Greece’s most colourful politician since the second World War, Andreas George Papandreou, was born on the Greek island of Chios
By Patrick Comerford
Greece’s most colourful politician since the second World War, Andreas George Papandreou, was born on the Greek island of Chios – the birthplace of Homer – on February 5th, 1919. His father, George Papandreou, became prime minister in the 1960s.
As a law student at Athens University, the young Andreas Papandreou became involved in radical, left wing politics, and was jailed and tortured under the pre war Metaxas dictatorship. He left for the US in 1940, and completed a PhD at Harvard before joining the US navy and becoming a US citizen. After the war, he taught economics at Harvard, became a professor at Minnesota and later at the University of California, Berkeley.
In the US, he came under the influence of John Kenneth Galbraith and was closely associated with Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey and the Democratic Party, and there he met and married Margaret Chant. Their four children include the present Education Minister, George Papandreou.
After almost 20 years in exile he returned to Greece on a Fulbright scholarship in 1959 and in 1961 became director of the newly founded Centre for Economic Research and an adviser to the Bank of Greece.
He was first elected as a deputy for his father's Centre Union in February, 1964, and was appointed Minister to the Prime Minister. But he was soon accused of plotting a coup with left wing army officers. The allegations coincided with the withdrawal of the future conservative prime minister, Constantine Mitsotakis, and others from Centre Union – Papandreou later described Mitsotakis as ‘my own arch enemy, the tall, ruthless Cretan who had sown the seeds of our destruction.’
The crisis brought the colonels to power in 1967, and Papandreou was jailed from April to December 1967. Mitsotakis was released after promising to quit politics for life, but Papandreou was detained and tortured until influential Democrats persuaded Lyndon Johnson to intervene. Johnson told a White House reception: ‘I just told those Greek bastards to lay off that commie son of a bitch, whatever his name is.’
He went into exile in Sweden, where he briefly held a professor ship at Stockholm University before moving to Canada, and for five years he was Professor of Economics at York University. In exile he founded the Panhellenic Liberation Movement (PAK), later the nucleus for his Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok).
With the fall of the colonels he returned to Greece in 1974 and founded Pasok. In the first election, the new party garnered only 12 per cent of the vote and 12 seats, but Papandreou set to work on building a web of party activists in every town, village and island. In 1977, Pasok doubled its vote, and Papandreou became official leader of the opposition. In 1981, campaigning on the slogan Allaghi (Change), it was swept to power. Papandreou became the country's first socialist prime minister, breaking the right's post war grip on power and becoming an enduring hero to the left. Four years later, Papandreou and Pasok comfortably won a second term.
Between 1981 and 1989, he embraced Third World radicals such as Libya's Col Gadafy, antagonised the US and castigated his EU partners. His radical domestic reforms included civil marriage, a lower voting age, greater rights for women and the abolition of the death penalty. And yet he was strongly nationalist at all times, taking tough stands on Macedonia, Cyprus, and Turkish claims in the Aegean, and demanding the removal of US military bases.
However, the government was marred by allegations of scandals corruption, and financial embezzlements, revelations about his private life, and his ill health. Papandreou was absent for two months in 1988 when he went to London for triple bypass open heart surgery performed by Sir Magdi Yacoub. In London as he fought for his life, an Olympic Airways hostess half his age, Dimitri Liani, kept vigil by his hospital bedside.
The pair shocked the nation when they publicly flaunted their affair. Shortly after his election defeat at the hands of Constantine Mitsotakis and his New Democracy in June 1989, Mr Papandreou divorced Margaret, his American wife of 38 years, and married Ms Liani, by then popularly known as Mimi and deeply unpopular within the ranks of Pasok and throughout Greece.
But even in his worst days in opposition, during three election defeats in 1989 and 1990, he could still pull 40 per cent of the popular vote. In 1992 he was cleared of charges relating to a $200 million bank embezzlement and at the same time, Ms Liani (temporarily) gave up her flashy clothes and carefree ways. But it seemed a career that began with promise and privilege had come to an end.
And yet he defied all the pundits when returned to power in 1993 with a landslide victory over his old rival Mitsotakis - the two had been lampooned in the Greek press as battling septuagenarian dinosaurs. But he was frail and unable to put in a full day's work. He antagonised many long-time supporters and soon found himself under fire from dissenters within Pasok when he appointed his wife as chief of staff, his son as junior foreign minister, his wife's cousin as junior culture minister and his personal physician, Dimitris Kremastinos, as health minister.
The Greek presidency of the EU at the beginning of 1994 should have been a personal triumph, but late that year the charismatic former European Affairs Minister, Mr Theodoros Pangalos, resigned from the cabinet, and within weeks Pasok fared badly in local elections. However, the greatest personal setback may have been the death of the former culture minister, Ms Melina Mercouri.
By now he seldom chaired cabinet meetings, and was hardly ever seen in parliament. All access to the prime minister, even for cabinet ministers was controlled by Mimi and trusted members of her entourage, including her mother, her brother, an Orthodox priest, and her personal astrologer.
The astrologer predicted that the last 10 days of November would be crucial for Mr Papandreou's health, and at the end of November he was rushed to the top Athens Onassis Heart Centre; with pneumonia. For weeks he was kept alive on a respirator and a dialysis machine, and hundreds of supporters camped outside the hospital for days. He survived Christmas and into the New Year, but their best wishes were to no avail.
He resigned on January 15th and was replaced as prime minister by Mr Costas Simitis, although he retained the title of party president. Eventually he left hospital after four months, only four days before Greece's national day.
As he left, he told boisterous supporters: ‘With love, I'm leaving from this.’ He was escorted by Ms Liani, who smiled and said he was unable to say more. He waved feebly from the back seat, where he sat expressionless as he was driven away.
