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
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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