This is how the tourism office describes Murnau:

In Murnau nature, art and culture form a special bond. World-renowned artists like Kandinsky, Münter and Horváth lived here and found inspiration in the picturesque landscape at the foothills of the Bavarian Alps with its romantic lakes and unique moorlands.

The moor, Murnauer Moos as it is called in German, right next to the town of Murnau, is an enormous nature reserve, the largest in Central Europe and, surrounded by the Bavarian Alps, benefits from a micro-climate that supports an extraordinary range of animals and vegetation.

Meadows, marshes and mires; bog and creeks invite and nourish butterflies, insects, and rare birds. The light is translucent, the air uplifting, and the colors of the wild orchids, irises, grasses, and innumerable other plant varieties are thought to “sing.” Painters, photographers, art, nature, and bird-lovers make their pilgrimage to the moor to hear these songs.

Whenever I can, I go for walks there. My poem Murnau, published in escarp.org on the 8^th of August 2010 is a twitter-sized attempt to condense the experience of walking on the moor without losing sight of some of the cultural associations of the area.

Nolde Question

While working on my novel When the Colors Sing, about The Blue Rider (Der blaue Reiter) movement, especially Kandinsky, Münter and Marc, I came across the work of Emil Nolde and his struggles with the development of his art. Readers of this blog will know I recently visited his house – now a museum – in Seebüll, North Frisia, to get a better feeling of his surroundings and the areas where he liked to work.

Having dipped a bit deeper in Nolde’s bio, I came back with more questions than I went with; which is something I appreciate. For instance, I kept thinking, how did Emil Nolde hold the tension between his art and his craft; between his personal, conservative philosophy and his experimental and liberating work; between his roots in the farming community and artistically, in a German tradition of painting, and freedom of expression in his own artistic explorations of landscape, nature and humans. In other words, how did Nolde carry his own, individual cross to produce such work of great depth, intensity, and appeal?

Interesting questions? There is no easy answer to them, of course. And no answer will be attempted here. Just a few facts I gathered about Nolde, and a few links that might spark some new lines of enquiry.

Coming from a family of farmers, Nolde, acting on his father’s wishes, trained and worked as a woodcarver and furniture designer. He also took drawing classes, and taught drawing in a variety of venues.

He came to painting later. Having been rejected by the Munich Art Academy, like Kandinsky, Nolde took private painting lessons and visited Paris and other European art centers. His rejection seems to have driven him to cast his net wider and to look at and absorb other styles and ideas. The Parisian Impressionism, the angular and extreme approach of the artists of Die Brücke, the work of the group The Berlin Secession, the spiritual expressionism of Der Blaue Reiter influenced the development of his work. Bright pigments, free brushstrokes, search for the essence/soul of the subject, mystical and symbolic preoccupations became his ongoing concerns and he found his own way of depicting them on canvas and paper.

While he exhibited with all these groups in the earlier part of the twentieth century, Nolde was an individualist at heart, happiest while painting, not in society or groups of artists. He cut links with all groups after a while.

Nolde became one of the most known and respected painters up to the 1930s even in the climate of racial hatred and divisive currents that were deepening within German society at that time. In part, this success may have to do with similarities between Nolde’s ideas and those of nationalist groups and even Nazi philosophy, as some have argued.

Nevertheless, his popularity and individualistic expressionist ideography did not sit well with some members of the National Socialist Party at least, and with Hitler in particular – another “painter” rejected by the Munich Art Academy – who saw Expressionism as “corrupting” and “degenerate art.” Nolde’s work was confiscated and exhibited with other expressionist paintings in the infamous Munich exhibition “Degenerate Art” – an exhibition meant to humiliate the artists and their work.

Nolde painted his Unpainted Pictures during this period, especially from 1941 onwards when he was officially prohibited to paint. While he meant to render these small-scale watercolors in oil one day, most of them remained unpainted. I wonder what this means. What it is these pictures represent. Might one say that they help, like free associations, lead to the not so obvious, not so known Nolde?

The novel Deutschstunde, The German Lesson, by Siegfried Lenz, published in 1968, was inspired by Nolde and the time of his being prohibited to paint. While the name of the painter, as well as of those in his immediate circle, has been changed (to Nansen, a paraphrase of Nolde’s family name: Hansen), there is an unmistakable line of character and biographical detail running through the novel. As a novel, it is original, well-thought out, extremely well-written and atmospheric. Even the landscape speaks!

Lenz, in this novel, contributes a major idea about Nolde and his work. By pitting him against someone (a policeman) deadened by his unthinking and unwavering dedication to duty and discipline (namely, to enforce the painting ban that Nansen/Nolde had been subjected to), Lenz shows Nolde’s individualism, dedication to his art, as well as conscience, and sense of moral responsibility.

Might this juxtaposition in Lenz’s novel serve as a clue to thinking about Nolde’s balancing of opposing elements? A clue to his ability to survive adversity and continue his artistic development without selling-out his soul?  Certainly worth thinking about.

Photo credit: Maria Pierides www.mariapierides.co.uk

6 September 2010

Nolde's Garden

Having seen an exhibition of Emile Nolde’s “unpainted pictures” in the Berlin branch of the Nolde Foundation earlier on this year, I came to visit his house in Seebüll, North Friesland, Germany, where he lived and worked.

The house is built on higher ground – this used to be a tidal area – providing a panoramic view of the garden below and the surrounding flatlands. The “unpainted pictures” refer to the small-scale watercolors Nolde produced from 1941 onwards, after he was formally forbidden to paint by the Nazi regime. Even before that, the Nazis considered his work to be “un-Germanic” and “degenerate.”

In order to continue working, Nolde used watercolors since they do not emit the typical smell of oil paint and turpentine that would have been easily detectable by the Gestapo during unannounced inspections. Nolde considered the watercolors of this period “unpainted,” because he had planned to render them in oil after the fall of the regime.

Some of the “unpainted pictures” are of flowers, with vibrant colors that overflow the boundaries set by the line and spill over. Perhaps this is one expression of Nolde – like Kandinsky – seeing music in color: his color notes blending across space in the way musical notes blend in time.

Nolde found ample inspiration for these motives in his own garden, which abounds with joyous color and diversity of form illuminated by the immense skies of North Friesland.

The Annunciation on the Wall

“Some great paintings are inexhaustible wells, forever self-replenishing,” Michael Glover writes in The Independent’s Great works: Annunciation (1438-45), Fra Angelico.  In a well-written article, he refers  to a number of other works on the same, very popular subject. Most of these other paintings include symbolic elaborations and allusions which may be said to clatter the subject.

Fra Angelico’s image is sparse: there is no holy book on Mary’s lap, other paraphernalia or decorative allusions pointing elsewhere. Mary and the angel, both with folded arms mirroring one another and looking into each other’s eyes, seem to be quietly and calmly accepting of the message of the conception – of the realisation (incarnation) of the divine. There is an acknowledgement of the gravity of the situation, respect, as well as certainty that it will be carried through.

More importantly, in this Annunciation there is a pervading sense of stillness. In the instant depicted, contact, communion, acceptance have taken place and now there is stillness and silence. Mary and the Angel face one another in a moment pregnant with meaning. They, and we, know that a whole new chapter is to follow.

For me, great works of art, or literature, are great because they are timeless representations of humanity’s most precious treasures. In this case, The Annunciation is the metaphor for the creative moment, when the “aha!” experience is reached (in-spire), when a new thought, a new conception arises in the mind. In this sense, the annunciation transcends the narrower context of Christian belief to emerge as a universal symbol of the creative, generative moment.

