CHANGING THE DATE

“What are you doing Christmas Eve?” Niko enquired. “Going to Midnight Mass?”

«Άκου εκεί Midnight Mass,” Stefo sniggered. “Like the good little Orthodox boy he is, he is going to go to the εσπερινό. You’ve been with the Catholics too long re. When are you going to come back to embrace the Dark Side of the Force?”

Niko was not only the first among our circle of friends to get married, he was also the first to marry out of the clan, having married a wonderful life-partner whose ancestors arrived here from Southern Italy. In the beginning, his mother was in tears and refused to accept her as the object of his adoration. Being enlisted to explain that all Southern Italians are Greek anyway, his mother brushed aside my arguments, repeating the mantra, «Παπούτσι από τον τόπο σου κι ας είναι μπαλωμένο». This mantra soon changed to «δεν πειράζει, να’ναι χέπυ τα παιδιά, ούνα ράτσα, ούνα φάτσα,» upon her learning that her sympethero was a quite well-off μπίλντας with an extensive portfolio of investment properties in Donnybrook and though we kept from her the fact that he had six other children, all of whom would presumably share in the inheritance until the day of the wedding, she managed to remain calm, smiling under the net of her fascinator, marvelling only that according to her, Italians seem to be obsessed with food and lack an understanding of the concept of kefi, which funnily enough is an observation my Assyrian relatives also make about the Greeks they come in contact with, I being possessed of not even one discernible even by X-Ray, party bone in my entire carcass.

By all accounts, Niko’s is a harmonious marriage.  Both his children were christened and confirmed in the Catholic Church, and attend Greek school after hours. Theirs is a serene existence of endless barbeques, birthdays and family dinners, punctuated by trips to Amalfi and Mykonos and they are splendidly content. It is only once a year that the internal equilibrium of the familial unit is sorely disrupted and that time is Christmas.

“Re, I wish we were παλαιοημερολογήτες,” Niko sighed as he nursed his beer, a robust Mountain Culture Moon Dust Stout.

“Vre αθεόφοβε, don’t talk about meat and paleo diets in front of Kalimniou,” Stefo chided him “He is supposed to be fasting.”

“Old Calendar, like the Russians,” Niko insisted. “I wish we were like them.”

Wishing that one resembles the Russians in any way is definitely not in season and I took great pains to point this out. I urged him to wait a while, for fashion has a funny habit of turning in on itself and returning like an ouroboros, or flared pants.

“I mean I wish we could celebrate Christmas on 7 January like all the other Orthodox. So much easier for all involved. No hassles, no dramas,” Niko continued wistfully.

“Yeah but if we did that, we would miss out on the Fota and going down to the holiday house in Rye,” Stefo spluttered incredulously. “So what would be the point of that?”

Nikos’ father in law’s holiday house is in Rosebud and on Christmas Day it is incumbent upon all his offspring, their significant others and progeny to make pilgrimage thereto and celebrate the Birth of Our Saviour, by means of an almighty feast ordered months in advance from the Chrisco catalogue, thereby creating a vast dilemma.

“My wife is accommodating on so many things,” Niko explained. “Greek school, giortes, as long as I drive the kids, no problems. But try to tell her that we need to go to my mum’s for Christmas and she won’t budge. Absolutely no way. I plead, I argue, nothing. Vre, I tell her, your mother has four sons, my mother has only got one son, it’s not fair, why should my parents have Christmas alone, the woman is supposed to go to the husband’s family, τίποτα. All I get are three stock responses: “We have Greek Easter with your parents. There is no such thing as Greek Christmas,” “We can see them on Boxing Day,” and “Your sister goes to your parents instead of her in-laws so why is there one rule for her and one for me?” And how many years of this now, my mum still won’t accept it. You know the deal: «Πρέπει να πατήσεις πόδι,» «αν ήσουν άντρας θα την έβαζες στη θέση της,» «φταίω εγώ για τις θυσίες που έκανα για σένα,» κάτι σκηνές, κάτι κλάματα, and then she won’t talk to me until after πρωτοχρονιά, when I go to mow the lawns.”

«Πρέπει να πατήσεις πόδι,» comes from the Greek marriage ceremony where the man is supposed to step on his wife’s foot,” Stefo mused. “But you wouldn’t know because you went full-metal Catholic. Kalimniou tried to step on his wife’s foot during the service, but he tripped and ended up stepping on himself instead.”

