of individuals to revive the sense of a shared point of reference. In this case the hairdresser’s shop takes up the role of the church and the hairdresser himself that of the confessor. Autobiographical storytelling in 114. See Maria Kakdvoulia, Interior Monologue and Its Discursive Formation in Melpo Axioti’s Dyskoles Nyhtes (Munich: Institut fur Byzantinistik and Neugriechische Philologie, 1992) and Eleni Yannakakis, “Fragmentation of Consciousness in Pentzikis’s Pragmatognosia,” in Dimitris Tziovas, ed., Greek Modernism and Beyond (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 151-62. 1 IS. Recent fictional (auto)biographies, such as Yannis Kiourtsakis, Bav M u O L U T ~ (199S), ~?)~~ EpcIs OL AAAoL(2000), and Aris Marangopoulos, OLwpaics ?)pip&$TOU Bcu~apiv,&VL~~TOUAOU (1998), testify to the growing interest in the genre and the possibilities afforded in tackling questions of both identity and form.
54
Chapter One
Koumandareas’s book is both the symptom and the escape from the increased individuation of Greek society. From 1974 onward and particularly after 1990 there is an increasing awareness of the fragmentation of society into smaller constituents and a more complex relationship between self, society, and tradition. The rapid development of a mass media culture in Greece over the last few years, the predatory tactics, and the encroachment on the private sphere particularly by the burgeoning number of television stations has raised serious questions about the definition of the boundaries between the public and the private domain. Also the establishment of an Authority for Protection of Personal Data (ApxG Ilpoa~aaiasII~OUWTLKLW A ~ S o p k v o v )in 1997 suggests that privacy in Greece (a concept that did not previously exist) is acquiring a new significance and importance. This rise of individualism could be related to the decline of faith in the political system, the failure of ideologies, and the worldwide death of utopias. Nowadays a more personal response to issues is developing together with a search for personal identity through the exploration of the past or the present. Collective experience gives way to individual visions, a transition that can offer a new perspective on Greek fiction and alternative ways of reading some key narrative texts, as will be shown in subsequent chapters. My readings in this book suggest that even in a culture with a strong collective tradition, a rereading of texts from an individualistic perspective is possible as the culture slides away from its collective cultural pattern. In other words, although it is methodologically useful to draw distinctions between collectivism and individualism, public and private trends in cultural developments, these cannot be fixed or taken for granted, but can be amenable to reinterpretation and renegotiation. This becomes particularly clear in literature and texts that have been considered representative of a collective spirit that can be read as narratives of self-identity, as will be shown in the subsequent chapters.
Chapter Two
Palaiologos’s 0 PoEypathis: Picaresque (Auto)biography as a National Romance
The novel was a largely imported genre in the newly founded Greek state after the War of Independence, though there were also links with the Hellenistic and Byzantine romance traditions, which, with new editions of some of these earlier romances making their appearance, showed signs of revival.’ In the period 1830-1850 three types of novel can be distinguished in Greece: epistolary, picaresque, and romance, although elements of the latter are present in both of the former. The three writers who claim to have introduced the novel to Greece can each be associated with one or other of these types. Panayotis Soutsos with his Leundros (1834) represents the epistolary novel, Grigorios Palaiologos with 0 Polypathis [The Man of Many Sufferings] (1839) the picaresque, and Iakovos Pitzipios with his I Orfani tis Hiou [The Orphan-Girl of Chios] (1839) the romance. In one way or another all three make references to Europe or European novelists and the themes that to some extent link these narratives are morality and romantic love. Polypathis is, by Palaiologos’s own account, an ambitious novel; for he declares that he endeavored to go beyond the simple recounting of a love story, and, unlike most novelists of the time, did not limit himself merely to 1. For the context and the trends of the period see the introduction of Alkis Angelou in rpqyopios ~ ~ X ~ L O X0 ~ ~IIoAu~af37j$, O S , ed. Alkis Angelou (Athens: Ermis, 1989), Panayotis Moullas, H TrdaLbTEpO ~ ~ < ~ b y p a c pvol. i a , 1 (Athens: Sokolis, 1998), and Yorgos Kehayioglou, “I 790-1 800: r i U U q U g , C X U a p ; 0,CXVCXTpOcpO86‘TllU~$ E ‘ i ‘ I C X U E K ‘ T i p ~ U ~T 9 S EXXT)YLK$S E P W T L K q S T T A ~ U ~ ~ T L K $nejoypacpias,” S ,ZCyKpLoq/Comparison, nos. 2-3 (November 1991): 5 3 4 2 , and ‘‘O~WJLOIYLKC? m p , c p p ~ ~ j 6 p ~ Tu a~ ES A A ~ U L K * E u m q s T T I E < O ~ P ~ ( P C ~ S : An6 rou I’pqy6pLo naXa~oh6y0ws TOU E V ( Y ~ Y E XM LU LU ~ ~ ~ X C S ~in, ”A r b rou Akau8po v r o u A O U K A&pw ~~ MSACTES y ~ raq u rre
(1995): 13145.
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describing the love affairs of his protagonist. It is also a composite novel, embracing, as it does, the picaresque, the French moralists, and the Greek romance. Palaiologos himself does not conceal his indebtedness to earlier French writers: in his address to his readers, he admits to borrowing certain ideas from earlier moralists, though without actually copying them. And, in his second novel 0 Zografos [The Painter] (1 842), he claims with reference to Polypathis to have written a Greek Gil Blas. Any analysis of the novel, however, has to address the question of whether in adopting foreign models its author was simply trying to produce a Greek version of the picaresque, or whether he intended to go a step further, using the varied intertext as a vehicle for symbolic projections of Greek society of the time. In this regard, the pseudo-autobiographical appearance of the novel may be misleading, inclining the reader to focus on the vicissitudes of the hero’s life portrayed in the novel rather than on its social metaphors. In my view, Polypathis cannot be read as a straightforward narrative and its allegorical side needs to be explored more carefully, as it tends to be obscured by its pronounced connection with the picaresque tradition and its mimetic narrative theory. But, before embarking on an exploration of the allusive aspects of the novel, it will be useful to look at its intertextual relations and its realistic aspirations.
THE INTERTEXTUAL ASPECT The similarities between Polypathis and Gil Blas are many and have been documented by Henri Tonne? and Georgia Farinou-Ma1amata1-i.~They range from the use of the word ZstorialHistoire in the chapter headings to those parts of Gil Blas that have been adapted and abridged by Palaiologos. The most striking affinities between the two novels are to be found in the encounter with the bandits and in the similarity of the ideas that are expressed in both texts. The episode with the bandits, which Lesage puts toward the be2. Henri Tonnet, “OL rahhLKCS E P L G ~ ~ U E UTOV L ~ IIoAmaO.il TOU Tp. ~ C X X C X L O A ~ ~ OinU , ” TpTy6pLos I I c L X C X L O A ~ ~0O IloA~vrathj~, ~, op. cit., pp. 177*-186*. Henceforth, references to the novel will be made to this edition and the page numbers will be given in parenthesis in the main text of this study after each quotation or reference. Details about Palaiologos’s life and a comparison of the editions of the novel can be found in the introduction to the recent French translation of Polypathis, which also includes the Greek text and useful notes. Grkgoire Palaiologue, L’Homme uuy milk mbaventures, Texte Ctabli, traduit, et annotC par Henri Tonnet (Paris: 1’Harmattan. 2000). 3. Georgia Farinou-Malamatari,“EAA~vLK& ZLXPX~ULOS; 0 UoAwra87j$TOU Tp. I I C X X C X L O X ~ ~ O U , ” E T L O T ~ ~ OEVmLqKp L~S~a r q g @LAOUO(PLKI~FZxoArj~ TOU APLOTEAELOV Ilav.c.rr~u~qpiov OEUCT~AOVLK~G, 7 6 ~ 0 A, s 1991, pp. 297-324. See also her article, “Ehhqvcus,Oriental +jT L ; 0 Anastasius TOU Thomas Hope KCXLo IloAwraO7jq TOV Tpqyopiou ~ C X X C X L O X ~ ~%:ixpova OV,” OCpa~a, second period, 67, April-June 1998, pp. 27-35.
Puluiologos’s0 Polypathis
57
ginning of his novel, represents a kind of rite of passage from adolescent innocence to maturity and triggers Gil Blas’s picaresque adventures. In Polypathis this episode is placed much later and the rite of passage is represented by the encounter with the roguish Anastasia, who cheats the main hero of the story, Alexandros Favinis, and takes all his money. Whereas Lesage leaves the corruption of his hero by power until late in the novel, Palaiologos puts his protagonist’s rise to power early on in the book.4 Moreover, Polypathis contains fewer embedded narratives than Gil Blas and this makes the novel much shorter. Both consist of the narration of the adventures of a hero and his contacts with all sorts of people from bandits to aristocrats over a period of years.5 Thus they are able to portray different social strata and explore the behavior of different races. Like Gil Blas, the protagonist of Polypathis, Favinis, never becomes a picar0 in the Spanish sense. He never finds himself on the verge of starvation nor does he become a persistent thief or gambler. Although he is an orphan, a typical feature of the picaro,6 he receives a relatively good education, which includes foreign languages, and thus, since he does not lack a proper upbringing, he can put all his misadventures down to fate. He is not a rogue of humble or unknown origins who is at odds with his society but rather an ordinary individual who develops into a critical observer of the various societies he encounters. Though he presents himself as suffering, and thus comes close to the condition of a picaro (20-21), Favinis develops as a character and eventually reforms, having first of all assumed the role of a traveller and ultimately that of a good husband and peace-loving landowner.’ Nevertheless, inasmuch as it focuses on the interaction between a growing individual (Alexandros Favinis) and his environment, Polypathis fulfils many of the criteria of the picaresque. In this sense Favinis is not an independent hero. As a consequence of being an orphan, knowledge is forced upon him by the shock of premature experience, exemplifying a kind of transition from “an innocence approximating nature to the corruption of an ktut de sociktk.” Apart from Lesage, the other French writer whose influence can be detected in Palaiologos’s text is Voltaire. Certain ideas about happiness and the purpose of human existence in the novel echo the latter’s views. Alexandros 4. See Farinou-Malamatari,“ E A A ~ V L ZLA~A&ULOS; K~ 0 LloAmCuOi)~TOU Tp. ~ ~ N X L O A ~ ~ O302. U,” 5. In the case of Polypathis this period is almost seventy years, since the narrative starts with the birth of Alexandros Favinis in Constantinople in 1774 and ends with the entry of 1840. 6. Favinis’s situation is slightly different from that of Gil Blas who is not an orphan, but who is educated by an uncle. See Claudio Guillkn, “Toward a Definition of the Picaresque,” in Literature as System: Essays toward the Theory ofLiterary History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971), 86. 7. See Farinou-Malamatari, “ E A A T ~ L KZLA~X&ULOS; ~ 0 ITohmaO7js TOU Tp. I I c x X ~ L O A ~ ~ O U , ” 307, 318. 8. GuillBn, op. cit., p. 87.
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Favinis and Candide undergo almost identical adventures, particularly when they join a foreign army, try to escape, and are arrested. Both are presented as antiheroes who at the end of their lives realize that happiness does not lie in the acquisition of riches or power, nor can it be equated with idleness. As both retreat to cultivate their gardens, the ideal of happiness is represented for them by a quiet and hardworking life away from the buzz of the city.9 Moreover, the relationship between Alexandros and Roxandra is similar to that between Candide and CunCgonde. In Voltaire’s Candide, as in Polypathis, the couples meet and fall in love at first sight, but, apart from some fleeting encounters, they are reunited only at the end of the story. As Tonnet points out, there is an important difference between Cuntgonde and Roxandra. The former is not as faithful as the latter, since she does not follow Candide into exile and prefers to get married to the Governor of Buenos Aires.Io In contrast, Roxandra rejects all offers and remains loyal to Alexandros even though she does not know whether he is alive or dead. Palaiologos also relies on La Bruyke, borrowing certain characters from him such as Louis XIV’s absentminded courtier, Mtnalque. However, he does not share La Bruykre’s absolute pessimism concerning the human condition, believing rather that man can improve.” The ideal love between Alexandros (though he is not faithful) and Roxandra,’* who, after many years of separation and suffering, eventually marry and live happily ever after, brings Polypathis closer to the tradition of the Greek romance (without ignoring its Odyssean echoes even in the title). The novel opens with the forced and unhappy marriage between the old and ugly Ioannis Favinis (father of Alexandros) and the young and beautiful Anna, which will culminate in murder, and concludes with the long-awaited, but happy, reunion of Alexandros and Roxandra. It is interesting to note that their relationship is described as ‘pure love’ (kuthurosems), contrasting it with the social corruption and moral depravity surrounding them.13The last part of the novel, which involves the capture of the hero by pirates, his chance encounter with Roxandra, his apparent death, and the meeting with his friend Stefanos, points almost wholly in the direction of the romance. What role his friend Stefanos is intended to play in the novel is not entirely clear. It is, however, common in the romances for the protagonist to have a 9. See Henri Tonnet, op. cit., p. 183*. 10. Ibid., 183*. 11. There is a reference to La Bruykre (Aappouldpov) in Palaiologos’s other novel 0 Zwypcipos, ed. Alkis Angelou (Athens: Idryma Ourani, 1989), 254. 12. As Henri Tonnet (op. cit., p. 182*) pointed out, the two main characters of Palaiologos’s novel bear the names of the two protagonists of the Alexander romance. 13. It should be noted that at the end of the novel when Favinis is reunited with Roxandra and plans to move to the countryside, he makes reference to “the innocent pleasures of rural life” (232), thus contrasting in this way the purity of love and nature with social corruption.
Palaiologos’s 0 Polypathis
59
friend with whom he shares his thoughts and adventures. It may be that the relationship between the two friends (Favinis-Stefanos) is modelled on Gil Blas and Fabrice, but it does not serve the same p ~ r p o s e .Stefanos ’~ seems to be the more experienced, having served under Ali Pasha, while Alexandros is described, at least in his early life, as naive, gullible, and inexperienced (upeiros, 43,55,121), as not knowing much about women (61), and being by nature sincere (65). Characteristic of his naivety is the humorous episode in which he presents himself, together with Stefanos, before the local ruler of the Danubian principalities, and falls over as he withdraws backward, leading him to fear losing his new post (44).In contrast to his friend, Stefanos appears more mature and self-assured. Yet, it should be noted that Stefanos’s appearances in the novel always precede or follow Favinis’s meetings with Roxandra. It could be argued, therefore, that the friendship between Stefanos and Favinis adumbrates or reinforces the ideals of friendship and love in a world dominated by fraud and isolation. In this respect, the role of Stefanos can be seen as a constituent of the romance aspect of Polypathis. In this novel, two ways of life are contrasted. The one, based on adventure and characterized by corruption, is represented by the life of Favinis, while the other, based on stability, friendship, and love, is represented by Stefanos and Roxandra. This suggests that the novel operates on two levels: one pragmatic and the other more idealistic. This twofold aspect of the novel can be detected in its narrative presuppositions.
THE NARRATIVE ASPECT Palaiologos’s narrative theory is clearly mimetic and, therefore, his metaphors tend to be pictorial. As can be seen in the following passages, he often makes references to pictures and mirrors: This picture is a touch antiquated, but then, as you know, the older a picture is, the greater the esteem in which it is held (50). The Court of Dacia is an exceedingly clear mirror, in which many other courts can see their iniquity reflected (53-54). Before I give any further account of my new Master’s moral character, I shall sketch for you a portrait of his physical appearance, in which it will not be my intention to flatter, like some other artists intent on pleasing their subjects (160). 14. Farinou-Malamatari ( “ E A A ~ u LZLAPX&CTLOS; K~ 0 IIoAvrrcyt9~jsTOU Tp. ~ C X X C X L O X ~ ~306) OU,” claims that while in Gil Blas the stories of the other characters combine to widen the “Spanish horizon” of the protagonist, in Polypathis the story of Stefanos has the opposite function: it covers the Greek space that Favinis is not familiar with due to his travels.
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This representational attitude towards prose culminates in his second novel 0 Zogrufos, whose very title is an expression of Palaiologos’s mimetic the0ry.I5 He also follows the example of La Bruykre in Caructi?res,in trying to construct the portraits of various individuals by outlining their character and visual traits, as in the case of Favinis’s prince (57) or his master-Lord (160-61). Through the cumulative juxtaposition of examples (such as a series of confessions or cases of madness and stories of brigands) a social tapestry is constructed in a metonymic manner and thus the emphasis is not so much on the individual but on society and its ethos as a synthesis of individual lives mirrored by the narrative. Mimetic theory is associated with some sort of moralism and didacticism; for the observation of the behavior of individuals or people, as if in a mirror, is held to have edifying results leading to self-improvement. The role of the reader, therefore, is not passive but active as he is invited to follow the example of the protagonist and thereby undergo a transformation. The reader is supposed to learn by observation, being indirectly encouraged to change and improve in the course of the reading process. Palaiologos’s novel has an episodic structure and is cast in the form of a pseudo-autobiography, as are most picaresque novels.I6 It is not the use of first-person narration alone that points to the autobiographical element. Favinis’s account is actually referred to several times as his life story.I7 When I had finished, he said to me, has it occurred to you how like a novel your life is? I advise you to write it down and publish it because it is quite remarkably topical and instructive. Your idea is not, I say to him, unappealing, but some, I fear, might think me intent on ridiculing them; for many of the diverse characters I have met with in other lands are to be found in Greece also. Rest assured, he replied. They will, on the contrary, be delighted; for, disregarding as they do their own failings, people always enjoy seeing those exactly like themselves derided, be that either directly or indirectly (228).
The above quotation shows that Palaiologos feels a degree of uneasiness and anxiety about the reactions of his readers. Aware of how some moralists might react, he attempts to preempt them by outlining his thoughtful and responsible approach to writing. 15. In his rejoinder in 0 @ihos TOU Aaolj (no. 36, 1840), reprinted in Angelou, ed., op. cit., pp. 257-58, Palaiologos reiterates his mimetic narrative practice: “These pictures are not, of course, flattering to those who see their faces in the mirror of Polypathis.” 16. According to GuillBn (op. cit., p. 81) “the picaresque novel is a pseudoautobiography.” 17. See pp. 63, 130, 243.
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Perhaps certain of my expressions will be condemned by the morally fanatic amongst us as unfit to be read by the young. Why, though, must we oblige ourselves to give to this or that person greater credence because he is untutored? Moreover, if one is to discredit evil, one must show it naked (243).
Palaiologos emerges here as a novelist who wants to present things as they are rather than to conceal anything. However, he often addresses his readers directly, either to reassure them or to forestall their criticisms or adverse reactions.I8 He advises them to conceal their reservations and in this sense one might draw a parallel between the reader’s response and his authorial strategy. Let them beware though; for if this or that man show anger against me, he will show that his conscience pricks him. In that case, caution enjoins upon him silence; and if any should have cause to blush or to bite his lips while reading my story, or while having it read to him, I advise him to contain himself as best he may, so as not to give cause for suspicion (1 70).
He seems to know his audience well, entering into a sort of dialogue with them, making them feel comfortable and even superior by reinforcing their prejudices.IYOn the other hand, he presents his approach as direct and pragmatic, and himself as a very self-conscious writer to whom the emotionalism and over-embellishment of poetry is inimical. Here it would demand a poet’s pen to describe our rapture, our shared joy, our explanations, and the rest of this affecting scene. But Apollo did not vouchsafe to make me a poet. Perhaps, though, this gift, so desirable to me, would have proved calamitous for my readers; for filled, no doubt, with poetic enthusiasm, like some who are carried away with inspiration, I should have become incomprehensible, or have altogether sickened my audience with my high-flown grandiloquence or my interminable descriptions (242).
Favinis is presented as an antiromantic, unable to commit suicide because he does not have a sufficiently negative attitude toward life. He attempts to come to terms with society rather than remain at odds with it. His attitude is ironic rather than full of romantic passion. In giving expression, through 18. He is even scared that the Pope will excommunicate him: “Everything I make mention of in this chapter, I am narrating as I saw and heard it, without offering even the slightest judgement of my own as to whether it was well or badly said or done, for I tremble at the prospect of excommunication by the Pope and all the other prelates of the world” (123). To what extent Palaiologos is serious or playfully ironic here is difficult to tell. 19. See the addresses to the readers in pp. 105, 165.
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Favinis, to these antiromantic and unpoetic tendencies, Palaiologos raises questions as to the purposes romance actually serves in the novel. Right from the outset, in the author’s address to the public that serves as a kind of preface to the novel, one is made aware that Palaiologos is trying to combine and contrast the dual nature and function of his narrative as at once a representation of society’s shortcomings and as a fictional fabrication of the author’s own. This rather contradictory combination of representation and imagination may have something to do with Palaiologos’s qualms regarding the reception of his novel. It may also point to the hybrid nature of his novel and its wider aims, which are not simply representational but also symbolic. In a sense, originality consists for Palaiologos in the combination of modes, ideas, and texts, which shows him to be a writer deeply involved in the concerns of his time and engaged in an intertextual dialogue. Just as Favinis negotiates his way through different adventures and societies, Palaiologos negotiates his way through literary precursors and narrative modes. And this attitude to his material should perhaps be taken into account in trying to unravel the overall aim of his novel. In his prefatory address to the readers, he outlines his ideas about fiction, arguing that his purpose is twofold: to edify and entertain. He also stresses the fictional character of his story and the skill needed if a writer wishes to portray the shortcomings of his society. In this way he suggests to his audience that his work combines a mimetic moralistic tendency with a fictional and entertaining approach. Although a mimetic theory seems to underpin Polypathis,there are some indications that the narrative has allegorical or symbolic intentions, which Favinis himself suggests it takes a trained eye to discern: “I have taken care that whatever is most unseemly [wickedness] should be covered with a veil, whose transparency untutored eyes may not easily detect” (243). This statement, combined with Favinis’s fear that some of the characters in his story might be taken to satirize individuals in Greece, mitigates the purely representational nature of Polypathis. These are indications that the novel has an allegorical background that it requires some skill to uncover and that Favinis’s story is not simply a straightforward representation of a period or of certain people, but goes beyond that, inviting us to explore its symbolic side. The narrative self-consciousness and self-referentiality of the novel (e.g., 241) invites the reader not to accept the novel at face value, but to look behind the story line. Equally one must ask to what extent a mimetic narrative mode associated with the picaresque can be compatible with an idealist and symbolist narrative tendency associated with romance. A similar question arises in respect of the tension between stability and change created in the novel.
Puluiologoss 0 Polypathis
h3
STABILITY AND CHANGE In the novel, one can observe a conflict between two trends, each of which is related to different genres or precursors. The first trend involves movement, change, and difference. The novel is characterized by constant movement from place to place as well as up and down the social ladder as the personal and economic circumstances of the protagonist change. Difference, too, is evident inasmuch as Favinis himself is regularly transformed while he is trying to identify the distinguishing features of other individuals and peoples. The portraits of the individuals, together with references to the mores and customs of Ottomans, Russians, English, and French, tend to stress the individuality and difference of characters and cultures. Thus Palaiologos relies on the picaresque as well as on the French moralists. The novel is partly about vicissitudes and change. For example, the protagonist changes his name three times as well as his religion. Complaining that he is the plaything of fate and other people, mainly women, he starts off poor, acquires money, and then loses it again; a reversal that gives him the opportunity to argue that virtue does not go hand in hand with good fortune. His social position, however, is determined by money and power, and in this way Palaiologos implies that money determines everything. It is as if he is implicitly referring here to the rise of capitalism. While Favinis is in the East (Ottoman Empire, Africa) his life changes more rapidly and for the worse than when he is in Britain or France, where references to fate are absent.20 The second trend is towards sameness and stability. In this regard, Palaiologos draws on Voltaire’s view of human nature as fundamentally unvarying, and of the world as fundamentally the same wherever you are despite superficial differences. Following the example of Candide, Favinis retires toward the end of his life to a peaceful and stable state, cultivating his garden. The ideal of stability, introduced through the stable character of Roxandra and further reinforced by the element of romance, culminates at the end in the marriage between hero and heroine. Romance here represents the ideal, a world of stability in which virtue and people do not change. The picaresque, on the other hand, represents the real, a world of change, corruption, and constant adaptation. Palaiologos’s text oscillates between the two, with Roxandra standing for the former and Alexandros for the latter. During the course of the novel the emphasis is on change, and sometimes on delinquency, rather than on stability or virtue, but the ending tilts the balance toward the romance, as the peregrinations of the protagonist 20. Indeed references to E ~ p ~ t p are p dmade ~ ~ in the novel only when the protagonist is in or returning to the East (see pages 9,66,71, 76, 105, 218,221, 224).
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are followed by a retreat into the peacefulness of rural life. It should be said, however, that although in the course of the novel change represents an unstable world, it has a cathartic effect too. Change is celebrated in the novel and readers are convinced that nothing is immutable or irreversible. Even murderers such as the father of the protagonist can become born-again Christians. Characters can be morally transformed, as happens with Favinis himself and his father. In the early part of the novel Favinis is a rogue, whereas after his metamorphosis he becomes a more passive observer of society. To what extent is this mixture of genres and precursors the result of simple fusion and to what extent is it the expression of a more general confusion that has its roots in the social concerns of Palaiologos’s time? Palaiologos wrote his novel after spending some years in France and England and thus he was in a position to compare social conditions in Western Europe at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution with those in the Ottoman Empire. Having experience of both worlds, he sought to achieve some sort of balance between change and stability, modernity and tradition in his novel, and it was this effort at ideological reconciliation that resulted in the mixture of genres and influences. It may be that his studies as an agronomist in Europe and his involvement in the organization and modernization of Greek agriculture and industry exacerbated his confusion and dilemma concerning the choice between tradition and modernity. Seen in this light, Palaiologos’s claim of 1842, that by imitating the French Lesage or the Russian Bulgarin without copying them he had written a Greek Gil Blas, can be more readily understood. The word Greek in the above statement can be interpreted in various ways. It might, for example, refer to the Greek identity of his protagonist (though his father was French and Catholic); it might stress the Greek appropriation or adaptation of a French novel form or, most importantly, in my view, the blending of western fictional modes with the Greek romance or Alexander narrative, namely the Hellenization of a western picaro.*’ The reference to the Russian (Polish by birth), Faddei Venediktovich Bulgarin (1789-1 859), may also serve to explain Palaiologos’s use of this phrase. Bulgarin’s best-selling novel Ivan Vyzhigin, published in 1829, had been described, when it was announced four years earlier, as “a Russian Gil Blas.” Moreover, as early as 1814, another Russian writer, Vasilii Trofimovich Narezhnyi (1780-1 825), had published a novel called A Russian Gil Blas (Rossiiskii Zhil ’blaz). It seems likely that Palaiologos was following their example, but what is surprising is that although both the original Gil Blas and the Russian versions became very popular and ran to sev21. For different views on the interpretation of the characterization of Polyparhis as a Greek Gil Blas see Farinou-Malamatari, ‘‘EAAT~JLK~s ZLA~A&ULO~; 0 ~ o A m a O lTOV j ~ Tp. I I ~ A ~ L O A ~ ~ U322-24. U,”
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era1 editions, Polypathis did not enjoy such popularity. To what extent this is due to the novel, to Palaiologos himself, or his Greek readership it is difficult to say. Readers and critics of his period failed to decode the political message of the book. They did not see the reformed Favinis as the epitome of the resilience of the nation nor did they perceive his romance with Roxandra as symbolizing the dawn of a new era. They simply treated the hero as a typical picaro and the novel as purely satirical, factors that account for the book’s hostile reception and for Palaiologos’s having been forgotten even during the nineteenth century. Perhaps he was the victim of his own skill and ingenuity as a writer and of overestimating the ability of his readers to read between the lines. It could also explain why his second novel was more overtly political.
TRADITION AND MODERNITY Throughout the novel there are allusions and statements indicating support for progress and rationalism. Early on in the novel, Favinis describes, in an exaggerated manner, barbaric teaching methods whereby students lose their eyes, hands, and nails, and he himself lost a finger. Criticizing these dated teaching methods indirectly, he also suggests that lay teachers were more effective and better than the clergy. From all this, we can see that Palaiologos is indirectly supporting the modernization of education, in favor of a regime that places less emphasis on religion and more on foreign languages-his protagonist, after all, learns French, Italian, and some English. He appears to take an optimistic view of this program of studies, arguing that a society thus equipped becomes more enlightened and better able to distinguish charlatans from true scholars. I do not say that there are not today also equally wretched lawyers and avaricious advocates, but their number is, as knowledge increases, every day diminishing. People discriminate now between the genuine lawyer and the impostor, and they shun the latter, despising him (25).22
Palaiologos portrays the conflict between tradition and modernity, taking medicine as his example and examining the conflict between the supporters of Hippocrates and Galen on the one hand and the students of Padua and 22. He also attacks educational formalism and the emphasis on the letter rather than on the spirit (14, 195).
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Montpellier on the other (28-29). He also often draws a distinction between Asian and European manners (97), but he does not appear biased against the Ottomans, as we may conclude from the following note. Not only is Sultan Abdulmecid following in his father’s footsteps, but he is setting an example that some of the European and Christian powers would do well to follow. All those who desire the progress of the human race wish to see the realization and continuance of this programme, through which alone may the Ottoman state flourish. It is fair in this regard for me to add here that, although the Ottomans have, on account of their ignorance, many superstitions and other faults, they are, however, more sincere in their friendship and more honest in their dealings than many Christian nations ( 104).23
He does not blindly adhere to the ideals of the Enlightenment nor does he praise the Europeans; on the contrary, he is harsh in his judgment of the pretensions of their governments: on the one hand, they promote freedom and equality and, on the other, they repress the working class (178). He tends to be sympathetic toward the Ottomans and their culture, and, presenting his readers, as he does, with a Christian who becomes a Muslim, he shows himself to have been very open-minded about religious matters during what was, in the aftermath of the Greek War of Independence, a difficult period. What matters to him is freedom of conscience, something that is essential for the progress and well-being of nations. He rejects coercion and argues strongly in favor of freedom of thought, indirectly castigating the banning of books by the Pope (120-22). He also protests against treating free expression as a criminal offence and the indiscriminate imprisonment of writers, journalists, and poets together with ordinary criminals (144). Condemning absolutism and supporting civil rights, Palaiologos comes out as a strong supporter of democracy and pluralism (161). For him, reason ( 0 ~ 0 6 X6yos) s is what distinguishes good from bad and truth from falsehood. Freedom of conscience is also necessary, along with sound government, to the progress of nations. When you compel me to believe whatever you want and to think according to your lights, you take from me everything that distinguishes me from the beast. Reason distinguishes the good from the bad, and the true from the false (123).
Although the novel contains positive references to rationalism and a castigation of superstition and even of religion, which teaches people to believe and not to search (145), it is hard to say that it demonstrates unreserved support 23. In Palaiologos’s second novel (0Zwypdqos, op. cit., pp. 227-28) Turkey is presented as having more freedom of speech than most European countries.
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for progress and modernity.24 Palaiologos was certainly influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment, but he does not project them as the chief message of his narrative; for fate seems to play a significant role in a number of incidents in the novel and the Asian way of life is not totally rejected. His attitude is flexible and open-minded, creating the impression that the main aim of his novel is not so much to promote the spirit of the Enlightenment, as to emphasize the need to eliminate corruption and secure stability at a social rather than an individual level. Consequently, what is important for him are not so much ideological statements about progress as stable social foundations and a moral way of life. Palaiologos does not seem to be interested in ideology but how things work in practice. Being practically oriented rather than theoretical, the vision he offers of an ideal and well-governed society is one that grows out of the simple and practical recommendations that arise as a result of Favinis’s adventures. However, the down-to-earth image we get throughout the narrative provides a contrast to the underlying attempt to draw analogies and suggest the symbolic overcoming of obstacles. Palaiologos may have argued that he was not interested in love stories, but romance is ultimately his symbolic resource. The novel works on two levels and makes use of two narrative modes. Although it foregrounds change and modernity using picaresque realism as a vehicle, what seem to prevail in the end are stability and traditional values. Modernity is rejected and the allegorical power of romance brings about a return to the land.
WOMEN AND LIBERALISM Although the novel is about the adventures of a male picaro, women also play an important role. The most important female character is Roxandra, who, in her devotion to Favinis, represents the ideal of loyalty, female endurance, and stability. She is the exact opposite of the male protagonist as well as of the other minor female character, the deceitful Anastasia. The rest of the female characterization tends to be stereotypical, but it is in relation to the contrast between Roxandra and the other female characters that the 24. Although Palaiologos appears to be an advocate of rationalism and progress, he is rather pessimistic about the moral progress of civilized societies marked by the rampant increase of corruption, as the following passage suggests: “This young woman was one of those rare women, whom one finds in civilized societies, where the miasma of corruption has spread to all classes of men, and where virtue in women is regarded as a strange and paradoxical phenomenon” (p. 63). On the other hand, he suggests that moral standards among the administrators in the Danubian principalities have improved over the years (pp. 50, 231).
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question of the position of women in society is i n t r o d ~ c e dThe . ~ ~ female characters contribute to the distinction between the two aspects of the novel: the ideal and the real, stability and change. The former is represented by Roxandra and the latter by roguish women such as Anastasia. At the very beginning, women are presented as victims when the novel opens in a dramatic and violent manner with the murder of Anna, the protagonist’s mother, by her over-jealous and bathetic husband. Later on the protagonist makes precocious indecent advances to a female second cousin, for which he is severely punished by his grandfather. In chapter 4 of part 1, he complains that he has become a joke among women, having expressed his love to so many that none of them can take him seriously. As he becomes richer, his frivolous attitude to women is reversed until he falls victim to his infatuation with Anastasia. In the first part of the novel women are not only presented as victims but as agents of deception. The treatment of women is used as an indicator of the cultural level or the degree of liberalism of each society and nation that Favinis encounters. Experience taught me afterwards that the majority of the men of that country considerjealousy to be a relic of the barbaric ages; that, friends to equality, they recognize in women the selfsame rights that they enjoy themselves, and that, consequently, so as not to be constrained by conscience, as they do not themselves restrict their feelings slavishly to their wives alone, they forgive it in them also if they enjoy the society of other men and if their relations with them span the full compass (49-50). In the third part of the novel the protagonist, in confessional mode, admits that men can be more unfaithful than women (96). He also contrasts the Asian to the European response to women, when he is forced to convert to Islam and marry an Ottoman woman. Further on, after listing some female shortcomings, he is quick to point out that while some women do indeed have these shortcomings others do not (170). And the same applies to men. In the fifth part of the book, which is set in England and France, he has another opportunity to contrast the oriental with the European treatment of women, Palaiologos himself, having lived in Europe as well as in the Ottoman Empire, seeks some sort of balance between freedom and constraint. You must admit though, my friend, I say to him, that husbands too must, without being excessively strict and tyrannical with their wives, not leave them to25. For the Enlightenment’s ambivalent attitude toward womanhood, and the status and intellectual activities of women in Greek society around the time of the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence see Paschalis M. Kitromilides, “The Enlightenment and Womanhood: Cultural Change and the Politics of Exclusion,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 1, no. 1 (May 1983): 3 9 4 1 [reprinted in his book Enlightenment, Nationalism, Orthodoxy (Aldershot: Variorum, 1994)l.
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tally unchecked; for unlimited freedom, like tyranny, brings with it dangers for mankind, especially for women, who, being by nature weaker in character, may the more easily go astray (206).
Women seem to play the role of a social barometer, indirectly posing the most fundamental question of this period: how liberal can a society be? Palaiologos, having experienced the Ottoman way of life and being an advocate of the western ideal of progress and equality, is trying to find a solution. In his novel two types of women are contrasted. The first type is represented by the loyal Roxandra and the other by women such as the French actresses who change their lovers one after the other (212), or even Stefanos’s wife, who shows signs of emancipation. One day I decided to speak with some seriousness to her. I say to her, then, that the needle is more appropriate than the book to a woman’s station, that reading should be no more than a secondary occupation for her, that when a woman does not herself supervise the servants and all that concerns the running of a household, that household goes soon to wrack and ruin, and woe betide also the children that do not, in their tender years, know the guidance of a mother’s hand! (230).
The above quotation shows that there was some debate at that time about the role of women, which the author is trying to convey to his readers without actually committing himself to any position. It should also be mentioned that on two occasions in the novel the choice of the right partner/spouse is considered to be a matter of great importance (136, 240). Family harmony appears to be crucial and this suggests that while the novel champions individuality, it is, nevertheless, concerned with the consequences of rampant individualism, which can lead to destruction of the social fabric and the family. The emancipation of women and their recalcitrant behavior, as described in the novel, are the first signs of this threatening individualism. The other sign is revolt against the father. At several points in the novel, particularly in the stories involving the bandits, the father is blamed for the upbringing and the destiny of the characters. Presented as determining their future, fathers are treated as responsible for their children and for curtailing their individual freedom. It could be argued that in the novel we observe the transition from an oriental order to the new western world, from feudalism to capitalism. To Polypathis we can apply what has been said of Gil Blas. The essential characteristic of Gil Blas is the perspective of victorious individualism which is made possible thanks to the new social basis offered by the French bourgeoisie of the 18th century. In my opinion, this is what explains the
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Palaiologos seems to champion individual freedom in Polypathis,but warns against its excesses and particularly against the undermining of social institutions such as marriage and the family. His views tend, on the whole, to be liberal. Yet he depicts the emancipation of women as being linked with a more general moral decline and the destruction of family values, this time either through negligent fathers or selfish partners. And all this is seen as posing a real threat to the fabric of society. Perhaps this explains why he is so concerned with the roles of women and fathers in the novel. In them, he sees both the roots of rampant individualism and the mechanisms for controlling it. In the end, one gets the feeling that, for Palaiologos, society is more important than the individual and that, accordingly, he attaches more importance to those things that sustain it, such as marriage, love, and respect. It can be argued, therefore, that he does not subscribe wholeheartedly to the emerging individualism associated with industrialism and the rise of the middle class in Western Europe.
NATIONAL ALLEGORY: FROM THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE TO THE GREEK STATE Another significant element in the novel is the way in which it tracks the political, social, and historical developments of its period.27 It is a book which sketches out the transition from the Ottoman Empire through the movement of Philhellenism to the establishment of the Greek nation-state. In the early parts of the novel, particularly in chapters 3 to 5 of part 2, he illustrates the corruption of the Ottoman administration. Favinis and his friend, Stefanos, manage to secure administrative positions in the Danubian principalities, thus affording an opportunity to expose the corruption of both low- and high-
26. FClix Brum, “Towards a Sociological Interpretation of the Picaresque Novel (Lesage and His Spanish Sources)” in Gustavo Pellon and Julio Rodriquez-Luis, eds., Upstarts, Wanderers, or Swindlers: Anaromy ofthe Picaro (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1986), 179-80. 27. Takis Kayalis points to a reading of Polypathis as an implicit critique of the Greek political and social situation at the time ( “ ~ C X T ~ L ~ O ~ V[ ~E VU O~ TC~YO ,~ FKCXL ~ C XL U T O ~ ~ CK X :c x X X L KCYL ~~ P C X ~ K C in X~~S Vayenas, ed., op. cit., pp. 13940).
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ranking officials in their dealings with individuals. Through various machinations, the protagonist manipulates his way to a position of power, but fails to understand that leaders, being used to flattery, cannot accept the unvarnished truth. Thus he loses everything and ends up in exile. We are not, however, offered an outright condemnation of this system by the narrator, perhaps because of a tacit acceptance that in every system there is some corruption and unsullied virtue is almost unattainable. In the fifth part of the novel we find references to the rise of Philhellenism and the attitude of Europeans toward the War of Independence. In this section the narrator describes the misunderstandings, the confusion, and the lack of knowledge about Greece and its people. But how can you be a Greek, says an earnest Englishman to me, if you were born in Turkey? And what of that? replies another more sagacious still. The Turks and the Greeks are, like the English and the Scots, indistinguishable. They speak the same tongue, share the same customs, and differ slightly only in the matter of religion; but just as now and then the Scots rebel against the English, the Greeks now and then rebel against the Turks. Sir Hemng is right, they all cried, absolutely right, and one of them asks me whether Greece and Turkey form together a single island, and how many hours it is from there to China and New Holland. . . . So little did they know of Greece! which some, indeed, had long since erased from the book of nations (181).
Indicative of this attitude is an incident Favinis describes that occurred while he was in England.28He was standing outside a bookshop and loolung at the pictures on display. One of them was a portrait that bore the name Kanaris and very much resembled that hero. He asked the owner about the portrait and the latter explained that Kanaris’s exploits had attracted the admiration of many people, who wanted in consequence to have a picture of him. Hence, in order to satisfy them, he had found a Greek and painted his portrait, copies of which he subsequently sold by the thousand (188). In a footnote Palaiologos explains that he had himself had just such an experience in France. Here Palaiologos is charting the rise of orientalism and exoticism as a fashion in Europe.29 French interest was apparently greatly excited by Ottoman costumes or by the arrival of the Ottoman ambassador, as well as by giraffes and other exotic animals. At the same time, the author is trying to 28. Apostolos Sahiriis (O~wpicvK ( Y L X ~ U W U T VZUTOPLCX TOU M U ~ L U T O ~ T ~UTVV ~ C Y Tl
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show how this fashion was exploited by western governments as diversionary tactic, viewing attempts such as these to manipulate the public as blatantly corrupt.3o The government, knowing the character of its subjects, provides them at intervals with spectacles of this sort; sometimes it brings before them wild and deformed men, sometimes tigers, elephants or whales, and sometimes it orders that comedies be staged and that the people be allowed to attend free of charge. By engaging the people’s attention with spectacles in this way, it frequently diverts it from its own actions (192).
Palaiologos demonstrates a critical awareness of how government officials, publishers, and booksellers manipulate public taste by cashing in on trends. He cites as an example a bookseller who bought Favinis’s Greek myths for a thousand francs without reading them, simply because it was fashionable in Paris to circulate the legends of various nations. The result, as the narrator playfully remarks, was that his grandmother’s fairy tales were on everyone’s lips within a month. Taking advantage of his success as a fabulator, he tries his hand as a dramatist, writing a drama about the fall of Mesolongi, which promised to have all the right ingredients, such as heroism and ideal love, to appeal to E~ropeans.~’ Though enemies of Greece are not absent (209), the narrator’s focus is on naive and ostentatious Philhellenes; his tendency is to demythologize them by stripping Philhellenism and ‘enlightened’ Europe of their pretensions. He presents the Europeans as succumbing to a fashion for exoticism rather than espousing ideals of freedom and equality. In the sixth part of his novel Palaiologos makes reference to the new Greek state and the enthronement of King Otto. He briefly describes the situation in Athens, where Favinis finds that love of knowledge and freedom, progress and beauty, coexist with a desire for power and money ( ( P L X O I T ~ O TK(YL ~ ( ~ ~ X o x p q p a ~His i a ) friend . Stefanos, on the other hand, believes that education and time, with the help of sensible government, will improve the situation. There are also references to factionalism as well as to some people’s dis30. There are references also to the role of prostitution and the corruption associated with it in the western world (179, 194). 3 I . While in Cambridge, Palaiologos translated into English N. S. Pikkolos’s, The Death ofDemosthenes (1 824). The name of the author of the tragedy is not mentioned either in the title page or in the address by the translator. In his address to the readers Palaiologos tries to arouse their interest in modern Greece on the basis of their familiarity with classical Greece. The tone of his attack on barbarians and Muslims in this address is in sharp contrast with the religious tolerance manifested in the novel. I quote below a characteristic example: “The infidel, the Mussulman, who so insolently reviles and despises Christendom, must be quite vanquished, that his fanatical arrogance may be humbled (p. vii). See also Maria Hristina Hatziioannou, “0O&KYTOF T O U A ~ ~ O C T O ~ V ON. U F2.T IOI ~UK K O A O U K a L 0 rp. ~ X Y A ~ L O A O ~ O~S w , ” j p w uVOI. , 9 (1984): 247-54.
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content with Bavarian rule and the belief that in 1840 Orthodoxy will bring all the nations together.32 Right at the end of the novel an implicit criticism of neoclassicism can be found, when the son of the protagonist is given the name Constantine, rather than one of the glorious ancient Greek names, which, according to Favinis, multiply day by day in Greece. Again with tongue-in-cheek, the narrator comments on the situation. A few years hence we shall have to begin sending forth colonial governors, generals, admirals, philosophers, rhetoricians and legislators; for poor and sparsely populated Greece will not suffice to provide intellectual and gastronomic sustenance for so many illustrious men; for the streets are teeming with grubby and slovenly Miltiadeses, with Agamemnons reared among swine, and with oneeyed Aphrodites and wall-eyed Aspasias, grovelling with the geese in the mire. What a scandal to their contemporary namesakes! (243).
As previously stated, the novel, starting as it does in Constantinople and moving to Athens, via Bucharest, Rome, London, and Paris, corresponds in a sense to the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Greek nation-state. Although Palaiologos, as we have seen, refers to the historical reality of his time, he maintains an ironic distance as regards these developments. His narrative is dispassionate but critical, though one can detect a certain ambivalence in his attitude toward society. On the one hand, he appears a supporter of the idea of progress and enlightenment and, on the other hand, he expresses a certain degree of disillusionment regarding the capacity for moral improvement of his society. In the first half of the novel, including Favinis’s adventures in Italy, it could be said that the role of religion and religious identity is crucial. First, Favinis is inadequately taught by a priest (11-15), then there are occasional references to the religiosity of the Russians (70-71), followed by the successive conversions of the protagonist (99-101, 109), the role of the Jesuit missionaries (112), and the meeting with the Pope (114-15). It is within this context of fluidity and instability, which prepares the ground for a transition from 32. At a popular level, a host of messianic and prophetic beliefs forecasting the ultimate liberation, as a result of Divine intervention, were circulated among the ordinary Greeks during the Tourkokratia. These apocalyptic beliefs and rumors remained undiminished even after the outbreak of the War of Independence. According to Richard Clogg, “there was a widely based belief, based on a reading of Agathangelos, throughout the new kingdom that 1840 would see the complete regeneration of Greece.” “The Byzantine Legacy in the Modem Greek World: The Megali Idea,” in Anafolica: Studies in the Greek East in the 18th and 19th Centuries (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), V266. J. A. Petropoulos in his book, Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece, 1833-1843 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968), 346 states that a book with Agathangelos’s prophecies circulated in the provinces and went through several Greek editions: Athens 1837, 1838, Bucharest 1838.
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East to West and from religion to nationalism, that pessimism about the national character of the Ottomans is expressed: “Sad to say (. . .) we are no longer the Ottomans of yore; for we have lost our old values, becoming every day more emasculate and Europeanized. Our rulers, wishing to import among us the laws and customs of the Europeans, have stripped us of our national character, and we are, now, neither Asian, nor European” (101). This could equally have been said of the Greeks at the time Palaiologos was writing, when the new state lacked a clear cultural ~ r i e n t a t i o nPerhaps .~~ the discussion of the decline of the Ottomans’ national character was an implicit warning to the Greek readers of the period, one that added to the political connotations of the novel. An additional justification for a ‘national’ reading of Polypathis is Favinis’s gradual transformation from a troubled individual to a Greek national. After his move to Europe and his moral regeneration, Favinis becomes more of an observer and his adventures from England onward are more closely related to the Greek War of Independence. His transformation from an individual picaro to a national type corresponds to a transition from acting in the interests of individual survival to contesting constructed national images. Moreover, the emphasis earlier in the novel on his avcrp&mms and particularly on his resurrection at the end may have a symbolic dimension suggesting the moral rebirth of the character and by extension of the whole nation, a kind of new beginning for both. Polypathis can be said to consist of two overlapping parts, each of which conclude with a reunion. The first part concludes with the meeting of Favinis with his estranged father in Italy, and signals his moral regeneration; the second part culminates with his reunion with Roxandra. In the first part, which is about the fall from grace and the subsequent transformation of Favinis, his identity and behavior appear unstable and his destiny unpredictable. He changes religion and name, while his national affiliations are somewhat unclear, the issue being compounded by his hybrid origin. Read as a national metaphor, Favinis’s early life can be taken to represent the difficulties experienced by the Greek nation under Ottoman rule. His moral regeneration can be seen mutatis mutandis as the regeneration of the nation and its preparation for independence. This parallelism can be extended by reference to the strengthening of Favinis’s national identity in the second part and the explicit references to Philhellenism and the newly established Greek state. In spite of his negative behavior, Favinis appears more active and dynamic in the first part, whereas in the second he is more passive and this, in turn, slows down the pace of the 33. In 0 Zoyphpoq (op. cit., p. 221) there is talk of “Our Greece, Europeanized from top to bottom” while Europe is identified with entertainment: ‘Europe!Europe! there indeed do people of every age enjoy themselves” (p. 235).
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narrative. It is as if Favinis, and by extension the Greek nation, have more freedom of movement under adverse conditions, than when their destiny is shaped by their masters and the European powers. A question that is worth raising here is what constitutes the didactic character of the novel, which Palaiologos himself spoke about? Does it simply arise from the presentation of episodes from Favinis’s life from which, potentially, the reader may learn? Is the simple observation of a character in action or the setting up of a mirror so that the reader can follow the drama of his existence didactically sufficient? For this to be the case, Palaiologos relies on the initiative of the reader himself as opposed to the didactic intervention of the narrator or the motivation of the writer. In that case, the reader himself assumes an autodidactic and autocathartic role in following the adventures of the protagonist. To what extent does such an autodidactic process warrant the claim to didacticism or, in other words, to what extent does the protean and unstable figure of the picaro Favinis constitute in itself a didactic source? To be effective, didacticism could be said to require some sort of active guidance, a rudimentary mediation, an occasional general statement such as can be found in the novel (37,57-58). So are Palaiologos’s didactic claims misleading or unjustified? I think they are justified by the role of the romance element in the novel and the fusion of the real (picaresque) with the ideal (romance). Polypathis is not strictly speaking a moral or a didactic text because it does not contain explicit and didactically projected rules of conduct or moral models. It is more of a political allegory, which aims not so much at improving individual as public morality. Moreover, moral conduct seems in the novel to be conditioned by the institution of the family and the institutional structure of education and the state in general, rather than by individual choice. Polypathis does certainly have a moral and edifying purpose, and does castigate corruption and defend virtue, but it seeks to achieve its aims by creating a national romance. Favinis’s fictional (auto)biography can be seen as some sort of biography of Hellenism from the Ottoman occupation up to the establishment of the Greek state. (Auto)biography as a genre has a retrospective character and fosters comparison between the past and the present. Hence, Favinis’s adventures can be treated as stages in the history of Hellenism under Ottoman rule, culminating in the years immediately before and after independence. Like the Phanariot Greeks, who took advantage of their language skills and their good education to become administrators under the Ottoman rule, Favinis also thrives in this environment, thus reinforcing the national connotations of the novel. His service, together with Stefanos in the Danubian principalities, in a sense represents in microcosm the administrative role of the Phanariots there, while his Islamization can be seen as a reference to the enforced Islamization of a number of Greek Christians. The incident with the brigands in Italy, although situated
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outside Greece, can be seen as a reference to the problem of brigandage, which troubled the Ottomans with the Mephts and later the Greek state. This connection is supported by the fact that the brigands in the novel do not attack ordinary people, but mainly government officials, and could also explain why this incident is not placed earlier in the novel as in Gil Blas. 34 After his move to Europe, the focus shifts to the role of Philhellenism and the attitude of Europeans to Greece, while the last part of the novel refers more directly to the problems of the newly founded Greek state. The emphasis on stability, virtue, and a life close to nature is the moral as well as the political message of the novel. A new nation-state needs political stability, the virtuous conduct of its citizens, and the cultivation of national land for its progress and its prosperity. Therefore, it can be argued that the label ‘Polypathis’ attributed to Favinis can be extended to the Greek nation as a whole, as the following metaphor from the novel suggests: There is, on the whole, he says to me, as compared with before, a great difference in the nation today; but the canker is not as yet entirely cured. Aged bodies are not easily cured of chronic ailments. Education and time, allied with prudent government, will gradually improve our conduct (228).
The reference to the role of the fathers in the novel could be read on a national level as a reference to the role of the nation’s progenitors or the past. Just as, for the individuals in the novel (Favinis, brigand Dimitrios), parenthood and upbringing are crucial for their development and behavior, so for a nation a healthy relationship with its past is of paramount importance. Palaiologos seems to disapprove of the fixation with antiquity, as is suggested by being given Favinis’s child the Christian name Constantine in preference to an ancient Greek one. Today, one might be sceptical as to whether the representation of the various social vices would have had an edifying effect on readers of the period. Judging also from the announcement accompanying the the book was 34. There is an element of social resistance and justice in the story of the brigands because in order to justify their actions, they treat politicians and other officials as thieves: “What else do the politicians, the military, the clergy, the judiciary, the merchants, and all the industrialists do but plunder, rob, and wrong people, glossing over their thefts with the labels, taxes, entitlements, remuneration, stipends, emoluments, allocations, contributions, donations, proceeds, etc.” (p. 128). 35. In the announcement of his novel, Palaiologos points out the comprehensive nature of his narrative in portraying social evils: “In recounting his life, he presents, usually in comic fashion, the adversities and misfortunes met with by men from early infancy to old age, from the upbringing of the young child to the doctor’s last visit. He describes whatever is deserving of ridicule and censure in the manners and customs of different nations, as well as in their royal courts and governments. He skilfully derides the conceit, the superstition, the stupidity, the lechery, the greed, the flattery, the profligacy, the presumption, the treacherousness, the baseness, as well as the various abuses, the misdemeanours, and especially the fraudulence present at all levels of society, from that of the rulers right down to the profession of servant’’ (p. 248).
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intended to contain very little positive imagery, and it does, in point of fact, consist almost entirely of representations of crime and vice. As we know from today’s criticism concerning the representation of violence in the media, this kind of strategy is unlikely to be conducive to moral improvement, but instead leads to an escalation of violence.36This is why it seems to me that the main didactic aim of the novel was the promotion of national unity and harmony. The marriage of Alexandros to the virtuous and faithful Roxandra is symbolic and emblematic (“paradeigma agapis kai armonias” [242]) of the author’s desire that Greek society should embrace virtue and acquire stability and prosperity. Neither of the two characters is of purely Greek origin. Alexandros is half Greek and the name of Roxandra’s mother (Zenka Ploescu) sounds Romanian. Yet, their settlement in Euboea may symbolically represent the desired integration of outside Greeks into the lungdom and their contribution to its p r o ~ p e r i t y . ~ ~ As is well known, one of the main problems of Greek society at the time was political disunity and lack of consensus. It is a commonplace that poets, including leading ones such as Dionysios Solomos and Andreas Kalvos, as well as prose writers, referred to the damaging conflicts among the Greeks and the deleterious effects of discord ( d i h o n o i ~ )Palaiologos .~~ could well have been engaging in this literary crusade against discord and its consequences when he presents Favinis at the end of his life as a role model. The return to nature, the peace of rural life, and his marriage to his beloved Roxandra could serve to illustrate the antidote to social conflict and political hatred. This could well have been the implied political message of the novel. Indeed, Palaiologos refers several times to factionalism and party fanaticism (161, 231-32) and through a destitute veteran of the War of Independence makes a plea for unity (235), ending his novel by expressing his bitterness at the way that journalists report and emphasize factional differences. It grieves me, too, to see them neglect so many more important matters in order to waste their time on trivial disputes, on factional rivalries, and most especially on personalities, who have done such injury-and pray God they do not do more!-to the freedom of the press. . . .
36. Palaiologos also failed to persuade the critics of his period about the moral character of his text, U T“It ~ ~isFin danger of becoming the objudging from the commments in EU~WT&’KOFE ~ : P ( Y Y Lthat ject, more probably, of imitation, or else of opprobrium” (250) or that parents and teachers “They hurl oaths and imprecations at Polypathis as a work tending to subvert morals and to encourage the very wickedness and wrongdoing it pretends to satirize and condemn” (0@tAosTOU AaoC [no. 34, 18401 in Angelou, ed., op. cit., p. 255). 37. In 0 Zwyp&pos, (op. cit, pp. 208-9) the problem of the Greeks, outside and inside the newlyestablished kingdom, is again raised with Tavropoulos having just arrived from Vienna (p. 204). 38. See for example D. Solomos’s “Yp,vos ELS TTY Ehm€)epicuv,”stanzas 144-8 and A. Kalvos’s ode “T6 @&up,cu.”
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We have come now to the close of ’39. . . . I see to my sorrow the hostility of the parties intensified. I hear that infernal plans are being hatched in secret, and I pray that those things which a few years back I had said to Stefanos may not come to pass! (243-44).39
Moreover, the political significance of the novel also lies in the fact that it downplays the national and religious differences between people, giving priority to their virtuous behavior and the proper exercise of their duties. Having a mixed family background, Favinis does not talk unsympathetically about the Ottomans nor does he have religious taboos. In this respect, Polypathis is not a nationalist or an intolerant book, but a narrative of political and moral consensus. The emphasis on the political aspect of the novel gains greater credibility from Pdaiologos’s subsequent development as a writer and particularly from his second novel Zogrufos, which is an altogether more overtly political novel, offering, as it does, a critique of the political realities and the governing elite of the new state. As efforts aimed at moral and political reform in Greece were increasingly frustrated and as the achievement of civic virtue came to seem almost impossible in Palaiologos’s eyes, his only way out of this urban quagmire was to leave the country, which he did. On an ideological level, he extricated himself by praising the purity of nature, and, on a generic level, he employed romance to convey this escapism. In Palaiologos’s novels there is a contrast between the corruption and hypocrisy of urban life on the one hand, and the sincerity and friendliness of the countryside on the other, as is clearly stated in the following passage from Zogrufos. Inasmuch as civilization has distanced man from nature, honesty, publicspiritedness and friendship have by degrees been replaced by hypocrisy, selfinterest and envy. At few tables does honesty reign supreme among the diners (167).
It could be argued that the selfless love and idealism of romance evokes the notion of primordial purity whereas genres such as the picaresque or satire are identified with the urban condition and its concomitant moral degradation. A crucial question that has not been raised so far is why Palaiologos wrote his two novels? Was it purely literary ambition or was his aim rather political? It seems to me that Palaiologos was primarily an agriculturalist who wanted to contribute to the economic development of his country.40Born in 39. References to factionalism and disunity among the Greeks can also be found in the first chapter of 0 Zoyphqos, op. cit., pp. 32-33. 40. Alexis Politis points out that most of the novelists of the period 1830-1880 were amateurs who q S.rrs
Puluiologos s 0 Polypathis
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Constantinople, he was also an outsider who did not always feel welcome in the capital of the newly established state. This is why, feeling disgruntled toward the end of his life, he left Greece and offered his services to Turkey. Taking the above into account, one might argue that Palaiologos’s aim in writing his novels was primarily political, something that becomes increasingly clear in his second novel. Palaiologos, with his cultured background, was aware that a political treatise would not be as effective as a romance that had been dressed up as picaresque or satire in order to convey the message of national unity, social harmony, and virtuous behavior all the more powerfully. I do not think that Palaiologos’s intention can merely have been to introduce western genres such as the picaresque into Greek literature. If this had been the case, then the perception expressed by Philaretos, his main character and spokesman in Zografos, of the novel as a corrupting agent would seem illogical and unjustified: “Fortunately, though, there are also quite a number of Greek families who bring their children up according to quite strict principles. These at least I should advise to forbid those novels even, which, though they may advance as their aim the improvement of morals, and, to that end, satirize baseness and misconduct, may nevertheless, through the necessary narration of unseemly episodes, serve to corrupt chaste innocence” (187). For all that Palaiologos boasts that he was the first to introduce the novel into Greece, in the announcement of Polypathis, he describes it as no more than a parergon, an exercise designed to while away his free time. This suggests that we should not exaggerate his literary ambitions. Yet his comments about his writing suggest a sophistication and awareness that would have been unusual in an amateur. In particular, his claim that he did not copy Gil Blus, but only followed its example, requires careful consideration; for it suggests the adaptation of Lesage’s text to suit his own ideological purposes. Palaiologos was not so naive as to try and pass off the imitation of a French novel as an original achievement, but he wanted to convey his political and moral message to his readers through the entertaining formula of picaresque adventures. In other words, the picaresque and comic elements of his novels contribute to the entertaining style, and the romance to the didactic substance. Polypathis is a deceptively individualistic and entertaining novel, which creates the impression that it celebrates individual freedom from national, cultural, or religious constraints, but which in a subtle way conveys a message about national unity and harmony. Palaiologos is able to produce a text that can function as a national allegory without compromising the individuality of his protagonist. By turning the fictional (auto)biography of his hero into a political narrative, a tension is created between autobiography and social representation. One is not always clear as to whether the focus is on the development and the adventures of an individual or the vices of society. This
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uncertainty can be accounted for by a consideration of the earlier role of (auto)biography, which was to generalize rather than to individualize its subject. Writers thought of their lives or the lives of others as illustrative of general principles, not sources of t r ~ t h .In ~ ’this respect, Favinis’s life can be seen as representative of the tribulations of his nation. Palaiologos’s novel is about finding an equilibrium between stability and change, tradition and modernity, East and West, individuality and society, dualities that are also reflected at a formal level in the fusion of the picaresque and romance. But how can these two narrative modes work together if there is any substance in the argument that the romance mode is associated with our impulse for vicarious participation in an ordered world and the picaresque satisfies our impulse for a vicarious journey through chaos and depravity?42 The picaresque, we are told, is ultimately about survival in a chaotic world and satisfies “our darker yearnings for demonic disharmony, disintegration, ugliness, disorder, evil, and the gaping abyss” whereas the romance “satisfies our craving for divine harmony, integration, beauty, order, goodness, and ultimate f ~ l f i l m e n t . ”If~the ~ picaresque is the antitype of romance, then why does Palaiologos combine two antithetical genres? Perhaps the purpose of this generic fusion can be better understood if the novel is seen as a political allegory and as a national metaphor.@ One of the characteristic features of picaresque is the Sisyphus syndrome, that is a series of fresh attempts at survival. If Favinis’s adventurous life is seen as a metaphor for the trials and tribulations of the Greek nation before and after its independence, then the picaresque Sisyphian rhythm can be interpreted as the constant struggle of the nation for survival and independence. This reading draws support from the fact that the dominant picaresque theme of the novel is freedom, including moral freedom, while other basic themes of the genre such as hunger, primitive physical survival, grotesque and horrible incidents play very little part in Polypathis. Favinis fights repeatedly for his freedom, whether it is from prison, an asylum, an ill-considered marriage, or brigands. Some sort of analogy with the Greek people seems intended. It could be argued that in both his novels Palaiologos seeks to achieve a kind of balance between picaresque and romance, satire and romantic love, stability and change, adventure and sentimentalism, entertainment and instruction. 41. John 0. Lyons, The Invention of the .Ye& The Hinge of Consciousness in the Eighteenth Cenfury (Carhondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), 40-88. 42. UIrich Wicks, “The Nature of Picaresque Narrative: A Modal Approach,” PMLA 89 (1974): 242. 43. Ibid., 242. 44. As Marietta Servou has pointed out, Iakovos Pitzipios’s ITLOT~KOFZo6O is an allegorical text and behind its main characters lie some well-known figures of the period (‘‘OLE < o ~ o ~ o ~ EU& + ~ c L ~ .rr~O.ilouK(YL o I&KOPOS~ L T ~ L ~ F L ~inS Vayenas, , ” ed., op. cit., pp. 93-102).
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What emerges from his novels is not the promotion or the preaching of a doctrine, but a fine balance on all levels that enables the better demonstration of the conflict between good and The balance, which he seeks on a formal or structural level in his novels, can be projected in terms of social harmony on an ideological or political level. In this respect, the element of romance is stronger than picaresque or satire since it shapes the final message of his novels without making them excessively sentimental or romantic. I would argue, therefore, that although Palaiologos balances opposite trends or forces in his novels, the ideal of harmony with which he concludes his novels prioritizes the romance over the picaresque or satire and stability over change. In some picaresque novels as well as in Cervantes’s Don Quixote, characters often combine romantic idealism and practical appetite. This is also the case with Polypathis; for Favinis seems to combine satire and utopianism, which in a sense reflects the fusion of the realism of picaresque with the idealism of romance. The picaresque aspect of Polypathis relates to the past and mostly externally inflicted troubles, which, if the novel is to be read as a national metaphor, could be seen as caused by foreign powers. The romance aspect, on the other hand, is about the ideal future representing internal harmony and happiness not only for the protagonists, but for Greek society as a whole. The picaresque is more retrospective and deals with a painful reality whereas the romance element is more projective and symbolic and is thus better able to play the role of a foundational narrative, projecting through love and friendship the ideal of national unity and nation-building.“6 In Polypathis one can see the ‘erotics of politics’ at work and we could thus treat the novel as a Greek foundational fiction seeking to overcome political and historical fragmentation through love. Polypathis can be described as a ‘family romance’, a term introduced by Freud “for a person’s neurotic fantasy about his or her origins in which parentage was in some way elevated or improved upon.”47Freud viewed family as the cultural catalyst for the articulation of private fantasy and public belief or as Dana Heller claims: “The family romance is thus defined as the interpolation of the individual in patriarchal history and patriarchy in individual 45. Avoiding extremes and instilling a sense of balance into his readers’ minds seems to be the purpose of Palaiologos, as evinced from the following statement: “I say to you, moreover, that women are not all unfailingly captious, malicious, envious or vain just as men are not all tyrannical, dissolute, vindictive, intemperate and sycophantic. There are everywhere women almost entirely praiseworthy, and men almost wholly laudable” (170). Similar views can be found in his other novel (0Zwypbqoq, op. cit., p. 231). 46. See Doris Sommer, “Irresistible Romance: The Foundational Fictions of Latin America,” in Homi K. Bhabha, ed., Nation andNarration (London: Routledge, 1990), 84, and her book Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 47. Christine van Boheemen, The Novel as Family Romance: Language, Gender; and Authority from Fielding to Joyce (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), ix.
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history.”48The family can function as a signifier with manifold connotations while familial metaphors can have wider social and national significations. The family romance instructs the public as to how it should understand the relations of the private. However, implicit in this act of translation is an act of transposition, an act that demonstrates the mutual dependency of identity and fantasy, mother functions and father functions, the public and the private ~phere.4~
Family romances represent attempts to render the broader social domain in terms of domestic patterns and thus to reproduce, redefine, or challenge the existing power structures through private roles. In other words, private relations between individuals can have a ‘civic’ function and it could be argued that this is the function of the romance element in Polypathis. This brings us closer to Freud’s original formulation of the family romance in which the questioning of origins was linked to fantasies of social improvement.Alexandros Favinis is trying to improve on his father’s example and to build up a happy family relationship with Roxandra, in contrast to the unhappy marriage of his own parents. As regards the references to Greek political factionalism toward the end of the novel, the family romance can easily be translated into ‘national romance’ as the romance structure provides the matrix for a political reading of individual relationships. Polypathis as a family romance can be seen as the founding fiction of the individual as well as the nation. Romance and nation-building came together in many countries, particularly in Latin America, thus suggesting that many foundational narratives are national romances. By mixing the picaresque with the romance tradition, Palaiologos combines real with ideal history, western with Greek literary tradition. Thus he constructs the first foundational narrative for the newly formed Greek nation-state and makes his first timid bid to become a political writer. It is with hindsight of course that Palaiologos’s novel could be seen as foundational narrative, since it was forgotten by critics and readers for a hundred and fifty years until it was rediscovered in the late 1980s and attracted considerable attention. On the other hand, Papadiamantis’s The Murderess, which will be discussed in the next chapter, has enjoyed undiminished popularity over the years. Although more than sixty years separate the two novels, what might be thought to link them is that their main characters are disgruntled with the society in which they live, but they have different views on social improvement. 48. Dana Heller, Family Plots: The De-Oedipalization of Popular Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 23. 49. Ibid., xii.
