Comments & Greek artists, Greek painting: But I never heard any noise or sound of builders...

Konstantinos Kavafis

Walls

Without consideration, without pity, without shame
they have built great and high walls around me.

And now I sit here and despair.
I think of nothing else: this fate gnaws at my mind;

for I had many things to do outside.
Ah why did I not pay attention when they were building the walls.

But I never heard any noise or sound of builders.
Imperceptibly they shut me from the outside world

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painting: They came dressed up as "friends"...

Odysseas Elytis

They Came

They came
dressed up as “friends,”
came countless times, my enemies,
trampling the primeval soil.
And the soil never blended with their heel.
They brought
The Wise One, the Founder, and the Geometer,
Bibles of letters and numbers,
every kind of Submission and Power,
to sway over the primeval light.
And the light never blended with their roof.
Not even a bee was fooled into beginning the golden game,
not even a Zephyr into swelling the white aprons.
On the peaks, in the valleys, in the ports
they raised and founded
mighty towers and villas,
floating timbers and other vessels;
and the Laws decreeing the pursuit of profit
they applied to the primeval measure.
And the measure never blended with their thinking.
Not even a footprint of a god left a man on their soul,
not even a fairy’s glance tried to rob them of their speech.
They came
dressed up as “friends,”
came countless times, my enemies,
bearing the primeval gifts.
And their gifts were nothing else
but iron and fire only.
To the open expecting fingers
only weapons and iron and fire.
Only weapons and iron and fire.

Comments & Greek artists: Merry Christmas...

MERRY CHRISTMAS

The Twelve Days of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me
a partridge in a pear tree.

On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Five golden ring, four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Six geese a-laying, five golden ring, four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Seven swan a-swimming,
six geese a-laying, five golden ring, four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Eight sheep a-milking, seven swan a-swimming,
six geese a-laying, five golden ring, four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Nine drummers drumming, eight sheep a-milking, seven swan a-swimming,
six geese a-laying, five golden ring, four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Ten ladies dancing,
nine drummers drumming, eight sheep a-milking, seven swan a-swimming,
six geese a-laying, five golden ring, four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Eleven lords a-leaping, ten ladies dancing,
nine drummers drumming, eight sheep a-milking, seven swan a-swimming,
six geese a-laying, five golden ring, four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Twelve fiddlers fiddling, eleven lords a-leaping, ten ladies dancing,
nine drummers drumming, eight sheep a-milking, seven swan a-swimming,
six geese a-laying, five golden ring, four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

Comments & Greek artists, modern Greek artists: The Night is in my Interest...

the night is in my interest.
First of all, it reduces ambition; moreover,
it corrects thoughts; then,
it collects the grief and makes it more bearable...

Nikos Karouzos

Suspension

In the sky, possibilities
are naught but thrilling.
As I was hanging in the air
holding on to a pure white cloud
on a mythic screen of the imagination,
I observed the quotations
of the elements of my blood
and heard a dazzling musical act
practically non-human
on the left of the geographical map
at the point at which Mt. Terror lies
always wreathed in lightning
and blinding storms.
I went up there once.
There I first heard the song
that said: we belong to water.
And on the other side Ecclesiastes shined.
For some time now I’ve known that the blood
contains all the mystery
which is given through signs
to the human mind, and complete discontinuity.
The circulation perhaps?
queried the brilliant pathologist.
And suddenly
Leonardo came to mind
who knew what exquisite information derives from the body.


Nikos Karouzos (1926-1990)

The Night is in my Interest

Indeed the night is in my interest.
First of all, it reduces ambition; moreover,
it corrects thoughts; then,
it collects the grief and makes it more bearable;
it dissects the silence with respect; in the gardens
it stresses smell,
but above all, night envelops.

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painters: O World! O Life! O Time! On whose last steps I climb...

Poetry & Greek artists, contemporary Greek painters


Yannis Stavrou, Attica Landscape, oil on canvas

Percy Shelley

A Lament

O World! O Life! O Time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more -Oh, never more!

Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight:
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more -Oh, never more!

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painting: My verses, children of my blood...

Greek poetry & Greek painting, Greek artists

Kostas Karyotakis
Wounded Gods
My Verses

My verses, children of my blood.
They speak, but I supply the words
like fragments of my heart,
I offer them like tears from my eyes. They go with bitter smiles
when I recount so much of life.
I girdle them with sun and day and sun
for when I'm overtaken by the night. They fix the limits of the sky and earth.
And yet my sons still wonder what is missing
always bored, worn down,
the only mother they have known is Grief. I pour out the laughter of the sweetest tune,
the aimless passion of the flute;
to them I am an unsuspecting king
who's lost his people's love. They waste away, they fade away, yet
never cease their quiet lamentation.
Pass by, Mortal, with averted gaze;
Lethe, carry me in your boat to bathe.

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painting: there where we now remain unsubstantial, bending...

Greek poets & Greek artists, modern Greek painters

or perhaps no, nothing is left but the weight
the nostalgia for the weight of a living existence
there where we now remain unsubstantial, bending
like the branches of a terrible willow-tree...

Giorgos Seferis

The King of Asine

All morning long we looked around the citadel*

starting from the shaded side, there where the sea,
green and without luster—breast of a slain peacock—
received us like time without an opening in it.
Veins of rock dropped down from high above,
twisted vines, naked, many-branched, coming alive
at the water’s touch, while the eye following them
struggled to escape the tiresome rocking,
losing strength continually.

On the sunny side a long empty beach
and the light striking diamonds on the huge walls.
No living thing, the wild doves gone
and the king of Asine, whom we’ve been trying to find for
two years now,
unknown , forgotten by all, even by Homer,
only one word in the Iliad and that uncertain,
thrown here like the gold burial mask.
You touched it, remember its sound? Hollow in the light
like a dry jar in dug earth:
the same sound that our oars make in the sea.
The king of Asine a void under the mask
everywhere with us everywhere with us, under a name:
“Αsίνην te... Αsίνην te...”
and his children statues
and his desires the fluttering of birds, and the wind
in the gaps between his thoughts, and his ships
anchored in a vanished port:
under the mask a void.

Behind the large eyes the curved lips the curls
carved in relief on the gold cover of our existence
a dark spot that you see traveling like a fish
in the dawn calm of the sea:
a void everywhere with us.
And the bird that flew away last winter
with a broken wing:
abode of life,
and the young woman who left to play
with the dogteeth of summer
and the soul that sought the lower world squeaking
and the country like a large plane-leaf swept along by the
torrent of the sun
with the ancient monuments and the contemporary sorrow.

And the poet lingers, looking at the stones, and asks himself
does there really exist
among these ruined lines, edges, points, hollows, and curves
does there really exist
here where one meets the path of rain, wind, and ruin
does there exist the movement of the face, shape of the
tenderness
of those who’ve shrunk so strangely in our lives,
those who remained the shadow of waves and thoughts with
the sea’s boundlessness
or perhaps no, nothing is left but the weight
the nostalgia for the weight of a living existence
there where we now remain unsubstantial, bending
like the branches of a terrible willow-tree heaped in
permanent despair
while the yellow current slowly carries down rushes up-
rooted in the mud
image of a form that the sentence to everlasting bitterness
has turned to stone:
the poet a void.

Shieldbearer, the sun climbed warring,
and from the depths of the cave a startled bat
hit the light as an arrow hits a shield:
“Αsίνην te...Αsίνην te...” Would that it were the king
of Asine
we’ve been searching for so carefully on this acropolis
sometimes touching with our fingers his touch upon
the stones.

Asine, summer ´38—Athens. Jan. ´40

Comments & Greek artists, modern Greek artists: Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance...

Nocturnal landscapes & Greek artists, Greek painters

When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance...

John Keats

When I Have Fears

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,

Before high-piled books, in charactery,

Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;

When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,

That I shall never look upon thee more,

Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.


