7 Beyond Kordos

Beyond Greekness
Przemysław Kordos
Beyond Greekness
Studies in contemporary Modern Greek prose
Warsaw 2019
Reviewers:
dr hab. Iliana Genew-Puhaleva, mgr. Nicole Votavová Sumelidisová, Ph.D.
dr hab. prof. PAN Elżbieta Kiślak (for Polish version of the manuscript)
English language adviser:

Andrew Dobson
Technical editor:
Elżbieta Sroczyńska
Graphic design and pagesetting:

PanDawer, www.pandawer.pl
Cover design:
Paweł Pietrzyk
ISBN 978-83-65886-72-9
© 2019 by Przemysław Kordos

© 2019 by Wydział „Artes Liberales”
© 2019 by Global Scientific Platform Sp. z o.o.
Sub Lupa Academic Publishing

www.sublupa.pl
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements 7
Introduction. Some thoughts on Modern Greek prose 9
Chapter 1. Inside the Zorba trap 47
Chapter 2. Vassilis Vassilikos: into the Great Unknown 75
Chapter 3. Vassilis Alexakis: toward a perfect foreignness 125
Chapter 4. Apostolos Doxiadis: writing (about) mathematics 153
Chapter 5. Christos A. Chomenidis: around the fantastic 181
Conclusion. Back to Greece 223
Bibliography 243
Index of names 285

Acknowledgements
I have the privilege to be a part of the “Artes Liberales” community

at the University of Warsaw, the community that has the features
of a healthy grassroots movement and is always ready to provide
meaningful feedback on its members’ research and other endeav-
ours. I am particularly grateful to Professor Maria Kalinowska and
the participants of her doctoral/post-doctoral seminar – a unique
and indispensable initiative. I am in debt to Professor Alina Nowi
cka-Jeżowa, Professor Zbigniew Kloch, Professor Stefano Redaelli
and Mrs Katarzyna Tomaszuk for conversations on parts of my text
and for their numerous insights. Mrs Tomaszuk read the Polish ver-
sion of this text and found many places in need of improvement (or
erasure, for that matter).
Mr Andrew Dobson, who watched over the English version
of my book, not only corrected my mistakes, but smoothed the
language and suggested a lot of expressions that animated the
discourse.
And above all: Professor Małgorzata Borowska, my mentor
since the beginning of my studies on everything Greek (starting
with the alphabet) offered ceaseless support and – as always – pro-
vided invaluable inspiration. She founded Modern Greek studies
in Warsaw, and we, her pupils, joined her in building the basis for
further Modern Greek studies on literature in Poland. This book is
a part of her idea.
A running joke says that without the assistance of a family such

books would be written much sooner. As for me, if it had not been
for my family, A., T., T. & T., this text would have not been written
at all.
Introduction
Some thoughts on Modern Greek prose
For a non-Greek reader Modern Greek literature consists predom-

inantly of poetry. Both the Greek Noble Prize laureates, Giorgos
Seferis and Odysseas Elytis were poets. Besides, they both belong
to a generation which is crucially important for the whole history
of Modern Greek letters – the so-called Generation of 19301 which,
while not limited to poetry, revolutionized it. One of the Modern
Greek authors who is most recognisable in the world, Constantine
Cavafy, did indeed mostly write poetry, while the other one, Nikos
Kazantzakis, known mainly for the novels he wrote towards the end
of his life, regarded as his masterpiece the poem Odyssey, a sequel to
Homer’s masterpiece that the Cretan author wrote and re-wrote for
almost fifteen years.2 Just like Kazantzakis, most Modern Greek prose
writers had in their creative biographies at least one short chapter
on poetry and generally in Greece, in critical and historical-literary
research on prose, its analyses, chronologizing its course (by distin-
guishing currents, generations and schools) phenomena are named
and delineated chiefly with regard to developments in poetry.
This privileged position of poetry is perhaps not due to its
ancient pedigree, but rather to the richness and vitality of what could
generally be called rural genius. Folksongs, orally transmitted down
the centuries and recorded as late as in the 19th century are proof
1
See p. 20. The terminology of the generation maybe be misleading: for
example The Generation of 1930 as Linos Politis uses (L. Politis, The History of
Modern Greek Literature, Oxford 1973) signifies authors that debuted within
the fourth decade of the 20th century. The same applies to the chiefly poetic
Generation of 1970.
2
Cf. p. 51.
10 Introduction
of the long memory and deep sensitivity of Greek people: the songs
conveyed information on important legendary and historical events,
songs lamented the dead, praised heroes, helped express sorrow
and joy and – above all – were the field where various stories were
told, even those which were imaginary, even those full of horror.3
In Greece such songs are still performed, for example during the
carnival period, which is dominated by folk customs. A lot of tradi-
tional melodies pervade popular music: they have become a canvas
for composers who write contemporary music not abstaining from
making use in their lyrics of the most acclaimed poems, which are
ambitious in form and challenging in reception.
Greek poetry deliberately discusses the subject of what ‘Greek-
ness’ is, that is what it is to be Greek (ελληνικότητα, a set of charac-
teristics), as well as that of ‘Hellenism’ (ελληνισμός, which would
denote all Greeks in all places and all times).4 While looking for
answers to this eternal question, poets have pointed to the com-
mon space having defined characteristics (climatic, morphological),
shared by the Greeks and have tried to grasp the essence of the Greek
landscape. It has for them emotional and aesthetic value, but it is
also a vehicle for memory, both individual and collective. There are
certainly other concepts concerning what the basis of Greekness is
3
Claude Fauriel, historian and linguist, was the one who had already
started collecting and regularly publishing Greek folk songs during the Greek
Revolution. Then came many others: P.M.L. Joss, W. Mueller, N. Tommaseo,
D.H. Sanders. In Poland the first ones were Józef Sękowski, Aleksander Chodźko
and Józef Dunin Borkowski, Sękowski as early as in 1819. Cf. Gminna pieśń Greków.
Antologia (Folk songs of the Greeks. Anthology), trans. M. Borowska, Warszawa
2004 (seria “Arcydzieła literatury nowogreckiej”, t. II / series “Masterpieces of
Modern Greek literature”, v. II).
4
See e.g. the introductory essay by G. Tsaousis (Γ. Τσαούσης, Ελληνισμός
και Ελληνικότητα / Hellenism and Greekness), in a collection on studies in his
edition Ελληνισμός και Ελληνικότητα. Ιδεολογικοί και Βιωματικοί Άξονες της
Νεοελληνικής Κοινωνίας (Hellenism – Greekness. Ιdeological and experiential
axes of the Modern Greek society), Athens 2009, p. 15-27. Cf. also Michael Jeffreys’s
lecture entitled The Criterion of Greekness in Modern Greek Literature, given in 1986
at the Syndey University. Jeffreys which concentrated mostly on poetry (text of
the lecture at webpage: https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/
ART/article/viewFile/5508/6179, DOA: 1/9/2018).
See also a more extensive discussion on the intricacies of these terms on
p. 60ff.
Some thoughts on Modern Greek prose 11
– some poets, as well as scholars, point not so much at the space, but
at the common language, religion, tradition and history, the topics
I will come back to below.
It was over poetry that the fight concerning the final shape of the
Modern Greek language took place and it was the poets – for example
the iconic Dionisios Solomos, decided that it would be the demotic
version of the language, the natural demotic language (δημοτική)
that would eventually prevail5 – becoming the preferred language
5
Contemporary Modern Greek is a model example of diglossia, one of
the cases analysed by Charles Ferguson in his founding article (C.F. Ferguson,
Diglossia, “Word” 15 [1959], p. 325-340), despite the fact that phenomenon in
question is much older than the modern Greek state. George Horrocks points at
the start of diglossia already in Hellenistic times and explained that it has not
left the language ever since (G. Horrocks, Greek: A History of the Language and its
Speakers, Hoboken, NJ 2010, p. 84, 100). In the 19th and 20th century two varieties of
language existed in parallel: the low, “home” variety – demotic and high, official,
katharevousa – an artificial variety that was born out of attempts to rid demotic of
its vulgar and foreign traces, combined with the language spoken and written by
educated Phanariots in Stambul (see D.J. Geanakoplos, The Diaspora Greeks: The
Genesis of Modern Greek National Consciousness, w: Hellenism and the First Greek War
of Liberation (1821-1830). Continuity and Change, Thessaloniki 1976, p. 59-79.) The
father of katharevousa was the acclaimed medical doctor and scholar Adamantios
Korais. His style proved to be inimitable, his postulates scattered – and difficult to
be realized in a wider perspective. Eventually his ideas were applied in a biased
form, matching the needs of his followers and not the spirit of his endeavours.
That was a major reason why “purified” Modern Greek slowly fell into decay
thanks to its users, whose linguistic and historical knowledge rarely matched
their ambitions. It was an odd creation: morphologically ancient, semantically
absolutely modern: one could use it in political and historical treatises, as well
in scientific texts (P. Mackridge, A language in the image of the nation: Modern Greek
and some parallel cases, [in:] The Making of Modern Greece. Nationalism, Romanticism
and Uses of the Past (1797-1896), R. Beaton, D. Ricks (eds.), London 2016, p. 183).
Katharevousa gained a privileged position, guaranteed by successive Greek
constitutions and ceaselessly reminded people of the ancient pedigree of the
modern Greek state.
The dispute over the shape of language never left the public scene. Very soon
the fortress of demotic became the poetry in its Ionian Islands version (at the time
the archipelago was under British rule) and then slowly the “low” variety was to
become appreciated by writers in the Kingdom of Greece. The most important
Ionian poet, Dionisios Solomos, wrote that “μήγαρις έχω άλλο στο νου μου
πάρεξ ελευθερία και γλώσσα” (do I think about anything other than language
and freedom – Δ. Σολωμός, Διάλογος (Dialogue), [in:] Άπαντα, v. ΙΙ, Λ. Πολίτης
12 Introduction
for artistic creations. The language – more so than territory, shared

history or confession – is the basic factor uniting the Greeks, the lan-
guage even despite its internal diversity: the variety of dialects of the
islands, valleys, regions is an important “richness” in itself, a treas-
ure that can provide new sound and meaning and not an obstacle
to understanding.6 The special attitude of Greeks towards their lan-
guage can be observed in the devotion with which they treat it, in the
passion they exhibit while fighting for its shape, in the determination
with which they trace the smallest crumb of the Greek language in
other languages and places.7
(ed.), Athens 1986, p. 12). But cf. the declaration of Giannis Makriyannis, a soldier
and self-made writer who – in the introductory sentences of his Memoirs comes
back several times to another dyad: Homeland and Faith. These four values:
language, freedom, homeland and faith are a good definition of what Greekness
could be.
The key work was the book Το ταξίδι μου (My journey, 1888) that contained
impressions from a journey to Greece by another emigrant, Giannis Psycharis.
He proved that writing prose in demotic is possible and the result legible and
valid (G. Horrocks, Greek. A History..., p. 356-257). But the disputes went on to,
sometimes literally, the streets. For instance the publishing in 1901 of the Gospel
in demotic translation resulted in riots and fatalities.
Many circles, mainly In the state administration, were slow to give
katharevousa up. Its knowledge was arcane: it gave access to higher spheres of
society, its complication allowed for semantic vagueness and its rickety lexicon
combined with unsure grammar was perfect for that type of political discourse that
longed for lofty canting talk. Only the disgrace of the “black colonels” in the junta
times (1967-1974) caused it to be gradually withdrawn from public life. Despite
that, until now, its numerous remains persist, which makes some linguists call
modern, contemporary language not demotic but ‘new koine’ (νέα κοινή). This is
why the creators of the Triantafyllidis Foundation dictionary decided to call their
book: Λεξικό της Νεοελληνικής Κοινής (Thessaloniki, 1998). Many professional
milieus (the church, the army, but also right-wing journalists and some publishers)
never discarded katharevousa and even now many publications are still issued in
katharevousa, merged in various degrees with demotic (sometimes the change is
in the adoption of the polytonic accentuation system, officially abolished in the
1980s). See e.g. P. Kordos, The Shadow of Diglossia. Modern Greek Language Condition
at the Turn of the Centuries, “EOS” 89 (2002), p. 137-143.
6
P.L. Fermor, Roumeli. Travels in Northern Greece, London 2004, p. 96.
7
The Legacy of the Greek Language, G. Kanarakis (ed.), New York–Boston,
2016. Cf. also a popular dictionary compiled by A. Stefanides, You speak Greek and
you don’t know it, Athens 2010, promoted and distributed – a meaningful fact – by
the Greek Tourism Organisation (EOT).
Prose joined the discussion on Greekness much later. In the times

when poets were writing universally in demotic, prose was still pro-
duced in the “high” artificial version of the language – in katharevousa
(καθαρευούσα, lit. “cleaned [language]”).8 The position of prose was,
at its beginnings,9 weakened and until today it is an object of conten-
tion whether Greek prose, at least in the 19th century and until the end
of World War One was derivate and backward or – on the contrary
– progressive and original. The point of reference is usually Western
literature (mainly English, French and German), though a number of
prosaic writers like to relate to the most distinguished Russian writ-
ers. Historians of literature certainly trace the initial stages of Greek
prose in antiquity and then move on to list works written in later
periods – such as Medieval times (as in Frankish Middle Ages) and
then in the early modern period (Cretan Renaissance).10 When in
1822 (or 1828, or 1830, or 1832)11 some Greeks became subjects of an
independent country,12 their prose tradition was feeble and it was –
as was stated by two important researchers of Modern Greek letters,
8
Cf. p. 11 and 20.
9
In this introduction I concentrate on literature written by the Greeks since
the Greeks gained their independence during the Greek Revolution (1821). About
the Greek Revolution see e.g. The Struggle for Greek Independence, R. Clogg (ed.),
Berkeley–Los Angeles, CA 1973; R. Clogg, The Movement for Greek Independence,
London 1976; J. Koliopoulos, Brigands with the Cause, Brigandage and Irredentism in
Modern Greece 1821–1912, Oxford 1987; D. Brewer, The Greek War of Independence,
London 2011; Α.Ε. Βακαλόπουλος, Ιστορία της ελληνικής επανάστασης του
1821 (History of Greek Revolution in 1821), Athens 2007.
10
See e.g. Literature and Society in Renaissance Crete, D. Holton (ed.),
Cambridge 1991.
11
It is difficult to establish the beginning of the modern Greek state: whether
it was its first constitution (1822), or Ioannis Kapodistrias at the head of the first
republic (1828), or the factual recognition of independence (1830) or the beginning
of monarchy (1832), or several other “starting points”.
12
The bibliography of concise studies of Greek history in the last 200
years is abundant in English – and even in Polish. I will refer chiefly to authors,
whose works have well grounded positions: R. Clogg (A Concise History of Greece,
Cambridge 1992) and C.M. Woodhouse (Modern Greece. A Short History, London
1968, improved edition 1991). For a Polish reader one might suggest A. Brzeziński,
Grecja, series “Historia państw świata w XX wieku” (Greece, series “History of
countries in the 20th century”), Łódź 2002 or J. Bonarek et al., Historia Grecji
(History of Greece), Kraków 2006.
14 Introduction
namely Roderick Beaton and Henri Tonnet – “inadequate”.13 Similar

tones are struck by another renowned scholar of Modern Greek lit-
erature: namely Mario Vitti in his History of Modern Greek literature,14
who states that in its modern form the “[novel] genre took its time
to appear in Greek letters”,15 though various hagiographic texts cir-
culating in villages, and prosaic versions of poetic works popular
among ordinary readers (or listeners) could prove something which
is exactly the opposite. The role of precursor was played, among oth-
ers, by a proto-novel Papatrechas published in the early 19th century
by one of the most significant “educators of the Nation” (ο δάσκαλος
του Γένους): Adamantios Korais (“to educate” would mean here “to
teach what it is to be Greek”).16 His work is indeed written in prose,
built mostly through dialogue.
On the other hand, as recent studies argue, the “language ques-
tion” (understood both as the struggle for the shape of Modern
Greek as well as the reason for prose backwardness) is toned down
in favour of a view that the main approach to Greek literature, and
especially to prose should come through ideological or even political
consideration. Such perspective has been recently presented by the
prominent neohellenist Konstantinos Dimadis in regard to engage
of interwar period writers with the ideology and power mechanisms
in the interwar period (and its consequences for the generations to
come).17 Setting the discussion on literature free from language and
therefore inward bias make such studies easier to be promoted to the
international level.
13
Cf. T. Haag, The novel in antiquity, Oxford 1983; G. Anderson, Ancient
fiction. The novel in the Graeco-Roman world, London-Sydney-Totowa, NJ 1984;
R. Beaton, The medieval Greek romance, Cambridge 1989; N. Holzberg, Der antike
Roman: eine Einführung, Munich-Zurich 1983.
14
Original, Italian edition Storia della letteratura neogreca, 1971, Greek edition
1979; the Polish edition was translated on the basis of the Greek text.
15
M. Vitti, Historia literatury nowogreckiej, p. 233.
16
A. Korais, Papatrechas, introduction, translation, edition M. Borowska,
Warszawa 2009 (“Arcydzieła literatury nowogreckiej”, t. VII / series “Masterpieces
of Modern Greek literature”, v. VII). Papatrechas is a very original text: it was
published as a kind of novel, in parts, It has an epistolary form, but it can be
treated as a philosophical thesis (ibidem, p. 25-28).
17
K.A. Dimadis, Power and Prose Fiction in Modern Greece, Athens 2016.
A Greek scholar teaching at Birmingham, Gregory Jusdanis,

rejects the discourse where Modern Greek writing is treated as
“small literature” (or the “literature of a small nation”) in the sense
proposed once by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari18. The Modern
Greek literature, though limited by the small extent of its language,
case is not an instance of a minority within a large nation and it pos-
sesses surprising vitality as well as the impressive length of literary
duration. Moreover, Greek letters have a unique relationship to the
European cultural circle that points not to the marginality of Mod-
ern Greek literature, but rather at its borderland status.19 In spite of
this view the first prose writers in the young Kingdom of Greece
had indeed to build the prosaic tradition from scratch and chose to
largely ignore the models of antiquity in favour of the achievements
of authors writing in the countries of the West.
Tonnet begins his lecture on the history of Greek letters by dis-
cussing the first novels written in the newly independent Greece. From
their examples he derives four main types of novel that dominated
the landscape more than 150 years ago. The first novel is Λέανδρος
(Leandros), by Panagiotis Soutsos20 from 1834, which Tonnet calls
“romantic”21 and is unequivocally inspired by the Western-type epis-
tolary novel, resembling Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Julie ou la Nouvelle
Héloïse, or Johann Wolfang von Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
and – most of all – Ugo Foscolo’s Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis.22 The
text by Soutsos consists of seventy-seven letters written by the nov-
el’s protagonists. It tells a story of a tragic love affair, culminating
18
G. Deleuze, F. Guattari, Kafka, pour une littérature mineure, Paris 1975.
19
G. Jusdanis, The Importance of Being Minor, “Journal of Modern Greek
Studies” 8 (1990), no. 1, p. 5-33.
20
I paralleled, wherever possible, the translation of Modern Greek works
with the Linos Politis’s English edition of A History of Modern Literature. In other
cases I located the titles of English translations – where available, showing, where
needed, differences in the meaning of an original title and its “official” rendering
in English.
21
H. Tonnet, Ιστορία του ελληνικού μυθιστορήματος (History of the Greek
novel), trans. M. Καραμάνου, Athens 2001, p. 103-109, J. Strasburger, Słownik
pisarzy nowogreckich (Dictionary of Modern Greek writers), Warsaw 1995, p. 136;
B. Merry, Encyclopedia of Modern Greek Literature, London 2004, p. 405.
22
Ugo Foscolo, born on the island of Zakythnos, was half-Greek (his mother
was Greek).
16 Introduction
in the deaths of both lovers.23 The second type set apart by Tonnet,
the picaresque novel, is represented by Πολυπαθής (One that suf-
fers, 1839) by Grigorios Palaiologos. The text draws heavily from Jean
de La Bruyere’s Caractères, Molière’s plays and Alain-René Lesage’s
L’Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane. The Palaiologos’s hero relates his
adventurous journeys around Europe and mischievously character-
izes the people he meets on his way. The third type is the historical
novel, and its first example – Alexandros Rizos Rangavis’s Αυθέντης
της Μορέως (The Lord of the Morea, 1850) takes place in the 13th
century Peloponnese and is based on the medieval The chronicle of
Morea, while the style resembles Walter Scott’s works.24 Finally the
fourth type, the sentimental novel is embodied in Η ορφανή της Χίου
ή Ο θρίαμβος της αρετής (The orphan of Chios or the triumph of
virtue, 1839) by Iakovos Pitsipios (or Pitzipios). The author describes
historical events – the Greek Revolution and especially the episode of
the Chios massacre in 1922 – but not the from the perspective of the
warring parties, but from the point of view of the civilians – observ-
ers and victims. Pitsipios’s work was quite popular at one time and
he is the only one of the four aforementioned authors not regarded as
an imitator by Tonnet.25 He also wrote a satire entitled Πίθηκος Ξουθ
(Monkey Xouth, 1848), called later the first socially aware Greek
novel.26
But it was the type initiated by Rizos Rangavis – the histori-
cal novel – that dominated the following decades in Modern Greek
23
Cf. also the political context of the work: D. Tziovas, The novel and the
crown: O Leandros and the politics of Romanticism, [in:] The Making of Modern Greece:
Nationalism, Romanticism, and the Uses of the Past (1797-1896), R. Beaton, D. Ricks
(eds.), London 2009, p. 211-224.
24
H. Tonnet, Ιστορία του ελληνικού μυθιστορήματος, p. 125ff.; R. Beaton,
Εισαγωγή στην νεοελληνική λογοτεχνία, trans. E. Ζούργου, Μ. Σπανάκη,
Athens 1996, p. 238-9.
25
H. Tonnet, Ιστορία του ελληνικού μυθιστορήματος, p. 115ff. Cf. also
Κ.Θ. Δημαράς, Ιστορία της νεοελληνικής λογοτεχνίας. Από πρώτες ρίζες μέχρι
την εποχή μας, (History of Modern Greek literature. From first roots to our times),
Athens 1949, p. 427-441; Α. Σαχίνης, Παλαιότεροι πεζογράφοι (Older prose
writers), Athens 1973.
26
B. Merry, Encyclopedia of Modern Greek Literature, p. 333.
letters history.27 Alexandros Diamantopoulos, an early theoretician of

the novel put much stress on the need for didacticism and this type of
novel responded very well to such a demand.28 But already in the first
works of this genre a serious problem appeared, a problem christened
later the “Greek language question” that overshadowed not just the
world of letters, but many if not all aspects of Greek social life. The
question of what kind of language should be regarded as appropri-
ate for writing: a natural, though vulgarized demotic or artificially
purified katharevousa29 was the reason for the waging of linguistic
wars until as late as 1980 when the problem – and ensuing diglossia
– was finally, if only theoretically, abolished. The prose of the 19th
century and of the early 20th century was written mostly in kathar-
evousa. That limited its range to educated readers and today forces
publishers to engage in inter-language translation (μεταγλωτισμός),
so that these historically important texts can be read, for instance,
by school pupils. The English linguist Peter Mackridge30 places the
language question at the heart of his research treating it as the core of
Greek cultural identity, while Beaton31 regards the question as being
the main feature of Greek prosaic production as well as main rea-
son for its arrested development. At the same time he states that he
respects other research positions that do not put so much emphasis
on the language issue.
27
In the 19th century history novel the action took place mostly during the
Greek Revolution – that is in the reality that was well-known to writers and readers
alike. Only sporadically did one reach farther – to the Turkocracy or Byzantine
times. Cf. Α. Σαχίνης, To ιστορικό μυθιστόρημα (Historical novel), Athens 1957:
among most important 19th century writers he lists F. Michalopoulos, A. Rangavis,
S. Xenos, S. Zambelios, E. Roidis, N. Makris, D. Vikielas and A. Papadiamantis. It
is worth mentioning here that strikingly seldom antiquity is the period of interest
for history novel writers. It was a popular background for 19th century plays, but
save for a few examples there are no contemporary historical novels taking place
in ancient times: cf. e.g. Χ.Α. Χωμενίδης, Λόγια φτερά (Words like wings), Athens
2009, a story told by the bard Tenellos, Homer’s grandfather.
28
Α. Διαµαντόπουλος, Περί του ορισµού της µυθιστορίας (Roman) (About
the term “novel” – Roman), “Αποθήκη των Ωφελίµων και Τερπνών Γνώσεων”
17 (1848), p. 243-246.
29
See footnote 5, p. 11-12.
30
P. Mackridge, Language and National Identity in Greece, 1766-1976, Oxford
2009.
31
R. Beaton, Εισαγωγή στην νεοελληνική λογοτεχνία, p. 22.
18 Introduction
Whatever the justification for the weakness of 19th century

Greek prose, the fact is that only at the end of the century did it gain
an original, important trait. In 1871 a work Μελέτη επί του βίου των
νεώτερων Ελλήνων (Studies on the life of contemporary Greeks,
in two volumes) was published by Nikolaos Politis, the founder of
Greek ethnography. Just like another researcher of this period, Oskar
Kolberg regarding territories inhabited by the Poles – he began with
the systematic collection of thousands of folk songs. His interests
then broadened and he started recording fairy-tales, proverbs and
other folk language products. Politis noticed that in the works of edu-
cated Greeks the elements of folk cultural are virtually absent and the
country culture is in fact alien to developing urban centres. With his
prompting the most important literary periodical “Εστία” organized
a contest for “folk” stories. In his invitation to take part in it, Politis
praises Greek folk people, who:
[...] έχει ευγενή ήθη, έθιμα ποικίλα και τρόπους και μύθους και
παραδόσεις εφ’ όλων των περιστάσεων του ιστορικού αυτού
βίου·η δε ελληνική ιστορία, αρχαία και μέση και νέα γέμει σκηνών
δυναμένων να παράσχωσιν υποθέσεις εις σύνταξιν καλλίστων
διηγημάτων και μυθιστορημάτων.32
[...] have a kind demeanour, numerous customs and manners, and

also myths and traditions for every occasion of having [being related
to] the history of the nation; Greek history, ancient, medieval, mod-
ern, is full of important moments which can become a seed to create
the best stories and novels.33
The response to the appeal was significant and writing folksy texts
did not cease after the initial contest – won by Georgios Drosinis
with Χρυσούλα (Chrysoula), a short story.34 His victory secured
32
H. Tonnet, Ιστορία του ελληνικού μυθιστορήματος, p. 138-139; Γ. Παπα
κώστας, Το περιοδικό „Εστία” και το διήγημα (Periodic “Estia” and the short
story), Athens 1982, p. 79-80.
33
All fragment translations to English, if not stated otherwise, are in my
rendering.
34
Full text (scan of 444th number of “Εστία”, dated 4/12/1883) shared by
the University of Patras on the webpage: http://xantho.lis.upatras.gr/test2_pleias.
php?art=79898, DOA: 2/12/2016.
a prevailing ethnographic trait in many later works of the type35

and their genre is today called ‘ithography’ (from ήθος – ‘custom’),
described by Małgorzata Borowska simply as a “description of cus-
toms”36 Linos Politis in his English version of A History... writes about
the “folklore movement”37 or – as Beaton wants – “short folkloric
realism”.38 The English researcher points at the basic feature of itho-
graphic works: a realistically depicted prose of small volume, written
at least partly in demotic (demotic is by default the language of dia-
logues), the plot often becomes a pretext for describing a traditional
society in its natural setting. Moreover, Beaton regards ithography
to be the Greek national genre: it commandeered Modern Greek lit-
erature at the turn of the century and its main representatives were
Giorgos Vizyinos, Andreas Karkavitsas and Alexandros Papadia-
mantis.39 The last one, perhaps was the most successful (or at least
his legacy proved to be the most lasting): he managed to merge cus-
toms and folk life with Byzantine heritage, because he saturated his
texts, which are set mostly on Skiathos island, with Orthodox folk
spirituality and was successful in creating a multidimensional pic-
ture of a small, closed, insular population: a microcosm of its val-
ues, fortunes and aspirations. And though ithography is regarded as
a “Greek genre”, a fine example of an original trait within the history
35
H. Tonnet, Ιστορία του ελληνικού μυθιστορήματος, p. 141; P. Mackridge,
The Textualization of Place in Greek Fiction, 1883-1903, “Journal of Modern Greek
Studies” 2 (1992), no. 2, p. 148-168; M. Vitti, Ιδεολογική λειτουργία της ελληνικής
ηθογραφίας (Ideological functioning of Greek ithography), Athens 1991.
36
Lit. ‘opis obyczaju’: see M. Borowska, Wstęp (Introduction), [in:] A. Papa-
diamandis, Sny na różanych wybrzeżach. Wybór opowiadań (Dreams on rosy waves.
Selection of short stories), trans. M. Borowska, Warsaw 2013 (seria “Arcydzieła
literatury nowogreckiej”, t. IX / series “Masterpieces of Modern Greek literature”,
v. IX), p. 42.
37
L. Politis, A History..., p. 154-156.
38
R. Beaton, Εισαγωγή στην νεοελληνική λογοτεχνία, p. 107 (orig.
R. Beaton, Introduction to Modern Greek Literature, London 1994, p. 72).
39
Michail Chrysanthopoulos shows that ithography for many prose writers
was a pretext for telling a story of a micro-history. It was not enough for them to
describe customs (picturesque or gruesome), but they were attracted by personal
expression, written inside their little homelands. M. Chrysanthopoulos, Autobi-
ography, fiction, and the nation: the writing subject in Greek during the later nineteenth
century, [in:] The Making of Modern Greece: Nationalism, Romanticism, and the Uses of
the Past (1797-1896), R. Beaton, D. Ricks (eds.), London 2009, p. 239-248.
20 Introduction
of Greek prose, its best followers, like Papadiamantis and Vizyinos

often broke the constrains of the self-acclaimed genre, boldly exper-
imenting with form. Papadiamantis wrote a story with the narrator
in the 2nd person singular,40 while Vizyinos explored multi-layered
narration and extensive use of retrospective. Moreover, ithography
was founded mostly on the short prose form, a literary genre at least
equally popular with the novel in Greece until today. In fact some
critics, while frowning upon quality and originality of novel, praise
the small form of prose – διήγημα (‘short story’) – as Greek form par
excellence.41
The first years of the 20th century saw a fading interest in ithog-
raphy – its epigone being Nikos Kazantzakis42 – the movement itself
transformed later into the urban novel of the inter-war period43 and,
with the ensuing and ruthless urbanisation, farther into the literature
of “small homelands”, such as Thessaloniki in Giorgos Ioannou’s
short stories, the multicultural Crete of Pandelis Prevelakis,44 the lost
ways of life in Epirote towns depicted by Dimitris Chatzis and the
once peaceful and idyllic Galaxidi by the Corinthian Gulf in the texts
of Eva Vlami. Such a list could be much longer as Greek readers have
been obviously keen on nostalgic, locally anchored stories. The fact
is proven for instance by the warm reception of Maria Iordanidou’s
debut, who, in her 64th year of life, published a novel Λωξάνδρα
(Loxandra, 1962) that tells a story about Constantinople through the
memories of her late grandmother.
Very important changes in the Greek novel were brought
about by the emergence of the next literary formation – the Genera-
tion of 1930. The writers counted among the representatives of this
40
Ολόγυρα στη λίμνη (Around the lake).
41
See e.g. the introduction by Kostas Georgosopoulou to Ανθολογία του
ελληνικού διηγήματος του 20ου αίωνα (Anthology of Greek short story in the
20th century), Athens 2009.
42
H. Tonnet, Ιστορία του ελληνικού μυθιστορήματος, p. 274.
43
R. Beaton, Εισαγωγή στην νεοελληνική λογοτεχνία, p. 306.
44
A representative example is a novel (an essay? a memoir?) by P. Prevelakis
Το χρονικό μιας πολιτείας (A tale of a town, 1938, English translation by
K. Johnstone in 1976).
generation45 had a kind of “writing compulsion”,46 treating writing

as a cure for the trauma suffered after tragic historical events.47 They
also opened Greek literature wide to Western European literary cur-
rents. Through new ways of expression – in poetry and in prose, being
finally appreciated as a wholesome form of expression, they defined
“being Greek” in new historical and social conditions, initiating anew
a discussion on what Greekness (ελληνικότητα) is as their main con-
cern.48 Among the other characteristics of the movement, delineated
first in 1927 in Giorgos Theotokas’s essay Ελεύθερο πνεύμα (Free
45
The Generation of 1930 dominated the literary landscape of the interwar
period, but it was not a total movement: Nikos Kazantzakis, for instance, did
not belong to it: Δ. Δημηρούλης, Ο Νίκος Καζαντζάκης και η Γενιά του ‘30. Τα
ίχνη της απουσίας (Nikos Kazantzakis and the Generation of 1930. Traces of
absence), [in:] Ο Καζαντζάκης στον 21ο αιώνα (Kazantzakis in the 21st century),
Σ.Ν. Φιλιππίδης (ed.), Herakleion 2010, p. 77-106.
46
Compulsive writing did not touch only prose authors – in the interwar
period there were thousands of witness statements (μαρτυρίες) written down by
refugees from the Asia Minor that described their little, lost homeland, (Smyrna,
Trapezunt, Aivali), the loss, trauma, torture of their relocation to Greece.
47
The period 1897-1949 brought Greeks wars, both won and lost, occupations,
massive forced emigration and refugee and economic crises. The tragedy of the
war with Turkey, the lost campaign in Asia Minor and the ensuing catastrophe of
the Greek Anatolian population and the calamity of the civil war that split Greece
for decades were traumas that affected several generations.
On the period from the Greek-Turkish War of 1897 until the aftermath of
the “Catastrophe” in Asia Minor in 1923 see e.g. R. Clogg, A Concise History of
Greece, p. 81-99; C.M. Woodhouse, Modern Greece..., p. 197-211 and monographies
G. Milton, Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 – The Destruction of Islam’s City of Tolerance,
London 2008; Γ.Θ. Μαυρογορδάτος, 1915 – Εθνικός Διχασμός (1915 – National
schism), Athens 2015; T. Czekalski, Pogrobowcy Wielkiej Idei. Przemiany społeczne
w Grecji w latach 1923-1940, (Epigones of the Great Idea. Social change in Greece
1923-1947), Kraków 2007.
48
Δ. Τζιόβας, Οι μεταμορφώσεις του εθνισμού και το ιδεολόγημα της
ελληνικότητα στο μεσοπόλεμο (Metamorphoses of national conciousness and the
ideology of Greekness in the interwar period), Athens 2009, p. 51, after: I. Wrazas,
Kazandzakis, tożsamość nowogrecka i grecki modernizm (Kazantzakis, Modern Greek
identity and Greek modernism, [in:] Wyspiański, Kazandzakis i modernistyczne wizje Antyku
(Wyspiański, Kazantzakis and modernist visions of the antiquity), M. Borowska et al.
(eds.), Warszawa 2012, p. 124. Cf. also Ν. Βαγενάς, Ο μύθος του ελληνοκεντρισμού
(Hellenocentrism myth), [in:] Μοντερνισμός και Ελληνικότητα (Modernism and
Greekness), Herakleion 1997, p. 19; Greece. Books and Writers (collective publication,
prepared by E.KE.BI. – National Book Centre), Athens 2001, p. 204.
22 Introduction
spirit)49 were: looking into the future, not into the past, striving to being
modern and not staying with what is traditional (and therefore explic-
itly rejecting ithographic approach), and finally – being optimistic and
not, like for instance (in their understanding) Cavafy’s poetry, being
tainted with fatalism and resignation. An important achievement of
the Generation was the universal introduction of the demotic language
variant to prose.50
Writers belonging to the school managed to make creative use
of Western European novelists’ tendencies, adapting them to their
needs and themes, and to speak through modern ways of expres-
sion, about the most important experiences of the generation, such
as deep social reconfiguration, urbanisation, war memories and
redefining attitudes toward Greek national history (for instance the
death of the so-called ‘Great Idea’- Μεγάλη Ιδέα). Along with the
growing cities (their growth was accelerated further by the influx of
refugees from Anatolia) there came into existence the mature form of
the urban novel, later regarded as the most characteristic genre for
the whole Generation. It is represented for example by Theotokas’s
Αργώ (two volumes, 1933 and 1936),51 that take place in the milieu of
Athenian law students, representatives of the generation growing in
the shadow of the calamity in Asia Minor and living poverty-stricken
social lives in the inter-war period.
In the meantime the historical novel had never fallen out of pop-
ularity from the time of Rizos Rangavis and it proved important, not
only through the sheer number of books issued, but through shaping
readers’ attitude toward literature as such. The majority of 19th cen-
tury works in this genre were written, often being didactic in nature,
49
Theotokas’s text analysis: V. Calotychos, The Cultural Geographies of (Un)-
Greekness, [in:] idem, Modern Greece. A Cultural Poetics, London 2003, p. 157-194,
especially p. 159-166.
50
Cf. e.g. P. Bien, Victory of Demotic, “The Times Literary Supplement”,
11/11/1994. On activities on demoticists (radical followers of demotic) in literature
see D. Tziovas, The Nationalism of the Demoticists and its impact on their literary theory
(1888-1930), Amsterdam 1986.
51
H. Tonnet, Ιστορία του ελληνικού μυθιστορήματος, p. 216. Cf. A. Αργυ
ρίου, Η μεταπολεμική πεζογραφία. Από τον πόλεμο του ’40 ως τη δικτατορία
του ’67 (Post-war prose. From the war of 1940 until the dictatorship of 1967), v. I,
Athens 1988, p. 102-103.
with the aim of acquainting readers with essential moments in Greek

history or that exemplified the fates of people living on Greek soil
in the recent or distant past. As a substantial number of these works
narrated relatively recent events, such as the Greek Revolution of
1821 – they perhaps should be called historical-political. Soon such
texts became unconventional and at times surprising. In 1855-1856
Pavlos Kalligas wrote a novel entitled Θάνος Βλέκας (Thanos Vle-
kas), initially published anonymously in parts in the periodical
“Πάνδωρα”. Its main theme was brigandage. The book, along with
Palaiologos’s aforementioned novel was regarded as the first Greek
instance of realism:52 the author (Kalligas) tried to authenticate the
events he set out to describe by, for example, suggesting that he was
merely publishing a manuscript he had found in mysterious cir-
cumstances. Another author of the genre, Dimitrios Vikelas, became
famous after he wrote his Λουκής Λάρας (Loukis Laras, 1879), the
novel that de-romanticised the subject of the Greek Revolution and
depicted it, not through the eyes of its actors, but civilians – though
not necessarily victims – on both sides of the conflict, and also people
who were blasphemously unwilling to fight at all. The Revolution
also interested Stefanos Xenos (who first published in England), the
author of a long novel Η ηρωίς της Ελληνικής Επαναστάσεως: ήτοι
σκηναί εν Ελλάδι από του έτους 1821-1828 (A heroine of the Greek
Revolution: or scenes from Greece in the years 1821-1828, published
in 1861 in London).53 An interesting text, which was popular out-
side of Greece and was more a novelette than a novel, was written
be Emmanouil Roidis. His Πάπισσα Ιωάννα (Pope Joan, 1866)54 took
readers to the seldom visited times (in Greek literature) of the Middle
52
J. Strasburger, Słownik pisarzy nowogreckich, p. 46.
53
H. Tonnet, Ιστορία του ελληνικού μυθιστορήματος, p. 245. The most
renowned text on the Greek Revolution is the memoir of Giannis Makriyannis,
an autobiographical re-telling by participants of the fighting, written in radical
demotic. His text was the endless inspiration for generations of writers and was
also a stimulus for his contemporaries to write their memoirs. Without doubt the
Greek Revolution is the period with the most abundant bibliography, historical
and literary in Modern Greece. See The Memoirs of General Makriyannis, 1797-1864,
trans. H.A. Lidderdale, Oxford 1966.
54
English edition, freely translated by Lawrence Durrell in 1954; Polish
edition in 1961 as Papieżyca Joanna.
24 Introduction
Ages and was a pungent satire on the clergy, Greek society and writ-
ten prose itself.55
While the times of ithography turned writers’ attention to con-
temporary times, the Generation of 1930 revisited the notion of the
historical novel. These representatives of the Generation rejected lit-
eral didacticism and the shaping of the patriotic posture, but wanted
to be more engaged, polemic, political.56 This is a trait the historical
novel has still not lost.57 Artemis Leontis, researching Greek imagined
topographies is of the opinion that there are few literary texts that do
not take part in discussing Greek identity. She adds that Greek liter-
ature’s goal is to hellenize and that it is “dug deep” into territorially
defined Hellenism.58 So imagined Hellenism materialised itself phys-
ically in a geographically defined space.
The historic novel came triumphantly back therefore in a new
form with the Generation of 1930, whose representatives proposed
a new way of speaking about history understood as a communal or
national experience. Stratis Myrivilis, a writer from Mytilini, trans-
formed his World War One experience into the Greek model “trench
novel” Η ζωή εν τάφω (Life in the tomb, 1924) and then offered its
continuation in the form of Η δασκάλα με τα χρυσά μάτια (The
school-mistress with golden eyes, 1933) talking about difficulties
in assimilating the Asia Minor refugees into the Greek state.59 The
55
See F. Lika, Roidis and the Borrowed Muse: British Historiography, Fiction and
Satire in Pope Joan, Cambridge 2018. It is rare example of studying the referential
context of Modern Greek literature, its list of influences from abroad.
56
Panagiotis Moulas writes simply about “conscripted literature”
(στρατευμένη λογοτεχνία). Π. Μουλλάς, Σκέψεις για την πεζογραφία μας.
1949-1967. Η εκρηκτική εικοσαετία (Thoughts on our prose 1949-1967. Explosive
20 years), Athens 2002, p. 341.
57
One of the most important publications is the collection issued by the
Κέδρος publishing house, in the third year of the junta (!) – Δέκαοχτώ κείμενα
(Eighteen texts, 1970), consisting of essays and short prose pieces by important
writers (Giorgos Seferis, Spyros Plaskovitis, Giorgos Cheimonas, Alexandros
Kotzias and others), all with a strong, anti-dictatorial overtone.
58
A. Leontis, Beyond Hellenicity: Can We Find Another Topos?, “Journal of
Modern Greek Studies” 15 (1997), no. 2, p. 220.
59
M. Vitti, Historia literatury nowogreckiej, p. 334. Linos Politis stated that for
every writer of the Generation the goal was to write a novel. Λ. Πολίτης, Ιστορία
της νεoελληνικής λογοτεχνίας, Athens 1973, p. 249-250.
ordeal of the lost Asia Minor campaign are recorded by Ilias Venezis
in Νούμερο 31 328 (Number 31 328, 1931) -a literary relation of his
fourteen months as a Turkish POW and Stratis Doukas in Ιστορία
ενός αιχμαλώτου (History of a prisoner, 1929).60 Doukas chose
a form of internal monologue by the narrator, Nikolaos Kozakoglou,
an authentic witness who makes the whole text more reliable with
his own testimony and allowing the author – Doukas – to sign it
“Kozakoglou” at the end of the book.61 Merging fiction with personal,
often painful episodes, opened texts to autobiographical elements:
authors (and readers alike) who took part in decisive, future-shaping,
historical and social events, did not refrain from becoming involved
in politics. This autobiographical trait has stayed in Modern Greek
letters ever since.62
The aforementioned opening up to Western literary ideas,
orchestrated so successfully by the Generation of 1930,63 had is prede-
cessors. Already in 1917 Konstantinos Chatzopoulos had published
Φθινόπωρο (Autumn), an elusive, symbolic novel, full of sugges-
tions and ambiguous dialogues. His readers were therefore forced
60
M. Vitti, Historia literatury nowogreckiej, p. 335. These two novels are placed
in the very centre of “war literature” by the important critic Apostolos Sachinis:
cf. Α. Σαχίνης, Η σύγχρονη πεζογραφία μας (Our contemporary prose), Athens
1951, p. 140-141.
61
62
Examples are numerous, like the oeuvre of Dimitris Nolas, who
translated his style of life (compared to that of beatniks) into novels and short
stories. Similarly Giannis Kiourtakis, whose Σαν μυθιστόρημα (Like a novel,
1995) is a successful example of autobiographical elements woven into a narrative
polyphony. Some introduce even a “meta-autobiography” that is they create
a protagonist who writes an autobiography: see L. Athanasiou-Krikelis, Twisting
the Story: Margarita Karapanou’s Rien ne va plus and Amanda Michalopoulou’s Θα
ήθελα as Metaautobiographical Novels, “Journal Of Modern Greek Studies” 34
(2016), no. 1, p. 103-129. Michalopoulou does not stop surprising. Her latest work,
an autobiographical novel, Μπαροκ (Baroque, 2018) is the story of her life told
backwards.
63
Cf. the statement by Vassilis Lambropuolos: “It reflects the militantly
ethnocentric reaction of mainstream Greek literature and criticism against the
radical trends in Western art during the first twenty years of the century, a reaction
of panic which accounts for the total absence of an avant-garde movement in
Greece”. V. Lambropoulos, Literature As National Institution: Studies in the Politics
of Modern Greek Criticism, Princeton, NJ 2014, p. 139.
26 Introduction
to commune with a text that was neither literal nor explicit. During
the interwar period, subsequent novelties were introduced, such as
automatic writing (practised for instance by Andreas Embririkos),
psychological novels with a developed – or encompassing – internal
monologue (Kosmas Politis, Eroica, 1937)64 or the psychoanalytical
inspirations, present in the oeuvre of the controversial M. Karagat-
sis,65 a novelist drawing from the ideas of libido and death instinct.
These experiments have not ceased and among such audacious
writers one could name Giannis Skarimbas who parodied the form
of the novel (in Mariampas), Melpo Axioti, Nikos Gavriil Pantzikis
and Renos (Apostolidis),66 all of whom decided to use chronologi-
cal disturbances, text fragmentation and references to themselves,
introducing prose into the realm of meta-fiction (though, as already
stated their innovation had already been foreshown by several ithog-
raphy writers). Within this group is also to be included Aris Alexan-
drou, the author of the ground-breaking Το κυβώτιο (The mission
box, 1974), a novel he continued writing for many years waiting for
the right political climate to publish it. The text is an allegory of the
Greek civil war (‘Emfilio’),67 described in Kafkaesque style: the pro-
tagonist, a partisan, imprisoned because he failed on a mission that
was to transport a mysterious box, is writing subsequent reports for
64
65
It is the pseudonym of Dimitrios Rodopoulos. The initial “M.” is not
expendable. Cf. K. Βίγκλας, Το γράμμα Μ. στο ψευδώνυμο του Καραγάτση ως
σύμβολο της ποιητικότητας και της διαφοράς (The letter M. in Karagatsis pseu-
donym as a symbol of creativity and being different), “Διαπολιτισμός. Ελληνικό
ηλεκτρονικό περιοδικό για τη Λογοτεχνία”, https://tinyurl.com/karagatsis,
DOA: 2/12/2016.
66
H. Tonnet, Ιστορία του ελληνικού μυθιστορήματος, p. 282. Renos
Apostolidis uses often only his name to sign his texts.
67
On World War Two, the civil war and ensuing period of reconstruction
see e.g. Cf. R. Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, p. 118-143; C.M. Woodhouse,
Modern Greece…, p. 239-260; P. Hradečný, Dějiny Řecka, Praga 1998, p. 424-447 and
Greece in the 1940s. A Nation in Crisis, J. Iatrides (ed.), London 1981; M. Mazower,
Inside Hitler’s Greece. The Experience of Occupation 1941-1944, New Haven, CT 1993;
M. Petrakis, Metaxas Myth: Dictatorship and Propaganda in Greece, London 2006;
D. Brewer, Greece, the Decade of War: Occupation, Resistance and Civil War, London-
New York, NY 2016.
his prosecutor in order to justify the fiasco that took place.68 The novel
consists of these reports, each of them less and less orderly, the last
one transforms into a stream of consciousness of the desperate cap-
tive. Alexandrou, for the sake of surprise, blurs the chronology and
keeps some key elements of the plot hidden from the reader.69
In Greece there proved to be no ground for experiments like
the nouveau roman (αντί-μυθιστόρημα, “anti-novel” – here only
the books of Kostoula Mitropoulou are mentioned in this context),70
instead the symbolic novel flourished, due to works by Spyros Plask-
ovitis or Antonis Samarakis. They both wrote allusive texts with
a political slant that conveyed the stifling atmosphere of post-war
and post-civil-war Greece, democratic, only in theory, due to the lack
of the left wing of the political scene.71
The last several decades have belonged to a circle of writers
that are sometimes called postmodernists.72 One of them is Filippos
68
E. Kantzia, Literature as Historiography: The Boxful of Guilt, [in:] Modern
Greek Literature. Critical Essays, G. Nagy, A. Stavrakopoulou (eds.), New York–
London 2003, p. 115-132.
69
The box proves to be empty. Vangelis Raptopoulos states that Alexandrou’s
idea is a great allegory for “the adventure that is literature”: it is not the contents
that count, but the readers – their efforts and their contribution. Δ. Ραπτόπουλος,
Το άδειο κιβώτιο κάθε περιπέτειας (An empty box for every adventure), [in:]
idem, Λίγη ιστορία τηε νεοελληνικής λογοτεχνίας (A little history of Modern
Greek literature), Athens 2005, p. 187.
70
In the study on the “new novel”, written in 1972, Apostolos Sachinis
does not mention any Greek writers. Cf. Α. Σαχίνης, Το Roman Nouveau και
το σύγχρονο μυθιστόρημα (The roman nouveau and the contemporary prose),
Athens 1972. Linos Politis complains that though, thematically, post-war prose
is more interesting than poetry, the formal achievements of the West are not
exploited in Greece (“έμειναν [...] ανεκμετάλλευτα”): cf. Λ. Πολίτης, Ιστορία
της Νεοελληνικής λογοτεχνίας, Athens 1985 (4th ed.), p. 346.
71
The allusions included in the text of that types were often of a makeshift
character: today these novels are read as a document of a certain historical period,
for instance Το φράγμα by S. Plaskovitis (The barrage, 1960) is a camouflaged cri-
tique of Konstantinos Karamanlis’s grand economic plans and the financial scan-
dals that ensued. B. Merry, Encyclopedia of Modern Greek Literature, p. 335.
72
Charilena Tourna concentrated on the Generation of 1980, especially its
poetry, examining the fascination of the authors with the various aspects and
consequences of cultivating a postmodern approach. She emphasizes mainly the
output by poets: Charis Vlavianos, Giorgos Blanas, Pantelis Boukalas, Thanasis
Chatzopoulos and Dimitris Chouliarakis, though she does not omit prose, Sotiris
28 Introduction
Drakontaidis, an author who describes his own textual creations as

“readings” (ανάγνωσμα), “naive story” (αφηγήσις αφελής) or
“something like a novel” (σαν μυθιστόρημα).73 Games with form char-
acterize the books by Eugenia Fakinou: in the novel Ποιος σκότωσε τον
Μόμπυ Ντικ (Who killed Moby Dick, 2001) she builds a complicated
construction of texts within texts and blurs borders not only between
layers of narration, but between what is real (though fictional) and
what is fantastic.74 The book by Thanassis Valtinos Μπλε βαθύ, σχεδόν
μαύρο (Deep blue, almost back 1985) is a recording of the thoughts of
a woman who has just taken sleeping pills while another one, Τρία
ελληνικά μονόπρακτα (Three Greek one-acters, 1978) consists only
of dialogues – though it is not a dramatic text. Giorgos Cheimonas,
a psychiatrist with a university degree, studies the limits of expres-
sion in the written word and deprives the worlds he depicts of any
“scenography”: the protagonists of his texts live and act beyond any
concrete time or place. Alexandros Schinas in Αναφορά περιπτώσεων
(Report on cases, 1966)75 included texts with a deeply hidden narra-
tive layer, obsessively concentrated on language. The theatrical critic
Paris Takopoulos is the author of Κενή Διαθήκη (Empty Testament,
in various versions, since 1973),76 a text that due to its complexity
and mysteriousness (as well as its illegibility!) is compared to James
Joyce’s Finnegans’ Wake. In the introduction Takopoulos’s friend, the
writer and politician Panagiotis Kanellopulos, writes:
Οι περισσότερες από τις λέξεις που χρησιμοποιεί ο Τακόπουλος

στην Κενή Διαθήκη δε βρίσκονται στο ελληνικό λεξιλόγιο.
Πρόκειται για μιαν ελληνική Εσπεράντο (ή Ντεζεσπεράντο,
όπως θα έλεγε ο ίδιος), για ένα πρωτότυπο μουσικό λόγο, που
Dimitriou, Vangelis Raptopoulos and Christos A. Chomenidis, among others.

Symptomatically in her source bibliography she mentions just three women, all
poets. Χ. Τουρνά, Ο μεταμοντερνισμός και η Γενιά του ‘80 (Postmodernism and
the Generation of 1980), Athens 2018.
73
A full list of his works is to be found on the authors homepage: http://
www.philipdracodaidis.gr/works (DOA: 2/12/201).
74
B. Merry, Encyclopedia of Modern Greek Literature, p. 138. Cf. p. 185.
75
A selection of short prose texts by Cheimonas is available on the webpage
http://boubouni.com/anaforap/ (DOA: 2/12/2016).
76
The full text on the novel is available on the webpage http://www.diortho-
seis.gr/vivlio/keni_diathiki (DOA: 2/12/2016).
ωστόσο απαρτίζεται από ελληνικούς φθόγγους, και που – σαν

κάθε μουσική– θέλει να πη περισσότερα από όσα μπορούν να
πουν οι καθιερωμένες λέξεις.77
Most words Takopoulos uses in the Empty Testament are not to be
found in the Modern Greek language vocabulary. We are talking
here about t type of Greek[-based] esperanto (or desesperanto as the
author would say), an original musical language, that admittedly
consists of Greek sounds, but – like ever kind of music – wants to say
more than words – with fixed meanings – are able to.
In experimental writing, more impressive than their quality – or even

sense is the number of innovations.78 But despite a number of innova-
tive forms the bulk of Modern Greek prose concentrates on discuss-
ing the past.79 Ever since the modernity-inclined 1930s, stories about
recent events have been common – no surprise, as the wave of ten-
sions, wars and deportations has been as high as never. But there are
authors who reach into a deeper past. Terzakis wrote the monumental
Πριγκιπέσσα Ιζαμπώ (Princess Ysabeau, 1938, improved version in
1945), a novel that just like the one by Rizos Rangavis draws gener-
ously from the Chronicle of Morea. World War Two, along with the civil
war (and the ensuing subsequent wave of extradition and emigration)
dominate the subjects of the post war novel “For Greek writers the
war lasted for thirty years”80 said – quoted by Vittti – the prose writer
and critic Alexandros Kotzias, pointing to the engagement of authors
in politics and constant reinterpretations of past events. Literature
becomes openly ideological, there emerge novels with theses. As the
Greeks face the reality of factual censorship, that expressing certain
views can remove a text or a writer from public discourse, novels with
a key (roman à clef) appear and the most famous of those is arguably
Z by Vassilis Vassilikos (1966).81 Other writers, just as in the interwar
77
Π. Κανελλόπουλος, Εισαγωγή (Introduction), [in:] Π. Τακόπουλος,
Κενή Διαθήκη, Athens 1973, p. 11.
78
R. Beaton, Εισαγωγή στην νεοελληνική λογοτεχνία, p. 322. See thoughts
on the crucial importance of “being readerly” in experimental literature, p. 123.
79
B. Merry, Encyclopedia of Modern Greek Literature, p. 297. Bruce Merry calls
the novel by Kotzias Αντιποίησις Αρχής (Usurping power, 1979) – “revisionist”.
The text is built around the tragic events of the National Technical School in
Athens in 1973. The main (anti-)hero is a confidante of the government.
80
M. Vitti, Historia literatury nowogreckiej, p. 465.
81
Cf. p. 78.
30 Introduction
period, dress their turbulent biographies in the form of a novel and

relate struggles, war campaigns, occupations and persecutions.
Giannis Beratis wrote Πλατύ ποτάμι (Broad river, 1966), where he
relates events from the beginning of Greece’s World War Two, on the
Italo-Albanian front. Dimitris Chatzis – in emigration for almost thirty
years – comes back ceaselessly to the pictures from the civil war. In
Greece Valtinos in the novel Κάθοδος των εννιά (The descent of the
nine82, 1959) deconstructs the legend and heroism of Emfilio partici-
pants showing a group of partisans escaping though the Peloponne-
sian mountains: they despair, lose their way and die one after another.
The degradation of human relations under German and Italian occu-
pation is analysed by Kotzias in Πολιορκία (Siege, 1953), while the life
of former soldiers and partisans after the war is of interest to Andreas
Frangias in Η καγκελόπορτα (Metal gate, 1962). Some, tracing the
steps of Terzakis reach farther: Dido Sotiriou in Ματωμένα χώματα
(Bloody earth, 1962) returns to the Asia Minor catastrophe while Pana-
giotis Kanellopoulos’s protagonists in Γεννήθηκα το 1402 (I was born
in 1402, 1958) relive the fall of Constantinople. Byzantium will be an
important background almost three decades later in Maro Douka’s
Ο σκούφος από πορφύρα (A cap of purple, 1995, translated to Eng-
lish in 2003 as Come forth, king), but this time as a pretext for historio-
graphical consideration.83 In our times there is still some attraction in
Stratis Tsirkas’s trilogy Ακυβέρνητες πολιτείες (Drifting cities, 1961-
1965, English translation in 1974) devoted to the Greek populations in
the Near East (one of the sub-plots is the mutiny in the Greek army
stationed in Cairo). There is War scenery here, but as an excuse for an
intricate psychological, intermingling set of novels.
82
The title relates to Xenofon’s phrase used in his Anabasis: “the march of
ten thousand” (κάθοδος των Μυρίων).
83
Similarly Thanasis Petsalis-Diomedis is, in his novels, interested in Byzantine
and Osman times. In 1960 he published a long novel on the Mavrolikos family, a saga
dating from 1565 until 1799. He then added the next volumes that extended the
history of this fictional family until the times of the Greek Revolution, and beyond.
Cf. Α. Σαχίνης, Νεοελληνική πεζογραφία του ‘30 (Greek prose of the 1930s),
Athens 1977, p. 123-124. A curious proposition is a crime story that takes place in 9th
century Byzantium – Το εβενινό λαούτο (Ebony lyra, 2003), written by a professor
of Byzantine studies, Panagiotis Agapitos. The book was translated into French and
also into Czech, along with the continuation – Ο χάλκινος οφθαλμός (Bronze eye,
2006). The trilogy is crowned with Μεδούσα από σμάλτο (Enamel Medusa, 2009).
Arguably, the most famous historical novel of contemporary

times is Ο βίος του Ισμαήλ Φερίκ Πασά (The life of Ismail Ferik
Pasha: spina nel cuore, 1989) by Rea Galanaki. It is a story of two Cre-
tans – brothers. One of them is kidnapped by the Turks as a child84
and becomes an Osman soldier, the other one fights for Greek free-
dom. Their fates cross again during the Cretan Insurrection in 1866.
The book undertakes such topics as the question of identity and of
homeland as notions that are never obvious or even sharply defined:
these allegedly historical problems are still valid.85 Equally enlight-
ening is Alexios Panselinos’s Ζαΐδα ή Η καμήλα στα χιόνια (Zaida
or the camel in the snow, 1996), a book that at first appears to be an
adventure novel but in fact is about the Europe of the early 19th cen-
tury from the historically important perspective of preparations for
the Greek Revolution and – mostly – about the discovery of Greece
by the West. A similar example might Isidoros Zourgos’s Αηδονόπιτα
(2008), a novel about an American in the Greek Revolution.
Greek prose can be justly characterized as inclined towards real-
ism, that is toward the depiction of reality, contemporary or past.
For Tonnet the conclusion is simple: the novel in Greece is in fact
a mirror of “true reality”, however defined, with a small condiment
of a fantastic element which – one cannot forget – never plays a dom-
inating role.86 Negligence of texts that do not aim at representing or
mimicking what is real can be seen in the attitude of the world of
Greek literary criticism towards popular or genre literature: towards
crime stories, horror, adventure, romance or the fantastic. Such texts
are commonly called παραλογοτεχνία – ‘paraliterature’:87 prose that
leaves the realm of realism is lesser literature and should occupy
84
It immediately brings to mind, to a Greek reader, the phenomenon of
paidomazoma from the period of Turkocracy. It was the forceful conscription of
Christian children by Ottoman authorities in order to incorporate them into the
fanatical elite infantry formations who were blindly faithful to the sultan.
85
Y. Batsaki, In “Third Space”. Between Crete and Egypt in Rhea’s Galanaki The
Life of Ismail Ferik Pasha, online publication by Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard
University, https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5711 (DOA: 2/10/2018).
86
H. Tonnet, Ιστορία του ελληνικού μυθιστορήματος, p. 290-291.
87
Γ.Ν. Παρίνης, SV. παραλογοτεχνία, [in:] Λεξικό νεοελληνικής
λογοτεχνίας. Πρόσωπα – έργα – ρεύματα – όροι (Lexicon of Modern Greek
literature. People – works – currents – notions), Σ. Πατάκης (ed.) [later: Patakis
Lexicon], Athens 2007, p. 1726-1728.
32 Introduction
a marginal position or worse than that: it is adjacent to literature, but

it is not literature. Critics sometimes distinguish the Greek equivalent
of “magical realism”: they so label certain the works of Maria Kara-
panou, several novels of Christos A. Chomenidis and most of all – in
a way – the model novel by Ziranna Zateli Και με το φως του λύκου
επανέρχονται (With the light of the wolf [i.e. with the dusk], they
return, 1993), a family saga infused with magic. A number of writ-
ers, especially those who also write poetry are classified as surrealist
prose writers – or are at least characterized by drawing from surre-
alism (Embirikos and – partly – Axioti, Skarimbas, Beratis). In the
prose opposing realism there is also fantastic literature, most of all
science fiction, virtually non-existent in Greece though, at the begin-
ning of the genre. SF historians often evoke Lucian from Samostata
and his dialogue Ikaromenippos or above the clouds (2nd century AD).88
In Modern Greek letters the dawn of this genre is usually traced to
the bountiful oeuvre of Dimosthenis Voutiras89 (a short story Από τη
Γη στον Άρη, From Earth to Mars, 1929 and others) and its mature
form is seen in the creations of the most popular SF writers – and
one of the few – Ioanna Bourazopoulou. The fans of such books are
concentrated around several periodicals (the first, “Αναλόγιο”, was
first issued in 1976) and regional literary clubs – in Ioannina and in
Athens, they read – in Modern Greek translation – books written by
foreign authors. As for the sub-genre, the globally popular fantasy –
so far there is no Greek author who has distinguished herself or him-
self in that field. Therefore the case of Bourazopoulou is doubly unu-
sual, because in the history of Modern Greek letters female writers
are scarce. Tonnet wrote about this phenomenon directly: when he
decided to mention only one female writer in his ample History of the
Greek Novel. He mentions solely Melpo Axioti, the only one – accord-
ing to him – who managed to leave the ghetto of “woman writing”
(which is supposed to be defined by family themes and sentimental
88
D. Budzanowska-Weglenda, Ikaromenippos – starożytny dialog o locie na
Księżyc i do niebiańskiej siedziby bogów (Ikaromenippos – an ancient dialogue on
a flight to the Moon and to the celestial seat of the gods), [in:] Narracje fantastyczne
(Fantastic narrations), K. Olkusz, K.M. Maj (eds.), Kraków 2017, p. 557-572.
89
tones)90 and whose novel Θέλετε να χορέψομε, Μαρία (Let’s dance,

Maria, 1940, extended edition in 1967), where a woman is cast as the
chief protagonist, belongs to the mainstream of Modern Greek let-
ters and it develops them. Tonnet’s sentence appears unjustly harsh
(though even in my short note female writers are much less numer-
ous than male ones):91 the French literature theoretician omitted such
important contributors as Pinelopi Delta, the author of many histori-
cal novels addressed mainly to younger readers,92 or Margarita Liber-
aki with a still circulating book Ψάθινα καπέλα (Straw hats),93 a story
about various ways of coming of age. Nor does he mention Mimi
Kranaki who in Contre-temps (1947) created a psychological portrait of
a female artist and managed to weave elements of musical literature
into her narration. There were female authors who scandalized audi-
ences with their works, such as Margarita Karapanou, the daughter
of Liberaki, who in Η Κασσάνδρα και ο Λύκος (Cassandra and the
wolf, 1976) raised the subject of sexuality in children, Ersi Sotiropou-
lou who had her novel Ζιγκ ζαγκ στις νεραντζιές (Zigzag through
the bitter orange trees 1999) withdrawn from the school libraries due
to the lobbying of conservative and church circles or Lena Kitsopou-
lou, who wrote a collection of short stories Νυχτερίδες (Bats, 2006,
translated into Polish in 2013). Her short book is a collection of brave,
unflinching texts that expose the monstrosities of the human psyche,
describes dysfunctional families in extreme situations and denounce
corruption.94 But still opinions on the writing of women seem not to
have improved with time (Tonnet wrote his ominous words only in
1996!) and one can still have the impression that the style of the first
Greek contention on the place of women in literature still remains
90
Ibidem, p. 253.
91
Alki Zei in young adult Αρραβωνιαστικά του Αχιλλέα (Achilles’ fiancée,
1987), created a character of a young, disillusioned communist woman and
according to Vassilis D. Anagnostopoulos and Walter Puchner – the editors of
the Patakis Lexicon – successfully combined in one text “literature that is at once
feminine and political”. Cf. Β.Δ. Αναγνωστόπουλος, Β. Πούχνερ, SV. Ζέη, Άλκη,
[in:] Patakis Lexicon, p. 770-771.
92
M. Spanaki, Byzantium and the Novel in the Twentieth Century: from Penelope
Delta to Maro Douka, [in:] Byzantium and the Modern..., p. 119-130.
93
R. Beaton, Εισαγωγή στην νεοελληνική λογοτεχνία, p. 441-442.
94
34 Introduction
in power. A polemic flared up in 1896 between Roidis and Kalliroi

