THE EDIFICATION OF CHILDREN

When I was young, some of the readings that we were periodically assigned at Greek School, were penned by a mysterious figure who would always begin with the endearment «Αγαπητοί μου» and end with the valediction: “I kiss you, Phaedon.”

In between the greetings, Phaedon would, in letter form, develop fascinating and deeply enthralling narratives about issues from the most complex to the most trivial, in a tone so fresh and familiar, as to make you believe that he had known you all his life. The subject matter had such immediacy and relevance that when I was told that the author, Grigoris Xenopoulos was born one hundred and ten years before I and died a year after my father was born, and that the letters were published in a periodical for children entitled “The Edification of Children” (Η Διάπλασις των Παίδων), between 1896 to 1948, I simply could not believe it.

Over the Christmas holidays, I managed to track down a compendium of some of the author’s favourite letters, published by him after the periodical ceased its circulation. Opening its yellowed pages I was immediately transported back to my childhood, guided by the same timeless, friendly voice. What immediately became apparent was how the author a noted novelist, playwright and literary critic presupposed neither knowledge, nor class status among his readers. He wrote without condescension, eschewing a preachy or didactic tone and instead speaking directly to his young readers and taking them from the outset into his confidence. Writing originally in the early editions in an accessible form of katharevousa, this champion of Demotic Greek switched to the common tongue as early as the first decade of the twentieth century, ensuring that his young readers would understand him and appreciate his message as effortlessly as possible.

I marvel at how Phaedon was able to embrace overarching themes by providing his readers with specific examples from their daily lives. In one of his early letters, he treats with the concept of modernisation by writing about the replacement of the steam train from Athens to Piraeus with an electric model. Outlining the benefits in terms of speed, ease of use and efficiency, he assures his readers that progress is inevitable and it is inexorable. However, he is also sensitive to the romantic hold that the old has over the new. Much of his missive is devoted to the nostalgia that impedes progress. Rather than deriding it however, he encourages his readers to understand, reflect upon and cherish the past, all the while understanding the importance of change.

Through such reflections, we watch Athens, where the author resided, transform from a small provincial town, into a bustling metropolis. We join with him in marvelling as he hears the sound of the first aeroplane fly over the capital and laugh with him as he recounts how the pilot’s mother exclaimed when asked her thoughts about her son’s exploits: “I have given birth to an eagle instead of a son.” Similarly, we sympathise with him as he laments the broadening of Vasilissis Amalias Avenue, which while necessary, for crossing it in the nineteen twenties was to put your life at risk, involved the cutting down of a number of beautiful trees that used to line it. He waxes enthusiastically about the introduction of cars to Athens, all the while predicting the inevitable traffic jams that would, years after his death, come to paralyse the city. In like fashion, he predicts the expansion of Athens beyond the city centre to its present extent and its merging with Piraeus, even as he sadly describes the orgy of construction and development that has criminally blocked his view of the Acropolis. Most tellingly, he enthusiastically describes the trend of young Athenians sporting tsarouhia as a form of jewellery in celebration of the Greek army’s early success in the Italians in 1940 and confides, in 1942, how he has come to appreciate the humble walnut, since bread is not available.

On occasion, Phaedon becomes not only the child’s confidant, but also a trust friend who can console them in their pain. One of the letters is inspired by a communication from a reader who lives abroad and describes to the author how empty and lonely her first Easter is, away from her country. Rather than indulge in platitudes or empty phrases, Phaedon feels her pain keenly, confiding in her and the rest of the community of readers how lonely he felt when he left his home and family in Zakynthos in order to study in Athens. He describes the sense of excitement he could feel from those around him during holidays and Feast Days and how bereft of meaning these days had for him, in his solitude and misery. From that point, he proceeds to assure his overseas interlocutor that things will get better, that one always finds meaning in the environment in which they live, that pain can be compartmentalised and contextualised, describing how his mother back in Zakynthos would deal with her son’s absence by imagining he was sleeping in the next room.

