Happy New Year!

Merry Christamas & Happy New Year!

Yannis Stavrou, Thessaloniki's Port, oil on canvas

But now they drift on the still water,  
Mysterious, beautiful...

William Butler Yeats
The Wild Swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,  
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water  
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones  
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me  
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings  
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,  
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,  
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,  
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;  
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,  
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,  
Mysterious, beautiful;  
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day  
To find they have flown away?

Being but men...

Thrust out our heads above the branches
To wonder at the unfailing stars...

Yannis Stavrou, Black Pine Trees, oil on canvas

"Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toenails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone and not alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own. All that matters about poetry is the enjoyment of it however tragic it may be all that matters is the eternal movement behind it – the great undercurrent of human grief, folly, pretension, exaltation and ignorance – however unlofty the intention of the poem…" Dylan Thomas

Dylan M. Thomas
Being But Men

Being but men, we walked into the trees
Afraid, letting our syllables be soft
For fear of waking the rooks,
For fear of coming
Noiselessly into a world of wings and cries.

If we were children we might climb,
Catch the rooks sleeping, and break no twig,
And, after the soft ascent,
Thrust out our heads above the branches
To wonder at the unfailing stars.

Out of confusion, as the way is,
And the wonder, that man knows,
Out of the chaos would come bliss.

That, then, is loveliness, we said,
Children in wonder watching the stars,
Is the aim and the end.

Being but men, we walked into the trees.

No Time, spoke the clocks, no God, rang the bells...

I know we're not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't...(Dylan Thomas)

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Where birds ride like leaves and boats like ducks
I heard, this morning, waking,
Crossly out of the town noises
A voice in the erected air,
No prophet-progeny of mine,
Cry my sea town was breaking.
No Time, spoke the clocks, no God, rang the bells...


Yannis Stavrou, Port of Thessaloniki, oil on canvas

Dylan Thomas

When I Woke

When I woke, the town spoke.
Birds and clocks and cross bells
Dinned aside the coiling crowd,
The reptile profligates in a flame,
Spoilers and pokers of sleep,
The next-door sea dispelled
Frogs and satans and woman-luck,
While a man outside with a billhook,
Up to his head in his blood,
Cutting the morning off,
The warm-veined double of Time
And his scarving beard from a book,
Slashed down the last snake as though
It were a wand or subtle bough,
Its tongue peeled in the wrap of a leaf.

Every morning I make,
God in bed, good and bad,
After a water-face walk,
The death-stagged scatter-breath
Mammoth and sparrowfall
Everybody's earth.
Where birds ride like leaves and boats like ducks
I heard, this morning, waking,
Crossly out of the town noises
A voice in the erected air,
No prophet-progeny of mine,
Cry my sea town was breaking.
No Time, spoke the clocks, no God, rang the bells,
I drew the white sheet over the islands
And the coins on my eyelids sang like shells.

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth...

Yannis Stavrou, Autumn Landscape, oil on canvas (detail)  

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ode to the West Wind
   

    I

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave,until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!

    
    II

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like Earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!

    
    III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

    
    IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

    
    V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Go, my songs, seek your praise from the young and from the intolerant...

Ezra Pound
Some Poems

Ité

Go, my songs, seek your praise from the young
and from the intolerant,
Move among the lovers of perfection alone.
Seek ever to stand in the hard Sophoclean light
And take you wounds from it gladly.

The Coming Of War: Actaeon

An image of Lethe,
and the fields
Full of faint light
but golden,
Gray cliffs,
and beneath them

A sea
Harsher than granite,
unstill, never ceasing;
High forms
with the movement of gods,
Perilous aspect;
And one said:
'This is Actaeon.'
Actaeon of golden greaves!
Over fair meadows,
Over the cool face of that field,
Unstill, ever moving
Hosts of an ancient people,
The silent cortège.

PHASELLUS ILLE 

This papier-mâché, which you see, my friends,
Saith 'twas the worthiest of editors.
Its mind was made up in 'the seventies',
Nor hath it ever since changed that concoction.
It works to represent that school of thought
Which brought the hair-cloth chair to such perfection,
Nor will the horrid threats of Bernard Shaw
Shake up the stagnant pool of its convictions;
Nay, should the deathless voice of all the world
Speak once again for its sole stimulation,
Twould not move it one jot from left to right.