A print of Fra Angelico’s Annunciation – which for me captures the universality of  inspiration at the moment it materialises in the mind, as it becomes flesh, or ink, poem or book – hangs on the wall of my house. I pass it with pleasure several times a day, always looking and waiting for the “Angel” to appear.

"ArTherapy" in Gazi

At this year’s (2010) Munich Film Festival I watched Nikos Perakis’ new film “ArTherapy”.  I found it an intelligent, exciting and enjoyable film, mixing documentary with fiction.

The protagonists, young students of the National Theatre School of Drama, mostly middle-class, politically conscious and wholly devoted to their art, work tirelessly in the face of adversity in the Athenian capital. The portrayal of the young, the intensity and aliveness of Athenian life, the wonderful development of the culture centre in the centre of historic and multicultural Athens, aptly named Technopolis, made me feel proud of my Greek roots. And yet, however much I enjoyed the movie, I felt there was something missing: something about the context, the place, the area was lacking. There were interviews with a few locals, but overall, I was left wondering who was the art therapy for, who is in need of it and why? An unfair question, perhaps, or even an irrelevant one. And yet.

Of course one answer to this question might be that it is the young generation addressed in the film that needs it, the generation of Greeks facing high unemployment, debt and deficit, of a politically traumatized youth, but this too did not seem enough to help understand my unease. In addition, a more complete answer might be that the fans need the art therapy too: “There is no better time to offer your fans an artistic therapy against the period of an economic crisis and fear from the forthcoming social shock. Told in the style of Fame Story…” the GR reporter wrote about the film. Of course…and perhaps!

I followed my usual pattern when in doubt: I googled Gazi. Taking its name from the Public Gas Works, which existed there for over a century, Gazi was, for most of its existence a poor area, where poverty, prostitution and immigration went hand in hand. And then I came across an article in Balkanologie about the people of Gazi.

The author of the paper, Dimitris Antoniou, wrote about the late immigrants to the area who arrived from the 1980ies and 1990ies onwards: Muslims from Northern Greece, from the Western Thrace migrating internally to Athens. Influenced by the Treaty of Lausanne, as well as the Greco-Turkish volatile relations and tit-for-tat policies, these people had found it hard to settle in Western Thrace, with scores migrating to Turkey, other countries, as well as to Athens, whenever possible. Antoniou followed their settlement patterns in the capital, their struggle for survival from earning a living through establishing cultural and religious associations to working out a distinct identity as a group.

Five years after the publication of this paper, I cannot find any further information about the people described and how they fared in the face of the massive redevelopment of the area.

Given the importance of this area as migration destination of Muslim Thracians, I now wonder what impact development has already had or might have on this group of people. Would it lead to the complete demise of this community in the name of progress, or might there be a new way of helping to engage and support the community in its search for and expression of its social and cultural identity? Would there be a way that the arts and crafts flourishing in the Gazi Technopolis might aid the survival of this community? That could also be a form of art therapy!

(Picture credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gazi_Technopolis.jpg)

Silence

In The Calcutta Chromosome, Amitav Ghosh explores the different and overlapping worlds of (scientific, written-down) language, and intuitive, oral folk tradition, and silence. This exploration takes the reader through an experiential process in which the customary way of reading a novel is challenged.

The novel begins at an unspecified time in the near future, when Antar, an employee of LifeWatch, a public health consultancy, is asked to find out what happened to another employee, L. Murugan, who disappeared in Calcutta in 1995. The plot is complicated (reviewers described it as “mind boggling” and “Rubik’s Cube of a novel”), and demands a special sort of concentration, as it shifts between different time periods and perspectives. The major plotline being that Murugan had asked to be transferred to Calcutta to investigate the life of Sir Ronald Ross – Nobel Prize winner for his work on how malaria enters the organism – but had disappeared under mysterious circumstances. I shall not attempt to summarize the novel here, as this has been done already quite competently.

Ghosh explores a complex web of themes: science, myth, language, silence, society and the individual. It is a web skilfully span, as he pairs the most unexpected themes, only suddenly to juxtapose them in the most astonishing patterns. For instance, silence is presented in various relationships to language, including scientific language. A character says about silence: “I see signs of her presence everywhere I go, in images, words, glances, but only signs, nothing more…”

Perhaps wisely, Ghosh does not attempt to describe in words this kind of silence. The implication being that by using language, we enter into a relationship with the background of silence similar to that we have as train travellers through a landscape, though infinitely more complex. For to say something is to change it. In a manner reminding me of the observer effect (in Quantum Mechanics) – the observer and the act of observation affecting the system being observed, regardless of the specific method used – the novel presents scientific knowledge as altering the landscape of the silence it tries to describe. Ghosh rather provides allusions, hints, pointers to it.

Language introduces other drawbacks. A scientist investigating a topic is burdened by scientific language, with particular ways of seeing and describing the world in the scientific community. A lay person, on the other hand, free from the restraints that scientific community and its language impose on him/her is well placed to make new discoveries, Ghosh is saying. It is as if, if you don’t know where to look, you may be in a better position to find what you don’t know you are looking for. Except in the novel, the natives know what they are looking for, and they are using the scientists’ results, and the results’ by-products, to gather the information they are seeking.

Taking the two major ways of knowing, scientific effort and language on the one hand and intuition, wisdom and silence on the other, Ghosh skilfully explores the opposition and mistrust that exist between the followers of the two. The setting being India, he also takes the reader on a reflective journey between the British colonial attitude of knowing best scientifically, and the native Indian one, of also knowing best, intuitively! There is more opposition and antagonism between the two ways of knowing in this book than there is in The Hungry Tide.

It may well be the case, as John Thieme wrote in The Literary Encyclopaedia, that in The Calcutta Chromosome, Ghosh explores “the possibility of an alternative subaltern history, which exists in parallel with colonial history as an equally – or possibly more – potent epistemological system, albeit one which has traditionally operated through silence.”

One of my own associations is to W. R. Bion, the British psychoanalyst born in India, who also wrote about knowledge and the processes of transformation that it has to go through in the mind before it reaches the potential of being knowable. Describing this process, Bion wrote about the shared human preconceptions and their journey to become concepts in the mind of the individual.

Bion valued the state of reverie, in which the mind sits quietly and allows things to unfold “without memory or desire,” or without expectation and aim-directed behavior. In this state, he believed, what had been obscured by the glare of expectation, wishful thinking, knowledge and assumptions would be allowed to show its true color, to shine through its own presence. In such a state of mind, one does not identify with, but rather becomes the thing thought about.

Bion wrote in a style which – although described as “not reader-friendly” – invites the reader to work with the text, to associate, feel and think for herself, i.e., to make or become its meaning. It seems to me that Ghosh too, in this novel, through his weaving of text and plot, knowledge, not-knowing, and guessing, attempts such a feat – risking, however, leaving the reader in a state of bafflement rather than becoming. Ultimately, the reader of the novel has to go through the process of experiencing it and form her/his own idea about it.

Handmade Football

Whatever you think about football,

think again. There is a story in the New York Times article “To Those with Nothing, Soccer is Everything,” about how Jessica Hilltout documented the continent’s love of the game. The Belgian-born photographer loaded her car with soccer balls and drove through southern and western Africa taking pictures.