Chapter Three
Selfhood, Natural Law, and Social Resistance in The Murderess
In the last thirty years Alexandros Papadiamantis (1851-1911) has become a controversial figure as his work has been entangled with cultural politics and debates on Greek identity. On the one hand, there are those who have emphasized his relationship with Orthodoxy, the East, and Byzantium and on the other, those who seek to bring him closer to the European tradition of the novel and to dissociate him from Byzantine mysticism.’ Moreover, along with these wider issues, in recent decades other questions have been hotly debated regarding the (aut0)biographical nature of his fiction, his narrative skills, the lyricism of his prose, and its social dimension.2What emerges from these studies and controversies is that Papadiamantis still attracts the renewed interest of scholars, intellectuals, and readers and that his work has benefited from their dedi~ation.~ Approaches to his work might have changed over the years; what, however, has not been questioned is the central position within his oeuvre occupied by The Murderess (I Fonissa). Though never published in book form in the author’s lifetime, it has been treated as a microcosm of his whole fiction4 1. The most striking example of this position is the book by Lakis Proguidis, La Conquzre du Roman: De Papadiamanris 6 Boccace (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1997). See also Kostis Papagiorgis, AhE@xv6poq A S ~ ~ ~ V T L EppavoVrjA IOU (Athens: Kastaniontis, 1998). 2. See for example Odysseas Elytis, H pay&a TOU l 7 a ~ a S ~ c y p &(Athens: vq Ermeias, 1976), ~ Ila.rraS~ap&vq (Athens: Kedros, 1976), Panayotis Moullas’s Stelios Ramfos, H T ~ A L V O S L ’ TOV (Athens: ~ O ~ ~Ermis, ~ E V O1974), ~ introduction to the volume A. ~ ~ L Y T ~ ~ L ( Y ~A&IvJTT~O) F~ L O Y P ~ Y ~ N.D. Triantafyllopoulos, M L V ~ ~ P L TU T~ C~ LV (Ox~~pafbcLBvou: Y~ ~ @LAOAOYLK& UTOV l 7 a ~ a S ~ a p . & v q (Athens: Kastaniotis, 1986), Georgia Farinou-Malamatari, A ~ ~ ) ~ Y ~ ~ T (Y ~ XTVLLK KC UTOV &F k ~ a S ~ a p & v1887-1910 ~q, (Athens: Kedros, 1987), and Guy (Michel) Saunier, Ewmpbpoq K(YL Ailpwuoe 0 U ~ O U O J TpliOos L K ~TOU S Ua.rraS~ap.&vq (Athens: Agra, 2001). 3. Thanks to them, Papadiamantis enjoys the unique privilege among Greek writers of having a journal (Papadiamanrika Tetradia) devoted exclusively to his work. 4. Guy Saunier, “ME~LKCS ~,EOO~OAOYLK& T U X ~ ~ T ~ ~ ~KIXL U ET~OT&UL(TELS L S YLIX 77) pEA&q TOU IICW~YSL~~&V amp&&^, T ~ . ” no. 165,8 April 1987, p. 40.
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and has been seen as “a Dostoevskian exploration of the psychology of the killer, and as a Miltonic attempt to ‘justify the ways of God to men.”’5 Published in 1903, The Murderess is the best-known work by Papadiamantis and is generally considered one of the key texts of Greek fiction. As such, it has been widely read and discussed. It has also attracted a great deal of critical attention focusing mainly on the motives of Hadoula or Frankojannou, the central figure of the novel who embarks on a killing spree of sickly or poor infant girls. The novel was described by Papadiamantis as a ‘social novel’, which has further compounded the difficulties critics have had in reaching a consensus as to whether Frankojannou is a dark and evil character or a social rebel and an early advocate of women’s liberation. The ambivalence and richness of the text is fostered by the intricate digressions of the plot, the equivocal attitude of the narrator, and the openness of the ending that can be read in different, even opposing, ways. The Murderess is ultimately a text that endows the reader with the freedom to make up his mind as to the main character’s motives and to sympathize with, understand, or be appalled by her actions. To a greater or lesser extent The Murderess combines three types of fiction: fictional (auto)biography,6 psychological thriller, and social novel. The first two pertain to the ‘subjectivity’ of the protagonist and the third to the ‘objectivity’ of the context. What links the first two is the state of sleep or half-sleep that enables Frankojannou to visualize and summarize her life by means of dreams and visions: “The whole of her life, with its futility and its emptiness and hardness, had come into her mind in pictures and scenes, and in visions” (2, 418).7The conclusion that she reaches quite early on is that throughout her life she has served other people, something that is emphasized through the use of words such as ‘serve’ and ‘slave’. In her private thoughts, when she summed up her entire life, she saw that she had never done anything except serve others. When she was a little girl, she had served 5. Roderick Beaton, An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 78. Moreover, Frankojannou has been compared or contrasted with Lady Macbeth, Euripides’s Medea, and Aeschylus’s Clytemnestra. 6 . Xenophon Kokolis in his study “Avro- KCXLETEPO-PLOYPCX(PLU~& UTY @6v~cracu” in TLa 77) @ ~ V L U U CTOU X I ~ W T C U ~ LAfro C U~ ~ L& E AVE T ~ ~~~)~(Thessaloniki: :L ( Y T C X University Studio Press, 1993), 9 4 3 argues that Papadiamantis is identified with Frankojannou and his novel could be seen as a form of ‘hetero-biography’. 7. I quote here from the English translation of Peter Levi, The Murderers (London: Writers and Readers, 1983) and page numbers are given after each quotation. Although I do not agree with Levi’s transliteration (e.g.. Frankojannou instead of Frangoyannou), the names of the characters retain the spelling used in the translation in order to avoid confusion. For Frankojannou’s son Moron, also known as Mulberry or Mug, the first form is used throughout. Readers also should be warned that part of the text of chapter 16 (pp. 120-22) in Levi’s translation has been accidentally transposed. Due to these problems with the translation, reference is also made to the Greek text of the novel; the second, italicized number after each quotation refers to the pages in the standard edition of Papadiamantis’s A~CXVTCY, ed. N. Triantaphyllopoulos, vol. 3 (Athens: Domos, 1984), 417-520.
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her parents. When she was mated, she became a slave of her husband, and at the same time, because of her strength and his weakness, she was his nurse. When she had children she became a slave to her children, and when they had children of their own, she was slave to her grandchildren (1-2,417).
The protagonist recalls her past and at the same time tries to erase it by killing the girls. She is trying to forget, but her life comes back as a nightmare. Trapped under “the black wings of her dreams” and “torn by the claws of reality” (100,498), she becomes a prisoner of her memories and dreams, which in turn induce her to overcome her reservations about the killings. Her recollections could be described as nightmarish, while her dreams and fantasies play a crucial role in the narrative as they allow the narrator and consequently the reader to probe into Frankojannou’s state of mind. To the nightmare of her own life, another nightmare is later added when her daughters take on the shape of her victims (95,494-95). Papadiamantis frequently uses digression to balance the information about the life of his main character with the elements of mystery and dramatic tension. The digressions serve as a kind of relief and in this way he is able to regulate the dramatic tension released within the narrative. The combination of a third-person narrative with direct access to the character’s thoughts also reduces dramatic tension, as we are constantly made aware of when Frankojannou has murderous sentiments. The mystery and tension is further reduced by the fact that there is no element of a “whodunnit.” However, this does not mean that there is no dramatic tension. On the contrary, the tension is heightened before each murder when we are wondering whether she will fulfil her murderous thoughts. It is also present when she is being pursued, and the police come very close to her, but do not arrest her. As a result, instead of devoting time to worlung out who committed the crimes, the reader tries to answer the question “Why did she do it?’ and thus forces himself to look further into the past and assess the characters and their social context. Too much tension within the novel could have directed the reader’s attention more to the action than to the main character’s motives and biography. Dramatic relief, through digressions and flashbacks, is a vital ingredient of the plot that allows the reader to have a better picture of the protagonist’s background story. The flashbacks are important to elicit the empathy of the reader. As the main narrative unfolds over the relatively brief space of barely four months, a rather narrow picture of the protagonist would have been portrayed without them. In this respect, one of the most interesting digressions, or rather, pauses, in the narrative is that in chapter 6. At the end of the previous chapter Frankojannou had just killed her grandchild. It is a moment that the storyline had been leading up to since the opening, and heralded even by the title. The fact that the story of Frankojannou’s son follows immediately afterward is a kind
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of bathos. There is a moment of high drama; the reader anticipates a prompt continuation after the moment of murder, but Papadiamantis skillfully wheels the story round into a comparatively relaxed recollection of the aftermath of a previous crime, when the policemen were searching for Moron. We are kept in a state of excited anticipation as to developments concerning the more recent murder of the grandchild. The Moron “interlude” is not irrelevant by any means though, as it shows firstly Frankojannou’s motherly love, secondly her own characteristics repeated in her offspring, and thirdly her determination, eloquence, and strength, both physical and mental. The narrative then reverts to the murder of the granddaughter and the commotion in the household is terrifying. The effect of this pause has been essentially to give one time to think about the murder, and to find out more about Frankojannou’s past. In The Murderess Papadiamantis skillfully blends the social conditions with the inner struggle and uses dreams and recollections to build a crescendo and provide an insight into the motivation for the murders. The dreams and recollections, therefore, are an important structural device that help Papadiamantis to unveil the past and the state of mind of his protagonist so that the reader understands better what led Frankojannou to the murders. As the narrator of the novel is a third person and not Frankojannou herself, her dreams and recollections facilitate the subtle presentation of her thoughts and feelings. A sympathetic image of Frankojannou is gradually constructed, providing an implicit justification for her actions. Her revelations are part of the process of self-analysis, of a dialogue with herself, while the narrator, as a kind of alter ego, seems to corroborate her innermost thoughts and secret intentions. The narrator at times confirms the sincerity of Frankojannou when, for example, she is in confessional mood during the night of her first crime. At that moment in the sleepless night she admitted it to herself for the first time. She had never mentioned it even in confession, where anyway she used to confess only very small things, just the usual sins that the priest knew before she said them: malicious gossip, anger, women’s bad language and so on. She had never confessed to her mother in her mother’s lifetime, though she had been the only person to suspect the truth without even being told it. It was true she had tried, and she had decided to tell her in her last moments. But unhappily, before her death the old woman became deaf, dumb and unconscious, ‘like an object’, as her daughter described her condition, so Hadoula had had no opportunity of confessing her sin (I 6, 429-30, my emphasis).
In this way the narrator demonstrates a lund of solidarity with the protagonist. Not only does he share her thoughts without ever challenging her, but he even plays the role of a detached observer and, one might say, of an independent
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judge.* Indeed, elsewhere the narrator acts as the guardian of truth, presenting himself as the validating authority who can have undistorted access to Frankojannou’s intentions: “It was true that she had not thought of it. But it was a hypocritical piece of sincerity” (59, 465).9 Occasionally the narrator appears to identify with Frankojannou and to raise some important questions on her behalf. As for Krinio, the little one, if only God would give her grace! However things might be, her mother had no intention (she couldn’t manage any more, couldn’t cope) of putting up with a tiny fraction of what she had suffered for her sister,just in order to marry her off. But I ask you, do there really have to be so many daughters? And if so, is it worth the trouble of bringing them up? “Isn’t there,” asked Frankojannou, “isn’t there always death and always a cliff?” Better for them to make haste above. “You’re telling me, neighbour” (35, 445). In this passage the first questions are raised by the narrator, as Frankojannou’s subsequent question is clearly demarcated and attributed to her. Indeed, often the narrator’s thoughts converge dangerously with those of Frankojannou or as Mary Layoun aptly put it: “The wandering thoughts of the ostracized and outcast old fugitive, Khadoula, seep into and stain the third-person narrative until, at times, it verges on the first person.”’” Yet in other parts of the narrative the role of the narrator seems to be confused, as in the following passage where the adverbs ‘anxiously’ (uplistos) and ‘fortunately’ (eftihos) contradict each other and represent two different points of view. This is a good example of the way in which the narrator identifies with and distances himself from the protagonist: “For days now Frankojannou had been watching anxiously for symptoms of convulsion in the weak little creature-because then she knew she could not survive-but fortunately she observed nothing of the kind. ‘She’s there to be tortured and to torture us,’ she had whispered to herself without being overheard”( 13,427). On the next page the narratorial voice clearly tries to defend her: “Yes, she did say it, but she would certainly never have been capable of doing it. Not even Hadoula herself believed that”( 14,428). Hence, one might ask, what is the point of this 8. Georgia Farinou-Malamatari (op. cit., p. 234) argues that the thoughts of Frankojannou are often formulated in a highly rhetorical idiom unusual for private thoughts and incompatible with her ordinary discourse. 9. At one point the comments of the narrator concerning Frankojannou’s sincerity are demarcated clearly by the use of a parenthesis: “(Frankojannou had made up this impromptu explanation out of the air and by inspiration)” (61, 467). 10. Mary N. Layoun, Travels ofa Genre: The Modern Novel and Ideology (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press 1990), 51.
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statement? On what is it based? Perhaps the narrator is trying to show that Frankojannou was not a murderer by nature or even by conviction. The role of the narrator in The Murderess can be described by using Dorrit Cohn’s term psycho-narration where an external narrator describes the character’s mental state. Cohn distinguishes between two types of psychonarration: dissonant and consonant. The former “is dominated by a prominent narrator who, even as he focuses intently on an individual psyche, remains emphatically distanced from the consciousness he narrates; the other is mediated by a narrator who remains effaced and who readily fuses with the consciousness he narrates.”” The narrator in The Murderess seems to oscillate between these two narrative strategies as there is often convergence and only occasionally disparity between the narrating and the figural consciousness.’2 According to Cohn, dissonant psycho-narration is generally favored by critics who demand moral guidance for the readers of novels, and condemned by those who want to grant readers the freedom of their own judgments.I3 What has been said about the ‘free indirect discourse’ as a technique of internalization could also apply to the narrative mode of The Murderess: “The effect of greater interiority is achieved by the oscillation or differential between the perspectives of narrator and character, by the process of moving back and forth between ‘outside’ and ‘inside’, a movement that seems palpably to carve out a space of subjective interiority precisely through its narrative obje~tification.”’~ Indeed, what is at work in Papadiamantis’s text is the ‘sympathetic’ proximity and the ‘ironic’ separation of narrator and chara~ter.’~ In short, the narrator provides the link with the context and reins in the tendency of the protagonist to withdraw into her inner world replete with dreams, memories, and fantasies. Only the narrator can have direct access to the protagonist’s mind and at the same time maintain a distance in order to provide other details, mainly through the digressions in the narrative. The most extensive digressions in the novel are the story of Moron, who injured his sister Amersa, and that of Marousso, whose illegitimate child Frankojannou helped to abort. These digressions, and other minor ones, show the silent sufferings of women in the small society of the island. The main problem for women and their families is the provision of a dowry, which explains 11. Dorrit Cohn, Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), 26. 12. Lefteris Papaleontiou in his article “H T C X W S ~ L C popcp4 X ~ TC~X@,6v~uuas SU T L K ~ KCXL o Acpqyq+” (Ehhgv~~Cu 47, no. 2 [1997]: 34344) argues that the narrative tends toward the characteristics of a consonant psycho-narration. 13. Cohn, op. cit., p. 29. 14. Michael McKeon, ed., Theoly ofthe Novel; A Historical Approach (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 485. 15. See also Massimo Pen, A O K ~ ~ A L C~X~ ~ T ~ c x Ted. o ~S. oN.~ Philippidis ~ ~ Y s ,(Herakleio: Panepistimiakes Ekdoseis Kritis, 1994). 71-76 and 91-92.
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why Frankojannou kills only girls and not boys. Apart from the social problems (poverty, emigration) mentioned in the novel, there is also the political problem of the local community’s resistance to the central authority and to its local representatives. Papadiamantis voices the opinion of the local people when he says that the evil of brigandage was succeeded by that of taxation. The opposition to various social institutions (taxation, police) expressed in the novel indicates a preference for local forms of social organization rather than centralized administration. Again one can trace here a preference for the primordial, natural, and local instead of the modem and urban, which constitutes a manifestation of the opposition between nature and culture. It should be pointed out that Frankojannou is not pursued by the villagers for her crimes. It is as if the local society condones them. Indeed there is no evidence in the novel of a public outcry over the murders. This supposition is reinforced toward the end where the attitude of the local municipal employees is distinguished from that of the police. But again, a coincidence comforted her and inspired her with a little hope. If one of the two officers of the law was a fellow-villager, a local man in municipal service, that might mean he had undertaken the pursuit he was charged with as an imposition. Perhaps he might delay the mad dash of his companion, the policeman. It was not improbable the field-guard might feel a secret sympathy for the runaway, unfortunate woman that she was, pursued and scrambling up above him with bloody feet on broken rocks. He might not even be quite certain of her guilt (12&21,517).
It is not clear whose opinion is conveyed here by the narrative. It is also worth noting that Frankojannou refers to the police as ‘dogs’ indicating her hostility toward them. Moreover she is almost certain that her fellow-villagers will not help the police when they are asked whether they have seen her. Apart from society, it is also the family context that disturbs Frankojannou. The relationship between the members of her family is not very friendly or supportive. Frankojannou is forced to steal from her parents in order to make up the poor dowry she has been given. Her mother calls her “little witch” and her cohabitation with her sister-in-law becomes increasingly intolerable: “impatient to be liberated from the tyrannical rule of her ageing and increasingly eccentric sister-in-law” (12, 427). Moron injures his sister while husbands tend to be unsupportive or indifferent. To sum up, in Frankojannou’s experience the institutions of family and society are dominated by violence, inequality, and injustice. Frankojannou herself tries to support her own children, as in the case of Moron when she spends a substantial amount of money in order to free him from jail. Her concem for him suggests that she is not a selfcentered or uncaring individual and her maternal instinct is very strong, though
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it could be argued that she feels some sort of special solidarity toward her rebellious son. It has also been suggested that there is a hereditary evil bloodline that links Frankojannou’s mother, Frankojannou herself, and her son, all of whom find themselves pursued. In the end, Frankojannou becomes tired and disillusioned and her killings are both acts of despair and a rejection of society in an attempt to assert her individuality and independence. It is significant that the two women (Hadoula and Amersa), who are mentioned in most detail in the novel, have male qualities (“masculine air” [l, 4 1 3 , “mannish” [20,433],“she was a bold and resolute girl” [23,435],“manwoman Amersa” [35, 4451). Amersa rejects marriage and Frankojannou appears stronger and more competent than her husband who could not even assert his rights in respect of wages: “If she had not been there, they would have tricked him every day. They would never have given him the right wages for his work on the boats, at the dry docks or in the boat yard, where he laboured as a carpenter and a fitter” (5,421). Frankojannou seems to be quick in her responses, intelligent, and rational, though after the first murder she is carried away by the momentum of her crimes. The men in the novel, on the other hand, tend to be indolent and rather indifferent to what is going on in their houses (Konstantis, Lyringos) while Konstantis, Delcharo’s husband, is described as clumsy and ill-made (8, 423; 34, 444). Trapped by society, the decisions of her parents, and her memories or dreams, Frankojannou is constantly seeking her independence. For her, independence is paramount and she experiences the greatest joy in her life when she is able to move to a house of her own (12,427). The social position of women and their marital problems appear to be issues that trouble the whole community and not only Frankojannou. She remembered other times when her mother had expressed herself with a meaningful shake of the head to the women and the old crones of the neighbourhood as they discussed the great superfluity of young girls, the rarity of young men, their journeys abroad, their huge demands for dowries and all the tortures a Christian woman went through to establish her ‘weaker vessels’. During discussions of that kind Hadoula uttered similar sentiments (14,428).
What she proposes as a solution to these problems is either that people should cease getting married or for girls to curtail their lives: “May they go no further!” Frankojannou does not think that the position of women can improve within society and, hence, what is suggested is an abrupt halt in the patterns of human engagement and a reversal of human evolution. In her violent response to these social problems, one can detect Papadiamantis’s own disappointment in his society, his desire for solitude, and even social revenge.
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Frankojannou seems to commit the murders as the result of a logical analysis and a reflection on the social position of women whereas at night her dreams and fantasies bring her into an unhinged state. Hence, her actions are presented as a combination of premeditation and irrationality and as the result of a dual pressure on her that Papadiamantis indicates vividly yet subtly. On the one hand, she spends her nights awake next to the sick child contemplating its bleak future and on the other the images of her past torment her relentlessly: “Sleeplessness was in Frankojannou’s nature and in her temperament. She thought over a thousand things, and sleep did not come to her easily. Her ponderings and memories, dim images of the past, arose in her mind one after the other like waves that her soul could see” (15,429). Past and present exert an enormous mental pressure on the protagonist who sees no purpose and no pleasure in life. The visions of the protagonist and the memory of her sufferings induce in her an excited mental and emotional condition while at the same time serving as justifications for her actions. In the novel there is a fusion of past and present, dream and reality, rationality and irrationality, innocence and sin. As the protagonist oscillates between these extremes, the text explores the formation of the subject by forces and conditions imposed by circumstances. The interweaving of her recollections and dreams with the time spent nursing the sick child creates two narrative sequences: one that takes place in the past and in Frankojannou’s mind and one that takes place in the present in the relatively short timespan from January to May. The interplay of these two narrative levels implies that the past determines and informs the present. Through her memories Frankojannou tends to relive the past, though her dreams seem to suspend time, representing a fusion of past and future in the present. Frankojannou is one of those characters in Papadiamantis who return obsessively to the same places “in an attempt to recapture the past and so obliterate time.”16 For example, after the murders she seeks refuge in the old village, the Castle, where she spent the first ten years of her life, as t h s place seems to represent for her the sense of freedom outside the boundaries of organized ~0ciety.l~ By trying to reverse or even obliterate time, Frankojannou is in a sense seeking to reverse the decline, the destruction of the old by the new. The old village, where Hadoula was offered a deserted, tumbledown house as a dowry, had been abandoned and the settlement had been moved and replaced by a modem town. Also the remote chapels she visits during her pursuit seem to have been left unattended, to be ravaged by time and the elements. 16. Peter Mackridge, “The Textualization of Place in Greek Fiction, 1883-1903,” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 2, no. 2 (1992): 164. 17. “Her refuge would be up there where her childhood memories were. Hadoula had been born on those northern shores, close to the wild blue sea, in the old Castle on its gigantic, sea-smitten rock. It was there she had been brought up until the age of ten” (83,485).
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The Murderess represents a kind of narrative reconstruction of Frankojannou’s past, a retelling of her life. It is a reexamination and reconstitution of herself as a subject and how she is defined by her social context. Her dreams and recollections constitute her own private space, where she can review her life, express her anger, and claim her subjectivity. This is an imaginary site where she is released from the constraints of the context and can plot her antisocial revenge. It is the domain of thoughts, emotions, and fears; a private space where Frankojannou appears to be in control and articulates her desire to relive her own life. Here what has been said about the writing of autobiography in general, being described as an act of producing difference by repetition, can be applied.I8 The killing of the young girls seems to represent the symbolic denial of her past, her latent desire to start her life all over again.I9 The murders are the result of the release of an internal pressure that had built up gradually. Thus we are made aware that not only do external events influence internal dynamics, but vice versa. Recollections and dreams activate the dormant personal past, which in turn acquires an unusual momentum and energy, thus contributing to the feeling that it is Frankojannou’s awakened psychological frustration that moves the plot forward. Compared to this explosive inner reality, the external world appears static and unchanging. The mental turmoil outweighs the social drama. After the first murder, Frankojannou’s inner self becomes increasingly autonomous; the external stimuli cease to be so crucial and a kind of internal dynamic is developed where the idea of getting rid of girls becomes pleasurable. Following the first murder, the desire to kill is not so much externally driven as self-driven, indicating the gradual autonomy of Frankojannou’s inner world. Her social self gives way to her demonic self, the logic of society is replaced by an irrational excitement. The murders disrupt the supposedly progressive course of society and challenge its complexity. Frankojannou does not simply try to rewrite and reshape her past; she attempts to intervene in its social evolution. The novel as a whole represents a regression, a revisiting of the past through memory, a return to origins and nature as she tries to restore the priority of natural law over the social. On a narrative and thematic level, the novel represents a regression to childhood, to innocence and nature. As self-representational narrative it expresses a desire on the part of the protagonist to relive and correct her life, a kind of symbolic rebirth. As a social novel it represents a movement away from society toward na18. Michael Sprinker, “Fictions of the Self The End of Autobiography” in James Olney, ed., Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980). 342. 19. Some have argued that Frankojannou’s actions are equivalent to suicide. See Saunier, l?wucpbpo~KCXL Apwuoq, 231,246.
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ture, which is often portrayed as an earthly paradise in lyrical descriptions such as this: “It was a sweet May dawn. The blue and rose clarity of heaven shed a golden colouring on plants and bushes. The twitter of nightingales could be heard in the woods, and the innumerable small birds uttered their indescribable concert, passionately, insatiably” (1 14, 510).20These descriptions of nature, which highlight its exuberance and beauty, contrast with the menacing images of it during Frankojannou’s pursuit. With the murders, Frankojannou tries to turn the clock back, to stop her victims entering society. The deaths can be seen as something positive, a release and a departure from the problems of the present life: “When she returned to the house of death to attend the ceremony of consolation in the evening, old Hadoula could find no word of comfort to say. She was all joy and she blessed the innocent child and its parents. And grief was joy and death was life and everything was upside down. Ah, look . . . nothing is exactly what it seems, anything but, in fact rather the opposite. Given that grief is joy and death is life and resurrection, then disaster is happiness and disease is health” (36,446).By saying that “nothing is exactly what it seems,” the hidden and the untold is privileged while the realistic and the facile is challenged. Papadiamantis invites the reader to probe deeper by questioning age-old oppositions and by seeing life in death. In this way the killings of the girls could be treated as a sacrifice for a better future. Earthly life is not sacrosanct when it is riddled with troubles. Frankojannou kills only girls who are either sickly or poor. These two conditions are represented as social and not natural evils, although natural metaphors are used to describe the growing of girls.*’ Killing them is not simply a form of revenge against society, but constitutes an attempt to restore a natural balance and the priority of nature over culture. Through the obliteration of the physically weak and the socially disadvantaged, what is sought is a return to the natural law of the survival of the fittest rather than the social laws imposed by the fittest. The deaths, in other words, represent a defense of nature and its laws. They can be seen as a sacrifice in the struggle of the natural against the Frankojannou does not commit the murders because she is evil, but due to social pressure. She spends several sleepless nights with her granddaughter 20. See also pp. 446, 469. 21. “‘My God, how they grow!’ thought Frankojannou. What garden, what meadow, what springtime produced this plant? And how it thrives and flowers and puts out leaves and establishes itself? And will all these shoots, every budding plant, grow to greens and lawns and gardens? And so on for ever?” (20,433). 22. Nature, described as an all-powerful goddess, features at the end of Andreas Karkavitsas’s two novels: H A v v q i ) [Fair Maid] (1890) and 0 Z T ~ ~ U [The O ‘ OBeggar] S (1896).
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looking after her and her mother, a self-imposed task that indicates devotion and selflessness. Only after the first murder does it become easier for her to contemplate further murders. It is also worth pointing out that, when suspicions arise, Frankojannou does not stay to defend herself nor does she even think for a moment that she might have fair treatment from the police. She has a deep-rooted mistrust of justice and society and the only solution is escape. Papadiamantis implies here that justice and morality are not given and objective entities, but socially constructed. The prison lies in Frankojannou’s soul and in her mind and thus the right of imprisonment is implicitly denied to society. On the other hand, nature can play the role of the moral judge as becomes clear in the following quotation: “Down in Bad Valley, in its lowest depths, close to the Black Cave, the rocks were dancing a devildance in the night. They stood up like living things, and hunted after Frankojannou and stoned her, as if they were sling-shot by invisible, avenging hands. . . . At times certain stones dropped from a height and struck with lively malice at her face. It really did feel as if an invisible hand was aiming a sling-shot at her head” (117-18,512). By restoring the priority of nature over culture and by seeking to replace social inequality with natural balance, the novel suggests that this is the only way to achieve social peace and tranquillity. Uncaring parents and an unjust society destroy the harmony and trust between people. This leads to the assertion of the kind of natural laws that endorse the survival of the fittest. Maybe this was meant to be the novel’s warning message to society, urging people to wake up and strive to improve. On the other hand, it is more likely that Papadiamantis was deeply pessimistic about social development and saw recourse to nature (and its laws) as the only alternative to a rigidly organized and doomed society. The only hope is a return to an Edenic life. The Murderess can be divided into two parts. In the first part Frankojannou tries to cope with the social sphere: to tackle the problem of the dowry, to build a house, to help her son face the authorities. Relying on memory in this first part, she tries to justify her resistance to the social hierarchy and regress to a more natural earlier stage by rethinking her life. In the second part she abandons the social concerns and moves towards the native. The action now takes place outside the social domain of the village as Frankojannou finds resort in nature. The movement away from the social toward the natural and primordial is a kind of regression which, as has been said, is matched at the level of narrative by the extensive reliance on retrospection. In the second part of the novel the emphasis is on recalling her youth: In her sleep she thought she was still young; her father and mother married her off in her dream as they had done in fact, and gave her ‘the blessing of the dear
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departed’ and the dowry, including her father’s plot, where she had dug and watered cabbages and beans when she was little (87,488). And sleep came to her again, deep and continuous. She dreamt then as if she were reliving all her past life. What was extraordinary was that she dreamt the continuation of her own dreams of the past day (95,494).
Frankojannou is not simply recollecting her life, she is reclaiming her subjectivity and her individual will. Her memories represent the defense and the relaunch of her individuality against the overwhelming circumstances. The reenactment of her life through dreams and memories articulates her desire to reinvent herself as a subject, to renegotiate her position in society. Moreover, there is an element of repetition and circularity in the novel that is emphasized by the fact that the grandmother gives her name to her granddaughter. The sense that the story is repeating itself is fostered by the fact that Frankojannou’s mother was also hunted. There are some further parallels between the two as both women are associated with witchcraft or natural medicine. Frankojannou in particular seems to be close to the natural world through her knowledge and use of herbs and other plants. She always carries her basket for the herbs and is a successful healer. Even her killings could be seen as a social remedy and at one point her roles as murderess and healer are blurred: “Old Hadoula had to stay all that night in the cabin, where she experienced the rare and indescribable sensations of a murderess transformed suddenly into doctor to her own victims” (62,468). In addition, the pursuit of her mother by the brigands presents striking similarities with the hunting of Frankojannou by the police. The fact that both women escape by hiding either in the trunk of a pine tree or in a place hidden and made inaccessible by vegetation suggests that they identify with nature and use it as their refuge. In both cases there is reference to dryads,23which reinforces the sense that both women are social outcasts and see the natural world as their protective spirit. The story of Frankojannou’s mother is an early digression in the plot and its function is not immediately clear or justified. However, one could argue that it helps to underline the circular and repetitive pattern in the lives of the two women. Both appear to be victims of the social system and both try to resist the authorities by escaping into nature. In this respect, the story of her mother is a prolepsis of the pursuit of Frankojannou adumbrating her taking refuge in nature and her resistance to organized society. 23. “The dryads, the forest nymphs whom she perhaps invoked in her magic, were protecting her, they were blinding her pursuers, they were laying a leaf-coloured mist, a green darkness over their eyes-and they failed to see her” (4,420). “It was a secret, untrodden place. It formed a kind of cavern of grass and tree-trunks and ivy. The cave of a Nymph, of a Dryad of ancient times, or a Naiad who perhaps found refuge there” (86,487).
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The end of the novel is also significant in two respects. Firstly, by directing the protagonist’s eyes to her dowry, Papadiamantis reminds the reader of the social motive of the story. Secondly, the fact that she is drowned, finding her death between human and divine justice, is telling, as her death might be seen as a return to nature. Papadiamantis is sympathetic toward Frankojannou and through her story tries to unveil the real causes of her crimes. Yet he cannot condone the murders and finds her ‘natural’ death the best solution since nature appears to have moral and even judicial qualities. The death of Frankojannou has been seen as a form of baptism or (re)birth in view of the fact that she is able to speak while her nose and ears are covered by the water.24 The above readings of the ending point to a wider interpretation whereby the protagonist returns and is punished by nature, which symbolizes both freedom and expiation. Morality and justice are not represented by society, but by nature, which is identified with God. The end of the novel ties in with its wider aim, which is to trace a regression to the past, to the innocence of childhood, and ultimately to the chastity of nature. The ebb and flow of the water, although necessary for a convincing death, suggests also a recurring pattern that involves periodic purification through immersion in water and reg e n e r a t i ~ nThe . ~ ~ way that the novel ends further underlines the retrospective nature of the narrative.
24. Georgia Farinou-Malamatari in her book A ~ ~ ) ~ Y T ) ~ CTSXVLKCS YTLKCS UTOV ~ ~ C Y T ~ S L L U ~ L C I . V T 1887-1910, (op. cit., pp. 67-68) argues that the death of Frankojannou could be seen as a form of baptism and purification, a symbolic reunion with the spiritual community from which she was cut off after her first crime. Moreover, according to Xenophon Kokolis (“ ‘Ovc~pcuK W &hXa U T ~@ ~ V L U U ~ ’ ’ in ria TV @ ~ V L U U C YTOU H~TcYBL(Y~LCI.VT~; Air0 ~ S ~ ~ E T ~ ~op. ~ Ccit., Y Tp.C58), Y , Frankojannou’s drowning represents a return to the state just before birth, being a cinematic representation of the exodus from the womb. In his prologue to the recent edition of The Murderess (Athens: Estia, 2001) Stavros Zoumboulakis argues that the ending of the story is very simple and suggests that Frankojannou dies without a hearing for her crimes. Rena Zamarou provides a detailed account in her article “H psy&Aq C ~ O U P T O ~ V C71s U @ ~ C X ~ K O ~ L C Y V U0 OU nohirr)~, S,” nos. 80, 8 1 (September-October 2000): 4650, 55-60 respectively, of the different readings of the way the novel ends and argues that Frankojannou dies ‘trapped’ by the sea in the same way she lived constrained by her internal entrapment. See also the short article by Christos Papazoglou, “KCXL T&L y ~ TaO T ~ X O ST ~ @6v~uac*s,” S hfLKpOpLhOhO)1YLK&, no. 9 (spring 2001): 16-20 who, among other things, points out that the sea is associated with death in Papadiamantis’s stories. 25. Water has a multiple function in the novel. First, it is presented as a cause of death (for the three older girls and Hadoula herself) and not as a life-giving force; secondly, it induces soul-searching, and thirdly acts as a barrier against Frankojannou’s escape. Elizabeth Constantinides points out that death by drowning is described or alluded to in no fewer than sixteen of Papadiamantis’s stories. In connection to The Murderess she argues that “throughout the story the proximity of a body of water-cistem, well, sea-is always sinister: it will always be an instrument of death. . . . The sea as bringer of death, however, is not always a malign entity. It is also perceived as a benign mother welcoming her creatures back to her.” (“Love and Death: The Sea in the Work of Alexandros Papadiamantis,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 4 [1988]: 106-7.) See also Saunier, Ewup6ppos K ( Y L A ~ W U O S 232-33, , and Roderick Beaton, “The Sea as Metaphorical Space in Modem Greek Literature,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 7 , no. 2 (1989): 257-59.
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It should be stressed at this point that in the novel, nature and sacredness tend to be identified with one another as Frankojannou visits or sets out to visit remote chapels when she is hunted, thus reinforcing the association of nature with Christian shriving and salvation (an association that can be found in other stories by Papadiamantis). She visits Saint John in Hiding, visited by all those who have a secret sin or pain; meets Father Josaphat, whose words from the Psalms trouble her; finally, she heads for the chapel of the Holy Saviour to meet the “real seer of secrets,” old Akakios. The isolation in the wilderness and the struggle with consciousness are features that bring Frankojannou closer to the eremitic life. Asceticism is the recognition of an individual secret life, of a private repentance away from society. The individual acquires his mental freedom and rehabilitates his moral consciousness within the austere calm of nature. While being hunted Frankojannou leads the life of a hermit, spending her night in the cave where the sounds of nature add to her tormenting fantasies. “She slept in her hiding-place in the dank and brinish cave that night. Echoes boomed in her ears. The waves foamed under her feet with prolonged roars of rage. Deep in her breast, she heard the weeping of innocent infants. Speechless whistles of the distant wind reached her” (120, 524). As we can see from the above quotation, nature fosters a manifestation of remorse and fear, thus contributing to the moral self-analysis. The text also refers to another aspect of monasticism: the benefits of childlessness. “How fortunate those men were who had felt from their first youth, as if by divine inspiration, what it was best to do and what they could do; not bring other unhappy creatures into the world. Everything was secondary to that. Those men had been granted wisdom as an inheritance, without having to darken their minds with the pursuit of truth which is never captured” ( 1 11, 507). Monasticism represents the suspension of human reproduction, the denial of social life, and the reversal of time. At an individual level it might be seen as an answer to the whole issue posed by the murderess, although she contemplates an escape to the opposite shore or even, in her despair, expresses the wish to be a bird. Yet Frankojannou’s wandering in untrodden places can be treated as a return to the condition of an animal which, at a more general and collective level, makes the return to the wild a way out of the social impasse. At this point one might ask: is Papadiamantis writing a novel from a female perspective, a novel that advocates women’s emancipation by showing their sufferings? It could be argued that through the dreams and recollections of his protagonist he demarcates an inner female space that strives to redefine and assert itself against a male-dominated society. The acts of violence are an attempt to make this private space public-like a volcano that erupts with disastrous consequences. The return to a more natural stage might be
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seen as a challenge to the socially constructed inequality between gender roles. It seems to me that Papadiamantis is trying to show in a general way the impasse in his society, to question the idea of progress and to advocate the idea of recurrence and a return to a purer presocial condition through the idea of regression, which is the dominant theme of the novel. It is as if he advocates a shock to society such as only the murder of young girls can provide. The nostalgia for a bucolic past seen in his other stories is transformed into a shocking recognition of the violent and liberating forces concurrently inherent in nature. In a number of Papadiamantis’s stories the opposition between nature and culture, rural and urban life is highlighted by showing the self-sufficiency and happiness of rural life and the corruption and greed of urban dwellers. For example, in the story “Dream among the Waters” (“Oneiro sto kyma”), the protagonist, working in a law firm in Athens, expresses his nostalgia for his wasted childhood, his native island, and the years when he “was still a natural man.” The story ends with the protagonist sighing (“Oh! if only I were still a mountain herdsman!”), which privileges the natural life, often associated with innocent and carefree youth, over a restrictive and unhappy city life.26 In her study of the idyllic dimension in Papadiamantis’s fiction, Georgia Farinou-Malamatari argues that the Papadiamantian text constitutes a journey of memory with the aim of rediscovering the lost unity between the human being and the natural The desire for the restoration of this lost unity can be found not only in ‘idyllic’ stories, but also in less idyllic ones such as The Murderess. Yet it could be argued that if in other, mostly earlier, stories the return to nature is couched in pastoral and nostalgic terms, in The Murderess this return entails physical violence and social resistance. Perhaps as Papadiamantis grew older his nostalgia for the past and nature gave way to moods of anger and despair. Certainly there is no attempt in The Murderess to portray the life on the island as timeless and idyllic; instead it is the narrative of a society in violent transition and confrontation with urban and modernizing trends. Perhaps Mary Layoun is right when she argues that “Papadiamantis’s fiction suggests the necessity of radical change rather than the defence and preservation of Greek tradition” or that his fiction “reveals less a romanticization of the peasantry than the urgent need for change in their condition.”28But the point 26. For more on this story see my article, “Dialogism and Interpretation: Reading Papadiamantis’s A Dream among the waters,” Byzantine and Modem Greek Studies 17 (1993): 14140. 27. Georgia Farinou-Malamatari, “H E L ~ U A A L C X K~~L & U T C X UT ~ ~ S~qyqpa~oypaqius S TOU IhTru8bap&vTq: MEPLK~S P C X ~ ~ T ~ ~ ~KCXL ~ U PE~ L O TSC ~ U E L S , ”in H A&&m6mq kfaysia:
I 7 a ~ i 6 ~ a p i Y 1991v q ~ ’Eva acp~ippwpa(Athens: Idryma Goulandri-Horn, 1992), 78. 28. Layoun, op. cit., pp. 37, 41.
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is that Papadiamantis does not outline or suggest a program of social reform. He might not be happy with the social status quo, creating characters like Frankojannou who react violently to social inequality, but the solution for him lies not in moving forward but backward to an organic, natural, and presocial condition. This, of course, is a position more implied in texts such as The Murderess than clearly articulated. Papadiamantis was making the point that society could not sort out its inequalities or tackle its inadequacies and, therefore, the only alternative is the Darwinian notion of natural selection.29However, his point of departure is not a strong commitment to Darwinian theory, but his disillusion with social developments in his day as well as his attachment to nature. His worship of nature and the arcadianism of some of his other stories is transformed here into a more general plea for a return to natural laws. It has to be acknowledged, however, that this return might involve extreme measures if ‘natural selection’ is allowed to sanction the extermination of young girls. One could argue that in The Murderess there is a nostalgia for a pre-social condition closer to nature, a nostalgia for origins that is expressed through the narrative retrospection. Disappointment with the Greek central administration (as expressed in the text), and in contemporary social practices that result in inequality for women and family discord, lead Papadiamantis not so much to seek change as to propose withdrawal to the past. A whole-hearted support by Papadiamantis of the Darwinian notion of propagation and survival of the fittest will imply an androcentric orientation of the novel that would contradict the narrator’s tacit sympathy toward Frankojannou’s sufferings. Moreover, natural selection has been seen as one of the underpinnings of a selfish and amoral capitalist society based on the division between the strong and the weak, a social vision that does not tally with Papadiamantis’s affection for the disadvantaged and the poor. Darwinian evolutionary theory represented an assault on traditional beliefs concerning God, religion, and humanity, but also led, toward the end of the nineteenth century, to pessimistic and regressive visions of society associated with degeneration, best articulated by Max Nordau’s influential book Degeneration (1892-1893). On this account, Papadiamantis’s text could be seen as part of the intellectual climate of the end of the nineteenth century when “notions of ‘evolution’, ‘progress’ and ‘reform’ led to an urgent fascination for their apparent opposites: ‘regression’, ‘atavism’ and ‘decline’.’’30 29. Jina Politi in her article, “ACXPPLULK~ K E ~ ( L E Y O K ~ qL @ou~uua TOV rIam8Lapiwq,” in ZUVO~LAOVTCXF p c T(Y K E ~ ~ F V (Athens: ( Y Agra, 1996), 155-81 argues that the law of nature represents the space between human and divine justice where Frankojannou finds her death. Frankojannou for her is the personification of Darwinian nature. 30. Peter Childs. Modernism (London: Routledge, ZOOO), 39.
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It is indeed difficult to argue that Papadiamantis espouses Darwinian natural selection in a systematic way in The Murderess. It is likely that he was familiar with the theory, but the Darwinian aspects of his novel should be placed in a wider context, involving the prioritization of nature over culture. Papadiamantis’s strong religious convictions cannot easily be squared with Darwinian theory, unless the emphasis on natural law is interpreted as a return to nature. Nature in the text has a liberating and purifying role. Through natural selection Frankojannou believes that social inequality and human weakness can be confronted and obliterated. At the same time she seeks her freedom in nature, while her death in the sea has allegorically a purifying effect. One might ask why Papadiamantis described his novel as social. Perhaps what he is implying is that social ‘progress’ leads only to inequality and in turn to crime, and that the solution lies in a return to a primordial, natural condition and corresponding laws.31This does not mean that violence or inequality will disappear, but it assumes that natural laws are preferable to and fairer than social ones. Under the social system described in the novel, the inequality is perpetuated and the hope for a better future lies in a return to the past. The Murderess is basically an antisocial and anti-evolutionary In the face of a society that tries to determine everything, Frankojannou asserts her individuality; her right to determine her life; to have secrets and private thoughts. She is struggling to keep her consciousness outside social control. In his novel Papadiamantis outlines a world of secrecy that feeds on darkness, memory, and fantasy. It is a self-referential space with Frankojannou confessing things to herself and not to others. She tries to defend the boundaries of this secret and self-sufficient space by showing that only the initial stimulus comes from outside, while the internal driving force is more powerful and self-sustained. Even the metaphorical expression “her brain had gone up like a smoke” (epsilose o nous tis), used by Papadiamantis to refer to her mental state during the crucial moment of the killings, suggests that the psychological female reality acquires a more elevated status than the male external reality. Seeing Frankojannou as having a hidden self and an inner space is compatible with individualistic thinking and an emphasis on self-awareness. Conceiving of a person as essentially containing inner space also meant a shift away from equating this person with his or her social role. It is the separation of public and private 3 1. Roderick Beaton (op. cit., p. 99) rightly points out that “Papadiamantis had described The Murderess as a ‘social novel’, but the society he depicts in that novel is presented as largely static and timeless.” 32. Papadiamantis implicitly turns against the evolutionary ideas that influenced the English novels during the nineteenth century, not only at the level of theme but also at the level of organization. See Gillian Beer, Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983).
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domains of life that laid the foundation for a view of the individual as being in conflict with society. In the Greek fiction of the period, this novel represents the most sustained defense of the inner world against social constraints (a theme that will be explored further in the next chapter), the revolt of consciousness against an oppressive external reality. It strives to assert the prerogative of individual consciousness to analyze, censor, and reprimand itself. The return to nature affords greater freedom from the social imperative and helps raise the individual will to the status of a greater authority than society. In his novel, Papadiamantis questions the oppositions male-female, public-private, culture-nature, and the prioritization of the former (in each case) by attributing male qualities to the female, by enhancing the private against the public, and by outlining a transition from culture to nature. Through the acts of his protagonist, he promotes nature over culture, individual secrecy against social pressure, and autonomous consciousness against collective morality. As a result of the author’s resentment toward society, the novel constitutes a twofold act of regression to the inner self and to nature; an act at once violent and liberating. In the end, The Murderess is more a drama of individual consciousness in its struggle with itself and the outside world than a social drama.
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Chapter Four
Individuality and Inevitability: From the-Social Novel to Bildungsrornan
The question of individual freedom in Greek fiction is usually associated with the existential fiction of Nikos Kazantzakis who chose even in his epitaph to declare: “I fear nothing, I hope for nothing, I am free.” In his best-known novel Zorba the Greek he presents the issue as an attempt to break free from the shackles of rationality and civilization. Zorba epitomizes the association of freedom with primitivism, the desire to recover the pristine essence of things. Just admire this primitive man who simply cracked life’s shell-logic, morality, honesty-and went straight to its substance. All the little virtues which are so useful are lacking in him. . . . Like the first men to cast off their monkey-skins, or like the great philosophers, he is dominated by the basic problems of mankind. He lives them as if they were immediate and urgent necessities. Like a child, he sees everything for the first time.’
Although Kazantzakis stands out as the Greek prose writer who approached the question of freedom again and again from different angles: personal, national, or spirituaL2 the issue of individual freedom is also raised explicitly or implicitly in a number of Greek novels that offer the opportunity to explore the ways individual characters resist, overcome, or succumb to the constraints set up by society, history, or culture. The question of individual freedom in relation to the social or historical context in Greek fiction has not been studied sufficiently by scholars, though it could be said that it is an area where Greek narrative texts can be fruitfully compared. I . Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek (London: Faber & Faber, 1995), 156-57. 2 . See Thodoros Grammatas, H Gvvo~a7 s EAEIIOEPLLY~UTO i p y o TOV NLKWKa&&iKq (Athens: Dodoni, 1983).
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The theme of the individual versus society dominated nineteenth-century European literature. It was during this century that European writers had felt particularly conscious of living in a shifting en~ironment.~ In Greece, however, this shifting environment became more acutely felt during the twentieth century and involved different aspects: social, historical, and cultural. The three novels discussed here deal with the way in which individual characters resist or are determined by social prejudice, historical change, and cultural perceptions in a society undergoing major changes. I have chosen to discuss three novels in which the main characters try to negotiate their personal development and fight off the determinism imposed by their social origins, historical fate, or cultural formation, but ultimately appear to succumb. In this way developments in Greek fiction concerning the struggle for supremacy between the individual on the one hand and society, history, and culture on the other can be studied. In this chapter I intend to study various representations of inevitability in three novels from different genres and written in different periods. The three novels represent different forms of contextualization of the self, demonstrating that this theme is not only central to Greek fiction, but it has been treated by Greek authors in diverse and subtle ways. It could be said that these novels fictionalize the Promethean ethic, seeing human relations with the world as essentially those of power and control. Kutudikos [Condemned] (1919) by Konstantinos Theotokis is the first novel to be studied and the first Greek novel to introduce the question of individual freedom from social constraints to any significant degree. In spite of its idealism it can be discussed within the context of the social novel in Greece as well as of the realist tradition of ethographia that dominated Greek fiction from the 1880s to the 1920s. The other two novels, Leonis (1940) by George Theotokas and The Sun of Death [0 Ilios tou Thanatoul(l959) by Pandelis Prevelakis, can be treated as types of Bildungsromun, although in the case of Prevelakis’s novel the development of the main character is neither strong nor very clear.4 The Bildungsromun eludes precise definition, but Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister has established itself as the prototype of the genre
3 . See Maurice Larkin, Man and Society in Nineteenth-Century Realism: Determinism and Literature (London: Macrnillan, 1977). 4. Fragiski Abatzopoulou, reviewing the Greek version of the Bildungsroman, argues that Leonis, together with Lilika Nakou’s napaoTpaT1)pFLbvoL(1935), is closer to the classic Western European tradition of the genre than other Greek novels of the period since Theotokas’s text maps out the transition of the individual to a Hegelian totality. See Fragiski Abatzopoulou, “AUTOPLOY~CX(PLK& X6yos: IUTOPLKO~ KCXL~ U ~ L U T O P I ~ ~ C X TPLi K o O~ UTO ~ ~ U ~ L U T ~ PEI ~~ ~~ PCEX~ c x E sV,T” E V K T ~7,~nos. ~LO 28-29 (autumn-winter 1994): 80, reprinted in H rpa(p7j K ~ 71L p&ocxvoq: Z V T ~ ~ AOYOTEXVLK~~ ~LO~T~ AVCWT~~CIUT&CTVF (Athens: Patakis, 2000), 69-70. Peter Mackridge, “A Matter of Light and Death: Symbolism,” in The Sun of Death by P. Prevelakis, Foliu Neohellenica 6 (1984): 65 and Roderick Beaton, An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 244 describe The Sun ofDeath as a Bildungsroman. See also K. Mitsakis, H N E O E A A ~ V l7ELoypapia: LK~~ H~ E V L ~ TOU ‘30(Athens: Elleniki Paideia, 1977), 85.
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in literary h i ~ t o r y The . ~ genre attracted fewer authors in nineteenth-century France (Stendhal is a prominent example) than in Germany and England and, according to Jerome Buckley, both its strength and its weakness lie in its autobiographical component.6 What is worth examining in the three Greek novels is how their authors handle the efforts of the protagonists to defend their freedom of choice, personal development and, ultimately, freedom, and to what extent they present them as giving in and being shaped by the demands of society, history, or tradition. These novels show how the context can appear to be more powerful than the self that it ultimately conquers and determines in different ways. Although they present three memorable characters, the novels in question portray the apparent defeat of the individual by the context. The contextualizing of the self in these texts proves its weakness to impose its will and resist external pressure. In Katadikos, Tourkoyannos chooses at the end to be a convict. Leonis in the eponymous novel becomes aware that his individual fate is history, while in The Sun ofDeath Yorgakis is unable to develop a sense of free individuality. These characters may lose the battle against the forces of society, history, or tradition, but they gain in self-knowledge or moral and spiritual freedom. In other words, the relationship between the individual and the external shaping forces is more complex than it appears to be and not simply one of determinism or domination. Hence, it will be worth exploring in more detail the ways whereby the individual self in each novel strives to resist or come to terms with the constraints of external forces. Katadikos7 stands out in Theotokis’s oeuvre, as it sits awkwardly with the pattern of his other writing and the image of its author as one of the leading Greek practitioners of realism and naturalism. The main character, Tourkoyannos, has attracted diverse and opposing assessments that primarily stem 5. Mikhail Bakhtin has identified two features of the genre that distinguish it from earlier forms of the novel in “The Bildungsroman and Its Significance in the History of Realism,” in Speech Genres & Other Lute Essays, trans. Vern W. McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986). First, according to him, the Bildungsroman presents the reader with “the image of man in the process of becoming” (p, 19). Secondly, through this evolving hero we glimpse historical change as he represents a kind of a threshold between two periods: “He emerges along with the world and he reflects the historical emergence of the world itself. He is no longer within an epoch, but on the border between two epochs, at the transition point from one to the other. This transition is accomplished in him and through him. . . . It is as though the very foundations of the world are changing, and man must change along with them” (pp. 23-24). For an overview of the history of the Bildungsromun as a genre in Germany see Todd Kontje, The German Bildungsroman: History of a National Genre (Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1993).According to this study, though the term itself was used in the early nineteenth century, “the designation did not gain widespread acceptance until around 1900.” See also James Hardin, ed., Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1991). 6 . Jerome Hamilton Buckley, Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), 26. 7. Konstantinos Theotokis, K~T&&KOF (Athens: Keimena, 1973). All subsequent references to the novel will be made to this edition and page numbers will appear in parenthesis after each quotation.
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from the different attitudes of Greek critics toward realism. For example, Aimilios Hourmouzios in his study of Theotokis’s fiction written in 1946, when he was still writing under the influence of socialist views on realism, pointed out Tourkoyannos’spassive stance toward life and his submission to fate. He argued that Tourkoyannos could not be presented as a model character as he was exceptionally indolent and monotonous, isolated from the diversity of life, and a complete misfit in the moral complexities of society.8 Hourmouzios’s view of Tourkoyannos was echoed by a number of critics who did not necessarily share his aesthetic or political views at the time and who were persuaded that Kutadikos was Theotokis’s “least persuasive and plausible because its realism was flawed and compromised by the idealist inclination of the author.’O There were other critics, however, who adopted a completely different view, seeing Tourkoyannos as a manifestation of individualism and who welcomed Theotokis’s break with the orthodox logic of realism. For them Tourkoyannos represented a transcending of the constraints of realism and of the monotony of familiar ‘types’ of mimetic prose. Perhaps this combination of realism and idealism in Katadikos is due to the ideological orientation of the author at the time of writing and the debates taking place among Greek supporters of socialist ideas at the beginning of the twentieth century. The idealistic tendencies in the novel cannot be seen as disappointment with or a shying away from socialism, but represent rather the fusion of socialist ideas with Christianity, which some Greek socialists envisaged at the time.’* Theotokis seems to be an exponent of a utopian and philanthropic socialism rather than of the revolutionary version. It has also been argued that Tourkoyannos is associated with the idealistic ‘positive’ heroes of Russian realism who are often singled out for their strict moral code based on strong Christian beliefs, whereas Peponas appears to be 8. Aimilios Hourmouzios, puOLmoprjpaTos U T ~ Y EAASa
KOYUT.
@ E O T ~ K I ~ F :0
E L U I ~ Y ~ T TOU ~ ~ F KOLYOYLUTLKOI~
(Athens: Ikaros, 1946), 155-56. 9. Alexis Ziras, “ Y l q h a ( p . i ) ~7‘7)s ~~~ ~ O ~ C ~ Y Tmuei8qcrqs L K ~ ~ UT(Y ~ U ~ L U T O ~ ~ ~ LTOV ( Y T C Y K W Y U T ~ Y T ~O~ EO O U T ~ KZZhpqupa~, ~,” nos. 57-58 (April-September 1991): 429. 10. See the views of T. Athanasiadis, ‘“Evas L&VLK& T I ~ P O U~ T ~ V~ e < o y p a q i apas,” Nia E U T ~ C Uvol. , 40, no. 457, 15 July 1946, p. 740 and A. Terzakis’s introduction to K. Theotokis, B ~ u L K ~ B L P A L O ~ T31 ~K (Athens: ~, Zaharopoulos, 1955), 21. George Theotokas also argued that Theotokis had the potential to be a successful novelist able to create impressive characters, but could not liberate himself from the constraints of naturalism and, therefore, his Tourkoyannos remained incomplete and his potential as a writer unfulfilled ( E A s ~ j O s p oZ Z u d p a , [1929], ed. K. Th. Dimaras [Athens: Ermis, 1979],51-52). T C X Ermis, 1982). 33 and Yannis Dal11. See for example Mario Vitti, H I ~ YTOULT ~ L ~ V(Athens: a O P L C ~ K ~ qpcjwv,” V las, “Am5 ~q pa~Oo~hacriaTOY ( P ~ U T I X U T L K ~uYq u ~ ~ d , o y p a ( p iTOV IE$xpupas, nos. 57-58 (April-September 1991): 291, reprinted in his book K O Y U T ~ Y T ~ Y O @EOT~KT~ K: ~ L T L~wovSrj K ? ~ p ~ a sT W < O ~ ~ ~ ( P L wopsias K~~F (Athens: Sokolis, 2001). L K ~ ~U T ~ EAAhSa Y am5 TO 1875 OF TO 1974, vol. 1 (Athens: 12. P. Noutsos, H Z O U L ~ L U TZ’KCI+II~ Gnosi, 1990). 104.
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closer to the individualistic, dynamic, and rebellious characters of Western European realism. The two central characters in Katudikos are sharply opposed. On the one hand, Petros Peponas represents a pragmatic and revolutionary vision of the world, and on the other Tourkoyannos appears naive and idealistic. These two characters represent two different attitudes to life: one associated with individualism, materialism, and physical love, and the other with selflessness, Christian morality, and ideal love. Tourkoyannos is presented as an ascetic figure like those in Byzantine icons. His hagiographic portrayal aims to emphasize the correspondence between his soul and his external appearance as is clearly pointed out by the narrator: “his longish face told of the serenity of his soul and the kindness of his heart” (8-9).14 Peponas, on the other hand, is presented as his complete opposite; an opposition made clear in the contrast between their eyes’ metonymic expression of their characters. Tourkoyannos’s eyes are ‘sleepy’ and ‘innocent’, demonstrating his goodness, whereas Peponas’s are alert (zoiru), indicating his cunning and ruthless nature. l5 In spite of these crude associations between external appearance and internal characterization that reveal the narrator’s bias in favor of Tourkoyannos, Theotokis skillfully presents some agonizing moments for Petros Peponas in chapters 2 and 10. On the whole, the focus is on the characters and there is very little emphasis on the wider social context. Thus the information about social conditions or the response of ordinary people is limited,I6 though a number of chapters start with a general reference to time and setting before the focus narrows down to fix on the characters. The narrative relies on pauses, breaks in the sequence of events, and shifts of focus. Until chapter 6 the narrative tends more to description and concentrates on the characters rather than the action. After the report of the murder of Arathymos, which is given telegraphically in the very short chapter 7, the pace of the narrative accelerates. After the account of what went on in the courtroom, the focus alternates between Petros and Tourkoyannos and the narrative gains in dramatic tension. Although the story has the necessary ingredients (illicit love, murder), Theotokis does not set out to write a story of mystery and suspense, but
13. Roderick Beaton (op. cit., p. 105) points out that “Tourkoyannos in Condemned was particularly admired by writers of the 1930s, who recognized his generic resemblance to Dostoevsky’s Idiot.” 14. Theotokis constantly refers to Tourkoyannos’s innocent eyes as reflecting his good character (18, 33, 53, 60). 15. See Viky Patsiou, “Ta ‘y~iX&t&~’ q ‘ y a X r ( v 2 I J . & T L ~ ev65 L ~ C Y . V L K OKC~T&~LKOU,” ~~ L’@pupas, nos. 57-58 (April-September 1991): 500-506. 16. In chapters 5 and 8 reference to the reaction of other people is made by describing the scenes at the coffeehouse and in the courtroom respectively.
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to highlight moral questions and to pose the problem regarding the freedom of the individual that preoccupied the intellectuals of the period.” The novel portrays Petros Peponas as the real prisoner first of his passion and then his bad conscience. Tourkoyannos, on the other hand, although apparently prepared to stay in jail for the rest of his life, is morally elevated and liberated. Handicapped by his origins and social inferiority he proves morally superior. Peponas represents social impasse and the attempt to overcome it by violent means, which also leads to deadlock. By recognizing social determinism and trying to escape from it, Tourkoyannos, by contrast, offers a solution to this impasse based on Christian repentance and asceticism. Theotokis uses the illicit affair of Petros and Margarita to show the breakdown of the family. This is emphasized in the narrative again by the story of a prisoner nicknamed Cain, whose brother made him marry his (the brother’s) mistress in order to be able to maintain his secret affair. Although Theotokis concentrates on individual cases and not on society at large, it becomes clear that the society he portrays in his novel is based on prejudice and inequality. Margarita’s case illustrates the social inferiority of women and how society treats them as playthings in the hands of men. There are a number of incidents in the novel that clearly show the subjugation of women to men. Most characteristic is the statement by Peponas to Margarita: “I control you. You’re my woman. I shall have you as my wife” (105).18 By contrast, Arathymos was different from other men. He was gentle and kind, as Margarita fondly recalls after his death: “There came to her mind the kindly villager with his large blond moustache, whom she’d lived so many years with, who’d never done anything bad to her. How different he was from the other men. They all beat their wives; he never did” (S5).19 Moreover, the courtroom scene demonstrates the social prejudices against marginal and disadvantaged people such as Tourkoyannos. Although one member of the jury expresses his doubts as to whether the accused committed the murder, the rest, including the judges, do not share his enlightened 17. At one point the narrator makes a general statement that shows the prevalence of determinism in the thinking of that time: “All nature was subject to laws of harsh necessity, and for mankind Love was such a law” (p. 25). 18. And elsewhere Peponas asserts his male power: “He said to her hoarsely: ‘I got rid of him so I could have you when I wanted! You’re my wife!’ He was holding her tightly. She made a timid movement with her body to escape him, and opened her eyes again a little. ‘What sort of man would I be’ he said again, ‘if I had you only when you wanted it! . .” (p. 120). 19. Echoing apparently a general view, Tourkoyannos is also drawing a distinction between the role of women and men in society: “The girls, said Tourkoyannos, seriously, ‘must learn to work from early on. They get married when they’re very young and then fall into man’s hands. Their mothers are cursed if they don’t teach them. With boys it’s different”’ (p. 31).
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views and Tourkoyannos is convicted.20Interestingly, this juryman is a doctor, the only juror described by his profession; this is because he stands for rationalism and thus he urges Tourkoyannos to abandon his obsession with theology (66-67). Incidents such as this suggest that Theotokis was trying to give his story a wider philosophical dimension, though this is never fully developed. Perhaps what Theotokis is trying to show is that society is dominated and governed by passion, prejudice, and violence and, therefore, requires purification through Christian repentance and asceticism. This is suggested by Tourkoyannos, who, before entering into Arathymos’s service, spent time in foreign lands rehabilitating himself morally and mentally under the guidance of a spiritual mentor who later died. Tourkoyannos was once a bad character, full of hatred for others, even for his own mother, but exile helped him to change.21 This romantic idea of repentance and moral transformation after a period of solitude and exile, which can be found in other works of the period, such as K. Palamas’s The Twelve Words of the Gypsy, is curiously inadequately explored here. Reference to Tourkoyannos’s earlier life is brief and could have been further developed in order to give a better picture of his moral transformation and to show how he arrived at his oft-repeated message: “the only happy people in the world are those who always do the right thing, or those who repent when they do wrong!” (107, 135). For him the most important thing is repentance, as he insists several times in the novel (38, 63, 65, 132). Though for some the ‘sanctification’ of Tourkoyannos might be unconvincing, the novel relies on the interaction between realism and idealism. Without this interaction the story loses its interest. Realism and idealism represent two different philosophies. Realism here is associated with the will to rule, the determination to change the course of one’s life, even violently. The individual, according to Peponas, is happy when his will is given free rein. For him, happiness is equated with power: “there is another happiness in the world, and this is man’s true one: of the man who rules; he subjugates his fate, his will is realized and overcomes all obstacles” (136). Peponas is presented as somebody who knows what he wants and who is able to control fate: “And he knew what he wanted, and he knew how to subjugate Fate” (1 17). In seeking personal freedom and the satisfaction of his desires, he tries 20. Interestingly, Tourkoyannos finds a single supporter in various public places such as the coffee-house, the court, and the jail. 21. Tourkoyannos fancied Margarita in the past and realizing that he could not marry her he left, after having kissed her: “And when I did what I did, I was so embarrassed before your father, even though I knew you wouldn’t confess, that I left immediately. And I was a bad person then, worse than bad people you find in prison, and I loved some people and others I hated, and I was jealous of every body. And I resented my poor mother because she had brought me into the world. Now living abroad has taught me things and set me on a different road” (p. 37).
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to be unscrupulous and remorseless, but ultimately fails and ends up the prisoner of his guilt. The idealistic position, on the other hand, is associated with repentance, self-sacrifice, acceptance of fate, and humble social position. Although Tourkoyannos appears unable to escape the social constraints, he attains moral freedom. For him, poverty or jail do not matter as long as he feels vindicated and his innocence confirmed. According to Margarita and her children, the difference between the two characters is summed up as the ability to rule others. “He’s a good man [Peponas]. And his children love him; and they are also afraid of him, because he knows how to be the master.” “It’s true,” said Margarita bitterly, “he knows how to command. No one can make a fool of him. Your poor father was different; he and Tourkoyannos never raised their heads from their work all day. . . .” “Oh Tourkoyannos . . .” said Leni, smiling. “He never knew how to command” (114)?2
By presenting two extreme positions through his characters Theotokis invites the reader to reflect on the nature of freedom and its different forms: physical, social, and moral. By investigating the struggle for freedom, his text points to the conclusion that moral freedom is not contingent upon physical or social liberation. Tourkoyannos may finish up poor, lonely, and a convict, but morally and spiritually he is free. Determinism and inevitability cease to operate on a moral and spiritual level, whereas violent ruptures do not lead to the desired degree of liberation. Peponas represents new social forces as we get a glimpse of his role in protecting the working class against the financial demands of the a r i ~ t o c r a c y He . ~ ~epitomizes the desire for a social breakthrough and a rejection of the status quo. For different reasons, Tourkoyannos, too, rejects society and seems to treat the jail as a retreat, a monastery where his increasing unworldliness culminates in his being called “Saint John”.24 Moreover, Tourkoyannos seems to represent a cyclical time pattern that involves a rotation of sin and repentance. This pattern is also emphasized by his repetitive style. Several times in the novel he repeats details of aspects of his life or his principles. He also tells us repeatedly that the name of one of the oxen is Paraskevas because it was born on a Friday. This might be attributed partly to his naivety and illiteracy, but the reader’s overall impression is that the pattern of his life tends to be repetitive involving an alternating cycle of 22. This is one of the few occasions that the children of Margarita are involved in the action. 23. See pp. 115, 119. 24. Tourkoyannos is called “holy man” (1 17) and “Saint John” (1 27) while in prison.
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sin and repentance. In contrast, Peponas represents an aggressive and linear conception of time and, by extension, of history and life. He does not believe in fate, but in the power of individual free will to change things. Tourkoyannos is often presented as a lonely and sad figure (75,76)who accepts his fate (124)’ whereas Peponas is depicted as dynamic and optimistic. Using the selfish Peponas and the selfless Tourkoyannos, Theotokis raises a more general problem regarding the relationship between freedom and determinism; that is, whether the life of individuals is determined by fate, heredity, and social origin, or by their own free will (in this respect Kutudikos is similar to The Murderess discussed in chapter 3). He does not offer a clear answer to this question, but tries to show that apart from social constraints there are moral constraints, too, and thus the meaning of the word ‘condemned’ in the novel’s title acquires a metaphorical significance and could apply just as much to Peponas as to Tourkoyannos. Tourkoyannos is not a convincing character, not so much because he is an idealist as because he is static, lacking nerve and energy. Although Kutudikos could have been a novel of individual development and change, portraying, for example, in more detail, Tourkoyannos’s transformation in exile under the tutelage of a wise man, this opportunity remains unexploited. As a result, the genre of the novel remains unclear and the reader becomes confused as to the aim and direction of the narrative. Theotokis, in effect, was torn between writing a social novel or a moral one. This ambivalence prevented him from handling the motivation of the characters or the dramatic tension of the story successfully, but did not prevent him from highlighting the more general and philosophical question concerning the limits of individual freedom in relation to social constraints. In this way Theotokis ended up writing a novel that is partly social, partly moral, and partly symbolic (or even philosophical), without ever fully or even adequately developing any of these aspects. If the central theme of Kutudikos is the negotiation of social inevitability by the individual, the underlying preoccupation of Theotokas’s Leonis is the historical determinism of the individual. L e ~ n i could s ~ ~ be described as a Bildungsromun since it charts the development of the protagonist from childhood to late adolescence and his transition from the Constantinople of World War I to Athens after the failure of the Asia Minor campaign in 1922 and the consequent influx of refugees. It could also be seen as a kind of Kiinstlerromun, considering that Leonis aspires to be a painter, wishing to 25. For the context and process of writing of Leonis see G. P. Savidis’s prolegomena to the edition of the novel published with its working title, S ~ p i c UTOU s 7jh~0,eds. G. P. Savidis and M. Pieris (Athens: Ermis, 1985) and Theotokas’s diary entries related to its writing and included in the above edition. This edition reproduced the initial text of 1940 before it was censored by the Metaxas regime.