Parren, the chief editor of “Εφυμερίς των Κυριών” (The Women’s
Gazette). On the occasion of the publication of an Arsinoi Papadopou-
lou’s novel Roidis decided to explain to them what type of literature
women should write and recommended them to occupy themselves
– also in literature – with topics connected to housekeeping.95 Maybe
that is why a century later Amanda Michalopoulou, the inventive
prosaic who reaches in her text far and beyond women and family
topics – as well as – beyond Greece,96 in her first novel Γιάντες (Wish-
bone, 1996) is devoted to gastronomy and her narrators comprise
a melon, parsley leaves and other food. One of the loudest female
voices in post-war literature – translated into many languages, Pol-
ish included, proved to be a novel written by a man, Kostas Tachtis
Το τρίτο στεφάνι (Third wedding, 1962, Polish edition entitled Obyś
trzech mężów miała in 1994), an audacious story of three generations of
women, written in seemingly non-literary language.
One of the features of the Modern Greek literary world is that
authors not infrequently combine the role of the creator and of the
critic, which could be exemplified by the case of Nasos Vagenas, who
is not only a poet, a translator and populariser of foreign literature
(he is responsible for the introduction of Jorge Luis Borges’s works to
the Greek literary world) but also an academic teacher at the National
and Kapodistrian University of Athens, a productive critic and lit-
erary theoretician. Both worlds, that of theory and that of practice,
meet in many literary periodicals: writers take part in contests, critics
95
Ε. Ροΐδης, Αι γράφουσαι Ελληνίδες (Greek women writers), Απάντα
(Collected works), v. V, Athens 1978, p. 121-131. Several thoughts regarded as
misogynistic are in fact toned down by Roidis himself. Cf. D. Tzanaki, Women and
Nationalism in the Making of Modern Greece. The Founding of the Kingdom to the Greco-
Turkish War, London 2009, p. 123.
96
As Greek prose rarely takes readers outside of the Greek “comfort
zone”, all the more original is the collection of short stories by Markos Lazaridis,
Ο Σταυρός του Νότου (The Southern Cross, 1952), the record of the author’s
experiences in Africa. One of authors in the Patakis Lexicon, Alexis Ziras thinks
that it was a proposition for an audience that wanted to “be unhooked from Greek
reality” (να απαγκιστρωθεί από την ελληνική πραγματικότητα): Α. Ζήρας,
SV. Λαζαρίδης, Μάρκος, [in:] Patakis Lexicon, p. 1207-1208. Among contemporary
“travelling” writers one can name Soti Triandafilou or Dimosthenis Kourtovik,
and also writers that live and write as emigrants, like Vassilis Alexakis.
review their subsequent works and try to describe comprehensively

their oeuvre or a fragment of it. Within a few successive issues the
roles will switch.97 The reason for such a “table-changing game” is
not the paucity of the literary scene (it is, in fact, quite broad), but
rather the importance of philology as a discipline: studying it and
cultivating it is for the Greeks of great significance and a reason to be
proud and to take the floor: both as a creator and as a commentator.
The critic’s role is a makeshift one – it relates to a single, concrete
book, more seldom one writer and even more seldom the object of its
reflection becomes the whole current or period. It is no coincidence
that some of the basic reports on Modern Greek literature have been
written by foreigners: Tonnet, Beaton and Vitti. The most important
Greek literary historians who decided to write cross-sectional studies
are Linos Politis who specializes in the poetry of the Ionian Islands
and a renowned specialist in the Greek Enlightenment, Konstan-
tinos Th. Dimaras (who ended his research in the 1940s).98 In 2005
the Patakis editions were published. The Patakis Lexicon consists of
more than 2500 pages and contains the most important information
on Modern Greek literature in the form of dictionary lemmas.99 It is
symptomatic of the character of thought on Modern Greek literature
that its main Greek-language source is a multi-authored set of hun-
dreds upon hundreds of lexicon entries. Only in 2018 or 2019 is a new
history of Modern Greek letters by a philologist from the Athenian
University, Dimitrios Angelatos supposed to be published. He is the
first to attempt to describe the literary phenomena of the early 21st
century thoroughly.
97
98
Κ. Θ. Δημαράς, Ιστορία της Νεοελληνικής Λογοτεχνίας… and
Λ. Πολίτης, Ιστοριά της Νεοελληνικής Λογοτεχνίας. There is also a monumental,
8-volume work by Alexandros Argyriou, which proposes an analytical and very
detailed approach, but is not particularly useful, as it does not propose any
conclusions (in the last volumes the author’s contribution is commenting on the
contents of literary periodicals). There is also Greece. Books and Writers (collective
publication, prepared by E.KE.BI.), but it was written in English for the sake of
visitors to the Greek stand in the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2001 (Greece was the
Guest of Honour) and contains rather basic and sample information.
99
Cf. p. 31.
36 Introduction
Historians that synthesize the fortunes of Modern Greek letters

usually finish their reasoning around the end of the years of the jun-
ta,100 with Greece coming back to a democratic system and joining
the EEC. The Greek literature of this period is very diverse, cha-
otic, and unidentified, this is a period that broke numerous custom
taboos and successive formal limitations, a period that left inward-
ness in favour of thinking about collective history,101 a period with
impressive quantitative output. Tonnet writes directly about the
“prose explosion” after 1974.102 Beaton, for his part, shows the revis-
iting of the literary canon and numerous attempts at a re-reading
of many, seemingly forgotten classics that have been interpreted in
only one, “fair” way, and now receive new, refreshing, frequently
audacious, or even barely related explanations, sometimes attrib-
uted to postmodernists103 and others. These original re-readings
involve monumental writers, such as Roidis, Papadiamandis or
Pitsipios.104 More and more often there appear books that have
achieved recognition not only in Greece, but – sometimes mainly
– abroad, like a bold approach on the junta and the aftermath of its
100
On the junta and its role in the politics of the Cypriot Republic see e.g.
R. Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, p. 162-168; C.M. Woodhouse, Modern Greece...,
p. 295-305 and C.M. Woodhouse, The Rise and Fall of the Greek Colonels, London
1985. Cf. also P. Osiewicz, Konflikt cypryjski (The Cypriot conflict), Warsaw 2013.
101
Dimitris Tziovas writes: “In Greece, however, where the sense of com-
munity has survived longer, many reformists argue that the development of
a ‘civil society’ is still incomplete”. And he adds that only after 1974 “[in] Greek
fiction, characters tend to be self-centred, self-indulgent, seeking private mean-
ings, individual happiness, and personal ideals”. D. Tziovas, National Imaginary,
Collective Identity, and Individualism in Greek Fiction, [in:] idem, The Other Self.
Selfhood and Society in Modern Greek Fiction, Lanham-Boulder-New York-Oxford
2003, p. 15, 25.
102
H. Tonnet, Ιστορία του ελληνικού μυθιστορήματος, p. 355. Cf. also Γενιά
του ‘70. Τ. Β’ πεζά (The Generation of 1970. Volume II. Prose), Γ.Α. Παναγιώτου
(ed.), Athens 1979.
103
R. Beaton, Εισαγωγή στην νεοελληνική λογοτεχνία, p. 24. Nasos Vagenas
states that at least within Modern Greek letters postmodernism is the realm of crit-
ics, not authors: it is the critics, post factum, that attribute postmodern sympathies
to an author. N. Βαγενάς, Μεταμοντερνισμός και λογοτεχνία (Postmodernism
and literature), Athens 2002, p. 83-85.
104
See e.g. D. Tziovas, Palaiologos’s O Polypathis: Picaresque (Auto)biography as
a National Romance, [in:] The Other Self…, p. 55-82.
atrocities in Η ανάκριση (The interrogation, 2008) by Ilias Maglin-

is,105 crime stories written by Petros Markaris, available in German,
but also in French, Spanish and – as of late – Polish or the globally
popular “mathematical” books by Apostolos Doxiadis. Moreover,
literature written in Greek by Cypriot authors has started to reach
the literary mainstream. Cyprus for years remained under British
influence (gaining independence despite British reluctance did not
stop Cypriots from maintaining close links with the British: even
now on the island there are two territories – British military bases –
excluded from Cypriot state jurisdiction) and its relation to Modern
Greek letters remains unclear.106 However certain Cypriot writers,
such as Emilios Solomou (laureate of European Prize in Literature
for 2013) is not only read in Greece, he also writes novels set in
Greece. His last work, Το μίσος είναι μισή εκδίκηση (Hatred is half
of revenge, 2015), targets – just like Kalligas’s work a century and
a half earlier – the problem of brigandry, the massacre of foreign
tourists turned hostages near Marathon in 1870, but also the con-
temporary crisis in Greece. Other writers of the Greek diaspora –
Greeks in the second or third generations have not givne up writing
about Greece, for instance the Australian Christos Tsiolkas or the
Americans Jeffrey Eugenides and David Sedaris.
Linda Hutcheon introduced a term ‘imperrealism’ to denote
a situation, where realism and the realistic poetics were equated with
the genre of narrative fiction.107 It went without saying that the reality
105
For its recent analysis see P.F. Barbeito, Screaming Skin: The Body, Perfor-
mance, and the Junta’s Legacy of Torture in Elias Maglinis’s The Interrogation, “Journal
of Modern Greeek Studies” 33 (2015), no. 2, p. 215-239.
106
M. Borowska, Panorama greckojęzycznej literatury Cypru, (Panorama of
Cypriot literature in Greek), [in:] Cypr – dzieje, literatura, kultura (Cyprus: history,
literature, culture), M. Borowska et al. (eds.), v. II, Warsaw 2014, p. 44. Cf. also
the question of relation between Greek and Cypriot literature: Γ. Κεχαγιόγλου,
Λ. Παπαλεοντίου, Ιστορία της Νεότερης Κυπριακής Λογοτεχνίας (History of
modern Cypriot literature), Nicosia 2010. On the Cyprus question in general see
e.g. P. Osiewicz, Konflikt cypryjski.
107
L. Hutcheon, Metafictional Implications for Novelistic Reference’, [in:] On
Referring in Literature, A. Whiteside, M. Issacharoff (eds.), Bloomington, IN 1987,
p. 1-13. See also K.M. Maj, Światy poza światem. Od świata przedstawionego do nar-
racji światocentrycznej (Worlds beyond the world. From the represented world to
world-centred narration), [in:] Narracje fantastyczne, p. 15-20.
38 Introduction
of fiction meant that a fictional, imagined object was pointed toward

probability and then toward reality, toward true existence. And
though it did not exist, it could be, among objects already in exist-
ence. It would not be distinguished, nor any different and it would fit
seamlessly into the surrounding, tangible reality.
I would propose the working term ‘Grealism’, a common, almost
universal aspiration of Modern Greek prose writers who draw their
prose fictions from reality. For them (and, which follows – for their
readers) literature is not a space for games, jokes, or experiments. It is
to be read to broaden experience and sensibility, it is to take part in the
life of its readers, to teach them or provoke them. Its role is not merely
instructing, but shaping – not tastes, but attitudes. It is not a place for
mental tourism, nor escapist day-dreaming. It is for the here and now,
it is for a Greek to face his or her politics, history, tradition and to
come out victorious from the encounter: wiser, better – “Greeker”.
The spirit of Stendhal and his idea of “un mirror [...] sur une grande
route”,108 as well as Émile Zola’s postulate equating grandeur and the
moral value of a literary work with its ability to render the truth,109
seem unquestionably valid. From this point of view, the bulk of Mod-
ern Greek prose would be typical, as it would address a common
convention – that of “Greek reality”. And it may not necessarily fall
into several formulaic categories (in John G. Cawelti’s sense),110 nor
it would obligatorily follow any grand plot structure (as stated for
example by Christopher Booker),111 the background of its plots: their
scenographies, props and ideologies would be to a point convergent.
On the other hand, a realism that is too advanced, one based on the
ideas stated for example by Flaubert or Taine, who postulated a more
strict connection of prose to scientific objectivism112 has not found
here many followers, even in theory. Moreover, the Greeks have val-
ued originality and a certain distinctiveness and one of its symptoms
is their approach to terminology. When in the 19th century a Greek
108
Le Rouge et le Noir, vol. II, ch. XIX.
109
Le roman experimental, Paris 1902 (orig. 1893), p. 35.
110
See footnote 116 on p. 40.
111
Ch. Booker, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, London 2004.
112
See H. Markowski, Teorie powieści za granicą. Od początków do schyłku
XX wieku (Theories of the novel abroad. From the beginning until the end of the
20th century), Warsaw 1995, p. 147-150.
equivalent for ‘novel’ was sought, the language nomothetists did not
choose to emphasize the novelty of such a literary form (Italian novella,
and English novel), nor its alleged Roman provenance (French roman,
Czech román), nor even the fact that it is after all a kind of recounted
story (Polish powieść). In the chosen, or rather coined, Modern Greek
term – ‘μυθιστόρημα’113 – that is a compound of words for ‘myth,
fable, plot’ (μύθος) and ‘history’ (ιστορία) – they point to the fact that
there is the matter of the coexistence, within a novel, of two factors:
the fictional (mythical, fairy-tale) one and the historical one: an imagi-
nary plane and a real plane.114 So already within the very term for the
novel there is included the idea that such a text reflects reality.115
There are some writers who – from my perspective – decided

not to give in to the demands of Grealism and went their own way.
My goal is to show four such examples, a number of works written
by four living authors who parted ways when writing about Greek-
ness and Greek reality. I will present these writers in their sequence
of seniority, as they represent subsequent generations, beginning
with Vassilis Vassilikos (born in 1934). As a prose writer Vassilikos
likes to play with form, however what attracts most the attention of
readers and researchers alike is the abundance of polysemic sym-
bolism. Thanks to an original structure, to language full of compli-
cated metaphors and to pungent satire Vassilikos constructs plots
that have engaged recipients equally firmly in the 1960s and today.
The second writer is Vassilis Alexakis (born in 1943), whose
life and creations are suspended between Greece and France,
113
Korais initially proposed the term “μυθιστορία”, see footnote 115.
114
Cf. M. Borowska, Wstęp (Introduction), [in:] A. Korais, Papatrechas,
p. 25-26; Δ. Τζιόβας, Από την μυθιστορία στο μυθιστόρημα. Για μια θεωρία της
ελληνικής αφήγησης (From «mythistoria» to «mythistorima». About the theory
of Greek narration), [in:] Από τον Λεάνδρο στο Λούκη Λαρά (From Leandros to
Loukis Laras), Ν. Βαγενάς (ed.), Iraklio 1997, p. 9-31.
115
The Greek neologism for ‘novel’ has been creatively contested and one
of the most famous attempts is the poem collection Μυθιστορήμα by Giorgos Sef-
eris, a selection that surely cannot be translated as “A novel”. Instead it comes back
to the etymological base of the term, underlining its precarious balance between
what is factual and what is fictional (1935). Or, as the translator, Edmund Keeley
wanted, a narrative (i.e. ‘a history’) that is mythical. See E. Keeley, Seferis and the
“Mythical Method”, “Comparative Literature Studies” 6 (1969), no. 2, p. 109-126.
40 Introduction
between Athens and Paris. And exactly this suspension, this in-be-
tween-ness is for Alexakis at the core of his writing. He proposes
a “between-identity” assuming that a writer – and a human – can
function, can exist between not only cities, but also nations and
cultures. In his prose he delves deep into himself and his unique
situation is subjected to cold analysis, performed through “men-
tal experiments” on himself. The distance of Alexakis from what is
Greek is his chosen perspective of a view from the outside. It creates
distance, but with constant looking back.
Another writer who chose his own path is Apostolos Doxiadis
(born in 1953) who chose mathematics as one of the main themes
of his literary life and has achieved international acclaim. The last,
a young writer of my choice is Christos A. Chomenidis (born in 1966),
one of the very few Greek writers that does not look down on the fan-
tastic: in his creations that could be treated as mainstream,116 there are
numerous fantastic elements applied to different purposes.117
116
The prose of the mainstream implies a form that tries to distance itself from
genre literature, the one caged in formulas (see J.G. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery and
Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture, Chicago-London 1976), impris-
oned in a forced style or convention. At the same time such a form can help in aban-
doning the traditional division between high and low literature and in freeing the
subject from sometimes pejorative descriptions, such as “popular” or “mass” litera-
ture – taken in a contemporary context. Cf. A. Fulińska, Dlaczego literatura popularna
jest popularna? (Why popular literature is popular?), “Teksty Drugie” 4 (2003), p. 55-66.
For example the Polish literary theoretician Czesław Hernas places popular literature
beneath the folk one and “highly artistic” one (Pl. wysokoartystyczna): it is this “third
one”, the worst one – Cz. Hernas, Potrzeby i metody badania literatury brukowej (Needs
and methods of researching popular literature), [in:] O współczesnej kulturze literackiej
(On contemporary literary culture), v. I, S. Żółkiewski, M. Hopfinger (eds.), Wrocław
1973, p. 15-46, especially p. 22. To this division relates Anna Martuszewska („Ta trze-
cia”. Problemy literatury popularnej / “This third one”. The problems of popular litera-
ture, Gdańsk 1997). Krzysztof Uniłowski writes in turn about “the middle literature”,
ambitious popular literature that imitates the artistic one („Proza środka”, czyli stereotyp
literatury nowoczesnej / The literature of the middle or the stereotype of modern litera-
ture, [in:] idem, Granice nowoczesności / The limits of modernity, Katowice 2006, p. 156-
196). Uniłowski states that naive literature (that does not aim at any reflection on the
part of a reader) and refined literature (that is scrutinizing) are mutually exclusive
and that both omit the important value of a text (e.g. in scrutiny one overlooks the
entertaining traits, p. 190). The fact is that what may be the most gratifying aspects of
a text for its reader may be easily omitted in theoretical analysis.
117
More about the fantastic, see p. 185ff.
All four of them made an attempt to move away from literature

turned inward: dealing with Greek reality, commenting on it, cre-
ating it, contesting it. All four of them wrote books that are fairly
accessible for a non-Greek reader who does not have to be entangled
in a local network of problems, questions and disputes, who can have
only a vague concept of Greek politics, the Greek attitude to history
(and on presenting history), who may have little or no knowledge of
the pantheon of Modern Greek heroes and anti-heroes, of facts and
myths in recent national history.
The sample is chosen in such a way that every one of the authors
I chose could point at a different strategy for refuting Grealism.
Chomenidis will apply the fantastic, Alexakis will play with for-
eignness (but also relish in vivisective autobiographism), Doxiadis
will make use of the exact sciences and Vassilikos of polysemy and
enigmas. Their ways will intersect at times: Vassilikos flirts with the
fantastic, especially in the last part of his opus magnum – the Trilogy.
Chomenidis bravely looks insides the souls of his protagonists and
concentrates more on their internal changes than on the develop-
ment of the plot. Alexakis does not refrain from academic discourse
which brings him close to what Doxiadis does.
Strategies as well as examples of escapes can be certainly dif-
ferent from the ones I have proposed. The example of Chomenidis
could be replaced by Nikos Panagiotopoulos who wrote Γονίδιο της
αμφιβολίας (The gene of doubt, 1999), a typical dystopian futur-
istic science fiction, or Nikos A. Mantis’s Άγρια Ακρόπολη (Wild
Acropolis, 2015), on a 22nd century world with cloned Neander-
thals as slaves. Vassilikos has much in common with Plaskovitis
or Samarakis – or Alexandrou, the aforementioned author of the
mysterious and experimental post-war novel. The unconventional
texts by Michel Fais or meta-fictional attempts by Panos Thodoris
or Evgenia Fakinou would also serve here as interesting examples
of texts wide open for various interpretations. Instead of Alexakis
one could point to Greek novelists who live abroad, like the crime
story writers Theodoros Kallifatides from Sweden, Greg Pelekanos
from the USA. Or Stratis Haviaras, the Greek-American poet and
prose writer whose late novels on the occupation in Greece as seen
through a child’s eyes might be compared to the transgression of
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński. However, Alexakis’s position
42 Introduction
between two cultures, combined with his adamant autobiograhism

makes his case unique.
The other strategies devised against or beside Grealism could
include “gastronomical literature” – as realized by Michalopoulou
or Andreas Staikos. Or novels that take their plots clearly outside
of Greece and outside of its issues as do Soti Triantafyllou, Dimitris
Nollas or Dimosthenis Kourtovik. Or works that skilfully contra-
dicted genre boundaries: one of the contemporary examples could
be Z213: έξοδος by Dimitris Lyacos: a journal a poetic prose, a story
belonging to the fantastic or horror stories. But the ones I decided
to present are – in my opinion – very different strategies, distanced
from one another and therefore showing a wide scope of works that
try to avoid or ignore the Grealism imperative.
Every one of the four authors belongs to a different generation
and was raised in radically different circumstances. The childhood
and adolescence of Vassilikos in World War Two and the ensuing
civil war, for Alexakis – it is his period of post-war reconstruction.
Doxiadis, ten years his junior, though he was born in Australia,
grew up in Athens and, with the coming of the junta, left for the
United States. Chomenidis was born just before the “black colo-
nels” took power and his adolescent years were in the time of the
post-junta transformation, when Greece became at last a king-less
parliamentary democracy and joined the EEC. Every one of them
plays a different role in non-literary life. Chomenidis engages in
politics, Alexakis plays the role of a Greek-French literary ambas-
sador, while Doxiadis lives in a literary-mathematic-comics subcul-
tural niche and, as of late, just like Chomenidis, is active in criticis-
ing the Greek political elites. Vassilikos, still active in creating, has
stayed an eternal scandalist: a controversial writer and media celeb-
rity. Such a sample touches on a variety of aspects in contemporary
Greek literary and cultural life.
The writing of none of them has yet been an object of deep
literary analysis in Greece and lies still beyond the main interest of
Greek literary criticism. Vassilikos was commented on while he was
young(er), Alexakis draws attention – but of the French, Doxiadis –
of the mathematicians. Chomenidis is so far left alone, maybe he is
politically too questionable? Their creations, except for those of Dox-
iadis, are not widely known outside of Greece (though, obviously,
Alexakis is well-known in France). In Poland, for example, out of

these three, Vassilikos, Alexakis and Chomenidis, only the novel
Z by the first of them has been translated.118 In English, too, the
selection of their texts is rather modest. That is why I decided on
presenting their texts in a certain amount of detail as well as pro-
viding wider contexts for their understanding and interpretation.
I feel obliged to underline, even cursorily, my own position, of
the observer from the outside: not fully equipped with various con-
texts due to my lack of systematic or life-long education received
in Greece, but also not burdened with plausible prejudices, nor
influenced by prevailing interpretations. As Michał Głowiński, an
important theoretician stated119 – a literary work might be read out-
side of the predestined context. It will be read in a different style of
reception, as the style is defined in part by the repertoire of literary
works in a given culture. My repertoire is different and it offers
me an attempt at a different reading that may or may not) discover
a new perspective.
Various tactics demanded various attitudes toward their cre-
ations. Therefore all of the four authors will be approached from
a different angle. Vassilikos’s texts are seen from the perspective
of pop-cultural reception, as he proved to be very original, for his
times, in the conception of a work that relies heavily on the recipi-
ents’ interpretation and the contexts they bring with them. That is
why I will employ elements of reception theories, as well as bring
in the voices of numerous interpreters that tried to understand
and explain Vassilikos’s labyrinths of images and meanings. Alex-
akis’s experience is not unlike that well-known to ethnographers,
who shift constantly between cultures, trying to translate one into
another, but in his case an ingredient for inspiration drawn from
his own experience, overtly exposed within his work, is impossi-
ble to be overlooked or ignored. Doxiadis is a representative of the
literary niche of “mathematical fiction”. Surprisingly, this niche in
Greek conditions is relatively more popular than anywhere else
118
V. Vassilikos, Z, trans. (from Greek) A. Chomicz, (from French) A. Danilo
wicz, Warszawa 1976. Until recently most Modern Greek prose was available for
Polish reader in translation via French or Russian, sometimes English.
119
M. Głowiński, Style odbioru (Styles of reception), Kraków 1977, p. 55ff.
44 Introduction
and I deemed it important to show his achievements in the much

wider framework of attempts that aim at combining mathematics
and literature. I also tried to categorize such attempts according
to the level of this combination, whether mathematics following
just topically or, more amply, it defines the structure of the literary
work. Finally, Chomenidis’s connection to the fantastic (in various
forms, alternative histories, the supernatural), by no mean straight-
forward, required the embedding of his texts in the rich speculative
fiction of theoretical substance, as well as a short assessment on the
uses of speculative literature. For Chomenidis employing fantas-
tic tropes and scenography is not merely entertaining, allegoric or
escapist, but it is a carefully considered means to reach conclusions
of an immediate and ideological nature. All these methods will
have surely one thing in common: following the prevailing mode of
the Modern Greek critical scene they will all be author-centred. In
a similar fashion to a Greek commentator on the literary world, I do
not intend to deprive authors of their voice nor ignore their exist-
ence: being an author in Greece is perhaps not equal (and surely
not that ephemeral) to being a television or sports celebrity, but cer-
tainly it is a visible and important public role not unlike the one
that in Modern Greek history is named “educator of the nation”.
In every case I will look at more than one text written by each of
the four of them, thus tracing thoughts that transcend one novel
and are developed in another. They are admired and recognisable,
but they are also burdened with social expectations. For that rea-
son I will conclude the book with a chapter on the most contem-
porary context – that of the economic and ensuing social crisis, as
all “my” authors have responded to it in various and interesting
ways: because, metaphorically speaking, Grealism offers two kinds
of gravity. Sooner or later it attracts writers to follow its path and,
secondly, it states that literature should be “serious”, as it is too
important to be toyed with.
As a form of prolonged prologue, before I concentrate in turn:
on Vassilikos, Alexakis, Doxiadis and Chomenidis, I will start by
presenting a slightly earlier phenomenon related to what is my
main interest. The four authors will move away from Greek real-
ity, and will ostensibly withdraw their texts from interacting with
Greekness. But I will start from a case of a novel that – instead of
describing – shaped this Greek reality, at least to some extent and

in certain circles. This is the case of Nikos Kazantzakis’s Zorba the
Greek: the most famous fictional (or rather fictionalized) Greek of all
times, the most in-rooted, vivid, colourful and harmful stereotype
of a Greek. His contribution will also provide a good perspective
from which to come back to the notion of ‘Greekness’ and as this
unfolds: it will be the best place to discuss at length what ‘Greek-
ness’ has been understood to be.
Chapter 1.
Inside the Zorba trap
On the 16th of November 2016 the President of the United States

of America, Barack Obama, who was only two months away from
stepping down, gave a speech in Athens that was enthusiastically
received both by Greek audience sitting in the Stavros Niachros
Cultural Centre, which was not yet officially open, and by those
who followed Obama’s performance on television screens. The
main theme of his speech was democracy and obviously, not acci-
dentally, it was given in Athens. Commentators immediately com-
pared it to a speech related to us by Thucydides,1 the speech that,
during the funeral of the Athenian soldiers who had died in the first
year of the war with Sparta, supposedly2 was given by Pericles. But
the attention of contemporary audience was drawn by something
else: in the first minutes of the speech, after a few jokes and a few
words pronounced in Greek, Obama said:
I came here with gratitude for all that Greece – “this small, great
world” – has given to humanity through the ages.3
“This small, great world”. Every educated Greek will immediately

have associated these words with poem Άξιον εστί (It is worthy,
1959) by Odysseas Elytis. In the first part of the poem, entitled
1
Thuc. 2,35-46.
2
Cf. e.g. C.M.J. Sicking, The General Purport of Pericles’ Funeral Oration and
Last Speech, “Hermes” 4 (1995), p. 404ff.
3
The text of the speech according to the transcript published on the White
House webpage: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/11/16/
remarks-president-obama-stavros-niarchos-foundation-cultural-center (DOA:
1/12/2016).
48 Chapter 1
Genesis, every one – apart from the first – of the seven songs that
are included, ends with the words “AΥΤΟΣ // ο κόσμος ο μικρός,
ο μέγας” (THIS world, the small one, the great one). The line
expresses both the connection between the poet and his creation (i.e.
Greece) and the relation of Greece to the world. Within the poet-cre-
ator there is Greece and within Greece there is the world.4 More-
over, Greece is not only a part of a bigger whole, but can replace
the whole. The Obama’s speech provides one more context: here is
a country, which, though small, is great, is very important for the
speaker, for the rest of the world, for democracy.
In common conception the greatness of Greece is inseparable
from its antiquity and Obama referred to this connection, thanking
the Greeks for their ancient playwrights, writers and philosophers
and above all, just like Pericles, praising democracy in the place of
its birth.
Contemporary Greekness is a topic that is far less known to
the world, and the reason for this can be placed in the geopolitical
topos of Greece as well as in its negligible economic potential. As far
as territory and population is concerned, Greece is the 10th largest
country in the European Union. No more than 11 million Greek cit-
izens, a million Cypriots and several million Greeks living in dias-
poras (in America, Germany or Australia) – are native speakers of
the Greek language. The places where Modern Greek is taught, and
especially universities with studies in neohellenist philologies are
globally few – and their number is dwindling. Few are the peo-
ple who learn Greek: in 2016 the national Certificate of Attainment
in Modern Greek (so-called Ελληνομάθεια) in 151 exam centres
worldwide was taken by only 4102 people (in 2017 – there were
4668 people in 157 centres).5 Events in the Greek world, whether
4
See also Τ. Λιγνάδης, Το „Άξιον εστί” του Ελύτη (The “Axion Esti” by Ely-
tis), Athens 1999, p. 62. The commentator of Elytis’s creation finds in these verses
echoes of Kierkegaard’s existentialism (the conception of a relation between
a specimen and a species).
5
Often these were they same candidates repeating the same level or striv-
ing for a higher one. Data based on internal correspondence of the Centre for the
Greek Language in Thessaloniki with regional exam centres (Sept. 2016 and Sept.
2017).
Inside the Zorba trap 49
political or cultural, attract the attention of a relatively small num-

ber of foreigners.
Modern Greek literature is virtually unknown, and the only
Modern Greek writers whose works have joined the global (or
rather Western) literary canon are Constantine Cavafy and Nikos
Kazantzakis.6 Paradoxically, from the Greek point of view, their
oeuvre is today of secondary importance as none of them have cre-
ated, in the sense of national or social duty, anything that would
strengthen their reception and justify their presence in, for instance,
school curricula. And – as if to adapt this criterion, of their pres-
ence in the school curriculum – both are mentioned sporadically,7
regardless of the fact that Cavafy is read worldwide, and for that
reason alone his words should be treated in Greek literature as an
absolutely unique phenomenon.8 The second of the writers, who
6
R. Nycz, Możliwa historia literatury? (A possible history of literature?),
“Teksty Drugie” 5 (2010), p. 175-177. See the expression “the Republic of letters”
in the title of the book La République mondiale des Lettres by P. Casanova, Paris 1999
(after: A. Jarmuszewicz, Współczesne badania nad recepcją literacką w kontekście liter-
atury światowej oraz pamięci kulturowej (Contemporary studies on literary reception
in the context of world literature and cultural memory), [in:] Mapy świata, mapy
ciała. Geografia i cielesność w literaturze (Maps of the world, maps of the body. Geog-
raphy and corporeality in literature), A. Jastrzębska (ed.), Kraków 2014, p. 15-32).
7
After a survey of contemporary school textbooks for secondary level
schools (available on Digital School webpage: http://ebooks.edu.gr/new/, DOA:
1/12/2016) the conclusions are quite clear. Pupils read a fragment of a Kazantzakis
text in every class of gymnasium, two parts of Report to Greco and one from Zorba
the Greek, and then in lyceum pupils come back to fragments of Zorba the Greek
in the 2nd year. Additional materials, which are optional for teachers, include
references to the travel texts written by the Cretan writer and a small fragment of
Ασκητική-Salvadores Dei. Cavafy’s poetry is represented summarily by six poems
in gymnasium and seven in lyceum, while another five can be located among
additional materials. There, an inquisitive pupil may also find two studies on the
oeuvre of the Alexandrian poet, including an interesting text on how Cavafy was
inspired by literature and art: http://photodentro.edu.gr/lor/r/8521/4412 (DOA:
2/12/2016).
8
It is effortlessly proven by the sheer numbers (as well as frequency) of
translations of his work into foreign languages, including for instance Polish
efforts. The whole of Cavafy’s work, including his texts written in prose, was
translated by the renowned Polish translator (and expert in Cavafy’s life and
work) Zygmunt Kubiak, but he was not the only one. Cavafy’s poems – at least
those that belong to the “canon” – were also rendered into Polish by Jacek Hajduk,
50 Chapter 1
is maybe even more famous,9 is seen in literary history as a prose

writer, though he also wrote poetry, dramas, essays, non-fiction
texts and philosophical theses. Kazantzakis, born on the island of
Crete, lived most of his life away from his island. He studied partly
in Paris, he lived for at least a certain period in France, Germany,
Czechoslovakia, Switzerland. He also made frequent journeys: to
England, Spain, the Soviet Union, Levant and the Far East, not to
mention Greece. The themes of his works diverge radically from
Antoni Libera, Ireneusz Kania, Agnieszka Fulińska. Single poems in Modern

Greek poetry anthologies were proposed by other prolific translators from Mod-
ern Greek (and at the same time anthologies’ editors): Janusz Strasburger and
Nikos Chadzinikolau (Joanna Kruczkowska has been pondering recently on fac-
tors that directed the composition of their anthologies and pointed out reasons
lying behind the literary or aesthetic value of the included works: J. Kruczkowska,
Who gets translated and why? Anthologies of twentieth-century Greek poetry in Poland.
“Journal of Modern Greek Studies” 33 (2015), no. 1, p. 105-126).
The situation in Poland is therefore characterized by a striking asymmetry:
on one hand Cavafy is translated over and over again, on the other works of many
poets (among them the most renown, laureates of Nobel prize – Seferis and Ely-
tis) are available to a Polish reader only in a small fraction of their work. (Though
Michał Bzinkowski, the translator and scholar, is working to neutralize this asym-
metry, at least in regard of Seferis. Some of the most important poem were also
translated by Zygmunt Kubiak, by way of his work on Cavafy.) This “Cavafy
phenomenon” does not find one simple explanation: his poems belong to elit-
ist poetry, demanding from recipients knowledge of Greek history and cultural
nuances, that include some more obscure historical periods such as Hellenistic or
Byzantine. The problem for a translator is also Cavafy’s language that makes use
of demotic – also in a dialectic version peculiar to “Alexandrian streets” – and kath-
arevousa but of Ancient Greek variants, too. Małgorzata Borowska with tongue in
cheek enumerated the features an accomplished Cavafy translator should possess:
knowledge of Greek history and literature, knowledge of books Cavafy had read
(those ancient and those contemporary to him), knowledge of the Greek language
from Ancient times until the beginnings of the 20th century), understanding his
creative idiolect – “Cavafy speech” (Kawafisowa mowa). And of course – as goes
without saying – such a translator should be a poet, too: M. Borowska, Kawafis
Kubiaka, czyli „pochwała niemożliwości” (Cavafy by Kubiak or “the praise of impos-
sibility”), [in:] O nich tutaj (About them, here), P. Sommer (ed.), Kraków–Warsaw
2016, p. 140-141.
9
Of great service in popularizing the Cretan’s work in the world has been
the Société Internationale des Amis de Nikos Kazantzaki, with its headquarters in
Geneva, especially the president of the Society, Giorgos Stassinakis. See the Soci-
ety’s webpage: http://amis-kazantzaki.ch/ (DOA: 2/12/2016).
the Hellenic cultural circle, as in the list of his “spiritual fathers”,

that is catalysts that inspired him, where one may find, not only the
Eastern Roman emperors: Julian the Apostate and Nikephoros II
Phokas, as well as the first governor of Greece – Ioannis Kapodis-
trias, but also Christ, Buddha, Christopher Columbus and Vladimir
Lenin.10 The works of Kazantzakis have often awakened interest
among literary scholars, especially from academic centres which
are not in Greece. Nowadays his words are read through the prism
of religious and philosophical studies.11 Still, some importance lies
in his travelogues and in his opinions on the dialogue with Greek
antiquity or Byzantine times12 (as well as ponderings on the fortunes
of great figures in history, both Greek and global).13 Worse fortunes
befell his opus magnum, the sequel to Homer’s Odyssey. The plot of
the poem, also entitled Οδύσσεια (Odyssey) begins precisely in the
place where Homer leaves his protagonist.14 Kazantzakis wrote and
rewrote his epos for a large part of his adult life. The new Odyssey
is regarded as difficult to understand; there is even an opinion that
Kimon Friar’s English translation of the work is more accessible to
a reader than the original.15
10
Cf. “If, however, I wished to designate which people left their traces
embedded most deeply in my soul, I would perhaps designate Homer, Buddha,
Nietzsche, Bergson, and Zorba”. N. Kazantzakis, Report to Greco. An autobiographi-
cal novel, trans. P. Bien, London 1973, p. 445.
11
I. Wrazas, Zbawca Boga. Kuszenia Nikosa Kazantzakisa (Saviour of Gods.
Temptations of Nikos Kazantzakis), Wrocław 2009.
12
See e.g. P. Bien, Kazantzakis: Politics of the Spirit, Princeton, NJ 1989;
Γ.Χ. Κουμάκης, Ν. Καζαντζάκης. Θεμελιώδη προβλήματα της φιλοσοφίας του
(N. Kazantzakis. Basic problems of his philosophy), Athens 1996.
13
Among other eagerly analysed Kazantzakis’s problems there are: the
question of language choices in his works (dialects, demotic), autobiographism,
neoromaniticism and biotheory (“poetry of life”), art and creation (truth and
masks).
14
N. Kazandzakis, Odyseja (Odyssey), fragments: “Początek”, “Śmierć
Odyseusza”, “Epilog” (Beginnings, Odysseas’s death, Epilogue), trans. P. Majew-
ski, [in:] Z Parnasu i z Olimpu (From Parnassus and from Olympus), P. Krupka
(ed.), Warsaw 2004, p. 94-98.
15
P. Bien, Kazantzakis and the Linguistic Revolution in Greece, Princeton, NJ
1972, p. 218. The full translation was published in the last years of the 1950s, that
is already after Kazantzakis’s death and the Friar’s text received critical praise.
Kazantzakis managed to read only parts of the translation.
52 Chapter 1
Wide praise for Kazantzakis came with his later novels, texts
concentrated mainly on Greek subjects (its history, but also its
ordinary life). The most accolades of all were reserved for Βίος
και πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά (Zorba the Greek), written dur-
ing World War Two16 and issued in the form of a book in 1946 and
maybe Ο τελευταίος πειρασμός (The Last Temptation), which was
published in 1955. It no accident that these are works for which
Kazantzakis is known worldwide, including in Poland, though
there are other prose texts of his available in Polish.17 Both Zorba the
Greek and The Last Temptation were adapted for the cinematic screen
abroad.18 His second novel was filmed in 1988, its director was Mar-
tin Scorsese and the main role was played by Willem Dafoe. The
film produced strong negative reactions in many countries, but
the commotion around the film was the pretext for many viewers
(or opponents) to reach for the original text and it brought about
a wave of interest in Kazantzakis’s work.
The global reaction to Zorba the Greek19 was more complex and
less obvious.20 The film premiered in 1964, quite a few years after
16
Kazantzakis wrote Zorba the Greek in the years 1941-1943, while he had
already published the introduction in 1937: Μ. Πασχάλης, Η τοπογραφία του
Ζορμπά: Ιδεολογική λειτουργία και διακείμενα (Zorba’s topography: ideological
functions and side texts), [in:] Ο Καζαντζάκης στον 21ο αιώνα, p. 221.
17
Καπετάν Μιχάλης (Kapetan Michalis, Polish edition 1960), Ο Χριστός
ξανασταυρώνεται (Christ recrucified, 1954, Polish edition 1992), posthumously
published as a fictionalized autobiography Αναφορά στον Γκρέκο (Report to
Greco, 1961, Polish edition 2012), and an earlier philosophical text: Ασκητική
(1945, Polish edition as Sztuka ascezy / The art of asceticism, 1993).
18
Other films based on Kazantzakis’s works are Celui qui doit mourir
(directed by Jules Dassin, 1957) and a Greek TV series (directed by N. Perialis
and G. Stavrou, 1975-1976), both variations on Ο Χριστός ξανασταυρώνεται. See
P. Bien, Nikos Kazantzakis’ Novels on Film, “Journal of Modern Greek Studies”, 18
(2000), no. 1, p. 161-169.
19
See I. Wrazas, Piękna katastrofa albo „Grek Zorba” (Beautiful catastrophy or
“Zorba the Greek”), „Notatnik Teatralny” 34 (2004), p. 190-195; K. Banaszkiewicz,
Grek Zorba: partytura na życie – media – kulturę: film Michaela Cacoyannisa w starych
i nowych kontekstach kulturowych (Zorba the Greek: music score for life – media –
culture: film by Michael Cacoyannis in old and new cultural contexts), “Transfor-
macje” 1/2 (2014), p. 83-109.
20
See E.T. Szyler, Grek Zorba czyli sława nie chciana (Zorba the Greek or
unwanted fame), “Kultura i Życie” 9 (1992), p. 10.
the first issue of the English translation (1952, by Carl Wildman –

later, again, by Peter Bien). It was directed by a Cypriot, Michael
Cacoyannis, already famous for his Stella (1955) and Electra (1962).
Zorba was shot in Crete,21 the main roles were given to the Mexican
actor Anthony Quinn (who had already won two Academy Awards
albeit for supporting roles) and the British actor Alan Bates. The
first was to play the titular Zorba, the second – “the boss” named
Basil: half-Greek, half-English, raised in the United Kingdom. One
of the main female roles – the one of the widow – fell to Irini Pappa,
the exquisite Greek film actress and singer.22 One could say that the
film is immersed in Greek reality. It is a pity that it is the English
language that is heard most on its soundtrack (the songs are how-
ever sung in Greek).
The film turned out to be a huge success, measured by the three
Academy Awards it received and the fact that it was a smash at
the box office. More importantly, its appearance coincided with
the beginning of mass tourism in Greece and in a similar way to
the comedy Never on Sunday (Ποτέ την Κυριακή, directed by Jules
Dassin in 1960)23 Zorba the Greek came to be a work that acquainted
thousands of people who were interested in Greece, with the coun-
try and its people.24 Hellas was shown as a land that was newly dis-
covered, exotic but accessible, concealed and fascinating, a hidden
gem full of beautiful landscapes, inhabited by people that are a little
bizarre, but at the same time mostly cheerful and hospitable. It was
not any more a country of ruins and Christian sites, a destination
21
T. Zaród, Zorba pięćdziesiąt lat później (Zorba 50 years later), Wrocław 2014.
The book was published exactly half a century after the film’s premiere.
22
Anthony Quinn and Eirini Pappa had worked together before, in the Guns
of Navarone (directed by J. L. Thomson, 1961). The film was based on the novel by
Alistair MacLean (1957). There Quinn also played a Greek.
23
In Jules Dassin’s film the main protagonist is Homer Thrace, an American,
“philosopher amateur” who wants to know how it came to be that the world is not
as beautiful, righteous nor moral as it was in the ancient times. He decides to look
for answers at the source, that is in Greece, as he suspects, the fall began there. For
its symbol he takes a prostitute, Ilia, played by Melina Mercouri), who he wanted
to straighten up and to educate. The background of the film is Piraeus and its
inhabitants – tavern goers, hospitable, playful, attractive people.
24
Later a musical was written (that had a Broadway premiere in 1968) along
with a ballet by Mikis Theodorakis, the composer of the soundtrack to the film.
54 Chapter 1
favoured by archaeologists and pilgrims, nor the ultimate goal for

classical philologists and artists, nor a stop on the way of the Grand
Tour.25 Ordinary people, tourists, could also find in Greece some-
thing for themselves: leisure, adventure or even life lessons.
The triumph of the film resulted in a series of translations of the
book into many world languages, also rarer ones, such as Icelandic,
Hebrew, Vietnamese, Sinhalese and naturally Polish (1971, by Nikos
Chadzinikolau). The tourist industry in Greece reacted in a lively
manner to the interest of holiday makers: Zorba became a patron
of numerous shops, restaurants, hotels and tourist agencies. Vinyl
records and tapes with the music from the film, written by the most
famous Greek popular music composer Mikis Theodorakis, were
available in every spa. Even now, more than half a century since
the premiere, Zorba’s music is heard sometimes in souvenir shops,
while the syrtaki dance, called in Poland simply ‘zorba’, belongs to
the repertoire of every so-called “Greek evening” – a mass dance
party organised in shabby tourist dance clubs.
The actors have become icons of pop culture, their charac-
ters – a way to speak about Greece and most of all Zorba himself
– Anthony Quinn – whose dance silhouette is maybe the most rec-
ognized Greek graphic sign. The role dominated his further career
and fate: after his death Quinn was honoured with a commemora-
tive statue in his home town of Chihuahua: the sculpture depicts
him in the pose of the dancing Zorba.
The film proved to be a great success, but unfortunately it con-
tains a significant number of important changes and simplifications
with regard to the literary original.26 Even the dance in this most
famous, last film sequence was invented for the needs of Caco
yannis’s work: it is composed of steps taken out from several other,
25
R. Eisner, Travellers to an Antique Land: The History of Travel to Greece, Ann
Arbor, MI 1991, p. 80-124; See also P. Kordos, Dwudziestowieczna Grecja oczami
polskich podróżników (20th century Greece through the eyes of Polish travellers),
Warsaw 2009, p. 30-32.
26
“The film’s misreading is to some extent justified by the popular nature
of the medium and by its dramatic results, but the persistent critical misinter-
pretations are much less excusable.” M.P. Levitt, The Companions of Kazantzakis:
Nietzsche, Bergson and Zorba the Greek, “Comparative Literature Studies” 14 (1977),
no. 4, p. 361.
original Greek folk dances. Even its name was invented – ‘syrtaki’
– which suggests that the dance belongs to a dance group from
the island of syrtos.27 The dance however gained a strong foothold,
though mainly outside of Greece, in Greece, however, the name was
accepted into the language and it appeared in some Zorba-inspired
songs, for instance in “Σύκω, χόρεψε συρτάκι” – “Stand up, dance
syrtaki”. While creating a dance could be regarded as an inventive
use of folk culture,28 the next distortion is much more serious and
much less forgiveable. In the film one of the two main protagonists
is half-Greek, raised outside of Greece and knowing little about
Greece. In the book the same protagonist – unnamed – is without
any doubt a Greek, just like Zorba. In the centre of Kazantzakis’s
work we have therefore two Greeks, opposing each other, and not
a pair: a foreigner and a native, where the second introduces the first
into the world and into the philosophy of (Modern) Greeks. More-
over, the film’s title in English – Zorba the Greek29 – might suggest
that it is Zorba who is a Greek, not Basil (the film’s title is actually
identical to the translation’s title), while the full Greek title – Βίος
και πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά – is not rendered completely in
any translation, which is a shame, because such a title immediately
suggests that a reader is dealing with a saint’s life, as the phrase is
stylised to resemble the titles of Byzantine hagiographies.
27
“Νεώτερος, αστικός, χορός εμπνευσμένος από το Χασάπικο.
Δημιουργήθηκε κυρίως για προβολή εκτός Ελλάδας.” (Modern urban dance,
inspired by Chasapikos dance. It was created mainly to present Greek dance
abroad.) Α. Ράφτης, Εγκυκλοπαιδεία του ελληνικού χορού (Greek dance ency-
clopaedia), Athens 1995, SV. συρτάκι, p. 635.
28
Magda Zografu and Mimina Pateraki write that: “it will be further argued
that this “invented” dance was, at the same time, promoted to acquire a socio-po-
litical consensus in Greece itself. The music and dance were the result of the com-
bination of a traditional dance from Crete called syrtos (the events in the film take
place on the island of Crete) and a hasapiko dance, along with a well-known song
based on the rebetiko genre”. M. Zografou, M. Pateraki, The „Invisible” Dimension
of Zorba’s Dance, “Yearbook for Traditional Music” 39 (2007), p. 117. On music
in Zorba the Greek see also Δ. Παπανικολάου, Οι μεταμορφώσεις του Ζορμπά
(Zorba’s metamorphoses), [in:] Κ.Ε. Ψυχογιός (ed.), Νίκος Καζαντζάκης: το έργο
και η πρόσληψή του (Nikos Kazantzakis: his work and its reception), Herakleion
2006, p. 91-108.
29
A title that is difficult to translate, literally: Deeds and ways of life of
Alexis Zorbas.
56 Chapter 1
Beside these renditions – which are sometimes indispensa-

ble while translating a literary language into a cinematic one –
Kazantzakis’s original has much richer overtones. Because of its
construction, which does not refrain from digressions, framed sto-
ries nor anecdotes (told mostly by Zorba) – it is an “almanac” of
Kazantzakis’s whole oeuvre – that written before Zorba and that
written after: it is a catalogue of the religious and philosophical
themes that occupied Kazantzakis (Christianity, Buddhism, Com-
munism, Bergson’s intuitionism), it is an expression of admiration
for the simplicity of country life and acclaim for Crete’s natural
beauty, but most of all it is an attestation of the author’s of love
of freedom and fighting for it. Other important issues covered in
the book include the relationships and connections of men with
nature and with the passing of time, the portrayal of the opposi-
tion between words and deeds, between thought (observation
and recording) and action (participating and experiencing). These
are the honest notes of an intellectual attesting to the words of an
authentic Macedonian that Kazantzakis knew, befriended (he says:
loved30) and with whose help he opened a coal-mine (though not
in Crete, but on the coast of the Mani peninsula). Kazantzakis can
be identified with the “boss” but also with Zorba – he equips them
both, and amply, with his own wisdom, memories and struggles.
It is easy to identify a friend of the narrator, Giannis Stavrakis, in
reality Kazantzakis’s close friend who was fighting for the life of
the Caucasian Greeks and who died in Tbilisi when he was only
22 years old.31 Zorba mentions war stories and adventures in many
countries, for instance in Soviet Russia, stories that Kazantzakis
not only heard, but sometimes also lived through, during his fre-
quent travels and wanderings.32 His work is characterized by inter-
nal intertextuality: one can sometimes trace the same pictures or
30
The literary figure was born supposedly out of nostalgia after the real Zor-
bas died in 1940: N. Kazantzakis, Report to Greco..., p. 458-459. See also M. Hnakaki,
Speaking Without Words: Zorba’s Dance, “Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnography”
SASA 56 (2008), no. 2, p. 27 and 30.
31
M.P. Levitt, The Companions of Kazantzakis…, p. 361. Levitt warns against
identifying the “boss” with Kazantzakis.
32
The story in Zorba the Greek is secondary: at first Kazantzakis wanted
simply to record Zorba’s thoughts – hence there are many monologues within
motifs, literarily transformed for various ends. For instance, in one

of the anecdotes that Zorba tells his boss at night, he mentions a pil-
lowcase filled with locks of women’s hair.33 The same story, this
time stylized autobiographically, is placed at the end of the chapter
devoted to the author’s father in the Αναφορά στον Γκρέκο (Report
to Greco, published posthumously in 1961)34 and is there to prove
his father had been successful with women.
Zorba the Greek is a novel of exceptional richness, though as far
as the plot is concerned, not many things happen. The axis is the
conversations between the “boss” and Zorba. These usually develop
into Zorba’s monologues and have a highly didactic angle: Zorba is
telling his “boss” how to live and how to interpret the successive
adventures and events, which are at times tragic, that come about. If
one extracted these fragments, if one dissected Kazantzakis’s novel,
the result would be a short and coherent, but unbearably one-sided,
simplified, and opinionated “life manual”. Contemporary readers,
for instance, my own students of Modern Greek literature, reproach
Kazantzakis’s titular protagonist because he is unacceptably misog-
ynistic. They also feel dejected because of his racist comments
(a black child can be loved, not as a human but as an animal),35
because of the homophobia and anticlericalism that is evident in all
the meetings with the monks of a nearby monastery.36 A common
mistake is to identify Kazantzakis’s views with the opinions uttered
by his characters, especially Zorba. At the same time, however, the
feeling of authenticity of the story, supported by the biographical
and autobiographical elements (letters, Report to Greco), makes it
easy to believe that this is the real fascination of Kazantzakis that
the text and the story is weak. See Μ. Πασχάλης, Η τοπογραφία του Ζορμπά...,
p. 221.
33
N. Kazandzakis, Grek Zorba, trans. N. Chadzinikolau, Warsaw 1989 (6th edi-
tion), p. 72.
34
N. Kazantzakis, Report to Greco..., p. 33.
35
“She looks like me, the little scamp; she’s only got her mother’s broad
flat nose. I love her, but just as you love a dog or a cat.” N. Kazantzakis, Zorba
the Greek, trans. P. Bien, p. 162 (according to the editon from 2014, published by
Simon & Schuster).
36
Ibidem, p. 223: when he understands the nature of contacts between
monks Dometios and Gabriel, Zorba exclaims: “Sodom and Gomorrah!” and
quickly departs from the monastery.
58 Chapter 1
looms from beneath the novel’s words. Despite these controver-

sies37 rightly earned or not, the book is still an interesting encounter
with Greece itself, with two radically opposed systems of thought –
where one of them is, from the beginning, put higher than the other:
it is Zorba that has all the narrator’s sympathies and it is Zorba that
wins – in the end – over the “boss”, who is subdued and converted
to the victor’s point of view.
One more thing is striking: the whole story is in a way timeless.
It is difficult to deduce at what time the novel action takes place
– only vague allusions to political situation outside of Greece are
present, mostly in Stavrakis’s letters. A historian of literature would
look in vain for any evidence within the text that it was written dur-
ing World War Two – inside occupied Greece as is alleged. But the
timelessness works to Zorba the Greek’s advantage – the text empha-
sizes Zorba’s teachings and does not make readers feel detached
from its essence by including additional information concerning
time and place.
Between these two most renowned Modern Greek writers,
Cavafy and Kazantzakis, who are so different, there is though an
important similarity: both rarely participate in current political or
ideological disputes. Cavafy’s stand is explicable: he was brought
up in British culture, his artistic life was embedded in older epochs,
he was writing for an audience much different from the one he
could find in contemporary Greece and his creation had a pro-
foundly important personal feel (that paradoxically made it more
universal).
Kazantzakis’s case is more problematic. In a similar way to
Cavafy’s case his work has been more appreciated outside of
Greece than in Greece itself. He was always interested in themes
that transcended the Greek or even the European horizon, he was
inspired by events that happened in remote parts of the world, and
yet he was writing about Greece, he studied it, he suffered over it.
The Greek themes (and Cretan ones) constitute a foundation for
many of his works: from Odyssey, through dramatic works that had
as central figures a gallery of important historic Greeks, to novels
in which the action takes place in Greece, among the Greeks. The
37
Some of the controversial plot threads were toned down in the film.
whole of his work is not easy to sum up, it is too multifaceted, too
several-fold – and sometimes too overtly contradictory. At the same
time it is difficult to answer the question of which concept of Greek-
ness was promoted by their author – through his work: which was,
according to him, the most important thing, what he wanted to do
was emphasize, repeat and leave behind. The polysemic ambiva-
lence that Kazantzakis neatly learnt to recall and – apply – to build
tension, this ambiguity that is so much appreciated among critics
and readers from outside of Greece, this is – for a Greek recipi-
ent – not infrequently hard to accept. The difficulties in Cavafy’s
work come from his erudition, hidden behind a deceivingly simple
facade, while the difficulties in Kazantzakis’s ouevre come from his
numerous provocations hidden behind an easy-to-read stream of
impressions, experiences and reflections.
To anyone who admires the subtlety of Cavafy and Seferis – said

Peter Mackridge while reviewing an anthology of Modern Greece
poetry edited by Peter Bien38 – Kazantzakis sounds like a country
bumpkin spouting a heteroclite mixture of undigested philosophi-
cal ideas. Kazantzakis, who, far from being an intellectual, is often
positively anti-intellectual, writes with a peasant’s admiration for
the wonders of the world. He is naively earnest, but at the same
time powerful, emotive, and occasionally spellbinding.
Bringing up Giorgos Seferis here seems here truly justified: his work
merges Cavafy’s finesse with Kazantzakis’s engagement. Seferis’s
work is usually seen as serious and dignified. Regarded as a “poet
of Hellenism”: he knows perfectly well how to evoke historical her-
itage(s) and simultaneously he does not stay indifferent to current
events, like the aftermath of wars and forced migrations and alsothe
struggles for the shape of the Greek language. He concerns him-
self with what being Greek really means, and with the anti-colo-
nial and pro-independence unrest in Cyprus.39 In the 1930s he even
38
P. Mackridge, Modern Greek Writers (review), “Comparative Literature” 25
(1973), no. 3, p. 265. See also K.A. Dimadis, Power and Prose ..., p. 209.
39
Dimitris Mitropoulos, who analyses the state of translations of Modern
Greek literature into foreign languages thus justify the success of Seferis’s work
abroad: “Seferis’s case is worth mentioning because it indicates the qualifications
60 Chapter 1
created a model of “Greek greekness” (ελληνική ελληνικότητα)

that stands in opposition to “European greekness” (philhellenism), it
is the opposite of, or perhaps incompatible with, what Europeans
perceive greekness to be. His proposition was to bring the notion of
“greekness” back to the Greeks and the discussion on this notion
back to its source.40
But it is the image of the Greek as Zorba, brought to life in
Kazantzakis’s novels and broadcast globally by the film made by
Cacoyannis, that became another voice in the discussion on Modern
Greek identity, a discussion that – according to the Polish-Greek
philosopher Ilias Wrazas – lies at the very centre of this identity.41
Among the answers to the question of what it means to be
Greek, there have been given innumerable answers: by artists, schol-
ars and politicians. Defining Modern Greek identity has evolved in
parallel with the discussion on the Greek language, but also with
the history of Modern Greek literature. When in 1830, thanks to the
will of the Great Powers, the Kingdom of Greece appeared on the
map of Europe, the identity of its inhabitants was an enigma. The
opinions that were circulating could have been placed on a wide
spectrum: from those which acknowledged the ancient pedigree of
Modern Greeks to theories which stated that there was not a single
a Greek writer needed (apart, of course, from the quality of his writing) to make
his name in the English world at that time. Seferis needed (1) class credentials
combined with fluency in foreign languages and an ability to foster contacts with
foreign colleagues, (2) an oeuvre fitting the international literary context, sensi-
tive to prevailing intellectual trends and concerns; and (3), last but not least, a fil-
tering of present-day Greek experiences through the culture of ancient Greece”.
D. Mitropoulos, On the Outside Looking in: Greek Literature in the English-Speaking
World, “Journal of Modern Greek Studies” 15 (1997), no. 2, p. 189.
40
After K. Zacharia, „Reel” Hellenism: Perceptions of Greece in Greek cinema,
[in:] Hellenisms: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity from Antiquity to Modernity, K. Zach-
aria (ed.), Farnham 2008, p. 322ff.
41
I. Wrazas, Dyskomfort (nowo)Greków (Discomfort of Greeks / Mod-
ern Greeks), Wrocław 2010, p. 46. Also J.P. Verinis, Spiridon Loues, the Modern
Foustanéla and the Symbolic Power of Pallikariá at the 1896 Olympic Games, “Journal of
Modern Greek Studies” 23, no. 2 (2005), p. 140; A. Efstathiou, Cultural Identity and
Cultural Policy: Manipulating Expectations in Contemporary Greece (Paper presented
at the 1st LSE PhD Symposium on Modern Greece, 21/6/2003, on the webpage of
the Hellenic Observatory in the London School of Economics: http://tinyurl.com/
z7x9759, DOA: 2/12/2016).
drop of ancient blood in Modern Greek veins and that the subjects
of the Greek king were, in fact, Slavs and Albanians.42 The Greeks
themselves tried feverishly to understand who they were, to under-
stand, but they also tried to influence this understanding. In 1843
Markos Renieris, the philosopher and historian, published the small
book Τί είναι η Ελλάς: Ανατολή ή Δύσις; (What is Greece: East or
West?). Already in the title he had put one of the two fundamen-
tal questions concerning the place of Greeks in the world: to what
cultural circle did Modern Greek culture belong, a contemporary
question for the author – to the Eastern one, along with the Otto-
man Empire it had just defeated, and from which it had success-
fully struggled to be free, or to the Western one, where Greeks’s
defenders belonged (though the position of Russia is indeed ambiv-
alent). For the option of the West there was the compelling argu-
ment of the agential and essential role of Greece’s ancient culture
in the shaping of modern Europe,43 from which it would follow
that Greece is the West par excellence. In Renieris’s sense the answer
was doubtlessly clear: Greece belongs to the West. In spite of that
there were, and there are, premises to answer differently. Beside the
argument of Greece’s geographical location, at a point where three
continents meet, besides the argument of its neighbourhood – the
Balkan countries, being an evident example of a borderland, and
in addition to the argument concerning the Orthodox faith, which
prevailed in Greece, Orthodoxy defining Eastern Christianity, there
is also the argument of its Byzantine heritage. Once unwanted it
was later regarded as a fundamental and untradable part of their
national tradition. The Greek Orthodox Church, divided between
42
The chief herald of this thesis – immediately proclaimed mishellene (the
opposite of philhellene) – became Jakob Ph. Fallmerayer, the author of Geschichte
der Halbinsel Morea während des Mittelalters: ein historischer Versuch, Stuttgart/Tübin-
gen, 1830 and 1836. See also I. Wrazas, Nowogrecy: rozpieszczone dzieci filhellenizmu?
(The Greeks: spoiled children of philhellenism?), [in:] Filhellenizm. Wybrane tematy
(Philhellenism. Chosen subjects), M. Borowska et al. (eds.), Warsaw 2012, p. 35;
K. Ρωμανός, Υπόθεση Φαλμεραΐερ (The question Fallmerayer), Athens 2001.
43
This is the fact about which the Greeks never forget to remind their fellow
Europeans. On the national side of the Greek version of the 2 euro coin there is
a scene depicting the abduction of Minos’s mother, Europa, by Zeus in a shape of
a bull.
62 Chapter 1
two Patriarchs, those of Constantinople and of Athens is a living

embodiment of Byzantium’s spirit.44 Renieris’s answer, giving
Greece to the West, was in fact a postulate, a sketch for a cultural
programme that would aim at unburdening the newly created state
of its Byzantine legacy.45
The second important question concerns the attitudes of the
citizens of this fresh Kingdom to their past, and to a past lying far-
ther away that the thousand year long Eastern Roman Empire. Just
like the question Renieris asked, this one remained open and sus-
ceptible to dispute. It seems that even now the official state ideology
emphasizes the expansion of knowledge about the ancient Greeks:
their language, their achievements, their heritage,46 and this looking
back to the antique past is at times incontestably spontaneous. It is
enough to recall the great public interest around the excavations
in Amfipoli (Eastern Macedonia), where in 2012 there was found
in the Casta barrow an unspoiled grave from the 4th century BC.47
Behind the universal public interest there are political arguments
at stake – the discovery is more proof that Macedonia lies within
Greek’s territory, contrary to the ideas put forward by one of the
northern neighbours of Greece.48
Studies on antiquity are present in various disciplines, for
instance in ethnography. Anthropologists from Greece and outside
of Greece look for ancient motifs in folk songs, for ancient patterns
in contemporary folk costumes and for elements of ancient dances
in folk dances from all around the country as well as those danced
44
Jan Gać understands this very well. He travelled all around Greece map-
ping Byzantine remains and visiting Orthodox sites: see e.g. J. Gać, W ogrodach
Pantanassy (In Pantanassa’s gardens), Łódź 1993.
45
I. Wrazas, Dyskomfort (nowo)Greków, p. 46-49. Only later was the Byzan-
tine heritage accepted and became one of basic pillars of the Modern Greek iden-
tity, today this is unquestioned.
46
P. Kordos, A Child among the Ruins: Some Thoughts on Contemporary Modern
Greek Literature for Children, [in:] Our Mythical Childhood… The Classics and Literature
for Children and Young Adults, K. Marciniak (ed.), Leiden-Boston 2016, p. 129-130.
47
See amateur wepages that flourished after the announcemnet of the dis-
covery: e.g. http://amfipoli-news.com/; http://www.theamphipolistomb.com/
(DOA: 2/12/2016).
48
The “Macedonian question” is also of an interest to Alexakis’s protago-
nists, see p. 149.
by diaspora members and their descendants. But nothing highlights

doubts regarding the place of the Greeks in time and space like the
very notion of “Greek” (Polish ‘Grek’, Czech ‘Řek’, French ‘Grec’,
Spanish ‘Griego’ and so on) which is exonymic: according to Aris-
totle it was an Illyric word for one of the northern Greek tribes.49
The Greeks themselves use the noun ‘Έλληνας’, that is ‘Hellen’ and
this is endonymic, also of ancient provenance. But for many cen-
turies, until modern times this word denoted a pagan – one that
stayed faithful to the old customs and old gods.50 Until the 19th
century the main notion of a Greek was “Ρωμιός” (anglicized to
‘Romios’ or even ‘Roman’), from the ancient “Ρωμαίος” (Romaios)
that is ‘Roman citizen’. One root of this notion can be found for
instance in the topographical name of Roumelia, ‘the land of the
Romans’: this is what the lands west of the Aegean Sea were called
(in contrast to Anatolia) by the inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire.
The name prevailing today – ‘Νεοέλληνας’, that is ‘Neohellen’
or ‘Modern Greek’ – is clearly a compromise: it relates to ‘Hellen’
while at the same time keeps its distance with a comfortable pre-
fix.51 Moreover, both these endonymic descriptions of the Greek –
‘Hellen’ and ‘Romios’ – still function, but each of them signifies an
aspect of Greekness, most of all in an emotional sense. Hellen feels
like a descendant of the Ancients, a true heir of their achievements
in the sciences and in the arts, while Romios is a grandson of the
Byzantines, an Orthodox defender of oikoumene against a perpetual
danger lurking in the East that threatens the true faith and Western
civilization. The feeling that accompanies Hellen is pride, while for
Romios it would be nostalgia. The concept of this duality of the
“Greek soul” has many times been an object of analysis for writers
and scholars alike (historians, philosophers, anthropologists).
Hellen was a favourite term for experts and amateurs that lived
at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. The growth of interest
observed, which dates from the lectures and texts of the German
49
Arist. Mete. I 14 (352b).
50
I. Wrazas, Dyskomfort (nowo)Greków, p. 28: discarding “Hellen” in favour
of “Romios” was the refutation of the “pagan stink”.
51
Ibidem, p. 72. See Π.Κ. Χρήστου, Οι περιπέτειες των εθνικών ονομάτων
των Ελλήνων (Fortunes of ethnonims for the Greeks), Athens 2003.
64 Chapter 1
art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who brought to Euro-

pean attention the originality of Greek art compared with later imi-
tations – growth used to be called philhellenism. In the strict sense
of the word, phihellenism was a widespread social and political
concern with Greek matters during the Greek Revolution, a move-
ment that translated into important and substantial material and
military help for the insurgents. In another sense philhellens were
active – before and after the Greek Revolution52 – scholars, artists
and travellers who were extremely interested in Greece – in its cus-
toms, history, nature – who reached for Greek themes in their cre-
ation: choral, artistic or literary. Phillhellens were rather well-edu-
cated in the matters of ancient Greek culture and history, and they
looked at contemporary Greece through ancient glasses.53 Some of
them in fact never visited Greece54 (like Winckelmann), some oth-
ers ignored modern Greece and avoided its inhabitants as actively
as they could, finally some tried to shape its modern inhabitants,
implanting them with knowledge about their ancient ancestors and
enhancing their pride in them.55 The mentality and spirituality that
52
An ample argument on various definions of philhellenism can be found
in M. Kalinowska’s introductory article to Filhellenizm w Polsce. Rekonesans (Phil-
hellenism in Poland. Reconnaissance), M. Borowska et al. (eds.), Warsaw 2007,
p. 11-14.
53
“[T]he image of Greeks these gentlemen carried with them was that arti-
ficial image enshrined in the classical tradition which they had received from
their preceptors at various establishments of higher learning. Greece was the land
of sylvan nymphs and piping shepherds […]. This image, in spite (or perhaps
because) of its lack of connection with any historical reality, was for those trav-
ellers at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries
extremely real.” Ph. Sherrard, Who are the Greeks?, [in:] idem, The Wound of Greece,
London–Athens 1978, p. 9-10.
54
L. Droulia, The Revival of the Greek Ideal and Philhellenism, [in:] Filhellenizm
w Polsce. Rekonesans, p. 26.
55
In such a way there came about, and multiple times, “colonizations” of
the contemporary Greeks by their ancestors (I express my thanks to Hanna Pau-
louskaya for this idea). One such moment was a visit of two Corsican born Greeks,
the Stephanopoulos brothers who were sent by Napoleon to the Laconian penin-
sula of Mani. There they met their distant relatives (the brothers came from the
family that 150 years previously sailed to Corsica from Mani) and they acquianted
the locals with stories about the Spartan leaders and kings. During the Greek
Revolution, some 20 years later the Maniots liked to call themselves “Spartans”.
has stood behind romiosyni (ρωμιοσύνη), that is behind Greekness

in its Romios aspect, since the beginning was alien to philhellens.
Unlike the Greeks: for them, it seems, it was romiosyni that was
natural, while it was the Hellenic facet of Greekness (ελληνικότης
/ ελληνικότητα) that was initially imposed. The Greek intellectu-
als relished this concept shortly after the Greek Revolution, trium-
phantly disposing of the Byzantine (and in conjecture – Oriental)
element of their culture, with the full approval of the West, they
reached for their past. The young Greek state underwent a crash
course in occidentalisation: traditional costumes that were appar-
ently worn by Peloponnesian shepherds, costumes whose tradi-
tional element was the foustanella (a male skirt) were replaced by
smoking jackets and frock-coats, soft fezes – by top hats, narghileh
– by pipes and cigars. Romios came from his “small homeland”,
he had a strong connection to his land and traditions: his present
was completely determined by the past. Hellen, on the other hand,
thought about the nation as a whole, defined its borders (which
were more or less imaginary) and projected its future. Byzantine
times, associated with the notion of romiosyni, appeared as a period
of perpetual decline, of the squandering of energy on senseless reli-
gious disputes, while the centuries since the fall of the Polis – were
seen as dark and long years of decline, slavery and ottomanisation.
Even at the beginning of the 20th century the great national poet,
Kostis Palamas, felt obliged to react to the opinion of the writer
Argyris Eftaliotis (nom de plume of Kleanthis Michailidis) who said
that “Romios” is a man who is “vulgar and worthless” (ευτελής και
χυδαίος).56
But a change of optics toward romiosyni and attempts to regain
balance between romiosyni and Hellenism started half a century
earlier. In the politics of 1840s there began the irredentist “Great
Idea”, the concept according to which scattered Greeks should be
unified in one country, most preferably with the capital in (after all
See P. Kordos, O spartańskim pochodzeniu Maniotów (On Spartan descendence

of Maniot people), [in:] Sparta w kulturze polskiej (Sparta in Polish culture), v. II,
M. Borowska et al. (eds.), Warsaw 2016, p. 245-268.
56
Κ. Παλαμάς, Ρώμιος και Ρωμιοσύνη (Romios and romiosyni), Άπαντα
(Collected works), v. VI, Athens 1972, p. 273-281.
66 Chapter 1
Byzantine) Constantinople.57 In historiography the proponents of

this change of course were Spyridon Zambelios and Konstantinos
Paparrigopoulos. The first coined the term ελληνοχριστιανισμός
(Greek-Christianity) and analysed Byzantine heritage through folk
songs (publications in 1852 and 1857). The second advocate pub-
lished six volumes of Ιστορία του Ελληνικού Έθνους (The history
of the Greek nation, 1860-1877), where he postulated the continuity
of Greek history from antiquity until the present day, this continu-
ity was founded on three pillars: ancient, medieval (Byzantine) and
modern.58
The Hellenic fascination with antiquity for many proved
a insufferable burden59 – antiquity was too complex, too alien and
too depressingly perfect. Despite this, until now, in school curric-
ula, historical and literary material on antiquity (and that is to say:
Greek antiquity) are placed in a privileged place.60 Material, tangi-
ble remains dating back two thousand years or more – the ample
complexes of ruins in the centres of not a few Greek towns – are
treated as sacred and cared for meticulously. They are deliberately
exposed, dominating the urban landscape. Antiquity is not allowed
to be forgotten, or rather: the Greeks do not allow their compatriots
to forget their ancient roots.
Romiosyni has in turn an ally in the Greek Orthodox Church
and especially in the rural Greek population – I take here into con-
sideration the special attitude of the Greeks towards their folk or
57
The Asia Minor Catastrophe is regarded as the end of the Great Idea. See
footnote on p. 21.
58
A. Frangoudaki, C. Keyder, Ways to Modernity in Greece and Turkey. Encoun-
ters with Europe 1850-1950, London 2007, p. 13-14; G. Huxley, Aspects of Modern
Greek historiography of Byzantium, [in:] Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity, D.
Ricks, P. Magdalino (eds.), London 1998, p. 15-23.
59
Jorgos Seferis wrote in 1935 in the 3rd part of his cycle Μυθιστόρημα
(Mythistorema): “Ξύπνησα με το μαρμάρινο τούτο κεφάλι στα χέρια // που
μου εξαντλεί τους αγκώνες και δεν ξέρω που να // τ᾿ ακουμπήσω. // Έπεφτε
το όνειρο καθώς έβγαινα από το όνειρο // έτσι ένώθηκε η ζωή μας και θα είναι
πολύ δύσκολο να ξαναχωρίσει.” (I woke with this marble head in my hands; // it
exhausts my elbow and I don’t know where to put it down. // It fell into the dream
as I was coming out of the dream // so our life became one and it will be very dif-
ficult for it to separate again. Trans. E. Keeley, Ph. Sherrard).
60
P. Kordos, A Child among the Ruins..., p. 128-129.
rural culture that was not touched by the ideologization of archaio-

latres (αρχαιολάτρης, lit. ‘the worshipper of antiquity’), but devel-
oped naturally though being neglected, as an element of one of
many Ottoman Empire ethnic cultures. Because the topography
of the lands inhabited by the Greeks – insular and mountainous –
favours the emergence of isolated communities, the main feature of
this variety of ways of life was its great diversity. The Greeks from
remote islands and valleys had their own dialects, peculiar to the
region where they lived, they dressed differently, danced different-
ly,61 had their own set of songs, customs and convictions. Its rich
distinctiveness has stayed alive in modern folklore and folk essence
(both in language and in customs) it infiltrated and then also flour-
ished in literature – under the wing of ithography and its continua-
tions – and polemics.62
Both the elements of Greekness, Hellenic and Romaic had some-
thing that the Greeks pursued and as a consequence being Greek
meant in fact being – perhaps unavoidably – torn. Kazantzakis
wrote about this feeling in a comprehensive and accurate way in
the prologue to his Ταξιδεύοντας: Μοριάς (Journey to Morea, first
published in the form of book in 1960), the recording of a tour the
writer performed in the autumn of 1935 due to an order from the
“Καθημερινή” newspaper. While standing between two culturally
important – and spatially close locations: Sparta, which symbolized
the great ancient past and Mystras where in 1449 the last Byzantine
emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos was crowned, Kazantzakis lis-
tens to his soul:
Για έναν Έλληνα το ταξίδι στην Ελλάδα είναι γοητευτικό,

