Patouchas, the Bigfooted Greek

University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 1978 Patouchas, the bigfooted Greek Ioannes Kondylakes The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Kondylakes, Ioannes, "Patouchas, the bigfooted Greek" (1978). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 3184. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/3184 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PATOUCHAS; THE BIGFOOTED GREEK by iQannis Kondylakis TRANSLATED WITH INTRODUCTION by Sotiroulla Syka-Carabas B.A., Deree College, Athens, Greece, 1976 Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA 1978 Approved by: Chairman, Board of Examiners Dean, Graduate School Date UMI Number: EP35387 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMT UMI EP35387 Published by ProQuest LLC (2012). Copyright in the Dissertation heid by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code luesf ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Syka-Caràhas, Sotiroulla, M.A,, , English Patouchas : The Bigfooted Greek by loaimis Kondylakis, translated and introduced by Sotiroulla Syka-Carabas Adviser: Lois Welch, Ph.D. Lc, loannis Kondylakis’, Patouchas (1891), one o£ the first m o d e m Greek novels, is a humorous account of a young Cretan shepherd's efforts to understand and conform to the social values of his parents’ village. Manolis, having fled the humiliation and the spankings of school, grows up in the mountains tending his father’s sheep until the urges of manhood drive him back to the village. IVhat follows is a rites de passage, a social obstacle course which the youth must overcome in order to be accepted as a full-fledged adult member of the village. Patouchas is an antliropological novel in that Kondylakis, along with his contemporaries, sought to preserve the ways and mores of the Greek country- side by faithfully recording them in novels and short sotries. Yet, in addition to the serious ethographic objectives of the author, the comic mishaps of the hero as he proves himself and wins the swarthy girl, Pighi, for his wife makes Patouchas a delight to read. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION . .............................. - 1 HO PATOUCHAS: THE BIGFOOTED GREEK 27 INTRODUCTION In the last quarter of the 19th century, loannis Kondylakis (1861-1920), and his fellow writers -- Alexandros Papadiamantis (1851-1911), Alexandros Moraitidis (1851-1929) and Andreas Karkavitsas (1866- 1922) --- constituted what has been called the New School of Athens. The main objective of this group was ethography, recording for posterity traditional Greek life, which under the influence of the new Greek state (18 29), and contact with Western Europe, was beginning to change. To describe the customs of rural, traditional Greece, these writers used several literary forms, pre eminently the short story. Papadiamantis, one of the leading lights of the movement, mastered the short story and brought it to maturity as a Greek form. He is best known for his analysis of the human psyche, especially in his novel. The Murderess, in which he explores the soul of a village woman who, in reaction to the oppressive life of the village, turns to violence and begins murdering female children. Moraitidis preoccupied himself with themes similar to those of Papadiamantis, except that the former was given more to the "painting of life than analyzing it."^ Karkavitsas' devotion to demotike, the spoken language, was a major contribution to the develop ment of modern Greek literature. The construction of his stories served as prototypes for many writers of his time. One of his best works. The Beggar, vividly portrays the misery of superstitious village life in mainland Greece. These early authors made Greek prose a more supple and suitable vehicle for a variety of literary endeavors, Still, a problem which these writers faced at this time was that of language --- a peculiarly Greek problem ^ Andonis Decavalles, "The Development of Modern Greek Prose," The Charioteer No. 5 (1963), p. 80. which has troubled Greek life and letters for the past two centuries. Even before the birth of the new Greek state, an important linguistic battle was joined, with conse quences affecting present day Greece. After four hundred years of Turkish rule, under which, although schools had vanished from Greece, "semi-educated monks and priests taught young Greeks their language and their historical and religious inheritance," (Decavalles, p. 81), the Greek language had changed in many ways. Greek, as a language of the arts, of government, philosophy and science had atrophied; it lacked educated writers and an adequate vocabulary to express contemporary thought properly. Worst of all, according to some, it had ab sorbed an enormous number of loan words from Turkish, Italian and other European languages. Naturally, the question arose as to how Greek could best be restored to its former power and resiliency. From this lively debate over the future of the Greek language, two main positions emerged. One party, led by Yiannis Psycharis (1854-1929) --- who expounded and exemplified his theory about language in ^ Journey, published in 1898 -- argued that the language spoken by the majority of the people, the popular language, should be the basis of a national tongue. Others led by Adamantios Korais, held that a language purged of loan words and closer to ancient Greek (Katharevousa) was a more dignified solution. The latter position carried the day, and except for poetry, Katharevousa became the official language after 1821. Demotike, however, had the long-term advantage of being a living language, the actual speech of the Greek people. And so, although influenced by Katharevousa, it gained strength and slowly displaced the learned and artificial language from all of its strongholds -- the last being the government documents and the classes and examinations at the University of Athens in 1975-1976. A brief sketch of the political history of Crete might also be helpful to explain the use of some words in Patouchas and also the patriotic feelings of the Cretans during this same time. Though Greece was promi nent among Greek states in the days of Homer, she played little significant role in historical antiquity. After the decline of the ancient Greek states, Crete was occupied successively by the Romans, the Byzantines, the Saracens, and the Venetians. The occupation by the Venetians in 1204 has often been referred to as Frankokratia. From that period onwards, all westerners, their languages, dress, religion and customs were called Frankish. The words Franks and Frankish, as they-are used in Patouchas, refer to vir tually any things or persons who are considered foreign by the villagers. During the Frankokratia Italian words were incorporated within the Greek vocabulary, one of these being Koubaros which, in both the Italian and Greek languages, refers to a god-father and is also used as a term of familiarity and friendship. In 1669 Crete became a part of the Ottoman Empire and even though mainland Greece gained her independence around 1827, Turkish soldiers were not removed from Crete until 1898; not until 1912 was it finally restored to Greece. Thus, Kondylakis' novel has a nationalistic purpose as well as an ethographic one: to heighten the tension between Greeks and Turks and to keep the question of Crete in the foreground of the mainlanders' minds. loannis Kondylakis was born in 1861 in Viannos, studied philosophy in Chania and taught in Modi, all on Crete. He was best known for, and is considered the father of the chronographema, a "short semi-journalistic, semi-literary article " (Decavalles, p. 81). He began to write these articles in the summer of 1889 for the newspapers Asty, Ephemeris and Skrip in Athens. His most serious work in the chronographema was done for the newspaper Embros in 1896. During this period, Kondylakis developed a liveliness and ironic humor evident throughout his later work. Over a period of thirty years Kondylakis wrote almost six thousand arti cles. By comparison, his purely literary work is quite limited. Written while he was working for the news papers, the short story "When I Was a Teacher," and the novels First Love and Patouchas, are the best examples of his literary talent. It is generally agreed that Patouchas is the best of them. Alkis Thrylos goes so far as to say that Patouchas was, for its author, "the 2 beginning and the end to Kondylakis' career." Kondylakis wrote at a time when the demoticists were attempting to claim prose literature as their domain. Although he uses katharevousa for the descrip tive and narrative passages, Kondylakis makes certain concessions to demotic in that his language is simple and without the pedantic affectations of some of his predecessors. In addition, his dialogue reproduces the 2 Alkis Thrylos, "Hellenes Degematographi Joannis Kondylakis," (Greek Prose Writers: John Kondylakis), NEA HESTIA. XII (Nov., 1932), p. 1169. actual speech of Cretan villagers. Thus, Patouchas, containing both languages, embodies the language problem in a somewhat hybrid way, though in this work Kondylakis treats the problem comfortably if not always successfully.

Load more