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express himself in his paintings.26But his teacher Montefredini asks him to copy fruit and pitchers and Leonis’s creativity is impeded by his teacher and the boring, mimetic paintings he is asked to do. For him art is associated with individual freedom and the transcendence of reality. He was happiest when he slipped off with his paints to the gardens or to the old neighborhoods or to the peak of a hill which commanded a good view, there to abandon himself completely to the charm of colors, to swim at random in the colors, no matter what should come of it. What he painted would have no great similarity to what he was looking at, but what did that matter? One was not supposed to copy things as they are-there are cameras for that purpose-but to make colors blend just right, to make them dance, revel, harmonize and become a chromatic synthesis, rather like a musical composition, where the colors would be notes. It was, after all, a game of the eye, to look at and to enjoy. What the colors represented did not have any particular significance; perhaps they did not represent anything at all, just as music does not represent anything. Colors were for playing with and not for teaching and getting serious about. That was how Leonis considered the matter2’
While painting for Leonis is more of a pleasurable game and not a means of instruction or serious discussion, for his teacher it is metaphysics and religion. This incident serves to emphasize Leonis’s perception of art as a playful expression of freedom and a disengagement from worldly concerns. Although the narrator is an omniscient one, the child’s curiosity and ignorance are subtly conveyed in the first chapters of the novel, first, through the inquiry of Leonis as to what exactly love poetry means and, secondly, when he seeks to understand what his grandfather discusses with others. When the novel starts, Leonis, a young boy, is unversed in the workings of love. Reading through an anthology of poetry he is intrigued by the love poetry because he does not understand what it is. Later, whilst playing with his friends in the Garden, Leonis again shows himself unfamiliar with what love means as they observe a confrontation between rivals in love. A woman appeared, running like mad with another woman in pursuit screaming at her. . . . They grabbed each other by the hats, and then, when they had flung 26. Todd Kontje in his study Private Lives in the Public Sphere: The German Bildungsroman as Mefafiction (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992) associates the emergence of the Bildungsroman with the changes in the literary context in Germany around 1800, involving the rapid expansion of literary production, the growth of middle-class readership, and the beginnings of artistic professionalism. He points out that by making their protagonists artists, the novelists address their own relationship with the public. 27. George Theotokas’s Leonis, trans. Donald E. Martin, with a preface by Theofanis G . Stavrou (Minneapolis: Nostos, 1985). 44-45, All subsequent references to the novel will be made to this edition and page numbers will appear in parenthesis after each quotation.
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these to the ground, by the hair. . . a gentleman in a straw hat stepped in to part them. At once they threw his hat to the ground and trampled upon it. . . . Then the woman . . . burst into tears and sobs and the gentleman who had restrained her did not know what to do with her. . . . Leonis asked what the reason was that the two women were squabbling, one lad answered him confidentially, “courtship” (15-16).
Leonis does not understand the word ‘courtship’, but does not seek an explanation in order to avoid the embarrassment of revealing his ignorance. Later on, meeting Nitsa, the sister of his friend Paris, he becomes infatuated with her and whispers secretly to himself the word ‘courtship’. In this way Theotokas convincingly and skillfully presents the erotic awakening of his protagonist, as he discovers new experiences and the meaning of certain words. Leonis does not remain inexperienced for long. Whilst developing his painting skills under the tutelage of Mr. Montefredini, his path crosses that of Ioulia Asimaki, an older fellow student. His relationship with her is short-lived. Through it, however, he is more conditioned to love, and prepared for the entrance into his life of the crush that is to form the crux of the novel: Eleni Phoka.28It is through his infatuation with her that Leonis’s development in the novel is made evident. His awareness of Eleni Phoka goes back some way. Having first seen his idol, Paul Proios, with her, he then watches the majority of his friends fall for her too, to such an extent that his scout troop becomes known as ‘The Eleni Phoka Troop’, for, “the evening could not pass without a discussion about Eleni Phoka” (63). Eleni herself appears only to enjoy the attention she receives from the boys: in terms of attachment she is unaffected and unattainable. Nevertheless, it is only a matter of time before Leonis, too, finds himself caught in her spell, but his experience with her cannot end well. Like all the others before him, he loses Eleni to another man. Yet Theotokas’s novel is not all about teenage love. Throughout the novel, Leonis’s experiences are woven into and out of history. Not only does the cosmopolitan character of Constantinople shine through, but events such as the arrival of German troops and postwar celebrations also play a key part in Leonis’s life. He and his friends do not just participate as observers at times, they unwittingly become a part of history too. He is living through a time of war and turmoil and his awareness of this grows as he matures. It starts with the games he plays as a young boy in the Garden, described by Leonis as “the endless stage of an imaginary theater” (17). Thus, it can be seen that Leonis 28. EIeni Phoka could be seen as a symbol, considering that her name, made up of features of ancient mythology and Byzantine history, is an embodiment of the Greek tradition.
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has grown up with a historical sense of the events taking place around him, even through his childhood games.29 Right from the first chapter the two themes of the novel, art and war, are introduced: Leonis starts painting from the age of four while with his toy soldiers he reenacts battles and army parades. The war is filtered through the imagination of a child and by means of the war game that the boys play in the Garden the world of teenagers is connected to and paralleled by the world of adults.30The novel captures both without compromising the freshness and the enthusiasm of a child’s perspective or ignoring the seriousness of war. In this way, the world of teenagers with their friendships and rivalries, their games and erotic awakenings is intertwined with the anxiety of war, the troop movements, the responses of ordinary people. Theotokas blends the two cleverly, as he places the development of Leonis’s individuality within a broader context, showing that his life is shaped by external events.31 He was more involved in the strange enchantment now gripping him: the feeling that the City, Europe, the world were all just an endless theatrical scene, just as the Garden of the Taxim had once been, a scene in which nations moved, and armies, and commanders astride large parade horses. And they seemed to be playing in a production which moved to a secret, imperceptible rhythm. They would come, go, relinquish their places to one another, bow. It was a fantastic, gigantic minuet. It was History. And Leonis himself was in History. With his Greek scouting cap and his great cane and with a blue kerchief around his neck, he was passing into History, saluting the important personages and marching in the parade. And he seemed to feel the great wave of History lift him lightly and draw him along with the armies, the peoples, and the Empires (61).
The metaphor of the world as an endless theatrical stage suggests that Leonis is indeed powerless when facing the great wave of History and its secret 29. In his book on Theotokas, Thomas Doulis argues that “in many respects, Leonis-Theotokas’s best work- reminds one of Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; both novels chronicle the development from childhood to early manhood of boys who are consciously representative of their nations.” Thomas Doulis, George Theotokas (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975), 80. 30. Curiously there is no mention in the novel of Leonis’s parents. It is not clear whether this is due to some aesthetic reason or Theotokas feared that Greek readers, reading his narrative as literally autobiographical, would have the well-known lawyer Michail Theotokas in mind whenever the father was mentioned. 31. Discussing three novels by writers who lost their homeland after the disaster of Asia Minor Campaign of 1922 (Theotokas’s Leonis, Elias Venezis’s Aeolian Earth [ 19431, and Kosmas Politis’s At Hadzifrangos’ [1963]), Peter Mackridge points out the timelessness of life in the old homeland as depicted in these narratives through the use of the imperfect tense to describe repeated actions: “This sense of timelessness however tends to result in the characters, and even some of the events, being insufficiently individualized to hold the reader’s attention, since they are intended to be representative of the kind of people and situations that were to be found in the lost homeland.” Peter Mackridge, “The Two-Fold Nostalgia: Lost Homeland and Lost Time in the Work of G. Theotokas, E. Venezis, and K. Politis,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 4, no. 2 (1986): 78-79.
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rhythm. History in the novel appears as the conductor of the world orchestra, overriding personal desires and individual aspirations. The end of World War I creates a false sense of freedom, the expectation that people can do whatever they want, that they can master their own fate.32Indeed, the novel highlights the contrast between an unsuspecting, carefree, and exuberant childhood and the growing awareness in adulthood that history repeats itself, that wars and armies succeed one another, making individuals realize that they cannot ultimately resist the universal force of History. In Leonis’s Diary the contrast between the “untameable wave” of History and the freedom and consolation offered by art resurfaces. The individual seems hopelessly caught up in the vortex of History: “And “I” in the midst of History, on the crest of the wave or on the brink of the abyss, which opens suddenly to swallow everything. Vertigo! My lot. Our lot” (129). On the other hand, art is the terrain of individuality, of dreaming and love: “Whatever is to happen, my paints and brushes will remain and my art will remain for me. Even without Her and without anyone, even without my Country, my art will remain: I’ll live for my art” (129).33Earlier, in chapter 9 of the novel, there is a contrast between what is going on inside the mind of Leonis, who is preoccupied by his erotic fantasies, and what is going on in the outside world with the crowds cheering the end of the war. The contrast between private thoughts and collective enthusiasm gradually gives way to the absorption of the individual by events and his immersion in the collective enthusiasm. The Garden and the War are the two opposing symbols of the novel, which the teenagers’ much-desired Eleni Phoka separates and brings together. Leonis in his Diary describes and contrasts them in terms of color: And the Garden was all greenery and heavy music and kids running around.And the mysterious things happening behind the foliage and some lovely ladies with huge straw hats and with very red lips which laughed in the sun. And opposite was Chrysopolis like a fireworks display. The War was like a red cloud which covered the sky, a red shadow which spread over everything. As it spread it became one with everything so that little 32. “All the great questions of humanity had more or less been set in order. Hereafter no one would have the right to complain that the world was not as it should be. The old should be forgotten. A new epoch was beginning in the world amid freedom and prosperity. Each person would do whatever his heart desires; one would draw, another write poems, another travel, wander from place to place, go to the Indies, to Japan, to the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Dimis would have nothing more to do than chase girls. Why not? since he likes to. And each nation would likewise follow its bent, enjoy life without restrictions, walk undisturbed along the road to progress. The Greek state would have to make yet a small effort and give a last push to tidy up some unsettled matters concerning Asia Minor, then there would be no other dark spot to hinder the contentment and the games of the children of Odysseus, “Happy are you,” said the ancients, “who today are beginning your life. Fortunate race [generation]” (58). 33. See also the entry of 31 May in Leonis’s Diary, pp. 129-31.
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by little each person grew used to it and began to forget it. But from time to time there would be a loud noise and a tremor like an earthquake and then would all awaken and remember (124).
The contrast between the two symbols can also be found in the characters. Leonis’s artistic and romantic temperament is contrasted with that of Paul Proios who claims not to be a romantic, but instead a man of action who goes to war and dies. He is handsome and looks like an ancient god, with an air of nobility and pride, which makes Leonis like and envy him, treating him as his hero. Proios is the first to kiss Eleni Phoka and, as it transpires after his death, he may have gone to war because he was still in love with her, though he claimed not to answer her letters and that he had stopped having any contact with her. Proios represents the idea of active participation in historical events, which he articulates in the following quotation. All I know, the only thing I understand well is that in an age such as this one beginning with us, an age so intense and full of so many struggles and great deeds either taking place or felt to be drawing near, the only thing that really matters is that we get into it, to take part with as much strength as we have; to enter into the age. That’s the question (105). After the disaster of the Asia Minor Campaign in 1922, Leonis finds himself part of the exodus of refugees leaving Constantinople for Greece. He ends up in Athens alone in a hotel as his father has travelled further afield. He has a sense of being able to move around freely, but also a feeling of bitterness and depression. The sense of an ending is in the air together with the realization that human beings cannot resist the tidal wave of history: “It seemed to be once again what the newspapers called History. Leonis willingly or not was plunged up to his neck in History. Leonis almost had, as the saying goes, a role in History” (135-36). The metaphor of history as an enormous wave underlines the fact that people are carried away, powerless and unable to resist. Even Leonis’s desire for artistic expression is thwarted as he struggles to paint and release his creative energy without success.34 The sense of loss permeates the end of the novel, with Leonis feeling lonely and disorientated: “‘We’ve lost everything we had,’ thinks Leonis. 34. “For the third time he fought with his oil paints for hours and again he accomplished nothing. What he was searching for did not come; the emptying and the freeing did not take place. He came close; he made it to the verge, but nothing came of it. There seemed to be something in the way. He did not know what was blocking him, but it was something which he could not overcome. He knew what he wanted. He saw what he wanted within himself, but he did not succeed in finding the way to bring it to light. For the third time he threw down his brushes disheartened. In a fit of obstinacy he kicked them to the other side of the room. He could not draw. It was as clear as light that he could not. Something had been ruined in the process. There was something that no longer worked as it used to” (pp. 139-40).
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‘I’ve lost my city. I’ve lost my comrades. I’ve lost my best friend. I’ve lost my love. I’ve lost my art. Now let’s see how we come out of this”’ (142). The loss of Eleni Phoka has a catastrophic effect upon his life: “Let it all go to the devil! Everything is falling apart!” (117). In contrast to Leonis’s preoccupation with history, Eleni Phoka is free from its constraints, and in that sense, from fate: “lighthearted and self-intoxicated, she abandoned herself to chance and to the wind” (106). The loss of Eleni is only the first of several losses Leonis suffers: the loss of Paul Proios, the disbandment of the 12th (Eleni Phoka) Troop, the loss of his homeland, and the loss of his art, leaving him only nostalgia: “it was yet another thing vanishing into the past, into the fog of the blue sea; a bit of life which was becoming memory” (140). The true sense of his development through these losses, however, comes from his ability to extract the positive from these experiences and move on: “We’ve lost whatever we had,” thinks Leonis. “We’ve lost all our loves, but we are in love with a thousand things, with everything that passes away and everything that is beginning. . . . If we do not enclose our era within our souls, how are we to be genuine?” (144-45). In Constantinople Leonis enjoys a cosmopolitan life, sees world events from a distance and a child’s perspective. In Athens he reinvents himself as a participant and not an observer of history, a child of a turbulent century.35 The personal loss is turned into historical awareness, his erotic frustration gives way to his identification with the Greek landscape. He feels that the Greek land is taking him back again to herself by gradual assimilation. For the first time he thinks about his ancestors, the farmers and sailors of the Aegean. He feels them all about, sunburned, laughing, struck by imagination. He recognizes them in the atmosphere, in the light, in the aromas of the hill and in the mists of the great sea. He recognizes everything; the wind, those islands, those gods (142).
At the end of the novel Leonis maintains: “I am something that is dying and something that is trying to be born.” From being a romantic artist he becomes an historical and national subject, marked by the contradictions of the century. “Up till now men have given many and different names to their fate,” thinks Leonis. “They have tried to grasp it and explain it in a thousand ways within their religions, philosophies, ethics, and natural sciences. We have culled our 35. Thomas Doulis (op. cit., p. 85) points out that in Attica Leonis understands “that he has a double self, one composed of ‘a yes and no’, a self ‘that dies and tries to be reborn’. Theotokas sensed that with the coming of the World War 11, he would be further bound to Greece and further removed from Constantinople. Leonis, in turning toward Athens, ‘the city where a new life awaited him’, was doing what Theotokas himself had done, accepting the decisions of history at his most profound and unreachable subconscious levels.”
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fate History. But the nature of the thing does not seem to change amid all this nomenclature. The given facts of the problem remain always the same as they were from their common beginning; that is, from one side a mystical power, immeasurably more powerful than human will, which draws everything into its inexorable rhythm; and from the other side, human beings, who are under its authority, who know this, and who look upon it face to face. And we, then, with our touted historical consciousness, come close to becoming what they call tragic figures (144) [My emphasis].
The romantic lyricism of his childhood is oveniden by an epic rhythm and a historical determinism. The nostalgia for the lost innocence of childhood is pitted against the violence of history as the childhood game is replaced by the awesome game of history. The novel ends in an anticlimactic way and the reader may conclude that Leonis’s maturity coincides with the completion of his transformation into a historical subject. His artistic aspirations and his individual freedom are crushed under the burden of history, which is elevated into a mystical, fatalistic, and all-encompassing force. Leonis’s personal story ultimately becomes the collective story of a generation, while he himself is changed from a sensitive teenager with artistic inclinations into an emblematic figure in an historical drama. Theotokas’s novel marks the transition from a romantic to a tragic conception of the world. On the one hand, as its author explains in a note accompanying the novel, it is a confessional novel like those enjoyed by people during the Romantic era.36 On the other hand, its aim is to demonstrate the impact of history on the life of the protagonist, how the historical process, and not monumental or ossified history, marks him deeply, preventing “his youth from flowering freely,” endowing it with a special flavor and value. Theotokas concludes by arguing that “such an intrusion of the historical factor-an intrusion basically tragic in the classical sense-is imparting to this day its special tone to the shaping of the spiritual life of the generations of the twentieth century” (xiii). Writing a book about the impact of the Great War during World War 11, Theotokas feels caught between these two major conflicts. Like his protagonist he develops a sense that War is inescapable, that History follows a recurring pattern. As he argues in his note, his generation is like one cursed and indelibly marked by successive historical crises. 36. Gerasimia Melissaratou in her article, “To T~OPTPCX~TOTOU KIY.AAL&XV~ ws vecupou K C O V U T C ~ U T L ~ O WK(YL T ~T(Y O AT~OPTPCX~TIX ~T~ mpo~rcuIwvovyysv4v TOW,” in 0 ’E&o-EAAqv~u~6s; K ~ ~ U T C W T L V O GK(YL TOA Zpupvq, ~ 1800-1922 (Athens: Etaireia Spoudon Neollenikou Politismou kai Genikis Paideias, ZOOO), 217-37 links the novel with the French fiction of the nineteenth century (Alfred de Musset, Stendhal, Balzac) as well as James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
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First of all I felt that we were a generation marked out by a special fate, that it was useless for anyone to complain or protest or try to forget, but that it was preferable for one to make up his mind that this was the way things were, that we were the children of a great historical crisis which determined all of our lives, and that our dreams and activities and works quite naturally could not escape entirely the shadow which covered us (xi-xii).
What Theotokas is trying to show in this autobiographical novel is that his characters are products of an historical crisis that rules their lives, their actions, and their dreams. The novel, in other words, turns history into fate, into an inevitable cosmic rhythm that relentlessly shapes the lives of individual^.^^ The romantic, innocent, and artistic Leonis succumbs to the determinism of history and this, it could be argued, is the sinister message of the book that otherwise aspires to a light-hearted quality. Prevelakis’s novel The Sun of Death,3* which was to become the first part of the trilogy The Roads to C r e a t i v i ~ , ’marks ~ a transition from historical representation to individualism. As Yorgis Manousakis has argued, in Prevelakis’s earlier works such as The Tale o f a Town (1938), Desolate Crete (1945), and his trilogy The Cretan (1948-1950), the protagonist is by and large the community, whereas The Sun of Death is a book about ‘individual fate’.40 The novel is about the efforts of an adolescent, Yorgakis, to come to terms with the death of his parents and to familiarize himself with rural life and folk tradition when he is adopted by his pious Aunt Roussaki and taken to live with her in her mountain village, Pigi, after the loss of his parents. He gradually realizes that a threat is hanging over his head as Roussaki’s son, Lefteris, who is fighting at the Macedonia front against Bulgaria (1917-1918), has killed another village lad whose mother is demanding revenge. At the end, as a result of this blood feud, Roussaki is killed trying to protect her nephew, and leaves him with the most positive 37. In his personal diary Theotokas points out that Leonis articulates a specific ma1 du si2cle as well as the association of the idea of history with the idea of tragic fate. T&TpTp&Bmf f p p o h o y i o u , 1939-1956, ed. D. Tziovas (Athens: Estia, 1987). 130. 38. There are two translations of The Sun of Death in English. One by Abbott Rick (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1964) and one by Philip Sherrard (London: John Murray, 1965). All subsequent references to the novel will be made to Sherrard’s translation and page numbers will appear in parenthesis after each quotation. S ~ S o w a s )and The Bread uf 39. The other two volumes, The Medusa’s Head (H ~ ~ c p aTh ~i M Angels (0@TOS TOV ayy6Xou), were published in 1963 and 1966 respectively. Andonis Decavalles in his Pandelis Prevelakis and the Value of a Heritage: A Talk, ed. Theofanis Stavrou (St. Paul, Minn.: North Central, 1981), 21 argues that this novelistic trilogy is written in the form of a Bildungsroman and represents the transition from epic or dramatic forms of writing to those of introspection and confession. ~ ) TOU Up&P&A&Kq (Athens: Ekdoseis 40. Yorgis Manousakis, H Kp7jTq CTO A O ~ O T E X U L KCpyo ton Filon, 1968), 8 1.
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message she can: “Now you’ll live! You’re the head of the family! . . . It’s better they killed me wrongly. May my death be a light for you. May it be your everlasting sun!” (206). This novel and Theotokas’s Leonis appear to be texts of a similar nature. Both focus upon the progression of a young boy through adolescence at a time when the world in which he is maturing is as fluid and changeable as himself. Both Leonis and Yorgakis face similar strivings in love, in growth, and in learning, and both novels deal with their reactions to these challenges. Although both novels take their protagonists through adolescence and all its experiences of growth and development, it should be noted that Leonis covers a longer period of time than does The Sun of Death (although one can follow Yorgakis’s development in the subsequent volumes). Both boys are described as pretty much alone in the world. Following the deaths of both his parents, Yorgakis has no one in his life, except for Aunt Roussaki upon whom he is totally dependent. For Leonis the situation is slightly different. He is not alone in terms of family or friends, but throughout the novel the focus is upon him alone, which makes him seem isolated. Both novels involve the transition from childlike innocence to experience, though Yorgakis does not seem to lose his innocence with a sexual awakening in the way that Leonis does. Yet for both protagonists love and sexual discovery are a key factor in their development-as indeed would be expected of two adolescent boys. However, there is a note of irony when Yorgakis tells us, after his first experience of war: “I’m not a child any more. I’m a man! I’m a man!’ . . . And I burst into tears” (43). The same naive contradiction is present in his first sexual encounter with Redlips. I knew more or less what a man had to do at such a moment and I plunged my hand under her dress. What a bad shot I must have made! What an irremediable mistake! In a second she was standing on the floor, her face furious, her eyes blazing with fire. . . . “Beast! Devil! Is that what you do in the town?’ she cried, livid with rage. “That’s it, is it? Though it’s a game we’re playing you want to disgrace me?’ (156-57).
Here, clearly, Yorgakis is more than a little out of his depth, though his confusion can perhaps be explained by his inexperience. However, from the perspective of his own narrative his relationship with Damolinos’s niece Alice, who might be called his first love, is as perplexing as his encounter with Redlips. Alice is very much of the town, and her status as such throws Yor-
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gakis into something of a quandary regarding his own situation and his desire to impress and please her.41 Alice’s own reaction to Yorgakis is as confused as his to her. When he adds a year onto his age, telling her that he is fifteen, she replies that he appears even older: “‘You look like sixteen. I’m a year older than you”’ (93). Later, however, when she has bewildered and teased Yorgakis with her intelligence she states: “‘Ah, what a child you are! . . . You’re a child!”’ (95). Ironically enough, however, it is partly through Alice that Yorgakis is forced to make one of his first moves toward maturity. Until that point, his relationship with Alice is described very much in terms of a played out fantasy, dreamlike, somewhat insubstantial and even insignificant. Again I had forgotten Alice. She had stirred something in my blood, but now I’d forgotten her. My excitement cut me off from the world, wrapped me round as a whirlwind in which I danced alone like the salamander in the flames (1 15).
It is the death of Alice that brings Yorgakis painfully back into the real world. Death is something with which Yorgakis is not unfamiliar, yet for the boy to have loved again and to have yet again lost the object of his love is a hard thing for him to come to grips with. It is Aunt Roussaki who once more is to aid his growth through the situation. “Listen, Yorgaki, to what I say to you, for I suffer more than you: even the greatest calamity, when you look it in the eye smiles; and the greatest happiness weeps. . . . The light blinding you now-you must get used to it. And you must say: that is the fate of man” (1 19).
Yorgakis does manage to move on from the tragedy of Alice’s death, finding love again for a brief time with his ‘Flower-of-Night’. His love is not, however, destined to last long, although Yorgakis is unprepared for its end. When Angeliki tells him she is moving on, he responds in this manner: “In fact it hadn’t occurred to me. Does the infant think its mother will take away the breast that suckles it?’ (175). Experiences in love are not the only things that Yorgakis and Leonis share. For both characters the context in which they are placed is a significant factor 41. “‘Are you from the town?’ From the way she said it, it wasn’t hard to tell she longed to hear me answer yes. ‘I’ve found someone from our own world, haven’t I?’ was what she meant. ‘No, I’m a villager.’ I said it without any deceit, simply because that was what I felt. ‘But it seems to me you haven’t been in the village very long,’ said Mr. Damolinos with a certain severity” (92).
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in their development, although perhaps less so for Yorgakis in The Sun of Death, than for Leonis. For Yorgakis the world around him is much more of a background to his development than a feature in it. The novel focuses more on his relationships with the people who surround him rather than their context. Nevertheless, we are made aware of various contextual details, such as the existence of a war in which Lefteris has gone off to fight, and the Bulgarian prisoners are working just outside the village. Contrasting slightly with this form of context is that which Aunt Roussaki offers to Yorgakis, in the form of an initiation into the natural world that surrounds him. At the beginning, his knowledge of nature is almost nonexistent. Yorgakis is intrigued by the discovery of a world unknown to him and is looking for fairies and magic: “An unknown world was opening out, while my aunt stood beside me and with her magic wand made it tame and desirable. ‘Are there fairies, Aunt, where you live?”’ (21). By leaving the town, he embarks on a journey of discovery of plants and rural practices: “‘What are those flowers, Aunt?’ ‘Christ and the holy Virgin! Don’t you know what mallows are?”’ (25). In his school, nature was simulated by one of his teachers who by means of a piece of rope on the green carpet represented a brook flowing through the green meadow or suggested treating a hatstand as a tree. When he first arrives in her care, Aunt Roussaki takes Yorgakis through the stars. “Now you’ll see a constellation big as a huge tree. Its foliage spreads in the zenith and its roots down in the earth. I don’t know what they call the tree, except for the two stars shining low down. They’re the Milk stars. When the shepherd sees them setting towards Mount Ida, he knows it’s time to milk his flock” (86).
Whereas for Yorgakis his context simply helps him develop in terms of selfawareness and understanding, and exists within a more rural rather than an urban framework, for Leonis it has a much more fundamental role, in the form of a historical background that not only runs parallel to the story, but is entwined with it. Theotokas, in his note to the text, says this regarding the significance of the historical context of the novel: “We were the children of a great historical crisis which determined our lives, and . . . our dreams and activities and works quite naturally could not escape entirely the shadow which covered us” (xii). Both Leonis and Yorgakis share experiences of loss that strongly influence their development. The loss of father in particular is a central feature of Bildungsrornan and often a prerequisite for the coming to maturity of the protagonist.
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The loss of the father, either by death or alienation, usually symbolizes or parallels a loss of faith in the values of the hero’s home and family and leads inevitably to the search for a substitute parent or creed.42 For Yorgakis, loss, particularly in the form of death, is central to his experience in the novel. Having lost his parents at the beginning of the novel, and then Alice part way through, it is in fact the death of the village’s beloved white stallion that finally leads Yorgakis to protest: “Whatever I love dies” (138). His Aunt’s retort, however, is telling: “It’s because you don’t notice other deaths” (138). It is, ultimately, through the death of Aunt Roussaki that Yorgakis must truly come into his own. As we can see there are a number of similarities between Leonis and Yorgakis, though it can be argued that they are mainly due to the fact that both are of similar age and the things they share (love, loss) are fundamental in anyone’s development. In many ways their differences outweigh their similarities. Leonis is, as the title of the novel indicates, certainly the central character in his story and his development is very much an individual one, coping as he does with his own emotions and place within the turmoil of history. For Yorgakis in The Sun of Death the situation is different. His development, whilst on a shorter time scale than that of Leonis, is less pronounced, largely due to the fact that his ‘development’ is mainly contrived through the tuition of his Aunt Roussaki and his friend Loizos Damolinos. In the end, Leonis and Yorgakis appear to be different characters, with quite different experiences in most areas of life. The former lives at the heart of a cosmopolitan city, and his development is very much an individual one, though severely conditioned by history in the end. Yorgakis’s development, on the other hand, is not an individual one. In many ways the novel focuses more upon the influence of the people around Yorgakis on him than on his own development. Moreover, Yorgakis spends much of the time in the novel filling the places of others for the people who surround him. For his mother he fills the place of his father: “‘Call me Maria. You’re grown up now’. ‘I’ll call you ‘my love’. ‘Yes. Call me that. That’s what I want”’ (15). For Aunt Roussaki Yorgakis fills the place of her son, Lefteris: “‘Let’s eat, LefteriWhat’s wrong with me? I keep on calling you Lefteri”’ (84),and his experience with Redlips is similar-he reminds her of Lefteri: “I took you for Lefteri!” (157) and even with Alice, fulfilling her fantasy: “‘Go, go! . . . I’m Ariadne. You’ll come to me out of the sea”’ (1 11). Until, therefore, Yorgakis becomes an individual, through the death of Aunt Roussaki at the end of the 42. Buckley, op. cit.. P. 19.
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novel, and stops filling the place of others for those around him, he can never be expected to develop to the same extent as Leonis. There is a certain ambiguity in Prevelakis’s novel as to who the protagonist of the novel actually is. Certainly the story is narrated from Yorgakis’s perspective, but in many ways Aunt Roussaki is far more its central character. Aunt Roussaki takes in Yorgakis after the death of both his mother and his father and treats him as her own son. For him, she is both teacher and guide. She initiates him in the ways of the village and rural life and aids his adaptation from town to village lad. “Forget the sea! You’re the earth’s seed” (118), Aunt Roussalu assures Yorgakis, establishing, through the association of the sea with death and the contrast between nature and urban space, what is the central theme of the novel: the overcoming of the fear of death. It is within the parameters of this underlying theme that the character of Aunt Roussalu far outshines that of Yorgakis with her strength, clarity, and implicitly earthy philosophy. The relationship between Aunt Roussaki and her nephew Yorgakis can be seen from a psychoanalytical perspective as she becomes not only a mother figure for him, but also because he develops a strong psychological attachment to her that has been missing in his relationship with his mother. His mother is presented to us as a cold and distant person, who offers him no emotional or physical love. For instance, after his father’s death he asks her whether she loves him, but she answers that she does not know, which in turn feeds his insecurity, giving him none of the reassurance that a boy of his age would need to cope with his father’s death. Furthermore, the relationship between Roussaki and Yorgakis has an educational aspect, for she takes it upon herself to teach him about rural life and folk tradition, in a way that even bookish Loizos Damolinos cannot match. Lastly, she becomes his companion and friend in whom he can confide, and someone who will provide him with answers to the questions that a boy may face, particularly after having suffered the death of both his parents at such a tender age. It should be noted that it is death, the death of his parents, which brings them together in the first place, and it is death that separates them again in the final chapter. This central idea is developed on three levels in The Sun qfDeath: at the level of the characters, as a backdrop to the action of the novel (for the novel is set during World War I), and on a higher level as a metaphysical subconscious fear. It is the juxtaposition between life and death, light and darkness, which is even reflected in the title of the book, that creates the underlying spiritual dimension in which their relationship develops. Dimitris Raftopoulos argues that Prevelakis aestheticizes death in his novel by presenting a narcissistic and aestheticist attitude toward
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it.43Yet he is presenting us not just with a study of death, but also a study of life, which could be seen as a reflection of the Freudian concept of the constant conflict between life and death instincts. After Yorgakis’s father’s death at sea, and his mother’s suicide, Aunt Roussaki emerges as a warm, loving, and caring guardian, who answers his initial anxieties and reassures him with her affection and attention. Hence, from the beginning of the novel, an attachment between aunt and nephew is formed, something that seemed to be lacking in his relationship with his mother. Aunt Roussaki becomes for him a mother figure, making him more than happy or in his own words: “Despite all the suffering I’d been through with her, I felt that I’d lived” (79). She is presented as the epitome of motherhood, her maternal instincts being emphasized a number of times in the novel. For example, she takes in a Bulgarian prisoner of war and offers him some food, and the reader is informed that the prisoner is touched by the fact that Aunt Roussaki calls him ‘my son’. She treats him in the same way that she hopes some Bulgarian mother would have treated her son before he was killed. Through this episode the universality of motherhood is underlined, as is the closeness between a mother and her son. This affection and love is not expressed any less in relation to Yorgakis. She treats him as though he were her real son, to the extent that she often calls him by her son’s name. This strong bond between mother and son incorporates the idea of mothers sacrificing themselves for their offspring. The culmination of this theme of sacrifice is of course the ending of the novel, in which Aunt Roussaki sacrifices her life for her nephew. The fact that Aunt Roussaki will sacrifice herself for Yorgakis does not come as a surprise to the reader. This is not only because their relationship is very close, but also because we have been given clues through the various dreams and premonitions that she experiences. She has a premonition that the boy will live for a great many years, that this will be her last Spring and that she will not be around for Easter, which is backed up by various dreams. For example, on the eve of the feast of Saint John she places a fig leaf on the roof of her house, according to custom, and the next morning when she goes to retrieve it she finds it withered, a sign that means that she will only live for one more year. Instead of being afraid, she hopes that it is true, and says: “May I pay for the blood, and my child live” (64). Hence, the reader is aware that Aunt Roussaki will probably die in an attempt to save the boy’s life; that subconsciously she wants to sacrifice her life for her nephew’s sake. The dreams in this instance are prophetic, and therefore hint to the reader what the end of 43. Dimitris Raftopoulos, OL1 6 C ~ rK
~ TLY L ’Epya (Athens: Difros,
1965), 62. He considers The
Sun of Death flawed due to its contrived language, schematic characterization, and aestheticism.
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the novel will be. They represent the dreamer’s unconscious effort to fulfil a wish that could not be expressed more directly. The novel relies on a number of oppositions; the main one being between life and death. Associated with sea, war, and urban space, death seems to come from outside and invade the natural world. Thus, another opposition between rural and urban experience is introduced and accentuated through the characters of the novel since Aunt Roussak~stands for rural life and folk tradition, whereas Loizos Damolinos, being exiled in the village, represents the intellectual, cosmopolitan, and modern man of the city, followed in this respect to some extent by his niece Alice.44 For Aunt Roussaki there is no separation between life and death, human and natural worlds, words and things. Death for her is not something dark and menacing, but an extension of life. It represents a bright guiding light, as Roussaki advises Yorgakis: “You mustn’t fear it either. As long as we feel him near us, we know what’s of value in life and what is rubbish. He holds a torch and shows us the way” (83). The attitude that Aunt Roussaki has toward death must be reassuring to Yorgakis, who is haunted by and seems to be the pivot of death in the novel, for not only do both his parents die, but so does his cousin, his girlfriend Alice, and even his aunt. It can be said that love in The Sun ofDeath does not result in happiness, and for Yorgakis it must seem that he loses everyone he loves to death. Aunt Roussaki’s total reconciliation with death is contrasted with Damolinos’s fear of death and his view that “The living are better off than the dead” (9 1). Whereas Damolinos tells Yorgakis that it is better to be alive than to be dead, his aunt talks about death as the ‘real life’.45As a result of her influence Yorgakis tells Damolinos that he is not afraid to die, however in the same sentence he does admit that he said this because: “I was annoyed that he called me a child” (91). Apart from initiating him into the ways of the rural tradition, Aunt Roussaki also prepares him spiritually for both life and death. Birth and death are all a natural part of rural life, and through the many deaths that Prevelakis presents us with in this novel, he tries to show that death is as inevitable as living-the one process inevitably follows the other. This also mirrors the Freudian concept that from the day we are born, we are moving towards death be it slowly or quickly. The fact that Aunt Roussaki celebrates life as well as not fearing death is exemplified throughout the novel. For ex44. Alice, who uses French words and flaunts her urban origin, seems to be preoccupied with her own thoughts and has little time for the natural world. Hence when Yorgakis invites her to watch a flock of sheep she replies: “I was thinking about something” (p. 94). 45. Aunt Roussaki argues that the dead continue to live in the other world, and insists: “Listen to him! Listen to him! That’s where life is. They forget the false world. For one day they weep because they’ve lost it. But then the other dead take them to the waters of Oblivion and they drink and forget” (p. 131).
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ample, at the beginning of the novel she shouts at an old man called Fotis who is about to kill an ant, telling him that he shouldn’t kill it, for life whilst it lasts is sweet. In another instance she comes between a bitch and some snarling dogs who are about to kill her, and defends the bitch from the men who are standing watching. For Aunt Roussaki life does not end at death, and this view underpins the decision she takes at the end of the novel as well as her statement: “The man who studies death . . . understands life” (1 81). Moreover, the fact that she sees death as an extension of life is also reflected in her belief that all animals were once humans that have been reincarnated, thus implying that there is no differentiation between human beings and nature. This belief is also applied to stars that have names associated with people and animals. Damolinos, on the other hand, tries to persuade Yorgakis to learn the scientific names of the stars.46 Though illiterate, Aunt Roussaki is wise, and her wisdom allows her to know the world in a very different way from Damolinos. Her education probably consists of the accumulated knowledge of generations of women that has been passed down in her family. The only book contained in her house is a Bible, and the fact that she teaches Yorgakis so much about rural life and life in general is seen in clear contrast to the bookish education that Loizos Damolinos offers the boy. Aunt Roussalu is a representative of folk tradition, through whom Yorgakis is initiated into the rural world of dreams, premonitions, and customs. Whereas for the illiterate Roussaki there is no difference between language and referent, Damolinos seems to be well aware of the difference between the signifier and signified.47 Who would be man’s greatest benefactor? He who would teach man to know things by their true names. Don’t think it’s easy. There are name-masks, and there are names which are skinned flesh. such that the least breeze makes them 46. “‘You said earlier,’ Lois0 [Loizos] continued, ‘that you saw the Seven Brothers, the Evening Star, the Goatherd and the Goat. . . . This is the only time I want to correct your aunt’s teaching. The names she’s taught you-even though they are as pleasant as hread-diminish the sky we have over us. They make it part of our earth. I’d like you to know the stars by the names science gives them: those are the names of mystery! The Seven Brothers you must call the Great Bear, the Evening Star Aphrodite, the River Jordan the Galaxy, the Goatherd with the Goat Altair and Vega. . . . What importance has it? you will ask. The greatest, if you wish to enter into the soul of language. Each thing has a name. If you bend and whisper it to it, it opens like a flower, breaks like a ripe fruit. It is liherated, it liberates!”’ (pp. 14445). 47. Peter Mackridge argues that “she uses language unreflectively; for her, language is a process in which she is enmeshed, and there are no gaps or spaces between it and her, or between it and the world; language not only integrates her into the tradition but allows her to participate reciprocally in the whole phenomenal and conceptual universe. Loizos, on the other hand, sees language as conventional and is able to flout it as he flouts any other social convention.” “Popular Tradition and Individual Creativity: Pandelis Prevelakis, 1909-1986,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 2 (1986): 149.
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suffer. If you want to become the poet I’ve dreamt you’ll become, stand in front
of every name as before an icon; and ask that it may work miracles! Ask that each word you utter be one with its object. And if it isn’t one with its object as the peel with the fruit, spit it out! (145).
Words for Damolinos are not always authentic representations of the world and what cannot be expressed in words is demonstrated by dance or even selfinjury.48 He seems to admire Roussaki for her firm beliefs and certainties while he is tormented by the feeling of spiritual exile: “An exile’s one who lost one faith and hasn’t put another in its place. He can’t explain the world any longer. All seems to him to take place haphazardly, all is a chaos” (129). Apparently a frustrated intellectual, the opposite of a natural man, alienated from tradition, and disillusioned, he envies Roussaki’s naive simplicity, unwavering faith, and total immersion in folk tradition. He is an existential pessimist who cannot return to his lost Paradise because he feels condemned to perpetual exile. Yet he preaches the individuality and freedom of the artist. “Whoever doesn’t find the reward inside himself is a slave. The first thing I teach-may you know it!-is freedom.” “Freedom?” “Yes. Freedom from fear, from the ruler, from the give and take. . . .” ‘‘I’ll put into your hands something that’s stronger than a golden sceptre,” said my master, as if he’d understood what I was thinking. ‘‘I’ll teach you to wield a pen.” “A pen?’ “Yes. That will be the sign of your power” (121).
Writing for Damolinos is associated with poetry and freedom. He sees it as his duty to awaken the poetic talent inherent in Yorgakis. At this point one could ask to what extent Yorgakis is free to choose. He is troubled throughout by the lack of his mother and as long as Aunt Roussaki represents a mother figure for him and fulfils this role, his course is predetermined and Damolinos, therefore, is not in a position to create a real dilemma. He is simply there to represent the other side, not as an alternative choice, but to complete the frame. Yorgalus is led inexorably toward nature and his gradual immersion into the natural world is not really challenged. The different worldviews represented by Roussaki and Damolinos do not bring about any inner struggle or crisis in Yorgakis’s consciousness. His un48. “You’ve seen how our young men dance? It’s because they have no words! When God enters into them, they don’t know what to do with him. Sometimes they plunge the knife into their loins, seeking to relieve their frenzy. . . . ‘Will you be able to contain that frenzy in words? That is the crux! That’s the leap of death, if you’ve heard the term. The man who can make it is the man who’s truly free”’ (p. 146).
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questioning attachment to or even absorption into the world of Aunt Roussalu seems inevitable if rather unnatural for a boy of his age. Although it could be argued that Yorgakis is trying to escape from the sea and the urban space associated with the death of his parents, the fact that he does not put up any resistance and accepts almost everything from Roussaki seems unconvincing and problematic. He is also haunted by the past and the memory of dead peoBy loolung toward the past rather than to the future his individual development is not fostered and he is not able to disengage from the tradition personified by Roussaki. His development is further impeded by his identification in the eyes of Roussaki and even Redlips with Lefteris. In this way the sense of personal development, central to the Bildungsroman, is undermined and the individuality of Yorgakis is compromised. Individual autonomy presupposes difference and conflict whereas Roussaki’s universe is based on sameness and harmony. In spite of the fact that she lives with the threat of the vendetta over the death of Spithouraina’s son, her beliefs do not involve the element of conflict, as for her there is no separation between life and death, the human and natural world, words and things, friends and foes. Damolinos may represent the agnostic intellectual and the autonomy of the artistic spirit, but one does not sense that Yorgakis is really struggling to choose between Roussaki’s adherence to folk tradition and Damolinos’s urban intellect~alism.~~ The novel is more about the initiation of an adolescent boy into the mysteries of the natural world and to popular culture rather than a manifestation of an identity crisis and a serious attempt to assert his individuality. The transition from the realm of folk culture and fixed beliefs to artistic individualism and urban culture described in the subsequent volumes of the trilogy is hindered from the very first volume because of the unquestioning attachment of Yorgakis to his aunt. This also introduces an element of confusion as to the genre to which The Sun of Death should be assigned. Is it 49. The following passages are indicative of the special relationship between Yorgakis and his dead: “My father, my mother, Lefteri, Alice rose up like cypress-trees about me, like trees in full leaf. ‘If God lets me live, it’s so they don’t altogether die.’ I said to myself,” (p. 120) “My dead wouldn’t leave me in peace” (p. 154). 50. After Rousaki’s death, Loizos’s scepticism dominates Yorgakis’s spiritual life. In the second volume of the trilogy, The Medusa’s Head, he goes to Athens to study and then to Aegina with his mentor Loizos. He flirts with communism and becomes acquainted with other ideas and thinkers. The fundamental dilemma for him is formed by the opposition between art and agnostic philosophy on the one hand, and life, love, and rural origins on the other. After a period of physical and spiritual ‘exile’ he returns to his roots, considering this return an essential condition for creativity. Like Odysseus, in the third volume of the trilogy, The Bread of Angels, he returns to Crete where he feels alien in a society transformed dramatically after World War 11. He finds Loizos, a caricature of his old self, once again, and meets Ariadne for the first time, his disabled half-sister, who symbolizes the idea of the homeland and at the same time the disintegration of the myth that had held his life together. In short, it is a trilogy of existential despair and artistic agony, echoing Kazantzakis, as a number of critics have argued claiming that Loizos is his persona.
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a Bildungsroman, a metaphysical-cum-existential novel, or neither? It seems to me that Prevelakis’s idealization of folk tradition compromises the individuality of his main character and the genre of his novel. The novel represents a desire for a symbolic return to the mother’s womb and to origins (it is indicative in this respect that the name of the village is Pigi [spring, source, origin]). The mother here is both real and symbolic. Plunging into the sea Yorgakis desperately seeks an elusive reunion with his dead mother,51while on a symbolic level he tries to shape his identity by identifying with two great mothers: nature and tradition, personified by the motherly figure of Roussaki, who in turn is contrasted with the male figure of Damolinos and the alienation of literacy. The reunion with the mother, by escaping the symbolic order of society and regressing to the safety of the womb of nature and tradition, becomes the ultimate goal of the alienated individual. Yorgakis returns to the safety of the womb and, therefore, the formation of his self in the novel remains undeveloped and incomplete. By seeing Yorgakis as a persona of Prevelakis himself, we might better understand his adherence to popular culture as personified by Roussaki. Prevelakis was, indeed, a staunch demoticist and an admirer of folk culture. As Peter Mackridge points out: “At times he was so confident in the adequacy and the vigor of Greek popular culture that he saw it as offering a cure for the ills that beset contemporary man wherever he may be.” 52 However, by harking back to the pristine and timeless popular tradition, uncorrupted by literacy and western intellectualism, he compromised the individuality of his young hero and denied the detachment afforded by the act of writing. By immersing his hero in oral folk culture he subordinated him to the past and tradition, thus curtailing his freedom and his d e ~ e l o p m e n t . ~ ~ By virtue of the conflation of life and death, the existentialism of the novel seeks the abrogation of time, the overcoming of alienation by recourse to an organic society, and the age of belief. Yorgakis represents the nostalgia and regression of an adult disillusioned by the present rather than the optimistic 51. On a visit to the sea, accompanied by Alice, Yorgakis, who had stayed away from the sea since the death of his parents, tries to establish contact with his mother by diving into the sea: “I clambered again to the top of the rock and took a second dive. ‘Mother! Mother! Give her to me!’ This was what I tried to say: I’d forgotten to say it with my first dive. The water rushed in filling, filling my mouth, pounding my stomach mercilessly, darkening my eyes. The same force that I’d met before again propelled me back to the surface. . . . ‘Mother!’ I tried with all my might to shout” (p. 112). 52. Mackridge, “Popular Tradition,” 144. 53. Theofanis G . Stavrou in his introduction to Andonis Decavalles’s Pandelis Prevelakis and fhe Value of a Heritage (op. cit., p. 6 ) points out that “subtle in all of Prevelakis’ work is his concern about freedom-individual as well as national-which is becoming more and more difficult to maintain.”
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dynamism of a youngster looking forward. Although the story is related from the point of view of the adolescent hero, the perspective is that of a man who wishes to reverse the tide and to halt the detrimental inevitability of progress. At the end, the social and spiritual integration of the individual is more important than his metaphysical freedom. Each of the three novels show the battles of individuals to defend their autonomy on various fronts: Theotokis takes on society, Theotokas history, and Prevelakis folk tradition. The three writers respond to a different problem each time: social, historical, and existential, thus showing that Greek writers dealt in different ways with the fundamental problem of the relationship of the individual to society, history, and tradition. The development of individuality in these novels is either weak or unconvincing, with the context appearing to be dominant or all-absorbing. It could also be argued that ultimately these three narratives tend to be fatalistic; their protagonists succumb to fate rather than the shaping forces of society, history, or tradition. The main characters in these three novels seem unable to resist or escape some sort of stigma: hereditary (Tourkoyannos), historical (Leonis), or cultural (Yorgakis). All three seem to follow an inexorably predetermined course which, however, does not lead to any personal fulfilment or achievement in the end. Instead, the ending of the stories is either ambiguous or inconclusive with regard to the protagonists who do not seem able to control their own lives. The fatalistic nature of these novels considerably reduces the creative tension between the hero and his context, and in turn leads to generic confusion. Katadikos fails to be a social novel while Leonis and The Sun of Death can hardly be defined as Bildungsromane. The conflict of generations and the transition from provincial to urban life, which are two of the principal features of the Bildungsroman, do not play a significant role in The Sun of Death, where the protagonist follows the reverse course from city to countryside. The city, according to Jerome Buckley, plays a double role in the life of the protagonist of a Bildungsroman; it is both the agent of liberation and a source of corruption. In the Bildungsromane the city, which seems to promise infinite variety and newness, all too often brings a disenchantment more alarming and decisive than any dissatisfaction with the narrowness of provincial life.54
In The Sun of Death, however, there is no flight from provincialism and urban life does not feature prominently enough to produce the necessary trial. 54. Buckley, op. cit., p. 20.
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Compared to James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the novels of Theotokas and Prevelakis are not narratives of struggle and revolt. They lack the liberating spirit of Joyce’s novel as is epitomized in the words of Stephen Dedalus. Look here, Cranly, he said. You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use-silence, exile, and cunning.55
In spite of the notion of static depiction implied by the word ‘portrait’ in the title, Joyce exploits a plurality of voices and an adversarial rigor in order to dramatize the different stages of Stephen’s growth in a manner that is lacking in Theotokas and Prevelakis because they see their heroes absorbed and overpowered by community, history, or tradition. Theotokas was certainly familiar with Joyce’s novel and Prevelakis might have been with the work of Thomas Mann,s6 assumptions that will help us to situate them in the wider European tradition. It has been argued that there is a difference between the German and the English tradition of Bildungsrom~n.~~ The English novel of adolescence is concerned with the practical accommodation between the hero and the social world around him.s8 In the German Bildungsroman, on the other hand, this accommodation is defined in epistemological and ontological terms, and less with regard to moral, social, and psychological factors. According to Martin Swales, in the German Bildungsroman “the forces which oppose its hero are less susceptible of realistic portrayal for the reason that they tend to be ontologically, rather than socially, based.”59 It could be said that Leonis looks more toward the English novel of adolescence while The Sun of Death more 55. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (London: Granada, 1982), 222. 56. Mackridge, “A Matter of Light and Death,” 65 argues that Thomas Mann’s Der Zcruberberg (1 924) is one of the precursors of Prevelakis’s novel. 57. Martin Swales, The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), 34-35, 163-64. 58. For the English version of Bildungsroman see Buckley, op. cit. Marianne Hirsch in her article “The Novel of Formation as Genre: Between Great Expectations and Lost Illusions,” (op. cit.) points out: “Whereas the German novels of formation focus primarily on the individual and his unfolding, the French and English novels directly engage the social problems that impinge on that unfolding, deforming and distorting it” (p. 309). According to Patricia Allen, the English form of the Bildungsroman “linked the individual’s moral, spiritual, and psychological maturation with its economic and social advancement.” Social Mobility in the English Bildungsroman: Gissing, Hardy, Bennett, and Luwrence (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1986), 2. 59. Swales, op. cit., p. 35.
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toward the German tradition of Bildungsroman, without fully realizing the tension between individual potentiality and the complexity of the social and historical context. The Bildungsroman can be seen as the prototypical narrative of individual development in society, which distinguishes it from related forms such as confession or the picaresque novel. What underlies the Bildungsroman as a literary genre is the dialectic of the individual and society. Built as it is on sharp contrasts, such as dynamism and limitations, restlessness and the ‘sense of an ending’, Franco Moretti argues that the Bildungsroman is intrinsically contradictory by being the symbolic form of modernity, because of its ability to accentuate modernity’s dynamism and instability, and the “symbolic form that more than any other has portrayed and promoted modem socialization.”60 In spite of this ambivalence, the historical and teleological structure of the Bildungsroman as a genre, with its gradual process of self-understanding and development through successive stages, engenders an ironic distance between the perspectives of narrator and protagonists. Such an ironic distance is not fully developed in either Leonis or The Sun of Death. The pale individualism manifested in these novels might be related to wider historical, cultural, or ideological trends in Greek society, as outlined in chapter 1, which fostered reliance on notions of collectivity (family, nation, tradition) rather than on individuality. This might also explain why there are few characters with distinct individuality in Greek fiction. The question of the formation of individuality and the degree of its shaping by external forces is certainly a broad philosophical, political, and moral problem, but what these three novels demonstrate is that in Greece the context is often overpowering6’ Although the three novels engage with the moral, historical, and cultural formation of the individual, ultimately the individuality of the characters is externally conditioned or compromised, and this trend might be illuminating in understanding the development of Greek fiction and culture as a whole.
60. Franco Moretti, The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture (London: Verso, 1987), 10. 61. Angela Kastrinaki argues that the Bildungsroman in Greece did not develop for three chief reasons. Firstly, due to the lack of normative institutions (puritanical families, boarding schools, a dominant church) to which the writers could demonstrate liberating tendencies; secondly, due to the underdevelopment of individualism; and thirdly, because of the absence of an aristocracy. “ N ~ a p o I K ~ X X L T . ~ X V E aS ~ q vE X A ~ V L K %m~o-ypaqia:H K O U A T O ~ ~ PTOU ~ E - ~ W T L U ~ KO ~~~ LK ~ P O L E P ‘EXXEI+ELS”’in OLX p 6 u o ~77s I m o p i w (Athens: Istoriko Arheio Neolaias, 1998), 253-63.
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Chapter Five
A Hero without a Cause: Self-Identity in Vasilis Arvanitis
The tendency till now has been to read certain modern Greek narratives as manifestations of heroism, patriotism, or manhood, as can be seen from the discussion of Freedom and Death in the next chapter. Yet, if we approach these same stories from a psychoanalyticperspective, they can be read as narratives concealing an identity crisis. This notion of transition from a heroic, male-oriented reading to a psychoanalytically informed analysis that exposes the protagonist as a vulnerable and unstable individual can be applied to Myrivilis’s novella Vasilis Antanitis. Reading this story one has to confront the issue of whether Vasilis is a popular idol of masculinity or simply an individual confused about his identity. The story, which has been treated by critics as a masterpiece,’ is set in a small village in Myrivilis’s native island of Lesbos during the first decade of the twentieth century. The timing is interesting as it is set in the final days of Greek and Turkish coexistence on the island, a time that produced an important subculture of heroic men owing allegiance to nothing and no one but themselves.2The main character of Myrivilis’s text has indeed been seen as embodying a ‘genuine Greek’ ideal and having qualities such as masculine beauty, an uncompromising free spirit, and bodily strength or virtuosity that make him an object of popular ~eneration.~ Vasilis has also been treated as a 1. Vangelis Athanasopoulos recently described it as a masterpiece of Greek fiction in his article “0 BaaiXqs o A p p a v i q s : ’Eva ~ r i ~ ~ v yO p E ~a~ T L K + O L K O U O ~ ~ ~ SNCa ,” Eu& 148, no. 1725 (July-August 2000): 103. In an earlier study, H IIOALTLK?~A L ~ U T C Xi -UqT~“Mu&K?~F ~ MEO~BOU”: STpanjs M u ~ L / ~ ? ~ A T ~ )T; u T ~~ ~~T(Athens: K~ J~Fs Kardamitsa, 1992) he treats the text as a mythical archetype and emphasizes Vasilis’s Nietzschean features. 2. See Pavlos Andronikos’s preface in his translation of Stratis Myrivilis, Vasilis Arvanitis (Armidale, Australia: University of New England Press, 1983). 3. Takis Karvelis, “Stratis Myrivilis,” in H MEUOT~OAE~LKT~ I l ~ ~ o y p a c p ivol. a , 6 (Athens: Sokolis, 1993), 129.
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godless, immoral, and lawless individual who expresses the liberation of the instincts and their primitive revolt against a conventional civilization that aims at their repre~sion.~ The narrative, it has been argued, “implicitly alludes to the classical Greek concept of the tragic hero, to Nietzsche’s concept of the Superman, and to traditional songs and tales which have defined the popular concept of heroic masculinity in Greek communities since the middle ages.”5 It could also be said that the narrative has an episodic structure, as each chapter deals with an individual incident while representing a regression to the past both in terms of its theme and in terms of style. It thematizes a nostalgia for childhood and a desire for a return to popular tradition. Thus Vasilis acquires mythical proportions and becomes the epitome of a folk hero. Although the first, shorter version of Vasilis Awanitis was serialized in the newspaper I Proia in 1934, and a second, more extended version was included in Myrivilis’s collection of stories To Galazio vivlio (1939), the final, further expanded and definitive version of the story was not published until December 1943 (followed by a second edition in February 19446)and can be related to Myrivilis’s tendency during the 1940s to go back to his childhood and popular t r a d i t i ~ nThis . ~ trend, also exemplified in the novellas Pagana (19441945), 0 Pan (1946) and the novel I Panagia i Gorgona [The Mermaid Madonna] (1949, serialized in an earlier form a decade earlier), is driven by nostalgia for the lost paradise of childhood and a conservative cultural ideology. Though the story can, and has been, read in different ways by exploring, for example, its connection with Greek folk traditions and fairy-tale imagery, or its alleged escapist nature,s it seems to me that the regression to childhood might offer the opportunity for a psychoanalytic reading. Pavlos Andronikos’s study on the role of the narrator points in this direction, making some good points of a psychoanalytical nature, even though its aim is to explore readers’ emotional responses based on Arthur Janov’s theory.9 However, before embarking on such a reading of VasilisAwanitis it will be useful to set 4. Critical views on the story are quoted by Mario Vitti at the end of his edition Vasilis Arvanitis (Athens: Ermis, 1972) and by Takis Karvelis, op. cit. 5. Roderick Beaton, An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 175. 6 . For understandable reasons manifestations of heroism in literature fostered resistance during the German occupation. 7. For the differences between the three editions see Athanasopoulos, H ~ O ~ L T ALC~CTTWJ~ L K ~ ~ T ~ S “Muthcrjs , M&f368ou,”10347 and K. A. Dimadis, A L K T ( Y T O ~ ~ ( U - U K~(A Y L& U&ioypacpicu, ~OS 1936-1944 (Athens: Gnosi, 1991), 215-47. 8. Mario Vitti in his introduction to his edition of Vasilis Arvaniris (Errnis 1972) investigates the possible links between the return to the past with the historical and political context of the period of publication. He points out the escapist role of memory in the fiction of the late 1930s and 1940s and some echoes of Greek folk songs and naive popular painting in the story. 9. Pavlos Andronikos, “The Narrator of Stratis Myrivilis’ Vasilis Amaniris,” in Margaret Alexiou and Vassilis Lambropoulos, The Text and Its Margins: Post-Structuralist Approaches to TwenriethCentury Greek Literature (New York: Pella, 1985), 85-122.
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out the parameters involved in the formation of identity and subjectivity, basing ourselves mainly on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. The distinction between self and other is based on mediation which allows each individual to circumscribe his distinct subjectivity. At birth, no distance exists between mother and child, the sense of self has not been developed, and the young child lives in a pre-linguistic, pre-Oedipal realm that Lacan calls the Imaginary. According to Terry Eagleton “the imaginary for Lacan is precisely this realm of images in which we make identifications, but in the very act of doing so are led to misperceive and misrecognize ourselves.”I0 At this stage there is a kind of idealized identification with the mother and there is no distinction between Self and Other. Normally the child is expected to move from a non-distanced relationship with his mother to the family, which as an institution distinguishes between parents and children constituting them as singular subjects. It is the father in the symbolic role of Law who prohibits the union of the child with its mother, thus establishing the family triangle. Failure to establish this triangle or, in other words, not successfully resolving the Oedipus problem, means that the child cannot dissociate itself from its mother and as a result is deprived of its subjectivity. Between six and eighteen months, what is called by Lacan the ‘mirrorstage’, the child sees its own reflection in the mirror and makes an imaginary identification with it.]] Whereas before it experienced itself as something amorphous, it now gains a sense of totality and completeness and gradually becomes conscious of itself as an entity. The mirror stage, however, challenges notions of unity and autonomy that are swept aside as merely illusory; “the infant experiences this discord between the fragmented self and his unitary image as an aggressive disintegration of his own body.”12 During the mirror stage the child forms the first unified self-image and although this image is still ‘imaginary’ and narcissistic, the process of constructing a self has begun. As a result the male child perceives its sexual difference from the female and thus can no longer identify with the mother as it did previously. At the same time the child wishes to be everything for her, a mere extension of her, thus identifying not only with the object of her desire, the phallus, but also trying to satisfy her desire. In the dual relationship of the mirror stage between the child and its own image or that of its mother, the child sees nothing but an ideal figure with which it 10. Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 165. 11. Jacques Lacan, “The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience,” in Ecrits, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Tavistock, 1977), 1-7. The mirror-image is “a homologue for the MothedChild symbolic relation” (p. 196). 12. Bice Benvenuto and Roger Kennedy, The Works of Jacques Lacan: An Introduction (London: Free Association Books, 1986), 57.
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merges or id en ti fie^.'^ In this way, the child is deprived of individuality, subjectivity, and a place in society, and by remaining fixed at this stage is reduced to the level of animal life. The identification with the mother entails an incestuous desire for her that can only be arrested by the father or father figure, who intervenes to impose the ‘Phallic No’ on the child, forbidding him any such sexual desires. The father disrupts the harmonious, libidinal relationship between mother and child by raising the taboo of incest and introducing the wider familial and social network in which the child has to be registered. The appearance of the father signifies the sexual difference between the child and the mother and drives its libidinal desire for her body underground to the unconscious. The child recognizes the father’s similarity to himself (i.e., he also has a penis), identifying this with his father’s position of power and, linking thereafter its loss with the loss of power, develops a castration anxiety and switches to identifying with the male parent. The father castrates the child by separating it from its mother, which is the price to be paid “if one is to become completely oneself and have access to the order of the symbol, of culture and of ~ivilization.”’~ As the child enters into what Lacan calls the Symbolic Order, also known as the Law of the Father, a triadic relationship between both parents and the child is formed. For the child, taking up a place in the symbolic register of language and the society represents the slow process of realizing its individuality. The transition from the Imaginary to the Symbolic Order, namely to a network of social, family, and sexual roles, represents the formation of a subject’s identity as it comes to perceive itself as constituted by differences and similarities. The Symbolic involves an intersubjective relationship always ‘mediated’ by a third term, the big Other and, therefore, is characterized by triadic structures, whereas the Imaginary is characterized by binary relationships. The former is “the realm of culture as opposed to the imaginary order of nature.”15 In the end, identity or selfhood is constructed in relation to the patriarchal Symbolic Order. 13. Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis (London: Hogarth Press, 1977), 257. 14. Anika Lemaire, Jacques Lucan, trans. David Macey (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), 83. 15. Dylan Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 1996). 202. Fredric Jameson points out that “whatever the nature of the Lacanian Symbolic, it is clear that the Imaginq-a kind of preverbal register whose logic is essentially visual-precedes it as a stage in the development of the psyche. Its moment of formation-and that existential situation in which its specificity is most strikingly dramatized-has been named the ‘mirror stage’ by Lacan, who thereby designates that moment between six and eighteen months in which the child first demonstrably ‘recognizes’his or her own image in the mirror, thus tangibly making the connection between inner motricity and the specular movements stirring before him.” “Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan,” in The Ideologies of Theory: Essays 1971-1986, vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 1988), 84.
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The resolution of the mirror stage and Oedipal problem is considered essential for the development of a ‘normal’, well-balanced person. The Symbolic marks the beginning of the socialization and cultural realization of man; it grants him a conditional identity along with the normalization of his sexual and aggressive instincts. As Anika Lemaire argues: “The resolution of the Oedipus liberates the subject by giving him, with his Name, a place in the family constellation, an original signifier of self and subjectivity. It promotes him in his realization of self through participation in the world of culture, language and civilization.”‘6This, however, does not always occur without problems or failures. A male who does not successfully complete his painful Oedipal passage as a child, may still be seeking to do so (unconsciously) well into adulthood, still searching for a mother figure to desire and a father figure to identify with. It seems likely that this is the case with Vasilis in Myrivilis’s story, depending on whether we see the narrative as a record of a traumatic personal experience or as a series of heroic acts. Some might think that a psychoanalytic reading is generally applied only to texts that have obvious Oedipal connotations, in other words, those that incorporate conventional dyadic and triadic human relationships (between parents and children). However, one must not be too quick to exclude more abstract relationships from such analysis. The fact that the potential of a psychoanalytic approach may not be immediately obvious to a reader is not proof that it does not exist. It simply requires a little deeper digging to unearth it, more often than not it is likely to be revelatory. Texts such as Vusilis Arvanitis may well contain submerged psychoanalytical elements and what I shall attempt to show here, by examining his character, behavior, and relationships with others, in particular those with his parents or parental substitutes, is that the protagonist is still in the midst of the mirror stage and the Oedipal trajectory is incomplete. Moreover, treating the narrator as a character in his own right, his role in the text will be discussed and analyzed. The relationship of the narrator to Vasilis is an interesting one, as the narrator’s role is prominent in the story, particularly in the first few chapters, and he can be treated as a character who idolizes and identifies with him. The narrator is fascinated yet disturbed by his idol, and this tension is a result of a confusion of idolization and censure. He would like to be like Vasilis, but knows that he could never live up to his exuberant lifestyle. It is also significant that the narrator, as Pavlos Andronikos has pointed out, does not age in the course of the narrative.17Although Vasilis himself during the same period grows from a young lad to a man, deep down he remains a child. By using a 16. Jameson, op. cit., p. 83. 17. Andronikos, op. cit., p. 90.
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narrator who recalls his halcyon childhood days, an air of nostalgia is conveyed. The narrator relates the story from the viewpoint of a child and stresses that his earliest memory of Vasilis is from when he “was still only a small ~ h i l d . ” ’ ~ At this crucial and formative age Vasilis becomes an idol for the narrator, who projects all his own fantasies and aspirations onto his hero. Therefore, his portrait of Vasilis is shaped and embellished by his childish imagination and admiration, and as a result one might wonder whether what we read is a factual or an imaginary construct of Vasilis’s life. It could easily be treated as the fabrication of the narrator’s mind, a symbolic icon that the narrator projects in order to tackle his own fears and anxieties. As Andronikos aptly puts it “the enigma of Vasilis is the enigma of the narrator’s own psyche.”19 Far from being a celebration of manhood, the central preoccupation of the narrative is with childhood. Not only in terms of nostalgia and the childlike qualities of the hero, but also by virtue of the fact that we come to see that the narrator has projected onto Vasilis the child inside himself, endlessly struggling like a trapped bird against death. Despite the narrator’s protestations in chapter 1, his lack of physical growth mirrors a lack of growth in self-awareness. In order for the narrator to understand Vasilis and his importance to himself, he must address the reasons for which he projected such affection upon him and to do this he must question his relationship with his parents, his faith, and all the values that he holds. It is his partial or subconscious understanding of this which causes the narrator such pain and which he, unconvincingly, tries to reconcile in the first chapter. The narrator sees Vasilis subconsciously as a rebel and consciously as an ideal hero. This paradox between the narrator’s conformist self and his admiration for a subversive remains with him throughout. Until his final confrontation with God, Vasilis balances conformity and subversion and his story is in itself an illustration of the narrator’s first statement: “There are different kinds of heroism, and there are different kinds of heroes” (3). Vasilis is both bearer and betrayer of society’s ideals. As I said before, for the narrator, Vasilis represents the ideal male hero, someone to look up to and admire, and this idolization helps to account for the narrator’s rejection of his real father in favor of a substitute father figure. His father is a man who loved trees and verse. Planting was his obsession. When he died and the narrator went to visit his grave he found a red poppy there. He is in two minds as to whether he will uproot it and replant it in a pot 18. Stratis Myrivilis, VasilisArvanitis, translated with preface and notes by Pavlos Andronikos, op. cit., p. 6. All subsequent references to the novel will be made to this edition and page numbers will appear in parenthesis after each quotation. 19. Andronikos, op. cit., p. 115.
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or leave it there. It seemed to him that the poppy reached his father’s heart and, if pulled out of the soil, blood would drip from its broken roots. These two conflicting impulses show the narrator’s ambivalent attitude toward his father and also his resentment at his father’s devotion to plants above his own children. As Andronikos rightly claims regarding the poppy incident: “Whichever way one looks at it, there is violence toward the father implicit in the narrator’s intended action, regardless of whether the action is prompted primarily by resentment or love.”20 The narrator’s father is not a hero. On the contrary, he admits the failure of his generation to push the Turks beyond the ‘Kokkini Milia’ (the mythical place to which, according to legend, the Greeks will drive the Turks when they regain Constantinople) and expects his sons to fulfil this dream. Though the father appreciates fearlessness and bravery, as can be seen when he sends Vasilis a scarlet neckerchief after he kills the snake, with a message that ‘he’s a brave Hellene’, he himself is a rather timid and quiet man who cannot be seen as a model by his sons. The present is an acknowledgment of his relief and at the same time of his impotence to deal with the snake. The efficacy of his paternal authority is called into question when he fails not only to notice how frightened his sons were of the snake in the house, but also to act as protector. The children tend to turn to their mother to calm their fears, while the father is absent when the snake finally makes its appearance, and this may have been the turning point for the narrator in switching his allegiance to Vasilis. By substituting Vasilis for his real father as a figure of patriarchal authority, the narrator condemns himself to never completing his Oedipal trajectory. The problem with this substitution is that Vasilis is unlikely to impose the “Phallic No” on him, hence he stands little or no chance of ever passing successfully into the Symbolic Order, or Law of the Father. As the narrator grows older, and reaches maturity, there are no signs of his fascination with Vasilis ebbing away or that he begins to see his admiration for him as some sort of childish fantasy. The ironic distance of hindsight, which might have led him to dismiss or laugh off his attachment to Vasilis as a childish obsession, does not emerge here. The narrator still looks back and regards him with wonder and wistfulness, and the fact that he still claims to hear the trapped bird beating its wings in the solitude and struggling to free itself every night, implies that the narrator has not really matured or changed his mentality since childhood. The narrator still sees Vasilis from the perspective of his childhood: “I still see him as I saw him then in my childhood imagination: so big and so tall, with broad shoulders, and his head higher than the treetops. It seemed to 20. Andronikos, op. cit., p. 105.