Stefo is currently possibly in his third-marriage, this being both because he is unsure whether the ceremony with the barmaid in the Turks and Caicos Islands is legally binding and also because her whereabouts are completely unknown after she defriended him from social media.

All the while Nikos was breathing heavily to the point of hyperventilation.  “What you are going through is not a new phenomenon,” I observed. “You’ve been married for two decades now. Why all of this Christmas angst all of a sudden?”

Niko looked up and shot me a look of abject misery. “Because you know what’s happening. The Holy Father and the Patriarch are in talks about changing the date of Easter.”

“Holy Father? Whose Holy Father?” Stefo guffawed. “Άκου εκεί Holy Father. You are so far gone vre…”

“Can you see?” Niko asked plaintively. “Not only are we going to cop strain at Christmas but at Easter too. At least up until now, we got to celebrate Easter with the oldies because of the difference in calendar. If they make the dates the same, what are we going to do? We can forget about Greek Easter.”

“It’s Orthodox Easter, not Greek Easter, you heretic!” Stefo interjected. “And anyway, what do you care? You’ve never seen the inside of a Greek church, even before you got married. But that’s what happens doesn’t it? The Greeks in Australia have no idea about our traditions and then as soon as you marry a “xeni” suddenly everyone remembers that they have customs and a faith.”

“No, you aren’t getting it,” Niko moaned. “What about the γκρίνια? What about the souvla? What about the lucky coin?...”

“Will you punch him, or will I?” Stefo snarled, rolling up his sleeves.

“This affects all of us who are in “mixed marriages,” Niko continued. “These prelates, they go off and do their negotiations and make their press releases and take their fancy photos but they don’t think of the practical consequences of their actions. Effectively, these guys are placing marriages in peril at a time when mankind should be celebrating peace and tolerance. At the Carol Service at Saint Patrick’s last year…”

“Seriously, δεν γλιτώνεις εσύ,” Stefo buried his face in his palms, in despair. «Τον πάπα να καταράσθε διότι αυτός είναι η αιτία του κακού». Saint Kosmas the Aetolian. He knew a thing or two. What I can’t understand is why our Patriarch wants to submit to the Catholics. I sense a plot by the Illuminati, the Bildebergers and the Freemasons. We already changed the date of Christmas to accommodate them and split off from the rest of the Orthodox και τι καλό είδαμε. My spiritual father….”

“My understanding is that the issue is a matter of calendar and not concelebration,” I ventured. “The idea is that the Catholics would adopt our date for Easter.”

“Which is precisely why this thing is so disastrous!” Nikos yelled, pounding his fist on the table. “Catastrophic! We shouldn’t celebrate together! We need to be separate! Forever! Otherwise we are stuffed! Last time, my mother said she was going to xegrapsei me from her will. This is awful.”

He remained silent for a while, his hand clutching at his unsweetened iced soy decaf caramel latte with no cream and extra syrup as if to crush it and relenting just at the last moment. Then, regaining his composure, he ventured:

“What we need to do is a petition. Of all Greeks in mixed marriages right across Australia. A petition to the Holy F… - I mean to the Pope and the Patriarch asking them not to create a common date for Easter. And while we are at it, to go back to the old date for Christmas. Believe me, this will preserve relationships, protect inheritances and save Christmas. Can you draft up something? Who do we send it to? Should we do it online or paper?’

“Don’t look at me,” Stefo pulled winced. “I’m off to Tahiti on the 20^th and I won’t be back until after the New Year. Tell me Kalimniou, what do you plan to do for Christmas? Parents’ house or in-laws?”

I am going to do what I have always done: Wake up the kids in the early morning and rush to church for the Christmas liturgy. Rush back home so they can open the presents. Rush to my in-laws where I will reminisce about my late father-in-law who would always dominate the conversation with a lengthy discourse about how all Christians and indeed all humanity should put aside its differences and come together and I will think about how much I miss him. Delicately accept my mother-in-law’s constant exhortations to gorge myself on the finest Assyrian cuisine ever to grace a table in the West and finally, rush off to my parents for an unbridgeably vast Christmas lunch and stoically pretend that I haven’t already eaten.

Petition? Not for me thanks. I would not have it any other way.

 

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 21 December 2024

LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATRICIDE: THE REVOLT OF THE ZEALOTS OF THESSALONICA

 

"...one after another the prisoners were hurled from the walls of the citadel and hacked to pieces by the mob of the Zealots assembled below. Then followed a hunt for all the members of the upper classes: they were driven through the streets like slaves, with ropes round their necks-here a servant dragged his master, there a slave his purchaser, while the peasant struck the strategos and the labourer beat the soldiers…."