Driving through villages, Hilltout found a genuine love for the game, people playing soccer for the sheer joy of it. In this sense, I would say the people playing the game, instead of nothing, do have something very important: the capacity to find enjoyment and pleasure in their environment.

The article, by Celia W. Dugger, singles out the most soulful of Ms. Hilltout’s images: those of homemade balls using the most improbable materials in the most ingenious ways: paper, plastic, strings, socks and rags, bark, amongst others. I must say I agree with her. The balls and the other pictures – look at those goalposts – look wonderful. You can see for yourself here.

Her photographs are exhibited in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Brussels galleries; there is an accompanying book “Amen: Grassroots Football,” published with the help and encouragement of her British father, and some of the photographs can be seen on her website.

What did she do with the factory-made soccer balls in the car? She gave them to the children in the villages who were reported to be delighted to get what they considered to be the real thing!

Perhaps the pleasure of the game, which we all share, whichever continent or country we live in, expresses our common humanity; realizing this may help to create a better atmosphere when acknowledging and coming to terms with colonial memories and wounds.

Photo credit: Jessica Hilltout

I was reminded of Sartre’s “Hell is other people.” Not the way he meant it – which was that if our relationship with a particular person is  bad, then our being with them becomes hell;  but the way it is usually understood, namely, that all other people are, and our relating with them is, torture.

I wonder what Sartre would have made of the idea that all humankind could theoretically be squeezed into a sugar cube! Horror of horrors! He might well have been a bit more appreciative of the already existing space inside and in-between other people’s atoms.

Now that’s a thought (for a short story).

I see that the ideas in the photo essay are explored in Chown’s “The Matchbox That Ate A Forty-Ton Truck: What everyday things tell us about the universe.” Well then, I am off to get this book…

For an essay on the quote “Hell is other people” see: http://legacy.lclark.edu/~clayton/commentaries/hell.html

Also, for the real thing:  http://www.sartre.org/

No Exit, the play from which the quotation arises http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Exit

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcus-chown/11-of-the-craziest-things_b_628481.html#s107477

Photo credit:  Constantina Pierides

I love Pascale Petit’s work. She has an imagination bubbling with creative and often electrifying ways of seeing the world. What Les Murray said about a “powerful mythic imagination” in her poetry is certainly true, though for me, while she draws from the whole gamut and history of art and culture, she fizzles with new ideas of her own. As a result, on reading her poems you acquire a new set of eyes, different with every single poem.

This is what makes it even more remarkable for me, namely, that she is able to put herself into another person’s perspective so well, with sensitivity and humility. Her poem “War Horse,” from The Treekeeper’s Tale, an earlier collection, inspired by Franz Marc’s letter to his wife Maria, is a beautiful instance of this. Writing to his wife from the slaughter fields of World War I, at night, he speaks through Petit over the distance of space, time, and culture to us as individual human beings.

It seems that Frida Kahlo is given the same treatment. I have not read the whole book yet, but from the poems and the reviews I have read, it seems that Pascale Petit is putting her remarkable imagination and empathy to excellent use. Taking her lead from a painting titled “What the Water Gave Me,” in which images from Kahlo’s life float in the bath water of her painting, Petit gives voice to this remarkable woman.

Kahlo became internationally known late in the twentieth century, long after her suffering polio, then catastrophic injuries from an accident in her teenage years, and her tumultuous relationship with Diego Rivera. Kahlo wove the strands of life, pain and art in her work: she used her injuries to inspire and fire her art, and her art to cope with her injuries and pain. The details of her injuries and private life have had a powerful effect on generations of women in particular, and have been written about extensively. It is a pity that a large number of her fans are said to be more fascinated with Kahlo’s tragic life than with the greatness of her art: the way she used life, pain and paint to speak in a unique language of painting. It is a unique “language” which conveys in colour, form, and Mexican folklore what it is like for a courageous intellect such as Kahlo’s to be looking at herself in the mirror.

One wonders what might have happened had Kahlo herself written poetry instead, or in addition to, her painting. Might she have coped in a different way, perhaps better than she did in her life? We will never know. Now, however, through Petit’s book, we can hear her voice.

While there is a plethora of writing about Kahlo, not many have managed the task of letting her speak for herself. Petit transforms the paint into poem in the same way that Kahlo transformed pain into paint. Unafraid of death, anger, blood, ugliness, loneliness, of the monkey and the other animals in Kahlo’s portraits, of Diego Rivera, and other disturbing realities in Kahlo’s life, Petit empowers Kahlo to speak and the reader to hear her.

The Voice of God

Poets, writers, artists, and composers have always tried to listen to God. Through words, paints, colours, notes, they have often succeeded, as is attested by the quality of literature, art, and music in the treasure-chest of humanity.

Now, scientists are getting nearer to hearing God. Or rather, nearer to the sound of the Higgs Boson particle, nicknamed God Particle. Using a process termed sonification, they are converting scientific data collected though the LHC at Cern, into sounds.

You can listen to the sounds produced so far: http://bit.ly/b0zMG2.  I personally prefer Bach – or at least Mozart’s interpretations of the voice of God!

Photo credit: Maria Pierides /p>

Refugee Day (20th June 2010) has come and gone. Refugee week too. Congratulations to the people taking part and above all, to those organizing the events, the publicity, the media, those attracting attention to displaced persons fleeing persecution as well as those celebrating the achievements of refugees.

But what now? What comes the day after? And the day after that? Will our attention be drawn somewhere else, to another, no doubt, worthy cause? The refugees are still here, many under the skies, lacking water, food, warmth, traumatized. Let us not wait for next year’s refugee day to remember them. Let refugee awareness become part of our everyday consciousness and conscience. Part of our lives.

Here are some pointers to organizations that help:

Facts about refugees: see information http://www.refugeeweek.org.uk/InfoCentre/Facts

Though the 2010 refugee week has come and gone, the information on this site is valid and useful:  http://www.refugeeweek.org.uk/Events

For the best resource,  see the United Nations Refugee Agency website: http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home

Highlighting the plight of tens of thousands of refused asylum seekers who are destitute, homeless and not allowed to work in the UK: http://stillhumanstillhere.wordpress.com/

“The largest refugee organization in the UK providing advice and assistance to asylum seekers and refugees”:  http://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/

The Hungry Tide

I just read The Hungry Tide, a novel by Amitav Ghosh, published in 2004. It has taken me a long time to find out about it, as well as its author, but, as they say, better late than never.
Such a well-written, well-researched, good read! But the added reason I bring it here is that it includes, among a number of other topics, the story of a Bengali refugee group, settled on Morichjhanpi island of the Sundarbans, forced to flee by the newly elected government of West Bengal, and the massacre of 1978-79. I have an interest in refugee groups, their experiences, itineraries and development – a refugee group appears in my forthcoming novel, Alexandrias’ 40: In the Shade of the Lemon Tree, as well as the one I am currently working on – and Ghosh’s story describes one such group, in a different part of the world, in a sensitive and engaging manner. In such a manner, in fact, that one might say that the refugees find a home and a voice in Ghosh’s novel. While they flee one way, and then the other, like the ebb and flow of the tide, they are given a presence, a ‘stable’ place in history by Ghosh.
He writes in English, weaving fact and fiction into a wonderfully clear, informed and at the same time enchanting tale.
While the refugee group is an important pivot to the story, the ebb and flow of the tides in the Sundarban islands off the easternmost coast of India, and the ebb and flow of language and silence, are the true stars of the novel. The main characters, an American Indian female researcher, an Indian male translator and an Indian male illiterate fisherman, carry the tidal shifts and currents between language and the areas around it, those places which inhabit the heart and the elemental areas of the psyche shared by all humans. This shared humanity provides the ground for the – unfortunately often undervalued – capacity to communicate with one another. “…Words are just air,” a character says, “When the wind blows on the water, you see ripples and waves, but the real river lies beneath, unseen and unheard.” (see also my comment:  http://bit.ly/aGNY1P)

