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Territories of Hellenism: Neohellenic modernism, nationalism, and the classical tradition

Leontis, Artemis Sophia, Ph.D.

The Ohio State University, 1991

UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106

TERRITORIES OF HELLENISM:

NEOHELLENIC MODERNISM, NATIONALISM, RND THE CLASSICAL TRADITION

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University

By

Artemis Sophia Leontis, B.A., M.A.

* * * * *

The Ohio State University 1991

Dissertation Committee: Approved by Marilyn R. Waldman Eugene W. Holland 7? Adviser Gregory Jusdanis One-of-a-Kind Program For Vassilis ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am deeply indebted to the many people who have supported me through the long years of graduate education. To my dear parents, Thomas E. and Anna Leontis, I am grateful for their insistence on a bilingual education and love of letters, and to my brother, Neocles Leontis, for sharing dilemmas of assimilation. To numerous friends and colleagues I owe many thanks: to Julian Anderson for advice on language and style; to Susan Ritchie for running commentary on the vagueries of theory; to Brenda Hosey for her cartography of the University bureacracy; to Stephanie Winder for endless conversations about Hellenism; and to Panayotis Bosnakis, Vangelis Calotychos, Van Gegas, Stathis Gourgouris, Martha Klironomos, Eva Konstantellou, Tracy Lord, Nenny Panourgia, Maria Papacostaki, and Charles Stewart—the next wave of Neohellenists—for their willingness to share with me their vast stores of knowledge. Nanos Valaoritis advised me on the specificity of the terms Hellenism and Neohellenism and offered great critical insight into the project of his contemporaries. I also thank Professors Margaret Alexiou, Peter Bien, John Chioles, Michael Herzfeld, and Gregory Nagy for their advice, encouragement, and confidence; Charles L. Babcock, Frederic J. Cadora, and Dean Micheal Riley gave me administrative backing for inter-departmental work and financial backing for my studies in theory. To Stephen V. Tracy I owe some difficult but immensely useful lessons in both the breadth and limits of a Classical education. I have benefited greatly from the attention and attentive readings of three excellent supervisors: Marilyn R. Waldman, who also supported me at a critical time, assisted in the passage of my interdisciplinary proposal for graduate studies, and pointed out at every turn the global implications of my research on Neohellenism; Eugene W. Holland, always a generous, immensely intelligent, and critical teacher and reader; and Gregory Jusdanis, who successfully cultivated an interpretive community of Neohellenic scholars and invested it with his own integrity and intellectual generosity. Finally, I am indebted to Vassilis Lambropoulos, who gently and persuasively pointed out what routes of inquiry there are for thinking and being. This project was supported by a Presidential Fellowship from the Graduate School of the Ohio State University. Some parts of the dissertation were previously published in earlier versions: chapter II in the J o u rn a l o f Modern Greek Studies (May 1990) and chapter IV in The Journal of Modern Greek Studies (May 1991). I would like to thank the editor Ernestine Friedl for her kind attention to my work. Portions of chapter III were delivered at Harvard University in March 1991, chapter IV at the Modern Greek Studies Symposium in October 1989 in Minneapolis, and chapter V at the O.S.U. graduate student conference, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies: The Next Wa w in October 1990. The College of Humanities, Department of Classics, Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, Division of Comparative Studies, and Graduate School partially covered travel costs for some of these conferences.

iv UlTfl

March 13, 1957 ...... Born - Midland, Michigan 1979 ...... B.A., Oberlin College, with Majors in Religion and Art 1980-1982 ...... University of Salonica, Department of Philology, Post-graduate research fellow in Ancient, Byzantine, and Modern Greek Literature, Salonica, Greece 1984 ...... M.A. in Greek, Department of Classics, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio Thesis Title: “ Thrush'. The Sign of an Absent Teiresias” 1984-1986 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate in Modern Greek, Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, OSU 1986-198 7 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Ancient Greek and Latin, Department of Classics, OSU 1987-199 0 ...... Graduate Administrative and Teaching Associate, Division of Comparative Studies, OSU 1990-1991...... Graduate Teaching and Research Associate in Modern Greek, Department of JaNELL, OSU

v PUBLICATIONS

1983 “K.n. Kapd^T) « a t t o X € ( tt€ i v o 8 € 6 s a v t (j6v i o v » : Mia o k t ^v o 0 € t i k ^ [C.P. Cavafy’s “The God Abandons Antony”: Stage Directions], QlA&oyoS' 33 (Salonica):218-222. 1984 110111011 OTT)V€T!OXilTTiSiirixaviKi)savaTTapaYWY')S” [Greek Poetry in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction], X dpT rjgil (Athens): 100-111. 1987 “The Lost Center and the Promised Land of Greek Criticism, ” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 5:2 (October): 175-190. 1990 “Modernist Criticism: Greek and American Defenses of the Autonomous Literary Text in the 1930s, ” in Greek in Modernism ? Essays on the Critical and Literary Margins of a Movement, edited by Mary N. Layoun, pp. 21-57 (New York: Pella). 1990 “Minor Field, Major Territories: Dilemmas in Modernizing Hellenism,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 8 (May): 35-63. 1990 “Surrealist Poetics of Identity and Andreas Embeirikos’s Defense of Man, ” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 6:315-329.

FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: One-of-a-Kind Program Fields of Concentration and General Examination: Contemporary Critical Theory (Eugene W. Holland and Gregory Jusdanis) Modernity and Modernism (Marilyn R. Waldman and Eugene W. Holland) Classical and Byzantine Greek (Stephen V. Tracy and Timothy Gregory) Modern Greek, 18th-20th century (Timothy Gregory and Gregory Jusdanis)

vi TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... iii VITA...... v PREFACE...... viii NOTE ON TRANSLITERATIONS, REFERENCES, AND TRANSLATIONS...... xii CHAPTER I. Introduction ...... 1 II. Topos\ From Revenant Nation to Transcendental Territory Post-War Consolidations ...... 29 A Genealogy of Topos...... 40 The Transcendence of “Greekness” ...... 61 III. N ostos\ The Crisis of Tradition and Hellenism’s Suspended Homecoming The Crisis of Tradition ...... 77 “Native” Complaints: Modernity’s Limitless Hotel ...... 85 Inter textual Horizons: T h ru sh and the O d y sse y ...... 91 Signs of Homecoming...... 98 Declarations of Ignorance, Modernist Ellipsis, and the Return to Light ...... 107 Salvaging the Post-War Shipwreck...... 117 IV. C osm os: Grounding the Poetic Word in the Spirit of the People The Self-Sufficient Universe: Two Versions of Autonomy 123 The T elosoi Neohellenism ...... 129 Demoticism and the Discourse of Populism ...... 139 Neohellenic Modernist “Form” ...... 148 The National Body as Literary Palimpsest ...... 157 V. Heterotopia or E ntopia'i The “Neo-” of Hellenism, or What to Do with Hellenism’s Modern Excess Heterotopia and Periphery ...... 176 The Acropolis, the Romantic Traveller, Ottoman Authorities, and the Greek State ...... 183 Modernist Scepticism: “A Dialogue Upon Mount Pentelicus” 200 The Ideology of the Neohellenic Aesthetic: Autochthony and the Greek Landscape ...... 208 Deterritorializing Hellenism ...... 219 NOTES...... 228 WORKS CITED...... 283

vii PREFACE

“Hellenism” is the Idea of ancient Greece produced by the discourses of European Humanism from the 18th to the 20th centuries. During my first years as a graduate student, I made this important Idea the proud centerpiece of my studies. I started out as a student of “The Classics,” reading ancient texts with the purpose of recovering truths about Greece. Through the rigor of certain “close readings,” however, and with the assistance of modern lexicons, commentaries, and literary histories that were supposed to make the meaning of Greek texts transparent, I gradually discovered that the content of the Greek “material,” as viewed by different modern beholders, was perennially shifting. I saw that our Idea of ancient Greece, as a major political and cultural ideal of Modernity, was neither a monolithic essence nor an unchanging truth, but a disputed province of western culture. I therefore shifted my focus away from the Truth of Greece to the “territories” where Hellenism’s sovereign meaning has been broadly contested. In particular, I chose to study the significance of western Hellenism from two complementary standpoints. I have examined Hellenism, first, from the significant but neglected perspective of its south-eastern periphery: Neohellenism, the culture of modern Greece. Neohellenism offers an unusual intellectual adventure for a student in the American academy. Even though contemporary Greece is the usual point of departure for a journey to many archeological sites of classical

viii antiquity, its own culture remains a minor subject in the University next to the preeminent “Classics” and the traditional “major” languages and literatures of western nations (English, American, German, French). Yet Neohellenism has the power to unfold into an elaborate labyrinth, where the venerated texts, language, museums, and excavation sites of Hellenism occupy crucial, if ambivalent, junctures. What is so interesting about the Neohellenic approach to Hellenism is that its meandering passages somehow circle back to their contemporary points of origin. They return to the pressing, if contradictory, issues of modern national culture: how to circumscribe the autonomy, sovereignty, and unity of a nation, and how to represent this nation as a unique case of a “human” group at any given historical moment and in the face of (or, one should add, with the effect of erasing the traces of) whatever political crisis. At the same time, Hellenism serves as the elixir that covers, without eliminating, the wrinkles of Neohellenism’s mixed project. My second approach to Hellenism has been through the contemporary currents of critical theory, specifically critiques of the project of Modernity. A question that recurs concerns the relationship of nationalism and modern culture: how does culture constitute an imaginary space for the sovereign nation. Thus I have been led to examine the very rich concept of “territory,” a term I define as a conceptually delineated space which confers both a geographical and a historical place to an imaginary community. I borrow this term not only from the field of cultural geography and the philosophical w ork of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, but also, in its Greek rendition as topos (“territory,” “place," “land,” “commonplace”), from the very interesting Neohellenic debates about the breadth and depth of a Hellenic ix nation. In fact, the negotiation of a topos of Hellenism has been basic to the history, politics, language, and culture of modern Greece. The advantage of using the concept of territory to study Hellenism’s shifting truths is that it offers a way of accounting for a specific set of operations—occupation, possession, restoration, expropriation, expatriation, exile, withdrawal, and return—which Greeks (and other national groups) have performed in the name of Hellenism and through the avenue of national culture. So much for my approach to the broad topic of Hellenism. My particular subject in this dissertation is Neohellenic modernism in the Cold War era. It is increasingly recognized today that Greece was the first theater of the Cold War. Just before World War II, a major shift in emphasis takes place in Neohellenic conceptions of the Hellenic topos, Instead of the all-out effort to delineate the geographical boundaries of a revenant Hellenic nation, one begins to see the production of w orks claiming to represent the transcendent values of “Greek Hellenism,” or “Greekness.” In the Cold War era, these works further distance themselves from the “dirty" scene of party politics, without ceasing, of course, to play a political role in the marketing of a “Free World.” They organize themselves into a literary canon that can be consumed by groups and individuals widely divided from one another in class origin and political affiliation. Modernist authors like George Seferis and Odysseus Elytis play a decisive part in this recoding of Hellenism in modern high culture. They attempt to resolve questions of national identity not by debating outright the issues of continuity, language, religion, geographical orientation, or race, but by incorporating uncontextualized fragments from Hellenism’s past into a portable and “disengaged” literary corpus. My analysis of these Neohellenic modernist appropriations of Hellenism raises the important issue of national tradition: how Neohellenism Implements older layers of culture to define its past and legitimize its present. Research on the institutions of the modern nation has shown that culture and the disciplines devoted to its study (criticism, philology, archaeology, history) play a significant role in positing a distinct origin, history, language, and ethos for the individual nation. One of national literature’s distinct roles is to “dig up” verbal remains from older communities and to incorporate their message into the new grand narratives of the emergent nation. This is also the case with a literary movement such as Neohellenic modernism, which commited itself to redefining the values of its “national heritage” for a modern audience. The present study is intended as a reexamination of western Hellenism through the example of Neohellenic modernism. The significance of m y dissertation lies, first, in its concrete analysis of the territorial dimension of Hellenism: how Neohellenes have used the discrete category of Hellenism to develop a sense of cultural uniqueness, to define a common fate, and to institute national identity on a global map. At the same time, my analysis of canonical 20th-century modernist works will show how the Hellenic project of “seeking Greece w ith one’s soul” played into the hands of an elite group that identified itself completely with the transcendental signifier of western civilization, Hellas. On the level of theory, finally, I hope to offer a model for discussing the ideological control of space in peripheral nations during periods of rapid "development.” Thus I expect my work to participate in current debates about modernism, nationalism, cultural identity, social and political space, center-periphery relations, and the politics of the Cold War. xi NOTE ON TRRNSLOTIONS, TRANSLITERATIONS, AND REFERENCES

Most translations in this dissertation are my own and are intended to be faithful to my understanding of the original Greek. In a few places I have used existing English translations which I do not think I can improve on. In this case, I indicate a translator’s name or a translated publication which appears in the list of references.

In the transliteration of modern Greek terms, I have followed the phonetic system of the Journal of Modern Greek Studies with the difference that I adopt common English spellings and drop stress marks where names and words have acquired currency in the Englislvlanguage. The examples of Elytis and Seferis, as well as ancient authors, mythical heroes, and words like topos and cosm os, are prominent. In the transliteration of ancient Greek terms, I have followed a non-phonetic system for the rendering of each Greek letter into English. I follow these two different systems for rendering modern and ancient transliterations because their phonetics differ and there is a lack of consensus on ancient Greek pronunciation.

I adopt the system of the Journal of Modern Greek Studies for the citation of references within the text, in the notes, and in the listing of references at the end of the dissertation.

xii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

To |i€ O T p £ p io t o Apxaio\oviic6 Mouoelo. S€0dpouv Tc5pa-dXXa oc K d o e j Kai dxxa yupva K aT d o a p K a p£oao to xwpa-ra aydXpaTa. 2e pid and t i s naxies pcyaXes ateouoes, yvoupipes and Ta paOTyrucd pas xP^via pe tt) OT€yvf) 6\|rn TIOU l(J>6pV€ k AtTO)S TipOS TT) pap€Tfl 8T^p6oia plpXlO0lfyCTV 01 €pydT€£80UX€U0UV P€ ^Tvdpia Kai p€ a^tvcs. To 8diT€8o, av 8ev ko 1t o (€ S r n OT^yn, Ta Tiapdeupa Kai t o u s t o I x o u s pc t i s x p ^ o ^ s em ypa^s, 0a pnopotioe va fyrav ^vas 6noios t 6ttos avaoKa^wv. Ta ayaXpaTa pu0iopeva aKdpT) ottj yr^s, aivovTovoav atr6 tt^ peat) K ai Tiava) yupva, 4>uT€p€va o ttjv tu x *)— 'HTav evas avaoTdoipos Xop6s ava8uop£viov, p ia SeuT^pa Tiapouola ou>pdTa>v tiou oou £8ive p ia TiaXapf) Xapa.... ZvyKCvryjT) and auTf) tt^v £a$viKf)ouceidTTiTa. 0 pnpouvTCivos M as, r\ nooei8wv, ^anXcjp^vos ndvo) oe pia Kao&a oav £vas Koivds Koupaop^vos €pyaTT)S. Tov dyyil-a o t o o t i ^Oo s , €K €ttiou S lvci to ptipaToo p€t o v c6po, ott ^v KoiXid, O T apaxxid t o u . m o u $ 6 .vt\k€ ttojs d y y ic a t o 8 ik 6 pou ocupa.... Tpex6s and to v t 6 tto . Kd0e pepa ouveuapp^vos nepioodTcpo and auTf) tt) pe0Tv Tr^ 0dXaooa, Ta pouva tiou xopeuouv aK(vr|Ta- Ta ifepa, Ta (8ia, o* outou t o u s x it u )V€ s tiou KupaTtCouv-pappapwpevo vepd yupw aTid Ta OTifaia Kai Ta TtXeupd TUV OK^OXWV OUVTpippiCOV. (Seferis 1986: 38-39)

At noon at the archaeological museum. They unearth now—some crates, some bare to the flesh in the earth—the statues. In one of the big old galleries, familiar from our student years, with the dull facade that somewhat resembled the dreary public library, the workmen excavate with shovels and pickaxes. If you didn’t look at the roof, the floor, the windows, and the walls with inscriptions in gold, this could be any [ topos of] excavation. Statues, still sunken in the earth, appeared naked from the waist up, planted at random— It was a chorus of the resurrected, a second coming of bodies that gave you a crazy jo y .... Emotion from this sudden familiarity. The bronze Zeus, or Poseidon, lying on a crate like an ordinary tired laborer. 1 touched him on the chest, where the arm Joins the shoulder, on the belly, on his hair. It seemed that I touched my own body.... Crazy [from] the [ topos]. Every day carried away more and more by this drunkenness. The sea, the mountains that dance motionless; I found them the same in these rippled chitons: water turned into marble around the chests and the sides of headless fragments. (Seferis 1974: 28-29; with my own minor changes or additions to Anagnostopoulos’ translation marked with brackets.)

1 2

This passage from the published notebooks of George Seferis (1900- 1971), dated Tuesday, June 4 1946, set me on my path of inquiry through Neohellenic modernism to Hellenism and back again to Neohellenism’s rendering of a transcendental life-bearing, emotion-begetting Hellenic topos during the period of the Cold War. In this diary entry, we find a strange juxtaposition of ancient statues, resurrected bodies, and “crazy” feelings deriving from the “ topos” (“territory,” “land,” “place”) of Hellenism. This particular Juxtaposition of elements is representative of not only Seferis’, but many others poets’ and critics’ work from this period. Perhaps it cannot be explained by anything short of a theory of topos, as a prim ary sign of Hellenism’s presence in Neohellenic modernism. Here Seferis describes the post-war “excavation site” of classical Greek statues resurrected from their vaults beneath the floors of the Archeological Museum of Athens. There they had been placed in storage at the beginning of World War II for protection from looting and bombing by the occupying German forces. The historical context of this “resurrection of bodies,” as Seferis refers to the event, is the volatile post-War era. At this time, reconstructive efforts in Greece are set back by a ruthless civil war that is encouraged, if not provoked, by the leaders of the western super powers, England and the United States. This is the beginning of the Cold War, and the first theater of operations is Greece. Yet Seferis does not name the historical moment with any precision. His emphasis on bodies and intense emotions from the topos may Indeed serve to neutralize, or even to repress, the fact that Greece has entered a 3 civil war. For in all the entries that cover this bloody period, Seferis’ refuses to mention the civil war, only making oblique references to the "machine of hatred” (Seferis 1974: 26), "the black and angelic Attic day” (Seferis 1974: 28), and the national shipwreck—metaphors which carry over into his most ambitious post-war poem, T h ru sh X Thus the poet chooses to Ignore the existence of w ar; as if civil w ar, unlike world war, is not relevant to the security of national museums—now under the control of ruling Greek authorities—and should not, therefore, impede any effort to restore Hellenism’s historical monuments. For this civil war is not a contest to seize and destroy a national past, but to control the interpretation of this past within Greece. In this context, Seferis’ description of “resurrected bodies,” the figure evoking his own recovery of physical sensation after World War II, takes on a political significance—almost despite itself. It becomes an allegory for efforts to devise a forced national union of people and territory in a time of civil war. This union is imagined in the sphere of high culture—the space circumscribed by museums and poetry. And it appears as a collage of ancient and modern Greeks, marble and living torsos, floating freely in the ahistorical topos of the idyllic sea- and landscape.

My topic in this dissertation is literary modernism and national tradition. More specifically, I study Hellenism in its Neohellenic modernist renderings. I define “Hellenism” as the system of statements produced by the discourses of Humanism from the late-18th to the 20th centuries. These 4 statements concern the political, cultural, and philosophical value of the ancient Greek heritage for western civilization. “Neohellenism” is the culture of modern Greeks, assembled according to the principles of nationalism in the hope that it might somehow embody the unique values of its antique precursors. “Modernism” is the name given to a series of experimental artistic movements of the late-19th and 20th centuries, whose formal innovations appeared in Greek letters after World War I, reached a broader audience in the interw ar period, and achieved consolidation as the language of high culture during and after World W ar II.2 I am especially Interested in the period of modernism’s consolidation in Greece. This coincides historically with the beginning of the Cold War—with its reconstitution of super-power battle lines that cut through the modern State of Greece.3 In the time between two dictatorships—the fascist rule of General Io&nnis Metax&s (1936-1941), on the one chronological end, and the military junta of General Y6rgos Papad6pulos (1967-1974), on the other— Greeks endured w a r against an Invading Italian arm y on the Albanian front (1940); German occupation (1941-1944); Civil War, first with British, then with American intervention under the Truman Doctrine (1945-1949), leading to the death of 7-8X of the population, the forced evacuation of some 25,000 children to countries of the Eastern bloc, and the political exile of many thousands of adults; and “reconstruction, ” or intensified “modernization” efforts (with all the political complications of this capitalist neo-colonialist strategy), under the Marshall Plan. 5

During this era of external intervention and internal disarray, it is not surprising to find that the nature and value of artistic modernism is highly contested. “Neoteric” or “Modernist”4 writing styles, promoted with mixed enthusiasm in the early 1930s, are either incorporated into an emergent “mfthos tis EUinikdtitas” ("myth of Greekness”) or renounced for irrelevance (or even malevolence) to contemporary Greek society. In this thesis, I am especially interested in the “canonized, ” rather than marginalized, versions of modernism: the ideas, Images, and forms that successfully persuaded their audience of their EUinikdtita (“Greekness”)5 In particular, I focus on the post-war work of George Seferis and Odysseus Elytis (b. 1912). The centerpiece of my dissertation is a study of these authors’ ideas about and construction of a national tradition. 1 have chosen these two writers not only because they are internationally the best- known poets of this period (both have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature), but also because each in his own way expresses views about literature and the nation that are vital to the development of Neohellenism in the second half of the 20th century. Alongside Nikos G&tsos (b. 1915), N. G. Pentzikis (b. 1908), YAnnis Ritsos (1909-1990), Y6rgos TheotokAs (1906-1966), Nlklf6ros VretAkos (b. 1911), and other poets from the same cultural milieu, Seferis and Elytis—perhaps more frequently and influentially and persuasively than the rest—defended the “Greekness” of their modernist writing style to a national and international audience. With the sign of “Greekness,” they marked neither the continuity of racial features nor the desire for political revival, but the thematic, 6 stylistic, and "mnemonic” return to an important scene of origin: the Greek vernacular cultural heritage, in which they included ancient authors such as Homer and Plato, as well as Byzantine and modern sources. Furthermore, "Greekness” indicated a continuity and "living” exchange between the Greek vernacular tradition and modern high art. While Seferis and Elytis remained fascinated with the progressive innovations of western modernism, they still sought tirelessly to find an appropriate form of expression which would convey the persistence of a Greek tradition and earn for their work the valued appellation, E llinik.6 (“Hellenic”) .6 They therefore tried to show through artistic form that "the idea that there is a chasm between modern art and tradition is a myth” (Elytis 1982: 411).7 Indeed, their work makes its “return” to p a r id o s i ("tradition”) through the modernist technique of direct textual appropriation. I refer to the device of the literary "quotation”: the re-use of another author’s words in dense clusters of allusion which sometimes appear Inappropriate in their new context.8 In studying the uses of classical texts by Neohellenic w riters, I have discovered that this literary device is unique to the late high modernists, who regularly incorporate quotations from other sources within their modern works. Since their appropriation of the past happens literally on a textual level, their use of this technique constitutes the most intense formal manifestation of the effort to transport the past into the present. Both Seferis and Elytis Interpolate into their poetry uncontextuallzed quotations from older Greek (as well as modern European) sources. These quotations are sandwiched between descriptions of contemporary events and 7 expressions of ephemeral feelings, all of which appear slde-by-side in an unspecified contiguity. The strange juxtaposition of antiquity and modernity, eternity and immediacy, is supposed to represent the confused processes of m n im i (“memory,” specifically “racial memory”). It gives a sense of both the immemorial place (to p o s) and the perennial displacement (a to p ia ) of Neohellenism. Although Seferis and Elytis employ the techniques of European and American high modernists (Jorge Luis Borges, T. S. Eliot, H.D., Ezra Pound, Vladimir Nabokov, and Rainer Marla Rilke, to name a few9), their use of the learned quotation from Greek sources is clearly ideological. It somehow registers the concrete socio-political needs of a besieged, war-torn, and shrunken modern state. More to the point, when Seferis and Elytis re­ assemble the fragments of Hellenism in their newly emergent topos, the literary high modernist text, they recode Hellenism from the site of the nation, the vision of the integrated community, and the expanse of the Greek state, to the transcendental sphere of high culture. And unlike their western European counterparts, who do not seek a territorial return on their Investment in Hellenism, these neohellenic authors test the capacity of the unincorporated literary quotation to annex Hellenism to Neohellenism. Their literary texts themselves become the privileged territory of Hellenism, the topos which shapes and preserves “the language and spirit of the Greek people” (Nikolareizis 1962: 16). In many ways, the enabling premise of my dissertation is that Hellenism, in its most “legitimate” manifestation, is the territory of western 8

Europe, excluding modern Greece, and that Neohellenism is perennially viewed as the "backwater” of both Hellenism and Europe. To put it another way, Neohellenism is the "illegitimate” offspring of Hellenism, compelled repeatedly to enter into the European debate about its origin and to contest its proper lineage. The self-proclaimed, unapparent heir to a civilization that has been historically influential, Neohellenic culture has n o t been a major force in shaping the European agenda; rather it is condemned ever to wander ex-centrically from the orbit prescribed by its honored point of origin. Nevertheless Neohellenic culture of the 20th century holds a crucial position for the study of Hellenism in its modern delineations. It is located historically and geographically at the intersection of the venerated ancient Greek, vilified Byzantine Orthodox, exotic Ottoman, and "enlightened” western European civilizations. Two of these are Important axes of modernity, while the remaining two represent the defeated despotism, clericalism, and superstition of the Oriental "Other.” At the same time, Neohellenic modernism interacts with several of its own important shaping forces: the cultural influence of European modernismds ("Modernism”), the political influence of ethnikismds ("nationalism”), and the historical influences of its numerous p a ra d d sis ("traditions”), including the discursively complex field of the klasikf par&dosi ("Classical Tradition”) and arhdos politismds ("ancient civilization”). Because its orientation is so complex, Neohellenic modernism gives expression to three interesting paradoxes. The first of these derives from its position of "minority”10 in relation to hegemonic cultural influences. The 9 paradox of “minor" modern cultures is that their most “legitimate” formations are those which most closely resemble “major” western models. In the case of Greece, when Neohellenic authors appropriated the forms of European culture—when they systematically adopted the formal innovations of modernism—they earned a reputation for the "authenticity, ” “purity” and “autochthony”11 of their expression. And they achieved the greatest international recognition for their “Greekness” when they imitated most closely the techniques and themes of French, English, and American modernist prototypes. This is not to say that Neohellenic modernism exhibits no important differences from European modernism. In contrast to the internationalism, cosmopolitan urban setting, and elitist tendencies of European works, for example, mainstream Greek authors have a nationalist project, give a rural setting to their poetry, and use populist rhetoric. They reject the decadent self-reflexivity of l’art pour l ’art in favor of a purified (rather than autonomous) language, which becomes the vehicle for their desired union of culture with nature. If they share western modernists’ ambiguous relationship to modernity (to technology, mass consumer culture, and the pervasiveness of economic Interests), they cultivate this ambiguity in the name of autochthony and in the guise of resistance to hegemonic forces.12 Thus they employ modernist techniques (montage, uncontextuallzed quotations, unexplained metaphors—all representing modernity’ maelstrom of change, simultaneity of time across space, and “tlme-space compression”13) simultaneously to represent the fragmentation of Greece’s a war-torn terrain 10 and to reterritorialize this terrain as the desired place of refuge from modernity’s global transformations. The second paradox of Neohellenic modernism follows from this contradictory tendency. Modernism uses its “modern” (“western") cultural orientation to assert what is “unique” (“traditional”) about Neohellenic identity. Hence one finds that artists, poets, and intellectuals of the 20th century appropriate modernist devices in order to delineate the cultural, if not also political, boundaries of Hellenism, which seem threatened by Greece’s growing integration into the undifferentiated global village of modernity. The obverse is also certainly true: in their effort to express the unique identity and traditions of Neohellenism, Greek poets and artists became sharers in the “international” culture of western Europe. This paradox might be understood as Neohellenism’s premium for its long-term investment in nationalism. I use “nationalism” in the strong sense of a cultural and political ideology appearing from the late-18th to the 20th centuries. This Ideology assembles a group of people who happen to share a language and ethos, and encourages this group to assert the uniqueness of its (secular) cultural identity, to claim political sovereignty on the basis of cultural uniqueness, and to acquire “territory” that reflects the “natural” boundaries of its culture. The paradox of what John Plamenatz has described as “Eastern Nationalism, ”** in which one should include Greece, is that “to retain their nationality, their separate cultural identity, they had in many ways to imitate the foreigners with whom they refused to 11

Identify themselves. And In so doing, they could not help but loosen the hold over themselves of ancestral ways” (Plamenatz 1973: 31). In Greece, this paradox is not unrelated to a third paradox which is peculiar to Neohellenism. This concerns the efforts of Greek artists and Intellectuals to claim a Hellenic tradition for themselves—to annex the “territory” of Hellenism to their rather minor dominion of a post-Byzantine, post-Ottoman, developing nation-state. And the paradox is this: on the many occasions when Neohellenic culture tried to circumscribe “Hellenism” in its own terms, it repeated the formulations of western Europe, which finally served to dissociate Neohellenism from its point of origin. One should also add, however, that even as Neohellenism repeated European statements obout Hellenism, it w as able to create a number of distinct and distinctly Neohellenic versions of the Hellenic heritage. These “forged” reproductions deserve special attention as powerful “adulturations” of the venerated Idea of Hellenism. At once Greek and non-Hellenic, European and non-western, familiar and exotic, indigenous and orientalized, these “territories” of Hellenism shatter the image of a unified western culture emanating from a venerated classical center. Thus, while one should recognize that well-known artists and critics from almost every period of modern civilization have plundered Hellenism in aesthetically imposing ways, the example of Greek modernism is of special interest. Its paradoxical situation in relation to modernity, western hegemony, and Hellenism raises Important questions in comparative literary study, literary theory, and literary history. How does a minor modern 12 literature situate itself in relation to the emergence of Modernism in European culture, to a national audience, to its past, and to the appropriation of that past by dominant European literatures? How does it define for Itself the value-laden idea of Hellenism in its “minor” manifestations: Ellinikdtita (“Greekness”) and R om iosirti (“Romanness” 16)? What forms does literary modernism take in a country on the periphery—culturally, economically, and geographically—of a European center where “modernization” and modernism often seem to go hand in hand? What role does Neohellenic modernism play in the consolidation of Greece as a modern western society and a national culture in the Cold War era? And finally, what does the Greek case tell us about marginalization in other European cultures that are not normally considered peripheral, yet view themselves as increasingly separated from the “territories” of their traditions? These questions should be of interest to anyone who has followed recent discussions about the ideological uses of tradition, the cultural institutions of nationalism, the movement of culture between an economic center and its developmental periphery, and the nature and context of minor and minority discourse.

A survey of 20th-century criticism on the topic of tradition reveals a major rift in the way critics now discuss the subject. Three conceptions are in dialogue w ith one another: the modernist notion that tradition constitutes a “simultaneous order” of works past and present;16 the post-war humanist idea that the literary tradition is a manifestation of our filial descent from Greece and Rome, which makes itself felt by way of influences;1? and the 13 post-structuralist psychanalytlc Image of tradition as the by-product of “anxious” responses to the Influence of powerful precursors.18 Of these views, only the third considers tradition to be anything but a relatively inert segment of social structure—a survival of the past. A fourth approach makes a decisive break from the treatment of tradition as passive transmission. It understands tradition as a discursive operation of modernity with particular selective and incorporating powers. 19 This view distinguishes itself from the others by featuring the power of “tradition” (that is to say, discourses that assert the value of the past) to authorize and legitimize social, political, and cultural change.28 It therefore analyzes traditions as “inventions”21 which serve particular institutions, formations, Ideologies, and movements. Furthermore, it takes into account how these “invented traditions” function in relation to the economic demands of modernization and the political goals of nationalism or colonization.22 This new paradigm follows closely upon a revaluation of the relationship between tradition and modernity. There has been a concerted effort to challenge both the linear view that more modernity means less tradition2^ and the dialectical view that modernity and tradition stand somehow inextricably entwined in a coterminous knot, logically dependent on their relationship of difference.24 One idea is that that tradition and modernity may be not only coterminous, but also correlated, if not collaborative in their effort to shape the future: “the mechanisms of persistence are not utterly distinct from the mechanisms of change.... 14

Tradition means a certain ‘presentness of the past, ’ but this past is always being re-created” (Werblowsky 1976: 17).25 The crucial question is whether “the uses of tradition and modernity [are] explicit ideologies operating in the context of politics in new nations” (Gusfield 1967: 351).26 Indeed, the greatest challenge to formalist humanist Images of tradition as an ordered succession or timeless library comes from critics who have considered carefully nationalism’s uses of culture:27 how culture and the disciplines devoted to its study (criticism, philology, archaeology, history) serve the processes of nation-building. Research on national institutions shows that culture—modern literature in particular— plays a significant role in positing a distinct origin for individual nations, “defining] a native ethos, and justifying] the claims to autonomy and Independence of that entity” (Lambropoulos 1988: 9). One of literature’s distinct roles is, in fact, to excavate and “refunction” verbal remains from a nation’s previous occupants, now “dead, absent, or conquered” (Errington 1989: 50), into the new grand narratives of the modern nation. Literature generally accommodates the message of older texts according to aesthetic principles, which obfuscate interests in the name of disinterestedness and convert partisan politics into a “universal” language. A national literature’s contestation of and for the “original” meaning of older texts is no small part of the nation’s efforts both to invent its traditions and to “modernize.” Both legitimation and formal innovation are significant functions of national literature. These two processes are not in conflict, but actually reinforce one another. Even where literary works are 15 not situated squarely within the discourses of nationalism, as is the case w ith the modernist poetry of Eliot and Pound, they may depend on an upsurge of traditionalism to institute new practices. At the same time, they represent themselves as woven into “a complex tissue of historical remnants, ”2® which demands the kind of philological study once devoted only to older works.29 The case of mainstream Neohellenic modernism is of special Interest here. Neohellenism generally aspires to produce a unified nation through modernizing processes. This is particularly so after World War II, when a protracted Civil War codifies the rhetoric of “unity, ” while Cold War “reconstruction” precipitates Greece’s most rapid economic and industrial “modernization. ” The “dialogue” of modernist authors such as Elytis and Seferis with their cultural past presents a special case of unlficatlon- reconstruction efforts. The stated Intent of these authors is, on the one hand, to cross the boundaries of parochialism3® and transcend narrowly national (or political) concerns; on the other hand, they seek to overcome the rupture with tradition and fragmentation of time which follows from the country’s sudden entrance into modernity. Thus they attempt to bring Greece culturally into alignment with the modern western world, while recovering the true origins and discovering the real cultural potential of eJlinikds Elhnism6s (“Greek Hellenism”31). Their recontextualization of classical authors is an example of “modernizing” innovations made in the name of “the national tradition.” 16

A number of critics have written about the relationship of 20th- century Greek authors to their ancient precursors. For the most part, they understand the relationship as a more or less complicated manifestation of “continuity”—the way in which the ancient past makes its presence felt in the modern Greek language, its literary genres, and popular forms and themes. The clearest image of a continuity appears in Dimitris Nikolareizis’ “HTiapouotaTOUOilfipouOTTiv v&ccXXTiU'iKfjlToiTiOTi” (“The Presence of Homer in

Modern Greek Poetry”) (1946), where the author describes the persistence of a Homeric world in the poetic consciousness of Dionisis Solom6s (1798-1857), 'Angelos Sikelian6s (1884-1951), Nikos Kazantz&kis (1885-1957), Seferis, and Elytis.32 Edmund Keeley (1983) complicates the issue of continuity by considering contemporary European influences on individual poets and their methods of producing links between past and present. In “Seferis and ‘Mythical Method’” [1968], Keeley describes how Seferis’ “discovery of Eliot’s poetry a few years before the publication of Mythistorima encouraged the development of” Seferis’ own mythical method (Keeley 1983: 75). Keeley borrows the term “mythical method” from Eliot, of course.33 While granting Seferis’ affinity to Eliot, however, Keeley also rightly attends to differences between the two poets’ uses of myth. He concludes that Seferis’ poetry of this “middle period,” and even moreso his “late ‘mythic’ poems” (Keeley 1983: 83) like T h ru sh , gain an advantage from the “natural conjunction” of the Neohellenic reality and the classical world: Seferis has the advantage of dealing with a present that immediately evokes the past he wishes to resurrect: his characters, settings, even 17

his language, can raise mythic overtones without the slightest strain because reality and myth exist in natural conjunction, as is not always the case in the mythic landscapes of Eliot’s London and of Joyce’s Dublin” (Keeley 1983: 80-81). The fact that Keeley finally naturalizes this “conjunction” between the Greek past and present, classical mythology and its “literal [modern] backdrop” (1983: 83), means that he derives little analytical advantage from raising the issue of Seferis’ western modernist influences. Like Nikolareizis, Keeley simplifies Neohellenlsm's cultural orientation by presupposing “natural conjunction”: a spatial and temporal continuity between Hellenism and Neohellenism. In his analysis of Seferis’ work, therefore, he can do little more than evaluate the poet’s relative success or failure in resurrecting w hat Keeley already assumes to be a readily accessible, if deeper, layer of the present.34 Here, on the other hand, by contrast, one might investigate the elliptical language that produces “mythic overtones,” as if “without the slightest strain, ” or the Impact this nostalgic evocation has upon on a national audience desperately seeking to prove its cultural proximity with an idealized past. David Ricks tries to avoid the impasse of presumed continuities by viewing Homer’s texts as a “focus for [the sometimes conflicting] aspirations of the modern Greek poets” (Ricks 1989: 178). In The Shade of Homer: A

Study in Modern Greek Poetry ( 1 9 8 9 ) , Ricks, not unlike Harold Bloom, considers the matter of poetic influence as a “struggle” between the modern poet and not only his formidable ancient ancestor, but also his more immediate contemporary (Greek and foreign) precursors. Furthermore, he views this poetic struggle broadly as part of modern Greeks’ effort to 18 overcome "the disadvantage that they are not only modern, with the anxieties that that may imply, but also Greeks; not only Greeks but modern” (Ricks 1989: 9). Ricks also takes into consideration the effects of major historical and geographical shifts, such as "the Asia Minor Disastor,”35 on Neohellenism’s view of Homer: generally Greek poets of the period of irredentism were content... to lay claim rather to the spirit of the Homeric heroes than to the letter of the Homeric poems. But the Asia Minor Disaster was a buffet to this way of thinking.... Of course Seferis stands out as a philologist among modern Greek poets, notable for his sustained study of the ancient texts, including Homer; and following the loss of his childhood home he turned for solace to the letter of Homer rather than to the nationalist mythology that had grown up around it. Too many earlier Greek poets had tended to feel so sure of their position as heirs to Homer that it had not occurred to them, as Eliot put it, that tradition could not be Inherited, and that if you wanted it you you must obtain it by great labour.” (Ricks 1989: 119) Here Ricks suggests that "Homer” becomes a site of literary appropriation, whose thematic accessibility depends on Neohellenism’s geographical collocation in the coast of Asia minor. He is quite right to observe that . "philological” recontextualizations of Homer appear only after the Greek­ speaking, Orthodox populations of Turkey (people like Seferis) were forced to leave the coast of Asia Minor and settle within the borders of the Greek kingdom or in the distant corners of the non-Greek world. But he does not develop this insight in his treatment of individual authors (he discusses 'Angelos Sikelianbs, C. P. Cavafy, and Seferis in some detail), largely because he does not view the matter of Neohellenism's "tradition” more broadly in the light of discursive struggles within and outside Greece. Ricks, too, finally assumes that "it is possible for the Greek poet, in ways perhaps not 19 imagined by Eliot, to write with a sense that ‘the whole of literature of Europe from Homer.. .composes a simultaneous order’” (Ricks 1989: 180, quoting Eliot 1920: 49). Dimitrios Tziovas’ book, Oi iierauopfauoeis roveeviopovKai roiSeoAdyqia

77)? eAA iJvucdTTjTa? oropeaondX €(10 ( The Transformations of Nationism and the

Ideologeme of Greekness in the Period between the Two Wars) (1989), is the best to date on the subject of the cultural movements of Neohellenism in the 1930s and early 1940s. Contrary to Keeley and Ricks, who presuppose Neohellenism’s special, unmediated access to a classical tradition, Tziovas assumes that the recurrent interest in matters of identity and tradition is symptomatic of the institutional instability and political, cultural, and geographical marginalization of Neohellenism in western Europe. Thus he is able to view Neohellenic modernism’s “attachment to tradition” within the broader political and historical context of Greece’s problematic relations with both the modernized west and the spectre of Hellenism. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Tziovas argues, politicians and Intellectuals responded to “the appearance of the modern element” in Greek culture and society by presenting themselves with a manichean choice between modernity, identified with the lifestyle of the western (secular) world, and tradition, conceived as native resistance to Europeanism. With the accession of Demoticism36 in culture and the recession of “Imperial aspirations” in politics, however, there came a major restatement of the problem of Neohellenic identity:

M^xpt to 1922 to irtpio rtTTHia y ia to eX \T)m 6 & vos fjTav Tip6pMuia €v6TTyras xai ow ^xeias..., €va5 mt6 to 1923 to (tfTTyia [i€TaoxniiaTlC€Tai o€ 20

Trp6p\rpa 8ia$opds (€XXr)ViK<5TTyra): note 6r)\a8i^ 6 a $€X(»)ptoovii€ an6 Ta dxxa &VT) Kai TTlte 0 a irpopXT)0€( T) €XXT)VIK1^ l6iaiT€p6TT)Ta. 2uyvpa^€(s, 6lTa)S o Z € ^ p i)j Kai o ecoToicds, TrpoondOTioav v a avnnapaeioow to v «€XXtivik<5 eXXTiviop6» o to v «€vipa)TialK6 €XXTjviop6» Kai v a tovIoovv t o oTpaTTyyiKd tov p6xo oto 8vtik6 TroXiTiopd 'OTav Xoindv r\ MeydXTj l8£a, pact pe tovs awpaTopiKote tt69ovs, etxav |€0vpdvei Kai tj Avot) KaTa kottoio rpduo etxe ttTropvOoTTOiTjdct, auTf) TTpoeTOipdCeTai v ia iva vio ovpaviop6, nov 0 a dppXVV€ to vco€XXT|vik6 8(XTppa[Kai] 0a loopponouoc tov ttoXitiopik6 looxoyiopd p€ Tr^v Evpdmr).... 'E to i oi €KTip6oamoi ttjs anoSvovTai oe p ia npoonaOeia ovpyiXtuKrns tov 8t)poTiKiopov pe tov KoopoiToXiTiop6, tou paKpvviavviopov p€ TOV pOVT€pVlOp6, TOV KOIVOV X6yOV p€ TT)V £VT€XVT) K€ipeVUC<$TT)Ta... (Tziovas 1989: 51-53) Until 1922 the key issue for the Greek nation was a m atter of unity and continuity..., while after 1923, the issue became the problem of difference (Greekness): that is to say, how to distinguish ourselves from other national groups and to project what is uniquely Greek. Writers such as Seferis and Theotok&s tried to distinguish “Greek Hellenism” from “European Hellenism” and to highlight its strategic role in western civilization Thus, when the Megili Idda^ with its imperial aspirations had lost its force, [the generation of the 1930s] prepared itself for a new Humanism which would smooth the horns of the Neohellenic dilemma [and] find a new cultural balance with Europe — Its representatives tried to reconcile Demoticism with cosmopolitanism, Makriyannism6s^® with modernism, everyday speech with well-wrought writerliness — Tziovas outlines a genealogy of Ellinikdtita (“Greekness”), which he describes as a liberal humanist gloss for par& dosi (“tradition”). He shows that the term did not acquire currency before the 1920s and 1930s. At this time, European-educated, anti-Marxist, middle-class, demoticist poets and critics who wanted to appear more adept than their predecessors at steering the difficult course between “the clashing rocks of vulgar populism of the past and menacing socialism of the present” (Tziovas 1989: 39), adopted Ellinikdtita as their signature. The “ideologeme” of their cultural project, Ellinikdtita was the emblem of a new brand of Humanism which would feature the Neohellenic “difference” w ith in European Hellenism. 21

Perhaps Tslovas’ most Important contribution Is his Identification of this ideologeme of Ellinikdtita with an “aesthetics of native authenticity” (Tziovas 1989: 73): a mystical idealization of the nation and paganlike worship of the Aegean landscape and Greek light. This aesthetic orientation developed after 1936 as a moderate reaction to the geocllmatic messianism of General Io&nnis MetaxAs. MetaxAs is the populist leader who became Greece’s dictator in 1936, gained absolute power in 1938, and then “set about his long-cherished ambition of reshaping the Greek character and remoulding Greek society” (Clogg 1979: 133). Two features of his fascist "third civilization” are of special relevance to Ellinikdtita . The first is its cultural nationism: the idea that culture, especially folk culture, is the carrier of the nation and the means by which it maintains its identity, enters into dialogue with other nations, and finally excels. The second is its racial and geographical determinism: the view that race and land (to p o s) are the two determining factors in a people’s cultural and spiritual development.39 Tziovas accurately describes Neohellenic modernist debates about literature’s national affiliation as these discussions take shape in the late 1930s. Even before the conservative turn in politics, Neohellenic modernist authors such as Seferis and TheotokAs featured “culture” as the distinctly Ate?-hellenic contribution to western civilization. After 1936, however, the liberal exponents of the modernism, the so-called “Generation of the Thirties, ”40 took a more distinctly nationalist turn, as Tziovas informs us. While they resisted blatantly racial conceptions of Hellenism, they yielded to arguments about the influence of climate and geography on cultural 22 orientation. In the 1940s, they even argued that "the Aegean preserves the tradition” of the ancients (Elytis 1982a: 413).41 Their critical and artistic project took the direction of promoting "authentic” sources, from ancient literature to popular Neohellenic works;42 developing an autochthonous aesthetic from the "natural” line and color of the Greek landscape;4^ and exploring the relationship between tradition and the geographical and climatic (or “geoclimatic”) space of Hellenism in their imaginative works.

In the chapters that follow, I extend Tzl6vas' discussion thematically, historically, and geographically. Whereas Tzi6vas focuses on the concept of "Greekness, ” my master term is topos, translated in certain of its uses as “territory,”44 but also as a rhetorical “commonplace” (koiv6s t6ito$, lo c u s co m m u n is). I derive this very rich spatial and literary metaphor from relevant Greek discussions about the proper grounding and expanse of Neohellenism. It is important to keep in mind both the geographical and the rhetorical resonances of the term, the reciprocal interdependence of spatial and discursive representations. Chapter II, entitled “ Topos: From Revenant Nation to Transcendental Territory, ” is devoted to the theoretical discussion of territory, particularly in its Neohellenic renderings. Here topos appears as the preferred term for naming the Imaginary space in which the nation develops naturally and find its self-fulfillment. In its intersection with "national tradition,” topos gives historical "roots” to an Imagined community. 4& Thus it lines up with both the spatio-temporal dimension of the Hellenic nation, and the discursive field of a shared "heritage” or, better, 23 common “ground, ” on which Neohellenic authors are permitted to tread— with deep reverence, of course—and even to withdraw their own cultural treasures. Because the precise historical and geographical boundaries of Neohellenism are subject to endless debate, the tracing of a national topos on the imaginary map of the "Hellenic” (as distinguished from the “Helladic”46) world becomes a central enterprise in Neohellenic politics and culture, especially after the turn of the century. By highlighting the territorial dimension of Neohellenic renderings of Hellenism, I am able to discuss how the topos of Hellenism serves to confer a spatial and temporal site to the aggregate of individuals called a “nation” and relates them to a symbolic center, standardizes their language, and generally regulates their coexistence in their imagined community. A survey of these debates reveals two major shifts in the 20th-century conception of topos. The first, noted by both Ricks and Tziovas, occurs after the defeat of the Greek forces Asia Minor by Kemal Atattirk in August 1922. With the events of 1922, Greece loses access to the once Hellenized space of Constantinople, eastern Thrace, and Asia Minor. This loss of “Byzantine territory” constitutes the first crucial turning point in 20th-century Neohellenic culture. As the irredentist dream of expanding the geographical boundaries of Greece is extinguished, the political battle to enlarge the state comes to a halting stop. At this moment, too, the project of tracing an ideal geographical map of Greece over the “unredeemed” diaspora47 loses 24 credibility. This project is gradually replaced by an Intellectual battle to expand the cultural horizons of modern Hellenism. My analysis of topos also extends temporally beyond the period encompassed by Tziovas’ discussion, which closes roughly with the beginning of World War II. The late 1940s and 1950s mark a second major turning point in the conception of a Neohellenic topos. During this Cold War era, not only is Greek political society actually sundered by the global division between “east” and “west,” “right” and “left”; this division also serves to “purify” neohellenism of its “non-Hellenic” elements. Poetic “internationalism” and “universalism" appear especially threatening to the uniquely “Hellenic... racial, historical, and human” climate, as the critic Andreas Karand6nis suggests, since these trends tend to erode national culture:

o cXXTinop6s, Tiappcvos oav evvoia TTXand, oav KXtpa $uXctik6, iotopik6 Kai avepiMTii'o pa£i apx^Cei vcl x d v e ia i p£oa ottiv tioiriTiKii TTapayajyii tojv vetoTcpajv. NoplCei Kavets ttws ttoXX<£ au6 TatioiffliaTa to u s d v a i pcTafo>aop£va airo 6xcs tis y ^ o o cs tou k6opou - ckt6s atio tt^v cXXtivikiV Aiceviop6$- TiaYKOopi6TTiTa, 8a ticItc. lows. Ma r\ Taneivri pas y v 6 \n \ clvai ttojs 6c y(v/€Tai Kavcts 6ic0W)S tiapd T pcavom s to xwpa tou t6ttou tou Kai utvoVTas TO vcp6 TOU. (K arand6nis 1980: 151)

Hellenism, taken as a broad term, a racial, historical, and human climate, begins to be lost in the poetic activity of the younger generation. One would think that their poetry is translated from all the languages of the world—except Greek. Internationalism, universality, you would say. Perhaps. But in our humble opinion one does not become international without eating the soil and drinking the water of one’s topos. Thus we find that same poets and critics who in the early 1930s combatted the rigidities of national culture now represent their work as a bulwark against “internationalism” and “universalism.” As a way of 25 neutralizing International flight while, at the same time, confirming Hellenism’s special contribution to the development of a “free world,” authors from the liberal Karand6nis to the conservative humanist philosopher I. N. Theodorak6pulos reimagine Hellenism as “ topos [with] its own ontology, which demands its own specific, homologous deontology” (Theodorak6pulos 1967: 137). Here the free, individualistic spirit of Man first discovered by the ancient Greeks remains “unconsciously” embedded in living traditions of the Neohellenic people—outgrowths of the same Hellenic climate and geography. These remains, like the ancient statues lying below the floors of the Archeological Museum, m u s t be resurrected in the post-World War II era. This becomes neohellenism’s “homologous deontology.” Modernism’s mainstream representatives in Greece, including Seferis and Elytis, of course, cautiously but forcefully excavate this "living, ” if fragmented, “national tradition,” without ignoring Neohellenism’s shattered state in an era of reconstruction. They use their “dialogue” with classical texts to transform the Neohellenic into spiritually expansive, if physically battered, topos of sun, sea, and soil—the finest n a tio n a l setting for European E v e ry m a n . Following my broader survey of discussions about topos in the 20th century, I focus on texts by Seferis and Elytis from the Cold War period. Chapter III begins with Seferis' ideas about tradition and then shows how these ideas become actualized in one of his most “m ature” poems, T h ru sh [1947]. Through careful analysis of Seferis’ “reading” of Homer’s O d yssey book XI (the n eku ia t Odysseus’ Journey to Hades), I describe how 26

T h ru sh makes the “national shipwreck” of post-war Greece a site for Everyman’s cultural n o sto s (“homecoming”). I describe Seferis’ strategy of settling the dis-established ancient material into the autonomous literary text. Saturated with the now “blind” meaning of desanctified classical remnants, this new center marks the place of return for modern Man: the site of cultural resurrection. T h ru sh becomes a sacred, if tentative, space in what Graham Hough has referred to as the "vast uncodified museum, the limitless Junk-shop of the past” (Hough, 1976: 316), which protects the hidden circumstances and lost values of culture’s originary “home,” Classical Greece. The subject of Chapter IV is Odysseas Elytis’ long lyrical poem and national epic, The Axion Esti. The central axis of discussion is Elytis’ effort to circumscribe a self-sufficient and regenerating cosm os of Hellas. This cosm os is Elytis’ vision of the transcendental territory of Hellenism. First I study Elytis’ linguistic and socio-cultural presuppositions, as spelled out in his critical essays about the relationship between culture and nation. I pay close attention to how the discourse of populism—which can be seen to penetrate demoticlst culture in both its early and late (modernist) phases— governs Elytis’ “reading” of Hellenism in its historical phases. I then Investigate how the first two sections of The Axion Esti digest layers of tradition, in particular Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, so as to incorporate them into this populist revision of Hellenism. The cosm os that is the product of this revision contains the metaphoric power of the Aegean light and sea: it promises to transport into its idyllic setting not only the Greek 27 citizen who needs confirmation of Neohellenism’s uniqueness In the face of Greece’s rapid “development," but also the western tourist who seeks “the Classic European Vacation"4® in the “underdeveloped” south. In Chapter V, I extend the geographical limits of my thesis beyond those of prior studies on Neohellenic modernism to include the perspective of the European tourist. I search the major cities of western Europe for descriptions of the archeological sites of Hellenism. In particular, I study travel literature by tourists and collectors from Lord Elgin to Sigmund Freud for its documentation of typical European attitudes toward Hellenism’s most “sacred” space: the Acropolis. 1 view these documents as both signs of knowledge and symbols of Europeans’ willingness to ravage the better physical remains of “barbarian” cultures so as to enrich their own “higher” “civilization.” Thus I return to a more general description of the topos of Hellenism, this time viewed from the perspective of the modern traveller, who typically sees Hellas as an extension of “home.” This perspective allows me to explore another aspect of the Hellenic territory. Whereas in the previous chapters I investigate how various neohellenic authors render Hellenism as an imaginary territory that corresponds roughly with a national ideal, here my subject of inquiry is how the “real” space of Hellas—the politically designated, geographically circumscribed area which is brimming with its overvalued ancient history—has served as a counter-site to European cities. 1 refer to this site as a “heterotopia,” a real “place” {topos) “of another 28 order” ( h fte r o s ) that confirms, yet also counteracts and jumbles, the modern western hegemonic self-image.49 To complicate this picture of Hellenism’s European “heterotopia,” I close with a the “native” or “autochthonous” view of classical sites as proposed by the turn-of-the-century art critic Periklis Yann6pulos and developed by modernists in the Cold War era. At this time modernists in culture and politics (Melina Mercuri is a prime example of both) begin using an aesthetics of “autochthony" or “entopia”50 to resist European intervention and support both a national artistic tradition and nationalist state policy. Through this aesthetic, they seek to recover Hellenism’s monuments for Neohellenism. Neohellenic literary modernism presents one aspect of this effort to construct an indigenous, self-sufficient, self-sustaining ideal w ith the power to interpret and control the topos of Hellenism. It is time now to describe the emergence of this ideal. CHAPTER li TOPOS: FROM REUENRNT NRTION TO TRANSCENDENTAL TERRITORY

Post- War Consolidations The years of the Greek Civil War, 1945-1949, mark a period of consolidation for Neohellenism. At this time certain interpretations of the tumultuous first half of the 20th are codified into a dominant narrative about the development of Hellenism. As evidence of this consolidation, one can point to the numerous thematically related essays published at this time by artists and critics who had emerged a decade earlier.* Significant points of contact between these essays are their searching inwardness, studied repression of contemporary events, and strict recoding of earlier cataclysmic moments in Greek history into a story of national self-discovery. In particular, they relate how Neohellenism managed to recover its deepest cultural roots during the previous decade, just after the nation had become geographically contained within the island-scattered, sun-bathed, sea- contained Kingdom of Hellas. And they baptize this space of containment and recovery “OHlicp6s out6s t&ios” (“this little topos").