εξαντλητικό μαρτύριο. Οι φωνές που περισσότερο γοητεύουν δεν
είναι εκείνες που ξυπνούν μέσα στα φρένα του τις πιο ψηλές και
ακατάδεκτες έγνοιες. Και πάλι ντρέπεται να κάμει χατίρι και να
ξυπνήσει τους πιο ασήμαντους και πιο αγαπημένους νεκρούς.
Όταν σταθείς σε μιαν ανθισμένη ροδοδάφνη του Ευρώτα,
ανάμεσα Σπάρτης και Μυστρά, αρχίζει η φοβερή προαιώνια πάλη
ανάμεσα καρδιάς και νου. Όλη η καρδιά σου ορμάει ν’ αναζητήσει
61
Alkis Raftis in Εγκυκλοπαιδεία του ελληνικού χορού distinguished more
the 1000 dance units encountered in villages even after the end of the World War
Two.
62
See p. 19-20.
68 Chapter 1
ένα χλωμό θανατογραμμένο κορμί και θέλει να ξαναγυρίσει

πίσω τον τροχό του καιρού, στις 6 του Γενάρη 1449, που εδώ
πάνω στο Μυστρά δέχτηκε το κορμί τούτο τη μαρτυρική λιγόζωη
κορόνα. Πλήθος πατρικοί στεναγμοί και μουρμουρίσματα από
δημοτικά τραγούδια και λαχτάρες του Γένους σε σπρώχνουν να
κάμεις χατίρι, μα ο νους αντιστέκεται, γυρίζει κατά τη Σπάρτη,
αγριεύει, μάχεται να νικήσει την αισθηματική τούτη νοσταλγία
και να σμίξει με τους αιώνιους έφηβους.63
For a Greek travelling in Greece, though wondrous, is an exhaust-

ing torture. The voices that enchant most are not those that bring
lofty and illustrious notions to his mind. But he is ashamed to let
his heart lead him and to wake these least valued but most beloved
dead. When you stand by an oleander over the Eurotas river,
between Sparta and Mystras, a terrible, perennial fight starts inside
you: between heart and mind. You run with all your heart to revive
this pale, death-stricken body and you want to turn back time until
the 6th of January 1449, when here, on the Mystras slopes, this
would-be martyr body took on a short-lived crown. Many fatherly
sighs and faint melodies of folk songs, yearning whispers of the
Nation drive you to listen to your heart. But your mind opposes
them, turns in the direction of Sparta, rebels, struggles to overcome
this nostalgic sentimentality and to merge with eternal ephebes.
This conceptualization presented by Kazantzakis is painful: for

a Greek such a journey and such a stop on his road meant choices that
are difficult to reconcile, they meant sorry thoughts. For a foreigner,
Kazantzakis writes a little further, such ditherings are strange and
“his mind, unfettered with complicated feelings, runs unobstructed
forward and finds the essence of Greece” (O νους του [ξένου],
λυτρωμένος από αισθηματικές περιπλοκές, ορμάει και βρίσκει
την ουσία της Ελλάδας).64 Maybe that is the reason why another,
slightly less serious approach to this bi-polarity was proposed by
a foreigner, the traveller and writer Partick Leigh Fermor, on the
margin of his voyages around Roumelia, first published in 1966.
He offers a list of as many as sixty four characteristics, arranged
63
Ν. Καζαντζάκης, Ταξιδεύοντας: Ιταλία, Αίγυπτος, Σινά, Ιερουσαλήμ,
Κύπρος, ο Μοριάς, Athens 2004, p. 191. English edition N. Kazantzakis, Journey-
ing, Travels in Italy, Egypt, Sinai, Jerusalem and Cyprus, trans. D.S. Ellis, Berkeley,
CA 1984.
64
Ibidem, 191-192.
in pairs in two columns: one describes a Hellen, while the other –

a Romios.65 This short guide of Fermor’s should not be treated as
a literary creation, nor an ethnographical report, nor a sociological
analysis. He instead uses his intuition to understand contemporary
Greece rather than present the systematic results of observations
made over a long time.
Such a bipolar opposition is also put forward by historians
of Modern Greek literature. They prove that such a discussion,
between those who held these two attitudes has smouldered more
or less consciously since the beginnings of the Modern Greek state
and ignited fully in the wake of the Generation of 1930, which,
influenced by the key experience of Asia Minor Catastrophe,66
was – according to its literary programme – pondering not only on
a new (modern) shape of literature, but also on a new identity par-
adigm. It is no accident that one of the main representatives of the
Generation, the most prolific poet of the 20th century, and adamant
communist, Giannis Ritsos devoted a whole poem to the notion of
romiosyni, describing maybe not the Romios himself, but the gen-
eralized and symbolic landscape, where Romios was supposed to
have lived: a place that was harsh, barren, scorched with the rays of
the unrelenting sun, tempering the soul and in a way encouraging
to bravery and tough-mindedness.
These writers [of the Generation] – writes the comparationist Ger-

asimos Katsan – reawakened echoes of the classical past and wove
them together with modernist conceptions to construct a “new”
Greek identity that transcended the nation-state while remaining
focused upon it. Ritsos chose «Ρωμιοσύνη» (Romiosyni), as his
topos, which, though not a literal “place”, allowed him to explore
a different part of the Greek tradition, one which was perhaps
more apt for the Greek nation-state since it did not focus upon the
classical.67
65
P.L. Fermor, Roumeli. Travels in Northern Greece, London 1966, p. 107ff. See
also P. Kordos, Patrick Leigh Fermor’s ‘Hellen-Romaic Dilemma’, “Colloquia Human-
istica” 1 (2012), p. 135 and 143.
66
See footnote on p. 21.
67
G. Katsan, Necessary Fictions: National Identity and Postmodern Critique
in Gouroyiannis’s Το Ασημóχο το Ανθíζεı, “Journal of Modern Greek Studies”
20 (2002), no. 2, p. 401.
70 Chapter 1
The Hellen-Romios opposition had many other aspects as well

as the continuations that tried to improve or refute the idea. The
anthropologist Michael Herzfeld, who mentions it rather reluc-
tantly, proves that the Romaic element is “inward-looking”, while
the Hellenic equivalent is “outward-directed”. That is why romio-
syni was useful in Ottoman times, for it guaranteed the stability of
society. After the Greeks were set free naturally the open attitude
started to prevail.68 Wrazas, who quotes the sociologist Dimitris
G. Tsaousis, adds in a similar tone that the Greek-Orthodox romio-
syni characterizes the passive-defensive and introspective attitude,
while Hellenism should be characterized as dynamic-offensive.69
Katsan in his turn suggests that a way out of the Hellenic-Romaic
entanglement is to leave the Aegean perceptive in favour of the Bal-
kan one: the point of view should be relocated.70 There are other
attempts to break this bipolar thinking, for example the one pro-
posed by Dimitris Tziovas. He looks at the Athenian Acropolis,
making its example a materialisation of a way of thinking about
Hellenism: as something beautiful and lofty. “Next to the Acropo-
lis, the modern city appears ugly and unattractive to [...] visitors.”
and according to him the Acropolis embodied “the invention of the
dual nature of the Hellenic”.71 He then goes on to enumerate sev-
eral such binary models, quoting not only Fermor and Herzfeld,
68
M. Herzfeld, Ours Once More, New York, NY 1986, p. 20.
69
Δ.Γ. Τσαούσης, Ελληνισμός και Ελληνικότητα. Το πρόβλημα της
νεοελληνικής ταυτότητας (Hellenism and Greekness. The problem of Modern
Greek identity), [in:] Ελληνισμός-Ελληνικότητα. Ιδεολογικοί και βιωματικοί
άξονες της νεοελληνικής κοινωνίας (Hellenism-Greekness. Ideological and expe-
rience-related parameters of Modern Greek society), Δ.Γ. Τσαούσης (ed.), Athens
2001, p. 22-23, after: I. Wrazas, Kazandzakis, tożsamość nowogrecka..., p. 123.
70
“[Michael] Fais also offers alternatives to the homogenizing notions of
Greekness. In Αυτοβιογραφία ενός βιβλίου [Autobiography of a Book], as the title
suggests, Fais is not only concerned with typical metafictional strategies, and the
way a novel is constructed, but more centrally to offering an alternative view of
a town in Greece, Komotini: its people and history constitute a heterogeneous
“Balkan Greece.” By focusing on the Balkans, Fais constructs Greek identity in
a way that moves away from the topography of the Aegean [...].” G.M. Katsan,
History and National Ideology in Greek Postmodernist Fiction, Lanham-Boulder-New
York-Oxford 2013, p. 159.
71
D. Tziovas, Beyond the Acropolis: Rethinking Neohellenism, “Journal of Mod-
ern Greek Studies” 19 (2001), no. 2, p. 197, 198.
but also James Pettifer (Greece as a part of the Balkans vs. Greece
as a part of Europe), Gregory Jusdanis (diaspora vs. nation-state
– and autochthons vs. heterochthons), Nikiforos Diamandouros
(modernized, European country vs. traditional Oriental society)
and some others.72 He however supports a synthetic, “hybrid con-
ception of Neohellenism”, mustering to this cause such writers as
Vizyinos, Cavafy and Kazantzakis, who – Tziovas argues – have
proven many times through their writings that such a bipolar view
is oversimplified, stereotyped and – even as a mental tool – brings
more harm than good.73 The traits or elements of Hellenism that are
used within these binary models rarely appear in isolation, they are
instead interwoven to a point that their separation would mean the
decomposition of the object they constitute.
Tziovas’s view is further supported by a few modern authors.
The popularity of the historical realism came with the second post-
war generation of writers74 (Modern Greek philologists even speak
about the revival of the historical novel)75, who brought publish-
ing success to prose. Among them are Rea Galanaki, Maro Douka,
Alexios Panselinos and others who propose a different, less one-
sided discussion on the essence of Greekness. The weaknesses of
the Hellen-Romios opposition were more evident. The duet of the
anthropologists, Magda Zografou and Mimina Pateraki sums up
the consequences of such a choice in the following words:
The politics of dichotomizing a Hellenes/Romii type of binaryism

during the last century resulted in the creation of two dominant
and stereotypical narrations: the Western grand narrative, directly
connecting present-day Greeks to the ancient Hellenes (sing.
72
Ibidem, p. 201-203. Such oppositions multiply easily: North vs. South
(Thessaloniki vs. Athens), mountains (i.e. continental Greece) vs. islands, Latin vs.
Byzantine influence – to name but a few.
73
Ibidem, p. 208-211.
74
See p. 29.
75
P. Roilos, The Politics of Writing: Greek Historiographic Metafiction and Maro
Douka’s A Cap of Purple, “Journal of Modern Greek Studies”, 22 (2004), no. 1, p. 1.
See also P. Mackridge, E. Yannakakis, Introduction: Greek Fiction in the Age of Glo-
balization. An Overview of Tendencies and Perspectives, [in:] Contemporary Greek Fic-
tion in a United Europe: From Local History to the Global Individual, P. Mackridge,
E. Yannakis (eds.), London 2004, p. 13-14.
72 Chapter 1
Hellene); and the domestic, oriental-type narrative of the Romii

(sing. Romios). This dichotomization prevented Greek identity
from being approached as a hybrid, and its dynamic expression is
found in the dominant questions among contemporary scholars.76
Though thinking about the Hellen-Romios opposition seems at

times efficient, one cannot forget that it is just a proposition and
even more, its is an impossible construct, because it is internally
contradictory. It is a reason for searching for other, alternative prop-
ositions for modelling Greekness, even though they do not have to
be necessarily more complex. While the thesis that Zorba the Greek
by Kazantzakis corresponds to a postulate of a binary model (“the
boss” represents the educated Hellen, who theorizes and is passive
or even impotent, while Zorba is the typical Romios, spontaneous,
uneducated, trusting blindly in his intuition) is arguable, the vital
changes in Cacoyannis’s Zorba the Greek are clearly an attempt at
leaving behind the binary concept of two competing ideas of Greek-
ness. Instead of Hellen or Romios he gives us Zorba, who embodies
in the character so convincingly acted by Quinn, what is “whole”:
the Greek who is funny, coarse and simple, living life to its full, is
irresistible. It is not Romios, as he has no Hellen to fight with and be
opposed to. It is a chosen set of Romaic features, with a slight hint
of Hellenism in the face of which Basil, a clueless foreigner proves
completely helpless.
It is a pity for the Greeks themselves that such a conception
of Greekness gained – undeserved in my opinion – widespread
popularity and even became something of a global Greek stereo-
type. Zorba’s features were originally thought of as merits while his
corresponding flaws were initially ignored: he is simple, therefore
uncouth, entertaining, therefore unwilling to work, living in the
present, therefore ignoring the future and – what is worse – unable
to think in terms of the categories of economic gain or investment.
The results of the stereotyping are far-reaching and have power
until this day. And even more – such a picture is ideal fuel for criti-
cizing Greeks in times of crisis. In response the Omicron Project was
76
M. Zografou, M. Pateraki, The „Invisible” Dimension of Zorba’s Dance,
p. 117-118.
formed, created by a group of volunteers who in response to this

negatively perceived icon that prevailed in the mass media mainly
in 2012 and 2013 decided to create a series of short clips. They fight
against the twisted idea of Zorba, strengthened by the sugges-
tions of laziness, churlishness and fraud, suggesting an image of
Greek who became the scapegoat for a crisis: naive – yes, but also
hard-working, both depressed and oppressed.77
And the popular, dominant vision of the Greek could be related
to other literary creations. For example to Theodoros Stefanidis, an
English-educated friend of the young Gerald Durrell, the future
British writer and biologist, who immortalized his Greek mentor in
the series of autobiographical books on his childhood on the island
of Korfu. The first one, My family and other animals, was published
in 1956. Stefanidis (an authentic person), who is a poet, a medical
doctor and a naturalist has mild manners and a cheerful character.
He has seemingly unlimited knowledge, lives in harmony with the
exuberant vegetation of the island and raises the young Durrell boy
to love everything that he loves, a love that will stay with Gerry for
his whole lifetime. Or another model Greek could be Giorgos Katsi
mbalis, an intellectual and a literary critic, an erratic genius who –
just before World War Two – introduced Henry Miller to the world
of Athens and Greece, the contemporary one and the perennial one.
Katsimbalis is the hero of Miller’s Colossus of Maroussi (1941), the
record of his fascination with the man and with the country.78
But it is the face, or rather the dancing posture of Zorba that
conquered the mass imagination of tourists and fuelled the enter-
tainment and leisure industry in Greece, as has been shown, with
various, recently lamentable results. The case of Zorba or rather the
trap that sprang when the Greeks themselves chose – if only for
77
The webpage of the project: http://omikronproject.gr/ (DOA: 2/12/2016).
Its participants produced also the third edition of the Grassroots compilation, the
list of initiatives belonging to “grassroots democracy” from all around the coun-
try. These initiatives were focuses on local overcoming the crisis effects (self-help,
counselling, barter system, solidarity networks and many others).
78
Katsimbalis was not only a “king of life”, as portrayed by Miller, but also
a resilient scholar, the creator of ample bibliographies devoted to Kostis Palamas
or Angelos Sikelianos. He was the one who encouraged Elytis to pursue poetry.
See. B. Merry, Encyclopedia of Modern Greek Literature, p. 123.
74 Chapter 1
outsiders – Zorba to be their ambassador, is a rare example when

(Greek) reality was influenced so firmly by a literary text. Usu-
ally the vector of such influence points the other way, challenging
authors to comment on reality, to interpret it, to rework it through
their texts.
The four authors my book is devoted to,79 have – as it seems
– their own attitude towards Greekness and towards writing on
Greekness. They neutralize the influence of Greek reality in their
writing, while they do not exhibit any strong imperative to sub-
ject their creation to the demands of Greek reality. Instead, using
various methods that propose new ways of reading Modern Greek
tradition (Vassilikos), through the fantastic they exercise the politi-
cal critique of their reality (Chomenidis) and while using the auto-
biographism of a unique personal position they propose looking at
Greekness in its hybrid, fringe and cosmopolitan aspect (Alexakis).
The last one (Doxiadis) subjugates Greekness to mathematical dis-
course, chasing a literary language free of – or at least less suscepti-
ble to – regional idiosyncrasies and understood by all. Their ways,
their steps are the ones I will follow in the next chapters.
79
Their collective characteristics are elaborated on p. 39ff.
Chapter 2.
Vassilis Vassilikos:
into the Great Unknown
One of the many contributions of Umberto Eco to contemporary

culture is, undoubtedly, his role in bringing the attention of literary
critics to works generally perceived previously as unworthy of any
deeper thought — to works of popular and mass culture. Eco was
not the only one, or the first, to choose such examples for his aca-
demic studies. He took them from the world of ordinary life and the
world of entertainment, (as, for example, did Ronald Barthes, who
in Mythologies had already, in 1957, considered blockbuster films,
fashionable cars and food photography). Eco, however, introduced
a suitable tool that allowed him, not only to understand better the
mechanisms of popularity of certain works, motifs or fashions, but
also allowed popular works to walk along a path created by the
avant-garde. The concept of “open work”, praising structures that
are unfinished, not sealed within their form and polysemic was
originally applied to avant-garde works in art and music (though
many literary oeuvres would also fit into the category — like James
Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake), but it turned out that popular works — for
different reason and not always intentionally — could be considered
to be open works that invited further, at times courageous, inter-
pretations. In other words, taking advantage of the Polish linguist
Michał Głowiński’s findings,1 though Eco’s conceptual comments
on the work’s form or construction, it has important implications
for its reception. This openness allows for multiple styles of recep-
tion in the sense that it grants access to new, originally unintended
readings that may be equally justified. From this point of view an
open work invites recipients to participate and not merely to ingest.
1
M. Głowiński, Style odbioru, p. 37-41.
76 Chapter 2
A recent example could be the television series “Lost”, created by

J.J. Abrams and others, broadcast between 2004 and 2010.2 A film
and especially a TV series, during the creation process, is bound by
different rules than, for instance, is a literary text — behind its cre-
ator there is not one author but dozens upon dozens of people: the
crew of people who run the show, the screenwriters, directors and
producers. This case is not peculiar, though — as it turned out, the
final shape of the series was influenced by crowds of fans that were
organised around various web discussion groups. Their opinions
and tastes forged the story, which at the same time was becoming
more and more open to outside influence, I dare say, in the sense
proposed by Eco. The screenwriters introduced not only new char-
acters, but also new riddles and mysteries, though, at the same
time, they were reluctant to solve many of these. Questions top-
pled over answers, from one season to the next, the plot grew more
and more complex, while the networks of relations and the corre-
spondence between characters and events became more and more
elaborate (such networks, in the form of graphs, were scrupulously
produced and re-processed in the light of new facts by the most
zealous fans). There were numerous budding hermeneutic theories
(sometimes along the path of paranoid interpretation, again follow-
ing Eco’s thought)3, that tried to establish links between seemingly
unrelated elements of the story and thus to infuse more (or any)
sense to events and the characters’ actions.
A popular web portal “TV tropes” that collects tropes — that
is “conceptual figure[s] of speech or storytelling shorthand[s] for
a concept that an audience will recognize and understand”4 — in
works of popular culture, in the lemma concerning the “Lost” series
2
The series consisted of 121 episodes and the main storyline concentrated
on a group of airplane crash survivors stranded on a tropical island that did not
appear on any map.
3
Cf. essays in the collection by U. Eco, R. Rorty, J. Culler, Ch. Brooke-Rose,
Interpretation and Overinterpretation, Cambridge 1992, esp. chapter by U. Eco, Over-
interpreting texts, p. 45-63. Cf. also A. Burzyńska, M.P. Markowski, Teorie literatury
XX wieku (Literary theories of the 20th century), Kraków 2006, chap. VIII: Semio-
tyka, p. 231-278, especially p. 254-262.
4
Self-definition, on http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Trope,
DOA: 1/12/2016.
Vassilis Vassilikos: into the Great Unknown 77
distinguishes miscellaneous types of its snarly narration, such as

the Kudzu Plot5 (the name coming from the name of the plant kudzu
— a vine species from the Pueraria family — which grows in all
directions), Wild Mass Guessing (mostly by fans) or the Jigsaw Puz-
zle Plot. This last one suggests that some recipients treat a given
story as a riddle to be solved and regard any unclear elements as
a clue.6
“Lost” is just one of many examples in a long series of a cer-
tain type of works that attracts a special type of recipient (watchers,
readers, players). For them a part of the pleasure in contemplat-
ing a work is the possibility of free construction of sense, of seem-
ingly boundless, new interpretations — of travelling into the Great
Unknown of fiction. Sometimes the clues they encounter are false:
every so often unintentionally so. Sometimes they are led towards
dead ends placed there on purpose: as a vicious joke. In fact one
of the fans’ activities is tracing such pop-cultural jokes — so called
Easter Eggs (a term that came originally from video gaming) — hid-
den, often in meta- or inter-textual jests.7
Such works often build up interest with a risky strategy of
unpredictability. A reader (or a listener, or a spectator) is put in
a position where they do not know what will happen next and the
work does not give away any suggestions. This is another aspect
of the Great Unknown — not only is there a multitude of (im)pos-
sible interpretations, but also there is a refusal to say what genre
or formula literature the text belongs to. The tropes do not work
as they should. The genre of the text unexpectedly changes. The
5
“A story [that] leaves so many dangling plot threads that it’s extremely
difficult to follow and needlessly complicated. A story arc may be resolved, but it
will usually create more unanswered questions in the process”. Definition accord-
ing to http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KudzuPlot, DOA: 1/12/2016.
6
To move for a while away from pop-cultural aesthetics see e.g. the concep-
tion of ‘miejsca niedookreślenia’ (places without complete clarification), specified
by the Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden. These places are the moments within
a literary work allowing for potential interpretational freedom. R. Ingarden,
O dziele literackim. Warstwowa teoria dzieła literackiego (On literary work. The layer
theory of literary work), Warsaw 1960, p. 316ff.
7
An Easter egg is — through analogy to the custom of hunting for Easter
eggs — a hidden element, most often a joke, within a video game or other pop-cul-
tural work. At times finding a solution will be rewarded with a tangible prize.
78 Chapter 2
metafictional level becomes mixed up with what was supposed to

be purely fictional. The end comes in an uninvited manner and its
outcome is not anticipated. Readers are left at a loss, though they
are supposedly enjoying it, while librarians have a difficult time
placing the work on a shelf, within any taxonomy.8
And though such unconventional texts are seldom encoun-
tered in Greece, at the beginning of the 1960s a novel of this kind
appeared: ambiguous, and mysterious, with many plot strands,
baffling critics until this day. Its author, Vassilis Vassilikos, does not
allow it to be deciphered, explaining his work in various, contra-
dictory ways and composing new texts that are characterized by
similarly complex confusion.
Vassilikos (born in 1934) made his debut when he was very
young. Already in 1953 a novel Η διήγηση του Ιάσονα (The story
of Jason) appeared and was warmly received and even nominated
for the prestigious award “Of the Twelve”. Soon a collection of
short stories Θύματα ειρήνης (Victims of peace, 1956), provoca-
tive already because of its title, was published and then came the
subsequent parts of his Trilogy. For that Vassilikos, in 1962, finally
received the award of “Of the Twelve”.9 In 1966, three years after
the striking political assassination of the Greek MP Grigoris Lam-
brakis, Vassilikos wrote and published Z, the novel that brought
him international recognition. In 1969 the director Costa-Gavras
adapted Vassilikos’s novel for the cinema. His film — with Mikis
Theodorakis’s soundtrack — became a symbol of Greek resist-
ance against the “black colonels” regime. Next year Italo Calvino
wrote the introduction to another early book by Vassilikos, Εκτος
8
Portal TVtropes, again, has a solution — or at least a name: such a trope
bringing down tropes is colloquially called ‘Mind Screw’, and as far as literature
is concerns they provide a long list of works accused of it, written by Mark Dan-
ielewski, Italo Calvino, William S. Burroughs, Vladimir Nabokov and Thomas
Pynchon, but also T.S. Eliot, William Blake or Fyodor Dostoevsky. See https://
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/MindScrew/Literature, DOA: 1/12/2016.
9
“The Group of Twelve” (Η Ομάδα των Δώδεκα), was composed of
renowned writers (always twelve in number) that had awarded prizes to authors
from 1951 until 1967. A detailed list of writers who have received the award is
available on the National Book Centre (E.KE.BI.) webpage: http://tinyurl.com/
je67nyh, DOA: 2/12/2016.
των τειχών (Beyond the walls, 1966), a book that was also read as
an anti-regime document, even though it was published before
the “black colonels” hijacked power over the country. In his part
Calvino writes about Vassilikos’s character and his inclination to
joyful laughter, that — with time, with consecutive years of the
regime, “became less and less good-hearted, but more and more
bitter” (γινόταν όλο και λιγότερο εύθυμο, όλο και πιο πικρό).10
The figure of the writer, notwithstanding his physical appear-
ance was — and still is — idiosyncratic. From his youth he was
provocative and eccentric. With a pipe that never seems to leave his
lips, he is an important icon of Greek literary life. He is not found
at its centre, he always represents the avant-garde and tries to set
new trends. When he was a student, Vassilikos left for the USA11 to
study issues concerning television. He came back with the opinions
of a cosmopolite and turned out to be one of the television pioneers
in the country when the first TV station started regular broadcasts
as late as 1966: Greece was, along with Iceland, one of the last coun-
tries in Europe to which television was introduced. Not everyone
appreciated Vassilikos: a recognized poet, Manolis Anagnostakis,
wrote, for instance, that the young writer was arrogant and the
reason for it should not be the quality of his writing, because this
was, in Anagnostakis’s view, particularly low.12 Not hindered by
anyone, Vassilikos has never stopped writing. Critics have counted
as many as 120 books of his authorship:13 starting from novels and
10
I. Calvino, Ο Βασίλης Βασιλικός εκτός των τειχών (Vassilis Vassilikos
behind the walls), [in:] Β. Βασιλικός, Εκτός των τειχών, Athens 2011, p. 8.
11
And, more precisely, to Ithaka, NY, that is to Dumbarton Oaks.
Cf. A. Μαραγκόπουλος, Αντί επιλόγου (Instead of an epilogue), [in:] Β. Βασιλικός,
Το φύλλο. Το πηγάδι. Το αγγέλιασμα. Τριλογία, Athens 2007, p. 347. Other
critics point to the formational experience the stays in the USA were for Vassi-
likos: D. Tziovas, Allegorical Readings and Metaphors of Identity: Sexuality, Society
and Nature in Vassilis Vassilikos’ To Φύλλο, [in:] Δ’ Συνέδριο της Ευρωπαϊκής
Εταιρείας Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών. «Ταυτότητες στον ελληνικό κόσμο (από
το 1204 έως σήμερα)», Γρανάδα, 9-12 Σεπτεμβρίου 2010. Πρακτικά (4th EENS
Congress. Identities of the Greek world since 1204 until today, Grenada 9th-12th
September 2010, post-conference volume), Κ. Δημάδης (ed.), Athens 2011, p. 256.
12
D. Tziovas, Allegorical Readings and Metaphors…, p. 255.
13
A. Μαραγκόπουλος, Αντί επιλόγου, p. 345: Vassilikos’s ergography
counts no less than 120 positions.
80 Chapter 2
anthologies of short stories and poems, through fragmentary auto-

biographies to a peculiar collection, itemised alphabetically, of brief
(and linguistically risky)14 quotations from speeches uttered by
Giorgos Papadopoulos, the first in the row of the “black colonels”.
The writer, just before the time when the regime took over, left the
country and did not come back until the regime’s fall.15
Vassilikos’s oeuvre is so ample and versatile, that a special
archive has been created to gather together his literary texts, cor-
respondence and interviews.16 The writer himself, during his stay
in Warsaw in 2008, when asked about the most important works
within such a vast collection, without hesitation pointed to the
aforementioned Trilogy and the book he spent the longest writing:
Γλαύκος Θρασάκης (originally published in 1971 and expanded
until 1996)17, the biography of a fictional writer along with an
ample anthology of his prose. Then Vassilikos’s creativity went in
the direction of politics and documenting social life,18 as the writer
started describing “what is behind his window”. Still, this early
work, the Trilogy is regarded as the most accomplished and age-
less of Vassilikos’s achievements.19 This is mainly the assessment of
critics, who see in Vassilikos’s text a diagnosis of the times he has
lived in20 as well as those who take his writing — mostly the Trilogy
and Γλαύκος... — as an early symptom of a post-modern turn in
14
These were authentic fragments of “the black colonels” in an almost
incomprehensible version of katharevousa.
15
D. Hadzisz (Δ. Χατζής), Utószó (Epilogue to the Hungarian edition of Το
Φύλλο), trans. M. Berki, Budapest 1970, p. 309.
16
Β. Βασιλικός, Εκτός των τειχών, p. 289. Aris Marangopulos comments
on the types of Vassilikos’s publications and describes the archive of his works
– Vassilis Vassilikos Collection, which is to be found at Boston University;
Α. Μαραγκόπουλος, Αντί επιλόγου, p. 347, 351.
17
V. Vassilikos, The few things I know about Glafkos Thrassakis. A novel, trans.
K. Emmerich, New York-Toronto-London-Melbourne 2002.
18
19
Δ. Κούρτοβικ, „Βασίλης Βασιλικός”, [in:] idem, Έλληνες Μεταπολεμικοί
συγγραφείς: Ένας κριτικός οδηγός (Greek postwar writers. Critical guide), Ath-
ens 1995, p. 42; D. Hadzisz, Utószó, p. 314; Δ. Σταμέλος, Η Τριλογία του Βασίλη
Βασιλικού (The Trilogy by Vassilis Vassilikos), “Ελευθεροτυπία”, 5/4/1998.
20
Μ. Μερακλής, Η ελληνική πεζογραφία της τελευταίας δεκαετίας
(Greek prose of the last decade), “Νέα Πορεία” 119-123 (1965), p. 33-34.
Modern Greek letters (he is accused of moral relativism),21 a lim-

ited and isolated phenomenon in Modern Greek prose, which is
saturated with realism. The writer Menis Koumandareas, calls him
a “cosmopolite” (κοσμοπολίτης) and the “first partisan of our gen-
eration” (πρώτος αντάρτης της γενιάς μας).22 Still, in the 21st cen-
tury Vassilikos turns out to be the most frequently — besides Cavafy
and Kazantzakis — translated Modern Greek author. Admittedly, it
is Z that can boast the most translations into foreign languages, but
both the Trilogy and Γλάυκος... have stayed at the centre of critical
and scholarly interest — especially the Trilogy for it is unfathoma-
ble, open and mysterious. It points to the Great Unknown.
The Trilogy consists of three short novels Το φύλλο (The
Plant23), Το πηγάδι (The Well) and Το αγγέλιασμα (The Angel, but,
as the word is a neologism, based on its morphology it would mean
“angelization”, that is the action of becoming an angel or an “inun-
dation of angels”).24 All were published in a short time, all of them
in 1961, but it was only in 2007 that they were collected under one
common cover and entitled Τριλογία. Η οριστική έκδοση (The Tril-
ogy. The definite edition), in which Vassilikos had made numer-
ous changes in the texts. He even suggested that the order in which
they should be read was different from that of the order of writing:
readers should start with The well and then move on to The Plant.25
In one interview he said that he was planning to write a fourth part
21
J. Lacarrière, Sur Trois Romanciers, “Mercure de France” 354 (1965),
p. 561-567.
22
Μ. Κουμανταρέας, Η μέρα για τα γραπτά και η νύχτα για το σώμα (Day
for writing, and night for the body), Athens 1999, p. 112-113.
23
V. Vassilikos, The Plant, The Well, The Angel, trans. E. and M. Keeley, New
York, NY 1964. The title in Greek means ‘the leaf’, but is justifiable here to trans-
late it as ‘the plant’, as the plant, at the beginning, consists of just one, big leaf.
24
Even the translation of the titles is problematic E. and M. Keeley chose The
Angel, similarly P. Comberousse in French – L’ange, and the translation into Ger-
man by E. Dryander – Das Engelwerden. In the Polish Słownik pisarzy nowogreckich
(Dictionary of Modern Greek writers, p. 149) J. Strasburger translates this title as
Pobór aniołów (Conscription of angels), while Polish translators of The History of
Modern Greek literature by M. Vitti decided to render the title as Agonia (Agony).
25
Μ. Κουμανταρέας, Από το Ζ στο Κ: Χρονικό μιας φιλίας (From Z to K.
Chronicle of a friendship), “Η λέξη” 107 (1992), p. 11.
82 Chapter 2
and expand the cycle to tetralogy,26 but so far this text remains only
a plan.27
The publication of the Trilogy proved to be an important event
in Greek literary life. These were important years for Modern Greek
literature as such, marked by the publication of novels and short
stories by such important writers as Kostas Tachtsis and Giorgos
Ioannou.28 Both were immediately compared to Vassilikos. Tachtsis
– because of the vivid, almost street language of his prose, Ioan-
nou — for his literary picture of Thessaloniki, the important scene
of the first and third part of the Trilogy. Just as the Generation of
the 1930s widely introduced prose to Greek letters, the Generation
of the 1960s, such as young writers like Vassilikos not only made
literature an important voice for people growing up after World
War Two (and not having many experiences or memories of occu-
pation or the civil war period), but also those writers transformed
literature. In their hands it became a tool for describing the rapidly
changing world — in a political sense, but above all in its social and
technological dimensions. As did his peers, Vassilikos upset the cir-
cles of critics and ordinary readers.29 The Trilogy brought reactions,
not only from the great Italian neohellenist Mario Vitti, but also from
Italo Calvino, and the French writer and traveller Jacques Lacarrière
(the future author of an important travelogue around Greece enti-
tled L’Été grec, 1976). The first reviews were fairly positive, though
critical readers later confessed to a certain level of confusion. The
mistakes and technical shortcomings were blamed on the writer’s
26
Μ. Ρέζαν, Βασιλικός: 3 έργα ένα Βραβείο. Με τον συγγραφέα που
εβράβευσαν οι Δώδεκα (Vassilikos: 3 works, 1 prize. With the writers award by
the Twelve), “Ελευθερία” 1/3/1962.
27
The writer concluded that the two best parts, Το πηγάδι and Το
αγγέλιασμα were “the real beginning” of his life as a creator: B. Ψυρράκης, Μια
επιτυχία των 12. Η απονομή του επάθλου Ουράνη στο νέο πεζογράφο Βασίλη
Βασιλικό (Success of the 12. Handing of Ouranis Award to a young prose writer
Vassilis Vassilikos), “Ο ταχυδρόμος” 10/3/1962, p. 15.
28
D. Tziovas, Allegorical Readings and Metaphors…, p. 256. The list can poten-
tially be longer: Tziovas writes farther (p. 259) about the similarities between Το
φύλλο and the symbolic novel To φράγμα by Plaskovitis.
29
Α. Μαραγκόπουλος, Αντί επιλόγου, p. 352.
youth and limited experience.30 Years later the renowned literary

theoretician Dimitris Tziovas31 summed up the list of the Trilogy’s
merits: “allegorical inventiveness, parodical playfulness, versatility
of style” and added that the reception of the texts was influenced by
the author’s uncommon personality ([young Vassilikos is] “irrev-
erent and provocative”). Vassilikos’s texts were to represent a new
type of prose, and he himself was hailed as a “new classic”32 and
— similarly to the events in the first Trilogy novel — was supposed
to have built a new townhouse (πολυκατοικία) in place of a demol-
ished one, probably a traditional, detached house.33
In the period 1960-1965 public attention was distracted from
Vassilikos’s work, which was eclipsed — at least so he thinks34
— by another trilogy written by another author, Stratis Tsirkas
— Ακυβέρνητες πολιτείες (The Drifting Cities, 1961-1965). This
new cycle became par excellence the three-book series of the 1960s.
Regardless of this, the three books by Vassilikos gained apprecia-
tion and during the next few years were translated (in part or in
full) into fifteen languages.35 The Trilogy, and especially Z, which
was then even more popular abroad, made Vassilikos one of the
most recognized Modern Greek authors in the world.
What is Vassilikos’s Trilogy about? It stands in contrast to the
cycle written by Tsirkas, who concentrated on the Greek diaspora
in three cities of the Eastern and Southern Mediterranean during
World War Two (Jerusalem, Alexandria and Cairo) and in fact
30
Α. Κοτζιάς, Μας έστειλαν επίσης: Το Φύλλο, Βασίλης Βασιλικός, Αθήνα
1961, σελ. 109 (We were also sent: The Plant, Vassilis Vassilikos, Athens 1961, 109
pages), “Εικόνες ” 30/6/1961, no. 297.
31
32
Μ. Γιαλουράκης, Το βιβλίο. Βασίλη Βασιλικού: Τ’ αγγέλιασμα (Book.
Vassilis Vassilikos’s The Angel), “Ταχυδρόμος” 18/3/1962.
33
“Στην θέση του παλιού σπιτιού χτίζεται τώρα μια πολυκατοικία.”
Κ. Πορφύρης, Σύγκρονος νεορομαντισμός. Βασίλη Βασιλικού: Το Φύλλο (Con-
temporary neoromanticism. Vassilis Vassilikos’s The Plant), “Αυγή” 11/7/1961.
Cf. also Π. Χάρης, Η Τέχνη και η εποχή μας: Τα νέα βιβλία. Βασιλη Βασιλικού
Το Φύλλο (Art and our times: new books. The plant by Vassilis Vassilikos),
“Ελευθερία”, 2/7/1961.
34
Private communication in Warsaw in September 2008.
35
Most translations were published within few years from its Greek publi-
cation. The exception is Spanish one published in 1998.
84 Chapter 2
wrote about the political and historical entanglements of various

individuals. All three parts are coherent, as far as narration, style
and themes are concerned. In the Trilogy the thought that would
bind together all three volumes is much more elusive. There is even
a possibility that maybe joining these three stories together was yet
another writer’s move, calculated to confuse readers. After all they
were not published in one volume until decades after the initial edi-
tions. There are some who believe so: some translators decided to
render only a part of the cycle, several scholars resolved to ana-
lyse one or two of these three books. It is not difficult to make such
a decision — they are small volumes and the story in each of the
books seems rather thin.
To φύλλο (The Plant) is a story of a young, 22-year old man,
Lazaros who moves with his family to a newly built tenement
house in Thessaloniki. He spends his time supposedly preparing
for exams, but in reality he wanders around the town. On one of
his trips he notices a girl carrying a one-leafed plant in a pot and he
decides to follow her. He manages to discover where the girl lives
and on the next occasion he sneaks into the courtyard of her house
and steals the pot with the plant. He brings the plant back home
and starts, obsessively, to take care of it. When his parents leave for
a holiday, the plant overgrows monstrously, takes over room after
room and attacks neighbouring flats. While the man lives alone
with the plant, his mania grows, the plant dominates his thoughts
and soon it starts intruding into his neighbours’ lives. Finally the
other inhabitants find the source of their problems — eerie noises,
issues with the constantly breaking elevator. They track the plant
and destroy it.
The second story, Το πηγάδι (The Well) takes place on the
island of Thassos. An urban-dwelling family has a summer house
there, surrounded by extensive private grounds. The first order for
a newly employed servant girl is to bring water from a nearby well.
The way is to be shown to her by a “young master”, the owner’s
son. Just before dawn the two people leave on — as it turns out —
a fairly long trip. On the way the man tells all kinds of stories to
the girl, to make her impressed or terrified — the stories revolve
around the island and around the people that inhabit it. The trav-
ellers are surprised by a sudden downpour, and they take refuge
in the house of an elderly man who — as he says — lost his wife in

the well. The closer they get to it, the place they are trying to reach
seems more and more strange and horrifying. And when they are
finally there, the well proves to be a crevice, a dungeon, dark, damp
and dangerous, filled with bizarre machinery. The boy goes down,
only to discover that the well has gone dry and while climbing up
he is forced to ask the servant for assistance. They come back to the
estate, where the “master” falls prey to an unknown illness and dies
within a few days. The doctors who perform an autopsy on him
in a hospital, come to the conclusion that the cause of death was
an “unidentified virus”. It is worth noting though, that the Eng-
lish translation, with the author’s consent,36 concludes several pages
earlier, not with protagonist’s death but with him leaving the well.
The story behind the mysterious Tο αγγέλιασμα (The Angel)
is, in the whole cycle, the most rudimentary. The novel consists of
letters written by a novice angel who is studying — after his earthly
death — at the angel’s military school (!). The recipient of these let-
ters is a girl, the angel’s love interest. Their contents are mundane,
they talk about the monotony of a life in an “institution” that closely
resembles the military units where Greek conscripts were sent for
a part of their youth. A part of the novel consists of retrospections:
the protagonist recalls his relationship with the girl, which was
ended abruptly when her “official” fiancé came back, presumably
having served his own time in a military garrison. In the end the
angel receives his wings, learns to fly and any day is supposed to be
sent to the front line of the war against Satan.
There are no overt plot continuities between the parts; there is
no common protagonist, no shared setting — and the action of the
third novel takes place in the afterlife. The connections between the
parts can be revealed after a deeper analysis of these allegedly sim-
ple (and somewhat phantasmagorical) texts. The critics who read
the Trilogy, adopted main two strategies: to analyse each text sep-
arately or to attempt37 to connect the texts by looking for elements
36
V. Vassilikos, The Plant..., p. 102.
37
E.g. Μ. Κλαράς, Νεοσυμβολισμός στο πεζό λόγο. Βασίλη Βασιλικού Το
φύλλο – Το πηγάδι – Το αγγέλιασμα (Neosymbolism in prose. Vassilis Vassi-
likos’s The plant – The well – The Angel), “Βραδυνή” 26/2/1962; Α. Καραντώνης,
86 Chapter 2
that are similar or in opposition, in order to prove or disprove the

claim that these texts, Το φύλλο, Το πηγάδι, Το αγγέλιασμα, form
a three-part entity. I will walk both these ways: first I will present
some hermeneutic ideas in favour of them being separate texts and
then, tracing the opinions of several commentators on Vassilikos’s
work will try to verify the other claim.
With the first text the problem starts with the title page. Gener-
ally one would translate το φύλλο as ‘a plant’), the initial meaning
would more likely be ‘a leaf’. And in fact, when the protagonist sees
this organism for the first time, in his eyes it looks like that:
Τότε παρατήρησε πως τα χέρια της δεν ήταν ελεύθερα. Κάτι κρα-
τούσε. “Τι μπορεί να ‘ναι;” σκέφτηκε. “Κανένα φόρεμα; Κανένα
άστρο; ‘Η το ψωμί απ’ το φούρναρη [… Κ]ρατούσε μια γλάστρα
στην αγκαλιά της. […] Καταμεσίς στη γλάστρα ψήλωνε, όμοια
με μια τρεμουλιαστή πράσινη φλόγα, ένα φύλλο. Το πρόσωπο
της δεν ξεχώριζε από μακριά. Το ‘βλεπε μονάχα χλωμό σαν το
φεγγάρι στην αρχή της νύχτας.38
Then he noticed that her hands were not free. She was holding
something. What could it be? he wondered. A dress? A star? Or
bread from the baker’s? [...] [s]he was holding a flower pot in her
arms. [...] In the middle of the flower pot, like a trembling green
flame, a single-leafed plant rose. He couldn’t make out her face
clearly from that distance. He saw only that it was pale like the
moon at the beginning of the night.39
But after the youth steals the flowerpot with the plant, it starts
changing — but maybe the change is the result of a change in per-
ception — the plant becomes a synecdoche for the unknown girl.
An educated Modern Greek reader will immediately associate the
event of plant kidnapping with a play Βασιλικός (Basil)40 written
by Antonis Matesis in the late 1820s. The important element of the
Βασίλης Βασιλικός, [in:] idem, 24 σύγχρονοι πεζογράφοι (24 contemporary prosa-

ics), Athens 1978, p. 121-165; Δ. Σταμέλος, Η Τριλογία…; Θ. Πέρσης, Η Τριλογία
του Βασίλη Βασιλικού (The Trilogy by Vassilis Vassilikos), “Χρόνος” 25/4/1988.
38
Β. Βασιλικός, Το φύλλο, [in:] Β. Βασιλικός, Το φύλλο. Το πηγάδι. Το
αγγέλιασμα. Τριλογία, p. 32, 35.
39
V. Vassilikos, The Plant..., p. 12, 15.
40
One can only suspect that the association between the author’s surname
(Vassilikos) with basil (Gr. βασιλικός, pronounced ‘vasilikos’) attracted his
intrigue is the theft of a pot with a basil plant by a man in love

with the pot’s owner. This is where the similarities end, because
in Matesis’s work the pot is no longer important, while in Vassi-
likos’s the plant becomes the very centre of the story. When it first
settles and its looks alter — the single leaf takes on a round shape.
Later on, when it is vast and encompasses various rooms it looks
like a hybrid of global flora:
Στην τραπεζαρία όπου οι σκιές τους της δίναν τώρα μια άλλη
προοπτική, ένα καινούργιο βάθος, κυριαρχούσαν τα οδοντωτά
μαζί με τα τέτανα και τα ελικόστροφα. Στο συνεχόμενο σαλόνι
έβρισκε περισσότερα ακέραια και σπονδυλωματικά ενώ τ’ αντί-
θετα είχαν τη δική τους γωνιά, σαν μειοψηφία, και γειτόνευαν
με τα πτερόβολα.
Στο δωμάτιο των συγγενών όμως έγινε κάτι διαφορετικό.
Εδώ οι ρίζες είχαν βγει στην επιφάνεια – επιπλολαιόριζες τις
λέγανε στη γεωπονία – και βγάλαν φυτά αντί φύλλα. Ίσως,
σκέφτηκε, επειδή η απόστασή τους από τη φυλλομάνα ήταν
μεγαλύτερη, προτίμησαν να γίνουν αυτόνομα έτσι που να μη
χρειάζονται την άμεση υποστήριξή της. “Τα δέντρα ξέρουν πιο
πολλά από μας. Σωπαίνω”, είπε, όταν τα είδε. Εδώ μέσα έβρισκε
άφθονα σαπινδικά, ιουλιανικά και μερικά έναρθρα, που τσίριζαν
σαν γάτες όποτε τ’ ακουμπούσε. Στο μέρος όπου ήταν άλλοτε
η ντουλάπα, και τα σανίδια είχαν λίγο άλλο χρώμα από την
έλλειψη του παρκέ, περίσσευαν τα λυκοποδικά, που ‘κάναν μιαν
όμορφη αντίθεση με ετεροχλάμυδα άνθη τους.41
In the dinning room, to which the shadows of the leaves gave

another perspective, another depth, the dentate now dominated
together with the alternately and the spirally arranged [levaes]. In
the living room he found that more entire and lyrate leaves, while
oppositely arranged had their own corner like a minority, and were
neighboring the pinnately lobed.
In the room reserved for visiting relatives, something else had
happened. Here the roots had emerged to the surface – they called
them “surface roots” in botany – and given birth to plants rather
than leaves. Maybe because their distance from the mother plant
was greater, he thought, they wanted to become autonomous, so
they wouldn’t need her immediate support. ‘Trees know more
attention to Matesis’s story and then it inspired the crucial element of the plot:
stealing a pot with a plant.
41
Β. Βασιλικός, Το φύλλο, p. 87.
88 Chapter 2
than we do. So I keep quiet’, he said when he saw them. In there

he found a number of peltate and julianate plants, a few articulate
plants that screeched like cats when he touched them. Where the
wardrobe had been before (the floorboards were a different colour
because they hadn’t been waxed) there was a surfeit of lycopods,
a nice contrast with their staminate flowers.42
The protagonist, the young student, spends a lot of time trying to

understand what species he is dealing with. He decides to catego-
rise it as monstera deliciosa, probably because of his reading, he is
after all studying agronomics.43
The plant is surely the main character (?) in the whole story,
for it is certainly not the frustrated, borderline crazy, passive stu-
dent that is deprecating towards his relatives and hateful toward
his neighbours. From the beginning the plant is a creature that is
unusual, supernatural, and as a matter of fact, unreal. It reacts to
the presence of its admirer, to his caresses and words. It expands
regardless of nature’s laws and intelligently seeks new fields for
expansion, it exhibits cunning. It dominates the text, it attracts
attention, it puzzles, it perturbs. What is it then?
Vassilikos proposes something that in a certain aspect resem-
bles the fictional island invented by Christos A. Chomenidis — it
is a world that is plausible, described almost naturalistically (for
instance: the routes of the protagonists could be easily traced on the
town’s map) a element that is alien and fantastic has been introduced.
In Chomenidis’s text44 the island of Agios will be an expansion and
at the same time an antithesis of Greece, which is equally as plausible
as the rest of the depicted world. Vassilikos confronts readers with
a different setting: here this unnatural element is anti-natural: it is
strongly opposed to the rest of the world. Such a narrative situation
is much closer to what Franz Kafka introduced in Metamorphosis than
to Chomenidis’s flirtation with the poetics of slipstream.45
During the same period as when Το φύλλο was published
a series of important symbolic novels were also written, for instance
42
43
44
Cf. p. 199ff.
45
Cf. p. 198.
Το φράγμα (The Barrage, 1960) by Spyros Plaskovitis and Το λάθος

(The Flaw, 1965, English translation 1969) by Antonis Samarakis.
In these two novels there are already story frames which are sym-
bolic, what is visible clearly in the depicted world of Το λάθος (the
nameless protagonists, moving around a nameless country in an
unspecified historical period). Vassilikos’s text stands even closer to
a slightly later novel (though it was written during the 1960s) Aris
Alexandrou’s book Το κιβώτιο (1974, The mission box). As in the
case of Το φύλλο and its title, so Alexandrοu book’s axis is — along
with the title — the fate of a mysterious box.
What does the plant represent? What does it point to? The
easiest reading is ecological: Το φύλλο tells a contemporary story
about culture conquering nature, how an urban environment con-
quers the wilderness surrounding and opposing it. Already in the
first sentences (I will analyse them later) the narrator has described
the construction of a house, he mentions the water and wind cur-
rents that are disturbed and then destroyed by the machines and
workers. The plant fights to regain the equilibrium between these
two worlds. It gains control over one of its would-be destroyers and
through him plans expansion. Its actions are nullified by a group
effort of pests, and its defeat is symbolic. The order of nature is irre-
versibly replaced by human disorder where beauty and eternity are
substituted with emptiness (spiritual) and temporality.
Peter Mackridge further strengthens the ecological interpre-
tation: he shows that from the beginning of the novel the town,
Thessaloniki, is divided — just like in reality — into the Upper
and Lower Town.46 The Upper one is old Thessaloniki, the part
46
P. Mackridge, Η πραγματική και φανταστική Θεσσαλονίκη στο
πεζογραφικό έργο του Β. Βασιλικού και του Γ. Ιωάννου (The real and the fan-
tastic Thessaloniki in V. Vassilikos’s and G. Ioannou’s prose), [in:] Συμπόσιο:
Παραμύθια Θεσσαλονίκης. Η πεζογραφία στη Θεσσαλονίκη από το 1912 έως το
1995 (Symposion. The fairytales of Thessaloniki. Prose in Thessaloniki from 1912
to 1995), Π. Σφυρίδης (ed.), Thessaloniki 1996, p. 342; K. Χρυσομάλλη-Heinrich,
Η Τριλογία (1961) και ο Γλαύκος Θρασάκης (1974-1975) του Β. Βασιλικού. Μια
προσπάθεια σύγκρισης και ερμημείας (The Trilogy and Glafkos Thrassakis by
V. Vassilikos. An attempt at comparison and interpretation), [in:] Αφιέρωμα στον
Καθηγητή Λίνο Πολίτη (Studies for Professor Linos Politis), Thessaloniki 1979,
p. 345-387.
90 Chapter 2
that mostly survived the fateful fire of 1917: the Thessaloniki of

narrow, steep streets and perched little houses. The Lower town
is modern, devoured by housing developers who built dozens of
cheap townhouses that all look the same (πολυκατοικίες), while
sometimes demolishing what is left of the older town. The border
ceaselessly moves up, this observation is also made by the protago-
nist, and the motif makes the ecological, pro-nature message more
reliable as the main theme of the book. Moreover, the Upper town,
the more authentic one, wrought during a slow urban evolution
(and not built in response to the urgent needs of the 20th-century’s
would-be inhabitants) is cut off from the sea by the lower town.
That is the basic connection of Thessaloniki with nature and the nat-
ural landscape.47 Some critics even risk putting forward the opin-
ion that Το φύλλο is to be read as an ecological manifesto: these
are the words of Tziovas, who points to the town’s division, which
mirrors various cultural dichotomies, not only with culture-nature
opposition, but also with internal contradictions of human nature.48
One scholar devoted to Vassilikos’s work, Aris Marangopoulos,
adds that besides reading the book with the ecological key one can
find evidence that it records man’s struggle against the limitations
a town imposes on him, or — more generally — it shows a man in
a struggle against the oppressions of civilization.49
Other critics (as well as the author, who likes to state contra-
dictory opinions in various pronouncements concerning his Tril-
ogy) try to offer a broad and at the same time ideologically more
neutral interpretation. They write about a rebellious youth, about
a mutiny against a reality that is not created but inherited, imposed
and therefore hostile. The plant is the sign of such a mutiny, of an
attempt to create an alternative. From such an angle Το φύλλο is
certainly a cross-over novel: on coming of age and on the generation
gap. The protagonist’s parents do not understand either him or his
fascinations and at some point they leave him, they give up trying
to bring him up and they go on holiday. He, for his part, suspends
his life up to this point, and the proof would be the fact that he
47
P. Mackridge, Η πραγματική και φανταστική..., p. 345-346.
48
Ibidem, p. 258.
49
Α. Μαραγκόπουλος, Αντί προλόγου, p. 14.
forgets his own birthday. Only a telegram with his parents’ wishes
brings him momentarily back to his old life: from such a perspec-
tive the novel is a straightforward record of a mutiny against adult-
hood. Marangopoulos takes another step, placing the mutiny and
the plant against the background of the deep social changes in post-
war Greece. The Marshall’s Plan donations allowed the country to
rebuild itself and repair the war damage, and Greece — for the first
time in modern history — joined the club of capitalist developed
Western countries.50
Mutiny, frustration, escape or — as the critic Pantelis Moullas
suggests — revenge (of nature over humans) are similar readings of
the book, which assume that the plant and its patron Lazaros (or:
the plant and its slave Lazaros) stand in opposition to hostile forces:
urban, human, generational, civilizational.51
Tziovas proposed a more complex reading that took advan-
tage of a psychoanalytical set of terms. He begins by pointing at the
homophony of the words ‘to filo’ (το φύλλο) and ‘to filo’ (το φύλο
— ‘gender’).52 He moves on to the ascertainment that in the first
chapters a room in the new house is a substitute for a girl.53 Then the
function of the substitute is taken over by the plant. Tziovas concen-
trates on the first reaction of the boy’s mother toward the plant: on
seeing it the mother reacts with jealousy.54 The scholar then ponders
whether the plant takes on the role of a lover or a mother (or, more
generally, a woman), while the protagonist — is the man (lover) or
a child.55 The second interpretation, that is the mother-child pair
is supported by his behaviour: passive and helpless — during the
final action of the destruction of the plant by the neighbours. Also
mysterious are the words the boy character says in one of the last
fragments, while addressing the plant he says “[M]y plant, my
50
Cf. R. Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, p. 140.
51
Cf. also Π. Μουλλάς, Βασίλη Βασιλικού: Το φύλλο (Vassilis Vassilikos’s
The plant), “Κριτική” 15 (1961), no. 3, p. 61-62.
52
D. Tziovas, Allegorical Readings and Metaphors…, p. 257; but cf. Α. Μαρα-
γκόπουλος, Αντί προλόγου, p. 13.
53
54
Ibidem, p. 268.
55
Ibidem, p. 264.
92 Chapter 2
woman, my Atlas”,56 a phrase that supports the ambiguity of such

a reading of the novel.
The text could be also looked upon as a recording of a creep-
ing madness. Already the first, obsessive chase after the girl puts the
protagonist in a bad light — as an unbalanced, impulsive person. He
then becomes more and more of a misanthrope,57 including subse-
quent people in the circles of “those evil ones”.58 His only partner in
conversation, the only creature that he has contact with is the plant.59
His fascination makes him forget the flow of time and his basic phys-
iological needs. He falls into a state of lethargy, when he stops count-
ing the passing days and vegetates in a half-sleep, in a form of stasis.
The narration, which is mainly concentrated on Lazaros, is bro-
ken by a description of the neighbours’ meeting. During these times
the inhabitants of the building try to find a reason for their troubles.
Vassilikos exposes three caricaturally exaggerated ways of think-
ing embodied in the orators: through an adequate choice of words
and arguments they attempt to convince others of their point. The
reader is acquainted with three world views: the religious, the con-
spiratorial and the scientific. The first person, a pious neighbour,
argues that the essence of their troubles lies in the immoral conduct
of the inhabitants and the troubles themselves are the sign of God’s
anger.60 The solution is to sober up and to repent. The second of
the speakers tries to prove that the sounds and the installations’
malfunctions are caused by spy equipment, probably decaying or
broken, installed within the building.61 The third one invokes the
psychology of masses and explains events by group auto-sugges-
tion.62 Vassilikos uses at this point of the story a comical language,
serving readers with a satire on the facets of the bourgeois mental-
ity.63 The three views, each in a crippled way describe reality, each
56
V. Vassilikos, The Plant..., p. 89; orig. “φύλλο μου, γυνάικα μου, άτλαντά
μου” (Β. Bασιλικός, Το φύλλο, p. 110-111).
57
Ibidem, p. 50.
58
Ibidem, p. 51.
59
Ibidem, p. 83.
60
Ibidem, p. 100-101.
61
Ibidem, p. 101-102.
62
Ibidem, p. 103.
63
Π. Μουλλάς, Βασίλη Βασιλικού: Το φύλλο, p. 63.
one excluding the others. One looks for answers in the supernat-
ural, the second one in dystopian visions and suspicions and the
third one juggles terminology devoid of meaning and designation.
Not only in this fragment is Το φύλλο a game of conventions,
a play of forms. Already the beginning attracts the readers’ full
attention promising that it is not merely another casual novel:
Στην αρχή ήταν ο χάος. Πάχνη, ομίχλη, βροχή, χιόνι και χαλά-
ζι.64 Ένα διάστημα αδειανό και το σκοτάδι πάνω στην άβυσσό
του. Τα συστήματα των ανέμων και οι συναγωγές των υδάτων
το κατοικούσανε. Κι εκεί μέσα πετούσαν τα πουλιά: κάργες και
χελιδόνια. Ώσπου μια μέρα εμφανίστηκε ένας κύριος σοβαρός,
με μαύρα γυαλιά και μ’ ένα χαρτοφύλακα στο χέρι του. Έβγαλε
τα χαρτιά από το χαρτοφύλακα, μ’ ένα υποδεκάμετρο διαιρούσε
το διάστημα. Και είπε ο Κύριος: “Να έλθει πρώτα ο εκσκα-
φέας”. Και ήρθε ένα τέρας σιδερένιο, μ’ ένα στόμα θεριού, όλο
δαγκάνες και άρχισε να σκάβει τη γη. Δούλευε μέρες πολλές
με λύσσα. Έτρωγε το χώμα κι έπειτα το ξερνούσε πάνω σ’ ένα
φορτηγό. Και είπε ο Κύριος; “Φτάνει. Να φύγει ο εκσκαφέας και
να έρθουν οι εργάτες για τα θεμέλια”. Μαζεύτηκαν τότε πλή-
θος οι εργάτες: μπετατζήδες που ‘φτιάχναν τα υγρά μπετά και
σιδεράδες που καμπύλωναν το ατσάλι και καλουπατζήδες που
‘φτιάχναν τις τάβλες με μαδέρια και τσέρκια.65
In the beginning was chaos. Mist, fog, rain, snow, and hail. A void,
and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Wind systems and
the meeting of waters inhabited it, and birds flew within it: crows
and swallows. Until one day a sombre Landlord appeared, with
sunglasses and a briefcase in his hand. He took papers out of his
briefcase: with a tape measure he plotted the space. And the Land-
lord said: let the digger come first. And there came a metal monster
with the mouth of the beast, all teeth, and it started to dig the earth.
It worked for days with passion. It ate up the earth and spat it forth
into a dump truck. And the Landlord said: let the digger go and let
the workers come for the foundations. A crowd of workers came
then, workers who mixed the thick cement and workers who bent
the steel bars, and mould makers who prepared the moulds with
wooden planks and clamps.66
64
The first two sentences abound in sound harmonies— in almost every
word the letter χ [ch] is repeated.
65
Β. Bασιλικός, Το φύλλο, p. 23.
66
94 Chapter 2
The style of the text within the book changes multiple times:
sometimes it is richly lyrical, at other times it borders on the gro-
tesque. Vassilikos walks the same way that later Thomas Pyn-
chon would choose in Gravity’s Rainbow or V. The paragraphs and
sequences of sentences are many times woven into a stylistically
independent text unit, not unlike the feat accomplished by Ray-
mond Queneau’s Exercises in style: here, though the young writer
does not change his style to tell the same story multiple times, but
moves on with the story while switching the styles. For instance, in
the description of the town, the little text Lazaros includes in a let-
ter to his friend, poetic language surfaces in bloom: the buildings’
roofs are compared to an undulant ocean and the churches’ cupolas
to emerging whales’ spines.67 The depiction of the flat in the build-
ing resembles a report from a siege castle and the novel’s ending is
open, unsure, and returns to biblical68 or mystical language:
Θα πήγαινε έκει όπου δε θα ‘βρισκε άλλα τέρατα, πέρα, πίσω,

μακριά, πιο πέρα από τους πύργους της ΔΕΗ, πιο πίσω από το
Γεντί-Κουλέ.69 […] Θα πήγαινε εκεί όπου θα έβρισκε τον ήλιο
στην αυγή του, στην κόψη του βουνού, και θα ‘ριχνε τα ρούχα
του και θα ‘μπαινε γυμνός μες στον ήλιο, γυμνός, θα έμπαινε
στη φυλακή του ήλιου, στον κρόκο του ήλιου...70
He would go there where he couldn’t find other monsters, beyond,

behind, far away, beyond the poles of the Public Power Company,
behind Y[e]di-Koule. [...] He would go there where he could find
the sun in its dawn, on the ridge of the mountain, and he would
throw off his clothes, he would go naked into the sun, he would go
naked into the prison of the sun, into the yoke of the sun...71
The wide spectrum of interpretation — or even the encourage-

ment towards interpretational anarchy — did not meet with the
approval of some critical readers. They point to a lack of clarity,
67
Ibidem, p. 28-29.
68
Π. Μουλλάς, Βασίλη Βασιλικού: Το φύλλο, p. 62.
69
Castle of Seven Towers (Tur. Yedi Küle) – the fortress at Thessaloniki’s
acropolis. The name clearly relates to famous fortification in Constantinople.
70
Β. Bασιλικός, Το φύλλο, p. 119-120.
71
blurriness or even the indecisiveness of the symbolic layer,72 a fea-

ture that would differentiate Vassilikos’s text from the works of
the aforementioned Plaskovitis or Samarakis, where the symbolic
key with which to see the sense of the novel is quite obvious and
easy to locate with careful reading. One of them, Vassilis Varikas
claimed that the satirical dimension of Το φύλλο was not accentu-
ated strongly enough, which makes a reader (not excluding Varikas
himself) lose sight of the interpretational key — he feels deprived
of hints, of signs or premises toward a solution, while the amassing
of chaotic elements — that probably mean something significant on
their own — do not add up to a whole and the final understand-
ing of the protagonist’s motivation as well as the meaning below
the text is made unavailable.73 Critics also said that Το φύλλο is
“χιλιοειπωμένο” (wordy) and is in fact a kind of demonstration of
the author’s talent and capabilities, but not a “masterpiece”. John
Gross, a reviewer for the “New York Books Review” wrote a short,
comical comment that sums up the anxieties of such critics:74
A simple little story of boy-meets-shrub? Wrong again: the fantasy

is taken further, this time with a comic slant. Although the blurb
suggests that all three of his stories are about Love—what else?—
an equally good case could be made out for Mr. Vassilikos’ true
theme being immaturity. His heroes are youthful, introspective,
awkward, unsure of themselves; their thoughts are confused, their
feelings misty.
The second part of the Trilogy, Το πηγάδι, is much more

low-profile, its narration is toned down and the coherence in style
well tended. The action happens in a village and that is why all the
utterances by Malamo, the protagonist and a simple, country girl
are delivered in a local dialect. In comparison to the first part, here
the dialogues are abundant. While some critics commenting on the
72
Γ. Χατζίνης, Βασίλη Βασιλικού: Το φύλλο (The plant), “Νέα Εστία” 817
(1961), p. 975-976.
73
Β. Βαρίκας, Συγγραφείς και κείμενα, τόμος Α’, 1961-1965 (Writers and
texts, volume 1, 1961-1965), Athens 1975, p. 29-30.
74
J. Gross, Recent Fiction, “The New York Review of Books” 10/9/1964
(online version at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1964/09/10/recent-fiction/,
DOA: 2/12/2016).
96 Chapter 2
novel regard it as better than the first Trilogy instalment,75 others

find it even more obscure and even less easy to interpret than the
first novel.76 There is however consent on the fact that this text is
compact and from the formal point of view more homogeneous, or
even — which should be regarded as praise — very “Papadiaman-
tesque”, i.e. similar to the texts written by Alexadros Papadiaman-
tis. Το πηγάδι processes, though fragmentarily, a spaciously lim-
ited sample of insular country life, consciously linking its themes
with the achievements of the ithographic movement.77 Thanos, the
young protagonist, thanks to the journey he undertakes, but also
thanks to the company of Malamo discovers what life is, encounters
love and eventually finds death.78 It thus comprises a full, though
condensed scenario for a Bildungsroman. There are immediate
associations between Το πηγάδι and Το φύλλο — here and there
a young man stands in opposition to social convention: in Το φύλλο
he capitulates, while in Το πηγάδι — this is not necessarily so. Per-
haps a short, sketched ending, where the main character suddenly
falls prey to a mortal illness should be read as a punishment on the
youth administered by fate (or society, nature, karma etc.), because
he dared to oppose the rules (divine, natural, social etc.).79
Just like in Το φύλλο, in the second part of the Trilogy a reader
encounters mysteries or rather elements of the story that do not yield
to simple explanations. Why, for instance, do the two youngsters not
go to the second well, which is farther away, though the road is much
less troublesome? Is it about making use of the well dug (built?) by
the boy’s father?80 Is the well a symbol of an estate (and family) in
economic decline? What is this well anyway — what does it look
75
I. Καβαλιώτης, Νέα Βιβία: Το Πηγάδι του Βασίλη Βασιλικού (New books:
The well by Vassilis Vassilikos), “Έρευνα” 31/7/1961.
76
Α. Σαχίνης, Νέα πεζογραφία. Βασίλη Βασιλικού: Η διήγηση του Ιάσονα –
Το φύλλο – Το πηγάδι – Τ’ αγγέλιασμα (New prose. Vassilis Vassilikos’s: Jason’s
story – The plant – The well – The angel), “Εποχές” 1 (1963), no. 3, p. 72.
77
Ibidem, p. 73. See also the Introduction, p. 19-20 (on ithographic move-
ment).
78
D. Hadzisz, Utószó, p. 313-314.
79
Π.Χ. Μαρκόγλου, Νέα βιβλία: Το Πηγάδι του Βασίλη Βασιλικού (New
books: The well by Vassilis Vassilikos), “Πρωινή” 11/8/1961.
80
Β. Βασιλικός, Το πηγάδι, [in:] idem, Το φύλλο. Το πηγάδι. Το αγγέλιασμα.
Τριλογία, p. 164.
like? There is no clarity on that matter. It is sometimes described as

a cavity in the ground, as a hollow not unlike a cave,81 but at the
same time there is a ladder there and pieces of complex — as it
seems — machinery. The well emits an enigmatic field (of a magnetic
nature?)82 and allegedly breathes,83 which would imply that it is alive
and — what is worse — is a wicked being. If one believes “uncle”
Sotiris, it devoured his wife,84 though some inhabitants suggest his
wife simply left him and he is trying to hide this obvious truth with
a supernatural explanation. Even the very beginning of the second
novel (but only in the English translation!) introduces ambivalence:
The well, it is said, is not really a well, but something of a reservoir,
or perhaps “something between these two, [...] something hermaph-
roditic”.85 Further down both texts the well’s descriptions are far
from clear — and when there are such descriptions the text slips into
“technobabble”, a kind of pseudo-scientific jargon that emulates ter-
minology-rich narration. This lack of clarity might stem from anxie-
ties that haunt both Thanos and Malamo during all the way, when
they exchange fantastic and horror-like stories.
[Έ]βλεπε μες στο πηγάδι, με το φως του φακού, κομμάτια σίδερο,

σωλήνες, αγωγούς, σκάλες, τροχαίες, ρόδες. Μοναχά το νερό δε
φαινόταν. Όσο διαπεραστικός κι αν ήταν ο φακός το φως του
δεν αντανακλούσε πουθενά και χανόταν σ’ ένα απροσδιόριστο
βάθος.86
[He] gradually directed the beam down the well. It picked out the
jumble of metal, pipes, drain, a ladder, pulleys and wheels. No water
could be seen; however directed, the light failed to strike anything
that cast a reflection and so was lost at an indeterminate depth.87
The fragment relating to approaching and then going down into

the well is exceptionally difficult. The narration, once light-paced,
81
Ibidem, p. 187.
82
Ibidem, p. 168.
83
Ibidem, p. 166-167.
84
Ibidem, p. 138-139.
85
V. Vassilikos, The Plant..., p. 103. The translation at places differs
substantially from the original.
86
Ibidem, p. 188.
87
98 Chapter 2
loses its rhythm, tears in places and takes on the features of a night-
mare. But all the earlier references to the well in the text have the
same effect: temporarily breaking the narration, introducing uneas-
iness and disturbing the otherwise one-sidedness of the novel’s text.
The motif of the well is very popular in fairy-tales, and not only
Greek ones. In the folk fairytales typology created and developed by
Antti Aarne, Stith Thompson and Hans-Jörg Uther (ATU system),88
the well is enlisted under type number 301, where it plays an indis-
pensable role in the story: it is a liaison between worlds. One can
find wells fulfilling this function in Greek folk song, as well as in the
“higher”, so called λόγιος (“savant”) literature, written for the more
educated, and not transmitted orally — the well can be an entrance
to a pre-Christian afterworld (or to an underworld of the dead)89 as
well as to the Christian hell.90 This last interpretation is strengthened
by Thanos, who persuades Malamo, that the word “well” (πηγάδι) is
a contraction of the phrase “go to hell” (πήγε [στον] Άδη).91
During my reading of this fragment I was under the spell of the
similarity between Vassilikos’s vision and the atmosphere of mys-
tery that permeates the aforementioned TV series “Lost”. In both
cases the readers and viewers are left with unanswered questions,
a small amount of guesswork and the text does not allow them to
imagine the object (i.e. world-building aspects and sense of a story)
in any full shape. Such a device that puts a recipient in a precarious
position, is often used by numerous pop-cultural works, especially
in the science-fictional ones (as of late the prose of Jeff VanderMeer
in the cycle “Southern Reach”, 2014, which has won awards, is
a good example): it is not unlike the “defamiliarization grip” by
Viktor Shklovsky:92 it is a clear intention of the author for a reader
to be, and to stay confounded.
88
The typologies of International Folktales, H.J. Uther (ed.), v. I, Helsinki 2004,
p. 200-201.
89
This is the way it is depicted e.g. in the 15th century Cretan poem by Ber-
gadis Απόκοπος (Exhausted).
90
D. Solomos, Kobieta z Zakintos (Woman from Zakynthos), trans.
M. Borowska, seria “Arcydzieła literatury nowogreckiej” (series “Masterpieces of
Modern Greek literature”), v. I, Warsaw 2004, p. 162.
91
Β. Βασιλικός, Το πηγάδι, p. 146.
92
Cf. p. 198.
The critics concentrate on the well, already mentioned in the title

and there they see the key to understanding the whole text. Nikos
Bakolas is convinced that while in Το φύλλο a reader has to deal
with a conflict between man and nature (one side in the conflict is
the plant), in Το πηγάδι the line of division is drawn between life and
death, the well itself is a “world between”, a point of passage.93 Aris
Marangopoulos sees the well as a symbol of gnosis, an equivalent of
the Tree of the Knowledge that rewards with education, but deprives
of innocence. He points at the meaningful presence of machinery that
introduces to the novel the element of technological civilization or
even innovation. The critic specifies at the same time that he does not
understand (contrary to others) the well as purgatory.94
The second motif in Το πηγάδι is the richly exposed relationship
between Thanos and Malamo. The narration is led in such a way
that it lets a reader know the thoughts, anxieties and expectations
of both protagonists. For the girl Thanos is an obstacle to returning
— after years of service on the land (that is in the continental part
of Greece) — to her insular home village,95 and the absurd – in her
eyes – escapade to the well only staves off the moment of her return.
She tries to convince Thanos to change their route, but he is relent-
less.96 This is not their first meeting, they know something about
each other: Malamo is sure that when Thanos is in a bad mood, he
will try to tease her and leave her in tears and then he will feel sorry
and will try to comfort her. That is why Malamo can manipulate his
feelings and cry when she needs to.97 Thanos on his part treats the
girl patronisingly (he is older, better educated, his social position is
higher and so forth) and calls her by her name. Malamo calls him
“sir”, “young master Thanos” (κυρ-Θάνο) or “young boss” (μικρο-
αφεντικό). It turns out the Thanos lusts after Malamo and not just
from the day that they go together to fetch the water. The girl attracts
him, a fact that he may not fully consciously realise. At one point he
93
Ν. Μπακόλας, Κριτική. Τ’ αγγελιασμα. Πεζογράφημα του Β. Βασιλικού
(Critics. The Angel. Prose of V. Vassilikos), “Ελεύθερος Λαός” 28/2/1962.
94
Α. Μαραγκόπουλος, Αντί προλόγου, p. 14-15.
95
96
Κ.Ι. Τσαούσης, Η αγέραστη Τριλογία του Βασίλη Βασιλικού (The Trilogy
by Vassilis Vassilikos not growing old), “Έθνος” 28/5/1994.
97
100 Chapter 2
recollects a dream when he is on top of her and “her warm body

is wriggling like a frightened bird”:98 he is aroused but at the same
time jealous – as Malamo belongs here, she is at one with the trees,
the birds, nature. She is stronger, being in her natural habitat, while
he feels he is losing his grip over her, he “has lost his armour”.99
Many of his actions and maybe the whole trip to the well has as an
ultimate goal impressing the girl.100 The relationship between them
definitely changes when they reach the well. Thanos, regardless of
his fears, descends into the cave (?), but he panics, when something
(a bird?) touches him and he suffers a haemorrhage from his nose.101
Malamo has to go to help him. She drops the polite title “kir-”, she
gently pulls him out to the surface and their relationship becomes
one of equality. During their joint attempt to leave the well there, in
the darkness, their first extended physical contact takes place.
[Μ]ε το ξυλιασμένο χέρι άρχισε να την πασπατεύει. [...]