Ms Liani, who has accused her husband's children and ex-wife of orchestrating attacks against her, is expected to be exiled at the luxury pink villa she built for herself in the posh Athens suburb of Ekali at astronomical cost.
History may not judge Mr Papandreou on his last term in office. Certainly, he has transformed Greek politics radically and to the core.
Pasok, with 170 of the 300 seats in parliament, has a secure majority that will ensure it survives until, next year, when Mr Papandreou’s term was due to end. But Mr Papandreou leaves deep divisions within Pasok, and Mr Simitis has an uphill battle to take control of the party leadership over the next few weeks. The party faithful only hope that he can get party affairs back into shape in time to win the next election.
This obituary was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 24 June 1996
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18 June 1996
Elgin Marbles may see the blue skies of Athens after 200 years
Letter from Athens
Patrick Comerford
Despite the heat, hundreds and thousands of tourists climb the steps up the Acropolis in Athens each day, to view the Parthenon and the other great classical buildings that are the crowning, glory of the Greek capital.
By day, the Parthenon can looks like an abandoned building site, surrounded by scaffolding and with large cranes inside the shell. But by night, viewed from below, it takes on a new beauty with the Sound and Light show that can be seen right across the city.
Archaeology and the great classical sites are a major reason for many tourists visiting Greece. But archaeology is also an emotive subject for Greeks.
Following concerted protests from Greek and German archaeologists and from the Athens Academy, building work on the Athens Metro came to a halt at the end of last month to allow geological tests to determine whether tunnelling was threatening the ancient Karameikos Cemetery close to the slopes of the Acropolis. And this month in Crete, staff at Knossos warned that immediate action is required to save the Minoan Palace.
But if the staff at Knossos fret about official indifference, the prospects for the Acropolis have improved in recent weeks, with a British television programme calling for the return of the so called Elgin Marbles to the Parthenon, and with President Kostis Stephanopoulos and the Greek Prime Minister, Mr Kostas Simitis, throwing their weight behind a campaign once identified closely with the late Culture Minister, Melina Mercouri.
The Acropolis has been a focus and nucleus during every phase in the development and growth of Athens, and became the heart of the first Greek city state. Under Pericles, the Parthenon took only 10 years to build with, in the words of Plutarch, “every architect striving to surpass the magnificence of the design with the elegance of the exterior.”
The elegant exterior survived for centuries, and the Parthenon has served as Greek and Roman temple, Byzantine church, Frankish cathedral and Turkish mosque.
By 1563 a minaret had been added, but a visiting Venetian diplomat found the building was still covered in sculptures and painted in bright colours. In 1687, the Venetians laying siege to the garrison on the Acropolis ignited a Turkish gunpowder magazine, blowing the roof off the Parthenon and giving the marbles their apricot tinged glow so admired by neo classicists of the 18th century.
At the beginning of the 19th century, a Scottish peer, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, was British ambassador to the Porte. An Ottoman permit allowed him to erect scaffolding on the Acropolis, carry out excavations, and remove stones with inscriptions. But, by design or by cunning, he interpreted the Turkish concession liberally, and between 1801 and 1811 made off with almost all the bas-reliefs from the Parthenon's frieze, most of its pedimental structures, and a caryatid from the Erectheion. These he sold to the British Museum in London in 1816 for £35,000.
The English poet Byron was outraged by the vandalism, describing Elgin as “the last, the worst, dull spoiler” from Caledonia. The Greek poet Yannis Ritsos expressed the feelings of his nation when he wrote: “These stones cannot make do with less sky.” The campaign to return the marbles gained momentum when Melina Mercouri became Culture Minister. “I believe the time has come for these marbles to return to the blue sky of Attica,” she declared in 1982.
Now, a major television programme has revived the campaign for the return of the Parthenon Marbles. The Without Walls programme was hosted by William Stewart, who argued for their return by 2001 – the 200th anniversary of Elgin’s looting of the Acropolis. But he hedged his demand with three stipulations:
• The marbles should return only when the new Acropolis Museum is ready to receive them;
• All costs for their return should be met by Greece; and
• Greece should bear no claim for the return of any other artefacts held in Britain.
Commenting on the stipulations, President Stephanopoulos said: “These are very reasonable preconditions that every Greek would readily accept. There is no reason why we should not accept this five-year agreement.”
Over 100,000 viewers phoned in after the first screening of the programme: 99,340 or 92.5 per cent supported the return of the marbles, with only 7,518 expressing opposition. Now 33 Labour MPs have given their support to calls for the return of the marbles to Greece.
Stewart pointed out that he is decidedly “not in favour of every work of art or ancient artefact being returned to its country of origin.” It was a point worth making at a time when the Turks are demanding the return of Priam’s Treasure, currently on show in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow. The gold of Troy was excavated by Heinrich Schliemann and was smuggled out of Turkey to Athens in 1873.
Greece has made no official claim to the collection, but would find sympathetic ears in Moscow, despite competition from Turkey and Germany. Dr Yiannis Tzedakis and Prof Giorgios Korres of Athens University were invited to the exhibition’s opening, when Dr Irina Antovana, director of the Pushkin Museum, reaffirmed a promise she made when Melina Mercouri died: “From the moment the legal problems are solved, Greece will be the first country to exhibit the treasures.”
But whatever happens to Priam's Gold, Greek hopes for the return of the Parthenon Marbles have been boosted in the past few weeks. Melina Mercouri’s husband, the French film producer Jules Dassis, believes the repatriation of the marbles “is now much easier than when Melina campaigned.” He is heartened by the prospect of Labour winning the next British election: “If they return to power … then Greece has very good reason to hope.”
Now the Prime Minister, Mr Simitis, is relaunching her campaign. “It is of major concern to Greece to secure the return of the ‘Elgin Marbles’, especially now that 90 per cent of the British public appear to support the Greek case,” he said. It shows that the British people have a sensitivity and principles which their government must respect.”
