The CHARIOTEER an ANNUAL REVIEW of MODERN GREEK CULTURE
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The CHARIOTEER AN ANNUAL REVIEW OF MODERN GREEK CULTURE NUMBERS 41142 2003-2004 SPECIAL DOUBLE ISSUE The Poetry of Stratis Pascalis INTRODUCING STRATIS PASCALIS BY RICK M. NEWTON 1\RD A DEFINITION OF POETRY BY STRATIS PASCALIS II' ~ tf~E POETRY OF STRATIS PASCALIS BY CHRISTINA DOUNIA INTERVIEW WITH STRATIS PASCALIS BY VASILIS I<ALAMARAS THE PATHOS OF DEATH BY ALEXIS ZIRAS A Hermaphrodite~ Night From Sour Cherries in the Darkness From Flowers of the Water THE SPECTACLE AND THE VISION BY SPYROS TSAKNIAS Michael Comedy Gazing at Forests $20.00 The CHARIOTEER AN ANNUAL REVIEW OF MODERN GREEK CULTURE Formerly published by PARNASSOS Greek Cultural Society of New York NUMBERS 41/42 2003-2004 SPECIAL DOUBLE ISSUE The Poetry of Stratis Pascalis Selected and Translated by DAVID CONNOLLY and RicK M. NEWTON Guest Editor: RICK M. NEWTON Publisher: LEANDROS PAPATHANASIOU Editor: APOSTOLOS N. ATHANASSAKIS Associate Editor: THEONY CONDOS Managing Editor: SUSAN ANASTASAKOS The CHARIOTEER is published by PELLA PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC. Editorial and subscription address: Pella Publishing Company, 337 West 36th Street, New York, NY 10018-6401. Tel.: 212-279-9586, Fax: 212-594-3602. One-year subscription $20. Copy right 2004 by Pella Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America by Athens Printing Company, 337 West 36th Street, New York, NY 10018-6401. The CHARIOTEER solicits essays on and English translations from works of modem Greek writers. Translations should be accompanied by a copy of the original Greek text. Manuscripts will not be returned unless accompanied by a stamped self addressed envelope. No responsibility can be assumed for theft, loss or damage. ISSN 0577-5574 Photo by Stelios Skopelitis TABLE OF CONTENTS RICK M. NEWTON, "Introducing Stratis Pascalis" 5 STRATIS PASCALIS, "The Indefinable: Notes Toward a Definition of Poetry" 9 Translated by RICK M. NEWTON CHRISTINA DOUNIA, "The Poetry of Stratis Pascalis" 15 Translated by RicK M. NEWTON VASILIS KALAMARAS, "Interview with Stratis Pascalis" 19 Translated by RICK M. NEWTON ALEXIS ZIRAS, "The Pathos of Death" . 29 (Review of A Hermaphrodite~ Night) Translated by RicK M. NEWTON STRATIS PASCALIS, A Hermaphrodite~ Night . 33 Translated by RICK M. NEWTON STRATIS PASCALIS, From Sour Cherries in the Darkness . 69 Translated by DAVID CONNOLLY STRATIS PASCALIS, From Flowers of the Water . 77 Translated by DAVID CoNNOLLY SPYROS TSAKNIAS, "The Spectacle and the Vision" . 85 (Review of Michael) Translated by RicK M. NEWTON STRATIS PASCALIS, Michael . 97 Including the epilogue (bilingual), "Hymn to the Angelic Nature" Translated by DAVID CONNOLLY STRATIS PASCALIS, Comedy ............................. 137 Translated by DAVID CONNOLLY STRATIS PASCALIS, Gazing at Forests . 147 Translated by RicK M. NEWTON ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS . 184 INTRODUCING STRATIS PASCALIS BY RICK M. NEWTON Verses by Another: This is the title of the collected poems (1977-2002) of Stratis Pascalis, an Athens-hom lyric poet whose family originates in the island of Lesbos. By the age of thirty six, he received the Ouranis Prize for Literature from The Academy of Athens (1994), followed by the State Prize for Translation (1998) for his Greek translation of Racine's Berenice. Pascalis' poetic career began in 1977 when, at the age of nineteen, he published his first collection, Anactoria, taking the title from a proper name in the fragments of Sappho, Lesbos' first-known lyric poet. Despite this onomastic reference to the ancient Greek lyrical tradition and his own ancestral past, Pascalis insists that, as a poet, he does not set out to rework ancient literary themes or tropes. In fact, he resists being identified with literary figures in general. Hence the title of his corpus, as it has emerged thus far, Verses by Another (Athens: Metaichmio 2002). The title can be interpreted from two perspectives. First, as the reader will readily glean from the interview with the poet, his own essay on the indefinable essence of poetry, and the critical reviews included in this issue of The Charioteer, Pascalis does not iden tify with other poets of his so-called "generation." He considers such classifications as being of more interest to sociologists and cultural his torians than to writers and readers (as well as listeners) of poetry. Pas calis, in other words, considers himself a distinctive poet, and it is in recognition of this distinctiveness that we are dedicating this double issue of The Charioteer to his work. But the "otherness" of Pascalis' poetry is based on another, and more profound, distinction, one that has little, if any; bearing on the time and place in which he composes. As he himself states, "The moment you write, you must be You. That is, Someone Else, someone other than one who