Ghosh’s achievement in this novel is to illustrate this ability through the relationships between these three characters and someone who, through his diary, is telling the tale of the refugees, using political, philosophical, and religious themes linked with passages from Rilke. In this novel, history, politics, poetry, biography, religion and myth are brought together in their varying forms of narrative language and yes, narrative silence, to tell a seamless story of incredible beauty.
More than that, however, the novel – through its metaphorical and symbolic richness and its assumption of the perspective of the American Indian scientist and the Indian translator, while contrasting them with the different qualities of the Indian fisherman’s discourse, and its unfortunate reception – reaches further into the colonial and post-colonial waters and invites critical reflection.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough, especially for the outstanding achievement of bringing together so many strands, including the horrific tale of the refugee group, loss, history and a love story with so much humanity and humility.

It is often said that life is stranger than fiction. Fair enough, I wouldn’t argue with this. Here I wish to point out two cases where fiction, narrative, or stories influence life. Admittedly, this is not any story, but the story based on the Passion.

Kazantzakis, perhaps best known for having written that other passionate character, Zorba the Greek, published his version of the Passion, Christ Recrucified, in 1948. It is a novel set in a Greek village in Asia Minor during the Ottoman Empire. The villagers are given a free hand in the running of their village affairs as long as they keep quiet, and the Agha (the local Ottoman governor), who likes to enjoy life’s little pleasures, happy.

Trouble, and the plot, comes to the village with the sudden arrival of a group of refugees led by their priest – their village was destroyed by the Turks in the fermenting tensions between Greece and the crumbling Empire. The locals don’t want the refugees in their village, but turn a blind eye, initially, to their camping on a barren mountainside just outside the village.

It is Easter Week approaching, and the village elders are preoccupied with allocating the roles of the Passion story to the locals: who will be “Judas,” “Christ,” or “Mary Magdalene?” Once the preparations for the Holy Week are underway, the chosen actors begin to identify with their allocated characters; they become more saintly, with the exception of “Judas” who becomes treacherous. The novel then takes off, with the actors coming in between the newly arrived refugees and their needs for food and shelter, and the resenting and increasingly intolerant locals. It has a terrific climax, wonderful psychological portraits both of individuals and social groups; it is one of my favourite Greek novels.

Well, in the Bavarian village of Oberammergau, in the foothills of the Alps, another Passion Play has been performed for centuries. In the year 1633, the village suffering from the plague, struck a deal with God: they would perform the Passion Play every ten years if God, in return, kept them free from the plague. Both sides seem to have kept their bargain – though the villagers did not hold the metaphorical plague of the World War II against God – and the play goes on. This year, 2010, sees the 41st performance.

The village performs the Play wholeheartedly, with villagers living and growing up with the preparations and performances all through their lives. Their aspirations, dreams and competition for the main roles achieve the status of basic needs. However, only those born and bred there, or those who have lived for at least twenty years in the village, are allowed to take part. Over two thousand locals (half the village) are involved in the performances that last the whole summer, from May to October, performing to an audience of over four thousand people daily! The rest are involved in the catering for and accommodating of the thousands of visitors in a small village.

Now the reason I brought these two together here, the novel by Kazantzakis and the performances of the Passion Play in real life Oberammergau, is more than that they share the same basic story; more important than the fact (and my need to brag about it) that I will be going to see the Play this year; more than the influence that Kazantzakis’ novel had on the background to my own novel, Alexandria’s 40: In the Shade of the Lemon Tree. It is how in both, Kazantzakis’ novel and the village of the Passion Play, a similar psychological phenomenon seems to be taking place. The actors tend to become more like the characters of the Passion story. The villages tend to show similarities with the folk of the original story.

In Oberammergau, one of the locals cast as Virgin Mary, I read, refused to marry afterwards; one of the “Jesuses” kept ‘blessing people’ long after the performance was over. One of the actors playing this year’s “Jesus” is reportedly tempted to defer to the actors who played previously “Jesus” and let them mount the donkey entering Jerusalem. There is also the story of King Ludwig II, making presents of silver spoons to the actors of the performance he attended, with the exception of “Judas,” to whom he gave a tin spoon. As for the village politics, they are reported to be tinged with the sometimes polarizing passions of the original story.

In the Kazantzakis novel, a similar but more pronounced process seems to be taking place. The main characters of the Play take on the qualities of those they portray. The actor Judas behaves like “Judas,” the local prostitute starts behaving like “Mary Magdalene,” similarly “apostle Peter” and “Christ.” The villagers and the mob equally seem to become caught in a web that almost dictates a necessity of action that follows the Passion. It is as if a need arises for the Play to become embodied and concretely played out in the village of the novel.

It is this unsettling echo between the two depictions I wish to highlight. Even on the side of the spectator, newspaper articles about the Oberammergau Play, inchluding the Spiegel online,  attract our attention by reporting that one of this year’s chosen inhabitants to portray “Jesus” is a psychologist; “Mary Magdalene” a Lufthansa flight attendant. This points to an expectation in ourselves to weld together the roles in the Passion Play with the Oberammergau locals playing them. When they do not fit – after all who would have thought of Christ been played by a psychologist? – a sense of discrepancy, perhaps a sense of the Uncanny arises.

An interesting analogy may be found in the discrepancy between what one wants to say and the way one expresses it through language, which is smaller in one’s native language than in a second/adopted language. While in the first case the metaphor of “bathing in language” is appropriate, in the second – when the gap between what one wishes to say and the way it is said is too wide – the expression “like bathing in a ski-suit” has been used by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming. A shift from the latter, uncanny experience to the more comfortable one of having the appropriate linguistic tools (the “bathing suit”) to express oneself is accomplishable through practice. In real-life Oberammergau, the endless rehearsals, revisions and reworking of the text, the advice sought and given, ensure that the fit between the Passion and its performance improves with each passing decade.

Kazantzakis’ novel, of course, has the advantage of setting this theme of the actor, the role and reality on a fictional stage. On this stage, the actors no longer simply perform but rather re-enact – as if the role fitted them like a glove. Better still, as if there were no distance between the narrative of the Play, the specific role, and the self. Or, as if: “World and dream are one,” as a boy in the novel sings to the Agha.

But then perhaps I am making too much of this: after all, one of the Oberammergau inhabitants who played Christ in the year 2000 performance is now, in the year 2010, playing Judas!

This poem is a suicide note addressed to a number of unusual addressees, leaving the content of the note to the reader’s imagination. It puzzled and haunted me for the last few weeks: its exquisite, lyrical tone, its mysteries and the ways it brings nature alive through its lines.

A Critical analysis by Tammy Ho Laiming and Jarno Jakonen appeared recently in A Cup of Fine Cha. I thoroughly enjoyed reading both, poem and analysis, and kept them with me for weeks, chewing on words, mulling over the subtle allusions.

