MODERN GREEK STUDIES YEARBOOK

,1

University of Minnesota

Volume 2 1986
 MODERN GREEK STUDIES YEARBOOK

EDITOR:
T HEOFANIS G. STAVROU
University of Minneso.ta

EDITORIAL BoARD:
Lars Baerentzen Louis Coutelle
University of Copenhagen University of Provence at Aix

Kostas Kazazis Peter Mackridge

University of Chicago - University of Oxford

Eleutherios Prevelakis Vincenzo Rotolo

The Academy of Athens University of Palermo

Constantine A. T rypanis
The Academy of Athens

University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Volume 2 1986
 Cover Illustration: Portrait of Joannes Argyropoulos from Constantinople (1393/4-
1487), successor to the Chrysoloras chair in Greek language and literature at Florence Uni­
versity (1456) and later councilor to King Matthias Corvinus, founder of the University of
Buda. Portrait in an illuminated manuscript of his time (Baroccianus 87, f. 33v, Bodleian Li­
brary, Oxford).

Responsibility for the production of this volume:

Theofanis G. Stavrou, Editor
Joan Sommerfeld, Assistant Editor
Kevin Haukeness, Assistant Copy-Editor

Modern Greek Studies Yearbook is published annually by the Modern Greek Studies
program at the University of Minnesota. The price for this_ volume is $30.00. Checks should
be made payable to the Modern Greek Studies Yearbook, and sent to:

Modern Greek Studies

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The main objective of the Modern Greek Studies Yearbook is the dissemination of schol­
arly information in the field of modern Greek studies. The field is broadly defined to include
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modern Greek experience. Topics dealing with earlier periods, the Byzantine and even the
Classical will be considered provided they relate, in some way, to aspects of later Greek his­
tory and culture. Geographically, the field extends to any place where modern Hellenism
flourished and made significant contributions, whether in the "Helladic space" proper or in
the diaspora. More importantly, in comparative and contextual terms, the Mediterrariean
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be paid to subjects dealing with Greek-Slavic relations or Eastern Orthodox history and cul­
ture in general.
Manuscripts, books for review, bibliographical information, and correspondence
should be sent to the above address. Manuscripts should be submitted in four double-spaced
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The publication of this issue of the Modern Greek Studies Yearbook has been made pos­
sible by subventions from the Modern Greek Studies program at the University of Minnesota
and the Ouranis Foundation.

Copyright© 1986
By Modern Greek Studies�,_
University of Minnesota f
All rights reserved
ISSN-0884-8432.
 CONTENTS

Editor's Note . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

ARTICLES

Post-Byzantine Hellenism and Europe: Manuscripts, Books

and Printing Presses .
: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . · . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . l
. Leandros Vranoussis, The Academy of Athens

The Greek Monk Arsenios and His Humanist Activities in

Seventeenth-Century Russia .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .... . . . .. . .. . . · . . 73
Maria Kotzamanidou, University of California - Berkeley

Theodore Angelopoulos, The New Greek Cinema and

Byzantine lconology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - ........89
Andrew Horton, University of New Orleans

Theotokas's Constantinople: Nostalgia as a

Source of Literary Creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Donald E. Martin, Rockford College

Sixteen English Letters to George Seferis: Presented

with an Introduction . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .... . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
George Thaniel, University of Toronto

Popular Tradition and Individual Creativity:

Pandelis Prevelakis (1909-1986) ............................. : ..143
P�ter Mackridge, University of Oxford

v
vi Contents

TEXT TRANSLATION

George Theotokas, Free Spirit Translated from Modern Greek

with an Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ........ .153 .

Soterios G. Stavrou, University of Minnesota

Spyros Skiadaresis, The Kospetonis Barracks: A Cephalonian Story

Translated from Modern Greek with an Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . .201
G. Michael Razi and Alec Reid

RESEARCH AIDS

The Research Center for the Study of Modern Greek History

of the Academy of Athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . . . . r. 221
Eleutherios Prevelakis, Former Director of the Center

REVIEW ARTICLES

Mediterranean Economic Connections from the Thirteenth to the

Nineteenth Century . . . . . . ........ . . . . . . . . . ..
. ,_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Basil Spiridonakis, University of Sherbrooke

The Greek Land Regime in Nineteenth-Century

Balkan Perspect_ive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . ........ 282 .