Come Beauty barefoot from the Cyclades,
She'd find a model for St. Anthony
In this thing's sure decorum and behaviour. 

SURGIT FAMA

There is a truce among the gods,
Kore is seen in the North
Skirting the blue-gray sea
In gilded and russet mantle.
The corn has again it's mother and she, Leuconoe,
That failed never women,
Fails not the earth now.

The tricksome Hermes is here;
He moves behind me
Eager to catch my words,
Eager to spread them with rumour;
To set upon them his change
Crafty and subtle;
To alter them to his purpose;
But do thou speak true, even to the letter:

‘Once more in Delos, once more is the altar a-quiver.
Once more is the chant heard.
Once more are the never abandoned gardens
Full of gossip and old tales.’ 

CODA

O My songs,
Why do you look so eagerly and so curiously into
people's faces,
Will you find your lost dead among them?

looking at the moon...

Yannis Stavrou, Moon Shine, Thessaloniki, oil on canvas

The clouds come and go,
providing a rest for all
the moon viewers...

Japanese Poetry, Haiku

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

A cuckoo cries
and through a thicket of bamboo
the late moon shines

None is travelling
Here along this way but I,
This autumn evening.

The first day of the year:
thoughts come - and there is loneliness;
the autumn dusk is here.

An old pond
A frog jumps in -
Splash!

Lightening -
Heron's cry
Stabs the darkness

Clouds come from time to time -
and bring to men a chance to rest
from looking at the moon.

In the cicada's cry
There's no sign that can foretell
How soon it must die.

Poverty's child -
he starts to grind the rice,
and gazes at the moon.

Won't you come and see
loneliness? Just one leaf
from the kiri tree.

Temple bells die out.
The fragrant blossoms remain.
A perfect evening!

Husking rice
a child squints up
to view the moon

A field of cotton--
as if the moon
had flowered.

The clouds come and go,
providing a rest for all
the moon viewers

From time to time
The clouds give rest
To the moon beholders..

Winter garden,
the moon thinned to a thread,
insects singing.

There is no sin except stupidity...

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation...


Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Oscar Wilde

Aphorisms

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

There is no sin except stupidity.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

A true friend stabs you in the front.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

All art is quite useless.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

To them it is I send my farewell cry...

Anna Akhamatova (1889-1966)
Portrait by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin (1922)

Anna Akhmatova

Dedication

Before this sorrow mountains bow,
the vast river’s ceased to flow,
the ever-strong prison bolts
hold the ‘convict crews’ now,
abandoned to deathly longing.
For someone the sun glows red,
for someone the wind blows fresh –
but we know none of that, instead
we only hear the soldier’s tread,
keys scraping against our flesh.
Rising as though for early mass,
through the city of beasts we sped,
there met, breathless as the dead,
sun low, a mistier Neva. Far ahead,
hope singing still, as we passed.
Sentence given…tears pour out,
she thought she knew all separation,
in pain, blood driven from the heart,
as if she’s hurled to earth, apart,
yet walks…staggers…is in motion…
Where now my chance-met friends
of those two years satanic flight?
What Siberian storms do they resist,
and in what frosted lunar orb exist?
To them it is I send my farewell cry.

In my own land, I’m in a far domain...

I’m dying of thirst beside the fountain,
Hot as fire, and with chattering teeth:
In my own land, I’m in a far domain:
Near the flame, I shiver beyond belief:
Bare as a worm, dressed in a furry sheathe,
I smile in tears, wait without expectation...

François Villon (1431-1463)

Francois Villon

Ballade: Du Concours de Blois

I’m dying of thirst beside the fountain,
Hot as fire, and with chattering teeth:
In my own land, I’m in a far domain:
Near the flame, I shiver beyond belief:
Bare as a worm, dressed in a furry sheathe,
I smile in tears, wait without expectation:
Taking my comfort in sad desperation:
I rejoice, without pleasures, never a one:
Strong I am, without power or persuasion,
Welcomed gladly, and spurned by everyone.

Nothing is sure for me but what’s uncertain:
Obscure, whatever is plainly clear to see:
I’ve no doubt, except of everything certain:
Science is what happens accidentally:
I win it all, yet a loser I’m bound to be:
Saying: ‘God give you good even!’ at dawn,
I greatly fear I’m falling, when lying down:
I’ve plenty, yet I’ve not one possession,
I wait to inherit, yet I’m no heir I own,
Welcomed gladly, and spurned by everyone.