John Keats (1795-1821)

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art -
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors -
No - yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever - or else swoon to death.

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painters: little that is "good" about human beings...

Aphorisms & Greek artists, contemporary Greek painters


Yannis Stavrou, Still Life, oil on canvas

Still life is better...

On Humans...

I have found little that is "good" about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.

It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.

Sigmund Freud

Comments & Greek artists, contemporary Greek artists: Your phantom is like the immortal sun!

The sunlight has darkened the flame of the candles;
Thus, ever triumphant, resplendent soul!
Your phantom is like the immortal sun!

Charles Baudelaire

L'Aube spirituelle

Quand chez les débauchés l'aube blanche et vermeille
Entre en société de l'Idéal rongeur,
Par l'opération d'un mystère vengeur
Dans la brute assoupie un ange se réveille.

Des Cieux Spirituels l'inaccessible azur,
Pour l'homme terrassé qui rêve encore et souffre,
S'ouvre et s'enfonce avec l'attirance du gouffre.
Ainsi, chère Déesse, Etre lucide et pur,

Sur les débris fumeux des stupides orgies
Ton souvenir plus clair, plus rose, plus charmant,
À mes yeux agrandis voltige incessamment.

Le soleil a noirci la flamme des bougies;
Ainsi, toujours vainqueur, ton fantôme est pareil,
Ame resplendissante, à l'immortel soleil!

Spiritual Dawn

When debauchees are roused by the white, rosy dawn,
Escorted by the Ideal which gnaws at their hearts
Through the action of a mysterious, vengeful law,
In the somnolent brute an Angel awakens.

The inaccessible blue of Spiritual Heavens,
For the man thrown to earth who suffers and still dreams,
Opens and yawns with the lure of the abyss.
Thus, dear Goddess, Being, lucid and pure,

Over the smoking ruins of stupid orgies,
Your memory, clearer, more rosy, more charming,
Hovers incessantly before my widened eyes.

The sunlight has darkened the flame of the candles;
Thus, ever triumphant, resplendent soul!
Your phantom is like the immortal sun!

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painters: This song for mariners and all their ships...

Walt Whitman
In cabin'd ships, at sea

In cabin'd ships, at sea,
The boundless blue on every side expanding,
With whistling winds and music of the waves--the large imperious
waves--In such,
Or some lone bark, buoy'd on the dense marine,
Where, joyous, full of faith, spreading white sails,
She cleaves the ether, mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under
many a star at night,
By sailors young and old, haply will I, a reminiscence of the land,
be read,
In full rapport at last.


Here are our thoughts--voyagers' thoughts,
Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be
said; 10
The sky o'erarches here--we feel the undulating deck beneath our
feet,
We feel the long pulsation--ebb and flow of endless motion;
The tones of unseen mystery--the vague and vast suggestions of the
briny world--the liquid-flowing syllables,
The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy
rhythm,
The boundless vista, and the horizon far and dim, are all here,
And this is Ocean's poem.


Then falter not, O book! fulfil your destiny!
You, not a reminiscence of the land alone,
You too, as a lone bark, cleaving the ether--purpos'd I know
not whither--yet ever full of faith, 20
Consort to every ship that sails--sail you!
Bear forth to them, folded, my love--(Dear mariners! for you I fold
it here, in every leaf;)
Speed on, my Book! spread your white sails, my little bark, athwart
the imperious waves!
Chant on--sail on--bear o'er the boundless blue, from me, to every
shore,
This song for mariners and all their ships.

Comments & Greek artists, contemporary Greek artists: In the garden the chrysanthemums were dying...

Kostas Karyotakis

In the garden the chrysanthemums were dying

In the garden the chrysanthemums were dying
like desires when you came. Calmly
you laughed, like little white flowers.
Silent, I made a sweetest song
out of the darkness deep within me
and the petals sing it up above you.

(translated by Peter J. King & Andrea Christofidou)