Perhaps the most heart-rending of Phaedon’s letters concerns the death of his nonagenarian mother. He does not try to hide his grief, but rather describes the ways in which she played an intrinsic role in the formation of his character. In particular, he focuses on two aspects of her character which he highlights as important: her egalitarian nature, for according to him, she was able to relate to and form lasting relationships with members of Zakynthos’ genteel society as well as the impoverished and the vulnerable on equal terms, and her education, for she was a voracious and sensitive reader and this, in her son’s opinion shaped her manners and her generous world-view and sense of mission. In doing so, he invites his readers to consider the contribution of their parents to their own lives while gently reminding them that they won’t have them forever. It is a humble, unassuming but utterly profound letter that avoids hysteria and melodrama and yet does not fail to move the reader, as is his penultimate piece, which describes how he his house, library and archive has been destroyed during the Dekemvriana, the first act of the Greek Civil War.

The letters that try to place Greek historical events in context are absorbing. In a precursor to the Kennedy moment, Phaedon describes the jubilation of the Athenians upon hearing the news of the liberation of Ioannina in 1913, foreseeing that in years to come, everyone will remember exactly where they were when they first heard the news. Sometimes, he gets it wrong. His 1919 letter on the “Megali Idea,” presents the expansion of Greece’s borders to encompass historic motherlands as inevitable and a historical right, unable to foresee how this would end in catastrophe only a few years later.

By far however, his most endearing epistles are those which deal with childhood and the process of growing up. Whether it is describing his childhood in Zakynthos and sitting on a raisin-heap in the evening in order to view the Summer night sky, or describing his youthful addiction to adventure novels only to exhort his readers to transcend the need for cheap thrills and to embrace the reading of proper literature, as difficult as this may seem, discussing maturity or the absence thereof in children with the reassurance that while some children may seem to be more mature than others, they are still children and the idea of childhood must be cherished, or in a treatise about marks and school reports, attempting to convince children that hard work and doing one’s best are their own reward, an endeavour that should unite all children of all colours and creeds throughout the world, or indeed, encouraging children to write poetry that comes from their heart and reflects their true emotions and experiences rather than those they think adults would approve of, Phaedon ever remains a non-judgmental, intimate confidant and guide for all ages.

I am not sure whether another Phaedon has ever existed within the Greek zeitgeist. We have certainly never had one here in Australia and that is a great pity. I look back at the organised community of my childhood and marvel not just at how few events were targeted towards children or designed to include children but also at how even today, the tendency to treat children as gargoyles at pointless wreath laying ceremonies inculcated in them the conviction that to be Greek is to suffer insipid boredom, rather than be inspired by the vibrancy of our culture. I wish that we had a Phaedon to feel as we have felt, to inspire us with his immense love of children and to create within us a sense of community and responsibility while at the same time, introducing us to the mysteries of Hellenism. But then again, given how timeless, how transcendent he is, maybe just one is all we need, provided we have the language skills to read him, for he remains criminally untranslated.

Sometimes, when I receive letters from readers telling me how they have grown up reading the Diatribe, for I am that old, I wonder how Phaedon would have felt, receiving letters from Greek children all around the world and I imagine him writing back to all of us that we are all one large family, united within the broad, however dysfunctional embrace of Hellenism and that embrace, just like the writings of the great man himself, endures the ravages of time and is as omnipresent as we would require it to be. And he would sign off, as ever with a kiss.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 18 January 2025

PISOPOGON

 

It was the anniversary of the crowning of Admiral Romanos I Lekapenos as co-emperor of the underage Constantine VII. I was recalling a lecturer at university pronouncing Lekapenos as Lekapenus, with the emphasis on the penultimate syllable, causing my classmates to giggle in a most refined fashion. The reason why still remains a mystery to me. Of similar mystification is why, when I pointed out that this son of the remarkably named Theophylact the Unbearable (ὁ ἀβάστακτος), as far as emperors went, sucked, the whole class erupted in laughter. I was musing on this, when the phone rang.

On the other end of the ether was a friend who is into mindfulness and self care.

He believes that his particular (curated, as he calls it) philosophy which combines what he terms Ancient Greek philotimo with veganism and yoga provides a plausible alternative way of life that is eminently marketable to the Greeks of the motherland and is projected to make him and his prospective investors a good deal of money.