– Τι πιάνω τώρα;
– Τη γάμπα μ’.
– Τώρα;
– Το λαιμό μ’.
– Αυτό τι είναι;
– Το τσίτι μ’.
– Τούτο;
– Τα μαλλιά μ’.
Εφάρμοσε καλύτερα στο πλάι της, βολεύτηκε όπως γύρω από
μια πήλινη θερμάστρα. […] Τον λυπήθηκε. Είχε την ίδια συμπό-
νια γι’ αυτόν όπως για όλους τους κουτσούς, τους τυφλούς,
τους σακάτηδες που έβλεπε στους δρόμους της πολιτείας. Κι
έβαζε τον Θάνο, από ένστιχτο, κοντά στους αδικημένους από
τη φύση.102
He started fondling her with his cold hand [...]

– What am I touching now?
– My leg.
– Now?
98
«[Τ]ο ζεστό κορμάκι της να σπαρταρά σαν πουλί τρομαγμένο», ibi-
dem, p. 162.
99
Ibidem.
100
Ibidem, p. 165.
101
Ibidem, p. 200.
102
Ibidem, p. 203.
– My neck.
– What’s this?
– My dress.
– This?
– My hair.
He made himself snug against her side, as comfortable as he would
be beside a clay stove. [...] She felt sorry for him., as she did for
all the maimed, lame, and blind whom she has seen on a street of
a town. By instinct she placed him among those not favored by
nature.103
The contact lasts even longer than that and starts resembling
a sexual act.104 When they are leaving the well, Thanos – just like in
his dream – ...
...βρέθηκε από πάνω της χωρίς να το καταλάβει. Ένιωθε το στα-

ρένιο της κορμί να σπαρταρά, τη λαχανιασμένη ανάσα της να
τον γλείφει, τα δάχτυλά της να κεντρίζουν το αίμα του, τη μικρή
φωνή της να ρίχνει λάδι στη φωτιά. Κόρωσε.105
He found himself on top of her without realizing it. He could feel

her young body wriggling, her shortened breath licking him, her
fingers goading his blood, her little voice stirring the fire. He was
blazing now.106
Their behaviour as lovers is kept then to the end of the novel.

Malamo is described as sitting next to Thanos’s deathbed and hold-
ing his hand in awe and grief.
A constant element of their conversation is the mythical sto-
ries or rather pseudo-myths. By feeding them to Malamo, Thanos is
whistling in the dark and, transforming his fears into words, he tries
to dominate the girl in yet another field. He is therefore telling her
a cosmogenetic story from the perspective of the Thassos islanders
— he speaks about a God, who transformed huge, prehistoric mon-
sters into rocks, boulders and islets: Thassos is a former crust of an
103
V. Vassilikos, The Plant..., p. 154-155 (with my additions).
104
In Greece until today the sexual theme (in literature but also on the
screen) was the subject of a strong taboo. Such words back in the 1960s had to be
really provocative and bold.
105
106
102 Chapter 2
ancient crab and its two peninsulas, Kefalas and St. Anthony, are
the petrified monstrous pincers. The coast is the monster’s mouth
and the beach — its tongue in atrophic state, the rocks around — its
teeth and the well — its throat that leads to depths of its ever-hun-
gry abdomen.107
In his text Vassilikos manages to merge a contemporary, almost
technologized worldview with seemingly incompatible “faithful-
ness to the mythical sphere”.108 In the texts that comprise the Trilogy
he pays peculiar homage to the Greek stories of childhood, that to
a large degree are tales that non-Greek children know as the Greek
myths. Marangopoulos relates to the Greek term for a novel —
‘μυθιστόρημα’ — and he plays with words called in Vassilikos’s
text not ‘mytho-history’ (taking the term morphems superficially
and literally), but ‘fiction-history’ (μυθιστορία).109 Similar connota-
tions are shared by Edmund Keeley, a renowned American trans-
lator, who in the introduction to his (and his wife Mary Keeley’s)
translation of the Trilogy into the English language quotes John
Updike, who stated that “through the young eyes of Mr. Vassilikos
modern Greece is again populated by monsters, omens, and prod-
igies. With wonderful cunning he makes the decadent technology
of the West yield metaphors for our timeless fears and appetites
His realism has the epic touch, and his parables, no matter how far-
fetched, live by heart’s blood.”110
The fateful ending of the novel, with the strange death of Thanos
after contact with an unknown virus and with Malamo by his bed-
side is heralded throughout the whole text. In Sotiris’s hut where
the protagonists take refuge from the unexpected rain, Thanos
automatically reads admonitory signs accumulated there (for what
purpose?) that once had been placed on a construction site (reminis-
cent of the introductory paragraphs in Το φύλλο?).111 They warn of
impending death if one is not careful enough. Moreover, the name
107
108
109
Ibidem, p. 12. Cf. p. 38 (the Introduction).
110
J. Updike’s review, quoted by the publisher of the English translation of
the Trilogy.
111
Β. Βασιλικός, Το πηγάδι, p. 162-164.
of the protagonist, Thanos (Θάνος, abbreviation from Αθανάσιος,

literally ‘immortal’) rhymes with the word ‘death’ (θάνατος) — the
mythogical Thanatos. Thanos, conscious of this link faux-grammat-
ically grades his name like an adjective: Mortal, Mortaler, Mortal-
est (Θάνος, Θανάτερος, Θανάσιμος),112 though the meaning of
the word, at least in Polish or and English, besides ‘one that will
eventually die’, may mean ‘one that is very dangerous” or “carry-
ing death’.113 The feeling of the imminence of death emanates from
the novel from its first pages, it is a record of the fears and anxieties
of childhood, adolescence and its end:114 the moment when a young
man stands for the first time in front of death and for the first time
makes himself aware of his corporeality and thus mortality.
Το αγγέλιασμα, the last part of the Trilogy, puts the protag-

onist — and readers — through death, speculating what would
come next. Modern Greek literature is full of various descriptions
of the afterlife and the afterworld, so well-known from frescos in
Greek Orthodox temples’ pro-narthexes. On the other hand, lit-
erary texts relate to a traditional, folk image of the world-under,
in-rooted in antiquity and preserved in a thousand funeral dirges
(μοιρολόγια). The topic, more or less comprehensively, has been
tackled by (among others): M. Karagatsis (Σέργιος και Βάκχος, Ser-
gios and Vakhos, 1959), Alexios Panselinos (Μεγάλη Πομπή, The
Great Procession 1985), or Christos A. Chomenidis (Στην Δευτέρη
Παρουσία ας μας βάλουν απουσία, At the Second Coming, let them
note our absence, 2010).115 Vassilikos’s vision, in comparison, looks
very detailed, but not generalized; instead — just like other texts in
the Trilogy — it is, above all, quite unclear and ambiguous.116 And
this part is not immediately connected to other parts of the cycle. In
the first part the hero is “on the side of nature”, in the second — he
112
Ibidem, p. 164.
113
Ibidem, p. 194.
114
K. Χρυσομάλλη-Heinrich, Η Τριλογία…, p. 351.
115
Cf. P. Kordos, Na Pierwszym Cmentarzu Miejskim w Atenach (First Com-
munal Cemetery in Athens), “Prace Filologiczne. Literaturoznawstwo” 5 (2012),
p. 83-98.
116
Ι. Καβαλιώτης, Νέα βιβλία...
104 Chapter 2
is a victim of nature, in the third part — there is no nature, but read-

ers are transported to an “extraterrestrial land”.
It is also the most “romantic” part of the Trilogy, to a large
extent devoted to an analysis of an amorous relationship between
two young people.117 The relationship is told from the perspective
of the dead and rejected lover. Love is described with poetic affec-
tion, unlike in the other parts (where deep feeling was the reason
for frustration, fear or awe). The critic Prodromos Markoglou thinks
that Το αγγέλιασμα is isolated from the rest of the threefold work:
anxiety, frustration, and the imperative of journeying disappear
and are replaced by poetry, so intense that the whole novel, while
written in prose takes on a deeply lyrical character.118
The fortunes of love are analysed and contrasted with celestial
reality: It is organised like a military camp. And so the reader who
in Το φύλλο observed mundane, everyday routine, in Το πηγάδι
— a supposed idyll of country life, this time is faced with the coer-
cion of state mechanisms.119 There is little doubt that Vassilikos is
relating here his own experience as a conscript. The link between
the worlds are the letters written by the protagonist to the girl (his
former girlfriend), who is left — alive — on Earth. The main char-
acter, named appropriately — Angelos (lit. “angel”) is studying to
become an angel and his curriculum is quite strict:
1. Γυμναστική.
2. Η τέχνη της Λήθης.
3. Ιεραρχία Αγίων και Οσίων.
4. Διάρθρωσις των Ταγμάτων των Αγγέλων.
5. Μέθοδοι επιθέσεως κατά τον Σατανά.
6. Περί Κολάσεως.
7. Συντήρηση Θεϊκού Υλικού.
8. Διαστημολογία.120
1. Physical Education
2. Science of Forgetfulness
K. Χρυσομάλλη-Heinrich, Η Τριλογία…, p. 351.

117
Π. Μάρκογλου, Νεα βιβλία...

118
119
Α. Σαχίνης, Νέα πεζογραφία…, p. 70-71.
120
Β. Βασιλικός, T’ αγγέλιασμα, [in:] idem, Το φύλλο. Το πηγάδι. Το
αγγέλιασμα. Τριλογία, p. 252.
3. Hierarchy of Thrones and Powers

4. Structure of Angel Platoons
5. Combat Strategy against Satan
6. The Nature of Hell
7. Maintenance of Sacred Equipment
8. Spaceology121
The first mention of angels is already present in the title, which

is neologic and at once a challenge for (would-be) translators.
Heaven in the novel is not a pleasant place. Candidates for the posi-
tion of angel are subject to strict discipline (insubordination will be
met with punishment), the whole institution122 is highly hierarchi-
cal and based on absolute respect for a military-style rank. Heaven’s
inhabitants are meticulously categorized: “God, Subgod, Cheru-
bim, Serafim, Supra-Saints, Saints and Subsaints” (Θεός, Υποθεός,
Χερουβείμ, Σεραφείμ, Υπερόσιοι, Όσιοι και Υφόσιοι).123 One of
the devices of discipline is the constantly heated-up atmosphere of
perpetual danger: an invasion from hell can happen at any time.124
Studying is by no means theoretical — the cadets are trained to be
front-line units. At the end of the novel the protagonist receives
wings, and other evolutionary enhancements that transform his
hands gradually making writing more difficult and finally impos-
sible.125 This is how the novel ends — and the Trilogy as well: the
ending is final, closed and categorical — everything has been said,
all the threads summed up and conflicts resolved.126 The picture of
a strict life in barracks and the imminent danger is — according to
Roderick Beaton — an allusion to the global political situation, it
feels very much like cold-war Greece.127 What surprises here is the
ample use of fantastic elements, that would point to an odd version
of science-fiction, but these are only sketches: the action takes place
on some moon, on a star, on an orbiting space station? Next to Earth
121
V. Vassilikos, The Plant..., p. 195 (with my additions).
122
Σ.Ε.Α.Ο. – Σχολή Εφέδρων Αγγέλων Ουρανού (The School of Heavenly
Angel Conscripts).
123
Β. Βασιλικός, T’ αγγέλιασμα, p. 312.
124
Ibidem, p. 299.
125
Ibidem, p. 339.
126
Ibidem.
127
R. Beaton, Εισαγωγή στην Νεότερη…, p. 318.
106 Chapter 2
or in a far corner of the Galaxy? Or maybe in a different galaxy

altogether?
[Τ]ην πρώτη νύχτα που φύλαξα σκοπός έγινε κάτι μυστήριο

στη σελήνη. [...:] το φεγγάρι άρχισε να κρύβεται μες το δικό
του σώμα. Ένα κομμάτι του σκεπάστηκε. Το άλλο πήρε να
κοκκινίζει.128
The first night I was on guard duty something strange happened to

the moon: it started hiding inside its own body. A part of it covered
itself in darkness. The remainder started turning red.129
The fantastic convention introduced in the plot is formal and

resembles more what the Little Prince has to offer than a full-blown
space-opera130 that would be characterized by highly developed
scenery, well-defined world-building conditions and a high level of
coherence. Besides, this it takes place in the far future among, stars,
starships and alien races. However, Carlos García Gual regarded
Το αγγέλιασμα as a fantasy novel (taking advantage of Tzvetan
Todorov findings).131 The fantastic scenery that is constructed
throughout the whole text with a lot of effort may132 play the role
of a “defamilarization grip” and exist in order for a reader not to
feel too much at home in the novel’s surroundings. Or perhaps it
has to do with a portion of comic quality133 that is present in other
texts in the cycle, though here the humorous setting is presented
128
129
130
Science-fiction subgenre, slanted toward adventure literature, taking place
in the far future and using such tropes as space travel, alien races, interstellar
conflict, colonization of other planets. Cf. B.M. Stableford et al., Space Opera, [in:]
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (online), J. Clute et al. (ed.), Londyn 2015, http://
sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/space_opera (DOA: 2/12/2016).
131
C. García Gual, Vasili Vasilikós: Un narrador inquietante y fantástico, “Claves
de Razón Práctica”, 85 (1998), no. 4, p. 60. Cf. also p. 185.
132
Δ. Ραπτόπουλος, Ο ένας „άλλος”: ο Βασίλης Βασιλικός (Some “other”:
Vassilis Vassilikos), [in:] idem, Οι ιδέες και τα έργα. Δοκίμια (Ideas and works.
Essays), Athens 1965, p. 258.
133
Λ. Πολίτης, Ιστορία της νεοελληνικής λογοτεχνίας, p. 357.
in an awkward and, up to a point, sketchy way. Jerzy Jarzębski,134

a theoretician who analyses the presence of fantastic staffage in con-
temporary Polish literature, pays attention to another reason for the
employment of a fantastic repository, He writes about the frequent
fantastic motifs that penetrate realistic (in this case non-fantastic)
prose and comes to two conclusions: one, that in many texts this
repository has a sketchy character and two, that it is an indispensa-
ble addition to a realistic means of expression that is not sufficient
to describe a quickly changing reality (and the picture of people lost
in a rapidly changing world).
The prolonged retrospective thread that is present throughout
the letters and the protagonist’s reminiscences concentrates on the
person of the girl who is the object of Angelos’s — in his earthly life
— romantic interest, in secret from her fiancé who is away on long
and compulsory military service. The relationship is the source of
lyricism in the novel. It starts casually, with a meeting in a crowded
university corridor, with a mutual wordless understanding. The
girl, Pidachtoi, and Angelos begin an affair.135 The girl, in the boy’s
embraces, starts to see herself as a “whole woman”,136 which the
dead Angelos remembers with nostalgia. It is no Platonic relation-
ship —but full of carefully described — corporeality.137 When the
end comes, it is orchestrated by the fiancé who returns home and
put things back in order, and who announces this to Angelos in
front of the girl. Angelos is left only with despair.
[Χ]άος είναι πικρό, αγκαθερό, όλο αίματα, εκτρώσεις, ασφυξιο-

γόνα αέρια:
ΥΓΡΑΕΡΙΑ
ΣΚΟΥΤΕΡ HEINEL – ΜΟΤΟΠΟΔΗΛΑΤΑ
ΚΟΜΜΩΤΗΡΙΟΝ “ΒΕΡΑ”
Και δεν μπορώ να σηκώσω τόση νύχτα επάνω μου, όσο κι αν
νέες διαφημίσεις έρχονται να την ξεσχίσουν.
134
J. Jarzębski, Realizm podszyty fantastyką (Realism coated with the fantastic),
“Teksty drugie” 6 (2008), p. 44-53.
135
Β. Βασιλικός, T’ αγγέλιασμα, p. 263. In English version the girl is not
called Pidachtoi, but Zoe (lit. “life”). V. Vassilikos, The Well…, p. 205.
136
„Τέλεια γυναίκα” (it also means “perfect woman”). Β. Βασιλικός, T’
αγγέλιασμα, p. 269.
137
Ibidem, p. 280-281.
108 Chapter 2
FOTOGRAFIKA
RADIO – OPTA
PHILCO
Περπατάω κι οι δρόμοι μου φαίνονται πνευμόνια που άδεια-
σαν από τον αέρα τους, οι άνθρωποι μικρόβια, που πρέπει να
φορέσεις γάντι πριν τους χαιρετίσεις, το γάντι που μακραίνει
τα δάχτυλα, όπως η αναμονή σου μακραίνει τα δευτερόλεπτα,
και, μικρά κεφάλια, δάση βουβά, βασανισμένα χρώματα πλά-
θετε την εικόνα της αγάπης μου μες στην κορνίζα της αιώνιας
θάλασσας.138
[C]haos is bitter, thorny, full of blood, abortions, asphyxiating gas:

WATER GAS
SCOOTER HEINKEL – MOTORCYCLES
BEAUTY PARLOR: “VERA”
And I can’t carry so much night on my back, even if new neon
signs rip through it:
FOTOGRAPHICA
RADIO – OPTA
PHILCO
I walk along, and the streets seem like lungs emptied of air,
people like microbes you should touch only while wearing gloves,
gloves that make your fingers longer, just as waiting for you makes
seconds longer – and capital letters, silent buildings, tortured col-
ours, mould the image of my love in the frame of the eternal sea.139
What is this last instalment of the Trilogy. For the Greeks “angel”
is not only a messenger from heaven, it (he? she?) can be also a har-
binger of death, because the Angel is used to represent Charos140 (as
in the story by Giorgos Vizyinos)141 and then the title says almost
too much. Marangopoulos called the text “the devouring of post-
war familiarity” and saw it as the true voice of the generation.142
138
Ibidem, p. 292-293.
139
140
M. Bzinkowski, Masks of Charos in Modern Greek Demotic Songs, Kraków
2017.
141
Cf. Γ. Βιζυηνός, Tο μόνον της ζωής του ταξείδιον (His only journey in his
life), [in:] idem, Διηγήματα (Stories), Athens 1991.
142
“Βρυκόλασμα της μετεμφυλιακής συνθήκης.” Α. Μαραγκόπουλος,
Αντί προλόγου, p. 17-19.
He discovered143 numerous links with Το κιβώτιο by Alexandrou,

widely regarded as the most original post-war Greek novel. Both
are characterized by long monologues and both have fragments
written in a “stream of consciousness” technique. He adds that
both these works, Το αγγέλιασμα and Το κιβώτιο, are indispensa-
ble for understanding the mentality of Greek society in the 1960s,
torn between capitalism (on the rise) and socialism (imaginary).144
Understanding of social moods is in turn indispensable to analyse
the circumstances that made possible the coup of the “black colo-
nels” in April 1967, which met with virtually no resistance, while
the coup perpetrators managed to keep power for seven years.
These events have still not been fully interpreted by historians nor
reworked by literature. So Alexandrou and Vassilikos, despite their
apparent shift to symbolism, are in fact political writers, taking the
floor on the subject of what the Greeks call επικαιρότητα — “the
stream of current events”.
Any attempt to consider the three parts of the Trilogy as a whole

begins with a quest for their common denominator: how to deter-
mine that these three texts belong together. There are certain effort-
lessly distinguishable similarities, like that fact that all three contain
a fantastic element — the last part especially, as it is presented in
a science-fictionesque scenography. And the protagonist of all three
texts is a young man, but there is always a significant other, a girl:
the object of the protagonist’s fascination, love, obsession and lust.
The main male characters are given meaningful names: Lazos
(Lazaros that is Lazarus), Thanos, and Angelos (literally ‘angel’),
a detail that points to the symbolism of the afterworld.145 The sub-
sequent parts may therefore signify Hell, Purgatory and Heaven
respectively,146 and the protagonists (or one protagonist in three
persons) travels through all these realms in a way which resembles
143
Ibidem.
144
Ibidem, p. 20.
145
K. Friar, Απόσπασμα από την εισήγηση στον εκδότη (Reader’s report
to the publisher), 10/4/1964, from Vassilis Vassilikos Collection ΦΑΚ Α.Β. 201/
ΑΙ/Ι.Ε.ΙI.FI, after: Β. Βασιλικός, Το φύλλο. Το πηγάδι. Το αγγέλιασμα. Τριλογία,
p. 422-423.
146
Θ. Πέρσης, Η Τριλογία του Βασίλη Βασιλικού.
110 Chapter 2
Dante’s Virgil. Other critics try to move away from — as it appears

— too jaded a trope of katabasis, looking for solutions connected to
Bildungsroman construction. For example Prodromos Markoglou
states that the three novels constitute a story (a meta-story) about
growing up and about the end of adolescence147 (Vitti adds that there
is a typical Vassilikos-type character: a young man facing a social
crisis.)148 Vassilikos for his part once suggested that such a reading
is correct and declared that he wrote a story about a young man
who does not want to live in a world he did not choose.149 The way
out of this world leads to rejection, most easily reached by death
(suicide): that is why the writer and literary essayist Dimitris Rap-
topoulos suggests supplying the Trilogy title with a subtitle “Three
deaths from youthful prehistory”.150 It would immediately point to
the motif of death that appears with various intensity throughout
all the novels commented on and — on the other hand — would in
a mildly humorous way refer to this aforementioned end of adoles-
cence, treated as remote times, a kind of prehistory from the adult
history point of view. Other interpretations have placed the Trilogy
in a specified epoch — the beginning of the 1960s and look for signs
of a description of a generation, the generation that experiences the
first major economic boom.151 The same critic states that the Trilogy
might be a reaction to the Americanisation of Greek society, built
up from the ashes of war with the post-war American reconstruc-
tion money.152 Yet another group of interpretations concentrated
on the triads of concepts that could be attributed analogously to
parts of the Trilogy: for example Lacarrière sees the world of the
absurd (Το φύλλο), of depression (Το πηγάδι) and of nightmares
147
Π.Χ. Μαρκόγλου, Νέα βιβλία...
148
M. Vitti, Presentazione, [in:] V. Vasilikòs, La folgia, Il pozzo, L’ angelicazione,
trans. F.M. Pontani, Turin 1971, p. 12-14.
149
Ibidem, p. 7-8; Β. Ψυρράκης, Μια επιτυχία των 12…, p. 15.
150
Gr. “Τρεις θανάτοι από την εφηβική προϊστορία” – the title of D. Rap-
topulos’s text (idem, Οι ιδέες και τα έργα. Δοκίμια, p. 266-275).
151
Β. Ψυρράκης, Μια συμαντική επανέκδοση. Μικρό χρονικό μιας
τερατώδους εποχής (Important republishing. The chronicle of a monstrous sea-
son), “Πανόραμα” 16/6/1994.
152
Μ. Κουμανδαρέας, Βασιλικές γάτες (Royal cats), “Διαβάζω” 70 (2011),
p. 76.
(Το αγγέλιασμα).153 Most such readings point to the amorous or

erotic dimension: it is supposed to be a recording that involves
“a myth of the first erotic contact”,154 the emotional development
of a relationship of young (and therefore inexperienced) people,155
the stages of love: puppy, unconscious and finally lyrical.156 Tziovas
states that these are simply symbolic narrations about erotic explo-
ration and initiation,157 while another researcher, Pierette Renard
calls the Trilogy straightforwardly “δρομολόγιο της αγάπης”
(a love timetable).158
None of the ideas on how to order and explain coherently the
elements of the Trilogy is simple nor obvious: every one takes on
additional assumptions that in my opinion reach beyond the text
and that let critics and commentators to allow for specific inter-
pretations and readings. Its “three-parted-ness” becomes a symbol
itself that demands to be deciphered. A peculiar afterword, placed
after all three novels, does not improve the situation the interpret-
ers are in:
Τα φύλλα, τα ψάρια και τα πουλιά είναι ένα στο βάθος. Μπορεί

να διαφέρουν όσο ζουν, μα όταν πάψουν να ζουν, αφήνουν το
ίδιο λείψανο χαραγμένο πάνω στη σκληρή μνήμη της πέτρας. Η
πεταλούδα δεν είναι μόνο το άνθος που απόκτησε φτερά. Ούτε
το χελιδονόψαρο το μόνο πουλί που έγινε ψάρι. Μας ξεγελά τ’
ότι ζουν στη στεριά, στο νερό και στον αέρα. Νομίζουμε, ότι δια-
φέρουν, γιατί άλλα μεγαλώνουν ακίνητα, άλλα κολυμπούν και
άλλα πετούν. Όμως, τα φύλλα, τα ψάρια και τα πουλιά, όταν τα
153
J. Lacarrière, Sur Trois Romanciers, p. 561-562.
154
Δ. Ραπτόπουλος, Τρεις θανάτοι…, p. 270-275.
155
Μ. Ρέζαν, Βασιλικός: 3 έργα...
156
Π. Μουλλάς, Βασίλη Βασιλικού: Το φύλλο, Το πηγάδι, Τ’ αγγέλιασμα,
[in:] idem, Για τη μεταπολεμιή μας πεζογραφία. Κριτικές καταθέσεις (About
our postwar prose. Confessions of a critic), Athens 1989, p. 69-70. Cf. also the opin-
ion that the Trilogy consists of “three tales about love”, P. Levine, Individualism and
the Traditional Talent, “The Hudson Review” 17 (1964), no. 3, p. 474.
157
158
P. Renard, Το τραγικό κάτω από την επιφάνεια: σπουδή στην τριλογία
Το φύλλο, Το πηγάδι, Τ’ αγγέλιασμα (Tragedy beneath surface. A study on the
Trilogy), “Πολιορκία” 20 (1984), p. 11-12.
112 Chapter 2
σώματά τους διαλυθούν, σκάβουν το ίδιο σχήμα πάνω σε μια

σκληρή πέτρα της μνήμης.159
Plants, fish, and birds are fundamentally one and the same. They
may differ while alive, but when they stop living, they leave behind
the same traces carved in the hard memory of stone. The butterfly
is not the only flower that took on wings, nor the flying fish the
only bird that took to water. We’re fooled by their living on land,
in the sea, and in the air. We think they differ, because some rise
motionless, some swim, and some fly. But plants, fish, and birds,
when their bodies disappear, carve the same shape into the hard
stone of memory.160
Though of course, one can simply point to the fact that a cer-
tain type of popular literature is inclined toward three-part cycles.
Trilogies have become a universal theme of speculative literature,
starting maybe with J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (though
the division was in this case imposed by his publisher).161 Tade-
usz Cegielski, historian and writer, points to the fact that trilogies
(‘three-deckers’) are a common phenomenon in the world of popu-
lar literature already in the 19th century, where the publisher spon-
sored the first part and counted on drawing the interest of readers
to sell the next two parts that were to finance the publisher’s initial
outlay with their profit.162 It seems that Vassilikos chooses to write
a three-part work as yet another nod towards popular literature,
leaving yet another misleading trace.
One of the methods for anchoring these unusual texts in
a broader literary context was searching for similarities of the novels
to renowned texts of world literature and subsequently discovering
a new, plausible inspiration that would be of help in interpreting
159
Β. Βασιλικός, Υ.Γ. (Postscriptum), [in:] idem, Το φύλλο. Το πηγάδι. Το
αγγέλιασμα. Τριλογία, p. 341.
160
161
R.T. Tally, Jr. Three rings for the Elven-kings. Trilogizing Tolkien in print and
in film, “Mythlore” 36 (2017), no. 1, p. 175ff (online: https://tinyurl.com/trilogizing,
DOA: 1/10/2018).
162
T. Cegielski, Detektyw w krainie cudów. Powieść kryminalna i narodziny
nowoczesności (1841-1941) (Detective in wonderland. Crime stories and the birth of
modernity), Warsaw 2015, p. 23.
Vassilikos’s creation. He himself referred to Alain Robbe-Grillet163

and Fyodor Dostoevsky164 the first one was responsible for the
form, the second for the content of Vassilikos’s writing, the author
negated all comparisons of his oeuvre with Nikos Kazantzakis’s,
whose texts are of no significance to the Trilogy’s author, or so he
says.165 The critics, as I have already mentioned, find in his work
echoes of James Joyce,166 Franz Kafka,167 Albert Camus168 and Jean-
Paul Sartre169 (the authors read extensively in the time of writing of
the three novels), but also the oneiric, poetic style of Edgar Allan
Poe and Arthur Rimbaud.170 The Trilogy was listed among the
works representing “the literature of the absurd”171 and regarded
as “almost” surreal.172 For biographical reasons (the young author
visited the USA shortly before writing the novels) Vassilikos was
suspected of having a fascination with beatnik culture and writ-
ing,173 a fascination that was believed to be lethal for the quality
of his prose (“Vassilikos covers with beatnik the nakedness of
his prose”174). When writing about Vassilikos, the critic, Pavlos P.
Nathanail, divided young Modern Greek writers into those who
163
A. Σαχίνης, Νέα πεζογραφία..., p. 69.
164
Β. Ψυρράκης, Μια επιτυχία των 12…, p. 15.
165
Ibidem.
166
Γ. Αριστηνός, Βασίλης Βασιλικός, [in:] idem, Νάρκισσος και Ιανός.
Η νεώτερική πεζογραφία στην Ελλάδα (Narcissos and Ianos. Modern prose
in Greece). Athens 2007, p. 381; Μ. Κουμανταρέας, Από το Ζ στο Κ..., p. 10-13;
Δ. Ραπτόπουλος, Ένας „άλλος”..., p. 259-260.
167
Γ. Αριστηνός, Βασίλης Βασιλικός, p. 378-9; Α. Κοτζιάς, Το πηγάδι του
Βασίλη Βασιλικού (The well by Vassilis Vassilikos), “Μεσημβρινή” 24/11/1961,
p. 214; K. Friar, Απόσπασμα από την εισήγηση…; Α. Καραντώνης, Βασίλης
Βασιλικός, p. 159-160; C. García Gual, Vasili Vasilikòs…, p. 60.
168
Τ. Σαλκιτζόλγλου, Ξαναδιαβάζοντας το Φύλλο του Β. Βασιλικού
(Remarks after a re-reading of The Plant by V. Vassilikos), “Νέα Γράμματα” 17-18
(1987), p. 11.
169
Γ. Αριστηνός, Βασίλης Βασιλικός, p. 379.
170
Α. Καραντώνης, Βασίλης Βασιλικός, p. 160.
171
Κ. Χρυσομάλλη-Heinrich, Η Τριλογία…, p. 346; Α. Σαχίνης, Νέα
πεζογραφία…, p. 69-70.
172
C. García Gual, Vasili Vasilikòs…, p. 60.
173
Δ. Ραπτόπουλος, Ένας „άλλος”…, p. 22.
174
Π. Μουλλάς, Βασίλη Βασιλικού: Το φύλλο, Το πηγάδι, Τ’ αγγέλιασμα,
p. 67.
114 Chapter 2
draw ideas from their talents and those who — because of their
lesser talent — have to look for inspiration in the works of foreign
writers. Vassilikos, according to Nathanail, paradoxically shares
both these features at once.175
Another important point of reference for his texts is their rela-
tion to Greek reality. They were written in a specific political and
social period that would demand some engagement on the side of
the author. But no, Greece in the Trilogy is virtually absent but for
scenography. Lesser customary elements (like a mention of the so-
called evil eye belief and a talisman that is supposed to protect one
from evil)176 or historical references (the trauma of the World War
Two) are rare examples of anything other than mere descriptions
of streets and landscapes.177 The only exceptions are perhaps the
fragments in the retrospections presented in Το Αγγέλιασμα that
compare the common history shared by the Greek nation with the
passing personal time of the protagonist.
Κομμάτια από την εποχή πριν σε γνωρίσω. Αναμνήσεις της

σκλαβωμένης καρδιάς. Το κρυφό σχολειό. Ο φόβος των Γενι-
τσάρων. Ο ευφρόσυνος Αλή Πασάς. Το όραμα μιας γρήγορης
απελευθέρωσης. Η Φιλική Εταιρεία. Οδός Παλαιών Πατρών
Γερμανού.178 Tο λάβαρο. Είμαστε νέοι.179 [...]180
Ω, τι δεν έκανα από τότε που χωρίσαμε – το παλιό όραμα,
η Κόκκινη Μηλιά,181 να ξαναφτάσουμε τα σύνορα των προγό-
νων μας, του θείου μας του Μεγαλέξανδρου, πλαταίνοντας τα
175
Π.Π. Ναθαναήλ, Βασίλη Βασιλικού: Τριλογία (Φύλλο, Πηγάδι,
Αγγέλιασμα) (By Vassilis Vassilikos: the Trilogy – The Plant, The well, The angel),
“Ηπειρωτική Εστία” 1/12/1961, p. 1138.
176
Β. Βασιλικός, Tο φύλλο, p. 56.
177
Β. Βασιλικός, Tο πηγάδι, p. 157.
178
The street named after the Patras bishop who allegedly raised the revolu-
tionary standard on 25th March 1821 (C.M. Woodhouse, Modern Greece..., p. 134).
179
Greece’s history does not leave the author’s focus. Vassilikos stated
he should regard himself as a descendant of the ancient Greeks: Β. Βασιλικός
Η χώρα που δεν μας χωράει; Οι νέοι και η κοινωνία (The country, that does not
fit us in. The young and the society), “Ταχυδρόμος” 14/7/1962, p. 22.
180
181
A legendary place whence the Turks are supposed to come from and
where they are to go back. A fragment of the legend about “a king turned to
stone” and about regaining Constantinople. Cf. C.N. Seremetakis, The Last Word.
Women, Death and Divination in Inner Mani, Chicago 1991, p. 203-205.
σύνορα της μικρής μας χώρας, φαρδαίνοντας τα σύνορα της

στενής μας κάμαρας, ώσπου μας πρόδωσαν οι σύμμαχοι, οι
τάχατε φίλοι, και γυρίσαμε πίσω με καταματωμένα τα φτερά –
τι δεν έκανα από τότε που αφομοιωθήκαμε με τους πρόσφυγες,
να βρω κάτι να σε αντικαταστήσει, μια άλλη χώρα να πάρει τη
θέση σου, μια ξένη αγκαλιά...182
Fragments from the period before I met you. Recollections of the

enslaved heart. Learning in hidden schools. The fear of Turkish
Gennesars. Amiable Ali Pasha. Visions of quick liberation. The
Friends of the Revolution. Palaion Patron Germanos Street. The
first banner: our youth. [...]
Oh, what I haven’t done since we separated – the old vision,
the Red Apple[-tree] – to re-establish the frontiers of Alexander the
Great broadening the borders of our small country, widening the
confines of our small room, until the allies betrayed us, our so-called
friends, and we returned with bloody wings: what I haven’t done
since I assimilated the refugees to find something to replace you,
another country to take your place, another foreign embrace...183
The abundance of historical persons, events and notions is to be

decoded only by an adept of Greek history, probably a reader who
has completed his or her school education. Then such names as Ali
Pasha or Germanos and such notions as the Red Apple Tree or the
Friends of the Revolution are no mystery — but again a knowledge
of them is not crucial to understand the context or the state of the
narrator’s mind in these short fragments.
The important element of topography — Thessaloniki184 — is
intensively present in both Το φύλλο and Το αγγέλιασμα. Lazaros’s
routes can be easily traced on a real map of the town, just like wan-
derings of Angelos, who, when he was still alive frequented the
whereabouts of Ierissos street.185 The town depicted in both nov-
els is as if it were ripped out if its social and historical contexts. It
would make little difference for the protagonists and for the story
if they wandered on the streets of any other town. Vassilikos in fact
suggests such a way of thinking in Εκτός των τειχών, where he cre-
182
183
184
Ι. Καβαλιώτης, Νέα βιβλία...
185
116 Chapter 2
ates his own version of “everywhere, that is nowhere” — as a joke

or as an exemplification, a picture devoid of any specific space and
any precise historical period. A day in the life of the Greek nation.
Το χωριό βρισκόταν σ’ ένα νησί, κοντά στην Αλβανία. Η γεωγρα-

φική του θέση δεν έχει καμία σημασία. Θα μπορούσε να είναι
οπουδήποτε στην Ελλάδα και εξίσου να ισχύουν όσα κι εκεί.
Τράπεζα και καρέκλες, μια ταινία στο κέντρο, σαν γραβάτα, για
να κολλούν οι μύγες, εκεί, όπου θα ‘πρεπε να κρέμεται ο γλό-
μπος του ηλεκτρικού, αλλά το χωριό, όπως περισσότερα χωριά,
δεν είχε ρεύμα. Στους τοίχους διαφημίσεις για το γάλα ΣΙΣΣΥ,
για την Ολυμπιονίκη μπίρα ΦΙΞ, για τα σιγαρέτα ΜΑΤΣΑΓΓΟΥ,
η φωτογραφία τής Αυτού Μεγαλειότητας σε νεαρή ηλικία που
χαμογελά, μια ζωγραφιά μ’ ένα καράβι που θαλασσοπνίγεται
κι απ’ τον Οργανισμό Ενημερώσεως Κοινού, μεγάλα πανό με
φωτογραφίες από την Επανάσταση και τον εορτασμό στις 4
Απριλίου της Ημέρας του ΝΑΤΟ.186
The village was located on an island, next to Albania. Its geographical

placement has no significance. It could be anywhere in Greece and
everything would be valid there, too. A table with chairs, flypaper
hanging in the centre, like a tie, so that flies would stick to it, in the
place where an electric bulb should be, but the village, like most vil-
lages, did not have electricity. On the walls there were advertising
posters about the milk SISSY, about the Olympic winner beer FIX,
about MATSANGOS cigarettes, a photograph of the smiling His Maj-
esty at a young age, a picture with a ship that is sinking and from the
Organisation of Information for Citizens big panels with photographs
from the Revolution and about celebrating 4th April, the NATO Day.
Vassilikos proves that he can write a piece on Greece where he
can make a local setting universal. Or – looking at it in a less sym-
pathetic manner: he can soak a picture with many seemingly local
details that do not point to anything specific. In years who would
remember these slogans and advertisements, these holidays and
these kings? The attributes there fill the space, but they are devoid
of any meaning – and the reading of the whole picture would be
universally empty. The minor details of the Greek reality served
here as an antidote for horror vacui.
Vassilikos’s places can be nowhere but his works cannot and
thus it appears necessary for the Trilogy to determine its place in
186
Β. Βασιλικός, Εκτός των τειχών, p. 39.
contemporary Modern Greek literature, even though it is more than

half a century since it was first published. It is unequivocally an
important cycle and regardless of the passing of time still provokes
reaction (“a book written yesterday about the problems of today”)187
and in a way that defines the “end of the novel” in its Greek ver-
sion188 (maybe along with Paris Takopoulos’s Κενή διαθήκη, The
empty testament)189 — or maybe it simply delineates its conven-
tional borders. It used to shock with its multiplicity of interpreta-
tions,190 with its dense, unclear symbolism and with something new
at the time — with the unreliable narrator. These days, when such
techniques are nothing new in the output of contemporary literary,
even the popular type, even the Modern Greek one, such a way of
story-telling does not cause emotional reactions. Then, however, it
was — especially in the traditional Greek, milieu of readers and
critics — shocking,191 more so, in that Vassilikos’s protagonists were
slowly drifting into insanity (which is clearly visible in the second
part of Το φύλλο). A reader was not safe with a steady, trust-wor-
thy narrator who even tells perhaps, a distressing story, but at least
his presence is a secure point of reference. Instead, Vassilikos draws
his readers into a spiral of madness.
Though after having written the Trilogy he started to favour
realism, some techniques and writing strategies present in the
cycle were later developed in an ample novel Γλαύκος Θρασάκης,
written over many years192 and published in many subsequent ver-
sions. Seemingly the novel’s goal is “researching”193 the oeuvre of
187
188
Α. Καραντώνης, Βασίλης Βασιλικός, p. 141.
189
See p. 28.
190
191
Cf. the term “unreliable narrator” introduced by literary theoretician
W.C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago 1961, p. 158-159.
192
The first version was created in 1977, then several others, the last one was
published in 1996 and is almost 700 pages long. In between there appeared separate
additions to the basic text, entitled “Apocrypha”. Cf. Γ. Φαρίνου-Μαλαματάρη,
Β. Βασιλικού Γλαύκος Θρασάκης: ο εαυτός ως άλλος στη βιογραφία (V. Vassi-
likos’s Glafkos Thrassakis: the same as the other in a biography), “Πόρφυρας” 104
(2002), p. 211-218. The researcher analyses changes in subsequent text versions.
193
From the very beginning the text simulates the scholarity of the narra-
tor’s approach. The first word in the book is έρευνα – ‘research’: Β. Βασιλικός,
118 Chapter 2
a tragically deceased — and fictional — Greek emigrant writer,194

Lazos Lazaridis195 who used the literary pseudonym Glafkos Thras-
sakis. His two published books proved to be a great success, also in
translation: Πρίνος ΙΙ (Prinos II) and Ευζ (Evz),196 but readers will
know next to nothing about them — even their strange title will stay
unexplained. The narrator of Vassilikos’s text (a novel, a fictional
biography, an essay with ample quotations of ergography?) will
spend most of his time analysing Thrassakis’s manuscripts, many
of those being quoted in extenso, rarely though, without a comment,
abbreviation or selection. At one point he analyses a photograph.197
And when he does not devote his time to Thrassakis’s texts, he
describes his own wanderings in Thrassakis’s footsteps — through
Amsterdam, Rome, Berlin, the towns and cities of America and
Yugoslavia, he has conversations with people who knew Thras-
sakis and attempts to explain the phenomenon of Thrassakis’s cre-
ation. The narrator reads (and quotes) numerous critical texts and
he is disappointed because he cannot find any critics who would
play the role of an authority figure in approaching Glafkos.198 He
doe not want to stop at the level of second-hand relation, he wants
to experience Thrassakis’s life and work without intermediaries, to
reach the bottom, the essence, to know everything:
Γλαύκος Θρασάκης, Athens 2008, p. 19.

194
Ibidem, p. 54 and 98.
195
There is a coincidence between the protagonist’s name and that of the
main character in Το φύλλο. His pseudonym is equally important: Glafkos points
to the Ancient Greek Glaukos, Poseidon’s son, the rudderman of the Argonauts
but also the victim of a metamorphosis. Thrassakis is an allusion to the name
Thrasos (Θράσος) Kastanakis, a prose writer, highly valued by Vassilikos (in
turn the etymology of the name is connected to the word θράσος – ‘audacity’). It
would be another trace to read the text as a twisted autobiography and to treat the
protagonist as the author’s alter ego. Cf. S. Ioannidou, Exile and the (im)possible nos-
tos: Greek autofiction and politics in the 1970s, [in:] Reading, interpreting, experiencing:
an inter-cultural journey into Greek letters, M. Tsianikas, G. Couvalis and M. Palakt-
soglou (ed.), Wellington, New Zealand 2015, p. 280-281.
196
Β. Βασιλικός, Γλαύκος Θρασάκης, p. 174-175. “Prinos” is maybe the
name of a village on the island of Thassos, the whole title (Prinos II) maybe a name
of a boat.
197
Ibidem, p. 337.
198
Ibidem, p. 48.
Μπαίνοντας σ’ ένα ταξί, προτιμούσε να κάθεται δίπλα στον

οδηγό (όταν ήταν μόνος) ή πίσω; Του άρεσε το χαμάμ; Ήταν ο
φόβος της σύγκρουσης των τρένων που τον έκανε να διαλέγει
πάντα τα τελευταία βαγόνια ή απλώς βαριότανε να περπατή-
σει μέχρι τα μπροστινά; Πήγαινε στην εκκλησία; Προτιμούσε
τον Μπετόβεν ή τον Μπραμς; Και ποιες ήταν οι αγαπημένες
του άριες απ’ τον Βέρντι (Το ότι προτιμούσε την Τεμπάλντι από
την Κάλλας το ξέρουμε γιατί το ‘χει γράψει). Θάλασσα ή βουνό;
Φυματίωση ή ελονοσία; Τον Λίβανο ή το λιβάνι; Το λιβάδι ή τη
Λειβαδειά ; Πόσα λίγα ξέρουμε για τη ζωή ενός ανθρώπου...199
Getting into a taxi alone, would he sit in the back or up front next
to the driver? Did he like Turkish baths? Was it his fear of accidents
that made him always choose one of the last cars on a train, or was
he simply too lazy to walk to the front? Did he go to church? Did
he like Beethoven or Brahms? We know from his writings that he
preferred Tebaldi over Callas, but what were his favourite Verdi
arias? Mountains or the sea? Tuberculosis or malaria? Lebanon or
Libadia? How little we know of a man’s life...200
With time the fascination becomes an obsession and readers,

instead of following the fates and fortunes of a fictional émigré author,
start to wonder who is the narrator — not named at any moment
— and what motive made him occupy himself with this task. When
he starts, all he knows is the lemma from the Universal Encyclopae-
dia:201 that Thrassakis was eaten by cannibals in New Guinea and that
he was their last victim. In reality however, as is established by the
“novel” narrator, the writer was murdered in West Berlin and most
probably it was a political crime. But the narrator digs into Thras-
sakis’s life so deeply that at one point he starts pondering whether
he is writing about Glafkos or maybe only about himself.202 When the
novel finishes, afterwords (written one after another in subsequent
editions) suggest the unfaltering interest of the narrator in Lazaridis’s
life, an interest that will probably go on until the narrator’s death.203
199
Ibidem, p. 49.
200
V. Vassilikos, The few things..., p. 15.
201
Β. Βασιλικός, Γλαύκος Θρασάκης, p. 24.
202
Ibidem, p. 77-78.
203
Ibidem, p. 465: in subsequent afterwords there are new, rivalling
interpretations of Thrassakis’s oeuvre.
120 Chapter 2
Just like in the Trilogy, and especially in its last part, similarly in
Γλαύκος Θρασάκης there sound echoes of the Cold War, even more
so, as a part of the novel’s action takes part in Berlin, divided by the
wall. In contrast to the Trilogy however, it is devoid of virtually any
immediate mention of Modern Greek politics or society, The Greece
in Γλαύκος Θρασάκης, the Greece of the 1970s and 1980s is very
much present, mainly in biting remarks made by the narrator about
Thrassakis’s life. Additionally, just as in Chomenidis’s creations,
Thrassakis in his text has a need to define his generation as a group
of people entering adulthood in the shadow of the heroic, wartime
generation. His cohort does not have any heroic challenge to under-
take, it is weak, easily Americanised, it goes backwards instead of
developing. These are the representatives of a “in-between” gen-
eration: they have not lived through the historic moments of their
fathers and grandfathers but it is not possible for them to forget or
at least get over those moments.204
There but a few mentions — and of little importance in my opin-
ion — that take into account the Modern Greek literary heritage.
Kazantzakis, for example, is present only as a protagonist of one of
the most successful Modern Greek literary anecdotes: Thrassakis
has thought since his childhood (he has dreams about it) that when
he is 33 years old, he will write a poem 33 333 verses long. Glafkos
regards this as a literary version of the Christ complex, present obvi-
ously in Kazantzakis’s Odyssey.205 Thrassakis writes about Cavafy
while referring to another memory from his childhood. He is sup-
posed to compose an essay on one of Cavafy’s poems. He singles
out Ρωτούσε για την ποιότητα (He asked about the Quality), but
his teacher strongly suggests that he should choose Θερμοπύλες
(Thermopylae), which is much safer (that is politically correct or
educationally safe).206 But these mentions put both the great Mod-
ern Greek writers in ironic positions, as misfits or as misinterpreted,
incomprehensible artists (like Cavafy) are read in a very conserva-
tive way and teachers are afraid of go off the carefully recognized
and trampled down trail of interpretation.
204
Β. Βασιλικός, Γλαύκος Θρασάκης, p. 365.
205
Ibidem, p. 75.
206
Ibidem, p. 129.
Γλαύκος Θρασάκης was written much later that the Trilogy,

but one can easily see elements known from the three-part cycle:
the eccentricity of the story telling, a fascination with obsession, but
most of all ambiguity. The Great Unknown is a valid metaphor also
in the Glafkos case. The multi-layered reading, the work that never
seems to be finished and closed up under one cover and a cocktail
of images that are supposed – or maybe not – to point at something
specific, something a reader is to discover, some important mystery,
maybe even unknown to the protagonist and to his narrator. The
Great Unknown is a crossroad with many possible paths to take
and one may be better that another. In a recent example Peter Watts,
a prominent Canadian SF writer in his last novelette Frame-freeze
revolution (2018) caused some letters, scattered across its pages to be
printed in red. If a reader decides to collect them and put them into
the correct sequence he or she will be rewarded with an internet
link where an additional short story – related to the novelette’s plot
– awaits. Or the Great Unknown can be a desert, a Borgesian type
of labyrinth,207 where all the paths seem plausible, but which one is
valid? It is easy to get lost and to drift away towards the realm of
the fantastic.208
Vassilikos for his part skilfully blurs the borders between what
is true, what is fictional and what is fantastic. And — just like the
narrators of the Trilogy — the storyteller Lazaridis,209 as well as his
“biographer” are not reliable.210 What changes is the position of
Greece or rather the angle at which the country is viewed. In the
207
See J.L. Borges, The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths, [in:] idem, The Aleph
and Other Stories 1933-1969, trans. N.Th. di Giovanni, Dutton, NY 1978, p. 89-90.
208
Michał Głowiński comes back with yet another metaphor – of the Tower
of Babel. This is his comment on the bulky set of examples translated into Polish
of foreign attempts at interpretation, in various school and traditions. The result
is a cacophony, only a skilful literary theoretician can decipher. See M. Głowiński,
Style odbioru, p. 224ff.
209
Α. Ζήρας, Ηδονή της γραφής: Μύθος και ιστορία στο έργο του Βασίλη
Βασιλικού (Delight in writing: plot and history in Vassilis Vassilikos’s works), [in:]
idem, Η Μεταπολεμική Πεζογραφία: Από τον πόλεμο του ‘40 ως τη δικτατορία
του ‘67 (Afterwar prose: since year 1940 until the dictatorship of 1967), v. II, Ath-
ens 1996, p. 348.
210
On the notion of ‘unreliable narrator” see footnote on p. 117.
122 Chapter 2
Trilogy Greece is an arbitrary space, in Γλαύκος... it becomes a neg-

ative point of reference, a place one escapes from.
Vassilikos equally skilfully blurs what is fictional and what is
autobiographical. For the scholar Stavrini Ioannidou211 Glafkos is
one of the key examples of an autobiographical trait within contem-
porary Modern Greek prose. She argues that the novel’s text draws
on similar attempts by Dostoevsky, Sartre, Nabokov. Vassilikos,
with a similar technique, successfully hides behind his protagonist.
Moreover:
[Vassilikos] manages to identify a couple of key aspects regarding

life-writing and fiction and treat them in his novel; namely, the
dualism of the protagonist and his tendency to represent himself in
fiction as a split subject, both inside and ‘outside’ the text. I believe
that the most important contribution Vassilikos made to Greek
postmodern writing with this book was illustrating that there is
indeed a way to combine fiction with biography through the prac-
tice of viewing oneself from a certain distance.212
Ioannidou concludes that Vassilikos was the one that intro-

duced autofictional tactics in Modern Greek writing.
Both the Trilogy and Γλαύκος Θρασάκης are characterized by
literature at play (or even a game played with literature); before
Vassilikos (and Alexandrou) formal experiments with the shape of
novel were largely unknown in Greece. Another innovation is the
radical dismissal of “Greek reality” standing at the thematic centre
of the text, a fact that Vassilikos prepared for while staying on the
other side of the Ocean. The reader of the Trilogy is still in dan-
ger of becoming lost in the interpretational Great Unknown, the
over-interpretation is possible or even impossible to avoid, because
the reader is not equipped with a sufficient set of hints on how to
understand Vassilikos’s work.
Experimental literature that breaks out of the conventions of
the form and the expectations of readers is a difficult art to pursue.
211
S. Ioannidou, Autofiction à la grecque. Greek autobiographical fiction (1971-
1995), PhD. dissertation submitted at King’s College in London in 2013 (retrieved
from https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/, DOA: 1/10/2018), p.118-148, esp. 128-133.
212
Ibidem, p. 131.
Joe Bray and other editors, the authors of the Routledge companion
to this subject,213 in the introduction to a set of articles on various
forms of experimenting, carefully map pitfalls of the kind that lit-
erature is susceptible to. And though the times are favourable for
such endeavours (much more so than in times of the Trilogy), the
digital possibilities lure readers and writers alike with the negation
of linearity and with multimedialism. Digital tools that mask the
line between what is real and fictional are at hand, but there is the
eternal problem of the “readerly”: if an experiment does not invite
recipients it will fail. And though in my opinion the three-part cycle
by Vassilikos falls victim to its own ambition, even when several
things go as planned: Greece, and its problems, looms far away.214
Moreover, the system of symbols is constructed in a manner that
is so ambivalent that it intrigues the reader and offers a new and
different reading to those who decide to pick up the gauntlet (and
not those who are not intrigued but irritated), like one who simply
explains and maps various ways to escape. Vassilikos himself related
to the metaphor of an escape when he said it is the thing that young
people in the Greece of the 1960s could decide to do — the brave
will escape outside, the less brave — inside themselves. Those, who
come back after their escape, will have foreignness inside them and
with a different mentality will face the “Greek reality” (ελληνική
πραγματικότητα) that will demand that they adapt to it again.215
This reading of the Trilogy confirms the suspicion that Vassi-

likos likes to build complex labyrinths, where readers and critics
alike lose their way (in fact they are supposed to lose their way, there
is no alternative). Understatements, the atmosphere of uncertainty,
adroitly and efficiently composed by the writer makes readers
213
J. Bray, A. Gibbons, B. McHale, Introduction, [in:] The Routledge Companion
to Experimental Literature, J. Bray et al. (eds.), London-New York 2012, p. 15-18.
214
In one of the interviews the author did not agree to the label of “polit-
ical writer” he was sometimes given. Instead, he said he is rather an... “erotic
writer” (and his political opinion was the result of the publication and success
of Z). Β. Βασιλικός, Σημασία δεν έχει η γραφή, αλλά το μοντάζ (What counts is
not writing, but (film) editing), “Διαβάζω” 70 (2011), p. 74.
215
Β. Βασιλικός Η χώρα που..., p. 22; cf. also the opinion of the author about
his Trilogy quoted by M. Vitti: idem, Historia literatury nowogreckiej, p. 456-457.
124 Chapter 2
unceasingly look for a(ny) meaning. In the end everyone fills in the
blanks with their own individual associations, suspicions and theo-
ries. And just as in the case of the titular well from the middle part
of the Trilogy, the central motif of the whole text evokes today inter-
pretations from popular culture that are contemporary for present
readers, thus interpretations Vassilikos could not have intended,
while an erudite reader, a Greek one perhaps, would think about
associations closer to the author’s original intentions — associations
connected to Hades or other popular afterlife beliefs. Readers there-
fore — to a point — will earn from their reading exactly what they
brought with them. Surely non-Greek readers will walk a different
path in Vassilikos’s labyrinths than the Greeks. There is a profound
importance lying in the tension between what is local and what is
universal throughout the Trilogy’s symbolism, but will a cultur-
al-oriented reading, sieved through Greek traditions and histories
endow these texts with a deeper more orderly sense and provide
fewer difficulties in interpretation? Maybe Vassilikos’s prose, which
offers a journey into the Great Unknown, actually results in the
Great Emptiness, a hollow vessel for one’s imagination, universal
and culturally independent.
It is finally worth noting that having combined a reading of
the Trilogy with Γλαύκος Θρασάκης it grows obvious that “being
Greek” is just one of the masks Vassilikos is putting on (or trying on)
while telling stories, the other mask being that of a man of letters, an
emigrant, a mystic, an eccentric. Or, as Ioannidou wants, Vassilikos
himself.216 The wanting and the wanted, the narrator and the writer
he pursues are in Γλαύκος... one and the same person. And this is
again the disguised Vassilikos, who likes to tell stories — not unlike
Alexakis — predominantly about himself, with Greece, at times, in
the background.
216
See above, p. 122.
Chapter 3.
Vassilis Alexakis: toward
a perfect foreignness1
During their fieldwork experienced ethnographers inevitably

encounter the moment, when they finally come back home. They
meet friends and family and the significant other they have missed,
they immerse themselves again in the culture they grew up in:
they merge again into their regular surroundings. But, also worth
remarking on, is the strange and short-lived feeling that accompa-
nies such a return: the feeling of being adrift, “in-between”, sus-
pended between two different cultures. What was once home, seems
to a researcher extraneous, unusual and new. They find themselves
at a distance from what was once their totally “domesticated” real-
ity – that is “domesticated” before they had field experience – and
through their recent contact with the foreign: another language,
other set of customs, even other landscapes and climate, these eth-
nographers see more clearly, by the rule of contrast, the features
of their own environment. Such an effect is further enhanced by
the modern way of travelling: moving by plane shortens to mere
hours the transitional period between the beginning and the end of
a journey and now returning can therefore have the characteristics
of a shock, sometimes psychological and occasionally even thermal.
More often than not such an ethnographical feeling of “being
in-between” fades fairly quickly. It ends shortly after their return,
maybe not with their immediate spacial return, but rather its mental
1
The first version of this chapter was published as P. Kordos, W. Alek-
sakis: oswajanie obcości (V. Alexakis: domesticating foreignness), [in:] E. Łukaszyk,
K. Wierzbicka-Trwoga (eds.), Niewłasne lektury. Od pisarstwa w języku wyuczonym
do wielości kultur czytania (Not one’s own readings. From writing in a learnt lan-
guage to a multiplicity of reading cultures), Warsaw 2018, p. 51-68.
126 Chapter 3
and emotional dimension: when they have domesticated their home

space anew. In rare cases, staying at home will evoke a yearning
for the place they have just come back from, and eventually result
in a new journey, this time forever. Jorge Luis Borges, in the short
story entitled The Ethnographer (1969), describes a liminal case: the
fate of Fred Murdock, who carries out research into North American
Indians. He comes back to his original habitat, but long-term and
intense contact with another culture makes him refute everything
that Western civilization has to offer and most of all its approach to
science. When he speaks to his academic colleagues who are wor-
ried about his conduct, he declares that his sojourn among the Indi-
ans changed him in such a way that now his indigenous culture
seems to him trivial and superficial, in contrast with the universal
knowledge he gained there. Moreover, he cannot pass this knowl-
edge on: having acquired it changes irreversibly its adept.
[...] Murdock replied. “I learned something out there that I can’t

express.”
“The English language may not be able to communicate it,” the
professor suggested.
“That’s not it, sir. Now that I possess the secret, I could tell it in
a hundred different and even contradictory ways. I don’t know
how to tell you this, but the secret is beautiful, and science, our sci-
ence, seems mere frivolity to me now. [...] And anyway, the secret
is not as important as the paths that led me to it. Each person has to
walk those paths himself.”2
Murdock then retires from academic life but decides to stay

within his own culture: he brings with him the truths he learnt from
the Other and now he lives according to them, regardless of the
place where he has chosen to live. This is of course a borderline
example and a literary one, over-coloured for the sake of successful
fiction. The anthropologist Edgardo C. Krebs states that Borges was
probably inspired by Alfred Métraux, who performed important
field work in South America at the beginning of the 20th century
J.L. Borges, The ethnographer, [in:] idem, Collected Fictions, trans. A. Hurley,
2
London 1998, p. 335.