To explain the positive aspects of containment within this topos, some authors reinvoke the year 1922 (“The Catastrophe of Asia Minor”) as a privileged signifier of national upheaval and collective recovery. Of course,

29 30 this is the first important historical memory for individuals who came of age in the 1930s. For this generation, 1922 marks the greatest turning point in a Greece’s modern history. Perhaps as early as 19292 “The Catastrophe” had come to represent the moment when Neohellenes ceased to expect anything from the geographical size of Hellenism. But an important article by the critic Dimitris Nikolareizis^ indicates that a symbolic rewriting of “The Catastrophe” is taking place during the

Greek Civil War. In his essay “H ITapouola tou Opifoou OTT) v£a EXXT)ViKf} tto1t)OT|”

(“The Presence of Homer in modern Greek poetry”) [1947], Nikolareizis uses 1922 metonymically to represent the flow of Neohellenism “home” to Greece from the foreign shores of Asia Minor. Furthermore, 1922 signifies the undercurrent of a Hellenic tradition which continues “TT) poV) TOV 0€ dXXti vn6Y€iaKO(TTi yTis” (“its flow in other underground cradles in the earth”)— even against the tide of “lOTOpiK^S Owefy(€S...€V

(“historical conditions [that run] against the nation”) (Nikolareizis 1962:

The opening paragraph of N ikolareizis’ essay is particularly revealing:

To 1922 pia \LtydXr\ €\hr\v\.Kf\ oTpand, nou clxe npoxaipifoei u>s rnv tcapSid vr\s AvaToXife, pp&ryce n(oa) OTa MiKpaoiaTiKa napaX ia ovvTpiiip^vT) Kai mfe€ Ta Kapdyia tov “Xvypov vdoTOV” - Ta^tScxlrc tipos tt^v (8 ia KaTcvSvvori nov clxav ouco\ov0f]o€i Kai oi opTpiKol Axaiot jieTa to napoipov tou lXtov. 'Eva KiJpa ^cpiCajp^vov cxxt^vikov nXTi0uopov aKoxoOe^oe t o O t t i r n $opd t h OTpand nov CT^OTpe^e o tt) ycv^exia y r ) . O i napa0axdooies enapxles r n s MiKpaoCas, and t t j v ireSidSa t t ) S Tpotas (6s t o BdXTa t o v Ma(av8pov, dnov and Xpdvia apvTfidvcvTa dv0i(€ dvas i8idpopyos €XXT)vuds noX m opds, cyKaToXclnovTav and tt)v exxtjviKl} yXtoooa Kai d8€ia(av and K a e c T t cXXTjviKd' oxdKXTjpri r\ vewvpadiKfi nepioxtf t t \ s Aotas, nou t t ^ v dyiaoev ri Y^vvtiot) tov opripiKou ^nous, ^PYaivcv ££

In 1922, the great Greek arm y, which had proceeded to the heart of Anatolia, returned in defeat to the shores of Asia Minor and set sail for a “pitiful homecoming”; it travelled in the same direction as the Homeric Achaeans after the fall of Troy. This time, however, a wave of the uprooted Hellenic population followed the army, returning to its land of origin. The provinces along the shore of Asia Minor, from the plain of Troy to the delta of the Maeander—where for years immemorial a singular Hellenic civilization flourished—were being abandoned by the Hellenic language and emptied of everything Hellenic; the entire geographical region of Asia, sanctified by the birth of the Homeric epic, would now be left out of the bright cycle of Hellenic history. What is striking about this passage is that it subtly shifts the essay’s subject from “the presence of Homer in Neohellenic poetry” to the presence of Homer in 20th-century Greek history, which is then "reflected in poetry” (1962: 210). The critical text itself Incorporates the Homeric epic into the events of 1922. In fact, it uses Homer so as to reinstate Neohellenism’s historical and geographical links with Greek antiquity, even while describing the most disruptive event of Greek modernity—the rupture, that is, of significant ties with “the entire geographical region of Asia, ” the region of the un-“free w orld.” The rhetoric of the passage is so remarkable, and, at the same time, so representative of the literary expression in this period, that it deserves careful analysis. A distinctive feature is its skillful movement back and forth between ancient myth and historical present. In the first sentence,

the Homeric phrase “kvypou v6otou ” (“pitiful homecoming”4) appears w ith

reference to the defeated arm y’s return to Greece. The face of the victorious Achaeans then merges with that of the defeated modern army, as ancient

Ionian colonies (together with names such as IJjos, Troia , M aiandros ) silence contemporary Turkish claims to the region. The western shore of 32

Asia Minor, long governed by Ottomans, becomes a place “sanctified by the birth of the Homeric epic” but finally lost to Hellenism. One concludes that Nikolareizis uses the story of the Ilia d to manipulate parallels between ancient myth and modern history-—and to elide major differences between the archaic and modern worlds. This device will be recognized as the “mythical method,”5 the modernist literary technique described by T. S. Eliot in his review article, “Ulysses, Order, and Myth” (1923). Nikolareizis employs it here to account for cataclysmic change in the topography of the Hellenic diaspora along the eastern Mediterranean basin (e.g., the uprooting of the Greek population in Asia Minor, the containment of Greeks within the Greek peninsula and the surrounding islands). He gives figurative prominence to similarities between the mythical and modern destinies of the Achaean army and the Greek soldiers in 1922. At the same time, Nikolareizis suppresses two major points of difference. First, the Achaeans were victorious, whereas the modern force lost to Kemal Atattirk. Second and more significant, although both Homeric heroes and modern Greeks “set sail for a ‘pitiful homecoming’”5 in the direction of the Greek mainland, the “uprooted Hellenic population” w as actually forced to leave home. Yet, by manipulating present history in terms of the mythical past, the author represents this forced transplantation of a large Greek-speaking population from Asia Minor to the modern Kingdom of Greece as a “retu rn ” to the “land of origin.” One should note, then, that a particular literary technique (the “mythical method”) is being used here to interpret modern Greek history. 33

Through the Homeric theme of a "pitiful homecoming,” mainland Greece is made to appear as the original home of a population of refugees; and Hellenism, decentered after the loss of access to the space of Byzantium (now modern Turkey), is reassembled within the geographical territory of Hellas, where, one assumes, the “bright cycle of Hellenic history” may now replay itself. It is this last point that I wish to stress, since the rhetorical sleight of hand that places the territory of Greece at the historical and cultural center of Hellenism is so dexterously executed that it m ay escape one’s attention. While the author seems merely to be lifting fragments from one cultural milieu into another with the purpose of embellishing modern history, he is in fact redrawing the map of the Hellenic world. This cartographic enterprise raises some interesting questions. What might be the genealogy of this project? When, how, and why is mainland Greece conceived as a site of origin for Hellenism? How does the conceptual map of Hellenism outlined by Nikolareizis line up w ith the existing political map of modern Greece? How does it relate to prior delineations of the Hellenic n a tio n (as opposed to the Helladic state)? as the authentic plane of Hellenism’s organization and development? How does the new map then legitimate a contemporary cultural movement as “indigenous” or “innate” to this discursively constructed space? How is the contemporary Greek world, in turn, shaped by this cultural movement? What role, finally is “the Classical tradition” assigned in the new conception of Hellenism? Before tracing the genealogy of Nikolareizis’ project, however, it is necessary to clarify how I use both the English word “territory” and the Greek “ topos.” 34

Territory and Topos In the Preface and Introduction to this dissertation, I indicated that Hellenism might be viewed as a “territory”8 of Modernity, whose shape, character, and claimants are in constant flux. Neohellenism, the culture and ideology of modern Greece, presents itself as one obvious and frequent claimant, an almost literal shaping force. The discourse of Hellenism has been integral to both the self-imagining of a heterogeneous Greek-speaking peoples as a national community and their institution of modern identity on a geopolitical map. Neohellenism is perhaps the most important vehicle for this self-imagining. This may explain why Neohellenism has been largely dedicated to reflecting, shaping, and claiming a topos of Hellenism, as we shall soon see. To any student of modern nationalist movements,9 the importance of topos to Neohellenism should come as no surprise. Studies in the field of political and cultural geography have shown that the attachment of Identity to “territory” is a core doctrine of nationalist ideologies. Josiah A. M. Cobbah refers to the process of territorial identification (which he distinguishes from non-territorial ethnic Identification) as “geoethnicity.” or “group politico-territorial identity. ” Geoethnicity "involves the historic identification of an ethnic group with a given territory, an attachment to a particular place, a sense of place as a symbol of being and identity” (Cobbah

1 9 8 8 : 7 3 ) . 35

But it is far from evident how a "given territory” (if one can ever really refer to a “territory” as “given”) becomes “a symbol of being and Identity” for any abstractly conceived group. This process is Itself becoming an object of study in certain fields.10 Within the tides of poststructuralism today, one might point to a narrow current which takes “territory, ” alongside the more pervasive term of “desire,” as a metaphor for the construction of social bodies. The idea of discussing bodies in term s of zoned areas derives from Jacques Lacan’s description of the processes by which the human body is organ-ized. The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the psychoanallst Felix Guattari transport the metaphor of the zoned body to political society, whose operations interest them more than that of the individual human organism. They use “territory” to describe how societies acquire homogeneity within space.11 Their appropriation of the term may appear idiosyncratic; but their attention to the complex symbolic processes by which a heterogeneous grouping of peoples identifies itself within space, and that space, in turn, organ-izes a homogeneous social body, provides a necessary supplement to more narrowly geographical and political conceptions of territory. In its strictest definition, the English word “territory” has been narrowly identified in modern times with the political boundaries and geographical limits of the sovereign state. “Territory” is, in fact, the spatial frame of province within which the state operates. This framework must be recognized by an International community. That is to say, the representatives of other states must agree that a specific geographical space 36 legally belongs to a particular people (conceived as a homogeneous group) and that this people has the right to organize and govern itself within this space and to hold others accountable for violating its borders. But the geographical space of the state must also be recognized as a homogeneous and finite plane by the heterogeneous mass of people who exist within that space. The process of recognition is quite complex, since it requires that different people abstractly imagine themselves as somehow identical to one another and at the same time Invest a space, whose precise limits lie beyond their sensational experience, with this identity. The effect of this investment is that they develop loyalty and sentimental attachment to an abstract space, which only thus becomes their “given territory.”12 The key term here is “identity. ” If a heterogeneous group is to recognize an abstract space as its “territory,” it must invest that space with an identity. D. B. Knight defines "territory” as that “space to which identity is attached by a distinctive group who hold or covet that territory and who desire to have full control over it for the group’s benefit” (Knight 1982: 526).13 But how does it happen that “heterogeneities that were formerly content to coexist or succeed one another become bound up with one another through the ‘consolidation’ of their coexistence and succession” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 330)? Even the strictest political definition of territory as the geographical framework of a state administration requires an account of how a group of people contained within this framework consents to its containment and imagines its unification and consolidation. One cannot afford to Ignore the “messy” processes of representation by 37 which a group asserts its distinctive identity and then symbolically draws and redraws the shape and limits of this identity. Wherever nationalist ideology plays a formative role in the achievement of self-determination and self-government, national culture has been the standard vehicle for fashioning identity. Indeed, culture may even perform the crucial function of delineating the imaginary territorial expanse of the nation, unifying that expanse, and deepening the nation’s "roots” within that expanse.14 One way it spatially unifies a heterogeneous people, for example, is by linking the people to a “center.” This center may be physical (a Capital, Cathedral, Tomb of an Unknown Soldier, or Museum), institutional (the State, Religion, Education, Art), discursive (Tr uth, Origin, Knowledge, Aesthetics), or expressive (the Classical, the Romantic, the Traditional, the Folk, or the Popular style).^ National culture usually operates within the apparatus of the nation­ state, which happens to be the administrative and legal framework of Neohellenlsm. The state administratively and legally stakes out a people’s "homeland” ( p a trfs, or “fatherland,” in Greek) around the center of the “Capital.” It derives the content of this “homeland" from the fragments of a variety of milieus, such as towns,16 villages, monasteries, unaccounted-for ethnic communities, the Isolated countryside, the ruins of older communities. The “homeland” may retain elements from these other milieus; but the state decodes these elements, removing them from their prior context, cutting off their relations to other elements, and making certain features common to all. It then recodes the heterogeneous milieus by giving them the value of 38 property and making them subject to taxation, verification by title, conscription and national defense, exploitation of natural resources, public works, and, generally, the disposition of public power. While the state recodes the heterogeneous elements that lie within its geographical boundaries, national culture may serve the State’s goal of subordinating the multiplicity of elements and diversity of expression to the idea of a unified and homogeneous “homeland.” To this end, culture orchestrates certain symbolic gestures—analogous to planting a flag— such as producing a national poet, writing a national history, standardizing a vernacular language, or canonizing a literary tradition. All of these signify the distinctiveness and unity of the people contained within the territory of the state. They also ensure the coexistence and regulate the succession of the

“imagined community”*? of the nation within the apparatus of the state. While enhancing many of the State’s claims, however, national culture may also advance other interests which lie beyond the boundaries of the state. This is a p r io r i the case when there is a fundamental disjuncture between the geographical boundaries of the state and the imaginary expanse of national groupings—as has been the case with Greece. Here culture, historically aligned with nationalist movements that precede the creation of a state, is perennially, and almost inherently, at odds with the State’s definition of legal and administrative limits. The definitive disjucture between nation and state may explain why the negotiation of topos is a primary function Neohellenlsm in all its phases, but especially a fte r the Greek-speaking population is administratively linked 39 to the Kingdom of Hellas. The spatial expanse of this state w as seen to stop short of the settlement area of the “unredeemed”18 nation from the Kingdom’s very foundation.19 Neohellenism, the prim ary medium of “geoethnicity” (the process by which ethnic identity is assigned to geography, as defined above), served the purpose of identifying a heterogeneous grouping of ethnic-Greeks geographically and historically into a homogeneous community of "Hellenes.” But its efforts to put Hellenism on a modern map seem to have taken place over and above the established boundaries of the Helladic Kingdom—on the Imaginary plane of the Hellenic Nation. I offer the Greek word topos as the master term for a particular kind of conceptual mapping. On a theoretical level, topos, in its Neohellenic usage, at least, is the representation of an imaginary Hellenic geography which becomes a symbol of being and identity for a nation of Greeks. “Representation” should be understood here as both a process and product. One might think of the topos at Hellenism, for example, as both the effort (the cultural “work”) and the effect (the images and the cultural products) of conceptualizing a culturo-politico-historico-geographical entity of Neohellenes. In the section that follows, 20 I chronologically trace discussions of the Hellenic topos that appear in Important Greek texts trom the late-19th to the mid-20th century. These texts offer a wealth of material for analyzing the t strategic functions and political uses of Identity as manifest in discussions about national space. A chronological view reveals w ays in which the imaginary boundaries of Hellenism are redrawn as the state foreign policy of 40 lrredentism is gradually replaced by one of consolidation and containment. Certain shifts in emphasis will become evident, the most important of which is the transition from the ideal of a revenant nation (the political and military policy of expanding the borders of the state so that they contain the territory of the nation—areas in the Balkans and Asia Minor where the Greek-speaking, Orthodox populations are in a majority) to the vision of a transcendental territory (the cultural mission of conveying to the world the superiority of Neohellenism as a preserver of Hellenic values). This transition begins around the turn of the century. At this time, three major cultural figures give expression to the theme of cultural transcendence: Y&nnis Psih&ris (1854-1929), 'Ion Dragumis (1878-1920), and Periklis Yann6pulos (1869-1910). I discuss their views of topos in some detail, and then describe how their separate projects are synthesized under the banner of “Greekness” by intellectuals and poets of the Inter- and Postwar period.

A Genealogy of Topos There is an exceptional degree to which the negotiation of topos has been basic to modern Greek history, politics, and culture. A cornerstone of the nationality, together with a people and its history, topos is perceived as a precondition for the birth and development of “Civilization," as is evident in

this passage by 'Ion Dragumis: “Ha va ttoXitio(i6s xPc'-(^ €Tai t6ttos,

Xp6vos xai dvepumoi paCai^vei kou oweep^vci 0€ £6vos. Oi tto\itio(io( ycvwiouvTai o icae^vas oc Kama TiaTplSa, oc Kdmoia ctiox^ Kai oc Kamo €0vosn

(“ Topos, history, and a people gathered and located in one place are 41 necessary for the birth of civilization. Civilizations are born in a particular fatherland, epoch, and nation”) (Dragumis 1927b: 233-4). Like others, Drag&mis assumes that Civilization develops naturally and finds self- fulfillment only within its own topos. But the precise boundaries of this topos remain subject to endless debate. Hence the tracing of national topos on an Imaginary map of the Hellenic world becomes a central project and point of contention in Greek politics and culture. The Greek word topos may designate a space physically inhabited or “legitimately” claimed by Neohellenes. Greek authors of the 20th century use it in a familiar and possessive way21 to refer to an intimate and narrow space.22 They treat this space as an organism with a “spirit, ”23 special “feelings, ”24 and a “life" of its own that should never be taken for granted and deserves close study. 25 An earlier, more neutral appearance of the word identifies a particular geographical space with its historical inhabitants: 0 t6ttos 6ttou TO TiaXai6v CKCCTOlKotioav 01 'E\\T)V€S, (“the territory where Hellenes dwelled in ancient times”) (Konstandis 1948: 71). In its recent, more frequently figurative use, topos is bestowed with attributes that situate it above the din of everyday life: t6ttos vnepoupctvios

(“transcendental territory”), 2 *> or t6tjos OTOiX€ia)^€VOS KOti [layups, t6ttos

X^ocpds, t6ttos <£tottoj (“haunted and magic territory, verdant territory,

a topic territory”) (Pantisis 1989, from a radio broadcast of August 27, 1988). A genealogy of topos shows that the word acquires a deceptively transparent, self-evident referentlallty during the 20th century. Indeed, under certain conditions, it becomes the preferred term, (alongside €0vos, Xa6s, y tv o s, 42

TTSerres, in Adrianople, in Constantinople, in Smyrna, in Trebizond, in Crete, in Samos, and in any land associated with Greek history or the Greek race.... There are two main centres of Hellenism: Athens, the capital of the Greek kingdom, [and] "The City,” the dream and hope of all Greeks, (translated and quoted by Clogg 1979: 76).28 Kollttis is arguing here for the expansion of the physical boundaries of the Greek State to fit a territory Ideally associated with Hellenism. The key to his Irredentist vision is found in the formula that Greece spans not only the places where contemporary Greeks may now reside or the land legally under their control, but “any land associated with Greek history or the Greek race. ” Kol6ttis posits the non-identity of the Kingdom ( vasilio, kratos) and the nation (tth n o s ), the “Helladic” (the institutional borders of the Hellas) and the “Hellenic” (the land associated with the nation’s history), the real and the ideal, Athens and Constantinople. He also organizes and unifies an ideal Hellenism as a unique social organism (a race) extending through space (“land”) and time (“history”). He gives this organism a territorial dimension by plotting an ideal center, “Constantinople, ” which resonates alongside the bureaucratic center of the state. The capital of Byzantine 44

“Hellenism," the ideal “City," Constantinople signifies the homogeneity and distinctiveness of an unfinished Hellenism, which rests alongside the legal entity of the Helladic State, symbolized by its capital, Athens. Because the revenant Hellenic nation is unfinished and in the process of becoming, there is something teleological in the promise of territory. The imagined community of Hellenes that radiates from the center of Constantinople ideally consolidates the succession and coexistence of modern Greeks. Greeks of the Byzantine era are placed prior to but on a plane with those of the Turkokratfa (“Turkish occupation”)^9 and of the modern state, while Greeks living in Jannina, Salonica, Serres, Adrianople, Constantinople, Smyrna, Trebizond, Crete, and Samos are conceived as existing together with those who Inhabit “the smallest and poorest” Kingdom of Greece. The idea of an enlarged territory of Hellenism also functions as a means of transcending alternative local, regional, or supra-national allegiances. Finally, it regroups the heterogeneous forces and functions of Greeks living in the diaspora under the concept of a unified race, and links these to the ideologically charged center of Constantinople. The general context is the ideology of nationalism, which generates successive visions of a restored topos of Hellenism both before and after the establishment of the Kingdom or State of Greece in 1832. In the form of ethnic nationalism, with its narrowly ethnic, but expansive territorial representation of Hellenism, this ideology generates claims for the annexation of eastern Thrace and western Asia Minor. “Constantinople” always marks

the center of these desired territories. PsihAris’ To TOffSl fio v (M y J o u rn e y ) 45

[1888], my next example, makes Constantinople, and more specifically the Patriarchate, appear as the haven and soul of the besieged nation both prior to and after the creation of the state.

“Ma noufc (jiTTopcC vcl 8 iii ITaTpiapxclo icai T larpidpxh Sixes' va TapaxTf);”

(“Who can look at the Patriarchate and the Patriarch without feeling shaken?”), Psihiris asks rhetorically. “T€Tpaic6oia xp6via OT(£0T)K€ to v to s 0 p.iKpouToiKos T6tios-^va £tiXivo ottIti, lvaTia\i 6atTiT0 ,-T0 p6vo pas KaTa^aryio, r\

naTp( 8 a. E8 c6 paoTidvTav to € 0 v o s ” (“For 400 years this tiny topos stood alone, a wooden house, a little old house, our only refuge, our only fatherland. It was here that the nation clung”) (Psih&ris 1979: 86). The Patriarchate, a tiny place of “refuge” during the Turkokratfa , becomes the coveted space over which claims are made in the name of national identity. Psih&ris shows interest in the Patriarchate not merely for its deliverance of local populations during “400 years” of Ottoman rule; the Patriarchate’s contribution also consists in its present and future significance . 30 This topos has the synecdochic power to evoke the whole of an imaginary Byzantine Hellenism. To put it another way, the Patriarchate becomes tinder for rekindling a homogeneous ethnicity even among Greek expatriates or non* ethnic residents. Once ethnic identity is attached to this place of “refuge,” this “tiny topos” becomes the ideologically charged center around which the larger territory of Hellenism radiates. Athens represents another center of Hellenism in Pslh&ris’ work. It is the Intellectual and spiritual ancestor of Europe, home of poetry and philosophy. Through Athens, Pslh&rls attaches the Neohellenic world to the 46 mainline of an ancestral European civilization (rather than to modern Europe) and assembles a homogeneous “Hellenic tradition.” This “small topos, ” although not actually “present” in the workings of civilized modernity, appears as the fount and origin of cultural life :^ 1

Ac pe p£xci TcSpa va Treedtvai! Me 4>Tdcvci T) a<|K>u c(8a ttjv A6f)va. E8(fi YCvvfjeriKC o k6o[ios. E8w Kai otti PcSpTi |i.op^(ii0ri*c€ r\ Eppumrv MuTdvci Tdvopd ttis va ttt)s tcai Ta Xcs 6xa. Me o^pas to xwpa ttis va TraTifaTis, ecu tiou ^pxeoai oe t^toux x<*>pof tov oupavd TIOU PX^TTCIS, TOV £pX€TiaV Kai t6t€S 01 peydkOl' TOV Op((OVTa TIOU KOlTOCeiS pe t6oti xapd tov KolTaCav Ta p d n a tous Kdee p£pa. M£oa o’ aTf) ttjv aTpoo<|ta(pa yevviotivTav 01 $u)T€p&18 &S, £pyaivav ttoCtjoti Kai ^iXooo^la. 'OTav avepaivav 01 ycvvaioi ott^v Akp6tioXti aTidvu), tt)v ( 8 ia edXaooa GajpoOoav tiou Gcapels Twpa Kai ou. (1979: 158)

Even if I die tomorrow, I will have had my fill of life, now that I have seen Athens. This is where the world was born. It is here and in Rome that Europe received its education. This small territory (to pos) filled the earth. From here we derived mind and thought and ideas. It made us into human beings. The place is called Athens, and never did another name with so few syllables mean so much in the world. For the name says it all. Whoever comes to such a place treads reverently over its earth; the sky which you look at is the one that great men looked at in their time; the horizon which you observe today with such joy is the one that their eyes observed every day. In this atmosphere lucid ideas were born, poetry and philosophy were created. And when the bold ones climbed up to the Acropolis, they made out the same sea which you now make out. PsihAris’ narrator expresses the joy of having reached an unquestionable terminus in life by liturgically invoking the syllables of its proper name: Athens. He then reduces the complex history of this modern capital to the nondescript moments of a civilization’s birth and a narrator's rebirth. Athens, city and later village, site of sometimes radically participatory, sometimes tyranically exclusive governments, host to friendly 47 and hostile occupying powers, becomes a place where past and present are fused through the immediacy of experience. If the ancients once observed the horizon at the same place where I now observe the horizon, Pslh&ris narrator muses, then we have observed the same horizon. The temporal continuity of these two moments, classical and modern, is guaranteed through the individual’s invocation of those physical signposts which signify the eternity of place—earth, sky, horizon, atmosphere, and sea. These tags bring about the conceptual, dehistoricized unification of a topos of Hellenism across thousands of years of history. The fetishlzed name of Athens, then, “says it all," formulaically marking the distinguished history, unique cultural contribution, and spiritual continuity of what Psih&rls refers to as the “national soul.” The spatial dimension of this national soul appears everywhere in Psih&ris’ book. Throughout the imaginary Journey, his persona marks discovery points where yet another aspect of the unique Greek Identity, character, and fate are revealed. Not only Constantinople and Athens, the Patriarchate and Acropolis, but even the island of Chios induces a kind of self-discovery—an epiphany which concerns “ T) TUXT) to d TpaiKoti 6xi p6vo orn

Xfo, a \\a OTT) EWaSa Kai ornv Eppumri” (“the Greek’s fortune not only in Chios,

but also in Greece and Europe”) (1979: 115). This u r -Greek fate can be

reduced to the following formula: “A€V OTcpcifieriKC OKdpri ki 6\o Kovvifrai. Acv ^ p c i oifyiepa t( pnopct va yCt'T) dppio Kai X&i p£oa tov—«0a YKpepifoovv d£a$va 6Xa 0a xap^ TiaX€ Kai to npcoC tov fjXio tt)S turf\s;»” (“It hasn’t yet found firm

ground, but keeps on moving. [And the Greek] doesn’t know today what 48 will happen tomorrow, and asks himself: ‘will everything suddenly collapse on me, or will I enjoy the light of day again tomorrow morning?’”) (1979: 115). Chios paradoxically marks a fixed point of reference for the transitory aspect of Greek identity, as defined by PslhAris. And the figure representing fully the temporal and spatial constancy of this identity in flux is the greatest son of Chios: “Homer,” the sign of the social organism at work weaving the disparate tales from various villages into a unified if sometimes contradictory expression. 32 Place names such as Constantinople, Athens, Chios, and Piraeus resonate in PsihAris’ populist text 33 as territorial markers indicating the vitality and persistance, expanse and uniformity of a “solid community. ” 34 These key geographical points represent the immanent power of the nation, without direct reference to state borders. While PsihAris suggests that the nation has legitimate claims of sovereignty over a space greater than that controlled by the Kingdom of Greece, the map which he draws has more symbolic than pragmatic value. Rather than serving as a geographic guidepost for the expansion of the Kingdom, it signifies the cultural expanse of Neohellenism. It also subordinates the multiplicity of elements and diversity of manners currently represented in the Greek world. Finally, it seeks to extend the intellectual horizons of Neohellenism to include its vernacular traditions . 35 PsihArls' battle to adjust the boundaries of Hellenism to a populist, ethnic nationalist vision of Neohellenism represents only one of many efforts 49 to define topos by regulating culture. Intellectuals like Psih&ris supported the political declarations of the Meg&li Idfa ("Great Idea”) by systematically extending Hellenism from Homer to Romiosinii? Romanness” 36). Culture and politics during this period might be described as Interdependent. The politics of expansion derives legitimacy from an assumed disjunction between the state and the national ideal. Intellectuals and artists nourish this assumption, and so claim the right to ressurrect Hellenism in the form of language, art, and learning—the foundations of national identity. They thus enjoy the authority of delineating a topos of Hellenism which, in turn, supports a particular foreign policy. The dialectic between politics and culture appears most visibly in the work of Psih&rls’ near contemporary, the demoticist critic and politician, 'Ion Dragumis. Crucial to Drag&mis’ project is his careful distinction between the "natural” borders of the Hellenic nation and the artificial boundaries of the Helladlc State:

Oi'EX\t)V€s tt)s EXXdSos, as tods tiovpc 0 1 cxxaSucol, ouvTcaiTiaav oto pvax6 to v s to €XXtivuc6 xpdTos, to €XXrjvitc6 paotxeio, tt) piKpf) EXXaSa |ic to €XXtivik6 €(, vo$. 5 IxaocLV to €XXt}vik6 cevos, tti PwpioovvTi, to p EXXr)viop6. Hixaoav m s to Kpdros, to paoiXcio, d v ai npootopiv6 Kai t o 4>avTdo0riKav no5s 0a iVrav, av iVrav t & c i o . Kai r\ avT(XTi\|rn tt^ s T€X€i6TryrasyV auTotis elvai £va dXXo, 6noio Kai vdvai, KpdTos t t i s EupoSnris pc ttpokotit^.... AXXa 8ev pxtvovv oi icvpioi onjToi, oi'EXXrjvcs, oi cXXaSucot, nu)s r\ AyyXla £r\ ^oioXoyiKa, Y iaT l exei Ta ^ruoiKd tt)S 6pia, exei 6\T | t t \ v aYY^tKf) ytl Y ta KevTpo, elvai TeXeuop^vo KpdTos Kai anXcoveTai ^nevra o’ 6xo tov k6opo. Evg5 ri EXXdSa (tj cXeueeprv Sr^XaSfi t o KpdTos, 8c Cn ^voioXoyiKd, yiaTt c(vai tc x v t) t6 KaTaoKcuaopa ^vwv 8uiXa>pdTu>v, 8cv £x€l Ta $voucd t t j s ovvopa, elvai £vas (wvTavdvcKpos irpoowpivds opyaviopds, £va tcxvt}t6 kIvtpo Kai dxt KpdTOS T€X€ia>p£vo. (Dragumis 1927a: 108)

The Hellenes of Hellas, let us call them the Helladics, identified in their minds the Hellenic state, the Hellenic kingdom, this tiny Hellas, w ith 50

the Hellenic nation. They forgot about the Hellenic nation, Romiosine, Hellenism. They forgot that the state, the kingdom, is temporary, and they imagined what it would be like if it were perfect. And their conception of perfection consists in any other state in Europe that has succeeded.... But these gentlemen, these Hellenes, the Helladics, do not see that England [for example] lives naturally, because it has its natural boundaries, has English earth as its center, is a finished state and so spreads out into all the world. Whereas Hellas (liberated Hellas, that is, the state) does not live naturally, because it is the artificial ruse of foreign diplomats; it doesn’t have its natural borders, it is a temporary, moribund organism with an artificial center, and not a finished state. The state is a temporary and imperfect solution, a "moribund organism” with an “artificial center”—an “artificial ruse of foreign diplomats” which the “Helladics” (the people dwelling in the state) wrongly identify with the nation. The nation, on the contrary, presents the natural solution to the geographic distribution and self-government of the Hellenic population. Drag&mis describes the nation as an integrated patchwork of simple, organic communities. In other words, the nation is comprised of social groupings of the kind that Max Weber and Otto Bauer labeled “ Gemeinschaft , ” whose associations are based on the feeling of members that they belong together as a distinct group with a subjectively and collectively held identity and sentiment of solidarity. These groupings are unlike impersonal associations formed for a specific political purposes, or

“ Gesellschaft . ” 37 For Dragumis, loyalty to local groups derives from loyalty to place ( topikismds, “localism” ) 38 and common racial origins (fill, “race"). Behavior Is controlled by regionally and racially shared codes (of honor or shame) and ancestral traditions (/a p itr ia , “things from our fathers”), rather than by an abstract, foreign constitution, a “Frankish system.” Under no conditions can a foreign system abolish the loyalty that time and 51

place produce in community members: “o t 6ttos Kai o XP<$vos 8 cv KaTaXvovTai otov avBpcimivo K 6opo” (“ Topos and time cannot be undon in the human world”) (Dragumis 1927b: 184). By upholding the value of the community (with its traditions, manners, codes, and local base) over the state (with its institutions, systems, centralized government, and uniform overcoding of an abstract sovereignty39), Dragtimis appears to be defending a kind of pre-modern archaism (indigenous roots) and so fending off the onrush of modernity (western influence). His political project might well be described as an attempt to strengthen local influence and boost grass-roots participation so as to stay the tide of both migration to Athens and emigration from Greece. To this end he redraw s the political map of Hellas as a spatially expansive, loosely organized union of autonomous, individually-coded communities. On a theoretical level, Dragfimis is uneasy with the physical boundedness of the State of Hellas because he places the state at the service of the abstract ideal of the nation, whose culture transcends physical boundaries and political institutions.^ According to him, the purpose of the state is to assure the “flowering of the nation”; there was no better reason

for its existence. The state, therefore, “Scv £x*t to 8 iKa(ttHia va Ticpiopl(€Tai

OTa OTCva tov ovvopa Ta ttoXitiko, ovtc va XTioiiovfj p.^pri tov &vovs, Ta an 6 Ta ovvopa” (“does not have the right to confine Itself to its narrow political

borders and to forget parts of the nation which remain outside its borders”) (1927b: 183):

6 xa Ta n^pri tov £evovs iia^i, o* 6noio itoXitik 6v opYavio;i 6 ki av tvxovv OYTivw^va, 8 t)|iiovpyovv tov iroXino|i 6 tou, ovvcpYctCovTai 6xa Yia to pcY&o 52

dveiopa. Arpioiipv 6s t o v tcpdtTous TidXi t o £ 0 v o s elvai, t o e0vos oXcuccpo, Kai t o &vos n\deei t o KpdTos yia t o v s okottovs tov & v o v s , via va pTrop&T) avev 6xXT)Ta Kai olyopa va pydxt) crDoowpo t o v noxinopd tov , va ttct^ t) t o XovXotiSl TOU. (1927b: 183)

every part of the nation, no matter to what political organism it may be wedged, is the creator of [national] civilization and participates in its flowering.... The entire nation is the creator of the state, and the nation fashions the state for the purposes of the nation, so that it may produce its civilization in one body, undisturbed and securely—so that it may blossom. Dragumis thus sketches the territory of Hellenism as a unified national space that justifies the existence of a state and gives it a ra iso n

d 'S tre . Like both Kol6ttis and Psih&ris before him, however, Dragtimis does not confine his Hellenic ideal to existing state boundaries, but extends it beyond the physical borders of the kingdom of Greece. The topos oi Hellenism becomes a fluid, negotiable space specified only by ethnic, historical, and cultural rather than constitutional markers. Like other territories, this topos is capable of taking the shape of a “very substantial, material, measurable, and concrete entity” (Gottman 1973: 15) when the obligations and interests of the state are attached to it. It then organizes, unifies, and controls w hat it has itself constituted as a single, homogeneous social body by shaping its interests and desires. Hellenism thus becomes a "reterritorialized” site for a state policy of nation-building.** The salutary purpose of the reterritorialized social body is to produce a distinct civilization which can overcome, paradoxically through the particularity and distinctiveness of its Indigenous contributions, the limits of local contingencies, surpass the borders of the States, and become universally accessible and admirable: 53

TToi6s c tv a i T(ov eevwv o okott6j o t€Xik6s,ties tov npoopiO|i6, Ties tov auooToXfi Ties tottv avdyKri; 0 TTOXinopds!. Nd, £pyo dljio y ia Ta &)vtv £pyo avepamiOTiKd, £pyo aXT^eivd avepc5nivo.... Na, ttojs IjencpvoiJv Ta oiSvopd tous, ^exeiXtCouv, rrXaTalvow, unjrcovovTai, yeptCouv icai tcaTaxTonv tov Koofjio.... Aev 4>Tavei 6pa>s v a e iv a i iva. eQvos iroXtTiop^vo, Tipinei KioXa v a etvai TioXiTiop^vo au6 8 ik6 too TTOXlTlOpd. (1927b: 181-2)

What is the final purpose, destiny, mission, call it necessity of nations? It is Civilization! This is a task worthy of nations—a humanistic, a truly human project.... This is how nations can surpass their borders, overflow and become broader, higher, fuller, and conquer the earth.... At the same time, it does not suffice for a nation merely to be civilized; it must be civilized with its own civilization. Although “Civilization” is here represented as a “native," literally u en to p ic fru it” (€Vt6ttios Kapiids, 183) produced from “deep within the entrails” of the nation, neither Civilization nor the nation can be contained by or reduced to a single locality. Indigenous Civilization is part of a generally conceived, “humanistic” project. Territorial ethos and local roots become buried in a modern eschatology, with the symbol of the nation, and beyond that, the human race, becoming the transcendental signifier of a developing Civilization. The project of highlighting the immanent validity and inner pattern of growth within a particular national culture finally serves to promote the interests of civilized, Hellenized, enlightened modern Man. Both Dragumis and PsihAris found license to reterritorialize local community interests in the expansive, imaginary community of the nation, with its unique language and culture, at a time when state policy was pushing to expand the borders of Hellas to include the “unredeemed” territories. But theirs w as not the only reterritorialization of Hellenism offered during this period of expansion. The idiosyncratic but widely

influential art critic Periklis Yann 6pulos took an aesthetic approach to 54

defining the boundaries of national culture . 4 2 His imaginary alignment of nation and state, the reterritorialization of Hellenism in the color and line of the Attic and Aegean Greek top/o ("landscape”), proved especially attractive to the w riters who came of age after Greece’s major m ilitary defeat in 1922, as we shall later see.

Yann 6pulos’ identifies the topos of Hellenism not with the unredeemed geographical space of the nation, but with the top/o ("landscape”) of Hellas: the topography and climate identified most readily with the Attic sun and Aegean sea. The aesthetic building-blocks of Hellas derived from this top/o are the KapTTJ\T| (“curved line”) and transparent (“light”) which is reflected everywhere in the color of KtidVOS (deep blue). These elements reflect Neohellenism’s €0viKf) aTopiK 6TT)Ta (“national individuality”). Their sphere of operation as neither the artwork nor the appreciating subject, but

topos, which becomes the self-evident category of Hellenism in Yann 6pulos’ work.

Yann 6pulos spells out his theory of topos in “H ovyxpovos ((flypa^iKTV’

(“Contemporary Painting”) [1902], He begins the essay by describing the Neohellene’s responsibility to topos:

Ytrdpxei £va Ka0fyov e is t o v t 6ttov ccut 6 v . Kai t o Kaefyov ccut 6 etvai va pcXe-nfaajpev TflieCs o u t o C to v « cvt 6 v pas, t o napcX 06v pas, t o nap 6v pas, 8 ia va Yva)plC Tjptfiv npaypaTiK^v Cwl^v, t o u s av0pc6nous Kai Ta tpya. tojv 8 ia v a yvcjpCcajpev t ( oripatvouv auTa Kai r i X^yopev r^peCs. To Ka0fyov o u t 6 enepaXa npwTov €is € P o u t 6 v . Kai KaTa ttjv 4>u o iv k o i va p d tt |v k X( o i v Kai cvavTfov tt)s iJruxiKfjs 8ia0^o€(os €8^op€uoa Tas KoMvrcxviKds pou 8w dp€is Kai oppds tipos ck S^X okjiv , 8 ia va c k tc x I oo ) npcijTOV o u t 6. (Yann6pulos 1988a: 7) 55

There is a single responsibility in this topos: that w e ourselves study ourselves, our past and our present, so that w e can learn w ho w e are, w hat w e are capable of doing, w hat paths w e should follow, in the direction of w hat kind of tom orrow , w hat near and distant future; that w e study and analyze our surrounding reality, the people and their w orks so that w e can know w hat they m ean and w hat w e are saying. Although Yanndpulos alludes here to the primary responsibility of the enlightened modern individual, the need to study oneself—to analyze, that is, one’s present in the light of the past, so as to recognize who one is and what one might become—he gives clear territorial boundaries to the subject and object of study. There is always a limit around and a root beneath the individual, which fastens one securely to a particular people and place. For Neohellenes, this is the topos of Hellenism, with its distinct borders and natural landscape. Tradition and Nature are the two constituent elements that comprise the racial and physical environment of the Hellenic people and regulate its activities. Tradition—with its heroic, mythological, classical, Byzantine, religious, and folk “ cosm os "—links a people to its racial substratum and offers authentic manifestations of culture, while Nature, Earth, and Soil continually nourish and channel its creative energy. If the responsibility of the individual emanates from a particular space and racial substratum, then to study oneself is not to satisfy one’s curiosity about the nature of a free-floating citizen of the world or universal soul, but to participate in "creating a P a tris” ("fatherland” (1988a: 65). The artist offers no exception to this rule, according to Yann 6pulos: artist without P atris, artistic expression without borders, works of art that belong generally to humanity—all of these are undesirable and useless for 56

Yann 6pulos. To make art Is to build a P atris, the highest calling of the Neohellene—artist, critic and layman alike. Nation-building requires that one recognize the unique signs of the

Individuality of one’s topos and describe these, as Yann 6pulos claims to do, or represent these, as Yann 6pulos urges artists to do. The responsibility of the critic is to point out the signs of Hellenism’s “t 6oov 0T€v6v t 6tiov Kai p.€ t 6oov U>S umoil€VOV” (“extremely narrow and enlightened topos”') (1988a: 22).

The task of the artist is to recognize and use them. The purpose of every work of art should therefore be to express the geographical and climatic particularity of Hellenism. Obversely, the artist is said to perform essential work toward creating a P a tr is : “IlaTpCs 8€V 0 a TiV) t Ctiotc X ^pls iSiKfjv TT}S Za)ypanothing without its own Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Literature, Music, and so many other things”) (1988a: 65). Within the P a tris , one may claim the title of the “highest priest” of one’s topos if one succeeds in feeling and perceiving and recreating the natural color and line of Hellenism. Under these conditions, a rt becomes “T)vnepTd7T|€K8fiXa)Ois TT^s av6p

Ka0€ xpwiia, Kd0€ f^xov STHiioupycl pe a (|ia” (“the highest priest of the human community; he creates each line, each color, each echo from blood”) (1988a:

22). 57

Artists must submit every artistic expression to the determining forces of Nature if they are to succeed in placing art within the cultural continuum and racial substratum that constitute the topos oi H e lle n is m . *3 This demands total immersion in the topio (“landscape”) of Attica and the Aegean, in particular, with their clear delineation of Hellenism’s natural line and color. It also requires that one study the cosm os oi the Hellenic people on all levels, including the natural, the mythological, the heroic, the folk, the religious, the Byzantine.

The true Nature of both the Hellenic topio and cosm os is such that “8 ev

4>alv€T0o X^ oijs Kai 8 cv 8 (8 cTai €is Tas Koivas \|rvxas Kai 8 ev ytv€Tai amMriTiTfi €is Tas Siavotas Kai 8 €v napa 8 (8 €i Tas x<*PiTas Kai Ta

|iuoTf)pia TT)j, Tiapd €is a€K€t vous oi oTioloi epcSvTai auTtiv |i€ Tideos, a^ooio 6vTai

€is tt^v XaTpelav TT)S Kai oc6[iaTi” (“it cannot be seen by the common eye, does not give itself over to common observation, cannot be perceived by lower intellects and only offers its graces and mysteries to those who love it w ith a passion and are devoted soul and body to its worship”) (1988a: 44). Nevertheless it is possible for one who has entered into these “graces and mysteries” to penetrate its beauty and reproduce the marvelous attributes of the Hellenic world.

Yann 6pulos claims to have achieved such a “baptism into the Light of

Hellenism” in his essay of 1904, H €\\T)ViKfj Ypappfj, TO €X\T]VIk6 XPW|ia (“The

Hellenic Line, the Hellenic Color”). Here he describes in detail the absolute integrity and unity of internal and external worlds in Attica and the Aegean. His theory of topos—oi a national space, that is, which defines, determines, 58 and subsumes the eternal spirit and artistic expression of its people— presupposes that the human spirit is organically tied to its place of origin on Earth. The integrity of Inner and outer worlds is expressed In the unique

“AiO0T|TlKi^ tow k<£0€ AccoO” (“Aesthetic of a each people”) (Yann6pulos 1988b:

142). Conversely, when a people derive their representations from things that have little to do with their own nature or earthly environment, they create false Images—as do the Europeans when they claim the Hellenic aesthetic for themselves, or Hellenes when they adopt the European aesthetic as their a^ev'TT) (“master”)

Of course, the interdiction against adopting a foreign master does not prevent Yann 6pulos from borrowing his conception of Hellenism’s “oAdTtyra”

(“wholeness”) almost wholesale from German aesthetic paganism. Not unlike Winckelmann, Schiller, and Goethe, Yann 6pulos discovers the vision of Hellenism’s essential integrity in the fragments of Classical Greek culture, the "natural and miraculous blossom” of Hellas (1988b: 97). Very nearly in the terms of Winckelmann—who detected in ancient sculpture and architecture eine edle Einfalt und eine stille GrtMe (“a noble simplicity and tranquil grandeur”) and for whom this “grandeur” was the unique product of a particular climate, age, and culture—Yann 6pulos describes the primary characteristics of Classical art as “oaf)V€ia” (“clarity”), transparency of

light and air, purity of line, symmetry, eurythmia, grace, gaiety, and Socratic Irony. These characteristics derive from the natural and unchangeable line of the Hellenisc top/o: the KcqimiXTi (“curve”) and the absolute presence of $U)£ ("light”), with its clarity and brightness, unity and singleness, lightness of color. Both appear with endless variation in the simplicity, order, harmony, nobility, fineness of all ancient architecture, some Byzantine churches, and a few common shacks. Where everything is light and nobility, the color of cyan blue (kwvow ) prevails, as it does in the Aegean and Attic summer landscape, with its hot sun, clear sky, barrenness and pure, “metallic” blue color: "H ojpaidiepa EXXriviKf) Enoxn, n ATTitcfj Ettox4 kco” e^ox^, e l m r\ ecpivii ot€ ti ai0pi6TT^s koci yupvoTT)? elvai TcXeia- Kai ava^atvcTai oX 6k\tpos pc yupi/ 6 v to KdtXXos rns....9a i 8 fyrc pc Ta pana oas xt^taKis ttiv eaXaooav, £va

Kvavd)TaTov, avoiKTdTaTOV, ue\a) 8 eoTaTov Kai p€TaXXiKWTaTOV xpwpa” (“The most beautiful Hellenic Season, the Attic Season, is the Summer, when ethereal barrenness reaches perfection... [and] you will see w ith your eyes a thousand times the sea—with its most cyan blue, open, glassy, metallic color”) (1988b: 121). This is the ideal top/o oi contemporary art. Here light passes everything and reveals the truth of things: the T 180W1 (“pleasure”) of the color itself and the oa^veia (“clarity”) of the line (1988b: 138).

Yann 6pulos argues, finally, that the pleasure of the landscape, the aboriginal call of the “Mother earth,” is so powerful that it can pull the Hellenic nation, even in its diasporan Odyssey, toward a single center, the emerging P atris. The centripetal force of Hellenism also extends its grip to the imagination of other national groups. There is, in fact, a major

contradiction in Yann 6pulos' work which reveals the Ideology of his

aesthetic.44 This contradiction appears in his tendency to slip back and forth between claiming for Hellenism a universality and a particularity. In a rare 60

ecumenical mood, for example, Yann 6pulos features the Attic and Aegean landscape as the 4>u o ik 6 s t 6ttos (“natural to p o s”) , the “temple” or workshop of not only Hellenic art, but all art. He imagines that, under ideal conditions, “auovtws r\ A t t ik t 1) 6a clvai o $ v o ik 6 s t 6 ttos tou ko XX i t ^ xvou , o $ u o ik 6 s va6s rn s T^XVT^s” (“Attica will eternally be the natural topos of the artist, the natural temple of Art”) (1988a: 35). When this happens, “every Rembrandt” who approaches the temple of Hellenism will go

Tipos to 4>u)s, npos £vcl k6o|iov ttou TToecl, 4>avTdC€Tai, axxd 8ev px^nei, e a TiXrioidoTi p€ ^iyos Kai e a pdxi^ pe ucpm deeiav Ta x^pia ttjs eis Ta TiTwxd oov XoSpTa oav 0€ xpvod KdyK€XXa etipas r\ onola avolyci ai^viBlws £va 6p6pov, Tipoj €va Kdopov TrdyKaXov Kai 4>a€iv6TaTov, to v ovcipoTioXotipcvov Kdopov Kdee TioiriTou, to v ottoIov oti £x€ls cpnpds €is Ta p d n a oou Kai 8(vai o Kdpos o i8ik6s oov, o TrpaypaTiKos, T) yfi oov, r\ priTepa tou, tt)v oiiotav KaTa pdeos ayaiTds, pe 6,ti Kai av Xfyrjs, pc 6,ti Kaiv av KdvTjs ayatrds paQcia oav 'EXXrjv TTOV etoai. (1988a: 40).

in the direction of light, to a cosm os which one desires, imagines, but cannot see, to approach with a shiver of reverence and lay the hands on your green grasses with passion as if touching the golden gates of an entrance which suddenly opens a path into a beautiful and absolutely brilliant cosmos, the dreamlike cosm os of every poet, which you have before your eyes and belongs to you, your own real cosmos, your earth, your mother, whom you love in the depths of your heart, by whatever you say, by whatever you do, you love in your depths as the Hellene you are.

It is significant that Yann 6pulos closes this reverie on the approach to Hellenism’s golden gates with an apostraphe to his compatriot “Hellene.” With this rhetorical shift away from Just any repentant Rembrandt to his fellow “Hellene” who loves "your earth.. .your mother.. .in the depths of your heart, ” Yann 6pulos makes a special case for the Neohellene to claim this topos at Hellenism as his own. Obversely, he denies the non-Hellene equal power to approach “the dreamlike cosm os at every poet.” Only the 61 autochthonous population, the indigenous occupants of the Balkan peninsula’s southernmost exposure, possess the right of direct access to what are in fact the "temples” of a local population. Indeed, Yann 6pulos argues systematically throughout this and other essays that northern European non- Hellenes are incapable of giving authentic expression to Hellenism. They inevitably create false Images when they claim the Hellenic aesthetic as their own.

It becomes apparent through Yann 6pulos’ alternating claim of particularity and universality for the Hellenic aesthetic that his argument derives some benefit from linking itself to both a geographically specific and a transcendent topos. In its geographically limited circumscription, Hellenism remains the possession of a particular people, provided this people firm ly anchor Itself in its own particular landscape. The aesthetic regulated by geography functions always in relation to a nation’s calling. In its transcendental scope, however—that is to say, as the "Mother Earth” of all a rt—Hellenism can be said to produce the best art in the world. Its universalized aesthetic functions to transform the topos of Hellenism into a continent of creativity which transcends actual geography. This is

Yann 6pulos powerful, if fundamentally ethnocentric, message to contemporary Greek artists.

The Transcendence of "Greekness * After Greece’s defeat in 1922, the politics of expansion became effectively moribund. At this time, poets and critics felt the pressing need to 62 reconcile themselves to the idea of a geographically limited state. Some sought reconciliation by developing a cosmopolitan vision of culture which broke out of nationalist prescriptions. Y 6rgos Theotok&s (1906-1966),45 preeminent spokesman of cosmopolitanism, studied the course of Neohellenism in light of both its own “TTV€UjittTiKT^ KXrpovopid”

(“cultural/intellectual heritage”) and the artistic potential of western “poVT€pvi0|i6j” (“modernism, ” or modernizing trends) (Theotok&s 1988: 54).

He undertook to chart from his “airborne” perspective the position and potential of Neohellenism in relation to contemporary European movements. With his liberal manifesto of free thinking, EAetidepoTJyctipa (“ F ree

S p ir it”), Theotok&s addresses the producers of a minor culture who were seeking to gain international recognition as Western European artists. To broaden their “l?vev(ictTiKol 0pl(0VT€£” (“intellectual horizons”) (1988: 19),

Theotokos describes the options available to a culture caught "pioa o’ ocut 6v

tov Kwewva tt\$ ovyxpovr^s Cu%, 8 app£voi and tovs peydxovs av^povs tt)s peTaTioXepiKife Eupamr)?” (“in the confusion of the modern world, beaten by

the great winds of post-war Europe”) (1988: 61). These involve not a choice between, but ways of synthesizing, local color and western sophistication, faith and nihilism, tradition and Modernity. Theotokos’ message to his compatriots is that they seize the moment— “Tocuaop^voi, papapfyoi, xap^voi pco’ otov kvkcwvcc tt^s ouyXP0^ (wife”

(“broken, withered, and lost in the mire of contemporary life”) (1988: 63) though they may be—and free their imaginations. They should ask not whether, but how to assist in the progress of “ilia piKpi^ Kai OTCVOK^aM) 63

€1T(XPXm5 tikt) KOivwvttt” (“a small and narrow-minded, self-absorbed provincial community”) now making unmanagable strides to keep up with its own uncontrollable development (“€{-£Xi£n TOV t 6ttou, ” “development in the land”)

(1988: 62). And the essential ingredient for success is the overcoming of prescribed limits on artistic expression. Thus, as a liberal corrective to the ills of parochial thinking, TheotokAs tries to bring fellow-authors to stride in

tovki*)tiot(i)v v€oe\\T|viKc5vYpcqi|idTU)V...[xcopis] T^ppa.... MpTiopoupe va yup(ooup,€ 6xous t o u s 8p6pous, axxd Ta 6piato u kt^ttou 8ev Ta pptoKoupe TTou0€vd. Oi eXTilSes tto u pas Tipoo^pei oe Kd0€ pfpa elvai aTieipes. To x^pa t o u , t t o u 8e y € v v t^ o € aKdpa TioXXd u\|»TiXd S^vTpa yiaTl 8e OKd^rryce apKCTa, Kptipei ttXouoious Kai ave^dvTXr^Tous xvn°te- E^vai 8uvaT6 va 8iaTuna)0ouv Ta 6piat o ) v €0vc5v tto u TcXelcooav, aXXd ryx i8io$u(a cv6s (oovTavou Xaou 8e yvu>pl0€i 6piaoutc ott)v lx Taot) o u t c o t o pd0os. (1988: 72)

a garden of Neohellenic letters... [without] lim its.... We can wander all paths, but we will not find the outer boundaries of the garden anywhere. The hopes which it offers at every step are infinite. Its earth, which has not yet given birth to tall trees because it has not been tilled enough, hides rich and inexhaustible resources. For it is possible to express the limits of nations which have come to an end, but the genius of a living people knows no bounds in its breadth or depth. As the decade of the 1930s progresses, however, artists and critics increasingly attend to the ingredient assigned a secondary role in Theotokds’ early manifesto: the “TTveunaTlKf) KXTipovopid” (“cultural/ intellectual

heritage) of a specifically “Greek Hellenism. ”46 They reclaim a special condition for the Neohellenic, albeit “cosmopolitan,” work of art: that its manner of expression be authentically Greek. Intellectual modernization in

their work47 takes the form of a modernistically aestheticizing

“Greekness . ” 48 An “pfj 6oYpaTiK6,” “u^oXoyiKd” (“undogmatic,” “stylistic”)

aesthetic of “Greekness,” signified more frequently by the terms EU inikds 64

Ellinismds, Neoellinismds, or simply EU inism ds (“Greek Hellenism, ” “Neohellenism,” “Hellenism”) than by EUinikdtita (“Greekness”), becomes a touchstone of Neohellenic modernist expression and'thought in the 1940s and 1950s.49 Hence, when the critic and poet Zisimos Lorentzatos (b. 1915)5° urges his readers to stop “expecting] anything from the geographical size of our country” (LorentzAtos 1947: 17), he has in mind not the formation of a truly internationalist movement, but the “recovery” of Hellenism’s authentic, if underground, artistic tradition. He describes

[€]va 8 iaKpiTuc6 super flumina Babilonis ttou okouo) va TTXr||i^\»pd, p£oa

[a] low-voiced super flumina Babilonis whispering through the most secret cells of the nation: in the folk tales, the dirges, or the songs of our people, of our poets and prose -writers.... An indefinite tone of spiritual anguish, a sense of catastrophe harking back to some lost paradise; the deep awareness of some great tribal longing which remains unanswered through the ages. (1980a: 19). He then projects this aesthetic ideal over and above the map of a war-torn Hellas as a shield against uncontrolled foreign invasions. LorentzAtos concerns himself specifically w ith “TOTTOYpaiK^ pvt^pr)”

(“topographical memory”) (1947: 16): how Neohellenic works recall the persistence of Hellenism through time and despite transformations in geographical space. He surveys the “national,” rather than broadly cultural, “horizon” to find the properly Hellenic alternative to what he later refers to 65 as equally “monotonous,” foreign solutions: “the modernization of Hellenism, or the Hellenization of Modernism” (Lorentzatos 1980b: 127). And he discovers an “dvioos Tdnos ttou undpxei tto X u nepioodTcpo o t o v xpdvo Tiapa o t o XWpo” (“uneven topos which exists much more in time than in space”)

(Lorentzatos 1947: 17). In Lorentzdtos’ work, topos becomes an emblem not of physical expanse, but of temporal survival and metaphysical well-being, especially under the current crisis of Western modernity. Furthermore, topos signifies the “spiritual and intellectual potential” of a historically defined people both fiercely grounded in local communities and perennially scattered across the world. This people cannot be “rooted in” an administratively defined space— especially a modern state—as the following remarkable passage argues:

2 up.pipdcCop€ TOV TOTTlKlOpd TOU'EXXT)Va K(Xl TT) SlOtOTTOpd TOU EPpaloU. ZuvexiCope t o dvopa cvds dvioou t6tiou ttou unapxei ttoXu TicpioodTepo o t o v Xpovo Tiapa o t o xwpo, Kai yi o u t 6 r\ potpa pas 6ev KaTaXapaivei tt} poipa to jv Xawv t o u xwpou, aXXa KXco0€Tai oXoeva Tpiyupa) o t o dXuTO TipdpXripa to o v 8uo 8iaoTdo€(DV. EtpaoTe oi pvTyjTfipes t o u xpdvou Kai oi KaTaSiKaop^voi t o u Xwpou.... Zrpepa TicpioodTepo and Kd0€ aXXt) ^opa 8ev ^xopc va ncpiplvope t ( t i o t € and Tt)V €KTaofi pas. Ifjpepa ncpioodTcpo and Kd0€ dXXT) $opd 0a np^nci va ouXXoyioToupc pifaws ploa o tt)V enoxd tto u pnatvope 6c pas anopevci aXXo epndpejpa and t t j v nveupanK^ €Tt18oo^ pas. Av npdKeiTai va (tfoope BiaTTipiSvTas t o dvopa t o u pucpooKoniKOU TdTiou pe Ta pappapa Kai tous Kapyd8€S, pe t t j Xapnpd lOTopla Kai Ta pdoava t t | s , pe t o v oupavd Kai vt\ To5xeia, pe Ta KiKKaXidpiKa pouva Kai Ta vrjoia, pev to v EukX€18ti Kai t o v oSvaaia, pe tov ^uttvo xad, Kai Ta cpTjpoKXifooia, t o u s oo<|>otis Kai t o u s ToapXaTdvous, t o MeyaX^avSpo Kai t o u s 0aXaooivous to u , t o TjouxaoT^pio Kai t i s Tap^pvcs pas~OTt^v navdpxait) to u tt^ KOiT(8a tt^s MeooycCou tto u Ka0ios pas x£yav oi nannouSes A oi yepdvTiooes, yevv^0TiK€ o Kdopos, pia 4>opdKi^vavKaipd... (Lorentzitos 1947: 16-17)

We reconcile the local roots [ topikismds] of the Hellene and the diaspora of the Jew. We are perpetuating the name of an uneven topos which exists much more in time than in space. For this reason 66

our fate remains incompatible with the fate of peoples rooted in space, but is continuously woven around the insoluble problem of the two dimensions. We are the suitors of time, and the outcasts of space.... Today more than ever before, w e must not expect anything from the geographical size of our country. Today more than ever before, we must ask ourselves whether we can offer the coming ages anything else but our spiritual and intellectual potential. That is, if we are to keep alive the name of this microscopic topos with its marble ruins and constant conflicts, bright history and troubles, shining sky and poverty, bony mountains and islands, Euclid and Odysseus, intelligent people and isolated chapels, wise men and charletans, Alexander the Great and seafarers, places of recluse and taverns—in this age-old cradle of the Mediterranean where, as our grandparents and old ladies used to say—once upon a time the world [cosm os] was born. Here the geographical dimension of the state is subsequent to the existence and non-essential to the survival of the Hellenic population—with its “marble ruins and constant conflicts, bright history and troubles — ” The symbolic m arkers of the “microscopic topos” o iHellenism are not geographical boundaries and constitutional limits, but the “high” and “low” expressions oi an “intelligent people’s” bright and troubled spirit. Lorentzatos’ effort to extend national horizons over a transcendental plane by defining the themes and styles of a Hellenic tradition is certainly no aberration for the Cold-War period. It is instead a most influential and self- perpetuating project. The anti-modern, anti-western, ethnocentric appendix to Lorenzatos’ essay is St^lios R&mfos Tdnos Ynepovpavios (“ Transcendental

Topos”') (1983). R&mfos views the tradition of Hellenism as an “vtt 6y €10

poJua” (“underground current”) (Ramfos 1903: 23). The “TTVeupctTlKf) Kpiorj”

(“spiritual crisis”) experienced by Hellas from late Byzantine to modern

times—as it “napatialei avaCnTtovTas tt^v TccuT^TTyrd tt^s pcTaj-ti AvaToMfc Kai Avoews” (“staggers between East and West in search of its proper identity”)

(R&mfos 1983: 34)—leads Neohellenes to become absorbed in aberrant projects: 67

“T| apxatoXoyta tt^s leay^veias... fa] Mcy & ti I8£a pids v€KpavaoTaoT)s... [o]

Aia$U)Tiop6[s] Kai [oi] iBeoXoyles tt)s 8uvdqi€U)£ Kai rn ? pffeews” (“the archeology of indigeny,... the M egili Idea of a resurrection,... the Enlightenment and the ideologies of power and rapture") (1983: 34). These undertakings are signs of Neohellenism’s spiritual impasse, R&mfos argues. They express its uniquely uncomfortable situation in an inauthentically “Hellenic” world:

Acv elpaoT€ 8£opioi tou irap€X06vTos, ctpaoT€ vaudyio oc £va Tiap6v auT00K0Ti6. no id piTopcl v a elvai r\ leaycvcia tou veo&XTiva oe evav k6o[io €\Xtivik6; nws Kai ttou va tt^v avaCTyfaori 6Tav r\ EXXa8a C,r\ Kai paoiXeuci oc £va TTveupa ((ufjs ttou 8€v u a p ^ i Tipovo[i(€s €XXriviK6TTyras 0€ Kav^vav; TTT(£pX€l liia TT€plTTT(OOTl €^€XXT|VlOllo0 TTOU 8€V a<{>€XXTlv(C€l;

We are not captives to our past, but shipwrecks in a self-centered present. What kind of indigeny can the Neohellene claim in a world that is already Hellenic? How and where can indigeny be sought when Hellas lives and rules in a spirit of life that offers privileges of Greekness to no one? Is there a possibility for hellenization which does not at the same time de-hellenize? (1983: 34-5).

B ecau se th e w e s t h a s a p p r o p ria te d H ellen ism fo r "TT^v T€XVl

0£TIk 6 tt|S TTVCUjia” (“its own technical prowess and positivist spirit”) (Ramfos 1984: 30), as R&mfos explains in HrXufooccKOCi rjlJapdSoorj (" Language

and Tradition”) (1984), Neohellenes lose the “priveleges of Greekness."

Hence their “oayr)V€up^vri” ("bewitched”) dialogue w ith w estern Hellenizers

produces tw o spurious approaches to neo-Hellenization: a pseudo-

“ progressive” im itation of w estern prototypes, w hich responds to no living

G reek reality, and reactionary “traditionalist” inhalations “tou okoviop^vou

licyaXelou t o u irapcXGdvTos” (“of the dusty greatness of the past”) (1984: 30)

R&mfos categorically asserts: “'Ooo pp(0K€Tai ot6 tto s oc pf)fa |i€ tt)V TTapdtSoorj, 68

o i 8vvdp€is tou 0a Tiapqi^vouv Sixaop^vcs Kai p&Xov ea £x*l tt^v ap€pai6Tryra”

(“As long as topos Is ruptured from tradition, its forces will remain divided and its future uncertain”) (1984: 30). Ramfos’ Transcendental Topos seeks to heal this rupture by transplanting Hellas from revenant nation to transcendental topos Its theme is that the real Hellas is a topos “6xi TU)V 0Uv 6pu)V...0UT€ touv pVT)[i€i(i)V” ("not of borders.. .or of monuments”), but of dreams and of ideas:

riofe v a optori o x6pt t 1S tt)v aTOTila Kai ttws va rn v nepixdpT), x^pos out6s, aTiepixwpTirneKelvrv... Att6 xutoo^paivei to aXXo, to dxxo touk 6opou, aiwvio Kai anepi6pi0T0 Kai aTi€piv6r|T0 Kai avunapKTO. To aXXo tou K6opou otov KdopoctvaiTiEXXdSa. (1983: 4)

How can the map define its atopia, how can it contain it—the one a space, the other that which cannot be contained within a space?... The absolute is the Other, the Other of the world, eternal and unbounded and inconceivable and non-existent. The Other of the world is Hellas.