“How are you?” I enquire, disinterestedly as, for wont of anything better to do I am trying to read Ioannis Vilaras’ demotic translation’s of the Batrachomyomachia, an ancient parody of the Iliad.

“I don’t know,” came the response. “I’m kind of sore all over. My skin is covered in these red welts.”

“Sounds fishy,” I commented.

“No, I’m on this guava only toxin cleanse. I must be allergic or something.. Nothing to do with fish.”

It actually does. The word sardine derives from the ancient Greek word σαρδῖον, the word for carnelian, denoting 'red,'  as according to our venerable ancestors, the flesh of some sardines is a reddish-brown colour similar to some varieties of red sardonyx or sardine stone.

“I’m burning all over. It’s like someone is roasting me with a blow-torch,” he complained.

In order to divert him, I saw fit to refer to mention Palladius’ narrative in the Lausiac History, where he refers to one Heron,  a young monk of Scetis who, ‘being on fire’, left his cell in the desert and went to Alexandria where he visited a prostitute. According to the historian:  “An anthrax grew on one of his testicles, and he was so ill for six months that gangrene set into his private parts which finally fell off.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? By the way, I’ve found a solution to your problem.”

“Which one?”

“You know how you keep complaining that you can’t grow a beard? I’ve found this aryuvedic remedy involving fermented Banyan seeds…”

It is true that I cannot grow a beard. It is also true that I have lamented this fact, for not being able to grow a beard automatically disqualifies one from being a candidate for the Byzantine throne. This is a complex that as engendered in me by a particularly malevolent and most likely heretical Greek-school teacher in my teens, who, noticing my lack of facial growth compared to my fellow adolescents, granted me the soubriquet: Constantine Pogonatus, the nickname ascribed to Emperor Constantine the bearded, presumably to highlight my lack thereof.

He was also responsible for informing me that while the word adolescent is said to derive from the Latin: ad- ‘to’ + alescere ‘grow, grow up, there is the homophonous ancient Greek word ἀδολεσχία, (adolescia) which refers to talking nonsense non-stop for an inordinate period of time, considered a sign of immaturity most likely to be found in adolescents by the ancients.

It is a recognised phsyco-linguistic phenomenon prevalent among Greek-Australian associations and clubs, whose Peter Pan-like presidents, refuse to grow up and who generally, do not sport beards, at least since the downfall of PASOK.

 

In the Homeric epics, having a beard had almost sanctified significance, with a common form of entreaty being to touch the beard of the person you addressed. I have largely become resigned to my beardless fate, regardless of the opprobrium that this causes me. I once managed to grow a goatee after six months of trying, but my wife compelled me to shave it off, claiming that rather than looking imperial, I resembled instead, a benevolent Trotsky, a prospect that she would not countenance though I suspect that her ulterior motive was, once learning that the Spartans curled their beards with heated iron rods, that I did not compete with her for the curling tongs. Thus, I remain beardless, content that what I lack in facial hair, I make up in the knowledge that Orthodox paraliturgies have been composed to describe those such as I.

 

Enter the Liturgy of a Beardless Man, a twelfth century scatological parody of the Orthodox liturgy. In commenting about it, scholar Barry Baldwin opines: “Alas, I like a good piece of humour as much as the next, but the limited and endlessly repetitive invective of the work makes it the sort of thing that gives pornography a bad name,” a criticism that has been levelled against the Diatribe, from time to time. Just how the scatological becomes tiresome can be evidenced below, in the section that purports to parody the hymn: “O the paradoxical miracle.”

“Verse: From the depths hast thou cried out, that thou mayst be granted a beard; and thy prayer was granted not.

O strange marvel, if you should meet a beardless man, fart on his moustache, pluck his beard, and favour him with a kick, that sconehead and skinhead. And say thus to him, most evil: O thou wood-throat and savage-moustache, evil beardless man, be gone, be crushed, most evil beast.”