I never take care, yet I’ve taken great pain
To acquire some goods, but have none by me:
Who’s nice to me is one I hate: it’s plain,
And who speaks truth deals with me most falsely:
He’s my friend who can make me believe
A white swan is the blackest crow I’ve known:
Who thinks he’s power to help me, does me harm:
Lies, truth, to me are all one under the sun:
I remember all, have the wisdom of a stone,
Welcomed gladly, and spurned by everyone.

Merciful Prince, may it please you that I’ve shown
There’s much I know, yet without sense or reason:
I’m partial, yet I hold with all men, in common.
What more can I do? Redeem what I’ve in pawn,
Welcomed gladly, and spurned by everyone.

Ballade du concours de Blois

Je meurs de seuf auprès de la fontaine,
Chaud comme feu, et tremble dent à dent ;
En mon pays suis en terre lointaine ;
Lez un brasier frissonne tout ardent ;
Nu comme un ver, vêtu en président,
Je ris en pleurs et attends sans espoir ;
Confort reprends en triste désespoir ;
Je m'éjouis et n'ai plaisir aucun ;
Puissant je suis sans force et sans pouvoir,
Bien recueilli, débouté de chacun.

Rien ne m'est sûr que la chose incertaine ;
Obscur, fors ce qui est tout évident ;
Doute ne fais, fors en chose certaine ;
Science tiens à soudain accident ;
Je gagne tout et demeure perdant ;
Au point du jour dis : " Dieu vous doint bon soir ! "
Gisant envers, j'ai grand paour de choir ;
J'ai bien de quoi et si n'en ai pas un ;
Echoite attends et d'homme ne suis hoir,
Bien recueilli, débouté de chacun.

De rien n'ai soin, si mets toute ma peine
D'acquérir biens et n'y suis prétendant ;
Qui mieux me dit, c'est cil qui plus m'ataine,
Et qui plus vrai, lors plus me va bourdant ;
Mon ami est, qui me fait entendant
D'un cygne blanc que c'est un corbeau noir ;
Et qui me nuit, crois qu'il m'aide à pourvoir ;
Bourde, verté, aujourd'hui m'est tout un ;
Je retiens tout, rien ne sait concevoir,
Bien recueilli, débouté de chacun.

Prince clément, or vous plaise savoir
Que j'entends mout et n'ai sens ne savoir :
Partial suis, à toutes lois commun.
Que sais-je plus ? Quoi ? Les gages ravoir,
Bien recueilli, débouté de chacun.

About the known Universe...

The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang.

Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.

Data: Digital Universe, American Museum of Natural History
http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/universe/

Visualization Software: Uniview by SCISS

Director: Carter Emmart
Curator: Ben R. Oppenheimer
Producer: Michael Hoffman
Executive Producer: Ro Kinzler
Co-Executive Producer: Martin Brauen
Manager, Digital Universe Atlas: Brian Abbott

Music: Suke Cerulo

For more information visit http://www.amnh.org

The tears of rivers flow always...

Andreas Embirikos

Insight of Morning Hours

For Yves Tanguy

Natural inclination
The dove of our heartbeat spreads it around
The tears of rivers flow always
They are tears of unconcealable happiness
They are lakes where snow-white storks lived long ago
No south-westerly settles in the sugar-canes
And even if at a gunshot the clouds lift
And rise into thinner layers
Where the corvettes spread the sails
Down on the earth a shadow searches for its lost body
The weather in the valley which stole it from her
Thickens the mists that hide it
The lake’s treasures are restless, their fur rises
Seaweed and elemental matter stir in the depths
A jellyfish weeps for yesterday’s transparency
Which will return with the first fishing-light
Before winter sets in
Before anyone thinks of lighting the beacon
Under which a blonde woman considers her future
The lighthouse-keeper bends to her lips and kisses them
As mariners kiss their symplegades.