Hellas, “tottos voryrds” (“imaginary topos”) t “t 6tjos unepoupdvios”

(“transcendental topos”) , is an a-topia of spirit, "ovTOTTia tou anoXVTOU” (“u- topia of the absolute”) (1983:4). In the spirit of differentiation from the west, Rdmfos’ Hellenism, the “Other of the world,” reproduces, from the perspective of the west, the theological topos oi the absent Hebraic God who has always already turned His face, refusing to take any form or settle in any space. Thus the atopia of Hellenism is its absence from western thought, especially where the west claims “Hellenism” as its own—both in a system of ideas and in the bounded western state of "Hellas.” This does not mean, however, that an authentic Hellenism does not exist, according to R&mfos. If God has turned His face 69

from the West, nevertheless “H 6\|fT} to u 0 cou ^urrtcei t o Tip6oa)TTO to u dXXou”

(“The sight of God illuminates the face of the Other”) (1983: 20). The Other of the western world is the Oriental Byzantine Orthodox

Christ. “0 XpiOT6s ycvvfieTiK€ OTTiv EX\d 8 a” (“Christ was born in Greece”), his

way prepared by “o Adyog to u HpaKXclTOU, t o w e iv x w napnevaSrv r\ eeoopta t w v

iSewv tou nxdTwvos, r\ peTa^uoiKfj to u A p io t o t I xt ), o OTOxao^6s t

'Oxi tto)s o xptOTiaviO[i 6s c tv a i evas €KXalK€uii£vos irXaTajvioiids” (“the

Herakleitan logos, Parmenides’ noein, Plato’s theory of ideas, Aristotle’s metaphysics, and Stoic thought”) (1983: 20-21). Christianity did not arrive

from the outside to fulfill Hellenism: “c tv a i YVifaios KapTids tou cXXT)Viqiati Kai avoK€4>aXalu)OTi tou, cvodpKWOT) tou ecou-Adyou” ("it is the authentic fruit and

recapitulation of Hellenism, the incarnation of the Divine Logos” (1983:33). As heirs to the Byzantine Orthodox tradition, Neohellenes therefore a lw a y s

a lre a d y “Cou[i€ £vav cXXtiviko tto\itioh6 Kai poipaCdiiaoTc tt)v 86£a tou Kai ttiv

Kp(or| tou” (“live a Hellenic civilization and sharing its glory and judgment”)

(1983: 33). Tradition offers another delineation of the paradox of an atopic Hellenic topos, as distinct from Enlightenment “Hellenism,” with its spurious political, religious, and cultural forms. Again, the problem is how to recover an authentically Hellenized Hellenic space in a world that de-Hellenizes in the name of “Hellenism.” For Rdmfos, tradition is the “space of history” where the Neohellene communicates with a Hellenism already in the making: “H

TTttpdSooT) ouvcttg&s 8cv ctvai ^vvoia, ctvai o x^pos ttis lOToptas, t) pcTdSoor) cv6s

vof^iaTO? tiou TipoUndpxci” (“Tradition is not a concept, but the space of 70 history, communion with an idea which preexists”) (1983: 43). With no originary or final form, tradition becomes “T) €ioayo)Ytito u Trap6vTos oc £va

TTpoUndpxov a8i6paTo TtXaloio, p(a cppoWi tou Tiapexedvros o to ytyveoeai to u

Tiap6vTO?”(“the insertion of the present into a hardly perceptible preexisting framework, the persistence of the past in the becoming of the present”) (1983: 53). In RAmfos’ Neo-Orthodox nationalism, the transubstantiation of tradition projected in Lorentzatos’ work takes place wherever the Hellenic Byzantine Orthodoxy is venerated and observed—whether by the monks of

Mount Athos or “Tovdv0pa)TTOTT)s Op0o8ol;las, ott|V Ka0apf) OTpepxajpevri to u p o p ^ ” (“any Orthodox believer, in his pure or crooked form”) (1984: 110). This transubstantiation occurs specifically “OTT|V op068o£r| \|ruxi^ yiotTC (OS ouecv'Tucii avuToxCnooa, ocut^ 8kx©£t€i ta repaona anoeepaTa aio0iipaTos Kai nveOpaTOs ttou avnoT&ovTai ott^v Tip6KXriori ttjs Auoeais, auTfi tcpaid t o W pa tt^s

Ccoiis, ttou e’ 6oov aKoXoue^oaipe, 0a Ppoupc enC tcXous tt^v EXXaSa” (“in the

Orthodox soul, because, as the authentic Oriental, it has at its disposal the huge reserves of feeling and spirit capable of resisting the provocation of the West; it holds the thread of life which will lead us finally to discover Hellas, if only we follow it”) (1984: 110). The soul of the believing Orthodox Christian, the space where a continuous and self-creating history unravels, gives a temporary location to the u-topian spirit of a single, unified, ancient philosophical and Byzantine Orthodox tradition—RAmfos’ transcendental topos of Hellenism. 71

My purpose in offering this genealogy of topos in Neohellenic letters has been to discover how Greek politicians, critics, and poets used topos to debate ideas of national identity, modernity, and culture. I have shown how the negotiation of topos served to confer on the heterogeneous populations of the Balkan peninsula and Greek diasporas a sense of shared space, resolve m atters of coexistence and succession, and consolidate a single milieu for Neohellenism from the scattered and separate milius of distant local communities, various ethnic groups and neighborhoods, cosmopolitan centers, monasteries, churches, and the countryside. It also played a part in standardizing a language, designating a poetic language, and creating a canon, Finally, topos has most recently come to signify the struggle to resist (or master and re-assimilate) European notions of Hellenism. Through concrete examples, I have also provided evidence of general trends. From Kol 6ttis to Rimfos, one finds that Greek politicians and intellectuals alike remain uncomfortable with the alignment of an imagined national community and the existing state. On various levels, they attempt to match representations of the imaginary and the real. In almost every case, they feature historical continuity, even though Neohellenism stands to lose a great deal in its comparison with the venerated Hellenic past. Inasmuch the western disciplines of aesthetics, archeology, philosophy, and archeology have authenticated classical Greece as the brightest hour of Hellenism, Jlfeo-Hellenism operates de fa c to outside the power and dominion of its past. Hence many of the authors whom I discuss find themselves compelled repeatedly to respond to "the European debate about whether or 72 not we Greeks were the true descendants of the ancient Greeks” (Lorentzatos 1980b: 91)—as Lorentzatos complains in “The Lost Center” (1961). Always distinguishing between the Hellenic and the Helladic, these authors also claim boundaries for Hellenism that extend beyond or above those of the Kingdom of Hellas. Whether more east- or westwardly situated, more inclusive or exalted than the modern state, their topos of Hellenism serves as an exemplar for the political, geographical, and cultural expanse of modern Greece. While history, geography, and politics take precedence in Kolletis’ parliamentary project, culture and language are featured by Psih&ris and Dragumis, and the national “landscape” or “horizon” of an authentic, yet capacious aesthetic tradition gains centrality in the work of

Yann 6pulos, Theotok&s, and Lorentzatos. In the later work of Lorentzatos and his “disciple” R&mfos, this tradition acquires a spiritual edge and eastern color. As Greek intellectuals lose all hope of increasing the physical expanse of their state, recovering an “unredeemed” diaspora, or resurrecting a historical body of Hellenes, they also either abandon the state of Hellas for a transcendent Hellenism, or render with metaphysical hues the physical and cultural landscape contained within their “microscopic topos ” This place of origin for Hellenism ultimately transcends time and place, yet is deeply rooted in the soil of Hellas. Tradition, a corpus of literature which best expresses the “autochthonous” aesthetic, rises from the horizon of Hellas’ “indigenous” landscape. This finally becomes the topos of Hellenism, the 73

“hardly perceptible preexisting framework” where contemporary culture Inserts itself. The post-War reconceptualization of topos outlined above becomes perceptible in Nikolareizis’ appropriation of Homer to invoke the presence of the past in both Neohellenic history and literature. One should recall the double movement of cataclysmic loss and remarkable persistence which marks his discussion of history. The same theme appears in Nikolareizis’ treatment of poetry. He observes, “Z€ Kfltipous ttou oi lOTopuc^s ouveifces T^Tay

evavTies yia to £6 vos, to TTOTapi tt)S eXXr^viKris Tiapd8ooT)s ouvcxioe r n pof) tou oe

d\Xt) urr 6yia ko(tt) yr)S” (“When historical circumstances challenged the

survival of the nation, the river of Greek tradition continued to flow in some other subterranean cradle of the earth” (Nikolareizis 1962: 211). Nikolareizis then follows the small “stream” of references to Homer in the work of

Dionisios Solomos (1798-1957), Angelos Sikelian 6s (1884-1951), Nikos KazantzAkis (1885-1957), Seferis, and Elytis. He argues that poetry which

represents the very “|€K6XXTip[a] tou [€0vous] octt6 to TTap€X66v” (“unglu[ing] of

a [nation] from its past”) (1962: 228) offers the most successful relocation of Homer into the modern world. Nikolareizis’ point of reference is the poetry of Seferis, which historically presupposes and lyrically represents the containment of

Hellenism “OTT)V TTepiox^ nepitiou tt)S KXaooiKife EXXdSas” (“approximately

within the area covered by classical Hellas”) (1962: 227). Into a literary world of fading heroism and broken artifacts, Seferis introduces “mutilated” Homeric myths and figures and accommodates the grandeur of the past to 74

the narrow limits of Hellenism: “OTIS 8 iaOT(£ociS to v X<»>P

OT)paa(a to v ” (“not only in the dimension of space, but also of time and on the level of culture, which it projected its deepest meaning” (1962: 226). Because his accommodation is appropriate to narrow times Seferis can provide a proper homecoming for Homer in the modern world. His simple “apriTwpcvTTi Tio(r|Ionia and Asia minor—because he has ro o ts in the physical origins of that civilization and draw s life from its deepest source. A significant change is evident in the way that the continuity of Hellenism is now represented. The Neohellenic poet’s affiliation with classical figures derives not from purity of race, endurance of spirit, or even persistence of function—all arguments which appear under other circumstances in modern Greek cultural history. According to Nikolareizis, 75 antiquity becomes luminously present by way of a parallel experience of the Hellenic topfo (“landscape”). The poet’s ability to conjure up Homeric heroes into an ailing modern world is one effect of his own, as well as Homer’s, apparently “unmediated” relationship to the topos of Hellenism. This new literary topos functions to erase differences in space and time: av o'EMTjvas TiotTynfe koit&£t} yifow tou Ta v^oid Kai r aKpoyidXia ttjs TtarplSas tou Kai t i\ eaXaooa, auTf) tt) 6d\aooa ttou 8&tv<€ t6oo OT€va \ie tt\ liotpa tou t6ttou tou, 8e y(v€Tai va pT)v okouoti ttjv t)xw KaTTOiwv opipiKwv ot(xwv Kai va \n\ 8t) va Tipopdx\ouv air6 rr\ iaWhiti tou curves tt)s O Svaaeias, tou £itous tou TTOTiopivou aiio tt)V dpiJLT) tou Avyalou. (Nikolareizis 1962: 236) if the Greek poet observes around him the islands and the shore of his fatherland, and the sea—that same sea which was so tied to the fate of his topos, it is im p o ssib le for him n o t to hear the echo of some Homeric lines or visualize Images from the O dyssey , the epic that was watered by the brine of the Aegean” (my emphasis).

Obversely, Homer, “o npaJTOS C urypa^S TT|S €\XT)ViKife \|fUXife K ai t o u

€\\T)VIK0U T0TT10U” (“the first painter of the Hellenic soul and the Hellenic

topfo") (1962: 235), is of infinite importance in the Neohellenic tradition. He was the first to draw from the resources of this topfo. His epic poems

“poid(ouv va Kpufovv ouYK€^aXaia)^va Ta puoTiKa piasirpurrapxiKTlS aio6TyriKf)s

€TTiTvx(as ttou €p€iv€ TrapaBevypa oTODS' aicoves” (“seem to encapsulate the mysteries of a primordial aesthetic success which remained exemplary through the centuries”) (1962: 236). The cultural logic that affiliates the modern poet and Homer by rendering their poetry not only expressions of a “primordial aesthetic,” but products of the Greek soil, is evident in a range of critical and literary works appearing after the rise of the Metax&s dictatorship and throughout 76 the Cold War. It Is Incumbent upon us now to consider this logic which links the opposing trends of rupture and continuity through the trope of antiquity's sometimes muted, sometimes bright physical Illumination in the contemporary topfo (“landscape”). How is this argument technically deployed in Neohellenic modernist texts? We should turn first to the work of George Seferis and study how his poetry evinces a Homeric n o sto s (“homecoming”) in the transcendental topos of a Hellenic literary landscape/tradition. CHAPTER III NQSTOS: THE CRISIS OF TRADITION AND HELLENISM’S SUSPENDED HOMECOMING

The Crisis of Tradition In this chapter, I examine Seferis’ critical and poetic attempts to recover a cultural n o sto s (the Homeric word referring to the Achaean heroes’ “homecoming” after their w ar with Troy*) for Neohellenism. Seferis represents the place of homecoming as the “lost center” of civilization, the topos of crisis marked by Romantic poets and philosophers of western Europe. I begin my discussion with an analysis of Seferis’ famous “Dialogue on Poetry” with Konstandinos Ts&tsos, where the modernist poet assuages the Kantian philosopher’s fear of crisis by “carefully grafting some concepts and practices of European modernism onto the legacy of Greek tradition” (Dimirulis 1985: 59). What distinguishes Seferis’ theoretical position in this essay is his studied equivocation on the subject of Neohellenism’s orientation to the modern. He identifies Neohellenism with both western modernity and its own homonymous other, the “Hellenic,” terms which are antithetical in western schemes of thought. Seferis indicates that Neohellenism might pass “home” to Hellenism through its overly burdened, unformed modern aesthetic culture. With his equivocation on the “Hellenic” potential of Neohellenism, he entangles the modernist discussion about the crisis of

77 78 tradition in a right-wing nationalist debate about the "Greekness” of contemporary values. The analogous poetic technique is "ellipsis” (or “ellipse”), by which Seferis omits not only minor words that might make his expression too "diffuse,”2 but also crucial mythological figures who would provide too incontrovertible a link between an important ancient source and Seferis' modern recreation. 1 study this technique in detail later in this chapter. Crisis, sometimes represented by the figure of the lost center, is a salient feature of discussions about art and culture in Europe beginning in the late 18th century. For various Romantic writers, crisis refers to contemporary literature’s divestment of the naive and pure disposition. Significantly, these w riters attribute to the bards of ancient Hellas the purity lost to them. They measure their own sentimental and self-conscious attitude against the harmony of experience and utterance characteristic of their cultural ancestors.3 The opposition, Hellenic versus modern, remains intact throughout the 19th and into the 20th century. The Victorian critic Matthew Arnold, facing the threat of social anarchy, calls for bold reforms to rediscover the "lasting tru th ” of Hellenism, the culture of “sweetness and light. ”* With the turn of the century, some heralds of modernity, finding themselves on this side of history, announce a conscious and deliberate break w ith the Classical past and a search for new forms of expression.5 They reckon as their ambiguous gain the loss of the central authority of ancient prototypes such as the Hellenic, and therefore hasten the crisis of dissolution.5 79

In Greece things developed in a different way, as I have already Indicated. The first articulation of a threatening crisis corresponded chronologically not to the beginning, but to the end of the European debate, and to the espousal of a break with tradition by many western artists. The historical event of the Catastrophe of Asia Minor in 1922, proving the impossibility of recovering the eastern cultural and religious center of Constantinople, Incited serious talk about a crisis of tradition. With this disaster, Greek Intellectuals sensed that the figure of the lost center had found literal fulfillment, and so become history. Neohellenism might now have to forfeit its theoretically privileged position, once translatable into a dream of restoring the foundations of western culture to an intact center and confirming the new state’s ties with a perfect origin. It too would become secondary, hence unequivocally modern. For Neohellenic literary history, the scene of loss acquired both its anti-hero and its hero in the years that followed. In 1928 the poet and satirist K6stas Kariot&kis’ (1896-1928) violated faith in the constancy of poetic value by his notorious act of violence against himself. Within three years, George Seferis published his first collection of poetry, significantly entitled “ZTpo^i*)” (“Turning Point”) (1931). In the codification of Greek history that takes place during the 1940s, Seferis’ publication is represented as a timely response to Kariot&kis’ suicide. The appearance of Seferis in the literary scene signals the end of nihilism and return to/of the values of a Hellenic p & rid o si (“tradition”) . 80

Yet the crisis of a Neohellenic tradition exemplified by the figure of the lost center remains a topic of crucial, if sometimes repressed Importance to Seferis and his contemporaries. This becomes evident in the “Dialogue on Poetry” which takes place between Seferis and Konstandinos Tsitsos7 at the time (and without the infamous censorial intervention) of the Metaxas dictatorship. In this Inter-war dialogue, Tsatsos and Seferis offer two different, but not incompatible, responses to crisis: an anti-modernist and a pro-modernist affirmation of Hellenism. Ts&tsos (1938a and 1938b) provokes debate when he questions the national integrity of the modernist experiment: how “Hellenic” is its subject, form, and language. His own central value is “CXXTlVlKdTTjTa”

(“Greekness"), the a p r io r i criterion for the judgment and enjoyment of artistic works. Although he announces the Kantian origins of his own critique of Judgment,® Ts&tsos does not mention the discursive source for his term for perfection, western Modernity’s nostalgic delineation of “Hellenism.” In other words, he avoids drawing the connection between his particular fear of the potential forfeiture of the Hellenic past and Romantic laments of lost innocence and communality. Instead he calls for a pure venture into genuinely Hellenic sources free from foreign intervention—as if the search for “Greekness" were a trend unmediated by western intellectual concerns. In response to Tsatsos, Seferis cautions that although “clvai peydXos \6 y o s va pixdei icavcfc yta tt)v «€\XT)vuc6TTyra» ev6s £pyov” (“it is a great and

beautiful thing for one to speak about the ‘Greekness’ of a work” (1981a: 98), 81 this term must not be too closely defined. “Greekness” is not a prescriptive criterion predetermining what form an artwork should take, but a descriptive assessment of artistic perfection. Seferis offers as a counter­ example to Tsatsos’ plea for a precise definition of standards the negative campaign of the proponents of katharivusa (linguistic “purists”)—who, he claims, stifled creativity by too narrowly delimiting the boundaries of the “Greekness.” Seferis disavows this censorial function. He subordinates national meaning to aesthetic concerns, and in fact makes the “Hellenic” and the aesthetic synonomous. For Seferis, Hellenic values consist of and at the same time constitute whatever is aesthetically acceptable. It is significant that Seferis traces Hellenism from the ancient Greek world to European aesthetics. Like other Neohellenic authors, he distinguishes the Hellenic from the Helladic, insofar as the latter has an unformed identity and exists in cloistered space which suffocates its population.9 Hellenism, on the contrary, is the vast, productive, conceptual territory where civilization grows, matures, scatters, and spreads. To further qualify the semantic field of “Hellenism”, Seferis grafts a synonymous adjective to the noun and coins the term “EX\T)VI k6s EWriviOfios”

(“Hellenic Hellenism”) (1981a: 101). By w ay of a narrative, Seferis gives historical content to this linguistic innovation. The plot thickens as the Helladic world becomes divided from Hellenism. Seferis traces the march of Hellenism from Ancient, Hellenistic and Byzantine Greek civilizations through the European Renaissance (which, he claims, is ppropelled by homeless 82

Byzantine scholars who leave Constantinople after its “fall” to the Ottomans). With the institution of the modern State of Hellas in 1831, Neohellenes recovered the potential of assembling Hellenism within a measured and marked geographical space: of stationing Hellenism in modern Hellas and thus making Hellas Hellenic. Contrary to the understanding of politicians, however, this establishment of residence for Hellenism involved not only the relocation of an actual group of people in a particular place, but also the transportation and development of an entire cultural milieu. Only a genuinely Neohellenic culture could transform the geographical space of the state into the home of Hellenism. Because the timing w as immature and the ground not ripe, however, a set of foreign values were imported, which "had nothing to do w ith our topos at all”:

Epcts 6po)s, onpu)Y|i^voi

ancient times to the present: “Att6 tt^v enoxi*) tou McyaXou AXefcdvTpou 83

OKOpTTlCuoioYvwplaTTveupaTiK^Tioiip€pivi^E\\d8a. Kaiea^i . aicpipute Yia xapaKnipumKd tt| ouvQcot) tojv xapaKTynpiOTucdv tojv aXTjeivwv

£pY«v ttou 6a £xow aTT^ 0TUS 'EXXtivcs” (“This Hellenism will show its face when Greece of today has acquired its own real intellectual character and features. And its characteristics will be the synthesis of all the characteristics of all true works of art which have ever been produced by Greeks”) (1981a: 102). Seferis claims that the genuine characteristics of “Hellenic Hellenism”

m ay be found “ji€X€Tc5vTas TT| paetiT€pT) ^uoiOYVupla tou KdXpou, otous ot Ixovs 84

tou ZoKu^ou ott |V a y a jv la tou n aX ajid ott ) vooTaXyta tou Kapa<|>T)” ( “ b y s tu d y in g the deepest features of Calvos, the verses of Solomos, the agony of Palamas, the nostalgia of Cavafy”) and even the “TTiV€Xlis” (“brush strokes”) of

“Theotok6pulos” (1981a: 101). It is significant that three of the four poets whom Seferis names (Calvos, Solomos, and Cavafy), together with the single artist (Theotok6pulos, or El Greco), are Greeks of the diaspora—Greeks, that is, who spent at least their years of schooling, if not entire life, outside the physical limits of Hellas, and learned Greek, if at all, only as a second language. Their tentative relationship to the geographical space of Hellenism is symptomatic of Seferis’ spatial atopia. In the “intellectual landscape” of his neo-traditionalist western cultural ideal, it is not the physical occupation of space, but proper aesthetic lodging within tradition that places one’s work among the “discernable landmarks” of Hellenism. By assigning the value of “Hellenism” to the autotelic work of art, Seferis both defends his affiliation w ith the formalistic modern poetics and recuperates the “Hellenic” as an approachable—abeit difficult—standard of value. In his critical and poetic persona, he overrides the paradox of joining modernist International with traditional national sensibilities by posing as both modern and Hellenic. He claims to be modern in his aim to investigate new forms, Hellenic in his avowal to search for integration, harmony, and tradition.10 By his equivocation, Seferis avoids addressing the issue of a crisis of tradition. Indeed the suppressed subject of the Tsatsos-Seferls debate is clearly modernity and the sense of crisis that penetrates the domain of 86

Neohellenic culture in the Interw ar period, when the terms of the search for national identity fall into murky uncertainty. It is important to note how attention from this problem is deflected by the subject of Hellenism. In a hesitating, but promising voice, Seferis confirms potential continuity and represses the sense of loss that characterizes his contemporary literary prototypes, the condemned Romantic seekers and gleeful Modernist iconoclasts of the Hellenic. When Greek poets would succeed in reintroducing to the truly Hellenic from western Europe to Hellas, then one could speak of the “homecoming” of “Hellenic Hellenism.” Thus Seferis gives a nationalistic qua aesthetic destination to the creative course of Hellenism’s “homecoming”: Neohellenes must create absolute aesthetic harmony in their work if they are “va ottiv' E\\a8a6,Ti €\\tivik6” (“to bring back to Hellas whatever is Hellenic” (1981a: 101).

“Native” Complaints: M odernity’s Limitless Hotel George Seferis w as one of a group of Greek writers who in the 1930s came to understand that European modernism would leave behind Neohellenic poets who did not assimilate it. This is the Interregnum period of rehabilitation, when modernists in Greece and elsewhere retreated from the “role of violence-inciting artistic provocateurs whose aim was to startle the culture out of lethargy” (Levenson 1984: 40) and sought to legitimize new cultural forms. At this time, Seferis made a concerted effort to extend the parameters of modern Hellenism, previously defined by more narrowly national interests, in the direction of contemporary European aesthetics. He 86 was also careful to relate “western” problems to the permanent values of “Hellenic Hellenism.” While facing what was for him the unmentionable disarray of the Greek Civil War11 (and, not much later, Greece's rapid modernization in the Cold War "Reconstruction"), however, Seferis begins claiming an ever-

deepening *2 (rather than broadening) place of origin for Neohellenism.1^ He relates his work more explicitly to Greek antiquity and “the literary tradition whose origin is universally attributed to Homer” (Argyros 1986- 1987: 315). To this end, he develops the modernist technique of settling dis­ established quotations from classical sources into the newly claimed autotelic center of culture, the literary text. His uninterpolated quotations connected by meaningful ellipses signal the hidden circumstances of their distant Hellenic cultural “homeland,” the deep structure that continues to shape everyday existence.14 In a nostalgic tone, Seferis refers again and again to an antique center of culture temporarily emptied of its holy congealing powers and rendered indiscernible from its profane surroundings. Through this vague, undifferentiated space, his poetic or critical persona is made to pass like a wandering exile in search of some formula which can ultimately bring him home to the nourishing center of culture. The quest is apparently spiritual, since the ruinous landscape, fragmented buildings, and abandoned home are set in plain analogy to the human body which clings desperately to the last vestiges of its eternal core. Its commandment is to hold onto the center, even as it leans toward disembodiment. One is gradually forced to abandon 87 familiar spaces, such as the homes or states one inhabits: “'A^oe t

'0|1U)£ dXXT) ijrux^ and TT) 8iki^ oov 8c 6a ppeis” (“Let houses become dwelling- places for the dead/ There will be other topoi, countries of another kind/ A soul other than your own you will not find,”) (l981h: 153). The scene of loss is set into endless variation in Seferis’ work, making it difficult to pin down the precise location of “home,” significance of separation, and process of communal integration. In “AcX^oC,” ("Delphi”)

(1961), for example, Seferis describes his search for common mythology15 at a time when “Oukcti 4>o(pos £x€l KCtXijpav” (“Phoebus no longer has a shelter”

(l981g: 150). Under these conditions TO T£[l€VOS [y(V€T0U]tV0L$ T6TT0S TT€pif)YT)OT)S OPYCtV(i)p£vOUS €|tyyTlTd8€S ttovi ^Beixvav t* a^ioe^aTa oTa OTa nx^er)-... Ii^pepa r\ koiW) ttIott) lx€l xaQet xai oi avepwTTOi ttov ^pxovTai ^x°w > o Kae^vas Sia^pcntcovs TipoowTTiKofe piteous. Aiapd(oiiv f) cocoOve £vav oSiYyd- TTdvco o' ccvt£s tis TrXrpo^opCes o Kae^vas Tip006^T€l TO 8ik6 TOU. (I981g: 145)

the temple becomes a topos of tourism, w ith organized guides showing the sights to the masses.... Today the common faith is lost and the people who come each have their own different personal mythology. They read or listen to a guide and, based on this information, add up their own story. When common values are no longer shared by those who make their pilgrimage to Delphi, access to the“ t 6 tto Ijexwpiopivo

(“ topos set apart from the rest of the world”) (l981g: 140) is temporarily lost. Seferis complains that "oi AcX^ol £yivav aTT^pavTO IjcvoSoxefo”

(“Delphi has become a limitless hotel”) (1981c: 145). To this affect, he ostensibly quotes “£votv V t6ttio” (en- topios, “a man from the same topos, ” “a 88 native”) (I981g: 145), whose voice bears the authenticity of an autochthonous experience16 of Delphi’s commodification. Seferis’ complaint in this essay suggests one grounding point for the scene of loss in his work. Home is Delphi, that sacred topos where integrity might have been maintained, if only the forces of commodification had been countered by a viable collective mythology. But the quotation actually refers the reader to a line in the opening section of Seferis’ masterful poem, KtxAr)

( T h ru sh ). Here the poet describes the conditions under which houses age: • Capoovow f) xapoY€\oDv cu<6pT) m opaTwvouv p €kc( vous ttou epeivav p ckcIvous ttou ^ v y a v p’ d M o u s ttou 6 a yuptC avc a v pTTOpotfoav fj TTOU X

remarkable consistency, Seferis’ work resonates here and elsewhere with the symbolism of a set of related themes: the commodified body that has lost its soul, the house emptied of its occupants, the refugee bereft of home, the fragmented landscape sundered from history and meaning, the literary quotation devoid of context. 89

Although it is impossible to settle finally on a single referent as the ultimate scene of loss, one may nevertheless identify the literary strategies that mark a fragile center as the origin of deferred signification and link the elusive homeland with a "Hellenic” ideal. This is accomplished on two levels. In Seferis’ critical and poetic oeuvre, one discovers the narrative of Hellenic history, outlined above, which explains how the topos of Hellenism becomes decentered. The formal correlative to this decentered topos is the familiar literary quotation divested of its material and historical context and identified with the fragmented “spirit, body, and reality” of Neohellenism. This technique of the uninterpolated quotation is used with great success in K(x^Tf {Thrush), the poem where Seferis systematically

transposes characters and fragments from ancient sources into a modern setting and gives full form to the idea of a n o sto s (“homecoming”) of/to Hellenism. Seferis’ incorporation of ancient sources, Homer in particular, has been discussed often.17 Here the modernizing force of appropriation is used to translate “poetry’s source”18 into the confused literary horizon of an elliptical modernist work. The disembodied narrative voice of the Homeric epic is adapted to new purposes and given a new position in the contemporary cultural order. Yet the matter of appropriation in Seferis’ work remains largely unexplored. Because overwhelming critical attention has been paid to the ways in which his poetry is “rooted.. .in a universalizing of deeply felt personal experience or insight” (Keeley 1983: 78), little effort has been made to discuss how a poem like T hrush itself (re)constructs a topos of “Hellenic 90

Hellenism,” ostensibly over and above the w ar-torn landscape of Hellas.19 Beyond attempts to recover the author’s inspired borrowings, 20 there has been no detailed study of the ideological effect of intertextual linkages between T h ru sh and its various “sources, ” including the O dyssey. H ere I offer a parallel reading of T h ru sh and its most obvious ancient and modern literary reference points, including O d yssey Books 10 and 11, Pound’s C anto I, Plato’s Apology, and Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus.^ I examine important points of convergence and divergence between these texts in relation the notion of a “homecoming.” In particular, I am interested in why and how T h ru sh draws its characters and themes from the locus cla ssicu s of descent and return: the Homeric account of Odysseus’ passage to Hades, commonly referred to as the n e k u ia , or, in modern Greek, KCtTdfJaciS.

(The n e k u ia is the episode of a hero’s living “descent” to the Underworld and his subsequent nostos, return to the “light” of home). How does T h ru sh repatriate “Odysseus” into a contemporary scene of uprootedness and longing? What is the significance and effect in this modern interpretation of the O d yssey of certain important ellipses, such as the removal of “Teiresias” from the scene of descent? Given this ellipsis, how does the poem navigate the hero’s return? Who provides the key to his nostos, and what is this key? More generally stated, how does T h ru sh use the techniques of the uninterpolated quotation and meaningful ellipsis to salvage a “shipwrecked” Ideal of Hellenism for both modernism and Neohellenism? And, in the final analysis, what is lost in Seferis’ plan for a Post-War cultural reconstruction? 91

Intertextual Horizons: Thrush a n d th e Odyssey From its opening lines, T h ru sh faces the problem of blocked access to a sacred center of culture. The inhospitable forces of modernity are charted by the poetic persona in the first section of the poem, “To ott I t i KOVTd OTT) edcXotooa” (“The House by the Sea”). This “Odyssean” persona contemplates the fragile qualities of home under the conditions of “Tl6X€[iOl, XttXdO^ol, l-€ViT€po(” (“war, destruction, migration”) (1.2), which break down more permanent walls of refuge. In the poem’s second section, “O t)8 o v ik 6 s EXTTi^aip” (“Sensual Elpenor”), “Odysseus” overhears the monologue of a mediocre man and records the difficulties of living in the undifferentiated spatial continuum of modernity. As he draws near to “To voaidyio TT)S KtxXTlS” (“The Shipwreck of Thrush”) in the third section of the poem, he

draws a circle around a calming and stabilizing center surrounded by a throng of chaotic voices. The question looming in the poem’s horizon is this: what might home be, and how might one reach it, when “the world has become a limitless hotel” (“£yiV€Oi<6opos £va auepavTO £evo8ox€fo ” (1.21; see

the quotation above)? The horizon of the poem is drawn on two levels, one representational and the other intertextual, both pointing in the direction of an elusive

“ OTRTi” (“house” or “ h o m e ” 22) for a contemporary “Odysseus.” First there

is the “House by the Sea, ” which offers a window onto Neohellenic reality. This inhospitable apartment on the island of Poros, “KOVTa OTT) BdXaooa, 0€

Kcqiapcs icpcpan oiSep^vaoxwpfc t I ttotc 8 ik 6 pau” (“near the sea,

in empty rooms with an iron-framed bed and nothing of my own”) (1.25- 92

27), gives the vantage point of displacement. From Its window, the modern “Odysseus” contemplates the shipwreck “Thrush,” which went down sometime in World War II and remained unsalvaged throughout the Greek Civil War. From here the transient narrative persona, with no stable, responsive center of refuge from the surrounding chaos, reflects on the qualities of lost homes: "Ta oiriTia no\j elxa iiov Ta Trfjpav” (“The houses which I had they took away,” I.l). Houses are endowed with racial properties (“€XOWTT)$ 11X1^ tovs,” “they have their race”) (1.11), age, and feelings, which reflect the character of their occupants or circumstances of their abandonment. Under these modern conditions, houses become obstinate and insensitive to habitation: "Impels, Ta OTflna TiciOiiantivcruv €ifco\a oav Ta ymvajocis” (“you know, houses easily become obstinate when you empty them”) (1.40). The catalogue of lost homes’ traits functions as a description of the age. As people lose ground in w ar, they begin the endless process of exile and migration. They experience a prolonged loss of distinct place. Conversations common property. One “Elpenor” becomes the purest representative of this age of human shipwreck. Obsessed by voices and images from the past, he is constantly haunted by “Todpo)|iaTT|S cmowrias pias V'eas pop^S” (“the fragrance of the absence of a youthful form”)

( T h ru sh 11.46). The poem’s horizon is intertextual as well as representational. By w ay of indirect references to Circe and Odysseus, direct allusions to the

" h u m b l e ”23 Elpenor, and the anticipated appearance of Teiresias—whose 93 presence is eclipsed by Socrates and Oedipus— T h ru sh recalls two well- known episodes from Odysseus’ adventures: the encounter with Circe and the journey to “the house of Hades.” This is perhaps the best-known n e k u ia (“descent to Hades”) in western literature. The “House by the Sea,” a sign of the modern “hotel”’s limitless /^hospitality, identifies itself with the houses of both Circe and Hades (both of which are by the sea, as Homer informs us). The poem then links itself intertextually to events that take place between these two boundary points of Odysseus’ adventures, and adopts the theme of Odysseus’ suspended n o sto s (“homecoming”). The literary connection with the O dyssey is vaguely drawn in the first section in the person of the narrator, who leans subtly on the character of Odysseus, the literary figure of instability and w a n d e rlu st :

As favraoToiJne\ oitt 6 v ttojs ctcelvos non x£ei eyci) o t t )v K(x*r)y e(vai k vas KaTTOios OSuooeas. 'lows ccut 6 fyci o k 6 |jlt) t o ttX c o v c k t t p x va pas icavei va 0 T0xa0 T0\j|ie ticos o i dvGpamov t t)s aoTaGeias, tcov TrepinXavifocwv icai t u jv Tro\epa)v..../ETOi, xpaTovpe Ta ovppoXa tcai Ta ovdpaTa ttou pas napa5a)0€ o pvGos, dTdvci va lipovpe ttws o i tuttuco I xapaxTfipes fyowc p€Tapxr)0€( O u p ^ W V a p€TO TTCpaOpa TOD XPOVOV Kai T IS 8ia4>Op€TlK€SO W 0T)K €S t o d Koopou pas. (Seferis, 1983b: 31-32).

Let us im ag ine then that the one who says ’I’ in Thrush is some one Odysseus. Perhaps this even has the advantage of allowing us to contemplate that people o f some instability, of adventures and w ar... always move between the same monsters and the same desires. In this way we hold onto the symbols and names which the myth handed over to us—so long as we recognize that the typical characters have been transformed in accordance with the passage of time and the changing conditions of our world. Now a nameless resident of modernity’s limitless hotel, the modern “Odysseus” peers out of his temporary shelter as the contemporary world leaks in. Rather than travel to exotic ports, he waits for others to visit 94 him, hoping that someoee might provide the key for return to the lost homeland. To put it another way, “Odysseus” is the modern topographer who listens to reports of the world’s disarray and attempts to recover the order of another world. References to the O d yssey become more obvious with the appearance of “Sensual Elpenor” in the second section. A brief narration of Elpenor’s fate in the O dyssey might help establish the connections between the two poems. Elpenor is mentioned in Odysseus’ Phaeacean tales (Books 7-12), which include the hero’s journey to the underworld and his conversations with the dead. As Odysseus describes preparations for the journey from Circe’s halls to Hades, he recalls the circumstances of Elpenor’s accidental death. “ * EXnfjvtop 8£ tis £okc v€(6t

(“tumble[s] headlong from the roof; so he broke his neck and his spirit went down to Hades”) (10.559-560). Odysseus takes no notice of the loss until he encounters a bitter Elpenor at the gates of Hades. Elpenor tells his story and demands a proper burial. In the first section of T hrush, “Odysseus” anticipates the visit of the dead man—“p.' donpaKaipaupapouxapeTioXuxpwpaKOopfipaTa, /...va’pSeC vap’ 95 anoxeipenfoer (“in black and white clothes with colorful jew els,/.. .coming to say good-bye”) 1.27-29, 32). The flashback in the second part of the poem is devoted almost in its entirety to recording this “sensual Elpenor”’s one- sided-conversation, overheard by the narrator on the eve of the man’s death. Here the unfortunate victim is clearly identified w ith Elpenor: “E(x€ TO lpOl|iO TOV EXTTfivopa, Xtyo TipIV TT^Oei VOC TOOKlOTCl, Kl 6p(l)S 8€V l^TdV p€0vop£vos,” (“he had the bearing of Elpenor Just before his fall and demolition, though he wasn’t drunk”) (II.4-5). A modern mortal Circe-like figure, “pia yvvaiKa €XlKopX€^)CtpT) pa&U(0)VT)”

(“a deep-girded, quick-glancing woman”) (1.33) is the m an’s unsympathetic interlocutor. “rup(( 0 VTAlexandria / cities closed like hot shutters”) (1.34-36), she is versed in the intoxicating possibilities of “apwpaTaxpvowv (capnuv Kai pdTava” (“fragrences of golden fruit and herbs”)

(1.37) and immune to the suffering of men (1.38-39). Seferis’ unnamed temptress arouses in “Elpenor” inexpressible desire. 24 “Elpenor’s” monologue is an oblique formulation of this desire, whose message rides on the metaphor of fragmented statues becoming life-like and bending in the light. Reverting to the netherworld of myth, “Elpenor” seems to lose himself in the thought that fragments of the past might possess a haunting life of their own, more real than the fleeting present. He privileges broken stones w ith a permanence that the aging body cannot possess. His desire for “Circe” draws him into the world of the non-rational, the “magic 96 stage proper,” which Max Horkhelmer and T. W. Adorno associate with Homer's Circe: Magic disintegrates the individual, who once again succumbs to it and is thus made to revert to an older biological species It uses the fixed order of time to attack the fixed will of the subject, who orientates himself by that order. Circe tempts Odysseus’ men to give themselves up to instinct: therefore the animal form of the tempted men has always been connected with a reversion to basic impulse, and Circe has been made the prototype of the courtesan. (Horkhelmer and Adorno 1972: 69) If the spirit of the Homeric Elpenor is unable to return to life or enter the house of Hades after its demise at Circe’s because its corpse remains u n b u r i e d , 25 here the modern “Elpenor” seems to dwell in the threshold between dead and living, past and present because he refuses to comes to terms with the conditions of modernity, which codifies the past with the patina of (dead) history. He is therefore unable to distinguish the past from the present. For this reason, he can only turn a deaf ear to “Circe"’s persistent reminder that today “T*

are in the museum”) ( T h ru sh 11.26 and 54). The intertextual status of Elpenor reflects his temporal and spatial atopia. The homesickness of the present is expressed by the transposed quotation. When "Elpenor” makes his final appearance in the poem’s third section, the poem refers indirectly to lines from Homer, where the ghost of Elpenor offers to Odysseus his life-blood: his oar. One recalls that Odysseus encounters Elpenor at the entrance to the underworld: “upwTTj 8£ ‘ EXTi^vopos fjxeev feTatpou/oii yap ttco £tc0

(“First came the spirit of Elpenor, my companion;/for he was not yet buried 97 under the broad-stretching earth;/we had left his corpse behind in Circe's hall/unwept and unburied, since another task compelled us”) ( O d yssey 11.51-54). Elpenor approaches his leader and requests that his corpse be burned with his armor, a burial mound heaped on the grey sea’s shore, and his oar planted in the mound of sand: “frit Ttippq) £peTp6v, T$ Kal (0)6s Ippeoov £d)V pef £poiS fcTdpoiOlV” (“on a mound place the oar which I used to row when I was alive with my companions”) {.O dyssey 11.77-78). The oar is to be a “ofipa” (“gravestone/sign”) that m arks his fortune “£oooplvoioi iri)0eo0ai” (“so that future generations may learn of me”) (11.76).

These lines are recalled in T h ru sh when “Elpenor” offers the narrator

“To IjiiXo ocvt 6 ttou 8p6oiCe t o p ^ T u m d poii” (“the wood which cooled m y forehead”) as a sign of his toil “ T i s w p e s ttou TO peor^pi pvpwve t i s 4>X€P€S”

(“the hours when midday burned my veins"). Like Elpenor’s oar, this “wood” finds must find its telos in the hands of others: “O€^vax^ptcc0e\ei av0iO€i. nap’ to, oou to XttpUw” (“it will blossom in someone else’s hands.

Take it, it’s my gift to you”) (III. 1-3). The extensive allusion to Elpenor prepares the scene for new literary encounters that first reach into the heart of the O dyssey , then suddenly swerve in the direction of other texts. “Elpenor” receives no recognition or thanks for his gift of “the wood,” because the narrator’s attention is already drawn elsewhere along the horizon of the O d yssey “Ki dXXcs $(i)v£s ovyd ovyd pc tt) ocipd Tous/ocKoXov0r)oav \|r(0vpoi $tcvo( xai 8u|raop£voi/nou pyatvouv cm6 toii fjxiov t’ dxxo p£pos to okot€iv6./ ed Xeyes yvpcuav va movv alpa pia OTdXa/ lfravc yvcopipas pa 8£v pnopouoa va tis £cx(oploa>” (“Other voices slowly 98 followed/one by one; whispers thin and thirsty/coming out of the sun’s dark side; you would say they were looking to drink a drop of blood;/ familiar voices, but I couldn’t distinguish them”) (III. 12-15). Clearly this passage alludes to the description of the ghastly throng that encircles Odysseus at the house of Hades: “a l8 ’ Erebus The throng moved toward the bloody pit from every side/with a deafening shout; and pale fear seized me”) {O d yssey 11.36-37, 42-43). As T h ru sh reaches this moment of near convergence with the O dyssey, it becomes possible to assess the intertextual relationship of the modern to the ancient poem. Poetic recollection has effaced the distinctive outlines of epic figures and whatever narrative detail might be incongruous with the modern setting. At the same time, it develops features that are especially suited to the tenor of times. The once insignificant character of “Elpenor” takes center stage. Recognizable Homeric elements—the dark scenery of Erebus (“to OKOT€lv6” in Seferis’ poem), the throng thirsting for

blood—are transported almost wholesale into the modern poem, while the narrator’s reaction remains muted—appropriately so, perhaps, for the poem’s unheroic setting.

Signs of Homecoming With the approach of the thirsty throng, T h ru sh takes a step in the direction of what is arguably the center of the O dyssey , the exchange 99 between the hero and Teiresias. This is the goal of Odysseus’ underworld Journey “cls’AtBao56povs Ka\£naiv% nepoefav'etys’’ (“to the halls of Hades and dreaded Persephone”) {.O dyssey 10.491). As Circe explains: “\|ruxt) Xpi’ioo^ev'ous erjpaCou Tcipeolao, / iidm os dAaoO, toO tc $p£vcs ?|ni€8o( clot- / tQ tcai t€0v/t)(Dti vdov ndpc ITepo€dv€ia / oiq) ttctvOoOccv toi 8e OKial aiooouoiv ”

(“you will consult the spirit of the Theban Teiresias/the blind seer whose mental powers are still intact;/ for Persephone provided him with a mind even after death/so that he alone has understanding, while others flit about like shadows”) (10.492-495). Teiresias’ distinction of “mental powers... still intact” becomes apparent to Odysseus after he passes into the underworld. Here the hero discovers that none of the spirits—not even his mother—is capable of recognizing him before drinking his offering of dark blood. The exception is Teiresias: “cpifc 8 lyva) Kal TTpoo€€iTT€' AacpndSrv troXunfixa^ ’08uood)”

(“he recognized me and addressed me: Son of Laertes, sprung from Zeus, Odysseus of many devices!” 11.91-92). To divine the purpose of the Odysseus’ journey, Teiresias then drinks from the blood, and forthwith

pronounces the crucial word, “v 6otos ” (“homecoming”) (11.100), which he

alone can dispatch. Teiresias thus becomes the guide for Odysseus’ safe return. Teiresias’ oracular procedure is to place “frii^p&n” (“in the mind”) of Odysseus the proper “0%ia” (“sign”), which should not escape the hero’s notice (“oti Xav0dv€W',” “not escape notice”) (11.126). He points to Poseidon as

the god who is detaining Odysseus (11.101-103). He entreats Odysseus to curb 100 the appetite of his companions when he arrives at Thrinacia and finds Helios’ fatted flocks grazing there (11.104-114). He describes a woeful state of affairs in Ithaca. He predicts Odysseus’ violent revenge against Penelope’s voracious suitors. Finally, he describes a journey which Odysseus must make after killing the offenders in his halls. This is a strange and haunting story, recounted later by Odysseus to Penelope after his return to Ithaca, but never fulfilled in the epic.

Ipxeoeai 8f\ £icriai ot ait to ao i edxaooav avepes, oiiSe e’ Sxcooi etSap IBouoiv oi»8’ fipa to I toaoi v£as $oivu:oiTap(ious, o08’ ein’pe' £p€Tiid, Ta TeTiTcpa vrpol n&ovTai. ofyia U toi £p£a) tidx’ dpi$pa8£s, ©08£ oe Xifoev 6tttt6t € kcv 8^ toi iHipxtpcvos &XXos 68(tt)s <(>rjXl a6ipTiXovy&v Ixeiv Ava ^aiStyq) a>pq>, tea! tot € 8f) yavQ Tri^as eiripes ^peTp6v, i>e% as lepa icaXa llooeiSdtovi Svokti , apveibv Ta0p6v tc oufflv f £mp^Topa Kairpov, oiKaS* Attootc Ixciv Ip8eiv e’ lepas £tcaT6ppas AeavaToioi GeoToi, to I oOpavbv eiipiiv Ixovoi, TTaoi [idx’ ^cItis' ©dvaTos 8£ toi ^ Ax5s outQ ApXTixp8s iidXa toIos feXeOoeTai, 8s k£ oe yfpijftio XvnapQ ApTp^vov ap4>\ 8fc Xaol 8xpioi eooovTai- Ta 8e toi vrpepTea eipw. {O d yssey 11.121-130, 132-137)

Then you will take up a well-shaped oar and go until you come to a place where men do not know the sea or eat food mixed with salt; they do not know purple-prowed ships or well-shaped oars, like wings to ships. A clear and inescapable sign I give you: when another traveller encountering you says that you are holding a winnowing shovel over your famed shoulder, then you shall plant the well-shaped oar in the earth and make sacrifices to Poseidon a sheep and a bull and a mounting 101

and depart for home and offer sacred hecatombs to the immortal gods who hold broad heaven each in order. Death will then come to you from the sea, a gentle death, when you are quietly overcome with old age; and your people will be prosperous. These things I have spoken truthfully to you. Since the journey is not fulfilled in the epic, the prediction appears without closure. This seems to contradict the seer’s word: for he stresses that he has spoken “VTflAepT^a” (“truthfully”) and given a “of)pa...Api^pa8€S, o08e06Xffaei” (“clear and inescapable sign”). It is possible, of course, that the story is taken up in another epic cycle, or deliberately unrealized in the Homeric poem so as to tease the reader and suggest that the greatest of journeys are never really complete. One might also argue that there are many inconsistencies in the O dyssey, a poem compiled by numerous editors over the centuries after its “original” oral composition. These are plausible suggestions, although not altogether satisfying. The appeal to aesthetic interpretations of closure or compositional theories about the epic poem’s multiple authorship does not do away with a sense that the epic tradition has a functional self-sufficiency, developed “within the so cia l framework of performer-audience interaction” (Nagy 1974: 11). Both the Ilia d and the O d yssey serve social purposes which are somehow made manifest in the poems: “Between the two of them, the Ilia d and the O d yssey manage to incorporate and orchestrate something of practically everything that was once thought preserving from the Heroic Age” (Nagy 1979: 18). Given the orchestration of a complex of social signs within the O dyssey, one should consider whether and how the poem indicates the fulfillment of Teiresias’ prophecy in its narration of Odysseus’ wanderings and n o sto s (“homecoming”). To this end, one should not overlook the 102 significance of the Iperpdv (“oar”) as a sign of the journey’s closure. We saw that Elpenor also commands his leader to plant an oar in the shore by the sea as a “0%ux” (“sign") (11.75) of his toil, and, in his case, a “ 0 %ia”

(“gravestone”) to mark his death. After returning from Hades, Odysseus puts his companion to rest, “'rtnpov x^aVT€S ical Ini OTf|\T)V lptioavT€j nffcapev ducpoTdtTC^ eOf^pes lp€T|i6v” (“piling up a mound and drawing up a pillar, we stuck a well-shaped oar at the top of the mound) (12.14-15). The oar which Odysseus plants may not be the “ofpct” (“sign”) Teiresias has spoken of. Odysseus fixes this oar in a mound near the sea, rather than “where men do not know the sea” (11.124), and in the middle, rather than at the end of his adventures. Yet Elpenor’s unusual burial may suggest something of the significance of Teiresias’ story. If the oar planted in Elpenor's mound signifies the end of the oarsman's toil and offers a lesson for others, the oar planted away from the sea by Odysseus might also indicate both the completion and the significance of the hero’s contest with the elements. In each case, the oar is a sign that closes a period of restless wandering and institutes learning for others. The knowledge, however, that Odysseus bears to the uninformed is not confined to the lessons of the oar, as may be the case w ith Elpenor. An opening line of the O d yssey describes the outcome of the hero’s wanderings in this way: “ttoMoJv S’ &v0p(MTU)vtSev doTca teat v6ov tyvm " (“He saw many cities of men and learned their way of thinking”) (1.3). Odysseus’ special power is his ability to recognize the “v6o?” (“mind,” “way of thinking”) of others 103 by the power of his own mind, and to act accordingly. It is this that distinguishes him from his “Wfaioi” (“senseless”) companions. This quality of “v6os” also bears on Odysseus’ relationship w ith Teiresias. We have already seen that Teiresias retains the power of “v6os"

(“mind”) even after his passage into Hades. The gift of interpreting “T^poiTa” (another word for “signs”) is encoded into his identity as one “having to do with signs” (“T^peoixis”).^ This makes Teiresias the appropriate guide for Odysseus. He is especially capable of offering to Odysseus insight into significant matters, such as the manner that he may gain his “ v 6o t o s ” (“homecoming”), the elusive goal of his wanderings (see

O d yssey MAW, quoted above).

Furthermore, “ v 6 o to s ” shares an etymological root with “v6o?.”27 As

Teiresias delivers the “o%a” (“sign”) of “ v 6o tos ” (“homecoming”), Odysseus applies his “v6os” (“mind”) to decode this sign and thus effect his “ v 6 oto ?”

(“return home”). Gregory Nagy (1983) describes the process of encoding and decoding “ v 6 o t o s ” th u s :

the seer Teiresias is giving a sem a to Odysseus, and the follow up expression “and it will not escape your mind” raises the expectation that getting the sign is linked with its recognition. The word noos is indeed overtly linked with the concept of sem a here, but the attention is as much on the encoding and on the decoding oi the sign. The narrative stresses that Teiresias, who is giving the sem a to Odysseus, is exceptional among the p s y k h a i in Hades in that his cognative faculties—or p h r e n e s , are intact (10.493): it is because Persephone had given him noos (10.494). This se m a , then, is implicitly encoded by the noos of Teiresias—and presumably must be decoded by the noos of Odysseus. (Nagy 1983: 44) Although no single event in the O dyssey is privileged above others as the sign of homecoming, nevertheless there are several important Junctures 104 in the epic where Odysseus Is seen to apply his skill of recognition with the effect of moving one step closer to returning home, securing his rule, and teaching others the lessons of the sea. These are the three signs of his successful rehabilitation. In each case the hero appears to fulfill Teiresias’ odd prophecy by instituting learning from his own example. One crux appears late in book 11, when the Phaeacean king Alkinoos (whose prowess in his mental powers is encoded into his name, “Alki-maas, ” “the one of powerful mind”) interrupts Odysseus’ story to observe that the teller has the unusual gift of speech coupled w ith a powerful mind: “ooi S’ Ini pop$?) Inlwv, Ivi 81 $plv€s loexat, / ptieov S’ u>s b f doi86s InioToplvous

KCtT&eljas, / ndvTwv ’Apyeltov oeo t coitoO icf)8ea Xirypa” (“On you is the grace of words and in you a noble mind./ You tell your story w ith skill like a minstrel—/ the one about all the Argives’ and your own grievous sufferings") (11.367-369). Odysseus then resumes his narration, showing precisely how he uses his twin gifts to graft his own ten-year plight to the epic of the ten-year Trojan war, and so to confirm his special greatness among the illustrius Argives. It is the signature of Odysseus alone that he applies his “mind” to gain a safe homecoming, and the power of “Inos” (“speech”) to transform his suspended homecoming into “pO0os" (“m yth”). The process of eternalizing the values of mind and speech in myth and thus securing authority with each new audience begins even with this Odysseus’ first- person narration of descent. One might argue, then, that what Odysseus is doing here in book 11 of the O dyssey, artfully telling his own story to the 105

Phaeacians, is proof that Teiresias’ sign—the mark of authority in the epic tradition—has not escaped him, and that the “v 6otos” (“homecoming” of eternal “|i 0 8 os” (“myth”) belongs to him.

An important 20th-century modernist poem bears witness to the irretrievable social and cultural context of the exchange of signs between the “original” soothsayer and myth-maker. I refer to Ezra Pound’s first C anto , which Seferis translated into Greek in 1939.28 This poem offers an archaizing English rendition of a Latin version o i O d yssey 11, which the obscure Andreas Divus translated in 1538 (Kearns, 1980: 18). It faithfully recounts Odysseus’ descent “to the place/ Aforesaid by Circe” (17-18), his meeting with Elpenor, “pitiful spirit” (26), and his initial neglect of Anticlea “whom I beat off” (58). When the poem reaches the interview between the peregrinating hero and “Tiresias Theban,” however, takes a significant turn away from its source, though not from Teiresias. The soothsayer appears, gives his sign of recognition and then asks, “A second time? why? man of ill star,/ facing the sunless dead and this joyless region?” (60-61). Here he addresses not the hero who reportedly travelled to Hades in mythic times, but the 2 0 th-century literary persona who aims at reproducing this event. After drinking the blood, “Tiresias Theban" divines a familiar answer, but in the third person: “Odysseus/ Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas,/ Lose all companions” (65-67). The weight of the prediction rests on the shoulders of modern poets who struggle to return to poetry’s source: Homer, the heart of western tradition. Since the blind seer gave the sign to Odysseus, once and for all, his advice is always already belated to 106 any modern myth-maker. The signs of poetry’s “homecoming” can arrive only through a mass of “cultural layering”—composed of the numerous voices that have edited, revised, translated, incorporated, appropriated, and interpreted the original w ork by Homer . 29 Pound’s homesick modern persona has such great difficulty hearing Teiresias’ response that he registers a complaint to the noisy translater: “Lie quiet Divus. I mean, that is Andreas Divus/ In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer” (68-69). Then other voices interject from the Babel-like configuration, relaying the message that numerous literary voyagers stand between moderns and ancients—so many, in fact, that a return to the scene of pure origins remains out of reach: Venerandam In the Cretan’s phrase with the golden crown, Aphrodite, Cypri munimenta sortita est, mirthful, orichalchi with golden Girdles and breast bands, thou w ith dark eyelids Bearing the golden bough of Argicida.30 (71-76) Through the din of literary interjections, the modern poet makes his own voice heard by this seemingly nonsensical addendum, “So that” (76). This is his introduction to the 116 Cantos that follow. Pound attempts to project a fresh voice,3* in an age when passage to the original centers of culture has been blocked by one’s too self-conscious secondariness , 32 by offering songs with deliberate anachronism and simultaneous readings from Homer to Ovid, troubadour tales to Renaissance history, Chinese calligraphy to ideograms, 107

Declarations of Ignorance, Modernist Ellipses, and the Return to Light Seferis tries a very different tack from that of Pound^ in his appropriation of Homer. He omits Teiresias’ divinations entirely and dangles in their place a literary quotation from another preeminent classical text, Plato’s Apology. “Ki a p.€ 8ikjustice will be my justice; it is not for me to go wandering through foreign lands [ to p o i\, like a rolling stone. I prefer death; god knows who goes to the better lot” ( T h ru sh III.20— 25). These words recall the conclusion of the Apology. “5TTOT€poi 8€ fjpwv epxovTai itpeivov TTpaypa, &8t}Xov iravTi ttXt^v t$ 0€$” (“which of the two of us goes to a better lot is unknown to everyone except the god,” 42a). The modern poem’s turn from Homer to Plato comes at a crucial point. It Indicates a significant shift in textual strategies. Until this moment, Homeric figures and episodes appear as foils in the narrative of a modern quest for home. They add literary depth by marking major continuities and ruptures between the archaic ordei—with its hierarchy of gods and heroes— and the contemporary world—with its overwhelming chaos. The unexpected quotation from another major text, however, complicates the intertextual horizon of T h ru sh , defers the “of\pa” (“sign”) of homecoming, and relocates the cultural center of the poem. One may recall that virtues attached to the figure of Socrates are

“004>la” (“wisdom”) and “ 8(kt)” (“justice”). Contrary to the Homeric value

of “ v6os” (“mind”), Socratic wisdom is acquired through a forthcoming 108

admission of Ignorance and fearless submission to the unknown. In the

Apology, Socrates defends his reputation as “OO^TCtTOS” ("the wisest of men") by admitting his Ignorance, specifically on the subject of death: t6 yAp toi edvaTov 8c8iivai, <5 fiv8pcs, oOBfev &x\o £oflv 8ok^I oo4»6v cTvai pf) 5vts cfl c18otcs 8 ti peyiOTov tcdv kokwv io n . ( Apology 29a)

To fear death, gentlemen, is nothing else than to think one is wise when one is not; for it is thinking one knows what one does not. No one knows whether death is not the greatest of all blessings to man, yet they fear it as if they know that it is the greatest form of evil. When Socrates chooses death as his punishment, he offers “ToO Gclov oiyidov” (“the divine sign”) (40b) as proof that he may meet with a better fate than his accusers: “oil yap loG’ &TT(i)S oiiK f|vavTiw0Ti fiv poi t5 cla)96s orpclov, cl pV| ti IpcMov £yw AyaGbv tipa^civ” (“for the customary sign would surely have opposed me, if I had not been going to meet with something good”) (40c). As he submits to Athenian law, Socrates pronounces his final words, through which he derives the ultimate argumentative advantage by claiming that his accusors are no less ignorant than he is about the quality of their future: “lpo\ p£v Anoeavovp£voop£vois- 6 tt6tcpoi 8fe fpwv i-pXOVTcu £tt\ flcpeivovTTpaypa, fiSriXovTTavTlTTXiy GcQ” (“I am about to die, while you will continue to live; which of the two of us goes to a better lot is not evident to anyone except the god”) (42a). These are the lines which T h ru sh incorporates into its scene of descent. By drawing the comparison between T h ru sh and the Apology, one can see that the modern poem gives prominence not only to Socrates’ calm submission to fate ("And if you condemn me to drink poison, I thank you”), 109 his compliance with the ruling system of justice (“your justice will be my justice”), and loyalty to place (“It is not for me to go wandering through foreign lands [ topoi], like a rolling stone”), but also to his plea of ignorance and deferral to “god" on the subject of unknown destinations (“I prefer death; god knows who goes to the better lot”). Furthermore, one should not overlook the fact that Socrates’ modern declaration of agnosticism is heard “octt6 tov ifyiov TO &K\o }i£pos, to okotciv6”

(“from the sun’s other side, the dark one”) ( T h ru sh III. 14). “T0 0 K0 T€lv6 ” means literally “that which is dark.” In the context of Seferis’ poetic corpus, this expression is a figure for the meaningful void behind the mask 34 of perceptible existence. “To OKOT€lv6 ” is set in plain analogy to the A pology1 s

“&8 r)Xov” (that which is “not evident,” “invisible,” “obscure,”

“inscrutable”), where human language and perception reach a productive stopping point. Even more resounding is the resonance of the R ep u b lic's “dark cave" (Book VII), the realm of illusion in which people are imprisoned with their backs to the sunlit exit. One is gradually set free from the bonds of illusion as one comes to recognize the predicament of the senses’ bondage and learn first to rely on physical perception, then to use the processes of

reason, and finally to develop insight into the world of the absolute . 35 The image of a “dark” or blind side of human existence functions in T h ru sh as a placard for the deeper understanding of things hidden from plain human perception. This understanding can only be claimed by a Socratic turn, that is, through a declaration of ignorance about origins and

destinations. Rather than Teiresas’ “ ofyux” (“sign”) of “ v 6 o s” 110

(“recognition”) and “ptiSos” (“m yth,” “speech”)—which effect Odysseus’

Journey’s end and institute learning for others—it is a Socratic declaration of ignorance that provides the key for a return to "the light” in T hrush. In his published supplementary essay, “Mid OKTiVO0€o(a yia TT)V KtxXT}”

[1950] ("Stage Directions for T h r u sh ”) Seferis offers this explanation of the shift from Teiresias to Socrates: npoooaew Tiijpa va icaTaxdpu) yiaTl fyive ornv K(xAriucd-yiaT{ ti AnoAoyta etvai £va an6 Ta icctpcva tioo p.* enrip^aoav TiepioodTcpo otti (wf) poo- lows €TT€i8i^ ti yevid poo peyaXwoe ki ^Ct) 0€ otov *aip6 tt)s aSudas. Tp(TO, yiart €xw £va ttoXo opyaviKd oovalo0Tipa too tout!(€1 tt)V avepwnia p€ TT1V €XXr)VlKfl $OOT|. (Seferis 1981f: 54)

I am trying now to understand why there was this replacement of Teiresias by Socrates in T h ru sh . My first answer is this: because I sensed that the tone of the whole which 1 was trying to create was elsewhere; I didn’t even consider the Theban one. Then— autobiographically speaking—because the A pology is a text which especially influenced me in my life; perhaps because my generation grew up and lived in a period of injustice. Third, because I have a very organic intuition which identifies humanity with the Hellenic p h y s is . The first point that Seferis makes is predictable enough. He reveals that aesthetic criteria concerning the “tone of the whole” bear final weight in the poet’s decision to incorporate certain sources and disgard others. Seferis’ image of the poetic work as a harmonious reorganization of literary particles drawn from a synchronically available tradition is not unrelated to T. S. Eliot’s idea of the poetic whole as the synchronous harmonization of historical layers. It is not mere coincidence that Seferis systematically i l l

discussed and translated T. S. Eliot’s work into Greek . 36 Indeed, he shared Eliot’s view about the modern poet and literary tradition. In his influential essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1920),37 Eliot describes tradition as the cumulative pool of literary material surviving from all ages: “Poetry is the living whole of all the poetry that has ever been written” (Eliot 1920: 53). All texts have a “simultaneous existence” (1920: 49); that is to say, they exist contemporaneously and are synchronically available to the poet both in principle—in that they can be read and understood with a properly receptive attitude—an in fact—since they are housed together in well-endowed libraries. Writing then involves the process of selecting from this cumulative “living whole.” It is the conscious or unconscious borrowing of existing Images and phrases, which then combine with the poet’s experience to form a new poem: “the poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seeing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present” (1920: 55). Older layers must resonate with the more recent “particles,” together forming a new whole. This resonance is what Seferis calls the “Ttivos” ("tenor” or “tone”) of

the poem. He therefore argues that the choice of Socrates, rather than Teiresias, makes for the organic coherence of the whole, so that it meets

with the standard of “ 0 Ctpnovi< 6s \ 6yos,’” (“the harmonious word”). And Seferis gives special emphasis to the word “ CcpnoviK<$$t p.c TT)v £vvoitt tov otivSCOpOV, TOV €ip[loO, TT£

€iK6 vas, TT|S Kai Tf|S dXXtjs ovyk1vtiot)S, ” (“ h a rm o n io u s, in the sense of 112 the attention paid to the connection, flow, correspondence, and contrast of one idea or feeling w ith another”) (l981f: 53). Seferis’ second point about the substitution of Socrates for Teiresias derives from personal experience. Here he offers the A pology as the appropriate antidote to contemporary injustices, which remain unnamed—as it is Seferis’ custom to avoid specific references to the sordid details of Greek politics. With his third statement of justification, however, Seferis seems to move in another direction: “I have a very organic intuition which identifies humanity with the Hellenic nature ( p h y s is ).” This sentence involves several crucial ellipses, which, when elaborated, bring it back in line with the matter of Socrates’ particular mediation of "homecoming” in T h ru sh . First, the connection between "humanity” and Socrates is not explained here, though it may be drawn out of Seferis’ earlier claim: “XTT}V 0 cpHTivcuTife tou v6otov 8ev e lm o Teipeotas, elvai £va Tip6oamo non aioedvofiai m6 a^'0pa)TllVO• 0 Blicaios” (“In T h r u sh , the interpreter of homecoming is not

Teiresias, but someone whom I feel to be more human than Teiresias: the one who is Just”) (l981f: 52). Perhaps it is with the idea of Justice that Seferis links the figure of Socrates to “humanity.” Almost without warning, however, Seferis also introduces the subject of "the Hellenic p h y s is ,” with its connotations of both geographical and racial determinism. How can one justify this appeal to "the Hellenic p h y s is ” as a final factor deciding which trait (humanity, say, as opposed to the power to divine the future) should be to be admitted as the "sign” at the crux of the 113 poem? Even references to “harmony” and “tone”—aesthetic criteria which subject the “particle” to the demands of the “whole”—do not adequately anticipate the requirements of landscape (the nature of the land) and blood (the nature of the people). And what can one mahe of nature’s linkage to specifically Hellenic determinants? The poem exhibits similar ellipses. After quoting the Apology, it decries the contemporary world with these words: “XuJpes TOV ifyiov kcu 8ev

|lTTOpClT€ 7 aVTlKploCTC TOV f)\lO. X(0p€S TOV aV0pti)TTOV KCtl 8€V [lTTOp€(T€V avTiicplocTC tov tragedies of Aeschylus, the philosophy of Anaximander and Heraclitus all constitute sophisticated, natural reactions to the element of light found in the Hellenic topio ("landscape”). If Seferis unequivocally claims to experience “TT)V KCtTdoTCCOTl TT)S avimapl-ias, tt^v KaTdpyriori tov eya)...niTpooTd otti peYaXoTip&Tcia opiop^vwv iiv m v tottCwv” (“the condition of nonexistence, the abolition of the self.. .when facing the grandeur of certain foreign landscapes [ top/a ]”) (l981f: 54), he also senses a “humanizing function” in “Taicvp(a)S €\\T|ViKd Toula”

(“principally Hellenic natural to pia”) (l981f: 55) which are filled with light:

“ntoTCVd) ttios vTTapxei uia XeuovpYta evavepumiopov OTO €\\T 1VIk6 WS” (“I believe that there is a humanizing function in the Hellenic light”) (l981f: 55). This light renders “YP

<^uoiOYVU)|il€S, T) TpaYiKT) ciamf) ev6s npoom ov” (“lines that are drawn and erasedj bodies and personalities, the tragic silence of the p e rso n ”) (I981f: 55). It finally merges with the living force that runs through not only “the blood of man, ” but also the cultural tradition of Hellenism, from Homer to the present: “E(m t6oo 0ko\o, Yitf ok^ou av to 4>o5s tt)s n^pas Kai to a([ia tov

avepoimov ffrav to ( 8 io TipdtYlia; 'Qs ttov [iTTopet va to aioeaveet Kavets ovto;... Av o

€vavepamiop 6 s ttov ^Xeya Y€vvr)oe TT^v O Sw oeia, ios /7C!/|iTTopoijp€ va Sovpe tt)v OSvooeur, ” (“It’s so simple: Image that the light of day and the blood of Man

are the same thing? H ow deeply can one actually experience th is?... If the 115 humanizing function which I referred to gave birth to the Odyssey, how far can we actually se e the O d y sse y l”) (l981f: 55-56). The conflation of culture and nature is a fundamental feature of T h ru sh . Indeed, this is the major ellipsis which must be elaborated if we are to understand the rhetorical operations of n o sto s (“homecoming”) in Seferis’ work. First, literary quotation from ancient sources lays the foundation for the “natural” site of Hellenism. Next, not only does this modernist technique render the distant past more hospitable to latecomers who suffer from the burden of their ancestors’ priority39; it also marks the boundaries of home for a fragmented and scattered tradition. Finally, if the poem defines the condition of modernity as the loss of home, the literary sign of Socratic agnosticism provides the means for a physical recovery. Recognition of the limits of contemporary cultural understanding is the test which the modern poet must pass in order to return to Hellenism’s natural home, “To <|)(0S” (“The light” ) . 40

As the last section of the poem develops, references to antique sources increasingly enter into conjunction with one another. The text incorporates a series of fragments from other venerated texts, including loose translations from the Ilia d (III.58), Prometheus Bound (ill.57), Oedipus at Colonus (lll.59ff.), Erotokritos (ill.65), Hesiod’s Theogony (ill.72), Pervigilium V eneris (III.74); and, once again, the O d yssey (III.80). The reference to Oedipus is most extensive and worth examining because of the way it is absorbed into the Socratic sign of ignorance. Here literary quotation takes the form of an apostrophe to the ambivalent “light” 116

of revelation: “AyyeXiKd Kai pavpo $u>s / y&io tcdv KvpdTflov o t is 8T)pooi€S tov tt6vtov, / SaKpvop^vo y&io / oc p\6i€i o y^povTas ik^ttis / TnyyatvovTas va

8paoK€\to€it i s a6paT€stt \

ET€OK\fi Kaitov noXvvetKTi” (“Angelic and black light/laughter of the waves on the crossroads of the sea,/ tearful laughter,/ it’s you the old suppliant sees/as he goes to cross the invisible fields/light mirrored in his blood/which bore Eteoklis and Polinikis”) ( T h ru sh III.56-62). In the Sophoclean text, the wandering Oedipus, blinded by his own hands and exiled by his own decree, finds refuge at Colonus. A suppliant to Theseus, he offers his body to the Athenian king in return for kindness. When “ofpaTa” (“signs”) from the gods indicate his approaching death,

Oedipus prepares to pass through the gates of Hades. He addresses for the last time the “blind” light which belonged to him before he extinguished his

sight: “(5 <|>ajs d^eyyes, irpdoQe ttovttot’ fjoe’ £p 6 v,/ vvv S’ £oxcit6v oav Toiipov

aiTTCTtti Sepas./ f^8 r| yap epna) tov TeXevTaiov ptov / Kpv\|rav nap’ "AiSt^v” (“0 light

that is no light, once in the past you belonged to me,/ now for the last time my body touches you./ Presently I creep ahead to the end of life/which hides beyond Hades”) {Oedipus at Colonus 1549-1551). The modern phrase, “ayyeXiKd Kai pavpo (“angelic and black

light"), assigns an apocalyptic, 41 rather than oxymoronic, meaning to the Sophoclean “light that is no light.” It identifies “light” not with the sense of sight, but with an unspecified “Apocalypse” which takes place with the poetic persona’s “ttKttTaiTttVTTi ovvaXXayf) pctti edXaooa, Ta povvd, to $g5s Kai tov

a£pa”(“continuous exchange with the sea, mountains, light, and air”) 117

(Seferis 1986: 37) of the Attic landscape. Quite typically, both in T h ru sh and in his diary entries regarding the poem’s composition, Seferis stops short of describing the process of Revelation by which the Odysseus persona’s identity becomes submerged “elsewhere in other to p o i” in the Hellenic landscape:

aSvvocto va 6ianmo5oa) tcaXvTepa totJtti tt^v anoKdxviln'v And €K€( Kai trdpa, d v ctoai 6xi £va updowno, 8ev ^xci Kapia orpaota. 'H: to Trpdocono 6ev eioai Tiia eov> to Tipdoamo etvai e/cei. 'Av ptropete, to ovjmX'npwvcis. 'Av ptiopels, Kaveis pia Tipa^r) i€pi^.... Elvai p ia ttoXt) ttou ylveTai oe aXXaus t6ttovs....nofe va tt|Vnepdoeis auTf) rn dpuooo.... H paupr) Kai ayyeXiKfi aTTiKf) p£pa. (1986: 38) Impossible for me to express this Apocalypse better. From here on, it makes no difference whether or not you exist as a person. Better, the person is no longer y o u, it is th e re . If you can, you complete it. If you can, you perform a holy act.... This is an agon that takes place elsewhere, in other to p o i How can one pass this abyss?... The black and angelic Attic day. The ellipsis of Revelation intimates a point of crossing from the murky darkness of modernity’s cultural indistinction to the sacred center “elsewhere.” Suddenly, the Odysseus persona is lifted up from his descent. “ T h ere” under the light of “the black and angelic Attic day,” his personality becomes immaterial, while Hellenism, broadly Christianized in the reference to Revelation and narrow ly localized in the description of the Attic topos, is resurrected.Apocalypse, with no articulated vision except an admission of the inexpressible and an image of light, opens the gateway “home” to/for Hellenism.