This news feature was first publish in The Irish Times on 18 June 1996
Patrick Comerford
Despite the heat, hundreds and thousands of tourists climb the steps up the Acropolis in Athens each day, to view the Parthenon and the other great classical buildings that are the crowning, glory of the Greek capital.
By day, the Parthenon can looks like an abandoned building site, surrounded by scaffolding and with large cranes inside the shell. But by night, viewed from below, it takes on a new beauty with the Sound and Light show that can be seen right across the city.
Archaeology and the great classical sites are a major reason for many tourists visiting Greece. But archaeology is also an emotive subject for Greeks.
Following concerted protests from Greek and German archaeologists and from the Athens Academy, building work on the Athens Metro came to a halt at the end of last month to allow geological tests to determine whether tunnelling was threatening the ancient Karameikos Cemetery close to the slopes of the Acropolis. And this month in Crete, staff at Knossos warned that immediate action is required to save the Minoan Palace.
But if the staff at Knossos fret about official indifference, the prospects for the Acropolis have improved in recent weeks, with a British television programme calling for the return of the so called Elgin Marbles to the Parthenon, and with President Kostis Stephanopoulos and the Greek Prime Minister, Mr Kostas Simitis, throwing their weight behind a campaign once identified closely with the late Culture Minister, Melina Mercouri.
The Acropolis has been a focus and nucleus during every phase in the development and growth of Athens, and became the heart of the first Greek city state. Under Pericles, the Parthenon took only 10 years to build with, in the words of Plutarch, “every architect striving to surpass the magnificence of the design with the elegance of the exterior.”
The elegant exterior survived for centuries, and the Parthenon has served as Greek and Roman temple, Byzantine church, Frankish cathedral and Turkish mosque.
By 1563 a minaret had been added, but a visiting Venetian diplomat found the building was still covered in sculptures and painted in bright colours. In 1687, the Venetians laying siege to the garrison on the Acropolis ignited a Turkish gunpowder magazine, blowing the roof off the Parthenon and giving the marbles their apricot tinged glow so admired by neo classicists of the 18th century.
At the beginning of the 19th century, a Scottish peer, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, was British ambassador to the Porte. An Ottoman permit allowed him to erect scaffolding on the Acropolis, carry out excavations, and remove stones with inscriptions. But, by design or by cunning, he interpreted the Turkish concession liberally, and between 1801 and 1811 made off with almost all the bas-reliefs from the Parthenon's frieze, most of its pedimental structures, and a caryatid from the Erectheion. These he sold to the British Museum in London in 1816 for £35,000.
The English poet Byron was outraged by the vandalism, describing Elgin as “the last, the worst, dull spoiler” from Caledonia. The Greek poet Yannis Ritsos expressed the feelings of his nation when he wrote: “These stones cannot make do with less sky.” The campaign to return the marbles gained momentum when Melina Mercouri became Culture Minister. “I believe the time has come for these marbles to return to the blue sky of Attica,” she declared in 1982.
Now, a major television programme has revived the campaign for the return of the Parthenon Marbles. The Without Walls programme was hosted by William Stewart, who argued for their return by 2001 – the 200th anniversary of Elgin’s looting of the Acropolis. But he hedged his demand with three stipulations:
• The marbles should return only when the new Acropolis Museum is ready to receive them;
• All costs for their return should be met by Greece; and
• Greece should bear no claim for the return of any other artefacts held in Britain.
Commenting on the stipulations, President Stephanopoulos said: “These are very reasonable preconditions that every Greek would readily accept. There is no reason why we should not accept this five-year agreement.”
Over 100,000 viewers phoned in after the first screening of the programme: 99,340 or 92.5 per cent supported the return of the marbles, with only 7,518 expressing opposition. Now 33 Labour MPs have given their support to calls for the return of the marbles to Greece.
Stewart pointed out that he is decidedly “not in favour of every work of art or ancient artefact being returned to its country of origin.” It was a point worth making at a time when the Turks are demanding the return of Priam’s Treasure, currently on show in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow. The gold of Troy was excavated by Heinrich Schliemann and was smuggled out of Turkey to Athens in 1873.
Greece has made no official claim to the collection, but would find sympathetic ears in Moscow, despite competition from Turkey and Germany. Dr Yiannis Tzedakis and Prof Giorgios Korres of Athens University were invited to the exhibition’s opening, when Dr Irina Antovana, director of the Pushkin Museum, reaffirmed a promise she made when Melina Mercouri died: “From the moment the legal problems are solved, Greece will be the first country to exhibit the treasures.”
But whatever happens to Priam's Gold, Greek hopes for the return of the Parthenon Marbles have been boosted in the past few weeks. Melina Mercouri’s husband, the French film producer Jules Dassis, believes the repatriation of the marbles “is now much easier than when Melina campaigned.” He is heartened by the prospect of Labour winning the next British election: “If they return to power … then Greece has very good reason to hope.”
Now the Prime Minister, Mr Simitis, is relaunching her campaign. “It is of major concern to Greece to secure the return of the ‘Elgin Marbles’, especially now that 90 per cent of the British public appear to support the Greek case,” he said. It shows that the British people have a sensitivity and principles which their government must respect.”
This news feature was first publish in The Irish Times on 18 June 1996
An anthem confined to home
By Patrick Comerford
Yannis Ritsos, the great poet of the Greek left, was born on May Day 1909. And Epitaphios, the epic that became the stirring anthem of the Greek left, was written 60 years ago, in May 1936.
Some 60 years later, despite being set to music by Greece's two leading composers, Hadzidakis and Theodorakis, and performed throughout Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, Epitaphios still waits to be translated into English and is largely unknown outside the Hellenic world. Yet it has its own mystique and stirs the hearts of every Greek who hears it read or sung.