Five hundred years before the anti-aristocratic purges of the French Revolution, Demetrius Cydones described in 1345, an orgy of violence that was visited upon the ruling classes of Thessalonica. For between 1342 to 1350, in the dying century of the Byzantine Empire, the people took control of the city for themselves. Known as the Zealots, scholars still debate as to whether they possessed a coherent ideological programme. While some suggest they represented a proto-Marxist movement focused on wealth redistribution, others argue they were primarily opportunistic, exploiting chaos to consolidate power. Regardless, it cannot be doubted that their rule, marked as it was by a rejection of external authority and emphasis on significant local self-governance, was seen as a horrific aberration by contemporary chronicles, one that disturbed the natural order of things.

Before the Zealots, there were others who went by that name. In the thirteenth century, according to the historian Gregoras, the “Zealots” were a faction predominantly composed of monks and lower-ranking clergy who gained significant influence among the Byzantine populace, likely due to their anti-aristocratic stance, which brought them into conflict with the “politicians,” a rival faction made up mainly of intellectuals and senior clergy. As a radical group, the Zealots often opposed imperial policies, particularly on contentious issues such as the union of the Churches.

Furthermore, their religious background informed their social beliefs. Thessaloniki, a thriving mercantile entrepot had already engendered the writings of theologians who stressed social reform. Saint Nicholas Cabasilas in his “Oration against Usury” condemned the widespread practice of moneylending in the city as usury: taking from something that provides no value. Both he and founder of Hesychasm, Saint Gregorios Palamas also argue that there was no absolute right to property and income if more is accumulated than is necessary, considering it to be a greater sin when the hoarding of money leads to the manipulation of the poor. In their view, profits derived from such endeavours were illegitimate and should be redistributed among the needy.

By the beginning of the fourteenth century, Thessalonica, the second largest in population and wealth city of the Byzantine Empire had begun to resent the overlordship of Constantinople and indeed had already revolted against it: Thus during the first Palaiologan civil war in 1322, the citizens of Thessalonica removed the despot appointed by Constantinople, Constantine Palaiologos from power and instead sided with the rebels Andronikos III and his ally John Kantakouzenos. In the second civil war, Alexios Apokaukos, rebel, arrived with a fleet and appointed renegade Michael Monomachos as governor. Despite these official appointments, the true power in Thessalonica rested with the Zealots, a radical group led by a certain Michael Palaiologos, who shared the title of archon with the governors. The city's administration also involved a council of local aristocrats and influential citizens, emphasising civic engagement in local governance.

Michael and his brother Andreas Palaiologos key figures in the Zealot administration that opposed Kantakouzenos identified with the imperial Palaiologos dynasty, indicating that despite authors describing theirs as a peasant revolt, they still attempted to draw legitimacy from the ruling family, even though their relationship to them was probably a political concoction. Despite their revolutionary activities, the Zealots continued to recognize the authority of Emperor John V Palaiologos, possibly while seeking a semi-autonomous status for Thessalonica.

Ostensibly, the Zealots constituted a political movement that seemed to favour and express the aspirations of the lower classes of Thessaloniki. Emperor John Kantakouzenos records their radicalism according to the following terms: “They roused up the people against the aristocracy, and for two or three days, Thessalonica was like a city under enemy occupation and suffered all the corresponding disasters. The victors went shouting and looting through the streets by day and by night, while the vanquished hid in churches and counted themselves lucky to be still alive. When order returned, the Zealots, suddenly raised from penury and dishonour to wealth and influence, took control of everything and won over the moderate citizens, forcing them to acquiesce and characterizing every form of moderation and prudence as “Kantakouzenism.””

Contemporary chroniclers describe how property was seized from the wealthy and redistributed in a manner anticipating the Bolshevik Revolution. Also prefiguring the Bolshevik Revolution was not only the Zealots’ single minded radicalism in a manner reminiscent of Lenin’s creation a tightly organized and ideologically disciplined corps of professional revolutionaries. They met at night in secret cabals or cells and determined on courses of action and the punishment of the wealthy. One grandee accused of crimes against the state was arrested in secret, tried in public and then was stripped, trussed up, and paraded through the streets, sentenced to be beaten up by five ‘notoriously vulgar’ women, before finally being set free. Again in a manner akin to the Bolsheviks alliance with the sailors of the Kronstadt naval base, the Zealots were assisted both in their seizure of power and the maintenance of their rule by the sailors and dock-workers of Thessalonica, the parathalassioi, who had been set up as a military association by Emperor Michael Palaiologos and as a result, already wielded significant political power in the city. In this regard, the late Father George Metallinos  observed: ‘It is indeed clear that - in spite of the confusion in the sources - the Zealots of Thessaloniki constituted a social group, as discerned by the People. It had ties to the "parathalassioi" - a well-known guild with Palaiologos family members at its head. The collaboration between Zealots and parathalassioi was obviously a coinciding of mutual interests. . . The Zealots identified with the people and they expressed the demands of the lower social strata, which partially coincided with those of the army as well.”