Vassilis Alexakis: toward a perfect foreignness 127
and may have become a perfect example of an ethnographer who

decided to experience rather than to observe and research.3
This aforementioned sensation, this experience of alienation4 is
rather less extreme than described in fiction. It is sometimes called
post-fieldwork blues, a feeling that curiously finds its equivalent in
scientific fields other than anthropology. Psychologists talk about
the re-entry shock that touches prisoners or about the culture shock
of coming home (also known as reverse culture shock), it is familiar
to travellers that have spent too long time in the Antipodes, to stu-
dents who decided to spend their gap year far away and to ex-pats
that decide to return to their homeland after many years of residing
in foreign countries.5
The most difficult thing is, however, to stay in this space in
between, not to return to either of the poles. The Greeks have a suit-
able word for such a state – μετέωρος – that initially meant a state
of hanging between earth and heaven, and gave its name to small
celestial rocks that, more often than not, burn up in the Earth’s
atmosphere, and also to Thessalian monasteries, constructed on
steep, seemingly inaccessible rocks.6 Such a “meteor” is also Vassi-
lis Alexakis, a Greek writer, living mostly in Paris, who writes in
French and Greek.
He was born in Athens in 1943 and in the early 1960’s he left for
Lille to complete his journalism studies – in Greece such a discipline
was not taught at the time, at least not at the academic level. He
came back home to do his military service. Soon Greece fell under
3
E.C. Krebs, Jorge Luis Borges and Alfred Métraux. Disagreements, affinities,
“HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory” 6 (2016), no. 2, p. 297-321.
4
Cf. the concept of “cognitive estrangement”, discussed on p. 185.
5
Post-fieldwork blues: from a textbook for PhD. anthropology students: https://
thesiswhisperer.com/2012/11/21/the-post-fieldwork-blues (DOA: 1/12/2016);
return culture shock: K. Musante, Participant Observation, [in:] Handbook of Methods
in Cultural Anthropology, H.R. Bernard, C.C. Gravlee (ed.), Lanham-Boulder-New
York-London 2015, p. 283; cultural shock of coming home: handbook for global
travellers (“backpackers”) http://www.lifehack.org/368928/the-cultural-shock-
coming-home-8-signs-reverse-culture-shock-2, (DOA: 1/12/2016); reentry trauma:
G. Vogel, J. Stiebel, R. Vogel, Reentry Trauma: The Shock of Returning Home, “Psy-
chology International” 22 (2011), no. 4, p. 8-9.
6
Γ. Μπαμπινιώτης, Λεξίκο της Νέας Ελληνικής Γλώσσας (Dictionary of
Modern Greek Language), Athens 1998, p. 1096.
128 Chapter 3
the regime of the “black colonels”. Alexakis, who spoke French flu-
ently and had prior experience of living in France, decided – on
leaving the army – to emigrate to Paris. There he began working for
a newspaper, writing and drawing satirical sketches. He also started
a family. In 1974 his debut novel – in French – entitled Le Sandwich
was published. During the first years of his life as a writer he kept
apart from his Greek roots, but in 1981 he decided to write a text
in Greek and soon a love story Τάλγκο was born.7 The language
situation in his work reached its present state with his fourth book,
Paris-Athènes (published in French in 1989), which was translated
by Alexakis himself four years later and (re)published in Greece as
Παρίσι-Αθήνα. This book, very well-received by critics and readers
alike (both in France and Greece), defined his style, the one devel-
oped in his subsequent texts and consolidated Alexakis’s position
not only as a bilingual writer, but also as a multicultural author, an
excellent literary candidate for the depiction of today’s mobile and
globalizing world in the field of literature. In 1992 he received the
Albert Camus award, in 1995 the prestigious Médicis award and
in 2007 the distinction from the French Academy.8 He is not only
an accomplished journalist and a writer, he is also a cartoonist and
a playwright: some of his earlier texts were adapted for the stage
and the screen.9
Alexakis is certainly not the first Greek emigrant writer, on the
contrary, emigrant literature has a rich tradition in Modern Greek
letters. Alexakis himself points to Adamantios Korais and Ioannis
Psycharis, two great language reformers of the 18th and19th cen-
turies who both spent most of their adult lives in France (neverthe-
less they wrote mostly in Greek). Similarly, Nikos Kazantzakis had
a Parisian episode in his youth. He took his first steps in literature
in French10 and during his life resided in France, Germany, Czech-
oslovakia and Switzerland. All of them are nowadays regarded as
7
‚Talgo’ is a name for high-speed Spanish trains.
8
See Alexakis’s biography in literary database Biblionet: http://tinyurl.
com/hn9ktky, DOA: 2/12/2016.
9
M. Bessy, Vassilis Alexakis: Exorciser l’exil, London-New York 2011, p. 20.
10
B. Αλεξάκης, Παρίσι-Αθήνα, Athens 1993, p. 21; B. Αλεξάκης, Η μητρική
γλώσσα (Paternal Language), Athens 1995, p. 48.
writers in Modern Greek letters, unlike for instance Ioannis Papa-

diamantopoulos, universally known as Jean Moreas who today is
unanimously regarded as one of the most important French sym-
bolists of the late 19th and early 20th century. Such cases of writers
who abandoned their maternal languages, and achieved fame in
the literature of a foreign language, are certainly numerous, e.g. in
Modern Greek literature (Stratis Haviaras) or in Polish letters (Sła-
womir Mrożek or Joseph Conrad). Emigrant writers have taken
different paths of living and creating between, or within, two lan-
guages: some stubbornly held to their native tongue, others chose
complete linguistic immersion in foreign surroundings, composing
in the language they had acquired and mastered abroad. Alexakis’s
situation is to a certain extent special, because he avoids staying
within just one language but prefers to be constantly on the move
between countries, languages and cultures.11
On another note it is worth pointing out that his attitude is
different from those of writers who did not emigrate of their own
volition, as happened for instance to the famous post-war Mod-
ern Greek writer, Dimitris Chatzis. A journalist, during the war, he
fought with the Communist partisans and had to leave his home-
land after the Civil War was lost by the Communist forces. He
spent several active decades in some countries of the Eastern Bloc
(where he founded Modern Greek studies in Budapest University).
His works are filled with nostalgia for Greece (for the country as
he remembered it from his childhood years and his youth) and he
stands closer to the interwar Greek writers who, in similar nostalgic
tones, mourned the loss of Greek Asia Minor, than to other Greek
post-war emigrant novelists, such as Kazantzakis or Melpo Axio-
ti.12 Chatzis decided against assimilating (by literary means) into his
11
And both languages enrich each other due to such contact. See B. Ala-
voine, Vassilis Alexakis ou le choix impossible entre le grec et le français, “Intercâmbio”
2 (2011), no. 4, p. 8-28.
12
It seems that the 1967 emigration wave, the result of the introduction of the
junta regime in April 1967, did not produce such remarkable writers abroad. The
political emigration period was much shorter – it lasted no more than seven years,
not thirty, as in the case of exile of the civil war. The junta period and its influence
on contemporary Greek society is still not analysed sufficiently and awaits an ide-
ologically unburdened account, also within the field of literary studies.
130 Chapter 3
new environment, but instead built a complex, multifaceted textual

picture of the pre-war Greek style of life, the life that he was forced
to abandon – and which ceased altogether to exist due to political,
historical and social factors.
Alexakis’s position is, in the recent history of Modern Greek
letters, quite unique. His work is often compared to publications
by the Czech writer Milan Kundera, who left for France in a period
similar to Alexakis’s and who – just like Alexakis – translates his
texts into French or from French (in his case, to Czech).13 Alexakis
himself likes to compare his work to that of Samuel Beckett, the
Irish playwright and Nobel prize-winner in 1969, who initiated his
life-long relations with French culture by studying French philol-
ogy in Dublin and then teaching English in Paris.14 Beckett lived
in France during the course of World War Two and even became
a member of the French Resistance. He wrote his most famous play
– En attendant Godot – in French only to translate it into English, but
not before its French stage premiere in 1953. One might point to
other similarities, like a cheerful pessimism that permeates at least
some of their works as well as a quite personal or even inward atti-
tude towards their oeuvre.
The uniqueness of Alexakis’s position is based on his popularity
in both his “target” countries: Greece and France. Critics ponder on
the success of his writing, trying to find another justification, besides
his privileged – and well used – status of suspension between two
fairly remote cultures. The fact that Alexakis is appreciated is sup-
ported by the aforementioned literary awards (as well as several oth-
ers). But it is surely not only the originality of his literary themes, but
also his writing style that plays an important role in his good fortune.
Alexakis proudly declares that Giorgos Seferis is his perpetual inspi-
ration, especially words from the poet’s statement where he aban-
dons academic ambitions for the advantages of a simple style of life
13
Por. E. Tassiopoulos, Literary self-translation, exile and dialogism: the multi-
lingual works of Vassilis Alexakis, [in:] Translation Research Projects 3, A. Pym (ed.),
Tarragona 2011, p. 43-52.
14
B. Αλεξάκης, Παρίσι-Αθήνα, p. 145.
that brings him joy.15 While reviewing Alexakis’s book Paris-Athènes,

the literary critic Richard Kopp stated that:
[…] the experiences are mostly commonplace, it is an example of

the author’s translucent style in recounting with absolute sincer-
ity simple, human, even mundane, events. Like the entire book, it
is an excellent illustration of the search by an honest, modest, tal-
ented individual to find meaning for his life in relatively indifferent
surroundings.16
Similarly, another reviewer, Paul Raymond Côté, states that

Alexakis’s writing is “simple, directe, et lucide”.17 However, what
Coté underscores is that the stories and plots in his texts seem at
first feeble, as the author can tell his story in a simple and honest
way, unpretentiously, associating with his prose is an effortless task
that brings unexpected surprises and unveils unforeseen associa-
tions before the reader’s eyes.
This is surely the case with Παρίσι-Αθήνα, whose title, though
straightforward, is in fact very much to the point. It is a story about
a life spread between two capitals and two languages. A researcher
of Alexakis’s works, Marianne Bessy, uncovers yet another dimen-
sion of this opposition, showing that the two cities in the narrator’s
life are rhymed with two women he is in a relation with: namely
with the Parisien Françoise (his wife – who represents a stable and
15
Ibidem, p. 135. See e.g. Γ. Σεφέρης, Ένας γέροντας στην ακροποταμιά
(An old man at the river bank), (verses 16-20), Ημερολόγιο Καταστρώματος (Log
Book), v. 2, [in:] idem, Ποιήματα, Athens, 1974, p. 201: Δε θέλω τίποτε άλλο
παρά να μιλήσω απλά, να μου δοθεί ετούτη η χάρη. // Γιατί και το τραγούδι το
φορτώσαμε με τόσες μουσικές που σιγά-σιγά βουλιάζει // και την τέχνη μας
τη στολίσαμε τόσο πολύ που φαγώθηκε από τα μαλάματα το πρόσωπό της //
κι είναι καιρός να πούμε τα λιγοστά μας λόγια γιατί η ψυχή μας αύριο κάνει
πανιά. (I want nothing more than to speak simply, to be granted that grace. //
Because we’ve loaded even our song with so much music that it’s slowly sinking
// and we’ve decorated our art so much that its features have been eaten away by
gold // and it’s time to say our few words because tomorrow our soul sets sail.
Trans. E. Keeley, Ph. Sherrard.)
16
R. Kopp, Alexakis Vasilis, Paris-Athènes, “The French Review”, 64 (1991),
no 6, p. 1067.
17
P.R. Côté, Vassilis Alexakis, La langue maternelle, “The French Review”, 70
(1996), no 1, p. 137-138.
132 Chapter 3
official relation) and with the Athenian Eleni (his lover – an unstable
and unofficial bond).18 In fact the whole story is strongly based on
the bi-polarity of the situation the narrator finds himself in.
As far as its form is concerned, Παρίσι-Αθήνα is not a novel,
but rather a loose collection of stories, brought together in thematic
chapters that touch a variety of subjects and are concentrated essen-
tially around the narrator’s (and simultaneously the main protag-
onist’s) life: his childhood, family, phases of emigration to France,
learning French, seeing himself through the prism of language.
It is true that nowhere in Παρίσι-Αθήνα do readers encoun-
ter any open declaration that they are reading an autobiography,
despite the fact that the life story of the author and of the main pro-
tagonist are very much in accordance with Alexakis’s biography.19
In French the text is labelled récit, the Greek – αφήγημα,20 which
would classify the text as ‘narration’ or ‘relation’.21 However critics
tend to name Παρίσι-Αθήνα quite straightforwardly as an autobi-
ographical narration (such is the main thesis of Bessy’s work). This
18
M. Bessy, Vassilis Alexakis: Exorciser l’exil, p. 193: L’opposition géo-
graphique entre Paris et Athènes est incarnée métaphoriquement par l’échec de la
relation amoureuse entre Éléni et Grigoris. Chaque personnage est en effet associé
à un pôle géographique: Éléni à Athènes et Grigoris à Paris. Leur impossibilité à
fonctionner ensemble sereinement et de manière durable symbolise bien l’instal-
lation d’une opposition géographique entre les deux pays. De plus, le fait que
Grigoris n’envisage pas vraiment de se séparer de sa femme et ne considère Éléni
que comme une maîtresse temporaire illustre aussi ce déséquilibre géographique
entre Paris (Françoise, la femme de Grigoris) et Athènes (Éléni, la maîtresse).
19
According to the criteria proposed by Philipe Lejeune the autobiogra
phical pact was concluded. See Ph. Lejeune, Pakt autobiograficzny, [in:] idem Wari-
acje na temat pewnego paktu. O autobiografii, Kraków 2001, p. 21-37, especially p. 34.
English edition: P. Lejeune, The Autobiographical Pact, [in:] P.J. Eakin (ed.), On Auto-
biography, trans. K. Leary, Minneapolis, MN 1989.
20
21
However, what is typical of Modern Greek culture, the word “αφήγηση”
(and its variant, “αφήγημα”) has its historical burden. This is exactly the word
used for example in 14th century by a Cypriot historian in the Lusignan period,
Leontios Machairas: this is how he described the chronicle he wrote (and he is
famous for). Patakis Lexicon (p. 223) points to a possible synonymity of terms
μυθιστόρημα and αφήγημα. But Alexakis evidently chose a phrase that would
allow him to stay suspended: unclear and uncertain αφήγημα between straight-
forward and well-defined αυτοβιογραφία (autobiography) and μυθιστόρημα. See
also the discussion on the notion μυθιστόρημα, p. 38.
is also the description Alexakis himself gave many years later, after
the initial publication of the book.22 Also inside the texts there are
hints that it should be read as an autobiography. One of the chap-
ters is entitled “Αυτοβιογραφία ως πειρασμός” (Autobiography
as a temptation) and is a description of the protagonist’s stay at
a literary congress in Quebec at a scholarly venue devoted to the
relationship between autobiography and literature.23 The material
may be based on author’s personal experience. What he describes is
a clear indication of how to read his whole text.
Οι περισσότερες [ομιλήτριες] μιλούσαν με ύφος καθηγητών.

Εξέθεσαν επί μακρόν τις ιδέες τους για την αμοιβαία επίδραση
της ζωής και του γραπτού λόγου, χωρίς να αναφέρονται ποτέ
σε προσωπικά θέματα. Κρατούσαν κάποια απόσταση από τα
λόγια τους.
Most [of my speaking predecessors] spoke like professors. They

extensively lectured on their ideas concerning the reciprocative
influence of life and the written word, never relating to any per-
sonal themes. They were keeping their distance from their words.
When the narrator’s turn for his speech comes, he starts by referring
to the first two novels by Alexakis.24 His words are taken as a farce by
the rest of the conference congregation, while the reader might approach
this passage as a metafictional prank. This thinly disguised autobiogra-
phism, most of all exposed during the Canadian episode, brought the
attention of Stavrini Ioannidou, who in her doctoral thesis analysed the
emergence of “autofiction” in contemporary Modern Greek literature.
Alexakis’s Παρίσι-Αθήνα was one of the milestones of the phenomenon
and the chapter devoted to him entitled “the Canadian experience”,25 as –
according to Ioannidou – it is no coincidence that Alexakis surfaces as the
author/narrator in this very chapter where he visits the country of two
languages and observes people speaking “two halves of the language”.
22
V. Alexakis, Je t’oublierai tous les jours, Paris 2005, p. 18.
23
B. Αλεξάκης, Παρίσι-Αθήνα, p. 28; R. Kopp, Alexakis Vasilis, Paris-Athènes,
p. 1067. Bessy (Vassilis Alexakis: Exorciser l’exil) devotes one subchapter (p. 34-39)
solely to autobiographism in Alexakis’s work.
24
25
S. Ioannidou, Autofiction à la grecque..., p. 153-160.
134 Chapter 3
Nevertheless the book, as well as many others written by Alex-

akis is characterized by – ‘in words’ of the researcher in comparative
literature Cristina Matei-Chilea – “confusion generique”,26 because
the border between what is fictional, what is real, and – what follows
– between a novel (or an essay) and an autobiography is, in an evi-
dent way, defined unclearly on purpose. The autobiographical trail
is consistently followed by Bessy, the author of – so far – the only
monograph on Alexakis and his books. The premise of her text – orig-
inally a doctoral thesis defended at the Louisiana State University in
2008 – is looking for a therapeutic basis in Alexakis’s prose:
J’interprète son œuvre comme une tentative de la part de l’écrivain

pour exorciser son exil. Alexakis a quitté la Grèce dans les années
soixante, s’est installé en France et a entamé une carrière littéraire
en français au milieu des années soixante-dix. En étudiant les sché-
mas de dépossession culturelle, de perte linguistique, d’étrangéité
et de crise identitaire dans ses écrits, je démontre qu’Alexakis
construit une esthétique du déplacement qui lui permet de se libé-
rer de manière cathartique des angoisses de l’exil.27
The form of Παρίσι-Αθήνα is extraordinary in yet another

aspect – the narrator ceaselessly alters the circumstances of text cre-
ation, in further instances of meta-fiction: the changing tempo of
writing, the time of day, when he writes, breaks and pauses that
happen along the way.28 The protagonist confesses to difficulties
26
C. Matei-Chilea, Problématique de l’identité littéraire: Comment devenir écrivain
francais. Andrei Makine, Vassilis Alexakis, Milan Kundera et Amin Maalouf, Université
Jean Monnet-Saint-Etienne; IASI Roumanie, 2010 <NNT: 2010STET2133>, p. 108
(after https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00676463, DOA: 2/12/2016).
27
M. Bessy, Vassilis Alexakis: exorciser l’exil. Déplacements autofictionnels,
linguistiques et spatiaux, a dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the
Louisiana State University, 2008, p. xii. (http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-
03072008-123039/unrestricted/Bessy_Diss.pdf, DOA: 2/12/2016). In yet another
passage of her thesis Bessy summarised her main line of thought even more com-
prehensively: “Le travail d’écriture d’Alexakis est une tentative perpétuelle d’ac-
ceptation de son statut d’exilé.” Ibidem, p. 5.
28
Metafiction elements are by no means alien to contemporary Greek litera-
ture. A popular author of crime stories, Petros Markaris (see p. 233) wrote a com-
ical story, where a protagonist knows he is the literary protagonist and moreover
his author hates him (Π. Μάρκαρης, Φραπέ [Frappé coffee], [in:] idem, Αθήνα.
that he has to overcome while writing, tells the reader about days
when he loses his inspiration, and then his belief that he would ever
finish the book. In the Greek version he states not only the fact that
the text is a translation, but shows what happens backstage, indi-
cating with asterisks those words that in the French version of the
book were left in their original Greek form (but obviously explained
for the sake of French readers).29 He comments on the technicalities
of constructing the threads of the plot, showing for example the
way he alters the names of real people who are changed within his
text into fictional characters.30
This concentration on the author-narrator person and on the
technical aspects of his work (the narrator implicitly identifies him-
self with the author) gives a kind of auto-analytical slant to the text
of Παρίσι-Αθήνα – it turns out to be an enriched, self-conscious ver-
sion of autobiography (even if the author himself refrains from call-
ing it that). The reader is invited to observe the internal changes in
the text’s author as well as his thought. The reader witnesses what
the text becomes and how it changes. And, as a side effect, it gives
an exhibitionist trait to Alexakis’s writing: the comparatist Alain
Ausoni remarks that in one of the main plot axes in Παρίσι-Αθήνα
and in Alexakis’s later book Οι ξένες λέξεις (Foreign words, French
2002, Greek 2003, English 2006) the central object of literary analysis
seems to be the relations of the writer with his parents, and a viv-
isection of the memories connected with them,31 maybe a simple
function of getting older and reaching further into the past.
But at the very centre of the Greek-French work of Alexakis is
the question of identity, as stated for example by the literary scholar
Vassiliki Lalagianni,32 however not in its national nor its cultural,
Πρωτεύουσα των Βαλκανίων [Athens. Balkan capital city], Athens 2004, p. 131-
150). More generally on metafiction see e.g. P. Waugh, Metafiction. The Theory and
Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction, London-New York 2001.
29
Ibidem, p. 55, see also p. 60 and 80.
30
Ibidem, p. 64.
31
A. Ausoni, Quand Vassilis Alexakis tricote le moi translingue, “Revue Cri-
tique de Fixxion Française Contemporaine” 3 (2011), p. 14-28.
32
Β. Λαλαγιάννη, Μετοικεσία, γλώσσα και ταυτότητα στο έγρο του
Βασίλη Αλεξάκη, [in:] Γλωσσική Παιδεία: 35 μελέτες αφιερωμένες στον
καθηγητή Ναπολέοντα Μήτση, Γ. Ανδρουλάκης (ed.), Athens 2015, p. 445.
136 Chapter 3
but rather in its linguistic facet. Starting with the first pages of
Παρίσι-Αθήνα Alexakis ponders on the position of himself in rela-
tion to the French language.33 If he thinks about himself, then in
what language? If he is to describe himself, what are the words that
first come to his mind and in which language? In order to under-
stand himself through language better, he describes the process of
learning French, composing a peculiar chronicle of studying: he
starts with the afternoon classes that he attended in Athens, in his
teenage years34 up to his life in France, where, finally, he was given
the opportunity to get in touch with unofficial, vernacular, slang
French – with a variety banned from textbooks.35 His knowledge
of the language became so intuitive, that he was able to puzzle out
the meaning of a word from its sound, to fit it into words in his
private dictionary, to harmonize its auditory picture with those he
had already acquired.36 He understands, though, that the process of
acquiring a language does not necessarily mean constant advance-
ment. There are phenomena that weaken such a constant incremen-
tal increase in knowledge. One of the most important factors in effi-
cient communication in French by foreigners is the perfection of
pronunciation. Few non-French people manage to climb to a level
where their imitation of the French accent is successful enough not
to sound foreign. Alexakis tried at first, but he admits that with the
passage of years he neglected to care about the correctness of his
pronunciation. He instead comes back to the natural – and alien to
French ears – sound of “his” Greek-tinged French.37
Equally scrupulously, Alexakis depicts the state of his mother
tongue – Modern Greek. He contemplates whether one can forget
one’s language, once it has been acquired (in a process which is the
reverse of learning). Such a forgetting would eliminate the “old”
(that is initial) language, so it would not get in the way of the new
one38. The case of Alexakis (in the writer’s role) is proof against this
B. Αλεξάκης, Παρίσι-Αθήνα, p. 13 and 234.

33
Ibidem, p. 114.
34
35
Ibidem, p. 148ff.
36
Ibidem, p. 151.
37
Ibidem, p. 87.
38
Ibidem. This problem can be also tackled form the angle of learning a lan-
guage that is, in a way, “built” on another. Such would be the case of students of
thesis: after many years abroad the author feels obliged to return
to the Greek language and to begin writing in Greek. This linguis-
tic return is tightly connected to his coming-back to the country –
Alexakis starts travelling to Athens more often and with a much
better attitude than before. He discovers that while in Greece it is
difficult for him to make notes of his thoughts and observations in
French. To put it more generally – and however commonplace it
may sound – the Greek language is better when it comes to writing
about Greece.39 It causes Alexakis’s work to be hellenized – as Bessy
puts it.40 In his own words (that is through the words of the narra-
tor) he thus explains it:
Καταλαβαίνω, νομίζω τουλαχιστόν, ότι καταλαβαίνω πια, γιατί

προτίμησα να ονομάσω αυτό το κείμενο Παρίσι-Αθήνα και όχι
Αθήνα-Παρίσι: ήθελα να δείξω ποια κατεύθυνση το ταξίδι αυτό
μου ήταν πιο ευχάριστο.41
I understand, or at least I think I understand why I preferred to enti-

tle this text Paris-Athens (Παρίσι-Αθήνα), and not Athens-Paris.
I wanted to indicate which direction was for me more pleasant.
The come-backs42 make him realize, that he had come to know

France better that he had ever known Greece: that awareness of his
foster country and its inhabitants, acquired during the process of
conscious learning, outmatched the education he had obtained first,
naturally, as a child in Greece.43 He admits that he has never loved
Greece as much as he loves it now, during these short returns.44 He
tastes the country in a new manner, he takes delight in sceneries,
Yiddish who had already learnt German. To a point Yiddish “spoils” their already
acquired knowledge of German. Or learning a dialect of a language, when the
standard version has already been mastered (Cypriot dialect against standard
Modern Greek).
39
Ibidem, p. 16.
40
M. Bessy, Vassilis Alexakis: exorciser l’exil. Déplacements..., p. 223.
41
Ibidem, p. 160.
42
See the term ‘re-enculturation’: C. Matei-Chilea, Problématique de l’identité
littéraire..., p. 223.
43
44
Ibidem, p. 36.
138 Chapter 3
he traces what is well-known – and yet discovered anew – tastes

in tavernas, where he enters kitchens to relish smells and to look
into cooking pots.45 He notices many little changes for the better: for
example he is surprised to find Greek women more beautiful – and
taller – that he remembered.46 During his come-backs Greece seems
to him a country, that is better, more pleasant, more beautiful. At
the same time he understands that these come-backs are not com-
plete, that they have the status of holiday retreats, during which
– obviously – one sees the superior, warmer, more charming face
of a country. In fact, he is a tourist, as he does not take part in every-
day life in quotidian routine and his Athenian days seem like a pro-
longed religious holiday. However even these crippled sojourns are
sufficient for him to see cultural contrasts, that he had not noticed
before. The protagonist pays attention to dissimilarities in human
relationships accordingly in France and in Greece: the Greeks are
– in line with his conclusions – more open and spontaneous, while
the French choose a life of isolation.47
Στη Γαλλία προσέχω τα λόγια μου, τις κινήσεις μου. Ζω

προσεκτικά. Έχω σαφώς την αίσθηση ότι έπαιζα θέατρο
όταν πήγαινα στη Μοντ. Δεν έπαιρνα ποτέ το ασανσέρ. Να
σκεφτόμουν ότι μόνο οι τακτικοί συνεργάτες είχαν δικαίωμα να
το παίρνουν; Ίσως ανέβαινα απ’ τις σκάλες για ν’ αποδείξω ότι
δεν είχαν πάρει τα μυαλά μου αέρα.48
In France I take heed of my words, of my gestures. I live cautiously.

I have a strong feeling that while working at Le Monde, I acted as if
on a stage. I never used the elevator. Did I think that only employ-
ees with steady job positions had the right to use it? Maybe I walked
the stairs to show I was not full of myself.
The state of suspension between two cities lets him organise his
feelings so that he is able to itemize every subject by making lists:
“the things I do not like in Paris”49 or – more boldly – the inadequa-
45
Ibidem, p. 167.
46
Ibidem, p. 174.
47
Ibidem, p. 169.
48
Ibidem.
49
Ibidem, p. 170.
cies of both languages – questions and problems one cannot express

sufficiently in either of them.50 With tongue in cheek he names the
deficiencies in both countries when he lets the reader have a glance
into his suitcase – to Greece he takes crêpes, to France – bottles of
ouzo.51
But the most interesting theme of Παρίσι-Αθήνα is the analy-
sis of this feeling of being meteoros, of being suspended. The text’s
narrator suggests his being simultaneously here and there. Here
and there, so indeed nowhere, because is there truly any space in
between?52
Il ne s’est jamais vraiment senti ni français, ni grec. Quand il se

trouve en Grèce, il ne peut pas croire qu’il est revenu; il est mélan-
colique et il a ce sentiment de temporalité. Quand il se trouve en
France, il trouve bizarre de s’entendre lui-même parler en français.
Il est un autre.53
A man suspended between two cultures, one who is in this

position, is exposed to two types of danger that can terminate his
state of being suspended. Both places of his residence – in the case
of Alexakis these are, accordingly, Greek and French reality – have
their gravity, and they want him to choose a side: through their
languages, people, spaces. And the force of attraction is so strong
that it would be easy to surrender to it. The second danger is that
of being rejected by both places, and then becoming a man who
finds himself nowhere. The narrator talks with admonition about
the language of emigrants who lose their mother tongue and do
not manage to acquire a new one. Their speech is broken, primi-
tive, hybridized and therefore communicatively weak.54 What the
protagonist notices, agrees with my own experience of observing
50
Ibidem, p. 217-8.
51
Ibidem, p. 200.
52
Ibidem, p. 21.
53
The note published on a lingustic blog Grèce – Martha within the frame-
work of the portal “Bonjour du monde”, dated 22/1/2014: http://www.bonjourdu-
monde.com/blog/grece/7/civilisation/vassilis-alexakis-un-perpetuel-etranger-de-
passage-entre-deux-pays, DOA: 2/12/2016.
54
140 Chapter 3
Polish emigrants in Athens who have lost the ability to speak Pol-
ish correctly but have not learned proper Greek (a different alpha-
bet, though with only 24 letters, is here a genuine obstacle). They
spoke a specific jargon, with a mixture of Polish and Greek words
(or Greek words with Polish morphology), often mispronounced,
and their grammar was simple and crippled. The voice speaking
in the text is spared their fate because he not only creates a dou-
ble identity, but he also creates a double speech identity, that is he
speaks in two different languages: in this manner he functions as
two persons, one for each language. Two researchers of Alexakis’s
work, Eustratia Oktapoda-Lu and aforementioned Vassiliki Lalagi-
anni, both Greeks but living in France, just like Alexakis, notice that
“[l]la double culture d’Alexakis se traduit par une double langue.
Alexakis n’est plus ni tout à fait le même ni tout à fait un autre.”55
Later they develop this thesis even more strongly.
Dans un perpétuel va-et-vient entre Paris et Athènes, Vassilis Alexa-

kis donne l’impression d’avoir assimilé les deux cultures à la fois
sans appartenir à aucune. Doublé de l’Autre, l’auteur tente de
renverser les relations et de les rendre réciproques et bi-direction-
nelles, jusqu’à son dernier livre, Les Mots étrangers, où il introduit
une troisième langue, le sango.56
So escape from entanglement in two languages is achieved by

introducing a third one (the adventure with sango – see below), one
that would play the role of a shelter, a neutral territory or another
foreignness, remote enough from an emigrant’s home space and the
space that he came to and which he domesticates. Writing was, and
is, for the narrator a way of leaving the emigrant situation, to find
his own place – “είχα βρει τον εαυτό μου γράφοντας γαλλικά”57
(writing in French I found myself): and therefore foreignness is for
him the state he wants and craves for. Foreignness is for him nat-
ural. One of the most curious observations he makes is connecting
his life to the condition of a Greek nation that is suspended between
55
E. Oktapoda-Lu, V. Lalagianni, Le véritable exil est toujours intérieur: imagi-
naire et métissage chez les écrivains francophones grecs, “French Forum” 30 (2005), p. 116.
56
Ibidem, p. 132.
57
Ibidem, p. 211.
Antiquity and modern times and cannot decide on the shape of its
future, especially as far as language is concerned.58 Or, finding sim-
ilarities between the speaker and the Greeks: they often travel:
Η χώρα μας πάντα έζησε – για οικονομικούς, πολιτικούς ή

άλλους λόγους – με το ένα πόδι στο εξωτερικό. Το ταξίδι αποτελεί
στοιχείο της ταυτότητάς μας. Ίσως το δράμα που ζούσα να μην
ήταν παρά μόνο συνέπεια της εθνικότητάς μου.59
Our country has always lived – due to economic, political, or other

reasons – having one foot abroad. The journey is an element of our
identity. Maybe the dilemmas that I have been through are simply
the result of my nationality.
The topos of journey has a universal character that permeates

world literature and in Modern Greek prose, since its beginnings:
through Odysseus’ long return home and then adopted by may
Greek writers, such as Cavafy, Seferis, Kazantzakis. The topos has
a variety of forms, like wandering, quest, escape, spiritual travel,
imaginary and internal journeys. It has great metaphorical potential
and easily fuels narration. Alexakis builds on this topos in an ample
novel H Μητρική γλώσσα (Mother tongue, Greek and French publi-
cation in 1995), where apparently another author’s alter ego, this time
more camouflaged as a cartoonist of Greek origin living in France,
comes to Greece in an attempt to understand the meaning of a mys-
terious letter epsilon on the tympanon of Apollo’s temple in Delphi.
And indeed, Pavlos travels all around the country and summarizes
his readings as he undertakes to unveil the enigma (among the texts
there is of course the place for Plutarch).60 He talks to scholars – phi-
lologists, archaeologists, historians, but also to dilettantes and lay-
men, in order to discover the possible meaning of the letter.61
58
See p. 11.
59
60
Plut. De E. A description of the ancient text, along with a short commen-
tary is included in the novel, p. 139-141. See also Plutarch, The E at Delphi, [in:]
idem, Moralia, vol. V, trans. F.C. Babbitt, Cambridge, MA 1936, p. 194-254.
61
Α. Τσοτσορού, Ρήξη και συνέχεια στην αναζήτηση του ελληνικού
πολιτισμού: Τα μυθιστορήματα του Βασίλη Αλεξάκη Η μητρική γλώσσα και
μ.Χ. (Gap and continuity in the search for Greek culture: novels by Vassilis Alex-
akis Mother tongue and AD), [in:] Πρακτικά του Ε’ Συνεδρίου..., p. 534-536.
142 Chapter 3
Η ιχνηλάτηση της ιστορίας των Δελφών και πιο συγκεκριμένα

του Ε, οδηγεί τον συγγραφέα στη αναζήτηση του συνόλου της
ελληνικής γλώσσας και της ιστορίας της, ως προς το κομμάτι
της ετυμολογίας και της σημασιολογίας. Ο συγγραφέας αποκτά
τα στοιχεία που του χρειάζονται για να λύσει τον γρίφο του Ε
μέσω συζητήσεων με φίλους και γνωστούς και μέσω των προ-
σωπικών του μελετών στη βιβλιοθήκη της Γαλλικής Αρχαιολο-
γικής Σχολής.62
Tracing the history of Delphi, and specifically epsilon, leads the

author [i.e. narrator] to search in the entire body of the Greek lan-
guage and its history, to undertake etymological and semantic
deliberations. The writer gains the elements needed to untangle the
puzzle of ε while talking to friends, acquaintances and by studies in
the library of French Archaeological School [in Athens].
The letter itself becomes a kind of obsession for the narrator:

Pavlos looks for women whose names begin with E and then he
tries to get acquainted with them. In order to relax and to gather
his thoughts he writes out sentences (in Greek), where every word
begins with ε. Finally, he comes to the conclusion that epsilon is
“the seal of the Greeks” (σφραγίδα των Ελλήνων), because this is
the first letter of the word “Greece”, that is “Hellada” (Ελλάδα).63
But from the beginning both the narrator and his reader know that
the quest is an “impossible task”, a task that is constructed in such
a fashion that its goal is unattainable.64 It is set, not to be achieved,
but in order to create a journey full of interesting observations and
62
Ibidem, p. 534.
63
See also words by Odysseas Elytis on the meaning of epsilon (or rather
about the words beginnig with ‘el-’) for the beginning of his poetry “Ήθελα
κάποιο ψευδώνυμο [...]. Και επειδή πάντοτε οι λέξεις που άρχιζαν από «ελ»,
έψιλον και λάμδα, μου ασκούσαν μια μαγεία – είτε γιατί ήταν η Ελλάδα, είτε η
ελπίδα, είτε μια Ελένη που ήμουν τότε ερωτευμένος, η ελευθερία, όλες αυτές
που αρχίζουν από «ελ» – σκεφτηκα να το αρχίσω έτσι....” (I wanted to take on
a pseudonym [...] And because always words that begin with ‘el-’, with epsilon
and lambda, had a magical sound for my ears – whether it was Ellada [Greece],
elpida [hope], Eleni [Helen], whom I then loved, eleftheria [freedom], all of them
started with ‘el-’. So I wanted to start the same way...) Ο. Ελύτης, Ανοιχτά χαρτιά
(Open pages), Athens 1974, after literary web portal “Μηχανή του Χρόνου”
14/1/2017, http://tinyurl.com/hpsxqvo, DOA: 15/1/2017.
64
B. Αλεξάκης, Η μητρική γλώσσα, p. 138; P.R. Côté, Vasilis Alexakis, La
langue maternelle, p. 137-138. See also, from the portal TVtropes the trope Impossible
thoughts. However, the main theme of Μητρική γλώσσα, much

closer to the title, is the aforementioned suspension of Greece
between the past and the present, its indecisiveness concerning
what attitude to choose toward its historical heritage.
Όλοι οι ελληνιστές συγκρίνουν τους Νεοέλληνες με τους

αρχαίους: άλλοι στέκονται κυρίως στις ομοιότητες και άλλοι
στις διαφορές. Έχω μάθει να ξεχωρίζω τους μεν από τους δε:
μόνο οι πρώτοι μιλούν νέα ελληνικά.65
All Hellenists compare Modern Greeks to the ancients: the first

ones concentrate mainly on similarities while the others on differ-
ences. I learnt to understand who is who: only the first type speaks
Modern Greek.
The discord is therefore deepened by foreign hellenists and

philhellens, strangers that are vitally interested in the antiquity-mo-
dernity dialogue (or opposition) and their mutual interactions.
Alexakis, through Pavlos, speaks about the fortunes of teaching
history in Greek schools, whose curricula largely ignore Roman
dominance and glorify the Greek past.66 He mentions the mockery
toward so-called Erasmian pronunciation, that everywhere but in
Greece there is a common standard for reading ancient Greek texts
aloud. The Greeks remain strongly opposed to the ideas Erasmus
had, though some of his phonetic propositions were proven right.67
Instead they read ancient texts with modern pronunciation thus
showing the inseparable link between what is Ancient and what is
Modern Greek.
Task and his meaning in popular and folk culture (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/

pmwiki.php/Main/ImpossibleTask, DOA: 2/12/2016).
65
B. Αλεξάκης, Η μητρική γλώσσα, p. 314.
66
Ibidem, p. 101.
67
Ibidem, p. 147. The standing of Erasmian pronunciation in Greece one can
find, for example, in Anastasios-Fivis Christidis’s book, who has the opinion that
this pronunciation proposal is treated as “strange” and “fallacious” because of
the lack of usage and elementary lack of knowledge among pupils in regard to the
basic phonetic phenomena that came to be in Greek phonetics through the ages.
Α.-Φ. Χριστίδης, Ιστορία της αρχαίας ελληνικής γλώσσας. Αρχαιογλωσσία και
Αρχαιογνωσία στη Μέση Εκπαίδευση (History of the Ancient Greek language.
Ancient linguistics and knowledge of the ancient in the secondary school educa-
tion), Thessaloniki 2015, p. 116.
144 Chapter 3
In yet another novel, μ.Χ. (AD [lit. After Christ], 2007) Alex-
akis explores another type of Greek vacillation – between what is
pagan and what is Christian. He tries to understand how one world
superseded another, how eras changed and whether the succession
was opposition or rather continuation. In other words – his cen-
tral question is about establishing whether the pagan world and
the Christian world are incompatible, verging on hostile. Here he
makes use of Spirydon Zambelios’ mid-19th century idea, which
is still important for Greek historiography, namely of the notion of
ελληνοχριστιανισμός – Greek-Christianity, the concept that pro-
motes the peaceful transition of epochs. Such a line of thought is
already announced in Μητρική γλώσσα – when Pavlos pays a visit
to the ancient oracle in Nekromateion.68 There, literally above the
ancient excavations, a little Byzantine church is placed on a cement
platform (as the ancient ruins were found during renovation work
on the church. This signifies – as the Modern Greek literature
scholar Aliki Tsotsorou states – “τον ανταγωνισμό μεταξύ των
θρησκειών”69 (the antagonism of religions).
The protagonist of μ.Χ. is a young student, who decides to
write his MA diploma thesis about the remnants of antiquity on
Mount Athos. He starts frequenting libraries, he meets with aca-
demics, priests and former monks, in an attempt to grasp not only
the nature of the relationship between paganism and Christianity
and the very moment of transitions of eras (from pagan antiquity
to paleo-Christianity), but also to understand the mentality of the
contemporary inhabitants of Athos. After meticulous preparations
(amply described in the novel) he undertakes a journey to the Holy
Mountain, an adventure that ends up in a scandal: he has to hastily
escape when he discovers that in one of the monasteries a monk
uses the gold from ancient artefacts to gild his own creations – con-
temporary icons.
Critics and scholars are not unanimous in regard to this book
by Alexakis. One of them, Ioanna Chatzidimitriou, writes that:
Por. Hom. Od. 11.1.

68
B. Αλεξάκης, Η μητρική γλώσσα, p. 259-260; Α. Τσοτσορού, Ρήξη και

69
συνέχεια..., p. 535.
[t]he surprising accumulation of wealth among the Mount Athos

monasteries, the effort on the part of Greek Athonite monks to vio-
lently expulse some of the peninsula’s Russian inhabitants that the
narrator witnesses on his first day on Mount Athos, and the destruc-
tion of an ancient golden crown by an artist monk who unearthed
it from a grave and with a surprising sense of entitlement welded it
into a halo destined to adorn a Byzantine-style icon.70
Her words depict a negative view of the Holy Mountain, much

more negative that the one offered by Alexakis.71 Chatzidimitriou
doubts the validity of Greek historical interpretation of the Byz-
antine time and interprets the ban imposed by Athonite authori-
ties against archaeological excavations on the peninsula – a fact
described by Alexakis in the novel – as a living example of the aver-
sion that characterizes the attitude of the guardians of post-Byz-
antine heritage towards anything that is pre-Byzantine or – more
generally – that is ancient.72 Tsotsorou on her part thinks that these
last thriller-like scenes should be read differently: though the whole
text is rather anti-Athonite, the ending of the story, the scandalous
use of an ancient object to beautify a contemporary one, may be
– shockingly put – a proof in favour of the continuity or even com-
munion between these two worlds: one is construction material
for another73 (not unlike the pre-modern attitude to ancient ruins:
these sites were treated as a source of well wrought stone, and bet-
ter than any quarry). This interpretation fits ideally with another
70
I. Chatzidimitriou, VA, Ap. J.-C., “The French Review” 82 (2009), no. 6,
p. 1350.
71
Regardless of interpretations Alexakis should be applauded for taking on
such a controversial subject: the existence and functioning of the “Republic of
Monks “ on one of the Chalkidiki peninsulas. Other contemporary literary texts
and essays, written by authors who chose Athos as the place of action or interest,
are much milder in their overtones for example a recent novel by Kostas Akrivos,
(Κ. Ακρίβος, Πανδαιμόνιο, 2007, Polish edition 2014 as Pandemonium). He attacks
monks and their sins, but the target of his attack is the moral decay of men and
not pondering on the very sense of survival of such a place as Athos – as it was
presented in Alexakis’s μ.Χ., where, quite surprisingly, the main critique was not
about the ban on all females (abaton), but rather the extremely conservative and to
a point hypocritical attitude of Athonite monks to various contemporary subjects.
72
Ibidem.
73
Α. Τσοτσορού, Ρήξη και συνέχεια..., p. 547.
146 Chapter 3
famous Athonite interaction between antiquity and Christianity, as

seen on the fresco towering over the entrance to the Megisti Lavra
(Μεγίστη Λαύρα, lit. the Biggest Monastery) refectory, the fresco
that depicts the Virgin Mary expelling Artemis. A part of the figure
of the ancient goddess is an ear incorporated into the fresco, which
is probably derived from an ancient sculpture.74
Greece ceases to be an important point of reference as well as
a major site of action in other novels by Alexakis. Ξένες λέξεις
(Foreign Words, 2003, English edition 2006, originally published in
French in 2002 as Les mots étrangers) are notes written by the nar-
rator from the process the learning of a foreign language, namely
sango, the official language (along with French) in the Central Afri-
can Republic. The author admitted that he decided on acquiring
another language – this time very much different from the ones
he already knew – to feel again the strong emotions that go with
learning a new tongue.75 Besides, every new tongue is for him an
expansion of his creative field.76 Languages dominate, yet again,
another of his novels, Η πρώτη λέξη (The first word, 2011, orig-
inally published in French in 2010 as Le premier mot). Linguistic
curiosity, bordering on obsession, characterizes the novel’s pro-
tagonists who browse innumerable dictionaries, etymologies, and
semantic connections between words in various languages and are
similar to the character of Pavlos from Μητρική γλώσσα.77 Η πρώτη
λέξη is, once more, an example of an “impossible task”, a task with-
out any hope of realisation, which Alexakis burdens his heroine
with. The sister of a dying comparative literature professor (who
is – again – a Greek living in Paris) wants to fulfil his last wish and
to find the first words uttered by a human being and to reach the
proto-langauge. She travels to many places and meets a variety of
people who have linguistic interests: not only scholars, but numer-
74
For deepened analysis of the fresco’s meaning: see M. Merlini, The Pagan
Artemis in the Virgin Mary Salutation at Great Lavra, Mount Athos, “The Journal of
Archeomythology” 7 (2011), p. 106-180.
75
V. Alexakis, Une langue pour rire, une langue pour pleurer, [in:] Fabriques de
la langue, K. Nassikas, Ε. Prak-Derrington, C. Rossi (eds.), Paris 2012, p. 341-343.
76
Β. Λαγαγιάννη, Μετοικεσία, γλώσσα και ταυτότητα…, p. 441-450 and
448.
77
ous enthusiasts and artists. She learns about established theories

in the fields of linguistics and anthropology, but is not deaf to fic-
tional stories, legends and anecdotes: all those about words, lan-
guages and communication. The book ends with an anti-climax: as
expected, no first word is found, only a need to continue looking for
it and for ceaseless dealings with words and languages.
In his next book Ο μικρός Έλληνας (The Little Greek, 2013,
originally published in French in 2012 as L’enfant grec) Alexakis pays
homage to the heroes of his childhood imagination: to Robin Hood,
Tarzan, Oliver Twist, the Count of Monte Christo and to many oth-
ers. He therefore fulfils what he had promised in earlier texts: that
he is ready for a personal turn, for a retrospective glance into his
childhood and adolescent years, and to speak more openly in the
language of metafiction.78
Such a unique biography and such a varied bibliography of
Vassilis Alexakis poses a problem for historians of literature – he is
not easily classified and labelled. Is he a Greek writer or a French
one? He lives in France and he writes in French (among other lan-
guages) but he has never decided to apply for French citizenship.79
As a result he is often omitted from the history of contemporary
literature, both those describing French letters as well as Modern
Greek. His sole text translated into Polish and published – a frag-
ment of the novel Talgo – consists of a part of the anthology Z Par-
nasu i z Olimpu (From Parnassus and from Olympus).80 The edi-
tor of the volume, Paweł Krupka, decided to place Alexakis’s text
along with others labelled “Greek literature outside of Greece” and
so Alexakis’s neighbours are prose and poems written in Cypriot or
Griko/Greko (Calabrian) Greek dialects. Moreover, the anthology
78
Meta-fiction never ceases to be fashionable and successfully conquers
popular literature. See e.g. the book series by Jasper Fforde, with the protago-
nist, Thursday Next, a chrono-policewoman, and then a Jurisfiction agent in the
meta-fictional world of BookWorld (first instalment: J. Fforde, The Eyre Affair, Lon-
don 2001).
79
C. Matei-Chilea, Problématique de l’identité littéraire..., p. 35.
80
W. Aleksakis, Talgo, trans. into Polish D. Wrani-Stachowska, [in:] Z Par-
nasu i z Olimpu, p. 337-352. Incidentally Alexakis is only marginally popular in
anglophone countries. There are just two of his novels translated into English:
Foreign words (2006, by A. Waters) and Mother tongue (2017, by H.R. Patton).
148 Chapter 3
was published in 2000, but in Alexakis’s biogram, included in the

volume, the existence of such books as Παρίσι-Αθήνα or Μητρική
γλώσσα was for some reason overlooked.81 The whole confusion
around Alexakis makes him a member of the group consisting of
multi-language writers that decide to write, or have to write, in
a language other than their own. This is the classification proposed
by Matei-Chilea, who mentions Alexakis along with Andrei Mak-
ine, Milan Kundera and Amin Maalouf.
On the other hand one should not overestimate the meaning of
Greece and Greekness for the writer’s output – the fascination with
this country, its history and culture and most of all with its language
is a stage in his creation, a stage that comes to pass.82 As most of his
works are initially planned for a foreign audience, his view of Greece
is consciously aimed at non-Greeks, and Alexakis plays the role of an
outside observer: an expert one, but nevertheless a non-committed
one. That is why his books, when translated into Greek, (sometimes
his own translations, sometimes not) have a “feeling” of distance and
dryness, but at the same time offer a fresh look at something that
had seemed well-known or even obvious. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir,
while writing about new mental tools in anthropology, pointed to
the growing popularity of the idea of “showing foreignness in what
is considered to be home”.83 Then – she continues – “[The act of]
being surprised at what is regarded as evident, negates alienation,
because it reveals a forgotten horizon of understanding that lets tra-
dition regain its speech”.84 Alexakis does exactly that: he speaks about
Greece in a new language that lets him reveal what was hidden, for-
gotten – or even forbidden. The geographical distance between him
and Greece gives him the courage to undertake subjects which are
81
From such a point of view he is indeed a writer-emigrant with a typical
biography.
82
Pl. ‘ukazać obcość w tym, co swojskie’: J. Tokarska-Bakir, Dalsze losy syna
marnotrawnego. Projekt etnografii nieprzezroczystej (Further fortunes of a prodigal
son. The project of non transparent ethnography), “Sztuka Ludowa. Konteksty”,
49 (1995), no. 1, p. 18. But cf. remarks on his latest novel, p. 240.
83
Ibidem.
84
Ibidem: “[Z]dziwienie tym, co uchodzi za oczywistość, znosi wyobcow-
anie, bo odsłania zapomniany horyzont zrozumienia, przez co przywraca tradycji
mowę”.
not too popular in the old country. He wrote harsh words about
Athos, he was able to state his views on the involvement and guilt
of the Greek junta in the tragic events in Cyprus in the summer of
1974.85 The background for Μητρική γλώσσα is the cumulation of
the modern version of the “Macedonian question”, a cumulation that
became a hot political topic in the mid 1990s. And here again Alex-
akis indulges in saying more than Greece-based Greek writers do,
exposing both the inhabitants of a country, which has a contentious
name, and the Greeks themselves, who, according to the writer, do
not have a monopoly on truth in this dispute.86 Within the novel he
quotes a hysterical political-historical manifesto, uttered or rather
shouted by the director of an artistic theatre that is presented right
after a controversial pro-national play. The speaker preaches a thesis
about Greek loneliness in the world and about the historical injustice
that still touches this – innocent – country.87 The words are heard by
the narrator with a feeling of shame, he is paralysed by their one-sid-
edness and underlying populism. Such an ample and yet ungener-
ous quotation was probably intended to ridicule such rhetoric, which
was quite popular in Greek public discourse (even more favoured
now, in times of prolonged crisis): according to such a point of view
an innocent Greece constantly falls prey to stronger, foreign powers.
But Alexakis’s view of his motherland has many positive,
sunny facets. One of the favourite, and the most respected Greek
writers is Constantine Cavafy. By no accident Alexakis mentions
an episode from his youth when his mother gave him a small book
with Cavafy’s poems when they were parting at the station, just
before his final migration.88 The writer has often reached for the
book and found solace in the poet’s words, like in this fragment,
when the poet seems to comment on his emigration.
Αναγνώριζα τον εαυτό μου στο ποίημα του Καβάφη που μιλάει
για κάποιον που περιφέρεται σε σκοτεινές κάμαρες ψάχνοντας
τα παράθυρα και ο οποίος εύχεται τελικά να μην τα βρει:
85
86
In fact he writes quite often about the “Macedonian question” –
B. Αλεξάκης, Η μητρική γλώσσα, p. 88, 146 and 295.
87
Ibidem, p. 194.
88
Por. M. Bessy, Vassilis Alexakis: exorciser l’exil. Déplacements..., p. 70.
150 Chapter 3
Ίσως το φως θάναι μια νέα τυραννία.

Ποιος ξέρει τι καινούρια πράγματα να δείξει.89
I recognized myself in this poem by Cavafy, where the poet speaks

about someone who wanders dark rooms in search of a window
and who finally wishes not to find any.
Perhaps the light will prove another tyranny.
Who knows what new things it will expose?90
In Μητρική γλώσσα, Pavlos, the narrator is appalled when he
discovers that a young scholar he has just met in the French Archae-
ological School has never heard of Cavafy.91 The old poet from Alex-
andria is for Alexakis a face of contemporary Greek literature, its
most far-reaching creator, the key to understanding the nation and
its history92 and no less importantly a chief ambassador of Modern
Greek letters in the world.
It is difficult to capture the attitude of Alexakis and his liter-
ary protagonists toward Greece. It is ostensibly an escape in spatial
terms: the author left the country half a century ago and is “still on
the run”. But actually it is an escape into the foreignness of French
culture and language (and then into all the languages of the world),
but most of all it is an escape into himself. Alexakis is, as he states,
the main recipient of his texts, if we are to believe him: when he
writes them, he thinks of himself and writes them to himself.93 Out
of this deliberation a single thought always stands out: what is
the relationship between him and the language? He indefatigably
thinks about new metaphors concerning how to describe this con-
nection, this entanglement. A language learnt well enough is like
an expensive toy, when one has obtained it, one refrains from using
it,94 states the narrator in the opening pages of Παρίσι-Αθήνα he
adds that when he speaks a foreign language he feels like an actor
89
90
The fragment of the poem Παράθυρα (Windows), here in translation by
Ph. Sherrard and E. Keeley (The Offical Webpage of Cavafy Archive: www.cavafy.
com, DOA: 25/08/2018).
91
92
M. Bessy, Vassilis Alexakis: exorciser l’exil. Déplacements..., p. 68.
93
94
Ibidem, p. 14.
on a stage.95 Alexakis, interviewed, once admitted that languages

are like lovers and can be jealous of one another.96 And in a recently
published text that sums up many years of his writing, he states:
Les langues étrangères sont des cours de récréation. Elles donnent

envie de jouer. On perçoit mieux leur musique que celle de la langue
qu’on a l’habitude de parler. Les mots étrangers nous invitent
à danser. Je crois que mes romans français sont plus légers que mes
textes grecs. Ma langue maternelle m’émeut forcément davantage.
En somme, j’ai une langue pour rire et une langue pour pleurer.97
Through his confession I see another dominating mode in his

oeuvre – an unceasing fascination with speech, with words. Its mel-
ody, the relationship between its shape (sound) and meaning, its
role in the history of language and in contacts between languages –
this is a motif Alexakis never betrays.98 In contrast to Dionisios Solo-
mos, who, according to a famous Greek “literary anecdote” paid for
new words (i.e. words he did not know), Alexakis – for free – draws
rich material from dictionaries but also from street language. He
is a tireless word collector who has found pleasure in exhibiting –
through literature – his ever-growing findings.
Alexakis found a home in his part of the world and his place in
literature. He became a characteristic writer, with his own, recog-
nizable style and – above all – his set of literary themes. He chose the
role of a satellite that revolves around Greece (and around France)
at a constant tempo and at an unchanging distance, without fear
that any of his homelands, the old or the new one, would attract
him for good.
95
Ibidem, p. 13 and 166.
96
S. Stuart, Linguistic Profit, Loss and Betrayal in Paris-Athènes, [in:] Fran-
cophone Post-Colonial Cultures. Critical Essays, K. Salhi (ed.), Lanham, MD 2003,
p. 286.
97
V. Alexakis, Une langue pour rire..., p. 343.
98
About the absolute control in language see an opinion by Elizabeth Klosty
Beaujour: “While it is true that bilinguals frequently shift languages without mak-
ing a conscious decision to do so, polyglot and bilingual writers must deliberately
decide which language to use in a given instance. The conscious awareness of this
option is both the greatest blessing that bilingualism provides the writer and the
greatest curse.” E. Klosty Beaujour, Alien Tongues: Bilingual Russian Writers of the
First Emigration, Ithaca, NY 1989, p. 38.
Chapter 4.
Apostolos Doxiadis:
writing (about) mathematics
A curious phenomenon can be observed in contemporary Modern

Greek letters: several authors have pursued the idea of introducing
mathematics into literary texts, thus effectively reversing the sep-
aration of these two worlds – or “two cultures”. Their efforts are
unique on a larger scale, as generally such attempts are still scarce
worldwide.
Charles Snow, the chemist and novelist, in his influential
“Rede Lecture” – several decades ago – drew attention to the gap
and tried to diagnose it. He pointed to the lack of communication
between ‘literary intellectuals’ and ‘scientists’,1 as well as the harm-
ful stereotypes that one group developed about the other, concern-
ing their knowledge, motivations and most of all their world view.
His words still resonate loudly, as was shown recently in a study
by the sociologist Anna Baczko-Dombi. It is justified to speak about
such a rupture already happening at school.2 During the educa-
tional process the gap is widened, as pupils divide themselves into
‘humanists’ and ‘mathematicians’. These first ones are often (self-)
defined as those who are not good at mathematics.3 Knowledge of
mathematics, which is highly cumulative and demands systematic
learning with a degree of self-control is, in later educational situa-
tions, further detested, because its connection to the problems of the
1
C.P. Snow, Two cultures, Croydon 1964, p. 4, 16. The lecture was presented
in 1959.
2
A. Baczko-Dombi, Ucieczka od matematyki. Rekonstrukcja procesu w kontekś-
cie społecznego wizerunku przedmiotu (Escape from mathematics. Reconstruction of
the process in the context of the social image of the [school] subject), “Edukacja”
140 (2017), p. 39-40, 44.
3
Ibidem, p. 39.
154 Chapter 4
world outside the classroom and school walls becomes more and
more elusive.4
Moreover, the onset of technology that facilitated unlimited
access to easily obtainable information created a demand for nar-
row and time-consuming expertise for sustaining and developing
such a state which makes the notion of the polymath less and less
congruent with contemporary times. Simply put, it is less and less
feasible to become a polymath. The development of human thought,
for vital, lucrative and strategic reasons, mostly in the fields of tech-
nology and medicine, forces professionals and scholars to specialize
in narrow disciplines, to go “deep” and not “wide”. Such special-
isation subsequently creates further divisions in education and in
science. One division has stayed especially strong, the one between
the exact and natural on one side, and human sciences on the other,
with social sciences – lying somewhere between them – living in
a constant “paradigm crisis” and looking for inspiration on both
sides of the gap.5 There are voices that believe the humanities to
be closer to the arts than the sciences, because the humanities, just
like the arts, are based largely on personal experience, are not neu-
tral with regard to emotions and are involved much deeper in the
lives of researchers, subjects, and the recipients of their work. Such
a distinction between exact (or natural) sciences and humanities (or
in some classification traditions: sciences and arts) is universally
sanctioned – one can take a cursory look at library classifications
or the Polish National Science Centre panels within funding pro-
grammes.6 The core of exact science was, and is mathematics, the
bulwark of the humanities – philology, especially the part occupied
with literature (or to some point cultural and social anthropology,
combining many humanistic disciplines in one). Moreover, such
4
Ibidem, p. 46-47.
5
C. Geertz, O gatunkach zmąconych: nowe konfiguracje myśli społecznej, “Tek-
sty Drugie” 2 (1990), p. 113-130, esp. 113-114. English original: C. Geertz, Blurred
Genres: The Refiguration of Social Thought, “The American Scholar” 49, no. 2 (spring
1980), p. 165-179.
6
Pl.: Nauki Humanistyczne, Społeczne i o Sztuce (lit. Humanistic, Social
and Art Sciences); Nauki Ścisłe i Techniczne (lit. Exact and Technical Sciences);
Nauki o Życiu (lit. Sciences about Life), after: www.ncn.gov.pl/finansowan-
ie-nauki/panele-ncn, DOA: 2/12/2016.
Apostolos Doxiadis: writing (about) mathematics 155
a division is introduced in the early stages of systematic school

learning and may be more marked in regard to gender.7
Literature belongs clearly to the arts and in some of its gen-
res it is clearly visible why it stands in opposition to science. In
rough terms, while some genres try to imitate or interpret reali-
ty,8 there are others where authors work mostly with their imag-
ination (speculative literature and its sub-genres, such as fantasy
7
See e.g. R.B. Felson, L. Trudeau, Gender Differences in Mathematics Perfor-
mance, “Social Psychology Quarterly”, 54 (1991), no. 2, p. 113-126 and their opin-
ion that “gender differences in mathematics performance are usually attributed
to gender socialization” (p. 113). Contemporary studies try to break apart pat-
terns of such thinking, pointing at natural small difference or lack thereof between
the genders when it comes to testing various mathematical skills. The difference
they claim, similarly to the opinion of Richard B. Feslon and Lisa Trudeau, lies
in social factors, like in tendencies to rivalry, where inter-gender variations are
more visible: M. Niederle, L. Vesterlund, Explaining the Gender Gap in Math Test
Scores: The Role of Competition, “Journal of Economic Perspectives” 24 (2010), no. 2,
p. 129-144. A. Baczko-Dombi (Ucieczka od matematyki..., p. 41) also points at text
by S. Bedyńska and P. Rycielski, Zagrożenie stereotypem, bezradność intelektualna
a oceny szkolne dziewcząt z matematyki (Threat of stereotype, intellectual helpless-
ness and school grade in mathematics received by girls), “Edukacja” 136 (2016),
p. 102–113.
It is not uncommon in Poland that in classes that are profiled mathematically
there are few or even no girls. In higher education, the humanities attract far more
women than men.
8
See categories mimetic, anti-mimetic and non-mimetic that come from the
theoretical reflection of SF thinker Andrzej Zgorzelski (Born of the Fantastic,
Gdańsk 2004, p. 9-22) and applied by Grzegorz Trębicki. From such a point of
view speculative literature is non-mimetic. See G. Trębicki, Supragenological types
of fiction versus contemporary non-mimetic literature, “Science-Fiction Studies” 41
(2014), no. 3, p. 481-501. But see also the opinion of Polish literary theoretician
Henryk Markiewicz, who, while defining the term “literary realism” points at
a possibility that would allow “homologic representation” (Pol. reprezentatywn-
ość homologiczna) which would render the structure and rules of the real world
but would allow for a symbolic variety (symbolic, that is also fantastic) of such
representation. Realism, understood in such a way is exemplified by the works of
Frank Kafka (H. Markiewicz, Główne problemy wiedzy o literaturze, Warsaw 1966,
p. 252 and 254) and from this point of view realism is unnecessarily held to be
inopposition to speculative literature. See also K. Uniłowski, Fantastyka i realizm
(Fantastic literature and realism), [in:] E. Bartos et al. (ed.), Literatura popularna.
T. 2, Fantastyczne kreacje światów (Popular literature. Vol. II. Fantastic world crea-
tions), Katowice 2014, p. 15-28.
156 Chapter 4
or magical realism) or with their sensitivity (lyrical poetry) – then

their literature travels not only to regions full of imaginary, hypo-
thetical people and situations, but to worlds that simply cannot, for
various reasons, come into existence.9 But these impossible places
and times can be shared by every reader, though every one experi-
ences them separately. Science strives for the opposite: it ceaselessly
pursues a shared, common truth about the world humans live in:
scientists discover its laws and test these discoveries with ruthless
rigour, while demanding that their peers corroborate or refute the
truth of their proposition. There is no place for subjectivity, which
on the other hand lies at the centre of humanist thought, that of
people who emphasise the autonomy of individuals and their
uniqueness in the process of interpreting not only reality, but also
any artistic work.10 The sciences differ from the humanities in their
attitude towards language. Writers, and especially poets exploit the
polysemy of words and associations that are based on the word’s
shape and sound. They sometimes decide on a meaning so deeply
9
See thoughts on slipstream, a sub-genre of speculative literature, p. 198.
10
The question of the connection between (literary) fiction and truth reaches
far beyond the scope of this text. It starts with Plato’s remarks on mimesis (Plat.
Rep., e.g. 10.597b-10.598b – “the three couches metaphor” and 10.603a) or Aris-
totle’s account in Poetics (Arist. Poet. 1451b) and has been a key intersection point
between literature and philosophy ever since. In the Polish tradition there are the
findings of the philosopher Roman Ingarden who decided to search judgements
by a fictional literary character for “quasi-truths” (R. Ingarden, O różnych rozum-
ieniach „prawdziwości” w dziele sztuki (About various understanding of “thruth-
fulness” in a work of art), [in:] idem, Szkice z filozofii literatury (Sketches in the
philosophy of literature), Kraków 2000, p. 397-404), later appreciated by Henryk
Markiewicz who emphasised the cognitive value of a fictional text (H. Markiew-
icz, Fikcja w dziele literackim a jego zawartość poznawcza (Fiction in a literary work
and its cognitive content), [in:] idem, Główne problemy wiedzy o literaturze (Main
problem of literature studies), Kraków 1996, p. 118-147). Anna Martuszewska,
who recently published a book on this subject (Prawda w powieści / Truth in litera-
ture, Gdańsk 2010) combines various stands on the problem she puts emphasis on
Stendhal’s views and on later aspirations of realists. There, the discussion about
what is realism, how it should be fulfilled within a literary text and what tools it
uses to make a literary, fictional text seem “real”, she finds to be an everlasting
and to a certain degree unresolvable dispute. Today yet another important aspect
of these discussions is led by theoreticians of speculative literature who explore
yet another interesting border: between what is fictional and what is fantastic. See
the chapter on Ch. A. Chomenidis, especially p. 209ff.
in-rooted in a language that a word, an expression or even a text

seems untranslatable into any other language. Scientists strive to
clarify terms, to achieve sharpness and precision of expression, to
eliminate a multiplicity of meanings and to facilitate inter-language
translation.
In the face of such a chasm that divides these two ways of
understanding and describing reality, all the more praiseworthy
are attempts to bridge the gap: to connect the humanities and sci-
ence, to bridge the gap between what is literary and what is math-
ematical. One such phenomenon is an endeavour called “mathe-
matical fiction”,11 which aims at presenting – through a storyline
– elements of mathematics and of the work of mathematicians –
sometime without showing the tools of their trade12 (there is a tan-
gible aversion against exhibiting equations, computations, geomet-
rical constructions within a literary text – of everything that brings
back memories of a mathematics classroom). Writing about math-
ematics is by no means a literary novelty and, while marginal, is
nevertheless surprisingly well represented. In post-war Poland sev-
eral fictionalized books on mathematics have supported school cur-
ricula (camouflaging under a thin veil a way of teaching children
and adolescents about theorems, problems and paradoxes: Lilavati
by Szczepan Jeleński (1954), Zerko Żeglarz (Zerko the sailor) by
Vladimir Lovshin (1987)13 or Wyprawa Kapitana Łamigłowy w krainę
matematyki (The journey of Captain Puzzle to the realm of mathe-
matics) by Jan Samsonowicz (1989)14 to name just a few. These days
a Polish reader can easily find several partly fictionalized biogra-
phies of famous mathematicians, like Stefan Banach. Niezwykłe życie
i genialna matematyka (Stefan Banach. Extraordinary life and brilliant
11
In Polish ‘beletrystyka matematyczna’. I borrowed the term from Zdzisław
Pogoda: Z. Pogoda, Beletrystyka matematyczna, “Matematyka – społeczeństwo –
nauczanie”, 28 (2002), p. 48-49.
12
Ibidem, p. 48.
13
Also Zerko, czyli Trzy dni w Karlikanii (Zerko or three days in Karlikania,
1991).
14
Captain Puzzle visited also the realms of physics, geography, history
and literature. There are other, similar books for children, all very popular, e.g.
K. Poskitt, This Murderous Math series (since 1997) or A. Bellos Alex’s Adventures in
Numberland (2010) and the like.
158 Chapter 4
mathematics) written by Emilia Jakimowicz and Adam Miranowicz

(2007) or Gödel: A Life of Logic by John Casti and Werner DePauli
(2000) and also autobiographies and “life guides” written by math-
ematicians themselves, like A Mathematician’s Apology by Godfrey
Harold Hardy (1996). A nod to mathematics is sometimes present
in popular literature, like in the crime story by Marek Krajewski
Władca liczb (The ruler of numbers, 2014) or in the romance novel
The Code of Love by Sylvia Andrews (2001), where a protagonist is
a fictional female mathematician, who fights for her right to pur-
sue her passion in the times of the English regency. Closer to the
meaning of mathematical fiction is surely Denis Guedj’s Le theoreme
du perroquet (1998, English translation 2000), where a young reader
is introduced to the history of mathematics, from its ancient begin-
nings to the most important contemporary theorems – all these in
the guise of a criminal plot.15 A similar attempt was made by Ian
Stewart. In his Professor Stewart’s Casebook of Mathematical Mysteries
(2014) he introduces elements of crime stories inviting readers to
solve mathematical riddles as if they were problems for detectives.16
An important milestone in the field was a book published in
1884 and written by Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many
Dimensions that had the ambition of acquainting readers with the
concept of geometric dimensions (apart from being a comment on
Victorian society). Abbott uses here a simple analogy: he describes
life in two-dimensional world (2D), where there is length and
width, but no height (or otherwise depth). Having met the flatlin-
ers, the inhabitants of this invented land, one can anticipate the idea
of a potential four-dimensional world (4D), because of the straight-
forward analogy: a 2D world to us, three-dimensional beings, is
what our 3D world would be to inhabitants of a 4D world. The mul-
ti-dimensional problem is also a core concept in Madeleine L’En-
gle A Wrinkle in Time (1962), a family fantasy story for adolescents
15
The Polish publisher, in the blurb on the book’s back cover, compared
Guedj’s book to Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Phi-
losophy, a notable publishing success a generation ago.
16
Stewart wrote a number of such popularising books, among them several
volumes of The Science Of Discworld that – half-jokingly- look for scientific content
in the fantastic universe of Discworld created by Terry Pratchett in more than 40
novels.
and young adults, as well as in a number of speculative fiction

novels. Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-
time (2003), whose main protagonist is a teenager whose Asperg-
er’s syndrome harms his relations with others but equips him with
exceptional mathematical abilities, was quite a success. The book
is to some point mathematically inclined, at least superficially, as –
for example – the chapter numbers are expressed with consecutive
prime numbers (2, 3, 5, 7, 11 etc.) instead of typical 1, 2, 3, 4 etc.
In The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein (1993) a young
Jewish protagonist, breaking free from her Orthodox background
discovers the pleasures of body and mind and entangles herself
in a difficult marriage to a brillant mathematician. A popular Ger-
man graphic novel Zahlenteufel. Ein Kopfkissenbuch für alle, die Angst
vor der Mathematik haben (1999, English edition 2000 as The number
devil), written by Magnus Enzensberger and illustrated by Rotraut
Susanne Berner tells a story of a boy, who, through a dream and
a benign demon, discovers the delights of numeral mathematics.
The Japanese Hakase no aishita sūshiki (lit. The professor’s beloved
equation, 2005, English edition 2006 as The Housekeeper and The Pro-
fessor), written by Yōko Ogawa is yet another recollection of a roman-
tic encounter between a young woman and a mathematician (as
they seem to be almost exclusively men). In the newest publications
there are also some worth mentioning, such as Goldman’s Theorem
by R.J. Stern (2009), A Certain Ambiguity: A Mathematical Novel by
Gaurav Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal (2010) as well as a book draw-
ing inspiration from the ancient notion of mathematics that borders
on mysticism: Pythagoras’ Revenge: A Mathematical Mystery (2011) by
Arturo Sangalli. The 2016 bestsellers’ lists included Ethan Canin’s
A Doubter’s Almanac, another story about a (fictional) brilliant math-
ematician who has to choose between devotion to science and his
feelings. Paolo Giordano, Italian physicist and writer, won with his
La solitudine dei numeri primi (The Solitude of prime numbers, 2008)
several important Italian literary awards. While essentially a love
story, it uses metaphors connected to prime numbers, like the term
of twin primes to express the intricacies of human relations.17
17
Italian literature is strong in the”mathematical fiction” tradition. One of
the most prominent writers who were working toward lessening the gap between
160 Chapter 4
The presence of mathematics in popular culture is by no

means confined to literature. The lives of mathematicians (or of
mathematically gifted people) became the root for such films as
A beautiful mind (2001, directed by Jon Howard), Good Will Hunting
(1997, directed by Gus Van Sant) or, recently, The Accountant (2016,
directed by Gavin O’Connor) as well as a noted TV series Numb3rs
(in which the rendering of the title “e” is, on purpose, stylised as
“3”), created by Nicolas Facci and Cheryl Heton, which ran from
2005 to 2010 and was bought by numerous television stations in
many countries, including Poland. The show was a mixture of
a typical, procedural drama with a mathematical “twist”, because
the consultant of the main detective characters was a university
applied mathematician who used mostly algebraic methods to
assist in solving crimes. This presence of the exact sciences in pop-
ular culture has attracted the attention of scholars. This resulted
in Math Goes to the Movies (2012, Burkard Polster and Marty Ross)
and a multi-authored selection of in-depth studies edited in 2012
by Jessica K. Sklar and Elizabeth S. Sklar Mathematics in Popular
Culture. Essays on Appearances in Film, Fiction, Games, Television and
Other Media. In an article included in this anthology and devoted
to the connections between mathematics and literature Alex Kas-
man18 states what already comes across as quite obvious, that in
most cases this connection is observed in speculative literature or
rather in its science-fiction subgenre.19 The themes of this type of
text directly apply to technological development and the poten-
tial applications of theoretical physics and that is why a mathe-
matical apparatus is visible in some of these texts. Kasman shows
what is mathematical (exact) and humanist was Italo Calvino, a member of

