16 - Early Timid Literary Aspiration

 A great deal has been written since time immemorial about reading and studying and creating works literature, and the experiential relationship with this form of art. For many, literature became a focal point of their existence and their writings influenced the way of thinking and stance in life of others. What Stalin had precisely in mind when he said that writers and poets are ‘the engineers of the human soul’, but we do not need a Stalinist buzzword to remind me that reading works of literature profoundly affects soul and mind, generates and shapes emotions, forms thoughts, ideas, and articulates speech, the prerequisites to will and action, and the bond of man with the world. I realized early in life the emotional touch books could have on the soul, how my connection with literature shaped and matured the inner world of ideas, feeling and emotions, how it developed my perception of reality and enhanced self-awareness, helped me to formulate thoughts and ideas, and eventually gave rise to a need to express this inner world of mine with words and, when possible and applicable, with actions.

Literary works of Greek writers of the last century, virtually unknown outside the narrow confines of the Greek literary world and society, Papadiamantis, Karagatsis, Myrivilis, Venezis, Delta, Theotokas and others, whose works excerpts, however, had prominent places in school textbooks (as deemed suitable by the ministry for the ethno-religious edification of Greek children) and, later, Lountemis, Kazantzakis, Varnalis, Sotiriou, Alexiou, Hatzis, Tsirkas,  of Koumandareas, Themelis, Doukas, most of them of leftist inclinations and whose unconventional and progressive writing were banished from the mainstream ‘curriculum’ of my school years, books from both sets of authors adorned the family library. Reading short stories, novellas and novels in my native language was easy and enjoyable and I devoured our books one after another, the most intriguing amongst them in a single day, through incessant and marathon readings that often began in the quiet, lazy afternoons after lunch when others were enjoying their siestas, and ended at dusk in the dimmed skylight through my balcony door. No volume and weight, no number of pages in any book discouraged or intimidated me.

Father's collection of books unfortunately lacked works of poetry. That might be both cause and effect of a deficit in sensitivity and romanticism in his personality, characteristics of poetic souls, as far as I know, which Father neither inherited from his family environment, nor did he cultivate in his life. As I grew older, motivated mainly by the revolutionary music we listened to and the lyrics of songs we sang, I embarked in enriching our library with collections of poets like Ritsos, Varnalis, Seferis, Livaditis, Kavvadias, Embeirikos, Karyotakis, from the rich Greek heritage, and of Neruda, Lorca, Mayakovski and others from the progressive world poetry. Old-school established and mainstream poets, like Palamas, Solomos, Drosinis, Vizyinos, Kalvos and others, were studied and their poetry occasionally discussed in class, with indifference it must be said, while some of their poems were memorized from and recited in front of teachers and parents in national holidays.  

As is well known, that period of adolescence and early youth, a period of immaturity amongst other things, opens up in the mind a constantly renewed and expanding range of ambitions. The readings motivated me to try to write my own prose. And I did attempt to write, without any particular authenticity in form and creativity in the content, the harsh truth was, mostly imitating the style and idiomatic language used, in the natural or authentic forms developed by each seasoned writer I read. Those diverse style influenced my prose along the way and altering accordingly my style of writing, as I was reading one’s work with its individual authentic style, such as women get ideas for their outfit by flipping through fashion magazines. Timidly, but with furtive hopes of some recognition, I submitted to a national student competition a short non-fictional story competition story: about the neighborhood which was enveloping my childhood years, the taverna of Tsapatsaraina by the stream where common folk gathered on Saturday evening, the old low-house of my best friend’s grandparents, our plays in the alley, where construction of blocks of apartments was changing in a fast pace. All of this in rather melodramatic tones for the generations being lost in the passage of time. My short story did not stand out. As a participant, I received a small booklet with a selection of student short stories that received distinctions in the competition and my work I was longing to see printed was not amongst them. The disappointment was momentary and minimal, at a time when my core ambitions were shifting elsewhere. I managed to save a manuscript of that first (and last) short story for some self-criticism and improvements. I still had a life ahead of me for my literary forays and experiments -I thought, as an amateur and maybe professional writer. Thenceforth, my writing efforts were limited to essays, as parts of school assignments, and depending on the motivation, normally low as with most school work, and the topic we were called upon to address, I regularly won praise –however, insignificant to resurrect my literary ambitions and spread my wings to that direction. The respective philologist, after grading our essays, usually invited me to recite my work in front of an indifferent and noisy class. Despite the shyness that I possessed by each time a teacher invited me to stand in front of the blackboard, in those early class environments, I used to overcome my bashfulness and managed fast-talking, with a relatively steady albeit flat-pitch voice, to articulate my short theses. But the national exams for university admission and the grades the most prestigious subjects like medicine, law or engineering required was were approaching and those ‘extracurricular activities’ like story writing had to be drastically curtailed. My study and performance in maths and science were given absolute priority in the allocation of time.