While playing to the desires of the city’s inhabitants, the Zealots’ agenda was multi-faceted. Confiscated properties from supporters of John Kantakouzenos were redistributed among the Zealot’s allies rather than benefiting the working-class. While the general population harboured anti-aristocratic sentiments, the Zealots' primary goals seemed more aligned with forging strategic alliances with power-brokers who would help to keep them in power, rather than with championing social equality or ideological reform as a primary aim. That they did so through consensus and collective decision-making may merely an outcome of their monastic background rather than a genuine revolution in their way of thinking and scholars still argue over the nature of their rule. Greek writer Kostas Lampou for example, emphasizes the more progressive aspects of their governance, maintain that the Zealots: “took measures towards intellectual freedom, freedom of speech and religious tolerance. They abolished all privileges, the right of private property and confiscated the wealth of the nobility. Direct election was established for all government offices, courts and religious offices. The wealth of the church was taken and separation of church and state established. They established status of equality before the law, released their serfs and gave equal rights to foreigners.”

Ultimately, Zealot rule proved to be of a transient nature. The threat of Serbian domination under the expansionist Stefan Dusan, their inability to protect the inhabitants from the ravages of a bout of the Plague and the reconciliation of the rebel John Kantakouzenos and the Byzantine Emperor eroded their legitimacy with the people. In 1349, the people of Thessaloniki rose up against the Zealots and deposed, culminating in the triumphal entry of the Emperor John Palaiologos into the city the next year.

Assessing the downfall of the Zealots, Matthew Raphael Johnson comments: “The zealots failed because the coalition against the landed oligarchy just meant that the poor were cooperating with the merchant class that sought to take their place. Their movement weakened and soon split into factions.” In his mind, their assumption of power was teleological: “There was some change in the form of redistributed property, the confiscated lands of the nobility and, most importantly, limitations on usury. This was a rebellion protesting a power vacuum, the domination of foreigners and the impending sense of dread knowing that the empire was near the end.”

A few decades later, Thessaloniki would fall to the Ottomans and though it would be recovered through diplomacy, it would soon share the fate of the rest of the Empire. The revolt of the Zealots in its dying days thus stands as a poignant and significant death throe of dignity, with social activism as its burial shroud.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on 14 December 2024

ΑΛΛΟΘΡΟΟΙ

 

“Greek is not a clean language for an old woman.”

- Juvenal

The highlight of my week was having Doctor Alfred Vincent refer at the recent Pharos Symposium on the Greek language in Australia at LaTrobe University, to my obsession with all things Karagiozi. At the conclusion of his multifaceted and nuanced discussion on our mother tongue, delivered with surgeon-like precision in elegant Modern Greek, he warned presciently: “Use it or lose it.”

Using the language immediately buys you purchase into the Hellenic sprachbund, something that was known for instance to the ancient Gauls, who despite Asterix’s best efforts in “Asterix and the Great Fight,” first used the Greek alphabet in order to encode their languages, enabling us to discover gems such as these: «Σεγομάρος ουιλλόνεος τοούτιουϲ ναμαυσάτις ειωρου βηλησάμι σόσιν νεμητον» ("Segomaros, son of Villū, citizen of Nîmes, offered this sacred enclosure to Belesama.”). The Armenians also used the Greek alphabet before using their own and their exist in North Jordan, a number of pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions where Greek letters have been used.

The word used by Homer in the Odyssey to denote a foreigner is: ἀλλόθροος, literally he who makes a strange sound and yet we find throughout history a multitude of strange-sounders who tuned their tongues to frequencies better understood by us, to the extent that the Hebrew term, lehityaven,   לְהִתְייַווֵּן literally meaning “to become Greek,” has been historically employed to mean “to assimilate,” in the same sense that we use the word «Τούρκεψε» in modern Greek to denote converting to Islam. Considering that according to one interpretation the Talmud, Greek is the most beautiful of languages, such a point of view is understandable, to say the least which is why when in 1947 Niccolo Tucci, surprised that Albert Einstein read the Greek classics with his sister Maja in the original exclaimed: “So you too, Herr Professor, have gone back to the Greeks,” Einstein responded:  “But I have never gone away from them. How can an educated person stay away from the Greeks? I have always been far more interested in them than in science.”