Nay, like Alexander the Great who ordered his men to shave off their beards, I revel in my lack of ground cover, and if I could, I would pen, as Emperor Julian the Apostate, a missive such as his Misopogon, ( the Beard-Hater, where, under the guise of mocking both himself and the philosopher's beard he sported in an era of clean-shaven manly men, he unleashed his deep resentment and frustration toward the people of Antioch. No one hailing from that city offends me, so I will unleash upon those of Melbourne instead, having tired of social media, ever mindful of the fact that the Emperor Domitian had the hair and beard forcibly shaven from the philosopher Apollonius of Tyana as a means of punishment for anti-State activities. Byzantine Emperor Theophilus on the other hand, prefers more invasive means that penetrated further than skin-deep: he branded iconoclastic verses on the foreheads of the iconodule monks Theodore and Theophanes who were henceforth known as γραπτοί. The verses were deliberately metrically irregular, to heighten the shame. Notably, however, they were not shorn, for to do so, in the Greek vernacular, signifies laicisation and expulsion from the Inner Party.

Theodore Prodromos, in his twelfth century satire: “Against on Old Man and his Beard,” warned against beards conferring authority upon those who would dominate us: “He said this, and we admired him, praised him and called him fortunate indeed, and we were all ears when he taught, because the man is a terrific speaker, and we trusted in his appearance. For his beard fell down to his knees and his neck was bent, his eyebrows were drawn together, and ochre was all over his face and, generally speaking, his look indicated that he was a philosopher even to those who did not know him. But yesterday, my dear, unveiled the drama and took away the skene and revealed the truth.”

“Well, the aryuvedic remedy is not what I’m calling you about,” my friend intruded upon my contemplation. “I’m setting up my website, in English and in Greek.  How do you say self-love in Greek? Is it αυτοαγάπη?”

”It’s αυνανισμός,” came my response.

 DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 11 January 2025

BEFORE MIDNIGHT

 

Every New Year’s Eve, wherever I may find myself, as I watch the passage of the dial across the clock until midnight, I hear the words of Cavafy’s poem “Since Nine” resonate with each tick:

“Half past twelve. The time has quickly passed

since nine o’clock when I first turned up the lamp

and sat down here. I’ve been sitting without reading,

without speaking. With whom should I speak,

so utterly alone within this house?

The apparition of my youthful body,

since nine o’clock when I first turned up the lamp,

has come and found me and reminded me

of shuttered perfumed rooms

and of pleasure spent—what wanton pleasure!

And it also brought before my eyes

streets made unrecognizable by time,

bustling city centres that are no more

and theatres and cafés that existed long ago.

The apparition of my youthful body

came and also brought me cause for pain:

deaths in the family; separations;

the feelings of my loved ones, the feelings of

those long dead which I so little valued.

Half past twelve. How the time has passed.

Half past twelve. How the years have passed.”

 

Twelve o’clock is the terminal point. This is where time runs out and it is not at all certain whether it begins anew and for whom. Cavafy begins to ponder the end at nine, that is in the twilight of his life. He is, in contrast to many of us who seek during festive occasions to be with friends or family, abjuring and inordinately fearful of solitude, absolutely alone. In the desolation of his empty house, all that remains for him to do, is to delineate a topography of loss.

Despite what he may think, Cavafy is not alone in this pursuit. I too, cast my mind back to New Year’s Eve’s of old. I remember parties and dances in clubhouses that have been sold long ago, their revellers, with their mutton chop sideburns and their inordinately wide-ties having been laid to rest decades ago. I remember my grandparents and their siblings bemusedly watch my uncles, so young then, attempting to the cheat them at cards, while trying to stifle a smile and recalling New Year’s Eves in other places, in other times, impossibly ancient and hard to fathom when one is only in the first decade of one’s life. Mostly however, I remember my great-grandmother, in the midst of an adoring crowd of descendants, celebrated, revered but utterly alone, remembering like Cavafy, loved ones long dead that had left her behind as the only person who remembered them, streets that no longer existed, neighbourhoods and customs that had passed out of sight and out of mind.