Towards the end of last year of Lyceum, that would conclude the last stage of our mandatory education, the progressive philologist of the year, Mrs. B, a petite figure with the kind and refined manners I mentioned above, assigned us a review of the works of writer of our choice. I chose Dimitris Hadjis, a communist writer and political refugee of the diaspora, sentenced to death by the post-civil war courts, and spent his life, until the transition to democracy in 1974, behind the Iron-Curtain, in Budapest. His short stories and novels -The Double Book, The End of Our Small Town, and others, I had read with interest and I was inspired by his linguistic style. I devoted plenty of time at the expense of few leisurely activities I was afforded, and with commendable drive and passion I wrote a multi-page essay with a synthesis and the exhibition of ideas that I found interesting in his novels. With the remarkable volume of books read on my own accord and initiative I felt that I had acquainted myself with a wide spectrum of modern Greek literature. I was pleased with the concisely, if not over-long, written essay I came up with, and my critique of a favorite author and I expected what I thought was a mature exposition of Hadji's works would impress Mrs. B, and maybe a handful of half-interested students, as much as it had impressed Father when he leafed through it. Unfortunately, under the circumstances in the public school for common people I attended, the presentation ended in a fiasco -as described above, nulling the little value I had attached to it. That presentation marked the limit of my lonely journeys in serial reading works of modern Greek literature and the end of my first timid attempts to write. The last traces of ambition to become an author were erased as well, although a small open crack in the depths of mind allowed some light through to shine through and show me that path I had abandoned, but at an older age, certainly too late for any career of note as a writer. If once I possessed a little bit of creativity the art of writing requires, that diminishes with time until it dries up in later year. Barely time was left to unimaginatively and uninspiringly salvage some of those memories.

The avid reading of books, having become an integral part of a ripening youth, turned into other directions. A career was discouraged along one of the so-called ‘humanities’ paths from early on: for a ‘positive’ mind, as mine was labelled, only a direction in scientific or engineering discipline, encompassing mathematics and physics in its core (subjects which occupied Father’s academic and professional life, as he proudly proclaimed at each opportunity) would highlight the limited range of talents I possessed and make the most of my potential. Besides, such disciplines were more tailored to the male brain and mental inclinations according to the stereotypes of the time. The ‘humanities’ were not for the highly intelligent, I was told, and intelligence, always according to Father's preoccupations, was almost exclusively associated with the ability to negotiate and solve complex mathematical problems or logic puzzles. Early literary wanderings served only to formulate one’s language, develop written and oral skills, and, importantly, obtain a good grade in the cumbersome essays we were asked to come up with in real-time -in those thorny sessions of the national exams. No one questioned the importance of language, but cultivating language skills were driven as means achieve specific goals, rather than an end to a professional engagement in literature, journalism, historiography, etc. On the other hand, studies in Mathematics and Physics as levers to success in national exams, aiming at prosperous career in engineering, subjects cold and barren relying on the use of logic, deprived me of aesthetic and emotional stimuli, stifled the imagination, made me a less sensitive, poetic and romantic and lyrical human being, and, perhaps, rather excessively practical. The opportunity for a golden mean, the equanimity and balance from a state of mental equilibrium, to borrow a term from physics, was sadly lost during those school years.

Nietzsche’s famous quote is brought in mind: ‘Art and art again. We need art so that we do not to die from the truth.’ It took more than half a lifetime to appreciate this message. My early literary ambitions were crushed in their cradle, along with a few others in as much an embryonic stage, the pursuing of which could have aided in the development of a better-rounded personality. Instead, this development has been permeated from an early age with the aim of pursuing an ambiguous ‘success’ in a professional career amongst a handful of options. This imperative and demand the lower middle class in Greece place on itself and its offspring (for self-preservation and advancement in the social ladder) was often met at the expense of the soul and spirit.