In May 1936, the northern town of Thessaloniki was paralysed by a widespread strike against wage controls. When workers in a tobacco factory took to the streets, the police were called in and opened fire on the unarmed strikers. Within minutes, 30 people were dead and 300 were wounded.
The next day, the Communist daily, Ritzospastis, published a front-page photograph of a mother dressed in black and weeping as she knelt over the body of her slain son in the street.
Moved by the photograph, Ritsos locked himself up in his attic and set to work immediately. In two days and two nights of intense creativity, his greatest poem, Epitaphios, was produced.
The Epitaphios Thrinos is the lament chanted in Greek Orthodox churches on the evening of Good Friday. But Ritsos's poem moves at the end from crucifixion to Resurrection, and an abiding hope that grave injustices can be conquered.
At first the bereft mother, like Mary with her crucified son, grieves inconsolably. She extols her son’s virtues and recalls his gifts. She cannot understand why he died, nor can she understand his political convictions. But she gradually changes and begins to apply his local struggle to the universal struggle for social justice. Her grief is sustained as she how her son pointed her to the beauties of nature and of all creation, she challenges the values of a society that can claim to be Christian, while killing those struggling for justice.
But darkness turns to light as the realisation unfolds that her son lives on in the lives of his comrades as they continue his struggles. At the end, her vision is of a future in which all shall be united in love, and in a stirring finale she vows to take up her, son's struggle and to join his company.
The poem first appeared as a work of 44 verses in Ritzosoastis: on May 12th, 1936, with a dedication to the workers of Thessaloniki. Soon after, a fuller version of 224 verses appeared in an edition: of 10,000 copies. Ritsos later told the newspaper To Vima that by the time he had sold 9,750 copies of Epitaphios, Kostis Palamas, the patriarch of Greek poetry, was selling only 300 copies of his works.
The strike in Thessaloniki was part of the unrest that led to the Metaxas dictatorship seizing power in the weeks that followed the publication of Epitaphios. The regime banned the poem and publicly burned the last 250 copies in front of the Temple of the Olympian Zeus in Athens.
Epitaphios was not seen again in print until the 1950s. In the intervening years, Greece suffered under German occupation and went through two civil wars, and Ritsos was held for four years in concentration camps and forced into internal exile.
The final, text was published in a second edition in 1956 and runs to 324 verses divided into 20 parts or cantos, each with 16 verses in eight couplets, except for the last two, which run to 15 verses in nine couplets.
Robert Frost has said a true poem memorises itself, and so it could be said a true lyric sings itself and harks after a melody. Epitaphios is lyrical and Ritsos achieved its lyricism by grafting his earlier elegiac mode and his political fervour on to the root stock of Greek folk song, the demotikti traghotidi. He 15 syllable lines and, rhymed couplets, reaching back into the racial; and mythical past of a people continually invaded, cheated and raped.
In 1958, Ritsos sent Epitaphios to the composer Theodorakis in Paris. Theodorakis set the epic to music, employing the quintessential instrument of the people, the bouzouki, and using rhythms drawn from the klephtic ballads, the songs of Epiros, the dirges of Mani, the songs and dances of the islands, and the rizitikas of Crete. At the time, the bouzouki was out of fashion among middle-class Greeks, who associated it with brothels and hashish dens.
Ritsos was apprehensive when he heard that Epitaphios, with its sacred allegories expressing ta Aghia ton Aghion (“The Holy of Holies”), was going to enter the music halls and night clubs of Greece. “I thought it would be a sacrilege … I was wrong.”
But the seeing by Theodorakis also, stirred intense debate in all sections of Greek society. Set to music, and recorded by artists such as Grigoris Bithikotsis and Yiannis Thomopoulos, the poem quickly acquired apolitical career of its own, becoming the anthem of the Greek left.
* * *
In 1963, once again in May, and once again in Thessaloniki, the young left wing deputy Grigorios Lambrakis lay dying in hospital after a murderous assault that provided Costa-Gavras with the drama for his movie Z. Hundreds of people kept vigil on the streets, and they were joined by Ritsos and Theodorakis as they sang Epitaphios in their martyr’s honour, vowing to ensure his struggle would live on. After the funeral in Athens, the dirge was sung once again by the crowds in the streets, and graffiti began appearing on the walls “Lambrakis Lives”.
When the colonels seized power in 1967, Ritsos was quickly arrested and sent into exile on Samos. The poetry of Ritsos and the music of Theodorakis were banned once again, but Epitaphios was soon being presented at readings and concerts throughout Europe as a rallying poem and anthem of opposition to the junta. The political force of Epitaphios had acquired a new dimension directly from its lyricism.
Surprisingly, Epitaphios has never been translated into English, although shorter poems by Ritsos have been translated by Nikos Stangos, Nikos Germanacos, Peter Bien, Kimon Friar, Kostas Myrsiades and Edmund Keeley. Last year, a bilingual (Greek English) commentary on the poem was published privately in Cambridge by Dr Nicholas Voliotis. But the fact that Epitaphios has still not been translated into English almost six years after the death of Ritsos leaves a major gap in the vast oeuvre of a major figure of the 20th century, Greek literary renaissance.
This feature was first published in the Arts pages of The Irish Times on 18 June 1996
Yannis Ritsos, the great poet of the Greek left, was born on May Day 1909. And Epitaphios, the epic that became the stirring anthem of the Greek left, was written 60 years ago, in May 1936.
Some 60 years later, despite being set to music by Greece's two leading composers, Hadzidakis and Theodorakis, and performed throughout Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, Epitaphios still waits to be translated into English and is largely unknown outside the Hellenic world. Yet it has its own mystique and stirs the hearts of every Greek who hears it read or sung.