Salvaging the Post-War Shipwreck It should be noted that T h ru sh ’s textual strategy of omitting crucial links and deferring to Revelation initially led to difficulties in the poem’s 118 reception. During the first years after its publication, readers complained that T h ru sh was too fragmentary .43 They cited allusions which broke off before coming clearly into focus. In addition, they suggested that this Neohellenic poem displayed an ambivalence toward the authority of tradition, typical of European Modernism. The poem’s obscurity quickly became point of concern for the Post-War audience, just as the apparent chaos of modernist poetics had been made an issue before the w ar by cultural conservationists of “Greekness” like Konstandinos Tsitsos. Seferis again took the opportunity to mediate differences between lnappreciative readers and elliptical techniques. He published “Mia OKT^vo0eo(ayiattjv(“Stage Directions for T h r u sh ”) in AyyAoeAArji/ucfj enidecoprfor} (Anglohellenic Review 4:12) in 1950.44 This essay took the form of a personal letter addressed to his friend Y 6rgos Katsimbalis, the editor of the Review. In it, Seferis blocked the positions of the ancient figures in T hrush . His declared purpose was to ease the difficult passage of readers down to the shipwreck of T h ru sh , through Odysseus’s renown n e ku ia (“descent into Hades”), and up into the haunting “angelic and black light” of Socratic humanism. By pointing out convergences and explaining divergences between the ancient sources and the modern poem, he appeared to answer the difficult question of consistency: what it was that held together the heterogeneous fragments of tradition in his contemporary vision.

While insisting that his Interpretation w as Inspired by merely personal motive and bore no more weight than that of “evmemories” (Zahareas: 191) through a “Cwip6 atoerpa tou t6ttou too, trapaXuTou k<£to>

1986: 100), “ompoUO|i6s T(DV €VO t(vkto )V” (“symbolism of the instincts”)

(Lihnari 1986: 37)—which rendered deep and meaningful the collective sense of the Neohellenic trauma: “private and general catastrophes” (Zahareas, 1968: 197) experienced by Neohellenes through years of “w ar, destruction, and migration.... ”

Readers will recall a passage I quoted from Seferis’ published diaries in the Introduction to this dissertation (page l). There we saw the unexplained contiguity of ancient statues, resurrected bodies, and “crazy feelings” for the Hellenic topos. At the same time, reference to the contemporary reality of an ongoing Civil War was entirely repressed in this passage, and limited in other journal entries to oblique phrases such as “the black and angelic Attic day,” which I quoted in the previous section. This expression, slightly modified in T h ru sh to read “Angelic and black light, ” functions both to designate the abyss of present understanding and to reveal the healing power of the Attic landscape—the “humanizing function in the Hellenic light” (Seferis 1981f: 55). That is to say, it obfuscates the details of contemporary circumstances while sanctifying the contours of the physical and cultural horizon. Indeed, the two functions of obfuscation and sanctification should not be viewed as contradictory. These characterize the double movement of Seferis’ modernist technique. While representing the 121 complex contemporary “landscape” in such a way as to hinder analysis of the various forces which make it dark, crowded, and indistinct, Seferis’ w ork also offers “ti(ott) o’aurd Ta apxalaorind8ia ti£oa oto to tt(o . r \ttIottittcos ^XOUVSiKflTOUS (“faith in ancient signs within the landscape.. .—faith that they have their own soul”) (Seferis 1981 j: 346). This double movement allows Seferis forever to equivocate on the m atter of Greece’ growing post­ w ar political and cultural dependence, in particular, its loss of control over development and uses of its land. Seferis promises that Neohellenism can recover its Hellenic origins by bypassing the problems of Modernity. The point of crisis m ay become the stepping-stone to Revelation. Surely Seferis’ failure to analyze his contemporary reference point is typical of the modernist literary approach which refuses to be “diagnostic”47 about the effects of capitalism’s commodification of space-time. It should therefore come as no surprise that Seferis symbolically recodes “The light” of of the modern scenery for a spiritual “Everyman. ” He reinvents the sacred so as to generate a return to/of Hellenism, the mythic origins of purity. This is his way of salvaging the shipwreck of post-War Neohellenism. What is lost in this reterritorialization of Hellenism’s sacred “homeland” is an analysis of how commodification transforms “co sm o s”— especially the underdeveloped, sunny Mediterranean exposure of the Western world—into a “limitless hotel.” Only anxiety of commodification appears in the margins of Seferis’ work, for example, in his essay on the interpretation of dreams [1971]. Here Seferis narrates the “nightmare” of his ascent to the Acropolis on the day it is auctioned (19811: 326ff.). I close this chapter with 122

Seferis’ account of the dream and his refusal to interpret it. This refusal is again typical. It is his way of orchestrating “€va 8 1 0 X0 7 0 tcov aiO0ifaeu)V TOV

TTOuyn^ pc tov €\Xtivik 6 X^po Kai tov €\Xt)VIk6 Xp6vo” (“a dialogue between the poet’s senses and Hellenic space and Hellenic time”) (Maronitis 1984: 16). It is also his way of generating mass relief. The subject matter is typical of that which Seferis refuses to treat. What Seferis “hasn’t the power to analyze, ” as he claims, is one of the most important concerns of Post-war Neohellenism: the possible ill effects of Hellas’ opening its doors to foreign investors and putting its ancient monuments on tour. In Seferis’ “nightmare,” a state auction is taking place at the pinnacle of the Acropolis. The purpose of the auction is to bring in revenue by selling ancient monuments to the highest bidder. Suddenly the crowds cry out in

triumph, “K£p8 loav 01 ApcplKavol” (“The Americans have won!”) (19811: 327).

An American toothpaste company has purchased the Parthenon:

t 6 t € el6 a tov Tiapeevtiiva yvpvd avaTpixiaoTwd, xwpls a^rajfia, x^pls yeioo, jjl€ t is KoXoves tov ireXeKTpeves, yuaXioTepes, napaoTcavovTas vn^povYtca oo)Xr)vdpia....A£v dpai apic€T 6s va avaXvow tovto to 6v€ipo.... 'Opios yia pcva e(vai 8 i 8 oktik 6.... Tt^v avaKaityioT) irov £viu)oa t6tc icai pe ovvTp64>€\|f€ 7 1a xp6via, 8 e 0a pnop&ei va tt^v €VT€(vei1 ^ va tt) xaxdoei, to Ijepw, OTKnaS^TTOTe oveipopavTeta. M’ avTo tov t p 6tto aio0avopai ttgus to 6 veip 6 pov tt)s AKp6noXt)s fyrav pux 8 i 8 oktikt ) TrpoeiSoTTolrjor). T^TOia e(vai t) Cwfipa?-IvaVT^ol p^oaOTOVTJTTVO” (I981i: 327-328).

Then I saw the Parthenon frightfully bare, without its pediment and peak, its columns chiseled and buffed in the shape of colossal tubes. It is not in my power to analyze this dream.... But for me [the poem] is didactic The relief I felt then [when I awoke], which has accompanied me all my life, could not be intensified or shaken by any interpretation of the dream—this I know. Thus I believe that my dream of the Acropolis was a didactic warning. Such is our life, an island within sleep. CHAPTER IU COSMOS'. 6R0UNDIN6 THE POETIC WORD IN THE SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE

AVTOS o KdojiOJ 0 p iK p o s 0 (JL€yaS This cosm os the small the great (Odysseus Elytis)

The Self-Sufficient Universe: Two Versions of Autonomy The central axis of discussion in this chapter is Odysseus Elytis’ effort to create a perfect and self-sufficient cosmos, or universe, through a revolution of the word. Like many modernists, Elytis offers the autonomous poetic work as a means of surmounting contradictory realities, recovering lost freshness, and overcoming ideological crisis. What is unusual in his work, however—at least according to the European modernist standard—is that he seeks to redefine the external world, specifically the national entity of Hellas, through his poetic vision of a transcendental cosm os His poetic universe is self-contained but not self-enclosed. It refers by analogy to the “great” nation: the topio ("landscape”) and la d s (“people”), of Hellas. First I examine the concept of cosm os around which Elytis develops his narrative about Neohellenism. I pay close attention to how the discourse of populism governs Elytis’ “re-writing” of a poetic cosmogony, whose telos is the absolute correspondence between language and world. Populism can be seen to penetrate vernacular high culture in both its early (demoticist) and late (modernist) phases. During this period, approximately from 1880 to

123 124

1960, the producers of a mainstream high culture sought to reclaim a more "authentic” Hellenic culture for a more autonomous Neohellenism, once again using techniques and arguments from western thinkers. 1 then investigate how the first two sections of Elytis’ national epic, ToAfiovEori ( The A xion

E sti, literally “Worthy It Is”1) (1959), incorporate layers of tradition, in particular Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, into a populist revision of Hellenism. Let us begin by considering the possible referents of this verse from The Axion Esti: “Autos o k6ohos 0 p.licp6s 0 [leyas” (“This cosm os the small the great”). The lines are well-known to a broad Greek audience. Of course, the familiarity of the verse does not make the referent of “this cosm o s” any more stable. There are at least three obvious interpretations of the line. A nationalist reading claims a “real” referent: Hellas, the small geographical entity which has generated cultural greatness throughout the ages. A strictly modernist (new critical)^ reading suggests that “this cosm os” can refer no further “outside” itself than to the universe of poetic language. There is also a third reading, no less nationalist or modernist, as I will argue, which discovers in the verse two referents. The “small” cosm os is the universe of the poem, while the “great" is the analogous geographical and social entity identifiable as “Hellas.” Through analogy, then the poem gives order to Hellas in accordance w ith its internal coherence. "This" becomes both self- and extra-referential. The poem is the small cosmos, a universe unto itself, the auto-nomous entity that names itself and by this naming creates itself—without heteronomous intrusion. It is more perfect 125 than any other cosm os because it controls itself, it closes itself off, it resists invasion. In the poem’s self-creation, it finds a proper place for each irreducible element of language. It composes a universe of language. This process of self-creation then subsumes a greater cosm os by the analogy of its own perfection. Through the achievement of perfection, there takes place a transubstantiation. Language becomes matter. “This” self-referential cosm os of language cocoons “this” terrestrial nation of sun, sea, and Neohellenes. “This cosm os the small the great” becomes a topos both in the rhetorical and in the geographical sense: it is a “common place,” a place shared in common by the deeply rooted universe of language and the wide expanse of the Hellenic nation. This third reading of the verse raises the problem of the referential status and autonomous aspirations of modernist poetry on the periphery of the “mainstream” European movements. Many modern poets of western Europe, beginning with Mallarm6, concern themselves with creating a self- sufficient and self-enclosed universe of language. For the most part they assume that the modern world needs a linguistic “treatment.” In some cases they may choose to confront this world; but they are pessimistic that they can make it a more integrated and harmonious place by perfecting the system of language. As a general rule, then, one can say that literary modernism distrusts the word as a bearer of meaning, norms, and values. Instead of perfecting the referential powers of language, it seeks to restore to language itself a lost purity or integrity. 126

As evidence of the broader trend within modernity, one can point to the many attempts to invent new systems of expression, from cubism and surrealism to Esperanto and Wittgenstein’s T ra cta tu s. More specifically in the language arts, one finds individual authors’ sustained efforts to create w hat Roland Barthes has referred to as “a self-sufficient language... [rooted] in the depths of [one’s] personal and secret mythology” (Barthes 1968: 10). While Elytis frequently expresses the wish to discover the “orthography” (“proper writing”) of a self-sufficient cosm os, his aim is not only to produce an autonomous semlotic system, but also to reproduce the integrity of a meta-historical Hellenic world. Furthermore, Elytis wants “va OKapei Kai V avoKaXuTTTei ouvexws vr\v E\\d8a ttov Tipoimapxci [i^oa tou” (“to excavate and discover the Hellas which preexists within him”) (Elytis 1990: 29) w ith o u t the guilt of belatedness. His is no historical or biographical search for lost origins; instead his poetry becomes a topographical register of that small space where language remains luminous and signs are natural. Thus, unlike other European modernists, Elytis views past layers of civilization not from the individual perspective of a secret, personal mythology, but from the absolute perspective of the self-fulfilled nation, where the cosm os of Hellenism appears clear, unproblematic, and eminently readable. This project may appear to contradict standard modernist assumptions that pure art and the sullied world (especially the propaganda machine of the nation-state) are at odds. Yet Elytis’ idealization of both poetry and Hellas as a topographical holdout for those opposed to the cannibalism of 127 capitalist markets conforms with the claims of aesthetic modernity. 3 What is unusual, instead, is his idea of the rule of autonomy. Briefly, one might refer to the view of artistic autonomy which derives from German idealism, according to which artistic creation involves the self-rule (auto-nomy) of artistic material and means, without the intervention of external laws (moral norms, political demands, etc.). In Institutional terms, art creates an autonomous space for itself when it becomes the medium for its own ideological (re)production.4 Alongside (and not necessarily in contradistinction to) this view, one should consider a very important notion of political autonomy in modern society: the autonomy of the nation, the social “organism” defined by the unique particularity of its language, history, and culture. National autonomy involves the self­ institution of a group, notably a national group. This group designates a territory ( topos) for itself and infuses this territory with identity by way of culture.5 Ideally, the national group gains full control (auto-nomy) over the material and means of its (re)production through its acts of self-institution. It is to this second view of autonomy that Elytis’ cosm os is tied. This is not to say that Elytis radicalizes a modernist aesthetic by connecting it outright with a political agenda. His work, however, presupposes this nationalist ideology: that artistic expression is an Important act of political self-institution, in particular, nation-building. It is the highest expression of the unique Spirit of a "people.” As I have mentioned, cosm os is Elytis’ version of a transcendental territory of Hellenism. More specifically, cosm os is the space where the people’s Spirit projects itself, without the intervention 128 of heteronomous forces, onto the soil and water of the Aegean and becomes a “readable” surface. In Elytis’ view, the cosm os of Hellenism has its own “orthography," whose irreducible elements—the sun, the sea, the land, the earth, the tolling winds, the mountains, and the trees—require only the services of a lum inary poet who can “read” them from the outside in. The poet is called upon to record the very cosm os where the "everyday” details of the landscape reveal the autonomous Spirit of Hellenism. By registering the “orthography” of the landscape, with its vignettes from bucolic life, on the surface of the poetic text, the poet can reproduce the cosm os of Hellenism so perfectly that the poetic cosm os itself becomes the cosm os of Hellenism by absolute analogy. It is no accident that many critics in Greece have promoted Elytis as the authentic spokesman for the Hellenic lads (“people”) and ith n o s (“nation”). This is especially the case with The Axion Esti, Elytis’ most ambitious work.6 In The Axion Esti Elytis offers both a autotelic poem and a national work. He “reads” the “small but great co sm o s” of Neohellenism in such a way that his first-person voice is identified with the nation (Hellas). Thus, for most Greek readers, the poet is the living memory of his “people.” Furthermore, his performance {The Axion E sti) makes possible Neohellenism’s continuity: The first person (speaker) is the poet and the people in an indivisible identification The fate of the poet (individual) is identified with the fate of his nation (general) in a specific place and... time.... So let this small world reveal the Glory of the eternal. For the world the small is potentially the great. (LignAdls 1976: 26-27). But to w hat end does Elytis make his poetry the rallying point for the collective body of the nation’s “people” (/ads)? Any assumption that there is an “indivisible identification” between “poet, ” “people, ” and the “fate of the nation” in a self-declared modernist work raises interesting questions about the problematic link between late modernism and populism on the margins of the western world. Is such a link possible, without evacuating the term “modernism” of any meaning? By what discursive means does a modernist artist make himself the organ of a perennially occupied lads (“people”) and give dramatic form to the fate of this people through his own personality, without denying the superiority of free, original, and pure (autonomous) artistic expression? How does he subject his personal voice to the collective mythology of a nation, without making every modernist illusion painlessly peripheral or eccentrically decorative? I begin my analysis by exploring what cultural presuppositions allow Elytis to unite internal and external worlds into a single cosm os whose p a tr /s (“fatherland”) is the realm of the senses in their absolute analogy to Spirit. Then I proceed to study how he reclaims the venerated Classical tradition as a constituent of the national-popular body, without creating a text that is excessively “readerly,” hence, elitist.

The Telos of Neohellenism Like many of his contemporaries, Elytis attaches certain powers of determination to the Greek topfo (“landscape”). He claims that the natural elements of Hellas have the power to link eras of civilization divided by time 130 when they discover their authentic orthographic (“correct spelling"). The character and shape of the everyday spatio-temporal order is such that it literally structures culture. Obversely, culture has the power to recover a more natural cosm os (“world order”). But how? In its normative Neohellenic usage, the meaning of the noun cosm os is quite straightforward, although its historical and contemporary resonances are perhaps as rich as those of the noun topos. Cosmos refers to people or the world. Of people, it Indicates any group ranging in size from at least one person (the expression K^O^iO, “I have visitors,” might suggest the presence of as few as one visitor), to a complete group (6Xos o Kdojios, “everybody”) or even the entire world population (o k6o[10S OX6kXtv>OS, “the entire world”). In a more philosophical sense, cosm os is a worldview or a world order, whether this is an individual’s eccentric outlook ((€( OTO 8 ik 6 tov KOO|iO, “he lives in his own world”), a poetic universe (o k 6o ^OS TOV EX vtt ),

“the universe projected in Elytis’ poetry”), a sphere of being (o KOIVIOVI k 6s k6ohos,o4>voikos k6oiios, “the social world,” “the natural world”), or the universe of heavenly bodies. The historical resonances of cosm os include its philosophical uses. In ancient Greek, cosm os “originally signified ‘right order’ in a state or other community” which was under the governance of d ik e or “Justice” (Wilber and Allen 1979: 39). More generally, cosm osreferred to the natural order of things. Of people, it suggested good order, behavior, discipline, form, fashion, or government, and of art, it indicated ornament, decoration, ornaments of speech. Of the physical world, finally, it came to signify the 131 universe (in Pythagoras, Parmenides, Herakleitos, Aristotle and the Stoics), the firmament, the earth as opposed heaven or the underworld, or the sphere whose centre Is the earth’s centre and radius the straight line joining earth and sun (Archimedes). Elytis builds on the normative Neohellenlc usage of cosm os and its antique philosophical resonances to create his own seemingly transparent (and certainly not unprecedented?) use of the term. In The Axion Esti and elsewhere, cosmos means, quite simply, “world"; but it implies a certain kind of order and a particular set of relationships between part and whole, as I have suggested. The Neohellenlc cosm os appears as the living organism of the national body which, like an individual body, has connected and interdependent parts that share a complex evolution and common voice. From another perspective, one might describe Elytis’ cosm os as his version of a transcendental territory, an imaginary space where the distinction between things and their representation, nature and culture, dream and reality vanishes. This is how the critic Andreas Karand6nis conceives of Elytis’ contribution to post-war cultural developments. Karand6nis claims that Elytis succeeded in creating

... €va o\6T€\a KaivoupYio <6opo outikc Sv 0aupdTU)v TTpaYpaTiKtov owdpa Kai ompiKwv. n a Tipa)TT) <|>op€iv.” (Karand6nis 1980: 160). ... an entirely new cosm os of visual miracles that are at once real and dream-like. For the first time in our poetry, the boundaries are abolished between reality and its dream-like reconstruction. From 132

their abolition emerges the assumption of a new and unrestricted freedom for poetic creativity. This was Elytis’ prim ary historical contribution to the renewal of poetic “feeling” and “w riting.” Elytis reflects most closely on the relationship between w hat he perceives to be the vital parts of Neohellenism—nature, earth, landscape, people, language, artistic expression—and the living whole, or “organism,” in a brief essay written at the time of the Greek Civil War, entitled “H 0vyXP0l/Tl €\\T)ViKfi T6XVT) Kai o Zo>Ypa<|x>S N. XctTCriKvpidKOS ndKas” (“Contemporary Greek

Art and the Artist N. Hatzikiriakos Gikas”) (1947®). Like others from this period, this essay offers a narrative of Neohellenism’s cultural evolution from the first years of the newly established state to the mid-20th century. Furthermore, it Justifies the tortuous line of this development, particularly in the visual arts. The essay refers to the independent state of Hellas quite literally as the “apTiY€WTyro o p y a n a n d nov TTi/eupccTiKd Kivcfrai \|raOovTas aicdpatioTcp’ and

TT| v€Kpoccv€ioc Tcoodpoov ttiwvtov” (" recently-born organism , which remains culturally a liv e if searching even after 400 years of apparent d e a th ”) (Elytis 1982a: 408, my emphasis). One of the organism’s crucial parts, its spirit, historically struggled to find its voice. In vain it sought for years to give a self-sufficient 4 k fr a s is (“expression”) to the entire organism. Elytis’ aesthetic assumption is that artistic expression may shape matter by synthesizing discrete parts into a unified whole, which both obeys the rules for its own ideal organization. Like many of his contemporaries, Elytis tells a story of stubborn Impasse and remarkable breakthrough. Under the oppressive influence of western institutions, in this case the European secular arts, the “organism” 133 of Neohellenism found little room to develop an authentically “€X\T)nKl^ 4>0)vtf ”

(“Hellenic voice”) (1982: 408), and so remained effectively mute.^ That is to say, It was unable to synchronize its vocal parts so as to express its organic essence (in art and sculpture, the “plastic value" of the specifically Hellenic landscape) in a style that was its own, rather than western European. From the beginning, as the story goes, the educated elite freely accepted foreign Influences and attempted to graft these onto the cosm os of Neohellenism. Only a few hagiographers and some anonymous folk artists tried to “preserve” an older strain. The colossal differences in orientation between educated and uneducated artists left their mark of silence, or perhaps of Inarticulate expression, on Neohellenlc culture: “8u6 k6o|XOI

TTapa\\T)\O l OKOXOVQOW TO SpOJIO TOl/£, 0€VCCS |iO K pid CLTJ6 TTJ ^VOT^ K ai TO O ^plyO J TT)S

Cwife, o dxxos iiaKpid and tt)v Ka\\UpY€ia Kai ttj 8waT6Ttyra 6Troiao8fiiTOT€ avaTTpooapiioyife” (“two parallel worlds follow their own respective paths, the one far from nature and the youthful exuberance of life, the other far from cultivation and the possibility of any change”) (1982a: 408-409). Where the combined forces of native authenticity and education might have given a legitimate, indigenous, and cultivated expression to the landscape of Hellenism, instead the lack of common ground between autochthonous and cultivated products created an immense h a sm a (“chasm”): “TO€\\T)V'Ik6 rorno, oav a?(aTiXaoTiKfv anop^vei xwpfe Kapiav &$paor). H Attikt^ yrf, to Avyafo, 8e pptaKouv iv av dveptmro v’ aTio8uoei tt)v ouota tous |i€ jxidv dqieori xcipovopla”

(“the Hellenic landscape, as a plastic value, remains without expression. Until the third decade of the 20th century, the Attic earth, the Aegean, do not 134 find a single person to render their essence with one unmedlated gesture”) (1982a: 409, my emphasis). As Elytis continues his survey of Neohellenlc art in search of an artistic expression rooted in the soil of the nation, he discovers that when the European cultural center of influence shifted from Munich to Paris with “pseudo-classicism’s” demise, the interests of Neohellenlc artists correspondingly moved away from classical allegory to representations of everyday life. The emergent impressionist movement called for the complete

“BiaXuor) tu )V [iop(i)v peoa o’ eva opyio evTunwoeuJV” (“dissolution of forms in an orgy of impressions”) (1982a: 409). Hopes were again revived “6n^0ao€Ti

(fipa va ppet o t6ttos outos tt)V aueevTixf) tou &4>paory’ (“that the time had arrived for this topos to discover its authentic expression”) (1982a: 409). Yet the revolution of impressionism would ultimately run against the grain of the Hellenic landscape. European techniques once again proved “aOepomeuTa

avTvn\aOTU<6s Via tov t 6tto pas” (“incurably ‘antiplastic’ for our to p o s”')

(1982a: 409). The turning point in the Neohellenic organism’s search for an authentic form of expression tied to the Hellenic earth came in 1930, when a new generation of artists and poets began studying the native arts of Greece:

“ tti pa0UT€pri orpaotatt )s BuCavnvifc T€xvr)$,... t is xaP^S tou Xaou, Ta

X€ipoT€xWpaTa,tov KapaYKi6crv ...tov a8(8axTo vupoKdyo ((oypd^o ttis MunXfjvris

0€6i\o,... TaTiaXia BripoTiKaKctpeva, tov Epu)T6tcpiTO, tov MaKpvyidvvrr (“the

deeper meaning of Byzantine art,... the graceful works of the people, the handwork, Karagi6zls,10... the unschooled, itinerant artist of L6svos, 135

The6filos,11.. .the old vernacular texts of Erot6kritos12 and Makriy&nnis”) (1982a: 409-410). They also maintained a fixed gaze on artistic developments in the west, especially the cubist reevaluation of “plastic values.” By their twin orientation, they discovered that

6xtj auTfi T) voTopta yia to x&rpa nov avolycTai avapeoa otti veu)T€pT} t ^xvti Kai tt)v napdSoori8ev clvaiTiapaevas ptieos.... anevavTtas oip((€S twv virnr avTiXityeauv pploKovTai pveiopeves ouoiaonKd p£oa OT’apxaCa €K€(va X

the whole story about a chasm opening between modern [western] art and tradition was nothing but a myth. Instead, the roots of modern perceptions are found essentially grounded in those ancient soils which are watered by the concern for the discovery of some unchanging rules. It is important to note the metaphorical language in this passage, which calls attention to Elytis’ conception of both the determinant powers and self-sufficient values of the Hellenic topio (“landscape”). The image of a culture rooted in the generative antique hdm ata (“soils”) of Hellas allows Elytis to derive the rules of modern art from his own idea of Hellenism’s natural geometry. As in the beginning of the essay, where he describes the h is m a (“chasm”) between the cosm os (“world view”) of the European- influenced educated elite and uneducated traditional artists of Greece, here, too, Elytis represents the break between present and past, European high art and Byzantine or Neohellenic folk art, by the spatial metaphor of the h is m a (“chasm”). When he proceeds to describe how two discrete worlds manage to meet, however, Elytis shifts to the natural metaphor of the deeply rooted plant that grows in unchanging, ancient soils. To these hdm ata (“soils”) of 136

Hellenism, Elytis attributes the powers of not only enrichment, but also metabolism. The earth of Ionia, the southeastern Asiatic hinterland and its

Aegean shoreline, becomes “to oo^d xwveUT^pi TOW EXXTjviopou” (“the wise digestive track of Hellenism”), otherwise conceived as “Ta pd0T) tou opaSiKod

UTT00UV€i8f)T0U” (“the deepest spot in the collective racial unconscious”)

(1982a: 415). The Aegean is, in Elytis' eyes,

...tott€8(o [lias a<|>o[ioia)TiKife evdpycias eaupaoTife, to epyaoTfjpiOTiupfyajv Texvris ttou anoTeXeaave to i/to tc pepuca and Ta m<5 peyaXa puoTucd t t \s cniTvxias tou EXXriviopou.... STa TrpooaJKpanKd xpdvia, ott)v €XXt)viotikt) Kai tt)v TraXaioxpioTiaviKfi ott[ BuCavnvfi Kai tt[v ToupKOKpaTotipcvTi aKdpa n€p(o8o, oi aXXr|XO€TTi8pdo€is Kai oi a m p in s 8€v ftratyav va orpcioavovTai OTa pd6r) too opaSiKod urroouveiBfyrou.... H tiaXid AiyurmaKf) auoTTpdTTyra, r\ Apapucf) eeppt) Kai xXi8t^ to aTcypd Kai aoKT)TiKd w ei/pa tt[S Svpias, t) nepoiKf) xPw^aT1-K^ alo0T[OT[ Kai pu0poxoy(a nepvow and to oo$d xwveuTfjpi TOU EXXTJVlOpoti, aiTOpdXXOW TO TOTTlKd TfXaOTlKd TOUS l 8 lu)pa, xdvOUV TT)V trpoc^oxfi TT|S vncppoXfis tous,... pcTOuowovovTai oc TTpdnma via, cvtcXcos upooamiKd, atip^ouva pe Ta KTipuypaTa tou tyoTds Kai ttjs eniTay^s tt^s yf^s OTTOU ea OTa0odl/. (I982a414-415)

....the field of a miraculous assimilative energy, the laboratory of nuclei of art which constituted always some of the greatest mysteries of Hellenism’s success From the time of the pre-Socratic philosophers through the Hellenistic, early Christian, and Byzantine eras, and even during the Ottoman occupation the exchange of influences and mixture of cultures never ceased to m ark the deepest spot in the collective racial unconscious.... [In] the wise digestive track of Hellenism, Egyptian, Arabic, Syrian, and Persian [influences] lose their local plast idiom... and take on a new, exemplary essence which is also purely personal in accordance with the rules of light and the commands of this earth where they will now stand. In Elytis’ view, Neohellenism recovered its authentic voice only when

its artists entered into “Kowwtapc to ouoiaOTiKd Trepiexwpevo tt)s veo€XXT)ViKifc TipaypaTiKdTf|Tas” (“communion with the essential content of Neohellenic

reality”) (1982a: 415). They achieved this “communion” not by slavish philology or chauvinistic nationalist sentiment, but “p€ plav aTTXV) pio\|/vxt-K^ 137

Tipo(60T|OT) OTIS Tnyy^S...” (“w ith a simple bio-psychological movement toward the sources...”) (1982a: 415-416). At its “deepest” level, the telos of their “bio-psychological movement” toward authenticity was classical antiquity itself. At an intermediate level, they reached “pcs

ToupKOKpaToDpevov Y^vous cos t o Bu(avno” (“into the memory of the race from

Byzantium to the Turkish occupation”) (1982a: 416). At the very surface,

“ei;0lK€l(DV0VTCa oxolva Kai TI€plOo6T€pO p€TT\ XalK1*l aVT(XT^T) Kai PplOKOVTai

uoioXoyiKd evappoviop^voi p€ t o aloeripa Kai t i s Kivifaeis ttov Ka0op((ow t o x # a t t j s V'€0€XXt)VIK1^s (cotis” (“they become more and more familiar w ith popular sensibilities and find themselves naturally in harmony with the feeling and movements dictated by the soil of Neohellenic life”) (1982a: 416). Because Elytis links the landscape so inextricably to the fate of the Neohellenic “people” in his cosm os, he can assume that “harmony with the feelings and movements dictated by the soil” follows “naturally” from an artist’s familiarity “with popular sensibilities.” He views the Spirit of “the people” projecting itself directly onto the Neohellenic top/o (“landscape”). He also proclaims that the artist must capture and develop this image. Elytis consistently places the needs and perceptions of “the people” alongside the forces of “nature” in an unspecified contiguity. They are the two constituent parts of a Neohellenic cosm os. By a grammatical closeness to “the soils” of the Aegean, the Neohellenic /ads (“people") is made to reproduce even “the traditions of the ancients” as naturally as the sun shines in the Aegean:

E8(fi, axf)0€ia, Ta yupvd ppdxia, to $ojs,oi dvcpoi ki oi avdyK€S twv auxiijv avBpoimaiv fywv vnavopeuoei Ta irdvia.... Ati’ aim^ tt)v diTot|rn o 138

vco €\X t^vik 6 s Xa6s ouv€^C€i KaTcvedav ttiv Tiap<£8oori tov apxatov. BploK€Tai pcoaoto Tiveipa tou (8 iov ttoX itio iio v ttov I^Taoe va pcXeiloei t <5oo paeid Kai tipwTdiuna piav aTTXf) opic6vna ypappTv 0)S, p € TT)V Cl-aipCTlKf) TTOl^TT^Ta TOV, p ^O a OTO K^VTpO TOV CXXt^VlOpOV, TO AvyaCo, SiaTtpel t t ) v TTapdt 6oor|.... (Elytis 1982a: 412-413)

Here, in truth, the bare rocks, the light, the winds, and the needs of the simple people have dictated everything.... From this perspective the Neohellenic la d s (“people”) continues directly the traditions of the ancients. It lies within the spirit of the same civilization which “managed to study with such depth and originality a simple horizontal line and made it curved, introducing feeling back into the heart of geometry.” The light, with its exceptional quality [is] at the heart of Hellenism, the Aegean, preserves this tradition.... Elytis further suggests that the contemporary artist can link his own work to the vernacular traditions of the ancients (including the products of classical, byzantine, and ottoman-occupied Hellenism) by drawing on the natural reserves of the landscape. This is his perplexing formula for Neohellenic modernism, a paradox which links the autonomy of artistic activity with the determinations of the soil and expressions of the people. For Elytis, contemporary art should appear as an authentic product of soil, land, and blood. To achieve this, the modern artist must first learn to "read” the landscape: to peruse the contemporary scenery, to study national traditions, to cultivate indigenous forms (including both the “light of the Aegean” and local folk expressions), and thus to excavate and discover the Hellenic cosm os which preexists within. Only then will modern art be able to reproduce the spirit of the people in the well-ordered poetic world, which clearly and unimbiguously expresses Neohellenism by its perfect analogy to a transhistorical cosmos. 139

Demoticism and the Discourse of Populism Elytis’ assumptions about the poet, the people, the earth, and the traditions of the ancients are largely sustained by the discourse of populism, which has thrived in Neohellenic intellectual circles from about the turn of the century. I call populism a discourse , 14 because it comprises a complex of signs, techniques, strategies, and truth-claims that compete for the power to organize Greek social practices and political and cultural life. Foremost is the sign of the la d s (“people”) , 15 with an interesting range of signifiers, including the palik& ri (“young man”), fa n d ir o s (“foot-soldier”), k idft is

(klepht), R om ioslni, 16 Karagi6zis, 17 MakriyAnnis , 18 The6filos,

KazantzIdis/MarinSlla , 19 Vuyukl&ki , 20 and, more recently, Andr 6as/Mimi.21 By means of these signifiers, the discourse of populism conveys the message that “virtue resides in the simple people, who are the overwhelming majority, and in their collective traditions” (Wiles 1969: 166). Furthermore, it promises self-governance through self-assertion. The sign of the people as the carriers of true culture is incorporated in a very powerful account of recent history which claims to assert the truth about the “people” by unfolding its meaning in time. The story goes something like this. While the “people” persist unconsciously in the cause of

harmony and continuity, some unwanted conspirator (the educated pedant , 22 the elitist westernizer, rationalism, the amoral capitalist, the foreign invader or, more abstractly, the “System”) tries to disrupt the integrity of the “people’s” life and break its ties to the land. The project of the conspirator is to affix alien structures (an artificially constructed language, 140 w estern clothing, non-Greek rhym e schemes, a foreign king, foreign institutions) onto native foundations. When carried out, this leads to catastrophe. The “people” must then combat the ill effects by relying on the existential necessity of their identity. This conspiratorial narrative produces a set of dichotomies (native/ foreign, majority/minority, direct/mediated, nature/culture, people/scholars), which create, in turn, an Internal sense of belonging and outward sense of otherness. The discourse of populism thus not only expresses the struggle against domination but also contests for the right to represent the “people, ” on whose behalf it claims to speak. It warns, finally, against the intrusion of an elite minority, whose aim is “to check the majority opinion of this people” (Lazer 1976: 259), and counterproposes a “theology of roots arrayed against the ‘impasse of western thought’”

(Likiard 6pulos 1983: 9). As a discourse, populism may penetrate a variety of relatively autonomous fields, institutions, or movements: history, anthropology, folklore; culture, education, politics; the M egili Idta, demoticism, etc. In politics, the appeal to a single, undifferentiated community is a gesture of coalition-building, directed ultimately toward reconstituting the middle class.23 Assuming the common cultural background and aspirations of this group, the discourse of populism aims to create a national audience by offering a coherent mythology. It addresses issues of national crisis in terms of territorial determinism, native authenticity, and national identity. Its 141 implicit goal is to escape from the burden of history by defending the beauty, simplicity, integrity, and purity of the “community. ”24 The populist image of the la d s (“people”) served to regulate Greek culture from the late-19th to the mid-20th century. An obvious example of the more crass regulatory effort is bureaucratic folkorismds (“folklorism”) which glorified an authentic national body and celebrated its spirit and traditions through officially sanctioned festivals and shows. These festivals, in fact, managed the activities of the lads (“people”), while appearing “paradoxically... [to] serve images of spontaneity and n a tv e td " (Herzfeld 1987: 13). More subtle is the case of the demoticist movement itself. A bold and coordinated attempt to write the modern vernacular language into high culture, Demoticism played a formative role in producing knowledge about the rural lads, its beliefs, customs, and forms of expression. Representatives of the literary and artistic movements which became prominent in the 1930s then revived arguments for native authenticity in the arts. In their works, they sought to negotiate the balance between an ideal of “ Ellinikdtita ” (“Greekness”) and the inevitable course of modernity, by aesthetically upgrading indigenous forms. Even a cursory glance at these important trends leaves the impression that populism has an important discursive history in Greek culture. Here I focus my attention on a particular category of statements and images which depict the ancient Hellenes in a modern village or urban setting. My Intent is to analyze representations of the modern Greek la d s (“people”) as the authentic carrier of classical civilization, and classical civilization as the 142 expression of the Greek lads (“people”). I will try to describe how, when, and w hy it became a sound option to claim, as Elytis does, that the virtues of ancient Hellenic culture re sid e or are present in the “people” of Neohellenism and in their collective traditions or institutions.^ How does it happen that classical Greek culture becomes a carrier of the message that Hellenism persists in the everday life of today? What complex of signs and truths makes it comprehensible to equate classical figures and texts with the ethos of the contemporary rural or urban Neohellene? What rhetorical figures of thought and tactical arguments erase the difference between past and present, rendering the “classical” an enduring expression of nature that has been preserved in the people’s voice? How and w hy do ancient authors, once venerated by the purist tradition in Greece, long prototypes for high art in western Europe, become emblems of the popular, demotic tradition—hence available for appropriation by the proponents of a vernacular culture? There are two significant moments in the development of the national- popular “myth of Greekness ”26 extending from the Classics to the home-spun philosophy of the k a fe n io n (“coffee-house”). The first is the proto- demoticist, “Romaic” (“Roman”) appropriation of ancient authors as “demotic” w riters; the second, the artistic incorporation of ancient images and texts as signifiers of Neohellenic culture. At this point I will discuss briefly the emergence of a demoticist ideology of the la d s (“people”) and its uses by Neohellenic modernist authors in their aesthetic theories. The differences between purist and demoticist attitudes toward the Greek people and their past are evident, for example, in a debate which took 143 place just after 1901 concerning the name and nature of Neohellenic national identity. I am referring to the discussion which followed the appearance of Aryiris Eftaliotis’ booh, tOTopia rtfs'PaJfilOOvyr)? {H istory o f Romiosini) (1901), with its promotion of R om io sini ("Romanness”) as a signifier of the national- popular body. 2? In the aftermath of the book’s publication, intellectuals lined themselves up either in defense of R om iosini or in opposition to its usage and defense of E llin ism d s (“Hellenism”). At issue was not only the national epithet, but also the cultural affiliation and historical self­ representation of contemporary Greeks. Although both sides appealed to the principle of continuity, they disagreed on its medium and surviving values. Exponents of E llin ism d s stressed the “unbroken continuity of the vio s (“life”) of the Greek d th n o s (“nation”) from the years of antiquity, through the painful era of slavery under the Turks, until the restoration of a free fatherland” (Politis 1931: 132).28 What remained undisturbed from the age of Perikles to the Greek revolution was the value attached to national unity and the pursuit of military glory. This was best symbolized by “the name Hellene” (Politis 1931: 132), whereas it was ridiculed by the name Rom ids (“Roman”), whose origins lay in Roman conquest of Greeks. The advocates of R om iosini claimed, to the contrary, that evidence of Greek continuity resides in the nation’s single unbroken tradition, the oral

and folk culture of the p eo p le. 29 They extolled the Byzantine and Ottoman- Christian popular heritage, with its demotic language and folk songs, alongside an idealized ancient genealogy. They argued, furthermore, that this heritage was best represented by the name R om iosini, a word which 144

has “KdtTl Tl TT01T)TIK(X Kai |iOUOlKd XP^paTlO^VO, Kdn Tl 4>T€pU)T<5, Xep^VTlKO y ia lias Kai avaXa^po, nov vop(Ca) tto j s 8ev t6x€i o EXXt^vio^os, pe 6 X tj t t ) papia t o u aoaXeuTT^ ji€YCtXoirpencia” (“something poetically and musically colored, something winged, manly, and light—something that E llin ism d s does not possess, with its heavy, unmoving grandeur”) (Palamds 1962: 279). In celebrating the survival of a continuous religious and folk tradition, rather than the revival of a glorified classical past, the champions of R om iosini highlighted the everyday contributions to the formation of Greekness made by the lads in the course of its history, especially during the Byzantine and Ottoman periods. Yet these demoticist authors did not denounce outright the values of Hellenism or the classical origins of Greek culture. One must point out that the demoticists never finally selected Rom ids over 'E llinas as the chosen epithet for the Greek people; nor did they renounce the word 'E llinas .30 Instead, they rendered the two names equivalent titles of honor, keeping both in circulation. The reason for this was that both appellations had eminent origins and bore witness to the twin glory of Greekness. As

Psihdris argued in “Pu)p.i6s K ai Pw|iioauvi\”

0 ...N. r. noX(TT)S &>€l{;€...TTU)ST’ 6V0[ia'EXXT)V €X€lKai OTO ll€Oa(U)VO, €X€lKai o t o BuCdvno Ta nepYcqiTivd t o u . 0 TlaXa^ds eSeile... ttoos o Pu>|jli6s eiTave, Kai o t t ) s EtiavdoTaoTis Ta xp 6via, 6vo[ia dyio Kai n ^ e v o . Tdoo t o KaXuTepo X o itt6 v av €X€oupi€8 u6 8o|;€S a v n |n a.... Aev eitrc Kavevas va |j€pa<|>Ttoovp.€ tt)v EXXd 8a Kai v a rn v Kdvoupie pao(\€io PainatiKO.

.. .N.G. Politis showed .. .that the name t llin a s also has its legitimate credentials in the middle ages and in Byzantium... [and] Palamds showed that R om ids was a sacred and honorable name even during the years of the Revolution; so much the better for us to have two glories 145

rather than one.... No one said that we must re-baptize Greece and make it a Romeic Kingdom. (1903: 51) Although the folklorist 'Alki Kiriakidu-NAstoros refers to PsihAris’ argument as a “OVUPipaoTiKi'j Xl3oT|” (“solution of compromise”) (1975 : 224), PsihAris seems rather to have offered a solution of profit. His view allowed demoticists to appropriate all aspects of the national past, including its most valued cultural possession, ancient texts—an area under contestation which no one could afford to relinquish. Thus, precisely while material from post- classical periods was incorporated into discussions of Greece’s history 31 and Byzantium was becoming more indispensable for the project of revising the contemporary cultural orientation , 32 demoticist authors began to translate the ancients into the demotic idiom .33 As Dimitris Tzi6vas has observed: With these translations, demoticists not only attempted to cast the ancient texts in the form of the modern language, but to put their seal on them by using demotic language, folk diminutives... and dekapentasyllavos (“15-syllable verse”), which w as considered by them to be the national verse form. (TziAvas 1986: 78) During the first phase of Demoticism, then, the struggle for the power to interpret Greek history and set the parameters of Greek culture took place largely on the basis of language and folklore. The demoticists’ goal was to overpower the languages of historical origin and purity with their own glorification of an authentic folk culture. Populism was one rhetorical strategy which demoticists used to counter purist appropriations of the ancient past. It proved capable of depicting the apologists of kathartvusa (the “purist” language) as conspiring, elitist, semi-educated fools, whereas the demoticists were assumed to be the authentic representatives of the folk, with direct access to its language and oral culture. 146

In the effort to reclaim the classical past for a vernacular tradition, PsihAris’ best-known work, To ragiSifJLOV (“ My Journey"} (1888)34 is certainly a tour de force. It even advances a controversial position on the Homerische Frage, the question of the composition and language of the Ilia d and Odyssey and of the existence of an historical “Homer.” In the relevant scene of his fictionalized Journey, the narrator records his disagreement w ith a Chian native who points to the place on the coast where Homer might have w ritten the first Rhapsode of the Ilia d . The narrator responds categorically:

O'Onipos 8cv £ypaavTaola 8 e v t 6t c s evas dvGpumos [i6vos- elxe 6 X05 0 Xa6 s... (PsihAris 1979: 116-117)

Homer didn’t write, because he didn’t know how to w rite.... A single Homer did not exist. Homer was many people. Greece thus proved itself to be a very rich topos, where one poet w as not enough; it produced many poets at once, all of whom wandered here and there throughout Greece, each telling his own tale.... Poetry and imagination w ere not the possession of a single person, but of the whole people {la d s). Here it is argued that the Homeric epics derive from neither a written source nor a single historical poet. Indeed, these poems represent the composite oral creation of a plurality of anonymous authors who, like contemporary illiterate villagers, created and “stitched together” poems in the spirit of demotic songs. Thus, the ancient rhapsodies are no different from demotic songs, “Homer,” finally, is none other than the lads (“people”) of antiquity who spoke the vernacular language and produced folk poetry. 147

The theory which PsihAris adopted in this passage w as first advanced by the German philologist F. A. Wolf. Wolf’s work, the Prolegomena ad H om erum (1795), aroused great controversy in European circles and instigated a debate which has yet to be resolved.In this work, Wolf describes a 400-year oral tradition begun by some “Homer” in approximately 950 B.C., gradually written down by a series of authors, and deliberately revised even after its redaction. Wolf thus argues that it would be wrong to attribute the Homeric poems to a single creator. Of course, it makes sense that an age which saw German Romantic poets turning to the Volk as a source of inspiration and scholars collecting popular tales should also have produced a philological argument that the Ilia d and O d yssey were orally composed and enjoyed a plurality of authors. PsihAris, too, adapted “Homer” to the spirit of his times and the purposes of his own cultural project. What is remarkable about his theory is its conflation of Wolf’s arguments w ith linguistic Demoticism. If the Homeric poems could be conceived as the products of multiple authorship and anonymous oral composition, might it not also be argued that they were a string of folk songs composed by, for, and in the language of, the “people”?36 In his effort to align the linguistic and cultural borders of the nation with the Greek vernacular (1979: 39), PsihAris makes room for “Homer” whom he transports from an antiquated past into the everyday present. He thus remaps the boundaries of the authentically “Romeic” to include not only the demotic songs of R om iosini but also the rhapsodies of Homer. 146

By this gesture, PsihAris claims the right to Interpret Greece’s past, as well as to define its present and circumscribe the course of its future. Since “Homer” is, according to PsihAris himself, a weighty precursor for a modern nation which feels nothing if not the v ir o s (“burden”) (1979:167) of the past, he is charged territory—someone who must be given a position in the vanguard of a forward-moving demotic culture. He fits this culture best when conceived not as not the unique genius belonging to a chosen individual, but as the exceptional, vibrant Spirit belonging to no one in particular and everyone in general: to the village, to speech, to vulgarity, to simplicity, to the present. A sign of what the G rekI (another vernacular expression for “Greeks”) are, rather than where they come from, “Homer” becomes the national communal organism diligently at work spinning its copious traditions.

Neohellenic Modernist "Form’’: An Internal Sense of Belonging In the struggle to define national identity, the first wave of demoticists prevailed in the cultural sphere but not in the state apparatus. In fact, the state did not adopt the Greek vernacular as its official language until the late 1970s. Intellectuals and poets who emerged in the 1930s provided w hat might be called the metaphysical foundations for the later

state recuperation .37 This group of writers, from TheotokAs to Karand 6nis, DimarAs to Linos Politis, Emblrikos to Elytis, made the boldest move in appropriating all aspects of Greek history, including the ancient Greek, for a

national, “popular," and “high” vernacular culture .38 They managed to 149 redefine the production of high culture as a continuation of a Neohellenism’s communal self-formation. As heirs to the cultural project of Demoticism, Neohellenic modernists adopted many demoticist views about the past. They imagined a “people” quietly perpetuating its living traditions, even while a self-serving, prejudiced elite minority or narrow-minded, foreign powers sought its dispossession by external intervention. Modernists also shared the demoticist’s goal of reshaping and integrating primordial material into a more contemporary and elevated vision of Hellenism. But the Key to their broader success was that they framed their project as the “continuous renewal” (DimarAs 1972: xiii) of the Greek tradition through the recovery of forgotten links with the past—overlooked but authentic manifestations of Hellenism. Although they in fact effected this “renewal” through the eclectic assimilation of foreign influences into a demoticist cultural framework, they were rhetorically able to identify the act of modernizing Hellenism’s form with that of giving Hellenism its

authentic vernacular expression. 39 This was their strategy: to reconcile the demoticist ideal of an unrestrained, unlearned orality with the literary modernist requisites for a self-referential textuality—a tall order indeed, and their degree of success was frequently under question, as one might well Imagine. Yet the formula of their project remained unchallenged. This involved paying close attention to Hellenism’s internal “form” in all phases of its development before capturing its contemporary manifestations. It is 150

important to note that the “neoteric,” properly aesthetic 40 element in the critical and artistic work of Elytis and his contemporaries was its systematic consideration of M-Op^ (“form”) . But perhaps we should specify what is meant by “form,” so that we do not automatically assume that the Greek notion coincides with a European Modernist standard. When Elytis refers to his contemporaries’ (notably the artist Hatzikiriakos-Gikas’) successful rendering of the Hellenic landscape (Elytis uses the term “plastic value” for the visual arts), he assumes that form is an essential shaping principle in the widest sense. Although apparently mutable with the passage of time, form is nevertheless a transcendental essence, the ideal organization of a living organism. Whatever in the make­ up of the object welds all the parts into the whole and, in addition, both gives “voice” to the whole and assists an observer in perceiving this organic whole is its form. Since outward manifestation (perception) may change with time and place, the artist must discover the ideal shaping principles which make sense under a specific set of (historical, geographical, climatic, cultural) conditions. But what remains the same is the rule of immanence: the identification of principles of structure and principles of nature: Furthermore, artistic expression must recover the spiritual dimension of the landscape. It Involves a communion of language and soil. The most extensive consideration of “form” appears in an essay

appropriately entitled “To TTpdpXrpa ttis fiop^ife” (“The Problem of Form”)

(1946), written by Elytis’ contemporary, the architect and theorist Dimitris

Piki6nis. Piki 6nis defines “p op^” (“form”) as “T)uvevpanicdTTiTa totjttis tt)S 151

rns” ("the spiritual dimension of this [Hellenic] Earth”) (Piki 6nis 1985: 206).

He presupposes an absolute “TCtUT^TTjTa tojv apxa)V vr\s Sopfis... p€ t i s apx&tt)S

In order to determine “Tl oxcoti elvai tovtt)tiou pas 8 £vei p[e to v Koopo

TOV €XXT)VIk6] ” (“what relationship it is that binds us to [the Hellenic cosm os]”) (1985: 206), Piki 6nis studies fragments from centuries of civilization on Rhodes. He very eloquently argues that the spiritual radiation of antiquity, the true value of ancient aesthetics, lies in its discovery that the beauty of the human body (as manifested in sculpture), the essence of the physical world (architecture), and the power of soul and mind (philosophy), reveal the beauty of the divine. The Byzantine world supplements this with the belief that the grace of the “vnepouoios” (“super­ being”) (1985: 212) sheds mystical light on every form of expression. Everything depends on incarnation, which, in turn, relies on the identity of principles of structure with principles of nature. The Importation of western aesthetics into the Greek world breaks this absolute identity. We see false, foreign shapes grafted onto Hellenism, where first the Frankish and then the Italian occupying force made every effort “va paXei TiavTOu tt) s Tiapouotas to u tt) opay(8a otov €XXt)vik 6 to u to t 6tto.

EtuPoXti tw v SiKuiv pas p^Tpajv, Ttov 8 ikg6v pas vnoeeTiKwv alju&v airava) o to u s dXXovs, nou c8a) natpvei t t i p o p ^ pias au0a(p€TTis Tiap^ppaoTis o to ‘Kappa’ ev6s

Xaoij, evos CKpiaopou apaoTayou yia tti ouveiSipri rnv cXXtivikti” (“to add the seal

of its presence everywhere in this Hellenic topos. This imposition of [their] 152 own measure, [their] own ideal values onto those of others... takes the form of a high-handed intrusion on the ‘karma’ of a people, an unbearable rape of the Hellenic consciousness”) (1985: 208). Although the Ottoman occupant comes nearer to realizing an Hellenic ideal, the spirit of Hellenism truly remains intact only in the “h d m a ta ” (“soils”) and hearts of the “la d s” (“people”) (1985: 207). And it is finally the common man who keeps alive the “shapes and essences of antiquity”:

Nai, (6 i p£oa [o to Xa6] o edog orrdpog. Z€ir\ TravdpxaiT) xaxia to u . Kai pv0po( «ai peXT) Kai oxifaaTa Kai ovotcg an’ Tovg tiavapxaiovg XP^vovs, 6uov TouTa fyrav opiopevo va avXXT)eovv€ Kai ttov av v£(aivav ov8’ o 0e6g o (8iog 86 6a piropovoe v a t ’ avaoT^oci.... IY o v t 6 k i t\ povXri to v €8(6opioe va (ovve vXavp£va, paKpid air6 tt)£ loToplag Tig aKp^g Kai Tig napaKp^g,o to v anxov to nvevpa Kai ttiv axaXaoiri TT|g\|rvxifc to v tt)v 6 cttXti(t|, yia. va Ta napaxdpei aTT6 K€lOTTOUynfc. (1985: 220)

Yes, in him live the divine seed, ancient speech, and the rhythm s and musical modes, the shapes and essences from ancient times. Here it was destined that they be conceived. If they were to die here, not even God himself would be able to resurrect them — For this reason it was His will that they be preserved here—hidden away, far from the peaks and declines of history, in the spirit of the simple man and the unspoiled surprise of his soul—so that the poet could take them over from here.