This type of attitude would account for the multitude of Greek inscriptions on the ceiling of sixteenth century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne's study, this being a time before the invention of inspirational social memes and Sports Illustrated. Thus, dangerously subversive words such as «σκέπτομαι» or such phrases from Epictetus’ Encheiridion as «Ταράσσει τοὺς ἀνθρώπους οὐ τὰ πράγματα, ἀλλὰ τὰ περὶ τῶν πραγμάτων δόγματα,» (It is not the things themselves that disturb men, but their judgements about these things,) still exist, incised upon the joists of his place of study and should be, in my humble submission, inscribed in the premises of every Greek brotherhood in Melbourne.

Montaigne of course was taught Greek by his father, who used a multi-disciplined approach comprising of games, conversation, and exercises of solitary meditation, rather than the more traditional books and rote learning, which probably explains why he included so many personal anecdotes and reflections in his essays, having no one else to speak to, for he never went to Greek school.

Roman schoolchildren, however, did go to Greek school. According to Quintillian, elite Roman children studied Greek (instructed by Greek slaves) to the extent that even when they spoke their native Latin, they had a pronounced Greek accent, which gave one a certain cachet in those times that simply does not exist among the Greek schools of today.

Learning Greek as a Roman did give one a certain gravitas in relation to stage exits. According to Suetonius, Julius Caesar’s last words before being repurposed as a pincushion were not “Et tu Brute, but rather «καὶ σὺ τέκνον» were spoken in Greek. While knowledge of this, and the fact that he wrote all of his military correspondence in Greek were lost during the Dark Ages, faint folk memories survived in Greece and were kept alive during the long centuries of Ottoman Occupation, only to be transplanted to Melbourne where the ritual phrase is routinely pronounced by the presidents of community organisations upon being ousted from power in surprise coups by their proteges and relegated to the outer darkness, where there is only wailing and venting of spleen on social media.

Perhaps that outer darkness could be illumined by George Bernard Shaw, who observed: "If in the library of your house you do not have the works of the Greek writers then you have a house with no light,” a possible sustainable alternative to carbon-emitting fossil fuels, given the price of energy these days.

Frederick the Great of Prussian who understood and read ancient Greek and spoke Modern Greek would have appreciated such sentiments. Against his abusive and authoritarian father's wishes who doubted his masculinity, he created a secret library of Greek classics. Unfortunately, all these efforts were in vain, as he was never able to visit Oakleigh. He did however, annex Silesia, invade Bohemia and participate in the partition of Poland, proving that there is no end of things that one could accomplish when one studies Greek and his face should be on posters promoting the study of the language everywhere.

Whether one, like Mehmed the Conqueror uses Greek to write random thoughts in notebooks, or learns the language, as in the case of Omar Sharif, in order to woo women, or simply because as in the case of Christopher Lee, you can’t convincingly play a James Bond villain named after a port in Piraeus, namely Scaramanga unless you have knowledge of Greek, without the immersion of the ἀλλόθροοι, our language is much diminished, as is our delight in it. This is by the way proved by a good friend who is a classical scholar and who after a good deal of thought, was able to provide me for my delectation, the following phrase: «κύνωψ ἡ ἐν χαλαρώσει,» this being the Greek for the phrase “resting bitch-face,” used to describe my countenance when being informed that there is a distinct group of Greek-Australians who transliterate the words «αγάπη μου» as “Agabie moo,” on Valentines’ Day cards and paraphernalia.

While we and our progeny was hysterical every time we open our mouths to speak Greek, the burden of expectation and fear of error weighing unbearable upon us, Virginia Woolf and erudite others like her, take a more gourmet approach, salivating over Greek as another form of lean but nonetheless authentic meat, light on the fizz, so you can slam it down fast: "Every ounce of fat has been pared off... Then, spare and bare as it is, no language can move more quickly... Then there are the words themselves which... we have made expressive to us of our own emotions, θάλασσα, θάνατος, ἄνθος... so clear, so hard, so intense, that to speak plainly yet fittingly without blurring  the outline..., Greek is the only expression. It is useless, then.. to read Greek in translation."