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me that if he wanted to stop and rest for a moment, he could just put out his arms and rest his elbows on the saddles of the mountains” (53). His description here has something of the hyperbole of a childish imagination. The incident in chapter 2 with the wood pigeon trapped by ivy in a hole in the wall of the house is symbolically significant as the narrator uses this metaphor to project his own inner struggle on to Vasilis. The symbolic bird that neither of his parents can free suggests that the narrator is constantly struggling to free himself without success and the only way out is to associate it symbolically with Vasilis. Though other imagery associated with Vasilis is that of archangel and eagle (“like an eagle and like an archangel he spread his wings and sailed through the air, over the bubbling water” [57]),the trapped bird, as Andronikos argues, comes to symbolize him in the narrator’s account.21 The metaphors of the helpless bird and the mighty eagle symbolize Vasilis’s position and hint at his dual personality. On the one hand he is a victim, on the other, a victor. The flattering image of the eagle, representing a number of positive attributes (power, grace, beauty, strength, fearlessness), is bestowed on him by onlookers, and principally of course by the narrator. Yet, here the image bestowed by others cannot be confused with identity as it might appear. As a result of his extraordinary and extreme behavior, Vasilis has managed to create a certain image among his fellow villagers, which is increasingly admired and exalted (and therefore upheld) by them, and consequently comes to be accepted as his identity. In a sense then, Vasilis’s image is reflected back to him as his identity, thus in effect observers (including the narrator) are projecting and imposing on him an identity that he does not actually possess. Although he defies the conventions of society, Vasilis attracts the attention of people by his supernatural, almost mythical, deeds. People accept him as something exceptional and condone his eccentric and antisocial behavior. In the first chapter the narrator presents Vasilis as a hero without a cause. He is uncertain as to what he is searching for, where he is heading, and what he believes in. Like a desert spring that nobody can reach or enjoy, Vasilis’s heroism seems to the narrator inexplicable and useless: “Such I think was the heroism of Vasilis: a desert spring, useless to the world, inexplicable to men, but a great joy in the eyes of God whose presence throbbed within him” (5). Vasilis gives the impression that he has not yet formed his identity, has not completed his Oedipal trajectory in order to enter the Symbolic Order, namely society, and this failure is suggested by the symbol of the trapped bird. 21. Andronikos, op. cit., p. 108.
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It is not wholly improbable that Vasilis failed to complete his Oedipal trajectory as a child since his behavior and personality (as related by the narrator) reveal a number of classic Oedipal symptoms that signify a halt in the Oedipal process. For instance, there is no mention of his mother at any point in the story, even when he is still a boy. Although the reader is not privileged with insight into Vasilis’s thoughts, since the information we get about him is controlled by the narrator, this cannot prevent him from making assumptions and drawing his own conclusions about absences in the story. In a story like this, the reader always runs the risk of falling back on and identifying with the narrator in enjoying the spectacle of Vasilis’s heroism, however, a more active and alert stance could help him to discern Vasilis’s identity problems. For Vasilis, his chosen hero is his real father, the formidable Barba-Yannakos, though their relationship is somewhat strained. An Oedipal child sees the patriarchal authority as a major rival in the masculinity stakes, one who has the power to castrate, but also someone with whom to identify. For Vasilis, therefore, his father is both a threat and a worthy example of maleness. On the one hand, he perceives his father as a threat and fears his own loss of maleness (castration anxiety), on the other he aspires to be like him. It might be significant in this respect that Vasilis retains his father’s nickname Arvanitis (Albanian), which he got for his irascibility and obstinacy. In order to allay his fear of the loss of the phallus and to attain equal status with the father figure, Vasilis attempts to prove his own masculinity (though he apparently mistakes machismo for masculinity), and set himself up as a serious rival in the hope that he cannot be overpowered, and, hence, castrated. He is admired by all, including other men, as a strong, brave hero, but in the main his impressive feats and adventures are intended, consciously and subconsciously, to intimidate, impress, and live up to his father. The irony is that despite Vasilis’s efforts to prove himself a man, he cannot fully claim that title until he has resolved his Oedipus complex, which, unfortunately for him, he will never do. For all his formidable appearance, Barba-Yannakos turns out to be like the narrator’s father, as he too fails to fulfil his parental function, revealing himself as impotent. This transpires when tempers flare between himself and his son on the building site where they are working together. Vasilis gets called a bastard by his own father and, violently temperamental, rashly responds to the hammer that is thrown at him by promptly shooting his own father. Instantly repentant, Vasilis honorably hands his father the offending weapon, offering himself for punishment. Barba-Yannakos, however, refuses to shoot his son, replying: “‘Don’t be a fool.’ . . . ‘You were in the right. You’re no bastard. You’re my own flesh and blood, damn you!” (21). Although, symbolically, he has the power to ‘castrate’ his son for his offense, by failing to do so Barba-Yannakos is no longer seen as such a
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threatening, patriarchal figure, and loses much of his authoritative status as a result. Vasilis challenges the name of the Father as he tries to enter the Symbolic Order and although there is an apparent reconciliation the tension between father and son persists. It resurfaces again when Vasilis dances with the daughters of Lambrini and embarrasses the whole village. It is his father, representing the voice of society, who reprimands him saying: “You’ve grown up, you’re a captain now, but you’ll never be a man” (57). This is another patriarchal function with the imposition of the “Phallic No” on his son, but his disapproval is acknowledged without being accepted. Vasilis tries to appease and please his father (whom, it must be pointed out, he still looks up to) by repeating Dayi-Panayiotis’s legendary leap across the Karini gorge. This is in effect a rebellion, as after the shooting episode his father is no longer threatening enough to force Vasilis to renounce his affair with the Lambrines sisters. One could also add that this revolt is due to the fact that the Law of the Father is not effective unless upheld by the mother (figure). Given that, in this case it can more easily be overridden. Understandably, just like a (male) child in the throes of the mirror stage or Oedipus complex who has gone from identifying with the mother in the mirror stage, to identifying himself as the (potential) lover of this now extremely desirable object and seeing himself as a rival to his father while awaiting the imposition of the Phallic No, which will encourage him to identify with his father before finally fixing on an identity all of his own, Vasilis is unsure of where he stands and whom to side with. This would explain why he switches loyalties so often, abandoning the Greek irregulars fighting against the Bulgarians in Macedonia to fight with the Young Turks against the Sultan (only to leave them when they offer him a post in favor of moving on to something new), and dramatically crossing over from working for the RCgie Turque tobacco company to becoming the figurehead for the tobacco smugglers on the very same day. As tales of his exploits filter through to the island and his deeds are recounted and exaggerated, Vasilis is treated by his fellow villagers as a national hero, particularly when it becomes known that he killed a Bulgarian captain. They see in him the person who fulfils their dreams and aspirations: “Vasilis! Who made our dreams a reality and realised those deeds which we, the slaves with the inspired but cowardly hearts, could only imagine in our most secret thoughts or read about in books” (37). However, his commitment to the national cause is rather doubtful as he easily switches allegiances and when the villagers question his business with the Sultan he is taken by surprise. To another, more specific question as to why he deserted the National Struggle in Macedonia, he replies: “Whether I was in Macedonia with the ir-
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regulars or in Constantinople with the Young Turks it was all the same to me” (43).While uttering these words, he unexpectedly points to the sea, explaining that she drew him back: “‘Her!’ he pointed and laughed like a child” (43). It is interesting that he confesses to being drawn back to the sea, which can be argued is a symbol of fertility. A return to the sea, therefore, symbolizes a return to the womb, in other words it represents security, a comforting presence for a (confused Oedipal) child. His identification with nature suggests that Vasilis still refuses to enter the Symbolic Order and to accept its cultural logic. He still behaves like a child who sees the sea as a substitute for his mother, treating war as a fun game and not as a means of national liberation. For all his heroic deeds and revered, almost godlike status, Vasilis does not succeed in finding the solution to his dilemma, his childishness and frustration becoming apparent upon his death: “In his eyes, which had remained open, two blue teardrops trembled, the tears of an aggrieved child” (84). Childhood is the underlying preoccupation of the story and as Andronikos argues, “Vasilis is seen variously in the work as a pullekuri, a klepht captain, an eagle, an archangel, an antichrist, an Adonis, a St. George, but beneath all of these roles in which he is cast, the narrator sees for a moment something very close to the truth that the roles disguise and from which they derive-the two blue tears of an aggrieved His childish characteristics also include the way in which he bears the pain of his injured leg. Though Vasilis does not care about humiliating, harming, or killing others, he cannot bear to suffer himself. In fact, he is so incapable of bearing the pain when he injures his leg that he actually prefers to kill himself rather than suffer. Instead of gritting his teeth and bearing it as best he can, as one would expect a ‘real’ man to do, he rants and raves and generally makes a big fuss in the same way that a child goes on screaming until whatever is wrong is put right. The fair-haired, blue-eyed angel, with “his pure, innocent face” (40)and his “shy smile”(70), essentially remains a child. Thus, Vasilis presents two contradictory images: one masculine heroic and one childish and shy. The same person then who “epitomizes an ideal of youth and manhood . . . is also endowed with the pathos of a The discrepancy between public perception and private intention can also be seen when Vasilis kills the Turk Sabri, not to avenge Zacharias’s death, but for thwarting him as he had planned to kill Zacharias himself. The village elders, however, misread his motive and are prepared to give him money to facilitate his escape. Vasilis constantly proves unpredictable, always having his own agenda rather than adopting a national or a social one. He tends to surprise his 22. Andronikos, op. cit., p. 120. 23. Andronikos, op. cit., p. 119.
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fellow villagers by not following the national or cultural logic. He is their idol in terms of heroism, beauty, and masculinity, but deep down he betrays a contempt for the organized community and its nationalist aspirations. Even when he becomes a racketeer, the villagers still perceive Vasilis’s uncompromising spirit, petulant behavior, and unstable allegiances in national terms. It is significant that even tobacco trafficking under the noses of the Turkish police takes on a patriotic meaning in their eyes: “The way he did this filled us with pride in the village. It seemed to us like a demonstration and an armed parade, and in our eyes it took on a patriotic significance” (63).24This attitude is understandable since the villagers see everything in terms of the national cause. Religious events such as the Epitaphios on Good Friday night are treated “like demonstrations of defiant nationalism” (73). Hence, their idolization of Vasilis owes much to a nationalistic frame of mind that makes it even more potent and blind. The reading of the story depends to a large extent on whether readers adopt this perspective and take it as the manifestation of the Greek spirit or adopt a more sceptical and questioning position. The instability and shifting allegiances exhibited by Vasilis are an example of the malaise he feels in the surroundings in which he finds himself trapped. Hence, the image of the helpless bird, struggling to break free from its trap but unable to find the one and only way out, very accurately depicts Vasilis’s predicament. He, too, is constrained on a larger scale by social conventions. Though he does his utmost to escape them by breaking rules, going against norms by joining both the Greek and Turkish army in an effort to find out which of them, if any, suits him best, ultimately his only way ‘out’ is the resolution of his Oedipal dilemma so that in reality he can enter into society. The imaginary identification by which the ego is created in the mirror stage “structures the subject as a rival with himself ’25 and thus involves narcissism, aggresivity, and alienation.26Vasilis’s often superfluous aggressive, and narcissistic behavior suggests that he did not transcend the aggressiveness inherent in this primary identification at the Imaginary Order and did not enter the secondary identification at the Symbolic Order. Vasilis’s inconsistency and instability make it apparent that he is still searching for who he really is, and his confusion and subversive nature can also be seen in his attitude to others. which wavers between the charitable and 24. Also in Elias Venezis’s A L O A L TT K ~ (Aeolian ~ Earth) published the same year (1943) as Vasilis Arvunitis, tobacco smuggling is presented as a patriotic activity. I am grateful to Peter Mackridge for this point. 25. Lacan, op. cit., p. 22. 26. Aggressivity and narcissism appear to be tightly bound to one another.According to Bice Benvenuto and Roger Kennedy (op. cit., pp. 59-60), “aggressivity is the irreducible accompaniment of narcissism,and is released in any relation with the other, ‘even in a relation involving the most Samaritan of aid, (Ecrits, p. 6).”
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the violent. This contrast is illustrated by two events that show that Vasilis was also the champion of the underdog. When the butcher Yutafos mistreats the orphan boy Zafiris, Vasilis confronts him and saves the boy from his master’s sadistic punishment. This display of merciful kindness can be contrasted with the way in which he treats Michel, the local RCgie representative, when he responds to a cut in wages by stuffing the terrified Frenchman’s mouth full of coins and making him keep them there until he has finished smoking his cigarette. Vasilis is both hard and tender. He plays the role of the father figure for the orphan Zafiris by protecting him against maltreatment by Yutafos and even treats the boy with motherly affection, as can be seen in the scene in which he saves him from further suffering at the hands of his boss. With one bound Vasilis was inside. He grasped the ladder upon which Zafiris was suffering and, with superhuman strength, turned it right around so that the boy was upright again. Then he drew his knife and cut the ropes tying the boy to the ladder. Sitting him down, he took the pitcher of cold water which Zafiris’ master kept on the window ledge for himself, and poured some out for the boy to wash his face. The rest he poured over the boy’s head to revive him (47).
Here we can see Vasilis acting simultaneously as mother and father figure, interestingly to an orphan boy, suggesting perhaps that he feels an affinity with him. His masculine/paternal side comes through in his physical rescuing of Zafiris, turning him upright and cutting him down from the ladder. His next action, however, is more female/maternal, as he does not just leave it at that, but proceeds to wash the boy’s face and revive him with the water, juxtaposing brute strength with tenderness. This incident highlights his indecision as to whom he should identify with and which role he should adopt, on occasion even going so far as to cross over genders and represent the female/maternal figure. For his admirers, the notion of the ideal male crossing genders may be difficult to conceive. However, Vasilis does this not only in the Zdiris episode, but also on at least two other occasions. He further compromises his gender when he dresses up as an old woman so he can enter the village secretly (and paradoxically) in order to gratify his male/Oedipal desires, and after his fall, when he is lying on the bed writhing in agony, he likens himself to a woman in labor. By equating himself in this way with the ‘weaker sex’, he is, therefore, implicitly admitting that he is not all male, as he and others would like to think. Mother figures are almost nonexistent in the story and Vasilis has no mother to speak of, aside from the sea as a mother figure that has been mentioned earlier. There is no woman who plays a particularly dominant part in
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Vasilis’s life, taking a special interest in him or for him. The only possible candidates are the sisters, who may be taken as being a double substitute for the female parent as well as lovers, especially when one considers their very maternal caring and mourning for Vasilis. As they do not refuse his advances as a real mother is supposed to do, in spite of there being widespread disapproval and condemnation, nobody other than a father figure can actually oppose or terminate their ‘unnatural’ menage B trois. However, by disobeying his father Vasilis has effectively disowned him and entered into a forbidden relationship with the mother figure(s), which can only lead to destruction. This destruction is finally brought about by the ultimate father figure, God himself, who does not countenance Vasilis’s arrogant rebellion against him and eventually fulfils the patriarchal threat, leaving Vasilis, who never really found the completeness he was seeking, with the “tears of an aggrieved child.” Significantly, in this respect, the lament of the two sisters for Vasilis turns into a lullaby (86). It is as if Vasilis is transformed from a hero to a child. The most important phallic symbol in Vusilis Awunitis is the snake that takes up residence in the young narrator’s house. As a symbol of the phallus and a source of fear, it is significant that Vasilis kills it, demonstrating as he does that, symbolically, he possesses the power to castrate, something that neither his own nor the narrator’s father has. The snake also represents the unspoken fear of the narrator as a child that he might be separated from his mother. The snake’s milking of the goat Dudu (which is something of a mother figure) signifies the potential threat it poses for the child and culminates with the wail coming up from the cellar. One night, as we lay in bed listening for the snake, a long drawn-out wail came up from below, from the depths of the cellar. It moved us deeply, dragging itself along pitiful and frightened, full of those sounds of fear and pleading which all men and all animals make when they are suffering and in pain. The horror felt like a knife in my belly. I poked my brother and his body replied in some mysterious way that yes, he knew. It was Mamouris, who had gone down to the cellar and was suckling our Dudu. The crying stopped but I could hear my heart beating like a hammer. The wick in the oil-lamp on the icon-shrine hissed and spluttered (12-13).
By bestowing universality on this cry, it is given metaphorical significance, representing the painful separation of mother and child. Hence, when the narrator listens to his mother’s voice and the rhythmic creaking of the cradle his fear is allayed. The presence of the mother is reinstated and the horror associated with the snake is abated. The snake with its male name Mamouris represents both an Oedipal desire for the mother and a threat of prematurely severing the child’s bond with her.
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The threat from the snake is symbolic, as the children have never seen it and it thus acquires mythical proportions. The secret fears and disturbing fantasies haunt the children while their mother’s voice calms them: “How it calmed our disturbed hearts, this quiet voice coming thus out of the darkness full of security and peace” (12). As the guardian spirit of the household, the snake seems to signify the father. When it is killed the narrator’s mother expresses doubts about its killing. Indeed it brings bad luck within the year with the death of the narrator’s sickly sister Lenaki. This reinforces the association of the snake with the protecting father figure and at the same time underlines its ambiguity as both evil monster and benign creature. Andronikos comes to the same conclusion. It is possible that we identify the snake with the father so that symbolically, in killing the snake, Vasilis is killing (or punishing) the father. It is not hard to see the snake as the father, even if we do not follow the traditional line of association, provided by psychoanalysis, of snake-phallus-father. The snake has the dual role in the narrative of protecting the household (and the children), which it fails to fulfil, and of filling the children with fear, which it does admirably. In this it is very much like a father.27
Precisely like Vasilis’s and the narrator’s fathers in fact. Metaphorically speaking then, in destroying a symbol of maleness so similar to that of his father, Vasilis preludes his later shooting of Barba-Yannakos by symbolically committing the heinous crime of patricide. It is interesting to note that Vasilis kills the snake with a spear or javelin, in other words, a phallic symbol is killed with a phallic weapon. In fact, phallic weapons (guns, daggers, knives) frequently make appearances throughout the text. The gun-phallic symbol par excellence-is (mis)used on at least two occasions. In the scene where Vasilis shoots his father, who refuses to retaliate, the gun represents the phallus with the power to destroykastrate. Later, when Vasilis issues his challenge to the Epitaphios procession, and therefore indirectly to God, and fires into the arch, he again misuses the phallic power and authority and is punished as a consequence. Knives and daggers too are clearly a sign of manhood, distinctly threatening, markedly present. When Vasilis is offered a gift by the Young Turks as a reward for his services, he chooses two phallic weapons, opting for both a gun and a Cretan dagger. During Zacharias’s unashamed courting of Lambrini, he sticks his phallic dagger into her front door as an intimidating warning to other males to keep away, and when Vasilis ‘avenges’ Zacharias’s death it is a knife that is used to kill the murderer. 27. Andronikos, op. cit., p. 114.
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Vasilis as the center of attention is the object of much praise and adulation. He knows this, and, while continuing to go his own way he is always aware that all eyes are upon him and does not want to lose his heroic status, enjoying the fame and admiration. All this adulation inevitably encourages narcissistic tendencies to come to the fore, as they do, his vanity coming through in the way he basks in the glory he receives. Vasilis is not only young and brave, but also handsome, and this is emphasized with frequent allusions to his physical beauty. He is also presented as some kind of heavenly figure, with his golden hair that at times takes on the appearance of a shining halo and his piercing blue eyes. He seems to cast a spell over everyone and everything. Such is the extent of others’ respect, admiration, and adulation for him that he comes to be revered as an almost superhuman being and in the eyes of the narrator virtually attains the status of a demigod, as on the night of the Epitaphios. It could be argued that the narrator makes a fetish of his hero, a possible avenue of escape from the castration anxiety “by the substitution of a fetish object or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous.”28The deification of Vasilis by the narrator is yet another sign of an individual with an incomplete sense of self-identity, who idealizes the object of his attention out of all proportion and imposes on it totally unrealistic expectations, and more often than not is doomed to disappointment, as is ultimately the case in the narrative. As has already been pointed out, the narrator is as prominent and important a character as Vasilis himselP9 and, in spite of the fact that the former idolizes and is spellbound by the latter, both share a common characteristic in as much as they display signs of an incomplete personality. This creates a mise-en-abyme, or ‘Chinese box’ effect, where the story of one Oedipal character (Vasilis) is told by another (the narrator), and at one stage even includes a third (Vasilis’s relationship with Zafiris). As the object of the narrator’s gaze, it is clear from the first time that Vasilis is mentioned that he has long been idolized by the narrator. As the latter himself admits “in his heroism was reflected our own desire for heroism” (36). In the mirror stage, the mirror as site of identity can sometimes be replaced by an overriding image, as happens here. The narrator is essentially a spectator, looking upon Vasilis as the ultimate example of the heroic male and revelling in his idol’s magnificence, much as a child of today may watch his favorite film star and aspire to emulate him in some way. The analogy of the spectator-screen situation works quite well as a way of illustrating the relationship between the 28. Laura Malvey, Visual and Other Pleasures (London: Macrnillan, 1989), 21. 29. See P. Andronikos’s preface in Stratis Myrivilis, Vasilis Ananiris, op. cit., p. xi.
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narrator and Vasilis. The cinema is often seen as being an important supplier of paternal representations (in the form of idealized male icons), with the screen acting as a replacement for the mirror that an Oedipal child needs if it is to identify with its own image. Following Vasilis’s activities and adventures is rather like watching a film with a glamorous star, which is basically what Vasilis is. He is not real, he has no identity, and therefore cannot be a genuine self as he has not yet ascertained what that self is. In effect, he is ‘acting’the part of hero (and enjoying the adulation), taking on and giving out an image that pleases him and others but which, as has already been discussed, is not his identity. However, all this is of little consequence to the narrator. In his search for a father figure with whom to identify he selects the most perfect image-not identity-he can find. This is typical of children in the mirror stage, whose “physical ambitions outstrip their motor capacity, with the result that their recognition of themselves is joyous in that they imagine their mirror image to be more complete, more perfect than they experience in their own body.”30 Returning to the analogy of Vasilis with film stars, one could apply to his case what Laura Malvey claims for male stars: “A male movie star’s glamorous characteristics are not those of the erotic object of the gaze, but those of the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego conceived in the original moment of recognition in the Accordingly, Vasilis, as the chosen ‘screen’ idol of the narrator, serves as a replacement for the father and gives the narrator a very impressive image to identify with. 32 Moreover, a challenge emerges for the reader, as he has either to identify with the narrator’s unequestioning adulation or to reject it and adopt his own attitude. We have a series of potential identifications here. The narrator develops a tendency to identify with Vasilis and the reader could be tempted to do the same. Vasilis’s suicide is the final confirmation that he cannot sort out his identity and therefore the only alternative to this failure is death. In this respect Vasilis is like Kapetan Mihalis (discussed in the next chapter) who is equally suicidal, not for patriotic reasons but in my view due to unsolved personal identity problems. The aim of this analysis is to show that there is sufficient evidence to warrant a psychoanalytic approach to Vasilis Awanitis and a reading of the text focusing on the identity of the main character could offer a thought-provoking alternative to the heroic, national, and 30. Malvey, op. cit., p. 17. 31. Ibid, 20. 32. One may well be tempted to ask why then the narrator does not appear to imitate Vasilis at all, as by rights a boy in his position should attempt to be like his hero. However, as no account of the narrator or his behavior is given once Vasilis has been introduced, it is not clear whether or not he does emulate him. It would be unwise therefore to try explaining any apparent hesitation on his part.
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rather superficial reading that has been the dominant one so far. It could be argued that by means of Vasilis’s identity crisis the author is inviting his audience to reexamine their own ideas of Greek identity and the conflict between Orthodoxy and paganism, conformity and subversion, tradition and modernity. Accordingly, this reading tends to decontextualize Vasilis’s self in the sense that it tries to offer a fresh inward look at a nationalized and historicized hero. Using Lacan’s terms, it could be said that until now the readings of Vasilis Arvanitis have belonged to the Symbolic Order while mine focuses on the Imaginary. This, of course, does not mean that a national or a historical reading of Vasilis linking him with the klephtic songs or other texts such as K. Palamas’s Thanatos Palikariou or A. Sikelianos’s poem “In St. Luke’s Monastery” is irrelevant (though one can also see the wounds of the male heroes in these texts as symbolizing castration). But my analysis underlines the fact that readers and critics can contextualize or recontextualize a character allowing the richness of the text to be highlighted.
Chapter S i x
The Poetics of Manhood: Genre and Self-Identity in Freedom and Death
“If there is no longer a Father, why tell stories?”’ -Roland
Barthes
With few exceptions, Kazantzakis’s novels have been discussed mainly for their ideas and not so much for their narrative structure or their generic nature. It is also known that Kazantzakis did not think highly of the novel as a genre compared to drama or epic and this explains why he came to the novel rather late in life, notwithstanding his earlier attempts in Greek and French to write novels.* Compared to his ambitious Odyssey (1938) or his dramas, he regarded his first novels as minor and peripheral to his work.3 So what kind of novel does Kazantzakis write? How far does he rely on pre-novelistic forms or other kinds of narrative? Similar questions have been raised with regard to Zorba the Greek [Vios kai Politeia tou Alexi Zorba] (1946) by Roderick Beaton who has argued that Zorba, as a hero and a literary text, represents aspects of ancient, medieval, and contemporary Hellenism. The book’s working title The Synaxari of Alexis Zorbas relates it to the tradition of medieval hagiography, while the word politeia in the title has echoes of Plato’s ideal state in his Republic. In addition to the word politeia 1. Roland Barthes, The Pleasure ofthe Text, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Fmar, Straus, and Giroux, 1975), 47. 2. Kazantzakis repudiated his first Greek novel ’Ops K(YL K P ~ V O[Serpent and Lily 1 (1906) and published his second S?raupbvss i,h,y.k [Broken Souls] (1909) only in serialized form. In French he wrote Todu-Rubu (1934), Le Jurdin des rochers (1939), and the unpublished Kupbfun 61iu (1929). It is believed that part of this unpublished novel, before it was destroyed by the author himself, was used in Kupetun Mihulis, an outline of which he prepared in French in 1936 under the title Mon p2re. Kupetun Mihulis was written in 1949-1950. 3. Peter Bien, “Kazantzakis’ Attitude towards Prose Fiction,” in The Greek Novel ADI-1985, ed. Roderick Beaton (London: Croom Helm, 1990), 81-89.
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in their titles, other features shared by Zorba the Greek and Plato’s Republic are the meeting at Piraeus harbor at the beginning of both texts and the development of philosophical dialogue^.^ I might add that Zorba the Greek could be described as a kind of oriental picaresque narrative, judging from the parallels drawn in the text between Zorba and Sinbad the Sailor. Kazantzakis himself in the preface to his novel points to the generically complex character of his text: “As yet, I could not fathom what form to give this fairy tale of ZorbAs: novel; poem; complex fanciful narrative like ‘A Thousand and One Nights’; or simply to reproduce drily and unadorned the things he had told me on a Cretan shore. We lived there, digging, supposedly, in the hope of finding lignite.”5 It could be argued that on a micro-narrative level Kazantzakis relies on metonymy, accumulating realistic vignettes to create the atmosphere and the social framework of action, and, on a macro-narrative level, he relies on metaphor and particularly on his favorite metaphor of Christ’s passion. Hence in Christ Recrucq5ed (1954) and to some extent in The Last Temptation (1955), he combines realism and symbolism, history and myth, the social with the philosophical novel. As a result his novels are not always clearly defined in terms of genre and perhaps this characteristic accounts for the distinctive style and popularity of Kazantzakis. Peter Bien has argued that Freedom and Death [Kapetan Mihalis] (1953) is an aesthetically flawed novel, that suffers from generic confusion by not being clearly either epic, novel, or romance.6 Kazantzakis himself described his text as epic7 and there are a number of supernatural elements that bring it closer to epic and particularly to Homeric epic. For example, Nuri’s horse neighs in lamentation on its master’s grave just as Achilles’s horses lament Patroclos’s death. Toward the end of the novel a western Philhellene describes Kapetan Mihalis as Achilles, telling him: “Why 4. Roderick Beaton, An Introduction to Modem Greek Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 177-78. 5. Nikos Kazantzakis, Bios K(YL IIOALTE~(YTOV AACtr) Zoppmi (Athens: Ekdoseis Elenis N. Kazantzaki, 1981), 9. The preface is not included in the English translation of the novel. It has been translated by Susan Matthias “Prologue to Zorba the Greek,” Journal of Modem Greek Studies 16, no. 2 (1998): 241-45. See also her article in the same issue “Restoring the Prologue to the English C K AhC(9 Zoppmi (alias Zorba the Greek): Recreating a Work in Edition of Bias KCKLT T O ~ L T E ~TOV Progress,” pp. 221-40. 6. Peter Bien, “0 Kapetdn Mihdlis, an Epic (Romance?) ManquB,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 5, no. 2 (October 1987): 153-73. Kazantzakis’s novel Kapetan Mihalis has been translated into English as Freedom and Death (U.S. title Freedom or Death). 7. See Bien, “0 Kapetun Mihdlis,” 154-55. In a letter to Emilios Hourmouzios dated 14 December 1953 Kazantzakis maintains that “when I began writing the novel, I didn’t have in mind to create the epic story of Crete; I had simply the desire to revive the lost Kastro of my childhood years and to UTOU raise from the ground certain people I knew as a child.” “ACKC~ETTLUTOX~STOU KCK
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should I go down to the towns again? I like it here. Nowhere have I eaten more delicious bread, nowhere have I drunk such a life-restoring water, nowhere have I seen men more like the ancient Greeks? I’m not going to call you Captain Mihalis, but Captain Achilles.”s Others have associated Kapetan Mihalis with Ajax of Telamon and Old Sifakas with the aged Nestor in the Iliad or have seen Nuri as an incarnation of H e ~ t o rIn . ~ spite of these connections, the epic tone is absent and this results in an aesthetic confusion. Epic simplicity is contaminated by the complexity of the psychological realism. According to Bien, Freedom and Death is aesthetically flawed because the supernatural element (such as the saving of Captain Mihalis and his family from pursuit by the Turks by the unexpected appearance of Saint Minas on horseback) is not compatible with the realistic expectations and the psychological realism of the novel. Kazantzakis is not able to maintain either the mythological-epic or the realistic tone throughout the novel and the consequent generic confusion allegedly impairs his novel aesthetically. Though Kazantzakis’s id6es fixes, such as the transubstantiation of flesh into spirit, the achievement of freedom only through death, and the imposition of human will on external reality are most closely related to the epic tradition, in Freedom and Death they are utilized unconvincingly by means of psychological realism. With these criticisms in mind, especially those of P. Bien, I intend to examine the relationship between epic and novel in Freedom and Death on the levels of narrative, worldview, and characterization. The aim of this analysis will be to explore the relationship between genre and self-identity in Kazantzakis’s novel. The narrative structure of Freedom and Death is more epic than novelistic since it relies more heavily on the episodic arrangement and accumulation of events than on their synthesis.’O The paratactic pattern is evident not only in 8. Nikos Kazantzakis, 0 K C U T E TM ~ ~LVX ~ A( E~ A F m ~ p i ar ) O ~ ~ V ~ T3dO ed. S ) (Athens: , Eleni Kazantzaki Publications, 1974), 379,366-67. All subsequent references to the novel will be made to this edition and page numbers will appear in parenthesis after each quotation. Although the novel is available in English translation-Freedom and Death (London: Faber & Faber, 1966)-the translation is not always accurate and some short passages are left untranslated due perhaps to the fact that it was not made directly from Greek. Therefore, the translations here are closer to the original text, but for those who do not have access to a Greek edition the second page number in italics, where available, after each quotation refers to the English translation. 9. M. G. Meraklis, “H mxp&&v~) Pop~ouCvq~ o K&vT<&KT),” u Nia E u T ~ 102, ~ , no. 1211 (December 1977): 86. Elizabeth Constantinides, “Kazantzakis and the Cretan Hero,” Journal ofModern Hellenism, vol. 1 (1984): 31-41 argues that Freedom and Death is a reworking of certain themes, incidents, and characters from the Homeric Iliad and there are parallels between the heroic society of Homer and that of the Cretan chieftains. According to her, Emink, Mihalis, and Nuri have some affinities to Homeric Briseis, Achilles, and Hector respectively. 10. For the structure of Kazantzakis’s novels and the folkloric-type stories embedded in them see S. N. Philippidis, T ~ T O L M:E A E T ~ ~ y~ (~Ya TOV T(Y L W ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ C h6yo Y T ~ L m K ~c u i ~o~AArjvwv m~oypcicpwv(Athens: Kastaniotis, 1997), 31-60, 209-30.
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the arrangement of events, but also in the use of epithets. Often Kazantzakis uses three consecutive epithets to describe a person: handsome, lean-boned, roving-eyed (84), short-curly-bearded, thick-necked, big-boned (3lo), sunroasted, premature (eftaminitis), sure-footed (343), big-boned, wide buttocked, heavily-built woman (377), and he often uses compound adjectives similar to the Homeric ones. It is apparent in this novel that Kazantzakis has some difficulty in constructing the plot or in connecting the events in a seemingly logical sequence.” Thus at the beginning he makes a brief reference to a nephew of Captain Mihalis, who has studied in the West, without naming him and only much later at the end of the novel does he return to him in more detail.12The initial reference to the nephew in the first few pages does not seem to serve any purpose and as a consequence one is left with the impression that it is unjustified. The same could be said about Manousakas. Early on his defiant attitude toward the Turks and Nuri’s involvement in this incident are mentioned, but it is only after almost two hundred pages that the theme of Nuri’s and Manousakas’s animosity will reappear. These two examples demonstrate the way in which Kazantzakis arranges his material in an episodic manner without producing a synthesis. The author also tries to create the feeling that the events in the novel occur either simultaneously or in parallel sequence. He often introduces an event with the phrase “At the time when . . . ”, seeking perhaps in this way to build up the sense of spatial unity. This method of connecting the various incidents might once again demonstrate his difficulty in producing a narrative synthesis and a complex construction. Kazantzakis cultivates the idea of simultaneity by accumulating his material in a syntagmatic manner and in turn allowing the reader to organize it paradigmatically. In other words, the idea of simultaneity counteracts the notion of narrative hypotaxis and the causal concatenation of events. Adopting the methods of the epic and of oral storytelling, the narrator simply presents the events in an episodic sequence and invites the reader to produce his own novelistic synthesis. It could be said, therefore, that Kazantzakis does not seem to organize his material in Freedom and Death skillfully and as a result his combination of epic and novel appears problematic in structural terms. Having examined the narrative structure of Freedom and Death, we should now focus on the impact of Kazantzakis’s ideas on it. 11. Roderick Beaton in his article “Of Crete and Other Demons: A Reading of Kazantzakis’s Freedom and Death,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 16, no. 2 (October 1998): 195-220 has a different view. He argues that “the whole book is built around two triangular sets of relationships in which the fixed points are kapetan Mihalis and Emine. The third point of the triangle is occupied by Nuribey in the first seven of the book’s fourteen chapters and by kapetcin Polyxingis in the remaining seven” (p. 197). 12. Mihalis also disappears from scene in later chapters devoted to Kosmas.
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It could be argued that Freedom and Death consists of two parts that highlight the contrast between the individual and the community. In the first part of the novel Captain Mihalis tries to single himself out and to impose his leadership on the people of Megalo Kastro (Heraklion). The city is described as a multicultural mClange (86) and its inhabitants are presented as being mostly weak and timid and regarding Captain Mihalis with admiration and awe. Three incidents in the novel help to single out Mihalis from the crowd. The first is when he puts his two fingers into a full wine glass and breaks it, attracting the admiration of EminC. In the second he invites Ventouzos, Fourogatos, Kayambis, Bertodoulos, and Efendina to the basement of his house for an eight-day drinking session. It is a contest from which Captain Mihalis eventually emerges sober and the winner, while the rest are described as karagiozides or t~outzedes.’~ The third incident is when he enters a Turkish cafe on his horse and expels the Turks.14 The first part of Freedom and Death could have been developed into a realist novel, depicting the ordinary life of Megalo Kastro and the resistance toward foreigners. A number of metonymic details, based on a series of images, give the atmosphere of the place. Towards evening brightly-dressed Christian men and women spilt out round the Three Arches; the wind was blowing and the silk ribbons in the girls’ hair fluttered. To the north the rose-coloured sea rested, and behind it, to the south the fields were turning a pale green, the mountains took on a rosy hue, and the olive bees shone a smokey silver. And over all a violet, silken, very soft sky held its shield above the well-fed Kastrians as they strolled for their digestion and to be seen. Then slowly the afternoon faded and a soothing shadow descended onto the Kastrian faces; suddenly the Evening star appeared, smiling and glorious, above the heads of the people, like a resurrected Christ (181,18&8l).
In the second part, the unbridled individuality of Mihalis is gradually compromised and subsumed within the community spirit as he becomes increasingly identified with Crete and recognizes his duty toward his ancestors. A turning point for the transition from the first to the second part is the abandoning by Captain Mihalis of his post to save EminC and the ensuing destruction of the Monastery of Christ the Lord. This temporary emphasis on indulging his own desires at the expense of the community was crucial in 13. Karagiozis is the main protagonist of the shadow theatre, but metaphorically signifies a fool. Tzourzes is a word of Turkish origin (ciice)and means a short-statured man who is a clown, buffoon, and, in this case, a boon companion. 14. While Kazantzakis (and the Cretan Christians of Mihalis’s time) described the Muslim natives of Crete ‘Turks,’ it is more accurate to call them ‘Muslims’. Of course there were members of the Ottoman civil and military services who were not native Cretans, but the vast majority of the Muslim population were descended from Christian Cretans who had espoused Islam.
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changing the attitude of Captain Mihalis. The kurugiozides of the first part, Kayambis, Ventouzos, and Fourogatos, stay close to Mihalis until the end, and are ultimately transformed into heroes.I5 In the second part old Sifakas plays a more prominent role and the setting is transposed from the city to the countryside and the mountains. The reference to other Cretan uprisings in pursuit of independence underlines the role of the past and the idea that each Cretan carries the burden of the earlier struggles. As well as being divided into two parts, the novel involves two opposing trends. The one tends to highlight the role of the community and Crete as a whole and the other focuses on the individual protagonists Captain Mihalis, Kosmas, and others. The first trend could be seen as having two aspects: the epic and the novelistic. The epic concerns the struggle for independence and is less prominent in the first part, reaching its peak later in the novel when the fighting is escalating. The novelistic involves the representation of the peaceful life in Megalo Kastro, since at times Kazantzakis tends toward a novelistic tapestry, trying to reconstruct metonymically the life of a multicultural city. In short, it can be said that Kazantzakis once again appears to be tom between epic and novel. The two trends (communal and individualistic) that I have outlined above correspond to two basic themes: the historical, which refers to the Cretan struggle and the symbolic, which concerns the authority of the father. What links the two themes is manhood (untrigiu) defined either in terms of physical gallantry and self-denial for the sake of freedom or as a symbolic identification with the father-hero. Manhood is their common denominator since it could manifest itself both physically and psychologically. The epic is more concerned with its external manifestation while the psychological novel deals with its internal repression. Kazantzakis cannot decide whether manhood is a feature of the body or the soul and this confuses the reader and the overall direction of the novel. In ideological terms he seems to favor the soul; in narrative terms, however, he favors the body. In the novel itself the resistance to education places the emphasis on the body, while the resistance toward women places the emphasis on the soul. By means of manhood, patriotism, repressive patriarchy, and the rule of the father, the return to origins is reinstated. Femininity, on the other hand, represents a threat to patriotism. No woman participates actively in the struggle for freedom while the two foreign women (EminC and Noemi) raise the dreaded specter of contamination to the pure race. Noemi’s miscarriage, coming as it does after EminC’s embarrassing pregnancy as a result of the affair 15. Though in the first part of the novel the treatment of Greeks originating from outside Crete is rather negative, in the second part Liapis is treated positively.
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with Polyxigis, does not simply demonstrate the symbolic violence of the father but also the desire for racial purity. In both cases what is at stake is not simply sexual potency, but_also the authenticity of reproduction. The racial prejudice against the two women is expressed amongst other things through the frequent references to their peculiar smell. If EminC and Noemi represent the symbolic association of the female with the ‘other’or the foreign, then the indigenous and the pure are represented by the male. Manhood is identified with the Cretans, the land, and tradition. It does not simply celebrate a return to Cretan origins; it also indicates a regression to the early stages of human evolution, a manifestation of primitivism and racial purity. In other words manhood symbolizes the return to the past in different forms: to the historical past of the island, to an identification with the dead ancestors, and finally to a condition of animality. Freedom and Death is a book about the relationship between father and son.I6 Kazantzakis himself, in a letter to Borje Knos quoted by Eleni Kazantzaki, states that he wrote the book in order to resurrect his father and to repay his debt “by giving birth to him who gave me birth.”I7 His relationship with his father was not a happy one and a dream related in Symposium, where the son is mocked by his father for his weakness and his alleged impotence,’*implies that his father cast an overwhelming shadow on Kazantzakis’s sexual beha~i0r.l~ Similarly in the novel, Kostaros, the elder brother of Mihalis, represses his daughter Maria with disastrous consequences, while his nightmarish, posthumous presence destroys the result of the sexual potency of his son Kosmas.
16. Kazantzakis in a letter from Madrid dated 5 January 1933, regarding the death of his father, wrote about their relationship: “It wasn’t love, it was something more profound, more bestial, as if a large part of my body collapsed into the ground, as if tremendous roots were trying to pull me to the earth before my time,” cited by P. Prevelakis, KCY&YVT&KTJF 0 T O L ~ T ~KCYL ~ F TO ~ o i q p a 77)s O d C u u ~ ~(Athens: as Difros, 1958), 250. Prevelakis also mentions that father and son constituted an imaginary pair with the father as a humadwild beast inspiring fear and symbolizing the mud that his son was destined to mold into spirit. 17. Helen Kazantzakis, Nikos Kazantzakis: A Biography Based on His Letters (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968), 485. 18. The relevant passage reads as follows: “Why have you come before me like this? Without blood? Bereft of strength? Your hair has already begun to fall out, my child; your eyes have grown dim; you’ve become hunch-backed. You’ve wrapped yourself in cowl and you drag yourself from door to door, like beggar. You’ve allowed our name to die out. What have you done with the blood I gave you?’ Nikos Kazantzakis, 2 u p ~ i j u ~ (Athens: ov Eleni Kazantzakis Publications, 1971), 80. 19. Bien, “0 Kapetdn Mihdlis,” 157-58. Peter Hartocollis in his article, “Mysticism and Violence: The Case of Nicos Kazantzakis,” The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, vol. 55 (1974): 205-10 points to the ambivalent relationship between Kazantzakis and his father, “a blend of dutiful love and barely contained hatred” (p. 208). In Kazantzakis, Hartocollis sees a conflict with the Oedipal father and a case of suppressed sexuality, attributing particular significance to an allergic neurodermatitis that troubled him while in Vienna.
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Freedom and Death can be seen as a ‘family romance’ (see also chapter 2) that Freud broadly defined as “the liberation of an individual . . . from the authority of his parents.”20For Freud the father was the locus of origin, authority, and identity and accordingly he treated the patriarchal family romance as the origin of human experience, thus suggesting that psychoanalysis itself may represent the family romance of modernity. By imaginatively reinventing the father, Freud suggests that “the child imaginatively rewrites the history of modernity and by so doing constitutes a more secure basis on which to articulate a coherent masculine identity.”2’ Kazantzalus’s text corroborates Stephen Heath’s view that the history of the novel can be seen as the history of family romance, a history concerned with both the representation and performance of “a permanent crisis of identity that must be permanently resolved by remembering the history of the individual-subject.”22 Kazantzakis in his Report to Greco confesses his fear of his father: “I had never faced my father with a feeling of tenderness. The fear he called forth in me was so great that all the rest-love, respect, intimacy-vanished. His words were severe, his silence even more severe. He seldom spoke, and when he did open his mouth, his words were measured and well weighed; you could never find grounds to contradict him. He was always right, which seemed to make him invulnerable. . . . An oak he was, with a hard trunk, rough leaves, bitter fruit, and no flowers. . . . Frantic revolts broke out within me when I was young; I was ready to throw myself into dangerous adventures, but I thought of my father each time and my heart turned coward. This is why I was forced to write down all I wished I had done, instead of becoming a great struggler in the realm of action-from fear of my father. He it was who reduced my blood to ink. . . . I had feared only one man in my life: my father. Now whom was I to fear?”2’ In the novel too, both Nuri and Kosmas are troubled by the presence in their dreams of their dead fathers, while the young sons of Mihalis and Manousakas, Thrasaki and Thodoris respectively, try to imitate their fathers.24 Indeed Thrasaki seems not only to be like his father but to look like him in 20. Sigmund Freud, “Family Romances,” in Srundurd Edition, vol. 9, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1959), 237. 21. Dana Heller, Family Plots: The De-Oedipalization of Popular Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 31. 22. Stephen Heath, Questions of Cinema (London: Macmillan, 198l), 125. 23. N. Kazantzakis, Report to Greco (London: Faber & Faber, 1973), 475-76. 24. The attitude toward fathers in this novel seems to echo S. Freud’s Totem and Taboo (1913), a book that Kazantzakis had in his library. There Freud describes patricide as a founding prehistoric principle among small primitive groups or ‘hordes’ and this ‘primal deed’ came to assume a place in the psyches of all subsequent generations. He thought that the murder of the father, committed by jealous sons and followed by a sense of guilt afterwards, resulted in the dead father becoming stronger than the living one had been; this, in turn, had left ineradicable traces in the history of humanity, thus implying that western culture is founded on patricide.
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many respects: “His son resembled him-he too had no fear of death. As soon as he died his son would step into his footsteps. Both father and son had the same mole on their necks, thick, prickly eyebrows, and the same small, round, coal-black eyes” (92-93, 92).25After the death of his father Thodoris is identified with him and takes his place: “He held his father’s gun, wore his boots and clothes and his headscarf which was soaked in his father’s sweat. He felt himself becoming one with his celebrated parent, as if his manhood had passed from his father’s clothes into his chest, loins and arms. His father had been resurrected; father and son were now one; and Thodoris matured day by day” (263-64,255-56). Throughout the novel the shadow of the father seems unchallenged and it is left to women and not to the sons to challenge his authority by emphasizing their individuality and the sexual identity of the repressed sons. Hence, manhood is not merely military valor; it is also a struggle with the patriarchal image for individual autonomy and sexual fulfilment. The ideal of manhood is the dominant motif of the book and is highlighted in the verbal exchanges between Mihalis and Polyxigis (136) or Diamantis and Polyxigis (141) and occasionally through idealization by women. For example, Mihalis’s daughter Rinio does not like either the respected gentlemen or the kurugiozides but prefers the captains (134) while Vangelio dreams of a brave handsome fellow (Zeventis usikis [137]) and EminC states that the man who is to embrace her should be unique (231). Particularly in the earlier part of the novel the repressed sexuality of the inhabitants of Megalo Kastro becomes evident and a number of men are presented as weak, either beaten by their wives (Fourogatos), tied up by them (Mastrapadaina’s husband) or unable to satisfy them sexually (Dimitros and his wife Penelope). Fanurios, son of Sifakas and chief shepherd, is afraid of his pallid wife Despinia and has to get drunk in order to touch her. The sexual behavior of Cretan women reinforces the ideal of manhood, while any confusion of genders, such as that caused by Bertodoulos’s shaving his moustache, is not tolerated. As is made clear, in Crete “there are two kinds of people, not three; men, and women. We won’t tolerate men who behave like women!” (96). The ambiguity of manhood and its significations in respect of valor in war, bodily strength, and sexual potency permeates the novel and holds it together on many levels, including characterization. Peter Bien claims that Captain Mihalis has the characteristics of the epic hero, whereas Kosmas (possibly a persona of Kazantzakis himself) is a novelistic hero in spite of the fact that he only appears toward the end.26 One 25. “Your health Thrasaki, my boy! That’s how I want you to be, a tighter! he murmured. That’s what a son means; you’ll restore me to life when I’m gone” (271). 26. Peter Bien, Nikos Kazanfzakis: Novelist (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1989). 52-56.
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could argue that the pair Captain Mihalis-Kosmas replicates the pair ZorbaBoss. It is characteristic that the former (Mihalis, Zorba) are depicted as u~ changing and the emphasis is on their primitivism and vitality; the latter, on the other hand, do change representing both literacy and links with the West. Though it could be argued that they do not change convincingly, the Boss is clearly influenced by the vitality of Zorba while Kosmas seems to abandon his western cosmopolitanism, finally giving his life for his land. It should also be taken into account that the two epic heroes, connected with the oral tradition and the East, are not transformed whereas the other two, who are associated with the West, writing, and the novel are transformed to a greater or lesser extent. I do not share Peter Bien’s view that Kosmas is a more complex character than ti tyro^.*^ In my opinion both represent the novelistic aspect of the text (as opposed to the epic aspect), constituting the counterbalance to the primitivism of Captain Mihalis. Tityros, together with Idomeneas and Hatzisavas, paves the way for the appearance and the role of Kosmas in the novel. These characters provide the opportunity for the antithesis between action and writing to be raised and for the opposition to education to be voiced. At times Captain Mihalis himself argues against education, as, for example, when he does not allow his nephew to go to school. The antithesis between action and knowledge is one of the basic themes of the novel, which points to the wider conflict between the world of patriarchal primitivism and that of the learned cosmopolitanism expressed by the two narrative forms: epic and novel. Without the preparation of the ground by the other characters, the appearance of Kosmas toward the end of the story (despite brief appearances at the beginning and in the middle of the novel [288])could be seen as forced and unjustified. It takes Kazantzakis relatively few pages to engineer his transformation from a cosmopolitan to a patriot in convincing fashion. By contrast, Tityros is given more space in which to undergo a plausible transformation and the murder of Diamantis is the critical turning point that changes him. This constitutes the first step, although the fact that he poisoned him instead of using a knife makes Captain Mihalis angry: “I don’t denounce you for killing him; I denounce you for killing him in a womanish way, with poison. Don’t dodge the issue. . . . A real man kills once for all!” (273,260).Earlier the gradual transformation of Tityros had surprised him: “He looked at his brother. Where did Tityros find such courage? How did those little glasses of his, those short trousers, that little hunched-up body contain so much spirit?’ (223,217). From the day of the murder, Tityros “became a man, he gave it a trial and realised that he was indeed a man” (282);he started to assert his au27. Ibid.. 52.
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thority at school and to beat his pupils. This psychological change brought about a physical one and in turn his transformation from a novelistic to an epic hero. The symbolic burning of his western clothes links the historical context of the novel (the reluctance of the Great Powers to help Crete) to its philosophical background. I would argue, therefore, that Tityros is indeed a novelistic character who paves the way for the culmination of Kosmas’s transformation and ensures the preservation throughout the novel of the constitutional oppositions: mind and heart, body and soul. His change of character is more convincing because it takes place gradually and not abruptly like that of Kosmas. Tityros also offers the opportunity for manhood to be treated as a matter of soul and not body, something that takes us from epic action to psychological novel. Tityros had in fact become a different person. Since the day that his handsome lad of a brother-in-law was killed, he had changed. He’d found courage, he discovered that the secret of manhood was not to have the physical strength of a giant, but to have the strength in your soul to make a decision. A determined horsefly can fell a hesitant ox. Manhood was soul, not body (320, 307-8).
It might be said that Captain Mihalis with his physical strength and his awesome appearance, being the epitome of Cretan valor, is both an epic hero and, since his soul is constantly troubled by demons, a novelistic character.28He is basically a desperado whose egoism is at odds with his patriotism, yet as Peter Bien argued “he cannot be patriotic because in him Kazantzakis presents, most basically, an individuality idealized in v ~ c u o . A ”~ number ~ of incidents, mentioned earlier, raise Mihalis above the rest of the community while his
28. Mikhail Bakhtin draws a distinction between epic and novel arguing that the epic hero is entirely externalized, everything in him is exposed and loudly expressed. There is no gap between his “authentic essence and its external manifestation.” All his potential is realized in his external social position while his view of himself coincides with others’ view of him. “There is nothing to seek for in him, nothing to guess at, he can neither be exposed nor provoked; he is all of a piece, he has no shell, there is no nucleus within.” M. M. Bakhtin, “Epic and Novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. M. Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981). 34-35. The epic (especially Iliadic) hero is always male and invariably a warrior, of extraordinary (‘godlike’) beauty and physical strength, and preeminent in achievements that are not necessarily restricted to martial skills. Epic heroes seek kleos via personal honor and are supposed to be socially ‘sensitive’ (i.e., exhibit aid&), so the generic epic hero has a number of mental and moral attributes besides courage and extraordinary fighting spirit (menos).For more details see Jasper Griffin, Homer on Life and Death (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 50-80 and Richard Rutherford, Homer, Greece & Rome series, no. 26 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 3 7 4 4 . 29. Bien, “0 Kapetrin Mihrilis,” 166. Considering Kazantzakis’s novel as a manifestation of the idea of ‘heroic pessimism’, Angela Kastrinaki claims that the heroism in Freedom and Death is ultimately not national but individualistic. “H E ~ T E L P 77)s ~ L IN i ~ q sK(YL q Mu60moiquq T q s ’HTTW. E L K ~ V ETOU S T O ~ ~ ~ UTO K Odpyo U TOU K C X ~ C X V T ~in& K H ~ TEhnrrcyia ,” @buq TOW K ~ ~ T L K O I Z ~ T ~ ~ ~ (Herakleio: C Y T O S Etairia Kritikon Istorikon Meleton, 2001), 389-97.
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fantasies single him out as a tormented and vulnerable individual. Thus, he is poised on the borderline separating an epic from a novelistic character. Mihalis is an epic hero for his supernatural strength and because of his lack of development, which one would not expect in the main character of a novel; he is also a novelistic character since he has the required inwardness, secrecy, and depth. His heroism is more tragic than epic; tragedy shows the hero as a problem whereas epic presents him as a model.30 For Captain Mihalis femininity is fearful and threatening. Inside his own family he was able either to counteract or limit this threat. Over the years Katerina, his wife, lost her ‘manly’ air while her strength and resolve withered. His position in the house has become unquestioned; even his shade evokes his authority: “Behind them, on the long narrow couch which took up the whole length of the wall, in the corner near to the window which overlooked the garden, was the seat where Captain Mihalis always sat. When he was away, a heavy shadow sat there in his place, and neither wife nor daughter dared to go near. They felt as if they were touching his body and they would tremble and quickly retreat” (41, 37-38). Within his domestic space, Mihalis keeps the female presence at bay, trying either to hide or to ignore it. He does not want his newborn baby and its mother gives it a sleeping draught in order to keep it quiet so as not to disturb its father. Moreover, once his daughter Rinio had turned thirteen and her bosom was becoming full, she was forbidden to come into his sight. As a result he was unable to recognize her later. Mother and daughter tacitly accept this condition of cohabitation, based on hiding the thriving femininity and generally accepted as a social prin~iple.~’ At one point, however, Katerina sees with a fresh eye an old lithograph in their house depicting Samson being abused by the Philistines and Delilah “leaning out of a little latticed window-a malevolent, full-bosomed, scornfully grinning woman” (42, 38). The reference to this lithograph does not seem coincidental. The pair Samson and Delilah could be seen as a symbolic projection of the relationship between Mihalis and EminC. Like Samson who loses his power with the cutting of his hair, similarly Mihalis appears vulnerable in the presence of EminC. Though his authority within his family has been established, his encounter with EminC conceals right from the beginning an implicit threat to his manhood. His glance is contested by the wild beauty of the Circassian woman and when their eyes meet, a challenge is in the air: “Their gazes met and clashed 30. Dean A. Miller, The Epic Hero (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 8. 3 1. Cretan women give the impression that they accept the male authority and that they would behave in a similar fashion had they been men themselves. See pp. 48, 133-34, 296. For an anthropological approach to the question of male attitude and behaviour in Crete see M. Herzfeld, The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988).
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in mid-air, and then straightway separated, both of them wild” (35, 32).32Emi d is not a submissive woman; she is presented as a ‘hungry beast’, unsatisfied and ready to devour men or to pursue the stronger male. He succumbs to her charm and feels her irresistible power: “Captain Mihalis raised his eyes, and glanced at her stealthily. But immediately he lowered his eyes, and two beads from his komboloi smashed to smithereens in his fist” (36, 32). What is going on here? Is it love, cowardice, or a threat from an unscrupulous and proud woman? Mihalis may claim not to look at other women (43) and certainly didn’t like the flirtatious ones (70); this behavior, however, does not explain his submissive glance and love in this case would have been incompatible with such animosity. Though the smashing of his beads could be seen as sign of Mihalis’s defeat by EminC and his frustrated desire for her, it could also suggest determination and resistance to the penetrating and irresistible charm of EminC who embodies the male fear of the female. Having heard of his bravery and his avoidance of women (36), EminC, during their first meeting, causes a conflict between Nuri and Mihalis who leaves disturbed: “His heart was swelling, overflowing. There was not enough room for it in his body or in his house” (40,36). The meeting with EminC brings to the surface untold fears, as he sees her as the personification of a threat to his manliness. In his fantasies this threat becomes more explicit, with EminC taking the form of an evil face or a demon: “his mind could not keep still, it whirled around and then vanished inside a shameless red mouth and, try as it might, it couldn’t draw itself away” (54,49). Mihalis fights with himself like a bull, “a new uninvited demon had found its way inside him, one that did not at all resemble his usual demons” (7 1,68).This demon does not leave him in peace and haunts him constantly, even obscuring the image of Crete. And just as he heard Crete’s lament his mind shifted once again. The face of Crete had changed; a plane tree had taken root inside of him and was swelling and devouring his innards. On its branches hung old forefathers, bare-footed and with bluish complexions, they bit their tongues and a strong wind moaned. . . . Just as Captain Mihalis stretched out his arms to pay his respects, everything disappeared, his mind emptied and nothing remained except a lantern of red and green glass, and under it Nuri, the lemon raki and the roasted patridges; and then suddenly a cackling laugh and a pair of Circassian eyebrows (93,92-93).
There is no doubt that this demon is Mihalis’s fantasy of EminC, who is often represented synecdochically by her laughter, her eyebrows, or the soles of her feet. It is also significant that the metaphor of the plane-tree helps to contrast 32. Even when he liberates her, Captain Mihalis is not able to look her in the eyes (p. 364).
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the genealogy of Crete with the exotic demon. What, however, does this demonization of EminC signify? In the first chapters of the book, Captain Mihalis is presented as a gloomy and pitiless man, one full of anger who fights with himself. He feels his heart seething; yet “he was unable to rejoice, laugh, tell a joke or even utter a kind word to find relief’ (93,92). Is it his sorrow for Crete’s occupation that makes him reserved and taciturn or is it a crisis of identity in respect of his duty towards Crete and his manly identification with the forefathers that is at odds with his sexual liberation and his personal fulfilment? These conflicting dilemmas emerge more acutely in his unconscious, manifesting themselves in painful fantasies. Captain Mihalis always tries to emphasize his individual identity, to show that he is different from the rest, yet always has to face his duty to his ancestors. And this dilemma causes a crisis of identity, making him melancholy. By drinking, he tries to free himself from the internal conflict between his identification with the ancestral experience and the overcoming of his inhibitions in offering himself to the female demon. Captain Mihalis kept filling and refilling his glass and drinking, but he found no pleasure in the wine. He hated it. Every time he lifted the glass to his mouth, his lips twisted to repulse it. Nevertheless he forcibly threw the wine down his throat to drown the demons inside him as neither woman nor war nor God could tame them. His demons were only afraid of wine, and so he drank it in great quantities whenever he felt them rising inside him. These demons had savage voices; most of them weren’t human but were like howling beasts. Every so often the trapdoor would open, and ancient ancestors would spring out-the tiger, the wolf, the wild boar, and behind them the hairy grandfathers from the caves of Mount Psiloritis (103-4, 103-4).
These fantasies highlight Mihalis’s confusion of identity and his dilemma as to whether to prove his manhood by fighting for Crete and returning to the ancestral glory or to test it in a different way by giving in to the seductive pleasures of the foreign woman. In this respect, Captain Mihalis is both an epic and a novelistic hero. As I have already said, as an epic hero he is singled out for his imposing presence, his courage, and his supernatural strength (126), as a novelistic character he does not lack depth, revealing his troubled soul and his struggle with the demons as becomes evident in the following passage. At daybreak on Tuesday, as he was leaning his head against the wall, sleep came and took him like a bolt of lightening, but the demon caught up with him nevertheless. In the beginning it appeared as if he had entered a cool, spring cloud composed of air and raindrops. Still dazed by the heat, the wine and the pain, he
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moved forward and the cloud took him in its embrace and raised him up, wrapping itself around him and caressing his body and thighs. Gradually the cloud changed shape, it thickened and it took on a face-two female lips at first, and then suddenly there appeared above them two wild eyes, full of shameless, mocking laughter. Lastly two small hennaed soles and two snow-white hands appeared from out of the dark, and then he heard the voice, gurgling like a stream: “Captain Mihalis, Captain Mihalis! (131, 131).
The fantasies of Captain Mihalis are not simply erotic or sexual; they reveal the darkness inherent in EminC’s image, which conflates the forbidden with the fierce, the dream with the nightmare, the liberation with the threat. It could be said that the epic aspect of Mihalis helps him to release his anxiety as a novelistic character. His internal fears are externalized in demonstrations of strength or provocative acts: “The overindulgence in wine hadn’t unsettled his wits at all; his knees gripped the flanks of his mare, and h s fists were coiled like two springs and within them lay an unbearable force of energy. It oppressed him more than the wine he had drunk. So strong was this force that Captain Mihalis didn’t know how he could expend it and so relieve himself’ (144,146). Is his bravery after all a result of his ardent patriotism or an attempt to divert his internal pressure elsewhere in order to remove his psychic deadlock? Mihalis feels constantly threatened; he does not go to sleep for fear that the demon will come in his sleep (169) nor does he take holy communion while the demon is inside him (179).33His identity as a man is confirmed at the end only through his fighting (“Only he who fights is a man” [490]). Whilst Mihalis is troubled by his fantasies of EminC, Nuri Bey is haunted by the vision of his father who demands revenge: “His father now visited him in his sleep regularly. He didn’t speak. He didn’t even stand over him anymore, but passed by dressed in rags, barefoot taking huge strides, and did not turn to look at him. He went and yet was never out of sight; all night he was there with averted face, inexorably present” (199, 191). The ghost of the father, as has been said, is one of the central themes of the book and troubles not only Nuri Bey but Kosmas too. It also represents the autobiographical aspect of the book, since Kazantzakis himself had mentioned on a number of occasions that he wanted to write a book about his father. Perhaps the shade of the father gives us the clue to exploring the relationship between Mihalis and Nuri, which is indeed intriguing for the reader, given that no convincing explanation is provided as to why the two enemies became “blood brothers.” Particularly the decision by Captain Mihalis to put aside his long-standing hatred and mix his blood with his enemy’s seems unwarranted and rather forced. 33. The fantasies and the dreams consume Mihalis (p. 211); he seeks support (p. 213), hut finally they are so tormenting that they lead him to self-wounding (p. 270).
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It could be argued that Nuri Bey is the alter ego of Mihalis. The former is tormented by the ghost of his father and the latter by EminC. In fact both fantasies represent the crisis of identity suffered by Captain Mihalis, his choice between the community (Crete, ancestors, father) and the individual. If we accept that Nuri Bey is Mihalis’s alter ego, then Nuri’s wounding in his genitals makes the threat of losing his manhood more immediate and visible for Mihalis. Glad at Nuri’s loss of virility, EminC symbolizes the threat of castration. “He’ll not be a man any more. He’ll still have a moustache and a beard, but no, he won’t be a man. The poor thing has been docked; he’s no longer Nuri, but Nurina.” EminC couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “Do you think, Mustafa Baba, that slowly but surely he’ll lose his hair and his voice will become like a woman’s? And in time will he grow breasts?’-“Maybe,” the old man had replied, who was at a loss listening to the woman laughing: “Maybe, but all the same he won’t be a woman.”-“Poor Nuri Bey, to think he was once a strapping man, a womaniser, you lion of Turkey, and now he’s sunk to this!” said EminC; “Neither man, then, nor woman; neither will he impregnate nor will he be impregnated; a mule!” She laughed again. Mustafa Baba had looked at her, terrified (229,223).
EminC epitomizes the threat of impotence, the fear of castration, and the humiliation of male pride. She judges men according to their physical strength and demands the highest degree of masculinity, which is manifested in the act of murder (230). Always taking the side of the physically powerful, she personifies the rewarding of manly power and at the same time symbolizes their fear of rejection. She moves very easily from admiration to hatred and as a result her attitude toward Mihalis is contradictory, a mixture of desire and hatred. What she desires deep down is to harness and subjugate his power: “But why, for God’s sake, did she think of him constantly? What did she find in him? He wasn’t a man, but a wild beast, a loner, ugly even. She didn’t want him. She hated him. If she could cut off both his hands, so that his strength would drain away into the earth” (317,305). Mihalis is aware of the overpowering violence represented by EminC and hence their relationship is more competitive than erotic; it is the battle between the sexes for symbolic power. This could also explain why Captain Mihalis is disturbed by the wounding of Nuri Bey, as “he was unable to comprehend how a man could suffer such a misfortune” (252, 243). Although Nuri Bey was the killer of his brother, he feels sympathy for him due mainly to his lost masculinity. It is significant that when Mihalis visits him he does not at first shake his hand and only at the end does so in order to reassure him that he is still a man (253,256). The code of
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male solidarity is placed above ethnic or more accurately intercommunal animosity. In the face of Nuri Bey, Captain Mihalis sees himself and thus the threat of castration appears immediate and real. In turn, his initial hatred is turned to sympathy. By treating Nuri Bey as an alter ego of Mihalis, which expresses his vulnerable and female side, their relationship can be understood better as well as Nuri’s role in the narrative. His wounding, on the one hand, makes the fear of castration tangible for Mihalis and, on the other hand, leads Nuri to an impasse and afterward to suicide as the only way out. The novel is ultimately a narrative of revolt. The revolt against the Turk conceals the revolt against the father. The demand for freedom is not merely about Cretan independence and getting rid of Turkish rule, but about individual liberation from the ghostly presence of the father and, by extension, the ancestors. On both levels the revolt fails, raising for the more inquisitive reader the question of whether the individual revolt must come first to support the collective one. In the end, Mihalis and Kosmas are victims of paternal authority and not so much of Turkish rule. Kazantzakis skillfully conflates the two themes, so that the motive is apparently the liberation of Crete while deep down it is the identification with the father. Hence the rallying cry “freedom or death” could be read in a twofold manner by turning this nationalist slogan into a psychoanalytic aporia: freedom from the shade of dead forefathers or death as a result of the identification with them and the return to the land.34The death of Kosmas at the end takes the form of fulfilling an old duty and assuming the role of his father. “Hail to you, nephew,” he shouted to him. “Your father has risen again, welcome brother Kostaros!” “It’s good to be here, uncle,” he answered, carried away by a strange intoxication. He was unrecognised. A dark, unfathomable joy had taken hold of him; he felt relieved, and delivered, as if at that precise moment he had at last come home to his own country. He thought of nothing any more. All Frankish ideas had vanished, along with his mother, his wife and his son. Nothing remained before him, except this single, ancient duty (494, 471).
34. Kazantzakis is preoccupied with the liberation of spirit and its ascension toward a symbolic goal. Captain Mihalis’s last stand in the mountains and his death could depict in symbolic form the evolutionary ascent (anijoros) from brute beast to man and the idea that only through death can ultimate freedom be achieved. Similarly in Kazantzakis’s The Odyssey (1938) forefathers and atavistic memories play a significant role in the ascending struggle of the spirit. In Book IX Odysseus “realizes that beast and god have always warred in man, as the spirit sought to evolve into light through dark atavistic roots. He knows now that his ultimate destination is to free God as far as possible from the beast, toward more and more salvation.” Nikos Kazantzakis, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, trans. Kimon Friar (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1958), 789.
