Notes Organized – Explore all possible aspects of cultural mobility.

1. Thesis
Very little has been said about the specific ideological moment that made his work possible
- the start of WWII when Greece and Britain alone still stood against the Nazi onslaught and
the Greek government was exiled in London - and how it relates to the work. Still less about
how that ideological moment and our present one can be reconciled - which in essence also
contains perhaps the most important question of all: What does it mean to read
Cepetanakis, this obscure mid-twentieth century literary figure today, what ideological
choices are we making by picking up his works, what aspects of our present idealogical
moment might we project back onto this reading? > In his role as cultural ambassador with
ties to the Greek Government in Exile he is implicitly relied upon to contain the agenda of
the Greek Resistance and to strengthen the case for liberalization of the government, which
in its first years still preserved a lot of elements of the Metaxas regime. In his works
dedicated to Greece he also provides an interesting balance between different ideological
bodies - the insider perspective of a 1930’s Greek intellectual and the perspective of a
Western Philhellene. A present day reading of his texts would almost certainly be produced
by the heightened interest in diaspora and migration narratives in Greece in light of the
refugee crisis and would necessarily invoke the discourse of compassion.

2. Characteristics:
- unmarked interferences (“foreign” arrangements of syntactic and semantic
structures) in Capetanakis’ English poems and essays as:
a. indicators of absence of ethnic tension and the informality of an in-group
b. deliberate attempts to negotiate more than one cultural identity
- the modernist themes of exile and intercultural encounter leading to the
representation of different languages (Eliot, Joyce, D.H. Lawrence) and interest in
the tensions between language as a tool of representation and as a represented
object (usually furthered by exploration of failures of communication); in
Capetanakis’ case not mere representation but performance > The interaction with
linguistic and cultural difference was a popular theme in Modernism and in the case
of a bilingual poet like Capetanakis it becomes more than a literary motif, it is the
main mode of production of the texts. >
a. How did Greek Modernists experience England and how did English Modernists
experience Greece?
b. How did Capetanakis mitigate between these two experiences?
c. What can be induced about his philosophy of language and how does that relate to the
production of his texts?

- the image of Greek history as universal history and the end of Romantic
Philhellenism; emerging discourses of a masculine, Dionysian Greece; Capetanakis as
an “observer” establishing a center in the relation of multiple ideological bodies that
cannot themselves negotiate a stable core
- spatial and social mobility in Capetanakis’ case; his relations with Athens University,
The British Council, the Korais Chair, the Government in Exile
- the attempt to “conceal” the Greek Resistance, the British-imposed “liberalisation”
of the Government in Exile and power relations in Capetanakis’ writing
 - the current migrant crisis and the elision of old markers of belonging to a collective;
the narratives of compassion; the discourse of shattered Philhellenism in Western
media approaches to the economic crisis

3. Bibliography
Ricks: argues that Capetanakis’ case “sheds a light on the permissible barriers between
literary cultures, where Greeks often find themselves”
Papanikolaou: The conclusion of this part of the article is that “by pointing to social class,
gender and literature as performances, Capetanakis places emphasis on his own position in
British literary circles as also being a type of performance” and his performance was that of
a Greek writer in exile.
Kantzia: Like Kierkegard and Plato, who influenced him, Capetanakis draws no clear border
between literature and philosophy.
She begins with a biographical note on the young poet and stresses the constant movement
in his life, from Smyrna to Athens, to Heidelberg, to Cambridge and London; a movement
which introduced him to some of the most powerful intellectual movements in Europe at
the time - Neo-Kantianism, Modernism, German Existentialism. (cf. Wanderwords: markers
of the writers’ wanderings – they betoken routes not roots) (His whole life was a movement
from one institution to another, from one sphere of life to another, from one medium to
another. A story of displacement and exile that can make a great book: Smyrna, Athens,
Germany, London)
Capetanakis’ translation practices for the purposes of his work as a scholar, lecturer and
writer shows him moving easily between the four languages at his disposal (Greek-German-
French-English).
This fascination is part of his phenomenological project - he sought to “enter into the
other’s space, to identify with the other subject” but was aware that full identification was
impossible. Capetanakis valued above all the individuality of his authors and he showed an
unflinching compassion for them. Kantzia argues that Capetanakis’ approach to reading was
the approach of the “lover who would like to be united forever with his beloved” echoing
the central idea of his German dissertation Liebe und Zeit.

Plan:
1. Preconditions for mobility: biography – emphasis on multilingualism and modernism
which are recurring motives.
2. Internal mobility: poetics (relations with philosophy and performance).
3. External (ideological) mobility:
3.1. Spatial: (inter)cultural climate and the institutions of the time.
3.2. Temporal: the new crisis and the narrative of compassion.

Summary:
We explore the work of Capetanakis through the theory of cultural mobility put
forward by S. Greenblatt. On the one hand, we discuss the movement of discourses and
practices within the cultural output of Capetanakis, on the other, we look at how his work
moves through space and time. The main points of interest we locate in Capetanakis’s work
are: the language of multilingual literature and the problematic identity behind it; the use of
critical and philosophic methods for the writing of poetry; the combined outsider and
insider perspective into Modern Greece; the new migrant crisis and the discourse of
compassion.