John Lampe, University of Maryland

Greece's Northern Neighbor: Yugoslavia in

Recent Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ·. . . . . . . . 287
Thomas A. Emmert, Gustavus Adolphus College

C. M. Woodhouse on Greece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . 296
Victor Papacosma, Kent State University

The Anthropologist in the Nation-State: Doing Fieldwork

in Greece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . .... . . . 307
Jill Dubisch, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Cyprus: The Loss of a Cultural Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : ........314

Michael Jansen, Nicosia

Manolis Andronicos, Vergina . The
Royal Tombs and the
Ancient City ......... .... ....325
. .
Reviewed by W illiam D. K Coulson
M. B. Sakellariou (ed. ), Macedonia:
4000 Years of Greek History and
Civilization; Nicolaos K. Martis, The
Falsification of Macedonian History;
Stoyan Pribichevich, Macedonia: Its
People and History ..............327
Reviewed by Ioseph Goldman
Bruno Lavagnini, Alle origini del verso
politico ............ .......... . 329
Reviewed by Vincenzo Rotolo
Zora Devmja Zimmerman, Serbian
Folk Poetry: Ancient Legends,
Romantic Songs; Alex N. Dragnich and
Slavko Todorovich, The Saga of
Kosovo: Focus on Serbian-Albanian
Relations . .. .... ............330
. . . ·
Reviewed by Thomas A. Emmer_t
"The Kiev Mohyla Academy" (Special
Issue of the Harvard Ukrainian Studies)
.............................. 333
Reviewed_ by Paul Bushkovitch
John Louis Hondros, Occupation and
Resistance: The Greek Agony
1941-44 ... .... . .. . .......334
. . . .
Reviewed by Alexandros Kitroejf
Eleni Fourtouni, Greek Women in
Resistance: Iournals - Oral
Histories . .......... ...........336
Reviewed by Elizabeth Faue
Lawrence S.Wittner, American
Intervention in Greece,
1943-1949 . ....................338
Reviewed by Marian Sarafis
Contents ., vii
BOOK REVIEWS
'
George L. Kontogeorgis, I Ellada stin
Evropi - I Poreia pros tin Enosi kai i
politiki tou Karamanli (Greece in
Europe - The Road to Union and the
Policy of Karamanlis) ...........340
Reviewed by Van Coufoudakis
Mariella Doumanis, Mothering in
Greece: From Collectivism to
Individualism ... ........... ..342
. .
Reviewed by Vassilikie Demos
Niki Loizidis and Nikos Andrikakis
(eds.), Ellines Kallitehnes tou
Exoterikou (Greek Artists Outside
Greece) ....................... 343
Reviewed by Dimitri Tselos
Alice Scourby, The Greek
Americans ...... ........ . ...345
. . .
Reviewed by Clarke A. Chambers
George Giannaris, I Ellines Metanastes
kai to Ellinoamerikaniko Mythistorima
( The Greek Immigrants and the Greek-
American Novel) ............... 346
Reviewed by Fotios K. Litsas
. Regina Pagoulatou, Oi Presvejtes ( The
Ambassadors); Regina Pagoulatou,
Motherhood. Original Greek text with
English translation by Kali Loverdou-
. Streichler .. ........ ..........347
. .
Reviewed by Apostolos N.
Athanassakis
Viktor Sokoliuk (ed.), Ekho Ellady
(Echo of Hellas) ................ 349 -
Reviewed by Irina Carten
Mikis I. Kitromilides,
Keimena ( Texts) ....... ........ 352
.
Reviewed by Costas M. Proussis
viii Contents

Louis Coutelle, Theofanis G. Stavrou Petros Haris, The Longest Night:

and David R. Weinberg, A Greek Chronicle of a Dead City. ......367 .

Diptych: Dionysios Solomos and Reviewed by Costas M. Proussis

Alexandros Papadiamantis . .... . . .353
Janusz Strasburger, Angelos Sikelianos,
Reviewed by John E. Rexine
Piezje (Poems) ................ 369
. .

Theofanis G. Stavrou and Constantine Reviewed by Franciszek Gotembski

A. Trypanis, Kostis Palamas: A Portrait
Yannis Ritsos, Zametki na poliakh
and an Appreciation. Including Iambs
vremeni. Stikhi i poemy (Notes on the
and Anapaests and Ascraeus ......355
Margins of Time. Short and Long
Reviewed by Thanasis Maskaleris
Poems) . . ...
. . . . . ............370
. .