 

In Cavafy’s experience, reminiscing is a harbinger of pain and an evocator of a sense of ennui, with the poet regretting the fact that he did not value his loved ones while he was with them, nor have sufficient regard for their feelings. These holidays, many of us will feel the same sense of pain as we remove loved ones from their accommodation in aged care in order for them to share the joy of the season with us. In a large number of cases, those afflicted with dementia will be physically present, just as Cavafy’s memories are visceral and sensory: he evokes the smell of perfumed rooms, the sound of the bustle of busy cities, the touch that beings wanton pleasure. However, unlike Cavafy, they will not be in a position to remember, to analyse those memories and to feel pleasure or regret, just as they will not be able to absorb or in any way relate to the celebrations they have been brought to partake in. For them, midnight has come and gone. Unable to be haunted by an apparition of their younger, more sensual selves, unable to distinguish between evolving streetscapes of yore and their present condition, they are transcend Cavafy’s conundrum: For them, Time no longer has any meaning whatsoever and instead, it is we, their loved ones who are implicated in Cavafy’s reverie: lamenting the decay of their corporeal form, feeling guilty about having disappointed them, disregarding their feelings and inevitably, in our most guilt-laden moments, furtively watching the clock.

 

The genius of Cavafy’s understanding of time however, is that it can ever be manipulated. While we meet him just before the end, the time is now half past doomsday and yet he is still with us, albeit in a diminished and melancholy form. Is guilt therefore a form of purgatory for those who cease to “live” a vibrant life, however this may be defined? What happens after midnight.

Many things it turns out, not all of them unpleasant. In the poem “Comes To Rest,” the memory of a torrid erotic encounter is placed a little after midnight:

 

“It must have been one o'clock at night

or half past one.

A corner in a taverna,

behind the wooden partition:

except for the two of us the place completely empty.

A lamp barely gave it light.

The waiter was sleeping by the door.

No one could see us.

But anyway, we were already so worked up

we'd become incapable of caution.

Our clothes half opened - we weren't wearing much:

it was a beautiful hot July.

Delight of flesh between

half-opened clothes;

quick baring of flesh - a vision

that has crossed twenty-six years

and now comes to rest in this poetry.”

 

As is the case with “Before Nine,” the memories unfold within a closed space: an empty home in the case of the first poem, an empty corner of a taverna behind a partition in the second. Midnight has been and gone and yet both sets of memories, set at approximately the same time  emphasise a physical and emotional barrier between the poet, his memories and the outside world that acts as a vessel to preserve those memories against time even while tacitly acknowledging that such an endeavour is ultimately futile and full of grief.

 

Those endeavours extend way past midnight into the afternoon. In “The Afternoon Sun,” in which via a description of urban renewal Cavafy describes with photographic accuracy a room used to make love which no longer exits, the seminal moment upon which his memory turns and is projected into eternity is precisely pinpointed as four o’clock in the afternoon:

 

“One afternoon at four o’clock we separated

for a week only. . . And then—

that week became forever.”

 

There is movement in the kitchen now. Dishes of food are being brought out, bottles of unspeakable vile Verve Clicquot champaign emerge from the refrigerator. Someone turns up the television and as I see the jubilant countenances of revellers in cities just as bustling as the poet’s Alexandria of old, all of them young and none of them of the age of his seedy conurbation, I muse that the  intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in Cavafy’s poetry, are Kantian in the way that they form transcendental pre-conditions of experience, but rather than being theoretical, they assume a concrete form.

 

There is a countdown now. Soon after the fireworks begin. From our location, the Melburnian fireworks are clearly visible, spreading their outrage of light across the dark night sky. The neighbours have all come out onto the street, their mouths open in wonder. As one fireburst follows the other in nauseating succession, a young child exclaims: “I wish this night could last forever.”

 

It is then that I am reminded that the ultimate brilliance of Cavafy, is not that he can, as an Egyptian, mummify and preserve time, nor that he can conflate it or transcend it, but, as in his poem “Before Time Altered Them,” make is stand completely still.

 

“Or maybe Fate

appeared as an artist and decided to part them now,

before their feeling died out completely, before Time altered

them

the one seeming to remain for the other always what he was,

the good-looking young man of twenty-four.”

 

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 4 January 2025