Byzantium and the Modernist Subject 195

Chapter 7 Byzantium and the Modernist Subject: The Case of Autobiographical Literature

Stratis Papaioannou

Immer nur ein unter dem besonderen Neigungswinkel seiner Existenz sprechendes Ich Paul Celan ⸪ It is no surprise that the modern reception of Byzantine literature has been limited. Like all other matters Byzantine, this reception has been conditioned by the main trajectory of the culture and society of Byzantium in western Eu- ropean historical consciousness. Bound up in models of universal history, priv- ileging the western European insider, this consciousness has had increasingly little space for the continuation of the Roman Christian empire in the pre- dominantly Greek-speaking East, in its various transformations from the fourth to the fifteenth century—what we have come to call “Byzantium.” The historiographical tradition that addressed the European insider—to borrow a scheme recently explored by Antonis Liakos1—mixed narratives of decline, which were attuned to a biblical, linear, and teleological time frame, with narratives that insisted on revival, cyclical time, and fantasies of utopian progress. The former, driven by messianic expectations, saw the Roman Em- pire in its medieval continuations, including Byzantium, as the last and inferi- or stage of a declining humanity. The narrative of progress promoted the image of European modernity as a self-confident renaissance, able to restore and continue the glorious Greco-Roman antiquity, which had been interrupted by the Dark Ages; Byzantium is almost entirely absent from this view.

* I would like to thank David Konstan, Kostis Kourelis, Charis Messis, and Jim Porter for their comments on this paper, Ivan Drpić for suggesting the icon of Saint Irene, as well as Annie McDonald for improving the style of the English and providing bibliographical help. 1 Antonis Liakos, Αποκάλυψη, ουτοπία και ιστορία: οι μεταμορφώσεις της ιστορικής συνείδησης (Athens, 2011).

At a closer look, things are more complex. After the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by the western Christian Crusaders, Byzantium set off a variety of echoes within European modernity, to which no justice can be done in this brief essay.2 There have been, for instance, significant moments of Byzan- tinism—such as the emergence of Byzantine scholarship in the context of bourgeois ideologies during the nineteenth century,3 or the immediate and or- ganic successor of these ideologies, modernism, to which this volume is devot- ed.4 Nevertheless, to the extent that they became ossified common sense, the

2 See recent discussions in the following books and collections of essays: Karsten Fledelius, ed., Byzantium: Identity, Image, Influence. Major Papers: XIX International Congress of Byzantine Studies, University of Copenhagen, 18–24 August, 1996; in cooperation with P. Schreiner (Copenhagen, 1996), 220–390; Robin Cormack and Elizabeth Jeffreys, eds., Through the Looking Glass: Byzantium through British Eyes (Burlington, Vt., 2000); Marie-France Auzépy, ed., Byzance en Europe (Saint-Denis, Fr., 2003); Anthony T. Aftonomos, “The Stream of Time Irresistible: Byzantine Civilization in the Modern Popular Imagination,” PhD thesis, Concordia University, 2005; Jean-Michel Spieser, Présence de Byzance (Gollion, Switz., 2007); Paul Stephenson, ed., The Byzantine World (London and New York, 2010), 429–509; Benjamin Fourlas and Vasiliki Tsamakda, eds., Wege nach Byzanz (Mainz, Ger., 2011); Foteini Kolovou, ed., Byzanzrezeption in Europa: Spurensuche über das Mittelalter und die Renaissance bis in die Gegenwart (Berlin and Boston, 2012); Marina S. Brownlee and Dimitri H. Gondicas, eds., Renaissance Encounters: Greek East and Latin West (Leiden and Boston, 2013); Angeliki Lymberopoulou and Rembrandt Duits, eds., Byzantine Art and Renaissance Europe (Farnham, UK, 2013); Ingela Nilsson and Paul Stephenson, eds., Wanted: Byzantium. The Desire for a Lost Empire (Uppsala, 2014). See also the excellent historiographical overview in Dionysios Stathakopoulos, A Short History of the Byzantine Empire (London and New York, 2014), 191–210. 3 For a survey (though with no critical approach) of the main figures: Nikolaos Tomadakes, Κλεὶς τῆς Βυζαντινῆς Φιλολογίας ἤτοι εἰσαγωγὴ εἰς τὴν Βυζαντινὴν Φιλολογίαν 1 (Thessalonike, 1993), 82– 197. Cf. also the bibliography of Byzantine studies in Karl Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzan tinischen Literatur von Justinian bis zum Ende des östromischen Reiches (527–1453). 2nd ed., A. Ehrhard und H. Gelzer, eds. (Munich, 1897), 1068–144 (a treasure for the history of scholarly Byzantinism before the end of the 19th century); and also: Alexander A. Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, 324–1453 (Madison, Wis.,1952), 3–41. See further Hans-Georg Beck, “Die byzantinischen Studien in Deutschland vor Karl Krumbacher,” in idem, ed., Chalikes: Festgabe für die Teilnehmer am XI. Internationalen Byzantinistenkongress (München 15.–20. September 1958) (Freising, 1958), 67–118; and D.R. Reinsch, “Ἡ βυζαντινὴ λόγια γραμματεία στὴν Γερμανία τὸν 19ο αἰώνα,” in E. Chrysos, ed., Ἕνας νέος κόσμος γεννιέται: Ἡ εἰκόνα τοῦ ἑλληνικοῦ πολιτισμοῦ στὴ γερμανικὴ ἐπιστήμη κατὰ τὸν 19ο αἰώνα (Athens, 1996), 107–28 (on Byzantine studies, specifically, in Germany before Krumbacher); and also various essays in the books listed in the previous note. 4 Cf. Kostis Kourelis, “Byzantium and the Avant-Garde: Excavations at Corinth, 1920s–1930s,” Hesperia 76 (2007): 391–442; also J.B. Bullen, “Byzantinism and Modernism, 1900–14,” Burling ton Magazine 141 (1999): 665–75, and Byzantium Rediscovered (London, 2003). For the trajec-