As we have seen, Piki 6nis is not alone in arriving at the conclusion th at educated Neohellenes must investigate the Spirit of the people so as to uncover the eternal “shapes and essences,” or form, of Hellenism. It should be noted here that Seferis, too, anticipates that the soul of the people can reveal something transhistorical to the poet and intellectual: “Tovg apxalovg,

av e&ovpe irpavpaTiKa va Tovg KaTaXapovpe, e a irp&iei TidvTa va epevvovpe vr\v

xjruxii TOV Xaov pag” (“If we really want to understand the ancients, we must

always investigate the soul of our la d s”) (Seferis 1981b: 257). The purpose 153 of high a rt is to cultivate for the “people” their own viable understanding of Hellenism in all its manifestations, including antiquity. But it is especially Elytis who places the “needs of the people” alongside the Hellenic landscape as constituent, even determinant elements, which structure his poetic cosm os. The “natural” community, like the landscape, orders itself according to the rules of immanence. The poet’s task is to develop a contemporary form, to give to the Spirit of Hellenism its contemporary manifestation. And, contradictory as this combination of elements may appear, Elytis argues that modernist (specifically surrealist) techniques can ground Neohellenic artistic expression in the soul of the people and the determinant powers of the landscape. In sum, Elytis’ project is to overcome linguistic aridity by making the poetic language of Neohellenlsm so luminous that it represents the natural “orthography” of the Hellenic world. To put it yet another way, Elytis’ poetry gives form to the idea—expressed most succinctly in his most recent essay, entitled “ Aiyidoia Kai iSWTlKa” (“Public and Private Matters") (1990)—that “Ta 8(066^CK€l©€ TOO Avyafov X^dTa” (“places here and there in the soils of the Aegean”) bear signs of the “noXvaiwiaa napouoia TOU eXXT^viapoti” (“many-century presence of Hellenism"). In the eyes the

modern peot, key spots on the “the soil of the Aegean” actually become

... plav opeoypa^ta, 6ttou to xdee loplya, to icdec ttyixov, T) xdee ol-cla, T) xdee \moy€Ypanii^VTV 8ev c (v a i napd evas koXttkSkos, \l w KaTW^pcia, pua KdecTT) ppaxou Tidva) oc pia KapnvXT) Trpupvas nXcovncvov, KvnanoTol 0|itt€Xg5v€s vnlpevpa €kkXt)oiu)v, aonpdiua fj KOKKimia, e8d) fj exel, an 6 vepiorepwwes xai yXdoTpes [i€ ycpdvia. 154

... an orthography, w here each omega, hypsilon, accent m ark or iota subscript is nothing but a small bay, a slope, the vertical line of a rock [superimposed] on the curved line of a boat’s stern, winding grapevines, the decoration over a church door, the red and white colors dotted here and there from pidgeonhouses and potted geraniums. (1990: 8-9) Not only does Elytis desire to disintegrate the duality between world and representation. He tries to recover the cosm os where nature offers its own “orthography,” or correct spelling. Language is purified not because its universe is cleansed of worldly referents, but because each irreducible worldly element finds its proper cultural space. When the Hellenic language recovers its natural “orthography,” it comes to spell perfectly “this cosm os the small the great”—Elytis’ toposoi Hellenism. Elytis’ elision of the move from language to landscape, orthography to nature, is not incidental to this passage, but eminently programmatic. Here, again, we find his work slipping silently back and forth between discursive and spatial representations of an autonomous cosmos, each co-determining the other. Elytis draws his monuments of the landscape—everything from the “small bay,” and the “curved line of a boat’s stern” to the “pidgeonhouses and potted geraniums”—from the vast storehouse of topoi that appear in his own poetry. These are the distinctive, irreducible segments of Elytis’ poetic cosm os They do not correspond to a actual physical elements and objects, but to the proper ordering of words and images in his own poetry. Thus “orthography” is the latent movement of his poetry from language toward a Neohellenic “entopia”41—an internal sense of its belonging to the Hellenic people and landscape. It is the tendency of Elytis’ poetry to cultivate the aesthetic potentialities of words and Images in 155 a way that makes tham fit “naturally,” as it were, into a particular cosm os. In this cosm os, as I have mentioned, the “people” (lads) are said to “project” their own image in the h dm ata (“soil”) of the Aegean topio (“landscape”). In fact, a fundamental presupposition of Elytis work is that the Neohellenic expression is, in its purest form, an extension of the natural world, with which it ideally finds itself in absolute communication. In the essay under discussion, Elytis expresses the wish that the objects of everyday life, the “phonemes” of artistic expression, be “in continuous communication with the sun” (the element his poetry nearly worships), like the plant which automatically turns to the sun to obtain “the necessary chlorophyll”;

Navnapxei Kai 71’ avTa p ia 4>a)T0Ta^(a ttov, 6tt(ds €Jjao<|>aXlC€i oTa <|>vTd tti XXwpo^rijMri tt)v aTTapalTT)TT) 71a va avavewvovTai aevaa...vattt) 8ovv and tov £va otov a \\o aiwva Kai vaTicpvovv peXovics trava) oto 8 eppa tov xpwvov.... Av 6xitittot€(xX\o, €‘[l€l8liKaT0lKO1jp€OTal8 iaXU)p.aTa. (1990; 18-19)

if there existed a kind of phototropism, which helped [eras of Hellenic] civilization leap from one century to another and stitch through the hide of time, just as phototropism assists plants in obtaining the necessary chlorophyll for their eternal revival.... [I would like this f]or no other reason than that we dwell on the same soil. Clearly Elytis’ desire for a cultural “phototropism” should be placed alongside his idea that a civilization which respects its natural “leanings” can in effect “leap” through time and bind itself to eras of its cultural history that are temporally distant but physically grounded in the same h dm ata (“soil”). In fact, what unites these two ideas is their incompatibility with the premise of autonomy shared by the international 156 movements of western Modernism. By Its novelty of form, Modern art both announced a clear break with the history of art and refused to subject Itself to external contingencies such as the demands of national politics. But—as critics are now asking of Martin Heidegger’s critical project after 1935—is the effort to establish a “tie between art and the grounding of the ‘world’ of the people” (Goux 1989: 14) necessarily contrary to the assumptions of modernist art? Does it it contradict a modernist aesthetic at its metaphysical foundations? Elytis, in fact, like Heidegger, proclaims his own modernity by dislodging the ego from the sovereign place of the center, while also resettling in the place of the ego a landscape and its “people.” Is this a repercussion against the disturbance of the modern—another reaction to the formal decomposition of culture? Or is it a legitimately modernist expression of rupture? In fact, one might argue that although Elytis’ idea of a physical grounding for art in the history and geography of a war-torn nation conflicts with the irreducible premise of artistic autonomy, it is nevertheless not entirely irreconcilable with the metaphysics of the Moderns. Here I refer to the idea that the subject achieves perfection within the self-enclosed realm of art. Within this purified space, the creation of art enacts a process of sometimes disfiguring self-formation. In Elytis’ work, however, modernist technique is used to give form to the poetic subject not as the disembodied voice of a solitary human being who quietly suffers social decomposition, but as a natural community of Hellenes marching forth through history to reclaim its cosm os from further foreign interference. Form expresses the 157 content not of a disfigured individual consciousness, but of Neohellenism’ communal awareness, which achieves perfection when it realizes the threat of external invasion. For a Neohellenic modernists such as Elytis, contemporary European techniques could be adopted to express Neohellenism’s self-formation against foreign appropriations of its own cultural expressions. (The paradoxical movement of asserting a pre-modern, non-western identity through western arguments and techniques is a salient feature of populism throughout Eastern Europe.42) Elytis in fact acquires interpretive authority and ideological power over the Greek past through the discourse of populism, which places the spirit of Hellenism in the heart of the la d s (“people”) and renders the poet the legitimate mediator not only between tradition and modernity, but also between Hellenism and its western usurpers. Thus it is Elytis’ assumed role to reclaim the antique past appropriated by western Humanism (and its bastard son, the kathardvusa, or “purist” national. language, invented by Adamindios Korais as a compromise between resurrecting Attic Greek wholesale and adopting the spoken vernacular), so as to transform it from a historical ideal into an eternal and luminous expression of the Neohellenic people and their landscape.

The National Body as Literary Palimpsest Elytis’ The Axion Esti is a culminating achievement in the effort to reclaim the classical, alongside the Byzantine and Ottoman Greek, as constituents of the national-popular body. In The Axion Esti, “Hellenism” is 158 relocated from its venerated historical conceptualization (the purist mode) and glorified folk setting (the proto-demotic mode) to a new topos\ the literary text. Although composed from the styles, fragments, heroes, and commonplaces of a select Greek corpus, The Axion Esti gives the impression of creating [iia Sued tou v€0€\\T|ViKf) pueoxoYla,

its own Neohellenic mythology directly from the landscape and customs, from the historical consciousness of freedom, from the mysteries of the Greek language, from Byzantine hymns and the liturgy of the Greek Orthodox Church, with its survivals of dionysian and eleusinian elements, and above all, from the sea, the sky the rocks, and the whitewash of the contemporary Aegean site. The overall strategy of the poem is to reterritorialize Hellenism from the remoteness of history to the immanence of form—the autonomous cosm os of the well-structured modernist poem. Inscribed in the pages of The A xion E sti a re ancient authors, mythical heroes, and canonical texts, which appear as if on the “entrails” of the “newly created” poet. The poet’s body is written through with mythical and Christian figures, classical, Biblical, and modern texts. It is also conflated with the autochthonous body of the “people,” as represented by the community of Hellenes—“an’dX€? tis yevUs Kai tis xpovies, dxxoi twv Twpivoov Kaipwv ki dxxoi noXXd naXiwv, nou *xav XeuKdvei art Ta ncpCooia ydvia” ("from all generations and ages, some from the

present some from ancient times, who’ve turned white by too much beard”) 159

(Elytis 1980: 31)—marching toward its destiny on the Albanian Front in World War II. But what exactly might it mean to read The Axion Esti as if it were, as Dimitris Dimirulis suggests, “£va TiaXtii^OTO6 ttou to K€lii€vo Kai oi CTTiKaXi3\|r€is tou cruooa)p€u0€(, avan€ix0€(, ouY?(ov€U0e( Kai 6iaoTaupa)0e(”

(“a palimpsest where the text and those that cover it have accrued, mingled, digested one another and crossed”) (Dimirtilis 1986: 315)? Perhaps we should fine-tune our image of the palimpsest (to which modernists themselves did not remain indifferent) so as to be able to describe with greater accuracy the composite effect of the modern poem. A palimpsest is the product of centuries of erasing and reinscribing a writing surface. The final product is a surface where centuries of layers m ay become visible, so that the “text” is a complex mosaic of various other texts which happen to show through in different places. One might say that the three parts of Elytis’ poem (“The Genesis,” "The Passion, ” and “The Gloria”) reflect the life of a palimpsest, reconceived as a self-fulfilling cosm os with a meaningful a rc h e and teios, “The Genesis” presents the dialectic of creation: the activities of erasing and rewriting which produce the palimpsest. In the “The Passion,” we find the populist narrative of a conspiracy to crucify the defiant nation-as-hero superimposed over older stories of Passion, including that of the ancient Greek and Romantic Prometheus and the Biblical and Liturgical Christ. Here the hidden layers, reemergent surfaces, and final Inscription all tell a story of near- fatal conflict, but nonetheless remain contradictory in their conception of the 160 powers In conflict. “The Gloria” offers a composite of “indigenous” expressions of Hellenism’s glorification. These become visible in the poetic “landscape” of the modern text by a process of self-reconstruction. The surface apparently recovers multiple layers of its ageless tradition, but in fact digests older layers into the most recent incarnation of Greekness. Although Elytis reflects pejoratively on the meditated usage of the written tradition , 43 he does not reject outright the literary appropriation of tradition. To put it another way, while Elytis describes his own work as a “TrptiJT'n Ypa^ to)W TipaYliaTCOV” (“primal inscription of reality”) (Elytis 1982c:

41) whose goal is to express the soul legibly,44 The Axion Esti nevertheless represents creation by the activity of reading. On the first day of “The Genesis, ” the creator unequivocally introduces “reading” as the poet’s first commandment for liv in g the newly-created cosmos. “‘EVTOM^ oou, 6llT€, auTds o k6ohos / m yp

TT0Xc|iT|0 €,’ €ITT€” (“‘Your commandment, ’ he said, ‘is this cosm os!and it is written in your entrails/Read and strive/and fight,’ he said”) (Elytis 1980; 13). Of course, the readable surface is not the literary text, but the poet’s “entrails. ” Yet the image itself represents a conflict between the natural body and the cultivated literary space. Nature and culture are then mediated by a personification of “memory itself” which takes on “TT) ... tcov S^VTptov, tcovKVfidTWV” (“the voice...of trees, of waves”) (1980: 13) when

it Introduces the poet to reading. The image of memory as a reservoir of words inscribed in the hearts or minds of mortals has its own literary history. In one conventional 161 ancient Greek metaphor, the faculty of memory is likened to a writing tablet of the mind. The phrase “iivr)p 6v€S 8 £\toi $p£vu)v,” is crucial to Io’s story in

Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound. The relevant scene follows Prometheus’ monologue, in which the hero enumerates his gifts to human beings. These include his discovery of “Ypannpdaa),/rjv ^yypd^iov ou [iWpooiv ScXtois ^pevwv” ("to you, first, I will declare your sorrowful wanderings, /which you must engrave on the memory tablets of the heart”) (/Clines 788-789). He then quitel literally maps out46 lo’s destiny. Her commandment is to inscribe this oral description onto the “memory-tablet” of the $pf)V (“the seat of thoughts and

emotions in living persons”47). Only thus will she be able to remember Prometheus’ words—to bring them out of storage, so to speak—and so recognize the signposts of suffering. The Axion Esti clearly recalls this image of the text inscribed within the body. Like the unfortunate Io, the poet’s fate rides on his ability to decipher this inscription. Like lo, too, the inscription is the equivalent of a miniature cosm os. Whereas Io is commanded to record and then recall what 162 is marked on her heart, however, the modern poet must re a d the body already engraved with the creator’s words. The act of reading is, in fact, what the poet learns from the creator during the seven days of genesis. The story of his initiation into the processes of reading “This small cosm os the great” is a prominent theme of “The Genesis”: here we are given a step-by-step account of how the poet learns to “read his entrails,” and so to understand the world both within and about. The poet first observes the creator’s act of writing: “0 AxeipoTTou)Tos/n€ to SaxTuXo eoupe tis paKpives/ypappe/avepaCvovTas k

\|rri*a pc o£utt)to/k

(“The One not made by human hand/drew with his finger the distant/lines/ sometimes rising sharply to a height/sometimes lower: the curves gently/ one inside the other”) (Elytis 1980: 14). Then the poet prepares a blank space, free of history: “p€ TT)V (JiT^pva opi^vovTas TT)V lOTopta” (“erasing

History with my heel”) (1980: 16). In a parallel action, the creator speaks and creates, first the sea, then “OTT) p^OTi tt^s ^otreipe Kdopous piKpovs KttT’ €iKOva Kaiopol(DOT| pou” (“in the middle of it he sows small worlds in my image and likeness”) (1980: 16). Each word brings into creation a new small cosm os. After a day of writing, the creator turns the poet’s gaze in the direction of the broad sky “yia va SiapaCeis p 6vos oov anepavTOOWTi” (“so that you read the infinite on your own”) (1980: 16). When the poet is charged “«ai tov tcdopo out 6v avdyKr) va tov px&rci- Kai va tov \apa(veis” (“to look upon and seize this co sm o s”) (1980: 17), he finally takes the first hard 163 steps toward reading. He clears a space of silence “...yta v’

4>66yywv koracles”) (1980: 17), then pronounces “Kpv

MIROLTAMITY, YELTIS”48) (1980: 18). When the creator describes these as

“ Aicpipd Xoyia,... optcoi TiaXaiol ttov eouoe o Kaipos Kai t\ olyovpT) cckot) tcov paicpivoov avepoov” (“‘Precious names,... ancient oaths, saved by Time and the sure ear

of the distant winds’”) (1980: 19), the poet understands that language is his most important weapon. He then prepares within his love-stricken “entrails” the seed for reading as re-creation: “Hpow OTOV etCTO pf)va tcov

epcoTcov/Kca OTa crnxaxvot pov oaXeve ott 6pos/Avtos/o «6opos o pucpos, o peyas” (“ I

was in the sixth month of my love / and in my entrails stirred a precious seed/This/ cosm os the small world the great!”) (1980: 19).

After a day of isolated study, or a skesis, “OTa xapTia ok\j<[>t6s Kai OTa

pipxla r amtepeva/... to Xeu «6 avaCi)TT)oa cos tt)v ijot

papers and bottomless books/... [seeking] whiteness to the utmost intensity of blackness”) (1980: 19), the poet comes to the end of his “Genesis.” Now he has completely located the text w ritten on his entrails and learned to read it productively. As he reads, his identity expands, and his body is occupied by 164

the creator god: “Kai out6s atofceia ttou fpwva/O troXkous aiwves nplv/O ai< 6pa

XMap6s pcs ott) ama 0 dtcoTTOs an’ tov oupav 6/n£paoe p£aa pov/ 'Eyivc outoj ttov €ipai” (“And the One I really w as,/the one of many centuries ago/the One still verdant in the midst of time, the One still bound to heaven/entered into me, became/the one I am”) (1980: 23). Finally he can identify his body with the cosm os written on his entrails. Through the oral recitation of his own natural “orthography,” he becomes “Avt 6s cyo) \ovn 6v/Kai o Koopos o |llKp 6s,o peyas” (“This I then and this small cosm os the great”) (1980: 24).

In “The Passion , ”49 the second part of The Axion Esti, the poet’s reading voice is juxtaposed with older layers of texts. The poem’s apparently primordial “orality” obfuscates books from the Old and New Testaments, Byzantine hymns, the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, demotic

Greek songs, the poetry of Dionisios Solom 6s, and the autobiography of MakriyAnnis. As the story of Passion progresses, images accumulate; the isolated hero becomes a modern transubstantiation of Prometheus, Christ,

The6doros of Mitilini, the naval leaders of the Greek War of Independence, and many, many others. It is possible to analyze how The A xion E s titt digests” classical works into its populist narrative of foreign interference and popular defiance by following one ancient thread in the poem: the very subtle references to the figure of Prometheus. Although textual allusions to Aeschylus’ P ro m eth eu s B ound are rarely obvious or certain, a comparative reading of the two texts is possible and illuminating. One can find a few choice passages from Aeschylus which are incorporated into Elytis’ altogether different narration 165

of suffering and conquest—the non-tragic^ myth of Greece’s unjust suffering before an evil and barbarous northern enemy. It is possible then to investigate how the ancient references are given a new setting in the modern text—imprinted, as it were, on the poet’s body, who is then commanded to “read” the cosm os of Hellas which preexists within him. The narrator identifies himself with Prometheus through his inventiveness, discovery of writing, recourse to the creative force of fire and mind, as well as through the circumstances of his victimization. In the final hour of Passion, the torment of Prometheus emerges on the surface of The Axion E stithrough several transparent allusions in this passage:

Hpeav lie Taxpwd oeipVyria T a TT€T€ivdt tov Boppa Kai Ttjs AvaToXifc T a 0T)p(a! Kai tt) odpKa pov OTa 8vo poipaCovTas Kai OTepva o t o ovkw ti hod endvw eptC ovTas £Tyyav. ‘Tia outovs , eurav, o Kanvds tt^s evotas, Kai yia pas ttjs

They came/with their gold stripes/birds of prey from the North and beasts from the East! After dividing my flesh in two/and quarrelling 166

finally over my liver/they left./ “For them,” they said, “the smoke of sacrifice/for us the smoke of fame, Amen.”/ We heard and/ recognized /the echo sent from the past./ We recognized the echo/and again sang in a dry voice./ For us, for us the bloodied iron/and thrice-worked betrayal..../ But you, in our hand you lit the star’s lamp/with your word! mouth of the innocent, gate of Paradise./ In the future we see the might of smoke/ the power and its kingdom/a plaything in your breath. Like Aeschylus’ Prometheus, Elytis’ poetic persona is betrayed by a powerful enemy, against whom he refuses to take up firearms. Indeed, the enemy’s “weapons and iron and fire” (1980: 42) are made weightier by references to Aeschylus. If Hermes threatens that Zeus will send his

“TTTT)v 6s> KVOV” (“winged dog”) (/inline 1022) to devour the Titan’s liver day after day, the enemies in “The Passion” likewise appear as “the birds of the North and beasts of the East” which “quarrel finally over the hero’s liver.” But the Manichean division in Elytis populist conception of a w ar-torn cosm os divided into parties of good and evil is made all the more apparent by its contrast to Aeschylus’ world of power-play, blackmail, and fierce negotiation. In fact, it is in this contrast that one discovers the clearest signs of Elytis’ populist revision of the literary past. In The Axion Esti, there is an absolute bifurcation of justice and power. The mouth of innocence, the force of good wielding the creative torch of poetic language, remains innocent of the knowledge of power. Its antithesis is the hegemonic power that wields the might of smoke. Forces from the north employ a destructive form of fire to extend and hold onto their unjust rule over the sun-filled south. The story of the conflict between these two cosmic forces, fire and sun, power and Justice, good and evil, offers a re-reading of Aeschylus tragedy which essentially ignores the anticipated reconciliation 167 between Zeus and Prometheus, while giving moral, rather than political, significance to the element of fire. Here it may be useful to return to the text of the Prometheus Bound, where fire, “TTav'T^xv'OV irvpds o£\as” (“the origin of the a rts”) for gods and mortals alike, becomes the focus of a power struggle between Prometheus and Zeus. Indeed, Prometheus, who steals fire from Olympus as a gesture of irreverence to the new ruler, has some interesting things to say about the place of fire in the cosmic order. In his opening and closing statements, he makes his counter-allegations against Zeus. He calls on the element of aether^ commonly translated as air or heaven, but also identified with fire— as a the first witness to his oath.51 Prometheus naturally avoids mention of the supreme god Zeus, from whom he is alienated, as his first witness. But it is particularly significant that he names “Stos al0lfc” (“illustrious

heaven”) {PB lin e 88)52 in the place of Zeus. Even in this invocation, Zeus remains powerfully present, since AIO2AI0HP (as the 5th-century BCE text might appear), can be interpreted as either 8lOS al0lfy> (“illustrious heaven”) or Aids at0ife (“heaven of Zeus, ” Al6s being the genitive case of Zcvs).

Prometheus addresses the aether again in the last lines of the tragedy as he falls into a new abyss of torment: “(SiravTtov/atOfip KOivdv aos elXioowv/^oopais p’tfcs €k8ikcx Trdoxto” (“0 aether/which rotates the common

light of all/you see how lawlessly I suffer”) (/Clines 1091-1093). The meaning of this passage depends on a specific Presocratic use of a e th e r which appears in fragments of Embedokles, Parmenides, possibly Herakleitos,55 and most certainly Anaxagoras.54 The image is of a gaseous medium which 168 carries the sun and catalyzes the sun’s combustion through its own rotation. This cosmic image of the a e th e r conforms with the etymological root, a e th - , which means “to light up, Kindle, or burn.” More important, the image assumes Knowledge of Anaxagoras’ cosmology. Anaxagoras was the first Ionian philosopher to taKe up residence in 5th-century Athens.55 At about the time when the Prometheus Bound was first produced in Athens, he was probably stirring up citizens with his scientific theories on the nature and order of the c o sm o s. In his cosmology, the sun, moon, and stars are fiery stones carried round by the “TT€piXWpT|OlS” (“rotation”) of the a e th e r. UnliKe “df)p” (“air”), a dense, most, cold, and darh element, the a e th e r is thin, dry, hot, and light, the equivalent of fire, as Aristotle informs us: “AvaijaYdpas ... 6vopa(€l yap alG^pa aim TTvpos” (“Anaxagoras refers to aether rather than fire”) (D e Caelo

A.3.270 b24). The author of Prometheus Bound could not have been ignorant of this cosmic theory or of Anaxagoras’ conflation of “aether” with fire. In the light of this conflation, Prometheus’ apostrophe to the A1O2A10HP is deeply suggestive. Whether taKen to mean “illustrious fire” or “fire of Zeus, ” it names the object of contention between Prometheus and Zeus: fire. In his closing prayer, too, Prometheus recognizes the role of fire in his suffering. He is now at the mercy of the same element which he wielded against Zeus. The sustained rotation and redistribution of the elements has made him, once the aggressive player, a “plaything” of fire. Thus Prometheus himself 169 admits in moment of deep despair, "vtiv8’ale£piovK(wYii’6 Td\as” (“now I, wretched on, am moved about by the aether”) (Offline 158).56 But Prometheus also describes himself as the chance victim of “wandering calamity. "57 In this case he uses the verb “TiXavdu)” (“to w ander”) which appears in medical discourse of Aeschylus’ time to denote “fevers that recur at regular intervals” (Griffith 1983: 138). Here Aeschylus extends the metaphor of moving fields of fire to explain the arbitrary suffering that befalls mortals and immortals. This is to give a sociological application to a cosmological and medical model. Within this schema of relentless elemental rotation, there is little room for individual agency or Just arbitration. As Prometheus struggles to designate Zeus’ crime against him, he suppresses his own role in disturbing the new ruler’s Just distribution of things ( ndm os ,) and renders himself its arbitrary victim. Prometheus’ rhetoric betrays his strategy, however, as he repeats forms of the same word over and over again in the opening section of the tragedy. 58 Through this repetition, the sympathetic chorus memorizes and internalizes his vague charge, and concedes that Zeus indeed “alid(€Tai

&T1410S” (“commits outrage unpunished”) (PB line 195), hence Promethus suffers “cdKfesTTfyxa” (“outrageous misery”) (/inline 472). In the process of explaining his current situation to the chorus, however, Prometheus provides valuable information about his struggle with Zeus. For his part, he admits to having erred on purpose: “&(DV, fyuxpTWV” (“willingly, willingly I missed the mark!”) (/#line 266). 170

It is logical to ask why he willingly disturbs the cosmic order and set it into furious motion. What has he gained by this disturbance.59 Certainly

Prometheus “the sophist” (as Hermes pejoratively refers to him: “ok to v 004>10T1^V”) (PB line 944) has something else in mind. The issue for him is one of survival for his generation and its descendents, the mortals whom the Titans created and civilized. The threat to every generation is its destruction by future generations. To this rule of violent succession, Zeus is not exempt. Just as “Z€vs... / Ta Tipiv TTeXaSpia vfiv aiOTOi”) (“Zeus vanquished the older generation of giants”) (C lines 150-151) and planned

“aXoTMOOLS ytvos I t 6 TTOtv <:XPT)tC€V &\\o 4>it0ocu ycvos” (“to replace m ortals with his own creation after destroying their race”) (/Clines 231-233), so his own offspring would “cc{it&v £k Tupavv(8os 0p6vwv r itiOTOV ^icpaXci” (“hurl him from his sovereignty and throne into oblivion”) (/Clines 909-910). The act of Prometheus’ stealing fire for human beings is an attempt to dispense arm s to Zeus’ surviving opposition. This is a first step in long-term negotiations for power by Prometheus and his kin. Prometheus takes up the cause of mortals not as a champion of justice and civilization over tyranny and barbarism, but as an power broker in search of allies. The mortals are a remnant of his own generation, whom Zeus intends to destroy in order to seal his absolute sovereignty. By passing the secret of fire onto them, Prometheus willfully moves to shift the scales for his alliance. This move sets the combustible elements of his cosm os into a violent, rotating motion. Prometheus takes a temporary beating. But he also holds another card. He knows precisely when and how Zeus will by vanquished by the next 171 generation as payment for usurping power. In an act of blackmail, Prometheus makes Zeus dependent on his own well-being, Prometheus advertizes (withouy letting out of the bag) his valuable foreknowledge.60

Throughout the process of negotiation, Prometheus stands “IkSikcT

("outside justice”) (PB line 1093) only because he removed himself from the protection of “Justice” when he Ignored Zeus’ regulations. This is in accordance with a conception of justice where the ruler determines what is just, as Prometheus himself declares: “t8 SIkcuov ZeiiS” (“Zeus holds

Justice”) (PB line 182). Justice is not arbitration by natural law, but a system for regulating community life. Due process of law is accorded only to the community member. Whoever takes a fateful step outside community life, whoever removes himself from the community by trespassing its regulations, becomes an “out-law.” He loses the right to seek legal reparations, so that he may experience outrage by the standards of community justice, without this outrage’s being labeled an unjust act. He stands, quite literally, “<-K-8iko,” “outside Justice.”

And so Prometheus’ cry of frustration at the end of the tragedy is in fact a cry of recognition: “You see how I suffer outside [Zeus’ system of] justice” (PB line 1093). His call for witnesses against Zeus’ outrage has met with meaningful silence from the ruling authorities. He has gained the sympathy only of a powerless chorus, which has learned from him “to despise traitors” (PB line 1607) because they upset the cosmic order. This lesson reflects as much on Prometheus in his relationship to Zeus as on Zeus in his relationship to the precursors whose power he eclipsed. 172

The Axion Esti adjusts the story of Prometheus to a populist narrative, according to which a native hero is victimized by a powerful outside intruder. In the poem, the Prometheus recalled seems to stand outside the sphere of power. No longer the mythical Titan who moves by way of blackmail through a contest of power which he has himself declared, the poem’s hero represents an innocent people blindly hopes for delivery from the external invador by the principle of Right. With justice transported from the sphere of power to the realm of saintliness, the enemy becomes a wholly pernicious force. This manichean reorientation allows the poem to balance an ancient Greek prototype of political defiance with the popular Christian narrative of Passion and Resurrection. This is to ignore, of course, the pre-Socratic conception of power, exemplified in the tragic conflict between Prometheus and Zeus, which permeates the Aeschylean drama—as I have shown. In The Axion Esti\ the figure of Prometheus is divested of its textual identity and philosophical context. It is made to fit snuggly into the familiar narrative of a nation suffering at the hands of the powerful userper who represents, in the words of Andreas Karand6nis, “anything foreign and northern,... European barbarism” (Karandonis 1980: 171). Native justice is served not by political negotiation, but by the intervention of natural forces: the Mediterranean landscape; “01 aiiliouBies TOV OliVjpov” (“the sandy shores of Homer”) (AE: 28).

“ Z to v aopeoTTi Tajpa to v s aXTieivovs jiou N6[ious k\c(v

In his populist revision, Elytis furthermore divests the figure of Prometheus of its textual identity and transforms him into a luminous image of Hellenism’s pure presence in a Neohellenic vernacular culture. It is within the whitewashed landscape of Elytis’ cosm os in The Axion Esti that Prometheus achieves a modern everyday incarnation. No longer an emblem of distant, pagan origins, he becomes another signifier of the beseiged Neohellenic “people,” the only true reserve of Hellenic culture. He is one more natural element in their cosm os, created in “The Genesis,” purified of foreign interventions in "The Passion,” and glorified in “The Gloria,” the final section of The Axion Esti. In this closing hymn of praise, Elytis offers a composite literary world made up of all the elements of Greece’s literary present and past which supposedly reveal the eternal greatness of Hellas. This is his Christian- pagan, saintly-erotic litany to the Hellenic cosm os. Here he joins mermaid and Madonna, common housewife and Penelope, a child’s unanswered question and the fragmented logos of Heraclitus. By juxtaposing the vernacular and classical, small and great in unlikely combinations, Elytis features the Neohellenic language’s apparent ability to invoke the sky and sea by their real, undiluted names— urands (“sky”) and th ila s s a (“sea”)—

“ctKpip(j5, ccKpipife 6tto)S o Pwiiavds, c8w Kai xU idScs XP^via, kcci

H<$vov4toi va pxenw aXifaeia t o yaXaCio to v aieepos V) V okovco t o p6x0o to v TTCXdtyovs” (“exactly as Sappho did, exactly as Roman6s did, for thousands of

years, and only thus to view in truth the blue of the ether or hear in thruth the roaring of the sea”) (Elytis 1982b: 321-322). 174

Elytis’ poem In fact reenacts a mystical union of the poetic word with the eternal Spirit of the topos. By this union, classical authors and texts such as the Prometheus Bound cease to represent the distance of historical origins. Instead they become signifiers of the “people,” the only retainers of a veritable culture. They achieve their modern incarnations in the form of condensed images of the everyday, which promise to reveal more about Hellenism than antiquity could reveal about itself in ancient garb. By the miracle of incarnation, then, the literary palimpsest incorporates older layers of culture and becomes the trans-hlstorical body and blood of the nation—the now and forever of Hellas. Although the theology of Elytis’ project may now be evident, its aesthetic ideology remains baffling. How can Elytis align himself w ith the protoporiakf (uavant garde”), when his poetry recenters poetic consciousness within a national space, always assuming the proximity of voice and being? Isn’t his conflation of poetry with the voice of the people in blatant contradiction to the modernist project—which decenters poetic consciousness, depersonalizes the text, and celebrates the abyss of linguistic signification that moves from signifier to signifer without ever reaching a signified? It is necessary to return now to the larger problem of the autonomous status of modernist poetry on the periphery of “mainstream” European movements. Here one discovers the difficult combination of an autotelic work of art and a populist intention. In the next chapter I shall offer a perspective from which the opposition between a modernist readerly text and a populist ideal of language as natural presence becomes a false dichotomy. 175

This is not to say that I reject an argument which I have put forth myself: namely that the inter- and post-War “renewal” of the arts in Greece systematically repressed the crisis of both representation and tradition which fuelled the modernist revolution of the arts in the West beginning in the late 19th century. It is easy to document such a repression in Greece.61 It remains impossible, however, to overlook the fact that Neohellenic poets and artists such as Elytis advertised their project (for both internal and external consumption) as “modernist,” even if their version of “modernism” meant a renewal of the Hellenic tradition. Furthermore, they adopted the techniques of European and American modernism—ellipsis, internal monologue, the uncontextualized quotation from older texts, the spatial, rather than narrative, organization of poetic material. To close my discussion of Neohellenic modernism, then, 1 should like to take up the matter of how the aesthetic project of modernity traveled from its European center to the archeological haven of Hellas. More particularly, I intend to show how Neohellenes proposed to g ro u n d in Hellas an internationalist movement which was in large part a revolt against the tyranny of Hellas. CHAPTER U MnZMBPM OR £M BPm THE NEO- OF HELLENISM, OR IIIHERE TO PLRCE HELLENISM’S MODERN EHCESS EXXdSa, vXcoooa t v M ott^v rcaxypa^la EXXdSa, oiK<5tT68o Kai anouffa Hellas, language blind in Geography Hellas, empty lot and colony (Dionisls Saw6pulos)l

Heterotopia and Periphery The study of Neohellenic modernist authors such as George Seferis and Odysseas Elytis raises an important question about the expression and content of canonical, high modernism in the margins of Europe: how can one explain the national orientation and populist rhetoric of this literary movement, in marked contrast to the internationalism and elitism of the modernist standard? Part of the exceptional interest presented by a minor case like Neohellenic modernism is that it forces one to reconsider the relations between the n a tio n a l cultures of modernity. Thus it may serve to inform one about not only the manner of its ^//-institution—its assertive, if sometimes regressive, drive to represent i ts e l f in the face of the enlightened but often imperialist unlversallsm of Western Culture—but also European and American modernisms’ sublimation of th e ir national particularity. 2 A theoretical question further motivates my investigations in this last chapter: how might one go about describing the flow of culture between

176 177 dominant and less-dominant or Internationally invisible, minor modern national entities? How do ideas “travel" through different power zones?3 Is the flow of culture between the over-valued “center” and the undervalued “periphery” somehow equivalent to the flow of capital? Is it enough to think about the development of high cultures in capitalism’s “periphery” as the imperious invasion of a prodigiously expanding “center” which overtakes an otherwise occupied, but weakly defended indigenous cultural space? Implicit in m y decision to theorize the relationships between zones is a strong sense th a t the current metaphors used to describe the economic geography of global capitalism may sometimes hinder more detailed analysis of complex cultural interactions.4 The “center" and the “periphery,” terms important for describing the position of greater and lesser forces as economic entities in global m arkets of all kinds, may indeed prove inadequate to the description of world-wide cultural exchange. The monocentric spherical metaphor represents the relationship between cultures of more and less “universally" recognized value as a unidirectional flow from a single cataract of advantage to surrounding mini-receptacles for outdated goods. Certainly the metaphor of the periphery cannot adequately account for differences in “development” along the edge—differences in the time and manner of the various societies’ “acceptance” of modernizing trends. Furthermore, it tends to reduce the specific case of the emerging national culture to another point on a radius along whose entire length the remainders of western goods are sequentially deposited.^ Finally, it offers no account of the value the periphery may 178

Itself have for the west, or again—that very different but not unrelated matter which I mentioned above—of the periphery’s self-institution. Greece presents an especially odd case, though not because it has suffered less than its share of foreign Interference, Invasion, tourism,6 occupation, or the forcible removal of goods in exchange for ’’protection’* of its resources by western European powers. Modern Greece is defined geographically and politically as a part of Western Europe, even though its designated place in economic terms is the distant periphery. Its modern history presents a group of people who achieved Independence and national unification according to Western political models at a relatively early date (1832)—not only before the other Balkan countries, but also before Germany (1871), Italy (1861), and Ireland (1922). In addition, Greece can be said to have gained independence without passing through a process of administrative colonialization by the west.? Furthermore, as both Greeks and non-Greeks frequently remind us, the distant Hellenic past has been exceptionally Important to the formation of western values. Finally, as we have learned from studying relevant modernist examples, Neohellenism cannot be described as a passive recipient of modern European culture. The case of Greece (alongside others, I am sure) constitutes an exception to the implicit rule that the periphery passively, faithfully, and belatedly receives and adopts the cultural forms of western modernity. Yet even as one puts to question the usefulness of metaphors such as center and periphery for the study of Neohellenism, one Is still reminded that the ‘‘universal’* values of modern Western Civilization have been historically defined by the countries with the will, means, capital, power, 179 and prestige to distribute and prescribe th e ir values. These countries lie to the north and the west of modern Greece and most other societies whose local forms they seem to displace. Thus, it is very difficult, and perhaps not entirely Inaccurate, to discuss the cultures of modernity in an international scene without referring to the dominance of a broadly based center of power shared, for the most part, by three or four countries in western Europe and one in North America.** Here I propose to complicate this spherical model by introducing the spatial metaphor of "heterotopia,” which I consider especially useful for studying the complex relationship between Neohellenism, the discourse of Hellenism, and European high modernism. The term "heterotopia” appears in a lecture by Michel Foucault dated March 1967 and entitled "Des Espaces Autres. ”9 Hetero-topla derives from the ancient Greek pronoun h ite r o s ("other”) and the noun t6pos (“place,” "territory,” etc.***). It means, quite literally, “a place of another order”: a real place that is conceived as being otherwise and existing outside normative social and political space. Foucault defines heterotopias as places "outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality [T]hese places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about” (Foucault 1986: 24).I* Heterotopias denote "real” countersites. They may be places Instituted elsewhere (colonies) which purportedly reproduce the originary source (the "mother” country); places set apart w ith in a geographically defined political entity which are tangential to and potentially contaminating of the socio­ economic panopticon, yet function to control crisis or deviation (prisons, 180 nursing homes, “inner cities”); or places instituted either elsewhere or within, which enclose into one location artifacts from all cultures and all times, and thus purportedly save these from extinction (libraries, museums, archeological sites). But w hat defines a heterotopia as a place of another order is not its geographical position in relation to normative political and social spaces. The relation of the topos of the “other” (A e te r o ) to the topos of the “same” (auto-) is determined less by position than by the confluence of discourses and technologies deployed in space. A heterotopia’s difference results from its discursively and institutionally defined form, function, meaning, and value in relation to the normative space that surrounds it. In describing a heterotopia, therefore, one must therefore pay special attention to these characteristics, as well as to the heterotopia’s separate genealogy, the juxtaposition w ithin it of incompatible sites, *2 its linkages to slices of time, ^ and the deployment of disciplinary technologies which give “excessive emphasis on [its] empirical opaqueness o r... ideational transparency” (Soja 1990: 8). These disciplinary technologies include the systems of opening and closing, surveillence of presence and absence, and definitions of Inside and outside. Unlike the periphery, the impoverished out-side of a designated core, the heterotopias that dot our world do not share a single center. Their value derives Instead from their relationship to the “remaining” spaces which may be immediately surrounding or lie at a great distance from the marked site. Foucault mentions one class of heterotopias that lie outside a state's borders yet operate as a great reserve for that society’s imagination: "I wonder if 181 certain colonies have not functioned somewhat In this manner. In certain cases, they have played, on the level of the general organization of terrestlal space, the role of heterotopias” (Foucault, 1986: 27). But one might further Imagine heterotopias which lie outside both the geographical borders and the administrative duties of hegemonic western states. These heterotopias are viewed as places of origin by both western states and the political entity within which they lie. I refer here to the numerous archeological sites of classical antiquity which form a circuit of tourist spots known to western travellers as “Hellas. ” These sites generally occupy a special place In the self-representation of both Western Civilization and contemporary Greece. We might broadly identify the heterotopia of “Hellas” as the set of spaces that contain classical Greek fragments. When numerous Europeans travelled through the southernmost exposure of the Balkan peninsula on their way to the Orient during the late-18th and 19th centuries, they made their w ay through whatever ruins of Hellas they could reach by the Ottoman Empire’s rocky roads. For some, Hellas promised financial gain, either because travellers could sell their notes to newspapers at home (G6rard de Nerval, 1808-1855; Th6ophile Gautier, 1811-1872)14 or because they could pilfer antiquities without being bothered by authorities (Georg- Christlan Gropius, 1776-1850; Louis-Fran$ois-S6bastien Fauvel, 1753-1838; Thomas Bruce Lord Elgin, 1766-1841). For the majority of these visitors, the current state of the Hellas was of little matter, even after the creation of an Independent Greek Kingdom. Contemporary Greek reality was either deeply troublesome because of its 182 apparent barbarity, or unworthy of comment. What mattered instead was to see Hellas as if through Plato’s eyes.T ourists were drawn to Hellas through their study of ancient Greek literature, their Interest in the aesthetic value of Classical art, and their desire to see the broader values of Hellenism resurrected—at least, within their own society. In viewing Hellas, they relied on existing archeological descriptions—to such a degree, in fact, that their sentiments were frequently clouded by literary expectations. These might also be complicated by foreign policy. To the French poet and statesman Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), for example, Hellas proved to be singularly unattractive at a time when France allied Itself with Greece’s enemy, the Ottoman empire against the Russians in the Crimean war. Of the archeological sites of antiquity, the Acropolis is perhaps the most "holy place"16 of enlightenment modernity’s secular imagination.17 In the next section, I describe this geographically identifiable space as a heterotopia of Great Britain, France, Austria, as well as Greece. For the purpose of analysis, I rely greatly on descriptions of the encounter with the Acropolis recorded by western European tourists visiting Greece during the 19th and early 20th century. I discuss a range of responses from a span of one-and-a-half centuries with a view to understanding what occupying space on the Acropolis means to the numerous Europeans who arrived in Hellas fortified with a good 19th-century classical education. I show how this “heterotopia” is synecdochlcally connected to both western Europe and contemporary Greece in ways that simultaneously represent, contest, and eventually Invert European identities. 183

The Acropolis, the Romantic Traveller, Ottoman Authorities, and the Greek

S ta te In order to describe the relationship between the heterotopia of the Acropolis and the remaining spaces of western Europe and contemporary Greece, one is compelled to map out the inter-national entwinement of spaces in the spheres of politics and culture. The Acropolis presents an Interesting example of how one heterotopia may be linked to numerous national spaces in ways that both complicate the perceived hierarchies of dominance and submission and break the image of western culture’s self-proclaimed internationalism. For the European, the “remainder” of space outside the Acropolis organizes itself around two main axes: home abroad and the local surroundings. 1 shall now consider the Acropolis’ complex relationship to each of these spaces in turn from the perspective of northern Europeans. The heterotopias of classical antiquity are places of homecoming set apart, quite literally, from home. *8 Europeans of the 18th and 19th centuries took the Grand Tour of the Orient to reach these sites.19 In the early 19th century, before the Kingdom of Greece had come into being and instituted its own protective “Apx

(1837), sojourners from Europe found it possible to carry back w ith them to the “safety of home” fragments of the heterotopia of Hellas (the “Elgin” Marbles, 20 Venus de Milo), to which they gave a new “proper context”21— apparently without diminishing the value of the original site. In the exhibition space of the national museum, 22 the unearthed fragments served the purpose of enriching the state (with all the ambiguities this expression 184 suggests) and raising the level of aesthetic discourse, moral sensibilities, and historical understanding of its citizens. In the Acropolis’ relationship to its western “home,” one finds unexpected reversals of western powers’ self* representations as Mother to pockets of civilization outside the west (colonies). The heterotopia of the Acropolis is taken to be logically and historically prior to western society’s self-institution (even if we may now view it as very much a product of this self-institution). It is conceived as the lost origin of a common heritage, a totality of the past which “has reached us [Western European Man] colorless” (Malraux 1974: 47). Throughout the 19th century one finals a pattern of travellers’ affirming, to a greater or lesser degree (depending on either the relative value assigned to "Hellas” or the degree of scepticism one expresses about one’s own society’s "enlightened” outcome), and often after intense scrutiny, a fundamental resemblance between the Acropolis and their European home. The mode of scrutiny is aesthetic. By the "aesthetic," I refer to the modern discourse on beauty. This discourse assigns supreme value to the artifact as a kind of autonomous subject. Indeed, it distinguishes the artifact from other kinds of objects by relating it directly to human subjectivity. The aesthetic not only shapes the individual’s experience of beauty, but also becomes a mode of encounter whereby the individual is liberated from social, historical, and political contingencies. As European Modern Man gazes upon the architectural and sculptural ideal, [s/]he recovers the Intrinsic values of Beauty, Truth, and Reason. 185

The encounter at first Induces a crisis of identity. In the first instance, the view of the Acropolis has an estranging effect. It provokes a sense of unreality. It transformes the senses and obtrudes on common sense.23 It functions to generate reflection even on the reliability of one’s perceptions. One may recall Sigmund Freud’s (1856-1939) incredulity, his feeling of “Entfremdungsgefilhl” (‘‘derealization’’) (Freud 1964 : 244) at the sight of the Acropolis upon his visit in 1904, narrated in “A Disturbance of memory on the Acropolis" (1936): When, finally, on the afternoon after our arrival, I stood on the Acropolis and cast my eyes around upon the landscape, a surprising thought suddenly entered my mind: “So all this really does ex 1st, just as we learnt at school! ” To describe the situation more accurately, the person who gave expression to the remark was divided, far more sharply than was usually noticeable, from another person who took cognizance of the rem ark; and both were astonished, though not by the same thing. The first behaved as though he were obliged, under the impact of an unequivocal observation, to believe in something the reality of which had hitherto seemed doubtful — The second person, on the other hand, was Justifiably astonished, because he had been unaware that the real existence of Athens, the Acropolis, and the landscape around it had ever been objects of doubt. What he had been expecting was rather some expression of delight or admiration. (Freud 1964: 241). To the “divided” observer Freud, the Acropolis at first activates expressions of both discredited disbelief under the compulsion of hard physical evidence and “justifiable" astonishment that the encounter with a place so real in schoolbook illustrations might generate such doubt instead of “delight or admiration." But the sum effect of the European observer’s divided response of forced belief and justifiable astonishment is only apparently negative. For another Viennese Austrian, the modernist poet and essayist Hugo von Hoffmannsthal (1874-1929), the “demonic irony" of the trip to the Acropolis 186 sometime before 1910 is that its sight induce in the lover of antiquity a sense of both its own unreality and the traveller’s “aimless searchings” for a lost origin of the self.2* This feeling is oddly “pleasing,” not because it exorcises antiquity from gus burdened soul, but because it finally deepened Modern Man’s understanding of the “Inexhaustible depth” of the relationship between the “unattainable” origin and “innermost being.” Far below the visible “surface” of the Acropolis’ statues which greet the tourist w ith their estranging gaze, there takes place a fundamental communication between Modern Man’s “innermost being” and the unattainable past. This experience is as nearly religious as the perfect aesthetic encounter could be. Hoffmanstahl suggests as much at the end of his essay: “If the Unattainable feeds on my Innermost being and the Eternal builds out of me its eternity, what then still stands between me and the Deity?” (1952: 87).25 Here w e see that the initial crisis of Being (the obtrusion of the senses, the feeling of unreality) caused by the view of the Acropolis resolves itself in the European observer as a kind of aesthetic “deification”: the near union of Being and Beauty. Even the ruthlessly unsentimental French realist Gustav Flaubert (1821-1880) apologetically mentions his temptation to pray on the Acropolis. In a letter dated “Patras, February 10, 1851,” Flaubert describes how “the pieces of sculpture found on the Acropolis” produce an “ecstatic” response w ithin him: 1 noticed especially a bas-relief representing a woman. There remains only a fragment of the torso, Just the two breasts, from the base of the neck to above the navel. One of the breasts is draped, the other uncovered. What breastsl Good Godl What a breastl It is apple- round, full, abundant, widely spaced from the other: you can feel the 187 weight of It in your hand. Its fecund maternity and its love- sweetness make you swoon. The rain and sun have turned the white marble to yellow, a taw ny color, almost like flesh. It is so calm, so noblel It seems about to swell; one feels that the lungs beneath it are about to expand and breathe. How well it wore its sheer pleated drapery! How one would have rolled in it, weeping! How one would have fallen on one’s knees before it, hands Joined! Standing in front of it, I felt the beauty of the expression Stupet sen's. A little more and I’d have prayed... (1980: 136) Ecstasy before "the ideal” beauty of lost pagan deities "incarnated in Pentelic marble” is given its ultimate (and very influential) expression in the “Prayer on the Acropolis” w ritten by the Professor of Oriental Studies and co-founder (with Auguste Compte) of positivism Ernest Renan (1823-1892), during his Journey to Greece in 1865.26 In his introduction to the Prayer, Renan describes his reaction to Athens and, more particularly, the Acropolis: II y a un lieu oft la perfection existe; 11 n’y en a pas deux: c’est celul- 1&. Je n’avais Jamais rlen imaging de pareil. C’6tait l’id6al cristallisl en m arbre pentlllque qul se montralt A mol. Jusque-IA, J’avais cru que la perfection n’est pas de ce monde — Or void qu’A c6t£ du miracle Juif venait se placer pour moi le miracle grec, un chose qui n’a exists qu’une fois, qui ne s’etait Jamais vue, qui ne se reverra plus, mais dont 1’effet durera Sternellement, Je veux dire un type de beautS Sternelle, sans nulle tache locale ou nationale — Quand Je vis l’Acropole, J’eus la rSvSlation du divln Le monde entiers alors me parut barbare. (Renan 1960: 15-16)27 There is only one place, not two, w here perfection exists: this is the unique place [of Athens]. I never imagined that there existed anything like it. What I encountered before me was the very ideal incarnated on Pentelic Marble. Until this time I believed that perfection was not of this w orld But here before m y eyes there appeared the Hellenic miracle next to the Judaic miracle: something that could only have occurred once, that had never appeared before, that would never be seen again, whose impression would be preserved eternally. I mean to say: it is a type of eternal beauty without local or nationalist color.... When I saw the Acropolis I accepted the revelation of the divine.... Then the entire world seemed barbarous to me. One should not overlook Renan’s interesting Juxtaposition of “the Hellenic miracle next to the Judaic miracle”—a parallel which sustains the religious tone of the description. 28 Hellenism, alongside Judaism, is purported to 188 fulfill the promised Incarnation, eternity, and revelation, three important theological principles. With Hellenism, however, it is not Grace but Beauty that achieves its "miraculous divinity.” The incarnation of beauty on the site of the Acropolis and, in particular, its linkage to an eternity of time and a universality of taste, induce in the viewer of the Acropolis something like a divine revelation. The viewer perceives the Acropolis as a place where the highest aesthetic values of western culture escape the ravages of time and limitations of "local or nationalist color, ” which hinder modern attempts at “incarnation.” Next to the Acropolis, “the entire world seem[s] barbarous” because it is perennially burdened by temporal considerations and national differences. 29 The dialectic of self-contemplation generated by the view of the Acropolis inevitably lead to an affirmation of the ancient site’s reality, at the expense of the prestige of “home.” Although it occupies no socially identifiable ground, but only a space that can be geographically located during the season of travel, the Acropolis is surrounded by an atmosphere of reality so powerful that it replaces Europe as “home. ” According to Georg Brandes (1842-1927, see above note 13), the real thing even had the power to repair one’s habit of viewing the Classical in “coarse” Roman copies and northern neoclassical hybrids: As I cast a first glance on this world of marble bathed in sunlight, on the still preserved reliefs of the Parthenon, and on the Caryatides of the Erechtheion, my inmost spirit sings: At last! At last we are no longer limited to the Dano-Greek neoclassicism of Thorvaldsen, 3° to the Germano-Greek architecture of the Glyptothek,31 to the French style of La Madeline, to Greek statues as coarsened by Roman technique, to Sicilian landscapes and coastlines as a substitute for those of Greece, to the pitiable imitation known as Athens of the North, but now the true Athens, the only, true Athens! (Brandes 1969: 172-173). 189

Brandes challenges the viewer to rectify these distorted images of culture which circulate at home in the form of neoclassical buildings, photographs, and, according to the English traveller and writer Robert Byron, “water­ colour sketches of the Russell Flint school that depicted the Parthenon as a grooved cinnamon ninepins against a sky the colour of a faded butcher’s apron” (from Europe in the Looking Glass, 1926; quoted in Stoneman 1984: 148). The association of the Acropolis with both an eternity of time and a universality of taste recurs in numerous descriptions. The two themes are quite neatly linked and work together to obfuscate questions of genealogy. How did the Acropolis come to transcend both its age and “local color”? How did it overcome national interests for groups competing for the right to claim it? How, indeed, did it became an important European arche-topia: a place of origin for western civilization? The themes of eternity and universality also serve to suppress the fact that contemporary “Greeks" or, at an earlier stage, “Turks,” continued for some time living on and around the Acropolis, using it as a fortress. Thus, when Alphonse de Lamartine reported in his published “journal” entry of the Voyage en Orient, (dated August 18, 1832) that the contemporary city of Athens was a “desolate and entirely barren” place (1990: 60), he was not documenting a demonstrable fact, but creating the scenery for Revelation. His literary account discursively prepared Athens’ “barren” modern surface to reveal its most eternal layers. The deepest of these rose

“apocalyptically”^ out of present barrenness to great physical heights. 190

At the peak of the Acropolis, Lamartine’s narrative shifts temporal registers. From here Lamartine views Athens from the eternal viewpoint of the founding philosopher. He “reconstructs] in [his] mind’s eye the Parthenon in its original form"—together with “the reverent population of Athenians ascending to worship Athena,” the temples of “hephestian divinities," and all the surrounding ancient (but not antiquated) sites of Athens—in their original splendor. That is to say, he imagines them as “Plato [might] have seen [them] when Athens, alive and decorated with its countless other temples, buzzed at his feet like an overflowing swarm of bees” (Lamartine 1990: 70-71).33 The general tendency in 19th-century reports is for the visitor to repress matters like national affiliation. Only in the 20th century is the question of the Acropolis’ national ownership forced upon Europeans, in part because of Greece’s efforts to recover "stolen” items.3* Nevertheless, one finds an unexpected emphasis on the national affiliation of o th e r s in certain descriptions of the encounter, particularly after writers begin to identify European tourism as an phenomenon incongruous with the sacredness of the Acropolis.33 When Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) ironically refers to “grey and purple mackintoshes” as the garb of contemporary suppliants to the Acropolis, she identifies them as belonging to "10 million G erm an tourists”: Have I described our afternoon on The Acropolis—when a storm rushed up from the Aegean, black as arrows, and the blue was as blue as hard china, and the storm and the blue fell upon each other and 10 milllan German tourists rushed across the temple precisely like suppliants in their grey and purple mackintoshes—no 1 haven’t described the Acropolis. (Woolf 1978: 52-53). 191

Thus, although the travellers’ accounts deliver the Acropolis again and again to an eternity of time (it lies beyond time), a universality of taste (it stands above personal, national, and economic interests), and a free expanse of public air (it appears freely accessible to an international public, even after guards are deployed and fees attached to the terms of entrance); nevertheless there exists a national and quite exclusive competition for its rightful inheritance. Perhaps the ideal state of the modern soul defied national boundaries; perhaps, under the best of conditions, everyone might freely pray to the immaculate Athena. But a visit to the Acropolis proved to Individual European visitors that for A n o th er national group to conflate i ts Identity with o n e’s ow n purest origin was to do violence to the integrity of western civilization. In the eyes of the British, French, or Austrian traveller (or, a century later, the German^6 or American tourist), only o n e ’s o w n national group could rightfully claim to have reached the universal soul’s eternal “home” after entering the gates of the Propylaia. Defining the proper “circumstance of the one’s soul” (Woolf, 1987: 979) when one strolled among the ruins of the Parthenon finally proved to be a matter of n o tio n a l honor. But whatever the distortion which the view of the Acropolis revealed in o th e r European groups, this could not be compared—in the tourist’s imagination, at least—to the flagrant violation represented by the local surroundings. These surroundings constitute the other important axis of “remaining” space related to the Acropolis in important ways. For northern Europeans, the Acropolis was reflected below in the space of first the 192

Ottoman Empire, 37 then the modern Greek State and Its (un)civil society as a parody of the original brilliant performance. Beginning in the late 18th century and toward the end of the period of Ottoman administration, Europeans began to deploy the fields, methods, rules of conduct, modes of expression, and institutions of the discourse of Hellenism as a “disciplinary technology”^8 for controlling the space of the Acropolis and its surrounding population. The fields of study were philology and history. The framework was humanistic. The narrative tendency was to give excessive emphasis to origins. And the mode of expression w as Aesthetic, as we have seen. The cause of Beauty, the ideal of unity and Integrity, the desire to liberate the soul from social and political contingencies, governed the encounter between the educated European and the Acropolis. By pursuing quite literally what Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) referred to metaphorically as the “path of aesthetics,” the European traveller, poet, diplomat, politician, humanist, scholar, or dilettante was led “through beauty... [to] arrive at Freedom” (1911: 36) of the soul by the sight of antiquity’s fragments. The rules of professionalism gradually (but never entirely) supplanted aesthetic experience as a guide for the proper treatment of the Acropolis and the surrounding space—though never for the traveller’s experience of Hellas. At first European diplomats, dllettants, and experts used aesthetic judgment to Justify changes on the Acropolis—including the removal of objects, whose transportation to European museums and gardens w as allegedly aimed at raising the aesthetic sensibilities of subjects who did not have the means or will to travel to Hellas. But gradually archeology took the place of aesthetics. 193

By the end of the 19th century* this particular body of knowledge, with Its own methods, terminology, techniques, standards of stratography, restoration, and conservation, and Institutions (the American School, the Greek Archeological Service, standing international committees of scholars and experts, the Archeological Council), had come to govern most decisions about rules of entrance and exit, systems of opening and closure, circulation of bodies In, on, and around buildings, and general uses of space on the Acropolis. 39

Aesthetics and Archeology combined w ith economic, political, and other institutional considerations (such as tourism—over which the Greek government began to gain control after World War II—or Art—over which "the West” never lost control) to oversee the surveillence of presence and absence, the definition of inside and outside, and especially the determination of the Acropolis’ "guardianship. ” All these factors "constructed, ” as it were, a non-inhabitable and non-utilitarian space, where discourses about knowledge were transformed into actual relations of power between European, Ottoman, and Greek authorities (government officials, museum directors, archeologists, professors of Classics and Archeology), European tourists, and Greek citizens of various classes, parties, interests, and places of origin. Their effect was initially to limit, then to control, and occasionally (again after World War 11) to enhance the perceived relationship between the Acropolis and the surrounding space of contemporary Athens. One example of the limiting, or perhaps blinding effect of these disciplinary technologies is that they prohibited recognition of the presence upon the Acropolis of a local population, who continued to use the Acropolis 194 as a v e ry effective fr u r io (“fortress”). During the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire (1821-1829, in particular in 1826- 1827, and again in 1833, when the Ottomans were forced to leave the Acropolis), opposing parties regularly fought either to gain or to maintain the protection of the Acropolis. Both the Greek-speaking rebels and the Ottoman authorities recognized that to hold the Acropolis w as to win Athens, a strategic site in the battle to control the Attic peninsula. While this was happening, Europeans continued to discuss ways of protecting the supreme values of Hellenism, which the Acropolis represented for them, from “vandalism” by the very groups who were seeking the physical protection of the Acropolis as a citadel-fortresss. It should not be assumed, however, that the Acropolis had no significance as a historical monument for competing local groups. Local Greeks placed great value on the monuments of antiquity during their rebellion against the Ottomans, as the following narrative from the AnojJVWOl'eviiaTatMemoires) of General Y&nnis Makrly&nnis suggests. Here

is a story from 1833 about two classical statues. Elxo 8uo aydXpaTa Ticptyripa pia yuvaka ki 4va fJaoiXdnouXo a(vovTav oi ^X^es- t 6 o t ) evT&eiav etxav. 'OTav xdxaoav t o v ITdpov, i d *xav Tidpei KdTi OTpanriTCS icai €is T'Apyos 0a t Kai o&s 6lvci 6 , t i to u CTjTifa€T€ 8ia va pclvouv €is tt^ v TiaTplSa andvou.” KaiTd*xaKpvpp£va. t 6 t €p€ tt)V ava^opa pou Ta Tipdo^epa to u BaoiX&us va xptioip^ouv 8ia tt)V TiaTplSa. (Makrly&nnis Volume 11 n.d.: 62) 195 I had two excellent statues, a woman and a prince, both solid—their veins showed, that’s how perfect they were. When Poros was destroyed, some soldiers took them and were ready to sell them to some Europeans at Arta: they wanted 1000 tila r a (monetary unit). I ended up there, I happened to be passing by; I grabbed the soldiers, I spoke to them. "Even if they give you 10,000 tila r a for these, don’t deign to let them out of your p a trld a ("fatherland”); these are what we fought for. (I take out and give them 350 tila r a ) 1, and when I see the Governor (since we eat together), I’ll give them to him and he’ll give you whatever you ask for to keep them up there in the p a tr id a .” And I hid [the statues]. Then through my reference I offered them to the King to make them of use to the p a trid a . The story shows that Makriy&nnis gave value to classical artifacts equal in some significant way to his own life. From a technical point of view, he appreciated the "two statues” for their perfect condition and realism (the veins on their skin). From the viewpoint of citizen, he perceived their utilitarian function: they could serve the p a trid a ("fatherland”) as signs of the value of Independence : "These are what we fought for.” To understand their precise value precisely, to understand w h a t Makriy&nnis fought for, one would have to study further the set of ideals that MakriyAnnls* M em oires repeatedly project. Regardless of the value that the local population placed on its monuments, however, from an early stage the discourse of Hellenism served the purpose of excluding Ottoman authorities and the Greek subjects not only from European debates about the processes of decision-making and definitions of proper usage, but also from the term s of possession of the Acropolis. One technique was to define what it meant to "appreciate” the Acropolis. Definitions of appreciation were largely exclusionary of local sentiment. In his infamously defamatory Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon, who described contemporary Athens as "no more than the shadow of herself," observed (without ever having visited Athens40) that "[t]he 196

Athenians walk with supine indifference among the glorious ruins of antiquity; and such is the debasement of their character, that they are Incapable of admiring the genius of their predecessors” (Chapter 42; quoted in Stoneman 1984: 130). Arguments like this about the "supine indifference” of local populations served to bolster claims that the local population and its authorities were in no position to protect the Acropolis, while western European States like Great Britain, France, and Germany (with their showcase national museums in the metropolitan centers of London, Paris, and Munich) could clearly offer such protection. Thus definitions of proper (aesthetic) appreciation were actively employed both to determine the m atter of the Acropolis’ proper "guardianship” and to increase museum acquisitions. One should not forget that the Acropolis is a heterotopia where the West has, quite literally, appropriated the ruins of Hellas for its own uses— namely the collection of cultural artifacts, the provision of an aesthetic education, the expansion of historical knowledge, and the enhancement of national prestige. The most infamous expropriation is, of course, Lord Elgin’s lavish effort to "save” the best marbles of the Parthenon by carting them home to Great Britain in 1802. Even today, the argument continues to be made (against Greek efforts to recover the Parthenon Marbles) that the "Elgin” Marbles are "safest” in the British Museum. One should note, however, that it is not coincidental to the functioning of the heterotopia of the Acropolis as a "space of another order” that the debate about the appropriate "housing” of the un-earthed "Elgin” fragments has found no comfortable resolution. Perhaps the matter of providing appropriate 197

“housing” for “misappropriated”** artifacts lifted out of spaces defined by their very unlnhabltablllty can never finally be settled. Some descriptions of Athenian reaction to the transfer of the “Elgin” Marbles from the Acropolis to Piraeus (where they were placed on ships headed for Britain) actually show Interest In local perceptions. Two sources refer to a popular assumption that ancient statues were animated and could be “not Infrequently heard to mourn and bewail their present condition” (Stoneman, 1987: 175).42 But the sources contradict one another in their interpretation of local response. John Cam Hobhouse, Baron of Broughton (1786-1869), though a close friend of Lord Byron (who strongly opposed the Marbles’ removal), claimed that Athenians were actually pleased that Elgin had “saved” the marbles from Turkish mastery over their souls and only mourned the bondage of the statues remaining on the Acropolis: Some Greeks in our time conveying a chest from Athens to Piraeus containing part of the Elgin Marbles, threw it down, and could not for some time be prevailed upon to touch it, again affirming, they heard the Arab (i.e. the enchanted spirit within the sculpture) crying out and groaning for his fellow-spirits detained in bondage in the Acropolis. The Athenians suppose that the condition of these enchanted marbles will be bettered by a removal from the country of the tyrant Turks. (From Travels in Albania and the Provinces of Turkey in 1809 and 1810, I—II, 1855. Quoted in Stoneman, 1984: 318) A gentleman traveller named F. S. N. Douglas, on the contrary, recorded this somewhat different reaction of an “illiterate servant of the Disdar of Athens” who transferred his mourning for the removal of one Caryatid onto “the five other KOptTOia (sisters). ” The Athenian man was said to have heard the

other Caryatids “manifesting] their affliction by filling the air at the close of the evening with the most mournful sighs and lamentations” (from his 198

Essay on certain Points o f Resemblance between the Ancient and Modern G reeks, 1813. Quoted in Stoneman 1987: 174-175). Although Douglas w as sympathetic to Athenian perception—indeed he generously concluded that “[w]e cannot refuse to acknowledge that the Athenians are not so indifferent as it has been sometimes represented to the wonders and monuments of their city" (Stoneman, 1987: 175)—his description nonetheless served to dismiss the local population’s views about the proper context of the marbles. In fact, both Hobhouse and Douglas’ interest in local reaction seems to be promoted by Orientalist curiosity about the strange and unfamiliar practices of the Ottoman population. Each author features local beliefs as the product of exotic n a iv e tf rather than fully developed theories about the past. Whether they draw the conclusion that the Athenians are pleased to have the marbles removed or mourned for their loss, both authors’ accounts serve to appropriate the imput of the local population on the m atter of the Acropolis’ “guardianship. ” Here we see the discourse of Hellenism working negatively (that is to say, by its n o t being represented in local views) and in conjunction with the related discourse of Orientalism (which renders these local views exotic) to “discipline” the local population.43 It is not unusual to find the disciplinary technologies Hellenism buttressed by arguments from other related discourses. As the debate about the restoration of the “Elgin” Marbles continued late in the 19th century, one interlocutor compared the prospect of restoring the “Elgin” Marbles to returning “Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, India. ” I refer to the Englishman James Knowles’ response in “The Joke about the Elgin Marbles” to a fellow- 199

Englishman Frederic Harrison’s argument that Britain ought to "Give Back the Elgin Marbles.” From his own partisan viewpoint in favor of restoration, the modernist poet of the Hellenic diaspora C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933) documents the most interesting of Knowles "audacious statements. ” According to Cavafy, Knowles confuses the purposefulness-without-purpose of the aesthetic object with the economic and political advantages of the British colony: Mr Knowles "thinks that if the marbles are restored, Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, India must be given away also—forgetting that if those possessions are necessary to British trade and to the dignity and safety of the British, the Elgin Marbles serve no other purpose than that of beautifying the British Museum” (Cavafy 1963a: 13). Although Cavafy finds Knowles’ argument spurious, one can be quite certain that the Englishman’s interesting juxtaposition of the discourses of Hellenism and colonialism did not fall on deaf ears "at home” in the diminishing colonial power of Britain. It is no accident that Knowles also refers to the Greek government as merely "transitory.” Here the colonial discourse is working full-force alongside Hellenism’s search for pure origins to disassociate a racially "mixed” administration from permanent claims. For Knowles, "the mixed little population which now lives upon the ruins of ancient Greece” (Cavafy 1963: 13-14) can make no rightful claim to possess the Marbles.** In the Greek government’s defense, Cavafy (alongside Harrison, one presumes) presents the counter-argument that "the climate of Bloomsbury is injurious to the sculptures. ” But the matter of environmental compatibility 200 has more recently emerged as an argument by which enlightened Europeans and concerned Greek authorities discipline the conduct of the local population. Although the modern scholar Richard Stoneman clearly appreciates the "national honour” which Greeks bestow upon their archaeologists and welcomes the prospect of cooperation between “the New Republic” (he is writing after 197345) archeologists of “the American School” at a site Just below the Acropolis, he offers a patronizing, if sympathetic warning to the Greek Archaeological Service concerning pollution in Athens: “Yet the biggest issue confronting the Greek Archaeological Service is one not so much of restoration as of conservation. The pilfering lords have gone, but the hungry clouds of pollution do damage in Athens nearly as bad” (1987: 300). Stoneman then closes with guarded praise of Greece and Turkey’s “responsible” behavior as “guardians of the ancient past.”