Tammy Ho Laiming and Jarno Jakonen’s analysis of the poem, as well as the comments, provide a beautiful and multi-faceted context to the poem. There is whole list of addressees in this “Suicide Note”: “frog, cicadas, rain clouds, gardens, worms, grass, deer, curtains, noise, lights, glass trails, heart, hands, ink, bruises, rivers, summers, monsoons and thunderbolts,” which the analysis and the comments fully and thoroughly explore.

I have nothing to add, except one question: Where are the people? Where are the relationships with people? The nature described in the poem is giving, generous – though providing what is usually offered by humans: warmth is offered by glow worms, for instance. And as if to emphasize the point, neighbours and strangers appear only impersonally as in “the shining lights of the neighbours and their last ashen cigarettes.”

So, for me, there is so much loneliness and sadness in the persona pouring out every time nature stands in for the human touch: friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues, or even kind strangers. What could be more indicative of sadness, and indeed despair, than the need to use “broken glass trails that will show the way to strangers”?

From this perspective, what if, in a well-encrypted way, we are led to ask: does the poem take the line of praising nature instead of criticizing fatal failings of the human heart?

With this in mind, how are we to conceive of experiences and memories of losing a home, family, country, culture through war and forced displacement? A pressing question, for there are so many groups in this predicament all over the world now. Arguably, the real losses and trauma suffered by those forcibly and traumatically expelled fracture the symbolizing processes, reducing the facility to employ them in creating meaning in everyday life. As a result, these experiences may acquire a different mental status, require different resources and be put to different uses by our conscious and unconscious minds.

Frequently, memories of such losses remain hidden, out of reach of linguistic elaboration for years – or even generations, as seen in families of holocaust survivors.

Sometimes, memories of the home lost, as well as of the traumatic circumstances of the expulsion, have been used as building blocks to construct or reinforce a sense of identity and community. This is illustrated in Alice James’ perceptive article, “Memories of Anatolia: generating Greek refugee identity.”

James studied the construction of the refugee identity of the Greeks of Anatolia who fled Mikra Asia, the western part of Anatolia in 1922. Up to that time, more than a million, perhaps a million and a half of Christian Ottoman Greeks had lived there, in Greek settlements going back millennia. However, after a disastrous series of wars in the Balkans and between Ottoman Turkey and Greece in particular which resulted in the catastrophic defeat of the Greeks, the surviving Christians of Anatolia were forced to flee from their homes. Many perished. Most of the survivors fled to Greece where they settled – though a significant number went to other countries and even other continents.

For those who settled in Greece, the country became their new home, even if they spoke little or no Greek. They encountered acts of kindness and generosity as well as negligence, and animosity. As a result, many of those who had survived the war and persecution in Anatolia, died. James refers to a League of Nations source that quotes mortality rates among the new arrivals reaching 45% at one point. Survivors grouped together and developed ways of coping with the losses they had suffered and the difficulties they encountered in their new country.

Concentrating on the refugees of Chios, the largest island closest to Smyrna, James quotes a refugee describing their situation, “like the leaves from the trees when the wind takes them away and they blow right and left without knowing where they are going.”

James notes that “The refugees were no longer attached to their land, and only by producing a group identity could they feel grounded.” This identity was produced through processes that helped translate the experiences and generate a distinct identity as Mikrasiates; all these processes helped recall and often show concretely the difference between the earlier wealth of the life in Anatolia that was lost, and the deprivation that followed the expulsion and refugeedom.

Efforts concentrated on continuing or preserving traditions and customs. Chief amongst these were those associated with the Greek Christian-Orthodox religion, which had been a pillar of their identity under the Ottoman rule. Christian Orthodoxy, with its emphasis on ritual and custom (such as celebrating Saints’ days, associated with the name days of those sharing Saint’s name), provided a continuity between the past, present and future generations.

Referring to Hirschon’s study of a refugee community in the Kokkinia district of Athens, near Piraeus, James points out the importance of memory for identity formation. Museums and collections or archives of memorabilia, photographs, and film were used by the Greeks from Anatolia to generate an image of themselves in Greece, as a distinct group, the Mikrasiates. By holding on to personal and cultural belongings and heritage, such as the Byzantine heritage, photographs, song, music and other memory devices, the story of the refugees’ lives, traditions as well as their loss is not forgotten, but incorporated in the process of identity formation, and bestowed upon future generations.

Beyond the communities studied by James and Hirschon, it would be interesting to think about how identity formation works in situations in which such uses of memory are discouraged, or non-existent: for example, the situation of those Greeks who fled, in the aftermath of the Civil War, to communist countries vis-à-vis those who managed to stay behind; the situation of the Muslims of Crete who went to nation-building Turkey after the treaty of Lausanne as compared to those Muslims who stayed on in Northern Greece, and others. It would also be of interest to think about other factors and processes involved in generating refugee identity, and their interaction with memory.

Please feel free to add your comments, impressions, views on these themes in the comments box below.

PS Some of these themes of loss, strategies of survival, and the vicissitudes of identity formation, I touch upon in my forthcoming novel “Alexandrias 40: Under the Lemon Tree.”

The poem “Where were you last night?” was written for a photographer friend; his photograph of a pair of bedroom slippers with the words “Her bedroom sippers,” used for inspiration.

The poet rose to the occasion, a difficult one, since it does not simply involve writing in response to a photograph, but a picture by a photographer and friend. How close is the friendship, one wants to ask, how much information is one not privy to, why bedroom slippers, what is the artist’s intention? And yet, on reading the poem, these questions lose their urgency, as we enter, or rather are led into, a world we feel we know, which however appears magical at the same time. From a book launch, to fairy tales, to Moscow, to Chelsea, to hotels and linguistic stops, we are taken round the world and back into the poet’s arms.

There are so many things I like about this poem that to single out one thing would do injustice to the rest. Nevertheless, I will pick out a theme which resonates particularly strongly with me.

The first stanza gives a clue that serves as an entry point. The narrator might be asking herself the question “Where were you …?” The book launch she attended was a boring event, too many writers’ egos, neat piles of books and lots of wine on an empty stomach! But we know you can’t judge a book by its cover. This leads the narrator to crack open the book pile, and the stories, fairy tales, metaphors, characters come tumbling out in the subsequent stanzas. The writer is never bored, or alone… and the reader is certainly entertained and amused, but also puzzled.

At the same time, a sense of longing and loneliness comes across in the poem. “Where were you last night?” might also be a question asked of the “you” in the poem – as if the narrator wished the “you” had been with her. The repeated question suggests feeling excluded, or left; and all that within the context of closer intimacy claimed by the words in the photograph “Her bedroom slippers.” In asking the “where were you” question, the narrator implies “you” could have been with her, “at home,” in her own arms, with her wearing “her bedroom slippers.” Perhaps, the fact that “you” were not is just as well, as one might imagine that, had that “you” been at home with her, the poem might not have been written!

In this sense, for me, this poem also explores the source(s) of creativity: is the feeling of a lack, of longing and of loss an essential ingredient of creative work? What other ingredients are there? And why is inspiration and creative effort so often experienced as capricious, and fragile, needing to be nursed and safeguarded? There is a powerful hint in the poem at our anxieties about the fragility of the creative process: one snowflake and we can be blinded for ever… There is a display of poetic force in this poem which transcends and transforms the longing into a poetic journey well worth embarking on.

Creative Climate is a media and research project about climate and the environment run jointly by the OU and the BBC.

The Creative Climate website is full of interesting information from experts around the world: videos and articles to take your breath away – though not literally! On the contrary, there is a lot of hope in the contributions.