OULIPO, who not only experimented with introducing mathematically generated
structures into his literary works, but toward the end of his career turned to theory
and examined the obstacles that prevent the unification of these ‘two cultures’, as
defined by Snow. His American lectures (1985, English translation in 1988 as Six
Memos for the Next Millennium) and especially the one on exactitude (applying
notions from exact sciences into literature) are fine examples of his endeavours.
18
A. Kasman, A survey of fictional mathematics in literature, [in:] Mathematics
in Popular Culture. Essays on Appearances in Film, Fiction, Games, Television and Other
Media, J.K. Sklar, E.S. Sklar (ed.), McFarland, CA 2012, p. 9-26.
19
Ch.L. Adler, Wizards, Aliens, and Starships. Physics and Math in Fantasy and
Science Fiction, Princeton, NJ 2014.
however that all too often this is bogus maths, limited to pseu-
do-scientific babble that is supposed to stay abstruse for a reader
and to simulate scientific discourse in fictional, fantastic situations
that are – from the point of view of contemporary science – simply
nonsensical, attempts at weaving real mathematics into literary
fiction are much less frequent and successful. Kasman has excel-
lent qualifications in this subject, for he runs a database of works
(texts, films, video games) where he finds traces of mathematics.20
More than 10% of the works mentioned in his list are novels in the
science-fiction genre, some written by renowned SF authors like
Greg Egan, Neal Stephenson, Carl Sagan and Stanisław Lem.21
Mathematics can manifest itself in a variety of ways in a work
concerning culture. The Sklar sisters, editors of the aforementioned
collection of articles on mathematics in fiction, divided these man-
ifestations into three groups – they called them “The Game”, “The
Players” and “Math + Metaphor”. The editors decided arrange such
mathematics-fiction encounters into situations where mathematics
constitutes the basis of the plot (“The Game”), where the protag-
onists are mathematicians (“The Players”), or where mathematics
is used metaphorically (“Math + Metaphor”), i.e. there are stories
about something not mathematically related but could be told or
explained in the language of mathematics. One of the texts in this
category tries to clarify the motivations and actions of characters in
20
Cf. the opinion of the mathematician and popularizer Keith Devlin:
“Mathematical connection is not always apparent until somebody points it out.”
K. Devlin, Preface, [in:] Mathematics in Popular Culture…, p. 1.
21
See also D. Fowler, Mathematics in Science Fiction: Mathematics as Science
Fiction, “World Literature Today” 84 (2010), no. 3, p. 48-52.
One of the most mathematically inclined SF novels in Polish is Marek Huber-
ath’s, Gniazdo światów (Nest of worlds, 1998, English translation in 2014 by M.
Kandel), a book where the rules that govern the fantastic world are expressed in
equations and it is vital for a reader to understand them in order to uncover all the
intricacies of the plot. See A. Mazurkiewicz, O polskiej literaturze fantastyczno-nau-
kowej lat 1990-2004 (About Polish science-fiction literature 1990-2004), Łódź 2007,
p. 174-191. Recently Polish novels that have significant contribution into under-
standing exact sciences have been awarded a special prize: the Kwazar Award. So
far Kwazar has been awarded twice.
162 Chapter 4
two horror films: The Saw and The Cube, through using the language
of mathematical argumentation.22
These two first sections within the Sklars’ book are to a certain
extent thematically overlapping, though the reason for the division
is apparent: in this way the editors underlined the change in depict-
ing mathematically apt people, professional mathematicians, but
also children and teenagers who are interested in exact sciences and
who are mathematically gifted. The word ‘geek’ (denoting a young
man or woman deeply interested in modern technology and in the
ways of its functions) as well as ‘nerd’ (sometimes synonymous
with ‘lamer’ or ‘dweeb’, an a(nti)-social version of geek)23 had,
until recently, a pejorative meaning, but now – mostly because of
technological progress – has stopped serving as an unwanted nick-
name. Mathematically and technically gifted pupils have left the
social margins: their position has changed dramatically. They have
become promising future graduates who will not have any problem
in finding a well-paid job that would relate to their interests.24
I would however divide the connections and inspirations
between mathematics and culture – especially literary – ones in
a different way than did the editors Sklar. It appears that the sim-
plest way these disciplines can meet within a text is exploiting math-
ematics for reasons connected to creating a plot, by presenting the
lives of mathematicians or giving descriptions of studying mathe-
matics. Such a text would allow a reader to understand the context
of a mathematicians’ work, but not necessarily the essence of their
endeavours.25 Readers learn about the social and psychological
22
J.K. Sklar, Thinking outside the box: application versus discovery in Saw and
Cube, [in:] Mathematics in Popular Culture…, p. 247-257.
23
See debates on differences between the terms “geek” and “nerd” carried
on in the online dictionaries of contemporary slang, e.g. Urban Dictionary, Online
Slang Dictionary: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Geek%2F-
Nerd%20Debate, http://onlineslangdictionary.com/thesaurus/, DOA: 2/12/2016.
24
It is worth noting that being a geek or a nerd is still rather limited to boys
and is another argument for the gender bias in mathematical and technical educa-
tion, formal and informal.
25
It is difficult, verging on impossible for a layman to understand the work
of a contemporary mathematician. Such a publication as P. Glendinning’s Math
in Minutes: 200 Key Concepts Explained In An Instant (London-New York 2013) that
try to shortcut years of demand academic studies and of sharpness of mind, are at
dimensions of mathematicians’ work and lives, familiarize them-

selves with their daily routines, and start to understand what kind
of “job” being a mathematician is.
A more difficult approach, for writers and readers alike would
be applying the apparatus of mathematics within a plot, for exam-
ple as a metaphor. In contrast to the first group, described in the
former paragraph, here mathematical knowledge is needed to
understand the premise. Here I quote – with some abbreviations –
from an oft cited allegory from Lev Tolstoy – where he describes the
modus operandi of historiography through calculus.26
Absolute continuity of motion is not comprehensible to the human

mind. Laws of motion of any kind become comprehensible to man
only when he examines arbitrarily selected elements of that motion;
but at the same time, a large proportion of human error comes from
the arbitrary division of continuous motion into discontinuous ele-
ments. [...] By adopting smaller and smaller elements of motion we
only approach a solution of the problem, but never reach it. Only
when we have admitted the conception of the infinitely small, and
the resulting geometrical progression with a common ratio of one
tenth, and have found the sum of this progression to infinity, do
we reach a solution of the problem. [...] This modern branch of
mathematics, unknown to the ancients, [...] conforms to the chief
condition of motion (absolute continuity) and thereby corrects the
inevitable error which the human mind cannot avoid when it deals
with separate elements of motion instead of examining continuous
motion. In seeking the laws of historical movement just the same
thing happens. The movement of humanity, arising as it does from
innumerable arbitrary human wills, is continuous. To understand
the laws of this continuous movement is the aim of history. [...]
first glance easy, but it is simply a selection of problems that can be put in layman
terms, not even hinting at possible solutions or proofs. It is later reduced to tell-
ing anecdotes (The bridges of Königsberg, The barber paradox) or to presenting
an impossible concept in a deceptively simple way – the drawing of the Klein
bottle (p. 292) is here a good example. And its description in a layman’s eyes can
resemble nonsensical SF technobabble:” Unlike the Möbius strip, the Klein bottle
is a closed surface—it is compact [...] and has no boundary. Mathematicians can
classify closed surfaces by counting the number of holes within the surface and
determining whether it is orientable or not.” (Ibidem).
26
See. e.g. L. Collins, The Use of Models in the Social Sciences, London 1976,
p. 61. This quote from War and Peace fascinates not only literary scholars and histo-
rians, but analytical mathematicians, sociologists and literary theoreticians.
164 Chapter 4
Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the dif-

ferential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and
attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of
these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history.27
Another example of such a fictional use of mathematics (i.e.

within fiction), this time one which is contemporary, is a fragment
of Julian Barnes’ novel The Sense of an Ending (2012), where one of the
protagonists writes down the relationships between the characters
in the story in the form of equations. Two of them appear within the
text as an element of a post-mortem letter and solving them (both
by the characters within the book and by readers) proves essential
to a full understanding of the plot – they explain the characters’
motives.28
The third, most difficult use of mathematics for literary goals
is discrete: in this type mathematics lies beneath the construction
of a work and is the most demanding for readers and writers. It
is at the same time nothing new in culture. Anna Teresa de Keer-
saeker, a choreographer, managed to plan dance moves that imitate
the Fibonacci sequence,29 while the composer John Cage is famous
for many musical experiments, like aleatorism – a concept based on
weaving random sounds into a musical piece.30
This type of venture sometimes assumes a primitive form, like
popular experiments involving interactive fiction. In the late 1980s and
in the early 1990s a well-recognized children book series appeared
– “Choose your own adventure”, originally written in 1979. The
idea was simple: at key plot moments readers were asked to choose
what would happen next, most often one out of two options, and
27
L. Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. L. and A. Maude, New York, NY 1966,
p. 917-918 (vol. 3, part 3, book 11).
28
Similarly the Italian writer and chemist Primo Levi encrusted his work
with exact science metaphors, like in the novel Il sistema periodico (The periodic
table, 1975, English trans. 1984). Por. S. Redaelli, Tradurre la scienza: Il sistema peri-
odico di Primo Levi, “Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny” 52 (2015), p. 211-220.
29
The interview of Danser Canal Historique with A.T. De Keersmaeker
https://dansercanalhistorique.com/2014/10/22/entretien-anne-teresa-de-keers-
maeker/, DOA: 2/12/2016.
30
P. Griffon, SV. Aleatory, [in:] The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musi-
cians, v. 1, S. Sadie (ed.), Oxford 2004, p. 237-242.
they were asked to jump to an appropriate fragment. Thanks to

such a solution one can lead a protagonist in several ways to one of
the endings – some of them are more favourable than others. The
idea of a fissioning, multiplying plot has already been brilliantly
described by Jorge Luis Borges.31 Such a multi-novel can be math-
ematically depicted in the form of a simple graph and then it can
be analysed, along with others, similar, statistically or otherwise.32
There are also more ambitious and famous projects that are based
on plot bifurcating and changing the angles of observing the same
moment, like Alexandrian Quartet by Lawrence Durrell (1957-1960)
as well as Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar (1963, English edition 1966),
and – to some extent – Mark Z. Danielewski’s debut novel House of
Leaves (2000), though the concept itself did not become popular on
a bigger scale and did not meet with the constant approval of crit-
ics’, or satisfy the desires of readers’.33 Another medium uses bifur-
cating plots with much better success- video games. Aficionados
of one subgenre – computer role-playing games (cRPG) are now
accustomed to expect that a story that they take part in will not
always lead in the same way and that the actions they undertake,
will change some elements of the game and influence the ending.
Contemporary cRPGs commonly offer several endings – based on
a player’s choices throughout the whole game and sometimes there
are more than ten (Fallout 3, a post-apocalyptic game issued in 2008
by Bethesda Softworks boasts of having more than 20 endings).
That is why such games have high replayability, a commercially
important factor that guarantees longer use of the product. Some
others found their game mechanics on constant plot alterations, like
Life is Strange (Square Enix, 2015), where the heroine is equipped
with a supernatural ability to manipulate time and to choose the
31
J.L. Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths, [in:], idem, idem, Collected fictions,
trans. A. Hurley, London 1998, p. 119-127 (orig. in Spanish, 1941).
32
See the article by Christian Swinehart analysing “Choose Your Own
Adventure” interactive book series: http://samizdat.cc/cyoa (DOA: 1/9/2018);
a wider context in N. Katherine Hayles and Nick Montfort, Interactive fiction, [in:]
J. Bray et al., Routledge Companion to Experimental..., p. 452-266, esp. 455-458.
33
See S. Cicconi, The Shaping of Hypertextual Narrative, [in:] The Integrated
Media Machine: A Theoretical Framework, M. Ylä-Kotola et al. (ed.), Helsinki 2000,
p. 101-120.
166 Chapter 4
best, most efficient and advantageous path of events. An even more

complicated construction lies beneath video games dubbed the
“narrative adventure” subgenre. A good example is 80 days (Inkle,
2014), based loosely on the Jules Verne novel – but spiced with
steampunk aesthetics – where players create their own version of
Phileas Fogg’s race against time. The authors of the game claim that
they wrote texts with more than 750 000 words, but a single game
reveals no more than 2 percent of them.34 The story has an undis-
closed number of endings, some are so rare that they have been
revealed to only a few players in the whole world.
Other authors have invented games that are much more math-
ematically advanced. In the experimental poetry anthology Cent
mille milliards de poèmes Raymond Queneau, by marrying literature
to combinatorial analysis, proposed composing 10 sonnets out of
several given verses – and potentially 10 billion others. His col-
leagues from Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle (OULIPO) used
hypertext (practising what came to be called ergodic literature) and
employed in literature the first achievements of cybernetics and
informatics, binding themselves with sometimes absurdly rigor-
ous rules applied to the form. Georges Perec built a lipogrammatic
novel in French having eliminated one vowel from the whole text
(La Disparition, 1969 without “e”).35
Bringing this issue to a more general level one has to admit
that mathematical fiction is but a curiosity. Even while compiling
these data quoted and commented above I was required to explore
seemingly separate and sometimes obscure regions of the history of
literature. That is why the situation in Greece is even more interest-
ing, for there such mathematical literature is produced by several
authors and has become quite popular.36 One such writer is Tefkros
34
According to information on the webpage Inkle Studios, the game’s pub-
lisher: http://www.inklestudios.com/2015/09/17/new_adventures.html, DOA:
2/12/2016.
35
W. Motte, Jr., Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature, McLean, IL 1998.
36
Maybe a part of this popularity is owing to the fact that Ada Lovelace,
the daughter of Lord Byron, a poet and philhellen much beloved in Greece, was
a mathematician and the author of the first algorithm (and because of that she
is sometimes regarded as the first programmer). See I. Coe, A. Ferworn, The Life
and Contributions of Countess Ada Lovelace: Unintended Consequences of Exclusion,
Michailidis, who has a PhD. degree in mathematics and who wrote

his debut oeuvre: a collection of mathematical essays Μαθηματικά
επίκαιρα (Mathematical novelties, 2004) and then a fictionalized
biography of Ahmes, a 17th century BC Egyptian mathematician,
the author of the Rhind Papirus. In the novel about him Αχμές,
ο γιος του φεγγαριού (Ahmes, the son of the moon, 2013), the nar-
rator, a refugee from Crete speaks of Ahmes’s life. His third work
was Πιθαγώρεια εγκλήματα (Pithagorean crimes, 2006), a detec-
tive story from the beginnings of the 20th century, where one math-
ematician tries to explain the murder of one of his colleagues.37 The
novel is concluded in an unusual way: in an appendix the author
confesses to all the fabrications he had to employ for the sake of the
plot (“I had to bring Picasso to Paris two months earlier”)38. Micha-
ilidis also translates the works of Andrew Crumey, a popularizer of
mathematics. A novel similar to Πιθαγώρεια εγκλήματα was writ-
ten by Iannis Karvelis: in Παραβολή του ασώτου (The parable39 of
the prodigal son, 2010) the protagonist employs numeral analysis
methods to solve an economic riddle.40 Mathematical elements are
present in the works of several other authors, like the renowned
Soti Triantafyllou who in Για την αγάπη της γεωμετρίας (For the
love of geometry, 2012) depicts a young girl, mathematically gifted,
who for social reasons cannot follow her calling: in the Greece of the
1970s women were not yet supposed to practise mathematics.
But the most “mathematicizing” writer, who has become very
popular, not only in Greece, is Apostolos Doxiadis, a mathemati-
cian born in 1953 in Australia, raised in Greece and educated in
the United States of America. However he has become a man of
letters, practically – he has written five novels – and theoretically –
he has examined the relations between the ancient development of
Prejudice, and Stereotyping, “IEEE Technology & Society Magazine” 35 (2016),

no. 4, p. 46-49.
37
Π. Τατσόπουλος, Μαθηματικά και δεοντολογικά (What is mathematical
and what is necessary), [in:] Το βιβλίο για τα βιβλία (The book on books), Athens
2010, p. 143-145.
38
Τ. Μιχαηλίδης, Τα όρια της ποιητικής αδείας (The limits of licentia poet-
ica), [in:] idem, Πιθαγώρεια εγκλήματα, Athens 2006, p. 268-271.
39
Gr. “παραβολή” means both a parabole and a parable.
40
Karvelis wrote two other mathematical crime stories.
168 Chapter 4
mathematics and the progress of narration techniques.41 In 1992 he

wrote his first book in the genre of mathematical fiction – Ο θείος
Πέτρος και η εικασία του Γκόλντμπαχ (Uncle Petros and Goldbach
Conjecture)42 only to rewrite it in English seven years later.43 All in
all the book was published in over 40 languages. His novels turned
out to be one of the biggest publishing achievements in the field of
mathematically inclined novels, moreover, their publication symp-
tomatically coincided with the proving by the English mathema-
tician Andrew John Wiles one of the most “relentless” theorems –
The Great Fermat Theorem.
Doxiadis tells the story of a Greek who, just before World War
One, starts working as a mathematician in Berlin and continues his
work for several decades. The task he sets for himself is to prove
the Goldbach Conjecture, formulated in 1742, which states that any
even number can be expressed as a pair of two prime numbers. The
direct motivation for his undertaking is a failed romance: after rejec-
tion he decides on becoming a famous mathematician and, through
accomplishing fame, winning back the heart of the beautiful Isolde.
The work in the hypothesis absorbs him completely: first in Cam-
bridge and Zurich, then in Munich, where he is offered a tenured
position. Petros stops publishing, in order not to reveal any of his
ideas to his competitors. The conjecture however remains unsolved,
and the final blow comes from Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing, who
prove that in mathematics there are unprovable theorems (Incom-
pleteness theorems published in 1931) and, what is worse, one can-
not know a priori if a given theorem is provable or not. Just before
the World War Two Petros returns to Greece, broken and lost,
regarded by his family as a man who wasted his life. After many
years, the narrator, his nephew, also decides to become a mathema-
tician. His uncle states that a mathematician is born, and not formed
41
A. Doxiadis, A Streetcar Named (among Other Things) Proof, [in:] Circles
Disturbed: The Interplay of Mathematics and Narrative, A. Doxiadis, B. Mazur (ed.),
Princeton, NJ 2012, p. 389-406.
42
The Polish edition is entitled Zabójcza hipoteza (trans. R. Śmietana, Warsaw
2000). I refer below to the original, Greek edition.
43
A. Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture. A Novel of Mathematical
Obssesion, London, New York, NY 2000.
through education (“mathematicus nascitur, not fit”)44 and that is

why he gives his nephew – unaware of the artifice – an apparently
easy task to be solved during holidays: the task is nothing other
than the Goldbach Conjecture. After his expected failure the uncle
judges him to be unfit to pursue the life of a mathematician. When –
after several years – the narrator discovers the perfidy of his uncle,
he comes back to his initial idea of becoming a mathematician. He
makes amends with Petros, and begins attending improvised les-
sons with his uncle. The renewed contact with mathematics makes
the old mathematician – the addict – obsessed with the conjecture
again and in the culmination of the plot he calls his nephew at night
with news that the Goldbach Conjecture is solved. The nephew
rushes to his house only to find his uncle dead and the question of
the hypothesis still open.
Doxiadis presents the life of a mathematician in no gentle way.
Devoting oneself to “the queen of sciences” is an occupation that
brings loneliness and exhaustion. The general opinion is that the
most important mathematical discoveries come to its adepts when
they are still young: 30-year-old mathematicians are at the end of
the period of their highest creativity and if they have not offered
anything of interest thus far, it means that they spent their talent
or even that they never had any. Practising mathematics destroys
health and can lead to mental instability or even illness (it is, as the
author writes, a result of “being too close to the Tree of Knowledge”
[!]).45 Mathematicians stand before the impossible choice between
“Scylla of mediocrity and Charybdis of madness”46 – between stay-
ing sane, but unknown, and famous but obsessed. Doxiadis narrates
the biographies of other mathematicians, like those who Petros met
personally and shows how high was the price they had to pay for
their subsequent discoveries. Petros lives into old age, but his life is
empty. His family takes him for a loser, and the story of his life is
a topic no one wants to mention. At one point of sudden sincerity
his younger brothers, among them the narrator’s father point to his
44
Α. Δοξιάδης, Ο θείος Πέτρος και και η εικασία του Γκόλντμπαχ, Athens
1992, p. 46.
45
Ibidem, p. 225.
46
Ibidem, p. 227.
170 Chapter 4
cardinal sin: Arrogance [sic], because he chose too ambitious a goal.

“One has to strive to achieve only reachable goals”47, they keep
repeating to him. Petros, too, is by no means kind to himself: after
many years he comes to the conclusion that fame was, to him, more
important than truth.48 His mistake was to work in isolation – when
he finally understands this and publishes the interesting, though
incomplete results of his endeavours, it turns out that someone else
has published the same results beforehand. Thereby Petros loses
even a shred of hope for even momentary fame.
Doxiadis’s novel is most of all about the psychological aspect
of practising mathematics,49 or – in more general terms – about a life
consumed by a passion for science. Pieces of information about the
theory of numbers are very limited and are presented on a very basic
level – the author explains such fundamental, high school curriculum
elements as complex numbers. Luckily for the reader the formula-
tion of the Goldbach Conjecture itself – which remains unsolved until
this day – is very straightforward. As for the use of mathematics the
novel Uncle Petros... certainly stays in the first, simplest category: it is
a story about a mathematician and about practising mathematics. It
has also some informatory value: a reader can get acquainted with
most important turns in the history of mathematics in the first half of
20th century and become familiar with at least partial biographies of
such famous mathematicians as Constantine Caratheodory, Godfrey
Harold Hardy, John Edensor Littlewood, Srinivas Ramanujan,50 Kurt
Gödel. On the other hand the reader is not initiated into any mech-
anism of proving any theorem and hypothesis which is mentioned,
and does not take part in any attempts at constructing such a proof.
Doxiadis returned to one of the plot threads already sketched in

Uncle Petros... by producing in Athens and then in California a play
entitled 17η νύχτα / The Seventeenth Night (2006), based on Gödel’s
47
Ibidem, p. 33-34.
48
Ibidem, p. 103.
49
Ibidem.
50
Ramanujan, who died prematurely, became the protagonist of the film
The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015, dir. M. Brown) based on his biography written
by R. Kanigel (1991).
last days and on – of course – the history of his theorem on incom-

pleteness. But surely a more ambitious and successful return to the
threads found in Uncle Petros... proved to be a graphic novel envis-
aged by Doxiadis, with the help of the mathematician Christos H.
Papadimitriou, and drawn by Alekos Papadatos and Annie di Donne.
Logicomix was published in 2008 in Greek (and a year later in
English). It eclipsed Uncle Petros... in every aspect: it was an enor-
mous publishing achievement, one of the most astonishing in the
history of contemporary Modern Greek letters both inside and out-
side of Greece. Within five years it was translated into more than 20
languages, Polish included, it became a bestseller in Great Britain
and reached a high position on the “New York Times” bestseller list.
There were several factors that brought about such success. Most
importantly Logicomix is a graphic novel. It does not, however, con-
form to typical comics themes: fantastic, super-heroic51 or satirical,
but depicts a story from the real world. Doxiadis is here much closer
to such comics masterpieces like A Contract with God, and Other Ten-
ement Stories (1978) by Will Eisner, Maus by Art Spiegelman (1986)
or Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (4 volumes, 2000-2004) than to the
achievements of the authors of Thorgal, Asterix, or to a series – once
popular in Poland – about Yans (written by André-Paul Duchâteau
and drawn by Grzegorz Rosiński and Zbigniew Kasprzak). More-
over Doxiadis’s book was certainly not the first graphic novel in
Greece: on the contrary – his proposition was based on experience
of a well-developed comics scene that drew strength from political
and social satire (see below, page 174).52 Doxiadis selected a superb
crew – aforementioned Christos H. Papadimitriou from the Uni-
versity of California in Berkeley and a couple of drawing artists:
51
Probably the best introduction to comics book theory is a comics book (!)
by S. McCloud Understanding Comics. The Invisible Art (New York, NY 1994). In
Poland comics book theory is approached by K.T. Toeplitz (Sztuka komiksu: próba
definicji nowego gatunku artystycznego, Warszawa 1986) or J. Szydłak (Komiks w kul-
turze ikonicznej XX wieku: wstęp do poetyki komiksu, Gdańsk 1999 oraz Komiks: świat
przerysowany, Gdańsk 2009).
52
Cf. a short description of comics scene in Greece from the historical point
of view prepared especially for a Greek-themed issue of a Polish comics mag-
azine: E. Tabakeas, Krótka historia komiksu w Grecji (A short history of comics in
Greece), “Ziniol” 9 (2010), p. 77-85.
172 Chapter 4
Papadatos and di Donna. Together they created a book that has

many themes and is complex, a book that manages to be in parts
funny and in parts wise.
Doxiadis – again – deals with the subject he obviously enjoys: the
layers ofconnections between mathematics and obsession. This time
the story is multidimensional: the writer is not interested only in the
relation of practising mathematics to mental health, but also makes
use of mathematics – and of logic – in order to fight madness, both
on an individual and collective level. The plot revolves around the
life and deeds of Bertrand Russell, a renowned British logician, the
author of Principia Mathematica (1910-1913). Russell is giving a lecture
at an American universities53 – on the 4th September 1939, that is in
the first days of World War Two, and a day after France and Brit-
ain declared war against the Germans. The lecture hall is blocked by
pacifists who appeal to Russell (as he had been a zealous pacifist for
years, making many public appearances) to speak about his views
during the lecture and present arguments to support those who did
not want America to join the war. Russell invites the protesters to
listen to the lecture and, from the question about his attitude towards
war, he develops the leading theme of his speech.
Russell’s lecture is in fact his autobiography – the mathemati-
cian concentrates on the most important events that directed him to
this or that path of discoveries. The subtitle of Doxiadis’s work – In
search for absolute truth – sums up Russell’s endeavours.54 During his
53
Doxiadis is very precise when it comes to referring to facts from Russell’s
life as well as to elements that are purely fictional. But as for the issue of the lecture
at one of the American universities, the lecture that becomes a frame-story for the
whole book, there is not much clarity. Doxiadis is here very vague, he does not
mention which university he has in mind. True, at the time Russell was teaching in
California, just after he stopped teaching in New York. But neither biographer, nor
he himself do mention such a pacifist-anti-pacifist lecture. Russell writes only that
in the summer of 1939 he suffered from terrible back pains and spent most of the
time lying in bed. However the contents of this fictional (?) lecture correspond with
many pacifistic publications of the British philosopher. Cf. B. Russell, Autobiography,
London 2001, p. .438-439; Bertrand Russell: a bibliography of his writings 1895-1976 /
eine Bibliographie seiner Schriften 1895-1976, W. Martin (compilation), Munich 1981.
54
The graphic novel depicts partially the struggle of Russell for logicizing
mathematics and for writing monumental Principia Mathematica (three volumes,
1910-1913, together with A.N. Whitehead).
story readers learn about other mathematicians and philosophers

who projected their influence on the British logician, among those:
Gottlob Frege, Georg Cantor, Kurt Gödel and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Their portraits are comical or tragi-comical, and their achievements
as well as life stories are often analysed from the point of view of
mathematicians as people vulnerable to madness. Cantor is shown
as a patient in a metal asylum, possessed by the idea of writing
a substantial work on the true genealogy of Jesus Christ, Frege
becomes a warring anti-Semite and David Hilbert, without a shred
of sympathy, condemns his son to a prolonged stay in a mental
hospital.
The most important of the characters drawn in the book is –
besides Russell – his pupil, Wittgenstein. Paradoxically in their
relationship of master-pupil it is the master, Russell, that eventu-
ally learns more. Wittgenstein successfully destroys a number of
Russell’s logical assumptions and takes the dispute about absolute
truth outside the realm of logic, stating that the important things are
those one cannot speak about.55 Russell in fact uses Wittgenstein’s
methods when he concludes his speech during the first days of the
war. Judging from the biographies of his fellow mathematicians he
shows what a mad regime the Third Reich is and argues that maybe
the most logical thing to do now is to fight against this all-encom-
passing madness. But – as he says in his last words – it is an individ-
ual decision for every one of the audience members.56 This attitude
towards the war is one of these most important matters one cannot
speak about – even if armed with the best tools of logic.57
The attractiveness of Logicomix’s plot is further increased by the
fact that its construction has a frame-tale character (mise en abyme)
which is in turn told by Russell and becomes a digression in the
main story frame – which is his American lecture. On the visual
level some of such inclusions are monochromatic (coloured in
55
A. Doksiadis et al., Logikomiks, Warszawa 2011, p. 296. See also the last,
seventh thesis by Wittgenstein in Tractatus logico-philosophicus.
56
Ibidem, p. 297-298.
57
Wittgenstein also became an inspiration for literature: the writer Thomas
Bernhard knew a certain Paul, one of Wittgenstein’s distant relative, who told him
stories about his famous uncle. Berhard collected and wrote down his memoirs in
Wittgensteins Neffe (Wittgenstein’s nephew, 1982, English trans. 1988).
174 Chapter 4
sepia) which would suggest retrospectives, others have their own

colour code – for example a story line about World War One within
Wittgenstein’s biography is depicted in black and white.
Another innovation is the advanced use of meta-narration. Read-
ers get acquainted with all the authors writing the novel, they observe
discussions on plot development, sometimes the authors (characters)
break the fourth wall and address a question or a remark to the read-
ing audience (for example while looking for a satisfactory bottom line
for the whole book). Such inclusions sometimes become intrusions –
the drawing artist can interrupt an utterance of another, in-story char-
acter.58 Doxiadis and his crew use the meta-literary level also to intro-
duce terminology and definitions, to make fictional short-cuts and to
show the places where the book was (supposedly) created.
There is even a special story arc within the meta-narrative level:
Papadimitriou comes twice from America to Athens and meets the
rest of the authors. During their first meeting they discuss the book’s
assumptions and its beginning. During the next visit he reads the
finished fragments of the story and comments on them. Together
with the other authors he thinks about the ending and the last line
which is best for the whole work. They eventually come across
a satisfactory one: it is yet another story: about di Donne and her
participation in preparing props for Aeschylus’s Oresteia. The clos-
ing scenes of this play by Aeschylus are depicted on the last panels
of the graphic novel:59 words spoken by Athena and Erinyes sum up
the topic of madness and support the pro-war (or rather anti-anti-
war) message offered by Russell. The last pages of the book serve
other, supplementary tasks: a description of fictional manipulations
and justification for them, illustrated (in the same convention) and
a hyperlinked dictionary of terms and people, as well as two bib-
liographies: mathematical and literary. This second one includes
books by Lewis Carroll, Henrik Ibsen and William Shakespeare.
In contemporary Greek literature Doxiadis’s book has a special

place. The Greek milieu of comics authors and readers, that is the
so-called comics scene, is quite active and busy, but concentrated
58
Ibidem, p. 255.
59
Ibidem, p. 310-313.
particularly on social, political and historically inward issues. Its

beginnings and still an important point of reference is – published
since 1950s – the series “Κλασσικά εικονογραφημένα”, originally
modelled on the pre-war American “Classics Illustrated” series.
The Greeks added dozens of new albums that are illustrated adap-
tations of ancient and Byzantine texts (myths, plays, novels), plays
of the Cretan Renaissance as well as historical volumes mainly on
the events of the 1821 Greek Revolution.60 This series, which was
published until the 1960s consists of circa 180 volumes,61 most of
them are still in circulation (second-hand and reprints). The next
decades gave avid comics readers other popular Western series, but
surely not as ambitious, like Lucky Luke and Asterix.
The local, modern comics went another way, set out at the
beginning of the 1980s by an influential magazine “βάβελ” and
then “9”: the way of formal experiments and themes concentrated
on the lives of young people: one of the most important works in
this current is Μανιφέστο (Manifest, 2003-2008) by Ilias Kiriazis.
Another world is multiple comics strips published in various news-
papers that comment on contemporary political and social life. Such
themes are raised in the creation of Konstantinos Chrissoulis (Con)
entitled Giant-size Fascists (since 2007) that merges ruthless satire on
Greek history (or the mythical perception of contemporary history)
with super-hero (dubbed hyper-Hellen) conventions. But surely
the most popular comics artist is Αρκάς (Arkas, lit. “an inhabit-
ant of Arcadia”), an anonymous, very proliferate illustrator whose
books have appeared in Greek bookshops since 1981. Arkas drew
more than 70 volumes, organized in more than a dozen series. His
protagonists are mainly animals (sparrows, chickens, cats, sharks,
hamsters), his stories are loosely connected gags, infallibly sarcas-
tic, closing with a punchline on one page or even within one frame.
Arkas also draws politically involved sketches.
60
Ε. Ηλιοπούλου, Καλά εσύ σκοτώθηκες νωρίς, κλασικά και εικονογρα-
φημένα (It is good you were killed early. Classics and illustrated), [in:] Πρακτικά
του Ε’ Συνεδρίου…, v. 3, p. 441-452.
61
Scans of all the covers of the series, grouped thematically, are available on
the webpage: http://www.mycomics.gr/classics/classics%20illustrated.htm, DOA:
2/12/2016.
176 Chapter 4
But it was Doxiadis who accomplished something which was

no mean feat: he introduced the graphic novel – that is the language
of comics – into the Greek literary mainstream – a phenomenon that
had not been observed before in Greece and globally is also not
too frequent. Additionally, or maybe primarily – he triumphantly
introduced mathematical fiction into the main volume of literary
works.62 As far as applying mathematics to fictional goals is con-
cerned, Logicomix stays on the same – admittedly quite low – level,
just like Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture. This is a plain appli-
cation of mathematics that is based on the social and psychologi-
cal context of practising it. But in a few fragments, where Doxiadis
tries to prove that the pursuit of mathematics can be a remedy for
madness he – for a moment, at least – strengthens the connection
between Logicomix’s plot and mathematics and makes mathemati-
cal matter (and not its context) a type of plot device.
Doxiadis steers clear of Grealism, as any mention of “Greek
reality” forms only a background to his stories, whether on uncle
Petros or on Russell. In order to see whether Doxiadis treated Greek
issues as important, or even vital to his narration, there is one char-
acteristic fragment in Uncle Petros... that clearly shows the issue.
Όταν τελείωσα μόνο, αντέδρασε με δύο λέξεις:

«Όμφακες εισί»
«Τι λες;»
«Εσύ θα ‘πρέπε να ξέρεις – ο Αίσωπος ήταν Ὲλληνας.»
«Τι σχέση έχει ο Αίσωπος;»
«Πως δεν έχει ο μύθος της αλεπούς δεν μπορούσε να φτάσει ένα
τσαμπί ώριμα σταφύλια και έτσι αποφάσισε ότι είναι άγουρα.
Ωραία δικαιολογία, αλήθεια, βρήκε ο θείος σου για την απο-
τυχία: Τη φόρτωσε στον Κουρτ Γκαίντελ! Τέλειο!» Ο Σάμυ είχε
σκάσει στα γέλια. «Αδιανόητο! Ανήκουστο! [...]»63
After I had finished [telling the story of my uncle], he summed up his

reaction in two words: ‘Sour grapes.’ [lit. Anc. Gr. όμφακες εισί – P.K.]
‘What?’
‘You should know – Aesop was a Greek.’
‘What’s Aesop got to do with it?’
62
See footnote on p. 40.
63
Α. Δοξιάδης, Ο θείος Πέτρος…, p. 212-213.
“Everything:. The fable of the fox who couldn’t reach a yummy

bunch of grapes and therefore decided they were unripe anyway.
What a wonderful excuse your uncle found for his failure: he put
the blame on Kurt Goedel! Wow!’ Sammy burst out laughing;.
‘Audacious! Unheard of! [...]64
This line – “You should know – Aesop was a Greek” – sums up

the presence of Greekness and awareness of Grealism in Doxiad-
is’s novel. Displaying elements of Greekness has here a marginal
character, it is introduced along the way, almost incidentally. One
can effortlessly imagine that Doxiadis is not Greek, but French
or Spanish and equally discreetly sketches in both his works
a national context, alluding sporadically to Molière or Cervantes
and making his protagonists walk Montmartre hill or Las Ram-
blas, instead of Athenian Plaka. It does not mean the pages of Uncle
Petros... and Logicomix are devoid of Greece – but the country and
Greek contexts – appear – as was observed already in Vassilikos’s
texts65 rarely and coincidentally. But in contrast to the author of
the Trilogy Doxiadis does not put Greece so much into the shad-
ows, he does not escape from anything that is Greek, he does not
hide it, but he simply ignores the need for Greekness within his
texts. At the same time he underlines, that the subject he is inter-
ested in – mathematics – is a discipline that exists beyond national
divisions and despite cultural differences. The aws, theorems and
conjectures of mathematics are discovered and developed by peo-
ple that belong to a different type of community than one that is
connected by the same language, religion or territory. Mathemat-
ics accompanies cosmopolitanism.
On the other hand, but within the same line of thought Vassilis
Raptopoulos, a literary critic, suggests with his tongue in his cheek
that Doxiadis’s goal was to write texts for his foreign audience: his
works are designed “for export” and he is looking for international
acclaim.66
64
A. Doxiadis, Uncle Petros..., p. 156.
65
Cf. chapter on Vassilis Vassilikos, especially p. 114ff.
66
See Β. Ραπτόπουλος, Λίγη ιστορία της νεοελληνικής λογοτεχνίας (A lit-
tle history of the Modern Greek literature), Athens 2005 and 2018. The chapter on
178 Chapter 4
All the Greek references: spatial, linguistic, literary only make the
stories told reliable, place them in a tangible context and – maybe –
exocitize them in a gentle way. They are general enough as well as
tactfully told so that a non-Greek reader would not be discouraged by
them, nor lost in them, nor forced to reach for any additional reading
material in order to understand an allusion or contexts. At one point
of the plot the protagonists take a charming walk around the Philop-
papou Hill, overlooking the Athenian Acropolis, the walk depicted
within one panel.67 These readers, who know the surroundings, will
happily recognize the views and smells of this place, for others it will
be a simple depiction of a walk in a park placed in the very city centre.
Logicomix caused a lively reaction from critics, though most of
them were not literary critics, but mathematicians. Most aspects of
Greekness in the novel were omitted, what brought it attention were
the educational merits of the story itself as well as the correctness
(or in-correctness) of the proofs and arguments mentioned. Paolo
Mancosu, an Italian mathematician, published a sort of extensive
errata,68 where he improves Logicomix’s authors’ views and their
lectures on mathematical problems brought to light in the novel
in much more detailed and orderly way. Others concentrated on –
unacceptable in their eyes – the connection between madness and
genius. Klaus von Stosch stated in an ample review that this idea
was excessively and unjustly exposed.69
In the perspective of at least some reviews and critics Logicomix
is by no means a Modern Greek book,70 but exits in a literary sphere
Doxiadis is entitled: Ο θείος Απόστολος και η Εικασία της Διεθνούς Καριέρας

(Uncle Petros and the equation of the international career).
67
A. Doksiadis, Logikomiks, p. 202-203.
68
On the webpage https://philosophy.berkeley.edu/file/509/logicomix-re-
view-january-2010.pdf (DOA: 2/12/2016).
69
K. von Stosch, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth, “History & Philosophy
of Logic”, 31 (2010), no. 4, p. 392-396.
70
Cf. e.g. reviews (Polish and not) that in most cases omit any mention of
the author’s Greek origin: M. Małkowska, Komiksowa lekcja logiki (Comics lesson of
logic), “Rzeczpospolita” 41 (18/2/2012), p. P10; W. Orliński, Superbohater Bertrand
Russell, “Gazeta Wyborcza” 2 (3/1/2012), p. 12; A.E. Eubanks, Logicomix: From Text
to Image/From Logic to Story, “Comparatist: Journal of the Southern Comparative
Literature Association” 35 (2011), p. 182-197. Similarly in Uncle Petros... reviews:
M. Oramus, Problem kluczy do mieszkania w Piasecznie (The problem of keys to a flat
devoid of national determinants – which is (along with its origi-

nal form and exquisite subject) – another unusual phenomenon
of these works. In such a sense Doxiadis easily leaves Greekness
behind, even if he had not had such an intention. Or – to put this
matter in yet another way – for a global reader it is not important
what nationality the Logicomix’s authors are, nor from what culture
they originate. The fact that Doxiadis manages to include a part of
Athenian topography in a story about (British and German, mostly)
mathematics, as well as some mentions of a Greek tragedy (thus
ending the story), gives his book some exoticism and agelessness.
Words spoken by Aeschylus’ protagonists in the final frames of
the story give to Logicomix a satisfactory punch line and sum up the
quest for truth, announced already in the novel’s title. The taming
of Erinyes by Athena, the recording of their agreement to do good
and to look after Athenians is – in the eyes of the story’s protag-
onists – a decision to build new axioms and consent to a radical
change in thinking. While searching for truth one must sometimes
reformulate one’s thinking or even start thinking anew, from a dif-
ferent perspective. This is the final lesson granted by Russell and
these are the words Doxiadis finds in Aeschylus’ text, proving the
universality of this Ancient Greek message.71
in Piaseczno), “Nowa Fantastyka” 7 (2001), p. 77; L. Budrecki, Stryj Petros i gran-

ice ludzkiego poznania (Uncle Petros and limits of human understanding), “Nowe
Książki” 2 (2001), p. 54. One reviewer wrote that Doxiadis is an “American” writer
(E. Satalecka, Dzisiejsi eupatrydzi. Spotkanie z Alecosem Papadatosem, twórcą komiksów
Logikomiks i Democracy (Today’s eupatrides. Meeting with A. Papadatos), “2+3D”,
4 (2015), p. 76-81), another that he is “international” (R. Homolka, G. Stevens,
A triple Play: Mathematics, Baseball and Storytelling, 2010, published online by ASEE
Peers, https://peer.asee.org/a-triple-play-mathematics-baseball-and-storytelling.
pdf, DOA: 2/12/2016). Doxiadis writes about his internationality in What’s in
a name? Fragments of a writer’s continuing, personal odyssey between two languages,
published on his homepage (http://www.apostolosdoxiadis.com/wp-content/
uploads/2013/03/whatsinaname.pdf, DOA: 2/12/0216).
71
Looking at Greece’s depiction from another angle one might attribute the
stereotyping to Doxiadis’s choice: after all the author decided to show the Acrop-
olis and its surroundings as well as a fragment from an ancient play. A night walk
– in another part of the story – through new parts of the town proves Athens to be
a place that is dangerous and unsafe (Omonia square whereabouts). The grandeur
of the ancients (their architecture and literature) is contrasted with the ugliness of
the contemporary city.
Chapter 5.
Christos A. Chomenidis:
around the fantastic1
Speculative fiction (further abbreviated to SF)2 is ex definitione a lit-

erary genre that uses every means to provide a reader with an
escape from reality.3 J.R.R. Tolkien reckons, however, that a recip-
ient of such literature (he means here, above all, fairy-tales) is not
necessarily in the role of a war deserter, a coward that is fleeing
from a battlefield, but rather of a prisoner who wants to cast aside
1
The following chapter is an extended version of the article Dodatek do
archipelagu. Nowogrecka kolonia Christosa A. Chomenidisa (An addition to the archi-
pelago. A Modern Greek colony by Christos A Chomenidis), [in:] Geografia krain
zmyślonych. Wokół kategorii miejsca i przestrzeni w literaturze dziecięcej, młodzieżowej
i fantastycznej (Geography of fictional lands. About the category of place and space
in children, adolescent and fantastic literature), W. Kostecka, M. Skowera (ed.),
Warsaw 2016, p. 243-255.
2
There is no satisfactory English equivalent for Polish term ‘fantastyka’.
The acronym SF that originally meant ‘science-fiction’ is now usually expanded
to apply to ‘speculative fiction’, which encompasses the science-fiction subgenre,
but also others. The term ‘speculative fiction’ was first proposed in this context
by Judith Merrill and – independently – by Robert A. Heinlein (see D. Oramus,
O pomieszaniu gatunków. Science fiction a postmodernizm / Blending genres. Science
fiction and postmodernism, Warsaw 2010, p. 3).
3
Though the fantastic staffage is used by numerous engaged novels, like the
anti-utopian My (We, 1920-1921) by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Brave New World by Ald-
ous Huxley (1926) or 1984 by George Orwell (1949). In Poland, in the times of the
Polish People’s Republic socially engaged science fiction was written for example
Janusz Zajdel that suggestively commented on the reality of the regime. Dominika
Oramus shows how various science-fiction authors do not refrain from tackling
difficult subjects, allegedly not suitable for this – stereotypically frowned upon
as (solely) entertaining – convention or even genre: D.M. Thomas in The White
Hotel (1981) writes about the holocaust and Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five
(1969) speaks about the annihilation of Dresden. See D. Oramus, O pomieszaniu
gatunków..., p. 82.
182 Chapter 5
their shackles (or – if such a solution is not available – to think about

something else apart from “jailers and prison walls”4). At the very
base of SF is cosmogony, world-creating, assuring a reader that
a time or a place, or both time and place, will be different from
what he or she might know from their own experience or received
education – or altogether impossible. The plethora of SF subgenres
points to an abundance of solutions: a novel’s plot can be placed in
an imagined future, in an alternate reality or even in the present,
but simultaneously in a parallel universe. A fantasy world exists
in a time and space that does not share a tangential point with our
reality as it is – in the classification proposed by Polish SF theoreti-
cian Andrzej Zgorzelski – exo-mimetic.5 Moreover SF, and most of
all fantasy, has numerous connections to fairy-tales and folk stories
and exhibits mythopoeic tendencies, though these – in the opin-
ion of Darko Suvin, an important investigator of SF genres – lead
straight to “creative suicide”.6
Surprisingly, a genre that does not deny its connection with
myth and fairytale is almost completely absent in Greece. In August
2002 the periodical “Διαβάζω” devoted its whole issue to specula-
tive literature. Thanks to its editors, one could learn about the his-
tory of SF in Greece. It comes up with only a few authors’ names
that are not popular in the mainstream, and rarely reprinted. The
anthology Το ελληνικό φανταστικό διήγημα (Greek fantastic sto-
ries), edited by Makis Panorios (six volumes, 1987-2012), shows
not only the feebleness of the writers’ imagination, but most of
all probably the unintended retro-futurism and derivativeness of
subjects that begin with astronauts in puffed-up space suits and
4
J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, [in:] idem, The Monsters and the Critics,
and Other Essays, Ch. Tolkien (ed.), London 1997, p. 148. Cf. also B. Usherwood,
J. Toyne, The value and impact of reading imaginative literature, “Journal of Librari-
anship and Information Science” 34 (2002), p. 33-41: the researchers distinguish
(p. 35-36) three types of escapes: an escape to a different world, an escape through
similarity (to a better version of this world, for example into childhood times) and
escape through aesthetic pleasure (through being immersed in a textual reality).
5
A. Zgorzelski, Born of the fantastic, Gdańsk 2004, p. 11-27; K.M. Maj, Allo-
topie. Topografia światów fikcjonalnych (Allotopies. Topography of fictional worlds),
Kraków 2015, p. 222ff.
6
D. Suvin, On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre, “College English” 34
(1972), no. 3, p. 375.
Christos A. Chomenidis: around the fantastic 183
in chrome-plated rockets. Speculative fiction novels are published

sporadically, like for example 2064 – στη γειτονιά των αστεριών
(2064 – in the neighbourhood of stars, 2016) by Fotis Galanopoulos,
a book imagining the fall of capitalism. Or the much more fulfilling
Το γονίδιο της αμφιβολίας (The uncertainty gene, 1999) by Nikos
Panagiotopoulos, who uses a science-fiction setting to create a uto-
pia where the gene responsible for artistic talents is discovered. The
novel is in fact a study on what it means to be an artist. Perhaps
the boldest attempt to introduce speculative fiction into the main-
stream was Ioanna Bourazopoulou’s novel Τί είδε η γυναίκα του
Λώτ (What Lot’s wife saw, 2007) built around the idea of a contem-
porary return of the horror embodied by Sodom and Gomorrah.7
These are isolated phenomena, in Greece there is no market and no
organised audience for – as it seems – the easier subgenre of fan-
tasy, let alone more radical hard science-fiction.
Speculative fiction is still – and not only in Greece – a type of
literature treated as “that worse one”8 or – like Anna Martusze-
wska wants – “that third one”.9 Because of its popularity and the
role it plays in globally perceived pop-culture, SF is regarded as
pulp, secondary, unambitious, infantile and effortless.10 To some
7
For more on Bourazopoulou see p. 32. A comprehensive bibliography of
SF works in Greece was published most recently by S. Vretos as Φαντασιογραφία:
βιβλιογραφία έργων αναφοράς επιστημονικής φαντασίας στην Ελλάδα 1971-
2007 (Fantasiography: bibliography of work related to science-fiction in Greece
1971-2007), Athens 2008.
8
Regardless of its ancient pedigree: some scholars and SF historians claim
that the first fantastic text was Gilgamesh: A. Roberts, Science Fiction, London-New
York, 2000, p. 47. James Gunn in the volume I of The Road to Science Fiction: From
Gilgamesh to Wells (1979) points to Gilgamesh but the first text he anthologized is an
excerpt from Lucian of Samostata’s A True Story.
9
A. Martuszewska, „Ta trzecia”. Problemy literatury popularnej (This “third
one”. Problems of popular literature), Gdańsk 1997. The first two are high and
folk literature. Cf. longer discussion on p. 75.
10
Adam Mazurkiewicz, a Polish SF theoretician, points at the fact of the
existence in Poland of two currents in the contemporary speculative genre. While
some ambitious works carve new, original concepts, the majority falls into the
“science-entertaining” (‘fantastyczno-rozrywkowa’) category that perhaps tars
the whole genre with the same brush. See A. Mazurkiewicz, O polskiej literaturze
fantastyczno-naukowej 1990-2004 (On Polish SF literature), Łódź 2007, p. 23 (foot-
note 1) and 132.
184 Chapter 5
degree such charges are true, especially because of the more and
more visible young-adult (like “kidadult” fantasy)11 current that –
indeed – is supposed to be easier and not demanding in terms of
understanding a historical, social or cultural context. Besides, this
subgenre is aggressively promoted and strongly supported by the
film industry. SF, as such, has an inclination to be commercialized
and falls easily into schematism, which, in turn, brings aversion in
those readers who strive for a higher, more ambitious culture, who
expect literature that analyses life and the world, who want to read
texts that would enrich or traverse their experience, that would
raise their overall awareness and that are at the same time original
and fresh. The genre has also a tendency towards polymorphism,
that is to mixing styles, conventions, subgenres, to cross inter-genre
borders, even those which are initially within its very convention.12
On the other hand SF readers are not rarely ashamed of their likings
and treat reading their favourite genre as being in the category of
a “guilty pleasure”, an activity that is, in their own eyes pleasant
and entertaining, but cognitively empty.13 One can defend SF with
the argument that it expands the imagination, exercises creative
thinking and influences the future. Because, as fanzine members
(that is the most devout fans) state, with speculative literature and
11
Cf. D. Oramus, O pomieszaniu gatunków..., p. 20. Some of the recently pub-
lished young adult fantasies have become synonyms of second-rate literature,
like S. Meyer’s “Twilight” series (4 volumes, 2005-2008) or V. Roth’s “Divergent”
series (3 volumes, 2011-2013). Books in this subgenre are easily adapted for the
needs of cinema or television.
12
A. Zgorzelski, Fantastyka, utopia, science fiction: ze studiów nad rozwojem
gatunków (Fantastic literature, utopia, science fiction: studies on genre develop-
ment), Warszawa 1980, p. 9. Dominika Oramus names genres akin to speculative
fiction: magical realism, narcissistic fictions and the gothic novel (Gormenghast tril-
ogy by M. Peake, 1946-1959) and others: D. Oramus, O pomieszaniu gatunków..., p. 82.
Though it has to be said that SF is striving to break through the limits of genre
and more often than not blends various (sub)genres within one work Therefore
any type of simple classification with the SF genre is impossible. It is also easy for
SF elements to “invade” other genres. See D. Oramus, O pomieszaniu gatunków...,
p. 20; A. Zgorzelski, Fantastyka, utopia..., p. 9.
13
Speculative literature is still treated as a kind of popular literature:
E. Rudolf, Pojęcie fantastyki. Rekonesans badawczy (The term “fantastic literature”
Research reconnaissance), [in:] Literatura i Kultura Popularna (Popular literature
and culture) VIII, T. Żabiński (ed.), Wrocław 1999, p. 82.
especially its most technologized variety – science-fiction – a lot of

inventions would not have come into existence, if not for the visions
and dreams of SF creators.14
Tzvetan Todorov, a well-known Bulgarian literary critic and
theoretician, who published in French, proposed an approach to
SF, now treated as historical if not satisfying, burdening the reader
with a decision, whether – when they consort with a text which is
seemingly fantastic – they are dealing with an illusion or something
more profound. If they treat it as an illusion, then they are within the
sphere of strangeness, fantastique-étrange, if not – the events and cir-
cumstances described in the given text are super-natural, they belong
to a different world and the reader is placed within the sphere of
wondrousness, fantastique-merveilleux. Additionally, a text that is
“almost fantastic” is one that puts a reader in a state of doubt, and
they cannot decide in what reality they are in.15 Jean Baudrillard was
of the opinion that science-fiction (he concentrated on this subgenre)
fulfils the second of three precessions of simulacra orders: between
a utopia and a cybernetic world (today it would be easier to describe
such a cybernetic world as virtual or immersive).16 Out of the various
SF features that have attracted the attention of scholars, writers and
critics, during decades of theorising, there is a prerequisite that a fan-
tastic text should lead to “cognitive dissonance”,17 favour inter- and
14
A much quoted example is S. Lem’s fragment from Return from the Stars
(1961, in B. Marszal’s and F. Simpson’s translation) that envisaged ‘opton’, an
invented object similar to the technology of an e-book reader: “The books were
crystals with recorded contents. They can be read withthe aid of an opton, which
was similar to a book but had only one page between the covers. At a touch, suc-
cessive pages of the text appeared on it.” (p. 45).
15
T. Todorov, Introduction à la littérature fantastique, Paris 1976, p. 29. Cf. also
M. Niziołek, Zdefiniować fantastykę, czyli „fantastyczne” (i nie tylko) teorie literatury
fantastycznej (To define fantastic literature or “fantastic” [and not only] theories of
fantastic literature), “Przestrzenie Teorii” 5 (2005), p. 267-278.
16
Cf. J. Baudrillard, A.B. Evans, Simulacra and Science Fiction (Simulacres et
science-fiction), “Science Fiction and Postmodernism”, 18 (1991), no 3, p. 309-313.
Immersion happens when some sensory sensations are mediated: a typical
immersive set contains VR goggles, with headphone and haptic glovers, that is
controllers that allow the manipulation of objects in a virtual environment.
17
A key term in thinking about the fantastic proposed by Darco Suvin. Cf.
D. Suvin, Estrangement and Cognition, [in:] Metamorphoses of Science Fiction – On the
Poetics and History of a Literary Genre, New Haven, CT 1977, p. 3-15.
186 Chapter 5
multi-genre solutions (or create a new subgenre as cyberpunk, sci-

ence fantasy or new weird) and a postulate for a depicted world to
be coherent. Otherwise, a fantastic vision – from a reader’s point of
view – loses its rationale: a textual world that forgoes its credibility in
reader’s eyes ceases to be trustworthy.18
Though speculative literature and its theory has been devel-
oped mostly by Anglo-Saxon writers (the first periods of its rapid
expansion occurred in the 1st half of 20th century, when in the
USA there was a period called the Golden Age of science-fiction),
there are certainly “national” varieties of SF: Russian, Czech, Chi-
nese – the last one gaining ground globally in recent years due to
several successful translations into European languages.19 The Pol-
ish variety, for example, is rather virile and well-developed – and
to some extent known beyond Polish borders. The greatest local
fantastic writer, Stanisław Lem, is not only the Polish author with
the most translations into foreign languages, but a science-fiction
writer regarded as one of the most influential creators of the gen-
re’s methodology. In Poland the popularity of Janusz Zajdel, who
passed away more than 30 years ago, has not faded and his most
famous texts in the social science-fiction subgenre (Paradyzja, Limes
inferior from the 1980s) are still read and admired for their covert
18
In the meantime within the world of popular culture one can observe
a surprising tendency towards mass falsification of reality, with the participa-
tion of writers, artists, journalists, but also readers: starting with examples of
satires in the form of a little guide Odczapów. Przewodnik dla turystów mentalnych
(Odczapów. A guide for mental tourists) by P. Dunin-Wąsowicz and A.S. Rodys,
1999, (which is a description of a fictional Polish colony by the Black Sea), through
web periodicals and portals that publish only false news (the Chicago based The
Onion” or the Warsaw-based “ASZ Dziennik”) to improvised events like creating
the history and topography of a non-existent Latin American country San Esco-
bar (forming its existence was provoked by a slip of the tongue of the Polish FA
Minister in January 2017). Great popularity has been achieved by endeavours that
combined standard, tangible elements with a surprising and odd fantastic supple-
ment. Such phenomena are for instance – once trendy on the web – paintings by
Jakub Różalski who merged the iconography of the Polish army and countryside
from the 1920’s with images that are huge, steam-powered “mechs” (i.e. walking
battle robots). His creations will be continued in the form of a computer strategy
game “1920 – Iron Harvest” soon to be published by King Art Games studio.
19
Liu Cixin won a prestigious Hugo Award in 2015 as the first non-Eng-
lish-speaking (or rather – writing) author in the Award’s history.
criticism of the socialist regime in Poland.20 The creations of yet

another, Andrzej Sapkowski, specialising in the fantasy subgenre
with a strong accent on ingenuously reshaped Slavic mythology
and fairytale morphology – became the starting point for the most
successful Polish video game brand – “The Witcher”21. While com-
piling a list of the most recognizable Polish SF writers one cannot
ignore Jacek Dukaj, still better known locally than globally, who
often envisages technophile worlds of the future. Probably though,
his most successful novel was alternate history Lód (Ice, 2007) which
brought him the European Prize in Literature, or Inne pieśni (Other
songs, 2003), a work based loosely on Greek ancient history, set in
a world where Alexander the Great did not die young, but lived
into old age and hence influenced the world’s history.
Speculative fiction has infiltrated mainstream literature. More
and more often the public appreciates texts with at least a hint of
the fantastic, like the ones encountered in Michel Houellebecq nov-
els (especially in Submission, 2015) or in the case of a recent Booker
winner, George Sanders and his Lincoln in the Bardo (2018).22 In the
meantime, in Greece, fantastic motifs are reserved almost purely
for children’s literature.23 The Greeks have not yet found their
Lem,24 Zajdel, Sapkowski, or Dukaj. Speculative fiction, even if
it surfaces in the mainstream, playing the role – let us call it – of
a decorative accessory: an introduced fantastic element or motif
20
Zajdel (officially: Nagroda Fandomu Polskiego imienia Janusza A. Zajdla,
The Janusz A. Zajdel Polish Fandom Award), the most important Polish SF Award
has been called this since Zajdel’s death in 1985 in his honour.
21
A high-budget TV series based on Sapkowski’s prose will be produced in
2019 by the online streaming platform Netflix.
22
See also H. Leleń, The fantastic as a technique of redynamizing mimetic fiction,
[in:] A. Wicher, P. Spyra, J. Matyjaszczyk, Basic Categories of Fantastic Literature
Revisited, Newcastle upon Tyne 2014, p. 8-24.
23
Last decade saw for example a text where a statue that comes to life in the
National Archaeological Museum in Athens guides children through the Muse-
um’s halls (Χ. Μπουλώτης, Το άγαλμα που κρύωνε, A statue that had a cold,
Athens 1999) or a variation on the story of Alice in Wonderland (A. Zέη, Η Αλίκη
στη χώρα των μαρμάρων, Alice in Marbleland, Athens 1997).
24
Though precisely Stanisław Lem’s works – as one of the few Polish SF
writers – has since 1977 been translated into Greek. Up till now six of his novels
and stories collections are available in Greek.
188 Chapter 5
is but a part of a literary game, a curiosity (a talking owl in Ζιγκ

ζαγκ στις νεραντζιές / Zig-zag among wild orange trees by Ersi
Sotiropoulou), a symbol (vomiting bones in Ο Τούρκος στον κύπο
/ A Turk in the garden by Ioannis Xanthoulis)25 or a parable as in
Argyris Chionis’s stories where the author anthropomorphizes not
only animal or plants, but also inanimate fragments of nature, like
stones, fields and mountains. The texts are dosed with counter-fac-
tual elements in moderation or sometimes even in parenthesis, like
in Μεγάλη Πομπή (Great Procession, 1985) by Alexis Panselinos,
where anything that is fantastic, happens in the main protagonist’s
imagination – he envisages a world based partly on his comic book
lectures. It is still however not a fully separated, independent fan-
tastic world, but the individual daydreaming of the protagonist.26
In a light speculative fictional undertaking, a literary prank, close
to the slipstream subgenre (see below) another writer, Giorgos Ska-
bardonis, convinced a group of his friends to form a Writers’ Soci-
ety to create a fictional biography and bibliography of a non-exist-
ent author Ioannis Zemenos. During the book’s presentation in an
Ianos bookshop in Athens, visitors could see an exhibition cabinet
with objects that allegedly belonged to Zemenos. The whole event
is documented by Ιωάννης Ζεμενός in a book, published in 2015,
that consists of showing biographic texts on Zemenos as well as
commentaries on his works, written by authors invited by Skabar-
donis to the project. On the other hand one might treat the whole
venture simply as radical fictionalization, in the style of mocku-
mentaries, like Woody Allen’s Zelig or the false bibliography noto-
riously introduced by Jorge Luis Borges in his quasi-scientific or
faux-critical short stories.
Hardly are there any attempts to write alternative history
or parallel history novels,27 there is only demand for what is
25
Γ. Ξανθούλης, Ο Τούρκος στον κήπο (A Turk in a garden), Athens 2001.
26
On the occasion of the recent republishing of the novel, Lefteris Kalospi-
ros pointed to its greatest merits: a picture of an adolescent who is not able to
conform to life in the demanding Greek society of the mid-1980s. Λ. Καλοσπύρος,
Στην ανατολή του νέου έτους (At the dawn of the new year), “Καθημερινή”,
addition “βιβλία”, 1/1/2017.
27
The difference is based on whether or not a world depicted in a fantastic
text has a shared history with our reality (alternative) or not (parallel). For an
traditional in form – and still fewer than one might expect – histor-
ical novels.28 One of the very few (according to my count: one of the
four!)29, full-blooded alternative history texts is Πλατεία Λένιν,
πρώην Συντάγματος (Lenin Square, previously Constitution),
written by Dimitris Fyssas.30 Unlike – for example – Chomenidis’
alternative world the moment where the history bifurcates from the real one into
an imagined one is called the point of divergence (POD). See e.g. M.J. Maj, Allo-
topie..., p. 232 on the clear differentiation between these two notions, which are,
alas, often confused. The concepts developed by the physicist Brian Greene (The
Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, 2011) might be
also useful – at least metaphorically – for literary analysis.
28
I write more about Polish examples of alternative histories on p. 224.
29
One of them is N. Kazantzakis, Ο τελευταίος πειρασμός (The last tempta-
tion of Christ, 1955). The temptation itself is set in an alteranative reality.
30
Δ. Φύσσας, Πλατεία Λένιν, πρώην Συντάγματος, Athens 2011.
Some historians do not refrain from considering questions that begin with
“What if”. The first of them was perhaps the Roman historian Livius who in Ab
urbe condita (Liv. 9.17-19) theorized on whether the Romans would have defeated
Alexander the Great, if he had lived longer. Since the 19th century the initiative
in creating alternative histories (stories, so called alt-hist) has fallen to the writers
of fiction who – like Mark Twain in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
(1889) – imagined distinct pasts (or parallel presents), as well as experimenting
– mentally – with time travel and the ensuing time paradoxes (these and what-if
models in both history and literary have recently been analysed thoroughly by
James Gleick in his Time Travel. A History, New York, NY 2016). Among the most
influential books of this – as it was taxonomized – subgenre of speculative fic-
tion one has to mention Men like Gods by Herbert George Wells (1923), a utopia
in a parallel reality, Man of the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (1962) about a real-
ity where the Germans and the Japanese won World War Two or Alteration by
Kingsley Amis (1976) about a world where the Reformation had not happened. In
Poland alt-hist stores became greatly popular in the interwar period (cf. A. Haska,
J. Stachowicz, Śniąc o potędze / Dreaming about might, Warsaw 2013), and since
World War Two numerous texts of this kind have been published. This conven-
tion was challenged by Teodor Parnicki, Andrzej Kuśniewicz and the aforemen-
tioned Jerzy Andrzejewski and more recently by Maciej Parowski, Jacek Dukaj,
Andrzej Ziemiański, Marcin Wolski and many others. In fact alt-hist is one of
the most popular SF subgenres practised presently in Poland (cf. T. Walas, “Nie-
była” historia literatury / “Inexistant” a history of literature, [in:] Narracja i tożsamość
(II). Antropologiczne problemy literatury / Narration and identity. Anthropological
problems of literature, W. Bolecki, R. Nycz (eds.), Warsaw 2004, p. 94-109). Some
chosen texts, mostly novels, of this sort are published in the series “Zwrotnice
czasu” (Switches of time), sponsored by the National Centre of Culture. The list
of books that are in circulation is available on the Centre webpage: http://www.
190 Chapter 5
novel Ο κόσμος στα μέτρα του, which will be discussed at length

below, it could be classified as being embedded in augmented or
expanded reality,31 Fyssas’s text is placed solely in an alternative
reality, where Greece is located on the other, eastern side of the
Iron Curtain. Though events depicted in Πλατεια Λένιν... hap-
pen in the 1st half of the 1970s, Fyssas introduces three chapters,
stylised in the form of historical discourse, entitled “The World”,
“Greece” and “Cyprus” – where he sketches the (alternative) his-
torical events that happen in three separate geopolitical planes
These three chapters, deemed by the author himself as not being
indispensable to understand the book’s plot,32 seem to be taken
from a textbook or an encyclopedia while the narrator’s voice
tries to be neutral in ordering facts (“facts”) and in assessing their
influences on the fate and shape of the alternate Greek society.
zwrotniceczasu.nck.pl/index.php?q=seriaksiazkowa, DOA: 2/12/2016. Polish alt-

hists are so popular that there is even a compendium that describes various liter-
ary visions of would-be Polands – in the geographical, political or even the eth-
nographical sense (P. Dunin-Wąsowicz, Fantastyczny Atlas Polski / Fantastic atlas
of Poland, Warsaw 2015). The interest in alt-hist has not faded: a popular crime
story writer Zygmunt Miłoszewski set his last novel Jak zawsze (As always, 2017) in
a French-dominated post-war Poland, while in 2018 Agnieszka Holland directed
the first Polish TV series for Netflix, 1983, which takes place in an alternative ver-
sion of the Polish People’s Republic that did not collapse in 1989 (the series, con-
trary to its title, takes place in 2003).
The “what if” concept has not however been monopolized by writers
and most of all SF writers who make use of this idea to create entertaining lit-
erature (adventurous, criminal, sensational), while for a historian a”what-if” is
a research tool for examining the possible outcomes of a historical process. Even
recently, in Poland, at least two historical books have been published, that explore
the “What-if” concept of practising history: W. Orłowski, Inna Polska (Another
Poland), Warsaw 2018 and A. Chwalba, Zwrotnice dziejów (Switches in history),
Warsaw 2019. The pretext is obvious – the 100th anniversary of Poland regaining
its independence.
31
Cf. below, p. 198. ‘Augmented reality’ (AR) started functioning as a tech-
nological term that describes imposing an overlay onto the real picture conveyed
through a smartphone or a VR glasses screen (OHMD – ‘Optical Head-Mounted
Display’). AR could be seen as a step towards ‘virtual reality’ (VR), which fully
replaces a real picture with a created, artificial one. Cf. A.B. Craig, Understanding
Augmented Reality. Concepts and Applications, Amsterdam 2013.
32
Δ. Φύσσας, Πλατεία Λένιν…, p. 12.
In the version proposed by Fyssas the German counter-attack in