Andreas Embirikos (1901-1975)

The Caryatids

For Yiorgos Gounaropoulos

O the breasts of youth
O the pallid waters of the fig-eaters
The cobblestones echo with the steps of morning people
Thicket of strength with your scarlet trees
Youth senses your significance
And springs up already at your edges
Feathery tresses frisk between the breasts of young girls
Who walk half-naked through your narrow streets
Their curls more lovely than those of Absalom
Amber drips between the locks
And the dark-haired ones hold ebony leaves
Ferrets sniff at their steps
The forest responds
The forest is a swarm of ants with lance-bearing legions
Here even the skylarks are stripping off their shadows
The railways cannot be heard
The day sighs
One of the her young daughters is playing with her breasts
No slap will do any good
A deer passes by holding in its mouth
The three cherries it found between the breasts of youth
The evening here is warm
The trees wrap themselves in their quietude
Now and then rocks of silence fall slowly into the clearing
Like light before it turns to day.

Sorrow & sympathy for Japan...

Hoping for the quickest possible recovery in Japan...

Dedicated to Japanes friends...

From time to time

The clouds give rest

To the moon beholders...

Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave of Kanagawa, print (1826-1833)

Japanese Haiku

Matsuo Basho
(1644-1694

Moonlight slants through

The vast bamboo grove:

A cuckoo cries


Ah, summer grasses!

All that remains

Of the warriors dreams.


Along this road

Goes no one;

This autumn evening.


From time to time

The clouds give rest

To the moon beholders..


The butterfly is perfuming

It's wings in the scent

Comments & Greek artists: Papadiamantis, the greatest Greek author...

Alexandros Papadiamantis
(March 4, 1851 - January 3, 1911)

The greatest Greek writer of the 19th century - The so called Greek Dostoyefski...

1oo years from his death


Alexandros Papadiamantis (1851-1911)

The following text is written by his translaton from Greek Irene Voulgaris

Alexandros Papadiamantis the most compassionate and authentic Greek author

“Papadiamantis” (“Papa” meaning priest and “Diamantis” being the colloquial version of “Adamantios”), the way his father, Diamantis, was addressed, was the pen name the writer chose. Young Alexandros, or “Alekos” as his father called him, was raised in a poor family in Skiathos, a small island in the Aegean Sea, with the pure orthodox Christian spirit and “fear of God”. He was born in 1851 to Adamantios Emmanuel, a poor parson, a descendant of priests and seamen, and Angeliki Moraitidi who came from an aristocratic family of the island. He was one of nine children of whom two died very young. In those times, priests did not receive monthly salaries and pensions from the Greek State, so his father had to make a living by farming.
From an early age Papadiamantis showed his love for knowledge and his unique empathy. His longing for higher studies led him to leave his island in pursuit of a proper education and a career in literature in Athens. His constant economic difficulties however, did not allow him to complete his formal studies for he had to work to support himself. Throughout his life he kept returning to his beloved island whenever he could no longer stand the affectation of manners and the vanity of city life. There, he wrote some of his masterpieces and his quiet spirit rested for a while close to the translucent, sparkling emerald-blue sea, the “flaxen-haired shepherds” and his own kin, before resuming his solitary life in the capital.

In spite of the enormous adversities he faced, or perhaps because of them, he persevered and educated himself by auditing lectures of his choice at the School of Philosophy of the University of Athens and by teaching himself English and French. It is no exaggeration to say that Papadiamantis educated himself attaining a higher level of understanding of Greek literature and philosophy from Homer and Plato to his contemporaries, of patristic and literary works of the Christian Orthodox Church, of history and politics than that of his lecturers and professors at the University. A lover of reading from the original, he devoured centuries of notable works and his sharp intellect did not compromise whenever grave issues threatening his values arose, to the point of publicly criticizing established professors and theologians.

At the beginning he worked as a private tutor and a newspaper and magazine contributor and then also as a translator. Being an ardent lover of literature soon he immersed deeply into reading works of great authors of his time, in English and French such as Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, Emile Zola, William Blake, Alphonse Daudet and Guy de Maupassant. His knowledge of these foreign languages improved so rapidly that soon he started translating English, French and American authors into Greek for magazines and journals where his wonderful translations were published, along with his own works, in instalments.