The documentary Hope in a Changing Climate drawing on success stories from China, Ethiopia and Rwanda, demonstrates how barren and decimated land that was thought to be beyond redemption could be brought back to life by local residents. Planting trees and selected vegetation in patterns that encourage the soil to retain water, they managed to transform within five years the arid plateaus to lush, fertile and life-sustaining land. The film of the work carried out by the locals in the Loess  Plateau in China, is both beautiful and inspiring.

Restoration of the environment is possible; the process of decimation is not irreversible. As if proof were needed that it is a matter of belief, determination, and dissemination of knowledge… all to do with the climate of opinion influencing the climate!

For lack of pictures of these areas to show what has been achieved, I include the photograph of Two Lakes in a Volcano taken from space and tweeted live from the international Space Station by Soichi Noguchi http://twitpic.com/1exv5i Thank you Soichi Noguchi for this gem of a picture! It also attests to what can be achieved through co-operation, ingenuity and determination.

chosen to be included in the 2009 Best of the Net Anthology is a beautiful poem. Read it here:

http://www.asiancha.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=367&Itemid=176

It works on many levels, as Tammy Ho’s critical analysis, and the responses to it (including mine) demonstrate.

http://finecha.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/a-cup-of-fine-tea-iris-law/#comments

The level that hooked me was the one hinting at the hunger for home and the wish to return to it.  Real or imagined, a literal home or a metaphorical one, the womb or country of origin, it is always there, calling. Going round the world, we carry that hunger, that need, hear the siren’s call, knowing at the same time, the impossibility of returning…

Iris Law speaks of the pain of this recognition, the moment “the spear hit home.”

Kavafis knew this problem and wrote about it in his Ithaca.

Odysseus had to find out for himself. Tellingly, he set out again, soon after he returned home.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/07/food-water-africa-land-grab

wrote about what is now often referred to as ‘the 21st century new colonialism.’ Bigger/richer countries, companies, pension funds, individuals and others acquire or lease land in Africa cheaply on which they grow food and export it back to their home markets.

In Ethiopia, for instance, farm land twice the size of the UK is being used to grow food, flowers, as well as crops for biofuels. At the same time, millions of Ethiopians threatened by hunger and malnutrition, displaced, are not even being told of the existence of the farms or the plans to extend them. There is a similar situation in over 20 other African countries, and more and more projects are given the go-ahead, profiting the richer countries, companies and individuals at the expense of the indigenous population and local farmers.

Lorenzo Cotula, of the International Institute for Environment and Development, in his ‘Deals can be good news when not made behind closed doors,’

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/07/africa-land-grab-food-water

argues that this need not be the only outcome. Rather, some of the development can be good news for the people involved, if there is proper consultation and negotiation of terms that are mutually advantageous. This is a good point – and something to aim towards. At present, unfortunately, not enough support is forthcoming for those affected, neither from their governments nor from abroad, that would enable them to become involved in such negotiations.

Turning a blind eye to the practice of using poorer countries as farms for the richer ones, while their people are starving, is becoming an urgent, practical as well as moral concern. And the implications and consequences of this practice are snowballing. Survival International is campaigning for the tribes of the Omo Valley, in south-west Ethiopia,

http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/omovalley/novoice#main

where a massive hydroelectric Dam is being built which will end the Omo River’s natural flood cycle. The tribes along its banks cultivate the fertile silt it leaves behind. Their fragile livelihoods are threatened as their farming is dependent on the river and its floods. However, these tribes have high illiteracy levels and lack the resources and infrastructure needed to employ the legal teams to negotiate terms on their behalf. Their government has so far ignored their plight.

If we don’t ‘see,’ who will?

http://www.stopgibe3.org

On the Omo Valley: Survival International is working jointly with International Rivers, Friends of Lake Turkana, Counterbalance and Campaign for the Reform of the World Bank on the Omo Valley.

Survival International has a number of articles on these issues and various options available for those wishing to help with their campaigns.

www.survival-international.org

Photo: Constantina Pierides

Creative Climate is an online diary project set up jointly by the OU and the BBC to chart the ways in which people see and respond to environmental change over the next decade. Through the diary, people from all over the world, will be able to share their views on the changing environment, as well as their ideas on how to meet the coming challenges. In this sense, the Creative Climate diary, will become “a huge living archive of our experiences and ideas in one of the most important decades in human history.”

For a sustainable future, we will need all the creativity, determination, will-power and strength we can master – and as many perspectives as there are. I will be reading the entries and following the diaries.

http://www.open2.net/creativeclimate/about.html

From his repainting of a 1912 photograph of himself and his mother, to the obsessional scraping of layers of paint in his canvasses, the viewer is provided with material to reflect upon not only the work of a genius, but also on the effects of trauma and the possible survival mechanisms at work. Best of all, Gorky’s paintings of himself with his mother serve as a pointer, a witness to the horrifying experiences and provide a background to that history and relationship.

For this blog – which focuses on cultural and historical factors impacting on themes of identity expressed in the visual arts, literature and society – the relevance of Gorky being an Armenian refugee from the Ottoman Empire, his life experiences and their influence on his subsequent development and work is self-evident. Born Vosdanig Manoog Adoian, in the surroundings of lake Van in the Armenian part of the Empire, he was said to be first traumatised by the emigration of his father to America; then by the persecution and expulsion suffered by the Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman empire rebuilding its identity as the Turkish nation. Gorky, together with his family, was forced on an eight day ‘death march’ during which many perished, suffered extremes of danger and famine and indeed lost his mother to starvation. He travelled via Constantinople (now Istanbul) and Athens some time in 1920 on his way to America.

Upon arrival, he took a new name: Arshile, as his first name, possibly from the Russian version of the Greek hero Achilles; and Gorky, from the great Russian writer, whose nephew he claimed to be. The question why Gorky changed his name, is one of the most discussed in the first newspaper reviews of the Tate exhibition, and has been prominent in the writings about him.

In The Times, Rachel Campbell-Johnston mentions the version of Gorky’s nephew, Karlen Mooradian (the same one who forged the letters from Gorky to his sister). He believed that Gorky was so overwhelmed by the weight of Armenian culture, history and language (passed on to him by his mother) that he felt he would never be able to live up to it. Changing his name, Mooradian is purported to have suggested, meant that Gorky could rid himself of this heavy burden.

Rachel Campbell-Johnston herself does not sound convinced that this is the main reason. Emphasizing the traumatic aspect of the wiping out of a whole community and subsequently this genocide being denied, she wonders whether the excessive trauma of this experience may have led Gorky to deny his true identity.

Whatever the reason – and several alternatives have been suggested and explored in the exhibition catalogue – there have been several charges levelled at Gorky and his art that are implicitly linked to his name change: imposture, mimicry, derivative, copying. William Feaver’s recent contribution in The Guardian is replete with references to boasting, or “an art of deception and concealment.” However, Michael R. Taylor in his article “Rethinking Arshile Gorky” (see exhibition catalogue) points out that what the critics saw as efforts by Gorky to copy the masters (Cézanne, Picasso and others) were misconstrued. These charges “fail[…] to grasp the radical nature of his self-imposed discipleship to these artists … Rather, Gorky emerges in this exhibition … as a quintessential self-taught artist in the interwar years whose steadfast allegiance to other artists’ visions was a means of self-creation” (p. 27).