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By means of death or killing, the liberation from the Turks as well as from the disturbing fantasies is achieved. Mihalis kills EminC in order to liberate himself, Nuri kills Manousakas in order to free himself from the vision of his father, Tityros not only kills Diamantis but is also responsible for the death of Vangelio, who commits suicide as a result of the murder of her brother with whom she had a strong bond. Here the convergence of the binary oppositions takes the form: death (body)-freedom (soul). Mihalis kills EminC not so much out of jealousy as because she is an obstacle to the fulfilment of his manhood, meaning identification with the ancestors and carrying out his duty to Crete. When he temporarily surrenders to her charms, the monastery is destroyed and she becomes an obstacle to the freedom of the island. And herein lies the ambiguity of her role. EminC promises Mihalis his individual autonomy and liberation from paternal authority, yet she hinders national liberation. We have, therefore, a conflict between two identifications and versions of manhood: the one seen as national valor (andreia) and the other as sexual potency (androtitu), a formula that is repeated in reverse order in the case of Kosmas. Transcending these problems presupposes that the role of the two women (EminC and Noemi) is sorted They embody the promise of individual freedom, of sexual fulfilment and liberation from the ancestral past, which means that the consolidation of individual identity entails the devaluation of national identification by rejecting the dynastic presence of the forefathers. In other words, the novel raises the problem of identity through the opposition of the sexual (or gender) to the national identity. Captain Mihalis seems to have a problem with his sexual but not with his national identity. By contrast Kosmas has no problem with his sexual identity but is ambiguous about his national identity. While Mihalis struggles with his fantasies about EminC, Kosmas is haunted by the vision of his father (408). The similar imagery is striking, suggesting that the development of the two characters might be contrasting and parallel at the same time. The novel is both action story and fantasy; the characters are presented both externally (epic) and internally (novel). Externally, Captain Mihalis is introduced as a strong man; internally, as troubled by a demon. Kosmas is portrayed externally as 35. Although there is a close connection between collective identity and womanhood with the representation of a country as a mother and women as symbolic bearers of national identity, women are often associated with impurity, danger, and otherness as in Kazantzakis’s novel. Nira Yuval-Davis, in her book Gender and Nation (London: Sage, 1997), says: “Women usually have an ambivalent position within collectivity. On the one hand, as mentioned above, they often symbolize the collectivity unity, honour and the raison d’2ti-e of specific national and ethnic projects, like going to war. On the other hand, however, they are often excluded from the collective ‘we’ of the body politic, and retain an object rather than a subject position. In this sense the construction of womanhood has a property of ‘otherness”’ (p. 47).
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‘Frankish’, but inside him his father and his Cretan spirit are awakened (49 1, 492).36 The Cretan struggle for independence ultimately overshadows the subjection of characters to the repressive paternal presence. The real violence of the intercommunal conflicts obscures the symbolic violence of the dead fathers, as is manifested in the case of Kosmas’s sister through the painful suppression of her individual will (419). The fundamental, wider question raised by the novel is whether the individual is entitled to his autonomy in relation to the past, the community, and ancestry, or is doomed to serve them. This question is indirectly posed to Kosmas by the bishop, who argues that the Cretans have a higher belief than that in the individual and that is their belief in God: “We Cretans have an ideal, a belief that’s higher than the individual and which is opposed to personal profit; it’s made of tears and sacrifice. We’re still bound to God and haven’t yet been expelled from His kingdom” (414, 390). On the basis of the above it could be argued that Freedom and Death is a thinly disguised nationalist In the text, however, contradictory trends coexist.38On the one hand, we observe the peaceful coexistence of the religious communities (brothers-enemies, 472-74), even understanding on the part of the narrator toward the Turks (337), and on the other hand, we witness the incessant hatred that is part of a revenge culture (attack against the abbot, Nuri’s revenge). Nationalist tendencies, however, are not manifested so much in the struggle between Greeks and Turks as through the opposition between the sexes and the projection of the question of manhood. In this respect, the role of Efentina and Aliagas, the two ‘hermaphrodite’ characters, should be highlighted. Their sexual ambivalence leads to their compromising attitude in national matters: both of them have good relations with the Christians and Aliagas even acts as an informer for Mihalis while he is besieged in his house. What is privileged in the novel are blood ties and the power of genealogy. This perhaps explains why the relations between siblings are possessive (Vangelio-Diamantis) and almost incestuous (Chrysanthi-Polyxigis). Sisters devote themselves to brothers and do not get married or are imprisoned by their father in order to keep them under his tutelage (Kosmas’s sister). The 36. See Beaton, “Of Crete and Other Demons,” 21 2. 37. It could be said that Kazantzakis’s reference to the Greek-Cypriot struggle for independence in the prologue of his novel reinforces a patriotic reading of Freedom and Death. Interestingly, both the prologue and the subtitle were added in the second edition of the novel in 1955. 38. Bien, Nikos Kazantzakis, 59 argues that “the book attempts to make us believe in something that is contradicted by the manner in which the protagonist is characterised it attempts to make us believe that MihAlis is a national hero whereas in truth he denies communal needs and fights for personal ones.”
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relationships between the two sexes are not harmonious, either because there is no happiness or there is a desire for control. Throughout, then, blood ties are emphasized, a roundabout confirmation of the hostility toward “otherness” implicit in the novel. In Freedom and Death it is suggested that the ancestors are biologically stronger than the present generation and gradually a kind of decline is taking place. Right from the beginning of the novel with the reference to the legendary grandfather Mad Mihalis, his grandson states: “Those were men, still . . . those were giants, not worms like us! So were their womenfok-yes, even wilder. Ah! time, time! Mankind’s going downhill, going to the devil” (15, 10). Kosmas, too, prays for a son that will not weaken the Cretan blood39and at the end of the novel, during the fighting, his ancestral blood is reawakened and the biological and paternal voice leads him: “In his depths stirred his father-the tough warlord-and his grandfathers, and Crete. It wasn’t the first time he had fought, he had been fighting for a thousand years, he had been killed a thousand times and resurrected. His blood began to seethe” (492,469). The idea of recycling and revitalization through the resurrection of the ancestors is stressed in several parts of the novel: The old ones are laid to rest in the earth and then they rise out of the earth, renewed. Crete is immortal (314-15, 303). Have my blessing! Call him Sifakas, do you hear me? That’s how the dead rise again! (446,422).
The ancestors rise in the soul of the Cretans and give them strength: “His blood was fired up, his youth returned, his old ancestors, who had fought against Turkey and had been killed, rose up in him. He wasn’t the only one who was struggling, it was all Cretans” (329, 316). The power of the ancestors is linked indirectly with the rule of the fittest when Captain Mihalis, facing the lepers in Meskinia, thinks that “only the healthy should live” (89). Darwinian echoes can be traced on two occasions in Freedom and Death.40 In his discussions with Tityros, Idomeneas opens “the new English book
39. “My lineage is strong and robust, said Kosmas to himself, its roots are deep in the earth. Mind you don’t bring shame upon it! God, don’t allow Noemi’s blood to weaken the blood of Crete! Let my son be a Cretan through and through. It would be a great shame for such a lineage to cease its ascent upward” (482,459). 40. Vrasidas Karalis argues that the influence of Darwin and Freud on Kazantzakis has been underplayed compared to that of Bergson and Nietzsche. “KOLVOYLK~) +IJXOGUVIXFLK~) UTOV KCU~TCTC~V M~xCihvTOV N ~ K OKc&xvT@q,” U AL@&W, no. 377 (September 1997): 8696. Though his article moves, rightly in my view, toward a psychoanalytic reading of the novel, he limits his analysis to the relationship of Nun Bey and Captain Mihalis, who did not become blood brothers during their childhood, as he claims, but when they were adults. Moreover, his claim that Freedom and Deufh is “a disguised homoerotic romance,” though challenging and thought-provoking, is not sufficiently substantiated or explored.
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which had caused a stir in the world and proved that man is descended from the apes” (184). The other implicit reference to Darwinian theory is made toward the end of the novel with the story of Andrulios. Though he was “only a half-helping’’ and “God’s refuse, not worth spitting out,” he was able with his axe to remove a whole mountain in Venerato, but gradually takes the form of an ape (486).4’ In this case the function of this story (a kind of reversal of Darwinian theory) is not entirely clear, unless one sees it as an attempt to suggest the idea of a return to origins and the rediscovery of ancestral power. Manhood, therefore, does not simply signify an identification with the ancestors, but also with the fittest. It is significant that foreigners tend to be weak, as for example the flabby pasha and the foreign women (the French wife of doctor Kasapakis, Noemi) whereas the real Cretans are exceptionally strong. Even Thrasaki shows his contempt towards non-Cretans in this way: “Could he put up a decent fight? He’s not a Cretan, he’s from Syra” (67, 64). Though on many fronts the novel deals with the fusion of genres, mentalities, and people, it presents the ultimate goal as purity (racial and national) and the return to origins and to an ancestral subconscious. The seeming confusion with the unexpected solidarity between Christians and Muslims (blood brotherhood), the mixture of genres (epic, novel), ethnic groups (Cretans, Turks, Circassians, Jews, Western Europeans), or identities should not obscure the main aim of the narrative: the highlighting of purity that can be achieved only through the perpetuation of ancestral manhood and its unequivocal reaffirmation. The confusion of genres in the mixture of epic and novel might suggest aesthetic flaws, yet it gives Kazantzakis’s novel some advantages. The combination attempted at a literary level matches that envisaged at a philosophical level with the synthesis of body and soul, matter and spirit. Combining the hyperbole of the epic with the psychological depth of the novel, Kazantzakis produces an unusual construction with manhood as the principle that holds it together. Because it is not ‘seamless’, this construction might be judged aesthetically flawed; it constitutes, however, and projects at the same time the characteristic style of Kazantzakis. The unorthodox combination of genres and characters shows that the literary synthesis adopted by Kazantzakis is not independent of his worldview. Or, if Freedom and Death is a novel manquk, as Bien claims, then the same should be said for the author’s whole work, including his philosophy. It seems to me that, though these unexpected, but not 41. George Manousakis argues that “Freedom or Death presents a complete Kazantzakean, anthropological scale; it begins with a homunculus, which is occasionally an almost ‘subhuman’ category, and reaches the highest type in Kazantzakean anthropology, the individual who displays many features of the Obermensch.” “The Characters in Freedom or Death: A Kazantzakean Anthropological Scale,” The Charioteer 22-23 (1980-1981): 68.
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totally unjustified, fusions might not convince the critics, they account for his popularity as a writer and his placement at the literary crossroads between East and West, epic and novel, past and present. Kazantzakis worked with antithesis as well as with synthesis, trying on the one hand to stress oppositions and on the other to attempt some sort of synthesis or even a kind of transubstantiation by transforming matter into spirit. It could be argued that the aesthetic flaw of Freedom and Death lies not so much in the generic confusion as in the fact that its novelistic or psychological aspects are not fully developed, probably because it was a highly personal and autobiographical work. The epic and heroic elements function as a smoke screen for the autobiographical aspect. Hence Freedom and Death is perhaps the best example of how Kazantzakis channels his personal anxieties into a novel and conceals them behind an historical or philosophical facade. So far critics have paid attention to this facade, emphasizing the epic or realistic side of the text and not the deeper cause of the psychosexual condition of Captain Mihalis, namely the return of Kazantzakis, through his hero, to his original and secret inhibitions as well as his desire to be and act like a man.42 Kazantzakis was not a master of narrative synthesis. However, one might say that he was able to turn this shortcoming to advantage by fusing aspects of the epic and folk tradition with realism and autobiography in an interesting way. With his generic ambiguity he was able to bring together hyperbole and verisimilitude, heroism and fear, egoism and patriotism, philosophical reflection and historical action, the narrative tradition of the East and the Western tradition of the novel. To what extent does this hybrid construction, which cannot easily be placed in generic stereotypes, account for Kazantzakis’s success as a writer? What fosters the fusion of these disparate elements and traditions and contributes to the coherence of the novel is the notion of manhood, combining the physical power of the epic hero with the angst of the modern psychological novel, and the struggle against the ghostly father figure with the duty toward the ancestors. In short, it combines external action (andreia) with internal conflict (the psychosexual syndrome of castration), and thus provides the overarching metaphor to the metonymic collage of the narrative material.
42. Apostolos Sahinis describes the book as “a truly heroic epic of Crete and of Greece in general” (p. 50) and adds that “this novel is an outstanding manifestation of manly art” (p. 52) in I I e ~ o y p f f ( p o ~ TOU K C Y L ~ O pa< I~ (Athens: Estia, 1967). Mihalis Meraklis, on the other hand, insists on the ethographic (realistic) character of the novel. “H (PLXOUO(PLK$~00ypacpiaK ~ aLv 0 p w ~ o h o y i aTOW N. K a c a v ~ c & ~ ~Acuoypacpia, l,” vol. 33 (1982-1984): 360-66. Roderick Beaton, “Of Crete and Other Demons,” 213-14, transcends the existing readings of the novel and provides a comparison with South American fiction, especially that of MBrquez.
Chapter Seven
Tyrants and Prisoners: Narrative Fusion and the Hybrid Self in The Third Wedding
Though it is considered one of the most successful Greek novels, The Third Wedding (To Trito Stefani)’ has not received the critical attention it deserves. In the few analyses of the novel written to date there is a consensus that The Third Wedding is to some extent autobiographical; on the other hand, it has been claimed that “the novel includes the history of modem Greece, both culturally and politically.”2 The author himself said that there were aspects of the novel that were autobiographical and others that were not, explaining that he found it entertaining to mix up the names of his own family. For example, his grandmother and her daughter were called Polyxene and Hecuba respectively and not vice versa as in the novel.3 This kind of playful strategy suggests that Tachtsis’s aim was to (con)fuse autobiography and fiction, and this osmotic trend is characteristic of the whole book and of his intention to write a tragicomedy. Again in the story “0pateras mou kai ta papoutsia” [My father and 1. The novel was published privately in Athens in November 1962 after being rejected by publishers and was reissued ten years later by Ermis in 1972. This is a sign that the novel was not initially welcomed by Greek critics and readers, though later in the 1980s and 1990s it sold well. The English translation of the novel and its publication by Penguin contributed to its gradual recognition as a landmark in postwar Greek fiction. Reference here is made to the English translation by Leslie Finer, Costas Taktsis, The Third Wedding (New York: Red Dust, 1986). All subsequent references to the novel will be made to this edition and page numbers will appear in parenthesis after each quotation. Also, the chapters in this translation do not correspond to those of the Greek edition and they are given in parenthesis. There is a more recent translation of the novel by John Chioles with a slightly different title: The Third Wedding Wreath (Athens: Hermes, 1985). I prefer the transliteration Tachtsis rather than Taktsis used in both English translations. 2. Nicholas Kostis, “The Third Wedding: Woman as the Vortex of Feeling,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 9, no. 1 (1991): 93. John Chioles, in his introduction to the translation of the novel, argues that it is “a panorama of Greek history in our century” (p. v). 3. Kostas Tachtsis, “ALEIJK~LY~UELS,” in A ~ r hTTV ,yap+$ UKOPLLV (Athens: Exantas 1992), 67-70. For details about his life in connection to the novel see his autobiography Kostas Tachtsis, To @oOp&pbB$pa,edited by Thanassis Th. Niarhos (Athens: Exandas, 1989),4041,365-67.
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the shoes] from his collection Tu restu [Small Change] (1972) he claims that when he draws on his personal experience he does not tell the whole truth. Only the kernel of his stories is autobiographical, and this is not due to lack of sincerity, but to psychological and aesthetic requirements. Narrative fusion is perhaps the salient feature of this novel and can be observed on the level of story, narrative voice, genre, and linguistic r e g i ~ t e r . ~ Tachtsis’s novel could be compared to the cultural aesthetics of me‘tissuge practiced by postcolonial writer^.^ Me‘tissage is a form of bricolage involving western literary (or religious) traditions and vernacular cultures (or dialects), a braiding of indigenous and colonial languages through the revalorization of oral traditions as the instrument of giving natives of the so-called Third World access to their histories. Similarly, the two female protagonists in Tachtsis’s novel try to reclaim their muted past by means of the ‘impure’ orality of their stories. If me‘tissuge is the emancipatory metaphor for the relational and interdependent nature of peoples, nations, and cultures, it could also be used to describe the interweaving of stories, genders, voices, and styles in The Third Wedding. The two themes of The Third Wedding are the Oedipal relationship between mothers and sons and the issue of marriage as the pivotal event within the Greek family and society. The two themes overlap in the novel as the two protagonists switch roles, but it could be said that the former is exemplified chiefly by the story of Hecuba, who represents the overpowering, bossy, and possessive mother and the latter by the story of Nina, who represents the dependent, sensitive, and vulnerable wife. In The Third Wedding women are presented as tyrannical mothers and trapped wives. On the one hand, they are in constant conflict with their children, trying to assert their authority within the family, and on the other they feel perpetual prisoners, condemned to seek marriage as the only way to overcome poverty and loneliness. Hecuba and Nina represent two opposing life stories and attitudes. Hecuba mythologizes marriage whereas Nina demythologizes it. Hecuba, though in favor of marriage and a widow, is married only once, remaining close to her children, particularly Dimitris. Nina is married three times, but does not love her husbands and has a problematic relationship with her daughter. Hecuba is 4. It has been argued that The Third Wedding relies on two poles: overt realism and latent lyricism, while between these two poles there is an interplay of the vulgar and the innocent, the humble and the sublime. See Vasos Varikas, , & y - y p a ( ~ ~K/ ~ ~ K~Lpeua, L A’ 1961-1965 (Athens: Ermis, 1975), 150, and K. Papageorgiou, “Kimas TLYXTU+,” in H M E T ~ T O A E ~17~(oypacpLa, LK~~ vol. 7 (Athens: Sokolis, 1988). 254-55. Also John Chioles (op. cit., p. xi) claims that “Taktsis has at once fused the Greek world with its past and fused it too with its extension into the European tradition.” Such views reinforce the argument that a narrative fusion is taking place in Tachtsis’s novel. 5. FranGoise Lionnet, “The Politics and Aesthetics of Me‘tissage,” in Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender; SelfPortrairure (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), 1-29.
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more emotional and invests a great deal in intrafamilial conflicts; Nina, on the other hand, treats such things more calmly. Both are opposites in many respects, though the conflation of their voices brings them closer together and obscures their differences. They epitomize the two main female roles in Greek society: those of the mother and wife. Their intimate relationship and the interweaving of their narratives point to the interdependence of their roles and ultimately result in their fusion and the construction of the hybrid self of the Greek woman. In spite of the duality of the characters and their roles, Hecuba and Nina enter into an osmotic relationship that builds up a portrait of the Greek woman in the first half of the twentieth century. The two protagonists complement each other and through the interaction of their stories highlight the complex position and the composite identity of women within Greek society. In the story “I proti eikona” (The first picture) from Tu restu, the narrator claims that since his childhood he has seen life through the eyes of women: his mother, grandmother, aunt. For him Greece was not a fatherland but a motherland. As has been said earlier, one of the central themes of the novel is the Oedipal relationship between mothers and sons, fathers and daughters. Women are not so much attached to their husbands as to their fathers and sons. Nina and Eleni are very close to their fathers and Hecuba and Aunt Katie to their sons Dimitris and Takis respectively. It is significant in this respect that Nina’s mother suffers and dies from cancer once Dinos is expelled from the family home by his father. Mothers seem to be responsible for the downfall of their sons yet on the other hand they are hostile to their daughters. Although fathers do not feature prominently in the novel we form an image of them through the narratives of their daughters, who tend to present them positively. Nina’s father, for example, is described as progressive and in favor of the emancipation of women. He shouted less than her mother and Nina admired him and learned from him. One of her dreams, described by her as filthy and sinful, in which she sees her father naked may be significant in view of Antonis’s alleged impotence and his tears on the first night of their married life. I saw my poor papa naked, and Antoni crying as he did the first night we were married. I saw Dimitris, or rather a beggar I took to be Dimitris, covered with lice. Suddenly he began to get smaller and smaller, till he was just a little ball no bigger than a walnut. Then Hecuba appeared on the scene, half-naked, with a mass of golden bangles on her arm and her hair down to her shoulders. She had a tambourine in her hand and she began to dance, like the painted ladies on the hurdy-gurdies (261).
Although the significance of the dream is not clear, the nakedness and the pairings involved point to an Oedipal relationship and conflict. The Oedipal
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syndrome is also fostered by the feelings of jealousy that characterize relations between the female characters of the novel. Nina, for example, is jealous of her mother’s bond with Erasmia and thinks that her daughter entertains similar feelings toward her. Similarly Eleni accuses her mother of jealousy. There are also some explicit references to an Oedipal relationship between fathers and daughters, as in the following case involving Eleni and her father, seen from Hecuba’s perspective. The only thorn in their flesh, the only thing that disturbed their married happiness was my daughter Eleni. Not that she was on my side. Not on your life! From the time she was a tiny tot she could never stand me. And she hadn’t changed her feelings about me. As far as she was concerned, the fault was all mine. But she loved her father as though he was her lover-God forgive me for saying so. And she was furious because he’d got entangled with Frosso before she could enjoy the pleasure of being rid of me (80).
Eleni, on the other hand, points to the indifference shown to her own daughter by Hecuba, who thereby justifies her preference. She’d get mad because I didn’t make a fuss of her daughter. God forgive me, I’d never seen an uglier child in my life. She had a head like a swollen pumpkin“What’s it got to do with you?’, I said, “aren’t I entitled to make a fuss of whichever child I like? What’s stopping you cuddling your daughter if you want to?’ It made her furious. She said I had a weakness for boys, and it would be they who’d be my ruin one day. She said that I’d been the cause of Dimitris coming to no good because I’d spoiled him and pampered him, and that I used to beat her without any reason when she was little because I was jealous (106).
It might be significant that daughters and granddaughters, in the eyes of mothers or grandmothers, appear ugly and unfriendly. The expression “monstrous freak of nature,” frequently used by Nina to describe her daughter, might suggest resentment for the failure of her marriage, but also a latent desire to suppress its sexual aspect by presenting her offspring as an accidental aberration. Perhaps due to her Oedipal fantasies, Nina seems to see marriage as a purely social and economic convention and to deny its emotional, sexual, and procreational side. At the other end of the spectrum Hecuba shows a strong attachment to her son. Although occasionally she curses Dimitris, she becomes angry when other people speak ill of him. There is a love-hate relationship between the two and their Oedipal conflict reaches its peak when Dimitris marries Victoria and seems to reject Hecuba. “No!” he was shouting at her, “I don’t propose to screw you! I know that’s what you’ve been wanting all these years, but that’s just too bad! . . . It’s Victoria I’ll
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screw, and you can bust with envy for all I care! I’ll screw her ten times a day if I feel like it, and in future we’ll leave the door open so you can take a good look at us, if it gives you any pleasure. You can drool away to your heart’s content!” (257).
Hecuba’s relationship with Akis is interesting in this respect as she brings him up as a girl, playing with dolls and learning embroidery; he is also able to knit better than a woman: “Even Hecuba’s grandson had learned to knit. And very nicely, too, for all that he was a boy! He did a cable-stitch that was better than some of the women could manage. The truth is that we were most interested in speed, we didn’t mind so much if it wasn’t perfect. We’d watch him grab the great big knitting needles in his tiny hands and knit away, his tongue sticking out in concentration, as though he was born to it, and we’d burst out laughing” (193). Through Akis, Tachtsis is pointing to the social construction of gender and identity by suggesting that gender roles are not biologically fixed or predetermined. When Dimitris dies and Akis starts rebelling against Hecuba to the point where they come to blows, she loses her purpose in life, becomes confused, her health deteriorates and eventually she dies. For her, the earth was no longer anything but a little globe, the same all over, in which Dimitris was buried; and no matter where she went, she would always be walking on his grave. However, she finally agreed to go. One reason was that every time she had a row with Polyxene she would discover new virtues in Eleni. Another reason was the thought that, if she went, she might be able to bring her grandson back with her. As it proved later, it was her last effort to find a purpose, any kind of purpose, to make her life worth living (274).
Her life seems to have been contingent on her children and particularly Dimitris. It was defined and destroyed by the attachment to him. At the end of the
novel, Nina undermines Hecuba’s image as a Hecuba-figure, the embodiment of the Greek mother myth, replacing it with a countermyth of a Medea figure who destroys her own children.6 The novel seems to be something of a treatise on marriage, presented either as a form of security for women or as a constraint mechanism for rebels such as Dimitris. Yet marriage as an institution is implicitly questioned, as it is depicted as forcing people into relationships that curtail their freedom and suppress their desires. The absence of strong emotional attachments in marriage and the way in which it is treated as a means of solving financial 6. Christopher Robinson, “Social, Sexual, and Textual Transgression: Kostas Tahtsis and Michel Tremblay, a Comparison,” in Dimitris Tziovas, ed., Greek Modernism and Beyond (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997). 212.
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problems perhaps explains why Hecuba sees Frosso, who stole her husband, as a victim and not only decides to meet her but even stays at her house. Real emotion and passion cannot be found in the marriages in this book, as most of them were contracted for reasons of convenience or have failed. Hence, the emotional investment is directed either toward Oedipal or homosexual relationships or friendships outside the family. Using the focus of marriage, Tachtsis contrasts the conventional with the natural by showing how social conventions obstruct human feelings and propensities, often leading to deviancy. Without favoring the natural over the conventional, he suggests that individual identity is defined by a mixture of the two in different ways and to a different degree each time. The novel seems to rely on polarities or equations such as phallos=logos, which it in effect undermines, demonstrating the fusion and the hybridization of opposite^.^ Challenging binary oppositions such as historicaUpersona1, public/domestic, male/female, the novel shows that the first term that is normally considered the dominant or primary one is absorbed and determined by the second. The hierarchy is not so much reversed as hybridized. Tachtsis does not try to erase the differences by fusing them into a dialectic synthesis, but to maintain their dialogic relationship and hybridic tension. In a way he demonstrates that an alternative social history of Greece can be written through the perspective of the family and an analysis of its function rather than through the traditional perspective of historical events and political developments. He does not analyze the way in which history and politics affect the lives of individuals, but looks at how the private produces the public and the family makes history. Although the novel concentrates on the personal lives of the two female protagonists, there are references to the historical context particularly during the period of the German occupation and the civil war. There are also brief references to the Macedonian struggle, to Venizelos’s disputes with King Constantine, and with Metaxas so that the reader has the sense that the historical blends nicely with the personal stories, without the narrative becoming overwhelmed with details about historical or political developments. As becomes clear from the way that Nina describes the influence of war, Tachtsis is trying to show how historical events are absorbed into the personal realm, what effect they have on his characters’ everyday lives and their attitudes toward other people.
7. The number three plays an important role not only in the title and the structure of the novel (divided into three parts), but it might be seen as representing a third level that transcends opposites by hybridizU~ TCXXTIJ+ ~~S: KCUL9 ~~vro~~oypcrtpicu,” NCa ing them. See Sofia Iakovidou, “H TCXV? T ~ CSU T ~ U T C U o E U T (February ~ 2002): 2 7 s 9 6 .
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Before it began to open new wounds, the war healed quite a few old ones: it shook us out of our lethargy, our life took on new meaning, we no longer lived without a purpose, eating and sleeping and excreting like animals. The danger aroused feelings we never knew we had in us. It brought people together. I’d never felt so close to Antoni as I did during those first few months of war. We may have slept side by side all those years, but we each lived our own lives, like strangers or sometimes even enemies. Now, for the first time, I realised how much he loved me and what a big-hearted man he was underneath his peasant ways (189). Sometimes this fusion of historical events with the lives of the characters is done very skillfully as in the following example: “If business had been better, Antoni would never have let himself go downhill so much. He wasn’t the kind of man to be easily depressed by illness. But the international situation was getting worse and worse: war in China, war in Abyssinia, war in Spain! . . . Everybody was saying we would soon have war in Europe” (30). Here what links the personal with the historical is the transition from the deterioration of Antonis’s business and his health to the worsening of the international situation with the outbreak of a number of wars. It is the historical that is grafted onto the personal rather than the personal becoming a detail that is pegged into the general historical process. In this way politics and history are personalized as becomes clear from the way Nina feels at the time of Metaxas’s death: “I suddenly recalled what had happened the day before, and I felt conscience-stricken. After all, 1 thought, when all’s said and done, what’s Metaxas to me? One man’s dead, but there’ll be ten others to step into his shoes. But Hecuba is one of us. As far as I’m concerned she’s more important than a hundred Metaxases” (205).And again the sinking of the Greek battleship Elli in 1940 by the Italians is not simply reported as a catalytic event leading ultimately to Greece’s entry into the Second World War, but is linked to the characters with Aunt Katie fainting when she hears of the torpedoing, knowing that her son Takis was serving on the vessel. History and politics in the novel are viewed from a personal angle, and the immediate context of family and friends assumes greater importance than the wider context. The interaction of the personal and the historical in the novel brings to the fore the domain of the family where this fusion takes place. The family context socializes the individual and personalizes the historical. Tachtsis is trying to show the social complexity and diversity that springs above all from family background. For example, Petros is a different sort of communist from Dimitris or Dinos since his communism is associated with his humanist and Christian background. In this way, Tachtsis demonstrates the determinism of the context but also individual diversity. The family is also an area where social prejudices or historical questions manifest themselves. The story of Victoria is a case in
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point as it indirectly exposes the prejudices against the Jewish community in Thessaloniki, but also shows how younger people tend to overcome these prejudices. Tachtsis does not embark on a detailed analysis of the difficulties faced by the Jews, foreigners (Fraulein Ober, 225-26),s or other minorities9 in Greece, but their problems are implicit in the relationship between Victoria and Dimitris. Dimitris’s affair with Victoria, the daughter of his Jewish landlord, is opposed by her father who does everything possible to separate them. Hecuba also voices her prejudices against the Jews, describing them as stingy and as the crucifiers of Christ. It could be argued that the novel uses the marriage of Dimitris and Victoria to give anti-Semitism a voice but also to challenge it. This is another situation where oppositions are highlighted and subsequently undermined. Toward the end of the novel, Tachtsis shows both the prejudices of Greek society against foreigners and the sympathetic treatment of the same people. Thus, he tries to show the complexity of the situation and how individuals have to cope with a polarized social and political situation. This is the case with chapter 7 (13) in the third section of The Third Wedding where Petros’s troubles, brought about by his political involvement with EAM, are recounted. This chapter is not essential to the plot, but it helps to bring out Nina’s attitude toward polarization. Although initially an EAM sympathiser, using the episode in the clinic she attempts to show that both sides are at fault: “It’s one lot of ruffians worse than the other” (286). Throughout the novel Tachtsis is trying to show that polarization is difficult to sustain or justify given that people’s attitudes and lives are inclined to be complex. The incident of Petros and the other references to twentieth-century events throughout the novel serve to demonstrate that most polarities are artificially constructed and ordinary people react to them by blurring the distinctions or deconstructing differences. In The Third Wedding there is an implicit separation between the domestic and the public world. The former is associated with women and the latter with men who are involved in politics and occasionally in crime. It could be argued that this division is deceptive. The women do not tend to withdraw into their own private and esoteric sphere, but try to support their families and to 8. Also Cleo is presented as different due to the fact that her husband was English: “What made her different from other Greek women was that she wasn’t in the least bit mealy-mouthed. She was simple and straightforward about everything. And she wasn’t one of those who make out that a woman’s virtue starts from the waist downwards, who put on puritan airs and graces in front of people and get up to all sorts of wickedness behind their backs. Her husband was English, and I expect that was something to do with it” (p. 229). Tachtsis here is pointing on the one hand to the conservatism of Greek society and on the other hand showing that it is their context that shapes people’s views, and attitudes. 9. Brief reference is made to the bias towards Arvanites (p. 37) as Lahanas’s family was of Albanian stock and to the hospitable nature of the Turks in Thessaloniki.
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recapture the public domain from men. They develop their own network of relationships and realize that survival relies on marriage, which is undertaken as a calculated act. The narratives of Hecuba and Nina demythologize the domestic sphere, divest it of happiness or other emotions showing its hard reality. The domestic world is dominated by economic necessity and it is this rather than love or friendship that regulates human relationships. In this respect the difference between the domestic and the public is hard to establish or sustain. Although one might form the impression that Tachtsis maintains a strict separation between the roles of women and men, reinforcing their stereotypical treatment, a close reading of the text will show that this is not the case. Nina, for example, questions Fotis’s masculinity and describes his behavior as womanlike (48). Dimitris erupts violently by smashing plates and then cries like a woman (13 1). On the other hand, Polyxene is described as ‘the man of the house’ and women in general as cooler and calmer than men. Tachtsis does not maintain a clear-cut division between men and women, but tries to demonstrate the falsity and inadequacy of established perceptions and to show that positive and negative qualities can be found in both sexes. By collapsing stereotypical gender distinctions, he attempts to show how women encroach on male territory and vice versa. Tachtsis tends to undermine stereotypes and to present men both as practical and sentimental, direct and down to earth, but also dreamers and idealists. Moreover, the opposition between rebels and conformists is not presented as determined by gender. Though men are acknowledged by women as being strong and bossy, they are occasionally presented as having no brains and behaving like little children.1° In this novel they tend to be losers: self-destructive (Dinos, Dimitris), ill (Fotis), impotent (Antonis), vulnerable and powerless (Babis). In general, they are presented as weak, belying their stereotypical image. Mamage in The Third Wedding is an initiation into symbolic order and into social violence. It represents the transition from innocence to a calculated and aggressive way of life. It transforms people, particularly women, as is the case with Hecuba when she asserts: “Just you wait and see what you’re in for when you get married! . . . Sometimes I can’t believe it when I sit and think back to those days. You’d think it was impossible for a person to change so much. I’ll never understand how that innocent little lamb turned into the monster I am now” (62).Marriage is an economic transaction and represents the suppression of love, the lulling of desire. Argyris, for example, was the only man that Nina really loved, but she was not able to marry him. “What good” 10. “But men don’t have any brains. They’re like little children, ready to sacrifice everything for some crackpot idea” (p. 72) or “We began talking about the stupidity and narrow-mindedness of men, and the cunning tricks women had to get up to pull the wool over their eyes” (p. 263).
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Nina argues “did it do me to have three husbands, I ask you? It would have been better if I’d had one good one and lived a quiet family life like so many other women in this world. If only I’d married the man I loved, the only man I really loved” (35). In the novel a gradual questioning of marriage can be observed if we compare the attitudes of the different generations of women toward it. Hecuba and Nina accept marriage as their destiny whereas Eleni and Maria are presented as rebels and monsters, with Eleni abandoning her husband and Maria not interested in marriage. Hecuba is more passionate in her relationships with members of her family and her behavior ranges from one extreme to the other. By contrast, Nina, more pragmatic and detached, does not demonstrate strong feelings or extreme reactions, while her daughter Maria, judging from what we learn from her mother, tends to be even less emotional. Hence, one observes an increasing detachment on the part of the women, a realization that marriage is a transaction and that the family cannot survive in the traditional sense as women acquire more freedom and demand better and more equal treatment. Though marriage appears to solve problems and serves as a form of ballast, the novel undermines the belief that family and marriage are the most stabilizing institutions in Greek society. Although Hecuba and Nina believe in the need for marriage and see it as a solution, the novel portrays the breakdown of the family and suggests that social crisis originates from within the family rather than outside. The family is not a safe haven but a battleground. It relies on relationships of dependence, conflict, and hatred. Sons and grandsons tend to be spoilt by their mothers while daughters (e.g., Eleni) constantly clash with their mothers (116-17, see also 252, 262). However, those who are forced to leave the family environment and do not have a normal upbringing have serious problems afterward, as in the case of Dinos, who is expelled from home by his father. Dimitris is also led astray by his stepmother, according to Hecuba, who tells her former husband: “Do you know that while you were in prison your mistress turned our Dimitris out into the street, and he spent his nights in wagons and got mixed up with a gang of ruffians and now he’s in danger of being ruined for life?’ (83). Hecuba here espouses the view that the family acts as a protective shelter for young people who are in danger when they abandon it. Elsewhere the novel contradicts this view by showing that a family upbringing can have serious consequences for the future development and behavior of an individual. Dimitris epitomizes deviancy in the novel, with forays into homosexuality and drugs, ending up in jail, becoming a communist, having an affair with a prostitute, and marrying a Jewish girl. Most of the characters tend to seek freedom and empowerment, but those who defy society and its institutions are doomed (Dinos, Dimitris). In the novel there is no stability, as the lives of the
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characters are marked by constant ups and downs that eventually contribute to social fluidity and decline. On the whole, people tend to move down the social scale, abandoning their academic studies as they are forced to work for a living and gradually being led into deviancy and antisocial behaviour. Happiness is always short-lived and succeeded by panic, as for example when Hecuba and Eleni come home after enjoying an outing to find their house has been broken into by Dimitris and Eleni’s pendant is missing (110-1 Women in The Third Wedding often appear more pragmatic than men and at times more assertive and even aggressive.I2They are strong because they are realistic and-in some instances-feel themselves superior to men, some of whom are described as brutes and peasants (Antonis, Sotiris). Their fate is to bury their husbands (Hecuba, Nina, Polyxene). They are aware that their weakness and vulnerability is not an accident of nature, but due to their social position. On the other hand, they do not question social institutions, particularly marriage. As the conservative element in Greek society, they do not have homosexual relationships, commit crimes, take drugs, or become involved in illicit activities or politics. They seem to be the victims of traditional practices, but at the same time they perpetuate them. It is difficult to distinguish between the two. Nina’s mother, for example, is presented as conservative, believing that a woman’s destiny is in marriage and looking after her home. However, throughout her life she has worked like a man and comes to the conclusion that marriage is the easiest job for women. Here the stereotypes are simultaneously flaunted and undermined, as Nina’s mother champions marriage for different reasons than those one would expect. The women in the novel are caught between destiny and freedom. They consider marriage as their inevitable fate, but on the other hand long for freedom and the ability to make decisions for themselves. It could be said that Hecuba herself seeks her freedom by not marrying again, by respecting her nonconformist son, and by wondering how Polyxene could have married the brute Sotiris just to conform to the social expectation of getting married at all costs. The prediction of Holy Ephemia about the third wedding reinforces the sense of destiny felt by female characters. The same applies to the prediction by the Turkish woman (65) or the sign from Saint Anastasia that Hecuba will lose her husband (68). In search of their elusive freedom they move to Thessaloniki, back to Athens, and then to Kalamata, or continually change houses: “Then they 11. Nina also complains that “I’ve gone through a lifetime without knowing real happiness” (p. 268). 12. Kostas Kazazis, “Men vs. Women in The Third Wedding,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 1, no. 1 (May 1983): 131-40.
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moved houses again. They used to change houses like people change their shirts. Every incident in their lives happened in a different house” (103). They are restless and unhappy, searching for a purpose. Their lives are vortices, a metaphor used for Hecuba, but it aptly portrays the lives of the other female characters. The Third Wedding is a novel about wasted and frustrated lives. It represents a series of attempts at new beginnings that in the end do not succeed. Nina remarries each time in the hope of a better life, Hecuba moves from Thessaloniki to Athens for a new beginning for her and her son Dimitris. However, all these fresh attempts fail and the narrative recounts a constant struggle for survival and happiness. The novel is a complex web of relationships with the relationship between Hecuba and Nina, presented as a sort of apprenticeship, being the most prominent. Hecuba maintains that marriage is important and Nina puts this principle into practice by taking three husbands and being prepared to marry for a fourth time at the end of the novel. Whereas the other relationships in the novel are based on dependency and conflict, Hecuba and Nina develop a relationship of understanding that represents a model of female solidarity. It points to the fact that true friendship can only develop outside the institution of marriage and family, a view confirmed by Nina when she says she could not have had Hecuba as her mother-in-law. The novel opens with Nina saying that she understands Hecuba better than anybody else and ends in cyclical fashion with Nina saying that Hecuba and her father were the only two people who understood her. There is a deep bond between the two women that is reinforced by the adversity of their circumstances and the hostility of their offspring toward them. However, there are no true friendships in the novel, only relationships of dependency, convenience, or solidarity. Even between Hecuba and Nina there is more empathy and sharing than friendship. In this complex web of relationships and family feuds, the individual emerges lonely, vulnerable and traumatized. People cannot live on their own, but only in a state of constant dependency. In terms of characters Hecuba is the epitome of the polarization in the novel. Quite early on she is described as both God and devil. She is alienated from her brother and sister, has lost her husband to another woman, but is very possessive of her son and grandson. She becomes a metaphor for Greece itself as one senior police officer in the book puts it.I3 She is perceived by others as both crazy and unfortunate, victim and aggressor, as emerges from Nina’s account. (“Ta nspLuabrspa P ~ P h i aE ~ V U~ KLO W ~ ~ L ~ , in ” A ~ r oT ~ ,ycupqArj V cit., p. 156) Tachtsis claimed that women are more easily identified with Greece, reinforcing the view that Hecuba is a representation of the country. 13. In an interview
U K O T L ~ ,op.
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Fond as I was of Hecuba, and sorry as I was for all the troubles she had to put up with, I had to admit that her brother Miltiades and Eleni weren’t altogether wrong when they accused her of being crazy and hysterical. It was because of her character that she’d suffered so much. And not only her, but her children also. Maybe she was unlucky, and maybe her husband was to blame as well, but her own way of carrying on had something to do with it (177).
There is an element of irony developing out of the relationship of the two women as Nina apportions some of the blame for Hecuba’s problems to Hecuba herself, particularly with regard to her children. Yet Nina herself fails to see that the same can be said about her attitude toward her own daughter Maria and thus her credibility as a narrator is ~ndermined.’~ Moreover, here, as elsewhere, the text raises the question as to whether character or context is the more important factor in determining the self. Without, of course, providing a definite answer to the question, it implies that it is a combination of both, pointing to the hybrid formation of the individual self. Hecuba is indeed the embodiment of tragicomedy as we gather from Nina who argues that she loved to dramatize her life, but “the more she dramatised it, the more jokes she made, always at her own expense, never at the expense of others” (14).This contradictory combination shows her volatile and complex character that could stand as a metaphor for the novel itself. She is lively and entertaining but behind her hyperactivity there is a great deal of loneliness and frustration. Her children address her in the plural as a sign of respect, while she sometimes seems to worship them and at other times is full of rage against them. She represents two extremes: as Nina points out “she was capable of being kind and generous to a fault, but, if she wanted to, she could be as malicious as the devil himself’ (59). She appears to be extrovert, but self-destructive and despite her intelligence she fails to face reality calmly and logically. Nina, on the other hand, being more patient and calm, tends to be more introvert, flexible and pragmatic, combining duty with a desire for freedom. Thus we can see that female characterization in the novel is rich, taking into account the stoic character of Polyxene, the rebelliousness of Eleni and Maria, or the stated dullness of Aunt Katie. The Third Wedding is both an autobiography and a biography. It is an autobiography of Hecuba and to some extent of Nina, but at the same time Nina acts as a biographer of Hecuba. The boundaries between biography and autobiography are blurred and Hecuba’s life appears to be both mediated and unmediated. By means of Nina’s narration Hecuba’s self is contextualized and assessed. Nina shapes, controls, and assesses Hecuba’s life, sometimes allowing her to 14. Peter Mackridge, “The Protean Self of Costas Taktsis,” The European Guy Review, vol. 6/7 (1991): 179-80.
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speak and at other times summarizing her account or even passing judgment. Although she seems to manipulate Hecuba’s narrative by inducing her to give an account of her life and by reproducing it in the manner she likes, Nina is also under Hecuba’s spell and influence, which eventually leads her to marry the latter’s son Thodoros. Thus, it is difficult to establish who is in control in this relationship or who is the analyzer and who is the analyzed. Thanks to their close relationship, involving both identification and separation, the novel enhances its hybrid character as its narrative strategy. The (auto)biography of the two women does not involve inner thoughts or feelings so much as a string of events and family disputes that show how the context shapes their lives. The novel represents the tension and the interaction between the biographical self and the social context, with family relations being the interface between the two. Through its narrative strategy the novel implies that our identity can be inhabited by other voices, as Hecuba’s narrative is incorporated in Nina’s, or by the elusive presence of others (a female narrator is used as a mask by the male author). Moreover the orality of the protagonists’ accounts is tinged with references to textuality, as when Nina claims that she knows Hecuba like a book or that when she married Theodore she seemed “to be marrying the hero of a novel I had read and re-read years before” (56). In this way storytelling blends with reading and the possibility it affords for revision and hindsight. The naivety and forwardness of orality is combined with the retrospection of writing, since Nina makes clear right from the beginning the ex post facto character of her story. Hecuba’s life is in effect reconstructed and revisited through memory, something that the dialogic partnership and the liveliness of the colloquial style of the two protagonists tend to obscure. Constructed by a web of relationships within the family and marriage, the selves of the two protagonists appear to develop in a culture of dependency. The text itself is also based on a web of relationships rather than a straightforward story. The narrative reflects this by being a monologue based on association (“All this put me in mind of poor Dino” [ 1431) rather than on linearity and causality, which is characteristic of rea1i~m.I~Speech and introspection are combined since the narrative is directed both outward to an 15. Alexandros Shinas, “MLIXzop$u.r~u&CAL<-I~ T ~ m
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implied addressee (an oral account usually assumes an interlocutor present) and inward as a kind of interior monologue. The extrovert and public nature of storytelling as known from the Greek oral tradition is intertwined with the privacy and inwardness of interior monologue or, in other words, the realistic representation of Greek society is fused with the modernist representation of the consciousness of the main characters. It has been argued that in The Third Wedding Tachtsis “continued the classic tradition of modern Greek fiction known as ethographia, that is, the realistic depiction of situations in which characters are called upon to play the roles expected of them in the family and society.”16When first published The Third Wedding was generally perceived as a continuation of ethographia and therefore underestimated as a literary text; though Tachtsis himself argued that his fiction opposed and superseded ethographia as a mode of writing. The Third Wedding is deceptively realistic, as it exploits and simultaneously undermines the conventions of realism by blurring the distinction between the real and the imaginary, objectivity and subjectivity. It is indeed a transvestite text “which stages a debate about the literary representation of gender stereotypes in the mask and costume of a realist reflection of those stereotype^."'^ Literary transvestism which, according to C. Robinson, “refuses to acknowledge binary oppositions between male and female identity and between reality and imagination”Is is in effect a hybridization of roles, genders, and id en ti tie^.'^ The relativity of perspective is central to Tachtsis’s writing as he shows that Nina’s and Hecuba’s narratives are biased and one-sided. The views of their daughters are not independently reported and the dialogic exchange between the two women exposes the limitations and relativity of their perspective.20 Everything is filtered through the consciousness of the two characters pointing to the subjectivity of their perception. Although Nina is the central consciousness in the novel, controlling and summarizing Hecuba’s narrative, the 16. Mackridge, op. cit., p. 174. 17. Robinson, op. cit., p. 213. As Kostis (op. cit., p. 103) argues “the very act of writing represents a ritual transposition of sexes that enables males to climb into and depict female consciousness. The heterosexual male author usurps the female role by a kind of professional transvestism.” 18. Ibid., 213. 19. In his story “H T ~ ~ ETL KT~ U O L ”Tachtsis highlights the interdependence of female and male roles and identities: “But no matter how I first saw life and men as a woman, I didn’t cease to be a man. As a woman I rejoiced in every male defeat. As a man I felt contempt for them, which later turned to compassion-and later still to contempt again-and it made me want to free them from the claws of their tormentors. . . . From an early age two opposite forces began to struggle in my soul, and, since they had a tendency to balance each other-or to cancel each other out-ach defined the other. . . . I was never more a woman than when I was playing the role of a man, and never more a man than when I played the role of a woman.” Kostas Tachtsis, Ta PL‘uT~ (Athens: Ennis, 1972), 16142. 20. Mackridge, op. cit., pp. 178-79.
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retrospective nature of her narrative and the frequent comparison between past and present emphasize its subjectivity. The addressee of Nina’s narrative is not clear; this nevertheless does not stop the reader from feeling that there is an implicit plea for himher to understand the behavior of the two women and that the aim of their narrative is to persuade and elicit empathy rather than establish truth. The theatricality of role-playing, the use of masks, the meandering narrative style undermines the text’s claim to realism. The narratives of the two women often appear closer to the subjectivity of stream of consciousness writing than to the objectivity of realistic narration. Although Hecuba’s narrative is more sequential, Nina’s narrative demonstrates some degree of selfanalysis and introspection (“I stopped for a moment thinking, looking into my own conscience” [ 1881). Particularly in the first chapters of the novel her narrative is inconsequential and has a number of digressions. The narrative constantly moves back and forth as becomes clear right from the first chapter, which is situated chronologically after the conclusion of the story.2’ At the beginning, there is no clear chronological order in the narrative, leaving the reader to guess what is going on in the first chapter. There is mention of Thodoros, the third husband, and then of Fotis, the first one, as well as of Argyris without any further explanation as to his association with the narrator. In the second chapter, Antonis’s mother is introduced first without the reader knowing anything about Antonis himself or that he was Nina’s second husband. The reader builds a picture gradually through random details, such as that Antonis had a heart problem, and Maria did not acknowledge him as her father. The events and the characters are not presented in a coherent and sequential order but in a haphazard manner. From chapter 2 onward the narrative follows a basic chronological order, but even this chapter starts in medias res around 1936 whereas the story of Hecuba goes back much earlier. And in the same chapter there is a possible allusion to the Greek civil war, suggesting that this is the actual time of the narration. Although the narrative is retrospective and, as she often points out, Nina has the advantage of hindsight, she does not present an orderly, linear narrative. Nina claims that she remembers the events of her past life involuntarily when she is upset by her daughter.22She often breaks the sequence of the narrative by interpolating other incidents or events and in this way the sequen21. Alexandros Kotzias, METIXTOAF~LKO~ ~~{oyphq (Athens: ~ o ~ Kedros, 1982), 155, refers to the peculiar ‘naturalism’ of the novel, but also points out the chaotic and anarchic nature of the narrative with the confusion of time sequences and the allusions to characters and events that are presumed known though they have not been introduced at all. 22. “Oh yes, I remember them all, one after the other. Every time she upsets me it all comes back to me, everything I went through in my life. It’s hard to know what to remember first” (p. 35).
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tial linearity is thwarted. For example, she first narrates how she met Antonis and then Fotis. This is also the case for her first meeting with Hecuba. The second chapter starts with a dialogue between Nina and Marietta and the arrival of Hecuba in Nina’s house and her announcement by Marietta. But then the narrative digresses and returns after a number of pages at the end of the chapter to the same point: the imminent meeting of Hecuba and Nina. In the same chapter she goes to visit Holy Ephemia, then the story of her husband’s health problems is interjected and she resumes the story about her visit to Holy Ephemia ten pages later. Though Holy Ephemia is not as important for the plot as Hecuba is, she is introduced first whilst a detailed presentation of Hecuba is delayed. Marietta too is introduced only after a parenthetical paragraph about Antonis’s mother. Most of the actions in the novel are motivated or caused mainly by financial hardship. One can argue, therefore, that there is a cause and effect pattern underlying the plot and determining the behavior of the characters. However, the story line with its lack of coherence and digressions eschews this pattern and thus does not support its claims to realism. Moreover, the characters are not introduced as might be expected in a realistic narrative by their actions or their physical description, but in terms of the way others perceive them. Nina’s daughter Maria hardly speaks at all and the reader forms an opinion of her through what Nina says about her, essentially describing her as a monster. Toward the end of the novel, Nina herself is surprised to discover that Eleni was not as awful as her mother made her out to be, thus exposing the biased and subjective nature of their narratives and undermining any claims to realistic objectivity. The same applies to Hecuba and Erasmia, who are presented early on in the novel in a negative way not by means of their actions or words but through the negative views that Aunt Katie has of Hecuba, and that Marietta and Nina have of Erasmia. Also, we are invited to accept at face value the verdict on Aunt Katie that she “lived and died like a pudding” (302) in contrast to the exuberant Hecuba. By combining showing with telling, it could be argued that the novel does not attempt to conceal the subjective presentation of its characters as might have been expected according to the conventions of realism. The lack of organic coherence, of moral commitment, or of authorial involvement make The Third Wedding a novel without apparent aim. However, its aim seems to be to show the tensions and conflicts within Greek society without taking sides or claiming the moral high ground; the result is a narrative that does not conceal its inconsistencies, its construction, and the fusion of disparate elements. The narrative itself becomes a replica of the chaotic and tragicomic diversity of Greek society that is not smoothed out by
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the imposition of an organic structure, but instead is treated in a light-hearted and almost carnivalesque manner.23 The language of The Third Wedding is not so much a fusion of different registers as an encounter of the informal with formal discourse as the narrators glide between demotic and Katharevusa, denying the novel linguistic purity. The narratives of Nina and Hecuba employ a colloquial, ordinary, and familiar discourse that is invaded and punctuated by clichCs, classical, and biblical sayings and collocations that one finds in written or formal discourse.24These cliches and religious language do not represent so much a mixture of demotic and puristic language as an appropriation of the public discourse by the private confessional narratives of the two women. They serve as a reminder that private discourse is marked by the heteroglossia of institutions and shared traditional wisdom. In my view these formal expressions do not represent individual use of Katharevusa so much as a desire on behalf of the two narrators to participate in the public discourse by showing that they can handle it adequately. The fact that the two narrators use standard, well-known expressions suggests that rather than laying claim to stylistic differentiation they are usurping the public temtory dominated largely by men. In effect these formal expressions contextualize the self and represent another interface between the public and the domestic domains. One can argue that the formal discourse does not become dominant, but is incorporated into the informal and private. The implication is that ordinary women can handle formal language without being intimidated. In this respect, the case of Dimitris in court where the strategy of the ‘assimilation of alterity’ is employed, is i n d i ~ a t i v e . ~ ~ Accused of being an accomplice to murder, he claims during his defense the right to use both slang and the puristic form of the language. On one occasion he even demonstrates his knowledge of Katharevusa, and more importantly draws a distinction between the official and unofficial linguistic register. “If I tell that, Your Honour, you’ll be warning me again to mind my language”“There’s no need for a detailed description,” said the judge sternly, “just tell us what point they had reached. In long words if you like.”-”I observed that they were engaged in fornication.” The judge could hardly keep himself from laugh23. In an interview (“CLX‘Y~VO~C~L TLS E T L K ~ T T E S ” in Am5 T ~ ,ya/.tqA7j V U K O T W ~ , op. cit., p. 196) Tachtsis argued that contemporary Greece is both tragic and comic at the same time, a kind of ~ha~~iy~hws. 24. For a list of the formal expressions in the novel see Kostas Kazazis, “Learnedisms in Costas Taktsis’s Third Wedding,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, vol. 5 (1979): 17-27. 25. Tachtsis, like Kureishi, “demolishes the notion of any originary cultural authenticity.” See Berthold Schoene, “Herald of Hybridity: The Emancipation of Difference in Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia,” Internutional Journal of Cultural Studies 1, no. 1 (1998): 109-28.
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ing: “Yes,” he said, “I can see you know quite a few long words when you want to. Now tell us what happened next. Just in ordinary language, if you don’t mind” ( 15QZ6 In this way the outcast Dimitris attempts to use his linguistic and rhetorical skills in order to reclaim a position in society and to strive against social rejection, whereas the judge tries to thwart this attempt by laughing at his use of Katharevusa and asking him to continue in the demotic. Dimitris’s case indicates that there is a clear connection between language and social position in the novel and helps us to understand the linguistic behavior of Nina and Hecuba. In conclusion, The Third Wedding denies the purity of the self, the text, and language. Heterogeneity, not homogeneity or unitariness, impurity and mClange, not originary purity, are its hallmarks. The novel is a combination of immediacy and masquerade, of destiny and freedom. Its textual web reflects the complexity of human relationships, pointing to the recognition that the self is constructed relationally; that identity, happiness, and gender emerge through the undoing and hybridization of oppositions. By asserting the differences and the oppositions and at the same time overriding them, the novel does not help the reader to decide whether women tyrannize their families or are prisoners of their marriages. It is not clear to what extent Hecuba and Nina are victims of the roles they are expected to perform as wives or victimizers since the two women are the real rulers in the family often employing emotional blackmail or manipulative attachment. The Third Wedding shows that clear-cut distinctions are difficult, if not impossible, and gender roles are often more complex, contradictory, and shifting than we think.27 Certainties that are produced by binary oppositions cannot be easily sustained since hybridity and relativity emerge as the defining social conditions of the self.
26. In the original there is reference to Katharevusa and demotic that have been translated as ‘long words’ and ‘ordinary language’. 27. HBlkne Cixous argues that homosexuality is a form of hybridity and acknowledgment of the other is inherent in every creative act: “Admitting the component of the other sex makes them [artists] at once much richer, plural, strong, and to the extent of this mobility, very fragile. We invent only on this condition: thinkers, artists, creators of new values, ‘philosophers’ of the mad Nietzschean sort, inventors and destroyers of concepts, of forms, the changes of life cannot but be agitated by singularities-complementary or contradictory. This does not mean that in order to create you must be homosexual. But there is no invention possible, whether it be philosophical or poetic, without the presence in the inventing subject of an abundance of the other, of the diverse.” Htlkne Cixous, “Sorties,” in Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, ed. David Lodge (London: Longman, 1988), 292.
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Chapter Eight
Defying the Social Context: Narratives of Exile and the Lonely Self
“Writing is impossible without some kind of exile.”’ -Julia Kristeva
Dimitris Hatzis (1913-1981) is usually treated as a social writer able to encapsulate changes in Greek society at different periods and represent them in narrative form. So far, most of the studies on his work have focused on issues of social representation, and, considering that most of his characters are lonely, introverted, or withdrawn individuals, very little has been said about the role of loneliness and exile in his fiction. Since he himself was a political exile for almost twenty-five years in Eastern Europe, it may be interesting to explore how loneliness or indeed exile facilitates or hinders the articulation of self and society in his work. Although Hatzis did not refer explicitly to his life in exile in his fiction, as most of the stories are set in Greece, the themes of loneliness and exile permeate his narratives and can be used to trace his development as a writer. Hatzis, it has been argued, avoids writing about himself or about his life in exile. Instead of writing about East Germany or Hungary where he lived, he writes about West Germany or Uganda, places he never lived in. Though a realist writer, Hatzis remains paradoxically silent about his life in exile, tending to write about others and not himself.2 In response to this I . Julia Kristeva, “A New n p e of Intellectual: The Dissident,” in The Kristeva Reader, ed. Tori1 Moi (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 298. 2. Dimitris Raftopoulos, “To xaydvo PLPXLO TOV A q p q ~ p + lXa~c-ij,”EAmvB~porvsricy (B@ALovBrjKT), 17 March 2000, pp. 12-13. In view of the fact that Joyce continued to write about the Ireland of his youth whereas Beckett left Ireland far behind, Christine Brooke-Rose points out that a “distinction can be made between those whose themes look back in either traditional or more experimental forms, and those whose themes, often with more formal experimentation, transcend the
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argument one could point out that Hatzis deals with his own exile in an implicit and subtle way through the loneliness experienced by a number of his characters. As Julia Kristeva has argued “the language of the exile muffles a cry, it doesn’t ever ~ h o u t . ”A~characteristic example is the story “I nisos Anydros” (The Arid Island) from his collection of stories Spoudes (Studies) (1976), concerning a fictitious desert island, where the anonymous protagonist of the story escapes from society as a kind of antiOdysseus. For him there is no return, no Ithaca; self-exile is the only alternative to disillusionment. In his transition from utopia to utopia, Hatzis tends to tackle the question of exile not as a personal problem or in a realistic manner, but as a universal condition divested of the nostalgia of return or the illusion of utopias. Distance and alienation, afforded by exile, enable profound insight and one needs to be situated on the boundary between home and away in order to produce a truly resistant as well as affirmative work. Theorizing on distance and the constructive, critical bridging of distance, Edward Said distinguishes affiliation from filiation as nonbiological but compensatory order. What Said claimed for Erich Auerbach could also apply to Hatzis. According to Said, although Auerbach “was away from Europe, his work is steeped in the reality of Europe, just as the specific circumstances of his exile enabled a concrete critical recovery of Europe. We have in Auerbach an instance both of filiation with his natal culture and, because of exile, uffiliation with it through critical consciousness and scholarly work.”4 Without intending to challenge Hatzis’s established image as a social realist writer, this study shifts the focus of attention from society to the individual and from exile as a personal experience to its treatment as symbolic representation. Hatzis himself as a writer moves gradually toward rethinking the realistic principles. The story “To foniko tis Izabelas Molnar” [The Murder of Isobel Molnar] (1976) is an example of this scepticism given the narrator’s argument “that the complete work of art is measured only against itself and never by any natural measures or other yardsticks; its truth is inherent-it’s not measured by any other measure or any other way.”5 The story is indeed about the discrepancy between life and art, as great art does not necessarily presuppose a balanced, sophisticated, and happy artist, being rather an act of negation and condition of exile. This distinction can he illustrated with, in the nineteenth century, Mickiewicz versus Norwid, or, in the twentieth, Joyce versus Beckett.” See Christine Brooke-Rose, “Exsul,” in Exile and Creativity: Signposts, Travelers, Outsiders, Backward Glances, ed. Susan Rubin Suleirnan (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998), 12. 3. Kristeva, op. cit., p. 298. 4. Edward Said, The World, the Text, and the Critic (London: Vintage, 1991), 16. 5. Dirnitris Hatzis, STOIJGE?~ (Athens: To Rodakio, 2000), 41.
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a form of hubris. It could be said that Spoudes as a whole, the volume in which this story appears, is more about aesthetics than life since the stories develop as intertextual or mythical allegories and not as realistic representations.6 A transcendence of realism can also be found in Hatzis’s novel The Double Book [To Diplo Vivlio] (1976), which marks his gradual transition from an epic to a dramatic conception of the world or in other words from an epic and confident representation of society to the scepticism and drama of individual consciousness.’ With its disturbed linearity of narrative time and its programmatic inconclusivity, The Double Book seems at odds with the realism of his first collection of stories, The End of Our Small Town [To telos tis mikris mas polis] (1953-1963). The centripetal character of the latter collection, enhanced by the role of the town as the focal point and principle of coherence, contrasts with the centrifugal character of The Double Book. The transition from the centripetal to the centrifugal pattern coincides with a shift in emphasis from society to individuality, but this does not occur abruptly as we move from one book to the other; it is gradually prepared for in some of the stories of The End of Our Small Town and culminates with the suspension of the dynamic and fruitful relationship between society and self in The Double Book8 Although the characters in the stories of Hatzis’s first collection seem to represent communities or collective mentalities, their solitude and eccentricity endows them with an individuality and uniqueness that singles them out. In this way, the focus shifts from external to internal reality and the sense of overpowering social determinism is considerably diminished. Though a number of critics have pointed out the different ideological, thematic, and generic orientations of the two books, the earlier book nevertheless prepares the ground for the later one. The solitude of some of the characters in The End of Our Small Town develops into a sense of universal exile in The Double Book. What the two books have in common, then, is an emphasis on the social alienation of the characters and their suspension of belief in the idea of social progress. This antisocial attitude is increasingly emphasized and reaches its peak in The Double Book, thus providing a thread between the two narratives. 6. Grigoris Pashalidis, “~.rrow8~ .rr&vvw UTLS TO&& TOW A q p + p q X O L T ~ in ~ , AvpTj~p~11~ ” X C X T ~ T Mia ~ S : m v . c i 8 7 ) q T ~ PwpiouCvq~, F eds. Yannis H. Pappas and Antonis D. Skiathas (Patra: Ahaikes Ekdoseis, 1999), 158-72. 7. See Angela Kastrinaki, “Aqp-fj~pq~ XOLT~$S: To $ T O S T ~ ~S U T KOLL ~ STO S p & p T ~ S ~ W U T L U T ~ O L S , ” in H (pwvTj TOU Y E V C ~ A L OT U ~ O (Athens: U Polis, 1997), 157-81. 8. For Hatzis’s ideological and narrative transition from his first novel I Fotia (1946) to To telos tis mikris mas polis see Natia Charalambidou’s article, “ A ~ ~ Y ~ ~ J , oTLET XY LLKK ~+KC~LI ~ E O X O Y ~ O OL L: XOYOTEXYLK~SP ~ O U ~ O K ~ ET S ~ A S ~ L U T E ~(1945-1955) &S KOLL q T E ~ ~ T T W U TW~ A ~ ~ J , $ T P XCYT<*,”Z m i p a , 3d period, no. 2 (autumn 1991): 113-45.
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In The End of Our Small Town loneliness is manifested to different degrees in the lives of the characters. In the stories that appeared in the first edition of 1953 it becomes an agent, a catalyst for establishing a new relationship with society, whereas in the two stories (“The Tomb” and “The Detective”) added later (1963) the characters forge no such relationship. These two stories represent a universal condition of loneliness as the characters experience ultimate solitude as a way of life. Whereas in the earlier stories the individuals can reconnect with society, in these two they cannot. Loneliness in some of the stories is instructive, almost an educational process, helping to separate two different forms of social engagement and to reintegrate the characters at a deeper level.9 In the first story “Sioulas the Tanner,” the protagonist does not experience a great deal of loneliness as an individual since he is protected by the arrogant superiority of the tanners’ community that tended to isolate itself from the other parts of society. However, a brief solitary spell throws Sioulas back on himself and makes him introspective. The following passage shows how solitude leads him to self-analysis and self-realization. He stayed in the room, alone in the empty house all afternoon, not thinking about their plight nor of his wounded pride and his shame before his children but about his wife, about his injustice to her. He kept catching back a sob-this was the first time in their twenty married years that he had ever seriously thought about her.’O
As evinced from this passage it is an afternoon’s solitary reflection that makes him reconsider his attitude. Only after twenty years of marriage is he in a position to think and care about his wife. Until then she has not been in the picture; he has been on his own, blinded by the haughtiness of his guild and isolated from the rest of the people. This brief solitary interlude marks a dividing line and represents a turning point in his life. A kind of gradual process is taking place in this story by focusing first on the community, then on a representative of this community, and finally on a 9. Hero Hokwerda discusses briefly the theme of loneliness in his article “The Ideological Role of the Countryside and the City in Dimihis Chatzis’s Literary Work,” Journal of Mediterranecm Srudies 2, no. 2 (1992): 213-25 En Stavropoulou in her book IT~OTC~UELS a v C i y v w q ~y m ~v ~ ~ ( o - y p a p ha s ETO,~+F (Athens: Sokolis, 2001). 209-39 argues that Hatzis’s characters, particularly the female ones, have difficulty communicating, which is due to social and not psychological reasons. In my view this difficulty can also be seen as an internalization of the condition of exile, which might explain the transition of some characters, particularly in The Double Book (the tailor of Sourpi and Anastasia) from speech to silence. 10. Dimitris Hatzis, The End of Our Small Town, trans. David Vere and ed. by Dimitris TLiovas (Birmingham: Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman, and Modern Greek Studies, 1995). 10. All subsequent references to the stories will be made to this edition and page numbers will appear in parenthesis after each quotation.
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crucial private and introspective moment that inaugurates a new relationship with society at large. In other words there is a movement from society to inner self and then back to society, forging a new relationship at a different, more human level. This moment of self-revelationand self-recognition seems on the one hand prepared for or imposed by social changes and on the other hand the culmination of soul-searching and introspection. In this respect, it is not evident whether this critical moment, which becomes a turning point, is externally or internally driven. It appears to involve a long process of preparation and at the same time is more of an inspirational streak of light and a sudden crisis of consciousness that occurs in a solitary condition.l 1 Whereas Sioulas is forced to change his attitude towards other people, to become more open-minded and understanding, Sabethai Cabilli in the eponymous story tightens his grip on his community. After forcing his protCgC and spiritual disciple, Joseph Eliyia, into exile it is in a moment of loneliness that he struggles with his consciousness and his God. Sabethai Cabilli went on a little and halted. The street was deserted; he was surrounded by absolute stillness and silence. Nothing stirred here without his will. Yet everything seemed to be slipping away into the mist that had fallen-slipping, retreating, sinking, everything, each day, each hour-yes, even his own heart, too, was slipping away: “Joseph. . . Beloved heart, Joseph. . . Why? Why you? Lord. . . why did You choose him to test me with?’ He leaned against a pillar, removed his hat and wiped away the heavy perspiration moistening his scalp. There in the darkness he beheld the fierce form of his God. And in the solitude of the Jewish quarter he heard again that other’s voice: A Jew calling and waking everyone in the middle of the night! And: What need have you, Sabethai Cabilli, of such words? His betrayal and his sin weighed down upon him with all the heaviness of the night, and there and then he swore once and for all never to let the Lord’s community out of his hands (56).
Sabethai Cabilli does not change as Sioulas did. He stubbornly adheres to his traditional views, ignoring the signs of change and crushing the equally stubborn revolutionary Joseph. His aristocratic aloofness and authoritarianism will prove catastrophic for his people in the end. The moment of crisis makes him strengthen his leadership and reinforce his control over his community with disastrous consequences: almost the whole Jewish community perishes during the German occupation, including himself. Though he seems to care deeply about them, deep down he condemns the community. 11. This moment is like James Joyce’s ‘epiphanies’ when the characters have a sudden revelation and realization of some magnitude that changes their life forever.