In May 1936, the northern town of Thessaloniki was paralysed by a widespread strike against wage controls. When workers in a tobacco factory took to the streets, the police were called in and opened fire on the unarmed strikers. Within minutes, 30 people were dead and 300 were wounded.
The next day, the Communist daily, Ritzospastis, published a front-page photograph of a mother dressed in black and weeping as she knelt over the body of her slain son in the street.
Moved by the photograph, Ritsos locked himself up in his attic and set to work immediately. In two days and two nights of intense creativity, his greatest poem, Epitaphios, was produced.
The Epitaphios Thrinos is the lament chanted in Greek Orthodox churches on the evening of Good Friday. But Ritsos's poem moves at the end from crucifixion to Resurrection, and an abiding hope that grave injustices can be conquered.
At first the bereft mother, like Mary with her crucified son, grieves inconsolably. She extols her son’s virtues and recalls his gifts. She cannot understand why he died, nor can she understand his political convictions. But she gradually changes and begins to apply his local struggle to the universal struggle for social justice. Her grief is sustained as she how her son pointed her to the beauties of nature and of all creation, she challenges the values of a society that can claim to be Christian, while killing those struggling for justice.
But darkness turns to light as the realisation unfolds that her son lives on in the lives of his comrades as they continue his struggles. At the end, her vision is of a future in which all shall be united in love, and in a stirring finale she vows to take up her, son's struggle and to join his company.
The poem first appeared as a work of 44 verses in Ritzosoastis: on May 12th, 1936, with a dedication to the workers of Thessaloniki. Soon after, a fuller version of 224 verses appeared in an edition: of 10,000 copies. Ritsos later told the newspaper To Vima that by the time he had sold 9,750 copies of Epitaphios, Kostis Palamas, the patriarch of Greek poetry, was selling only 300 copies of his works.
The strike in Thessaloniki was part of the unrest that led to the Metaxas dictatorship seizing power in the weeks that followed the publication of Epitaphios. The regime banned the poem and publicly burned the last 250 copies in front of the Temple of the Olympian Zeus in Athens.
Epitaphios was not seen again in print until the 1950s. In the intervening years, Greece suffered under German occupation and went through two civil wars, and Ritsos was held for four years in concentration camps and forced into internal exile.
The final, text was published in a second edition in 1956 and runs to 324 verses divided into 20 parts or cantos, each with 16 verses in eight couplets, except for the last two, which run to 15 verses in nine couplets.
Robert Frost has said a true poem memorises itself, and so it could be said a true lyric sings itself and harks after a melody. Epitaphios is lyrical and Ritsos achieved its lyricism by grafting his earlier elegiac mode and his political fervour on to the root stock of Greek folk song, the demotikti traghotidi. He 15 syllable lines and, rhymed couplets, reaching back into the racial; and mythical past of a people continually invaded, cheated and raped.
In 1958, Ritsos sent Epitaphios to the composer Theodorakis in Paris. Theodorakis set the epic to music, employing the quintessential instrument of the people, the bouzouki, and using rhythms drawn from the klephtic ballads, the songs of Epiros, the dirges of Mani, the songs and dances of the islands, and the rizitikas of Crete. At the time, the bouzouki was out of fashion among middle-class Greeks, who associated it with brothels and hashish dens.
Ritsos was apprehensive when he heard that Epitaphios, with its sacred allegories expressing ta Aghia ton Aghion (“The Holy of Holies”), was going to enter the music halls and night clubs of Greece. “I thought it would be a sacrilege … I was wrong.”
But the seeing by Theodorakis also, stirred intense debate in all sections of Greek society. Set to music, and recorded by artists such as Grigoris Bithikotsis and Yiannis Thomopoulos, the poem quickly acquired apolitical career of its own, becoming the anthem of the Greek left.
* * *
In 1963, once again in May, and once again in Thessaloniki, the young left wing deputy Grigorios Lambrakis lay dying in hospital after a murderous assault that provided Costa-Gavras with the drama for his movie Z. Hundreds of people kept vigil on the streets, and they were joined by Ritsos and Theodorakis as they sang Epitaphios in their martyr’s honour, vowing to ensure his struggle would live on. After the funeral in Athens, the dirge was sung once again by the crowds in the streets, and graffiti began appearing on the walls “Lambrakis Lives”.
When the colonels seized power in 1967, Ritsos was quickly arrested and sent into exile on Samos. The poetry of Ritsos and the music of Theodorakis were banned once again, but Epitaphios was soon being presented at readings and concerts throughout Europe as a rallying poem and anthem of opposition to the junta. The political force of Epitaphios had acquired a new dimension directly from its lyricism.
Surprisingly, Epitaphios has never been translated into English, although shorter poems by Ritsos have been translated by Nikos Stangos, Nikos Germanacos, Peter Bien, Kimon Friar, Kostas Myrsiades and Edmund Keeley. Last year, a bilingual (Greek English) commentary on the poem was published privately in Cambridge by Dr Nicholas Voliotis. But the fact that Epitaphios has still not been translated into English almost six years after the death of Ritsos leaves a major gap in the vast oeuvre of a major figure of the 20th century, Greek literary renaissance.
This feature was first published in the Arts pages of The Irish Times on 18 June 1996
11 June 1996
Greek islanders tilt at Turks as EU promises them a windmill
Letter from Crete
Patrick Comerford
The tourist industry in Greece is suffering badly this year, with bookings from the main sources of tourism, Britain and Germany, down by 20 to 30 per cent so far.
The pinch is being felt throughout Greece, particularly in popular islands like Rhodes and Crete. But one island that sees few tourists, year in year out, is Gavdos, the southernmost island of Greece and of Europe.
