The CHARIOTEER A review of Modern Greek Culture NUMBER 4 1962 .from TWO NOVELS AND A PLAY by ANGHELOS TERZAKIS THE SHORT STORY IN GREECE Seven Short Stories by Six Pioneers: KONDYLAKIS KARKA VITSAS PSYHARIS pAP ADIAMANDIS VIKELAS MORAiTIDIS THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN GREEK PROSE by ANDONIS DECAVALLES THE BULL FROM THE SEA An Essay by JoHN A. STONE GREEK FLOWER; GREEK ECSTASY An Essay by LEE HATFIELD THE PAINTINGS OF SPYROS V ASSILIOU Autobiographical Word and Critical Mosaic With Six Reproductions TWO POEMS by LEE HATFIELD Published by Parnassos Greek Cultural Society of New York $1.50 Pamassos wishes to thank the Honorary Board for their kind interest in the previous issues of The Charioteer. Because of unavoidable circumstances the new editorial board has not been in touch with each member of the Board, and so we have temporarily omitted the roster of their names. We are grateful to Sir Maurice Bowra, Professor Moses Hadas, and Lawrence Durrell for their generous and unfailing support. THE CHARIOTEER A REVIEW OF MODERN GREEK CULTURE Published by Pamassos, Greek Cultural Society of New York VOLUME I NUMBER4 EDITORIAL STAFF Executive Editors ANDONIS DECAVALLES BEBE SPANOS Art Editor MILTON MARX Copy Editors THOMASINA ALEXANDER ALICE-MARY MAFFRY Business Manager KATHERINE HoRTIS Parnassos Representative in Greece DIMITRI S. GEORGEOPOULOs Pattission 236, Athens, Greece. Telephone: 876-494 and 870-633 PARNASSOS EXECUTWE COUNCIL President ANDONIS DECAVALLES Vice-President KATHERINE HoRTIS Secretary CLEO VLAHOS Treasurer ANGELICA MANTAS Cultural Committee Chairmen ETHEL CosMOS LEE CAKIADES Library Committee HELENE PANDELAKIS Membership Chairman MARIA CAKIADES Publications Committee BEBE SPANOS Social Committee VASILI KLIMI NICHOLAS HERZEGOVITCH THE CHARIOTEER is published by PARNASSOS, GREEK CULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YoRK, a non-profit organization under the laws ofthe State ofNew York, Box 2928, Grand Central Station, New York 17, N.Y. Subscription: $5.00 a year, $9.00 two years. Foreign subscriptions: Greece, 180 drachmas a year; United Kingdom, 50 shillings a year; France, 3000 francs a year; other countries, including Canada, $6.oo a year, $11.50 two years. Distributor: H. DeBoer, 102 Beverly Road, Bloomfield, New Jersey. Copyright© 1962, by Pamassos. All rights reserved. Printed at The Thistle Press, New York. TABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL BEBE SPANOS 4 BREAKFAST IN MYCENAE: Poem LEE HATFIELD 8 nPOfEYMA ~TI~ MYKHNE~ translation by Andonis Decavalles 9 ANGHELOS TERZAKIS: Excerpts from Two Novels and a Play from Princess Izabo translation by JoAnne Cacoullos IS from Without God 30 translation by Tedd Athas, john Karkas and Staff from Emperor Michael translation by Katherine Hartis 40 ANGHELOS TERZAKIS: A Critical Mosaic so K. DIMARAS, K. DEDOPOULOS, Y. HATZINIS, A. KARANDONIS, A. THRYLLOS, AND OTHERS translation by Tedd Athas and adapted by the Staff SPYROS VASSILIOU: An Autobiographical Word 55 translation by Andorzis Decavalles from "POETRY IN THE PAINTING OF SPYROS VASSILIOU" ANDONIS KARANDONIS translation by Andonis Decavalles 56 SIX PAINTINGS SPYROS VASSILIOU 57 THE BULL FROM THE SEA: An Essay JOHN A. STONE 64 'GREEK FLOWER; GREEK ECSTASY': An Essay 68 LEE HATFIELD THE DEVELOPMENT OF A10DERN GREEK PROSE: An Essay ANDONIS DECAVALLES 74 THE SHORT STORY IN GREECE: Six Pioneers Why l Remained a Lawyer DIMITRIOS VIKELAS translation by Alice-Mary Maffry The Earrings YIANNIS PSYHARIS 93 translation by Alice-Mary Ma.ffry The Yearly Victim ALEXANDROS PAPADIAMANDIS roo translation by JoAnne Cacoullos The Upside-Down Man ALEXANDROS MORAITIDIS ro8 translation by Merella Psarakis Assmus The Funeral Oration IOANNIS KONDYLAKIS II7 translation by Alice-Mary Maffry The Sea ANDREAS KARKAVITSAS !23 translation by Christina Pappas and Staff The Y ousouri ANDREAS KARKAVITSAS translation by Fotine Nicholas TO TELEMACHUS: Poem LEE HATFIELD !46 nPO~ TON THAEMAXO translation by Andonis Decavalles I47 ILLUSTRATIONS Vassiliou: Drawings, 1959 7, !2, 13,29, 39, I24 THE CONTRIBUTORS EDITORIAL THE MEMBERS OF PARNASSOS and particularly the Staff of The Charioteer regret to announce that Mr. Kimon Friar is no longer our editor. His insight and leadership gave the magazine an excellence that has attracted readers from many parts ofthe world, and the present Staff, most ofwhom worked under his guidance, are dedicated to the endeavor of maintaining the standards he established. The aims and purposes of The Charioteer continue to be the same as those that first prompted the society to publish the magazine and that Mr. Friar defined in his first editorial. The literature and the art in previous issues illustrated primarily work being done in Greece now, today. Their substance and texture and the attitudes they embody reveal something of the fme fusion between the