knows, who has acquired experience, who has his likes, his ideas, his views, his abilities, his facilities, who knows how to persuade and charm." In the case of Pascalis, the "poetic experience," for want of a better descriptor, is an experience of self-alienation, of the separation of ego and genuine self, of the unconscious and conscious mind. This is 5 6 THE CHARIOTEER the experience which precedes the act of writing, and it is extremely important for the reader and critic of these poems to keep the chronol ogy of the poetic experience, followed by the act of writing, in their proper sequence. Pascalis first encounters what he calls a "stimulus," something that strikes his sen5es (most frequently, his sense of sight and his sense of smell). In responding to the stimulus, he enters a state of altered awareness, as it were, in which fantasy and reality become inter twined and in which all of the logical opposites and antitheses that inform our rational world-view and Westernized dualistic mind-set become indistinguishable from one another. This state is what he then attempts to capture as a "genuine response to the immediate stimulus of life." It is at this point, it seems, that he puts pencil to paper and faces what he fears is "utter perdition," sacrificing his ego to an authentic and genuine self. This self, this true and genuine being that he was unable to recognize while functioning on the superficial level of his socially conventional persona, is "the other" whose voice emerges in the poems. The poet then enters into "a magical game of words" through which he hopes to bring his reader to the same experiential point, that of a non-commonplace way of seeing the world. This new point of refer ence, this new "stance on life" (one of his tentative definitions of the indefinable essence of poetry) is something which, he hopes, "will help his fellowman to exist." Pascalis may therefore be viewed as consciously resisting the deliberate acculturation and studied refinement of the poet in order to achieve a simple and direct expression which will resonate with all readers, especially with "the unknown reader" who remains his final hope. This effort may explain the predominance of natural motifs that inform his work, since the sights and visions he describes are sights and visions encountered by everyone who lives in a city, walks through a park, or sits by the seashore. Pascalis laments the fact that poetry today has become the domain of the urban elite in a world that has lost touch with nature, and he insists that the poetic experience which originates in his response to a natural stimulus is not, in the end, an exclusively personal matter. On the contrary, he maintains that his "internal adven ture" which brings him to a non-commonplace view of the world is the journey of every human being. As much, therefore, as these "verses by another" distinguish the poet from the world in which he lives, they ultimately bring him into a union not only with other human beings but Introducing Stratis Pascalis 7 also with the physical cosmos itself. They also bring his self into a new union with his ego. Self-alienation, via poetry, is transformed into a self integration: "otherness" is therefore paradoxically obliterated in these "poems by another." The particular tension in the resulting poems may therefore be read as a reflection, if not as a reenactment, of the poet's internal experience as he attempts to articulate this adventure in words and transmit it to the reader. For although the poet undergoes an internal experience, most frequently in reaction to a scene or event that occurs in the phys ical world, the compjetion of that experience lies in the act of writing. And in writing, this "acculturated" man ofletters cannot help but be his "true self' and find expression in a language that is, despite his every conscious effort at directness and naturalism, highly refined and liter ate. As the critics have correctly noted, Pascalis is keenly aware of and indebted to not only Sappho but also Cavafy, Sikelianos, Seferis, and, of course, his compatriot Odysseas Elytis. It is on this plain of tension between the natural human being and the civilized creature of society that Pascalis plays his self-acclaimed "magical game of words." In this respect, this poet who would be "other" than his colleagues ineluctably joins their ranks and, indeed, the ranks of all poets. And an adventure it is, in the Aristotelian sense of "peripeteia." For Pascalis, the poetic experience amounts to a "reversal," a reversal in which the dichotomies of existence change places. Chthonic and celes tial, dark and light, joy and sorrow, and-most significantly-life and death all become one and the same. "Poetry reaches beyond the poet," he himself states, and in this statement we find a perhaps unintended but nevertheless revealing allusion to one of the most predominant images of his work: that of the tree.