The Journal of Modern Hellenism

Front Matter

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Biographical Statements

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“A Letter from John Tzetzes, with Notes for the Uncomprehending”

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This short story was written in the context of an upper level undergraduate course run by Dr. Dimitris Krallis this fall at Simon Fraser University—Fantasy in Byzantium—which examined the ways in which Byzantine sources have influenced and been reinterpreted in modern fiction. During the course I was struck by the wonderfully vituperative style of John Tzetzes, a twelfth-century polymath infamous even in today’s scholarship for his endless quarrels over minor grammatical points and his near-eternal grudges. Reading Tzetzes, it is hard not to wonder how such a sharp-tongued character would have navigated a society in which literary and political circles were so close knit. Thus, this story began in part as an attempt to play with the idea of how a person like Tzetzes might have tried to walk back a statement that went too far, or was too direct to be veiled by literary references or allegory.

The challenge for a Byzantine writer was in part finding a way to incorporate the old into the new in a way that both added depth and bolstered the credibility of the author, and in keeping with this, I set out to try to create my own imitation primary source out of quotes from other Byzantine writers, complete with the explanatory notes we sometimes see requested in Byzantine letters or marginalia. Tzetzes’ personality, and some of his nastiest letters, also reminded me instantly of the kinds of characters that show up in the works of Vladimir Nabokov—the eloquently miserable, self-obsessed narrators of works like The Vane Sisters and Pale Fire—and so I have drawn on Nabokov’s characterizations and on the structure of Pale Fire in an effort to combine the old and the new. The text that follows, connects elements of the past and present, history and fiction, tragedy and satire, which I hope will invite further reflection

Modern Greek Literature’s Intersections with Greek History and the Past: A Concise Outline

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The first part of this paper is a concise outline of some of the ways in which modern Greek literature has entered into a dialogue with Greek history and the past from the nineteenth century to the present by idealizing, Hellenizing, suppressing, inventing, negotiating, critiquing, or reinterpreting and re-inventing them. Along these lines, the paper weaves together different literary, ideological, and historical threads which help the readers realize that the topics examined by the ensuing papers of this Special Issue do not emerge out of a vacuum, but instead constitute responses to—or have been prompted by—concrete developments in the realms of modern Greek literature, ideology, and history. The second part of the paper delineates the Special Issue’s specific focus, scope, aims, approach and methodology, while summarizing the main arguments and contributions of each of the individual papers.

Staging Transcultural Relations: Early Nineteenth-Century British Drama and the Greek War of Independence

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This paper examines two British Romantic dramas written during the Greek War of Independence and its aftermath: George Burges’s The Son of Erin or the Cause of the Greeks (1823) and John Baldwin Buckstone’s The Maid of Athens; or, the Revolt of the Greeks (1829). The paper discusses the plays’ portrayals of transcultural interactions between Greeks and Europeans (Irish and British) and argues that the two dramas encourage audiences to see similarities between themselves and Greeks, while also critiquing British apathy toward the Greeks’ efforts to achieve liberation. Despite Burges’s and Buckstone’s shared support for the Greek war, however, an important difference between the two texts exists: while The Son of Erin maintains a relentless attack on the British government for aligning British politics with Ottoman policies and remaining indifferent toward the Greek war, The Maid of Athens suggests that Britons who take advantage of Greeks’ subjugation misrepresent Britain’s true feelings about the Greek War of Independence.

Cavafy’s Historical Poetics in Context: “Caesarion” as Palimpsest

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This article explores the multiple genealogies of C. P. Cavafy’s “Caesarion” (1918), a poem often claimed as a key to our understanding of his historical poetics, by tracing its European cultural and literary context. Despite his perception as an obsolete and marginal historical figure, Caesarion was highly recognizable in the poet’s time and was often portrayed in various contexts, from scholarly studies to various forms of popular culture. The article examines the unexpected ways in which Cavafy absorbed and transformed elements from his main historical source, J. P. Mahaffy’s The Empire of the Ptolemies (1895), and surveys the unknown series of Caesarion’s literary depictions by several European authors before the composition of Cavafy’s poem. As this discussion demonstrates, Caesarion’s composite portrait is marked with insinuations of effeminacy, which may result from his enfoldment in the legend of Cleopatra and explain this ancient historical figure’s transformation into an object of homoerotic desire in Cavafy’s poetry. The article concludes with speculations connecting Cavafy’s poem to the historical Caesarion’s treatment in early 20th-century cinematic renderings of the story of Antony and Cleopatra.