Just the other day I fascinating conversation with an Albanian client. She understands Greek but cannot speak it well. I partially understand Albanian but cannot speak it. Between the two languages she expressed her lament that her grandchildren, who came to this country a decade ago, refuse to speak Albanian and tell off their parents and grandparents when they address them in Albanian stating: "Why are you using that language? No one speaks it here."

Albanian nationalism is a daughter of Greek nationalism and the grandmother's concerns mirror those our community has for its language. In the end, the grandmother shrugs her shoulders and sighs: "We should have taught them Greek instead,” proving that one man’s defeat, is another’s Favorinus. That Gallo-Roman writer, in upbraiding the Corinthians for removing a statue of him, in his ‘Corinthian Oration,’ maintained he emulated not only the voice but also the mind-set, life and style of the Greeks (οὐδὲ τὴν φωνὴν μόνο ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν γνώμην καὶ τὴν δίαιταν καὶ τὸ σχῆμα τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐζηλωκώς). As a result, he insisted he was pre-eminent in one quality, in ‘both resembling a Greek and being one.” (Ἕλληνι δοκεῖν τε καὶ εἶναι.) Surely it takes one to know one.

Raising up a crispy burnt toast to the Greek language, Vladimir Nabokov has the last word for a discourse in which everyone seems to want in, except for us:

“On mellow hills the Greek, as you remember,

fashioned his alphabet from cranes in flight;

his arrows crossed the sunset, then the night.

Our simple skyline and a taste for timber,

the influence of hives and conifers,

reshaped the arrows and the borrowed birds.

Yes, Sylvia?

                    “Why do you speak of words

When all we want is knowledge nicely browned?”

 

Make mine buttered with a side of gluten-free Decapentasyllable, thanks.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on 7 December 2024

ERYSICHTHON THE INSATIABLE

 

“And just like a greedy fire never refuses food and burns up countless torches and, where a greater supply of fuel is available, seeks more and more, and grows only more voracious with abundance, thus the mouth of the sacrilegious…. simultaneously eats and demands every meal.”- Ovid

I was young when I first met Erysichthon. In those days, no houses had been built behind our home and the grasslands flowed from the hills, punctuated by low lying dense shrubs, down the floodplain to a creek. Sheep and horses grazed there periodically and on Sunday mornings from my parents’ bedroom window, we would watch a family of foxes emerge from their den in a small cave on the slope and trot amiably down to the creek for a drink of water. Towards the horizon, the creek, flowing towards the Maribyrnong, crossed paths with another of its kind and at their confluence, stood alone amidst the landscape, an enormous weeping willow, swaying even at the slightest of breezes.

The willow bounded my existence: my parents had no qualms about me spending most of my free time searching for frogs or tortoises in the creek but it was law that I was not to stray further then the willow tree. On hot days, I would sit underneath its branches, a perfect hiding place from the world and while listening to the wind whispering through its leaves, the cicadas chirping in trochaic pentameters by way of accompaniment, ponder the lyrics to the Greek folksong, «Ιτιά».

One day I came home from school to find the entire side of the hill gone. As far as the eye could see, grasses and shrubs had been torn away and deep brown gashes scored the landscape. Further away, the willow tree which marked the utmost limit of my horizon had gone. In its place, lurked an excavator, its shadow looming large upon the churned up ground in the afternoon sun. With tears in my eyes, I ran towards the creek. The workers had all gone home and the excavator, stood motionlessly. High on its boom, someone had placed a sticker that bore one word: “Erysichthon.” Decades later, the area is covered in houses and yet I return to the creek bank, in search of my tree, cursing the machinery that caused its uprooting.

Erysichthon was, of course, the king of Thessaly, who according to mythology decided to impress his friends by building a brand new banqueting hall. Taking trusted companions with him, he set off for a grove which was sacred to Demeter, the the goddess of agriculture and fertility. In this grove, dryads and other wood nymphs were said to dance in honour of the goddess. All this of course meant nothing to Erysichthon, whose only thought was how to acquire the lumber. He raised his axe and buried it in the side of a poplar tree.

The king might have sensed something was wrong when the tree began to groan in pain like an injured human. Had he been of an intuitive bent, he may have become disconcerted by the sudden appearance out of nowhere, of Demeter’s priestess, Nicippe, reminding him of the sacredness of the place and exhorting him to lay down his axe. Erysichthon, however, would have none of it. Roughly pushing the priestess aside, he proceeded to lay waste to the grove. This was unfortunate, as Nicippe was actually Demeter in disguise and to insult an earth goddess is the height of folly.