Ardennes in late 1944 was vastly more successful that it really was.
Because of that World War Two in the European war theatre ends
half a year later than in our reality. Additionally, work on invent-
ing the A-bomb is slower and it is ready, in both its American and
Russian version as late as in 1946.33 These drawbacks (with regard
to real events) allow the Red Army to open a new front in Crete
while Turkey annexes the Dodecanese. After the war the Greek Peo-
ple’s Republic is created, within the same borders as this world’s
Greece, except for the Dodecanese34 and Macedonian fragments,
which are taken by the Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia. On the
other hand, Greece gains so-called Northern Epirus from Albania.
The rightist refugees leave for Cyprus, which is swiftly given inde-
pendence by the British, who decide to create a space for the Greek
political opposition. Both Greek and Turkish Cypriots in no time
find themselves dominated by an influx of newcomers from Greece
(‘Ελλαδίτες’) who hijack the political scene, make Cyprus a member
of NATO and in so doing create a counterweight to Soviet controlled
communist Greece. The hotspot becomes the island of Kassos (The
Dodecanese island closest to Crete), the only one taken over by the
Russian-Greek forces in Crete and left within Greek borders. The
waters surrounding Kassos often witness tests of strength between
the Western and Eastern bloc. When the Cuban crisis arrives, Cuba is
dubbed in international press the “second Kassos”.35 Greek society,
living through the reality of communism, goes through the typical
fate of such nations – it experiences a “real socialism” (soc-realism)
phase, collectivisation, political police, ruthless censorship, but also
“double think” – for the sake of the state and for the sake of home.
Giannis Ritsos is proclaimed the national poet (in our reality he is
an important leftist writer, often interned and imprisoned for his
unrepentant views), called simply the Poet. He writes a hymn on
33
Ibidem, p. 46-47.
34
In reality, only in 1947 was all the Dodecanese merged with the King-
dom of Greece. Before that, from 1913 it had been ruled by the Italians and then
from 1943 it was under Nazi occupation. After World War Two it became, for
a short time, a British protectorate. It was the last Greek territorial addition.
Cf. C.M. Woodhouse, Modern Greece..., p. 257.
35
Δ. Φύσσας, Πλατεία Λένιν…, p. 105-106.
192 Chapter 5
the occasion of Stalin’s death, which is universally recited and read

at schools. The author of Πλατεία Λένιν... makes use of authen-
tic works: literary texts, speeches, political manifestos and – taking
advantage of alternate world conventions – puts them into a differ-
ent context. What in reality was an unofficial, desperate, unpopular
proclamation can become an anointed, obligatory, dogmatic work,
learnt by heart by pupils in schools.
The fortunes of Ritsos’s work exemplify the method Fyssas
uses while making his alternative world seem more plausible. Fys-
sas is a historian specialising in contemporary history and his vision
of “communist Greece” is based on sources that inform the reader
how communist partisans and politicians dreamt of “their Greece”
after their victory. In (our) reality they failed: many died, many
were executed, many emigrated or were periodically detained, but
what Fyssas writes is not completely fictional, like Ritsos’s poem
which was really written.
In his historic work Fyssas analyses the events of Novem-
ber 1973 and the massacre at the National Technical University of
Athens.36 The student protests against the “black colonels” regime
resulted in bloody suppression, but were also a significant crack
in the colonels’ social image that in time contributed to their fall.
In Fyssas’s version the Technical University events are transformed
into an anticommunist revolution, similar to the Hungarian revolt
of 1956 or of the Prague Spring twelve years later. The plot of the
book takes place around the revolt, the plot is, in fact, a pretext for
a historical analysis, in which the fantastic element, though dom-
inant in terms of volume, is introduced mainly in order to ani-
mate the plot, which is, in fact, secondary to the historical facts or
“what-if” historical divagation.
A similar concept appears in Πλατεία Μπελογιάννη (Belogi-
annis square, 2010) by Giorgos N. Alexatos. In his novel, the prem-
ise, even broader than in Fyssas’s text, is that the communist bloc in
Greece wins in the civil war directly after World War Two. The vic-
tory is however partial, because the warring sides divide Greece’s
36
Dimitris Fyssas (Δ. Φύσσας) published a book Η γενιά του Πολιτεχνίου.
Ενα βιβιογραφικό λεξικό (National Technical School of Athens generation. Bio-
graphical dictionary), Athens 1993.
territory: the communists rule approximately in the north, the roy-

alists in the south. The story is less historically inclined and even
less historically conscious: the author concentrates on two young
protagonists, a boy and a girl who are raised in the Greek Com-
munist Republic, on the island of Cephalonia. The novel follows
their fate for several decades, and all the details on the imagined
alternated world are conveyed through their individual stories:
camps for Greek pioneers, visits of socialist youth from other East-
ern bloc countries, the attitude to religion and its slow decline. The
book lacks the cold, unattached look that was present in Fyssas’s
narration: Alexatos is a leftist political activist and the book seems
like a manifesto, a nostalgic journey into an unrealised alternative
world.
There are two professional ways that lead to creating an alter-
nate vision. The first of them is the one that Fyssas and Alexatos
chose, two historians who decide to leave factographic narration
and dare to speculate. On the Polish literary scene two writers, at
least, have distinguished themselves with such an attitude to lit-
erary output: Teodor Parnicki and Andrzej Kuśniewicz. The sec-
ond one explored the Polish heritage of the Austrian-Hungarian
empire and times, mixing – at the level of individual characters –
the great factual history and fantastic fates. The first one operated
more systematically. He began with writing monumental works
chiefly on ancient history but towards the end of his literary career
he started to explore other possibilities, travel with his characters
to pasts unfulfilled, with the help of – as he called it – Muza dale-
kich podróży, “the Muse of journeys far away”, which is supposedly
a type of time-machine.37 Such histories in “what-if” style are not
always realized as literary plots and speculations in historiographic
37
Parnicki’s work and especially his turning to speculative literature
towards the end of his literary life is not widely recognized, though there are sev-
eral important academic texts analysing or undertaking this thread of his oeuvre,
e.g. W. Jamroziak, The historical SF of Teodor Parnicki (“Science Fiction Studies” 5
[1978], no. 2, p. 130-133) or J. Kieniewicz, Czwarte królestwo (The fourth kingdom),
[in:] idem, Wyraz na ustach zapominany. Polskiej inteligencji zmagania z ojczyzną
(A word forgotten on the lips. The Struggles of the Polish intelligentsia with the
homeland), chapter III, Warszawa 2012. Stefan Szymutko, the author of the most
comprehensive monograph on Parnicki (Zrozumieć Parnickiego / Understanding
194 Chapter 5
narration are not seldom published by historians.38 And sometimes

even writers that are not considered speculative, nor historically
inclined, use this trope to expand their literary creation in an unu-
sual way – such was a whole chapter in Jerzy Andrzejewski’s late
novel Miazga (Pulp, 1979), written in the second conditional mode,
and a cruel game with readers performed by Ian McEwan in Atone-
ment (2001) where the main thread proves to be hypothetical (and
readers are deprived of a happy ending).
The other way leading to alternative histories is through spec-
ulative fiction – when an author, for the time horizon of events
they describe, chooses the very near future, writing in the subgenre
dubbed soft SF or close-range SF, or present, but a different present
to the one we experience. From such a realisation there is but one
step: into the past, but a different, un-real, more or less plausible
past that is separated from our reality at a so-called point of diver-
gence and goes on another course. Such is the way preferred by
Christos A. Chomenidis (born 1966).39
He proves to be one of very few Modern Greek authors, whose
work, at least in part, could be classified as speculative fiction. He
made his debut when he was just 23 years old, with an original
novel Σοφό παιδί (The wise child, 1989), where he describes, among
other fantastic adventures and landscapes, an escape from Cyprus,
invaded by the Turks in summer of 1974, on a whale’s back. In
another novel he invents an illness that makes one of his protag-
onists, a child, to age eight times more quickly that the rest of the
characters.40 The most science-fiction-like text he has written so far is
a 1994 story entitled 2094 (Year 2094)41, that takes place, as indicated
by the title, exactly a century later that it was written. The rudimen-
tary plot presents a small episode from the life of a Greek minister,
who has to take important decisions in face of a newly invented
Parnicki, Katowice 1992) also does not omit this alt-hist aspect, though he is
clearly perplexed by it.
38
See e.g. M. Bunzl, Counterfactual History: A User’s Guide, “American His-
torical Review” 109 (2004), no. 3, p. 845–858.
39
See p. 199.
40
See Χ.Α. Χωμενίδης, Υπερσυντέλικος (Past perfect tense), Athens 2003.
41
Χ.Α. Χωμενίδης, 2094, [in:] idem, Δεν θα σου κάνω το χατίρι. Διηγήματα
(I won’t make you a favour. Short stories), Athens 1997, p. 133-148.
technology. In this projected future scientists finally manage to

develop a method with which to revive the dead and the politi-
cian works on the project of which historical figure to resurrect first.
Much more interesting than the plot itself – which is in fact a polit-
ical grotesque – is the scenery: the picture of Athens and Greece of
the future, as sketched by Chomenidis, in a way, incidentally:
Το κτίριο έκανε στροφή εκατόν εξήντα μοιρών και η Αθήνα

απλώθηκε κάτω απ’ τα πόδια μου. Η τεχνητή λίμνη του Κολω-
νακίου γυάλιζε στον ήλιο σαν ασημένιο τασάκι ενώ στους πρό-
ποδες του Λυκαβηττού ορθωνόταν πανύψηλος ο μιναρές του
μεγάλου τζαμιού της πόλης. Αριστερότερα ο βράχος της Ακρό-
πολης, μ’ εκείνο το μαρμάρινο ερείπιο, το οποίο αποτελούσε την
εξωφρενικότερη απάτη στην ιστορία της ανθρωπότητας.42
The house performed a turn of one hundred and sixty degrees and
Athens spread beneath his feet. The Kolonaki artificial lake was
shining in the sun like a silver ash-tray and at the foot of Lycabetus
Hill there hulked very high minarets of the city’s great mosque. To
the left stood the rock of the Acropolis, with these marble ruins that
were the most awful fraud in the history of mankind.
This is how Chomenidis drowns, in an artificial basin, the dis-

trict of Kolonaki, the richest and the most luxurious region of cen-
tral Athens, and in the heart of the city he places a mosque, with
a very visible minaret (not the only one, as it later turns out, in the
skyline of the Greek capital). The fact that the Parthenon proved to
be a falsified monument, would surely upset every Greek. In the
story a reader finds an explanation, according to which the temple
was built in the 14th century by “κάποιον αρχαιόπληκτο Ένετο
άρχοντα της Αττικής” (A Venetian ruler of Attica who was nuts
about antiquity)43 and who – before this construction – demolished
the original temple so that no stone was left standing. Chomenidis
shows Greece à rebours, where everything is disturbed, where black
and white change places.
In longer forms the fantastic elements invented by Chomenidis
are more impressive – they are not just part of a scenography in
42
Ibidem, p. 136.
43
Ibidem, p. 137.
196 Chapter 5
a text that demands a sharp bottom line. In longer forms these ele-
ments become independent and gain more attention. That is why
the most ambitious speculative fiction project in the writer’s bib-
liography is creating a reality in which Greece has an additional
island called Άγιος (Agios – lit. ‘Holy’).44
It seems that for Greeks it’s not that difficult to add a new island:
another land in the archipelago can pass unnoticed. Statisticians
count that just within the Greek borders there are around six thou-
sand islands and islets, but only a fraction of them – 117 according
to early 21st century data – remain inhabited.45 Moreover, only 79
of these islands can boast a population of over 100 inhabitants. The
biggest is Crete, where more than six hundred thousand Cretans
live. The island is a separate microcosm and constitutes an entity
that is almost self-sufficient.
Among the invented islands, some were dreamt of in antiquity:
there are the islands known from Homer’s Odyssey, like Lotus-eaters
island and Aeaea, the island of Circe.46 The title of the most renowned
island goes, however, to Atlantis. In the dialogues of Timaeus and Cri-
tias Plato writes about a great and wondrous empire, whose influence
stretched far beyond the island’s coasts and encompassed a part of
the southern Mediterranean and in the north it reached the southern
slopes of the Alps (Tyrrhenia).47 Other ancient writers refer to Pla-
to’s vision, passing on various and mysterious pieces of information
about Atlantis. In turn in the 4th century BC Theopompus of Chios
described a certain Meropis island (which was to be a parody version
44
It is not the first island invented by Chomenidis. In Στο ύψος των
περιστάσεων (High randomness of circumstances, Athens 2006) a part of plot
takes place on the island of Avgo (lit. “an egg”), that lies supposedly east of Crete.
The island, its location and history is presented in a long exposition on p. 19-23.
45
See the results of the 2011 census, available on the webpage of the Greek
statistical services (www.statistics.gr), sub-page http://goo.gl/AGXiv, DOA:
17/03/2015.
46
There are attempts to draw Odysseus’ route on real maps. Cf. A. Wolf,
Mapping Homer’s Odyssey, [in:] Eastern Mediterranean Cartographies, G. Tolias,
D. Loupin (ed.), Athens 2004, p. 309-334.
47
Plato mentions Atlantis in his dialogue Timaeus (25a), but describes the
island primarily in dialogue Critias (113b-121c); the description, however, is sev-
ered. See also A. Manguel, G. Guadalupi, The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, New
York – San Diego – London 2000, p. 41-43.
of Atlantis).48 Diodorus of Sicily (1st century BC) sketched a journey

of a certain Iambolos to the Islands of Sun, somewhere in the Indian
Ocean49 and sometime before, Euhemerus (3rd century BC) pon-
dered on the existence of Panchaia, that was supposed to lie not far
from the Island of the Sun.50 But it was Atlantis that passed the test of
time and entered triumphantly into the pop-cultural world. In years
2004-2009 a TV series belonging to the so-called Stargate universe
was broadcast – its events took place on a cosmic version of Atlan-
tis. Even Lego, the famous toy brick company, created a set series
(2010-2011), inspired by the legend of Atlantis: the set’s mini-figures
were fish-men living deep in the sea. Atlantis is also the name of the
mysterious and hardly reachable capital of the Zamonia continent in
the world created by Walter Moers in the book 13 1/2 Lives of Captain
Bluebear (1999)51 and others in the cycle: there Atlantis does not sink
but, launches itself into the sky.
Authors closer to our times – though not Greeks – did not stop
adding elements to the archipelago. Utopia, created and described
by Thomas More, at least as far as the name is concerned, should
be regarded as a Greek Island (after all its name is Greek – ou-topos,
that is no-place). New Atlantis (Bensalen) was imagined by sir Fran-
cis Bacon. The non-existent island of Fraxos is the setting for John
Fowles’ novel The Magus (1965), though supposedly the island is
based on the Greek island of Spetses, where the author spent two
years teaching English in the early 1950s. A special place on the list
of creators of imaginary Greek islands goes to Alistair MacLean’s
novel The Guns of Navarone (1957), a story from World War Two that
takes place on an island in the fictional archipelago of Lerades (with
two fictional lands: Maidos and Cheros). It is based on the actual
Battle of Leros. MacLean, as a kind of malicious joke, included
a map that does not fit in with real maps of the Aegean Sea and
Dodecanese Archipelago.
48
Theopompus of Chios, Philippika, fragmentarily preserved in Elianus
(Ael. VH 3.18).
49
Diod. II, 55-60 and V, 41-46.
50
Cf. also G. Schmeling, The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden–New York,
NY 1996, p. 621.
51
Cf. W. Moers, The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear, trans. J. Brownjohn, Lon-
don 2000.
198 Chapter 5
Chomenidis’ idea is therefore preceded by a rich tradition of

nesogenesis (i.e. island creating), but of course this is not the only
tradition Chomenidis builds upon: the very keystone of speculative
fiction is cosmogenesis, world creating. Chomenidis makes use of
yet another fantastic idea – he creates his world with the SF subge-
nre called slipstream. Bruce Sterling, a renowned SF writer as well
as methodologist was the first to use this term, in a modest article
published online:52 there he described a new idea for a genre that
would serve as a bridge between mainstream literature and specu-
lative fiction. In slipstream what is imagined, “lurks” in the back-
ground and slowly takes over and dominates the plot. As a result
the reader is convinced that they are dealing with a realistic text (i.e.
a text written in the convention of realism) and starts “feeling very
strange”.53 Paweł Frelik54 and Jeff Prucher55 developed a slightly
different approach to slipstream – as a “inter-genre”, lying on the
fringes of both speculative fiction and mainstream literature:56 as
texts that employ fantastic tropes, but cannot be fully classified as
fantastic. Very different writers have been credited with writing
slipstream, this variety includes Thomas Pynchon, Neal Stephen-
son, Umberto Eco. Jorge Luis Borges, the author of exemplary and
benchmark slipstream texts (Tlön, Uqbar and Orbis Tertius or Aleph)
has been proclaimed the spiritual father of this (sub/inter)genre.
Some ideas about the authors itemized as slipstream followers (not
always consciously) is given by a informal, working slipstream
canon.57
From a formal point of view slipstream can also be defined
with the help of the term ‘ostranenye’ (or more accurately ‘pri-
yom ostranenya’, defamiliarisation grip), a narration technique
first described by Viktor Shklovsky, a Russian formalist, in the first
52
B. Sterling, Slipstream, “SF Eye” 5 (1989), p. 77-80.
53
“[T]his is a kind of writing which simply makes you feel very strange”.
Ibidem, p. 78.
54
P. Frelik, Slipstream 101, “SFRA Review” 289 (2009), p. 3-6.
55
Cf. lemma written by J. Prucher in the dictionary Brave New Worlds. The
Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, Oxford–New York, NY 2007, p. 189.
56
Cf. footnote on p. 40.
57
The list is available on the webpage: http://www.readercon.org/docs/
slipcanon.pdf (DOA: 17/03/2015).
decades of the 20th century58 (his idea was later developed by Ber-
told Brecht in his definition of ‘Verfremdungseffekt’ – the alienation
effect).59 Shklovsky’s technique is based on presenting a familiar
element of reality in an unusual way, in order to cause in recipients
the effect of anxiety (de-familisarisation) that will draw their atten-
tion to the developed plot and at the same time would shake their
trust in the narrator as well as in the reality he or she is trying to
convey. A reader would feel for a while like a patient suffering from
the Capgras syndrome: they would have the impression that the
world they have usually experienced has been somehow replaced
with another, fake one.60 Moreover slipstream worlds belong to the
category of so-called close-range science-fiction:61 that – in sharp
contrast to hard science-fiction – chooses not to set events in a dis-
tant future but literally tomorrow, in the space and time seemingly
familiar to everyone. Just like a “what-if” of historian, slipstream
authors create an alternative world, but with point of divergence
placed at now.
Chomenidis’s creation, for which he brought to the Ocean’s
surface the island of Agios is entitled Ο κόσμος στα μέτρα του (The
world for his measure)62 and is his tenth novel, published in 2012. Its
protagonist, one Arthouros Simotas is a well-bred young man with
neither specific goals nor ambitions, who discovers by chance that
most probably he used to have an older brother he knows nothing
58
Rus. приём остранения. Cf. D. Ulicka, Chwyt udziwnienia wobec porewolu-
cyjnych przemian języka (Estrangement devices and post-revolutionary changes in
language), [in:] K. Chmielewska, D. Krawczyńska, G. Wołowiec (ed.), Literatura
i socjalizm (Literature and socialism), Warsaw 2012, p. 27-57.
59
B. Brecht, On Chinese Acting, trans E. Bentley, “The Tulane Drama Review”
6.1 (1961), p. 130-136.
60
N. Brémaud, A short historic note about the „delusion of supposition” according
to Sérieux and Capgras, “Annales Medico-Psychologiques” (2015), DOI: 10.1016/j.
amp.2016.04.014.
61
M. Parowski, Czas fantastyki (The time of the fantastic), Warszawa 1990,
p. 49-54 (the essay is entitled Fantastyka bliskiego zasięgu / The close-range fantas-
tic).
62
Χ.Α. Χωμενίδης, Ο κόσμος στα μέτρα του, Athens, 2012. The book’s title
is polysemic because of the doubt as to what the pronoun ‘του’ is pointed at:
it could be a world for the protagonist’s measure (i.e. abilities) or a world that
would correspond to its own possibilities.
200 Chapter 5
about. Every trace of the brother’s existence has disappeared even

before Arthouros was born. The protagonist is forced to travel to the
past, in the times of his father, Markos’s, youth. Most unfortunately
Markos is haunted by an unidentified illness that feeds on his mem-
ory and personality, Arthouros has to reconstruct his father’s life
based on the recollections of his old friends that knew him 30 years
earlier. Then he was of Arthouros’s age, was a paragon of health
and had been just elected the new governor of the island Agios,
a Greek colony in the Atlantic Ocean.
… Η νήσος Άγιος κείται εις τον Ατλαντικόν Ωκεανόν, εις τα

ανοικτά της ανατολικής ακτής των ΗΠΑ. Διαθέτει έκτασιν 390
τετραγωνικών χιλιομέτρων, κλίμα εύκρατον-υποτροπικόν, έδα-
φος εύφορον και πεδινόν, με τη εξαίρεσιν τριών λόφων εις το
νότιον τμήμα της. Ανεκαλύφθη υπό του Χριστοφόρου Κολόμ-
βου – κατά το πρώτο του ταξείδι, τον Οκτώβριο του 1492 – και
προσηρτήθη στους Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες υπό το όνομα Άγιος
Πατρίκιος (Saint Patrick). Το 1864, ως ένδειξη ευγνωμοσύνης διά
την συμμετοχήν τάγματος Μανιατών εκ Γυθείου εις τον Αμε-
ρικανικόν Εμφύλιον Πόλεμον, ο πρόεδρος Αβραάμ Λίνκολν –
με την σύμφωνον γνώμην της Βουλής των Αντιπροσώπων και
της Γερουσίας – εδώρησε την νήσον εις την Ελλάδα, η οποία την
μετενόμασε εις “Άγιος ο Θεός”, επί το συντομώτερον “Αγιος”.
[…] Το 1956 ο πληθυσμός του Αγίου απέρριψε κατά συντριπτι-
κήν πλειοψηφίαν πρότασιν ανεξαρτητοποιησεώς του, εκφρά-
ζων την βούλησιν να παραμείνει διά παντός υπό την σκεπήν
της μητέρας πατρίδος. Πληθυσμός (απογραφή 1958): 41.812
κάτοικοι. Πρωτεύουσα: Τριχερούσα. Κύρια προϊόντα: Καπνός,
αραβόσιτος, χοίρειον κρέας.63
Agios island (lit. ‘Holy’) lies in the Atlantic Ocean, in the open
waters off the eastern coast of the USA. Its area amounts to 390 sq.
km., its climate is mild subtropical, its soil is fertile and flat, except
for three hills in the southern part of the island. It was discovered by
Christopher Columbus on his first journey, in October 1492, it was
annexed by the USA in 1801 and named Saint Patrick [...] In 1864,
as an expression of gratitude for the participation of Maniots from
Gytheion in the American Civil War, president Abraham Lincoln –
following the consent granted by the American Congress and Sen-
ate – handed the island over to Greece, which changed the island’s
name to “Holy is God” (Agios o Theos), abbrevatied to Agios. [...] in
63
Χ.Α. Χωμενίδης, Ο κόσμος στα μέτρα του, p. 29.
1956 the population of the island rejected by a vote with a consider-

able majority the proposition of independence, expressing its wish
to stay forever under the protection of the motherland. Population
41 812 inhabitants (based on the census from 1958). Capital: Trich-
erousa. Main export products: tobacco, corn, pork meat.
That is how the author introduces Agios within the novel. The
quoted fragment is supposed to come from Λεξικόν του „Ηλίου”
(Lexicon of the “Sun” publishing house), an authentic Greek ency-
clopedia, which was popular in the post-war period. Even the lan-
guage of the lemma is stylized to the language of 1960s, a mild ver-
sion of katharevousa. This is the only one – so rich and so detailed
– exposition of a fantastic theme.64 Later Chomenidis writes about
Agios almost on every page, but incidentally, pretending that the
detailed information about the island is within the readers’ reach:
they can look into an appropriate lemma in wikipedia, in many lan-
guages, and clarify any doubts for themselves. And he, the author,
suggests that the quoted pieces of information come from existing
books, as in the case of the Lexicon, or he slightly changes the facts,
mainly altering fragments of biographies of real, historical people.65
Ο Άγιος συνδεόταν με την Αθήνα αραιά. Μία φορά στις δέκα

μέρες το αεροπλάνο της Ολυμπιακής για το Σικάγο έκανε
στάση στο αεροδρόμιο Φαλέζ Κολοκοτρώνης.66
Agios had poor transport links with Athens. Every ten days an
Olympic Airways plane on the way to Chicago landed on Falez
Kolokotronis airport.
64
B. Stableford, Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction, (chapter “So What Hap-
pened Exactly? Dialogue and Exposition”), Eastbourne, UK 1997, p. 139-164.
Cf. lemma exposition published on the pop-cultural web portal TVtropes (http://
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Exposition, DOA: 2/12/2016).
65
Slipstream deprives readers of any trust in a text. The renowned practi-
cian and theoretician of postmodern literature, John Barth, in the article Literature
of exhaustion writes explicitly: “After reading [the J.L. Borges story] Tlön [Uqbar,
Orbis Tertius] one is inclined to recheck every semester or so”. See John Barth, The
literature of exhaustion, [in:] idem, The Friday Book: Essays and Other Non-Fiction,
London 1984, p. 73.
66
Χ.Α. Χωμενίδης, Ο κόσμος στα μέτρα του, p. 72-73.
202 Chapter 5
Chomenidis does not only give the island’s airport the name
of Theodoros Falez Kolokotronis, the (real) grandson of Theodoros
Kolokotronis, the famous Greek Revolution warrior and leader
(dubbed “The Old Man of Morea”), but writes new chapters in Falez
Kolokotronis’s biography.67 Falez was supposed to be the island’s
first governor, while in fact he led the ordinary life of an Athenian
politician and publicist (1829-1894). In turn Manolis Chiotis, within
the novel, is born in Agios, the composer of the island’s anthem and
the initiator of the independence movement, was in fact a popular
singer and songwriter, originating from Thessaloniki. Chomenidis
decided to include a Greek king among the real people entangled
in this fictional history:
Το 1871, που έχει βάλει επιτέλους τα πράγματα στην πατρίδα

σε μια ρέγουλα, φόρτωσε σ’ ένα πολεμικό πλοίο οικογένεια
και αυλικούς και αριβάρισε στο νησί. Οι πρώτες και οι τελευ-
ταίες εντυπώσεις του από την αποικία ήταν εξίσου απογοητευ-
τικές. “Ούτε ο Ροβινσόνας Κρούσος δε θα άντεχε...” – έγραψε
67
Ibidem p. 79-80: “Ο εγγονός του Γέρου του Μοριά, ο αιρετικότερος μάλ-
λον γόνος του κατεστημένου στο οποίο προέκυψε από την επανάσταση του
‘21, εκείνος που αποκήρυξε τους γονείς του ως σφουγγοκωλάριους της βαυα-
ρικής αριστοκρατίας, που έφτυσε στα μούτρα τον – ημίτρελο και τοκογλύφο
κατά την άποψή του – στρατηγό Μακρυγιάννη, που αλληλογραφούσε με τους
πιο προχωρημένους Ευρωπαίους στοχαστές και υποστήριζε τους πρώτους
Έλληνες σοσιαλιστές ο Θεόδωρος Φαλέζ Κολοκοτρώνης, εικονιζόταν όρθιος,
με τα μακριά μαλλιά και με τη ρεντιγκότα του να ανεμίζουν, με το τραγίσιο
κάτω χείλος του να προεξέχει ειρωνικά και την μυτόνγκα (ένα τέλειο σκα-
ληνό τρίγωνο) να σπαθίζει τον αέρα. Το άγαλμα έφτανε τα δυόμισι μέτρα,
ήταν κατασκευασμένο από μπρούντζο [… και] ήταν θεμελιωμένο πάνω σε
είκοσι κυβικά μέτρα πελοποννησιακού χώματος που είχαν μεταφερθεί επι-
τούτου.” (The Old Man’s of Morea [i.e. Kolokotronis’s] grandson, the most heretic
offspring of the establishment, that he joined after the revolution of [18]21, the one
that called his parents the ass-wipers of Bavarian aristocracy, the one that spat in
general Makrygiannis’s face [and had him as being half-mad and a usurer], the
one that corresponded with European thinkers and provided for the first Greek
socialists, Theodoros Falez Kolotronis was depicted [on his statue] erect, with
long wind-blown hair and a flying horse-riding coat, with a goatee under his lip
that protruded ironically and with a big nose [in the shape of equilateral triangle]
that cut the air. The statue was two and half meters tall and was made of bronze
[...and] was erected on twenty cubic meters of Peloponnesian soil brought to the
island [for this purpose]).
στον γυναικάδελφό του Μέγα Δούκα της Ρωσίας Κωνσταντίνο

Κωνσταντίνοβιτς.68
In 1871 the king [George I], when he finally straightened things up

at home, boarded a military ship with his family and members of
court and sailed to the island. His first and last impressions from
the stay in the colony were a stream of disenchantments. “Even
Robinson Crusoe would not survive here...” he wrote to his wife’s
brother – the Great Prince of Russia – Konstantin Konstantinovitch.
Understanding that readers are faced with a carefully staged

falsification, they are supposed to be inquisitive, to try to separate
what is true, what is fictional and what is impossible, using for this
purpose information sources from outside of the novel.
The author does not necessarily present data about Agios in the
form of comprehensive material,69 but it does not mean that Agios
is poorly described. On the contrary, a reader can walk around it
far and wide, they learn about the lives of ordinary islanders (along
with the life stories of their families), they start to understand the
political and economic issues troubling the island. Readers are put
in the same situation as Markos, who is new to the island, who is in
fact a foreigner, being introduced into island reality by the autoch-
thon inhabitants. The former governor, a Maniot aristocrat acquaints
Markos with the official, affluent and pro-Greek face of the island,
he takes his young successor to meet the most prominent fami-
lies, who are strongly connected to the motherland – emotionally
and economically. Markos’s best friend, a local... barber, takes the
newly elected governor outside the city centre. He shows him Agi-
os’s favelas, discloses unpleasant facts from the history of Greece-
Agios relations and introduces Markos to – the budding anew –
independence movement. He makes the governor conscious of the
fact that on hundreds of hectares the island’s inhabitants cultivate
68
Ibidem, p. 99.
69
Cf. the term infodump (transplanted from computer studies where it
denotes a bulky data dump) – an awkward information exposition in the SF liter-
ature: a concentration in one point of narration (e.g. in a protagonist’s monologue)
of detailed and long explanations that concern the rules of a fantastic world or its
paraphernalia (after: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Infodump,
DOA: 2/12/2016).
204 Chapter 5
cannabis (and – allegedly cocaine plants). This is where the money

come from, because, as the barber explains “with the dollars we
receive for the lease of the American military base – and that is 30
million dollars a year – Agios could have been a second Switzer-
land. Instead, you take all the money, you, the Greeks from Greece,
that is your government”.70
Relatively obscure is the physical aspect of the island: read-
ers know it lies in a tropical or subtropical climate zone and the
vegetation here is fairytale-like “ο μαγιάτικος Άγιος ήταν χαρά
Θεού” (magical Agios was God’s gift).71 Plants known in Greece as
shrubs are here much taller and exuberant than in the motherland:
the island itself seems in the eyes of a new-comer a paradise (a fact
that would suggest its innocence and purity). However, Agios is
a cultural melting pot: emigrants from Europe and Africa reached
the island on their way to America and some, for various reasons
have stayed. There are black emigrants, who until recently, worked
as slaves on the plantations belonging to Maniot families. With the
children from mixed relations starting to be born: these who have
a Maniot for a father receive Greek citizenship. But if it is the mother
that is white, while the father is not, the situation can become tragic.
Όταν η θυγατέρα κάποιου Σαφιολέα γέννησε δίδυμα κορίτσια,

μιγαδάκια, η μάνα της τα έπνιξε ψυχρά στην κούνια. Το γεγο-
νός πήρε μεγάλη δημοσιότητα, το συζητούσαν για βδομάδες και
στην Αθήνα. Από εκεί εμπνεύστηκε, λένε, ο Παπδιαμάντης για
να γράψει τη “Φόνισσα”...72
When some Safioleas’s daughter gave birth to twins with almond-

coloured skin, her mother, in cold blood, suffocated both infants in
the cradle. The event gained publicity, even in Athens people spoke
70
Χ.Α. Χωμενίδης, Ο κόσμος στα μέτρα του, p. 102-103: “...[μ]ε το νοίκι
της βάσης – τριάντα εκατομμύρια δολάρια τον χρόνο – ο Άγιος θα μπορούσε
να ‘ναι Ελβετία. Το παίρνετε όμως όλο εσείς οι Ελλαδίτες, η κυβέρνησή σας
δηλαδή.”
71
Ibidem, p. 154.
72
Gr. Φόνισσα [The Murderess] – the title of the novelette by A. Papadia-
mantis written in 1903 (Eng. trans. in 2011 by L. Sherrard), where the protagonist
is an elderly lady who drowns girls in a well in order to save them from the toil
and disappointments of adult life. Χ.Α. Χωμενίδης, Ο κόσμος στα μέτρα του,
p. 100.
about it for weeks. They say that it became an inspiration for Papa-
diamandis who later wrote “The Murderess”...
Such a mixture of races is the result of the decision of the Amer-

ican state, which introduced immigrant selection on Ellis island and
made some of them – who either did not want to go home, or were
unable to do so – settle on the island of Agios.73
An interesting or rather peculiar place on the island is the vil-
lage of Peran, the settlement lying farthest away from the capital
Tricherousa. Markos spends time there at the most important fair
(πανηγύρι) of the year, during the holiday of the Dormition of the
Virgin Mary. Usually, during such holidays people take part in
religious ceremonies, later they dine together, they entertain them-
selves and dance, not rarely for several days and nights. In Peran,
where the inhabitants have a strange ash hue of the skin and their
posture is ape-like, there occurs a breaking of taboo. An orgy ensues,
with acts of incest and pederasty. The protagonist takes part in this
strange, disturbing carnal feast and then returns to his governor’s
palace full of guilt, disgusted with himself. He later has an occasion
to come back to Peran on an ordinary day. And the village turns out
to be regular, inhabited by normal, ordinary people. What was then
this August visit – an illusion, a phantasmagoria?
It is not the only fragment where Chomenidis suggests the
counter-factuality of the world he creates. Such suggestions appear
in the words of the narrator who addresses his words to read-
ers,74 or in the thoughts of the protagonist who ponders whether
this whole story is but a dream,75 or rather a nightmare. Such nar-
ration technique would point at the affiliation of the text to slip-
stream, as well as to the strong connections of slipstream to literary
postmodernism.76
73
Ibidem, p. 101.
74
Ibidem, p. 135-6.
75
Ibidem, p. 410.
76
Cf. the Man of the High Castle by Ph. K. Dick: the Americans living under
German and Japanese occupation (due to their defeat in the World War Two) learn
about the existence of an alternative world, in which the Nazis lost the war. It is
a motif known well in the circles of what-if histories enthusiasts as ‘Double Blind
What If’ (that is pondering on an alternative from a perspective of an already
206 Chapter 5
In the most curious and detailed way the mechanisms of polit-

ical oppression are described that dictate the brutality of the life on
Agios. The burden for the inhabitants is the incumbent Maniot fam-
ilies that rule heavy-handedly, not unlike the ancient Spartans (the
Maniot homeland just like in the case of the Spartans is in the south-
ern Peloponnese) and that do not let anyone share their power. In
Agios they introduce endogamy, from their homeland Mani pen-
insula they transplant an austere way of life, litotis, as well as their
peculiar architecture, that is however not visible at first glance. In
the capital Markos first comes across a typical sample of colonial
architecture “με μεγάλες βεράντες και με φοίνικες αριστερά
και δεξιά της εισόδου” (with great verandas and with palms on
the left and right of the entrance)77, but the Maniots live in edifices
that remind them of their origin: even today in Mani a traveller can
easily spot numerous villages where most houses look like small
castles: with towers, portholes and thick walls. This is what the res-
idence of the most prominent Agios family looks like:
Επρόκειτο για έναν κανονικό πύργο, λιθόκτιστο, με πολεμί-

στρες. “Από το ύφος σας συμπεραίνω, ότι δεν έχετε επισκεφθεί
τη Μέσα Μάνη. Σπαρμένη είναι από τέτοια πέτρινα θηρία. Δεν
τα σήκωσαν για φιγούρα, αλλά για οχυρά εναντίον Τούρκων.”78
It was a typical [house with] the tower, coated with stone, with
portholes. “From your pout I conclude that you have not been to
Inner Mani. It is covered with such stone monsters. They were not
built for a show but for defence against the Turks.
Markos is then shown a cemetery with ancestors’ graves,

a small chapel with a little statue of king George I (Maniots are zeal-
ous royalists), a collection of vintage cars (among them a Roll-Royce
with caterpillars in place of the rear wheels) and basketball courts –
basketball being the most popular sport on the island – where, even
though it was growing dark, under the bright light of jupiter lamps,
promising young players were practising.
alternative world) – http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php?id=alternate_his-

tory:double_blind_what_if, DOA: 2/12/2016.
77
78
Ibidem, p. 193.
The Greeks from Greece (Ελαδίτες, Helladites) prove to be

even worse than the insular Maniots. One of the characters puts the
matter frankly: “Οι Ελλαδίτες μάς πίνουν το αίμα!” (Helladites
drink our blood!).79 And then he explains his exasperation in the
following way: it is not enough that since the beginning of colo-
nial existence – and the presence of the American military base on
its soil – Athens has high-jacked all the profits, they use the island
in other ways. Since World War Two compulsory conscription has
been conducted so that the insular youth would fight on the royalist
side in the Greek Civil War. The anxiety that was growing in the late
1940s, exploded in a mutiny that came to fruition as a secretly pre-
pared insurrection. The Agios inhabitants composed a hymn for the
new country and wanted to change the island’s name to Republica
Sancta, they worked out the future rules of its functioning and in
1955 rose up against the Greek garrison.80 The mutiny was swiftly
put down, but the perpetrators were not brought to justice: Ath-
ens chose instead the road to peaceful reconciliation.81 However
during Markos Simotas’s governorship old sentiments return, this
time instigated by the Americans. The pretext for the preparations
becomes the Greek reaction to the shooting down of Korean airliner
by a Russian fighter in September 1983 (it is a true event). Contrary
to the situation in other European Economic Community countries
Greece does not agree to sign a condemnatory resolution against
the Russian actions, which in turn exasperates the Americans. The
incoming Agios insurrection will be a punishment for the Greek
socialist government, which in American eyes, is too sympathetic
toward the Russians.
How was this new country in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean
to be? The idea was about a republic, egalitarian and affluent, where
everyone could realize their dreams (in case of the owner of the best
79
Ibidem, p. 109.
80
Ibidem, p. 214: the hymn’s words are kitschy and satirical: “Πατρίδα,
αδελφάκι μου, θα κτίσμουμε. // Ποτέ πια το κεφάλι δε θα σκύψουμε. // Ελλάδα,
το παράκανες, // θαρρώ πολλά μου τα’ κανες, // ο Άγιος θα ανήκει πια σ’
εμάς.” (We will build, my brother, a homeland // We will not bow our heads any-
more // Greece, you overdid it // It was just too much for us // And Agios will be
ours from now on).
81
Ibidem, p. 115.
208 Chapter 5
Tricherousa hotel “Ο Λέων της Σπάρτης” – The Lion of Sparta –

this dream was to build a casino),82 thanks to the money of naive
sponsors, mustered by cunning Agios inhabitants on the west side
of the Atlantic Ocean. It turned out that there is even a constitution,
allegedly prepared already by Falez Kolokotronis, the very exotic
“first socialist constitution in the world” that foresaw the abolition
of private property and of the traditional family83.
The Americans get involved in the insurrection so much that
they print new money in Texas for the future Republica Sancta. But
unexpected political circumstances as well as sudden changes in
governor Simotas’s private life prevent the mutiny. Greece which
probably knew all along about the whole plan, decides to defuse
the insurrection bomb and – again – to make concessions. Agios
is granted the money for the lease of the military base. And not
only that: the island’s basketball team can join the Greek basketball
league.84
It is worth noting the interesting situation regarding language
on the island:85 many still willingly use the katharevousa variety86
(which is supposed to denote conservatism and traditionalism).
The Greek language is the lingua franca for people of the various
nationalities that settle on the island.
Αποτελούσε η εθνική ταυτότητα συνεκτικό ιστό; Η γλώσσα

πάντως σίγουρα. Όσο και αν διατηρούσαν οι οικογένειες στον
Άγιο την ανάμνηση της απώτερης καταγωγής τους (η οποία
περνούσε όχι σπάνια και στα επίθετα, γι’ αυτό και υπήρχαν
κάμποσοι Φράγκοι, Σπανοί, Ρούσοι), τα ελληνικά ήταν ο κοινός
τους τόπος.87
Was national identity a kind of collective network [that bound the

island’s inhabitants together]? Surely the language: even if Agios
families left a memory of their origin (it passed on through their
surnames: there were some Frankoi, Spaniardoi, Russoi), the com-
mon place was the Modern Greek language.
82
Ibidem, p. 305.
83
Ibidem, p. 307.
84
Ibidem, p. 408.
85
Ibidem, p. 153.
86
Cf. remarks on the Greek “language question”, p. 11 and 17.
87
Ibidem, p. 152.
But more important than any political, social or linguistic

issues is another question: why did the author create Agios in the
first place? For what purpose? As it seems, inventing the island
does not play any important fictional function:88 the main plot, that
of Markos in the centre, turns out to be in fact a description of an
unhappy and tragic romance with tragic consequences (tragic for
Markos and for the island) with a local girl, a romance that could
happen anywhere. Trying to impress his lover and save their rela-
tionship, Markos with lamentable results joins in the revolutionary,
anti-Greek movement, destroys his career and ruins his life.
The Greek critics that approach Chomenidis’s novel, concen-
trate on its political and social dimension.89 The writer depicts his
country from the early 1980s, that is, the first years in power of the
centre-leftist PASOK party: the conservative, backward country
that has just come around after the traumatic regime of the “black
colonels”, after a short democratic period, though still politically
monopolized by the conservative Nea Dimokratia party, suddenly
88
Cf. also the short digression on truth in literature on p. 156, although
in the case of Chomenidis it is not the question of what is true (based on truth)
and what is fictional, that is invented. The dilemma of his work and indeed of
the works falling into the category of slipstream is the division between what is
merely fictional and what is already fantastic. The simplest differentiating factor
here would be the plausibility of a given element within a text – the more plausi-
ble the less fantastic. An interesting and helpful term to be introduced at this point
is ‘counterfactual’. In describing a fictional element that could have been plausible
in different historical conditions and its application it constitutes a very suitable
way to discuss alt-hist works. See e.g. M. Borowski, M. Sugiera, Morfowanie historii
(Morphing the history), “Dialog” 7-8 (2017), p. 186-197, esp. 187.
A simple and partial division of SF texts goes along the lines of three basic
conditionals as seen in teaching English: the first one points at the future and
opens the realm of science-fiction, the second one, tackling with present introduc-
ing “close range SF”, slipstream and apocalyptic SF, while the third one, which
describes the impossible, defines a point of divergence and open an alt-hist. For
more on alt-hist, especially in Poland see also p. 224.
89
Cf. e.g. reviews: Ε.Χ. Μαυροπούλου (Ο κόσμος στα μέτρα του, του
Χρίστου Α. Χωμενίδη / The world for his measure by Christos A. Chomenidis),
in the web periodical critique.gr dated 24/8/2013 (http://www.critique.gr/index.
php?&page=article&id=1104, DOA: 17/3/2015) or Β. Βασιλικός (Χ.Α. Χωμενίδης,
Ο κόσμος στα μέτρα του / Christos A. Chomenidis, The world for his measure),
web portal protagon.gr dated 3/8/2012 (http://www.protagon.gr/?i=protagon.
el.article&id=17279, DOA: 17/3/2015).
210 Chapter 5
starts being dominated by the socialists who come out victorious in

the parliamentary elections.90 The island is the Greece of PASOK-
ists, seen in a distorting mirror, and creating Agios is a mental
experimental to better comment on changes in the Greek politics
and society of the 1980s.
Seeing the novel from such a point of view, the chief villain in
the story is Andreas Papandreou, depicted as satrap, charismatic,
but eccentric. The first meeting of Markos and the PASOK leader91 is
simultaneously the striking up of the novel’s main plot. The future
governor is the representative of the new establishment – it consists
in part of people who arrive accidentally, like Markos, who set out
to replace the conservative order in the country (and in the colony),
embodied on the island by the aristocracy composed of the Maniot
families.
[…] ρέμβασε σε μια πολυθρόνα σκηνοθέτη, με ένα μεγάλο

λευκό σκύλο στα πόδια του και μια ξένη εφημερίδα στην ποδιά
του. […] Φορούσε εκείνο το σακακοπουκάμισο με τις πολλές
τσέπες που συνηθίζανε οι Εγγλέζοι στις αποικίες και οι συντα-
ξιούχοι στο Ζάππειο.92
[Papandreou] sat and daydreamed on a chair in the style of a film

director, with a great white dog at his feet and a foreign newspaper
in his lap. [...] He was wearing a type of vest with many pockets that
is typical for Englishmen in the colonies and for the retired [walk-
ing in the park] around Zappeio [Exhibition Hall].
One year later, this fateful meeting is brought up by Marina,

Markos’s lover who ironically remarks that surely Papandreou
was also wearing slippers in the type of those linen shoes that are
the attributes of old men. But in this comparison she suggests that
beneath the pretence of a strong, charismatic man there was in fact
a tired nonagenarian nearing the end of his life.93 Papandreou is
not a popular person on the island. One day Markos notices the
chill and disapproval that comes from the crowd when he mentions
90
91
Ibidem, p. 65-71.
92
Ibidem, p. 65.
93
Ibidem, p. 191.
Papandreou’s name in his speech.94 During a short visit to the home-

land, still as the governor in office, Markos observes the changes
that have occurred in the style of governing, changes in behaviour
and in the dress code of the prime minister and his closest collabo-
rators, organised around him in the shape of a royal court. Markos
witnesses the meeting of Papandreou with officers of a lower rank
and during the meeting he notes the beginnings of a personality
cult.95 Then he notices a new fashion in the Foreign Affairs Ministry
rooms.
Εκατοντάδες μεσαία στελέχη του κρατικού μηχανισμού

χειροκροτούσαν όρθια επί επτά λεπτά τον Ανδρέα Παπανδρέου,
ο οποίος – εντυπωσιακά πιο παχύς από την τελευταία φορά
που τον είχε δει ο Σιμώτας – επανέλαβε επί τροχάδην τα
γνωστά του συνθήματα, χαιρέτησε έπειτα δια χειραψίας όσους
συνωστίστηκαν γύρω του και φωτογραφήθηκε μαζί τους.
Μια πόζα με τον ηγέτη της Αλλαγής ήταν απαραίτητη για το
προεκλογικό φυλλάδιο του κάθε πολιτευτή.96
Hundreds of middle rank officers were standing applauding Papan-

dreou for the whole seven minutes. Papandreou himself – strikingly
fatter that the last time Markos had seen him – was repeating over
and over again the same well-known slogans and he was greeted
with a handshake by everybody that came to him. He also allowed
people to take photos with him. Such a photograph, with the leader
of the Change, was an indispensable part of the pre-election leaflet
for every [aspiring] politician.
The coming of PASOK proved to be a real social revolution.

The political class, which until this time had been reserved for
rich urban citizens could suddenly be open to any, ordinary man.
Everyone, regardless of their background, but also of education,
could advance in their career, could become influential. The ranks
of officers were reinforced by people from everywhere, from var-
ious places and environments and with various life stories. Their
common denominator was their blind faithfulness to PASOK, their
adoration for their party leader and their far-fetched conformism.
94
Ibidem, p. 212.
95
C.M. Woodhouse, Modern Greece..., p. 327-332.
96
Ibidem, p. 365.
212 Chapter 5
[…] όλοι οι άντρες – απ’ τους κλητήρες μέχρι τον υφηπουργό,

ο οποίος ήταν ο πολιτικός του προϊστάμενος – είχαν μουστά-
κια και ανοιχτά πουκάμισα, για να φαίνεται το δασύτριχο
στέρνο τους. Κάπνιζαν αρειμάνια κι εργάζονταν στον ρυθμό
των βαριών ζεϊμπέκικων και των ελαφρολαϊκών που έπαιζαν
τα τρανζιστοράκια τους. Σε κάθε τρίτο τουλάχιστον γραφείο
υπήρχε μια φωτογραφία του Ανδρέα Παπανδρέου και κάθε
πέμπτο μπρελόκ είχε έναν ασημένιο ήλιο του ΠΑΣΟΚ. “Δε μπο-
ρεί να ξήλωσαν όλους τους δεξιούς υπαλλήλους, τους σοβαρο-
φανείς γραφειοκράτες που δεν ξεκούμπωσαν ούτε καθιστοί τα
σακάκια τους” σκέφτηκε ο Μάρκος. “Μάλλον μεταμορφώθη-
καν οι ίδιοι σε σοσιαλιστές...”97
All men, ranging from lower rank officers up to the vice-minister

– who was Markos’s political superior – were sporting moustaches
and shirts with low necklines so that their chest hair was clearly
visible. They smoked without stopping and they worked while lis-
tening to the rhythms of heavy zeibekiko98 or light folk music that
played on their little transistor radios. In at least every third office
there was a framed picture of Andreas Papandreou and every fifth
fob depicted a silver PASOK sun [the party symbol]. “It is impos-
sible that they threw out all these rightist bureaucrats who, even
while seated, never unbuttoned their jackets”, thought Markos
“Probably they have transformed themselves into socialists...”
The political interpretation of Ο κόσμος στα μέτρα του is

further strengthened by the fact that Chomenidis wrote his novel
during the first years of the – still-ongoing – Greek crisis that after
30 years swept the bi-polar party set up off the political scene (the
political system whereby the government was taken in turns by
PASOK and by its opposite – the rightist Nea Dimokratia), with the
full acceptance of society. The author shows the beginning of the
process, the end of which the Greeks observed in 2009 and later. He
shows the beginnings to prove that the harbingers of the fall were
visible even then, when the socialists introduced new rules to Greek
politics and Greek society, expanding the bureaucratic supply base,
destabilizing capitalism and demonstrating a nonchalant attitude to
property, whether public or private.
97
98
Zeibeikiko – improvised male solo dance and music that accompanies it.
Chomedinis does not stop at criticizing the socialists: by cre-

ating a alternative world that works for him as a mental “firing
range” he wants to see what the Greeks would be like in the role
of colonizers. Up till then they had been the ones being colonized
– by the West, by the “Great Powers”, by the past.99 This is a major
challenge for them: to interpret their history placing themselves in
the position of the victors instead victims – accidentally or not –
of the global politics and of the universal history. Would they be
free of the temptations and traps that colonialism brings? Would
they treat people (their citizens) having a different skin colour, con-
fession, and customs with respect? Would they be good wardens
for others? Would they wage only just wars? Would they be able
to introduce justice among various social classes and work out an
intra-racial platform of tolerance? In Agios’ history there are ele-
ments the reader will easily identify: compulsory conscription of
youth in the 1940s, the embers for the later mutiny on the island,
reminiscences of the phenomenon called ‘παιδομάζωμα’ – kidnap-
ping children by the Ottoman Turks in order to indoctrinate them
and then to incorporate them into an elite infantry formation.100
Chomenidis invites readers to yet another thought experiment:
what would a Greek separatist movement look like? The last two
hundred years of Greek history is dominated by irredentist think-
ing: what counts most is to consolidate the lands inhabited by
Greeks within a united Greek state. A counter-point for Agios is
the example of Cyprus, since the 19th century striving for enosis,
unification with Greece. Because of various, complex historical fac-
tors enosis did not come about as a result an anti-colonial mutiny
(insurrection? civil war?) in the 1950s. The island of Aphrodite was
declared an independent state in 1960 and enosis was constitution-
ally forbidden.101 And here, suddenly, on Agios, there is a group of
blasphemous Greeks that demand independence from Greece.
99
Cf. footnote on p. 64.
100
See also p. 31.
101
Cf. Annex I (i.e. treaty guaranteeing the independence, territorial integ-
rity and Constitution of the Republic) to the Constitution of the Republic of
Cyprus as well as numerous mentions of “territorial integrity” that are present in
the whole its text.
214 Chapter 5
One cannot ignore the element of intellectual play in Chomenid-

is’s novel, the element visible in many fragments of the text, where
Chomenidis jokes with readers well acquainted with Modern Greek
history and literature, by making frequent intertextual allusions.
But above all his novel is a useful tool in political discourse and that
is why, regardless of a strong fantastic component, it belongs to the
literary mainstream.
Chomenidis does not escape into speculative fiction to avoid
contemporary Greek problems: instead his escape is feigned and it
proves to be yet another way of speaking about “Greek reality”. The
fantastic input makes his position safer because it works as a mask
he can hide behind. Or maybe it should read as a text with a key,
like the prose of the aforementioned SF Polish writer, Janusz Zajdel,
who – with a story about a dystopian regime imposed by aliens –
attacked the Polish regime (that was only seemingly independent of
the outside influence), hidden behind a fantastic convention. Why
therefore does Chomenidis need the fantastic: the escape; to camou-
flage and to hide, or just to play?
In order to make an attempt at answering this question it is
valuable to analyse how the fantastic functions in the other works
of this writer, for example in his next novel making use of the gen-
re’s prop warehouse. In April 2016 he published the book Νεαρό
άσπρο ελάφι (Young white deer), where he comes back to a fan-
tastic topos: nonexistent animals, places, illnesses. The protagonist,
Minas Avlamis, “a former writer” lives a dull life in the island of
Corfu’s main town (which is also named Corfu). He is a typical – if
one may create such a category – “Chomenidisian hero”: a man try-
ing to limit stimuli, to withdraw himself from life and to efficiently
amputate all higher feelings.102 He is torn away from this self-im-
posed atrophy by an incredible set of circumstances (Chomenidis
Χ.Α. Χωμενίδης, Νεαρό άσπρο ελάφι, Athens 2013, p. 19: “Τα τετράωρα
102
που μοιραζόμασταν δε νοθεύονταν. Ήταν ολοσχερώς αφιερωμένα στην

επιθυμία των σώματών μας. Το ανεκτίμητο δώρο που μου έκανε η Θάλεια
ήταν ότι στην αγκαλιά της ένιωθα το μυαλό μου να αδειάζει από την κάθε
ανάμνηση, την κάθε σκέψη.” (The hours we spent together every week, did not
have any influence on us. It was time devoted purely to the passion of our bodies.
The invaluable gift Thalia was giving me was that in her arms I felt my mind was
deprived of all memories, all thoughts).
is the master of such settings) that take him to Kidonia, a strange,

invented little town in Western Macedonia.103 Kidonia is ruled by
a certain Pavlos Pavlou, son of Pavlos and nicknamed Papapa, who
lifted the town out of a complete economic disaster having estab-
lished a factory (!) of earthworms that are unusually abundant in
the local soil. These worms come to be an unexpected, clean and
cheap way of solving the problem of waste, Pavlos explains to the
protagonist, giving reasons why a common Lumbricus rubellus is the
ultimate solution: it will not only eat everything, but it can digest it
all and then excrete it as a form of a pure organic material. In other
words: “τρώει […] τα σκουπίδια και χέζει εξαιρετικής ποιότητας
λίπασμα” (it eats trash and shits manure of the highest quality).104
And the white deer, present already in the title – what is it? It is
the animal, whose meat is the most tasty in the world. When it is
prepared appropriately, it smells and tastes exquisite. It is served
almost raw, it is advised to eat it with bare hands and “[ό]ποιος το
έχει γευτεί, έχει γευτεί το παράδεισο” (whoever has tasted it, has
had a taste a paradise).105
The gathering of such unreal elements of the plot raises the
question, of whether the text should also be treated as belonging to
the slipstream subgenre. Rather not, the fantastic element in Νεαρό
ασπρο ελάφι does not dominate in the plot, it is more of a decora-
tion, or even a frivolity. But on the other hand these elements are
103
Ibidem, p. 69: “Η Κυδωνία, κατοικημένη απ’ τους βυζαντινούς καιρούς,
κείται στους πρόποδες του όρους Βίτσι. Διαθέτει εντυπωσιακή υφαντουργική
παράδοση, εάν την επισκεπτόσουν τον 19ο αιώνα, θα νόμιζες – από πλευράς
βιομηχανικής ανάπτυξης – ότι βρίσκεσαι στο Μάντσεστερ.” (Kidonia, inhab-
ited since Byzantine times, lies at the foot of the Vitsi mountain, somewhere
between Kastoria and Florina. It has always been an important textile centre, even
in the 19th century when it was comparable to Manchester in regard to its indus-
trial development). Its fall began only after World War Two.
104
Ibidem, p. 71. Papapa ingeniously uses later the image of the earthworm
in order to present Avlamis to the town’s inhabitants (p. 129). The (former) writer
is supposed to be, due to his profession, “ένας γιγάντιος ξεωσκώληξ: ποκανίζει
την πργαματικότητα, ρουφάει τις ιστορίες των ανθρώπων, τις επεξεργάζεται
– όχι με τα έντεα αλλά με το μυαλό του – και τις μετατρέπει σε τέχνη.” (a huge
earthworm: who digs through reality, sucks in stories of people, transforms them
– not in his intestines but in his head – and makes them art).
105
Ibidem, p. 21-22.
216 Chapter 5
treated by the author with a disturbingly high level of granularity,

like in the following fragment, describing – again – the meat of the
white deer:
Μόλις άρχισε να ροδίζει, ο χώρος μοσχοβόλησε. Ένα άρωμα

θεσπέσιο μας μάγεψε ακαριαία όλους. Μας άρπαξε απ’ τα ρου-
θούνια και μας πήγε στον παράδεισο. Θυμάμαι κάθε κλάσμα
του δευτερολέπτου – πως κόπηκε το κρέας σε κομμάτια και σερ-
βιρίστηκε στα πιάτα, πώς άνθισε το στόμα μου με την πρώτη
μπουκιά… Το άσπρο ελάφι δεν είναι για χόρταση – δυο πιρου-
νιές να φας, έχεις νικήσει τη βαρύτητα, τη φθορά, τη μιζέρια της
ανθρώπινης ύπαρξης… Ίπτασαι!106
When only [the meat] started to crimson [on the frying tin], the
whole place started to smell wonderful. The magical savour over-
took us all. It took us by our noses and led us to paradise. I remem-
ber the passing of every second – as the meat was being cut Into
pieces and placed on plates, as my palate flowered with the first
morsel... You do not eat white deer to your fill. Instead, you use
your fork twice and you have already won, over burdens, corrup-
tion, and the poverty of human existence. You start to fly!
The deer, the animal that is, looks very pretty and innocent.
It lives only in the forests surrounding Kidonia – and somewhere
north of the polar circle.107 The protagonist has just once the occa-
sion to meet it in the flesh: in the hotel’s kitchen when he lives. This
is exactly the specimen that is supposed to be served. Before this,
however, Avlamis has to kill it himself, which is not easy, because:
[α]δυνατώ – μου είναι απλώς αδύνατον – να αποδώσω με λέξεις

την ομορφιά του. Είχε τα βελούδινα μάτια του κόσμου. Το στιλ-
πνότερο τρίχωμα. Το πιο χορευτικό βάδισμα. Και ήταν στ’ αλή-
θεια κάτασπρο, εκτυφλωτικά λευκό, με μιαν ελάχιστη μονάχα
κανελιά γόνατο. [...] Ένα μπιμπερό βρέθηκε – δίχως εγώ να
πάρω πώς χαμπάρι – στο χέρι του Παπαπά. Σε σύγκριση με το
άσπρο του ελαφιού, το γάλα του έμοιαζε κιτρινισμένο.108
I am not able -simply not – to put its beauty into words. It had the
most velvet eyes in the world. The most gleaming hair. The most
106
Ibidem, p. 124.
107
Ibidem, p. 22.
108
Ibidem, p. 118-119.
dancing step. And it was bedazzlingly white, with just one little
spot, like a touch of a paint brush, on its knee [...] A bottle with
a dummy – how, I do not know – appeared in Papapa’s hand. In
comparison, with the whiteness of the deer, milk seemed yellowish.
Chomenidis’s book is a collection of unusual stories that are

jointed to form a plot, that come from one another, that interlock
or contradict. Here lies the weakness of the text, which is in fact
an anthology of dialogues where Minas listens to stories or tells
them himself. However the protagonist is a (former) writer and
there Chomenidis’s reader has the opportunity to learn from the
narrator’s lips as well as from many other characters some ideas
of the author concerning unrealized books or views on literature
in general: its place in life and its practising. One of the women
that appeared in the protagonist’s life, is strongly opposed to writ-
ing down experiences, because it cannot be done properly: love,
especially, is impossible to put on paper, as it would be blasphe-
mous to try to immortalize it and conserve it. Its written version is
a kind of a “parallel reality”, alien, biased, false.109 Literature – says
Papapa in another conversation they have – is not to be taken lit-
erally – and the same applies to films and theatre plays. Its func-
tion is different: “Ο κόσμος εκτονώνεται μέσα απ’ τα πάθη των
φανταστικών ηρώων” (People let off steam through the sufferings
and the passions of fictional protagonists).110 And literature is not,
as Minas had once thought – about looking for truth.111 Literature is
more than that for him, as one of his friends tells him, it is a shield
against madness. Maybe this is a fragment when the author’s per-
sonal life has its voice: Chomenidis has tragically lost his little son
in an accident.112
109
Ibidem, p. 180-181.
110
Ibidem, p. 186.
111
Ibidem, p. 144.
112
Cf. interview with Chomenidis by K. Bakogianni Χρίστος Χωμενίσης
κατά μετρίων (Christos Chomenidis in different measurements), “Καθημερινή”
28/03/2016 (text in the web issue of the newspaper at http://www.kathimerini.
gr/854593/article/proswpa/synentey3eis/xrhstos-xwmenidhs-kata-metriwn,
DOA: 2/12/2016).
218 Chapter 5
Εφόσον ο κόσμος τον είχε τραγικά διαψεύσει, εφόσον του ειχε

πριονίσει το σημαντικότερο σημείο στήριξης, την πίστη στον
γονιό του, ο Μήνας θα επινοούσε τον κόσμο από την αρχή. Θα
έπλαθε έναν δικό του κόσμο. Δύο δρόμοι ανοίγονταν μπροστά
του; η τρέλα και η λογοτεχνία. Ακολούθησε τον δεύτερο. […]
Η τρέλα σε απομονώνει. Την τέχνη τη μοιράζεσαι. Ο Μήνας δεν
κρατούσε, από παιδί, τίποτα σχεδόν για τον εαυτό του.113
Because the world has bitterly deceived him, because it deprived

him of the most important fulcrum, Minas decided to create the
world anew. To create his own world. Two roads opened before
him: madness and literature. He chose the second one [...] Madness
isolates you, art makes you share. And Minas had never kept, since
his childhood, anything for himself.
In the one of the most important, climactic fragments of the

novel Minas speaks of the great revelation that was granted to him
after months of complete creative drought, of a vision that would
give him the work of his life. Through the lips of his protagonist
Chomenidis ridicules the fever and frenzy of creating:
Βρισκόμουν ύπνου και ξύπνου – είχα μισοξυπνήσει, επειδή με

πίεζε η κύστη μου – όταν συνέλαβα ένα μυθιστόρημα-πόταμο.
Μια πολυφωνική σύνθεση. Ένα ψηφιδωτό της ανθρώπινης
φύσης. Εκείνο θα ‘ταν το μεγάλο μου έργο! Το αριστούργημά
μου. Ό,τι είχα και δεν είχα γράψει θα έβρισκε στις σελίδες του
την ολοκλήρωση και τη δικαίωση του. Συνέλαβα – για να πω
χωρίς ψευτοσεμνότητες – μια διαφορετική ματιά στον κόσμο!114
I was located somewhere halfway between being asleep and awake

– that is I was half-awake because of my bladder – when I invented
a great novel that would float like a river. A polyphonic compo-
sition. a mosaic of human nature. It would be my greatest piece,
a masterpiece! Everything I had written before and what I had not
written, would find fulfilment and justification on its pages. I was
able to look at the world with a different eye – I say this without
any false modesty.
113
Χ.Α. Χωμενίδης, Νεαρό άσπρο ελάφι, p. 250-251.
114
Ibidem, p. 275.
Unfortunately, this story concludes with the fact that because

of unpleasant circumstances (again!) the protagonist forgets what
this novel, this masterpiece would be about.
Νέαρο άσπρο ελάφι is certainly less fantastic from the point
of view of convention, and at the same time more personal in con-
tent than Ο κόσμος στα μέτρα του. But to a certain degree it is also
a novel about Greece, but presented in not such a covert way. The
little town of Kidonia is a potential Greece, a Greece that should be
strived for or maybe should be avoided. The characteristic that the
crisis that has stifled the country for several years is in this novel
– written in 2014 and 1015 – present directly in just one sentence.
One of the protagonists commenting on Kidonia’s economy says
“Καμιά κρίση δεν μας τρομάζει εμάς!” (We fear no crisis!).115 Are
not these arrogant words the fulfilment of the Greek dream to be
able to utter such a phrase in a reality haunted by insecurity and
bleak perspectives, is not Kidonia a dream of a safe haven?
Various other – and admittedly not frequent – remarks on the
state of Greek are present marginally and often in form of stereo-
types: when one mentions funeral laments, the weepers must come
undoubtedly from the Mani peninsula.116 These few spots where
the characters comment on Greek society are mostly connected
with the narrator’s childhood: they refer to the late 1970s and 1980s,
they are short, stinging or even insulting. For example Avlamis’s
sister, disillusioned with her homeland and getting ready for emi-
gration with no intention to return had a custom of calling Greece
(Ελλάδα) ‘Asseece’ (Κωλλάδα).117 In another short fragment the
narrator shortly comments on the “golden” 1990s:
Η Ελλάδα του 1997 – και για αρκετά χρόνια αργότερα – διατε-

λούσε σε μαζική φαντασίωση. Οι κάτοικοί της την είχαν συλ-
λήβδην ψωνίσει. Μικροϋπάλληλοι τζογάριζαν το κομπόδεμά
τους στο χρηματιστήριο, μελετούσαν – ανάβοντας πούρα στην
115
Ibidem, p. 132.
116
Ibidem, p. 141. One of characteristic features of Mani folk culture are
long, complicated, improvised dirges (‘μοιρολόι’), sung – usually to order – by
professional funeral weepers Cf. M. Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition,
Lanham, MD 2002.
117
Χ.Α. Χωμενίδης, Νεαρό άσπρο ελάφι, p. 135.
220 Chapter 5
παραλία – οικονομικές εφημερίδες και παρίσταναν τους επεν-

δύτες. Τύποι που δεν είχαν δει εκ γενετής χαρά στα σκέλια τους
μόστραραν ξαφνικά για Δον Ζουάν, κυκλοφορούσαν έναντι
πινακίου φακής δίμετρες Ρωσίδες. Ο περιπτεράς έστελνε τα
ζωντόβολα παιδιά του σε βρεταννικά πανεπιστήμια. Ο περί-
εργος της γειτονιάς πήγαινε για σεξουαλικό τουρισμό στην
Άπω Ανατολή. Οι μύτες των ανθρώπων είχαν σηκωθεί στον
ουρανό.118
The Greece of 1997 – and several years after – lived in a mass fan-
tasy. Its inhabitants believed the vision with no reservations. Small
shopkeepers gambled their savings on the stock-market, they stud-
ied – while smoking a cigar on a beach – economic newspapers and
pretended to be investors. Guys that since their birthday had not
have any success with women, suddenly became like Don Juan and
with no effort seduced Russian women that were two metres tall.
An owner of a news-stand could send his kids to British universi-
ties. A neighbourhood freak went for sex-tourism in the Far East.
Everyone swaggered and the sky was no limit.
Big time politics, so often present in the former Chomenidis’s

texts is almost completely absent. The only contact with this world
is in the person of a congenial minister who Minas meets on a ferry,
but the meeting ends abruptly119 and brings no development to the
plot – which may be a part of a game Chomenidis plays with his
readers: a game of form.
Similarly to Το κόσμος στα μέτρα του, in Νεαρό άσπρο ελάφι
Chomwenidis does not allow his readers to catch their breath. In the
story about Agios readers always have to be on guard: they are led
down the road between what is true and historical and what is false
and fictional, between an authentic and fantastic Greece. In the next
novel Chomenidis chooses to shake up its form and offer an unpre-
dictable brew of conventions: from a slapstick comedy, through an
idyllic romance to tragedy and even horror, from descriptions of
118
Ibidem, p. 171.
119
Ibidem, p. 282-285. The politician simply is shortly satirized and in a pun-
gent way, shown as a sybarite who thinks that he knows everything (but, as Avla-
mis admits, the minister has read his books and proves himself able to remember
their content) and is able to do everything. As the conversation transforms quickly
in an anthology of advice given by the politician to the writer – on how to write –
the protagonist quickly excuses himself, and leaves.
moon-struck and romantic love to scenes that depict sexual inter-

course literally and naturalistically. One of the few reviews that
were published called Chomenidis’s text – maybe due to the lack of
any better term – “psychedelic”.120 It is a word for many occasions,
one that would cover up confusion or misunderstanding, but in the
face of the carousel of incredible stories that Chomenidis proposes
that the reader can just lie back and take a ride with its writer – and
equally stoic narrator.
Chomenidis’s tactics have a unique character: on the one hand
he constructs vast, fantastic sceneries, on the other the ultimate goal
is to confront Greek reality. He seemingly avoids Greekness only to
look at it from afar, from a safe(r) distance. He does not submerge
his protagonists in the direct, Greek experience,121 but he makes his
readers look into a distorted mirror he set up to see the problems of
contemporary society. One should expect nothing less from a man
who for years has taken part in political discourse as a columnist
in newspapers and social media, he is famous for his distinctly
expressed views. His detachment toward Greekness is rather elu-
sive but thanks to conscious and advanced experiments with a vari-
ety of forms and topos he has enriched Modern Greek letters. It is
probably one of the reasons Chomenidis is virtually unknown out-
side of Greece122 – his books, despite the fact they attest to his rich
and original imagination and fictionalization abilities, stubbornly
come back to Greek themes, and mainly to the current, contempo-
rary, much-discussed ones. In order to read his texts with under-
standing and delight, a reader must have a high level of “compe-
tence in Greekness” or – probably – simply should be Greek.
120
Π. Σπίνου, Χωμενίδης αισθησιακός (Sensitive Chomenidis), web peri-
odical “ΕυΣυν” 30/03/2016 (http://www.efsyn.gr/arthro/homenidis-aisthisiakos,
DOA: 2/12/2016).
121
Although his 2018 novel Ο φοίνικας (Phoenix), which concentrates
(under thin cover) on Angelos Sikelianos and his Delphic experiments, and is bus-
tling with historical figures, has a much more direct touch with the 20th century
Greek history. Cf. more detailed commentary on p. 241.
122
None of his books were translated to English and only three to French,
two to Hebrew and one to Italian.
Conclusion.
Back to Greece
No picture, no sketch of the condition of contemporary Modern