With what he earned, the writer could have lived decently. Nevertheless, he barely managed to pay for his room's rent or for his meager meals at a tavern, as he used to give most of his money to the needy. He hardly ever bought new shoes or clothes, partly justifying, regarding his appearance, the fact that his acquaintances referred to him as “a monk living in the world”. Nevertheless, this is precisely what has set him apart from other writers; for Papadiamantis was a man who felt the pain of those mourning, the hunger and the bitter cold of the poor, the longing of the immigrant to return home, the despair of the deserted wife, the suffering and helplessness of the poor widows and orphans, the ways of those who entertain evil thoughts. He lived his stories and his stories contain this stark reality, in a way few stories ever do. In this respect, Alexandros Papadiamantis is for Greece what Charles Dickens is for Britain. The main difference between the two great writers is, apart from the fact that Dickens’s childhood was much more painful than Papadiamantis’s, that while Dickens got married, had a big family, made a fortune out of his writing, was highly appraised by his contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic and enjoyed publicity, Papadiamantis remained a single, lonely, poor man, despised by most of his peers and avoided being in the public eye at all costs.

His father hoped that he would become a high school teacher and that he would make some money to help his four sisters get a dowry so that they would get married; a young girl was not considered an eligible wife in those times, unless she had a dowry. He never married himself; neither did he have any relationship with any women. He led a secluded, spartan life devoted to writing, to translating, and to singing psalms as a “chanter on the right” (the one on the left was his cousin Alexandros Moraitides, also a writer) in the chapel of St Elisseos in Plaka, the old district of Athens. Papa-Nicolas Planas was the priest there then; the legendary, loving shepherd of humble attitude who came from another Aegean island, Naxos, and was canonized by the Christian Orthodox Church in the last decade of the 20th century. Like the monks on the Holy Mountain where Papadiamantis had spent some months with a friend who became a monk and like Papa Nicolas, the writer never showed off but preferred to remain unnoticed. He even shunned publicity when recognition came a little before his death. Such was the ascetic, humble spirit and life of this extraordinary literary figure and such was the place he frequented.
Although his incredibly authentic, lyrical and soul piercing writing remains hitherto, almost a hundred years after his passing away, unsurpassed, and even though scholars have only recently discovered the equally unparalleled beauty of his literary translations, and lectures and films and events dedicated to his memory and to his works abound all over Greece, his talent was not recognized by the majority of the prominent literary critics of his time. He was despised by most of the established literary figures among his contemporaries, who have already been forgotten, for although he chose to write in their language, the language of the upper class and of the aristocracy, the “katharevousa”, his themes dealt primarily with the outcasts of the civilized society, with the poor, with the badly hit by fate widows and hungry orphans, with evil witches and saints, with the passionate beauty of the sea and of the rural countryside, with the mundane struggle of the unprivileged creatures to survive in the midst of disease, death, poverty and social exploitation and exclusion. Thus, the only ones who complimented his works in his lifetime were his fellow-journalists and the “demotikistes”, the writers who wrote in the people's spoken language, the “demotic”. “Demotikistes” chose to write in this version of Greek so that their works could reach the uneducated people who did not understand and could not afford to learn “katharevousa”. They felt close to Papadiamantis spiritually, but they were separated from him by their different linguistic choice as he only wrote the dialogues in “demotic” but used a very rich and eloquent “katharevousa” for the rest of his stories. Among those few who had publicly recognized that his works were of a rare literary, human and moral value as they reflected his living, compassionate spirit and his love for the poor and unjustly suffering, were the distinguished and esteemed poet and critic Kostis Palamas and his friend, the publisher of the newspaper "Akropolis", Vlasios Gabrielidis. The latter wrote about Papadiamantis among other things:

“He is not an ordinary storyteller; he is a spiritual and moral laborer who fights for progress, for awareness and for justice...”

However, after his death in 1911 of pneumonia, he was unanimously acclaimed as the best Greek author modern Greece had offered, as “the Saint of Greek Letters!” Some critics even went so far as to claim that it would be difficult for next generations to produce an author of the same or an even better caliber. The present reality of the beginning of the new millennium has exceeded their prediction; no Greek writer has come close to the deeply human, and nature loving power of his works, or to his rich, uniquely expressive language, let alone equals it.
Papadiamantis wrote about two hundred short stories and about fifty studies and articles. He also wrote three novelettes, “The Murderess”, which has been translated into many languages, “Christos Milionis”, and the “Rosy Seashores”. He also wrote three novels, “The Emigrant”, “The Merchants of the Nations” and “The Gypsy Girl”. Some of his works have been turned into films.