Incensed, Demeter exacted a terrible revenge, cursing him with an insatiable hunger and enlisting the help of Dionysus in order to likewise curse him with an unquenchable thirst. Erysichthon consumed everything in sight but the more he ate, the hungrier he become and then went on to expend his entire wealth in the pursuit of acquiring more foodstuffs to consume, going even so far, according to one variant of the myth, to sell his own daughter. In the version propagated by Hellenistic poet Callimachus in the ‘Catalogue of Women,’ Erysicththon, shorn of all dignity, becomes a beggar at the side of the road, begging for scraps and eating dirt. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses however, an even more tragic fate awaits him: “The wretched man began to tear at his own limbs with his maiming bite and feed his body by making it smaller.”

A cautionary tale against greed and hubris, one may think that the punishment of the foolish king is rather dire. Trees, after all, are a resource that people need in order to survive, and was it not arbitrary and selfish of a goddess concerned only with the guarding of her privileges and prerogatives to deny this to Erysichthon? The names of the main protagonists harbour a clue. Demeter, literally means the “Earth Goddess,” the entity that makes human life possible. The name of the Thessalian king, on the other hand, means “Earth-tearer.” His destruction of the sacred grove is not merely an arbitrary arrogation of a natural resource, (he did not require the wood in order to put a roof over his head or for fuel but rather in order to construct an unnecessary vanity project) but an act of violence, a violation of the Mother of all. In such a gendered reading of the myth, we note that is the males who create harm by invading a ‘female’ space, inflicting wanton destruction upon fertility and thus, life itself.

While the ancient Greeks were not environmentalists in the sense we use the term today, the myth of Erysichthon does indicate the  human vices that have implications for some of our most pressing contemporary problems.

Thus, Erysichthon’s destruction of the sacred grove can be seen as symbolising humanity’s relentless exploitation of natural resources for personal gain, ignoring the sacredness and interdependence of the environment. Similarly, climate change is driven by overexploitation of resources like forests, fossil fuels, and oceans, leading to deforestation, pollution, and biodiversity loss – a violation of “Mother Earth.” This aspect of the myth thus may warn against short-term greed and emphasises the need to respect ecological limits to avoid devastating consequences.

In similar vein, the curse of insatiable hunger visited upon Erysichthon, the Ultimate Consumer, could parallel humanity's insatiable consumption patterns, which prioritise growth and consumption over sustainability and which ultimately lead to dehumanisation where everything is reduced to a commodity, as symbolised by the sale of the king’s daughter. Consequently, the tale serves as a dire warning about the dangers of unchecked consumerism, which leads to environmental degradation and destruction.

It is difficult not to parallel Erysichthon's curse as a cycle of destruction that he cannot escape, much like the feedback loops in climate change, where melting ice caps lead to more heat absorption, which accelerates further melting. His fate, rather than serving solely as a punishment, underscores how irreversible harm to nature can lead to self-destruction. Ovid himself outlines how the king “had consumed all material,” before the final and greatest form of consumerism followed as an inevitable consequence: his horrific autophagy.

Erysichthon, arguably the first character in world literature to have an eating disorder, causes us to ask difficult questions of ourselves. Do we feel pity for him and his gruesome fate, or contempt, secure in the knowledge that we would have acted differently? Do we view Earth/Demeter as an arbitrary and vengeful deity who will only tolerate so much before she moves to protect her own, casting us, with our Judeao-Christian narrative that places us at the centre of Existence, aside? Or is she in fact, a vulnerable being that needs us just as much as we need her? The manner in which we view the myth not only creates ambivalence in the way we see ourselves but also the world around us.

One thing however, is unequivocal. Erysichthon’s other name, as mentioned by Callimachus,  is Aithon, the “burning one.” In keeping with his name, Ovid refers to the “flame of his appetite.” Like a fire, he is all consuming and his legacy are ashes. But then again,  new life according to mythology is gained by rising from the ashes of one’s predecessor, that is, if one is of the correct species and of course, in the end, if the burn is controlled….

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@homtail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 30 November 2024 

ΜΑΥΡΑ

 

“I miss all those old nonnas wearing black, with their cute headscarves, walking back from the shops with their little shopping carts. You just don’t get that kind of authenticity in the area anymore,” the lady exclaims to her friend as she took a sip of her latte, holding a yoga mat in her other hand, while watching a thin, black clad, hunchbacked old woman limp slowly from the supermarket. Unlike so many of her past incarnations, she is not wearing a headscarf today and that must have been the source of her observer’s consternation.