Modernist Scepticism: “A Dialogue upon Mount Pentelicus’, Analysis of the technologies that define the European encounter with the Acropolis, administer the uses of that site, relate its contents to numerous sites at “home,” and discipline the surrounding residents may suggest that the deployment of knowledge on the Acropolis largely overlooks or excludes the local population. Certainly the site of the Acropolis (as a product European cultural imperialism) has in many ways reproduced the relations of power between an imperious center and its technology-poor periphery. Like other venerated antique sites, however, the Acropolis has also generated much discussion about the right to control it. In addition, its values have been widely contested by competing groups, including Greeks, 201 who now bureaucratically control the administration of the Acropolis. Furthermore, the Acropolis includes within or penetrating its space a complex juxtaposition of other Incompatible sites.46 The cosmopolitan simultaneity of differences in space may in fact charge this heterotopia with social and cultural meanings that effect both the surrounding local space and European “home.” Finally, as a heterotopia, the Acropolis presents a mirror image of "home” that Jumbles its schoolbook "original” by claiming to be something jnorethan the original. For the European traveller who is fully Interpellated into the romantic discourse of Hellenism, the Acropolis represents a nonlnhabltable space where one goes to discover one’s roots. To study the color of the Parthenon, to peruse the "naked beauty” of the Athenian landscape (which is stripped of its native occupants who are seen not to fit); to isolate and sometimes uproot buildings and statues from their surroundings—to do all these things is to search intensely for one’s severed origin and reflect on one’s shattered identity.

But the Acropolis, or, by extension, any venerated classical archaeological site in Greece, has not prohibited more discomfiting reflection—beyond the self-contemplation and self-interpretation that Jumbles normative experiences of time and space. Heterotopias of Hellas have also served to generate scepticism even about the national Identity of European culture. This mode of reflection may not be evident in some of the romantic accounts which I examined in the previous section. But "disturbances of memory, ” as Freud puts it, which effect one’s perception of ethnic and national affiliation48 are Increasingly reported after the turn of the century, 202 when the European Intellectual elite’s ambiguous relationship to modernity evolves into a modernist decentering of perceptions and values. Thus, against the tendency to conceive of the classical Greek archeological site as the lost origin of a common heritage over which certain European groups have a greater claim, one also finds w hat I shall refer to here as a modernist “counter-discourse.’’49 For the skeptical European modernist, a visit to Hellas raised serious questions about the eternity and universality of one’s n a tio n a l conception of Hellenism. Likewise, as one Interrogated the terms of national identity, one reaches a recurring conundrum: “the tough old riddle of the modern Greek and his position in the world today. ” Virginia Woolf faces this “riddle” head-on in a short story entitled “A Dialogue upon Mount Pentelicus” (written at an unspecified time after Woolf’s first visit to Greece in 1906; posthumously published in 1987). Woolf’s story is of special interest here because it records a British modernist’s reevaluation of both the sentimental Victorian claim to command the values of Hellenism and the western European tendency to berate Neohellenes for their “mixed” genealogy. The two issues are, in fact, inextricably linked. The pendulum of the story’s six English tourists’ sentiments swings between two contrary positions: from the unquestioning identification of the English with real Greeks and the modern Greeks with “barbarians, ” to a self-reflexive skepticism about the values of Englishness and identification of the modern Greeks with real Greeks. Even the most sentimental of the dialogue’s interlocuters, who initially dismisses the entire modern Greek race, 203 discovers his real “Greek” self in the heterotopia of Mt. Pentelicus (site of a marble quarry in ancient and modern times) only through a sudden face-to- face encounter with a modern Greek monk. From the opening paragraph, the narrative voice casts doubt, through the techniques of irony and detachment, on the travellers’ confident sense of their souls’ perfect lodging in the heterotopia of Hellas: It so happened not many weeks ago that a party of English tourists was descending the slopes of Mount Pentelicus. Now they would have been the first to correct that sentence and to point out how much inaccuracy and indeed injustice was contained in such a description of themselves. For to call a man a tourist when you meet him abroad is to define not only his circumstance but his soul; and their souls they would have said—but the donkeys stumble so on the stones—were subject to no such limitation. Germans are tourists and Frenchmen are tourists but Englishmen are Greeks. Such was the sense of their discourse, and we must take their word for it that it was very good sense Indeed. The message here is not only that one must n o t take the six friends’ “word for it” that they are not tourists (as Germans and Frenchmen are) but honorary citizens of the slopes of Mount Pentelicus; more radical, one must not “take their word” literally for anything regarding the “circumstances of their soul” within the spaces of Hellenism. One is led to question the very “sense of their discourse” which serves to suture their bodies to their limited beliefs about their relationship to this rocky landscape. These beliefs extend from the heterotopia of Mt. Pentelicus in two geographical directions, as one would expect: toward Britain and modern Greece. Concerning the matter of the Hellenic language, the tourists collectively hold that Cambridge Greek is the ultimate Greek language; conversely, “the fact that Greek words spoken on Greek soil w ere misunderstood by Greeks destroyed at one blow the whole population of 204

Greece, both men and women and children.” Concerning manners and style, "Greeks.. .were a still people, significant of gesture and of speech, and when they sat by the stream beneath the plane tree they disposed themselves as the vase painter would have chosen to depict them”—not unlike the English party; on the contrary, the contemporary race is rendered “spurious” by its “garrulous” manner and “barbarian antics, rolling and singing, pulling each other by the sleeve and chattering of the vintage that now hung purple in the fields.” As report of dialogue among members of the party begins, however, the narrator’s detached voice breaks up into several distinct, passionately held positions. Group opinion appears especially divided on the subject of the position of the modern Greek in the world today: “Some of optimistic nature claimed for him a present, some less credulous but still sanguine expected a future, and others with generous imagination recalled a past.” True to the form of the dialogue, the narrative voice then divides into two opposing views whose differences rest on the matter of Britain’s role in filling an absence that contemporary Greeks cannot compensate for. The first interlocutor is fully interpellated into the discourse of Hellenism. He expresses the view that ancient Greeks “fixed their minds upon the beautiful and the good”; that they “died as the day dies here in Greece, completely”; and that they left nothing “for us but to worship in silence or, if we choose, to churn the empty air. ” His conclusion brings discussion back to the role of Britain: it i s possible to fill the emptiness of Hellenism’s loss by turning to English summaries of its achievement, such as those one finds in "Peacock.”50 205

The other sustained voice In the “Dialogue” belongs to the schismatic scholar “whose character was already spotted with a dangerous heresy: for only a year ago he had made use of his brand new vote [as a Cambridge MA] to affirm that Greek should cease [to be compulsory at Cambridge].” This scholar's views about Hellas are informed by several counter-discourses: an emergent meta-colonial reaction against English self-promotion as a world- standard of value, manners, style, and knowledge; growing anti-Victorian scepticism about the “sentimentalist and sloven” belief that Hellenism represents all that is “noble in art and true in philosophy”; a scholarly critique of obfuscations that hinder etymological definition and archeological dispute; a political awareness of the national interests that motivate the English to call their national ideal “Greek” rather than “the Italians or the French or the Germans, or by the name of any people indeed who can build bigger fleets than ours or talk a language that we can understand”; and a visceral reaction to the berating of a living people. “So,” he concludes, “while you read your Greek on the slopes of Pentelicus, you deny that her children exist any longer.” This voice finally expresses the opinion that the “Greek” functions as a sign around which English society organizes its high culture, educational system, and rhetoric of superiority over other nations, while obfuscating its ultimately parochial motives. “Greek” does not exist except as an affirmation of “English. ” Thus the most sceptical member of the party

nearly dispenses w ith the discourse of Hellenism altogether by exposing the ideology that governs the equation of “Greek” with “English.” 206

But the narrator’s stance from the beginning of the story has born a distrust of the characters' thought and speech. As we have seen, the story begins w ith the travellers’ clear denial of a place for the Neohellene along the "solid and continuous avenue” of Hellas. At a second step, dialogue begins on the topic of the Greek’s position in the modern world: the neophyte returns to the original dismissal of the modern Greek race on the grounds of genealogy, while the scholar takes that dismissal as opportunity to reflect negatively on the ideological purity of Englishness. The dialogue is interrupted suddenly at the point of its potential disintegration into absolute disagreement. A broader revaluation of Englishness and Hellenism is triggered by the modernist technique of “epiphany,” a sudden encounter that interrupts discussion and transform s beliefs. The focal point of this epiphany is an exchange of words in modern Greek—which Woolf oddly (or appropriately?) leaves blank in her unpublished manuscript and the editor confidently fills in. When a native “brown monk”—“large and finely made, and [with]... the nose and brow of a Greek statue—appears suddenly before them, “the English could not have told at the moment at which point [in the continuous avenue of time] they stood, for the avenue was as smooth as a ring of gold.” The monk gives his greeting—“KOXTjOTrlpa which is good

evening, and it was odd that he addressed the gentleman who had been the first to proclaim the doom of his race.” The foreign greeting of the Greek monk operates in the story to expand the temporal limits of Hellenism and to confound the identity of both Englishness and Hellenism in the once passionately closed mind of the 207 neophyte. “The conviction w as his that he now spoke as a Greek to a Greek.” And the contemporary landscape mystically confirms the actuality of this exchange, against the "disavowal” of a lifelong education: "and If Cambridge disavowed the relationship the slopes of Pentelicus and the olive groves of Mendeli confirmed it. ” Woolf’s story moves the neo- of Hellenism from the excluded local surroundings to a place within Hellas, even as it dislocates "Cambridge” (or Englishness) from Hellenism’s once solid center. On the level of the narrative, then, the epiphany in Woolf’s brief story opens a gulf between the loyal English subject and the ideal of Hellas, once viewed as not only the origin of truth and beauty, but also a reliable determinant of identity. The modern subject experiences the erosion of both crucial links with Hellenism confidence in the tru th of Hellenism. The subject recovers a certain homogeneity, however, (though one that is written through with irony), through an encounter with the native. By challenging the unquestioning identification of the English with Hellas, and, at the same time, identifying modern Greeks w ith real Greeks, Woolf’s story not only raises questions about the value of Englishness, but also seeks a more authentic origin for truth and beauty. If this represents a modernist impulse, we may find ourselves wondering how the decentering of a hegemonic value like “Englishness,” together with the temporal extension of Hellenism, lines up, as it were, w ith the Neohellenic modernist recentering of the EllinikStits ("Greekness”) within the panoptic heterotopia of Hellas. To put it another way, is it possible to understand 20th-century 208

Neohellenlc reterritorializations of Hellenism as Greece’s own very interesting counter-discoursive deterritorialization of Western (European) Civilization?

The Ideology of the Neohelleaic Aesthetic: Autochthony end the Greek L endscepe By giving prominence to Western European tourists’ views of Hellas’ high and holy centers, I have not meant to imply that Neohellenism has been a merely passive recipient of European conceptions of Hellenism, whether sentimental or skeptical. One should not forget that power and knowledge are best understood by their enabling effects. Once the "disciplinary technologies” of Hellenism were deployed in Greece, the venerated sites of Greek antiquity—the heterotopia of Hellas—became spheres where power was immanent. Since the late 18th century these sites have ceaselessly generated struggles and confrontations that continue to transform the ways their competing "guardians” conceive of Hellas, circumscribe the "remaining” spaces, and define themselves. Through such struggles, different "guardians” variously emerge. Among the most important of these is the cultural and bureaucratic assemblage of modern Greece, which in the 20th century triumphantly projects its e lf as not only the keeper of classical sites, but also the "lost center” and "promised land”51 0f Hellenism. In this section, I return to the subject of Neohellenism’s revisions of the "Hellenic” during the 20th century. This time 1 examine the Ideology of the aesthetic in Greece—which assigns the origin of beauty to indigenous forces, and renders artistic form dependent on geographical and climatic determinants. 1 suggest that when Neohellenes represent their culture as 209 sprouting from Hellas as an autochthonous product (I refer to their supposedly "native” garden as the en -to p ia of Hellas), they produce a powerful Image of culture whose "compensatory function”^2 Is not only to negotiate tensions between traditionalist and modernizing tendencies in Greece, but also to nationalize Hellenism's ancient sites. The nagging “traditional-modern” dichotomy effectively defines not only Greece’s but many non-dominant societies' entrance into modernity. In fact, I submit, the continuous negotiation (rather than the final resolution) of the term s of opposition is very much the operative force in the production of non-western national cultures. In Greece, the play of local indigenous forms against western modernizing tendencies even charges mainstream modernist culture w ith meaning, as w e have seen. Neohellenic modernism reproduces the totality/crisis-ridden, naive/sentimental antithesis in the notion of EUinikdtita ("Greekness”). Like western high modernism, it cultivates an ambiguous relationship to modernity by signifying open resistance to technology, mass consumer culture, and pervasive economic interests. Unlike the western standard, however, it resists "external” development by renewing "indigenous” forms. EUinikdtita represents the aesthetic principle of autochthonyy rather than autonomy. The ideology (if not the actual coinage) of EUinikdtita has numerous beginnings, the earliest of which may be 1833. At this time the Ottomans abandoned the defense of the Acropolis to the Bavarian Otto, King of Hellas. Within the next year, Otto moved the capital of his new Greek kingdom from N&fplion to Athens. The new state, conjecturing that the ancient citadel was somehow crucial to the (re)construction of a free and authentic Hellas, took 210 upon itself the task of rebuilding the Parthenon. This building project made antiquity (and archeology) a cornerstone of the Greek state’s foundation. The Acropolis became a heterotopia of modern Greece from that state’s very institution. It played the Important role of making up for bad blood53 and lost time. Here, in marked contrast to the “barbarian” population scattered in the surrounding city, human perfection was effectively achieved. Unlike Europeans—who w ere largely confident in their modern identity and therefore viewed the Acropolis as a place where they were finally represented, if sometimes in a jumbled and inverted image—modern Greeks were self-critical from their very beginnings. They therefore encountered the heterotopia of classical sites as a dally challenge to their integrity as a modern society and genealogy as a “pure” race. For them, the site of the Acropolis compensated for their inherent weaknesses. Situated at the high panoptlc center of its modern capital, it represented order where there was chaos, pleasure where there was anxiety, purity were there was only a “mixed race,” and beauty, Integrity, and perfection where there was only the recurrent call for reconstruction. The modernist contribution to Neohellenism’s seizure of the Hellenic ideal was its reevaluation of the relationship between Hellenism and topos. Modernists located the production of Hellenic culture w it/u 'n the topos of Hellas. By conceiving of Hellenism as the product of a particular landscape, they were also able to append the neo- of Hellenism to the Hellenic. At the intersection of the modernist, the national, and the traditional, they imagined a “transcendental territory” of Hellenism which w as at the same

time Afeohellenism’s local garden. 211

An important precursor for Neohellenic modernism was the idiosyncratic turn-of-the*century art critic, Periklis Yann6pulos (1872-1910), whose idea of topos I discussed in Chapter II. The translation of "Hellenism” into an autochthonous aesthetic, understood as the "natural” line and color which derives directly from the landscape and belongs solely to the people of Hellas, w as one of Yann6pulos’ obsessive concerns in the first decade of the 1900s. Yann6pulos caustically criticized contemporary Greek artists for not opening their eyes to their surrounding cosm os He urged them to return to their MT)T€pa Tr) (“Mother Earth”)—to ground their work in the indigenous traditions of Hellenism and record the feeling of their topos, the "eternal Hellenic idea” which expressed the individuality of their nation. Yann6pulos defines the function of the aesthetic sphere as the expression of Neohellenism’s €0vuc^ctTOiiiKdTTynx ("national individuality”).

Furthermore, he assigns this task to neither the artwork nor the appreciating subject. Instead, topos becomes the self-evident category of Neohellenism and sign of Hellenism’s pure presence in his work. Aesthetic achievement can begin only after one had recognized the unique individuality of one’s topos—more specifically, the qualities of the Hellenic topio ("landscape”), meaning the geography and climate of Hellas most readily identifiable with the Attic sun and Aegean sea By arguing that topos directly regulated the aesthetic properties of art, Yann6pulos reterritorialized not only Hellenism, but also the aesthetic, in the landscape of Hellas. His idea of a geographical and climatic determinism in art recurrred frequently during the 20th century in not only politically conservative but also in culturally liberal, modernist manifestos, as we have 212 discovered. Its recurrence raises an important question about the conception of the aesthetic sphere in Neohellenic culture. If intellectuals have persistently aligned art with a particular "national” landscape in such a way that the landscape appears as the "workshop” for the creation of modern art, then it is lncumbant upon us to ask: what ideology of the aesthetic in Greece subjects art to the demands of climate and geography? One is right to anticipate that this Ideology differs in important ways from the western standard. Most significant is the fact that in Greece the emergence of the aesthetic as a theoretical category is n o t "closely bound up with the material process by which cultural production becomes autonomous” (Eagleton 1990: 8-9), as it is in the west. It is possible to explain this difference by arguing that Greece has lagged behind the west in its reception of modern cultural goods. But I have already expressed my reservations about a theory of culture’s movement through different power zones which reduces the “periphery” to a belated reproduction of the "center.” I have suggested that it might be fruitful to consider instead how Greece and Europe negotiate their respective positions in relation to the heterotopia of Hellas, the alleged origin of aesthetic value and sign of high art. And I have anticipated the argument which I will now present: that the aesthetic emerges in Greece when art replaces, or at least supplements, politics as the force that potentially Infuses the territory of Hellenism, Including classical fragments, w ith a specifically Neohellenic identity. At this time, Neohellenes claim Hellas as an tn to p ia of Neohellenlsm. Yann6pulos is perhaps the first to advance the idea of a Neohellenic entopia in aesthetic terms. He also presents the negative side of this 213 argument. He systematically contends that non-Hellenes are Incapable of giving authentic expression to Hellenism because they are not situated within the topos of Hellas. Northerners Inevitably create false Images when they claim the Hellenic aesthetic as their own. Through an alternating claim of particularity and universality for the Hellenic aesthetic, Yann6pulos links the aesthetic to both a geographically specific and a transcendent topos Thus, whether he defines the aesthetic of "Hellenism” for a particular people or for the world, he affixes this aesthetic in the territory of the Hellas. In this w ay he grants Neohellenes special access to Hellenism. His theory of the aesthetic not only bestows on Neohellenes special rights over this topos, but also allows them to "nationalize” Hellas’ "temples” in Attica and the Aegean—provided, of course, they make these their workshop. The national effort to gain control over Hellenism’s classical monuments may explain why Yann6pulos is finally interested both in elaborating a notion of the aesthetic that functions always in relation to the nation’s calling, and in claiming for his nation’s art a special status. Neohellenlsm becomes the deepest expression of autochthony and the most sustained bearer of Hellenism’s continuity. Of all European cultures, it alone remains subject always to the internal laws of the land and "the highest expression of human energy. ” According to Yann6pulos* prescription, the Neohellenic artist becomes the "highest priest” of not just the n a tio n a l community, but also "the h u m a n community” (1988a: 22, my emphasis). Yann6pulos’ view of the artist’s responsibilities in rebuilding Hellas should not be considered an idiosyncratic side-effect of his pompous claim to have received “BaTTTlO|ia €is TO 0€(ov ♦u>s” ("Baptism into the Divine Light”) of 214

Hellenism. It involves a highly original, broadly Influential conflation of two Important ideals of modernity, the national and the aesthetic—both of which are coincidentally represented by the term “Hellenism” in Greece. Of course, it is no coincidence that these two Ideals should be conflatable. Indeed, they are quite analagous in their modern conceptualizations. Both are governed by the rule of autonomy, both emphasize their liberating potential, and both feature the unity and integrity of their product. Finally, “a varied span of preoccupations: freedom and legality, spontaneity and necessity, self- determination, autonomy, particularity and universality” (Eagleton 1990: 3) have surrounded both the aesthetic (as Eagleton argues) and the national ideal (as I would add). Thus, the discourse on beauty and the discourse on the nation converge on many important points. In Yann6pulos’ prescription for Neohellenic art, there is a structural homology between the concept of the individual as grounded in the national context and the idea of the artwork as directly responsive to the earth and soil. Neither the individual nor the artw ork is self-determining or self- regulating—“free particulars,” as Terry Eagleton refers to the conception of both art and the individual subject in British aesthetics and German Idealism. Yann6pulos not only develops a theoretical category which conflates the national and the aesthetic ideal. He also capitalizes on the dual signification of “Hellenism” for contemporary Hellas: its reference to both the unique cultural identity of a politically sovereign people living within a territorially delineated space (the political topos of the nation-state) and the coherent, luminous, and brilliant artistic heritage of the Classical past (the 215 aesthetic topos for perfect Integration of internal and external world, self and Nature). It should be pointed out that Yann6pulos’ fascination with the aesthetic potential of Neohellenism clearly depends on a European outline of the aesthetic of ancient Hellenism. Despite his devastating critique of Eurocentrism in neohellenic art and architecture, Yann6pulos’s vision relies on the German image of Hellenism, as I noted in Chapter II. He appropriates the aesthetic signification of "Hellenism” for the Neohellenic nation, making the aesthetic a local («n-/4tvh)/national product. He then promises to individual artists the power to create monumental works of art if only they cultivate the territorial constants of Neohellenlsm’s geography and climate. An essential side-effect of his appropriation is that he renders the Greek state (Hellas) the rightful protector of Art’s original sites (Hellas). One cannot stress enough the tremendous influence Yann6pulos had on Neohellenic modernist (as well as MetaxAs’ official) revisions of Hellenism after the rise of the MetaxAs regime 1936. Like other intellectuals in the 1930s, Konstandinos TsAtsos, the philosopher, critic, and later, President of the Greek Republic (1975), bears witness to the influence of Yanndpulos (and German aesthetic paganism) in his description of the traits of Ellinikdtita, which he proposes as a p r io r i criteria for aesthetic judgment. The forgotten half of the “Dialogue on Hellenic Poetry” between TsAtsos and Seferis (Seferls’ end of the discussion is the usual subject of analysis^*) is TsAtsos’ “ITpiV air6 TO o€K(VT)na” (“Before Starting”) (1938). TsAtsos begins

by describing the Importance of “positioning,” or “placement,” in the creative act. In fact, proper positioning is the guarantor of an individual’s p o litic a l autonomy, according to TsAtsos. The word for positioning is topo- 216 th e tis is . To take a /Aes/s55 In the topos with which one engages at a given moment Is to assert one’s unique particularity, without trespassing the heteronomous “eternal laws” that apply a p r io r i to the general case: “Depending on the place one takes ( topothitisis), every meaning of life, (which is entirely personal), changes, without the eternity of law that governs the general case being affected.” As the essay progresses, however topothftisis is reduced to a precondition for aesthetic creativity (rather than political autonomy). It becomes a guard against both historical (marxist) determinism (topothttisis is a personal m atter)^ and sophistic (internationalist) relativism (topothitisis binds one’s loyalties to a particular place) in the arts. The direction of the argument finally chrystallizes when Ts&tsos compares finding one’s Archimedean point in creative activity to an ancient temple’s, such as the Parthenon’s, realization of its proper placement. It is not the architectural analogy, but the specifically Hellenic analogy of the ancient temple—resting on the earth, emerging out of the earth, and rising in itself and in all things—that plays a role in the course of Ts&tsos’ argument. I might add that this idea of ancient temples’ deriving their religious authority from their location in the Hellenic topos is one that is developed by other contemporary critics, such as Hristos Karuzos and Dimitris Piki6nis,5? and appears repeatedly in Neohellenic criticism from the 1940s to the late 1970s. It also appears in Martin Heidegger’s “groundbreaking” philosophical essay of 1935, “The Origin of the Work of Art, ” where the Ancient Greek “temple work” Is described as “standing there, open[lng] up a world and at the same time set[ting] this world back 217 again on earth, which Itself only thus emerges as native ground”) (Heidegger 1971: 42). For TsAtsos, topothitisis means finding one’s proper place not in an international scene, but in the Hellenic landscape. It means rooting oneself In the Hellenic earth In such a way that artistic expression derives from

“ TIS (8l€S TIS TTTyy^S TTJS €\XT)VlKlfc CWfc. TTp008l0pl0p£va Kd0€ 4>0pdt an6 TT|V

TlpWTapXlKf) TOT1O0^TT)OT| OVVClSlfocUJV UOU (OUV TTJ |a6v^T) 8waT1^ YV'fawt (<*4 TT| (0)11 nou p((€S OTTi>niKaiOTOUV€tiiiaTOX06v'io" (“the very sources of Hellenic life, defined each time from the original placement of a consciousness that lives the only possible authentic life, the life which has roots in the earth and in the chthonic spirit”) (TsAtsos 1938b: 100). Although TsAtsos warns that finding an “objective form” does not mean fitting one’s work into a prepared mould—0 t6ttos ...irp&rci v a c tv a i

koiv6s y ia Kd0c aio0ryriKf) ouvc(8tiotv xwpfc va c(vai koiv6s t6ttos” (“ topos m ust

be common for every aesthetic consciousness without being commonplace”) (TsAtsos 1938c: 254)—he does not hesitate to describe the traits of ElUnikdtita in a later response to Seferis:

'AXXoi uXrioidCovpc tt^v i8£a ttis cXXTiviKdTiyras an6 to 8p6po n is ^voiis, dxxoi and t o 8pdpo ttis lOToptas. 'AXXoi cpxdpaoTC Tipos cwti^v ai?6 tt)v ttoCtioti Kai andtt)v t^xvti ttis f\ Kai and rn 6ia8oxi1tujv ©piioKcic&v ttis . rv ccut6 piropct oe TioXXd va 8ta4>iovoup€ avapcTalju p as. Etvai dpa>s t6oo aSidoeiOTT) r\ coioTcpiKi^ tt) s €v6tt)To, ttov 8cv pnopct va pri ovvavrT^ovpc oc pcpucd Kalpia orp cta; Mia apCTfj tyDTds nou Siwxvci tis okUs, tt) 0apTid8a Kai to puoTi^piO1 ttou 8(vci ca^vcia o t i s ypa|i|i& ««■ OTa TTcpvypdpiiaTa.... Mia apcTi*) piTpou, ttov 8cv avAx€Tai TavncppoXuca jicy& tv tiou 0uoid(€i Ta TiTaviKd Kai Ta Yi-Y^Tia OTa oXtipma Kai Ta av0po5mva ttou o th v \|rvxf) pd£ci dpia oc Kd0c (lotiaopa.... 'Eva p£rpo OTa0cpd Kai dpws cvkopttto... (TsAtsos 1938c: 258) 218 Some people approach the idea of Greekness from the path of nature, others from the path of history; still others approach it through poetry and art or from the succession of its religions. For this reason we may differ among ourselves on many points. But isn’ its internal unity is so un-shatterable that it is impossible for us not to agree on certain crucial points? A virtue of light that dispels shadows, dullness, and mystery; that gives clarity to lines and contours. A virtue of measure that cannot bear exaggerated size, that sacrifices the titanic and the gigantic for the Olympic and the human, that gives the soul limits for each outburst.... A measure that is steadfast but supple... It is not difficult to discover parallels between Yanndpulos’ description of the Hellenic topfo (“landscape”) and TsAtsos’ ideal of ElUnikdtita , which also stresses the “virtue of light,” “clarity" of “lines and contours,” and “virtue of measure.” Again, one should not forget the clear identification of ElUnikdtita with an “aesthetic of native authenticity” (Tziovas 1989: 73) which derives from YannApulos: the mystical idealization of the nation and paganlike worship of the Aegean landscape and Greek light. Although Yann6pulos Introduced this aesthetic during the first decade of the 20th century, it acquired currency only after 1936 as a moderate reaction to the geocllmatlc messianism of General IoAnnis MetaxAs. The aesthetic of en-topia combines several diverse notions: the modern political ideal of a dellneable space which circumscribes the social and cultural body of a particular nation (national territory); the classical rhetorical figure of a literary “commonplace” which provides authors with a familiar site of return that can be cultivated to please audiences again and again (koinds tdpos, locus communis); the western aesthetic image of a place where one recovers the intrinsic value of Beauty, Truth, and Reason (the archeological site); and the Neohellenic goal of reconstructing Hellenism in its original space (the State). In Neohellenic modernism, “Hellas” becomes the 219 ambiguous but powerful sign that marks this tdpos as both the indigenous, naive, pure origin and the modern, sentimental, belated outcome of Hellenism.It is always “ours,” yet never entirely possessed.

Deterritorializing Hellenism We have seen how Neohellenism transforms the political project of defining (and expanding) the boundaries of the unredeemed nation into a cultural project of (re)constructing a topos of Hellenism w here modern Greece is aesthetically redeemed. In its modernist manifestation, Neohellenism shapes the topos of Hellas in ways that prove capable of absorbing the aesthetic function of western modernity—the function of producing works that are both unified and Integrated, autonomous and liberating. That is to say, it subjects the autonomous, self-regulation function of the aesthetic—as a system of forms, ideas, and sentiments that purportedly give no account to any other system; as an invisible force that shapes customs and habits without displaying its power; and as a counter- discursive option that contests the pervasiveness of technology, mass consumer culture, and economic interests—to the determining forces of topos. The literary outcome is probably not unfamiliar to students of non­ dominant modernist movements. One characteristic that minor modern literatures may indeed share is that they situate themselves in relation to the emergence of Modernism in European culture by playing to a national audience—with its sense of outrage at the appropriation of its past by dominant European cultures. Thus, against the high modernist culture of western Europe and America, which features a cosmopolitan urban setting, 220 international flight, and the theme of spiritual exile, one finds the nationalist orientation of Greek modernism. The setting is bucolic. The rhetoric is populist. The conception of language promises organic union with the natural surrounding. Fragmentation of form becomes a banner marking the violation of national terrain. And the image of a “home” within "home” ( entopia ) is projected as the recovered lost center of civilization. In sum, Neohellenic modernism nostalgically reterritorializes state power and physical geography as a way of countering the dominance of western culture. To return to the overarching question of how ideas and movements travel off-center, when “modernism” takes its tour of Greece, it becomes “grounded” in the politically and culturally overdeter mined notion of topos. People like George Seferis and Odysseas Elytis use modernist techniques to circumscribe, transverse, and finally occupy a topos of Hellenism as a transcendental site of Hellas. During the years of what is for him an unmentionable Civil W a r , 59 Seferis attempts to stage a mystical leap homeward from the darkness of agnostocism to “the light” of apocalypse— that vague place of collective n o sto s (homecoming) where the ground and origin of modern (national) identity rise out of a self-fulfilling nostalgia. In the period of "reconstruction” after the great world and civil wars, Elytis describes a landscape of the Aegean that implodes into a minute but ever so “great” cosmos. He invites both compatriots and erstwhile invaders to discover with him the properly neohellenic beauty of his cosm os—to follow him into his own “far and sinless.. .far and unwrinkled country” of Hellas. 221

The notion of a Neohellenic culture which expresses a particular topos and is grounded in the Spirit of its people, yet, like the aesthetic ideal in the west, supersedes all contingency, appears repeatedly throughout this century in a number of statements. It is in this vein that Elytis once described the contribution of his contemporary and friend, the artist Y&nnis Tsaruhis (1909-1989):

Tt)v rp^pa nov o (arypdtyos o v t6 s TdXpryje va avaCTyrfaci t o v EppV] 6 x i o to 6pos 'OXvpTros aXXdoTo «Ka4>eve(ov o'OXvpTiosx*, Iv a s pveos Kar^Tycc an6 Ta pipxla om ( 0) ^ €V<6t o p d n to v KaXXiT^xm vnoxP€(j56riK€ va aTCvfoei axxu6s tov k6o|io. Me d x x a X 6yia, r\ veoexxtivufi TTpaypaTiKdmTa, frapapoptyop^vri (6s t 6 t c cm6 pia tlrctinm ^ixoxoyla, epxdTav va tidpci t t i ♦voiKtfi m s Qlor\ p£oa OTa nxaoTiKd evSia^povTa to v xaipoti pas. Kai o (wypd^os, €VTomop£vos p£oao to x<6po nov to v 6pi(e avTfi €TT(opic6Tav Tis evolves va p p e i m povaSiKfi &4>paoTi ttov dppo(e om v iSum m ta m s. (Elytis 1988 : 241) The day [Tsaruhis] dared to search for Hermes not on mount Olympus but in the k a fe n io n ("coffee house") “Olympus," was the day when a myth descended from books to life, while the eye of the artist became obligated to gaze at the cosm os differently. In other words, Neohellenic reality, distorted until then by a false philology, found its natural place in the artistic Interests of our times. And the artist, en - topi-smenos ("located within”) the space which set [Neohellenism’s] limits, shouldered the responsibility of finding a singular expression which would harmonize with its particularity. Elytis’ substitution of the " k a fe n io n ‘Olympus’" for the revered dwelling of the classical pantheon, “Mount Olympus, ” suggests that the virtues of Hellenic culture, classical and modern, find not only their genuine modern residence but also their true p h ilo lo g y in popular culture: the popular site of the modern Greek k a fe n io n (“coffeeshop”) and figure of the p a lik ir i (“brave young man”). Meanwhile, Tsar&his characterized his own project as the

e5cvycviop6s m s Xawtfe t^xvtjs (“ennoblement of the people’s art") (Tsaruhis

1988 : 20). Prometheus becomes the symbol of origin for his popularizing 222 revolution: “an6 v c \v ctoxti tou ripo^T^a, o Kaxxvrfyvris ctvai cnavaoTdTris"

(“from the time of Prometheus, the artist has been a revolutionary”) (1988: 24). His paintings represent classical images of the urban male nude, “6ff(i)S

8ev c(x€ €H$aviOT€( atr6 rnv apxai6rnTa”(“as he had not appeared since ancient times”) (Xydis, 1989: 47). Like Elytis’ poetic personae, his images present popular, classical icons of native identity and authenticity: an Interesting synthesis of the archaic k o u ros (the monumental 6th-century BCE statues of a male youth) and the modern p a lik ir i (“brave young man”).

Tsaruhis’ work in fact involves a continuous “8ia$iry£s

K\aou«$Kai TidXi avTtoTpo^a”(“evasions of the popular by way of the classical, and vice versa”) (Vakal6 1983: 75). This interesting circumvention of ElU nism Ss by way of R o m io sin i may indeed account for Tsar&his’ success, if one judges from the universal praise which his received for the aesthetic purity—for the “Greekness"—of his work after his death in the summer of 1989. The makers of Greece’s modernist revolution, having derived the authentic “line” of Hellenism from Homer, the archaic ko u ro s, and Aeschylus, sketched willful incarnations of the modern la d s : from the wayward Odysseus persona who wanders through modernity’s “vast hotel” in search of home (Seferis), to the naive Prometheus figer who fights fire w ith the sun (Elytis), to the urban (Tsar&his) or the bucolic, Picasso-like, “classical” nudes (Nikol&u). Each of these textual and visual reincarnations claims the power to communicate with the Hellenic people of all ages through the great conduits of par& dosi (“tradition”) and l tt l ii (“language”). 223

As if bridging the chasm between their own and more ancient sensibilities, Neohellenic modernists have also divined the tastes of not only their own “people,” but also their "ancestors” who appeared in classical sculptures such as Parthenon frieze:

Iifycpa o Xa6s pas t ( €(8ou? t^ x v t) ayaTrdci n€pioo6T€po. Nop(Cu> 6 t i ayaTrdci t t \ pououc^ Kai pdXioTa Ta pcpti^TiKa. Auti^v tou ap£oei va okouci, tov ToiTodvT) Kai to icaeapdKai apdXi/VTo TpayouBi tou Mtti0ik(otot). TcpdoTios o MneTdpev aXXd t o peoa pas k<£tidXXo ayand Kai out6 pas XPC tdC^Tai. BX^novTas Ta avdyXu^a and t i s pcTwrres to u napeevwva, rr^v noprn^ tojv navaeTivatwv, vioSeeis 6 ti Kai o to u s 'EXXt\v€S ck€(vt^s rn s enoxife auTfj r) pouoiKi^ ea tous Talpiacc, £va t^ to io ncptnou xalKd TpayoOSi. ndvTcus, an* to u s Carypdtyaus rn s enox% pas ckcCvos tiou 6a OTCKdTav itio KaXd pact to u s e(vai 0 ecddlXOS. (NikolAu 1986: 49-50)

Today what kind of art does the lads love best? I think it loves music, especially the urban blues (rembdtika). This is what it likes to hear, TsitsAnis and the pure, untainted song of Bithlkdtsls. Beethoven is great, but we love something else deep Inside us and this is w hat we need. While observing the Parthenon frieze, which represents the Panathenaic procession, one feels that this music—a popular ( la ik d ) song of this sort—would also be suitable for the Greeks of that epoch. Anyway, from the artists of our times, the one who would suit them best is The6filos. Therein lies the myth of Greekness. Through such fantastic divinations of ancient tastes, Neohellenic modernists gave a “popular," modern form to everything from from Sappho’s fragments to Euripides’ tragic choruses, alongside demotic songs and modern poetry. 6° In this thesis, I have tried both to explain and to contextuallze the cultural logic which replaces false (western) conceptions of Hellenism with the philosophy of the k a fe n io n (“coffee house”) . I have shown how this cultural logic locates Hellenism en-tdpto\ within the Spirit of the Neohellenic “people” and their landscape, the carriers of Hellenism throughout the ages. I have described how It renders Classical Hellas a topos (“commonplace”) of esteemed high and low origins. Through a detour from history to 224 autochthony, the Hellenic tradition is made to signify the aesthetic harmony of the good earth and vitality of the indigenous population. The same logic continues to govern powerful political statements of resistance to western hegemony—most notably Melina Mercurl’s recent complaint that "Coca Cola won out over the Parthenon” in the Olympic International Committee’s decision to give the 1996 Olympic games to Atlanta. The message here is that only crass materialism can stand in the way of Neohellenism’s rightful claim to hold and protect and reproduce Hellenism’s purest Institutions. 6* But what have been the sometimes powerful, sometimes devastating effect of Neohellenism’s post-War efforts to "reconstruct” Hellas as the untainted, pre-capitalist, non-industrialized home of (western) Hellenism? What are the results of its sustained effort to claim the status of authenticity for a national culture of secondary power, influence, authority, status, and wealth among western nations? From all these examples, one can see that modern Greece has been carving out an uncomfortable relationship to the heterotopia of Hellas: in almost every case, it leans hard on historical continuity, which is anything but given or direct. Inasmuch as ancient Greece has been assigned to the conceptual territory of Hellenism—which was, after all, assembled and marked by the western disciplines of history, philology, and archeology— Neohellenism continues to operate outside the power and dominion of its own glorified past. Hence it is compelled repeatedly to respond, as Lorentzatos complains in "The Lost Center,” to "the European debate about whether or not we Greeks were the true descendants of the ancient Greeks” (1980b: 91). 225

In its contemporaneous relation to the major axis that cuts through many developing countries, the axis of the developed and modernized west, Neohellenism operates, again, outside the standard. This is reflected not only in St 6llos R&mphos" and Perlklis Yann 6pulos' insistence that foreign values are not the values of Hellenism, but also in Y 6rgos TheotokAs' urgent call for modernization and liberalization. These Greek critics agree that Neohellenism deviates dangerously from the European norm. For the former, it deviates to its credit, whereas for the latter, to its detriment. In either case, it does not cut a bold path in unexplored directions. The image of deviation should be scrutinized further, especially as it relates to the position of a minor academic field. In its current state, Greek criticism has not found ways to subvert the notion of a continuous or monolithic Hellenism; through a variety of unsuccessful, albeit creative successful efforts, it has only tried to link modern Greece to the standard of Hellenism. Preoccupied with issues of identity, it has sought to extract for itself constants from ancient Hellenism, rather than to set this very notion along a path of variation. Thus, it has perpetuated the view that there is a Greek style indigenous to the territory of Hellenism, without effectively persuading major forces that it ultimately defines this originary space. In relation to the western European/American tracing of civilization, it deviates, diverges from the rule, walks the crooked path. Even where it appropriates Hellenism to negotiate its own boundaries and shape its own space, it often fails to annex Itself legitimately. Although a study such as my own cannot aspire to redirect Neohellenism Itself, It m ay propose w ays of revising the hierarchy of 226 disciplines within its own context, the American University .62 In this spirit, I suggest that we consider the position of the field of Modern Greek as a plateau in the multileveled system of strata that organizes and unifies the contemporary disciplines of the Humanities. Modern Greek may be conceived as one of a number of un-disciplined, discontinuous epistrata that ride a path of difference over what deceptively appears as a continuous and solid mass. It cuts through a heterogeneous grouping of social, political, and cultural vectors which have been variously categorized as both Greek and non- Hellenic, European and non-Western, familiar and exotic, Indigenous and orientalized. In this position, Modern Greek reflects the situation of not a radically devalued Other, but what may be named the subversive “inner Other”66—the other of European culture which both invests in and adulterates a prototype of civilization. Through its Internalized alterity,6* it shatters the continuity of “western Civilization, * fragments the ring of its venerated classical center, and “deterritorializes” Hellenism, finding lines of flight that relay in unanticipated directions. In the undisguisedly ethnic and political culture of Greece, one has the advantage of recognizing elements, forms, cultural issues, and problems of 19th- and 20th-century western culture, while finding patterns that undermine the universality of Eurocentric notions (like the radical disjunction between aesthetic and political culture66). Given the impracticable and yet compelling prescription that Neohellenism be made in the image of Hellenism, Modern Greek Studies can bear witness to one irreparable fissure in the “Eurocentric Self.” It should therefore challenge the notion of legitimate lineage, orderly descent, and unadulterated western 227 civilization. By exploring the tenuous and strained relationship between Greeks, Neohellenism, and Hellenism, the field of Modern Greek may shatter the Illusion of a unified origin for European cultures, and thus play a dynamic role in remapping cultural studies. NOTES

Chapter I. M nM iia.

1 I discuss this poem at length in Chapter III.

2 The Neohellenic modernist movement which emerged in the early 1930s w as cosmopolitan in outlook, liberal in ideology, and experimental in its approach to language and artistic style. It exhibited innovations in form, reflected on its medium, explored the formal possibilities of non-chronological narrative and non-rational thought, and referred to prior works of art in a fragmented and desultory manner. For a range of articles on the existence and scope of a modernist movement in Greece, see the collection of essays edited by Layoun (1990).

^ This is quite literally the case, since the cold w ar effected one of the last major changes in Greece’s borderlines. In 1947 Greece lost claims to Norther Epirus—a region of southern Albania occupied by ethnic Greeks and sought by Greece as w ar reparation—in exchange for the Dodecanese Islands, occupied by Italy since 1911. We have witnessed in early January of 1991 yet another complex side-effect of the recent cold-war thaw, the "return" of ethnic-Greeks (alongside fleeing Muslims and Roman Catholics) from this region of Albania to northwestern Greece. This newest arrival of refugees has met with little favor in Greece, where government officials cling to statistical information about the presence of a large Greek minority in Northern Epirus in support of their continuing claim to this region.

4 These two Greek terms, alongside the terms protoporiaki (“vanguard”) and s in h r o n i (“contemporary”), signify progressive writing styles. N e o te r ik i(“neoteric”) is the preferred adjective used by mainstream Neohellenic modernists to refer to their own stylitic innovations. The term, Moderntsmds (“modernism”) appears in Greece as early as 1921, when it refers specifically to Futurist poetry. Its usage at this time is for the most part pejorative. For a history of these two terms’ appearance and usage in Greece, see Tziovas 1989: 19ff.

5 I discuss the appearance and meaning of the word ElUnikdtita (“Greekness”) more extensively later in this chapter.

^ It is Important to understand the resonances of the “Hellenic” for a Greek audience. First, one should distinguish between the “Hellenic” and the “Helladic.” I use the term “Hellenic” to refer to both the Neohellenic nation

228 229 and the cultural ideal of western Humanism. In territorial terms, the Hellenic is the land associated with a Nation’s history. “Hell a die, ” the adjective derived from the name for the Kingdom (and, later, State) of H ellSs, describes the geographical space legally belonging to this Kingdom. Throughout Neohellenic history, there is a perceived disjunction between the Greek nation ( ith n o s) and the Greek state ( k r ito s ) , which I describe more thoroughly in chapter II. The '‘Hellenic” is imagined as emergent and having a certain teleology, whereas the “Helladic” is viewed as static—a “state” existing from the time of the establishment of an all too limiting Kingdom of Hellas.

7 In a powerful, though all too aphoristic, critique of Neohellenic modernist ideology, Dimitris Kaps&lis (1984a and 1984b) argues that “the problematic pair, ‘tradition and/or vanguard’ continues to operate today” throughout Neohellenism. This is because “to 8(Xt|ppa ctUT6...0 XTpaTi(€i...Kai avanapiOTd tt)v lOTopiKf) Kai cvvoioXoyiKl^ ttpoutt66€ot} tou V€ 0€XXt)vikou pOVT€pVlOpoft 0 €|€XXT^VlOil6s TOU pOVT^pVOU Yj 0 €Kp0VT€pVl0p6$ TOU €XXT)VIK0U” (“this dilemma.. .form s... and represents the historical and conceptual presupposition of Neohellenic modernism: the Hellenization of the modern and the modernization of the Hellenic”) (Kaps&lis 1984a: 30). The critic Andreas Karand 6nis, a contemporary and major exponent of Seferis’ and Elytis’ work who identifies totally with their project, symptomatically articulates both sides of this modernizing/Hellenizing project: “Oi $£ves eni8pdoeis ouxvdavaCax>,y6vTioav...TTi XoyoTexvta pas, poTiduvTas al-fous 8rpioupvous va ouyxpovfoouv rnv eXXTpaKfj tous cpucipta pe t is £ |v €S, 8(xws v a XT)opoW)Gouv, aXXd, to avTtSeTO, v a ava8e(£ouv ttjv €XXt)viKf) tous KaTayary^.... Av o Sc^pris Kai o EX uttjs an6 p id s apx^s e^doKTjoav Kai eiaoKouv ok 6pti SuvaT^s Kai noxxanxls €Tii8pdo€is otous vecjTepous, etvai yiaTt Kdpav €XX tjvik 6 alp a t is €ni8pao€is nou 8^XTTycav ati6 tous ^ vous ” ("Foreign influences frequently gave new life to... our literature, assisting worthy creators to modernize their Hellenic experience through foreign [experiences], without forgetting but, on the contrary, revealing their Hellenic origin If Seferis and Elytis from the beginning exerted and continue to exert powerful and multiple Influences on younger generations, this is because they transformed foreign Influences into Hellenic blood”) (Karand 6nis 1980a: 148-149).

8 Peter Hutchinson (1983) notes that quotation (especially from Latin sources, including the Latin Bible) is a prominent device in literature beginning in the Middle Ages. He might also have noted its extensive use in Hellenistic and Augustan poetry. “In general, however, modern authors have taxed their reader’s attentiveness and general knowledge far more severely” (Hutchinson 1983: 108). In modernist literature, quotation may represent a "competitive” form of “game,” which challenges the learned reader to find and interpret the cryptic quotation. The device of quotation should be distinguished from the thematic treatment of ancient myths, such as the dramatic revival of the stories of Antigone, Dionysus, Tiresias, or Orpheus. There are numerous examples of 230 modernist revivals. Some of the best known are Jean Anouilh’s A ntigone (1942); Guillaume Apollinaire’s Les Mamelles de Tirisias (1903, produced as an opera with Poulenc’s music in 1947); Jean Cocteau’s A ntigone (1922) and O rphie (1926); H. D.’s Helen in Egypt (posthumously published in 1961); Andrl Gide’s King Kandaules (1901); Jean Giraudoux’s Amphytryon 58 (1929) and La guerre de Troie n ’aura pas lieu (1935); St6phane MallarmA’s N erodias (1869); Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning becomes Electra (1931); Rainer Maria Rilke’ Sonnets to Orpheus (1923); YAnnis Ritsos’ T4terti Di&stasi (1976); Jean Paul Sartre’s Les mouches (1943); Carl Spitteler’s Olympian Spring (1910); Paul A. ValAry’s The Pythian Prophetess (1922); Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s E lectra (1903); and Franz Werfel’s Trojan Women (1914). In each case the author relies on an audience’s familiarity with a basic story and manipulates audience expectations in re-telling of that story, or alludes to the story incidentally as a way of either giving depth to certain material or creating an Ironic distance. C. P. Cavafy achieves both a sense of grandeur and irony in his best “historical” poems, which use lesser- known historical material in a similarly thematic manner. These include “Thermopylae” (1903), “King Dimitrios" (1906), “The Glory of the Ptolemies” (1911), and “Greeks from Ancient Times” (1927), and many others.

9 Here I refer again to the technique of literary quotation, as distlnquished from the thematic treatment of myth. Ezra Pound’s “Papyrus," which appears in L u stra , offers a typical example. Here we find a symbolist use of the odd detail, the Incidental reference to Sappho’s fragmentary literary remains found in the Egyptian desert “dumps. ” “Spring.../Too long.../Gongula” (Gongula is the name of one of Sappho’s “pupils”) represents a string of incidental details. Taken together, these suggests the condensed but luminous image of longing contained in Sappho’s papyrus remains. Rilke’s work represents another approach, where the poet uses ancient material to ‘answer’ major questions about love, death, nature, and language.

10 For more on the nature and context of minor and minority discourse (the slippage between these two terms is common) see the Spring and Fall 1987 Issues of Cultural Critique and the May 1990 issue of the Journal of Modern Greek Studies

11 I discuss the aesthetic ideal of “autochthony, ” that is to say, of a culture or people “sprung from the land” ( ch th o n) “itself” {a u to ) and so authentically representing an indigenous culture, in Chapter V.

12 Autochthony also seems to be a criterion of value in other “peripheral” modernist movements, for example, the novela de la tierra of Spanish America. Carlos J. Alonso (1990) views autochthony as a rhetorical phenomenon in the gaucho bildungsroman of Ricardo GUiraldes, the jungle novel of JosA Eustasio Rivera, and the Venezuelan plains regional tale of Romulo Gallegos. In each case autochthony serves as a self-consciously critical discourse that marks the modernity of the genre. 231

David Harvey (1989) coins the term “time-space compression,” building on Stephen Kern’s (1983) analysis of western turn-of-the-century reconceptualizations of space and time. The “time-space compression” refers to both changes in the conceptual ordering of time and space and the material (socio'politico-economic) consequences of these changes. Specifically it is the tendency for the development of capitalist systems to be accompanied by a “speed-up in the pace of life, while so overcoming spatial barriers that the world sometimes seems to collapse inward upon us” (Harvey 1989: 240). A contradictory trend also follows. Even as the capitalist organization of social and political relations tends to absorb time and space “under the homogenizing powers of money and commodity exchange” (1989: 263), it also “rationalizefsj spatial organization into efficient configurations of production.. .and consumption” (1989: 232). That is to say, it both universalizes and radically localizes time and space. In modernism one finds both of these conflicting tendencies. Modernist literature may treat the past as part of a simultaneous order to which it belongs (thus spatializing time), while also drawing attention to its radical difference of position relative to any moment in the past. On the spatlalization of time in modernist literature, see Joseph Frank (1968).

14 "Eastern Nationalism” is a purposeful misnomer. It refers to the nationalism of peoples from Eastern Europe, Including Greece, but also from the continents of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It is “Eastern” only in the sense that it is secondary to “Western” Nationalism. And it is secondary in this sense: that a non-western people aims to assert its own civilisation as an equal if separate partner in a “western civilization” which ultimately precludes its equal participation.

15 R om iosini is very nearly Impossible to translate into English. It is the nominalized form of the adjective Romi6s> a Greek vernacularization of the adjective Rom aios ("Roman”), This name attaches itself to the occupants of the Greek peninsula at some unspecified time after the Romans destroyed Corinth (146 BC). R om iosini is a vernacular coinage of the late-19th century. It signifies the national-popular body and its Byzantine / Ottoman-Chrlstian popular heritage, the demotic language and folk culture of “the people. ” For more on Demoticlsm, Populism, and Rom iosini, see chapter IV. 16 The image of a “simultaneous order” derives from T.S. Eliot (1920). After years of disuse in the vocabulary of English and American poets, novelists, and critics, Eliot brought the term “tradition” into currency just after World War I. At this time some of the “moderns” (including H. D., Ford Maddox Ford, T. E. Hulme, Wyndham Lewis, and Ezra Pound)* who had embraced Individualist, anti-traditionalist, subjectivist, positions in the pre­ w ar period, declared their earlier views bankrupt and promoted a “classical revival. ” The case of Hulme and Pound is of special note: “Just as Hulme rediscovered Racine. Byzantium and Egypt, so Pound returned to his ‘pawing over the ancient’” (Levenson 1984: 186). Their revived interest in a great civilizations of the past allowed for a revaluation of the concept of tradition 232 and its role in aiding, rather than constraining, the individual talent. It is in the context of this post-World War I shift that one should view T.S. Eliot’s influential essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” [1919] and his conception of tradition as a “simultaneous order.” I discuss Eliot’s essay extensively in Chapter III. Eliot and his friends were not alone in returning to the issue of tradition. Robert Weimann (1984) has argued that a world-wide revaluation of tradition occurred during the second quarter of the 20th century. He claims that Eliot exhibited parochialism by remaining unaware of this fact (Weimann 1984 : 58ff.). On another front, the formalist critic JurlJ Tynjanov (1987) recognized that every literary movement relies on the conventions of a previous system. With his very Interesting essay “On Literary Evolution” [1927], Tynjanov opened a line of inquiry into the interrelationship of literary "systems”—e.g. an individual work and its genre or a work and preceding works. He explained changes in the function of elements by the idea of “literary evolution. ”

17 See, for example, Gilbert Highet (1949) and E. R. Curtius (1948). Curtius’ is the most important book on tradition published during the post­ war period. It traces the continuity of a western literary tradition from Homer to Goethe by studying persistant structures, allusions, metaphors, ideas, and topoi (“commonplaces”). Other late-19th century humanist terms used to characterize of modern assimilations of the classical world Include the biological metaphors, Nachleben, Fortleben , and “Survival, ” all of which "suggest an immortality, as it were, of the classical spirit that escaped extinction in subsequent cultures” (Reinhold and Hanawalt 1987: 2).

18 “The Anxiety of Influence” (1975a) is Harold Bloom’s catchy phrase for the agonistic relationship between competing authors. By this image, Bloom seeks to supplant the notion of a benign “simultaneous order” and so to deflate the authority of T.S. Eliot. Bloom represents the processes of transmission as an agon between a poet and his precursor. The new poet confronts the precursor, who remains a source of anxiety for his filial rival because the new poet's place in tradition depends on his persuasive “misreading” of the precursor. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (1988) give a feminist reading to Bloom’s theory of anxious influences (Bloom 1975a, 1975b, and 1976). They argue that the author’s sex is ultimately significant in determining what sort of relationship s/he may have with her/his precursor. Gilbert and Gubar accept Bloom's Oedipal model for male authors, but offer an alternative model for female w riters of the 20th century.