Perhaps this is the point to remind ourselves how common it has become to write or paint under ‘pen names,’ ‘nom de guerre,’ or ‘nom de plume’. Would that mean that in relation to Gorky, different standards have been applied regarding his changing his name and not speaking about his own origins and trauma? If so, it would be interesting to consider why this might be the case.

However, there is a different point to consider. Without wishing to belittle the impact of the Armenian genocide or other explanations of Gorky assuming a new name, it may be useful to refer to the substantial amount of thinking and research carried out on the effects of colonial, imperial and post-colonial subjects. This work describes a clear pattern in the behaviour of those who aim to start a new life in another country, whether as refugees from war, persecution, hardship or for other reasons. In modern English literature, for instance, Indian and Pakistani authors, fleeing the aftermath of the Indian and Pakistan declarations of independence, have described the experience of such upheavals. Writing in English, these authors provide a culturally rich and imaginative perspective on displacement, exile, losses suffered and ways of coping/surviving them. They also explore, through their characters, a number of survival mechanisms being adopted in the new countries. Change of name, or slightly shortened/modified/Anglicized versions, as a sort of baptism, are among them.

Gorky’s change of name, his refusal to speak about the family trauma, may well be seen as expression of survival mechanisms which served him well in his work and life. The fact that he faced apocalyptic losses in his forties – lost paintings and books due to a fire in his studio; rectal cancer; wife’s affair with friend and supporter; subsequent abandonment by his wife, who took their children with her; breaking his neck in a car accident – meant that he was faced once again with a repetition of the original trauma he had suffered. Losing the life he had struggled so hard to build in America, Gorky may have lost the survival structures and the life energy that had propelled him forward to his becoming a new man, and a great artist.

See:

http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue18/mygorky.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/7190303/Arshile-Gorky-A-Retrospective-at-Tate-Modern-review.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/feb/06/arshile-gorky-painting-william-feaver

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article7019487.ece

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article6977836.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2

Video on the Tate Channel about Arshile Gorky by fellow Armenian Nouritza Matossian, writer of Black Angel: A Life of Arshile Gorky. Her family, like Gorky’s, survived the Armenian genocide.

http://channel.tate.org.uk/media/26093514001

Michael R. Taylor (ed) Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2009)

Nouritza Matossian, Black Angel: The Life of Arshile Gorky (London: Chatto and Windus, 1998)

Please feel free to add your comments, impressions, views about the film in the comments box below.

For more Reading Room Blog entries click here http://www.stellapierides.com/blog

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7015540.ece

Or this one in The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/04/ancient-language-extinct-speaker-dies

Which diseases do languages die of? Colonisation, present and past, ‘civilising,’ paternalistic policies may be the most virulent and aggressive ones. How many people speak the indigenous languages of the American natives? How many languages are threatened by blind prejudice?

How many great poems, stories were lost when the Bo language became extinct ? How much knowledge about history, ancient perspectives, animals, plants was lost, we will never know. In our arrogance, we are comfortable in the belief that our knowledge is the best, that we know better – and thus lose our connection with our roots, history and common humanity.

From another perspective, globalisation, time, culture, technologies are great equalisers, disseminators of information to the great Social Darwinian battlefield of humanity. The stronger language, community, culture wins. In an article in The New York Times, this process is seen at work in China:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/world/asia/18manchu.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

On the other hand, many languages have also been saved. The Hebrew language was actively revived as a spoken, everyday language in the late nineteenth century, when Classical Hebrew and its later developments, together with other spoken Hebrew became the Modern Hebrew used today. Latin was saved from extinction through its use in the Holy See (but not the Vatican City State), apart from being preserved in classical education. Barely recognisable variations of Ancient Greek might (!) still be spoken by small pockets of descendents of Alexander the Great’s army in remote parts of Asia; Doric Greek is often uncovered in dialects spoken in the Peloponnese and other Western areas of present-day Greece. Welsh (in the United Kingdom), Maori (in New Zealand), and other languages came back from the brink.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8311000/8311069.stm

Though the work of digital archives is commendable in preserving dying and/or dead languages in digital museums, such as “Open Language Archives Community” (OLAC) – it is, sadly, helpless in keeping them alive out there in the world.

Luckily, there are are other means of helping: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/5509 and
http://www.survivalinternational.org/weareone

other people’s poem stories. Have a look, you might find something to your heart’s

liking: http://carryapoem.com/category/stories/

STELLA’S STORY: BLUE NIGHT Thursday, 28 January 2010

I have different poems to suit different occasions. Poems,
fragments, even lines
of poems I keep in my books, notice-board, notebook, iPod,
in my heart and head. And I keep renewing them, thanks to the wonderful output of our poets.
Last Christmas, I loved Carol Ann Duffy’s poem ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’;
last year, for rainy days, I carried Don Paterson’s ‘Rain’; the last few years,
Mary Oliver’s ‘Wild Geese’, hearing their ‘harsh and exciting’ cries as a wake
up call to the world. For decades, I pondered over Giorgos Seferis’
‘In the Manner of G.S.’. So many others…

Whenever I need reminding of my place in nature, in the order of things,
whenever my expectations become too great, I reach for Sean O’Brien’s
‘Blue Night’.
Downloaded from the Guardian, it lights up my computer screen. Therefore. Therefore,
I become small, or tall. I draw strength and inspiration. Thank you Sean O’Brien. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jan/14/tseliotprizeforpoetry.awardsandprizes1


from Blue Night by Sean O’Brien

Therefore. Therefore. Do not be weak.
They have no time for pity or belief,

Reading Room Blog

To suggest something for my Reading Room Blog, please email me and I will try my best to follow it up. Otherwise, pick an entry, sit back, and read!

Matina Stevis, in The Guardian, asks: Who are the real Greeks? Sparking a thought provoking debate, she discusses the proposed legislation offering citizenship to the children of immigrants:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/20/greece-citizenship-immigrants-debate

I copy below my comment on Matina’s article from the Guardian website:

20 Jan 2010, 9:14PM

Greece is not an island. Unlike the UK, it is a country at the crossroads of the East with the West, at the intersection of three continents. It has a long history of wars of occupation and independence; of expansion, contraction, populations mixing, fleeing, persecution and exchange. In such an environment, the question ‘Who are the real Greeks?’ becomes either irrelevant or plays into the hands of those who try to manipulate history and race.

History helps us understand, though by no means justify or excuse, the state of a country and its people. Today, history is alive in Greece, and knowledge of the country’s past – the four hundred year Ottoman occupation, the Balkan wars, two World Wars, the war with Turkey and the resulting ‘Catastrophe’ of 1922, the treaty of Lausanne, the Civil War, the Junta –  helps us trace the roots of the divisions in modern Greek society. Unfortunately, large chunks of this history are kept in different places because they are being disputed, not accepted as true by the still warring parties in this country, as well as Greece’s neighbours. A quick read through the responses to this blog will illustrate the diversity of histories, ethnic woes and, really, the whole problem.

The Greek fault line may nowadays be seen in the reactions of some Greeks to foreign workers; in a feature shown on Greek TV some time ago, one could see footage of Greek migrants to America in the early twentieth century and the negative reactions to them by Americans that paralleled Greeks’ reactions to Albanian immigrants. The schism is also expressed in Greece’s policies towards some neighbouring countries  and now in the opposition of Greeks, thankfully not a majority, to the legislative proposal to allow citizenship to children born to immigrants.

