Comments & Greek artists, greek painters: nights of my country that never change...

Poetry & Greek artists, greek paintings, greek painters


Yannis Stavrou, Hydra V, Oil on Canvas

Greek landscapes in poetry...

A town in Southern Greece
Titos Patrikios

This town has crippled me, just as long ago
a town might have crippled me,
with its barracks its empty factories
its black walls topped by broken glass
its narrow streets, treeless, dry
its swarthy, salty women
mobile, fluid, with coal-black eyes
olive skins lightly perspiring
just enough for transient, fleeting love
on shadowy, half-deserted sea-shores
with their stones, tar, rust and thorns.
This town cures me with its nights
the nights of my country that never change.

----------------------
Translation: 2005, Peter Mackridge

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painters: It remind us science fiction...

Science fiction & Greek painters, Greek paintings, Greek artists

Yannis Stavrou, Reflections, Thessaloniki, oil on canvas

It remind us science fiction...

Once upon a time, the forgotten race of greeks lived in a place located at the north of Mediterranean Sea...

It is obvious that the science fiction does not concern only the greek people; it concerns all the nations that participated in the creation of the so-called western civilization...

Yet, the process has already started...

The above mentioned thoughts resulted from the following article...

BBC NEWS, 4 February 2010

Last speaker of ancient language of Bo dies in India

The last speaker of an ancient language in India's Andaman Islands has died at the age of about 85, a leading linguist has told the BBC.

Professor Anvita Abbi said that the death of Boa Sr was highly significant because one of the world's oldest languages - Bo - had come to an end.

She said that India had lost an irreplaceable part of its heritage.

Languages in the Andamans are thought to originate from Africa. Some may be 70,000 years old.

The islands are often called an "anthropologist's dream" and are one of the most linguistically diverse areas of the world.

'Infectious'

Professor Abbi - who runs the Vanishing Voices of the Great Andamanese (Voga) website - explained: "After the death of her parents, Boa was the last Bo speaker for 30 to 40 years.

"She was often very lonely and had to learn an Andamanese version of Hindi in order to communicate with people.

"But throughout her life she had a very good sense of humour and her smile and full-throated laughter were infectious."

She said that Boa Sr's death was a loss for intellectuals wanting to study more about the origins of ancient languages, because they had lost "a vital piece of the jigsaw".

"It is generally believed that all Andamanese languages might be the last representatives of those languages which go back to pre-Neolithic times," Professor Abbi said.

"The Andamanese are believed to be among our earliest ancestors."

Boa Sr's case has also been highlighted by the Survival International (SI) campaign group.

"The extinction of the Bo language means that a unique part of human society is now just a memory," SI Director Stephen Corry said.

'Imported illnesses'

She said that two languages in the Andamans had now died out over the last three months and that this was a major cause for concern.

Academics have divided Andamanese tribes into four major groups, the Great Andamanese, the Jarawa, the Onge and the Sentinelese.

Professor Abbi says that all apart from the Sentinelese have come into contact with "mainlanders" from India and have suffered from "imported illnesses".

She says that the Great Andamanese are about 50 in number - mostly children - and live in Strait Island, near the capital Port Blair.

Boa Sr was part of this community, which is made up of 10 "sub-tribes" speaking at least four different languages.

The Jarawa have about 250 members and live in the thick forests of the Middle Andaman. The Onge community is also believed to number only a few hundred.

"No human contact has been established with the Sentinelese and so far they resist all outside intervention," Professor Abbi said.

It is the fate of the Great Andamanese which most worries academics, because they depend largely on the Indian government for food and shelter - and abuse of alcohol is rife.

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painters: The cutural landscape of Greece...

Greek poets & Greek paintings, Greek artists, painters


Yannis Stavrou, Warehouses, Thessaloniki

Life and Death according to contemporary Greek poets...

The cutural landscape of Greece...