C. Capri-Karka, War in the Poetry of Reviewed by Irina H. Corten

George Sejeris. A Poem-by-Poem
Analysis .. . . . .
. . . ... .. . . . . . . . 357
. .
Titos P. Jochalas, Stoikheia Ellino­
Alvanikis Grammatikis kai Ellino­
Reviewed by John E. Rexine
Alvanikoi Dialogoi. Anekdoto Ergo tou
Deborah Tannen, Ioanni Villara (Elements of Greek­
Lilika Nakos .... . . . . . .. . .
. . . . . .358 Albanian Grammar and Greek­
Reviewed by Marjorie Bingham Albanian Dialogues. Unpublished work
of John Villaras) ... . . . . . . .....371
. .

Christos S. Romanos, Poetics of a

Reviewed by Demetrius Moytsos
Fictional Historian .... .........360 .

Reviewed by Virgil Nemoianu Peter Mackridge, The Modern Greek

Language: A Descriptive Analysis of
George P.· Henderson, Standard Modern Greek .........374
E. P. Papanoutsos . .. . . . . . . . ..361
. . .

Reviewed by Lambros Missitzis

Reviewed by John P. Anton

Vitzentzos Kornaros, OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED ....379

Erotocritos .................... 363
Reviewed by M. Byron Raizis

Stratis Myrivilis, Vasilis Arvanitis.