Reading Andreas Kordopatis, Understanding History and Fiction in Thanasis Valtinos

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Beginning with a brief account of the reception of Aristotle’s divide between literature and history, this paper explores a contemporary Greek case of blurring the boundaries between those narrative forms, as exemplified in the work of Thanasis Valtinos. Focussing on one of his early works, it argues that by creatively manipulating textual formats which often do not belong to the realm of literature, Valtinos’s prose constructs a blurry space between fiction and historical reality which challenges ordinary views of perception and representation and tests the boundaries of prose writing. Literature may not be able to restore historical truth, but by exploring how individuals negotiate life through specific historical conditions and circumstances, regardless of whether their understanding of these circumstances is systematic, comprehensive, accurate, or naïve, it can give voice to the experience of anonymity and therefore contribute to our understanding of what history potentially overlooks. Furthermore, it can problematize what is viewed as historical truth and accordingly sharpen our critical approach to the past by cultivating the potent space between history and fiction, between what has happened and what may have happened.

Of Pretense and Preservation of the Self: Theater, Trauma, and (Post)memory in The Mother of the Dog by Pavlos Matesis

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This study discusses The Mother of the Dog, the first and now best-known novel of Pavlos Matesis, the celebrated Greek playwright. The 1990 popular novel, by its original Greek title of Η Μητέρα του σκύλου, was translated by Fred Reed as The Daughter, after its main character. The title switch is indicative of the reader’s willingness to move from the first to the second generation of those compelled to process devastating experiences and subsequent memories. This study unearths the novel’s themes of trauma and memory and speaks to issues framed by the theoretical concept of “postmemory.” In particular, I show how an extensive personal testimony from “postmemory” may fruitfully be read, analyzed, and integrated into Greek novel-writing as Greek history-writing—may even constitute the novel as history. Equipped with the notions and tools of postmemory and postmodernism of the 1990s, Matesis ironically reworks themes that have traditionally centered the master narrative of Greek nationalism. He subverts grand, patriotic Greek history and takes it down to the level of its perennial humble victims. Matesis presents the life of the nation, as of the heroine, as a performance manqué. He undercuts the “post-” of “postmemory” for demonstrating how Greek history failed to place both time and space between the first generation and the second generation of its trauma survivors and of its female victims, especially. The author’s deliberate inability to represent a romantic novel or even a few romantic characters, his preempting of any worthwhile performance, whether communal or individual, bestows on this Modern Greek novel a unique voice of cultural and sociopolitical criticism. This critique has transformed the oft-translated novel of 1990 into an early harbinger of a new and more challenging era of (internationally watched) crisis, whose harsh realities have curtailed patriotism and deflated appearances even further.

History, Fidelity and Time in Rhea Galanaki’s Novels

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Rhea Galanaki’s novels Ο αιώνας των Λαβυρίνθων (The century of the Labyrinths) (2002), Φωτιές του Ιούδα, Στάχτες του Οιδίποδα (Fires of Judas, Ashes of Oedipus) (2009) and Θα υπογράφω Λουί (I shall Sign as Loui) (1993) lend themselves to a re-examination of the past from the point of view of the present and for the sake of the present. The past must be accepted as an “impassable truth”. One can arrive at such a liberating interpretation after dismantling constructions of racial superiority, misogyny, the haunting of personal, collective or national traumas, and even the legacy of revolutionary idealism. Such an interpretation might prove helpful in dealing with contemporary challenges to identity at a time of new geo-political tensions, mass migration and rising neoliberal populism.

RENA MOLHO, The Holocaust of the Greek Jews: Studies of History and Memory. Athens: Patakis editions. 2015. Pp. 196+ Indexes and photos.

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ANNA MANDILARA and GIORGOS NIKOLAOU, eds., Filiki Etairia: Revolutionary Action and Secret Societies in Modern Europe. Athens: Asini. 2017. 376 pages. Illustrated

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