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Sabethai Cabilli inclined his head and hearkened to his own heart again. It was fluttering tremulously, as always. And together with this newly-felt joy he now realised how profoundly he despised all this rabble-of Jews and Greeks-with its trivial concerns, its false joys, its putrid spirit, that daren’t raise its head but could only whisper treacherously (51). Both Sabethai and Joseph demonstrate a high degree of individualism and at the same time a passionate involvement with society that leads them into conflict and to the banishment of the latter.12 Although both stories are about the role of the social context in changing individual attitudes, it is these transient moments of loneliness and introspection during which the individual characters are alone with themselves that have special significance. It is exactly these moments that suggest that the self, though heavily determined by the social context, maintains a degree of autonomy and choice of direction. While they last, the individual characters are released temporarily from social constraints and have to come to terms with their own consciousness. A precarious shift occurs from society to individual inner space, which is sufficient to give the stories an additional moral and human dimension. Loneliness is, after all, a form of nonconformism. It conceals a latent social resistance and fosters a determined i n d i v i d ~ a l i s m . It ’ ~also helps characters such as Margarita Perdikari, in the eponymous story, to dissociate herself from the corruption surrounding her, though it makes her hesitate as to whether or not she will allow the other unhappy people to get closer to her. At first, Margarita was astonished to find the world could contain such unhappiness. People, with their troubles and suffering and their sorrow, seemed to be drawing very near her. She felt aggrieved, as if they were going to encroach on the sacred territory of her solitary despair. She was not one of them. She didn’t want them as companions in misery. With her own sorrow and her own destiny, she set herself apart from other people, whose troubles seemed fleeting ones to her and only to be considered as trivial, and whose tears were but of the cowardly and cringing. She wanted to remain alone, as before: without fear and without hope (155). 12. Dimitris Raftopoulos argues that in The End of Our Small Town the individual is not subsumed under the general trend hut that there is an interaction between the two. “H )LLKP( p a s T O A ~ TWU L S E C ; ) ~ K ~ TLO U . Z O . Z A A ~ U L )L&~?)LLY K~ TOW A?p,(~pv X L Y T ~ ( , ” in 0 6 166~s-K ( Y L TLY ’Epycu (Athens: Difros, 1965), 128. 13. In “The Teacher’s Will,’’ Iakovos Rallidis, who causes such a stir amongst the establishment of the small town with his will, defies society and its institutions by refusing to accept his promotion to the rank of headmaster and “stayed on, always keeping to himself; totally fenced in and remote” (p. 93). There is a certain affinity between him and Sklithras who avoids civic corruption and prefers his village. Neither of the two men is native to the town and both feel strangers and outsiders.
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Here Margarita retains something of the aristocratic aloofness and pride of her family as solitude represents the distinctiveness and protected territory that she has to give up in order to serve the community. At the same time, however, it prepares her mentally and strengthens her resolve to join the resistance. The reintegration with society cannot be effected without a heightened sense of individuality based on isolation and introspection. In “Aunt Angeliki,” the eponymous protagonist demonstrates clearly how Hatzis’s characters are often deeply involved in the lives of others, and genuinely care about them, but at the same time their loneliness makes them naive and unaware of the workings of society. Aunt Angeliki, being “unmarried and all alone, . . . was so well adapted to this virtual nothing of hers that she couldn’t distinguish between being rich and being poor” (61). When the deception of Antonis Gogousis is revealed, she seems to be cut off from the rest of the world. She protests genuine ignorance and is flabbergasted when Petros tells her that the whole world, apart from her, knows that Gogousis, in a period of great famine during the German occupation, is keeping olive oil in her cellar, not the dowry of his daughter. The social distinctions between rich and poor appear alien to her as she repeats: “Forgive me, I didn’t understand the difference between the rich and the poor. Now I realise, and I’ve come to tell you . . . ” (71). Aunt Angeliki in her naivety and goodness seems to defy society and its conventions. She remains close to the people with a strong sense of communal support, but unaware of the exploitation and deception going on within the ranks of society. She is both an insider and outsider. Though maintaining the communal spirit, she does not partake of the cruel logic of social inequality and betrayal. In this way her story prepares the ground for the two later stories: “The Tomb” and “The Detective.” “The Tomb” is about social change, but it is also about loneliness and exile. The two main characters, Antonis Tsiagalos and Barba-Spourgos, come to represent respectively these two conditions. At the beginning Tsiagalos is introduced as conservative in disposition, poor and humble, but socially respectable, being “counted among the respected townspeople, the pillars of the community and the traditionally established order of things” (17). Spourgos, on the other hand, is not a local man and is presented as something of a mystery. He is described as “leading a very solitary life, he had no dealings nor any particular private interests to pursue with anyone, and had fallen out with no one” (17). Not knowing his past, the locals think of him as an escaped convict, though he is quiet and does not care about money. No one could get it out of his head that there must be some mystery about such a person as this old fellow-one who never went into town nor to church, wasn’t concerned about his cafe, didn’t chase up his debts, wasn’t afraid of burglars, and, worst of all, unbelievable in fact, spoke ill of no one nor wished anyone
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harm. At the very least he must surely have committed three murders-so held (20).
it was
Spourgos is driven into exile by the squabbles of his family, and appears to be the perpetual victim of disputes: His two older brothers fought with their uncles and cousins over the distribution. Then they fought over it with their sister and brother-in-law, and later came to an agreement so that they could grab his share. Finally, they fought each other-the knives came out and there was bloodshed followed by intense malice, arrests, court cases and evasions of the law. . . . So he set out, and once again found himself amongst people, and they proved to be just as rabid and damned as ever. He still made no attempt to take a grip on his life and look after his own interests. He moved on again, now with no notion of where he was going (19-20).
Spourgos is the underdog, constantly persecuted. He also appears to be a victim of financial necessity, as his life is disrupted first in the Peloponnese and later at the riverside by rivalry over possessions. Perhaps Hatzis is trying to make the point here that this could not have happened in a noncapitalist society. Spourgos’s tribulations might point implicitly to the Greek civil war and he seems to stand for the peace-loving individual who suffers unjustly and eventually becomes the innocent victim. Initially he seems to be closer to the idyllic innocence of nature, as his name signifies a s ~ a r r o w ,whilst ’~ that of Tsiagalos is associated with harshness and vindicti~eness.’~ However, the condition of exile makes Spourgos frugal, preparing him to cope with the onslaught of social change. In the end rather than being a victim he becomes a victor as he adapts easily to new conditions (being prepared to supply trout to the new shop), and in spite of his social alienation he appears calm and stoic about change. Strangely, exile makes him more flexible and adaptable while his attitude suggests that what matters is not material possessions but the human condition. Spourgos is almost a Christlike figure, who goes into the wilderness and who can be construed as a moral paradigm. Tsiagalos, on the other hand, appears to be socially integrated but, though he manipulates the authorities against Spourgos, he ends up the least prepared for change. His greed is transformed into an endless loneliness. 14. “He was unable to prosper or settle anywhere. And so he remained as he was, at one with the sparrows and blackbirds of the hillside that seemed to be singing and lamenting in his soul for the beauty of a peaceful scene that had been swallowed up in an orgy of hatred” (p. 20). 15. David Vere in his notes in The End ofour Small Town,op. cit., p. 173, points out that fsiagalo means an unripe, green almond.
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“The Tomb” could be read as an allegory of the Greek civil war and its aftermath with Spourgos representing the losers and Tsiagalos the winners. This reading can be reinforced by the reference to Spourgos’s hut as a tomb that takes a kind of revenge on Tsiagalos. The association of Spourgos’s hut with a tomb can be read as the ghost of the troubled past that comes to haunt him, though one might argue that this allegorical reading of the story might be an over-interpretation. At the end, however, both characters are implicated in loneliness. Spourgos being a real exile is in a position to cope with his situation much better whilst Tsiagalos realizes it belatedly. His loneliness becomes like a trap for him, whereas Spourgos seems liberated and at peace with himself. Instead of controlling the changes, Tsiagalos’s life is controlled by them. From being in charge of the situation he ends up as the destroyer of his own livelihood when the building of the road brings developments he could not have foreseen. The story shows that exile makes people more human, understanding, and open-minded, whereas an attachment to old social practices leads to alienation and universal loneliness. Exile is not treated here as a form of punishment, but as a means of social awareness and engagement. Stepping outside the social conventions helps the individual to understand or tackle change and innovation better. At the same time one can be at the heart of society and yet feel the solitude of an exile, like Tsiagalos at the end. Exile is defined more as a mental or emotional state than as a physical condition. Society and exile in the story might seem to be opposites, but loneliness and alienation as the pervasive universal condition undermine the opposition. Loneliness is inherent in society and increasingly threatens its cohesion more than other social ills: “And it wasn’t ill-fortune and poverty that choked him at this moment. Kyr Antonis felt a boundless loneliness within him. He felt the loneliness of the tomb” (31). The focus ultimately shifts from society to self, from the ideal of progress to solitary despair, from social arrogance to introspection. What links “The Tomb” with “The Detective” is the interplay of expectation and frustration, a feature that singles them out from the other stories of the collection, which tend to be about a doomed past and a promising future. Tsiagalos has been looking forward to the new road for twenty years and instead of bringing him happiness and prosperity it leads to his downfall and to loneliness. Thodorakis in “The Detective” has been hoping for a clerical post for many years that never materializes, making him unhappy and lonely. Two more features link these two stories. First, the absence, compared to the other stories in the book, of clear topographical links with the author’s native town, Ioannina. And, secondly, a frustrated love affair, which in “The Tomb” is only implied by the reference to a pair of black eyes, and in “The Detective” involves Despina, the girl who loves Thodorakis but who, as she
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comes from a poor family, cannot dream of marrying someone destined for an important job. “The Detective,” one of Hatzis’s best stories, is about a frustrating present and an elusive future as Thodorakis, the so-called ‘Detective’, tries to resist his fate, but is unable to change it. The story opens with an idyllic scene of a town described in a picturesque way with its “surrounding slopes, the streams, the flowers” and most importantly with its harmonious and impeccable social order. The story takes as its starting point Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, which purports to portray the daily life of a small provincial town. Nothing happens in the Detective’s town, until its quiet life is disrupted by the disappearance of Syregelas, who has been at his usual wineshop till eleven that night “quietly drinking away, as ever, his day’s earnings” (74). A reticent and lonely man with no identity, his real name has been completely forgotten, obscured by his nickname, Syregelas, meaning “Run hither and thither.” Thodorakis is determined to solve the mystery of his death, relying on his hobby of reading detective stories and living with the dream of his personal distinction that society at the end denies him. He starts from a position of social pride and superiority due to his good high school leaving-certificate and the promised clerical post in the offices of the eparchy that would reflect his excellence: “Yet the appointment was late in coming” (78). He takes no action since his father arranges everything for him: from the clerical position promised by the local member of parliament to his ‘temporary’ job at the printer’s shop until the promised post materializes. Fantasy becomes the substitute for his inactivity and underachievement. Gradually he becomes more selfish as his fantasies testify. Meanwhile, the evenings saw him preoccupied with imaginary feats of detection, for the flame burned there, too. Yet it did so less keenly now, and there had been a gradual change so that the portion of love once present was now no more, just like that certain inclination towards the good. So if he rescued a girl at the end of one of these tales that he always enjoyed concocting, now she would have to marry him and make him a gift of her beauty and her great dowry, of happiness (81).
Thodorakis in effect resists change. He does not take sides during the civil war and remains closed within himself “Nothing in his life had changed. He remained as ever at the printer’s shop, which the good Praxitelis no longer ran” (86). Thodorakis does not buy the shop, still believing that this is not the job for him. Ambition and inactivity mingle in him and he is not able to follow the gradual transformation of the town: “The town itself grew a little during this period. The old wineshop Syregelas used to go to was knocked down and a three-storied concrete building put up there-the town’s hotel. In the
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small square the old paving stones were removed and asphalt laid down” (86). Changes in the town or in the lives of other characters (the police officer is transferred elsewhere, Despina is married), do not mean changes for everybody. On the one hand, Thodorakis feels guilt “at the fact that one more day had gone by with nothing changed” (85) and on the other he does very little to change his situation. The external inertia is contrasted with his rich imagination as the reading of detective novels compensates for his paltry existence and feeds his dream: “All he needed was a modest lie to brighten his evenings, a little fantasy, quite innocuous” (79). The deficit of his life is covered by his fantasies. Thodorakis appears to represent the provisional and the elusive whereas the town, in terms of its mentality, stands for the immutable and the restrictive. He is presented as having a pair of wings that cannot be unfolded so that he can soar to the heights of recognition and achievement (85). And it is this image that shows the entrapment of Thodorakis by his surroundings and his unfulfilled potential. The story gives the impression that Thodorakis is caught between illusion and reality. However, it is not clear whether his failure is due to his obsession or to the scarcity of opportunities and the gravitational force of the context. Perhaps the secret of a successful life lies beyond individual illusion and the hard reality of the context. Initially, Thodorakis’s life is determined by the context (city, father, politicians); he does not marry Despina because she is poor, though it is not clear whether this decision is solely his or dictated by the aspirations raised by the social context. At the end of the story he realizes in a flash of insight that the social context has destroyed his life. It is a story about losers and at the same time it represents a liberation from the context, which leads not to rebellion but to self-realization. It also leads to the denial of the context, the demarcation of an inner space of loneliness and frustration. The story starts with the emphasis on individual aspirations concerning progression on the social ladder and ends by focusing on a frustrated love affair and wasted life. There is, therefore, a transition from social achievement to emotional devastation, from arrogance to despair. It is a movement away from social determinism to the discovery of human feelings and liberation from the community that suppresses the expression of those feelings. The early part of the story is dominated by the logic of cause and effect, by an attempt to investigate Syregelas’s death. A dilemma clearly emerges as to how to describe Syregelas’s death: accident, suicide, or murder. There is a bit of everything here as the lines between accident due to drunken stupor, individual frustration, and social marginalization become blurred. Although Thodorakis seems to solve the mystery of the death of Syregelas, it is not clear whether the latter was in love with Despina or simply a voyeur. This ambiguity in the narrative
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seems deliberate as it fosters the identification of the two characters. Toward the end of the story Thodorakis becomes increasingly identified with Syregelas.I6 He starts to understand his loneliness and his frustration with life. Hence the logic of the detective gives way to empathy and it is suggested that the best way to understand things is not by applying logic or the expectations of society, but by understanding and sharing the individual predicament. In spite of his initial posturing, Thodorakis ignores society. He appears self-centered and unable to adjust to society, being more involved in his imagination than in action. Thodorakis seems to have social ambitions while at the same time denying them. His inertia is a form of social indifference as he is not interested in politics and is not trying to find other ways of improving his life. His single-mindedness is an affirmation of his social aspirations and at the same time their abrogation. He is shaped by society and at the same time resists it. Social and individual change do not go hand in hand and social ‘progression’ might mean individual ‘regression’. This is the ambiguity and subtlety of the story. Thodorakis’s search for the solution of the mystery of Syregelas’s death is a search for his true self, a kind of self-discovery. In solving the mystery he is exploring his own self, he is trying to demarcate his own psychic space by discovering its secrets and overcoming the pressures of the context. It is a story about the defeat of logic and the celebration of feeling. The mystery of the death is not related to murder or to any external force, but is more about loneliness and erotic frustration. The all-enveloping mentality of the town that suffocates talent and creativity is challenged in the end by a flash of insight and by the triumph of imagination. Though the personal discovery concerning the mystery of Syregelas’s death is devastating, it shows that empathy and understanding among individuals can be more important than cruel social logic based on causality and realistic representation. It seems that Hatzis, although recognizing the devastating power of the context, makes serious claims for the emotional and private sphere of the individual that social logic cannot easily penetrate or unravel. The context cannot always provide the explanations and the logic of detective novels based on cause and effect is here ultimately refuted. In the story a transition takes place from the social to the mental condition as the expectations raised by the context are undermined and the reader is invited to search for the answers in the secrets of the characters’ inner world. It is a story about social repression and individual obsession. How society, on the one hand, feeds expectations that cannot be fulfilled, thus destroying lives and relationships, and how, on the other hand, the individual obsessively and hope16. Both also have lost their real names and become known by their nicknames.
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lessly adheres to one goal. It is also a story portraying the social conditioning of loneliness and despair. The self in the story is shown as socially constructed, but this construction seems fragile as obsessions, fantasies, and feelings seem ultimately to defy this process. In the story two conceptions of life, and, by extension, of history and time, compete. One is the linear and progressive, represented by the idea of social success and personal achievement and supported by the logic of cause and effect. The other is repetitive, obsessive, and circular, represented by the lifestyle of individuals such as Syregelas himself (his very nickname seems to thwart the idea of progress) and Thodorakis, who cannot move on in his life and is buoyed up by the conception of life as theater (as in Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town). After fifteen years it was like being in a dream to be there again. Like being at the theatre, as well, with the houses opposite and at both sides, looking as if they were artificial ones-stage props painted in red and blue. . . . It was like a theatre in every respect. With the waiting silence, too, when the performance is about to begin (87).
On the one hand, there is the idea of life as progressive movement, and on the other hand as the repetition of a dream, an endless reenactment that leads to an implicit identification of Syregelas with Thodorakis. The ‘detective’s’ notebook epitomizes the progress of the enquiry and the stage performance the reenactment of a drama. Hatzis is tom here between the idea of social progress and the endless reenactment of human loneliness and despair. What Thodorakis loses in terms of social achievement, he gains in terms of self-awareness. For Hatzis the reenactment of the story could be a reflection on the pain of exile. He returns to his past, like Thodorakis, who, after fifteen years, revisits the small square, the scene of the drama. Any homecoming is a painful soul-searching, it involves a shift of focus from society to self. The story is not about progress, but about return; the return of an exile who does not so much regret his social exclusion as his personal loss: his lost love and his wasted youth. Whereas the other stories in The End of Our Small Town involve communities (tanners, Jews), neighborhoods (“Aunt Angeliki”), extended families (“Margarita Perdikari”) or institutions (“The Teacher’s Will”), the two later stories (“The Tomb” and “The Detective”) are about individuals. And these individuals are not dependent on their past since compared to the other stories reference to tradition is minimal. In the earlier stories the historical past is highlighted through the medieval origins of the tanners’ guild, the history of the Jewish community, the old church in Angeliki’s neighborhood, the ancient lineage of the Perdikaris family, and the age-old
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institutions in “The Teacher’s Will.”’7 The individualism of the protagonists in the two later stories reflects the alienation of modem man in sharp contrast to the ethos and the traditional nature of the old communities portrayed in the earlier stories. Generally speahng, in The End of Our Small Town we come across so many different manifestations and degrees of loneliness as to suggest that Hatzis attributes a great deal of emphasis to this theme, something one would not expect from a writer with a Marxist outlook. Indeed the theme of loneliness permeates his fiction and can be found in his later stories, and most importantly in his novel The Double Book. In some of the stories of Anyperuspistoi [DefencelessOnes] (1966) such as “Ai Yorgis” [St. George] and “Ora tis fyronerias” [Ebb-tide] external reality invades the secret, seemingly settled and lonely world of Katerina and Kostantis respectively. It disturbs their closed inner space associated with the repressive security of the house and forces them to abandon their isolation and confront external reality. The two stories delineate the transition from a lonely and naive self to socialization and human solidarity with conflicting results. Katerina is left devastated as a result of her openness and her friendship with Iphigenia whereas Konstantis finds in Hamalaros a supportive, though inarticulate, friend. What emerges from these stories is that change brought about by socialization may not always be beneficial, and that it can be less cruel for individuals to remain in their reclusive, repetitive, and selfsufficient world of fantasies and illusions. Two other characters seem to have difficulties concerning the expectations of others or their social conformity. Anestis in the story “Ena thyma tis katohis” [A victim of the Occupation] tries to maintain his ambitious individuality and freedom in the face of the warring factions, but ends up being executed by the Germans a month before the liberation, while Gerasimos Kourtis in “To ousiodes” [The essential thing] seems to be lonely, restless, and struggling to adjust himself to society, seeking to escape to the sea as a sailor. There is an element of social resistance in these stories, as some of the characters prefer their eccentric isolation, whilst for others such as Katerina their socialization proves disastrous. This would seem to indicate that Hatzis does not subscribe wholeheartedly to social determinism, but is sympathetic to lonely, antisocial, and introverted characters who often end up as victims of society. 17. An interplay of individuality and collective standardization occurs on the level of discourse, as often in The End of Our Small Town the idiolect of characters or of the narrator himself is explained in standard words or phrases: “such people were mere carrot-cmnchers, ‘datskanaruii-uncouth villagers’” (p. 4),“it naturally didn’t matter much if your maxoumi-your youngster-voiced the same notion” (p. 3 9 , “pricked them with needles to make matsoth-unleavened yeast-with their blood” (p. 3 3 , “‘Who’s been telling you such things, mother, such badala?’-such nonsense, he meant” (p. 46).
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With The Double Book Hatzis introduced into Greek fiction a salient but rather neglected feature of postwar Greek society: emigration. In this way he was able to contrast a rural and preindustrial way of life with patterns of work and behavior in an industrial society such as Germany. The novel is based largely on this contrast, as the focus of the chapters alternates between Germany and Greece. It begins by contrasting the strict and programmed mode of production in the German factory AUTEL with the more relaxed work at the lumberyard at Volos where everything was more personal and friendly. The work there did not follow any timetable and the Master himself would arrive each morning at irregular times. In this way, the lumberyard serves as a symbol of the disorder and anarchy of Greek life. Work at the lumberyard was complete chaos. There were no regular hours, no definite assignments, no overtime, no midday break, no union, no pension withdrawals, none of those. . . . Well now, let me tell you that there in that lumberyard I fell in love with order, with routine, something I never knew until then. It’s obvious that I’m not very bright and because of this I want to have everything regulated, planned out, and with others doing the planning. I can’t take the disorder of this lumberyard, the anarchy, the cheating, the Greek way of doing things (4546).’*
By contrast at AUTEL orderly routine is the norm, allowing very little freedom of movement. In spite of the deceptive transparency, Kostas, the Greek Gastarbeiter and main character of the novel, discovers that he has limited access to the various parts of the factory. Everything there follows a quiet pattern and no deviations or disruptions are allowed. Miiller, his supervisor, is described as an impersonal machine, a symbolic representation of this calm order and clockwork frame of mind. He never changes his voice for anything. The way he says his words is always the same-and only that way, as if he said only four words, nothing more. It’s as if he punches them into a machine he has inside his mouth, an audiocassette he has in his mouth. I suppose he has to take this tape out at night just as he takes out his dentures. Obviously, he puts his dentures into a glass of water. But where does he put the cassette? I used to be really tortured with this idea of the cassette in Muller’s mouth, what he did with it when he went home and what his voice sounded like then (15).
Kostas’s Master at the lumberyard was the complete opposite. He is described as a good-hearted fellow who was like a character out of the tales of A Thousand 18. Dimitris Hatzis, To Ab~rAbB@Aio (Athens: Rodakio, 1999). All subsequent references to the novel will be made to this edition and page numbers will appear in parenthesis after each quotation. Here I quote from the unpublished translation in English by Eugene W. Bushala and Maria Kakava.
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and One Nights: “Everything he said was finished off with a little tale, sometimes his own, sometimes one he had learned from the philosopher Syndipas, such as the Seven Viziers, Sinbad the Sailor, the Great Emirs. I learned them all from him and know them by heart” (43). Kostas, the semiliterate and naive narrator, and the master as oriental storyteller represent orality that in turn could be associated with the fluidity and fairy-tale imagination of a preindustrial society, whereas writing represented in the novel by the notebook of the fictional author could be seen as epitomizing the ordered and rational logic of ~apitalism.’~ Hence, on a number of levels the novel projects the antithesis of two worlds without idealizing or prioritizing either of them. The protagonist Kostas leaves his job at the lumberyard and his village Sourpi for a better future in Germany, but the situation there is not any better. His work in the factory is very repetitive and boring and the prospects of his getting the training for a better job are nonexistent. Though the contrast between a rural, poor and underdeveloped society and the glittering society of industrial progress is highlighted throughout the novel, what the two societies have in common is the loneliness of the characters who inhabit them. Kostas feels just as lonely in Stuttgart as he did in Sourpi or Volos, his boon companion at the lumberyard being an orphaned red-haired mongrel with no name. Hatzis does not idealize the Old World since he shows the exploitation and deception taking place there. Even Skouroyannis, returning from Stuttgart to Dobrinovo, encounters the same calculating and money-grubbing mentality. In other words, the old Greek way of life is not presented as moral and honest compared to capitalist debauchery. On the contrary, life in Germany is portrayed as less hypocritical and people less inhibited about doing what they want. In Stuttgart Kostas has several one-night stands with German girls, and he praises their honesty and straightforwardness.20 Though Hatzis seems in a schematic manner to contrast the world of industrialization, impersonal order, pragmatism, and ruthless working conditions with a more human, dreamy, idealistic, and old-fashioned world, he undermines this opposition by showing that both worlds are dominated by solitude and alienation. Through Kostas’s eyes, western consumer society seems to offer a good lifestyle, has taken care of almost all material needs, but does not know how to handle human loneliness and frustration. “It has created everything for us, arranged it all, it hasn’t left a thing out. It’s only 19. For the relationship of the narrators in the novel see the article of Elli Philokyprou, “0G L ~ X O Y O S a(pq-pl~6~ m o ALTAC~PLPALo TOV A q p q ~ p ? Xa~c.il,”EAAT~uLK& 42, no. 2 (1991-1992): 329-39. 20. “German women are good-I can say that. They’re an honest people, because they are free. A free person is an honest person” (p. 71). TOU
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yourself that you don’t know what to do with” (67). Modern cities, with their glass and aluminium as reflecting and self-examining mirrors, are presented in the novel as cities of strangers, of people who have lost the ability to love. Kostas’s relationship with Erika lasted only five months and makes him wonder. A11 in all our love lasted five months. Is that the normal routine for others? Could it be that love isn’t for the poor? Could it be that they confuse everything and, hungry for what we called the ‘real life’, expect everything to come from love alone? Or is this perhaps the way people are today? We have forgotten how to love. We don’t know what’s wrong. Are we driven mad with love to the point that we destroy it just to see what’s inside it? (109).
However, the life he left back in Greece was no better. While in Volos he had neither friends nor girlfriend: “In the evening when the Master and I parted, I would stand there a while, watching him as he went home. And then I, too, would go back to my little room. Where was I to go? I had no place to go. I had no friends, no acquaintances, no girlfriend” (76). Kostas also is described as a man without a homeland, a Kasper Hauser in the wilderness. His loneliness has its roots in his family background since his father, a tailor in Sourpi, ended up humiliated and withdrawn after playing an important role in the resistance. Having joined EAM, he is subsequently arrested. His rich and religious aunt in Volos, a pillar of the establishment, intervenes and saves him only in order to humiliate him. He eventually confesses to murders he did not commit, signs a statement renouncing his past, and withdraws to his village shattered and disillusioned. His story implies that loneliness and frustration, dominant in the modern world, are due to the shattering of dreams and myths of previous generations: “The little tailor of Sourpi began to dream about the world and himself within that world. He dreamed about what you now find lacking at the coffee-house, what is lacking in contemporary political parties. He dreamed of the great myth, the pristine myth, the whole myth’ (84). The little tailor, Kostas’s father, was not the only one who dreamt and ended up lonely and disillusioned. Anastasia, his daughter, also tried to lead a double life: one of dreams symbolized by her birds and the reality of her marriage with Vasilis. She, too, has reached the ultimate degree of solitude and feels alien even to herself. Consequently, a marriage without love does not bother her too much. And what of him and me? We arrived here strangers to one another and we have remained strangers even as we worked side by side. We have not become more isolated, more withdrawn from each other, simply because it’s impossible to
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withdraw any farther apart. I know this and he certainly knows it, too. He doesn’t hate me. He doesn’t look down on me. I just don’t exist (168).
Family relations in the novel are dominated by silences and repressed feelings. Characters are more comfortable on their own than within family relationships or in love affairs. Skouroyannis, for example, represents the ultimate loneliness. Living in Germany with the nostalgia of homecoming and the dream of an imaginary homeland, he becomes disillusioned when he goes back to his village. A bear is his only companion “among those crazy, weakly, stuporous, defeated creatures he had found on his return” (129), people who think only about money and mistake even his forest visit as a preliminary to a commercial venture. The Double Book is a narrative of scepticism and solitude. It is a story about the fragmentation of self, of dreams, and of myths. Through the loneliness of his characters, Hatzis manifests his doubts about collective visions and social progress. Without loolung either back with nostalgia or forward with hope, he expresses a deep scepticism regarding grand narratives and sees fragmentation as the postmodern and postindustrial condition.21 Social progress as suggested in the novel is simply a movement toward social disintegration and solitude. The major problem for Hatzis is not how to revive social myths and shattered dreams about social change, but how to manage solitude and alienation as a permanent human condition. This is why his fictional writer is ultimately defeated, as is pointed out by Anastasia: “I see that you’re the most vanquished of us all. Your life is fragmented into thousands of pieces because of our lost lives. You didn’t bring your book. It doesn’t exist, nothing but loose threads are left. And you come here seeking one last word. I don’t know how to say it” (169). The writer in the end shares the loneliness of his characters and the only reward waiting for him is self-awareness. The characters in the novel are individuals with no homeland or firm social anchoring. They resent and defy society as it creates a false sense of community. They are permanently exiled, as a return to a premodern innocence or to the world of organic communities is impossible. Rootless and solitary cosmopolitanism is their inexorable destiny while Kostas feels constantly excluded: “Everything happens apart from me, without me” (150). Loneliness and exile might be painful, but they are more genuine conditions, offering gains in terms of self-awareness and self-liberation. The same applies to the fictional writer who in his solitude discovers that his task is impossible; the synthesis he is seeking is not feasible and his narrative will remain fragmented. The novel highlights the demise of the traditional society and narra21. The postmodern aspect of the novel is discussed in my book, To I l a A i & ~ ~ r ~711s o E A A T ~ K +Arprjy-r)crgs(Athens: Odysseas, 1993), 244-75.
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tive as we know them, which also leads to questioning notions of community and totality. Out of this process the individual emerges sad, lonely, and rootless, but self-confident as he manages to leave behind nostalgia for the past, the homeland, and collective myths about social progress. Hence, the novel does not lead to sentimentalism or protest, but to self-realization and an awareness that no promised lands exist. The illusion of nostos is indefinitely suspended.22 In a way, Hatzis’s development as a writer anticipates the transition from modernist exile to postmodernist migrancy or nomadism. The term ‘exile’, according to Caren Kaplan, connotes the estrangement of the individual from an original community and in this respect the exile is melancholy and nostalgic about an irreparable loss and separation from the familiar.23It also fits the modernist celebration of singularity, solitude, and alienation together with the notion of the estranged artist whom displacement helps to produce experimental work. For Euro-American modernism, exile acted as an ideology of artistic production while for postmodernism, homecoming becomes an impossibility. Its migrant subject-in-transit signifies mobility and habitation simultaneously since “the nomad represents a subject position that offers an idealized model of movement based on perpetual di~placement.”~~ In other words, the nomadic subject symbolizes displacement and dispersion. It could be argued that Hatzis’s fiction represents a somewhat similar movement from the modernist aesthetic of exile to a more ‘postmodern’ manifestation of existential homelessness and migrancy. Hatzis generally tries to depict two worlds: one dying and belonging to the past and the other emerging and promising (though in The Double Book many doubts are raised). Through the hardship and loneliness experienced by his characters, his narrative becomes emotionally charged and thus readers can adopt either a romantic and nostalgic attitude toward the vanishing world of the past or develop a critical awareness that the world henceforth will increasingly be dominated by a physical, spiritual, and ideological homelessness. It seems to me that ideologically Hatzis accepts the overpowering role of society, but emotionally identifies with the otherworldly characters. Hence, his fiction invites two opposing responses: either a socio-ideological response which gradually becomes ironic and self-critical or a sentimental and humanist one. The former, based on the overall narrative structure, at first tends to 22. By undoing nostalgia, Hatzis also abandons utopia since as Malcolm Chase and Christopher Shaw argue “nostalgia becomes possible at the same time as utopia. The counterpart to the imagined future is the imagined past.” “The Dimensions of Nostalgia” in Malcolm Chase and Christopher Shaw, The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), 9. 23. Caren Kaplan, Questions of Travel: Postmodern Discourses of Displacement (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996), 27-28. 24. Ibid.. 66.
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be forward-looking but gradually turns to scepticism and doubt while the latter could be described as retrospective and nostalgic, based on identification with the characters and the expression of sympathy toward their social marginality or defeat. Hatzis’s world is that of small communities and social groups, but it is equally that of opinionated or solitary individuals. His characters are often tragic losers, victims of their illusions or innocence who attract the empathy of readers. Although they are not stereotypes, characters from Sioulas the Tanner to the anonymous protagonist of “I nisos Anydros” have something in common in their simultaneous detachment from and involvement with society. Although his aim seems to be the representation of social structures and changes, Hatzis’s fictional method relies more on individual case studies. It is through the stories of eccentric individuals that he is trying to illuminate the wider social scene and this perhaps explains why his most successful narrative mode is that of the short story rather than of the novel. His fictional universe consists basically of antisocial individuals whom he is trying to bring together in order to produce a wider picture. His starting point seems to be the individual in order to reach the social rather than the other way around. The social portrait in Hatzis’s fiction is constructed metonymically out of individual cases who seem to be at odds with their social context. Hatzis’s development as a writer involves a transition from a realistic representation of social change toward an exploration of human loneliness as a universal social condition. This of course is at odds with his supposedly optimistic Marxist outlook, which is about a struggle for the ideals of social progress and a communal ethos. From The End of Our Small Town onward, however, Hatzis increasingly questions the dynamics of society as a whole and focuses on the solitary individual. He gradually moves away from the Enlightenment’s ideal of modernity and social progress as he probes into the dark side of human despair and lack of fulfilment. As he becomes more and more sceptical of totalities, visions, and master narratives, his stories narrate the loosening of social control and in turn become narratives of social fragmentation and exile. The Double Book in particular can be seen as the narrative of the postmodern condition where certainties are undone and illusions exploded.
Chapter Nine
Fool’s Gold and Achilles’ Fiance‘e: Politics and Self-Representation
Recently there has been a growing awareness that autobiography as a genre is gendered, and a widespread belief among feminist critics that the patriarchal hegemony in literary history has offered a privileged position to male writings about self compared to female ones. As Leigh Gilmore points out “the near absence of women’s self-representationaltexts from the critical histories that authorize autobiography indicates the extent to which the genre that functions as the closest textual version of the political ideology of individualism is gendered as ‘male.”” Gradually, however, the poetics of autobiography is ceasing to be an androcentric enterprise. The concept of multiple selves or the fluidity of identity has become very popular among women writers and critics, as opposed to the notion of a unified, essential self that has historically been associated with men’s lives. Particularly in Greece over the last twenty years, female narratives of self-representationhave proliferated while earlier writings by women have also come to the fore. Identity, autobiography, and self-discovery are themes featuring prominently in women’s writing and this association is exemplified quite early on in Greek literature by texts such as Elisavet Moutzan-Martinengou’s M y Twentieth-century Greek women writers continued her legacy, but rarely was there an explicit connection between self-identity and politics. Melpo Axioti, arguably one of the most political female writers in Greece, 1. Leigh Gilmore, Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women’s Self-Representation (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994), 1. Sidonie Smith also argues that ‘‘until the last few years, the impact of gender on the autobiographical project has not been a serious focus of critical or theoretical inquiry.” A Poetics of Women s Autobiography: Marginality and the Fictions of Self-Representation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 7. 2. The Autobiography (as is the Greek title) of Elisavet Moutzan-Martinengou (1801-1832) was first published in 1881, fifty years after it was completed. It has been translated into English by Helen Dendrinou Kolias, M y Story (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989).
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dealt with both themes but in separate and quite different books. For instance, texts such as Dyskoles Nyhtes [Difficult Nights] (1938) or Kadmo (1972) appear distinctly unrelated to her more political text Eikostos aionas [Twentieth Century] (1946). However, in the post-1974 Greek fiction dominated by women writers, a successful combination of identity and politics can be found in two novels by Mar0 Douka and A l h Zei3 In Douka’s Fool’s Gold [I Arhaia Skouria] (1979)4 and Zei’s Achilles’ Fiance‘e [I Arravoniastikia tou Ahillea] (1987y two female characters, Myrsini and Eleni respectively, relate their stories in a subtle way, showing the impact of history and politics on their lives. In their narratives major historical and political events of twentieth-century Greek history are confronted: the German occupation (1941-1944), the civil war (1944-1949) and the military dictatorship (1967-1 974). The polarized postwar climate in Greece was diffused after 1974 and particularly after 1981 when the first socialist government came into power, the return of almost all the political refugees from Eastern Europe was completed, and the left-wing resistance during the German occupation was recognized. As a consequence, public discussion about the civil war was encouraged. Alki Zei’s novel is one of the most notable literary contributions to this debate. Mar0 Douka, on the other hand, takes her inspiration from the events of November 1973 when students of the Athens Polytechnic barricaded themselves in the building and began broadcasting from a pirate radio station. Their three-day opposition to the military junta was brutally crushed by the army on the night of the 16 to 17 November, when tanks broke down the gates of the Polytechnic and a number of students were killed. Thus, both authors responded to the keenly felt need of the Greek people to address highly controversial and emotionally charged issues of the recent past.6 Their aim, however, was not to produce ‘testimonial’ accounts of these events, as was the case with some writers of the late 1940s and 1950s who tried to reproduce their experiences in a realistic and documentary fashion, nor was it to tackle the same issues by introducing greater experimentation in narrative technique as Tsirkas had done in his Drifting Cities. Instead they 3. It is significant that Mar0 Douka is one of the editors of Melpo Axioti’s collected works published by Kedros. 4. Mar0 Douka, Fool’s Gold, trans. Roderick Beaton (Athens: Kedros, 1991). All subsequent references to the novel will be made to this edition and page numbers will appear in parenthesis after each quotation. 5. Alki Zei, Achilles’ Fiancke, trans. Gail Holst-Warhaft (Athens: Kedros, 1991). All subsequent references to the novel will be made to this edition and page numbers will appear in parenthesis after each quotation. 6. Maro Douka in her collection of essays 0 fl&(oyp&cpoqKLYL TO IILO&pL TOU (Athens: Kastaniotis, 1992), 19-20 claims that her novel did not go down well with left-wing writers such as Elli Alexiou who refused to talk to her after its publication.
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sought to highlight personal self-discovery rather than political involvement. The distinguishing feature of these two novels is their shift in emphasis away from the historical reality toward the formation of personal identity. Historical events cease to be the focus here and form instead the backdrop to the search for identity on the part of the protagonists of these two novels. Linda Hutcheon claims that the feminist rethinking of personal experience and the reevaluation of life-writing led to the increasing politicization of the personal. In granting new and emphatic value to the notion of ‘experience,’feminisms have also raised an issue of great importance to postmodern representation: what constitutes a valid historical narrative? And who decides? This has led to the re-evaluation of personal or life narratives-journals, letters, confessions, biographies, autobiographies, self-portraits. . . . If the personal is the political, then the traditional separation between private and public history must be reth~ught.~ The focus in both Fool’s Gold and Achilles’ Fiancke is on the private world of one woman within the wider framework of political events. Through the turbulent course of modern Greek history we follow the personal development of Myrsini and Eleni (the similarity to The Third Wedding in this respect is indeed telling). The crucial element in the life of the former is not so much her activities in the resistance movement and the public sphere as the inner resistance she develops to what she calls the safe and solid way of life. Fool’s Gold is first and foremost the story of Myrsini’s personal revolution: “a revolution in the first person.” In Achilles’ Fiuncke the extraordinary times Eleni has lived through have resulted in the formation of a dual identity. Her subsequent struggle is to reconcile her conflicting personas and make herself a unified person once more. The time span covered in each novel differs. The events narrated by Myrsini in Fool’s Gold begin the summer before the Colonels coup in April 1967 and continue until the restoration of democracy in 1974. Eleni’s narrative in Achilles’ Fiancke, however, encompasses a much longer period of time. Beginning during the German occupation of Greece, her story takes us through the civil war, the postwar years spent by political exiles in the Soviet Union, and up to the advent of the dictatorship. In fact the time of narrating varies in both novels too. Eleni recalls her previous life over the few days she spends working as an extra on a film. Myrsini’s account, in contrast, though it spans the relatively short space of seven years, is the product of several years of reflection. 7. Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism (London: Routledge, 1989), 160.
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Despite the differences in chronology, one can find much to compare in these two novels. Because the two protagonistsharrators belong to different generations, in a sense Myrsini’s story commences where Eleni’s ceases and thus the two novels could be said to complement each other. In a broader sense there are many common elements in the lives of Myrsini and Eleni. From an early age they are both active in left-wing resistance organizations, become engaged to political “outlaws,” and suffer at the hands of the security forces. Essentially, both Myrsini and Eleni spend their formative years in a turbulent period, and in opposition to the ruling regime. Furthermore, at the time of writing they find themselves in a similar predicament: Myrsini and Eleni are both seeking, in retrospect, to explore the ways in which these factors have influenced their personal development. Self-analysis is, then, the purpose of the narrators’ recollections. On the opening page of Fool’s Gold Myrsini remarks: “I don’t try to prove a point, I just ramble on” (9). Even though she does not know at this stage what realizations she will anive at, her ultimate aim is to attain an understanding of herself. Similarly, in Achilles ’ Fiuncke Eleni articulates her main concerns when Eugenios asks what troubles her and she replies: “Myself, the dictatorship, the Civil War, December, the Occupation, Tashkent . . . ” (162). The placing of the self before the historical events is by no means random. Eleni’s chief preoccupation is, indeed, herself. This is not to suggest that these major events of recent Greek history are not weighing upon her mind. It would be virtually impossible for anyone to ignore them, least of all someone so inextricably bound up with them as Eleni. Yet, one gets the impression that somewhere along the line, amidst the turmoil, Eleni, the person, became lost. In leafing through the past Eleni is trying to rediscover her essential self. Therefore, in both novels, we can see that the narrator embarks upon a quest of selfidentity and the result of this endeavor is, necessarily, a narrative of identity. On issues of identity and selfhood it seems that there has been some distance separating feminism and postmodernism. While postmodernism forges identity through articulating the exhaustion of the existential belief in selfpresence and self-fulfilment, feminism, in its early stages at least, was moving in the opposite direction. Women writers began “to construct an identity out of the recognition that women need to discover, and must fight for, a sense of unified selfhood, a rational, coherent, effective identity.”8 Women’s writing, according to Patricia Waugh, whether feminist or not, has largely existed in a contradictory relationship to both the liberal and the postmodernist conceptions of subjectivity. However, there is a gradual recognition among women novelists that human identity should be considered in terms of rela8. Patricia Waugh, Feminine Fictions: Revisiting the Postmodern (London: Routledge, 1989), 6.
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tionship and dispersal “rather than as a unitary, self-directing isolated ego, which has fundamentally altered the course of modem and contemporary women’s writing concerned to challenge gender stereotype^."^ It is this recognition that brought feminist writing to a ‘postmodernist’ conception of subjectivity. Women novelists try to chart their way between the postmodern ‘decentering’ of subjectivity and the liberal understanding of self as a unified and free agent. They still “affirm a belief in the need for ‘strong’ selves without presenting the self as an unchanging, ahistorical essence or as an isolated ego struggling aggressively and competitively to define itself as unique, different, separate.”1° Although there is no absolute ‘female’ style, women writers often explore subjective experience and search for a personal voice, avoiding formal abstraction and the tendency toward the impersonality that dominated modernist aesthetics or the postmodernist depersonalization and its emphasis on fragmentation and the subject’s dispersal. Women’s narratives, as Rita Felski argues, cannot be understood by referring to an abstract ideal of ‘feminine’ consciousness, but by examining the influence of gender upon genre and the relationship between female ideology and narrative plots. Transcending the dichotomy of earlier forms of narrative closure, of either marriage or death, the contemporary, female self-discovery narrative is an essentially optimistic genre thanks to its challenge to current social values. Female self-discovery narratives can be divided into two types. The first can be described as a feminist Bildungsroman and adopts an historical and linear structure. In this type of narrative “female self-discovery and emancipation is depicted as a process of moving outward into the public realm of social engagement and activity, however problematic and fraught with difficulties this proves to be.”“ Indeed, female desire for progression and social integration could often turn into regression. Comparing the male and female BiEdungsroman Annis Pratt points out that the woman’s novel of development is “less a self-determined progression towards maturity than a regression from full participation in adult life.”12This kind of novel,
9. Ibid., 12-13. 10. Ibid., 14. 11. Rita Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Chunge (London: Hutchinson Radius, 1989), 126-27. She also outlines the difference between male and feminist Bildungsroman in this way: “Whereas the male Bildungsroman is often defined as a novel of apprenticeship and typically depicts the childhood and early manhood of the protagonist, the feminist Bildungsroman thus embraces a much wider range of ages” (p. 137). 12. Annis Pratt, Archetypal Patterns in Women’s Fiction (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982), 36. Whereas the male hero of the Bildungsroman, according to Esther Kleinbord Labovitz, will grapple with social inequality, the theme of equality between sexes is one raised in the female Bildungsroman. See The Myth of the Heroine: The Female Bildungsroman in the Twentieth Century (New York: Peter Lang, 1986), 25 1.
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according to her, can be described more appropriately by the term Entwicklungsroman, which describes “the novel of mere growth, mere physical passage from one age to the other without psychological development.”I3 The second type of narrative depicts “self-discovery as a process of awakening to an early given mythic identity or inner self and frequently occurs in nature or in a generalized symbolic realm from which the contingent social world has been e ~ c l u d e d . ” ’The ~ novel of female selfdiscovery can also be seen as a quest narrative involving a number of binary oppositions: from ignorance to knowledge, from speechlessness to language, from alienation to authenticity. l 5 These two types of novel correspond to two dominant trends in feminism itself. One of these embraces a narrative model of history as progress and the necessity of engagement in the public sphere, while the other includes a strain of romantic individualism; critical of ideologies of modernity and progress, this latter trend looks toward an Edenic past rather than to the future. It does not describe a process of unfolding, but a process of self-recognition and the recovery of a repressed identity. These two models of female self-discovery do not constitute an opposition and should not be viewed as mutually exclusive since the celebration of subjectivity does not necessarily imply a lack of commitment to social and political change. What I shall try to show is that the two novels discussed here illustrate the transition from politics to selfhood, from activity to introspection, and from a female Bildungsroman to a narrative of self-awakening.
SELF-AFFIRMATION,DUAL IDENTITIES, AND ROLE PLAY Fool’s Gold begins after Christmas 1974, following the fall of the Junta. The narrator, Myrsini, is approached by an acquaintance who is campaigning on behalf of a left-wing political group. With a view to becoming a member, Myrsini is asked to complete a questionnaire and this provides the initial stimulus for her to take stock of her life. The questions refer to the basic facts of Myrsini’s life: name, age, address as well as her family background and previous political activities. 13. Ibid., 36. 14. Ibid., 127. Earlier scholars drew a more stark distinction between the traditional male Bildungsroman plot, which culminates with the hero’s accommodation to society, and the novels of female development, which “substitute inner concentration for active accommodation, rebellion, or withdrawal.” Elizabeth Abel, Marianne Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland, The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1983), 8. 15. Rita Felski, “The Novel of Self-Discovery: A Necessary Fiction?” Sourhem Review 19 (1986): 132-33.
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The novel can be seen to consist of three texts. Firstly, there is the blank questionnaire which Myrsini, as she herself tells us, takes as her point of dkparture. We find the questions listed in the first chapter of the novel. The second text comprises Myrsini’s attempt to answer these questions and forms the main narrative, as Myrsini painstakingly delves into her past. Finally, at the end of the novel we are presented with the third text, Myrsini’s summary response to the questionnaire. In a matter-of-fact way she states the requisite information. The succinct nature of Myrsini’s replies contrasts with the long, meandering flow of the main narrative. Obviously, one’s life cannot be condensed into a single sheet of paper. Her answers, though, are not empty, as some critics have argued, since she declares the conclusions she has reached about herself; a vital statement that allows her once and for all to come to terms with the past and look to her future.I6 In this way the search for identity clearly provides the framework of the narrative and the structure of the novel reinforces the personal rather than the political agenda. The conciseness and directness of the questionnaire contrasts with the long-winded account of Myrsini’s introspection. There is also a contrast between the public and political discourse of the questionnaire and the rambling monologue of the protagonist. The questionnaire seeks factual information, constituting an attempt to impose order on Myrsini’s inner world by reference to external reality, whereas the rather incoherent main narrative represents the inner turmoil, doubts, and fantasies of the protagonist about her life. For all my efforts to impose some sort of order on these events, they were too much for my brain to cope with. I slid like an eel within myself and slunk in darkness. All the doubts I’d carried with me throughout my life, that I’d cajoled in one way or another, spread about me now unchecked, like a poisonous leaden cloud, enveloping me (278).
Myrsini’s story is told throughout in the first person. As she tells us on the very first page, ever since her association with the Left she has been obliged to justify her actions and has acquired the habit of talking to herself constantly. Her story resembles a sustained self-addressed monologue, following the winding course of her thoughts. The introspective nature of the narrative is intensified by the inclusion of several of Myrsini’s dreams. Filled with animals as well as members of her family, the dreams have a nightmarish, surreal quality that points to Myrsini’s distressed state of mind.I7The monologic 16. Roderick Beaton, An ~nt~duction to Modern Greek Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 285-86. 17. Rita Felski argues, often “the experience of dreams and hallucinationssymbolizesthe disorientation of the heroine, the undermining of her established value systems and conceptions of reality which marks the transition from one stage of consciousnessto another;” Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, (144).
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character of her narrative with its long sentences and the absence of dialogue suggest that Myrsini is totally immersed in her story. If in her life she had been totally devoted to others, her narrative becomes her own domain that cannot be violated by the presence of other discourses.’g Myrsini’s monologue definitely has an autobiographical character, but it is not always clear whether the emphasis is on communicating the past events sequentially or on the spontaneity of the thought process. In other words there is an ambivalence between narrative communication and monologic association. Curiously Myrsini’s monologue is imbued with a feeling of detachment. The narrator is the protagonist of the novel yet at the same time creates the impression of not being involved in the proceedings she relates. As Myrsini herself states, she has her own paradoxical way of viewing events: “I’d always be saved by the passionate but at the same time disinterested way I had of responding to events” (238). Not only does Myrsini distance herself from what is happening around her but, like Eleni, she experiences a separation from herself “It’s always the same when something upsets me, I can look in on myself being upset as though it were happening to someone else, like watching myself in a mirror, and can even be amused by the expression on my face” (19). She is simultaneously speaker and listener: “as though at once in control of my voice and at the same time also a detached listener” (21). The narrative voice thus focuses attention on the figure of Myrsini who is at the same time both subject and object. The idea of narrative voice is linked to a challenge to old, patriarchal forms of authority while “feminist thought itself has increasingly privileged speaking and hearing as opposed to the patriarchal valuation of specularity, vision, the objectifying gaze.”I9 Narrative voice has become a trope of identity and power and Susan Lanser has identified three categories of voice: authorial, personal, and communal. Personal voice, according to her, “is less formidable for women than authorial voice, since an authorial narrator claims broad powers of knowledge and judgement, while a personal narrator claims only the validity of one person’s right to interpret her experience.”20 Personal voice is crucial in the production of female sub18. Karen Van Dyck in her study, Kassandra and the Censors: Greek Poetry since 1967 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998) argues that Douka’s story “is as much about writing becoming women’s writing as it is about a girl becoming a woman. Over the course of the narrative there evolves an appreciation of the complex role gender plays in the construction of a text. . . . In this novel, as in the poetry collections from the 1980s, writing stumbles, halts, swerves. It does not guide the reader through the story the way Ariadne’s thread leads Theseus out of the maze; it requires a reader willing to take detours” (pp. 257-58). 19. Andrew Gibson, Towards a Postmodern Theory of Narrative (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), 156-57. 20. Susan Sniader Lanser, Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992), 19.
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jectivities and is usually indistinguishable from autobiography, though its use “risks reinforcing the convenient ideology of women’s writing as ‘selfexpression’, the product of ‘intuition’ rather than of art.”21The use of personal voice in Douka’s novel is intended to represent female subjectivity; it also seeks, however, the authority and detachment of an authorial voice. In other words she tries to combine a ‘mimetic’ with a ‘diegetic’ voice, an autobiographical with an omniscient perspective. The subjectivity she sought to represent through the character of Myrsini seems to be both personal and public. Myrsini’s sense of detachment from herself has its roots in her childhood when her parents addressed her in the third person and she would look over her shoulder as if she had a double.22Caught up in the endless round of infidelities, resentment, and recriminations of her immature and self-centred parents, she has to contend with her family background alone since her parents cannot offer her a supportive environment and have engendered in her an overwhelming feeling of self-alienation. Weary of their histrionics and antics, Myrsini’s relationship with them becomes increasingly stifling. Suffering from loneliness and a lack of emotional security, she realizes she must break away from her parents’ influence if she is ever to thrive as an individual. Myrsini’s decision to leave home therefore represents a significant step in her pursuit of an ‘authentic’ identity. Even away from home Myrsini is not spared from shocking revelations about her father’s adulterous life. It turns out that he has three illegitimate children, while his relationship with Lucia leads eventually to the breakdown of his marriage and the suicide in London of his former wife. Myrsini has to cope with her mother’s suicide and the guilt she feels for never having become the prima ballerina of her mother’s dreams. At the end, however, she comes to terms with her mother’s death and is prepared to accept the failings of her parents. Gradually she attains a state of independence where her parents can no longer hurt her. She burns her mother’s diary and enjoys a moment of reconciliation with her father the day before the attack of the Polytechnic. Another key issue that informs Myrsini’s search for identity is class status. She comes from a wealthy, upper-middle class family and is thrust into a predominantly working-class environment through her association with leftwing resistance groups. She is often rebuffed by her associates due to her 21. Ibid., 20. 22. “The question would always be framed at one remove, how is Myrsini? as if they hoped that gradually I’d change into someone else, and though I h e w quite well whom they meant and duly answered, I’d always cast a glance over my shoulder-I got used to seeing a shadow there and grew up with the idea of a double” (p. 214).
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‘bourgeois’ social standing. Such is her sense of guilt at her privileged upbringing that she attempts to renounce her middle-class background and transform herself into a working-class girl. The futility of this endeavor is shown in Myrsini’s humiliating rebuff by the astute personnel manageress in the Softex factory where she goes looking for work. Myrsini is a misfit, she is unable to find a niche for herself and is painfully aware of her dilemma. “On the one side I’d renounced the background I’d grown up in, but on the other I was continually rebuffed by the world I wanted to adopt” (285). She gradually realizes that she is not only fooling others but also herself, and resigning herself to the fact that she comes from an affluent background, she no longer feels ashamed of it. Class difference is also one of the chief causes of incompatibility between Myrsini and her boyfriends. Myrsini makes an attempt to overcome her social difference, but it resurfaces as a cultural difference when she admits not liking popular Greek songs or rebetiku and quarrels with George about her preference for Solomos over T s i t ~ a n i sThere . ~ ~ is also a clash of images and expectations from both sides. For example, Paul’s mother does not fit the image of a tormented woman that Myrsini had formed of her in her mind (55). On the other hand, George’s mother, a working-class woman, expected Myrsini to be dressed up as she assumed befitted her upper-class status (253). Myrsini’s narrative reveals that stereotypical images or class barriers are deeply embedded and cannot easily be transcended through political change or love. She forces herself to love George, to become a manual worker, ultimately to live up to a role model she has in her head of a fighter for democracy and social justice. She surrenders herself to others, cares for them without her concern being reciprocated. While George is in prison she has him constantly in her mind. I used to think of him in the prison yard, with the bitter taste in his mouth in the aftermath of each visit, his loneliness at night. In just this way I had once visualised Paul in hiding. But when it came down to it, who thought in that way of me? I was always at sea among fantasies of other people (203).
Myrsini’s relationships with men are fraught with anguish, undermining her self-confidence rather than boosting it. She is devastated by the breakdown of her first relationship with Paul and it takes her a long time to recover from her distress. The wretchedness of their sexual relationship leaves Myrsini feeling even more inadequate. Her engagement to George comes out of the blue and Myrsini herself is unsure of her feelings toward him. On the 23. See pp. 22426.
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one hand she loves or pities George and on the other he makes her angry (251). George, like Paul, does not give Myrsini the affection and security she craves; both lovers behave in an egoistic and uncaring manner. Though Myrsini appears sensitive and emotionally vulnerable, she possesses considerable powers of resistance, being able to leave the comfort of her home, to withstand torture, to rebuff Anestis’s advances (213-14). Sometimes she is about to explode, but often feels powerless, a tool in the hands of the others (234). Myrsini’s personal revolution takes the form of severing all previously established bonds and extricating herself from stultifying relationships with her family, lovers, and friends. She has an unflinching ability to penetrate the pretence of others and to perceive the duplicity of their emotions. Toward the end of the novel she asserts: “With every day that passed I became more confident I could walk without the crutches that each one lent me towards his own apotheosis” (303). What is highlighted in the novel is Myrsini’s loneliness. Victim of events and of people, she makes an attempt to understand others and engages herself in the struggle for a better world. Though she appears to have many friends and acquaintances, she cannot communicate with them. They, in turn, fail to listen to her and understand her problems. She feels alone with herself and her narrative monologue reflects her solitude. What she gains out of her relationships and experiences is self-assurance and self-understanding, which toward the end of the novel lead her to reflect and conclude: “I wondered what there could be for me to hang on to, but I didn’t really feel the need” (294). By ending up lonely and unattached, Myrsini demonstrates that she can resist the pressures of the context that demands political as well as social conformity. Her friends return to their first loves (George-Xenia), get married, or settled, whereas Myrsini refuses to look back either with nostalgia or regret. Myrsini stands out in the novel as the sole character who does not compromise her principles. She is determined not to be implicated in the corruption of society, which the “fool’s gold” of the title symbolize^.^^ By the close of her narrative, Myrsini has no firm plans for the future, but hopes to devote more time to her earlier passion for ballet dancing. In order to discover her true self, Myrsini requires the freedom to be herself and develop her own interests, unencumbered by the demands of others. Myrsini is characterized by an inferiority complex, guilt, insecurity, and impotence. She gradually overcomes these destructive impulses and succeeds in 24. According to Eleni Yannakaki, the title symbolizes the moral corruptionof the upper classes and at a deeper level the alienation and compromise of the Greek people, regardless of class, with the system. “The Novels of Miro Douka,” in Roderick Beaton, The Greek NovelADl-I985 (London: Croom Helm, 1988), 114.
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adopting a more relaxed outlook on life, finally feeling at ease with herself. I don’t know why, but I was profoundly happy. I felt somehow gorged and ravenous at once, a curious mixture of sadness and calm that wasn’t resignation, rather I was at peace with myself, content to follow the course of brightly coloured tropical streams and celebrate an inner exultation (307-8).
As Kay Cicellis has pointed out “the book is a continuous negation which ends in overwhelming a f f i r m a t i ~ n . ”It~ is ~ significant that Myrsini states in her completed questionnaire that she is not a member of any group. This is a positive statement revealing her independence of thought and action. Myrsini’s self-assertion is further expressed in her response to Maro, the girl with the questionnaire: “It’s enough for me to be myself, I wanted to say to her, and that’s the way I mean to live” (3 11). Although Myrsini still may not have the courage to speak up for herself, at least she herself is convinced of her words. She is finally able to accept herself as she is, for all her strengths and weaknesses or fluctuations of mood. Her supreme affirmation is contained in the closing line of the novel, namely: “So when all’s said and done, sometimes I feel like a god, and sometimes the merest creature” (312). Achilles’ Fiunce‘e opens with the shooting of a film in Paris at a time when Greece is under the Junta. Amongst the extras are a number of Greek political refugees forced into exile due to the military dictatorship. They include Eleni who has known some of them since the German occupation. She has only a small part in the film and, therefore, during the filming there are long breaks of sitting and waiting on set. These enforced bouts of inactivity induce Eleni to reflect upon her life. Thus in both novels the external situation in which the narrator happens to find herself, although very different in each case, engenders the same response: a reviewing of past experiences. One of the most interesting features of Achilles’ Fiunce‘e is the dual narrative. The narrative alternates between “The Horror Train” and the “Cut” sections. The “Cut” interludes comment upon the progress of the movie as well as Eleni’s life in Paris outside the studio. “The Horror Train” sections follow the scenes of the film and, more importantly, contain Eleni’s history. Although, “The Horror Train” can be seen as an ironic symbol of Eleni’s troubled life, representing the terrible chain of events she has been caught up in, it is also the title of the film in which she is an extra (282). In her mind Eleni directs her own movie in which, far from being an insignificant extra, she has the dubious honor of playing the starring role. 25. Kay Tsitseli (=Cicellis), “To am-iyoptupkuo p+pa,” H KaOqp&pw7j, 6 March 1980.
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The “Cut” sequences are given in the third person while Eleni’s story “The Horror Train” is narrated in the first person. One reason for this may well be that as Eleni herself says, for her and her comrades: “Our past is so alive, more alive than the present” (67). The split narrative voice serves to enhance the contrast between ‘then’ and ‘now’. Eleni feels the past with such immediacy, yet seems to be alienated from the present day. Moreover, the dual narrative points to dual personalities. Eleni in reality has two personas. The novel begins with the first appearance of the central character, Eleni, playing a role; as her story unfolds we see that Eleni has in effect been playing a role all of her adult life. Even her name is not her own; her real name is Daphne, and some people in her life still call her by that name. But to others she is Eleni, a codename that was given to her at the age of sixteen in the resistance, or “Achilles’FiancCe,” a sobriquet ascribed to her during the German occupation, when she became engaged to Achilles, a guerrilla leader. Ever since she has been known as Achilles’ FiancCe, even though she is now a woman in her early forties. Just as the labels Eleni and Achilles’ FiancCe have been imposed upon the protagonist by others, similarly Eleni represents the external and superficial aspect of her character. Eleni and Achilles’ FiancCe are roles the protagonist has assumed and that most people still expect her to fulfil. In the course of the narrative, the protagonist strives to outgrow the role of Achilles’ FiancCe that she has been obliged to play for over twenty years, but her life will not allow her to discard the image that her old acquaintances still see. The novel frequently draws parallels between Eleni’s life and the process of acting a part, highlighting the difficulty she faces in attempting to step out of character. The use of third-person narration expresses not only the external nature of the identity “Eleni,” an entity observed from the outside, but also the sense of detachment felt by the narrator towards this persona. The third-person narrative voice should not be read as that of an impersonal, omniscient narrator. On the contrary, it is Eleni who speaks as if standing outside herself. Eleni’s alter ego is Daphne, her baptismal name. Daphne corresponds to Eleni as a child, before her involvement with the resistance and, of course, Achilles. The character of Daphne has no association with Achilles but becomes, instead, the girlfriend of Jean-Paul in Rome, on her way to join Achilles, who had taken refuge in the Soviet Union. Jean-Paul is an artist and in temperament is the opposite of the serious, austere Achilles, and their relationship similarly is passionate and carefree; it is almost as if Daphne is her ‘real’ self, but she must eventually become Eleni again, for Achilles’s sake. To Achilles she is Eleni; when, much later, he finds a picture of her drawn by Jean-Paul, he destroys it, and it is as if he is denying the existence of Daphne.
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Significantly, Eleni’s most intimate friends Serioja, Andreas, Nadia, Michael Grigorevitch all refer to her as Daphne. Daphnoula is also the name Eleni gives to her daughterz6These points suggest that Daphne represents the inner self trapped within the outer construct of Eleni. The fact that the first person “ . absent from the present implies that Eleni has lost touch with her esI is sential character. In sum, the two narrative voices illustrate effectively the identity crisis that Eleni is suffering and the two names suggest that identity does not exist outside language while alternative or deferred identities constantly subvert any claims of truthfulness. Daphne represents the relaxed, youthful, and artistic persona of the protagonist. It is this persona that falls in love with the painter Jean-Paul, or establishes a rapport with the artist Andreas and the liberal intellectual Michael Grigorevitch. The protagonist is aware of the discrepancy between her two sides that correspond to different roles: “Who shall I say I am? At any rate I’m certainly Daphne. It wouldn’t do for Eleni to sit and splash carelessly in the water of the fountain in company with someone she hardly knows” (104). Eleni is arrested simply because she is Achilles’s FiancCe (38,42, 48) and she attracts the attention of the other prisoners due to her attachment to a revered guerrilla leader. Her existence and status is defined by her role, by her aim to go and find Achilles; Eleni as such is not important. She is not a hero, but sensitive, vulnerable, and lonely: “Alone. For how long? Is it bad to want a man’s arm around me? Why didn’t Achilles take me with him? Why did he leave me?’ (90).27Her life is in constant transition, a movement from place to place.z8Achilles is the only fixed point of reference, which is reinforced by his unchanged views and unaltered beliefs. Eleni is expected to be the austere hardliner and committed fighter, an image she has to wear when it is appropriate by suppressing her alter ego Daphne: “Now Daphne doesn’t exist any more. I can pull my hair back and maybe I’ll achieve the hard face that Eleni, Achilles’ fiancCe, should have” (128). It is Daphne who has to be effaced. Ironically, she is the true rebel, the more unpredictable person of the two; it is her nonconformism that can annoy the commissars of the party and Achilles. Hence, it has to be sacrificed: 2,
26. “Seeing I don’t have that name I used to love any more, let me give it to my baby. Two days ago I didn’t have anything to love very much and now I feel as if nothing will ever matter to me except this. It’s mine, absolutely mine. Here, in the middle of the steppe, I have nothing of my own. Not even myself. Not even my thoughts” (p. 216). 27. It could be argued that the protagonist is constantly seeking a male partner and gives the impression that her life is not defined by Achilles only, but by a number of men (Jean-Paul, Serioja, Evgenios, Dinos) with whom she either develops a relationship or simply flirts. The reader doubts her ability to exist independently, as she appears vulnerable, unhappy, and insecure without a male partnership. 28. “‘I’m passing through,’ she’d said then when she went through Rome to go and meet Achilles in the Soviet Union. Passing through. And she stayed two years” (p. 67).
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“Achilles wants the Eleni he said goodbye to on the street-corner before he left for the mountains, and he clings to that picture. There is no room for discussion. I must make Daphne die” (205). However, she finds it hard to switch from the one role to the other: “I thought it was easy, like in the theatre, to change from one role to another. I thought I could leave Daphne with JeanPaul in Rome” (160). In the end, life is not a theatre. Each role requires an emotional investment that cannot easily be abandoned. The protagonist becomes the prisoner of her roles as she leads a schizophrenic existence.29Yet one forms the impression that the protagonistharrator can keep an ironic distance from her two roles. She can analyse both of them self-consciously as if she were an outsider: “Because now I’m neither Daphne any more, nor Eleni” (249). One might say that the process of characterization in Zei’s novel follows the dichotomy of appearance versus reality. Earlier theories of characterization are all dependent upon the paradigmatic dichotomy of appearance and reality, and their narratives are always ‘apocalyptic’ in the sense that they move from mystification to enlightenment and revelation as to the ‘truth’ of the character and its identity. The narrative trajectory is from the heterogeneity of different appearances to a presumed homogeneity of a real identity.30
If earlier theories relied on the ‘economy of identity’, postmodern characterization evokes an ‘economy of difference’. Postmodern characters escape the fixity of identity and cannot move from appearance to the enlightenment of reality. The narrative trajectory is from an assumed homogeneity of identity toward an endlessly proliferating heterogeneity: “Where the economy of identity produces a single totalized narrative, that of the Self, it also arrests the temporality of narrative and the notion of temporal change which is axiomatic to narrative; postmodern characterization keeps the narrative goi ~ ~ g .Zei’s ” ~ ’ narrative, though it does not abandon the dichotomy between interior ‘reality’ and external ‘appearance’, does contradict the notion of the totalized selfhood by emphasizing the temporal dimension that highlights heterogeneity and role play. The conflict between dual identities is the recurrent theme of the novel and the two personas form a stark contrast. Eleni is so burdened with the many harrowing experiences she has undergone that she has forgotten what it is to 29. “How did I believe it was as easy as playing a role in the theatre every so often? How did I think I’d be able to make Daphne disappear?” ( p . 181). 30. Thomas Docherty, “Postmodern Characterization: The Ethics of Alterity,” in Edmund J. Smith, Postmodernism and Contemporary Fiction (London: B.T. Batsford, 1991), 184. 31. Ibid., 187.