simple and the complex, the transparent and the opaque, the familiar and the strange, that characterizes a culture whose past is ancient and rich. We may say that probably we can never be too much aware of that past, even while we admit that its brilliance has caused students and the public at large to neglect Greek arts and letters of more recent times. The chief task of The Charioteer is to make up for some of that neglect. The previous issues show that the task is happily not a matter of mere lip-service to works of passing value, whose only claim to recognition is that they have hitherto been unknown in the English-speaking world. Rather, as Mr. Friar stressed with his first editorial, there is in Greece today "a sprouting Renaissance" very much worth study for its own sake. Many more than three issues of The Charioteer will be required to exhaust our interest in the current rebirth of Greek culture, for it springs from sources that can never be fully analyzed or explained or even counted. Like the other issues, this number of The Charioteer tries to illustrate the depth and range of that rebirth by presenting an anthology from the works ofa contemporary writer and ofa contemporary artist. The chapters from two novels-one historical, the other psychological-and the scene from a Byzantine drama suggest that Anghelos Terzilis is a highly :versa­ tile talent. With the swift ease of a Walter Scott, he can make himself at home in a period of history far removed from his own. Yet, with slow, almost psychoanalytic care he probes the inner life of a modem, non­ heroic, no-name hero. The versatility of Spyros Vassiliou is even more marked. A discerning critic pointed out that each of the paintings for this Bebe Spanos: Editorial 5 issue seem to be the work of a different person. Our Art Editor, who is familiar with all Vassiliou' s works, hastened to affirm that each of these paintings represents a vital aspect of the artist's nature. The main purpose of this fourth issue is to give homage to some of the more recent literary ancestors who helped to make possible the current rebirth of Greek literature. The anthology of short stories from the last half-century will answer a question that many of us have wondered about as we read the contemporary writing in the first three numbers. The ques­ tion is rather personal as much as it is literary and rises from the natural, sometimes vulgar, curiosity that people tend to have about each other; such curiosity, akin to the museum-making instinct, causes one era of human experience to be interesting to another. When Joseph Conrad, for instance, was with the Saint-Antoine gun-running along the Gulf ofMexico and gathering valuable impressions for Nostromo; when Henry James went for a walk with George Du Maurier-"in the mild March twilight (there was a blessed sense of spring in the air), through the empty streets of Porchester Terrace" -and listened to Du Maurier's dazzling improvisa­ tions for Trilby; when Marcel Proust was imprisoning himselfin his sound­ proof study on the Boulevard Haussmann, what was the mind given to putting words on paper thinking in that far corner of the western world called Greece? What kind of stories were getting themselves written in that young-old land? The answer is: the kind that always has been written there. Slight as they may seem, however much they may require that the worldly reader suspend his sophistication, the short stories in this issue treat material that is as old and as young as the land itself and they reveal some of the charac­ teristics of the Greek mind, early or late. Vikelas' Myrt6s who falls in the battle for Crete is like a pale shadow of one of those many minor, almost anonymous young heroes whose untimely, seemingly unnecessary death under the walls of Troy the poet records in a few lines but never neglects to make poignant. The heroes of Karkavitsas' little fables recall Odysseus in search ofhis fate-unless they more immediately suggest the high ro­ mance ofHerman Melville's characters who belong in the Homeric tradi­ tion. (In fact, the translators consulted Melville's sea stories for reasonable English counterparts of some almost-lost sailing terms in the Greek text.) Yianno Gamaro escapes from the Y ousouri as much without a scratch as Odysseus from the Scylla or Ishmael from Moby Dick. The brevity of human life, the vanity of human wishes, the longings of the seafarer, the patience of the land-bound who are anxious for his return, the joy when 6 THE CHARIOTEER he arrives, the break ofhearts when he does not come back-these themes are timelessly Aegean. As for the sea in a Greek story, when has it not been not merely a subject or a setting but a living character who demands human sacrifice and rejects all compromise? Better than any other element in the Greek landscape, the sea expresses the Greek impulse toward the pagan.