The CHARIOTEER an Annual Review of Modern Greek Culture
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The CHARIOTEER An Annual Review of Modern Greek Culture NUMBER 151974 Dedicated to KIMONFRIAR Translator of this issue KIMONFRIAR AS TRANSLATOR an essay by Andonis Decavalles QETS OF TWO DECADES: An Introduction by Andonis Decavalles by the Post-War Poets Aravandinou, Athanasoulis, Decavalles, Dhikteos, Dhimakis, .Karidhis, Karouzos, Kotsiras, Papadhi tsas, Papadhopoulos, Phocas, Sahtouris, Sinopoulos, Stephanou, Steryopoulos, Vakalo, Valaoritis and Y eralis THE VESPA a short story by Triandafillos Pittas THE SCULPTURE OF NATALIA MELAS an essay by Kimon Friar BOOK REVIEWS Published by Parnassos, Greek Cultural Society of New York IJ.OO From Cavafis to Elftis Translation, Introduction and Notes by /( imon Friar Translator of Kazantzakis' The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel Twenty-five years in the making, this massive and splendid achievement containing over 450 poems from thirty poets - is a masterpiece of both translation and poetic creation. More than this, Mr. Friar has created a work of outstanding scholarship, for his noteo;, his commentaries and his long pre face on the modern Greek poets r('pre,ent the mo:;t complete study of what can now, at last, be seen as a new Golden Age of Greek poetry. D. I. Antoniou Zoe Karelli Nlkos Ghavriil Pendzikis Alexander Baras Kostas Kariotakis Pendelis Prevelakis Rita Bolimi-Pappas Nfkos Kavadhias Yannis Ritsos Nicolas Calas Nfkos Kazantzakis George Sarandaris Constantine Cavafis Alexander Miitsas Angelos Sikelian6s Odysseus Elytis Melissiinthi George Seferis Andreas Embiricos Kostas Ouranis George Themelis Nikos Engon6poulos I. M. Panayotopoulos G. T. Vaf6poulos Nikos Gatsos Takis Papats6nis Kostas V arnalis Andreas Karandonis Nikos Pappas NikiphOros Vrettakos $20 • Published by SrMoN AND ScHUSTER /:i 630 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10020 !\. THE CHARIOTEER AN ANNUAL REVIEW OF MODERN GREEK CULTURE Published bv Parnassos, Greek Cultural Society of New York NUMBER 15 1973 EDITORIAL STAFF Executive Editors Andonis Decavalles Bebe Spanos Managing Editor Katherine Hortis Editor in Greece Kimon Friar Book Review Editor George Thaniel Art Editor Nicholas Ikaris Copy Editor Belle Rothberg Business Manager James W. Manousos THE CHARIOTEER is published by PARNASSOS, GREEK CULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK, a non-profit organization under the laws of the State of New York. Editorial and subscription address: Box 2928, Grand Central Station, New York, N.Y. 10017. 2-Number subscription $5.00; 4-Number subscription $10.00. Copyright 1973 by Par nassos. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A. by H. Gantt, New York, N.Y. 10040.-THE CHARIOTEER solicits essays on and English translations from works of modern Greek writers. Translations should be accompanied by a copy of the original Greek text. Manuscripts will not be returned unless accompanied by stamped self-addressed envelopes. No responsibility can be assumed for theft, loss or damage. PARNASSOS EXECUTIVE COUNCIL President George A. Gazetas Vice President Alexandria Christopher Treasurer Mary Georghiou Secretary Charles Alikes Cultural Chairman Mary Gregory Social Chairman Mabel Haqjidakis Membership Chairman Dawn Spiropoulos Charioteer Chairman James W. Manousos Board of Directors Eleni Austlid, Demetrios Counes, Sophia V ardas The staff of The Charioteer are members of Parnassos who donate their services. Support is earnestly requested from all who are interested in the aims of this publication. Your contribution is tax-deductible. TABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL Bebe Spanos 5 KIMON FRIAR AS TRANSLATOR Andonis Decavalles 9 POETS OF TWO DECADES Andonis Decavalles 15 MANDO ARAV ANDINOU from LINEAR SCRIPT A, The Absent One 28 KRITON ATHANASOULIS Extract from My will 32 The Dove and The Sleep of the Good God 34 I Am a Lunatic 36 ANDONIS DECAVALLES Other Self 37 The Screw 38 Between Stops 39 ARES DHIKTEOS Serpent 41 Christ in the Monastery at Daphni 44 Voyage to Cythera 46 MINAS DHIMAKIS You Come Like a Wounded Bird 49 Elegy 49 Variations on a Theme 50 NIKOS KARIDHIS Fragment of a Biography 51 Alexander Avenue 52 NIKOS KAROUZOS Therapeutic Education 53 Solomos in my Dreams 54 The Victory of War 55 GEORGE KOTSIRAS The Unbound 56 The Other Face 58 The Poet 59 DIMITRIS PAPADHITSAS Behind Every Door 60 It Was He Coming 60 The Moon 61 YANNIS PAPADHOPOULOS Flight903 62 Wine From Thasos 63 NATALIA Essay 65 by Kimon Friar SEVEN PIECES OF SCULPTURE Natalia 67 NIKOS PHOCAS The Caterpillar Ox 71 From The Trial of the Airmen, November 1943 72 Trees With Trees 73 MILTOS SAHTOURIS The Voyage 74 The Huge Moon 75 The Dance 76 The Poet's Head 77 TAKIS SINOPOULOS In Memoriam G. S. 78 Waiting Room 80 The Poetry of Poetry 82 LYDIA STEPHANOU Saint Marina 85 KOSTAS STERYOPOULOS Deep in Vegetation 88 The Great