................... ........... 366
Reviewed by Vassilis Lambropoulos
366 Book Reviews
Stratis Myrivilis, Vasilis Arvanitis. Translated
from the Greek by Pavlos Andronikos (Armidale,
Australia: University of New England Publishing
Unit, 1983), pp. 112. Paper $9.50.
Stratis Myrivilis's novella was first serialized
as a short story in an Athenian newspaper
(1934), then appeared in a much longer ver­
sion in his collection of short stories, The Blue
Book (1939), and was later published
separately in a revised and extended form
(1943), until its second, definitive edition a
year later. We now have the opportunity to
welcome its first complete English transla­
tion.
The work has been hailed unanimously
as a major accomplishment in Greek prose.
This praise, invariably accompanied by ex­
clamations of national pride has viewed the
work under consideration exclusively in the
context of Greek fiction, particularly the
fiction of the 1930s. To enlarge this context,
and take into due consideration develop­
ments in the broader European and Ameri­
can milieu, one should keep in mind a few
well-known and representative titles: Svevo,
Confessions of Zeno (1921); Bely, Kotik
Letayev (1922); Joyce, Ulysses (1922); Kaf­
ka, The Trial (1925); Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
(1925); Breton, Nadja (1928); Faulkner,
Sanctuary (1931); and Celine, Journey to the
End of the Night (1932). These titles sum­
marily remind us of the Modernist move­
ment, which during the second decade of the
twentieth century took literature and the
other arts by storm, changing drastically
writing styles and reading conventions. Un­
der its self-reflective scrutiny, literature itself
as an institution underwent a severe crisis of
conscience and confidence, and had to reex­
amine its means and ends, its operations and
its social role. After this turmoil, which lasted
for some thirty years, once the very nature
and constitution of the aesthetic were ques­
tioned, nothing was going to be the same­
beautiful, immediate, direct, transparent -
any longer.
Significantly, Modernism was violently
debated and fiercely resisted in Greece. The
reasons are analyzed convincingly in a forth­
coming study of canon formation in Greek
literature by Gregory Jusdanis. Suffice it to
indicate here that, while with Modernism
European artistic tradition was looking back
at its history of the last 150 years and seeking
a new self-justification and direction, after
the recent socio-political upheavals, in
Greece literature (and art) was just emerging
as an autonomous institution with its own
territory and importance. The Modernist cri­
tique of presence and essence was potentially
the worst enemy of such a l�gitimation proc­
ess. The threat was real and the reaction
strongly negative. As a result, only individual
modernist works appeared but not a single
author joined the movement with serious
conviction or consistency.
Vasilis Arvanitis is an exemplary case of
the anti-modernist trend which arguably
(and distressingly) persists until today (often
even in Greek literary criticism). Set in the is­
land of Lesbos in the first decade of this cen­
tury and in the last days of Ottoman rule,
with a mixed Greek and Turkish population,
it tells the story of the eponymous local Greek
hero who defies all forms of control and
authority, exhibiting a mythical combina­
tion of strength and hubris, until his final in­
capacitation and death. The story is told
from the viewpoint of a younger narrator
who recalls with awe, affection, and nostal­
gia the astonishing deeds of Vasilis, trying
retrospectively to make sense out of his life
and character. The narrative has three main
effects: it idolizes, beatifies, and nationalizes
the hero. First, he is turned into a superhu­
man being whose abilities, power, and cour-
. age· are simply incomparable, challenging
and defeating everybody and everything­
friends and enemies, relatives and snakes,
nature and arms. Second, he is turned into a
pagan semi-god, a fallen archangel- who
transgresses norms of conduct and ignores
distinctions between good and evil to achieve
a unique individuality. Finally, and most im­
portantly, he is turned into a national figure
of epic proportions, an incarnation of the
Greek character in his transhistorical es­
sence, who invents, knows, and obeys his
own uncompromisingly idiosyncratic rules
that make life plenary and meaningful.
In terms of genre and style, the novella
belongs to the late symbolist naturalism com-
 Book Reviews
monly associated with such works as Hesse's
Demian (1919), Alain-Fournier's Le Grand
Meaulnes (1913) and K. Hamsun's Look Back
on Happiness n912) but is especially indebt­
ed to the mystical paganism of G. Haupt­
mann's The Vatican Cellars (1914). In fact,
much of Vasilis's inconsequent actions should
be interpreted in the light of Gide's doctrine
of the gratuitous, yet liberating acte gratuit,
which is performed on impulse to release and
gratify a motiveless desire. But the anti­
modernist current running through the book
does not spring simply from its :return to an
aesthetic and technique that were pre­
modernist and already twenty years old. It
stems primarily from the anxiety_ of Greek­
ness that haunts the work. The ultimate justi­
fication of the hero's character and deeds re­
mains his national identity, the fact that "he's
a brave Hellene. " (p. 17) The "archangel of
heroism," (p. 3) the man who "defied God,"
(p. 90) who expresses in every move and
mood the immortality of the Greek soul in all
its untamable exuberance. There is no need
for any foreign models or values, the novella
asserts on all levels, from language to plot­
we know who we are and what we want.
This claim of total independence, of course,
needs a constant differentiation from the
other - in this case, the Turk - and begs his
presence simultaneously in contempt and in
desperate need. Thus, ironically, the bravest
of the Hellenes is called "Arvanitis" (Albani­
an), fights with the Young Turks in Constan­
tinople, and dances only to Anatolian music.
These fundamental (arid ideologically un­
avoidable) contradictions are allegedly re­
solved in the overwhelming personality of the
hero, where an· alternative ethic is exem­
plified: identity as public self and Greekness
as morality. To rephrase, in this "recit" of the
national character the Greek identity is cap­
tured and portrayed in the morality of the self
as public performance. Therefore, the hero's
sordid heroism is ultimately an inverted and
extrovert aestheticism: he is more Wildean
than Nietzschean - hence the gripping fasci­
nation the book still exercises on our imagina­
tion.
The translator, Pavlos Andronikos, a
lecturer in modern Greek at the University of
367
Melbourne, has presented us with an enjoya­
ble, spirited, faithful translation and an in­
formative edition of the novella. Andronikos
is also a sophisticated commentator and even
though his interpretation is at-variance with
that of the present reviewer, it deserves seri­
ous study. In the preface and in a subsequent
essay ("The Narrator of Stratis Myrivilis'
Vasilis Arvanitis: An Exploration into Emo­
tional Response to the Reading of ·Eiction," in
The Text and its Margins, M. Alexiou and V:
Lambropoulos, (eds.), Pella, 1985), which
blends psychoanalysis and reader-response
theory, he concentrates on the presence of the
narrator and discovers modernist elements in
the narrative _technique. Undoubtedly, the
subject will be further explored in his doctor­
al dissertation on the author which is being·
completed at the University of Birmingham.
We are therefore grateful to Mr. Andronikos
for his dedication to the study of Vasilis Arva­
nitis. Credit is also due to the University of
New England for undertaking this important
publication. Vasilis Arvanitis is indispensa­
ble for our better understanding of the de­
velopment of Greek fiction, and its impact on
the latter. The present translation should be
of special interest to the modern Greek
specialists, to comparatists and narratolo·­
gists. Its delectably devious glamorization of
decadence as -pure (noncommittal) patri­
otism puts it in a special category which will
both delight and instruct.
VASSILIS LAMBROPOULOS
Ohio State University
Petros Haris, The Longest Night: Chronicle of a
Dead City. Translated from the Original Greek by
Theodore Sampson (Minneapolis: A Nostos Book,
1985), pp. x, 128. $20.00
The Longest Night is a collection of nine
modern Greek short stories written by Petros
Haris about the sufferings of occupied
Greece, especially the city of Athens, during
World War II. The subtitle of the 'book,
"Chronicle of a Dead City," is quite an ap­
propriate one· because the separate short sto­
ries of the book see� ·to form a continuous
whole, an unfolding narrative, from the day