19 According to Joseph R. Gusfield (1967), "tradition is not something waiting out there.... It is rather plucked, created, and shaped to present needs and aspirations in a given historical situation. Men refer to aspects of the past as tradition in grounding their present actions in some legitimate principle. In this fashion, tradition becomes an ideology, a program of action in which it functions as a goal or as a justificatory base” (Gusfield 1967: 358) 233

20 Robert Weimann (1984) has argued that T. S. Eliot’s spatial image of tradition as a "simultaneous order” ignores tradition's operation in smoothing the fundamentally temporal (and political) problem of succession. Weimann conceives of the relationship between present and past as a dialectic between preservation and repression.

21 Here I use the term “invention” in the manner suggested by Eric Hobsbaum and Terence Ranger (1983), who define “invented tradition” as “a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically Implies continuity with the past... [T]hey normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past.... In short, they are responses to novel situations which take the form of reference to old situations, or which establish their own past by quasl-obligatory repetition” (Hobsbaum and Ranger 1983: 1-2).

22 It is important to note the Marxist contribution to this last view of tradition. Raymond Williams (1977) defines tradition as “a deliberately selective and connecting process which offers a historical and cultural ratification of a contemporary order” (Williams 1977: 116). Williams’ work calls for a critical practice that opposes the hegemonic version of “a living tradition. ”

23 One version of this narrative appears in the work of JUrgen Habermas. Habermas (1984) ascertains the unity (and thereby epistemological confidence) of modernity by reference to a “rationalized lifeworld ” linked with “our Occidental understanding of the world ” (Habermas 1984: 43-44). In contrast to this rationality and universality, Habermas refers to the “‘closedness’ of mythical worldviews:... the insufficient differentiation among fundamental attitudes to the objective, social, and subjective worlds; and the lack of reflexivity in worldviews that cannot be Identified as worldviews , as cultural traditions. Mythical worldviews are not understood by members as interpretive systems that are attached to cultural traditions, constituted by internal interrelations of meaning, symbolically related to reality, and connected with validity claims” (1984: 50-51). What is remarkable about this passage is that its author treats the mythical worldview merely as a mirror by which the Occident may recognize its own s u ffic ie n t “differentiation among fundamental attitudes to the objective, social, and subjective worlds.” Here it appears that Habermas is interested in the non-West only Insofar as it can provide the West with a confident image of itself. Habermas talks in a general way about the lack of self-awareness, self-interpretation, and self-understanding (standard traits of a “modern Occidental” worldview), without attempting to distinguish between different aspects of the non-west. According to Naokl Sakai (1988), Habermas “deals with the non-Western cultures and traditions as though they were clearly shaped and as though they could be treated exhaustively as objects” (Sakai 1988: 478). 234

24 In the study of the history of religion, Lloyd I. and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph (1967) have suggested that “tradition” is one of a pair of historically- constructed concepts, the other of which is “modernity. ” They analyze ways in which tradition and modernity infiltrate one another. They generally view tradition and modernity as somehow continuous, and cite studies of non-Western societies to show that traditional societies reveal modern features, and modern societies have their traditions. They argue further that it is the traditions of modern nations that make them unlike one another, a difference which is crucial for maintaining national allegiences, which is a crucial aspect of modernity. Their goal is finally to “accord tradition a higher priority in the study of modernization” (Rudolph and Rudolph 1967: 10). Zwi Werblowsky (1976) holds a related view. He grants that “the degree of ‘tradition orientedness* of a religious culture determines to a great extent the nature of its encounter with modernity” (Werblowsky 1976: 4) and that modernity may render a traditional past antiquated. Yet the conflict between traditional religious views and modern rationalization is a consequence of “the impact of the West” on the non-West (Werblowsky 1976: 5), which takes the character of a military, economic, colonial, missionary, imperialist, and cultural intervention. This is not to say “that Western experience sets the standard by which all other developments have to be measured” (1976: 6). Werblowsky recognizes “the role and significance of the Western paradigm not only as a causative factor but also as a convenient reference point for comparison that may throw into greater relief the characteristics of other cultures in responding to Western impact and influence” (1976: 7).

25 Werblowsky rhetorically asks whether there is “room in the structure of modernity for tradition. ” Indeed he finds that both modernity and tradition possess a characteristic patina which is part of the modern world. Modernity symbolizes “the lure of the new,” while tradition holds the “deceptive appearance of Integration and of the resolution of conflict” (Werblowsky 1976: 114). Not unlike Edward Shils (1981), who argues that tradition is a creative and dynamic force, Werblowsky asserts that modernity m ay Itself become a tradition, even as tradition may be modernized, and modernity, constantly overtaken by a new modernity, becomes a “movable Indicator of temporal or cultural location” (Werblowsky 1976: 18).

26 As groundwork for this hypothesis, Joseph Gusfield (1967) names seven fallacies which follow from the false presupposition that tradition functions as an impediment to modernization. Against each assumption he counterproposes his own view. Among these assumptions is the belief that traditional culture is a consistent body of norms and values and traditional society a homogeneous, non-dlfferentiated social structure. Gusfield suggests instead that one finds an important diversity of orientations and lifestyles—a diversity which itself “provides legitimizing principles for a wide set of alternative forms of behavior” (Gusfield 1967: 354). To the notion that traditional societies are static societies, he answers that “tradition has been 235 open to change before its present encounters with the West” (1967: 353). And to the assumption that tradition and modernity are exclusive systems, he gives this reply: “a given Institution or cultural system contains several aspects or dimensions. Each dimension does not function in the same w ay in response to new Influences on a society. Tradition and modernity are frequently mutually reinforcing, rather than systems in conflict” (1967: 356).

21 Another line of interest is the relationship of colonialism and “indigenous” cultures. Lata Mani (1987) analyzes how the discourse on the tradition of sa t /serve the colonial “development” of India. She takes as her object of study not tradition Itself, but a particular discourse on tradition which appears in the context of colonial and postcolonial debates about the ethnic, religious, cultural, and sexual Identity of a vast labor force occupying the economically invaluable land of the Indian Peninsula. Her approach to tradition is thus Ideological, in that she considers the powerful political and economic (in this case, “modernizing, ” feminizing, and subjugating) function of modern discussions about the past.

According to James Longenbach (1987), Eliot and Pound were intensely Interested in representing the processes of history in their poetry: “For both these poets the present is nothing more than the sum of the entire past—a palimpsest, a complex tissue of historical remnants They were occupied not only with the actual recollection of the past but with the process and methodology of that recollection. Their work forced them to think strenuously about the ontological status of history and the nature of historical understanding — [They also tried to] negotiate several conflicting types of historicism... to navigate between the Scylla of the antihistoricism of Marinetti and the Italian futurists and the Charybdis of the ‘pastism’ of the philologists” (Longenbach 1987: 11-12)

29 Peter Hutchison (1983) suggests that the game of cryptic quotation and esoteric allusion which many modernists play requires its own philological exegesis, sometimes provided by the author himself—“T. S. Eliot acknowledges a number of his [quotations] in The Waste Land by means of the ‘Notes’ he appended to the poem” (Hutchison 1983: 108)—sometimes demanding the life-time attention of critics—“And critics are s t i ll discovering cryptic quotations in U lyssesX” (1983: 110).

88 The attack on parochialism begins as early as 1929 with Ydrgos Theotokos’ essay £A evQepo TJ^eu/ia (Free Spirit), which I discuss in Chapter II.

31 The term ellinikds Ellinism6s (“Greek Hellenism”) is Seferls’ invention and appears in his well-known debate with Konstandinos TsOtsos about the Greekness of his poetic language and style (1966 and 1981a). I discuss Seferls’ notion of “Greek Hellenism” in Chapter III. 236

32 I discuss Nlkolarelzls’ text and subtext in Chapter II.

33 Eliot (1923) introduces the term "mythical method” to describe James Joyce’s manner of using the myth of the O dyssey. The relevant passage is quite well-known: “In using the myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the Immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history— Instead of narrative method, we may now have the mythical method. It is, I seriously believe, a step toward making the modern world possible for a rt” (Eliot 1923: 483).

34 Alexander Argyros (1986-1987) points out that Keeley’s “insistence on the synthetic capacities of myth has, in the end, the pernicious effect of serving the Interests of those who would see modern Greece in the image of a certain idealized ancient Greece” (Argyros 1986-1987: 308).

33 1 k*tastrofi tis M ikrtsias (“The Catastrophe of Asia Minor,” or “The Asia Minor Disastor”), refers to events in Turkey in 1922, when the invading Greek arm y w as routed by a Turkish attack in the region of Afyonkarahisar (16 August 1922) and forced to retreat first to Smyrna and then the coast of Asia Minor. In the aftermath of the Greek army's evacuation of Smyrna (8 September 1922), there followed “a full-scale massacre of the Christian population, in which the Armenians suffered the greatest casualties.... A quarter of a mlllian people fled to the waterfront to escape the inferno [of the burning city].... Within a few d a y s.. .a 2500-year Greek presence on the western littoral of Asia Minor had been abruptly terminated in conditions of total disaster” (Clogg 1979: 118). Over a million-and-a-half refugees from the uprooted Greek and Armenian populations of Asia Minor arrived in Greece. For more on the social effects of this vast population movement, see Ren6e Hlrschon (1989).

36 “Demoticism” was a cultural movement which acquired force in Greece in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Its goal was to standardize the vernacular dialects and adopt these (over the archaizing “purist” language, which was officially in place until 1977) as the language of both culture and the state. Demoticism’s proponents argued for the vernacular’s clarity, intelligibility, and proximity to life and speech. They claimed that the state revival of ancient Greek (institutionalized with the foundation of the state in 1830) falsified the noble spirit of the Greek race and isolated the learned minority from the unschooled majority. Demoticists defended the Greek vernacular, first, in the name of Shakespeare, Racine, Homer, and Dante, all of whom wrote in the language of their times, with its mixed and “corrupt” forms and foreign words; second, in the name of the people, who expressed themselves naturally, consistently, and directly; third, in the name of nature, which directed the evolution of things according to the inner laws of their noble (de)generation; and fourth, in the name of tradition. 237

Tradition therefore took an important place in demoticist’s organic conception of the evolving and unfolding nature of national Identity. For them, time functioned as a continuum, rather than a discontinuity of past (antiquity conceived as origin) and present (modernity conceived as fall). To be Neohellenlc w as to have an historical consciousness of this continuum, of the link, that is, between individuals belonging to a single Hellenic race, past and present. History was the consciousness of this link between past and present; but the truly integrative function was performed by tradition, a living national memory. Thus, according to 'Ion Dragumis, one of Demoticism’s most articulate and powerful proponents, “For nations, memory is tradition.... Tradition is the link between the individuals of a single race, both present and past, which makes them a nation. History is the consciousness of this link. (Dragtimis 1927b: 203). Tradition was also viewed as contributing the necessary “temporal continuity and cohesion to a series of phenomena which are designated by succession” (Tziovas 1986: 71).

37 The M egili Idia (“great idea”) is the irredentist political vision of a Hellenic Kingdom whose borders would reflect those of the late Byzantine Empire. For more on how this vision is outlined, see Chapter II.

38 “Makriyannism6s” is defined as the populist insertion of General Y4nnis Makriy&nnis’ (1797-1864) semi-literate memoirs into the neohellenlc demoticist literary canon. For an insightful analysis of the cultural uses of “Makrlyannism6s,” see Stathis Gourgouris (1989). I discuss this Interesting phenomenon again in Chapter IV. Major critical essays that promote Makriy&nnis’ w ork during post-World War II period Include Kakridis (1972), Seferis (1981b), and Theotok&s (1961).

39 This latter view is expressed quite succinctly by G. Z. Mantzufas (1938), a critic who wrote regularly in the cultural journal of the Metax&s regime, To NtovKpdTOS ( The New State ) : “H cXXtivucI) ilnwi 6tiu)S Y ^T ai am\rflTT6v, ctvai ow8uccoii£vt} iic ir\v cMTiviictfo' tyixfy'. AXXd 8a/ ctvai p.6vov r\ i8i6iris rns cXXTivucife \jrvxifc. To Y€Y<>v6s 6 ti cyevi/ifariiiev a s tvo. ajpio^vov t6ttov, a s tov ouofov |0t)ocv dXX 0T€ t) €ic€(vtv T) ono(a 48u>0€v €is tt)v av0pa)Ti6T'nTa tov tcXaooi<6v tioXitio^v, 8ev elvai TVxaCov” (We are discovering that the Hellenic soul is in harmonious relation w ith the Hellenic race.... Yet [race] is not the only property of the Hellenic soul. The fact that we have been born in a particular topos where this race also lived at another time—one which gave humanity Classical civilization—is not coincidental”) (Mantztifas 1938: 1327-1329; quoted in Tziovas 1989: 143).

40 For a critique of the term “Generation” and, more generally, the filiative representation of literary succession, see Leontis (1990b).

41 Tziovas cites this passage (Tziovas 1989: 118). I discuss Elytis’ Important essay on Hatziklri&kos-Gikas (1982a) in chapter IV. 238

4* An obvious example is the n a iv e art of The6filos Hatzimihail (d. 1934). “The6filos, ” as he became known by his contemporaries, is a self­ trained "folk” artist who painted on buildings and walls in Lesvos in the early 20th century. His work was discovered by E. Teriade, who collected his more portable paintings and organized an exhibition in Paris in 1936 and in Greece in 1947. Teriade donated his collection to Museum of V arii in Lesvos, where it remains today. The surrealist poet Andrlas Embirikos (1901-1975) also collected The6filos’ paintings. Modernist poets and critics alike promoted The6fllos’ work for its Indigenous aesthetic of “Greekness, ” w ith its pure color and line. See Elytis (1947 and 1986) and Seferls (198lc) for their representative evaluations of The6filos’ work.

43 I discuss the Neohellenlc “autochthonous aesthetic” more fully in Chapter V.

44 Topos also has other related meanings: a piece of ground, a place, a site, a position, or an opportunity. Its rhetorical usage is especially suggestive. In ancient theory topos indicates a passage in a specific text or, more generally, a reliable “commonplace” expression (the Latin lo ci com m unes) which regularly dazzles its audience. In this last sense, a topos comes to mean a useful place of return, the site of common knowledge which is saturated with dependable rhetorical resonances.

48 The term, “imagined community,” appears in the title of Benedict Anderson’s much-discussed book (1983). Anderson defines the nation as “an imagined political community.... It is im agined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-memabers, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.... In fact, all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined” (Anderson 1983: 15). To “imagine” is not to fabricate, falsify, or masquerade, but to consent to a principle of self-representation—a principle which in turn creates or sustains a particular grouping that would not exist in that form if identity were “imagined” otherwise.

46 For the distinction between “Hellenic” and “Helladic” see note 6 above.

47 The term, “unredeemed diaspora,” refers to the Greek-speaking Orthodox populations that lived outside the geographical borders of the Greek Kingdom. It was used regularly by the proponents of the M egili Idta.

48 "Greece. The Classic European Vacation” appeared in The New York T im es Sunday Travel Section, Winter and Spring 1982. It was the slogan for an advertisement paid by The Greek National Tourist Organization. Susan Buck-Morss reproduces this advertisment (1987 : 213). 239

49 i borrow the term “heterotopia” from Foucault, who defines it as effectively enacted utopia in which other real sites are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Foucault identifies prisons, rest homes psychiatric hospitals, boarding school, military service facilities, honeymoon hotel, and certain colonies as modern heterotopies (Foucault 1986: 27).

50 “Entopia” is, literally a “place” or “territory” {topos) “within” (<7 7). The demotic adjective n td p io s (demotic fo rm s frequently drop unstressed vowels at the start of a word) appears regularly in the Greek language with the meaning of “native” or “local.” I borrow the term “entopia” from the architect and urban planner, Constantine A. Doxiadis, who held major positions in the Ministry of Public works in Athens from 1937-1951 (he served as Chief Town Planning Officer for Greater Athens in 1937, Head of the Department of Regional and Town Planning from 1939-1944 during the years of World War II, and became Permanent Secretary of Housing Reconstruction in the post-war period). Doxiadis coined the English word “entopia” in the 1960s to describe the community which approaches perfection not by its disassociation from real space/time (a “utopia,” which, Doxiadis claimed, quickly reduces itself to its opposite, “dystopia”), but by its embodiment within (en-) a concrete space/time (to p o s). According to Doxiadis, the creation of an entopia begins with Nature and moves through the “subsystems” of Anthropos and Society, all of which constitute “the whole system of social organization also expressed physically” (Building Entopia, 305). Its goal is to “lead humans back 0 the harmony they badly need” (308). The English coinage of “entopia” as an architectural term may be Doxiadis’ own, but both the notion of the national community living in harmony with its natural surroundings and the use of the word “topos” combined w ith various prefixes and suffixes to name this harmonious relationship was quite certainly fashionable in Greece in the official cultural sphere during the years of the Metaxas regime and in “high” culture during from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s. The critic Andreas Karand6nis highlights the “onrush” of “a natural native ( n td p ia ) power” which would “resurrect the deadened lungs” of a decade of writing that had suffered the influence of too many northern winds. Karand6nis tells the following story. In the 1920s and early 1930s, “ €VU> T) (0)1^ yupw p a s KCU T) €XXT)VlKfl $1JOTVTJ pCOOyClOK^ pas &>IV€ t6 o o v s cpeOiopotis teatT6oa 8i8dypaTa, t(tio t* ati* auTd Bcv J-eptinCav ott^v ttoItjot) to>v v£(i)V TTlS €TK>xtfc €K€lVT|S”(“while life throbbed around us and Hellenic, Mediterranean nature gave us so much excitement and so many lessons, none of these appeared in the poetry of the young people of that time”) (Karand6nis 1980a: 147). At this time it was Impossible to foresee what would happen within the next decade: “8€v piropotioa, pljlaia, t 6 t c va $avTaoTa( ttios tioTepa and Xlya xpdna, pia $uouc^ StivapT) VTdrtia 6aciooppotioe o tt) XoyoT€xv(a pas icai0 a r n s ^avaCwvTdveve to u s anovcicpwp^vous tiveupovcs” (“ 1 could not imagine, of course, at that time, that within a few years, a natural, native [ n td p ia ] power would rush into our literature and resurrect its deadened lungs”) (Karand6nis 1980b: 66-67). For Elytis’ aesthetic ideas 240 about the relationship between the literature, art, and the neohellenlc landscape, see Chapter IV.

Chapter II. Tapes . Fre* RevMwrt Hatton to T rw fiw iw til Tetrltorp .

1 A list of works from this period whose themes and stories converge would have to include at least the following (the original publication date is placed in brackets, while the date cited in my list of references, if this differs from the original publication, appears in paranthesis): the philosopher and humanist IoAnnis Theodorak6pulos’ “To nvevpa tov N€0€X\Tpaopoti” (“The Spirit of Neohellenlsm”) [1945] (1967); the poet and critic Zisimos LorentzAtos’ A ortfilO I (“ E ssa y /") (1947); the architect and theorist Dimitris Piki6nis’ “To TrpdpXTpa TT[S (“The Problem of Form”) [1946] (1985); the folklorist Stilpon Kiriakidis’ “The Language and Folk Culture of Modern Greece” [1946] (1968); the poet, critic, and diplomat George Seferis’ poem Ktx^T) ( “ T hrush”) [1946] (1974) and his essays “0€64>lXos” (“The6filos”) [1947] (1981c), “rpctpiia o* \vclv $ (\0 ” (“Letter to a Foreign Friend") [1948] (l98id), “AeuTcpos Ttp6xoyos: oto pipxfo pou 9. 2/EXiot: H'EpTuiTjXdpaiccadXXa TTOlfpaTa” (“Second Prologue to my book, T. S. Eliot: The Wasteland and Other Poems”) [1949] (l981e); the critic Dimitris Nikolareizis’ “H TTapouoCa TOV Opfipov otti v i a EXXTjViK^ hoItioti" (“The Presence of Homer in modern Greek poetry”) [1947] (1962); the poet Odysseus Elytis’ “H aioQTyrucfi Kai owaio0TipaTiK^KaTaYU)y^T(we€O^(XoiuXaT(THiixa^X” (“The Aesthetic and Emotional Origin of The6filos Hatzimanail”) [1947] and “H ovyxpovt) cXXr^viKT*) T^x^TlKaioCayypd^osN. XaTCTVCupidbcosnciKas” (“Contemporary Hellenic Art and the Painter N. HatzikiriAkos Gikas”) [1947] (1982a); a review of the artist Nikos NikolAu’s exhibition of new paintings [1948] by the a rt critic Man6lis HatzidAkis [1948] (NikolAu 1986); and the scholar and literary historian C. Th. DimarAs’ loropfa TTfS' NeoeAA rjv itc fe A o y o re x v fa f (“ A H istory of Neohellenic Literature”) [1948] (1972).

2 1929 Is the year when Y6rgos TheotokAs published his controversial liberal manifesto of cultural Internationalism, EA eudepo nveifaa (“ The F ree S p ir it" ') (1988). 1 discuss this w ork below.

3 A summary of this article was published in the American journal Portofoglio, which devoted an issue to contemporary cultural life in Greece; the entire essay appeared in the December 1947 issue of the Greek journal N iaE orfa. 241

* Niholareizis uses the relevant Homeric phrase. See O dyssey I, 327. Of course, the Achaeans face a “pitiful homecoming” not because they are defeated, but because their victory has cost them the loss of harmony at home and/or favor with the gods. See also note 5 below.

5 I discuss the term “mythical method” in the Chapter 1.

6 Homer’s “pitiful homecoming” refers to not the humiliation of defeat in war, but such post-war tragedies as the domestic violence that awaited Agamemnon, the suicide of Ajax, or the perennial wanderings and belated homecoming of Odysseus.

7 It is important to note that the nation and the state not the same. The nation is the “imagined community” conceived when a heterogeneous group consents to three basic assertions about the essential identity of its constituent parts: that there exists a social body w ith an explicit and peculiar character; that the interests and values of this social body take priority over all other interests and values; and that this social body must be as independent as possible, and usually requires at least the attainment of political sovereignty. The state is the apparatus that legitimizes, organizes, manages, and operates the affairs of a sovereign body. In the modern world, it is designated as “the possessor of sovereignty over a given territory” (Breuilly 1985: 355), with the qualification that it should exercise sovereignty directly only in the public sphere (given that a distinction between the public and private spheres is maintained). The sovereign nation-state, a peculiarly modern institution, is the apparatus adopted by a nationalist movement that has achieved autonomy within a given territory. On the tension between the claims of the state and the rights of the Individuals that constitute the nation, see Breuilly (1985: 353-365). This and other related topics are discussed in relation to modern Greece in Adamantia Polls (1987: 147-160). On the distinction between the Hellenic and the Helladic, see Chapter I note 6.

® “Territory” is a master term in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, particularly in their A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1987), whose meaning I have assimilated into my own theorizing of this term. I recognize that 1 may perform some injustice to their argument by Isolating a single notion from the very rich set of Images and Ideas they propose. But I find it useful for heuristic reasons, and not incommensurate w ith their model of “writing [which] has nothing to do with signifying, ... [but with] surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to come” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 5). Deleuze and Guattari themselves suggest that their book should be read for “intensities” rather than Interpretation: what is important is not what it means, but whether and how it works for a given reader. 1 have also drawn from the work James Anderson (1988), Josiah A. M. Cobbah (1988), Jean Gottman (1973), D. B. Knight (1982), Juval Portugali (1988), R. Sack (1983 and 1986), Rokkan Stein and Derek W. Urwin (1982), 242 and Paul Wagner (1969). For an excellent annotated bibliography on territory, nation, state, and self-determination, see D. B. Knight and Maureen Davies (1987). Of general interest should be the work of Paul Allies (1980), who studies how space becomes a project of the state through the mediation of administration. Allies argues that administration produces state “territory” by creating a structural relationship between civil society and the state propre. These discussions in the fields of geography and political science concern the political formation and strategic function of spaces. Some standard categorizations of space in other fields include “social space,” “political space, ” “urban space, ” and “religious space. ” To these one may now also add some less conventional rubrics such as “the ‘abstract space’ of capitalism’s economic and political systems—externalized, rationalized, sanitized—and the swirling, kaleidoscopic ‘lived space’ of everyday life” (Gregory 1990: 53).

9 Contemporary discussions about nationalism are too numerous to cite. Some titles which 1 have found useful are Benedict Anderson (1983), John Breuilly (1985), Elie Kedourie (i960), Gavin Kitching (1982), George L. Mosse (1985), Boyd C. Shafer (1972), and Hugh Seton-Watson (1977). For a good bibliographical guide on nationalism, see Anthony D. Smith (1988). The newly published Encyclopedia of Nationalism by Louis L. Snyder (1990) offers a comprehensive bibliography and broad historical overview of nationalist movements (over 200 such movements are discussed.

10 The term, “territoriality, ” is introduced by geographers to refer to the processes by which people and institutions develop loyalty to and assert control over a particular space. R. Sack (1983 and 1986) sees “territoriality” as “the attempt by an individual or group to affect, influence, or control people, phenomena, and relationships, by delimiting and asserting control over a geographic area” (1986: 19; see also 1983: 55-74, esp. 55). Just as nationalist claims of linguistic, religious, ethnic, and cultural uniqueness are vital in the effort to achieve self-determination and self-government, so “an assertion of a distinctive geography and history is a vital task in the unification of territory claimed by nationalist movements. The latter must draw together a complex set of factors to link th e ... diverse people... physically, socially, and especially psychologically, so that they identify both with themselves as a ‘people’ and with the territory” (Johnston, Knight, and Kofman 1988: 7).

11 Here 1 again refer to their recent major philosophical treatise, A Thousand Plateaus, where “territory” names a force that marks, organizes, and modifies a slice of the world. Deleuze and Guattari develop the notion of “territory," together with their derivative terms of “deterritorialization” and “reterritorialization, ” in their discussion of identity. "Deterritorialization” is the movement or “line of flight” out of a territory. It can be covered over by “reterritorialization, ” which compensates for it, so that the “line of flight” is hindered. “Reterritorialization” is the “standing for” (v a lo ir p o u r) a territory that has been deterritorialized: the setting up of artifices that serve a new territoriality in the place of the old territory. 243

For a condensed discussion of these and other important terms, see their final chapter, “Conclusion: Concrete Rules and Abstract Machines” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 501-514). With these conceptual tools, Deleuze and Guattari are able to explore identity as a matter of position, rather than essence. This is the purpose of their critical project of “map-tracing” (1987: 15) or “cartography,” by which they analyze the symbolic delineations and ideological functions of space while also renegotiating the boundaries of that space. Deleuze and Guattarl’s proposals for “cartography” as a critical enterprise are discussed by Charles J. Stivale (1985). The analogous critical term s on the psychoanalytic, linguistic, and socio-political plateaus are “schizoanalysis,” “pragmatics,” and “nomodology.”

12 I do not wish to suggest that there is any temporal priority the processes by which people identify their space and organize themselves within space. The events of self-identification and administrative organization may or may not occur simultaneously, but almost certainly reinforce one another.

13 Paul Allies (1980: 18-19) argues that territory should be conceived as a “double space,” where an organism (the “people”) is able to act and where an object (the geographical expanse of the state) is linked up with these actions. Territory is not itself either the object, or the people, but a symbolic order, spatially circumscribed, where actions are identified with an organism.

14 A developing discussion about geoethnicity and the world ethnic and political map may be of relevance here. It has been argued that nationalisms are a territorial form of Ideology. According to Johnston, Knight, and Kofmann (1988), not only is territory a major component of nationalism, but "nationalist ideologies have sought to interpret the occupation and control of space, both in the past and as a plan for the future” (1988: 3). James Anderson (1988) concurs that “[n]ations, like states, are not simply located in geographic space... rather they explicitly claim particular territories and derive distinctiveness from them. Indeed nationalists typically over-emphasize the particular uniqueness of their own territory and history” (1988: 18). What must be added to this arguments is that the particular geographical space to which a national idea attaches itself is not that which constitutes the uniqueness of the nation. Rather, it is the ideology and national culture which marks the territory, rendering it foundational and essential, rather than functional and transitory.

Take the example of the British Museum, in close relation to the institution of Art, the discourse of Aesthetics, and the Classical style, as a case in point: the “Elgin Marbles. ” The British Museum becomes a “center” of British achievement even when it isolates something like the Parthenon marbles from the “dangerous” milieu of the Athenian Acropolis. It offers the marbles a new name (“Elgin”) from British diplomatic history, a new context for viewing them (the museum), and a way of relating them to the 244 deterritorialized fragments of other cultures which may also be labeled as ‘‘Classical.” At the same time it serves to reterritorialize diverse aspects of ancient Hellenism around the discourse of Aesthetics and the notion of autonomous Art (I discuss the Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon marbles in Chapter V). There is a growing bibliography of works on the institution of Art and, more specifically, the function of the Museum. See especially Edward P. Alexander (1983), Howard S. Becker (1982), Pierre Bourdieu and Alain-Domlnique Schnapper (1969), Douglas Crimp (1980 and 1987), and Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach (1978).

Deleuze and Guattari (1987) argue that the town functions according to a different set of principles from the state. Defined by its entrances and exits and its network with other towns, the town is a point of circulation: "Each one constitutes a central power, but it is a power of polarization or of the middle This is why this kind of power has egalitarian pretensions, regardless of the form it takes: tyrannical, democratic, oligarchic, aristocratic” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 432). The state, on the other hand “is a phenomenon of intraconsistency” which makes the points surrounding it “resonate” around its administrative center.

17 On the term, “imagined communities,” see Chapter 1 note 45.

16 The theological metaphor of an “unredeemed” nation appears in the Italian “irredenta," from which “irredentism” etymologically derives. In Greek, the same metaphor appears in the phrase “aXtiTpwTOS E\\r)vaoii6s” (“unredeemed Hellenism”), which Greeks still use to refer to ethnic Greeks living outside the borders of Hellas. The policy of “irredentism ” might be defined as the effort of a state to claim as “irredenta” (“CtXiJTpwTOS,” “unredeemed”), and hence expand its borders to include, “the settlement area of the nation—where compatriots live under foreign rule” (Mellor 1989: 58).

19 For nearly two centuries there has been a perceived dlsjuction between the Greek state ( k r fto s ) and nation ( Ethnos). The one is viewed as existing from the time of the legitimized establishment of the Kingdom of Hellas, while the other is emergent and with a certain teleology. Thus, for the Greeks following the battle of independence, there was the perception that “a Greek state now existed, but a Greek nation still had to be made” (Seton-Watson 1977: 114). The distinction between nation and state lines up approximately with the distinction between the Hellenic and the Helladic.

20 Before entering my discussion of the Greek material, I should insert a note of explanation. I believe that the Neohellenic discussion of topos can offer a special dimension to the theoretical conception of “territory.” By studying the negotiation of topos in Greece, one may discover how imaginative geography becomes subject to concrete political and cultural battles in the context of nationalism. At the same time, my discussion of topos should provide a perspective on how local phenomena become leading 245 elements in important social and political processes. From this angle, it is possible to locate on the concrete, microscopic level of literary and critical texts lines of power that delimit a topos of Hellenism. At the same time one can discover where there are ruptures or changes in what seems to be a predictable, codified, and fixed notion of national Identity, tradition, and history.

21 E.g., “0t6fos pttS” (“our territory") (TheotokAs 1988: 19 and 63).

22 E.g., "ToOtos0 lUKpotiTOlKOS tAttos” (“this little tiny territory,” (PsihAris 1978: 86); “otAttos pas 0 kXCIOtAs” (“our closed off territory”) (Seferls Mithistdrima I, line l), "0 piKpoOKOlTlKA? tAtios” (“our microscopic territory”) (LorentzAtos 1967: 17).

23 E.g., “to w evpa tovt Atiov pas” (“the spirit of our territory”) (PikiAnis 1985: 8),

24 E. g., "ot Attos pas xwpte Ycvvala icat €vy€viK& ovvaioefjpaTa” (“our territory lived without brave and noble feelings”) (TheotokAs 1988: 63).

25 E. g., "€lvaiko \A Kai xpfatpo va peXcTovpe tt| Can1) too tAtiov pas” (“it is a good and useful thing to study the life of our territory” (TheotokAs 1988: 19). 26 This is the title of a book by StAlios RAmfos, which I discuss below.

27 I define the Meg&li Idea in Chapter 1 as the irredentist political vision of a Hellenic Kingdom whose borders would reflect those of the late Byzantine Empire. Kolittis was the first politician to articulate this vision.

2® The entire speech appears in “H TT^s TpiTTiS Z€fTT€pPp(ou CV' AGl^vaiS E0VIKT) ZvveXeuoiS npoKTUca ” (“Proceedings of the National Assembly of September 3 in Athens”) (Athens, 1844). On the history of the text, see K. Th. DimarAs (1982). For a remarkable discussion of this speech, as well as the ideology of the Megali Idea , see 'Eli SkopetAa (1988).

29 Turkokratla is the Neohellenic term that refers to the four centuries (1453-1821) when the Ottoman empire extended its reign into the Greek peninsula. The Ottoman rule of what later became the Kingdom of Hellas is broadly perceived by Neohellenes as a repressive foreign occupation.

30 Here the imagined territory emanating from the Patriarchate functions as the “space to which identity is attached by a distinctive group who hold or covet that territory and who desire to have full control over it for the group’s benefit” (D.B. Knight 1982: 526). 246

I may be anticipating another rendering of Hellenism, which discovers mythological and historical figures of Classical antiquity in the "spirit” of popular, everday life in modern cities and villages, and claims that the virtues of ancient Hellenic culture are actually present in the people and in their collective traditions. I discuss this Neohellenic national-popular revision of the Classical Tradition in Chapter IV.

32 I discuss PsihAris’ insertion of "Homer” into a national-populist narrative in Chapter IV.

33 I call PsihAris’ To Ta£(8lH 0V (“My Journey”} a populist text because it consistently argues that virtue and authentic knowledge resides in the simple people, who are the overwhelming majority, and in their collective traditions. For a more thorough discussion of populism and Psiharls’ reckoning of Hellenism, see Chapter IV.

34 Benedict Anderson describes the historical self-conception of the nation as "a sociological organism moving calendrically through homogeneous, empty time,... a solid community moving down (or up) history” (Anderson 1983: 31).

35 As PsihAris professes in his opening chapter, “'Eva iQvos, yia va ytvr) td v o s , e£\ei...va iicyaXcSoovv Ta otivop & to v icai va Kdjiri ^ixoxoyla 8ik^ to v .... np&i€i va ii€7aX(fioT| 6xi p6vo Ta $voucd, |ia icai Ta voepd to v Ta ovvopa” (“For a nation to become a nation, it needs two things: to expand its borders and to produce its own literature.... It must expand not only its physical but also its intellectual borders. It is for these borders that I am now fighting”) (PsihAris 1978: 37).

3^ For more on the meaning and resonances of B om iostoi see Chapter 1 note 15 and Chapter IV.

37 James Anderson (1988) draws on this Weberian distinction between two types of social groupings and argues that the nation is originally conceived as a kind of Gemeinsch&ft, whereas the state is a kind of Gesellsch&ft.

3® Dragumis uses this word frequently throughout his work.

39 According to Deleuze and Guattari, "primitive societies operate essentially by codes and territorialities.... Modern, or State societies, on the other hand, have replaced the declining codes with univocal overcoding, and the lost territory with a specific reterritorialization (which takes place in an overcoded geometrical space” (1987: 212-213). 247

40 At one point Dragumis makes this remarkable claim: "AS X«(\|n^TO KpdtTOs, nou 0a TTjS ctvai cjmdSio f) 0a Tiapoqiop$a>VT) tt^ v €0viKi*j ilrvxii. Av t o Kpdios OT€voxoapfi t o £0vos, upfrrci avaYKCKmicd va aXXdgT) popM f[ va xaOiV To kp< xtos, tio u €piro8(0€it t ) $uou>XoYtat o u tevous, etvai t t € P i t t 6 Kai p\apep6. XpeidC€Tai jna TioXiTucf) Cufi aveJ-dprryrn, 8T)Xa8f) cXX^viKfj, yia va y c w t ^ dvas €XXt)vuc6s TTOXiTiopds” ("Let there be no state, if it hinders or disfigures the national spirit. If the state cramps the nation, it must necessarily change shape or disappear. For the state which hinders the nation is superfluous and harm ful. What is needed for the birth of a Hellenic Culture is an independent, that is a Hellenic political life”) (1927b: 231).

41 The effort to build a nation-state (Hellas) on the site of a national body (Hellenism) with its own history, language, culture, and physical expanse, is not peculiar to modern Greece. Juval Portugal! studies the analogous Israeli / Palestinian case. Based on this example, he shows that one of the core doctrines of nationalism is that "Nations can only be fulfilled in their own territory, with their own state and government,” and that “the nation-state — the unity of people, territory, and government — is the genuine unit within and through which people conduct their social economic and cultural affairs” (1988: 155).

42 I return to Yann6pulos’ influential theory of the aesthetic in Chapter V.

43 Conversely, If they remain blind to this topos and instead cross Hellenism’s boundaries to the north, artists inevitably “avTVypdOW t o v €oa>T€puc6v to)v k6oiiov, to v owT€0€ip£vov atr6 Ta xpwpaTa Kat Ta ox^pctTat t j s evpuMialKtfe ((irypa^iKife” (“copy an interior world composed of the colors and shapes of European art”) (1988a: 21) and so reproduce bastard European images of Hellenism. Art loses its immediacy, and the artist ceases to be an artist.

44 I discuss the Ideology of this Neohellenic aesthetic of "autochthony” (or en td p ia ) further in Chapter V.

43 Theotokas wrote essay, novels, and plays. His best-known novels are Apya) (“ Argo, ” 1936) and A edvip (Leonis, 1940). He was Director of the National Theater of Athens from 1945-1946 and 1950-1952.

4& Seferls Introduces the coinage “Greek Hellenism” in 1938 in his “Dialogue on Poetry” with the Kantian philosopher, Konstandinos TsAtsos. I discuss this Dialogue further in Chapter III and Chapter V.

4? I am referring here to the work of TheotokAs and his contemporaries, Odysseus Elytis, AndrAas Embirikos, Dimitris KapetAnakis, AndrAas Karand6nis, F6tis K6ndoglu, Nikos NikolAu, Dimitris PikiAnis, Nikitas 248

RAndos, George Seferls, and Y6rgos SarandAris, all of whom give special emphasis to both the "native” Aegean landscape and folk art forms, which they “upgrade” aesthetically to the level of “high” art.

48 Mario Vitti (1979) argues that “the dogma of Greekness, ” the idea that contemporary works should draw from “types and forms that are authentically Greek” (Metaxas 1960: 841), derives from Metaxas’ fascist intervention in art. The artistic phenomenon of “Greekness” should be viewed in the light of comparable aesthetic theories in fascist Italy (“ Italianita” the aesthetic of “Italian-ness” as defined by the neo-Hegelian and self-styled “philosopher of fascism” Giovanni Gentile, who w as also minister of education in Mussolini’s first Cabinet) and in Spain (“ hispanidad, ” the aesthetic of “Spanish-ness”) (See Vitti 1979: 200).

49 The condition that contemporary artistic expression should strive to reach a “€\Xtivik6 i8€(o8t)S” (“Hellenic ideal”) is assumed in a discussion orchestrated by the art journal 2 v y fc \\1 (May 1956). The journal posed the question, “'Tndpxow Koivd OTpcla tt \s povT^pvas t^xvtis pe to iSewSes ttis EXXT)VlKlfc T^XVTIS” (“Are their common points of contact between modern a rt and the ideal of Hellenic a rt”) to the artists Spiros Vasiliu, VAso KatrAki, Periklis ByzAntlos, Nikos Engon6pulos, LAzaros LamerAs, and Konstandinos Luk6pulos. None of the artists questioned the existence of such an ideal. More recently, however, “Greekness” has become the subject of both criticism (KafAtso 1986) and historical study (Vakal6 1983) in the visual arts.

88 LorentzAtos’ first-published article, “O'EvryKap'AMavITdcKaiTi $iXooo$(a TTjj ruyeeoews” (“Edgar Allan Poe and the Philosophy of Synthesis”), appeared in the journal £AAr}ViKdrpdiiHCCTa (“ H ellenic L e tte r s ”) in 1936. His first major publication on Neohellenic letters is the remarkable monograph (1947, English translation 1980a) discussed in this chapter. For a critical analysis of LorentAtos’ most influential essay “To xctp^vo K^VTpo” ("The Lost Center”) (1961; English translation 1980b), see Leontis (1987) and Gourgouris (1990).

The term, “€8ik 6s VT€Tep|AlVlO|l6s” (“territorial determinism”) has been used by Dimitris Tzi6vas (1989: 75).

82 According to Tziovas, the belief that race, land, and climate are primordial determinants of cultural diversity, has roots in certain strands of German and Italian right-wing idealist philosophy. In Greek letters, this view first appears in the work of Yann6pulos, as we saw above. A few decades later it is also expressed by Nikos Kazan tzAkis. 249

Chapter III. The Crtefe if TraHH— aM th lh a ta 'i lip iih l HeneeeaHef

1 We encountered the Homeric phrase “Xvyp6s v 6otos ” (“pitiful homecoming”) in Nikolareizis’ introductory paragraph discussed at the beginning of Chapter II.

2 “In their eagerness not to be diffuse, 20th-century poets (especially Pound, Eliot, Auden, William Carlos Williams, etc.) are particularly attracted to the device” of “ellipsis” (or “ellipse”) (Preminger et. al. 1975: 217). The opinion of J. A. Cuddon (1979) concurs: “Ellipsis.. .has been frequently used by modern poets like Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden (1979: 216- 217).

3 Friedrich Schiller, for example, in his letter to Wilhelm von Humboldt on 26 October, 1795, asks a series of plagued questions about his own circumstances as a modern poet: "Given my distance from the spirit of Greek literature, to what extent can I still be a poet and indeed a better poet than the extent of my distance seems to allow.... 1 am not a naive writer. How is it then that 1 can still be good?” (Quoted in the Introduction to Schiller 1981: 12).

4 “Sweetness and light evidently have to do with the bent or side in humanity which we call Hellenic.... To say we work for sweetness and light, then, is only another way of saying that we work for Hellenism” (Arnold 1971: 123).

5 For a brief survey of modernist attitudes toward the past, see Stephen Watson (1983: 16-17).

6 Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarland (1976) describe the Modernist “crisis-centered view of history" (1976: 20) and “Great Divide between past and present, art before and art now” (1976: 21): “Indeed Modernism would seem to be the point at which the idea of the radical and innovating arts, the experimental, technical, aesthetic ideal that had been growing forward from Romanticism, reaches formal crisis—in which myth, structure and organization in a traditional sense collapse, and not only for formal reasons. The crisis is a crisis of culture; it often involves an unhappy view of history—so that the Modernist writer is not simply the artist set free, but the artist under specific, apparently historical strain. If Modernism is the imaginative power in the chamber of consciousness.. .it is also often an awareness of contingency as a disaster in the world of time: Yeats’s ‘Things fall apart; the center cannot hold’” (1976: 26).

7 Seferls (1981a) responded to two essays by Ts&tsos (1938a and 1938b). Ts&tsos then wrote a third essay (1938c) where he expressed his gratitude for “dialogue.” 250

8 Immanuel Kant (1982) analyzes a faculty of judgment—independent of the faculty of cognition (which has objective a p r io r i)—"of which we may reasonably presume by analogy that it may likewise contain, if not a special authority to prescribe laws, still a principle peculiar to itself upon which laws are sought, although one merely subjective a p r io r i” (Kant 1982: 15).

8 In the poem Mv9l0T<5pjpa, (transliterated, the word is M ithist6rima\ its two components are “myth” and “history”; this is also the Modern Greek word for the genre “novel”), Seferls complains that “our topos” has become altogether sequestered: “0 toitos pas etvai kX€10t6s, 6Xo pouva/ tiou £x™v otcem) to xapTix6 oupav6 p£pa *ai vuxTa / tov kxc Ivonv / oi 8 n 6 paOpes ZupnXTyydSes. H a Xipdvia/ tt|v Kvpicoci) oav KaTepotfpc v* avaodvoupe/px&ioNpe va 6a>T((ouvTai o to TiXidyeppa/onaop^va 5vXa and Ta^iSianou 8ev T€\€iu)oav/o(6paTa iton 8cv £€povvma irate V ayairifooNv”) (“Our topos is closed,/all mountains whose roof is a low sky, day and night..../ It is shut off by the two Symplegades./ At the harbour where we go on Sundays to breathe more freely,/ we see under the sun’s light/ broken planks from unfinished voyages,/ bodies that have forgotten how to love”) (M ithistdrima 10, lines 1-2, 12-17). The Greek critic Andrdas Karanddnls (1963) was the first to suggest that sequestering of topos here refers to Catastrophe of Asia Minor, which closed off Neohellenism’s physical and imaginary access to western Turkey (see Karanddnis 1963: 111— 112).

*0 in the Ts&tsos-Seferis dialogue, Tsatsos’ “Hellenic” attaches itself to a national referent; Seferis’ “Hellenic Hellenism” has an aesthetic referent which corresponds to the national ideal. Insofar as his concerns are national, Seferis betrays the international spirit of western Modernism, since “the essence of Modernism is its international character...Modernism, in short, is synonymous with internationalism” (Bradbury and McFarlane 1976: 26). Insofar as he translates a discussion about national ideals into one about aesthetic perfection, a discussion about national style into one about a search for individual style which becomes “Hellenic” by its very consistency and success, he remains true to Modernism. It is in this sense that he poses as both modern and Hellenic.

11 In his published Journals from the period 1945-1954 (Seferis 1986; the translation appears in Seferis 1974), Seferis never once refers directly to the ongoing civil war, but only only vaguely, if passionately, to the “darkness” of the political surroundings. I discuss Seferis’ refusal to name and analyze contemporary circumstances in Chapter I and, at greater length, at the end of this chapter.

12 Andrlas Karand6nis views Seferis’ literary “depth” in this way: “0 Zc^lpris pxaoTalvci ploa and Ta m6 paeid oTpofyaTa tt\s YXwooiiclfc pas Ca)i)s,...6cv fyaoc pia otiypti...to aloeripa ttis cxxrjviKifc xoyoTexviKife tov euewTtf.... o p6xos ton Ze^pi) €(vai va KpaTf)o€i avoixT6 6va 8p6po npos to 251 anuTaTO pdeos ,“ 6xiirpos tis €8(6 ki €«€( €m$av€iaK& XoyoT€xviK& enueuleis tt|s yXwooudfe lias aXf)6eias” (“Seferis grows out of the deepest layers of our linguistic existence... [and] never for a minute has lost a sense of responsibility deriving from Hellenic literature— Seferis’ role is to keep clear a road to the deepest depth—and not to the scattered literary successes on which remain on the surface of our language’s truth”) (Karand6nis 1958: 164-165).

An analogous example from German letters is the work of Ernst Robert Curtius, who responded to the cultural transformations in the years during and after World War II by turning his attention away from the broad “synchronic” plane of contemporary European literatures to the historical line of classical and medieval Latin texts: “I felt the need to return to older periods—metaphorically speaking 1 would say today, to more archaic strata of consciousness: in the first Instance, the Romance Middle Ages. Beyond that I was seeking, without being precisely aware of it, the road to Rome. Ever since my first visit the city had become for me, not only on all its historical levels but rather in its spiritual essence, in other words in a sense that transcended history, the holy city; yet withal one not chosen but discovered, an ancestral homeland and a goal of pilgrimage. Every fresh sojourn in Rome strengthened this relation to my life. I knew myself bound to the Roma aeterna. In the course of years and decades I realized that this bond contained a secret with many layers of symbolic meaning” (Curtius 1973b: 498) In his magnum opus , European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages [1948], Curtius focused on structures, allusions, topics, metaphors, modes of inspiration, and education in “great intellectual and spiritual tradition of Western culture” (1978a: x) and followed their “transmigration” from the classical era through the Latin middle ages and into the modern period. He found himself “gradually penetrating deeper and deeper into my chosen field of study; [with! new connections and cross-connections ... constantly opening up; [and], in the end, a new line of continuity in the history of European culture ... becoming discernible” (1973b: 502). By tracing the development of literature “from Homer to Goethe” (1978a: 12), he finally discovered a site that “transcended history,” a center of culture out of which radiated “a new line of continuity in the history of European culture” (1973b: 502): Roma aeterna , the “ancestral homeland” of culture’s origins.

14 James Longenbach (1987) provides some necessary background from intellectual history for understanding the development of similar notions of history held by Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, both of whom experimented with techniques of incorporating various historical “levels” into modernist literary works. The idea that “meaning is not to be found in the ’surface” of events, but in some ’deeper’ structure or reality that shapes the experiences of everyday life” (1987: 25) may derive from the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce’s (1866-1952) “History Subsumed Under the Concept of Art” (1893) and A e sth e tic (1902). Croce aligns historical knowledge with the arts. “Historical knowledge is a subspecies of artistic knowledge” (1987: 27), directed ad 252 narrandum non a demonstrandum. The purpose of art is therefore to discover its ever “deepening” condition of existence.

15 Seferis thought a great deal about how to create a common Neohellenic mythology. Dimitris Dimirulis argues that Seferis* interest in “collective mythology” stems from his desire to create a broad audience. “Personal mythology was not enough to establish for oneself a national Hellenic audience. Collective mythology, on the other hand offered the symbols which connect present and past and future, making poetry a matter for a collective body and, finally, for the nation” (Dlmir&lis 1986: 326).

16 For Seferis, the “native people” sustain the collective soul which reveals the truth of ancient Hellenism: “TONS apxafous, av 0&au[i€ TlpayjiaTlKdc va tods xaTaXdpotipc, 6a trpfriei ndvTa va €peuvoti|i€ tt^v tov Xaou pas” ("The ancients—if we really want to understand them, we must examine/ Investigate the soul of our people") (1981b: 257). The soul of the people must be examined for the transhistorical knowledge it reveals about Hellenism. The project of culture is to investigate the autochthonous expression of “the people” so as to discover the “real” “Hellenic Hellenism” within. One must study popular culture for its transhistorical qualities—something Seferls attempts to do in many of his essays. The study of popular culture involves Isolating and defining these qualities; by this method, one may discover both the real ancients and the true values of Hellenism. For more on this populist revision of Hellenism, see Chapter IV.

Mark Davis (1975), Dimitris Maronitis (1984), Dimitris Nikolareizis (1962), George Thaniel (1974, 1977, and 1989), NAsos VayenAs (1974), Anthony N. Zahareas (1968), and others discuss ancient references in T h rush.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus used the poet's own words to describe him as the source of poetry: Like Homer’s Zeus, he wrote, “we must say that Homer is the one ‘from whom all rivers and every sea flows, every spring and great well. ’ The others who have practiced the same mean are very much his inferiors, though well worth study in their own right” ( On the Arrangement of Words, 23). More recently, Harold Bloom has reaffirmed this belief: “It remains not arbitrary nor even accidental to say that everyone who now reads and writes in the West, of whatever racial background, sex, or ideological camp, is still a son or daughter of Homer” (1975a: 33). Charles Segal (1989) uses Bloom’s theory about the anxiety that Homer’s authority may create in a modern poet to analyze “Mythic Intertexts in Seferls. ”

19 In the past decade, Seferis’ critical strategies of (re)construction have come under scrutiny by Vangelis Calotychos (1990), Dimitris Dimirulis (1985), Dionisis KapsAlis (1984a and 1984b), and Vassilis Lambropoulos (1988 chapter 2, entitled “Who has been Reading Masterpieces on Our Behalf? George Seferls, Makrlyannis, and the Literary Canon”). 253

20 The conclusions of Mark Davis (1975) about Seferis’ personal investment in fragments from the past are a typical telo s for a certain kind of study about antiquity’s influence and poetic inspiration: “‘Thrush’ may be regarded as a poem of culmination: it signals the consummation of Seferis’ search for a transcendent vision in the apparent absurdity and transcience of life. He knows well the loneliness, outrage, bitterness and anguish of the search and of our times, but in the end ‘Thrush’ comes as an affirmative utterance, an utterance which is also a declaration of faith in contemporary man’s ability and desire to divine and welcome the light native to the poem called ‘Thrush’” (Davis 1975: 298).

2* As a way of exploring the intertextual play, I also take into account Seferis’ published commentary on the poem (l981f), his diaries from the period of its composition (1986), and other essays. I hold these not as proof of intent, but as further evidence of tactics.

22 The Modern Greek language does use a different word for house and home; both are designated by “ oti Ct i .”

23 So Nikolareizis suggests: "Ha TOV 0 EXTlfjvopas €(vai 0 Tito avTvnpooamevnicds and tovs ovs tov 08voo£a, ttov tous Tptfei 6 x o u s to t

24 In his commentary (l981f), Seferis claims that Elpenor metonymically represents all the “avl8€0i tcai xopTdTOi” (“mindless and satiated”) (l981f: 38) companions of Odysseus; he is furthermore a foil to true heroes, typical of the worst “^opcts tov kcocov ” (“bearers of destruction”) (l981f: 40).

25 Elpenor’s passage out of the twilight zone is contingent on his receiving a proper burial, something he promotes by way of threats: “pi^ p dxXocuTov deoOTTov td)v 5m0€v Kio0e(s, pVj TOl t i Geuiv pf)vipa Y^vu)pai”(“Do not leave me behind unwept and unburied when you go back there,/ lest I bring upon you the wrath of some god”) (O d y sse y 11.72-73).

26 Emile Boisacq (1938), Pierre Chantraine (1977), and Hjalmar Frisk (1961) all agree that "Teres-ias” (“Teiresias, ” in the epic poetry, with the first syllable augmented for etrlcal reasons) is derived from the noun te r as , meaning “a significant sign or token. ” Boisacq Includes the following 254 interesting gloss concerning the “Teresias” who appears in Homer: "(Horn), nom parlant d’ un devin qui ‘ interprets Jes signes'” (my emphasis).

27 On the etymology of “v6os” see D. Frame (1978: 1-5). Frame offers formal evidence that “vdos” and “V'dOTOS" derive from the same Indo- European root-verb, *nes-, which signifies a “return to light and life. ” See also Frame (1971).

28 Seferis’ translations of Canto I, XIII, and XXX appeared in the journal NiarpdppaTd (April-June 1939) and are reprinted in his published volume of translations, A U T iy p a ^ (“ Copyings ”) (1965). For an analysis of the relationship between “George Seferis’ T h ru sh and the Poetry of Ezra Pound,” see George Thanlel (1974).

29 G. Kearns (1980) documents these sources and adds: “Once we are aware of all the voices in the Canto— Homer, Virgil, Divus, the Cretan, the Anglo Saxon bard, Pound—we see more clearly in the structure of the Canto one of Pound’s essential methods, ’cultural overlaying’” (1980: 21). Seferis calls this technique a “[AOOalicd” (“mosaic”) of words (1965: 151).

30 This passage is rich in cultural layering. “The Cretan” is Georgius Dartone, who called himself Cretensis and translated Homeric Hymns into Latin. Aphrodite is then described in both Latin and Greek as one veneranda (“worthy of worship”) in her o ric h a lk i (“bronze”) form. The “golden bough” plucked by Aeneas before his descent into Avernus—a descent which naturally echoes the n e k u ia of Odysseus—is that bough made familiar to an English-speaking audience by Sir James George Frazer.

31 James Longenbach (1987) argues that that the full effect of literary quotation in Pound’s work is an “imaginative recontruction” of the literary past: “Just as Odysseus gives life to ghosts, Pound gives his own life to a dead poet, translating Divus’s translation of Homer into English and filtering the result through the ancient rhythms of ‘The Seafarer’ Pound’s poem including history begins with an invocation of the dead, a seance that reveals how historical knowledge is acquired by infusing the ghosts of the past with the life of the present.... Pound understands the past through the process of imaginative reconstruction” (Longenbach 1987: 17-18).

32 This inconclusive finale may be supplemented by a programmatic statement made by Pound in 1928: “Quite simply: I want a new civilization. It must be a s good as the best that has been. It can’t possibly be the same, so why worry, novelty is enforced” (quoted in Kearns 1980: 23).

33 One should also consider the case of T. S. Eliot, who uses Telresias as the presiding consciousness in The Waste Land— a poem which Seferis also translated. See especially part HI, with Eliot’s invaluable commentary on the persona of the poem. James Longenbach (1987) observes that “Tiresias” 255

(like Pound, Eliot employs a non-Homeric spelling) "was to function not only as the ‘most important personage in the poem’ but as an observing consciousness who can penetrate the everday world of Sunday outings and closed carriages to ‘trace the cryptogram’ of a higher reality—transforming that everyday reality into a visionary world of myth” (1987: 214). The voice of Tlresias " s e e m s to be the voice of history itself, an expression of the ‘entire past’ woven into the texture of the present” (1987: 208).

34 The ima^e of the “mask” appears in another well-known poem by Seferis. OBaoiX la s' T1)S A o iv r js (“The King of Asine”), names the productive void with a phrase that is rich in connotations: “kva. OTgieCo OKOT€lv6” (“a dark point / sign,” line 29). In his deconstructive reading of the poem, Dionisis Kaps4lis (1984b) takes this “dark sign” as evidence of both “mythopoeia which demythologizes itself,” and “the process of demythologizing which in turn becomes blind”: “the Platonic abhorrence of literary lies and rhetorical arbitrariness [‘the poet a void’] is at the same time a virtue, the brilliance of art [‘the golden mask’], and ‘a single word’ [a myth] from the Iliad is interwoven with elements of Platonic allegory ‘from the depth of the cave’] in order to render allegorical the theoretical moment of reading: the frightened bat which strikes against the light. The ‘nostalgia from the weight of a living existence’ [one could say, the nostalgie from the weight of the incarnated Word] always lies ‘beneath the name, ’ and the myth is composed, the poem written only to the extent that it also sees the void ‘under the mask,’ and recognizes itself as myth. Myth here is already theoretical [as it is in Plato]; it is the blind spot which reaches the light. Through its denunciation of myth, observation in the ‘direction of the sun,’ and stigmatization of the fear of theory that emerges in Seferis’ essays, the process of demythologizing would in turn become blind, so that it could not see this same blind spot”) (Kaps&lis 1984b: 45)

35 For a summary of Plato’s theory of ideas as expounded in Books 6 and 7 of the R epublic, see Albln Lesky (1963: 530).

36 Seferis published his translation of The Waste Land , 'EjpryujXdjpaicai dAAa iTO llfyiaTa ( The Waste Land and Other Poems) in 1936, with a lengthy introduction. His “Eioaytoyi^ o to v 0.2. E K iot” truly introduced Eliot to the Greek cultural scene. “K. n. Kapd^s, 0.2. EXiot- napaAXr^Xoi” [1941] (“C.P. Cavafy and T.S. Eliot in Parallel”) became another standard work on Eliot. On Seferis’ and Eliot’s parallel critical “Art of Making Claques,” see Vangelis Calotychos (1990).

37 For an Interesting discussion of Eliot’s treatment and uses of tradition, see Sean Lucy (i960) and the more recent book by Gregory S. Jay (1983). Jay relates important contemporary theories of the poetics of tradition to the influential views of Eliot. 256

38 One should repeatedly note that this kind of ellipsis is representative of Seferis’ rhetoric. Typically, ellipsis in Seferis’ poetry and essays has been mistakenly intepreted by critics as a sign of simplicity and directness. For a discussion of the rhetoric of simplicity in Seferis* work, see Dimitris Dimir&lls (1985). In his analysis of Seferis’ poem, “An Old Man on the River Bank, ” Dimirulis very eloquently shows how the “negative logic... triggers a chain of metaphors meant to prevent a further proliferation of the trope. The movement forward presupposes a clearing of the ground, a transmission to a more contiguous grammar freed from the bonds of a disturbing rhetoric. But while the text alludes to a grammar not yet found, the narration itself flows amid static metaphors that turn out to be, in a curious way, the only movement forward in terms of textual space. What the text tries to forget reemerges from its own writing, and the language it aspires to erase proves, though in a superficially negative manner, the impossibility of such an erasure” (1985: 73).

39 The image of literary inheritance as a burden is developed and analyzed by Walter Jackson Bate in his influential book The Burden of the Past and the English Poet Bate argues that tradition only became a burden after the Renaissance, when specific cultural conditions were created. These Include an increase in the means of preserving and distributing literature, which results in the expansion of the archive of works available at a given time to a poet; a deepening self-consciousness about the wealth and richness of this legacy; and an Imperative that (new) poetry be original. The combination of these three conditions created a sense that the possibilities of language were being exhausted and that the poet had to workagainst very difficult odds. Thus the past inevitably became a burden for the Romantic and Modern (English) poet.

40 Seferis identifies “The light” as the new home of Odysseus, “to S ik6 ro t/o v U i, 6nou 0 &€i va yuptoei o O8voo 6 xs” ( - h i s o w n home, the home to which Odysseus wishes to retu rn ”) (Seferis 198If: 50).

41 Seferis w as not indifferent to the m atter of religious Apocalypse. In fact, he translated the Book of Revelations into Modern Greek (Seferis 1975). A brief discussion of this translation appears in Sofia Skopet 6a (1987), who claims that “Seferis’ purpose was to make the A pocalypse accessible to the uninitiated” (1987: 29).

42 “Seferis relationship with ancient Greek authors is deeper than one of borrowings, recollections, uses of mythical material which offers itself for anachronistic games; it is a structural relationship. The structure of Greek tragedy is the path from passion to human dignity: the transformation of the Furies into the Eumenides.. .from the fall into darkness of the instincts to the arrival into the light of balance and Justice. This is precisely the structure which T h ru sh follows. The voice of the wise old m an... is the voice of justice, which will speak of a death that is full of dignity. From inside the deeper symbolism of the instincts, the soul serves one of the 257 highest moments of human conscience: the mystical experience of apocalypse which resolves the agon” (LlhnarA 1986: 87).

43 “ATTpooTT^XacTO” (“unapproachable”) (Seferis 1981b: 30) is the word Seferls uses to describe readers’ experience with the poem. As an example of this frustration, see Andreas Karand 6nis (1963).

44 The full text of the letter has been translated by James Stone (1980).

43 In his own 1962 edition of A O K yii^ Seferis added this quotation from his earlier essay on KAlvos: "A€V vn<£pX€iko XM t^xvtis tiou va lx ^ Bttfoci au0€VTiKf)eppr)V€ta tov £pyou TOV, ” (“No artist who has given an authentic interpretation of his w ork”) (l981f: 353, footnote no. 1 to page 30).