Morning and Evening
Miltos Sachtouris

In the morning
you see death
looking through the window
at the garden
the cruel bird
and the quiet cat
on the branch

passing
on the street outside
is the phantom-car
the supposed driver
the man with the broom
the gold teeth
laughs
and in the evening
at the cinema
you see
what you didn’t see in the morning
the joyful gardener
the real car
the kisses with the real couple

that death is not liked
by the cinema

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painters: with the full moon of contradictions...

Poetry and greek painting, greek artists, painters


Yannis Stavrou, Thessaloniki V, oil on canvas

HOTEL INSOMNIA
Haris Vlavianos

at night
with the full moon of contradictions
shining on the dome of your mind

you are thinking of changing roles
of finally taking the mask of grief off


yesterday
enchanted by the possibilities of your feelings you wrote:

only love as passion has meaning
every profound spirit needs a mask
– thus the subtlety of its embarrassment demands

today
under this predictable sky
you want to think
that the avenue stretching at your feet
ends somewhere –
to a final resolution of the matter
to a synopsis that will allow you to stand in awe of
the predestined unfolding of the story


your story –

in whose dramatic episodes
you seek to recognize the beckoning of affirmation
the assurance of reward


the light is glaring
“the light is always glaring”

it is late though
to leaf through the moment (life is not an argument)

no one feels like reading any more
neither do you (let the texts speak)
who exhausted by the intensity
of the last hours
pick up the phone

“a double espresso”

(as always the best sleeping pill)

Comments & Greek painters, Greek artists: Lets play the winds...

Poetry & Greek artists, Greek painters, Greek fine art


Yannis Stavrou, On Red Background, oil on canvas

Reading greek poetry...

I penetrated matter howling
Nikos Karouzos

Two seas pursue me: life and death

two currents which, damn them, are in my heart . . .
I am trying to find in my dog-drunk head

/second possessive pronoun/

intelligence – can’t be found. I didn’t petrify anything.

Lets play the winds

let’s sweetly play the damned.

What a sensuously-seasoned infant the poem and poor Jesus

wearing orange stained underwear

is hung up every year in spring.

Our art: the ego’s most horrible disguise.

-------------------

From Stones of Dreams by Dimitris Kalokyris:

Issue 2.699 of the 57th year (August 9-23, 1979) of the French weekly literary review of the time Les Nouvelles Littéraires, included a folio supplement with a densely printed tribute to modern Greek art and literature. This six-page supplement was edited by D.T. Analis, who was also responsible for most of the translations. I also contributed to the collection and partially to the choice of the material. Amongst the eighteen authors that were invited to express their personal relationship to writing was, of course, Nikos Karouzos. He wrote the following self-explanatory text, typed in red ink and in the traditional polytonic system:

Nobody asked me to write. Consequently, no mathematical logic is in my favour if I should seek justification. In the end, the way I am adapting to exist as a poet is like a man who is grazing his own personal sheep without being a shepherd at all. Possibly I may exist as a poet because I did not become an astronomer, as I imagined I would as a child, or a philosopher, as I thought about later, absorbed exclusively in philosophical interests. The fact is this: poetry keeps me hanging onto the bitterness that we call life, and life devotes me to poetry. I resent existing, but existing – damn it to hell – has a certain allure, as they say. This contradiction is crushing me. I would say that no, I am not a automobilist of verses, I am a walker of verses; I don’t belong to highways (Pythagoras told us to avoid walking on them); I created my own path by myself, and nobody treads it but love and I. The poet’s drama, in my opinion, is not to express reality, but to overcome it. The true poet creates outstanding business with existence – that’s what I believe – and his vision, a chimera if you wish, is to break the fetters of reality. For me, poetry is an ontological self-illusion, unless the poet meets and achieves the freedom of existence (i.e. the extinguishing or reduction of the ego to the intellect of the heart – i.e. what used to be called holiness) which shatters reality and leads man to the living infinity of universality.