Ironically, Gavdos may have been one of the first islands to attract tourists. According to tradition this island, off the south coast of Crete and lodged in the Libyan sea between Europe and North Africa, is Homer’s island of Ogygia, the home of the nymph Kalypso, who seduced Odysseus.
In classical times the island was known to Plutarch as Kavdos and to the Romans as Clauda. St Paul was blown past the island in the storm that carried him off from Crete to eventual shipwreck on Malta.
Under Byzantine rule, it was so heavily populated it was a diocese with its own bishop. The Venetians who occupied Crete for four centuries named the island Gozo di Candia, and feared it as the hideout of pirates. The Turks who captured Crete in 1669 knew Gavdos as Bougadoz under Ottoman rule; the now abandoned Pharos or lighthouse on the north-west tip was built by a French company in 1880.
In 1912 as part of the province of Sfakion, Gavdos was integrated along with the rest of Crete into the modern Greek state. But today it is still cut off from the rest of the world during extended periods in the winter; during the summer the weekly ferries from Paleohora and Hora Sfokion, as regularly as not, fail to make the three hour, 45 km journey due to strong winds. The expensive fares and unpredictable sailings deter any tourist who is ailing at heart or weak in pocket.
The problems facing the tourist in summer are a bitter taste of the perennial problems haunting, the residents in winter. Electricity only arrived with solar cells and generators in the 1980s, there are only 15 telephones and fewer cars.
Visitors are warned not to contaminate the limited fresh water supply with soap. The police station and school are dilapidated and forlorn, the need to preserve law and order and to provide education have long passed.
There are no package holidays to Gavdos. But for the few tourists – mainly Germans – who manage the three-hour trip from Paleohora, there are two tavernas and 19 rooms to rent, spread through the ‘capital’ Kastri, and the hamlets of Karabe, Sarakinikos and Korfos.
But the triangular island has fine cedar, pine, olive, carob and fig trees, crystal clear, sparkling turquoise waters and golden stretches of sand. The local honey is wonderful and the local wine comes with strong recommendations.
The island, home to 8,000 people in the Middle Ages, has fewer than 120 permanent residents today. The majority of houses in Kastri are crumbling away.
Only two families live in Ambelos, once famed for its vineyards. In Vatsiana, the southernmost settlement of Europe, isolation and irregular human contact have made the few inhabitants the most hospitable in Greece. At Cape Tripiti, the southernmost tip of Europe, the abandoned country houses of stone and cedarwood now shelter livestock. Beyond, there is only sea separating Greece from Libya, Europe from Africa.
On Thursday last, Gavdos had more visitors in a day than it might have had in the whole holiday season. The island was invaded by media eager to hear the islanders express their fears, not of mass tourism, but of a military invasion.
Earlier in the week, hours before his resignation, the Turkish prime minister, Mr Mesut Yilmaz, repeated his claim that there were “grey areas” – including Gavdos – in the Aegean that needed to be negotiated with Athens.
Last January, Turkey and Greece came close to war over the Dodecanese islets of Imia. Now for the first time, Ankara has staked a claim to a part of Greece abandoned by the Ottoman Empire in the last century and hundreds of miles from the Turkish coast.
“The Turkish claims are absolutely ridiculous," said Mr Michalis Pandelakis, the deputy chairman of Gavdos Community Council. "Someone has to put things in their right place.”
“If need be, we will give our answer with shotguns and pistols,” one angry resident told the daily Ethnos. “No Turk has ever set foot here. We want the international community to condemn the troublemakers.”
But the new focus on Gavdos has brought mixed blessings. The island looks like getting a new wind driven generator system courtesy of the European Union.
The island has long been demanding infrastructural investment and a regular ferry service with the south of Crete. Now the positive response of the Energy Commissioner, Mr Christos Papoutsis, a member Mr Simitis’s party, Pasok, and the four-day visit to Crete by the Prime Minister, Mr Costas Simitis, look like meeting some of the demands of Gavdos community council.
This news feature was first published in The Irish Times on 11 June 1996
Patrick Comerford
The tourist industry in Greece is suffering badly this year, with bookings from the main sources of tourism, Britain and Germany, down by 20 to 30 per cent so far.
The pinch is being felt throughout Greece, particularly in popular islands like Rhodes and Crete. But one island that sees few tourists, year in year out, is Gavdos, the southernmost island of Greece and of Europe.
Ironically, Gavdos may have been one of the first islands to attract tourists. According to tradition this island, off the south coast of Crete and lodged in the Libyan sea between Europe and North Africa, is Homer’s island of Ogygia, the home of the nymph Kalypso, who seduced Odysseus.
In classical times the island was known to Plutarch as Kavdos and to the Romans as Clauda. St Paul was blown past the island in the storm that carried him off from Crete to eventual shipwreck on Malta.
Under Byzantine rule, it was so heavily populated it was a diocese with its own bishop. The Venetians who occupied Crete for four centuries named the island Gozo di Candia, and feared it as the hideout of pirates. The Turks who captured Crete in 1669 knew Gavdos as Bougadoz under Ottoman rule; the now abandoned Pharos or lighthouse on the north-west tip was built by a French company in 1880.
In 1912 as part of the province of Sfakion, Gavdos was integrated along with the rest of Crete into the modern Greek state. But today it is still cut off from the rest of the world during extended periods in the winter; during the summer the weekly ferries from Paleohora and Hora Sfokion, as regularly as not, fail to make the three hour, 45 km journey due to strong winds. The expensive fares and unpredictable sailings deter any tourist who is ailing at heart or weak in pocket.
The problems facing the tourist in summer are a bitter taste of the perennial problems haunting, the residents in winter. Electricity only arrived with solar cells and generators in the 1980s, there are only 15 telephones and fewer cars.
Visitors are warned not to contaminate the limited fresh water supply with soap. The police station and school are dilapidated and forlorn, the need to preserve law and order and to provide education have long passed.