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enjoy herself. Daphne, however, is a young girl with no history, free and nonchalant. As needs dictate, Eleni must change character. She talks about this switch in terms of a life and death contest. Leaving Rome in April seems to Eleni like dying and her departure does indeed represent a symbolic death for Daphne. In Tashkent Eleni resolves to make Daphne die, resigned to the fact that Eleni has triumphed. Despite her exertions, Eleni never manages to suppress either identity completely. The specter of Eleni occasionally looms large in Rome just as “the girl with the pyracantha” comes to light in Tashkent. Eleni discovers to her dismay that she cannot assume her alter ego by simply putting on another ring or changing her clothes. Contrary to her expectations she cannot play another part as if she were an actress in the theater. Both Eleni and Daphne exist in an uneasy symbiosis, each representing a different aspect of the protagonist’s personality. As has been argued earlier, Eleni corresponds to the superficial aspect of the protagonist. This is reinforced by the many references to Eleni’s external appearance. She is constantly reminded by old associates of her youthful looks, as if time has left no mark on her. This shows the static nature of the character Eleni. Her development was curtailed the day Achilles left for the mountains. Eleni is depicted as the eternal twenty year old who will remain forever Achilles’ FiancCe. She is unable to escape this image that others have imposed upon her. Irony emerges in the gap between appearance and reality for Eleni, the person, has long since outgrown the role of Achilles’ FiancCe. Her relationship with Achilles has become fossilized. Eleni remains Achilles “fiancCe” even when she is his wife. He, himself unaltered, does not entertain the possibility that Eleni may have changed during their long years of separation. He expects the same girl to whom he said good-bye in Athens and he assumes that their reunion will be automatic. Eleni, however, knows otherwise: “Now I’m lost, Achilles. Now you’ll have to find me again” (173). Having spent such a long time apart and so little time together, Eleni feels it is imperative that they talk. But with Achilles there can be no discussion on any matter. The lack of communication finally deadens their marriage as far as Eleni is concerned. Eleni has matured considerably since the time when she was sixteen and fell in love with Achilles. She is now a sensitive woman seeking a partner with whom she can discuss the problems that disturb her. Eleni’s personal development and Achilles’s lack of it render them no longer compatible. “If I had the mentality of the seventeen-year-old Eleni, of Achilles’ fiande, I’d get on fine with him. But I’ve come a long way since then, I even read Tolstoy!” (250). Eleni’s relationship with Achilles is reduced to a formality, a habit. In Paris, Eleni feels that inside herself, if not officially, she has been divorced for a long time. Yet, once again we see how circum-
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stances conspire against Eleni, preventing her from breaking out of an oppressive and obsolete role. “If Achilles were not in prison, she’d have asked him for a divorce. To get rid of the title ‘Achilles’fiancCe’ that still hung over her” (236). The inner aspect of the protagonist is represented by Daphne, the name that is used only by her closest friends. Achilles has no connection whatsoever with Daphne. He does not share in his wife’s inner world of thoughts and feelings. Eleni feels that she has been deprived of the opportunity to be her true self out in the open. She has been coerced into assuming another identity. “They changed my name too; they called me Eleni, so that no-one would recognise me. Fortunately there were witnesses who knew about Daphne: Andreas, Serioja, Michail Grigorevich, Jean Paul . . .” (297). Threatened with the extinction of her true identity, in an act of self-preservation, Eleni passes on the name she used to love to her daughter. Daphne is a dynamic persona who undergoes change, makes new friendships, furthers her studies, keeps abreast of the political climate, and adapts to new surroundings. Eleni becomes an increasingly burdensome persona from which the protagonist would like to be released. She would like to revert to being called Daphne. When Eugenios unexpectedly calls her “Daphnoula” Eleni replies: “-Really, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you all to call me Daphne. At least you. To change my stripes” (162). However, by the end of the novel Eleni’s attitude alters. Instead of trying to shrug off this identity she accepts that she will always be seen as Achilles’ FiancCe, as if it were engraved on her back. To spurn this identity would amount to negating the majority of her life. From the final passage of the novel it is clear that Eleni chooses Eugenios as her future partner, with whom she can be both Daphne and Eleni, thus achieving a productive synthesis of her conflicting identities. Toward the end of the novel the changes between the “Cut” and “The Horror Train” sections occur with increasing frequency as the most recent happenings in Eleni’s life are recounted. This leads up to the final passages of the novel which, although they bear the heading “The Horror Train,” deal with Eleni’s present situation. For the first time the narrator speaks in the first person when referring to the present time. This implies that Eleni has at last succeeded in integrating the past with the present. In the same way, it would appear that Eleni has achieved a reconciliation between both identities. In the “I” of the closing sections both Eleni and Daphne are subsumed. Consequently, the narrator is able to turn her thoughts to the future and proceed with her life. Nevertheless, it could be argued that Eleni at the end does not resolve her dilemmas, but instead is poised in an ambivalent position. On the one hand, she rejects the image of Achilles’ FiancCe, harking back to her youthful
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image as Daphne and on the other hand, while back in Greece, she feels nostalgia for Russia. This indecisiveness is reinforced by reviewing her past life; she even relives it when, for example, she makes love with Dinos in the same flat where Windblown had hidden almost twenty years ago. The past also invades her life at the end of the novel when she meets Franco and Laura in Hydra and finds out that Jean-Paul is now married in Canada. Rejecting the image of Achilles’s Fiancee does not entail moving on, but a regression to the past, to her earlier life, to Daphne. Her life follows a cyclical, repetitive pattern that the protagonist ultimately seems not to wish to break: “I, who wanted to make a new life! All those reminders of the past waiting for me at every corner” (354). Instead of moving on and breaking away from the past, she returns to it not only through memory, but also by naming her daughter Daphne. It is not clear to what extent the protagonist is trapped by the past or whether the past is a convenient refuge as she is not prepared to face up to the future. Eleni’s story is presented through a sequence of ‘flashbacks’, many of which are of considerable duration. Each lapse into the past is triggered by an incident in the present. The first flashback is initiated by Eugenios’s remarks as he points out to Eleni that in the nightgown she is wearing for the film being shot she looks twenty years old. He had made a similar remark many years ago when both of them were eighteen years old whereas now they are forty-two. And he continues by saying: “Then, who would have dared! You were Achilles’ fiancee” (14). This comment opens up the question of identity, which is the motivating force of the narrative. The title “Achilles’ Fiancee” resounds in Eleni’s head. Through all the years, wherever she has travelled, this name has accompanied her. Eleni’s mind is set in motion and she thinks back to how it all began, her first meeting with Achilles. She met Achilles on a train as she did Jean-Paul. She travels by train to find Achilles in Tashkent. In the rue Conflans, her Paris home, trains pass constantly through the night. Also, the film in which she is taking part is called “The Horror Train.” The train is the dominant leitmotif in the novel, the symbol of her desire for happiness and escape. Yet, she is fed up with and haunted by the trains: “I can’t bear trains any more” (162).32They represent the movement forward, the desire for something elusive, for a reunion with beloved persons and Achilles. The film, on the other hand, takes her back, it is the medium of retrospective self-analysis. Through the cinematic process, she can dissect her life in slow motion and reconsider her past. From her first meeting with Achilles onward the flashbacks continue to be evoked through association (verbal, visual, or otherwise). Flashbacks also oc32. “Trains keep chasing Eleni in her life” (p. 62).
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cur during the “Cut” sections and are chiefly concerned in this case with the fate of other characters, such as Panos and Eugenios. On several occasions the process works in reverse, “The Horror Train” sections providing a link into the “Cut” sections. This is explicitly demonstrated by the repeated phrase: “Tears don’t last long here” (195) which brings “The Horror Train” episode to a close and opens the ensuing “Cut” sequence. We can clearly see how thoughts revolve in Eleni’s head. For example, a gabardine that her daughter tries on in Paris recalls the memory of a girl who entered her cell many years earlier wearing a similar gabardine. Likewise the Moscow snow on a visit to Serioja brings her memories of Jean-Paul in Rome or an excursion to Mount Pamitha with Panos and Eugenios. Through this method of random association the reader is drawn into the workings of Eleni’s mind, into the web of people, places, and events that make up her life. Eleni relates her unique experience in a purely subjective way. Only she is capable of malung the connections she does. The sight of a large advertising poster, for example, showing a beautiful blue sea, might be insignificant for some people. Yet, for Eleni it carries a wealth of meaning and prompts her memories of being landlocked in the midst of the vast Russian steppe. Although the flashbacks proceed chronologically, the scenes presented are essentially determined by the progression of Eleni’s thoughts. The narrative structure is obviously carefully contrived, yet for the most part maintains a feeling of easy spontaneity. Eleni seems fettered by the past as Anna’s reproach makes clear: “You remember everything from the old days” (358). She cannot help remembering, for her memories rise up involuntarily. The very fact that her past is called up against her will signifies that Eleni’s narrative has no ulterior motive in a political sense. At no point is Eleni’s tone of voice dogmatic or insistent. On the contrary, she talks with warmth and sensitivity, in an unhurried manner that altogether befits a narrative of selfexploration. It has been said that metonymy, a trope of contiguity and relation, is a favored trope for female self-representation and metaphor, a trope of hierarchy and identity, a favored trope for male self-repre~entation.~~ Feminist critics argue that female autobiographies represent the self in relation to others, as metonymy places the emphasis in the context and the horizontal axis of meaning and not on the vertical axis as metaphor does, which isolates an ideal or essential self. Hence metaphor and metonymy are seen as patriarchal and feminist tropes respectively. Though this rhetorical distinction could be applied in 33. Leigh Gilmore (op. cit., pp. 69-82) discusses this issue with reference to two influential texts on autobiography:James Olney’s Metaphors of Self: the Meaning ofAutobiography (1972) and Paul de Man’s “Autobiography as De-facement.”Modern Language Notes 94 (1979): 919-30.
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some cases, in other female narratives, such as those of Douka and Zei, selfhood is defined as both relational and ontological. Particularly in Zei’s novel selfhood is presented as both constructed and authentic, temporal and ideal, partaking to the mechanics of metonymy and the idealism of metaphor. Achilles’ Fiancke is a novel with a complex structure in which the content is reflected in its form, and its ‘cinematic’style suggests that the past cannot be recovered, but can only be represented, thus substituting the desire for recovery with the possibility of representation as its mode of production. Throughout the novel there are many references to making a film about Eleni’s life. Genevieve, Achilles’s lawyer, pictures Eleni and Achilles as a Tristan and Isolde pair of tragic lovers, whose love for each other remains steadfast, despite seemingly insuperable obstacles. Eleni, however, is horrified at Genevieve’s romantic scenario for it bears no relation to her actual experiences. Thus, we can see that Eleni objects to the distortion of truth and maintains a realistic attitude. She counters Genevieve by pointing out: “You shouldn’t just look at the romantic side of the story. There are enormous difficulties and problems for two people who separate under circumstances and meet again, years later. . . ” (290). By contrast, Eugenios encourages Eleni to make a film about these very problems, about her real-life struggles: “You should have told this Genevieve to make a film about your real life, with your wanderings, your problems with Achilles, with the real you; it would be more interesting and more modem too” (3 12). The allusion to filmmaking is taken up again by Eugenios, who asks Eleni at which shots she would pause if she could watch her life on a monitor. Her responses are telling: she would freeze-frame herself and Jean-Paul in the courtyard in the monastery in Assisi, the moment she first saw Daphnoula, her return to Greece as well as her arrival in Moscow, when Serioja emerged from behind a bunch of roses. These are some of the most poignant scenes in the novel. Although it may be an ironic device, Eleni does not feel bitter about her past, nor is she seeking to over-dramatize her life. However, the cinematic parallels extend below the surface action, since the work is essentially concerned with questions of image, of how people are perceived by others in terms of ‘characters’, as if they are playing a role which is imposed upon them, rather than being ‘themselves’.This variable perception of reality depends upon the point of view of the observer, and the novel describes how, over a period of some twenty years, the perceived image of people, political beliefs and parties, even whole countries, alters as a result of the characters themselves changing. That people are sometimes unable to see beyond or beneath their own stereotypes serves to illustrate how Greece has been adversely affected by political polarization since the Second World War. The cinematic aspect of the novel highlights this need for flexibility and open-mindedness.
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The cinema ‘cuts’ emphasize temporal sequence and development, thus countering the notion of transcendent self lying ‘behind’ the surface. “In fact, according to Eisenstein, it is precisely such a discontinuity between shots that is of the essence of cinematic montage, and in postmodern narrative, such a discontinuity is taken on, as a challenge to the notion of a ‘real’ identity or self-sameness that underpins various mystifying or “disguised ‘appeara n c e ~ ’ . ’ ‘Reality’ ’~~ depends upon one’s point of view, and as such it can be manipulated to present a particular image. The novel often emphasizes this creation of ‘truth’ by comparison with the cinematic process in which Eleni becomes involved; the director of “The Horror Train” selects the shot he requires, sets up the appropriate scenes and angles in order to create a specific illusion. Similarly, within the book, “Achilles’s FiancCe” creates an image of “a tortured girl who’d lived through jail, the underground, through horror. A woman who had waited endlessly to meet her beloved, her guerrilla leader, her hero” (127). Such, at least was the expectation of Marie-ThCrkse, who is sent by the French Communist Party to meet Eleni when she goes to Paris on her way to the Soviet Union. Instead, however, “she was presented with a young creature . . . a little crumpled from the long days of travelling, but with a fresh young face” (127). Nevertheless, Marie-Therese “presents” Eleni “to the ‘French women’ at a public meeting,” making her dress to look “like a schoolgirl going to recite her poem at the school picnic,” and telling her to wear her hair in such a way as to make her face look severe. Thus, with the image created, Marie-Therese presents her as “a heroine, the fiancCe of the guerrilla leader,” and tells her to give them the story of her experiences in the Transit Branch, where she had been imprisoned for being Achilles’s fiande; she speaks to them of the young girls who were executed, and of Matina, who sees her friends die but is spared herself in order to sign a confession. The presentation succeeds in its aims: “They applaud me. I become a heroine without having died, because I told them how some young girls died, the same age as me” (131). Whereas Eleni resists the images others have made of her, Achilles lives up to his image as the fearless guerrilla leader. It is debatable to what extent Achilles himself is trapped within this identity, though at no point does he seem dissatisfied with his role. Alki Zei’s rich use of irony is particularly effective in portraying the illusions people entertain of one another. As a director chooses his scenes, so Marie-Therese uses the ‘character’of Achilles’s FiancCe to achieve the desired effect. This use points to the fact that an author employs much the same techniques as a film director in selecting and depicting a scene in the desired manner, so that the reader is intended to be affected 34. Docherty, op. cit., p. 179.
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in much the same way as the audience in Paris. Achilles’ Fiancke is indeed concerned with the nature of images and of the perception of other people. According to Rita Felski “the Bildungsroman is a teleological genre in which the goal of self-knowledge provides the endpoint from which all aspects of the text gain their significance in terms of the developmental plot.”35 In the narratives of Douka and Zei, which can be seen as a kind of female Bildungsromun, autonomy and independence outweigh social integration. The process of self-recognition is more important than that of development since female identity tends to be perceived as inherently present, an authentic self waiting to be discovered. As has been suggested earlier both novels have an overall circular pattern, returning at their close to their starting point. Within this pattern the narrative unfolds following the recurrent pattern of the narrators’ thoughts. A straightforward chronological approach is not adopted and it is the reader’s responsibility to establish a linear sequence of events. The plot of inner development traces a discontinuous, circular path which, rather than moving forward, culminates in a return to origins, thereby distinguishing itself from the traditional plot outlines of the Bildungsroman. With this circularity, structures of repetition rather than structures of progression come to dominate the plot.36
Moreover, this circular pattern relates to the theme of identity in the sense that both protagonistsharrators are caught in the vicious circle that leads from their past to their present and back to past self.37 The question arises as to the reliability of the narrator in each case. Not only do we encounter an autodiegetic narrator, but also a story told through recollection. Yet, Eleni in Achilles’ Fiuncke does not try to conceal the fact that she views the past from a personal and subjective angle. Within this perspective, however, Eleni’s vision is presented as clear and the reconstruction of events detailed due to her unfading memory. When it comes to the violent clashes between rival factions of Greek exiles in Tashkent, Eleni appears to be able to reconstruct the scenes vividly in all their details. The case of Myrsini in Fool’s Gold is somewhat more problematic. Myrsini is the only consciousness in the novel, as is Eleni in Achilles’ Fiancke. How35. Felski, “The Novel of Self-Discovery,” 139. 36. Marianne Hirsch, “Spiritual Bildung: The Beautiful Soul as Paradigm,” in Abel, et al. op. cit., p. 26. 37. In narratives of self-discovery the pattern of movement tends to be circular as “identity is not a goal to be worked toward, as in the Bildungsroman, but a point of origin, an authentic and whole subjectivity from which the protagonist has become estranged.” Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 143.
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ever in Fool’s Gold, no other character is given the opportunity to speak, whereas in Achilles’ Fiancke a kind of dialogic form is maintained throughout. All dialogue in Fool’s Gold is absorbed into Myrsini’s monologue, allowing more scope for misrepresentation. Unlike Eleni, Myrsini herself doubts the accuracy of her account. On the very first page she admits: “So I keep on losing the thread, never quite get things right, and when I catch up with myself, by then it’s too late” (9). Toward the end of her narrative, Myrsini again expresses dissatisfaction with her efforts. I’ve had the impression throughout of constantly leaving things half said, whatever I’ve wanted to say would involuntarily take off into vagueness, I can’t help it, suppose I was afraid to go the whole way, this is the best I could do. And so I’ve been left throughout with the bitter feeling that was all hot air (309).
Myrsini on several occasions revokes the statement she has previously made. Yet, this tendency toward negation and the contradictory nature of her narrative does not denote falseness, but arises from the painstaking attempt to be as truthful as possible. Myrsini is aware of her inclination to make grandiose resolutions and is openly self-critical. As she tells us, she is in the habit of subjecting herself to cross-examination. In denying some of her former remarks, Myrsini is at the same time rejecting the way she felt and thought at that point in time. Consequently as the narrative proceeds, Myrsini’s struggle with herself unfolds and we can follow the various stages in her self-development. It is, therefore, apparent that neither of the narrators is trying to give an exaggerated portrait of themselves. By no means do they wish to depict themselves as resolute mythical heroines. Indeed they are anxious to dispel such illusions. Eleni and Myrsini highlight their insecurities and doubts and both express a similar feeling of aimlessness. Myrsini admits: “I was all at sea at this time, practically in a panic” (157) and Eleni confesses “I don’t know if I’m floating between the sky and the earth, but I’m floating somewhere” (323). The frank way in which each narrator speaks about herself is striking; it is this candid tone of voice that leaves a lasting impression on the reader. Thus the overwhelming concern of the narrative mode in both novels is what may be termed authentic subjectivity, whereby the inner reality is reproduced as accurately as possible.
SUBJECTIVEHISTORY AND FEMALE DIFFERENCE The metafktional strategies used in the two novels do not finally displace ‘history’ and ‘character’ as material constructions that bear a meaningful relationship to actual social practices. The stones are neither mimetic representation
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nor simply the play of signification and therefore cannot easily be classified within the dominant aesthetic categories of realism, modernism, or postmodernism. The two novels explore the tensions and boundaries between the public and the private, the personal and the political in a similar way to that of some feminist thinkers.38According to Jean Bethke Elshtain “women were silenced in part because that which defines them and to which they are inescapably linkedsexuality, natality, the human body (images of uncleanness and taboo, visions of dependency, helplessness, vulnerability)-was omitted from political speech. Why? Because politics is in part an elaborate defense against the tug of the private, against the lure of the familial, against evocations of female power.’’3yPolitics traditionally has been considered the man’s sphere and the two novels confirm and at the same time challenge this view, inviting the reader to rethink the political as personal. It could be argued that the most salient and fascinating aspect of these novels is the foregrounding of the inner as opposed to external reality. This feature brings both texts closer to the novel of awakening. As Rita Felski argues: “A nostalgic vision of an authentic subjectivity opposed to and subversive of the norms and values of modem social existence is strongly in evidence in the novel of awakening, which typically contains a number of explicitly Romantic motifs.”40 Myrsini struggles with herself more so than against the dictatorship, just as Eleni is concerned with reinstating herself amidst the political turmoil. Both are above all preoccupied with self-discovery in their endeavour to reexamine their past in order to come to terms with their identity. Myrsini, however, tends to deny her past whereas Eleni explores it more positively in order to reconcile her two images. The purpose of their reflections is not to establish historical fact but to find out the truth about themselves. It is significant that the historical events per se have minimal import. Only in relation to a particular person do they take on meaning. The novels could therefore be regarded as personal histories, as the emphasis is not on the events themselves but on their consequences for the i n d i ~ i d u a l . ~ ~ Despite the emphasis placed on subjectivity by Mar0 Douka and Alki Zei, they never lose sight of the specific historical context. On one level, Myrsini and Eleni act as spokespersons for their respective generations, their experi38. Douka’s and Zei’s novels can also be compared to those of the German writer Christa Wolf who in a similar manner interweaves personal and public history in her novels. 39. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), 15-16. 40. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 145. 41. Mairi Leontsini in her article, “ ~ O ~V d i q x oTOV d ~ o w L: ~ E O A O Y ~ pli8os U, KUL L E P ~ T ~ ) T U a71-pAPPLXPWYLUTLKLC~ TOV AXLAACLXT ~ ’SA h ~ q sZCq,” NCa E u ~ i avol. , 147, no. 1723 (May 2000): 772-96 argues that Eleni-Daphne transcends the objective and dispassionate presentation of History in order to highlight its subjective dimension (p. 795).
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ences being broadly representative of those of their contemporaries. T P comes across most clearly in Achilles’ Fiancke. Eleni remarks at the beginning and the end of the novel that: “No-one of our generation had time. War, December, Civil war, dictatorship” (358).Eleni, like her friends, has not been able to plan her future, for the course of her life has been determined by the events themselves: “It was the facts themselves that had made the decisions about her life” (275). The characters in the two novels seem to be prey to events, to lose their will for independent action, but at the same time events serve as an excuse to people for not acting or for not resisting their course. In Fool’s Gold Myrsini is caught between the disintegration of her family and the disintegration of the political system. She desperately seeks an anchor and a clear orientation by going through a therapeutic process of self-analysis: “I’d analyse myself and feel my nightmares formally registered, as if by doing so I could freeze them into a harmless narrative, into something that the brain could control” (203). The disintegration of the state institutions and of her family make her seek inside herself the stability and security which are denied by external reality. Politics can build up deceptive relationships, but it can also conceal problems of personal communication fostering the illusion that people are compatible with one another.42Politics in the novel brings together and separates people, determining their lives and causing uncertainties about their feelings. It also highlights social cleavages and class barriers, pointing to the discrepancy between the public and the private sphere. By means of the rambling and often vague way in which she relates her story, Myrsini, as has already been said, is not striving to prove or disprove anything; she is simply trying to learn about herself. Her confused state of mind is exactly what the narrative aims to portray. Thus, she does not present us with a clear, factual reconstruction of events. If she were at pains to produce an accurate documentation of the events, or indeed to vindicate a political standpoint, one would expect her narrative to consist of an ordered exposition of the proceedings supported by rational argument. Myrsini, however, surrenders herself to the twisting train of her thoughts and, as she confesses from the outset, she is unashamedly self-indulgent: “The honest truth is that during these last months I’ve kept myself on a pretty loose rein, I’ve enjoyed myself turning over the pages of the past” (10). Once again we can see how Myrsini’s individual wishes are paramount; her narrative is propelled by the desire for self-gratification. Eleni also overtly states that her account would be of little use to a historian due to its intensely subjective perspective: “Except that this re-play wouldn’t help any historian, because she, 42. “The door opened and when I caught sight of him, I was the one I was sorry for; after all the grille that had separated us had also been a protection” (p. 216).
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just like the director of The Horror Train, is looking at it from her own angle of the set” (218). Though in Fool’s Gold there are frequent explicit references to various politicians, events, and dates, in Achilles ’ Fiancke, by contrast, such references are oblique. Dates, for example, are rarely stated, the only exceptions to this being 12 October 1944, when the German forces were driven out of Athens, and 21 April 1967, the advent of the dictatorship. Admittedly, repeated mention is made of December ‘44 and May ‘68. These dates delineate the main time frame of the novel, but as we will see, they have a deeper resonance that goes beyond their function as specifications of time. Throughout Achilles’ Fiancke we come across references to certain major events which, although not clearly specified, can be readily recognized and dated by the reader: the death of Stalin in 1953, the speech by Nikita Khrushchev denouncing Stalin in 1956, the first spaceflight by Yuri Gagarin in 1961, the Prague Spring of 1968. As in Fool’s Gold, these references establish a firm connection between the narrative and historical reality. In Achilles ’ Fiancke, however, Alki Zei transcends these limits. There are several allusions to less well-known incidents that the average reader may well have difficulty identifying. These include the fighting between vying camps of Communist Greek exiles in Tashkent in 1955,43between those opposing and supporting the leader of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) Nikos Zahariadis.@ Zahariadis is never mentioned by name but is referred to as the “LEADER of LEADERS.” Furthermore, Alki Zei creates several characters who bear a resemblance to certain ‘real’ people yet who do not correspond in every detail. The character “Windblown” (Anemodarmenos) can be identified with reasonable certainty with Nikos Ploumbidis, the undercover chief of one of the outlawed Communist Party organizations in Athens. Ploumbidis, like Windblown, underwent arrest (November 1952), trial (July 1953), and execution (14 August 1954). The identification is further supported by the fact that after his arrest, Ploumbidis was denounced by the Greek Communist Party on their radio station as a traitor.45The KKE later claimed that he had not been executed but helped to escape to South America. These points are consistent with the fate of Windblown in the novel. The most striking inconsistency with the real-life Ploumbidis is pre43. For the clashes in Tashkent in September 1955 see Gavrilis Lambatos, ’ E h A ~ p xVOALTLKO~ (Athens: Courier Ekdotiki 2001). 44. See Spyros Linardatos, AVO TOV E ~ ’ ~ & ~UTT A L Xo O ~ V T voi. ~ , 3 (1955-1961) (Athens: Papazisis, 1978), 102-11. KCYL Y L ( Y TU~ K ~ W U C ~TO V N ~ KM O V E A O ~ LK (~Y LVTOVF ~ C~VVT~@W 45. See Tasos Vournas, IIOLOL TOV (Athens: Tolidis, 1981). Potis Paraskevopoulos, 0 A v O p o ~ ~oC ~ L ETO yapCcpaAAo (Athens: Kaktos, 1980), and Spyros Linardatos, A?rO TOV ~ p ( p i j A ~u0 q X O C V T ~ ,vol. 1 (1949-1952) and vol. 2 (1952-1955) (Athens: Papazisis, 1977 and 1978). m p c j u q w y ~uqv ~ T ~ u K ~(1949-1957) vS~
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cisely Windblown’s most characteristic feature, his long hair. Ploumbidis was, in reality, balding. Another character, Kostis, bears similarities to Dimitris Batsis, the distinguished economist who was arrested in October 1951 in connection with the Beloyannis affair. Batsis was a member of society circles as Kostis is in the novel. Contrary to the narrative of the novel, Batsis and Ploumbidis were not in league with one another nor were they apprehended together.46Thus Alki Zei deliberately links two incidents that were not in actual fact related. One of the most problematic characters in terms of identification is “The Lion of Denfert.” Unlike Windblown, he represents the official Communist Party and in this capacity he can be seen to combine elements of several prominent KKE functionaries (Yannis Ioannidis, Dimitris Vlantas, and Kostas Koliyannis). His physical appearance, separation from his Greek wife, and marriage to a young Russian girl cannot be linked with any known person. Indeed it would appear that The Lion of Denfert is intended as a composite figure, a stereotypical Stalinist official, laclung in integrity. Interestingly, in Fool’s Gold, Zahariadis, Beloyannis, and Batsis are all mentioned overtly, their names cropping up in the rhetoric of various characters, whereas in Achilles’ FiuncLe Alki Zei goes one step further by recreating some of the political figures of the period in fictional form. Once again the personal drama comes to the fore. The most important information we are given about Windblown and Kostis is that they are close friends of Eleni’s and that she feels great affection for them. Her feelings toward them are the only evidence she can muster of their innocence. Yet this proves to be their best defense in the long run, as demonstrated in the way Eleni is able to rehabilitate Kostis in the eyes of his daughter, Sophoula. In Eleni’s fond remembrances both Windblown and Kostis are vindicated, though on a purely personal level of course. We can therefore see how Mar0 Douka and Alki Zei do not confine their writing to a documentary approach to history. Even more than Mar0 Douka, Alki Zei blurs the distinction between fact and fiction for thematic purposes. The interaction and overlapping of private and public spheres in the two texts construct an autobiographical marginal space, an ‘inbetween’ realm where public histories and personal stories coexist in fusion, being stripped of the traditional connotations of superiority and inferiority. In both novels the concept of time is more significant than actual dates. Myrsini has her own private way of dating her life: “I was mixed up with Paul, and that’s how I put a date to the events of my life; Before Paul, After Paul” (11). Remarkably she does not make the distinction one would perhaps expect of “Before the dictatorship” and “After the dictatorship.” It would 46. Ibid.
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seem that for Myrsini personal relationships have more relevance than political events. More so than Myrsini, Eleni, the older woman, is preoccupied with the idea of time. She measures her life primarily in terms of days. As a child on holiday she kept thirty-one pebbles in a tin. She would count down the days by throwing one pebble into the sea each evening. There are many references to Eleni’s idiosyncratic way of counting time, the most striking being the twenty times twenty days she waits for her visa in Rome and the three hundred and forty two Saturdays she telephones Liza from Moscow. It becomes apparent that Eleni has a unique way of registering time that retains a certain childlike simplicity of tone.47For the purposes of self-orientation Eleni translates time into units relevant to her particular circumstances. Moreover, time acquires a special meaning for Eleni. For Achilles’ FiancCe the abstract notion of ‘forever’ becomes actuality, in the sense of finality rather than eternity. Eleni must face the fact that she may never return to Rome, or to Greece, or see her mother again. As with history, the passage of time is understood in relation to the life of an individual. Bearing this in mind, the key dates of December 1944 and May 1968 come to stand for stages in Eleni’s life rather than particular events in history. Whereas December seemed to ‘belong’ to her, May appears ‘foreign’ to her. The student uprising in Paris in 1968 is the preserve of her daughter, Daphnoula, the next generation. Eleni’s time of “we fight and sing” has passed. In December 1944 Eleni was an eighteen-year-old girl, infatuated with Achilles, so sure of everything, unafraid. In May 1968 she is a mature woman in her forties with more sceptical insight into life. The world no longer appears so secure and certain to her. The juxtaposition of these two dates thus serves to show how Eleni’s outlook on life has changed dramatically through the years. The notion of ‘relationality’has played an important role in theorizing female subjectivity in autobiographical writing. An ego psychologist Nancy Chodorow has argued that feminine personality includes a definition of self in relation and connection to other people more than masculine personality does. That is, in psychoanalytic terms, women are less individuated than men and tend to have more flexible or permeable ego boundaries: “The basic feminine sense of self is connected to the world, the basic masculine sense is separate.”48According to her, a girl has more fluid ego boundaries than a boy because she does not have to resist her early identification with the mother. By developing less of a desire to sense her difference from the mother, the girl child develops a fluid interface between self and others. Though Chodorow’s 47. It should be noted here that Alki Zei is primarily an accomplished writer of children’s stones. 48. Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 169.
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theory has been criticized for universalizing the developmental process and not paying enough attention to cultural specificities, it contributed to the perception of female identity as grounded in interpersonal relationships. A similar notion of female ‘relationality’and permeability of ego boundaries seems to be at work in the narratives of Douka and Zei. Myrsini and Eleni commit themselves primarily to people and not to abstract ideals. Myrsini had first of all joined the Centrist Youth Movement in order to meet people, regarding it as a social club rather than a political organization. Through her boyfriend, Paul, Myrsini comes to join the Left, becoming a member of the Lambrakis Youth. She declares that she was happy in this group for she liked the other members. In Achilles ’Fiancke the young Eleni blithely goes along to her first meeting with Panos with no thought of resistance in her head; instead she anticipates her first kiss from a boy. Thus neither Myrsini nor Eleni becomes involved with political groups on her own initiative, nor out of an excess of ideological fervor. Both women continue to connect ideas to people. In retrospect Myrsini realises that it was not the ideas themselves she took exception to, but the individuals who propounded them, such as Fondas and Fotis. Eleni too does not make distinctions along political lines but simply separates the likeable from the unlikeable characters. Eleni and Myrsini stand in opposition to their partners, Achilles and George, who place politics before people. The intimate friendships which Eleni enjoys are, however, exactly what Myrsini is seeking to establish. The two novels are concerned with gender relationships and offer more examples of sterile relationships than fruitful ones. In both novels there are numerous examples of male insensitivity. Myrsini’s boyfriend Paul is described by her as being “forever unsharing and uncaring in the ordeal of human love” (18). Achilles also is the epitome of blinkered thought; for him, all issues are black or white, and he has unquestioning faith in the Communist leadership. He is unable to see any faults in the Soviet system, and loyally accepts its treatment of him. In both novels the difference between male and female modes of thought is exposed. The majority of male characters have a propensity for logical arguments, often for the sake of argument itself, for example Fondas and Fotis in Fool’s Gold and Panos and Eugenios in Achilles’Fiancke, The female characters by contrast relate first and foremost to people rather than ideas, encouraging communication rather than dispute. Perhaps one exception is Rodhia in Achilles’ Fiuncke. In addition, the male process of thought proceeds in a straightforward, clear-cut manner whereas the female characters allow their thoughts to wander at will. The men in the novels tend to be opinionated and inflexible in their opinions, however, the women are characteristically openminded and undecided. Myrsini recognizes the gap between her view of life
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and the uncomplicated outlook of her male contemporaries: “Both of them, when they spoke of life seemed to understand by it a river emptying into the ocean. But tributaries that run dry and never reach that great resting place, the brooks that only just make it, now losing themselves, now barely perceptible as an underground trickle, they’d never thought of, but chose to ignore them instead” (239). She tends to be more artistic, as she reads poetry and cares more for the appearance of the political brochures rather than their content as the men do. They in turn tend to be hard, unsupportive, and single-minded. Men tend to lead in politics, women simply follow, often confused or lost as the case of Elvira testifies in Fool’s Gold. 49 Women seem to be obsessed with men (e.g., Myrsini’s mother obsession with Alexis). This obsession is not so much sexual as an expression of insecurity and of the need for emotional attachment. They tend to live with the memories of the past and express their anxieties through dreams (Myrsini). The protagonists of both novels gradually grow out of their dependency on their male partnerships though earlier they were prone to fantasizing about them. This is, however, a characteristic restricted to their youthful, naive days. As a schoolgirl, the protagonist in Zei’s novel would adorn the margins of her schoolbooks with the name “ACHILLES ACHILLES.” She was in awe of her bold kupetunios, her only horizon being his back in his saddle-bag jacket. In the same way, Myrsini admired Paul, Dimitris, and George. In the process of growing up both girls leave behind such childish infatuations and acquire a more discerning view of the world. The adult Eleni is no longer enraptured by the hero figure, and, as she tells us, is quite capable of falling in love with someone who is afraid of war. Myrsini, on seeing the clusters of wide-eyed and admiring girls around Paul, soberly recognizes herself as she once was. The tendency towards idealism and romanticism is more pronounced in Myrsini. She sets Dimitris on a pedestal as the embodiment of the revolutionary worker. She is crestfallen when he allows himself to be exploited by becoming a migrant worker in Germany. Myrsini’s problem is that of reconciling her grand socialist ideals with the realities of everyday life: “But I couldn’t easily reconcile the practicalities of ordinary living, and its ineluctable difficulties, with the socialist ideals that kept buzzing in my head” (286). She is all too easily entranced by the scenarios she dreams up in her mind. In the course of her narrative Myrsini comes to the realization that she has fallen in love with the sufferings of others. She perceives that her confusion stems from her fantasies: “But when it came down to it, who thought in that way of me? I was always at sea among fantasies of other people” (203). 49. “Fotis was the most well-read communist I ever met. Elvira hadn’t a clue, but nonetheless followed him in everything, she ticked me off for being ‘revisionist’because I admired the Soviets” (p. 88).
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Myrsini’s lasting achievement is that she finally comes to terms not only with her own faults but those of others too: “And it came to me with clarity that all my life I had never been able to accept people for what they were, to respect their equilibrium and their choices; whatever didn’t fit with my own psychological make up I’d refuse to accept, which is not to say that I did so easily” (309). The taboo subject of female sexuality is alluded to in Achilles ’ Fiuncke by Achilles’s refusal to believe that Eleni could possibly have had sexual relations with another man during their lengthy separation. Yet it is perfectly acceptable to him that he sought out female companions to gratify his sexual desire. Furthermore, in Achilles ’ Fiunce‘e the widely held belief that a child can save the parents’ marriage is exploded. The birth of Daphnoula does not bring Achilles and Eleni closer together but causes Eleni to withdraw further from her husband and bestow her affection on her daughter. It must, however, be added that Alki Zei also includes models of male sensitivity in her novel, above all in the figure of Serioja. Eleni’s deeply fulfilling relationship with Serioja transcends the realm of a traditional male-female sexual relationship thereby implying the limited nature of the latter: “ We feel a great love for each other. It’s certainly not sexual loveit goes beyond that” (158). In conclusion it can be argued that neither Myrsini nor Eleni should be mistaken as alter egos for Mar0 Douka or Alki Zei respectively. Although the details of the authors’ lives are in many respects analogous to those of their protagonists, neither novel should be considered solely as autobiography. On the other hand, autobiography, as Leigh Gilmore points out, “emerges as a special case in the definition of subjectivity because it interiorizes the specular play between the producer/producing and the produced.”50Both texts can be seen as sharing the idea that autobiography can become ‘the text of the oppressed’, articulating through individual stories sentiments and experiences that may be representative of a wider group. Women’s autobiographical writing can often work both ways: “testifying to oppression and empowering the subject through their cultural inscription and re~ognition.”~’ Both authors have obviously drawn on their own experiences and emotions in writing the novels, yet they have chosen to fictionalize their experiences and thus to offer them to a wider female identifying audience. In this way they are not restricted to chronicling accurately the ineluctable facts of their own lives but are free to explore the inner quandaries of their characters. The two texts are concerned less with realistic representation “than with 50. Gilmore, op. cit., p. 71. 51. Linda Anderson, Autobiogruphy (New York: Routledge, 2001), 104
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the evocation of a symbolic realm which echoes and affirms the subject’s inner being.”52 This represents a new method of coming to terms with problematic recent Greek history. Both writers display an awareness that an objective record of history cannot be achieved. Even if this were possible the results would be of little worth for the facts themselves are ultimately meaningless. History does not exist in a vacuum and it is thus far more valuable to disclose, by means of empathetic imagination, the way in which external circumstances affect individual development. It should be stressed, however, that unlike Leonis or The Sun of Death (discussed in chapter 4) which may be categorized as narratives of historical or social conformity, these two novels are narratives of selfhood. These four novels (discussed in chapter 4 and 9) do not simply represent a transition from masculinity to femininity, but they also show how the Bildungsroman as a genre has changed over the years. If the emergence of the genre has been linked to modernity, now as modernity gives way to postmodernity it also undergoes transformation. Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century critics defined the Bildungsroman as a patriarchal, national genre that took pride of place in the new literary canon. Much recent Bildungsroman criticism follows along the lines of the postmodern critique of modernity: it is feminist, international, and questions distinctions between elite and popular fiction in an effort to rehabilitate forgotten works by viewing literature as part of a larger social n e t ~ o r k . ’ ~
Traditional definitions of the Bildungsroman consider an accommodation between the individual and society an essential chracteristic of the genre that defines its teleological character. With the decline of the male Bildungsroman and the rise of the female form of the genre, the teleological character of the genre comes into question. As Esther Kleinbord Labovitz points out: With the male Bildungsroman thought to be disappearing in contemporary society, and no longer a viable genre for a pluralistic and fragmented society, where the concept of Bildung is being undermined and cannot be upeheld in its former cultural context, the belated arrival of the female Bildungsroman invites comparison and contra~t.’~
The four novels discussed in this study illustrate to some extent the transition from the male to female version of the Bildungsroman and provide the ground52. Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics, 144. 53. Todd Kontje, The German Bildungsroman: History of a National Genre (Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1993), 11 1. 54. Labovitz, op. cit., p. 8.
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work for a review of the development of the genre in Greece within the wider context of social change. Though Douka’s and Zei’s novels seem to rely upon the romance plot (and Achilles’Fiancke more so than Fool’s Gold), they represent a critique of its customary resolution: the dialectic of romantic love and quest is utilized and undermined at the same time. Both narratives aspire to contribute to the project of twentieth-centurywomen writers in rejecting the alternating endings of marriage and death that are their cultural legacy from nineteenth-century literature by offering alternative patterns of closure.55By emphasizing the process of awakening rather than learning, female narratives of self-discovery run the danger of idealizing the recovery of an essential, hidden, and authentic self. They seem to conceptualize “female identity as an essence to be recovered rather than a goal to be worked toward.”56Though the process of self-understanding,undertaken by the protagonists of the two novels, is individual and inward, it neither leads nor aspires to total social withdrawal. In other words, self-understanding in these two novels cannot be seen as an end to itself, but as a basis for future negotiation between the individual and society, the outcome of which is projected beyond the bounds of the text.
5.5. Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Writing beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century Women Writers (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 198.5). According to Rita Felski “in postulating marriage or death as the necessary telos of the ‘heroine’s text’, the eighteenth-century novel directly confronts the question of the social possibilities available to women and answers it with an emphatic finality. The contemporary feminist novel does not usually supply any such closure; the question of how personal female identity is to be adequately integrated into a new social identity is often left unanswered.” Felski, “The Novel of Self-Discovery,’’ 136. 56. Ibid, 142.
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Chapter Ten
”Mosc6v-Selim” and The Life of Ismail Ferik Pasha: Narratives of Identity and the Semiotic Chora
The comparative reading of two texts of the same or different literatures is usually justified by reference to three considerations. Firstly, both texts might presuppose an earlier text(s) as a common source; secondly, one of them could have influenced, directly or indirectly, the composition of the other; and, thirdly, both texts may share or evoke some thematic, ideological, structural, or discursive affinity without this necessarily suggesting an interaction or a mutual reliance on some common denominator. If I had to justify my parallel reading of Georgios Vizyenos’s and Rhea Galanaki’s texts on these grounds, I would ultimately have to resort to the latter, although it does not entirely cover this case. The parallel reading of two texts does not necessarily have to result in the revealing of underlying connections nor should it make uncovering them an end in itself. Without assuming any organic relationship in the form of an influence or even of a distant echo, a reading of one text may help us to see another from a different angle by shedding an unusual light on it or by functioning as a filter, thus generating a number of associations and previously unconsidered permutations.’ One of the reasons for deciding to discuss “Mosc6v-Selim”* and The Life
1. Without assuming any direct relationship between the two texts, Vangelis Calotychos attempts a parallel reading involving Galanaki’s novel and Orhan Pamuk‘s The White Castle in his article, “Thorns in the Side of Venice? Galanaki’s Pasha and Pamuk’s White Castle in the Global Market,” in Greek Modernism and Beyond, ed. Dimitris Tziovas (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 24340. 2. Georgios Vizyenos, “Moscbv Selim,” in M y Mother’s Sin and Other Stories, trans. William F. Wyatt (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1988). All subsequent references to the story will be made to this edition and page numbers will appear in parenthesis after each quotation. On Vizyenos one could consult the studies of Vangelis Athanasopoulos, OLpG0o~77)s loqs K ( Y L TOU &you TOU B ~ l q u O i(Athens: , Kardamitsa, 1992), Michalis Chrysanthopoulos, r ~ h p y r o skhlqzhs; M E T ( Y ~ ~ ~ ~ ( Y u T ( Y K(YL u ~ (pu$p7)s Y~ (Athens: Estia, 1994), and “Views of Vizyenos,” (articles by Margaret Alexiou, Patricia Felisa Barbeito, and George Syrimis), Journal of Modem Greek Studies 13, no. 2 (October 1995): 289-349.
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of Ismail Ferik Pasha [0vios tou Ismail Ferik PashaI3 together is that both in
one way or another constitute narratives of identity. There is, of course, a time gap of almost a century between the two, since Vizyenos’s story was published in 1895 and Galanaki’s novel in 1989. However, the action in both texts takes place in more or less the same period during the nineteenth century and both narratives present at least some shared external characteristics. I shall begin with these. First of all, both texts bear in their titles the name of their protagonist (in both cases a double name) who is taken captive, displaced from his birthplace, and later comes back. In both there is a kind of nostos, the desire to return to the homeland and revisit the past, despite the fact that this ultimately proves either impossible or fatal. In the end both protagonists die overwhelmed by nostalgia and their struggle to suppress it. Captivity and nostos form the shared backdrop and are the main factors in the duality of the two characters and their identity crises. Although the two narratives follow a straightforward chronological arrangement of events, the reader has the feeling that they are written from the perspective of hind~ight.~ Right from the beginning, the reader forms the impression that each narrative aims at completing a circle, inviting us to read it having an inkling about its end, so that we can empathize with the drama of the protagonist. Their other common characteristic is that both narratives take place in areas that are religious as well as cultural crossroads. The setting of “Mosc6vSelim” is eastern Thrace, the northern edge of the Greek world, where Christians and Muslims, Russians, Turks and Greeks clashed and coexisted, while The Life of Ismail Ferik Pasha takes place in the south, in Crete and Egypt, where again historical upheavals and cultural interactions were frequent. The intra-familial relations, too, play a moderating role in the stories: the relationship of the two brothers, their contrasting attitudes or lives, the special bond with their mother, the distant father. All these elements are catalysts for the plot and at the same time illuminating for the ethos of these narratives. In both there is a more or less unconfessed personal story and the difficulty of 3. Rhea Galanaki, The Life of Ismail Ferik Pasha, trans. Kay Cicellis (London: Peter Owen, 1996). All subsequent references to the novel will be made to this edition and page numbers will appear in parenthesis after each quotation. This novel is the first part of a trilogy (the other two being @a wroyphqo Aovi 119931 and E A C q 6 o K ( Y V C U ~[1998]) S dealing with historical personages of the nineteenth century who experience divided identities and a crisis of belonging (see chapter 1). For an analysis of Galanaki’s poetry collection The Cake see Karen Van Dyck, Kassandra and the Censors: Greek Poetry since 1967 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Comell University Press, 1998). She has also translated Galanaki’s collection in her bilingual edition The Rehearsal of Misunderstanding: Three Collections by Contemporary Greek Women Poets (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1998). 4. See D. N. Maronitis, “P&asrCihffU&K.rl: 0 pies TOU Iapaqh h p i H ~ a d , Spina nel cuoreB ~ ~ E L ~ ~ I JALC@~&J, & L s , ” no. 291 (8 July 1992): 49, reprinted in AL(YAC&LS(Athens: Stigmi, 1992), 231.
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its being told to others sometimes takes the form of a struggle between the inner and the external world and sometimes the supplanting of the one by the other: “For many years I had,” Ferik says “unawares, substituted in my memory the outer for the inner world; which meant that I had no real knowledge of all that my soul enclosed” (144). The emotional substratum is the same. The secret life, the ambivalent feelings, the untold ordeal constitute a hidden history of emotional turmoil and identity crisis, inconceivable and imperceptible within the historical process. Vizyenos’s story opens with a short preface where the narrator expresses his regrets and makes some commitments. In the first paragraph he admits he wishes he had never met the protagonist of his story, describing him as a ‘simple’ and ‘strange’ Turk who gave him too much grief to swallow, as if the daily sorrow at the fate of his fellow Greeks was not enough. This advance announcement of the narrator’s grief prepares the reader for a distressing story while at the same time the ethnicity of the narrator and that of his protagonist is distinguished. The former, addressing his by now dead hero in the form of an apostrophe, acknowledges his duty to record his account as a ‘simple chronicler’. In a confessional manner, the narrator tells us that he valued Selim as a human being and not as an inexorable enemy of his nation, although he himself runs the danger of being reproached by the fanatics of his race for not concealing the Turk’s virtue or not substituting a Christian character for him. Similarly, he confesses, his protagonist might be accused by the fanatics of his own race for confiding his life story to an infidel. Right from the beginning the narrator gives the impression that he wants to focus our attention on the difference in ethnicity between himself and his protagonist, anticipating our sympathy with his references to the sorrowful, gaunt face of the Turk or to his deep, mournful look and his doleful and trembling voice. In this way the narrator appears to have a twofold aim; on the one hand to undermine any doubts as regards the sanity of Selim and on the other to challenge the prejudice of his compatriots against foreigners and particularly Turks. Thus he introduces himself as unbiased and open-minded. After this short preface, the narrator starts describing his meeting with Selim. Quite late in the day, on an afternoon toward the end of summer (probably the summer of 1886), after a long horse ride, the narrator and his companions arrived at V., an administrative center in eastern Thrace, and they went to water their horses at KaYnhdza, a well-known spring in the middle of an otherwise desolate landscape. There he had the illusion that he “had been suddenly transposed to some small oasis on the steppes of southern Russia”(l88), and this delusion intensified when he saw at a distance a small log cabin, a sort of imitation of a Russian izba. In this cabin lived Mosc6v-Selim, a man deemed insane, because, although a Turk, he was
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crazy about the Russians, hence his nickname Mosc6v. He was strangely dressed, wearing worn-out Cossack boots, an old soldier’s topcoat that still had two or three polished Russian buttons, and the tall fez of a Turkish soldier, all signs of his confused id en tit^.^ He even addressed the narrator in Russian while the attention of the latter was drawn to the contrast between his manly stature and his trembling, languid voice combined with his deeply melancholic glance. His meeting with Selim disturbs the narrator, kindles his imagination, and makes him go to visit again the next day. They feel between them a kind of “understanding of souls” and the Turk starts relating his story. Recounting his life is a relief for him, as he had previously been unable to entrust anyone with the secret derti burdening his heart and his interlocutor-narrator is dying to find out what drove Selim to his Russophilia and his rejection of the deeply rooted Turkish national character. Selim was born of a wealthy bey family. He had two brothers, but since he was the last child and there was no sister, his mother dressed and beautified him as a girl; though proud of him, she did not take him out of the harem.6 He rarely saw his father; but despite his father’s aloofness, the boy admired him and wanted to become like him in his manly competence and activities. His mother, realizing this inclination of her son, struggled to keep him close to her at all costs. Her relationship with her son became more intense since her husband already had another wife. So, she promised to satisfy all the child’s demands on the condition that he, in turn, would give his word not to be as indifferent to her as his brothers were. The intra-familial relationships take the form of a contract of allegiance and unbroken vows. The elder brothers identify with their father and ignore their mother, while the youngest expresses limitless love for his mother, feeling at the same time trapped by his desire to demonstrate his manliness so that his father will no longer scorn him. Selim then developed an identity crisis and divided personality. On the 5. “Moskov-Selim’s crudely made costume declares national identity to be similarly ill-fitting garb. Moskov-Selim’s sartorially proclaimed ethnic hybridity, ‘a bright red sash [under] an old soldier’s topcoat’, his identification more by the hyphen than the component parts of his name, not only identifies him as a carnivalesque figure but, once again, transposes this spatial indeterminacy onto the plane of gender.” Patricia Felisa Barbeito, “Altered States: Space, Gender, and the (Un)making of Identity in the Short Stories of Georgios M. Vizyenos,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 13, no. 2 (October 1995): 31.5. 6. For issues of transvestism and dressing in Vizyenos see Michael Chryssanthopoulos, “Illusions of Transparence: Transvestism and Treason as Ways of Crossing Boundaries in Four 19th-Century Modem Greek Fictional Realist Texts,” in Nationalism and Sexualiry: Crises of Identity, eds. Yiorgos Kalogeras and Domna Pastourmatzi (Thessaloniki: Aristotle University-Hellenic Association of American Studies, 1996), 55-62 and Main Mike, “ M E T ( c x ~ ’ ~KCXL ~ E ~IOLT)TLK+ u T ~ ) UTOV B L ( ~ v ~ , ” r d p y i o s B i ( q v 6 s n p f f K T i K f f AisOvoCs ~ u v ~ S p i oyia u TV (06 KCXL TO Cpyo TOU, Komotini, 28-30 March 1997,98-118 and her book M E T C X ~ ( P L ~uw U ENLES O E A A T ~neloypacpicu LK~ (190s200s C X L W U C X(Athens: ~) Kedros, 2001), 169-76.
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one hand, his mother wanted to keep him close to her in the harem whereas he wanted to do everything possible to please his father, identifying with his older brother who was his father’s chosen son. At one point lots are drawn for conscription into the army. The eldest brother’s lot came up, but he lost heart and deserted, belying to some extent his appearance: “He resembled my father in appearance, hard and fierce on the outside, but no one believed how soft, how gentle he was at heart” (199-200). To conceal his brother’s desertion, Selim took his place. Everything happened so swiftly that Selim hardly had time to notify anyone about the exchange and suddenly he found himself in the Crimean War. During the war he was wounded in his attempt to rescue the flag from the enemy; however, instead of him receiving the decoration from the Sultan, his captain, who had abandoned his position, got it instead. He served the Sultan for seven years, and when allowed to return home he did not have the money to do so. When he eventually comes back, in a miserable state, he finds his household in a state of decline, and an old servant, who is the first person he meets, tells him what has happened during the years he was away. His brother Hasan had been killed by those pursuing him for desertion at the request of his father, while his other brother has gone east. Following the death of his son, his father had broken down, taken to drink, and neglected his house and property. His second wife has turned him against Selim as the ostensible author of the tragic events and he, believing her, has yielded more and more to drink and debauchery. When Selim comes back, hoping after all to gain his father’s love, he renounces him. Meanwhile his mother is deeply grieved by what has happened and the fate of her sons. Just before her death, she gives a diamond ring to her faithful slave Meleika, setting her free. After spending a year in prison, demanded by his father for allegedly hiding a deserter, Selim marries Meleika. Then he goes to war for two more years upon hearing that a revolt has broken out in Herzegovina. His father, having been expelled in the meantime from the harem by his second wife, realizes that Selim is the ‘child of his soul’. As the years go by Selim has three children and every time he hears about war he gets excited. When Russia enters into hostilities with the Sultan he can no longer resist; he goes as a volunteer to fight the country Turkey considered its main enemy, having developed an unbridled hatred towards the Russians. He fights with zeal, and is wounded and captured by the Russians. They look after him, heal his wounds, and eventually his fanatical hatred for the Russians is transformed into sympathy. After the positive experiences of his time in captivity, returning a free man to his homeland, he undergoes a great deal of hardship and humiliation. His wife and children have died and he himself ends up as the narrator finds him.
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Finally Selim asks the narrator to let him know if he ever hears that the Muscovites have arrived. A few months’ later the narrator learns from a doctor that Selim has suffered a stroke due to his joy upon being told by hoaxters that the Russians are coming. The narrator pays him a visit and Selim confesses that he has not suffered the stroke out of joy, but because his mind has struggled with his heart; it was impossible for him to deny his blood and to go with the Russians. The narrator reveals to him that the news was false and the Turk, happily excited, dies, while the story concludes: “A second onset of the disease had put an end to the old soldier’s trials, and the Turk remained a Turk to the last.” Reading Vizyenos’s story two questions might be raised in the reader’s mind. The first concerns the melancholic gaze of Mosc6v-Selim which is not openly discussed or attributed to any specific factor(s) and the second has to do with the extent to which the life of the protagonist is related and explained to us by the narrator. Both questions deserve special attention and could be explored through a psychoanalytical reading of the story. The key to the plot of this narrative is a double identity crisis. Initially it is a question of gender when Selim is dressed up as a girl and confined to the harem, causing him later to prove his manhood by joining the army and fighting bravely in order to gain his father’s respect. The first crisis leads to the second, that of his national identity and in the end it is this that kills him. At a primary level, identity appears to be a matter of allegiance and devotion: first to the father and secondly to the homeland. When these two allegiances are shaken, then the identity of the protagonist loses its stability.’ Thus gender identity and national identity coalesce. Yet, the end of the story highlights another, hitherto latent, aspect of identity based on the incompatibility between being and becoming.* Identity is not so much manifested or expressed by appearances (for example, Selim’s bizarre dress or his Russian izba) as determined biologically. The story seemingly represents a denial of blood ties and cultural upbringing by challenging ethnic and religious determinism; at the end, however, it celebrates their triumphant rehabilitation. At one point the narrator accepts that he had formed only one conviction about Selim, “that his jumbled attire had nothing in common with the or7. “Identity is confused in this story through an endless series of substitutions that, like Selim’s clothing, resists a single and stable origin,” Barbeito, op. cit., p. 316. For Barbeito, Vizyenos problematizes the notion of an inherent, homogeneous and unitary concept of identity through its endless deflection onto masks, figures, and poses. 8. V. Athanasopoulos (op. cit., p. 161) refers to the clash of two realities-truths in Vizyenos’s stories (pp. 173-74, 317) and argues that the only stable element in them is the presence of uncertainty, ambiguity, and ambivalence.
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dering of his ideas” (191). Difference between external appearance and innermost thought, form, and substance, is interpreted as insanity by ordinary people, as schizophrenic. And this misreading of difference, people’s refusal to see beyond the surface, is what distresses the narrator at the beginning of the story. It is not simply the unexpected death of Mosc6v-Selim which causes his distress, but rather the reluctance of people to go beyond external phenomena in order to discover the depth of his soul and his identity, and to move from sensing the surface to the knowledge of his inner world.9 Vizyenos does not attempt to cancel out the difference between reality and appearance, but to privilege the depth of the psyche at the expense of epiphenomena, to show that behind the external signs and manifestations deeper psychological reverberations occur that only the human face and the gaze can betray: “Truly some shadowy mystery-erceptible through his sad and dreamy eyes-appears to possess his internal life” (192), or elsewhere “It was then for the first time that I actually observed the expression of his eyes from close up. Never had I seen eyes so profoundly and so expressively reflecting some vague, sad disposition of soul that people usually call ‘heartsickness’ benthos kurdius]” (194). These persistent references to the ‘deep melancholic gaze’ of Mosc6v-Selim indicates in my view that for Vizyenos the face and particularly the gaze constitute the mirror of the soul. The same could be applied to emotions which are either reflected in the gaze (melancholy) or can be so powerful as to kill (in Selim’s case his joy killed him). Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia, between a ‘normal’ period of grieving and a continuing, debilitating fixation on loss could be useful here in understanding Mosc6v-Selim’s behavior. In mourning, according to Freud “it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself.”I0 Kristeva, on the other hand, does not see the melancholic subject as simply displacing hatred for an other into his or her own ego, as Freud maintained. For her, melancholia “and its more temporary variant, depression, would constitute an example of an unsuccessful 9. Roderick Beaton in his foreword to Georgios Vizyenos, My Mother’s Sin and Other Stories (op. cit., p. xiii), points out that “Vizyenos in his stories brings into question the nature of identity and of reality as constructed by reason and the senses.” 10. Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” The Standard Edition, ed. James Strachey, vol. 14 (London: Hogarth Press, 1957). 246. In his later work The Ego and the Id (1923) Freud revises the distinction between mourning and melancholia. According to Judith Butler “the identification with lost loves characteristic of melancholia becomes the precondition for the work of mourning. The two processes, originally conceived as oppositional, are now understood as integrally related aspects of the grieving process.” Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York Routledge, 1990), 62.
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separation from the mother and a failure of primary narcissism to emerge.”” The sadness of a melancholic subject would be rather the most archaic expression of an unsymbolizable, unnameable narcissistic wound, so precocious that no outside agent (subject or agent) can be used as referent. For such narcissistic depressed persons, sadness is really the sole object; more precisely it is a substitute object they become attached to, an object they tame and cherish for lack of another. In such a case, suicide is not a disguised act of war but merging with sadness and, beyond it, with that impossible love, never reached, always elsewhere, such as the promises of nothingness, of death.12
The mother, according to Kristeva, is identified with Death so as not to be shattered through the hatred the melancholic person bears against himself when he identifies with Her.I3 Moscbv-Selim, as will be shown below, indeed exhibits the symptoms of melancholia as a preoccupying state of mind that replaces or fills the space left by loss or separation. Being a melancholic subject he remains in a state of acute loss and nostalgic malady. The story consists of consecutive transformations of Selim: from an initial femininity he moves to a demonstration of his gallant masculinity while his father follows the opposite direction (213), from religious fanaticism to a sympathy for foreigners, from fantasy to reality and from devotion to comparison. His contact with foreign people opens Selim’s eyes, causing him to doubt his own identity and functioning in a revelatory way. As a consequence he begins to compare everything, even women: “MelEika, my wife, was beautiful and good, but-what can I tell you? In our houses the best women are like sheep. I had lived with MelEika for many years, and we had had three small children. Can you believe it? She had never looked me in the eye as Pavlbvska did. Pavlbvska’s gaze was not lowered before mine like a slave who bows his head for his master to give him an order or reprimand him” (220). Escaping from the influence and narrowness of his native place, Selim is in a position to compare and appreciate cultural difference in an unbiased manner. Yet, deception and self-delusion become matters of life and death determining the transition from the one condition to the other. A series of disappointments regulates the narrative: the incident with the flag when he is not awarded the medal, the hostile attitude of his father, the kindly behavior of the Russians. 11. John Lechte, Julia Kristeva (London: Routledge, 1990), 185. 12. Julia Kristeva, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, trans. Leon S . Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989). 12-13. 13. Ibid., 28.
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The story suggests a cyclical movement both in its narrative structure from the present to the past and back again to the present as well as in its final ‘message’ that one ultimately returns to one’s roots, to one’s blood origins despite temporary crises and vacillations. The power of blood always prevails and the same wins over the other. The cyclical movement, and particularly the notion of the cycle, plays an important role, perhaps even more important and more symbolic, in The Life of Ismail Ferik Pasha.14 The novel recounts the life of Emmanuel Kambanis Papadakis who is captured as a child on the Lasithi plateau in Crete, becomes a Muslim and eventually, as Ismail Ferik, reaches the post of Minister for War in Egypt. After many years of living in Egypt, trips to Europe, and campaigns in Syria, he comes to Crete to quell the revolt of 1866 that is financed from Athens by his brother Antonis Kambanis Papadakis. Finally in Crete, in the place where he was born, he dies. For his death, as for the fate of his mother, we are given a number of versions: that he was poisoned by the Turkish commander-inchief, or that he received a bullet in his stomach during the battle, or that he committed suicide at his ancestral house with the old knife that he had been carrying with him since his childhood and throughout his captivity. The book consists of two parts and an afterword. The first part, bearing the title The Years in Egypt-The Myth, is narrated, as is the afterword, in the third person, whereas the second part, Days of Homecoming-The History, is narrated by Ferik himself in the first person. Furthermore, in the author’s note we read the following: “There is the angle of myth (part one), with the narrative in the third-person singular; its distinguishing features are a style adopting poetical modes, an almost abstract treatment of events, and a symbolic rendering of time. Then there is the angle of history (part two), with the narrative in the first-person singular; here, a realistic account of military operations keeps breaking into the narrator’s monologue, and time is compressed within the exhaustive, day-to-day account of a mere nine-month span.” It may appear paradoxical at first that the history part is the more personalized of the two, being written from a subjective point of view. History is traditionally viewed as a relaying of fact or truth in a detached, objective manner. Eleni Yannakaki notes that this move to the first person “indicates a gradual internalization of the story . . . but is at odds with the normal development of a person who while growing up acquires a more objective and less emotional 14. The cyclical pattern is a salient feature of Galanaki’s earlier collection of stones O ~ ~ K E V T P ( S L ~ Y ~ ~ ~ C L(1986) ’ Y T ’ Yas Andeia Frantzi points out in her brief overview of Galanaki’s poetry and fiction, “PEa rahaVaKIl: AT6 ‘TLS (pW‘T0ypaqiEs TOU LUTOpLKO6 U T q U ‘ T O L I p K i l ’ ‘TTS LUTOpkXS,” X q p ~ i ovol. , 2 (19913-1994): 259-64. See also Alexis Ziras, “H K I J K ~ L K ~ ~ ( P + P / T ) U TK) ~ OLL &SOVCS V ~ UTO S &yo T ~ Pdas s rahaV&Kq”, A&pPOp(Y (TZv Pba! r(YhffVhKv,C ~ ~ E ~ O - @ U ~ X X1,& L O Nicosia 2000.27-59.
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per~pective.”’~ It could be argued that this second part is written in the style of diary notes, which is one of the most subjective and introspective lunds of writing. The realization that he cannot recreate his own history by the mythologizing or fictionalization of his own past, that he cannot turn his own history into a reality, is the link between the myth and the history of the novel. One might also point out that a number of recurring motifs in the course of the narrative such as the circle, memory, and “his own private fantasy of the workings of the life cycle” (19) can be associated with myth and others, such as the straight line, the ‘orbit of knives’, and pain, can be related to history.I6 The circle is symbolic in three ways. First, it represents Ismail’s mother who in turn stands for nature and fertility and hence the cycle of life. Second, it represents his former life, as he remembers it, circling round and round, with no direction in a state of stagnation. And third, it signifies the cycle of time, or of history, and of Ismail’s life turning back on itself to discover its own identity. Myth and history represent the two lives of Ismail Ferik Pasha: the secret and the overt, which are presented as autonomous and complete. The second does not represent a continuation of the first, because what intervenes is the ‘first death’ as the end of the one and the ‘second birth’ as the beginning of the other. Each of them expresses a different world and is identified with a repository of memory and culture, thus both helping to outline the secret cycle of the union between mother and son, and its associative manifestation during the demolition of a Byzantine castle in Adana supervised by Ferik Pasha. Certain Greek words which happened to ring out between blasts as the fortress was blown to pieces reminded him of the sounds that marked his first death and his second birth. He was startled to see her, in the midst of the deafening tumult, young and wild with fear as she had been at that time, twice calling out his Christian name, a name he had not heard for many years. Still ignorant of the several versions concerning her end, he refrained from clothing her in the silken shroud of finality, and dressed her in the torn clothes she had worn at the cave. Like a sudden rainbow, his Christian name spanned the years back to her body. She moved towards him, treading carefully over the many-coloured arch. He rushed forward to meet her. Then the two ends of the arch left the ground, and the inverted curve, now facing upwards, enclosed once again mother and son in a circle of secrecy (39-40).
15. Eleni Yannakaki, “History as Fiction in Rea Galanaki’s The Life of Ismail Ferik Pasha,” Kbprog, Cambridge Papers in Modem Greek, no. 2 (1994): 125. 16. Galanaki points out that she was trying in her novel to fuse the linear with the cyclical conception of history and the oral with the written version of history. Rhea Galanaki, BamhEi)~$ Z T ~ ~ T L (Athens: Agra, 1997), 21-22.
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The title and the subtitle of the novel: 0 vios tou Ismail Ferik Pasha: Spina nel cuore is in itself a cultural crossroads. The word vios in the title, as Yorgos Thalassis has already pointed out, suggests Hellenism and Orthodoxy (e.g., saints’ lives, vios kai Politeia tou Alexi Zorba) the name Ismail Ferik Pasha connotes the East and the subtitle, from a Venetian manuscript of the thirteenth century, the West.17 Even the Greek name of the two brothers: Kambanis Papadakis, son of Franghios, appears to be the outcome of an intersection, with Papadakis referring to hereditary priesthood (23) and Franghios, I presume, to Venetian rule on Crete. At times, the opposition between oriental fatalism and Western exercise of free will emerges: “Astounded, I dragged up from the depths of my being a liberal European citizen-I did not dare aspire to a more radical stance-who refused to subscribe to the recurrent pattern of the Orient’s destiny; who endeavoured to steer his life on an unswerving course, knowing that this was far more difficult than accepting a divine decree” (1 12). In this respect, the European ideas seem to cause and fuel the revolt against destiny, the subversion of fate and immobility. The first chapter is rather suggestive and symbolic, employing an almost hallucinatory narrative that is given to us retrospectively from the point of view of the adult rather than that of the child. The boy’s thoughts seem to be the thoughts of an adult, creating the sense that times and ages mingle, that end and beginning coincide. The boy who hears his mother calling him from the entrance of the cave, where women and children crowd from fear of the Ottomans, and the boy who sees in the face of the dead Ottoman conqueror his own, are prqjections of the present onto the past, a fusion of memory and image, life and death, with the cave symbolizing the transition from the one situation to the other and their inextricable amalgamation. For the children the cave was a forbidden place that the grown-ups did not allow them to enter and stories used to circulate “about a flickering crimson blaze in the depths of the cave, and how it was believed to reflect the red throes of an ancient childbirth; perpetual blood, flames under cauldrons of boiling water” (16). There, he is called by his mother, a h n d of return to the womb, of a new pregnancy and new birth: “his mother had risen above the cluster of people by the cave and all at once had conceived, carried, brought forth and raised her second son anew” (16). The cave represents the end of his first life and the beginning of his second: “he emerged from the cave with his hands tied behind his back and commenced his new life as a prisoner” (16). It also stands for the beginning
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and the end of the cycle, the death and the womb at the same time. Like the plateau with the rocky ring of its mountains, or, in the passage quoted earlier, the circle of people above which his mother is raised, the cave evokes the figure of the circle as a dominant symbol throughout the book, counterbalancing the other dominant symbol, that of ‘the orbit of knives’. In the second chapter we have three versions concerning the fate of his mother, and in all three she is dressed in her best silk clothes. According to the first, she was taken as a slave to Constantinople and vanished into thin air just as she was about to step onto the quay heading for a Turkish harem. In the second version, she killed the Albanian who abducted and tried to rape her on the first night of her captivity, vanishing immediately afterward and no one saw her again. In the third version, which Ferik preferred because it matched his own fate, she went back to the house, put away the key forever, and buried her husband, wearing the silk dress that she never again took off. Then one morning her neighbors found her dead, the silk dress by now so threadbare that she appeared almost naked. These three versions are interesting for two reasons. First, they increase the ambiguity and the anti-verisimilitude of the narrative. Certain descriptions are so unrealistic and poetic as to be reminiscent of Latin American magic realism. I shall give two examples: “The Albanian’s blood dyed her silk dress black, and this explains how she was able to escape unnoticed from the enemy camp, from the frenzy of the blood-crazed soldiery. As she washed herself in a brook nearby, the black stuff slid off her body and dissolved into the water, leaving her once again bathed in the reliance of her silk garments” (20) or “As she departed she did not seem earthbound but floating a few inches above the muddy ground” (21). Secondly, it seems that the choice of the third version by Ismail Ferik Pasha as more humane and plausible is of particular significance. The first two, although constituting a negation of captivity, present his mother, albeit temporarily, as captive until she vanishes. Yet both present his mother as displaced, forced to leave her birthplace, while in the third she is rooted in her house and dies there. In this version there is no mention of captivity or even of displacement. In a similar way, inside his own house, Ismail will choose to die at the end of the book. And for him, as has already been said, there are three versions of his death; the third, with which the narrative ends, being the clearest and the strongest. It describes how he committed suicide in his house, dying in the same place as his mother. Thus mother and son are united in their deaths in their own home.’* 18. One could argue that the return of Ismail to his native island echoes the homecoming in the folk ballad of “The Dead Brother.” Here, however, instead of the motherdaughter relationship we have the bond between mother and son.