After his death and the subsequent sudden awareness of the critics regarding the merit of his literary work, his stories were painstakingly collected from thousands of newspaper and magazine issues and they were bound in volumes and so were his novels. After all his works were published in multi-volume editions, the critics were astonished not only by the quality but also by the quantity of his work. Scholars are still studying his lesser known stories, discovering unknown ones and their social and historical settings. Their latest discovery is a large number of anonymous translations which must be his; the date, the language, and the expressive and stylistic choices reveal the identity of the translator.
A
part from prose, Papadiamantis also wrote poems. From the time he was a little boy he occasionally resorted to putting his feelings to paper in verse and he has thus left us some beautiful poems in which so many feelings, experiences and reveries are expressed so eloquently in so few words, that one marvels at the combination! Again, his poetry was underestimated by his contemporaries, but now this hidden treasure has been found and taken out of its trunk by some amateur singers who have turned them into beautiful ballads. Here is one of them:

‘night of suffering’

When my poor eyes
will you close in silence,
offering sleep an’ bitter rest
to me…

Hearken how the nightingale
has crouched in solitude,
listen, listen to the owlet
ending its dirge…

And the stars, withered
lilies of God,
keep turning off an’ falling down
from heavenly lowlands…

And the fishing lamp’s gone
somewhere in the bleak haven,
glimmering the sea’s depths an’
being mirrored on the shore.

(Translated by Irene Voulgaris)



Click the above image to read Papadiamantis short story
The Demons in the Ravine

Comments & Greek artists, painters: And not just for myself I pray to Lord, But for them all, who stood in that line...

Not under foreign skies protection Or saving wings of alien birth – I was then there – with whole my nation – There, where my nation, alas! was.

Anna Akmatova

Among the greatest poets of the 20th century...

(from)
Requiem

Instead of a Preface

In the awful days of the Yezhovschina I passed seventeen months in the outer waiting line of the prison visitors in Leningrad. Once, somebody ‘identified’ me there. Then a woman, standing behind me in the line, which, of course, never heard my name, waked up from the torpor, typical for us all there, and asked me, whispering into my ear (all spoke only in a whisper there):
“And can you describe this?”
And I answered:
“Yes, I can.”
Then the weak similarity of a smile glided over that, what had once been her face.

April 1, 1957; Leningrad


Anna Akmatova (1889-1966)

Dedication

The high crags decline before this woe,
The great river does not flow ahead,
But they’re strong – the locks of a jail, stone,
And behind them – the cells, dark and low,
And the deadly pine is spread.
For some one, somewhere, a fresh wind blows,
For some one, somewhere, wakes up a dawn –
We don’t know, we’re the same here always,
We just hear the key’s squalls, morose,
And the sentry’s heavy step alone;
Got up early, as for Mass by Easter,
Walked the empty capital along
To create the half-dead peoples’ throng.
The sun downed, the Neva got mister,
But our hope sang afar its song.
There’s a sentence… In a trice tears flow…
Now separated, cut from us,
As if they’d pulled out her heart and thrown
Or pushed down her on a street stone –
But she goes… Reels… Alone at once.
Where are now friends unwilling those,
Those friends of my two years, brute?
What they see in the Siberian snows,
In a circle of the moon, exposed?
To them I send my farewell salute.


Epilogue

I

I’ve known how, at once, shrink back the faces,
How fear peeps up from under the eyelids,
How suffering creates the scriptural pages
On the pale cheeks its cruel reigning midst,
How the shining raven or fair ringlet
At once is covered by the silver dust,
And a smile slackens on the lips, obedient,
And deathly fear in the dry snicker rustles.
And not just for myself I pray to Lord,
But for them all, who stood in that line, hardest,
In a summer heat and in a winter cold,
Under the wall, so red and so sightless.

Comments & Greek artists: Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

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, 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, 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)

Comments &Greek artists, Greek painting: as night falls in autumn...

Autumn landscapes & Greek artists, Greek painting, Greek painters


Yannis Stavrou, Autmn Landscape, oil on canvas

Miltos Sachtouris

Autumn

What’s the girl looking for
in the darkness of the chair?
quickly
as night falls in autumn
she undresses
with clouds before her eyes
with the rain inside her head
with the needle in her heart
she removes the stockings
removes the flowers
discards the halo

outside the time’s leaves
are dyed in blood