Greek literature is complete without a reference to the present
social and political situation in Greece, especially now, when dur-
ing the last decade (since 2009) an economic crisis – that is primarily
economic – has substantially changed the literary landscape. A web
portal has recently published1 a comics strip by Arkas,2 depicting
a room, where a father, dressed in a coat and a winter cap, sits
in an armchair. Beside him stands his son, also dressed in a coat,
scarf a cap. He points at a radiator and asks: “Dad, what is that?”
Through his drawing Arkas, while commenting on yet another rise
in heating prices (the last few winters were unusually harsh for the
Greeks) in his usual sarcastic manner states two of the most impor-
tant facts about the Greek crisis: that it has lasted a long time and
that it has shocked Greek society to its core, depriving it of its basic
needs.
As has already been stated, literature in Greece must – in the
view of many Greek creators and recipients – correspond to what
the Greeks like to call “Greek reality”. Experimenting with its form
and playing games with readers, as well as thematic venturing into
the realms of the fantastic: future, non-mimetic and alternative,
appears only to a limited degree and is in fact restricted to the mar-
gins of literary phenomena.
1
News web portal “Protothema”, 18/10/2018, https://www.protothema.
gr/greece/article/830736/o-arkas-gia-to-petrelaio-thermansis-baba-ti-einai-auto/
(DOA: 19/10/2018).
2
See p. 175.
224 Conclusion
Such an attitude and such a resulting situation is very much

different, for example, in Poland, where literature seems to boldly
venture further and further and is less missionary. As an example
let me point to a recently published novel that belongs to the pop-
ular current of alternate history (alt-hist), a subgenre of speculative
literature (SF). In his novel Czterdzieści i cztery (Forty and four, 2016)
Krzysztof Piskorski draws a vision of the world where Napoleon
Bonaparte manages to reverse the results of the Napoleonic wars,
by winning the battle of Leipzig. The greatest Polish poets of the
19th century, Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki, the voices of
Poland under partition, remain poets in the book, but at the same
time are given important political functions: the first is the head
of the Polish diaspora in Paris, the second is a high official in the
Duchy of Warsaw, a satellite country of France where the old Józef
Poniatowski is the governor (Poniatowski in reality died in the Bat-
tle of Leipzig, while securing the retreat of the main Napoleonian
army).3 What interests me here the most is the reinterpretation of
the fates of various recognized historical characters, already well-
known classes from classes in the schoolroom: their new, fictional
biographies are shocking or funny at times. Moreover, Piskor-
ski quotes fragments of several well-known texts, mainly poems,
belonging to the very core of the Polish literary canon, but with
cosmetic changes that correspond to his world-building. A descrip-
tion of the struggle between Polish and Russian troops on the out-
skirts of Warsaw in 1830 (as described in Reduta Ordona / Ordon’s
Redoubt by Mickiewicz) in Piskorski’s variant takes into consider-
ation the existence of ether-driven weapons. Such textual additions,
3
There is another difference. In the Forty-and-Four world, a new discovery
comes into being: ether, the “energy of the void” (whatever that means), a dis-
covery that, due to its versatility replaces electricity (and puts an end to the bud-
ding research on electricity), and is a powerful material to be used in weapons
and allows the opening of portals to parallel worlds. Piskorski combines, in one
text, the idea of parallel and alternative worlds and the whole scene is filled with
steampunk aesthetics (Steampunk is an SF subgenre that places the action of a text
within a world, which emerges from the 19th century which was chiefly Victorian.
It is characterised by aesthetics and sophisticated technology based on the steam
engine. The first steampunk novel was published in 1990: it was The Difference
Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.) At some point Piskorski even intro-
duces sapient alien species.
Back to Greece 225
though chiefly humorous, allow readers to gain a fresh perspec-

tive on monumental historical characters and texts, but at the same
time lets them take part in the argument, at the historiographical
level, concerning interpretations of national history, its lost pos-
sibilities and overlooked turning points.4 There are, in fact, many
more writers, mainly those writing within the SF convention, that,
through radical tropes, discuss the meaning of Polishness (polskość)
and contend with national myths. Jacek Dukaj, at first in the Xavras
Wyżryn5 tackles the issue from various angles: futuristic, alternate,
post-apo, while in the later Lód (Ice, 2007) he invents a world where,
probably due to an alien intrusion, history literally freezes at the
beginning of the 20th century resulting in no World War One and
consequently no independent Poland. Szczepan Twardoch analyses
such issues from his particular point of view, that of a Silesian: in
Wieczny Grunwald (Eternal Grunwald, 2013) he draws on an oneiric
vision of a perpetual, metaphysical German-Polish conflict. Very
recently, Ziemowit Szczerek, who experimented with novels more
or less disguised as non-fiction (like Przydzie Mordor i nas zje, czyli
tajna historia Słowian / Mordor will come and will eat us or the secret
history of Slavs, 2013) lets his imagination run free in the futuristic
Siwy dym (Gray smoke, 2018), showing Poland in the near future,
distorted, radical, absurd, where many liminal visions for the shape
of the country and for the shape of its identity came true, and all of
them at once.
In the aforementioned article, Jerzy Jarzębski pointed at the
success of science fiction in contemporary Polish prose, because
a number of authors have been able to make use of this genre to
give sense to a rapidly changing world, and for some readers it
replaces the great novels of past transition periods (like the regain-
ing of Polish independence in 1918).6 The last novel of Piskorski’s
(as well as the other similar one referred to above) are intended as
4
Many plot devices used by Piskorski invoke earlier versions of the recent
ideas of writers such as William Gibson, Terry Pratchett (“Long Earth” series), and
Ian R. MacLeod, but Piskorski’s combinations of them are both original and brave.
5
The collection is subtitled ...i inne fikcje narodowe (...and other national fic-
tions). The story Xavras Wyżryn was first published in 1997, while the complete
publication of the collection was in 2004.
6
J. Jarzębski, Realizm podszyty fantastyką, p. 107.
226 Conclusion
an answer to the degradation of patriotic values. These are becom-

ing jaded through public discourse as well as because they are used
as weapons against political adversaries, and not as a bonding fac-
tor. Simultaneously, these texts are entertaining, and to a point dan-
gerous: they allow readers to daydream about a mighty Republic
of Poland (or the Kingdom, for that matter) while applying tropes
learned from the school literary canon and from political debates of
the type broadcast by the mass media.
The Greeks are evidently not interested in elaborate literature
games,7 they do not ponder on the alternative fates of the Greek
Revolution, nor on what might have happened during or resulted
from the Asia Minor campaign in 1922 had it not been a catastrophe,
nor are they interested in applying a bolder perspective on a Byz-
antine empire that might somehow have survived the onslaught
of the Ottomans. They tend to fantasize even less now, when they
face the dramatic events that have been unravelling for the last dec-
ade. Surely future history books will attempt to point to the exact
moment when the crisis was revealed by politicians to the Greek
general public: perhaps it will be the speech of the Prime Minis-
ter of Greece, Giorgos Papandreou (son and grandson of Greek
PMs), which he gave in April 2010 in Kastelorizo, the most remote
Greek island. In a form characteristic of Greek political rhetoric
he did not refrain from using language full of pathos, making ref-
erences to antiquity or literary allusions. Among other things, he
mentioned “incomprehensible mistakes, criminal decisions and
a storm of problems” (τα ακατανόητα λάθη, τις παραλείψεις, τις
εγκληματικές επιλογές και την καταιγίδα των προβλημάτων)8
7
Although there are instances, like a novel written by four authors of the
Generation of the 1930 Α. Τερζάκης, Σ. Μυριβήλης, Η. Βενέζης, Μ. Καραγάτσης,
Το μυθιστόρημα των τεσσάρων (The novel of four), Athens 1958. All the authors
agreed not to talk about the plot. They claimed they just read a chapter written by
their predecessor and on its basis they wrote their own. They were not the first:
such attempts, of sequential or collaborative writing, had already been under-
taken in the 19th century, in the USA and Spain.
Forty years later another group of authors, inspired by this literary perfor-
mance, wrote Το παιχνίδι των τεσσάρων (The game of four, 1998).
8
The text is based on “Ελευτεροτυπία” newspaper (23/4/2010) transcript
(http://tinyurl.com/hxb7fbq, DOA: 1/12/2016).
Back to Greece 227
that his political crew inherited from the former one. Greece was, in
his understanding, “a ship about to sink” (ένα σκάφος έτοιμο να
βυθιστεί), but as he continued:
Από την πρώτη μέρα σηκώσαμε τα μανίκια και με σκληρή

δουλειά βαλθήκαμε να ανατρέψουμε αυτό το αρνητικό κλίμα.
[…] Μετά από έναν πραγματικό μαραθώνιο, διεκδικήσαμε και
καταφέραμε να οδηγηθούμε σε μια ισχυρή απόφαση της Ε.Ε.
για την στήριξη της χώρας μας, με ένα πρωτόγνωρο, για την
ιστορία και τα δεδομένα της Ε.Ε., μηχανισμό.9
From the first moment, we rolled up our sleeves and, through hard
work, tried to overcome these unfavourable conditions. After a true
marathon we successfully got over these difficulties and managed
to secure a strong decision from the European Union on helping
our country that involved mechanisms unprecedented in history
and in statistics.
Closing his speech he referred to Homer:
Βρισκόμαστε σε μια δύσκολη πορεία, μια νέα Οδύσσεια για

τον Ελληνισμό. Όμως, πλέον, ξέρουμε το δρόμο για την Ιθάκη
και έχουμε χαρτογραφήσει τα νερά. Μπροστά μας έχουμε ένα
ταξίδι με απαιτήσεις από όλους μας, αλλά με μια νέα συλλο-
γική συνείδηση και κοινή προσπάθεια θα φθάσουμε εκεί ασφα-
λείς, πιο σίγουροι, πιο δίκαιοι, πιο περήφανοι.10
We are [found] on a difficult road, during a new Odyssey for Hel-

lenism. However, we know our way to Ithaca and we have drawn
a map of the seas. There is a demanding journey ahead of each of
us, but – showing new collective consciousness and undertaking
a common effort, we will reach it safely, becoming more self-confi-
dent, more just, more proud.
Indeed, the Greek public debt grew so much that it could no

longer be serviced by the state budget. The economic data, both
those that allowed Greece to join the eurozone and those that sup-
ported the fiction of the welfare state and of the good condition
of public finances, turned out to be, at least, partly falsified. The
9
Ibidem.
10
Ibidem.
228 Conclusion
burden of the lavish investments in infrastructure that were real-

ized on account of the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens (and that
fell into disuse shortly after) only worsened the economic situation
and the bubble which had been inflated since the beginning of the
century burst with a loud bang.
Greece, from 2010 until 2018, received financial support man-
aged by a so-called “troika”.11 The bail-out programmes, accord-
ingly for 110 billion, 130 billion and 86 billion, on the one hand
saved the finances of the country and rescued Greece from going
into default, but on the other meant the widespread introduction of
the policy of austerity. Consecutive governments, first formed by
the Nea Dimokratia conservative party and then by SYRIZA, a left-
ist movement that filled the void after the PASOK party’s disgrace,
were forced to introduce frugality on a large scale. Wages were cut,
pensions reduced, a number of taxes increased, and a number of
new ones introduced. A part of public property was privatised, sold
mostly to foreign investors (for instance Port of Piraeus, the largest
one in the country, was taken over by a Chinese company). More-
over, governments committed themselves to fighting against cor-
ruption, tax evasion and the grey market. Despite this, the situation
did not improve as fast as it was supposed to. Three bail-out pack-
ages or rather the demands that were tied to them, pauperised the
country (its GNP shrank by 25% from the beginning of the crisis),12
made unemployment grow substantially, principally among the
young, provoked a wave of migration and universally depressed
the moods of Greek citizens, as – for example – the fact that the
repayment of the sums borrowed will last and burden the country’s
budget until at least 2060.13
11
“Troika” consists of representatives from Euopean Commision, European
Central Bank and International Monetary Fund. It may be a derogatory term,
relating to infamous “special troikas”, an institution from early Soviet area, that
were condemning people to harsh sentences in express judgements.
12
Daily chart: the agony of Greece, “The Economist” 4/5/2015 (http://www.
economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/03/daily-chart-0, DOA: 1/12/2016).
13
M. Khan, Can Greece pay really its debt?, “Financial Times”, 23/5/2016
(https://tinyurl.com/gukjk86, DOA: 1/12/2016).
Back to Greece 229
The negative economic situation influenced social standings.

People grew poorer, frustrated and desperate.14 The first years of
the crisis brought numerous public protests, strikes, grass roots
social movements intended to express anger, but also they pro-
duced organized self-help. In recent years the intensity of actions
has significantly decreased. Another negative effect was the rad-
icalisation of political moods. As well as the SYRIZA party, now
in power, but representing once, along with the Greek Communist
Party (KKE) a rather thin slice of the radical left there is an extreme
rightist party Golden Dawn (Χρυσή Αυγή), a nationalistic or even
– for some – fascist movement that has attracted around 10% of sup-
port. The polarisation of moods was not helped by the immigration
crisis that culminated in the summer of 2015 when daily, the islands
in the Eastern Aegean accepted rafts or dinghies with refugees and
immigrants from the Near and Middle East. Most of them then
embarked on long journeys on foot through Europe while others
were – and still are – detained in camps called hot-spots. Though no
outbursts of xenophobia or xenophobic attacks have been observed,
the sheer presence of immigrants is an additional burden on the
crisis-stricken country.
Troubles touched every sphere of Greek life, making it worse, as
did the uncertain financial situation, which made them spend less.
The book market was seriously affected and many famous book-
shops were closed, while many others downsized their premises.
In September 2016 the Eleftheroudakis family closed their flagship
bookshop on Panepistimiou street in central Athens, a bookshop that
before the crisis was housed in a seven-floor office building.15 Some
important publishing houses, like “Ελληνικά γράμματα” went
bankrupt, others reduced their publishing schedules. The National
14
Cf. e.g. the report of the social sciences institute διαΝΕΟσις on poverty in
Greece: http://www.dianeosis.org/research/poverty_greece/, DOA: 2/12/2016. See
also D.M. Knight, Ch. Stewart, Ethnographies of Austerity: Temporality, Crisis and
Affect in Southern Europe, „History and Anthropology” 27 (2016), no. 1, p. 1-18.
15
Information taken from the Greek news and opinion Internet portal pro-
tagon.gr: https://tinyurl.com/z989jm2 (DOA: 1/12/2016). Since then, there has
been some hope for a change: in November 2016 a “Book Plus” point was opened
at the same spot and Eleutheroudakis is to come back to its former premises – in
some form.
230 Conclusion
Book Centre (E.KE.BI.) was closed (or rather absorbed by a bigger

entity: The Hellenic Cultural Foundation, ΕΙΠ) regardless the fact
that in the years 1994-2013 multi-layered research was conducted
on the book market and on readership, it supported and developed
various databases on books and their authors, and on translations
of Modern Greek literature into foreign languages, it animated the
Greek book world through events and monetary grants.
On the other hand the theme of the crisis has become an impor-
tant motif of Modern Greek contemporary literature. For Greek writ-
ers, the current reality is so inspiring (tragic, but inspiring) that there
is no way not to write about it. Published in 2016, Alexios Panselinos’s
book Κρυφή πόρτα (Hidden door) analyses the slow decline of an
ageing man whose collapse corresponds to that of a city which gives
in slowly to atrophy and ruin. Panselinos’s wife, Loukia Dervi, a year
earlier, issued a collection of short stories, whose protagonists are
emigrants and refugees – from Greece and to Greece.16 An individual
in crisis (mostly personal) is the object of interest for Makis Tsitas,
who, in a tragi-comic novel (Μάρτυς μου ο Θεός, 2013), describes the
decline of an ordinary man, Mr Chrisovalandis, a cognitively chal-
lenged, ailing 50-year-old beset by work and having a toxic family.
The protagonist’s fall coincides with society’s decadence, while it
keeps up good appearances. The text, by Tsitas, gained the distinc-
tion, in 2013, of winning the European Prize in Literature, and the
next year was adapted for the stage. While his book was read as
a classic in-crisis text, it was written, in fact, years beforehand, and as
such constitutes a literary prophecy of the times to come.
Contemporary problems are raised with an ironic tilt by Dimi-
tris G. Magriplis, who in a peculiar collection of micro-short stories,
(μικροδιηγήματα) under the meaningful title Καναπεδάκια της
απεργίας (Sofas of unemployment)17 allows his narrators to formu-
late their thoughts on the crisis explicitly: “In the old days, when we
all had [credit] cards and were spending money without limits...”
(Στα παλιά χρόνια, τότε που όλοι είχαμε κάρτες και ξοδεύαμε
ασύστολα…).18 Or:
16
Λ. Δερβή, Αλλού, στ’ πουθενά (Somewhere else, nowhere), Athens 2015.
17
Δ.Γ. Μαγριπλής, Καναπεδάκια της απεργίας, Athens 2016.
18
Ibidem, p. 39.
Back to Greece 231
Πρέπει κάτι να καταναλώσω. Το νιώθω σαν ανάγκη, ειδικά όταν

βλέπω ειδήσεις. Όλη αυτή η εθνική προσπάθεια μου δημιουργεί
ένα είδος ασφάλειας και μια διάθεση για ένα νέο ξεκίνημα. Όλα
θα πάνε καλά. Χρήματα υπάρχουν.19 Όσο και αν αντέδρασαν οι
εταίροι, στο τέλος θα μας προικίσουν με δις. Θα έχουμε για να
φάνε και οι κότες.20
I have to consume something. I have such a need, especially when

I watch the news. All this all-nation effort brings a kind of safe feel-
ing and a mood for a new start. All will end well. The money exists.
Regardless of how our partners will react, eventually they will
throw us money. Everyone will eat one’s fill.
Manos Kondoleon wrote a young adult (or – more exactly –

a “cross-over”) novel21 about a girl, Stefania, from a crisis stricken
family: as a result of financial troubles her parents get a divorce,
her mother starts a new family, while her father loses the fam-
ily business and succumbs to depression. Stefania abruptly loses
her childhood and has to independently find her way to adult-
hood. Christos Oikonomou wrote a collection of short stories,22
concentrated mostly on the hardship of a life influenced by crisis
(hunger, unpaid debts, exorbitant taxes, demonstrations, protests
and quests for money: through theft, beggary and lending from
friends). His stories proved representative enough to be translated
into English as a sort of “visiting card” of the crisis-influenced
literary form (Something will happen, you’ll see, trans. by Karen
Emmerich, 2016).23
19
The allusion to infamous words “Λεφτά υπάρχουν” (Money exist or
there are money), uttered during the election campaign by Giorgos Papandreou
in September 2009, before he became the first “crisis” prime minister.
20
Ibidem, p. 87.
21
M. Κοντολέων, Αμαρτωλή πόλη (Sinful city), Athens 2016.
22
Χ. Οικονόμου, Κάτι θα γίνει, θα δεις (Something will happen, you’ll see),
Athens 2010.
23
This cursory list could be much longer and contain ,for instance, novels by
L. Pityri Όλγα ή τίποτα (Olga or nothing, 2013), about Londonian and Athenian
hardships or an unusual crime story Μαύρη μπίρα (Black beer) by V. Danelis
(2011) about street musicians, poverty and suicide, as well as books and stories by
Nikos Panagiotopoulos, Iordanis Tsakmalis or Sotiris Dimitriou. Other forms are
also present, like several anthologies of comic strips by the most renowned Greek
newspaper cartoonists. Also a collection of crisis-inspired poetry (100+1 ιστορίες
232 Conclusion
Is it proper to speak already about a new literary genre – the

“literature of crisis”?24 Two scholars, Natasa Lemos and Eleni Yan-
nakakis, in the introduction to an anthology of critical texts on
crisis, place such novels earlier, in the time of Great Depressions,
but mainly the one in the USA at the beginning of the 21st cen-
tury – after the World Trade Centre attacks, as well as after the 2008
financial crisis (“post-Lehman novel”).25 They doubt, whether such
a variant was moulded in Greece and if so – they ponder on the
quality of the texts on crisis.26 Another critic, Alexis Ziras, tries to
establish if behind the economic and social crisis there is also a cri-
sis of the Greek novel. He states at one point that maybe the novel
on crisis should stay in crisis.27 More optimistic was the novelist
Amanda Michalopoulou, who, in an interview for Greek News
Agenda,28 expressed the view that “If we get out of this crisis wiser,
then it will be a great opportunity for self- and social exploration
and revaluation”.
Literature has turned its face to the present, but there are re-is-
sues of texts that were written decades ago, though – surprising
timeless – their message is still intact, for example a short book
by Nikos Dimou, an essayist and photographer, where the text is
composed in the form of roughly 200 aphorisms – The Unhappiness
of Being Greek. These are Dimou’s thoughts on happiness, Greek
της Κρίσης / 100+1 stories of the Crisis) edited by Irini Agapidaki was issued in 2017
– with a prologue by Apostolos Doxiadis (!).
24
Renata Lis in “Dwutygodnik” (online magazine, issue 238, 2018) pro-
claimed the existence of such literature – on the Greek crisis in Polish, starting
with Dionisios Sturis’s non-fiction and partly autobiograhical book Grecja. Gorzkie
pomarańcze (Greece. Bitter oranges, 2013).
25
E.g. S. Faulks, A Week in December, London 2009.
26
N. Lemos, E. Yannakakis, Introduction, [in:] Critical Times, Critical Thoughts:
Contemporary Greek Writers discuss Facts and Fiction, N. Lemos, E. Yannakakis (ed.),
Cambridge 2015, p. 10-11.
27
Α. Ζήρας, Το μυθιστόρημα μπροστά σε μια (ακόμα) κρίση της
αναπαραστατικής του δυνατότητας (A novel facing another crisis of its ability
to represent [reality]), “Αναγνώστης” (web magazine), 16/6/2014 (http://tinyurl.
com/h76mybn, DOA: 2/12/2016).
28
Reading Greece: Amanda Michalopoulou on Literature’s Innate Quest for
Form..., interviewed by Athina Rossoglou for Greek News Agenda (offical organ
for the General Secretariat for News and Media), https://tinyurl.com/michalopou-
lou-on-crisis (DOA: 3/10/2018).
Back to Greece 233
reality and on being Greek he had them while living in the time of
the junta. He published it in 1974 but now it has became popular
again. He points out in the epilogue written for the new re-edition:
On Wednesday, 10th of September 2013 the newspaper “Ta Nea”

was published with my book’s title on its front page. To justify its
decision, the next day the newspaper wrote: “We came to the con-
clusion that there was no need to explain the words of yesterday’s
issue’s front page: The Unhappiness of Being Greek. The words
referred to the well-known book by Nikos Dimou [...] composed of
thoughtful aphorisms, that – laconically and without unnecessary
adornment – describe and value the birthmarks of Greek reality,
traits that were once understood as signs of Greek peculiarity and
that, generally speaking, led the country to crisis, depression and
onto the edge of the abyss.29
Moreover, Dimou’s book has become popular abroad: it has been

translated recently into German, French and Polish. But arguably
the most striking instance to exemplify the relation of literature
to the situation in the country is the series of detective novels by
Petros Markaris, one of the most popular authors in Greece in this
genre. The cycle revolves around the life and accomplishments of
an unassuming Greek policeman, Kostas Charitos, a typical Athe-
nian. His well-organised life is disrupted again and again by con-
secutive crimes he has to solve and he is regularly forced, by Marka-
ris, to face the dangers that at a given moment are most notorious
in Greek public life: 17N terrorists,30 nationalists from the Golden
Dawn party or – most recently – criminals that work within, and
exploit, the Greek crisis.
The most notable of Charitos books are those gathered together
in “The crisis trilogy” (η τριλογία του κρίσεως), consisting of the
following volumes: Ληξιπρόθεσμα δάνεια (Unrequited debts, 2010),
29
N. Dimou, Nieszczęście bycia Grekiem (On the Unhappines of being Greek),
trans. P. Kordos, Wrocław 2016, p. 90-91.
30
Gr. “Επαναστατική Οργάνωση 17 Νοεμβρίου” (Revolutionary Organi-
sation 17th November) – “urban guerilla”, regarded as terrorists by Greek govern-
ment, acting between 1975 and 2002, 17N committed more than a hundred attacks
on the citizens of Greece, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the USA. I.K. Lekea,
17N’s Philosophy of Terror: An Analysis of the 17 November Revolutionary Organiza-
tion, Santa Barbara, CA 2014, p. 153-156.
234 Conclusion
Περαίωση (Erasure, 2011) and Ψωμί, παιδεία, ελευθερία (Bread,

education and freedom, 2012). The part of the plot involving detec-
tive work is rather weak, it is the socio-economic situation which is
put to the fore.31 Charitos, his colleagues and his family experience
the effects of the crisis on every page – there are for example: demon-
strations and city blockades, wages’ and pensions’ cuts, bankrupt-
cies, unemployment, stifling taxation, impoverishment, emigra-
tion, psychological depression and suicide. In the second volume,
devoted to a mysterious “national tax collector” who “erases” tax
evaders with hemlock, there is a strong sub-plot devoted to suicides
among various groups of people (the elderly, youngsters, entrepre-
neurs), who leave explicit suicide notes.32 A striking case is that of
two young people, a couple, who surreptitiously invade the Acrop-
olis archaeological site and cut their veins while lying under the
columns of the Parthenon. The note they left, said:
Είμαστε η Μαρίνα και ο Γιάννης. Η Μαρίνα έχει μεταπτυχι-

ακό στην ψυχολογία και εγώ έκανα ένα μάστερ στην ιστορία.
Η σχέση μας κρατάει πέντε χρόνια. Θέλουμε να παντρευτούμε,
αλλά είμαστε και οι δύο άνεργοι. Η Μαρίνα δούλευε συμβασι-
ούχος σε ίδρυμα, αλλά την απέλυσαν. Εγώ δεν μπόρεσα να βρω
ποτέ δουλειά. Ούτε οι γονείς μας μπορούν πια να μας βοηθή-
σουν. Ο πατέρας μου έκλεισε το παπουτσίδικο που είχε στην
Πατησίων, και ο πατέρας της Μαρίνας έχασε τη δουλειά του
γιατί φαλίρισε η επιχείρηση. Δε βρίσκουμε δουλειά, δεν μπο-
ρούμε να ζήσουμε μαζί, και οι γονείς μας δεν μπορούν να μας
συντηρήσουν. Το μόνο που μας μένει είναι η αυτοκτονία. Σκε-
φτήκαμε να αυτοκτονήσουμε στον Παρθενώνα, για να δουν
31
The unprecedented setting, which pushes economic crisis so much to the
front of the plot attracted the attention of scholars. See e.g. P.F. Barbeito, Undoing
His/story: On Fathers, Domesticity and Agency in Petros Markaris’ Crisis Trilogy, [in:]
Greece in Crisis. The Cultural Politics of Austerity, D. Tziovas (ed.), London-New
York 2017, p. 239-255; L . Marcou, De l’anatomie d’un crime à l’anatomie d’un pays :
la « crise grecque » dans les trois derniers romans policiers de Pétros Markaris, “Cahiers
balkaniques” 42 (2014), DOI : 10.4000/ceb.5162.
32
Emilios Solomou in his Το μίσος είναι μισή εκδίκηση divided the book
into five clearly defined plots, marked with letters A to E. One is devoted a recon-
struction of the massacre at Marathon in 1870, the next three deal with the contem-
porary situation in Greece and draw parallels between 19th century brigandage
and 21st century politics. The last one, signified with the letter E, is a collection of
suicide notes of crisis victims.
Back to Greece 235
τουλάχιστον οι αρχαίοι πρόγονοί μας πώς μας κατάντησαν οι

απόγονοί τους. Φειδία, Περικλή, Σωκράτη, πεθαίνουμε για να
μη βλέπουμε τα λαμόγια, τους απόγονούς σας.
Άντε γεια.
Μαρίνα, Γιάννης33
We are Marina and Giannis. Marina has an MA in psychology and

I graduated with a master’s in history. We have been together for
five years. We want to marry, but we are both unemployed. Marina
was a contract worker in a foundation, but she was let go. I was
never able to find work. Neither are our parents able to help us.
My father closed the shoe shop he had it the Patisia district and
Marina’s father lost his job because the company he worked for
went bankrupt. We cannot find a job, we cannot live together and
our parents cannot support us. The only thing that is left is suicide.
We decided to kill ourselves in the Parthenon, so that at least our
ancestors would see where their descendants led us. Pheidias, Per-
icles, Socrates, we die not to see any more these swindlers, your
descendants.
So long.
Marina, Giannis
This fragment clearly shows that Markaris is a skilful artisan of the

word: he is responsible not only for this highly successful criminal
series but also for some of Theodoros Angelopoulos’s film scenarios
and he knows how to manoeuvre in a variety of genres. Therefore
he manages to join seamlessly two themes within one text: the ever
returning question of Greekness, about the relation of the past with
the present (ancestors and descendants) as well as the contempo-
rary economic situation, which is not alien to any Greek.34
33
Π. Μάρκαρης, Περαίωση, Athens 2011, p. 188-189.
34
The last part of his trilogy, published in 2012, ventures into the realm of
the alt-hist genre (See p. 189). Markaris plays a game of prophecies and describes
Greece on the day of the 1st January 2014 when it returns to the drachma, or rather
replaces the euro with the new drachma currency. There is poverty on the streets,
many people are hungry and homeless and ATMs allow the withdrawal of only
50 thousand new drachmas a day (that is 100 euro). In Charitos’s police station the
payment of wages is suspended until April or later.
But Markaris does not stop here with his predictions of the future. One of
the more recent books about Charitos’s adventures, Offshore (2016), describes
236 Conclusion
The consideration of crisis is well recognized by the neohellenist

scholars: the last congress of the European Society of Modern Greek
Studies, organised at the Lund University in October 2018 was devoted
to crises throughout the history, culture and literature of Greece. The
sheer length of the list of topics raised proved the power of various
crises, defined in a number of ways that drove forward, influenced
and – up to a point – gave birth to Greekness in its present shape.
The crisis has not changed one thing in the literary landscape –
the author-oriented attitude of society: Greek writers are still impor-
tant members, not only of cultural, but also of social and political
life. They are usually treated with reverence and their opinions
count. Artemis Leontis, who is interested in the relation between
literature and Greek space and – as naturally follows – in the influ-
ence of literature on non-literary reality, thinks that “[a] historical
overview suggests that literary authors have been vastly important
figures in Greek society. The development of [M]odern Greek liter-
ature, especially poetry, was crucial to the formation of the modern
Greek nation”.35 And there is nothing strange about it – these are the
ones who took up the gauntlet of the perennial topic of Greekness,
Greek identity, the relation of the Greeks towards their culturally
understood space as well as to their past.
Ilias Wrazas states that the writers of the post-war period could
be characterized by their war fighting experience and this experi-
ence was wrought into the struggle for identity.36 The next gener-
ation also managed to localise and make use of its key experience
– the junta and the massacre of students protesting at the Athenian
Technical University. Now, after the 1974 transformation it is more
difficult to have such a singular point of reference: maybe it will be
the crisis that will creatively shakes the present generation of writ-
ers. Or perhaps the wave of criticism that struck the Greeks which
came from their fellow (as they had thought) Europeans.37
a post-crisis Greece where a party comprised of young people seizes power and
attracts investors.
35
A. Leontis, Beyond Hellenicity..., p. 223.
36
I. Wrazas, Zbawca Boga…, p. 9-10.
37
Dimitris Mitropoulos, a Greek scholar living abroad, states that “Greece’s
relationship with its European partners and the West [is] in general often soured;
Back to Greece 237
The last ten years has also marked a great success for the Greek
cinema – films directed by Panos Koutras (Xenia, 2014), Athina
Tsangari (Attenberg, 2010) or Giorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth – 2009
and The Lobster – 2015), have won important awards all around the
globe, while Lanthimos’s latest work, The Favorite (2018), received
ten Academy Awards nominations. The critics talk about the com-
ing of the “new Greek wave” in the “weird” style.38 Similarly, writ-
ers, or at least some of them, would want (and work towards it)
Modern Greek literature to achieve similar acclaim beyond the
Greek borders and overcome the harsh market rules that discrimi-
nate against “small literatures”.39 The writer Soti Triandafyllou con-
fesses, while being interviewed by a literary agent Evangelia Avlo-
[…] Gradually, international sympathy was replaced by scepticism, criticism,

even outright hostility” (D. Mitropoulos, On the Outside Looking in..., p. 190).
38
I. Karkani, Framing the Weird Body in Contemporary Greek Cinema: Dogtooth,
Attenberg, and Alps, “International Journal Of The Image” 7 (2016), no. 3, p. 1-11.
39
Contesting the quoted statements of Jusdanis (cf. p. 15), one may decide
that Greek literature falls into the category of “small literatures” (cf. G. Deleuze,
F. Guattari, R. Brinkle, Nouvelles considerations sur les littératures dites mineures,
“Littératures classiques” 31 [1997], p. 233-247; G. Tihanov, Do «Minor Literatures»
Still Exist? The Fortunes of a Concept in the Changing Frameworks of Literary History,
“Studia Imagologica” 22 [2014], p. 169-190), an expression that is not a strict term,
as Magdalena Pytlak rightly notices (M. Pytlak et al., Małe literatury – stereotyp,
autostereotyp, rzeczywistość: kilka uwag na temat literatur słowiańskich (Small litera-
tures – stereotype, autostereotype, reality: some remarks on Slavic literatures),
[in:] R. Kusek, J. Szeliga-Sanetra (ed.), Spoglądając na stereotyp (Looking at a stere-
otype), Kraków 2014, p. 122). These, as it was wittily put in Polish “wciąż muszą
się tłumaczyć” (word play, as it may mean: “they have to explain themselves”
or “they have to translate themselves”), cf. the title of the meeting Dlaczego małe
literatury wciąż muszą się tłumaczyć?, devoted to Romanian literature during the
Conrad Festival in Kraków in October 2015. Contrary to other small literatures the
Modern Greek one has consonantly to explain itself to native readers while its cre-
ators regard it as a duty to interact with the local reading audience. The audience
abroad is much less significant. (See also G. Jankowicz, A. Manguel, Małe języki,
wielkie literatury. Small Languages, Big Literature, Gdańsk 2017).
That is why – as I have put in more detail (cf. p. 49), in fact only two authors,
Nikos Kazantzakis and Constantine Cavafy have made [a name] outside of
Greece in the last 100 years. There is no-one like Imre Kertész, Ismail Kadare,
Jaume Cabré, Bohumil Hrabal or for that matter Stanisław Lem who conquered
the global imagination and made a lasting mark on the shape of various national,
international and cosmopolitan literatures.
238 Conclusion
niti, to a dilemma that is faced by Greek prose writers who would

also like to cater for non-Greek language readers:
Greece is part of Europe, but remains, merrily and stubbornly, out-

side of the Western club. There are various reasons for this: a differ-
ent religion, mentality, different historical and cultural diplomatic
affiliations. Thus, what is required from Greek literature in order to
be interesting and translatable is nearly impossible: when the sub-
ject matter and writing style are ‘similar’ to the European-American
at large it is not exotic enough – when it is ‘local,’ it is, understanda-
bly, considered as ‘regional fiction,’ that is,an inferior genre .40
A publishing house, located in Wrocław, “Greckie Klimaty”, the

only one in Poland that regularly publishes contemporary Mod-
ern Greek prose, published, in 2017, the first Polish translation of
Amanda Michalopoulou’s prose – Γιατί σκότωσα την καλύτερή
μου φίλη (Why I killed my best friend, 2003).41 In the afterword the
author says that originally she was thinking about using Marthe
Robert’s words from the often quoted thesis Roman des origines et
origines du roman that the novel is:
[g]enre révolutionnaire et bourgeois, démocratique par choix et

animé d’un esprit totalitaire qui le porte à briser entraves et fron-
tières, le roman est libre, libre jusqu’à l’arbitraire et au dernier degré
de l’anarchie.42
Robert is convinced, while reading literature from a psychoanalyti-

cal perspective that the genre definition related to the novel’s form.
For Michalopoulou however the words read in Robert’s thesis are
the justification for writing a book on young, rebellious women
in the times after the junta, when the Greek urban left, anarchist
40
E. Avloniti, Greek Literature Abroad: A Modern Odyssey (Part 1), 5/3/2015, por-
tal “Publishing Perspectives (http://publishingperspectives.com/2015/03/greek-lit-
erature-abroad-a-modern-odyssey-part-1/, DOA: 2/12/2016). cf. interview by D
Raptopoulos with A. Doxiadis about his international success: B. Ραπτόπουλος,
Ο θείος Απόστολος και η Εικασία της Διεθνούς Καριέρας (Uncle Apostolos and
the conjecture of an international career), [in:] Λίγη ιστορία…, p. 270-282.
41
A. Michalopulu, Dlaczego zabiłam swoją najlepszą przyjaciółkę, trans.
A. Kotecka, Wrocław 2016.
42
M. Robert, Roman des origines et origines du roman, Paris 1972, p. 14.
Back to Greece 239
movements and first set of resistance actions against capitalism was

born and was overt.43 Her novel is quite traditional, maybe, but for
the sensational title, but what is revolutionary touches the sphere
of the content – of Athenian bohemian circles, of youth entering the
world of politics. The novel is but a vehicle for a political interpre-
tation of contemporary events, or even a manifesto presenting the
author’s strong opinions through her fiction.
The literature on crisis reveals two basic types of literary
approach to Greekness, two main thematic roads, parallel and at
times crossing as far as the themes of Modern Greek literature are
concerned: a debate engaged with contemporary issues – “Greekness
in action” – or a multitude (one might say: a cacophony of) voices
over the definition, meaning and its consequences of both “Hellen-
ism” and “Greekness”.44 The authors who I have mentioned, tried
to choose other roads and left, or distanced themselves from the
debates. Chomenidis used tropes from a fantastic “cabinet of props”
and looked back from afar. Vassilikos struggled with identity issues
43
Michalopoulou’s book is compared to “L’amica geniale,” a series by an
Italian author Elena Ferrante (2011-2014).
44
The comparationist Stathis Gourgouris (S. Gourgouris, Dream Nation:
Enlightenment, Colonization, and the Institution of Modern Greece, Stanford, CA 1996)
recalls a short fragment from Seferis’s diaries where the poet writes about an
imaginary Greece characterised by “nostalgia for utopia”, an ailing willingness to
live in accordance with an imagined, model set of rules and circumstances (p. 223-
224). The philosopher Akis Gavrilidis, in his controversial book Αθεράπευτη
νεκροφιλία του ριζοσπαστικού πατριωτισμού (The incurable necrophilia of
radical patriotism, 2007) supports Seferis’s view, which is related by Gourgouris
expresses a compelling and constant need to construct Greek identity on the basis
of historical myths. Their significance is strengthened by a kind of education and
public discourse that willingly evokes glorious events, when the Greeks exhibited
courage, resilience and compassion (or, contrarily, when the Greeks became help-
less victims). On the other hand, such a tactic is first to omit the events that do not
suit such a narration, which could be shameful and which place the Greeks in the
roles of aggressors, torturers or opportunists. Gavrilidis takes on the difficult task
of analysing in depth one such event, namely the massacre of the Muslim popu-
lation of the Peloponnesian town of Tripolitsa (contemporary Tripoli, in Arcadia
region), carried out by Greek insurgents in the first months of 1821. The author
points to the fact that the significance of this incident – exhibiting the senseless
cruelty of the Greek insurgents – is muffled and diminished not only in history
textbooks but in scholar monographies. (p. 77ff).
240 Conclusion
through considering the unforgiving nature of capitalist society (in

the first part of his Trilogy), entering into a dialogue with the folk tra-
dition (in the second) and rejecting the nightmare of obligatory con-
scription in particular and the oppressive state in general (in the third).
He also added traces of mock biography, playing with the trope of an
emigrant looking for his country and for the proper embedding of his
creation (Glafkos Thrassakis) Alexakis circled around Greek topics but
never landed on them for good. Doxiadis admittedly presented Athe-
nian topography and quoted Aeschylus, but was not that a means to
an end: using Greece as a way of speaking about mathematical prob-
lems that bothered him?
Perhaps a measure of the distance a text has to these ceaselessly
discussed Greek themes – such as mirroring reality and discuss-
ing Greekness – is the ease with which the text can be translated
into a foreign language. The least complicated of the ones I ana-
lysed was surely Logicomix, after all it was translated into Polish
from the authorized English edition and dealt with the universally
understood language of mathematics. But I strongly doubt if Vassi-
likos or Chomenidis had foreign readers in mind (while Alexakis,
by default, writes for foreigners). Any potential facilitation for the
foreign-language reader is a rare added value, a side effect. Vassi-
likos, as I argue, misleads his readers regardless of their stance,
while Chomenidis takes readers far away from Greek reality only
to present it in a distorted mirror.
In the form of an epilogue it is worth saying that in recent years

all four writers, in their creations, came back to the Greek reality:
through memories, quasi-historical books, autobiographies and
entanglement in crisis. Vassilikos devoted his last book, Ημερολόγιο
Θάσου (Thassos Diary, 2015) to his childhood memories from the
island where he used to spend his holiday and to his family house
there – in that, he is not unlike Thanos in Το πηγάδι. Alexakis in
Το κλαρινέτο (2016, orig. in French, 2015) tells a biographical story
about his late publisher – the book, told mostly in the second per-
son singular, is in fact an autobiographical confession to Alexakis’s
dead friend. The narrator – again – travels to Greece and back
to France, visiting his dying friend, who is in a hospital bed and
observes Greece in the turmoil of the crisis, a very important and
Back to Greece 241
acutely present factor in the narration – to a point when the narrator

quotes statistical data as well as numerous conversations, mostly
with Frenchmen, when he tries to explain and, to a point, justify the
crisis. Chomenidis delves into the past with the novel Ο φοίνικας
(Phoenix, 2018), a fictional story inspired by the lives and deeds of
the famous married couple of Eva Palmer and Angelos Sikelianos.
The author describes an interesting period in Greece’s history,
from the end of the 19th century and the fateful war with Turkey
in 1897, through the Balkan War, World World One, Asia Minor
Catastrophe until the 1920s which saw a revival of the importance
of the Delphi site and the emergence of the “Delphic Idea” through
artistic Delphic Festivals. It was a period of perpetual crisis, but
it brought as a result the birth of the Generation of 1930, a crucial
triumph in the history of Modern Greek arts and letters that has
extended its profound influence on many later generations. The
message in Chomenidis’s text is simple: in my opinion he shows an
unexpected light that may come after dark and depressing times.
He does not refrain from literary games: an important element of
the novel is for the reader to decipher who is who: which character
is based on which historical person. Such a demand seeks native,
proficient readers, adepts in the literary history of the inter-war
period. Moreover, Chomenidis quotes a number of literary texts,
mostly fragments of poems, and he – sometimes – alters them to
his needs, without any information on his plausible falsifications.
Finally, Doxiadis in Ερασιτέχνης επαναστάτης (Amateur revo-
lutionary, 2018) turns to autobiography (προσωπική μυθιστορία
– “personal ficionalized story”) and retells his life, shadowed for-
ever by the junta years of his childhood, the fate of the “National
Technical School of Athens generation” (γενιά του Πολυτεχνίου),
that witnessed and was traumatized by the brutal suppression of
student protests in 1973 and the aftermath of these dramatic events.
All four authors came back to Greece, at various times, through
their cherished memories and through their needs to touch subjects
they deemed most important in well-known circumstances. They
responded to the calling of “στρατευμένη λογοτεχνία” – ‘engaged
(lit. conscripted) literature’45 whose first task is not to entertain or
45
See also footnote on p. 24.
242 Conclusion
move, not to enlighten or to educate but to comfort. It is a response

to readers’ fears and an attempt to infuse them with hope: through
personal recollection, experienced events (βιώματα) and historical
facts that – though at the time chaotic, desperate or senseless – in
the end proved to be a part of some grand, optimistic narration that
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Popular culture web portal TVtropes: http://tvtropes.org/
Reading Greece: Amanda Michalopoulou on Literature’s Innate Quest
for Form..., interview by Athina Rossoglou for Greek News
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Selection of short prose texts by Alexandros Schinas: http://
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canon.pdf
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tionary.com/
Vasilis Alexakis’s biography in the literary database Biblionet:
http://tinyurl.com/hn9ktk
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thermansis-baba-ti-einai-auto/
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finansowanie-nauki/panele-ncn
Webpage Κ.Π. Καβάφης. Ένας παγκόσμιος ποιητής (Cavafy:
a worldwide poet), set up for the use of secondary schools’
pupils: http://photodentro.edu.gr/lor/r/8521/4412
Index of names
Aarne, Antti 98 Bacon, Francis 197

Abbott, Edwin A. 158 Baczko-Dombi, Anna 153
Abrams, J.J. 76 Bakolas, Nikos (Μπακόλας, Νίκος) 99
Aeschylus 174, 179 Bal, Hartosh Singh 159
Ahmes 167 Banach, Stefan 157
Akrivos, Kostas (Ακρίβος, Κώστας) 145 Barnes, Julian 164
Alexakis, Vassilis (Αλεξάκης, Βασίλης) Barthes, Ronald 75
39–44, 74, 124, 127–151, 240 Bates, Alan 53
Alexander the Great 115, 189 Baudrillard, Jean 185
Alexandrou, Aris (Αλεξάνδρου, Άρης) Beaton, Roderick 14, 17, 19, 35, 36, 105
26, 27, 41, 109, 122 Beckett, Samuel 130
Alexatos, Giorgos N. (Αλεξάτος, Beethoven, Ludwig van 119
Γιώργος Ν.) 192, 193 Belogiannis, Nikos (Μπελογιάννης,
Ali Pasha of Tepelena 115 Νίκος) 192
Allen, Woody 188 Beratis, Giannis (Μπεράτης, Γιάννης)
Anagnostakis, Manolis 30, 32
(Αναγνωστάκης, Μανόλης) 79 Berner, Rotraut Susan 159
Andrews, Sylvia 158 Bessy, Marianne 131–134, 137
Andrzejewski, Jerzy 194 Bien, Peter 53, 59
Angelatos, Dimitrios (Αγγελάτος, Bonaparte, Napoleon 224
Δημήτριος) 35 Borges, Jorge Luis 34, 121, 126, 165,
Angelopoulos, Theodoros 188, 198
(Αγγελόπουλος, Θεόδωρος) 235 Borowska, Małgorzata 19
Apostolidis, Renos (Αποστολίδης, Bourazopoulou, Ioanna
Ρένος), see Renos (Μπουραζοπούλου, Ιωάννα) 32,
Aristotle 63 183
Arkas (Αρκάς) 175, 223 Brahms, Johannes 119
Ausoni, Alain 135 Bray, Joe 123
Avloniti, Evangelia (Αυλωνίτη, Brecht, Bertold 199
Ευαγγελία) 237, 238 Bruyere, Jean de La 16
Axioti, Melpo (Αξίωτη, Μέλπω) 26, Buddha 52
32, 129 Cacoyannis, Michael 53, 54, 60, 72
286 Bibliography
Cage, John 164 Dassin, Jules 52, 53

Callas, Maria 119 Deleuze, Gilles 15
Calvino, Italo 78, 79, 82 Delta, Pinelopi (Δέλτα, Πηνελόπη) 33
Camus, Albert 113 DePauli, Werner 158
Canin, Ethan 159 Dervi, Loukia (Δέρβη, Λουκία) 230
Cantor, Georg 173 Diamantopoulos, Alexandros
Capgras, Joseph 199 (Διαμαντόπουλος, Αλέξανδρος) 17
Caratheodory, Constantin 170 Diamandouros, Nikiforos
Carroll, Lewis 174 (Διαμαντούρος Νικηφόρος) 71
Casti, John 158 Dimaras, Konstantinos Th. (Δημαράς,
Cavafy, Constantine (Καβάφης, Κωνσταντίνος Θ.) 35
Κωνσταντίνος) 9, 22, 49, 50, 58, 59, Dimou, Nikos (Δήμου, Νίκος) 232, 233
71, 81, 120, 141, 149, 150 Diodorus of Sicily 197
Cawelti, John G. 38 Donne, Annie di 171
Cegielski, Tadeusz 112 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 113, 122
Cervantes, Miguel de 177 Douka, Maro (Δούκα, Μάρω) 30, 71
Chadzinikolau, Nikos 54 Doukas, Stratis (Δούκας, Στρατής) 25
Chatzidimitriou, Ioanna Doxiadis, Apostolos (Δοξίαδης,
(Χατζιδημητρίου, Ιωάννα) 144, 145 Απόστολος) 37, 40–44, 74, 168–179,
Chatzis, Dimitris (Χατζής, 240, 241
Δημήτηρης) 20, 30, 129 Drakondaidis, Filippos
Chatzopoulos, Konstantinos (Δρακονταειδής, Φίλιππος) 28
(Χατζόπουλος, Κωνσταντίνος) 25 Drosinis, Georgios (Δροσίνης,
Cheimonas, Giorgos (Χειμόνας, Γεώργιος) 18
Γιώργος) 28 Duchâteau, André-Paul 171
Chionis, Argyris (Χιόνης, Αργύρης) Dukaj, Jacek 187, 225
188 Durrell, Gerrald 73
Chiotis, Manolis (Χιώτης, Μανόλης) 202 Durrell, Lawrence 165
Chomenidis, Christos A. (Χωμενίδης, Eco, Umberto 75, 198
Χρίστος Α.) 32, 40-44, 74, 88, 103, Eftaliotis, Argyris (Αφταλιώτης,
120, 194–221, 239–241 Αργύρης) 65
Chrissoulis, Konstantinos (Χρυσούλης, Egan, Greg 161
Κωνσταντίνος) 175 Eisner, Will 171
Columbus, Christopher 51, 200 Elytis, Odysseas (Ελύτης, Οδυσσέας)
Con, see Chrissoulis, Konstantinos 9, 47
Conrad, Joseph 129 Embirikos, Andreas (Εμπειρίκος,
Constantine XI Palaiologos 67 Ανδρέας) 32
Cortázar, Julio 165 Emmerlich, Karen 231
Costa-Gavras 26 Enzensberger, Hans Magnus 159
Côté, Paul Raymond 131 Erasmus from Rotterdam 143
Crumey, Andrew 167 Eugenides, Jeffrey 37
Dafoe, Willem 52 Euhemerus 197
Danielewski, Mark Z. 165 Facci, Nicolas 160
Dante Aligheri 110 Fais, Michel (Φάις, Μισέλ) 41
Bibliography 287
Fakinou, Evgenia (Φακίνου, Ευγενία) Ibsen, Henrik 174

28, 41 Ioannidou, Stavrini 122, 124, 133
Falez Kolokotronis, Theodoros Ioannou, Giorgos (Ιωάννου, Γιώργος)
(Κολοκοτρώνης, Θεόδωρος 20, 82
Φαλέζ) 202 Iordanidou, Maria (Ιορδαννίδου,
Fermat, Pierre de 168 Μαρία) 20
Fermor, Patrick Leigh 68–70 Jakimowicz, Emilia 158
Fibonacci 164 Jarzębski, Jerzy 107, 225
Foscolo, Ugo 15 Jeleński, Szczepan 157
Fowles, John 197 Joyce, James 28, 75, 113
Frangias, Andreas (Φραγγιάς, Julian the Apostate 51
Ανδρέας) 30 Jusdanis, Gregory 15, 71
Frege, Gottlob 173 Kafka, Franz 26, 88, 113
Frelik, Paweł 198 Kakogiannis, Michail (Κακογιάννης,
Friar, Kimon 51 Μιχαήλ), see Cacoyannis, Michael
Fyssas, Dimitris (Φύσσας, Δημήτρης) Kallifatides, Theodor 41
189–193 Kalligas, Pavlos (Καλλίγας, Παύλος)
Galanaki, Rea (Γαλανάκη, Ρέα) 31, 71 23, 37
Galanopoulos, Fotis (Γαλανόπουλος, Kanellopoulos, Panagiotis
Φώτης) 183 (Κανελλόπουλος, Παναγιώτης)
García Gual, Carlos 106 28–30
Gavras, Konstantinos (Γαύρας, Kapodistrias, Ioannis (Καποδίστριας,
Κωνσταντίνος), see Costa-Gavras Ιωάννης) 51
George I 203, 206 Karagatsis, M. (Καραγάτσης, Μ.) 26,
Germanos (Γερμανός), bishop 115 103
Giordano, Paolo 159 Karapanou, Margarita (Καραπάνου,
Głowiński, Michał 43, 75 Μαργαρίτα) 32, 33
Gödel, Kurt 168, 170, 173, 177 Karkavitsas, Andreas (Καρλαβίτσας,
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 15 Ανδρέας) 19
Goldbach, Christian 168 Karvelis, Giannis (Καρβέλης,
Goldstein, Rebecca 159 Γιάννης) 167
Gross, John 95 Kasman, Alex 160, 161
Guattari, Felix 15 Kasprzak, Zbigniew 171
Guedj, Denis 158 Katsan, Gerasimos 69, 70
Haddon, Mark 159 Katsimbalis, Giorgos (Κατσιμπάλης,
Hardy, Godfrey Harold 158, 170 Γιώργος) 73
Haviaras, Stratis 41, 129 Kavafis, Konstantinos (Καβάφης,
Herzfeld, Michael 70 Κωνσταντίνος), see Cavafy,
Heton, Cheryl 160 Constantine
Hilbert David 173 Kazantzakis, Nikos (Καζαντζάκης,
Homer 9, 51, 196, 227 Νίκος) 9, 20, 21, 45, 49–60, 67, 68,
Houellebecq, Michel 187 71, 72, 81, 113, 120, 128, 129, 141
Howard, Jon 160 Keeley, Edmund 102
Hutcheon, Linda 37 Keeley, Mary 102
288 Bibliography
Keersmaeker, Anna Teresa De 164 Liberaki, Margarita (Λυμπέρακη,

Kiriazis, Ilias (Κυριάζης, Ηλίας) 175 Μαργαρίτα) 33
Kitsopoulou, Lena (Κιτσοπούλου, Lincoln, Abraham 200
Λένα) 33 Littlewood, John Edensor 170
Kolberg, Oskar 18 Lovshin, Vladimir 157
Kolokotronis, Theodoros Lucian from Samostata 32
(Κολοκοτρώνης, Θεόδωρος) 202 Lyacos, Dimitris (Λυάκος, Δημήτρης)
Kondoleon, Manos (Κοντολέων, 42
Μάνος) 231 Maalouf, Amin 148
Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia Mackridge, Peter 17, 59, 89
203 MacLean, Alistair 197
Kopp, Richard 131 MacLeod, Ian R. 225
Korais, Adamantios (Κοραής, Maglinis, Ilias (Μαγλίνης, Ηλίας) 37
Αδαμάντιος) 14, 128 Magriplis, Dimitris G. (Μαγριπλής,
Kosiński, Jerzy 41 Δημήτρης Γ.) 230
Kotzias, Alexandros (Κοτζιάς, Makine, Andrei 148
Αλέξανδρος) 29, 30 Mancosu, Paolo 178
Koumandareas, Menis Mantis, Nikos A. (Μάντης Νίκος) 41
(Κουμανταρέας, Μένης) 81 Marangopoulos, Aris
Kourtovik, Dimosthenis (Κουρτοβίκ, (Μαρανγόπουλος, Άρης) 90, 91,
Δημοσθένης) 42 99, 102, 108
Koutras, Panos (Κουτράς, Πάνος) Markaris, Petros (Μάρκαρης, Πέτρος)
237 37, 233–235
Kozakoglou, Nikolas (Κοζακόγλου, Markoglou, Prodromos (Μαρκόγλου,
Νικόλας) 25 Πρόδρομος) 104, 110
Krajewski, Marek 158 Marshall, George 91
Kranaki, Mimi (Κρανάκη, Μίμη) 33 Martuszewska, Anna 183
Krebs, Edgardo C. 126 Matei-Chilea, Cristina 134
Krupka, Paweł 147 Matesis, Antonios (Ματέσης,
Kundera, Milan 130, 148 Αντώνιος) 86, 87
Kuśniewicz, Andrzej 193 McEwan, Ian 194
L’Engle, Madeleine 158 Michailidis, Tefkros (Μιχαηλίδης,
Lacarrière, Jacques 82, 110 Τεύκρος) 166, 167
Lalagianni, Vassiliki (Λαλαγιάννη, Michailis, Kleanthis (Μιχαηλίδης,
Βασιλική) 135, 140 Κλεάνθης), see Eftaliotis, Argyris
Lambrakis, Grigoris (Λαμπράκης, Michalopoulou, Amanda
Γρηγόρης) 78 (Μιχαλοπούλου, Αμάντα) 34, 42,
Lantihmos, Giorgos (Λάνθιμος, 232, 238
Γιώργος 237 Mickiewicz, Adam 224
Lem, Stanisław 161, 186, 187 Miller, Henry 73
Lemos, Natasa (Λέμος, Νατάσα) 232 Miranowicz, Adam 158
Lenin, Vladimir 51, 189 Mitropoulou, Kostoula
Leontis, Artemis 24, 231,236 (Μητροπούλου, Κωστούλα) 27
Lesage, Alain-René 16 Moers, Walter 197
Bibliography 289
Molière 16, 177 Papadopoulos, Giorgos

More, Thomas 197 (Παπαδόπουλος, Γιώργος) 80
Moréas, Jean 129 Papadopoulou, Arsinoi
Moullas, Pantelis (Μούλλας, (Παπαδοπούλου, Αρσινόη) 34
Παντελής) 91 Papandreou, Andreas (Παπανδρέου,
Mrożek, Sławomir 129 Ανδρέας) 210–212
Myrivilis, Stratis (Μυριβήλης, Papandreou, Giorgos (Παπαπνδρέου,
Στρατής) 24 Γιώργος) 226
Nabokov, Vladimir 122 Paparrigopoulos, Konstantinos
Nathanail, Pavlos P. (Ναθαναήλ, (Παπαρρηγόπουλος,
Παύλος Π.) 113, 114 Κωσταντίνος) 66
Niachros, Stavros (Νιάρχος, Σταύρος) Pappa, Irini (Παππά, Ειρήνη) 53
47 Parnicki, Teodor 193
Nikephoros II Phokas 51 Parren, Kallirroi (Παρρέν Καλλιρρόη)
Nollas, Dimitris (Νόλλας, Δημήτρης) 42 34
O’Connor, Gavin 160 Pateraki, Mimina 71
Obama, Barack 47, 48 Pelekanos, Greg 41
Ogawa, Yōko 159 Pentzikis, Nikos Gavriil (Πεντζίκης,
Oikonomou, Christos (Οικονονόμου, Νίκος Γαβριήλ) 26
Χρίστος) 230 Perec, George 166
Oktapoda-Lu, Efstratia 140 Pericles 47, 48
Orestis Digenis (Ορέστης Διγενής), Pettifer, James 71
see Theotokas, Giorgos Piskorski, Krzysztof 224, 225
Palaiologos, Gregorios (Παλαιολόγος, Pitsipios / Pitzipios, Iakovos
Γρηγόριος) 16, 23 (Πιτσίπιος / Πιτζίπιος, Ιακώβος)
Palamas, Kostis (Παλαμάς, Κώστης) 65 16, 36
Panagiotopoulos, Nikos Plaskovitis, Spiros (Πλασκοβίτης,
(Παναγιωτόπουλος, Νίκος) 41, Σπύρος) 27, 41, 89
183 Plato 196
Panorios, Makis (Πανόριος, Μάκης) Plutarch 141
182 Poe, Edgar Allan 113
Panselinos, Alexios (Πανσέλινος, Politis, Kosmas (Πολιτής, Κοσμάς) 26
Αλέξιος) 31, 71, 103, 188, 230 Politis, Linos (Πολίτης, Λίνος) 19,35
Papadatos, Alekos (Παπαδάτος, Politis, Nikolaos (Πολίτης, Νικόλαος)
Αλέκος) 171, 172 18
Papadiamantis, Alexandros Polster, Burkard 160
(Παπαδιαμάντης, Αλέξανδρος) Poniatowski, Józef, prince 224
19, 20, 36, 96 Poquelin, Jean Baptiste, see Molière
Papadiamantopoulos, Ioannis Prevelakis, Pantelis (Πρεβελάκης,
(Παπαδιαμαντόπουλος, Ιωάννης) Παντελής) 20
see Moréas, Jean Prucher, Jeff 55
Papadimitriou, Christos H. Psycharis, Giannis (Ψυχάρης,
(Παπδημητρίου, Χρίστος Χ.) 171, Γιάννης) 128
174 Pynchon, Thomas 94, 198
290 Bibliography
Queneau, Raymond 94, 166 Sklar, Jessica K. 160–162

Quinn, Anthony 53, 54, 72 Słowacki, Juliusz 224
Ramanujan, Srinivas 170 Snow, Charles 153
Raptopoulos, Vangelis (Ραπτόπουλος, Solomos, Dionisios (Σολωμός,
Βαγγέλης) 27–28, 110, 177, 238 Διονύσιος) 11, 150
Renieris, Markos (Ρενιέρης, Μάρκος) Solomou, Emilios (Σολωμού,
61–62 Αιμίλιος) 37
Renos (Ρένος) 26 Sotiriou, Dido (Σωτηρίου, Δίδω) 30
Rimbaud, Arthur 113 Sotiropoulou, Ersi (Σωτηροπούλου,
Ritsos, Giannis (Ρίτσος, Γιάννης) 60, Έρση) 33, 188
191, 192 Soutsos, Panagiotis (Σούτσος,
Rizos Rangavis, Alexandros (Ρίζος Παναγιώτης) 15
Ραγκάβης, Αλέξανδρος) 16, 22, 29 Spiegelman, Art 171
Robbe-Grillet, Alain 113 Staikos, Andreas (Σταΐκος, Ανδρέας)
Robert, Marthe 238 42
Roidis, Emmanouil (Ροΐδης, Stavrakis, Giannis (Σταυράκης,
Εμμανουήλ) 23, 24, 34, 36 Γιάννης) 56, 58
Rosiński, Grzegorz 171 Stefanidis, Theodoros (Στεφανίδης,
Ross, Marti 160 Θεόδωρος) 73
Rousseau, Jean Jacques 15 Stendhal 38
Russell, Bertrand 172–174, 176, 179 Stephenson, Neal 161, 198
Sagan, Carl 161 Sterling, Bruce 198
Samarakis, Antonis (Σαμαράκης, Stern, R.J. 159
Αντώνης) 27, 41, 89, 95 Stosch, Klaus von 178
Samsonowicz, Jan 157 Stewart, Ian 158
Sanders, George 187 Suri, Gaurav 159
Sangalli, Arturo 159 Suvin, Darko 182
Sapkowski, Andrzej 187 Szczerek, Ziemowit 225
Sartre, Jean-Paul 113, 122 Tachtsis, Kostas (Ταχτσής, Κώστας) 82
Satrapi, Marjane 171 Takopoulos, Paris (Τακόπουλος,
Schinas, Alexandros (Σχινάς, Πάρης) 28, 29, 117
Αλέξανδρος) 28 Tebaldi, Renata 119
Scorsese, Martin 52 Terzakis, Angelos (Τερζάκης,
Scott, Walter 18 Άγγελος) 29, 30
Sedaris, David 37 Theodorakis, Mikis (Θεοδωράκης,
Seferis, Giorgos (Σεφέρης, Γιώργος) 9, Μίκης) 54, 78
59, 130, 141 Theopompus of Chios 196
Shakespeare, William 174 Theotokas, Giorgos (Θεοτοκάς,
Shklovsky, Viktor 98, 198 Γιώργος) 21, 22
Skabardonis, Giorgos Thodoris, Panos (Θοδωρής, Πάνος) 41
(Σκαμπαρδώνης, Γιώργος) 188 Thompson, Stith 98
Skarimbas, Giannis (Σκαρίμπας, Thucydides 47
Γιάννης) 26, 32 Todorov, Tzvetan 106, 185
Sklar, Elizabeth S. 160–162 Tokarska-Bakir, Joanna 148
Bibliography 291
Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel 112, 181 Wildman, Carl 53

Tolstoy, Lev 163, 164 Wiles, Andrew John 168
Tonnet, Henri 14–19, 31–33, 36 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 64
Triantafyllou, Soti (Τριανταφύλλου, Wittgenstein, Ludwig 173, 174
Σώτη) 42, 167 Wrazas, Ilias 61, 70
Tsangari, Athina (Τσαγκάρη, Αθηνά) Xanthoulis, Giannis (Ξανθούλης,
237 Γιάννης) 188
Tsaousis, Dimitris G. (Τσαούσης, Xenos, Stefanos (Ξένος, Στέφανος) 23
Δημήτρης Γ.) 70 Yannakakis, Eleni (Γιαννακάκης,
Tsiolkas, Christos 37 Ελένη) 232
Tsirkas, Stratis (Τσίρκας, Στρατής) 30, Zajdel, Janusz 186, 187, 214
83 Zambelios, Spyridon (Ζαμπέλιος,
Tsitas, Makis (Τσίτας, Μάκης) 230 Σπυρίδων) 66, 144
Tsotsorou, Aliki (Τσοτσορού, Αλίκη) Zateli, Ziranna (Ζατέλη, Ζιράννα) 32
144, 145 Zei, Alki (Ζέη, Άλκη) 33
Turing, Alan 168 Zgorzelski, Andrzej 182
Twardoch, Szczepan 225 Ziras, Alexis (Ζήρας, Αλέξης) 232
Tziovas, Dimitris (Τζιόβας, Δημήτρης) Zografou, Magda 71
70, 71, 83, 90, 91, 111 Zola, Émile 38
Updike, John 102 Zorbas, Alexis (Ζορμπάς, Αλέξης)
Uther, Hans-Joerg 98 52–60, 72–74
Vagenas, Nasos (Βαγενάς, Νάσος) 34 Zourgos, Isidoros (Ζουργός, Ισίδωρος)
Valtinos, Thanassis (Βαλτινός, 31
Θανάσης) 28, 30
Van Sant, Gus 160
VanderMeer, Jeff 98
Varikas, Vassilis (Βαρίκας, Βασίλης)
95
Vassilikos, Vassilis (Βασιλικός,
Βασίλης) 29, 39, 41–44, 74, 78–124,
177, 239, 240
Venezis, Ilias (Βενέζης, Ηλίας) 25
Verdi, Giuseppe 119
Verne, Jules 166
Vikelas, Dimitrios (Βιλεκάς,
Δημήτριος) 23
Virgil 110
Vitti, Mario 14, 35, 82, 110
Vizyinos, Giorgos (Βιζυηνός, Γιώργος)
19, 20, 71
Vlami, Eva (Βλάμη, Εύα) 20
Voutiras, Dimosthenis (Βουτυράς,
Δημοσθένης) 32
Watts, Peter 121

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Beyond Greekness

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© 2019 by Przemysław Kordos

Sub Lupa Academic Publishing

Index of names 285

I have the privilege to be a part of the “Artes Liberales” community

A running joke says that without the assistance of a family such

For a non-Greek reader Modern Greek literature consists predom-

for artistic creations. The language – more so than territory, shared

Prose joined the discussion on Greekness much later. In the times

namely Roderick Beaton and Henri Tonnet – “inadequate”.13 Similar

A Greek scholar teaching at Birmingham, Gregory Jusdanis,

letters history.27 Alexandros Diamantopoulos, an early theoretician of

Whatever the justification for the weakness of 19th century

[...] have a kind demeanour, numerous customs and manners, and

a prevailing ethnographic trait in many later works of the type35

of Greek prose, its best followers, like Papadiamantis and Vizyinos

generation45 had a kind of “writing compulsion”,46 treating writing

with the aim of acquainting readers with essential moments in Greek

Drakontaidis, an author who describes his own textual creations as

Οι περισσότερες από τις λέξεις που χρησιμοποιεί ο Τακόπουλος

Dimitriou, Vangelis Raptopoulos and Christos A. Chomenidis, among others.

ωστόσο απαρτίζεται από ελληνικούς φθόγγους, και που – σαν

In experimental writing, more impressive than their quality – or even

period, dress their turbulent biographies in the form of a novel and

Arguably, the most famous historical novel of contemporary

a marginal position or worse than that: it is adjacent to literature, but

tones)90 and whose novel Θέλετε να χορέψομε, Μαρία (Let’s dance,

in power. A polemic flared up in 1896 between Roidis and Kalliroi

review their subsequent works and try to describe comprehensively

Historians that synthesize the fortunes of Modern Greek letters

atrocities in Η ανάκριση (The interrogation, 2008) by Ilias Maglin-

of fiction meant that a fictional, imagined object was pointed toward

There are some writers who – from my perspective – decided

All four of them made an attempt to move away from literature

between two cultures, combined with his adamant autobiograhism

Alexakis is well-known in France). In Poland, for example, out of

and I deemed it important to show his achievements in the much

describing – shaped this Greek reality, at least to some extent and

On the 16th of November 2016 the President of the United States

“This small, great world”. Every educated Greek will immediately

political or cultural, attract the attention of a relatively small num-

is maybe even more famous,9 is seen in literary history as a prose

Antoni Libera, Ireneusz Kania, Agnieszka Fulińska. Single poems in Modern

the Hellenic cultural circle, as in the list of his “spiritual fathers”,

the first issue of the English translation (1952, by Carl Wildman –

favoured by archaeologists and pilgrims, nor the ultimate goal for

Beside these renditions – which are sometimes indispensa-

motifs, literarily transformed for various ends. For instance, in one

looms from beneath the novel’s words. Despite these controver-

To anyone who admires the subtlety of Cavafy and Seferis – said

created a model of “Greek greekness” (ελληνική ελληνικότητα)

two Patriarchs, those of Constantinople and of Athens is a living

by diaspora members and their descendants. But nothing highlights

art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who brought to Euro-

has stood behind romiosyni (ρωμιοσύνη), that is behind Greekness

See P. Kordos, O spartańskim pochodzeniu Maniotów (On Spartan descendence

Byzantine) Constantinople.57 In historiography the proponents of