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In his attempt to avert a double loss, a double nostos, Ismail’s anxieties and tribulations reach a peak: “I would surely go mad if I had to deal with two lost homelands instead of one for the rest of my life” (114). He becomes aware that he will not be able to live with two lost motherlands and thereby seeks a stable and invariable point of reference: “I had sought to discover in my life some focus impervious to change; a way of acceding to a stable, consoling fount of tenderness, whether a landscape or a human face” (114-15). The memory of the Cretan landscape is so tormenting as to shake any sense of identity he is trying to form, since for the protagonist each landscape requires its own language. The lost world of the plateau is not only identified with the Greek language, but emits a harmonious ensemble of peaceful images, sounds, and smells. The world of captivity, on the other hand, is closed, colorless and odorless. The former is the world of nature and childhood, mythical and almost nonexistent, the latter is that of civilization, progress, martial art and adult life, historical and material.19 The circle symbolizes the mysticism and the closed nature of the first life. Its introversion resembles the introversion of the plateau that is also encircled by a ring of mountains. By contrast, the other life in Egypt is symbolized by the straight line of the Nile, by the orbit of knives, and by the extroversion of war activities. Only when some memories or people from the first life emerge and disturb the second does the straight line become twisted and withdraw into itself. When his cousin Ioannis Kambanis or Papadakis comes to visit Ismail and reveals his identity, then the straight line is transformed into a circle. For the course of the river Nile, where the end never met the beginning, had not extended straight to the sea yesterday, as it was wont to do; nor would it ever reach the sea again. The head of the river turned round to bite its tail, twisting itself into a ring. And so the river coiled around the plateau and flooded it, causing the snow to thaw and trickle into the pot-holes; as the remembered sounds, smells, tastes, textures, images trickled drop by drop into his mind (52). The geometry of symbolism and of the senses determines the idea of time suggested by the narrative. Ismail Ferik Pasha is as if in a state of oscillation: ‘‘I had entered a course that was a reversal from the embryonic state; diminishing instead of growing” (112),*Owhile at the same time he tries to kill the 19. In view of the circular pattern that dominates the natural world, the attachment of Ismail to the landscape of his native island reinforces, according to Galanaki herself, the circular and not the linear conception of history. She also points out that nature acts for Ismail as the female complement to the Z T ~ ~ T L27-29. ~TT~, lost mother. Galanaki, Baud& 20. This regression to childhood can also be seen in the following passage: “I discovered that the door I leaned against had grown taller, while I had shrunk to the size of a child. I wiped my lips with a child’s hand. . . . With the same childish hand I held on to the wall as I wandered round the house” (p. 145).
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boy who troubles him as an adult (133). His ability to forsee his fate clearly is a quality that is usually associated with texts displaying the characteristics of magic realism. As soon as he arrives in Egypt, he foretells his second (actual) death and later he specifies the exact time of that death, which incidentally coincides with the duration of a pregnancy: “In a little while I will step ashore, and after nine months exactly, as I reckon, I will merge into the hinterland’ (75). These sorts of premonitions reinforce the cyclical pattern and the sense of recurrence. The novel raises the reader’s expectations and undermines them. At the beginning, through the historical personage of Ismail, it fosters the impression of an historical novel though it does not live up to this expectation because of the fluidity of his identity and the multiple versions of the story. The language, too, does not contribute to creating an authentic historical atmosphere for the novel, with its poetic, antireferential, and contemporary resonances, undermining the ‘solidity’ and ‘truth’ of history and helping to establish a distance between the author and her material.21 The most important aspect of these two narratives seems to be the relationship between desire and identification during the identity formation process. As Diana Fuss points out: “For Freud, Lacan and Kristeva desire and identification are mutually interdependent but counterdirectional trajectories in which identifying with one sex is the necessary condition for desiring the other.”22Identification usually occurs through absence and the creation of desire rather than presence and the discovery of satisfaction. According to Judith Butler “because identifications substitute for object relations, and identifications are the consequence of loss, gender identification is a kind of melancholia in which the sex of the prohibited object is internalized as a prohibiti~n.”~~ In both narratives we can distinguish a primary and secondary identification. The first involves an identification with the mother and the desire for the father. This kind of identification can be seen in Vizyenos’s story where Selim is brought up and dressed as a girl as a result of his attachment to his mother, but he increasingly wishes to be identified with his father. When, eventually, he affirms his manhood and his combative qualities, and his father acknowledges him, he then seeks a return to his mother in the guise of an imaginary 21. Gillian Bottomley in her article “Ethno-Nationalisms and Contrapuntal Histories: Writing Modem Greece,” Modern Greek Studies (Australia and New Zealand), vol. 5-7 (1997-1999): 15-26 argues that Galanaki’s novel “constantly raises the question of difference, of what is deferred, elided and evaded in the writing of history” (p. 24). 22. Diana Fuss, “Fashion and the Homospectatorial Look,” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 4 (summer 1992): 737. See also her book, Identijkation Papers (New York: Routledge, 1995). 23. Butler, op. cit., p. 63.
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homeland linking him through a form of umbilical cord with his racial blood ties. His father is symbolically connected with captivity and exile while his mother represents homeland and nostos. Also in Vizyenos’s story the father seems to represent harsh reality while the mother is associated with something imaginary or illusory. Selim had created for himself a Russian life in that Hellenic land because his lively imagination, perverted by his passion for Russian things, filled in the gaps in that life so that what for the rest of us was comic and ridiculous disappeared from before his eyes in exactly the same way that that good hanurnissa had created through her own imagining a girl child by dressing and making up the extremely manly Selim as a daughter (225).
In Galanaki’s narrative the role of the father is played by Ibrahim.24His relationship with Ismail tends to acquire erotic and antagonistic tendencies regarding his earlier life. But he came instead, though I was not expecting him at that moment. Ibrahim came, beautiful as I remembered and loved him, and sat on the ground by my side. He put his arm round my shoulders, his eyes fixed on the monastery. And I hated him then, for the first time and with my whole being, for he had never cared to look upon the autumn of my past, whereas I had devoted myself to him entirely (99).
At the time of their campaign in Syria, he attempts to erase the memory of captivity, namely of his first life (83), describing his sympathy for the enemy as ‘unavowed’, ‘unacceptable’ and ‘inevitable’ (84); on Crete, however, he visualizes the disfigurement of the face of Ibrahim by throwing stones at him ( I 00). Ferik himself refers to Ibrahim as “the mother of his second life” (134, 135) and when he is about to die he calls upon the two ghosts, his mother in Greek and Ibrahim in Arabic (158). Both are spiritualized, overshadowing his life. They represent the two warring poles, the two stages of identification and desire. Here again the father/Ibrahim is identified with captivity and martial virtue while the mother represents homeland and affection. The ‘femininity of the circle’ lies in reclaiming the primary identification of the boy with his mother, and the blood libation from his wrist, which Ismail performs in his house at the end of the book, is the blood cycle. 24. Galanaki ( R a u ~ h d7is X T ~ ~ T L2 6~2 7~, 53) S , refers to the strong relationship between Ismail and Ibrahim, arguing that in the first part the shade of the mother is dominant while in the second it is that of Ibrahim.
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Identity is ultimately something fluid since it cannot be found in a moment of critical repose; it resists the forces of suspension or negation and it neither begins nor ends at a point of total immobility, but is constantly fuelled and invigorated by the restless operations of identification, one “of the most powerful but least understood mechanisms of cultural self-fashioning’’ according to Diana Only death can put an end to this perpetual process and perhaps this explains the fact that both narratives end with the death of their protagonists. In these narratives identity appears to be a resolution of conflicts and a transgression of oppositions such as those between reason and emotion, duty and feeling, culture and genealogy. Their interest lies in the fact that the conflicts persist throughout the stories adding dramatic tension to them, and only when the last one is determined with genealogy coming out the winner, is the outcome of the rest decided implicitly and retrospectively. Both narratives are teleological; their aim is to clarify where human loyalty ultimately lies or what determines it; in other words, to reach an unequivocal conclusion through the exploration of a duality involving meaning, name, gender, and nation. That is to say, these stories give us the journey as well as its destination, the peripeteia and its katharsis, more straightforwardly in Vizyenos and less so in Galanaki, but finally in basically the same way. Peripeteia and katharsis are so inextricably interwoven that the one cannot function without the other. Is the death of the protagonists, however, the solution or the rehabilitation of their identity? Death seems to be the motivating force in the unravelling of the plot, while the tacit redefinition of identity with the return of the protagonists to their primary identification constitutes the transcendence of their ideological and cultural dilemmas. The two texts rely on the exploration of the other; the desire of their protagonists to be somewhere else, to relive the past. The narrator in “Mosc6v-Selim” is exploring the other side of his character: the inexplicable and the schizophrenic. Selim, in turn, wishes for the return of the Russians. In The Life ofZsmail Ferik Pasha, a woman writer explores the double life of Ismail, while he himself searches for his country, and for his mother in his desire to recover his childhood. The novel might end with an acknowledgment of the impossibility of the return (“And this meant that there does not exist, nor has there ever existed, a way back” [166]), but the whole text is built on and inspired by a primordial urge for a return to the roots, an untamable nostos for origins, for a retrospective quest for beginnings. The whole life of the protagonist seems to be defined in terms of the desire for a homecoming, and the vital role of this desire in the narrative cannot be diminished by the unattainable nature of the goal. 25. Fuss, “Fashion and the Homospectatorial Look,” 716.
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Ismail Ferik Pasha has something in common with Selim inasmuch as both appear, on the one hand, brave warriors and robust men, and on the other sensitive and vulnerable men who tend to repress their feelings and emotions. The manly stature, which in Selim reflects the manly appearance of his father and in Ferik the toughness of Ibrahim, are contrasted with the sensitivity and femininity of their souls.26It is that part that belongs to the woman and the mother that prevails at the end when Selim’s father, having become effeminate through debauchery, acknowledges him as the child of his soul. In these narratives what is taking place is a transition from the ‘semiotic’ to the ‘symbolic’ arid back to the ‘semiotic’ again. In order to understand these transitions, I would like to explain the distinction between the semiotic and the symbolic as it has been developed by Julia Kri~teva.*~ The semiotic consists of nonverbal and nonrepresentational conditions of signification, the early preOedipal sexual drives and bodily activities that circulate in the body of an infant. The semiotic represents first the uncontrolled and undirected impulsive energies of an infant and later of the subject in a moment of crisis and psychic disturbance. It is the uncertain and undetermined articulation of the primary drives and energy discharges that form an unexpressed material and bodily totality.28The semiotic then is constituted by the early, unrefined bodily forces and energies that are then organized by the secondary activities of the symbolic as a regulating mechanism. It precedes, therefore, the symbolic, and prepares its manife~tation.~~ If the semiotic denotes the uncontrolled, instinctual drives of the body, the symbolic is the organized and systematic introduction of this bodily polymorphism and heterogeneity into the social arena. It could be said that the former is represented by rhythms and bodily pulses whereas the latter by the regularity and conformity of grammar. The order of the symbolic is primarily represented through language, the basic means of repressing and sublimating the semiotic. Without the semiotic it is impossible for the symbolic to exist, 26. Ismail feels closer to his mother than to his distant father: “I was filled with wonder at the reciprocity of my feelings towards each parent; at finding that whereas my feelings for my mother followed the same trend as hers, my feelings for my father, like his, were conflicting ones, not to say at war with each other. 13ut I told myself I had been fortunate to reach this knowledge, even belatedly, not daring to go as far as to admit that I may have reached it in vain” (p. 149). 27. Julia Kristeva, Revolurion in Poetic Language (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984). 28. Ann Rosalind Jones in her article, “Julia Kristeva on Femininity: The Limits of a Semiotic Politics,” Feminist Review, no. 18 (winter 1984): 59, points out the relationship between the semiotic and jouissance. 29. Judith Butler argues that Kristeva denies the semiotic as an emancipatory ideal and reinstates the paternal law at the level of the semiotic itself. She claims that “the semiotic is invariably subordinate to the Symbolic, that it assumes its specificity within the terms of a hierarchy immune to challenge. If the semiotic promotes the possibility of the subversion, displacement, or disruption of the paternal law, what meanings can those terms have if the Symbolic always reasserts its hegemony?’ Butler, op. cit., p. 80.
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since it needs the former as its material basis and its primary energy. Yet, this distinction between the semiotic and the symbolic is retrospective given that the former can be distinguished through its suppression by the latter. The semiotic is a kind of material basis for the symbolic and at the same time sui generis, while for Kristeva the social and the symbolic are almost synonymous, particularly if we take into account the fact that language is above all a social instrument. Art, on the other hand, constitutes “the semiotization of the symbolic.”30 Nonverbal signifying systems tend to base themselves exclusively on the semiotic (music, for example), although no system can be either exclusively semiotic or exclusively symbolic.31 Although the distinction between the semiotic and the symbolic is not identical to similar ones such as unconsciouskonscious, idhperego, or naturekulture, there are nevertheless some analogies between them. In all these divisions we witness a constant dialectical process at work, which has its origins in infancy and is linked to the differentiation of the gender roles. One side of this differentiation is constituted by drives and impulses and the other by family and social structures. In the case of the semiotic/symbolic opposition, however, the difference lies in the fact that this dichotomy operates within, by means of, and through language.32 As John Lechte argues in his book on Kristeva, without the intervention of the symbolic as order, identity, or consciousness, there would be no art in the western sense, since there would be no language as communication. On the other hand, without the semiotic, the symbolic would lack any form of materiality, and therefore there would be no art or language as comm~nication.~~ Language as a social practice, Kristeva claims, “necessarily presupposes these two dispositions, though combined in different ways to constitute types of discourse, types of signifying practices. Scientific discourse, for example, aspiring to the status of metalanguage, tends to reduce as much as possible the semiotic ~ o m p o n e n t . ”By ~ ~contrast, the signifying economy of poetic language is based on the semiotic. Prosody, wordplays, rhythm, and laughter fall within the ambit of the semiotic. Aesthetics as a whole appear to rely on the semiotic, while society itself is the product of the symbolic. That is why a number of strictly sociological interpretations of works of art tend to focus more on the (symbolic) message for which the work appears to operate simply as the vehicle, rather than on the (semiotic) texture of the aesthetic result.3s 30. Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, 79. 31. Ibid., 24. 32. See the introduction to Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, 4. 33. Lechte, op.cit, p. 130. 34. Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature andArt (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), 134. 35. Lechte, op. cit., p. 131.
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The most interesting point in this case is that the semiotic is associated with the mother and the symbolic with the father and patriarch^.^^ The locus of the drive energies and the semiotic is defined by Kristeva by borrowing the term choru from Plato’s Timaeus. Choru in that sense denotes “an essentially mobile and extremely provisional articulation constituted by movements and their ephemeral ~ t a s e s . ”Although ~~ it can be designated and regulated, the choru can never be definitely posited; it is a semiotic, nongeometrical space where drive activity is primarily located. As the locus of the semiotic, the choru connotes the mother’s body whereas the father’s presence is associated with the intervention of the symbolic. In the mother-child-father triangle, the symbolic order is represented by the father and his intervention is experienced by the child as a separation from the mother.38Consciousness, the ego and identity are all predicated on the intervention of the symbolic in the mother-child relationship. The order of the symbolic embodied in the Nameof-the-father intervenes in the idyllic union between mother and child in order to facilitate the introduction of the child into the symbolic, and such an intervention has its painful and melancholic aspect. Although the semiotic is the pre-Oedipal realm in which the child exists in unity with the maternal body, Sue Vice points out that the semiotic is linked to the feminine rather than to the female. Because the child in the semiotic does not yet know gender, Kristeva argues that the semiotic is not especially linked to the female, although it does turn out to be linked to the feminine, as a position rather than an identity. Any socially marginalized (but symbolically central) group may find itself linked to the feminine, a term used purely descriptively by Kristeva. The feminine is what is marginal to the symbolic realm, a position currently occupied by women, among others.39
The semiotic as a maternal subversion of the symbolic denotes a somatic dependency on the maternal body prior to the individuation of the ego. 36. Alice Jardine emphasizes the relationship of the semiotic and the mother’s body in this way: “The semiotic, has been and continues to be coded in our culture as feminine: the space of privileged contact with the mother’s (female) body.” “Pre-Texts for the Transatlantic Feminist,” Yale French Studies, no. 62 (1981): 228. 31. Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, 25. 38. For Julia Kristeva, HClhe Cixous, and Luce Irigaray, despite their considerable differences, the pre-Oedipal mother is seen as the site of potential meaning because she preexists the patriarchal reign of language associated with the father and the phallus. For Irigaray in particular, the archaic relationship with the mother’s body should be brought out of silence and into representation. Arguing for a maternal genealogy and challenging a masculine symbolic, she points out that we must “invent the words, the sentences that speak the most archaic and most contemporary relationship with the body of the mother.” Margaret Whitford, ed., The Irigaray Reader (Oxford Blackwell, 1991), 43. 39. Sue Vice, “Bakhtin and Kristeva: Grotesque Body, Abject Self,” in Face to Face: Bakhtin in Russia and the West, eds. Carol Adlam, Rachel Falconer, Vitalii Makhlin, and Alastair Renfrew (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 165.
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Looking at the two narratives from the semiotic-symbolic perspective, the nostos of the protagonists is the nostos for the semiotic and the negation of the symbolic. Both are subjects in transition constituted by semiotic and symbolic elements in a precarious synthesis in which one recognizes the rhythmic reverberation of the semiotic into the symbolic, a reverberation that implies the union with, and at the same time the separation from, the mother. Their return is the return to choru in the sense of a mother and a homeland. The semiotic choru evokes Lacan’s Real, which is what cannot be symbolized, represented, or expressed in any way, and therefore leads to death. As long as the subject only lives in the realms of the Symbolic and the Imaginary, the Real, in turn, connotes death. Hence, the return of the two characters to the semiotic choru entails and coincides with their death. Even the poetic ambiguity and the musical vagueness of the narrative mode of Galanaki suggest the semiotic rhythm rather than the language of the symbolic. The captivity of the two protagonists can be seen as representing the rites of passage to the symbolic, to the violence of war and society. We can detect, therefore, a kind of resistance to the violence of the symbolic, identified with captivity, by means of this peculiarly poeticized language. In Galanaki’s novel, myth (the first part of the narrative) operates more as a manifestation of the semiotic, and in turn the discursive mode tends to be more poetic, whereas history (the second part) represents a manifestation of the symbolic and the afterword stands as a sort of return to the semiotic. In the case of “Mosc6v-Selim” it is the symbolic, namely the communicative potential of the language, which makes possible the mediation of Selim’s story through the narrator-writer. Without the intervention of the symbolic as a condition for communication, the semiotic predisposition would remain unexpressed. To use two of Kristeva’s terms, I would say that the geno-text, based on the semiotic predisposition, is premised on the pheno-text of the symbolic articulation. The Greek identity of the protagonist in The Life of Ismail Ferik Pasha survives in the order of the semiotic, in the realm of the senses: “He had an intimation that the lifespan of all the things now lost to him could perhaps be prolonged if only they could be made to penetrate the world of his feelings through the total recall of sound, smell, taste, touch and form” (23). And this repressed semiotic chora surfaces after many years and challenges the language of the symbolic: “I could see that through all those years spent in the grip of an ineffaceable captivity, I had visualized the lost country in images of ideal serenity. The smells, colours, sounds, textures touched my senses and reached my soul in a harmonious whole” (91). And further on: “Familiar human voices reached me, the sound of domestic
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animals, the sound of the weather, of singing, toiling, mourning, feasting. Then along came the smells: bodies, trees, cloth, winter fire in the hearth, harvested fields, ripe apples-that last smell invaded the house, dyeing it crimson” (146). The semiotic cannot be conceived so much conceptually as aesthetically and sensually. The smells and sounds that are described in the above passages echo the materiality and the sensuality of the semiotic. Its language is the senses, the rhythms, and the sounds as opposed to that of the symbolic, which is the language of religion, the army, and duty. The semiotic is as if identified with Greek, the lost and repressed language of the protagonist. In that language he manages once to speak to the phantom of Ibrahim, the “mother of his second life” when he was on the Kastelli plateau: “And only then, as we fell silent, did I realize that all this time I had been speaking to him in Greek. I had never before addressed him in my long-lost language (135). In Vizyenos the semiotic is the realm of the feelings: of melancholy and joy. The symbolic emerges with the characterization of Mosc6v as insane, thus taking the form of social revenge by attaching a stigma to anyone who does not follow the established pattern of behavior and defies the social and national order. The “mourning of the heart”40 and his unexplained melancholic gaze, for which the narrator offers no unambiguous reason(s), seem to me to represent the nostos for the mother, the semiotic choru. Melancholy, as Kristeva argues, and its most transient manifestation, depression, constitute the sign of an unsuccessful separation from the mother corresponding to a tendency toward a union with Lacan’s Real, that is to say, according to Kristeva again, with the mother and death.41The union of mother and child precedes the entry into the symbolic and is, in effect, prior to life. Melancholy represents the total failure of the subject to form an identity in the order of the symbolic because the separation from the mother has not been completed. No object can replace the mother, and hence melancholy tends toward silence since the loss of and the desire for the maternal choru fail to be verbally articulated. One can, therefore, see gender identity as a melancholic condition. Mosc6v-Selim’s identity crisis appears as a disturbance of the chronological order of his existence that can be restored through the retelling of his life. This recounting acquires an introspective and self-knowing character, 40. Selim’s “mourning of the heart” (penrhos kardias) could be associated with Ibrahim’s “grief of my homecoming” @enrhos rou nosrou) (128). 41. See Kristeva, Black Sun. See also John Lechte, “Art, Love and Melancholy,” in Abjection, Melancholia, and Lovc.: The Work ofJulia Kristeva, eds. John Fletcher and Andrew Benjamin (London: Routledge, 1990), 34.
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something that might explain why the story is mediated to us through the anonymous narrator and not by Selim himself.42In his attempt to give a narrative shape to the life of his subject and to make it meaningful, the narrator, too, represents the symbolic. Hence, the verdict at the end-“and the Turk remained a Turk”-is the meaning that the narrator wishes to impose through the Symbolic Order, urging us to read Selim’s life and his reactions in terms of social and national parameters. However, a reading highlighting the semiotic disposition of the text goes beyond the language of ethnic logic and social conformism to the semiotic chora of emotions and impulses, and ultimately to the tacit desire for a reunion with the mother. It can be argued that what has been said above about Vizyenos’s story could offer an answer to the two basic questions raised at the beginning. The confused and inarticulate Mosc6v-Selim expresses his ‘heartsickness’ by means of his melancholic gaze, while the narrator in the role of the analyst presents and indirectly interprets Mosc6v-Selim’s life story for the reader as Freud did with his own case studies. It is left, however, to the reader to accept the narrator’s reconstruction and interpretation of Mosc6v-Selim’s life and to read the story in terms of ethnic identity or to embark on his own reading of the text by exploring its blind spots and the gaze of the main character as manifestations of a confused self-identity. Although the narratives by Vizyenos and Galanaki seem to place the emphasis on external action rather than on internal crisis and strife, it could be argued in conclusion that as the preceding analysis has shown, they could be read as narratives of identity and of divided selves that privilege their semiotic rather than their symbolic aspect. In both narratives, events and characters are approached from a different cultural angle. In “Mosc6vSelim” the narrator and the author, are Orthodox Christians whereas Moscdv is heterodox and of a different race. In The Life of Ismail Ferik Pasha a woman writer compiles the story of a pasha, someone who is supposed to be accompanied by all the trappings of heroism and manhood. Trying somehow to offset the otherness of their perspective, both writers use their birthplace as the setting for the greater part of their stories. Surprisingly, however, they pay little attention to the question of religion and the religious identity of their Muslim or Islamized protagonists. Though one might be left with the impression that the same appears to win the battle over the other and the cycle of blood is proved stronger than the straight line 42. It should he said that Vizyenos’s narratives frequently involve the telling of stories as “a character embarks on narration to bridge the chasm between private trauma and a shared conception of ‘reality’” (Roderick Beaton in his foreword to Vizyenos, My Mother’s Sin and Other Stories, xiii).
Narratives of Identity and the Semiotic Chora
27 1
of forgetfulness, the two narratives constitute intriguing explorations of rather than definite statements about identity.43They seek to turn our attention away from wars or nationalist controversies to human emotions and the ambivalence of nostos. In other words, they invite the reader to search for the semiotic and not the symbolic meaning.
43. Alev Adil in a rather simplistic review of Galanaki’s novel (Times Literary Supplement, 5 July 1996) argues that she “reduces this intriguing historical narrative to a battle of good versus evil, Christian versus Muslim, Greek versus Turk, progress versus decadence, the Occident versus the Orient. Although she captures the passionate tones of Hellenism, she fails to explore the possibility that nationalism might be an historically influenced concept rather than a force of nature.” This review, which argues that “Galanaki manipulates history in order to simplify it” caused a great deal of controversy because it failed to see that “the novel is remarkable precisely for its rejection of simplistic nationalist stereotypes” (Times Literary Supplement, 19 July 1996).
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Afterword
This study has not aspired to provide a history of the Greek novel, but a fresh approach in reviewing narrative developments in Greece since 1830 and embarking on a rereading of some of the most widely read Greek novels from a perspective that takes into account recent shifts in Greek culture. It combines cultural analysis, close reading of the texts, genre, and psychoanalytical approaches in an attempt to shed a different light on Greek fiction as a whole. The readings of the novels are not intended as purely critical or formalist exercises, but as a way of demonstrating the intertwining of critical approach and cultural change. Reading against the grain should not be perceived simply as an act of irreverence toward earlier interpretations; in this case it represents an effort to highlight the richness and diversity of Greek fiction which, in turn, could lead to its greater appreciation. As I have pointed out in the introduction, what links the texts discussed in this book is that almost all of them are narratives about an individual in search of selfhood against a background of social constraints. What emerges from the analysis of the novels is that there is an element of regression and withdrawal either to nature (0Polypathis, The Murderess, The Sun of Death), to childhood (Leonis, Vasilis Arvanitis) or the mother’s body (“Mosc6v Selim,” The Life of Zsmail Ferik Pasha). This nostalgia for origins and primordial innocence, which could be seen as a desperate search for personal freedom, involves a degree of resistance to social determinism (The Murderess, Katadikos, Hatzis’s texts, The Third Wedding) or often leads to transgression and suicide (Vasilis Arvanitis, Captain Mihalis). In other words, there is a tendency in these narratives toward the semiotic rather than the symbolic, as we have seen in the last chapter. This, in my view, raises an important question: is the search for self-identity regressive or forward-looking?Indeed, the construction of selfhood involves a 273
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revision of the past, but this revisiting of the past is informed by an understanding of the present. The self is not something hidden to be recovered, but a past that is negotiated through the otherness of the present. Autobiography, like psychoanalysis, is a reconstruction of the past through the perspective of an other self. A dialogic relationship between past and present, selfhood and society is constantly at work here. Narratives of self are not seen any more as a naked and transparent presentation of existence, but as an articulation of the relationship between the individual and the social world. They tend to hybridize old dichotomies between subject and object, private and public, fact and fiction, self and world; between the introspective quality of autobiography and the ‘objectivity’ of the social context or of history writing, defined as a ‘documentary’ approach to lives and events. Though the texts analyzed are mainly autobiographical, contrasts or variations of genre are another underlying theme of this book. As we have seen, 0 Polypathis involves the interaction of the picaresque and romance, Freedom and Death presupposes the dichotomy between the epic and the novel, while the texts discussed in chapters 4 and 9 give the opportunity to compare male and female versions of the Bildungsroman. In this respect, this book offers an insight into the dialogue and development of narrative genres in Greece. Moreover, in different parts of this book reference is made to Freud’s notion of family romance, which could be seen as a useful metaphor in order to illustrate the articulation of the private and the public and the struggle of the individual against a patriarchal society. Some of the Greek novels dealt with here can be treated as forms of family romance representing individual characters in a crisis of identity, struggling to liberate themselves from parental authority. Family romance brings about the question of self-identity by problematizing origins and fantasizing social improvement. What the readings of the novels demonstrate is a rigorous defense of the inner world against social constraints, particularly by female characters (Frankojannou in The Murderess, Hecuba and Nina in The Third Wedding, Myrsini in Fool’s Gold, Elenimaphne in Achilles’ Fiancke). Female characters’ self-representation charts a territory that is largely private, unmapped, and unrecognizable and at the same time makes inroads into the public domain. Though the texts discussed here explore the tensions and the boundaries of the public and the private, the personal and the historical, there is an attempt to rethink the historical and the political as personal. This becomes evident in the novels of Kostas Tachtsis, Mar0 Douka, and Allu Zei and to a lesser extent in George Theotokas’s Leonis and Nikos Kazantzakis’s Freedom and Death. This study has attempted to sketch out the transition of Greek culture from collectivity to individuality (and even to postmodern subjectivity) and to ex-
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plore how this is reflected in more recent Greek fiction and might transform our reading of some major Greek texts of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Telling the story of the self is characterized by a particular act of interpretation and not a simple process of mimesis. The texts discussed in this book are fictions of identity demarcating a textual space wherein the culturally constructed and historically contingent epistemology of the self finds particular expression. What emerges from the analysis of the novels is that the self is not a single and unified entity or a self-authorized figure, but a network of differences within which the subject is inscribed. The aim here has not been a search for the missing individuality of characters in modem Greek fiction by trying to recover their autonomy, restore their authenticity, rehabilitate their singularity, or demonstrate their belatedness. Instead what is sought is the exploration of the hybridic space between self and other and the permeable boundaries of selfhood and society, showing individuals in crisis, in constant search of self-identity, or in trying to articulate their desire to overcome dilemmas and define their social role. In turn, individuality does not represent a valorization of autonomous selfhood, but a form of rebelliousness and a challenge to cultural expectations. This book, therefore, does not constitute a celebration or a defense of individualism, but it aspires to show how cultural, political, and social changes could revise our readings of the literary canon. Thus, it demonstrates, I hope, that literary texts are open to new approaches and that literary interpretation is conditioned by cultural and social developments. What my study suggests is that fictional forms and texts are not inherently individualistic or collectivist, but can often be read as such depending on the approach adopted which, in turn, is socially and culturally contingent. Literary analysis, therefore, could help us to rethink cultural stereotypes and offer us a different perspective on cultural developments. Applied to the cultural sphere, this anti-essentialist literary approach could have wider implications, suggesting that cultures cannot be seen in terms of rigid dichotomies, between collectivism or individualism, and thus neat categorizations and strict oppositions could be put into question. This study suggests that literature partly reflects social trends and cultural patterns, but at the same time challenges them by means of its ambiguity and openness to diverse, even opposing, readings. Accordingly, literature emerges as a fluid and malleable category fostering a dialogic relationship between selfhood and society.
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Index
Abatzopoulou, Fragiski, 104n4 Abel, Elizabeth, 220n14, 236n36 Add, Alev, 27 1n43 Adlam, Carol, 267n39 adventure novel, 3n3 aestheticist movement, 38 aesthetics, 46, 197 Ahmed, Aijaz, 26n48 Alexandropoulos, Mitsos, 44 Alexandrou, Ark, 16n11,46 Alexiou, Elli, 21 6n6 Alexiou, Margaret, 136n9, 249n2 allegory, 45, 46, 197, 203; allegorical, 56, 62, 67; national allegory, 3, 26, 70, 79; political allegory, 75, 80 Allen, Patricia, 132n58 Anagnostakis, Manolis, 52nl13 Anagnostopoulos, B. D., 51n110 Anastasopoulou, Maria, 49n104 Anderson, Benedict, 29 Anderson, Linda, 245115 1 Andronikos, Pavlos, 135112, 136, 13942, 145, 149, 150n29 Angelou, Alkis, 55111, 58111 1 , 60n15 anthropological approach, 164n31 antiquity, 76 Apostolidis, Renos, 43 Apostolidou, Venetia, ix
Appiah, Anthony Kwame, 7n13, 29 Argyriou, Alexandros, 42n92,78n40 artist, Romantic, 31 Asher, Linda, 29n62 Asia Minor, 115n32;Asia Minor Campaign, 116; Asia Minor Catastrophe, 30, 41 Athanasiadis, Tasos, 106n10 Athanasopoulos, Vangelis, 135n1, 136n7,249n2,254n8 Athens, 33, 34 atomization, 12, 16,240, 257 Atopia, 196 Auerbach, Erich, 196 Augustinos, Gerasimos, 37n76 autobiography, 2, 3,4,9, 31,49, 53, 55, 75,79, 80, 84, 92, 175, 187-88, 215, 223, 245, 274; autobiographical, 60, 83, 105, 119, 175-76; female autobiography, 233; pseudoautobiographical, 56, 60 Axioti, Melpo, 2, 40, 43-44, 52-53, 215,216n3 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 7-10, 105115, 163n28, 267n39 Balkan Wars, 41 Balzac, Honor6 de, 1181136
277
278
Index
Banfield, Ann, 37n75 Barbeito, Patricia Felisa, 249n2, 252115, 254n7 Barthes, Roland, 153 Batsis, Dimitris, 241 Baumeister, Roy F., 511.5, 6, 15119 Beaton, Roderick, ix, 2n2, 11n28, 36n73,40n85,42n91,46n100, 84n5,96n25, 100n31, 104n4, 107n13, 136x15, 153, 154n4, 156nl1, 171n36, 174n42,216n4, 225n24,255n9,270n42 Beck, Ulrich, 11 Beckett, Samuel, 195112, 196n2 Beer, Gillian, 100n32 Bell, Daniel, 6n10 Beloyannis, Nikos, 241 Benjamin, Andrew, 269n41 Bennington, Geoff, 5n9 Bentham, Jeremy, 5 Benvenuto, Bice, 137n12, 146n26 Bergson, Henri, 172n40 Bhabha, Homi K., 81n46 Bien, Peter, 44n96, 153n3, 154-55, 159n19, 161-63, 171n38 Bildungsroman, 2, 3n3, 103, 104, 111, 112n26, 122, 123n42, 129-33, 219-20, 236, 246, 274; novel(s) of formation, 2, 3 biography, 10, 187 Blair, Tony, 14n7 Boheemen, Christine van, 81n47 Bottomley, Gillian, 262n21 Boukalas, Pantelis, 52n111 Brooke-Rose, Christine, 195112, 196n2 Brown, Penelope, 22 Brum, FClix, 70n26 Buckley, Jerome Hamilton, 105, 123n42, 131n54, 132n 58 Bulgarian, 144 Bulgarin, Faddei Venediktovich, 64 Burkitt, Ian, 10 Bushala, Eugene W., x, 209n18 Butler, Judith, 2551110,262,265n29
Byzantine Empire, 18; Byzantine East, 19; Byzantine History, 113n28 Byzantium, 33, 83 Calotychos, Vangelis, 249n1 Calvinist, 14; Calvinism, 19 Camus, Albert, 45 Canada, 232 capitalism, 7, 14; noncapitalist society, 202 Capote, Truman, 188x115 captivity, 263 castration, 152, 168-69, 174; castration anxiety, 143 Cavafy, C. P., 1, 17,27 Cervantes, Miguel de, 81 Charalambis, Dimitris, 27n55 Charalampidou, Natia, 47n102, 197118 Chase, Malcolm, 213n22 Chekhov, Anton, 38 Childers, Joseph, 12n29 childhood, 136, 140-41, 145 Childs, Peter, 99n30 Chioles, John, 175n1, 188n15 Chodorow, Nancy Julia, 10n25,242 Chora, 267-68 Christian, 66, 107, 173, 250; Christianity, 1511, 106 Chrysanthopoulos,Michalis, 249n2, 252n6 Cicellis, Kay, 461199, 226, 250n3 cinema, 151; cinematic process, 235; cinematic style, 234 Civil War, 24, 41,46,47, 216-18,239; Greek civil war, 46, 190, 202-3 civilization, western, 6 Cixous, HLlkne, 49n104,193n27,267n38 classical antiquity, 3 1 classical ideal, 34 Clinton, Bill, 14n7 Clogg, Richard, 23n41,73n32 Cohn, Dorrit, 88 collectivity, 11, 15, 16, 21, 251147, 26, 27,46,47, 52, 274; collective
Index
mentality, 22; collectivism, 11, 22, 23, 54, 275; collectivist, 22, 275 communal, 158 Communist Party, 241; French Communist Party, 235; Greek Communist Party, 240 community, 14, 19, 24, 29, 36, 132, 157, 158, 163, 168,201; Jewish community, 182, 199, 207; national community, 251147, 38 Connolly, David, 211135 consciousness, 267 Constantinidis, Elizabeth, 96n25, 155119 Constantinople, 145, 260 Constas, Dimitri, 28n59 Crete, 250, 257,259; Cretan, 173 Crimean War, 253 critical realism, 4 3 culture, 35,45, 66, 89,93, 98, 100, 101, 266; cultural, 131; cultural diversity, 28; cultural politics, 83; European culture, 133; folk culture, 129, 130; Greek culture, 15, 21, 25, 273; media culture, 54; national culture, 30; oral culture, 23-26, Third World culture, 26; traditional culture, 2 1; traditional Greek culture, 25; western culture, 10, 1.5119; written culture, 24 Dallas, Yannis, 106nll Darwin, Charles, 172n40 Darwinian: Darwinian natural selection, 100; echoes, 172; theory, 99, 173 death, 170, 219 Decavalles, Andonis, 119n39, 130x153 Delanty, Gerard, 8, 14n7 Delios, Yorgos, 40 de Man, Paul, 233n33 Demertzis, Nicolas, 27n55 demotic language., 192-93 de Peuter, Jennifer, 5n7 desire, 263 detective stories, 204 dialogism, 7, 8, 10; dialogic, 7
279
Diamandouros, Nikiforos, 23n41 diary fiction, 38,41; diary form, 38 didacticism, 60; didactic, 75, 77, 79; autodidactic, 75 Dimadis, K.A., 42n89,51n108,78n40, 136n7 Dimaras, K. Th., 106n10 Dimitriou, Sotiris, 51 Docherty, Thomas, 229n30,235n34 Doody, Margaret Anne, 14n5 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 107n13 Douka, Maro, 48,50,216,222n18,223, 225124,234,236,238,241,243, 245,247,274 Doukas, Stratis, 41 Doulis, Thomas, 114n29, 117n35 Dragoumis, Ion, 3 8 4 0 drama, 38, 86; dramatic, 68 dreams, 84, 85, 86,91,92 Dumont, Louis, 14n6 DuPlessis, Rachel Blau, 247n55 Eagleton, Terry, 8n16, 137 East, 162, 174, 259 educational formalism, 65n22 ego, 267; ego psychology, 10 Egypt, 250,257,261-62 Eisenstein, Sergei Mikhailovich, 235 Eliot, T. S., 20n31, 24n45 Elshtain, Jean Bethke, 238 Elytis, Odysseas, 1, 21n35, 83112 Emerson, Caryl, 9n22, 163n28 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 37 Enlightenment, 5 , 19,66, 67, 681125, 73, 214 Entwicklungsrornan, 220 epic, 154-56, 158, 162, 274; epic hero, 44, 161, 163, 164, 166; Homeric epic, 154 Episkopopoulos, Nikolaos, 38n80 epistolary, 55 Epitaphios, 146, 149-50 EthographidEthography, 30, 36, 39, 104, 189
280
Index
Eurocentric bias, 14 Europe, 196; Eastern, 195, 216; Western, 20 European, 74, 132; culture, 133; literature, 104; tradition, 176; union, 18; western European, 173 Evans, Dylan, 1381115 exile, 195-96,201-3,212-13,263 existentialism, 130; existential, 131 exoticism, 7 1 ‘face’, concept of, 22 Fais, Michel, 43n93, 48 Fakinou, Evgenia, 50 Falconer, Rachel, 267n39 family, 17, 181, 188 fantastic, 45 Farinou-Malarnatari, Georgia, 56, 57n4, 59n14,64n21,83n2,87n8,96n24,98 fate, 105 Felski, Rita, 49n105, 219, 220n15, 221n17,236,238,246n52,247n55 female difference, 237 female narratives, 49 female subjectivity, 223 femininity, 158, 164, 246, 265 feminism, 49n105, 218 Finer, Leslie, 175111 First World culture, 26 Fletcher, John, 269n41 folklore, 36n72 Forster, E. M., 1881115 Foucault, Michel, 13 Frangias, Andreas, 43,46n101 Frangopoulos, Th. D., 43 Frangoudis, Epameinondas, 3 1 Frantzi, Andeia, 257n14 free association, 40 freedom, 155, 170, 185,208,273 free indirect discourse, 36, 88 Freud, Sigmund, 81-82, 160n20, 172n40,255,262,270,274 Friar, Kimon, 169n34 Frye, Northrop, 29 Fuss, Diana, 262,264
Gagarin, Yuri, 240 Galanaki, Rhea, 50, 249-50, 257n14, 258n15,261n19,262n21,263-64, 268,270,271n43 Galen, 65 Garantoudis, Evripidis, 52nl12 Gardiner, Michael, 5n7, 10n26 Gastarbeiter, 209 Gerneinschaft, 14 gender, 179, 183, 189,219,264 generation, 52; polytechnic generation, 50 Geno-text, 268 Germanakos, N., 16nll German occupation, 41, 199,216-17 Germany, 209-10,212; East Germany, 195; West Germany, 195 Gesellschaft, 14 Gibson, Andrew, 222n 19 Giddens, Anthony, 9, 11 Gilmore, Leigh, 215, 233n33, 245 Goethe, J. W., 104 Gorky, Maxim, 38 Gounelas, Haralambos-Dimitris, 37n76, 381179 Grammatas, Thodoros, 103n2 Great Idea, 30; Megali Idea, 73n32 Great Powers, 163 Great War, 118 Greek: culture, 15,21,25,273; Greekness, 36,41, 53; nation-state, 70, 73; popular culture, 130; state, 70, 74, 1151132; tradition, 113n28 Griffin, Jasper, 163n28, Gritsi-Milliex, Tatianna, 43, 45 Gudykunst, William B., 22n39 GuillCn, Claudio, 57n6, 60n16 guilt, 17 Gurevich, Aaron, 5116 Gutrnann, Amy, 7nl3 Halliday, John Dixon, 14n4 Hamsun, Knut, 38 Handley, William R., 9n21, 10 Hardin, James, 105n5 Hartocollis, Peter, 159n19
Index
Harvey, David, 47n 103 Hatziioannou, Maria Hristina, 72n3 1 Hatzis, Dimitirs, 3, 42-43, 46n101, 195-97, 198n9,201-2,204,206-10, 212-14,273 Hatzivasileiou, Vangelis, 43n93 Hatzopoulos, Konstantinos, 38, 42 Heath, Stephen, 160 Heimonas, Yorgos, 45 Hellenism, 75, 153, 259, 271n43 Heller, Dana, 81, 82n48, 160n21 Heller, Thomas C., 10n25 Hentzi, Gary, 12n29 hereditary, 131 hero: tragic, 136 heroism, 135, 142, 146, 150, 164 Herzfeld, Michael, 36n72, 164n31 Heyman, Sam, 22n39 Hippocrates, 65 Hirsch, Marianne, 3, 132n58, 220n14, 236n36 Hirschon, RenCe, 18n21 history, 46,48, 105, 111, 132, 154, 180-8 1, 257-58, 262; historical, 13I , 133, 181; subjective history, 237 historiography, 32, 41 Hokwerda, Hero, 198119 Holquist, Michael, 9n22, 163n28 Holst-Warhaft, Gail, 216n5 Holton, David, x homelessness, 21 3 homosexual relationships, 185 Hope, Thomas, 56n3 Houliaras, Nikos, 48 Hourmouzios, Emilios, 106, 154n7 Hristomanos, Konstantinos, 38 humanism, 7; humanist, 8n16, 21 Hungary, 195 Hutcheon, Linda, 26, 217 hybrid, 62; hybrid self, 175 Hydra, 232 Iakovidou, Sofia, 180n7 Ibsen, Henrik, 38 id, 266
28 1
identification, 262-64 identity, 2, 4, 6, 11, 15, 15119, 17, 23, 27,48, 49, 52, 137-38, 142, 151, 160, 166-68, 179-80, 189, 193,215, 218,221-23, 228-31,235,238, 254-56, 262, 264, 266-67; collective identity, 13, 27, 28, 29, 30,44; ethnic identity, 270; female identity, 247; gender identity, 254, 269; Greek identity, 28, 83, 152, 268; identity crisis, 129; individual identity, 27, 30; narratives of identity, 249-50, 270; national identity, 16, 17, 27, 170, 254; personal identity, 217; religious identity, 270; self-identity, 3,9, 51, 135, 150, 153, 155, 215, 218, 273, 275; sexual identity, 161 ideology, 67 imaginary, 137, 138, 268; national 13, 15 imagination, 62, 206 Independence, War of, 55,66,7 1, 73n32,80 individual, 29, 70, 71, 97, 101, 104, 108, 111, 115, 119, 129, 131, 133, 157, 168 individualism, 5, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22, 27,28, 30, 31, 38, 39, 41n88,47,49, 54,70, 107, 119, 200, 208, 220, 275; anarchic, 18; Romantic, 37, 44, 50; western, 18, 21; individualist, 14, 22; individualistic, 22, 23, 79, 107, 158,275; individuation, 19n25, 20, 23, 26 individuality, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12n29, 13n2, 15, 21, 29, 39,40,44, 46,52-53,69, 80,95, 100, 103, 105, 114, 129-31, 138, 161, 163, 197, 201, 208, 274-75; of the artist, 37; of the author, 36; of characters, 35, 37, 42,49 industrial: industrialism, 70; industrialization,45; non-industrial, 14 inevitability, 103
282
Index
intellectualism, 129; western intellectualism, 130 interior monologue, 40, 4 1, 189 intertext, 56 Ioannidis, Yannis, 24 1 Ioannina, 203 Ioannou, Yorgos, 44 Irigaray, Luce, 267n38 irony, 235 Islamization, 75 Jameson, Frederic, 26, 1381115, 139n16 Janov, Arthur, 136 Jardine, Alice, 2671136 Jew, 173; Jewish, 182, 199, 207 Jones, Ann Rosalind, 265n28 Joyce, James, 114n29, 1181136, 132, 188n15, 196n2, 199nll Judelson, Katharine, 5n6 justice, 15119 Kachtitsis, Nikos, 2, 52 Kafka, Franz, 45 Kakava, Maria, x, 209nl8 Kakavoulia, Maria, 53n114 Kalligas, Pavlos, 3 1 Kalogeras, Yiorgos, 252n6 Kalvos, Andreas, 77 Kambysis, Yannis, 38 Kaplan, Caren, 213 Kapsomenos, Eratosthenis G., 16n12 Karagatsis, M., 41-42, Karaiis, Vrasidas, 172n40 Karkavitsas, Andreas, 35, 93n22 Karvelis, Takis, 135113, 136n4 Kasdaglis, Nikos, 43 Kassos, Vangelis, 51n110 Kastrinaki, Angela, 37n77, 133n61, 163n29, 197n7 Katharevousa, 192-93 katharsis, 264 Kayalis, Takis, 70n27 Kazantzaki, Eleni, 159 Kazantzakis, Nikos, x, 1, 38, 43-44, 103, 1291150, 153-56, 157n14,
158-63, 167, 169, 170n35, 171n36, 172n40, 173-74,214 Kazazis, Kostas, 185112, 1921124 Kefalas, Ilias, 51nllO Kehayioglou, Yorgos, 55111 Kennedy, Roger, 137n12, 146n26 Khrushchev, Nikita, 240 Kim, Kwangsu, 22n39 kinship, 15 Kiourtsakis, Yannis, 53n115 Kitromilides, Paschalis, 68n25 klephts, 76 klephtic songs, Greek, 11, 152 Knos, Borje, 159 Kokolis, Xenophon, 84n6,96n24 Kolias, Helen Dendrinou, 215112 Koliyannis, Kostas, 241 Kondylakis, Ioannis, 34 Kontje, Todd, 3n3, 10.5115, 112n26, 246n53 Kostis, Nicholas, 175n2, 189n17 Kotzia, Elisavet, 16n14, 51n109 Kotzias, Alexandros, 42n92, 43, 41, 190n21 Kouloufakos, Kostas, 42n92 Koumandareas, Menis, 53-54 Kourtovik, Dimosthenis, ix, 16, 50 Kranaki, Mimika, 43 Kristeva, Julia, 9, 27, 195-96, 255-56, 262,265-69 Kundera, Milan, 29 Kureishi, Hanif, 192n25 Labovitz, Esther Kleinbord, 2191112,246 La Bruybre, Jean de, 58,60 Lacan, 137 Lacan, Jacques, 9-10, 137-38, 146n25, 152,262,268-69 Lambatos, Gavrilis, 240n43 Lambrakis Youth, 243 Lambropoulos, Vassilis, 136n9 Langland, Elizabeth, 220n14,236n36 language, 9, 265, 266; Greek language, 261; language question, 24; metalanguage, 266
Index
Lanser, Susan Sniader, 222 LaograJia, 36 Larkin, Maurice, 104n3 law of the father, 138, 141, 144 Lawrence, D. H., 1881115 Layoun, Mary, 87,98 Lazaridou, A. D., 78n40 Lechte, John, 256n11,266,269n41 Left, Greek, 15,46 legal positivism, 18 Legg, Keith R., 28n58 Lemaire, Anika, 138n14, 139 Leontsini, Mairi, 238n41 Lesage, Alain-RenC, 56-57,64,79 Levenson, Michael, 40n86 Levi, Peter, 84n7 Levine, Donald N., 61112 Levinson, Stephen C., 22 liberalism, 67, 68 Linardatos, Spyros, 240n44 Lionnet, Frangoise, 176115 literacy, 23, 162 Lodge, David, 193n27 Loizos, Peter, 15n10 loneliness, 198,200, 201-3,207-8, 21612,214,225 Loomis, C. P., 14n6 Lorenzatos, Zissimos, 46n99 Lugowski, Clemens, 14n4 Luhmann, Niklas, 13n2 LukBcs, Georg, 29 Lymberaki, Margarita, 43 Lyons, John, 5, 80n41 Lyotard, Jean-FranGois, 5119, 271153 lyricism, 52 Macedonia, 144 Macey, David, 138n14 Mackridge, Peter, ix, x, 271154, 42, 43n94,44n98,91n16, 104n4, 114n31, 127n47, 130, 1321156, 146n24, 187n14, 189n16 Macrides, Ruth, 33 Magdalino, Paul, 33n69 magic realism, 260
283
Mailer, Norman, 188n15 Makhlin, Vitalii, 267n39 Malvey, Laura, 150n28, 151 manhood, 135, 140, 153, 158, 159, 161, 163-64, 166, 168, 170,262 Mann, Thomas, 3n3, 132 Manousakis, George, 173n41 Manousakis, Yorgis, 119 Marangopoulos, Aris, 53nl15 Maronitis, D. N., 250n4 MBrquez, Gabriel Garcia, 174n42 marriage, 35, 179, 183-85, 188,219 Marshall, Leo, x Martin, Donald E., 112n27 Marxist outlook, 208 masculinity, 135, 143, 146, 68, 246, 256 Massumi, Brian, 5119 materialism, 107 Matesis, Pavlos, 48 Matsumoto, Yuko, 22n39 Matthias, Susan, 154n5 Mayerfeld Bell, Michael, 5117, IOn26 McGee, Vern W., 9n22 McKeon, Michael, 37n75,88n14 medieval: hagiography, 153; western philosophy, 5 melancholidmelancholy, 255-56, 269 Melissaratou, Gerasimia, ix, 118n36 memoirs, 32, 53 memory, 117; spatial 44, 94 Meraklis, Mihalis G., 155n9, 174n42 metafictional strategies, 237 metaphor, 233-34 Metaxas, Ioannis, 41, llln25, 180-81 Me'tissage, 176 metonymy, 154,233-34 Mickiewicz, Adam, 196n2 Mike, Mairi, 252n6 Mill, John Stuart, 5 Miller, Dean A., 164n30 minorities, 28 mirror stage, 137, 139, 144 Misailidis, Evangelinos, 55111 Mise-en-abyme, 150 Mitropoulos, Dimitris, 1881115
284
Index
Mitsakis, Karolos, 104n4 Mitsora, Maria, 50 modernism, 39, 43, 213, 238; English modernism, 1881115; Greek modernism, 2,52; modernist techniques, 44; modernity, 6, 8, 14, 19, 23, 64, 65, 67, 80, 133, 152, 214, 220,246; modernization, 12, 65; modem, 89 Moi, Toril, 195nl Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Secondat, 27 moralism, 60; moralist, 60; French moralists, 63; morality, 55 Morante, Elsa, 188n15 Moretti, Franco, 133 Moms, Brian, 21n34 Moscow, 233, 242 Moullas, Panayotis, 16n15, 31n66, 33n67,55nl mourning, 255 Moutzan-Martinengou, Elisavet, 215 Mouzelis, Nicos, 15n8 Muslim, 66,72n31, 173,250,270 Musset, Alfred de, 118n36 Myrivilis, Stratis, 41, 134-35, 139, 140n18, 150n29 myth, 20, 129n50, 154, 257-58; Greek myths, 72; mythology, 113n28 Nagy, Gregory, x, Narcissism, 256 Narezhnyi, Vasilii Trofimovich, 64 narrative voice, 176, 222, 227 nation, 29, 264; Greek nation, 41, 76, 80 national belonging, 42; national differences, 78; national metaphor, 80; national valour, 170 nationalism, 37, 38, 50, 74 nature, 35,45, 89, 93, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 124, 266; natural, 95; naturalism, 105, 106n10; natural law, 83; natural life, 98; natural selection, 99; natural world, 126n44
neoclassicism, 73 new historicism, 4 Niarhos, Thanassis Th., 175n3 Nietzsche, Frederic, 37, 136, 172n40 Nirvanas, Pavlos, 38n80 Nishida, Tsukasa, 22n39 Nordau, Max, 99 Norwid, Cyprian Kamil, 196n2 Nostos, 213, 250, 261, 263-64, 268-69, 27 1 Noutsos, Panayotis, 106n12 novel: novel of awakening, 238; historical novel, 32, 33; psychological novel, 163, 174; rise of, 14 Nunn, Valerie, ix Occident, 27 1n43 Oedipal relationship, 176-78, 180; Oedipal character, 150; Oedipus child, 143, 145, 151; Oedipus complex, 1 4 3 4 ; Oedipal conflict, 178; Oedipal desires, 14743; Oedipal dilemma, 146; pre-Oedipal, 267; Oedipus problem, 137, 139; Oedipal trajectory, 141-43. Olney, James, 233n33 Ong, Walter J., 23n43, 24n46 oral folk culture, 130 orality, 23, 25, 188, 210 oral storytelling, 156 oral tradition, 162; Greek oral tradition, 189 orient, 27 ln43; orientalism, 7 1 originality, 62 orthodoxy, 19,46,83, 152,259; Orthodox Christians, 270 other, 9, 10, 11, 27, 137, 138, 159,275; otherness, 8,28 Ottoman, 66, 74, 259; administration, 70; Empire, 18, 70, 73; occupation, 75; period, 41; rule, 74; way of life, 69 paganism, 152 Paivanas, Dimitris, ix
lndex
Palaiologos, Grigorios, 3 1, 55-57, 60-73,75-82 Palamas, Kostis, 21, 38-39, 109, 152 Pamuk, Orhan, 249n1 Panagiotopoulou, Roy, 18 Panselinos, Alexis, 50, 51n108 Papadiamantis,Alexandros, x, 3, 32, 35-36,4344, 82-86,88-91,93-94, 96-101 Papagiorgis, Kostis, 83nl Papaleontiou, Lefteris, 88n12 Papataxiarchis, Evthymios, 151110 Papazoglou, Christos, 96n24 Pappas, Yannis H., 197116 Paraskevopoulos, Potis, 2401145 Paris, 232,235 Paroritis, Kostas, 42 Pasayannis, Spilios, 38n80 Pashalidis, Grigoris, 197n6 Pastourmatzi, Domna, 252n6 patriotism, 135, 158, 163, 167 Patsiou, Vicky, 107n15 Pellon, Gustavo, 70n26 peloponnese, 202 Pentzikis, Nikos Gavriel, 2,40, 52-53 Peri, Massimo, 361174,881115 personal, 181 perspectivism, 47 Petropoulos, J. A., 73n32 Petsalis-Diomidis,Thanassis, 41 phalic symbol, 1 4 8 4 9 Pheno-text, 268 Philhellenism, 70,71,74,76; Philhellenes, 72 Philippidis, S. N., 361174, 155n10 Philokyprou, Elli, 210n19 picaresque, 2, 3, 55,56, 57,60,62,63, 67, 701126, 75,79, 80, 81, 82, 154, 274; Picaro, 57, 64, 65, 67, 74, 75 Pieris, Mihalis, 11ln25 Pikkolos, N. S., 721131 Pikros, Petros, 42 Pitzipios, Iakovos, 55, 80n44 Plaskovitis, Spyros, 42n92,45
285
Plato, 154, 267 Ploumbidis, Nikos, 2 4 0 4 1 poetry, 21,23,52,61, 112, 128 politeness, 22 Politi, Jina, 99x129 politics, 46, 180-81, 215,238, 239; political development, 70; political narrative, 79; political novel, 65 Politis, Alexis, lln28, 78n40 Politis, Kosmas, 38,4244, 114n31 Politis, Nikolaos, 36 Pollis, Adamantia, 16-18, 28n58 positivism, 38 postmodem, 8; characterization,229; condition, 214; narrative, 235; postmodemism, 8, 14,43,213,218, 238; postmodernity, 8 poststructuralist, 12n29 Prague, Spring of 1968,240 Pratt, Annis, 219 Prevelakis, Pantelis, 4142,44,46, 104, 119, 124, 126, 127n47, 130-32, 159n16 primitivism, 159, 162 privacy, 54 private vision, 5 1 progress, 65, 67, 98,99 Proguidis, Lakis, 83nl prose, 23 Prosopon, 19 Protestantism, 14; non-Protestant, 14 Psomiades, Harry J., 281159 Psycharis, Yannis, 38 psychoanalysis, 10,41, 149, 160,274; psychoanalytic, 135, 169; psychoanalytic approach, 139, 151, 273; psychoanalytic reading, 136, 139, 254; psychoanalytic terms, 242; psychoanalytic theory, 137; psychoanalytical, 4 psychological novel, 163, 174 psychological thriller, 84 psycho-narration, 88 Puritan, 14; Puritanism, 19
286
Index
racial purity, 159 radicalism, 50 Raftopoulos, Dimitris, 124, 125143, 195n2,200n12 Raftopoulos, Vangelis, 5 1 Rallidis, Iakovos, 200n13 Ramfos, Stelios, 19n25, 83n2 Rangavis, A. R., 32 rationalism, 5, 18, 65, 67n24, 109 real, 268-69 realism, 36, 39,43,50, 105, 106, 109, 154, 155, 188, 191, 197, 238; realist tradition, 104; Western European realism, 107 Rebetika, 224 relationality, 242 relativism, 47 relativity, 12 religious differences, 78 Renaissance, 20, 21 Renfrew, Alastair, 267n39 Rick, Abbott, 119n38 Ricks, David, 33n69 Roberts, John M., 281158 Robinson, Christopher, ix, 179n6, 189 Rodokanakis, Georgios D., 31 Rodokanakis, Platon, 38 Rodriquez-Luis, Julio, 70n26 Roidis, Emmanuel, 33-34, 37 role-playing, 190, 220 romance, 55, 59,62, 63,64, 67, 75, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82,274; Byzantine, 55; family, 81, 82, 160, 274; Greek, 56, 58; Hellenistic, 55; national, 55 romantic, 61; antiromantic, 61, 62; Romantic era, 118; romantic love, 55 Romanticism, 7, 43, 50; Greek Romanticism, 3 1 Rome, 230,233,242 Roudiez, Leon S., 27~56,2561112 Roufos, Rodis, 43 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 5, 31 Russia, 251, 253; Russian, 250 Rutherford, Richard, 163n28
Sahinis, Apostolos, 71n28, 174n42 Said, Edward, 71n29, 196 Samarakis, Antonis, 45 Samouil, Alexandra, 38n81 Saranti, Galateia, 43 satirical, 65; satire, 79, 81 Saunier, Guy (Michel), 83n2, 921119, 96n25 Savidis, G . P., 11ln25 Schoene, Berthold, 192n25 secularization, 5 Seferis, George, 1, 21, 38 self, 100, 117n35, 129n50; hybrid, 175; Greek concept of, 16,92; Greek notion of, 18, 28; psychological, 20 self-affirmation, 220 self-analysis, 86 self-awakening, 220 self-awareness, 100, 122 self-discovery, 215, 217, 220, 238, 247 self-knowledge, 105 self-referential, 100, self-referentiality,62 self-representation, 215 self-understanding, 133 selfhood, 2 , 4 , 5 , 7 , 12, 52, 53, 83, 138, 220,234,273,275 semiotic, 265-66, 268-69, 27 1, 273; Chora, 249,269-70 Sennett, Richard, 5n8, 16n13 Servou, Marietta, 80n44 sex, 45; sexuality, 161; female sexuality, 245; sexual potency, 159, 170 Sfakianakis, Aris, 51 shame, 17 Shaw, Christopher, 21 3n22 Shepherd, David, 9n21 Sheridan, Alan, 137nll Sherrard, Philip, 20-21, 119n38 Shinas, Alexandros, 188n15 Sifianou, Maria, 22 Sikelianos, Angelos, 21, 152 Simmel, Georg, 6n12 Sinbad the Sailor, 210 Skarimbas, Yannis, 2,40, 52
Index
Skartsis, S. L., 5111110 Skassis, Thomas, 48 Skiathas, Antonis D., 197n6 Skordos, Hristakis D., 33n68 Smith, Edmund J., 229n30 Smith, Sidonie, 215nl social conformity, 208 social determinism, 37, 42, 43, 208, 273 socialism, 37, 38 social novel, 84, 92, 103, 104; antisocial novel, 100 social resistance, 83 social theory, 14 society, 2, 5 , 197, 275; civil society, 14, 15, 27; Greek society, 19, 21, 25, 28, 30, 34, 56, 177, 182, 185, 189, 191, 19.5, 209; traditional society, 21 solitude, 197, 201 Solomos, Dionysios, 21,77, 224 Sommer, Doris, 8ln46 Sosna, Morton, 10n25 Sotiriou, Dido, 44 Soutsos, Panayotis, 3 1, 55 Soviet Union, 217, 235 Spanaki, Marianna, ix Spencer-Oatey, Helen, 22n39 spiritualism, 18 Sprinker, Michael, 92n18 Stalin, Joseph, 240 Stathi, Penelope, 55nl Stavridi-Patrikiou, Rena, 37n76 Stavropoulou, Eri, 198n9 Stavrou, Soterios G., 39n83 Stavrou, Theofanis G., 28n59, 112n27, 119n39, 1301153 Stendhal, Henri Beyle, 105, 118n36 storytelling, 53, 189 Strachey, James, 160n20,255n10 stream of consciousness, 40, 190 Stuttgart, 210 subjectivity, 7, 8x116, 10, 11, 12, 49nlOS, 52, 137, 138, 139, 190, 219-20,274
287
Suleiman, Susan Rubin, 196n2 superego, 266 superman, 136 Swales, Martin, 132 symbol, 113n28; symbolic, 62, 67, 74, 81, 92, 96n24, 130, 133, 139, 26546,268-71,273; symbolic order, 138, 141-42, 144-45, 152; symbolism, 43, 1321156, 154 Syndipas, 210 Syria, 257 Syrimis, George, 249n2 Tachtsis, Kostas, 1, 44-46, 48, 175-76, 179-80, 182-83, 186n13, 189, 192n23,274 Taine, Hippolyte, 37 Tamvakakis, Phaidon, 5 1 Tashkent, 218, 240 Tatsopoulos, Petros, 5 1 Terzakis, Angelos, 39-40, 106n10 testimonial narrative, 39, 41, 45; testimonial war narrative, 41 textuality, 25, 188 Thalassis, Yorgos, 259 Theodoropoulos, Takis, 16n12 Theotokas, George, 3 8 4 1 , 43, 46, 51, 104, 106n10, 111, 112n27, 113, 114n29, 117n35, 118-20, 122, 131-32,274 Theotokas, Michail, 114n30 Theotokis, Konstantinos, 35-36, 38, 42, 104-6, 107n14, 108-11, 131 third way, 11 Thomadakis, Stavros B., 281159 Thousand and One Nights, 209-10 Thrace, 25 1; eastern, 250 Ting-Toomey, Stella, 22n39 Tolstoy, Leo, 230 Tonnet, Henri, 43n95,56,58n9 Tonnies, Ferdinand, 14 tradition, 13, 14, 21, 29, 53, 54, 64, 65, 80, 105, 127n47, 131, 132; European tradition, 176n4; folk
288 tradition, 41, 127, 129, 130, 136; Greek tradition, 113n28; popular tradition, 136 tragedy, 164 tragicomedy, 175 Triandis, Harry C., 22 Triantafyllopoulos, N. D., 83n2, 84n7 Tsirkas, Stratis, 15, 42n92, 4 3 4 4 , 46, 216 Tsitsanis, Vassilis, 224 Tsivakou, Ioanna, 20n26 Tsoukalas, Constantine, 17n19, 28 Turgenev, Ivan, 38 Turkey, 253; Turk, 144, 145, 149, 173, 250-5 1 Tziovas, Dimitris, 23n42, 37n77, 5311114, 119n37, 179n6, 198n10, 249n 1 Uganda, 195 urbanization, 45 Valtinos, Thanassis, 46-48 Van Dyck, Karen, 222n18, 250n3 Vassilikos, Vassilis, 1, 45 Vayenas, Nasos, 52n113, 55n1, 70n27, 80n44 Vendetta, 15119 Venezis, Elias, 114n31, 146n24 Venizelos, Eleftherios, 180 Vere, David, ix, 1981110, 202n15 Vice, Sue, 267 Vikelas, Dimitrios, 3 1 visuality, 25 Vitti, Mario, 33n68, 106n11, 136n4 Vizyenos, Georgios M., x, 32, 249-51, 252n5,254-55,262-64,269-70 Vlachos, Angelos, 37 Vlantas, Dimitris, 241 Voles, 209-1 1 Voltaire, 58, 63 Voumas, Tasos, 240n45
Index
Voutiras, Dimosthenis, 2, 39 Voutouris, Pantelis, 34n7 1 Watt, Ian, 13-14, 24n44 Waugh, Patricia, 218 Weintraub, Karl Joachim, 13n2 Wellbery, David E., 10n25 West, 14, 16, 19n2.5, 20, 21, 29, 162, 174, 259; westernization, 12 Western European, 21 Whitford, Margaret, 267n38 Wicks, Ulrich, 80n42 Wilden, Anthony, 10n23 Wilder, Thornton, 204, 207 Williams, Raymond, 13n2 Wolf, Christa, 238n38 women, 67,68,70, 81,90, 91, 95, 97, 108, 127; Greek women writers, 215; womanhood, 681125; women’s writing, 218; writers, 49. Wood, Michael R., 6 World War I, 41 World War 11, 15,41,45, 118. Second World War, 44, 51, 234 writing, 24 Wyatt, William F., 249n2 Xefloudas, Stelios, 38,40 Yannakakis, Eleni, 27n54,53n114, 2251124,257,258n15 Yannaras, Christos, 19nn24-25 Yannopoulos, Periklis, 38n80 Zahariadis, Nikos, 240-41 Zamarou, Rena, 96n24 Zei, Alki, 48, 216, 229, 234-36, 237, 24041,242n47,243-45,274 Ziras, Alexis, 42n92, 106n9, 257n14 Zola, Emile, 36 Zoumboulakis, Stavros, 96n24 Zurcher, Louis A., 6
About the Author
Dimitris Tziovas is Professor of Modem Greek Studies and Director of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman, and Modem Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham (U.K.). He is the author of a number of books on Modem Greek literature and culture, and general editor of the Birmingham Modem Greek translations series. His most recent publication is an edited volume entitled Greece and the Balkans: Identities, Perceptions, and Cultural Encounters since the Enlightenment (Ashgate, 2003).
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