Let us hope that those interested in Greece will feel encouraged by Matina’s article to trace the threads of this regrettable reaction to Greece’s history and the countless conflicts and migrations that made it a country and constructed its identity, and its fears of losing its recognizable format. At the same time, let us applaud the Greeks who, by proposing and supporting this progressive law, demonstrate their affinity with ideas of shared humanity and acceptance of the other.

Hirschon draws on her research as an anthropologist in one of the refugee areas of Piraeus, Kokkinia, in 1972. Living within the refugee community, Hirschon was able to observe people’s customs and traditions, listen to their stories, and witness their lives. The fact that they referred to themselves as refugees and they were addressed as such in 1972, fifty years from the 1922 catastrophic events in Asia Minor, becomes the pivot of the book, and underpins the facts she discusses.

Hirschon was able to follow the grievances, alienation, marginalisation and suffering of this group of people living in Piraeus, and their attempts to cope with their situation by forging a separate identity within the Greek nation. While later years brought prosperity and the possibility to move out of the area, large numbers decided to stay in overcrowded properties for economic, socio-political, and to some degree, psychological reasons. Hirschon’s work focuses on a moment in time in the lives of this group of Mikrasiates, which tells a story of their continuing need for an identity and a way of coming to terms with their situation.

From the iconostasi (icon corner/alcove) to the proxenio (the procedure of arranging the marriage), to the dowry, to the seeming contradiction of religious practice with left-wing commitment, and to the surprising ratio of chairs per head, the book presents and explores a society both alive and struggling to maintain its identity. Hirschon relates a woman refugee saying that while the catastrophic events in Asia Minor and their consequences were traumatic experiences to the older generation, they are heard only as fairy tales by their offspring.

This book paints an alive picture of the people and the society it describes.

——————————————————————————————————————-

Leyla Neyzi, ‘Remembering Smyrna/Izmir: Shared History, Shared Trauma’ in History and Memory, Bloomington: 2008, 20:2

Gülfem Kaatcilar Iren, a woman from Smyrna/Izmir, born in 1915, talks to Leyla Neyzi about her experiences of war, and the destruction of Smyrna and Manisa in  particular, events central to the history of Greece and Turkey. These events are referred to in Greece as the Smyrna ‘disaster’, while in Turkey as the ‘liberation’ of Izmir. This paper provides a unique account of the co-existence of two contradictory discourses framing the identity of the witness interviewed, as well as a wonderful illustration of shared humanity between people on the opposite sides of the political divide of the Aegean.

In a sensitive manner and with an ability to hold conflicting approaches in balance, Neyzi identifies two separate discourses in this narrative: a nationalist discourse which rationalises the events in Izmir and the ‘silence’ that followed them, and a discourse based on personal experience, which empathizes with those who lost the war and were forced to emigrate to another country (in this case, Greece) for safety.

Neyzi explores the coexistence and intersection between the two discourses while placing them within the wider socio-political context of the discussion about identity and history in modern-day Turkey.

Sources and related material to Alexandrias 40 and my Greek Short Stories:

Online

Alice James, 2001, ‘Memories of Anatolia: generating Greek refugee identity’, in

http://balkanologie.revues.org/index720.html

Thalia Pandiri, 2007, ‘Narratives of Loss and Survival: Greek voices from the Asia Minor Catastrophe’, in

http://www.interlitq.org/issue1/thalia_pandiri/job.php

Raymond Bonner, 1996, ‘Tales of Stolen Babies and Lost Identities; A Greek Scandal Echoes in New York’ in

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/13/nyregion/tales-of-stolen-babies-and-lost-identities-a-greek-scandal-echoes-in-new-york.html

Print

Bruce Clark, Twice a Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey (London: Granta Books, 2007)

Dimitra Giannuli, ‘“Strangers at Home” The Experiences of Ottoman Greek Refugees during their Exodus to Greece, 1922-1923,’ in Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 13:2 (1995: Oct.)

Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City (New York: Newmark Press, 1988)

Esther P Lovejoy, Certain Samaritans (New York: Macmillan, 1933)

Leyla Neyzi, ‘Remembering Smyrna/Izmir: Shared History, Shared Trauma’ in History and Memory, Bloomington: 2008, 20:2

Arnold J Toynbee The Western Question in Greece and Turkey: A Study in the contact of civilizations (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922)

Fiction

Louis de Bernieres, Birds without Wings (New York: Random House, 2004)

Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex (London: Bloomsbury, 2002)

Ernest Hemingway, ‘On the Quai at Smyrna’, in The Short Stories (New York: Scribner, 2003)

Nikos Kazantzakis, Christ Re-crucified,

Dido Sotiriou, Farewell Anatolia

Films

Theo Angelopoulos The Weeping Meadow

Costas Ferris, Rembetiko

Elia Kazan, America America

Some people think that, since life is so messy, art and literature should go about creating order. According to them, stories should be logically tight, red-herring free, sparkling with intelligent dialogue, perfect grammar and syntax, restrained in adverbs and smelling of the creative writing programmes that fertilised their authors. These people would not enjoy Harukami’s book. It is a long, winding story full of diversions, ambitious themes, metaphysical concerns and unadulterated creativity. And all the mess that goes with them. It is a book littered with short stories, red-herrings, repetition of theme and expression, which trembles with authenticity and life.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle was published in Japan in 1994 and 1995. English versions appeared since 1997, 1998, wonderfully translated (I am told) from the Japanese by Jay Rubin. My own copy, by Vintage, is 607 pages long, meandering, challenging, exciting, shocking, thought provoking.

I am new to his work – though I am soon to remedy this – but on the basis of this book alone I can understand Murakami’s popularity.

I will not summarise the book here. It would both spoil the pleasure of discovery for the reader and it is a redundant process; there are many summaries of it around. Google the book and you will see what I mean.

Murakami has been linked to Carver, Chandler, John Irving and others. To me he is nearer to Camus than any other writer. Surprised? Think of the Outsider, this short and sharp novel and you will recognise the feeling of alienation, of estrangement, of emptiness in the 607 pages of Murakami. The W-uBC just happens to enjoy the ride and therefore be longer.

Murakami writes about Japan and a not recognisable Japan, about friendlessness while hanging around  friends, about loneliness in the  middle of crowds, about being young and being understood by the old - or no-one. About the experience of having people appear, disappear and reappear again without any feeling of constancy of their presence or existence.

Toru, the thirty year-old hero, has left his job in law and is wondering what to do next while his wife goes out to work. He idles away his time left over from being a house-husband, listening to the cries of a bird outside his home, which sounds like a wind-up spring and which give the novel its title, until the disappearance of his cat sets him on a search for meaning, both personal and universal. This path takes him from a dead end alley, to the entry of the suburban railway, to the bottom of a well, where, in the dark, he tries to get in touch with his true feelings.

In the periphery of a life regulated to the minute by social laws, and not knowing what or who he is, Toru, and the reader, find meaninglessness accompanied by mindless brutality and sheer horror – I am referring to the skinning a person alive scene, to prepare the reader for something utterly nightmarish – emerge in ordinary settings, or unexpected turns in the story. History adds its gore to this mix. Dante’s Hell for the masses?

At best, the world appears a mysterious, strange, infinitely complex place, with good and bad taking turns to descend upon its populace unexpectedly. The mechanical cry of the wind-up bird that reverberates through the novel adds to this feeling of estrangement that is at the core of this book. Like the Emperor’s Nightingale, it carries risks. So, by all means, read it, but not at night – and not in the dark.

Reference:

Haruki Murakami (2003) The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, London: Vintage.

We shall see what comes of it. Very soon!