Lesson 88 Under the Eucalyptus Trees 89 ELENI VAKALO .Journal of The Age 90 NANOS VALAORITIS One Thing in Another 94 On Shadow 95 Pate's Decree 95 GEORGE YERALIS The Light in Altis 96 The DeadMan 97 On Death 98 NOTES 99 TRIANDAFILLOS PITTAS The Vespa a short story 102 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 114 REVIEW OF BOOKS 119 EDITORIAL Time and custom leave their thumbprint on everything. A work of art-painting or music, sculpture, novel or poem-is no excep tion. Sooner or later, whoever would fully understand it must understand the circumstances of history or geography or whatever that presided at its birth and fostered its growth. (Sooner or later, he will, of course, confront the ageless quandary: does art make life or life make art.) For the experienced reader, the poems in this issue reflect manners which the contemporary Greek poet inherited from a previous generation, the so-called Symbolists, who searched for an ideal world beyond the discord ofthe era through which they lived. The crises of the Symbolists were, however, comparatively per sonal. The inexperienced reader need not look deeply among these poems to discern that they are the fruit of huge, impersonal disasters which did not merely bring upheaval and suffering to the poet himself but churned the very earth under his feet and the sky over him into continuing chaos. As Sir Maurice Bowra writes in The Heritage of Symbolism, "The twentieth century has brought poets into touch with facts far more brutal than their immediate predecessors ever knew." These poems, as their dates indicate, belong to the Forties and Fifties of our century and are charged with the kind of trauma which throws the poet, as it throws every artist, back upon himself and causes him to behave toward the external world as if he were blind and deaf to it. Throughout these pages, recur the words pain, wound, death. The contemporary Greek poet, however, pays doubly for his pain. He not only gives up the most reliable ins trument he, as any poet, has-his senses; he also turns away from the most nourishing source any poet ever had or could hope to have-the face of Greece. Centuries of poetic tradition have fed upon the profound phantasmagoria which the Greek light evokes upon the Greek land, her sea and sky. For the contemporary Greek poet, the sight of that external reality, affectionately cherished by his ancestors, has become too forbidding to look at and the sound of it too hideous to his ears. "Witnessing betrays," writes Aravan dinou. "The senses are blunted; space widens. I Time is confined. I Pain remains the same." The commonplace certainties that once reassured him have dissolved into amorphous apparitions: "All things change,"writes Valaoritis; "one thing becomes another I ... 6 THE CHARIOTEER All things are telescoped and nothing is I Certain what it will or will not become I ... the world is terrifying I It borrows and lends, changes color I Is no longer called what it is called. ." And Kriton Athanasoulis writes, "Exterior beauty frightens me, and I search to find if it exists within things." The contemporary Greek poet seems to move, groping, between two extremes, a ravishing light and a smothering darkness. "The darkness pursued us and we pursued the sun," writes Papadhopoulos. This fugitive condition, pursued and yet pursu ing, causes the poet to withdraw into a subliminal world. It is a watery element where he drifts neither on the surface of his awareness nor in its depths, but in a middle distance between wisdom and folly, misery and joy, knowledge and ignorance, courage and terror. "I acquire the movements of a drowning per son," writes Aravandinou. "I describe invisible circles. I I sway in space. I I pass through all forms, without substance. I I acquire my total form." The poet dares to wonder what is above and below him. Fear fully he imparts intuitions whch burden his spirit and which he but dimly comprehends. Yet, he clings to them. Bereft of the sights that once gave order to his existence, reflecting as they did the order of his mind, he fingers now his intuitions much as a blindman fumbles the coins of a strange realm to l~arn about the unseen world through which he passes and about his own place in that world. The words pain, wound, death are, however, secondary themes in a counterpoint where dream and sleep, and shadow and ecstasy prevail. The poet keeps seeing himself, or rather feeling himself as a swimmer lost in waters where sleeping and waking, life and death melt into each other. "I gaze on the region of Sleep," writes Dhik teos, "and am taught I between the space of earth and the opposite shore. Thus, I conclude I that life is death, that sleep is life, that death is sleep I and I do not know if I am dead now, or if I have passed through I an uninhabited expanse of sleep .... " The realizations of the dream -swimmer persist in Karouzos: "0 how we plunge in the night and from what longing I ..