There are no package holidays to Gavdos. But for the few tourists – mainly Germans – who manage the three-hour trip from Paleohora, there are two tavernas and 19 rooms to rent, spread through the ‘capital’ Kastri, and the hamlets of Karabe, Sarakinikos and Korfos.
But the triangular island has fine cedar, pine, olive, carob and fig trees, crystal clear, sparkling turquoise waters and golden stretches of sand. The local honey is wonderful and the local wine comes with strong recommendations.
The island, home to 8,000 people in the Middle Ages, has fewer than 120 permanent residents today. The majority of houses in Kastri are crumbling away.
Only two families live in Ambelos, once famed for its vineyards. In Vatsiana, the southernmost settlement of Europe, isolation and irregular human contact have made the few inhabitants the most hospitable in Greece. At Cape Tripiti, the southernmost tip of Europe, the abandoned country houses of stone and cedarwood now shelter livestock. Beyond, there is only sea separating Greece from Libya, Europe from Africa.
On Thursday last, Gavdos had more visitors in a day than it might have had in the whole holiday season. The island was invaded by media eager to hear the islanders express their fears, not of mass tourism, but of a military invasion.
Earlier in the week, hours before his resignation, the Turkish prime minister, Mr Mesut Yilmaz, repeated his claim that there were “grey areas” – including Gavdos – in the Aegean that needed to be negotiated with Athens.
Last January, Turkey and Greece came close to war over the Dodecanese islets of Imia. Now for the first time, Ankara has staked a claim to a part of Greece abandoned by the Ottoman Empire in the last century and hundreds of miles from the Turkish coast.
“The Turkish claims are absolutely ridiculous," said Mr Michalis Pandelakis, the deputy chairman of Gavdos Community Council. "Someone has to put things in their right place.”
“If need be, we will give our answer with shotguns and pistols,” one angry resident told the daily Ethnos. “No Turk has ever set foot here. We want the international community to condemn the troublemakers.”
But the new focus on Gavdos has brought mixed blessings. The island looks like getting a new wind driven generator system courtesy of the European Union.
The island has long been demanding infrastructural investment and a regular ferry service with the south of Crete. Now the positive response of the Energy Commissioner, Mr Christos Papoutsis, a member Mr Simitis’s party, Pasok, and the four-day visit to Crete by the Prime Minister, Mr Costas Simitis, look like meeting some of the demands of Gavdos community council.
This news feature was first published in The Irish Times on 11 June 1996
01 June 1996
Greek leader faces tough battle to maintain control of his party
Patrick Comerford
Only four months after succeeding Mr Andreas Papandreou, the Greek Prime Minister, Mr Costas Simitis, is facing a tough battle for control of his party, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok).
Mr Papandreou (77) has refused to step down as president of the party he welded together 22 years ago, and it appears increasingly likely that the main battle will come later this month in the party congress with elections to a newly created post of executive vice president.
The group of so called “lieutenants”, including two government ministers, Mr Haris Kastanidis and Mr Dimitris Reppas, have expressed their support for Mr Simitis. But they have been critical of those supporting the so called dual leadership, with Mr Papandreou as party president and Mr Simitis as Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister was initially uneasy about the proposals for electing a vice president, insisting Pasok needed “clear solutions” to its internal problems. “Clear solutions. Clear solutions are always the best,” he said after meeting Pasok’s secretary, Mr Kostas Skandalidis, who had talks with Mr Papandreou before a meeting of the party’s executive bureau.
Mr Simitis had a taste of victory this month when the parliamentary group elected three of his supporters to the party presidium. But the way is not clear yet, and observers believe the rift has grown wider between the Prime Minister and party members still loyal to Mr Papandreou and the unreformed wing of the party represented by the Interior Minister, Mr Akis Tsohatzsopoulos.
Mr Tshatzsopoulos, who talks in terms of a collective party leadership, is likely to be Mr Simitis’s main rival at the party congress. He keeps a tight grip on the party machine and organisation, and his supporters also managed to take three of the presidium seats, with only one going to a supporter of the Defence Minister, Mr Gerasimos Arsenis, who gave Mr Simitis a tough run in the leadership race in January.
If Mr Simitis fails to win the support of the party congress, he is expected to resign and Pasok could split, with Mr Simitis taking key party figures with him, including the Foreign Minister, Mr Theodoros Pangalos, and the Development Minister, Dr Vasso Papandreou. Together, the three were the main reformers who led the move to oust Mr Papandreou from the party leadership four months ago.
Either way, the outcome is likely to bring new elections in the autumn, with a congress victory encouraging Mr Simitis to seek his own mandate from the voters.
In his official residence, the Maximos Palace near Sindagma Square in central Athens, Mr Simitis appeared optimistic about next month’s congress, saying the type of change he proposes in Pasok “is not easy, but is necessary … Democratic practices must be learned.”
He said Greece's two main parties, Pasok and New Democracy, had been dominated for almost 30 years by chiefs, a reference to both Mr Papandreou and the former president, Mr Konstantinos Karamanlis. “We need no more chiefs of this type in Greece,” he added.
Mr Simitis gave the impression of wanting to put party divisions behind him in order to concentrate on the major foreign policy questions facing Greece, including relations with Turkey, tensions over the Aegean islands and the presence of Turkish occupying troops in northern Cyprus, playing a positive role in the Balkans, and working towards closer co-operation with the countries of the Middle East.
He expressed disappointment that no fellow member state of the European Union had expressed support for Greece when Turkey violated its borders last January and tried to occupy the small Dodecanese islets of Imia, off the coast of Kalilimnos. No European country had ever been asked to redraw its borders, he said, and “no other European country has seen soldiers of another country on its territory”.