46 By its own ellipses, noted above, the essay reinforces the Idea that a complex composition such as T h ru sh is nested within not an Intertext of Images, icons, and ideas but “the non-text, the experience of Hellenism” (KapsAUs 1984b: 45. I note that Kaps&lis is critical of this view). Seferis offers aesthetic “reinforcement” to older works so as to create an apparently natural in the contemporary landscape site where the “the nostalgia emanating from the weight of the past” finds fulfillment.

47 Fredric Jameson (1988b) offers an extensive critique of the modernist literary and critical (non-)reckoning with the “bondage” of contemporary Ideology. He suggests that a “diagnostic” approach may create paths out of the isolation and darkness of “the cave”: “There are, of course, ways of breaking out of this isolation, but they are not literary ways and require complete and thoroughgoing transformation of our economic and social system, and the Invention of new forms of collective living. Our task—specialists that we are in the reflections of things—is a more patient and modest, more diagnostic one. Yet even such a task as the analysis of literature and culture will come to nothing unless we keep the knowledge of our own historical situation vividly present to us: for we are least of all, in our position, entitled to the claim that we did not understand, that we thought all those things were real, that we had no way of knowing we were living in a cave” (1988b: 132, my emphasis). 258

Chapter IV. Cinw f : Bri—flag the Psette VaN hi the Spirit if the Paapto

1 In the Notes to the English translation of the poem, the Edmund Keeley and George Savidis offer this gloss for Axion Esti. “In the Greek Orthodox ecclesiastical tradition, these two words (meaning ‘worthy it is’) have a double Mariolatric connotation: first, the title of a Byzantine hymn glorifying the Virgin Mother of God; and second, the name of a famous holy icon of the Virgin still extant on Mount Athos” (Elytis 1974: 79).

2 On the connection between modernist and new critical assumptions about the status of the text, see Leontis (1990b).

3 On the differences between aesthetic and scientific conceptualizations of modernity, see Mate! Calinescu (1987), who contrasts “modernity as a stage in the history of Western civilization—a product of scientific and technological progress, of the industrial revolution, of the sweeping economic and social changes brought about by capitalism—and modernity as an aesthetic concept (1987: 41).

4 Peter BUrger (1984) offers a very interesting discussion of artistic autonomy and modernism. He uses artistic "autonomy" to refer to the institutional status of art. He argues that artistic production became a distinct institutional subsystem with Aesthetlclsm. It may be that Kant provided the conceptual foundation for this differentiation in the 18th century. But "the evolution of art as a distinct subsystem.. .began with l’art pour l’art and was carried to its conclusion with Aestheticism” (1984: 32), when a rt finally lost its social function. The autonomous institution of art (with its own system of production, canonization, promotion, and reproduction) emerges with this break and becomes thematized with the avant-garde.

5 For a more extensive discussion of national autonomy, territory, and culture, see Chapter II.

6 Just one year after the publication of The Axion Esti, the eminent critic Y6rzos P. Sawidis published an article in the popular weekly magazine 0 TaxvSpOfiO? (“ The Postman , ” which is roughly the equivalent of the American N ew sw eek in its popularity, politics, and scope) devoted entirely to thie poem: “‘'A£iov Eot C’ to TTolrpa tou EMjtt)” (“‘Worthy Is’ the Poem of Elytis”) (i960). Here Sawidis complains about the lack of "spiritual health of [a] nation” (Sawidis 1970: 142) which effectively ignored so great a national poem. He sets about to rectify this situation by proving to his audience “yictTloiroiTynfc tou *'A£iov Eot (’ ctvai tou £evous” ("why the poet of The Axion Esti is w orth of the nation”) (1970: 143). 259

7 In 1906, Periklis Yann 6pulos summarized his intellectual project as the effort to lay “Tots Baoeis TT£ Aiynoupylasto u NiovEXXT)rucovK6qiov” (“the foundations for the creation of a Neo-Hellenic Cosmo.s”) by describing succinctly “tiptoTOv tt)v iuoioXoylav tou'EXXtjvoj Kai SeuTepov tt)v ♦uoioXoyCav tt^s EXXT)ViKf|S ♦uXf)?” (“first the physiology of the Hellene and second the physiology of the Hellenic race”) (Yann 6pulos 1906: 5). Yann 6pulos’ conception of the ideal cosm os is not far from the view that Elytis later develops. I discuss Yann 6pulos’ ideas in Chapters II and V.

8 Elytis’ essay first appeared in AyyAoeAAr)ViKfjEm6€(6pr)or) 2:11 (January, 1947), the same year that Nikolareizis published “HuapouolctTOU Optfoou OTT) v ia €XXT)ViKf)tio (t)OT) ” and Seferis published T h ru sh , and a year after the appearance of Dimitris Piki 6nis’ “To TTp6pXrjpia ttis pop^ifc” [1946] and Stilpon Kiriakidis’ “The Language and Folk Culture of Modern Greece” (the last two essays are discussed below. For a more complete list of related essays written during the Civil War and a discussion of their traits, see the beginning Chapter II.

9 According to Elytis, it is very nearly a rule of Neohellenlc (high) culture that it is shaped by western European technical developments: “Enei8tf e(vai an6 t is tcxvotpott Ics out I s Kai cm6 tov avTOcTvrrd tous otti x ^ p a pas irouc^aKOXouCcC vanXd0CTaiTiiOTop(aB (“our history continues to be shaped by [European] techniques and their repercussions in our land”) (1982a: 409) Yet these techniques failed miserably, each in succession, to give “voice” to the land.

10 “Karagi6zis” refers to the genre of Greek shadow theater which takes its name from its trickster-hero. Stathis Gourgouris (1988) analyzes the ideological uses of Karagi6zis. He observes, “ l8ia(T€pa OTaX^PtCC opiopevoov Siavootipevwv tidv Tjpcpdv pas, t o €XXt|vik6 elaTpo okiwv TipaypaTonoict Iva dxpa o to v p€Ta$uouc6 x^po, c$6oov o x6yosto u s SiaKrjpuooei (Kai p€Ta cpcuvd) to v fjpcoa (os apx^Tuno ouv-ypa$6pevo p€ Kdnoia ‘ouoiaoTuca’ oToixcta t t i s veocXXTiviKife '\|fVXf)S.’” (“Especially in the hands of certain intellectuals of our day, Greek shadow theater takes a leap into the sphere of metaphysics, since their logos announces (and only then studies) the hero as an archetype, written into/ composed together with some ’essential’ elements of the Neohellenlc ’soul’”) (Gourgouris 1988: 358)

11 Concerning the “discovery" of the folk artist The 6filos see Chapter I note 42. A critic who publishes in Greece under the name “Daniil” retells this story of “To 4>aiv6pcvo ecd^iXos 40 xpdvia p€Ta ttjv ‘avaKdXu\|rn tou ’” (“The Phenomenon The 6filos 40 Years after his ‘Discovery’”) (1974). “Daniil” is especially critical of the tenuous links which Elytis produces between the work of Thelfilos and cubist art. 260

12 “Erot6kritos” (1635-48) Is an epic poem by the 17th-century Cretan poet Vints 6nzos Korn&ros.

1^ Elytis’ cultural ideal is reflected almost explicitly in Andreas Karandonis’ essay, "Tupo) on6 to ‘A£iov E ot(’” ("Concerning the 'Axlon Esti’”) (1979), first heard on national radio in 1958 in anticipation of the poem’s publication. Karand 6nis describes the cosm os of The Axion Estia s “ . . . 0 Kdopos 0 €\XT)VIK6s, 0 K6opOS 0

I* Populism has also been discussed under the rubrics of ideology, rhetoric, and syndrome or movement. Torcuato S. di Telia (1965) and Peter Wiles (l969) have discussed the last two terms. Wiles observes that populism can be identified historically with a great variety of political movements—urban and agrarian, intellectual and grass roots, right- and left-wing, including the Levellers, Diggers, Chartists, Narodnlkl, US populists, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Gandhi, Sinn Fein, and the Iron Guard— and so cannot be regarded as a single movement without compromising the plurality of its historical manifestations. Regarding the “ideology” of populism, Gavin Kitching (1982) makes a significant contribution, as do A. James Gregor (1969), Donald MacRae (1969), Angus Stewart (1969), and Peter Worsley (1967 and 1969). Kitching defines populism as an Ideology of anti­ industrialism, which emerges with the rise of proletarianization, the process whereby the artisan or small farmer becomes a wage labor in the city. Part of “a current of thought ... opposed to large, concentrated production” (1982: 19), populism offers an alternative pattern of development, based on small-scale Individual enterprise in industry and agriculture. Kitching’s use of the term is well-circumscribed. To call populism an Ideology is, however, to become entangled in the vexed issue of whether populism Inherently serves conservative or progressive causes. Doris Sommer (1983) manages to escape this issue in her very interesting study of populism in Dominican novels. She refers to populism as a rhetoric, following Minogue (1969). The rhetoric of populism offers the language or cultural background of a set of Ideological options. Although a rhetorical strategy (such as the persistent adulation of the people, their language, and their ways) may in a given instance be bound up with a particular movement or ideology, under other circumstances it may be connected w ith competing political and economic motivations. The value of 261 rhetoric is this: “instead of distinguishing one cause from another, rhetoric often constitutes the common (battle) ground for competing ideologies that vie for the authority to establish the referents of a shared rhetoric” (Sommer 1983: xli). It is certainly true that the rhetoric of populism may index an ideology that differs in significant and substantial w ays from w hat its users appear to be trying to say. Yet I would argue that both the rhetorical and the ideological uses of “the people” depend on the signs, techniques, strategies, and truth claims which set into motion ways of talking about the “people.” A discourse in fact combines considerations of ideology and rhetoric, in that it constructs knowledge Of and a way of talking about its object. See also Canovan (1981) for a good discussion of scholarly trends in the academic analysis of populism. For some important primary sources see Herzen (1956), List (1841), and Proudhon (1898 and 1970).

15 The use of la d s to signify “the people” as the carriers of eternal spirit and authentic culture is quite recent, according to Margaret Alexiou (1984), who traces this Interesting history of the word lads'. “Throughout the Tourkokratia, and even during the War of Independence, the words genos, ethnos and p a trid a predominate in appeals to Greek consciousness. Only after the establishment of the Greek state, was the word la os used increasingly to mean ‘people’ in the Herderian sense of Volk, as carriers of the eternal spirit ( p n e u m a ) of the Greek nation (e th n o s ), whose values are transmitted ‘in the blood.’ The nationistic and religious overtones of the word continue to this day— Yet la o s is rarely, if ever, used by ordinary people of themselves-, it denotes not ‘real’ people, but a concept of the collective consciousness for popular will and power, so generalised as to exclude direct reference to the speaker or addressees” (Alexiou 1984: 14-15).

16 The struggle over the value and content of R om iosfni (literally, “Roman-ness”) has a very interesting history in the early 20th century, which I discuss below. I define R om io sfni in Chapter I note 15.

117 See above note 10.

18 Makriyinnis is the general of the Greek revolution whose memoirs were canonized by the modernists. See Chapter 1 note 38.

Kazantzidis and Marinella are the last names of two popular singers (a male and a female) who paired up in song and life in the late 1960s, and won the hearts of the nation by their romance.

20 Allkl Vuyukl&kl is a perennially youthful actress who for decades has represented both sexual desire and childhood Innocence for adoring fans.

21 “Andreas” and “MimI" are the names by which most Greeks refer to the previous Prime Minister of Greece, Andreas Papandrlou, and his current wife and former mistress, Dimltra Ll&nl. The drama of their less- than-secret affair, culminating in a marriage ceremony whose publicity 262 rivaled that of Charles and Diana’s royal wedding, was followed like a national soap opera from the mid- to late- 1980s.

22 The educated pedant, a figure of 111 repute for generations of supporters of the Greek vernacular, was associated with Adam&ntios Korais by Solom6s in his “AldXoyos” (“Dialogue’’) of 1824, and with “ R o ra ism d s ” by Y&nnls Psih&rls and his followers. Filippos Iliu (1989)argues that the representation of the Greek enlightenment by Psiharismds (the -ism, or the linguistic, cultural, and social idiom created by literal-minded followers of Psih&ris) as well as certain Marxist and Orthodox cultural movements in Greece reveals a conscious dispossession of the educational tradition of the enlightenment by Greek populism.

23 In his polemical book, Ger&simos Kaklam&nls (1989), a critic of populism in Greece, argues that the rise of populism concurrently with the emergence of the Greek middle class is no accident. Populism assumes the common cultural background and aspirations of the middle class and, furthermore, aims to create a national audience by offering the middle class a coherent mythology concerning its “spirit.” It offers a non-western audience the discursive means of resisting the intrusions of science and w estern rationalism iby appealing to an indigenous ideal.

24 Donald MacRae (1969) suggests that populism is an attempt to escape from the burden of history, and is therefore apolitical. Populism is especially effective in a national culture which aims to express the spirit (rather than understand the historical, economic, and political situation) of its people and their territory. In Neohellenic culture we find that even Y 6rgos Theotokis, the cosmopolitan and libertarian defender of internationalism in the arts, appealed to a kind of territorial determinism in this airy description of Greece’s inherently “spiritual” qualities: “H EXXd 8 a etvai 6X0 ni'cOpa. ECvai T| yn t u )v ayviov k c u KaQapwv i 6 € w v . H 6 ta t t ^s EXXdSas eivai pia anoXtfTpuxni t t j s o k ^ s , pid Kdeapor) tt^ s Hruxife- Acv wdpxci e£crn €8g5ywt Ta papid tcai otcoTCivd SiavoTinKd otKo 8 opV)paTa, yia Ta owve^iaop^va ovoTifyiaTa, yia t i s t t o p t u 5 8 i k € s icai peyaxdoTopcs cxdpoeis, y ia to v s ay^pwxovs icai pdvavoovs xPwpanopoOj. eappcte tt o js o t 6 tto s pas 6 iu)xv€i poucpid t o v , 6 ,t i tt€ P i t t 6 , . . . xai Blanket povaxa t t ^v vn^pTaTT) ovola t t j s . e6o5 6 \ a etvai aTixd, t 6 o o 6pop<|>a, t 6 o o paeid anxd, nov r\ avX6rr\jd toms OPopdoTT)K€ 0 a ifra” (“Greece is entirely spirit, the land of pure and clear ideas. Its view is the deliverance of thought, the catharsis of the soul. There is no place here for heavy, dark intellectual edifices, for nebulous systems, for pompous and grandiloquent declarations, for defiant and brutal colors. You would think that our territory ( topos) dismisses far away whatever is superfluous and graceless ... and retains only its supreme essence. Here everything is simple, so beautiful, so deeply simple, that simplicity was named a miracle”) (Theotok&s 1931: 30). 263

2 5 A contemporary example may serve the purpose of clarification. In a rem ark made by the composer-musician Dionisis S aw 6pulos during an interview about his album TOKOvpe^ia (“ The Haircut ”) (released in late 1988), S a w 6pulos complains generally that "Greece as a state is continuously distancing Itself all the more from the values of Hellenism.” In the context of a discussion about his song, "Oyios pov Tidci oto OTpcrrtS” ("My son goes to the Army”), Saw 6pulos (who, as he admits, never went to the army) identifies the Greek stra td n a s (army barracks) as a place where traditional values prevail. He advances this argument by equating the modern fand& ros (infantryman) with the Homeric hero: “ €£ccko X ou 0 € ( €VTT)X

26 Eldni Vakal 6 (1983) attaches the name, “0 piteos TT)S cXXtiviKOTTiTas” (“The Myth of Greekness”) to the “neo-populist” trend in art. Her source for this appellation may well be Nikos Nikoldu (1986; see especially page 49). She names the artist Y 6rgos Sikeli6tis as one such “neo-populist”; he takes la ik a (“popular”) themes and forms, raises them to an archetypal expression, and develops them into a personal mythology (Vakal 6 1983: 52; see also her chapter on “Neo-populism,” 1983: 119-125).

27 Entering into the fray of battle with Eftalidtis were Kostis Palamds, Yannis Psihdris, Karl Krumbacher, and Greg 6rios Xen 6pulos on the one side of R om iosfni, and Y 6rglos Sotiri&dis, Y6rgios Mistrldtis, Y6rgios N. Hatziddkis, and Nik 6laos G. Polltis, the defenders of Hellenism. Relevant works are Palam&s’ “P(upi6s Kai PwpiootivT)” (“Romi 6s and Romisini”) (1907); Psihdris’ “Pa>pi6 s Kai PtopiootivT)” (“Romi 6s and Romiosini”) (1902); Krumbacher’s To npdpA rjfia Trp yetVT&aS' ypafofitw fc EAA qvucrfc ( The Problem of Neohelienic W ritten Greek) (1905); Xen 6pulos’ “lOTopta TT1S Pa>piOOTJVT)S vtt 6 ApyupT) E$toXu6tti T6pos npci)T 0 S” (“History of Romiosini by Argiris Eftall 6tis Volume I”) (1902), and Politis’ i^Pwpiol” (“Hellenes or R o m ifn) (1901). Sotirlddls, Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Athens, issued a polemical response in his review of Eftalldtls “lOTOpla TT)S 264

PwpiO

28 The folklorist Nlk6laos Politls, of course, worked with his own conception of the Greek la d s as a retainer of survivals from the past. His pioneering effort to record demotic songs aided in the emergence of laograffa (“Folklore”) in Greece. Concerning his introduction of the term, laograffa , see Margaret Alexiou (1984: 14-15).

29 In his novel Oooi Zwyravof {As M any as Are Living) (1926), 'Ion Dragumis describes two traditions side by side, the one mediated and the other unmediated: “A

30 Today both terms remain in usage, each representing a different symbolic order, as Michael Herzfeld (1988) has persuasively argued. In brief, R om iosfni has to do with self-knowledge, E llenism ds with self-display.

31 K. Paparrig6pulos’ (1970) pre-demoticist history of the Greek people, with its emphasis on the Byzantine period, is a primary example of this pioneering effort to view the continuum of Greek history.

32 The enhancement of Byzantium’s reputation in the sphere of culture began with Spiridon Zambdlios (1815-1881), who inquired “TT60CV T) KOlvf) X€£is TpayouSto; XK&jfClS Tl€p( €XXTlVlKlfc TTOllfocws” ("Whence the Common Word, to 265

Sing? Thoughts on Greek Poetry”) (1859). ZambAlios recognized the Importance of medieval Greek history in the development of an indigenous poetic tradition. Among Demoticists, Dragumis, Eftali 6tis, PsihAris, and, of course, PalamAs gave Byzantium a prim ary position in their respective schemata of Greek cultural history. Of course, the enhanced reputation of Byzantium in Greek intellectual circles is not unrelated to the rise of Byzantine studies in Germany in the late 19th century. For a comprehensive survey of the history of Byzantine scholarship, see A. A. Vasiliev (1928).

33 The most remarkable of these is Alexander Pallis’s translation of Homer’s Ilia d [1904] (1932) in the manner of the 8tmiotik 6 TpayouSl (“vernacular song”). Pallis adapts the Ilia d to the prosody of 15-syllable stressed verse and demoticizes its heroes’ names: E\£vT| (Helene) the ca u sa Jbelli , for example, becomes the folk diminutive, Aevi 6 (“Leni 6 ").

34 I also discuss this work in Chapter II.

35 Wolf’s theory about the poems’ oral composition, if not multiple authorship, made its way into diverse discussions and contexts. J. Davidson (1969) and Albin Lesky (1952 and 1966) provide comprehensive surveys of the development of the “Homeric Question” in German and English scholarship. Richard Jenkyns (1980, 192-226) describes the reaction by various w riters of the Victorian era to Wolf’s challenge. In Greece, Spiridon ZambAlios adopted the view that Homer composed orally, without questioning his historical existence. ZambAlios begins his controversial critique of the “metaphyslcomania” of Dionysios Solom 6s by tracing the origins of Hellenic poetry as “song” (&8 (ti) to Homer. Homer is here represented as the originary blind singer, the Inspired oral poet who documented extraordinary historical developments in the Greek world: “Kai i8ou o a6^iiaTOS tt^s EiroTToitas 8tiiiioupy 6s, o eelos 'Opripos! o noXutoTujp outos , oioTpriXaToijpcvos utt6 tou Kaivo^avous eeapocTos tou naveXXtji/Cou, u$’ £va Kai pdvov Kolpavov KaTd pappdpuN OTpaTeuovTos, d8ei, €l;u|iv€(, 8iaoa\ntC€i, d8ei pev cos ttoit)tt^, d6ei 8c Kai (ds iotopik 6j , to TipajTov pfpa tou y ^vous tou irpos ttiv ouva(o0rioiv OXop€X€la? Kai aKepaidTtyros!” (“Behold the blind creator of Epic, divine Homer! The teller of many tales, goaded by the novel sight of the Panhellenic army marching against the barbarian under the only and only king, sings, glorifies, trumpets — sings as poet, sings as historian — the nation’s first step toward consciousness of its own totality and wholeness”) (Zambelios n.d.: 5).

35 For a comparable view, consider Karl Lachmann’s (1874) “lay” theory, developed following his comparative study of Finnish national epic. Lachmann argued that the epics were composed from separate lyric poems (“lays”) which treated similar themes and a single myth. These “lays” were then “stitched” together. Again, it should be stressed that PsihAris’ contribution to this and other arguments of the German “Analyst" school of 266

Homeric composition w as his insistence that the poems were composed by common villagers in the vernacular language of the age.

37 From the preceding discussion of populism, one should not infer that populism promoted only hegemonic projects. It has also offered ammunition for the causes of resistance, both to dominant party politics (consider the poetry of Y&nnis Ritsos or the early music of Mikis Theodor Akis: certainly it has been a staple of the political and cultural rhetoric of the left that the lads at all times in Greek history were the carriers of true culture), and all forms of resistance against a foreign enemy. The populism of resistance movements in Greece is an area that deserves exploration. A poignant example of how its rhetoric served the cause of resistance to occupying forces is found in Stllpon Kiriakidis’ essay, “The Language and Folk Culture of Modern Greece” (1946), self-described as a “rebuttal to what the German occupation forces wrote during World War II in order to indoctrinate their soldiers. They said that the modern Greeks had no connection whatsoever with the ancient Greeks but that, for the most part, they were descendants of the barbaric Slavic tribes which flooded Greece during the Middle Ages” (Kiriakidis 1946: 47).

38 In the view of Kaklam&nls, Neohellenlc populism emerges in full force only with the so-called “generation of the 30s.” Kaklam&nis (1989: 128— 151) discusses in detail the work of Y 6rgos Theotok&s and Spiros Mell&s.

39 For Elytis, all kinds of speech—in the arts, politics, education, religion—should ideally have “TTJV aTTaiTOUH€VT) Soiif) TT| OTOiX€i(68r)" (“the necessary and elementally appropriate structure”) (1990: 33): “T(TTOTa...8cv TTcapvei 8ia|5aTipio yia tt)v \|A^fv <£v npoTyyou^vaJS 8cv fyei tt)v o^€i\6ji€VT) 6€4pei oav avT(XT)\|rr| an’ to v ko XX it^xvt V Kai ott|V avT(\T)\|nitou KaXXiT^x^n0 aywvas yia tt! oajTTiplato u avGpwTJOu€(vai ayaivas yia tt)V opGtfj ^K^paorv Kai t(tio t€ dXXo” (“Nothing... becomes a passport to the soul, if it does not previously have the beneficial “visa” of expressive means. The rules of the arts are the rules of life. It is in the interest of the politician not to differ from the artist in his views. And in the artist’s view the struggle for the salvation of human beings is the struggle for appropriate expression, and nothing else”) (Elytis 1990: 34).

*0 Gregory Jusdanls (1991) argues that properly aesthetic considerations are not systematically entertained in Greek letters before the 1920s.

1 discuss the coinage of the Greek word “entopia” in Chapter I and extend my analysis of the aesthetic of “entopia” in both Chapters II and V. Elytis’ aesthetic ideas about the relationship between poetry and the Hellenic landscape clearly reflect a vogue of the late 1930s and early 1940s, which may be traced to not only the official cultural doctrine of Metaxas’ fascist 267 regime, but also the "national aestheticism” of Nazism. The German thinker who attempts to establish a subtle philosophical "tie between art and the grounding of the ‘world’ of the people” (Goux 1989: 14) is Martin Heidegger. See especially his essay, “The Origin of the Work of Art” [1935] (1971). For an interesting discussion of Heidegger’s "dilemma” concerning modern art, see Jean-Joseph Goux (1989). It should be noted that both Elytis and Heidegger (unlike the Greek and German fascists) take language (and not blood) as the root that grounds a poetic world in the soil of a nation.

42 On the paradoxes of Neohellenism, see Chapter I.

43 One finds in Elytis’ essays a formal opposition to “kva. elSos v€O€YK€^a\io|xo0 va p&rouv 6Xoi npos tt^v a^pT ui^vri &<|>paoTv t i s TieeXT^ves Trapaoiam^oeis..., to u s pexcTnp^vous \maivvyiiote, ns ^ [ le o e s ava$op& oc TiaXaidTepa OTpu^aTa n a iB e ta s ” (“a certain kind of neo-intellectualism which tends toward abstract expression, studied silence... overworked citations and mediated references to older layers of education”) (1982c: 15).

44 On another occasion, Elytis claims that he sought long and hard to discover the method capable of “incarnating,” or literally “giving body” to the senses: “...fyravtioXu $voik6 V avaCTyrd (iia ^ 8 0 8 0 TTOiTyritcfjnou...vaytvciai ucaW) ti€ Tt|v en^paor) tx \s 8iKifc p.ou \(ruxT|S va 81v€i oc5pa o tis avdxoycs aioeifacis TlOV Jl€yof)T€vav” (“it w as quite natural that I should seek a poetic method which could be made capable, by my own soul’s intervention, of incarnating something analogous to the senses which charm me”) (1982b: 243).

45 James Notopoulos suggests that the invention of writing, like the purloined firebrand, would significantly disturb a pre-literate social order. He argues that “Prometheus’ gift of letters wherewith to hold all things in memory is a radical and rather opposite view to that of conservative members of an oral society. Here we see the clash between the two views of early peoples on letters, the the conservative element of the oral society maintaining that it destroys memory, while the preogressive element maintained that it would conserve rather than destroy memory (Notopoulos 1938: 476) 46 I use this word quite literally. Prometheus’ speech to Io contains so much geographical detail that it in fact offers a map of Greek world.

47 In pre-Socratic literature, ^p^V is equivalent to the “living spirit” of humans—that which endows the living person with the capacity to both feel and think. Human shades are without it.

48 These are anagrammatic forms of key words in Elytis’ poetry: "rose,” “sea,” “marina,” “sun,” “immortality,” and his signature, “Elytis." 268

“The Passion” is the largest section of the poem. It is composed of eighteen Psalms (represented by Roman numerals), twelve Odes (represented by lower-case letters), and six Readings. These are grouped in the following pattern, PPOROPPOROPP, which is repeated three times. The three parts of “The Passion” have as their respective themes Consciousness Pacing Tradition, Consciousness Facing Danger, and Consciousness Surpassing Danger.

50 In a very early appraisal of The Axion Esti, Pinos E. Thasitis refers to the work as a “tragedy. ” Clearly he uses this term in an unspecific way when he describes “tragedy” as the story of a “conflict of catholic powers... [which] finds an optimistic solution in the victory of good over evil” (1979: 59). Yet the term has been applied generously to The Axion Esti since Thasitis first set the tirms for discussing the work. In the analysis that follows, I would like to suggest that the conception of power put forth by The Axion Esti conflicts with that which sets the action of ancient Greek tragedies in motion.

This is a Homeric formula. See for example IJiadl.Tlbti.

52 This is another Homeric formula. See Ilia d 16.365, “Ctl9ep0S 8lr|S” (“out of the illustrious aether”).

53 "The pure cosmic fire was probably Identified by Heraclitus with a ith e r, the brilliant fiery stuff which fills the shining sky and surrounds the world” (Kirk and Raven, 1957: 200-201.)

54 c. J. Herrington (1963: 180 n.3) lists these references.

55 Anaxagoras’ stay in Athens is dated from approximately 480-450 B.C.E. John Burnet (1957: 25l) lists sources giving information on Anaxagoras’ life.

56 We saw these lines elegantly revised in The Axion Esti, when the poetic persona describes himelf as “a plaything in your breath" (1980: 43). This same theory of the powerful motion and exchange of burning elements appears in other speeches by Prometheus, notably his narration of the battle between Zeus and the sons of Earth and Heaven. The fate of the hundred­ headed giant, Typhon, is exemplary. When fighting against Chronus’ sons and daughters, Typhon flashes hideous lightning from his eyes. Yet an undaunted Zeus dares to withstand his force and strikes him with an “unsleeping dart/descending thunderbolt that breathes out flames” (Offlines 358-0). This burns him to ashes and leaves him sprawling beneath the roots of the mountain Aetna. But the exchange of crossfire is not complete, as Prometheus suggests; one day “rivers of fire will burst forth there/ devouring with savage jaws/the level fields of Sicily, rich in fine fruit" (PB lines 367-369). The root of Typhon’s name, TV$“, which means “to raise or 269 consume smoke, ” derives from the Indo-European root dhu, which means “etre anlme d’un mouvement violent” (Boisacq 1938: 995. On the etymology of TV^~, see also Frisk 1961: 950.)

57 “n\ava)^VTiiTp6sSx\orSk\oviTTinovf|TTpooi(;dv€i” (“Misery roam s unpredictably around, and settles on different people in turn”) (/9 lines 275- 276).

58 The key word is “aUcta” (“outrage”), which appears in various nominal and verbal forms at lines PB lin e s 93, 97, 168, 176-177, 227, and 256.

59 Oceanus is unable to see the payoff when he advises Prometheus to forget his anger, beg for release from his suffering, and adjust himself to Zeus’ rule and system of justice (PB lines 310-316).

58 "Aeschylus’ P rom etheus seems to be a continuous discussion of a fundamental political problem: what is power? And it is one of the deepest things that have been thought and artistically formulated in antiquity on the essence of power. Hardly anywhere has the problematic and mysterious essence of power been described in such a concrete way as in the progress and construction of this play. Force has only the appearance of power: the threats and punishments of Zeus are illusory; in reality only powerlessness rages in this way. Only seemingly does the chained and tortured Prometheus succumb; despite his lack of force, there is superior strength, real power, in his knowledge and his will” (Stoessl, 1952: 128-129). 0 Elytis’ systematic repression of the political message of surrealism is the subject of Leontis (1984).

Elytis’ systematic repression of the political message of surrealism is the subject of Leontis (1984).

Chapter V. Heterotmpievr Emtwpis f The Wee of HeUeairw, or Vhere te Place HeYleetsa's Modem Excess.

* From Saw6pulos’ song ‘TEVVTfarvca ott) ZaA ovkri” ("1 was born in Salonika”) (1979).

2 It is ironic if not predictable that scholars of dominant western cultures of modernity are rarely tempted to study a subject like literary modernism in relation to its “minor,” “national” “derivatives,” whereas students of the “minor” simply cannot afford to describe their lesser-known 270 and lesser-valued entities in Isolation from those cultures whose readership is guaranteed ipso fa c to in the academy.

3 For the changes in uses and position of forms and ideas through space and time, see Edward Said (1983) and Mary Layoun (1990). Said explores “what happens to a theory when it moves from one place to another” (1983: 230). He is eager to point out that a theory’s passage into a new environment with “processes of representation and institutionalization different from those at the point of origin... complicates any account of the transplantation, transference, circulation and commerce of theories and ideas” (1983: 227). His essay warns against too vague an analysis of the relationship between ideas through the critical prism of “misreading. ” Layoun offers a global mapping of "travelling” generic forms through her analysis of Greek, Arabic, and Japanese transpositions of the novel.

4 1 do not wish to suggest that discussions about “center and periphery” are without their value. For a very rich collection of essays on this topic by political geographers, see Jean Gottman (1980).

5 In their very interesting critique of post-war modernization theory, Anthony R. de Souza and Phillip N. Porter (1974) outline a culturally relative theory of change in emerging nations, which calls to question these two assumptions: that European Intervention Interrupted traditional ways and determined the course and direction of change in colonies (with initiatives for change solely in European hands); and that societies in underdeveloped countries began to undergo a fundamental process of change akin to the western model through increased interaction w ith the West and adoption of Western ideas and practices. Donald C. Tipps (1973) goes even further by offering an alternative perspective which “identifies] in more or less operational terms the underlying core structural problems common to ail national societies to which these transformations are a response—problems relating to the formation and maintenance of societal boundaries, the organization and performance of political and economic institutions, and the social distribution of power resources” (Tipps 1974: 224).

6 For a description of tourism as “the peaceful Invasion” and the coincidence of its “knowledge precedure[s].. .applicable to wartime and ‘peaceful’ invasions alike” see Susan Buck-Morss (1987: 204-206).

7 This holds true only if one ignores the fact that the Ionian islands and the Dodecanese were colonized by first the Venetians and then Great Britain, while Crete was colonized by the Venetians. I am grateful to Stathis Gourgouris for the following insight. It is odd that Greeks consider the culture of the " E pta nisa ” (the seven Ionian Islands) to present the purest expression of “Greekness”—meaning that it shows the least signs of Ottoman influence. Why is British and Venetian influence so “invisible”? Why does western colonial Influence sit so well with Greeks, who then focus their attention on sorting through Ottoman cultural deposits? It could really be 271 argued that modern Greece endured a “colonialization of the mind” by western Europe—especially since Its system of education was imported directly from Germany—which renders western colonial influence invisible. On colonializations of the mind, see Onwuchekwa Jemi Chlnweizu and Ihechukwe Madubuike (1987).

8 Wlad Godzich claims that the development of the core-periphery occured during the post-war period, when “decolonization was followed by a reterritorialization that became rapidly conceptualized through notions of core and periphery, in which the former colonial powers together with other economically dominant nations constitute the core whereas the former colonies form the periphery. The latter admits of measurement in relation to the core as an index of its degree of development, where it is of course implicit that the core’s own development is normative and somehow “natural.’ Such an approach requires that one distinguish circles, if not outright peripheries, within the core as well and that ultimately some center be located, even if it means that national and regional boundaries must be ignored” (1986: xi).

9 We learn from an editor’s note in Diacritics, which published the English translation “Of Other Spaces” (1986), that “although [the manuscript] was not reviewed for publication by the author and thus not part of the official corpus of his work, [it] was released into the public domain for an exhibition in Berlin shortly before Michel Foucault’s death” (Foucault, 1986: 22 n. l). For other discussions of "heterotopia” see Edward W. Soja (1989 and 1990).

18 For my discussion of the Neohellenic uses and meanings of topos, see Chapter II.

11 Foucault identifies prisons, rest homes, psychiatric hospitals, boarding school, military service facilities, honeymoon hotels, boats, and colonies as modern heterotopies. He refers specifically to “the Puritan societies that the English had founded in America” and “those extraordinary Jesuit colonies that were founded in South America” (Foucault 1986: 27).

12 “It is this complex juxtaposition and cosmopolitan simultaneity of differences in space that charges the heterotopia with social and cultural meaning and connectivity. Without such a charge, the space would remain fixed, dead, immoble, undialectical” (Soja 1990: 9).

13 A heterotopia may be said to remain outside time, within a speeded- up time, or at the end of time.

14 The Greek translator of Nerval’s and Gautier's travel accounts of Greece explains that Nerval supported himself in 1843 by publishing in a newspaper column his descriptions of different places in Greece (M6ntzou 1990: 25), while Gautier decided to make a stopover in Athens on his w ay 272

from Constantinople to Paris for purely economic reasons— “a^cti [icpucd rfpBpa yia rr^v Akp6tto\ti 6a ttXtpujvovtciv oacpipd atr6 tods SieuOvvnis tojv e^ncplSw v” ("since a few articles about the Acropolis would be paid for dearly by the editors of newspapers”) (1990: 26).

15 See the discussion of Alphonse de Lamartine’s Voyage en Orient below.

For the European traveller, the ground of the Acropolis is viewed as sacred. I refer below to Ernest Renan’s famous “Prifcre sur l’Acropole” (“Prayer on the Acropolis,” 1865). The Danish cultural and political critic Georg Brandes (1842-1927), a self-declared atheist and Nietzschean leftist, describes his encounter as the realization of a dream which fills him with "a feeling of awe. For this ground is holy. These curiously tarnished marble columns, bathed in the warm, caressing March sunlight, are a festive sight to the eyes, both by their color and their form. The longer one has thirsted for this sight, the profounder is one’s rapture” (1969: 170). For Brandes, Renan’s prayer serves as a reminder that western powers are obligated to treat Hellas, both ancient and modern, with special dignity, even if they did fulfilled this obligation in their determination of foreign policy in 1922: “It is a far cry from feelings expressed by Renan in his prayer, to those now animating the European Powers in their relations with Hellas. These Powers have sacrificed Hellas to the fury of the Turks in cold blood. Greece, not Palestine, is the Holy Land, and until humanity recognizes this fact, until humanity discards its indifference to truth and its hatred for reason, which in our day is cankering all souls and permeating all of literature and philosophy, we shall witness nothing more nor less than a continuous and progressive decay of our civilization” (1969: 192-193).

17 The Acropolis w as a "holy” place of another order for ancient Athens. This is not the place to discuss a genealogy of the Athenian Acropolis in ancient times. But such a genealogy might begin with its "transformation from the political and military center it was [during the Mycenean period] into an exclusionary cult site” at the beginning of the first millenium (Dontos 1979: 6)

18 It is no m atter of coincidence that the Greek Tourist Organization conducted a publicity campaign in the U.S. after 1985 (the year of the TWA hijacking at the Athens airport), in which they featureed a number of celebrities of various ethnic backgrounds. Each celebrity named their family’s place of origin (England, Germany, Italy, Ireland), then Joyfully announced that "this summer I’m going home—to Greece.”

19 Hellas became a popular stopping point on the Grand Tour of the Orient especially after Napoleon’s fleet blocked access (for the English, at least) to Egypt. 273

20 fhe Ottoman attitude toward the Acropolis remains undocumented. Although British authorities regularly argue that Ottomans directly authorized Lord Elgin’s removal of the Acropolis marbles, the document of said “authorization” is not extant in the original. Only an Italian translation of the lost original remains—a document addressed to Ottoman authorities. I discuss the case of the Parthenon Marbles below. Here I include the English translation of the Italian translation of the lost Turkish original of the letter given to Lord Elgin’s chaplain, Philip Hunt, with directions for the local Ottoman authorities. Again, one should note that the letter directs itself to the appropriate “comport” of not Elgin’s party, but local Ottoman authorities, whom it orders to allow Elgin and his artists to enter the Acropolis, model temples with chalk, measure fragments, erect scaffolding, dig, and remove without interference “any pieces of stone with inscriptions and figures”: “ .. .it is our desire that on the arrival of this letter you use your diligence to act conformably to the instances of the said Ambassador as long as the said five artists dwelling in that place shall be employed in going in and out of the citadel of Athens which is the place of observation; or in fixing scaffolding around the ancient Temple of the Idols, or in modelling with chalk or gypsum the said ornaments and visible figures; or in measuring the fragments and vestiges of other ruined buildings; or in excavating when they find it necessary the foundations in search of inscriptions among the rubbish; that they be not molested by the said Disdar nor by any other persons; nor even by you to whom this letter is addressed; and that no one meddle with their scaffolding or Implements nor hinder them from taking away any pieces of stone with inscriptions and figures. In the aforesaid manner see that you behave and comport yourselves” (Quoted in Stoneman, Land of Lost Gods , 1987: 173).

21 B. F. Cook, Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum, describes the scattering of the Elgin Marbles throughout the many halls of the Museum’s Classical Greek permanent exhibitions, as an attempt “to find their proper context” (1984 : 4).

22 The museum is another heterotopia “proper to culture of the nineteenth century” (Foucault, 1986: 26). For modern social, political, and economic histories of museums and collecting, see Joseph Alsop (1982), Germain Bazin (1968), Douglas Crimp (1980 and 1987), Carol Duncan and Allan Wallach (1978), Kenneth Hudson (1975), Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor (1985), and H. Seling (1967).

23 Robert Byron compares his sensation of the Acropolis’ first “materialisation” before his eyes to the effect on his psyche of certain photographs of familiar objects: “the actual materialisation of objects familiar in monochrome since the earliest days of the nursery, somehow produces a sensation of such unreality that the eyes of the beholder seem to play him false, as if imposed on by a mirage. Such a feeling, I must confess, obtruded itself upon my common sense, as our cab gradually approached the foot of the mountainous platform on which the Parthenon 274 stands. I felt I was the victim of a delusion” (From his Europe in the Looking Glass, 1926; quoted in Stoneman 1984: 148)

24 "Impossible antiquity, said I to myself, aimless searchings.—The harshness of these words pleased me.—Nothing of all this exists. Here, where 1 had hoped to touch it with my hands, here it is gone, here more than anywhere else. A demonic irony hovers round these ruins which in their decay still retain their secret” (Hoffmannsthal 1952: 184).

25 The closing passage of Hoffmannsthal’s essay, “Moments in Greece, ” which records his thoughts as he passes through the Acropolis Museum, is w orth quoting in full: “Maybe, I tell myself, it is from these statues that my soul received its direction, maybe it is something else of which these statues standing about me are messengers. For it is strange that again I do not really embrace them as something present, but that I call them to me from somewhere with continuous wonder, with a feeling anxiously sweet, like memory. It would be unthinkable to want to cling to their surface. This surface actually is not there—it grows by a continuous coming from inexhaustible depths. They are there and are unattainable. So, too, am I. By this we communicate. And while I feel myself becoming stronger and under this one word “Eternal” forever losing more and more of myself, vibrating like a column of heated air above a conflagration, I ask myself, slowly fading like the lamp in bright daylight: If the Unattainable feeds on my innermost being and the Eternal builds out of me its eternity, what then still stands between me and the Deity?” (1952: 87).

26 It may be relevant to note that Renan is known for his application of positivism to literary and cultural studies. With this intent, he wrote “scientific” biography (Life of Jesus, 1863) and explained literary works by the “race, milieu, and moment” of their authors.

27 A Greek translation of the Renan’s prayer is “dedicated to the worshippers of the Good and Beautiful” (Renan 1960, title page).

28 Two other sources explicitly compare Greece to the Holy Land. Brandes arrives at the conclusion, as we saw above, that Greece, not Palestine, is the Holy Land” (1969: 192-193), and Alphonse de Lamartine calls Athens the “Jerusalem of nations” (1989: 57).

29 This message is also the effect of Alphonse Lamartine’s “reverie, ” which I offer here in a recent Greek translation: “MirpoOTd o' out6 to £pyo, aTTepiTTO, v^rnX6, a>pafo, appovixd {vyiaop^vo o’ dva 8cIk6 pu0p6, pveiCdpaoTc oe pa8v, tpa(ou xd0r)K€ and h

Tiai8id TT^s € ( v a i av^M iopa v a tt^v aTio8c5oow” (“Before this w ork—simple, lofty, beautiful, harmoniously measured in a divine rhythirm—we fall into a deep and humble reverie; we set before ourselves disquieting questions, we ask whether human genius, which believes itself to be running with swift step along the road of progress, may have followed instead a backward path; and we think that, despite all its new religions and inventions of all kinds— the compass, printing, and steam—the idea of beauty has been lost from earth, or that [earth's] children are unable to represent it” (Lamartine 1990: 162).

30 The Danish sculptor Albert Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) was a leader of Neoclassicists known for his adherence to Greek art and respect for ancient prototypes. The largest collection of his works is in the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen.

31 The “Glyptotek” is a museum in Munich.

3^ Lamartine refers to Athens as “FT) TT)S aTTOKaXu^ris ttou p.TTod(€i XTvnrp£vTi and Kdmoia eclKfi KaTdpa, aTi6 Kdnoia irpo$Tyrr|iK^ ptfarf (“Land of the apocalypse which appears stricken by a divine curse, a prophetic utterance”) (1989: 57).

33 For another French author, the poet and journalist Thdophile Gauthier (1811-1872), the eternity of the Parthenon’s beauty is not unrelated to the non-reproducibility of Athenian genius, whose analogue is the “Parthenogenesis” of the goddess Athena: “Parthenon, temple of the P arthenos (Virgin) I For Athena, Pallas Athena of the Hellenes, was the purist creation of pagan mythology; she came out of the Head of Zeus fully armed and fully grown.... For this reason her temple was the brightest of all pagan temples; over this temple attic genius consumed itself in its highest effort” (1990: 161).

3* A few foreign visitors have argued, however, against the judgment of powerful people like Lamartine, that to confirm of the atemporal of the Parthenon’s beauty is to “whitewash” the Acropolis of all native (if not actual) color—whether this color is seen to derive from the surrounding Greek landscape or distant European societies. These criticisms grow more frequent after the turn of the century, as we shall see below. Among other twentieth-century authors, Andr6 Malraux (1901-1976), takes strong exception to the physical violation done to the Acropolis when “the whole past [is seen to have] reached u s .. .colorless” (1974: 47, as quoted above).

35 For post-war authors, it is not nationality, but technology that intrudes on the sacred “otherness” of the Acropolis’ space. The contemporary Canadian author Gwendolyn MacEwen describes the “unreality” of “the Acropolis lit by night”: "There is something vastly unreal about the Acropolis lit by night; it is the same unreality that 276 surrounds two other "high places” I have seen which have become the victims of the hellish son et lum iire shows—the fortress of Saladln in Cairo and the great pyramids in Giza. Huxley maintained in The Doors of P erception that modern artificial lighting allows us to appreciate ancient architecture and sculpture in new and thrilling ways. For me, however, those huge waves of unreal light create a nightmarish quality I can do without. When the Parthenon was built, nobody anticipated that one day hundreds of viewers would sit entranced before its holy pillars, half blinded not by the light of God but by that of Edison. Some things can only be understood in pure sunlight or in the discreet illumination of torches” (1978: 16-17).

36 It should be noted that Germans did not regularly visit the Acropolis or even Greece before the post-World War II era. People like Wlncklemann, Schiller, Nietzsche, and Heidegger (until very late in his life) described the Hellenic ideal through texts and decontextualized statues without witnessing the original architectural monuments or the real natural surroundings.

37 For centuries the Acropolis lay within the boundaries and jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire, which used several of its buildings for the storage of gunpowder.

38 Foucault (1979) analyzes the functioning of “disciplines” in modern societies. “Disciplinary technologies” are general formulas of domination that act as a “mechanics of power” or a “political anatomy of detail.” Foucault is especially interested in the way the modern world uses “disciplines” to control bodies: “The historical moment of the disciplines was the moment when an art of the human body was born, which was directed not only at the growth of its skills, nor at the intensification of its subjection, but at the formation of a relation that in the mechanism itself makes it more obedient as it becomes more useful, and conversely. What was then being formed was a policy of coercions that act upon the body, a calculated manipulation of its elements, its gestures, its behaviour. The human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it” (1979: 138). Yet he is not unaware of the centrality of space to the deployment of such disciplines: “Discipline sometimes requires enclosure, the specification of a place heterogeneous to all others and closed in upon itself” (1979: 141). He refers more specifically to places of confinement (prisons, mental institutions, hording houses, military barracks). For the purposes of my study, it is important to reconceive his analytical method in such a way that it is appropriate to my object of study, the heterotopia of the archeological site. Here the deployment of disciplines does not directly effect individual bodies or “subjects”; rather it supervises the historical self­ conception of “dangerous” (i.e. heterogeneous to all other) populations and their authorities.

3? At about this time, a major architectural addition was made on the site of the Acropolis: the Acropolis Museum, constructed in “a relatively 277 non-visiblc low area in the SE corner of the surface of the rock of the Acropolis” (Dontas: 1979, 18). The museum is a heterotopia within a heterotopia. Unlike the ancient monuments, the building itself is clearly designed to be “non-visible”; its function is to reveal itself only through its contents. Hence it is not pictured anywhere in the museum catalogue, except where its low roof and sides appear accidentally in aerial views of the entire site. It should be noted that a new 350,000 sqare foot Acropolis Museum is about to be built in Athens at the foot of the Acropolis. Two Roman architects, Manfredi Nikoletti and Lucio Passarelli, have been selected by an international ju ry to design the building, much of which will be quite literally invisible. As Nikoletti has informed the public, the entrance and part of the structure are to be below ground ‘so as to convey the idea of a descent into history’” (New York Times, December 1990). The new museum is being designed to house not only marbles in storage at the old museum, but also the Parthenon Marbles, which the British Museum has not yet promised to return.

40 Gibbon’s “vision of decline” is constructed, according to Richard Stoneman, by analogy to Gibbon’s “experience of Rome” in 1764 (Stoneman 1984: 130).

41 “Misappropriation” Is the term used by Greek officials to describe Lord Elgin’s activities on the Acropolis: “The miscreant w as a diplomat and the misappropriation was covered by the authority of an official action, a permit from the Sultan. He was Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin — ” (Dontas 1979: 18).

42 A similar perception also prevailed among Byzantine Greeks. For a remarkable account of Byzantine views, see Cyril Mango’s excellent essay, “Antique Statuary and the Byzantine Beholder” (1963). Mango studies the effect of pagan statues on the Byzantine spectator (as recorded in Byzantine texts, especially the genre of ik fr a s is ) . He describes both “popular” and “intellectual” reaction, “superstitious” and “Christian reinterpretation” of the antique statuary. His purpose is to “set up a test case of the Byzantine attitudes towards antiquity” (1963: 55). He is quite careful not to allow modern assumptions about the aesthetic value of Classical art to predispose him negatively toward these “Byzantine attitudes.”

43 An author who expressed great sympathy for the views of the local population was the English Romantic poet and Philhellene, Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824). It is no coincidence that Byron fought agressively both w ith his pen and with his life (he died in 1824 alongside Greek revolutionaries within the besieged Mesol6ngi) for the value of contemporary reality over Classical antiquity. In English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Byron caustically spoofs Elgin’s antiquarian pursuits: “Let Aberdeen and Elgin still pursue/The shade of fame through regions of Virtu;/Waste useless thousands on their Phidian freaks,/Misshapen and maimed antiques;/And make their grand saloons a general mart/For all the mutilated blocks of art.” 278

He concludes The Curse of Minerva, where he satirizes the reactions of a crowd that gathers to admire Elgin’s "loot,” with a description of the most sober response: "And last of all, amidst the gaping crew,/ Some calm spectator, as he takes his view,/In silent indignation mix’d with grief,/Admires the plunder, but abhors the thief.” For carefully annotated compendium of Byron’s views on Greece, see Harold Spender’s B yro n a n d Greece (1924).

44 Cavafy here reminds his English readers that the Greek government to which Knowles refers has made “law s prohibiting illegal traffic in Greek antiquities; and they have established several well-stocked and well-managed Museums.” Cavafy also informs us of Knowles’ second main argument, that a likely “clash of the Eastern Question” would hasten the Marbles’ destruction on the Acropolis.

Stoneman is writing after 1973, of course, when the military dictatorship led by Colonel George Papadopoulos as "regent” and “prime minister” deposed King Constantine and “proclaimed the creation of a ‘presidential parliamentary republic’ to be ratified by referendum” (Clogg 1980: 196).

46 Gwendolyn MacEwen imagines this sonic juxtaposition on and around the Acropolis: “I turned away from the window and imagined I could hear the strident notes from the bouzoukia of Plaka—the night-spots which form a weird, winding network of music and laughter along the lower slopes of the mountain of the Acropolis. Above, in the Parthenon, the freaky stillness of history. Below, a maze of streets full of caf£s, bottes, ta ve rn a s, each competing with the other for the right to do permanent damage to the human ear. And yet, often, hidden away in a dark corner under a roof of lattice-work and grapevines, the surprise: the lone s a n to u r i player caressing the countless strings of his instrument upon the table” (MacEwen 1978: 17).

47 “The Ideal of Greece no longer holds sway, yet Greece, somehow, for better or for worse, will not go away. It is the seeking for our own roots, our own reflection, in that landscape of spectacular beauty and fierce nakedness, that draws us back.... Those of us who can travel can see all these things.. .without needing to uproot the buildings and statues from their surroundings. The totality of landscape that gave birth to the Greek gods, to Western art, philosophy and politics, to our dreams and passions and our incurable nostalgia, will always lure us on to discovery and reflection” (Richard Stoneman 1987: 301).

48 Freud interprets his experience of “derealization” on the Acropolis as a displacement of the anxiety of assimilation. His question, “can it be that the Acropolis r e a lty exists?" represses the son’s “sense of guilt or inferiority” (1964 : 242) that he, the son of a ghetto-born, uneducated, and ethnically unassimilated Jewish businessman, could go so far. The real 279 question which it displaces is this: can it be "that I should ‘go such a long w ay’?” (1967: 246), or “What would Monsieur not re F$re have said to this, if he could have been her to-day?” (1967: 247).

Richard Terdiman (1985) uses the term “counter-discourse,” to characterise “a series of techniques and practices by which 19th-century intellectuals and artists contested the dominant habits of mind and expression of their contemporaries” (1985: 12).

50 The fictional young man seems to miss the sustained satirical tone and focus only on the conservative message of Thomas Love Peacock (1785- 1866), whose Gryll Grange (1861) includes a cleric’s summaries of Greek aphorisms on the good life.

51 On the figures of the “lost center” and “promised land” in twentieth-century criticism, see Leontis (1987) and Stathis Gourgouris (1990).

52 On the “compensatory function" of the aesthetic in Greece, see Gregory Jusdanis (1991).

55 The now infamous German journalist Fallmerayer published a series articles beginning in 1836 (based on his Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea waehrend des M. Helalters ) where he made the racial argument that contemporary Greeks inherited none of the blood of the ancient Hellenes, since their origin is largely Slavic.

54 i discuss Seferis’ “Dialogue” in Chapter III. The only mention that I will make here of Seferis’ end of the discussion is this: although he claims that TsAtsos introduces the demand for “Greekness, ” Seferis is the one who interposes this term in order to reject its status as an a p r io r i criterion of aesthetic value. TsAtsos falls into Seferis’ trap and ends up naming the traits of “Greekness. ” This is not to say that TsAtsos’ first essay is not headed in this direction. Although TsAtsos begins with a very interesting argument about the variable of th esis, or “positioning,” in any creative act, he ends up describing the foundations of cultural expression in Greece. Thus, when TsAtsos explains to Seferis, “H€\Xt)VIk6tT)T0 Poti0T)Tu6 y ia tov e\€YXO ttjs yvTyndTTyras ev6s ipyov t 4 x ^ ” (“Greekness is an aid for checking the authenticity of a work of art”) (TsAtsos 1938c: 259), he is only adding the placard, “ EUinikdtita, ” to the closing argument in his first essay, entitled “TIpiv cm6 to SertvTHia” (“ Before Starting"): “rj ovola t t £ TrvevpaTiKtfe tov Cwifc etvai avandoTraoTTi cm6 tti yri Kai ati6 ttjv lOTopta tou XaoO 6tiou aviyei.... np£n€i va opioSct tioid etvai ovtt^ r\ yrv ttoi6 ctvai to TivevpaTud v 6 ^ d ttjs, ttou Kvpiapxitcd Tipoo8iop(C€i tti yW)oia t^xvt) Kai ttjv ovoiaoTiKf} ok£\Jttv Kai aKdpa noid €(vai avTfi i\ lOTopla, u>s €v6TTyra €via(a ov\XT)itt^ and to Tivctipa. Ei8iKWTepa yia TTJV EXXd8a, TTp^TTGl Va y(V€l OVV€18 t1T^ X\ €Od)TaTTl ovvoxtf 6XO)V TtOV lOTOpiKWV Ti€pi68a)V ttis Kai to koiv6 tioMtiotik6 tovs v6rpx.... npiv and Kd6€ d?iov 280 empcaopd, IpxcTai ti v 6t)ot) ttjs eXXTiviKife yris Kai tt)s cXXTpaKtfc ioTop(as” (“the essence of cultural life is indivisible from the earth and the history of the people where [the artist] belongs.... One must define what that earth is and what its cultural meaning is, since this fundamentally predefines authentic art and essential thought and even history, as a unity concieved from spirit. Especially in Greece, we must become aware of the internal coherence of each historical period and its common meaning.... Before any valuable influence (from abroad) comes an Intelligible sense of the Hellenic earth and Hellenic history”) (TsAtsos 1938b: 98). But 1 would like to suggest that Seferis may have had his own reasons for Inserting the term EUinikdtita into the dialogue, even as he pleads agnosticism concerning its contents. Anyway, ten years down the road, Seferis also claims to discover a “humanizing function” in the “light” of “the principally Hellenic topia” (I981f: 55): “I believe that there is a humanizing function in the Hellenic light” (I981f: 55). This light renders “lines that are drawn and erased; bodies and personalities, the tragic silence of the p e rso n ” (I981f: 55). It finally merges with the living force that runs through not only “the blood of man, ” but also the cultural tradition of Hellenism, from Homer to the present: “Elvai t6oo cvkoXo, yid OK^ijrou: av to rns p£pas Kai to a ip a tov avepumov fyrav to (Sio TTpdypa; 'Qs ttou pnopeC v a to aio0av0c( Kave(s ccvto;... Av o cvavepumiopds nov h e y a . Y^vvrjoe rnv OSvooeia, ate norfy.nopodpcva Sotipc TT)v OSvoaeicc, ” (“It’s so simple: Image that the light of day and the blood of Man are the same thing? H ow deeply can one actually experience this?... If the humanizing function which I referred to gave birth to the Odyssey, how far can we actually see* the O dyssey ?”) (I981f: 55-56). I don’t think that Seferis was entirely unhappy with the description of EUinikdtita w hich TsAtsos offered.

55 I do not know as much as I would like about TsAtsos influences from the contemporary scene of philosophy in Germany. A few years before TsAtsos published this essay, Martin Heidegger wrote “The Origin of the Work of Art,” which signalled his turn away from politics towards the arts. In his “Addendum” [1956] to this essay Martin Heidegger attempts to define the creative act of “'fixing in place of tru th ,’” (Heidegger 1971: 82), which he calls by the Greek name, th esis.

56 TsAtsos writes against historical determinism (and the influence of marxism on Neohellenism) : " 'On dpoos auTO nov avTdpaTa, poipala, KaTd to 8ioX€ktik6 vdpo ttjs lOTOplas, ovppatvei, naCpvei tt) pop

I discuss Piki6nis’ work in Chapter IV.

58 Neohellenic culture is unusual among non-dominant cultures of modernity in that the two opposing positions which emerge with its entrance into modernity, the traditionalist and westernizing forces, both takes “Hellas” (or Hellenism) as their prim ary sign. Each side then competes for the authority to control the semiosis of "Hellenism.” The competition may produce new hybrids. Neohellenic modernism, for example, synthesizes the European, Classical Hellenic and the indigenous Hellenic/Romeic into the notion of EUinikdtita (Greekness), as 1 have frequently noted. One might consider one of a number of contrasting cases, for example modern Iran, where the westernizing Pahlevi dynasty attempted to revive a Persian identity to the exclusion of the traditionalist Muslim idenity—at the cost of losing mass support from the Muslim majority. Here the two opposing terms had different signifiers which were also perceived as mutually exclusive. On the cultural politics of the Pahlevi dynasty and the conflict of the “modernizing” state with the "traditionalist” hierocracy in Iran before 1979, see Arjomand (1988: 75-87).

59 On Seferis’ refusal to discuss the Civil War, see the beginning of Chapter I.

88 The example of the composer MAnos HatzidAkis’ very successful album, 0 MeyctAogEpcOTltcd? ("The Great Love God”) (1972) is preeminent. Here the composer assembles an incongruous assortment of “Greek poems” into an “unbroken cycle of songs”—a "Greek liturgy” dedicated to a “XalKds 0 €6s ttou (€iott )v ^avTaola |ias an’ tt)v os, €4>t)Pik6s Kai aSidicoTia (wvTavds.... *opa€i8uca tou [pouxa] ttou ouve^Touv SuokoXous auvSuaopous ifywv, avdXa^ptov xpmdTtuv Kai frouyriKUJV ovelpuv. Aev TTepi^i pT)vfyiaTattou ewoXa Taopuvouv oi ppoxes ... 0 Meyaxos EPgdtikAs ctv ai p ia ocipd au 6XalKa TpayouSia, ttou ypd^Tiycav upon-* an' 6Xa y ia va €ttikoivo)v^ oo) eycS o (8ios pe 6xa Ta cXXtjvucd Trp6ocoTra ttou ayaTKtf paeeia, out<£ttou yvwpioa, auTd ttou 8 a yvcop(oa) ki auTd ttou 8 €v 6a pTiop^oa) ttotI s pou va yvcoploa). Ki aKdprj, lies an’ auTd, va cva>0c5 pe ttjv tou t6ttou jiou oe p ia XciToupyCa aedvaTrj, cpa)TiKfj Kl eXXT)ViKi^” (“God of the people who lives in our imagination from the moment we are born until we die: handsome, youthful, and continuously alive.... He wears his own clothes, a synthesis of difficult combinations of sounds, soft colors, and poetic dreams. He doesn’t Include messages which the rains easily erase O Megalos Erotikos is a series of laiki tragudia ("popular songs”), which were written first and foremost so that I might communicate myself with all the Hellenic persons whom I love deeply, those I met, will meet, or will never be able to meet. And still, 282 from within these songs, let me be united with the spirit of my tdpos in an immortal, erotic, and Hellenic liturgy”) (Hatzid&kis 1972: album jacket).

61 This ip also the message of Seferis* dream sequence of ascent to the Acropolis (I981f: 326ff.). See Chapter III for an analysis of his interpretation of this dream.

62 As Eugene W. Holland (1990) suggests, "Greece presents an especially revealing or blatant case of re-territoriallzation, reconstituting itself in the modern period both geographically and culturally on the model of past territories that have for one reason or another been effaced or expropriated. As well-suited to studying the modern Greek situation as the concept of (re-) territorialization clearly is, however, its deployment in programs of modern Greek studies creates a host of dilemmas” (1990: 129).

63 jos£ Rabasa (1987) uses this term in a discussion about contemporary ethnography. He suggests that the ethnographer’s confrontation with her/his “subject” be dispersed beyond the dichotomy of Self-Other to the “Inner-Other”—that all too Eurocentric Self that haunts the ethnographer’s venerable intention. Evidently, Eurocentrism is not an ‘out there’ that we can identify, but the locus where minor discourses intervene” (1987: 159).

64 Michael Herzfeld, referring to the case of Greece, characterizes this phenomenon “alterity in itself” (1987: 47).

66 Gregory Jusdanis (1991) persuasively argues that anthologies and literary histories were being created in Greece on the basis of political rather than aesthetic criteria until the 1920s. W orks Cited

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