HYBRID MARGIN-DWELLERS: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF DIGENIS AKRITAS.

 

It was on the fringes, where the legends of the hybrid hero, half-Romaic, half Saracen Digenis Akritas survived, for in the “heartland” he had largely been forgotten. His memory lingered in the marginal areas, the liminal spaces where our identity was forged in relation to the Others. On Pentadaktylos mountain in Cyprus, which according to legend, Digenis grasped in his gigantic fist in order to make an imagination-defying leap into immortality. On Mount Psiloritis of Crete, where his foot made an indelible imprint upon the rock after landing, (and we remember of course that the presence of deities in the pagan Near East was traditionally depicted by a footprint) bards twisted his feats into verses and wove them into song. On the mountains of Pontus, where he fought and made love to Amazons in their traditional homelands, his war cries mingled with their death throes and pants of ecstasy in the drone of the kemenche, marking the uttermost extent of Hellenism. It is from them that tales of the Hybrid hero’s exploits were passed down to us, alloyed with long lost tales of the Trojan War, of Heracles, the Argonauts, Thebes, that were never truly forgotten.

Significantly, is the son of the Syrian Emir Mousour and the Cappadocian princess Irene who will become the quintessential Romios and paragon of our race. It is he, Digenis, who once threw a large rock across Cyprus in order to keep off the invading Saracen ships. The rock was hurled from the Troodos mountains and landed in Paphos at the site of Aphrodite's birthplace, known to this day as Petra Tou Romiou (the Rock of the Romios). In this way, it is the legendary hero’s dual identity, his hybridity, that renders him the archetypal Romios, the poster boy of Romiosyne, who fears no one, constitutes an elemental force, fights and defeats dragons, subverts the prescribed social order by abducting the daughters of his betters, earns himself a depiction in Saint Catherine’s church in Thessaloniki where he is depicted fully armed tearing apart the jaws of a lion and condescends only to grapple with Death as his ultimate foe, “on the marble threshing floor” to whom he gives a run for his money and who has had form, having already defeated Heracles, the tale inspiring a Russian bylina or folk ballad about Anika the Warrior.

 Most likely, it is because he is the personification of our early emerging identity that fittingly, he chooses to end his days, not in the lands where Greek is spoken, but rather, in his father’s country, building for himself a luxurious palace on the Euphrates, again a liminal space, in the land of the two rivers, Mesopotamia. Hybrid heroes such as Digenis have no ghetto mentality, nor the need to flock to the like-minded or the blinkered conformists for protection and validation. They can articulate and defend their identity wherever they are, to whosoever they encounter. They are both the prototype and the ultimate of the Modern Greeks.

Save for the songs, it was only in the nineteenth century that manuscripts containing the entire Digenis epic were discovered, again on the margins of Hellenism, the first being in Panagia Soumela monastery of Trapezounta in Pontus in 1868 and the oldest surviving manuscript being retrieved from Grottaferrata monastery in Italy, a home of Greek learning where Greek hymnography flourished there long after the art had died out within the Byzantine Empire and whose affiliation with Rome propagated an alternative version of Hellenism.

It is therefore fitting that the “Educational Institute Hellenism of Anatolia: from the Aegean Sea to Pontus” saw fit to hold over the past weeks, an extensive exhibition entitled “In the Footsteps of Digenis Akritas” in what is now arguably the most geographically marginal extent of Hellenism: Australia. The brainchild of passionate educators Yiota Stavridou and Simela Stamatopoulou, the Institute has a two-fold aim. The first is to ensure that the rich and diverse history, culture and traditions of Hellenism in Asia Minor, whose physical presence came to an end with the tragic events of 1922, survive and are not forgotten. Rather than being an obscure undertaking, attempting such a task from the remoteness of the Antipodes makes absolute sense, if one considers that Hellenism in Asia Minor developed in dialogue with other cultures, linguistic and religious traditions, drawing its vitality from its hybridity and its receptivity to adaptation and mutual exchange, much in the same way in which our own people in multicultural Australia have developed a convivial version of Hellenism that is at its best when it is outward looking, all embracing and inclusive. The sheer diversity in experience of our people within the various regions of Asia Minor exhausts stereotypes and defies generalisations, providing subtle instruction in how to resist the efforts of those who would preside over us to typecast and compartmentalise our very existence. In the study of Asia Minor, therefore, are the keys for our future.

The second aim, is, having drunk deeply from the bottomless font of Asia Minor memory and tradition, to be able to draw the requisite lessons that will enable us to fashion a version of Hellenism that is in communication with that of the Motherland, but which is also comfortable in its own skin, able to converse with and contribute to other discourses within a shared cultural tapestry while creating its own relevance and asserting its own identity.

Viewed from this perspective, the Institute’s focus on Digenis Akritas, is inspired. Cappadocia, his maternal homeland, is the place where centuries later, his descendants, the Karamanlides would articulate their identity in their own unique way. Having lost facility in the Greek language, they consciously chose to render their language, Turkish, in Greek script. At a time when fluency in the Greek language is rapidly declining within Greek communities in Australia, when intermarriage with other communities is common, when academics and community leaders throw their hands up and proclaim “the end of the Greek community as we know it,” and propagate linguistic, racial and other criteria for membership into an ever diminishing fold, it is through the study of the experiences of those who have been there before that we discover the tools for our own survival and the construction of an identity narrative that can graft itself onto its surroundings and thrive.

All these things were furthest from my children’s minds as they returned from their school excursion to the exhibition. Instead, I was treated to tales of treasure hunts, of dances, of a superhero who could leap tall islands in a single bound. We chuckled as they tried to remember the lyrics of the Cretan lay of the Death of Digenis, which their teachers had taught them, collapsing into laughter as I attempted to teach them the Cretan pronunciation. Next, they endeavoured to recreate that song on their violins. But it was only when my eight year old daughter, whose mother was born by the banks of the Euphrates, turned to me and said: «Μπαμπά, είμαι κι εγώ διγενής,» that I was able to appreciate how profoundly significant “Hellenism of Anatolia’s” exhibition actually is.

“We all are διγενείς, Akrites following in the footsteps of Digenis,” I responded. “Every single one of us.”

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 22 June 2024