Good Greek Turkish relations make sense, the Prime Minister insists, and he wants closer co-operation with his neighbour in many fields, including economic development and tourism. “Nationalism is out of time and place now,” he declares.
But Mr Simitis insists no EU member state has ever been asked to redraw its borders, and concedes he cannot understand Turkey’s demands in the Aegean: “I don’t know what Turkey wants exactly.”
However, despite an apparent lack of confidence in the six-month Italian presidency, Mr Simitis expressed his hopes for the forthcoming Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC). Greece had three hopes for the negotiations: a more federative model for the EU, more powers for the Commission and more democracy and an enhancement of common policy making.
Greece would find it difficult to meet the Maastricht requirements for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), he said, but he hoped the country would still try to meet those requirements.
Asked whether he expected Cyprus to become a full member of the EU by 2000, he said: “We are working for it and I hope we will achieve it.”
Looking outside the EU, Mr Simitis pointed out that Athens had good relations with its neighbours in the Balkans, while its differences with Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Fyrom) were close to being overcome.
However, Turkey’s claims in the Aegean were a problem relating directly to European foreign and security issues, and “they (EU member states) should help solve the problem”. Declaring Greece’s good intentions, he added forcefully: “This is not the age of nationalism any more. This is not the age of wars.”
This news analysis feature was first published in The Irish Times on 1 June 1996
Only four months after succeeding Mr Andreas Papandreou, the Greek Prime Minister, Mr Costas Simitis, is facing a tough battle for control of his party, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok).
Mr Papandreou (77) has refused to step down as president of the party he welded together 22 years ago, and it appears increasingly likely that the main battle will come later this month in the party congress with elections to a newly created post of executive vice president.
The group of so called “lieutenants”, including two government ministers, Mr Haris Kastanidis and Mr Dimitris Reppas, have expressed their support for Mr Simitis. But they have been critical of those supporting the so called dual leadership, with Mr Papandreou as party president and Mr Simitis as Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister was initially uneasy about the proposals for electing a vice president, insisting Pasok needed “clear solutions” to its internal problems. “Clear solutions. Clear solutions are always the best,” he said after meeting Pasok’s secretary, Mr Kostas Skandalidis, who had talks with Mr Papandreou before a meeting of the party’s executive bureau.
Mr Simitis had a taste of victory this month when the parliamentary group elected three of his supporters to the party presidium. But the way is not clear yet, and observers believe the rift has grown wider between the Prime Minister and party members still loyal to Mr Papandreou and the unreformed wing of the party represented by the Interior Minister, Mr Akis Tsohatzsopoulos.
Mr Tshatzsopoulos, who talks in terms of a collective party leadership, is likely to be Mr Simitis’s main rival at the party congress. He keeps a tight grip on the party machine and organisation, and his supporters also managed to take three of the presidium seats, with only one going to a supporter of the Defence Minister, Mr Gerasimos Arsenis, who gave Mr Simitis a tough run in the leadership race in January.
If Mr Simitis fails to win the support of the party congress, he is expected to resign and Pasok could split, with Mr Simitis taking key party figures with him, including the Foreign Minister, Mr Theodoros Pangalos, and the Development Minister, Dr Vasso Papandreou. Together, the three were the main reformers who led the move to oust Mr Papandreou from the party leadership four months ago.
Either way, the outcome is likely to bring new elections in the autumn, with a congress victory encouraging Mr Simitis to seek his own mandate from the voters.
In his official residence, the Maximos Palace near Sindagma Square in central Athens, Mr Simitis appeared optimistic about next month’s congress, saying the type of change he proposes in Pasok “is not easy, but is necessary … Democratic practices must be learned.”
He said Greece's two main parties, Pasok and New Democracy, had been dominated for almost 30 years by chiefs, a reference to both Mr Papandreou and the former president, Mr Konstantinos Karamanlis. “We need no more chiefs of this type in Greece,” he added.
Mr Simitis gave the impression of wanting to put party divisions behind him in order to concentrate on the major foreign policy questions facing Greece, including relations with Turkey, tensions over the Aegean islands and the presence of Turkish occupying troops in northern Cyprus, playing a positive role in the Balkans, and working towards closer co-operation with the countries of the Middle East.
He expressed disappointment that no fellow member state of the European Union had expressed support for Greece when Turkey violated its borders last January and tried to occupy the small Dodecanese islets of Imia, off the coast of Kalilimnos. No European country had ever been asked to redraw its borders, he said, and “no other European country has seen soldiers of another country on its territory”.
Good Greek Turkish relations make sense, the Prime Minister insists, and he wants closer co-operation with his neighbour in many fields, including economic development and tourism. “Nationalism is out of time and place now,” he declares.
But Mr Simitis insists no EU member state has ever been asked to redraw its borders, and concedes he cannot understand Turkey’s demands in the Aegean: “I don’t know what Turkey wants exactly.”
However, despite an apparent lack of confidence in the six-month Italian presidency, Mr Simitis expressed his hopes for the forthcoming Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC). Greece had three hopes for the negotiations: a more federative model for the EU, more powers for the Commission and more democracy and an enhancement of common policy making.
Greece would find it difficult to meet the Maastricht requirements for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), he said, but he hoped the country would still try to meet those requirements.
Asked whether he expected Cyprus to become a full member of the EU by 2000, he said: “We are working for it and I hope we will achieve it.”
Looking outside the EU, Mr Simitis pointed out that Athens had good relations with its neighbours in the Balkans, while its differences with Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Fyrom) were close to being overcome.
However, Turkey’s claims in the Aegean were a problem relating directly to European foreign and security issues, and “they (EU member states) should help solve the problem”. Declaring Greece’s good intentions, he added forcefully: “This is not the age of nationalism any more. This is not the age of wars.”
This news analysis feature was first published in The Irish Times on 1 June 1996
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