Also, she isn’t a nonna, because as she approaches me, she cranes her neck, like a turtle peering from its carapace, and recognising me, hails me in greeting:

-           -Ω Κώτσιο!

-           -Ω θειά, I respond.

-           -Τι κανς μωρ μάνα’ μ;

-           - Καλά είμαι. Συ τι κανς;

-           -Τι να κάνω η μαύρη; Από τότες πού’ φκε ο συγχωρεμένος, λιάζω το σκατί μου και το τρώω…

I was very young when that happened and yet I remember it distinctly. She would have been in her late thirties, wearing the same black clothes, throwing herself upon her husband’s coffin, rending her hair and scratching at her cheeks until she drew blood, as she railed against fate, against her husband who had the misfortune to have his life taken away from him in an industrial accident, against God himself who in his infinite mercy had saw fit to create orphans and widows. I remember her headscarf getting tangled in her thick plaited hair, the colour of pitch as she tore at it in defiance. When she finally ripped it free, she thrust it up at the sky in fury. «Να!» she screamed at the heavens and then all went black as she collapsed. Over the years, I bore witness to that same lady’s features begin to harden, to dry, eventually to shrivel, encased in her armour of perennial black, but losing none of her bitter rage.

My great-grandmother was in her early thirties when her husband was killed. These, as she would explain, were the “black” years. She was breastfeeding her baby when she was told the news and from the shock, she would relate, her milk “turned black,” and the baby died. This was during the war, far before my time, and yet the memory of my defiant neighbour become conflated with that of my great grandmother, who wore black until the day she died at the age of 104 and who I would see in the mornings, meticulously combing and plaiting her hair only to cover it with a tightly tied black headscarf. First, she would fold the square over to create a triangle. Then she would take the two ends of the triangle and cross them over her throat, up over her head and tie them firmly on top, so that her neck could not be seen. When asked how she was, she would respond sarcastically in the same words as my neighbour: «Τι να κάνω η μαύρη;» For, encased in the garb that rendered her femininity and fertility at naught, that is what she was. Black. Nothingness Personified. The epitome of Uncreation.

Sometimes, at the social gatherings which our widow neighbour would not attend out of propriety, for what widow had the right to express joy in the company of others, I would catch fragments of sentences referring to her as «η καημένη», for, consumed by the black, she no longer had a name and I imagined her, burning in grief and indignation in her shroud of black all these decades. It was then that I finally realised what the word «χαροκαμένη», another word employed to describe widows, actually meant: to be literally burnt by death. To a crisp. To no longer be human but instead, through pressure, through decay, through pain and absence, to lose any humanity left to you and instead, to revert to the basics of all and any carbon-based life forms; to become as incendiary as anthracite, capable of igniting at any moment. Black, black as pitch, black as my great-grandmother’s coal black eyes.

In 1927, Professor Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland created the Drop Pitch Experiment, to demonstrate that some substances which appear solid are highly viscous fluids. Pitch was placed into a sealed funnel and after it had settled, the neck of the funnel was cut, allowing the pitch to start flowing. Since that time, only eight drops have ever fallen. I imagine the pitch, as black as the widows’ clothes, as dark as my great-grandmother’s mandila to be their congealed life force, impenetrably thick and unyielding, its viscosity, a measure of their resistance to deformation at a given rate. At night I see again my recurrent childhood nightmare: the mandila wrapped like a black viper around the light fitting in my room, venomously dripping pitch down onto the white sheets below. My aunt maintained what I had seen was the head covering of Agia Paraskevi but my great-grandmother, alone in her room, counting her dead among the shadows knew better. In the shadows, the fall of pitch cannot be seen, let alone be counted. I recognise it as Bengt Ekerot, Death in the Seventh Seal and I challenge it to a chess game. But they don’t play chess in my village.

The first ever shirt I bought for myself was black. I wore it proudly on my nameday and when I went to kiss my great-grandmother she pushed me away sharply and spat:

-          - Τι ειν’αυτό που φοράς;

-           -Ε;

-          - Αυτό το μαύρο τσόλι.

-           -Πουκάμισο είναι.

-           -Να το βγαν’ς. Τι το περάσαμαν; Δε θα ξαναβάνς μαύρα.

I dared not to again, at least not in her presence, this being present continuous, which is why eventually, I threw it away. It is also the reason that I discarded the black cushions I received as a housewarming present and regifted the black t-shirts a well-meaning friend gave my daughters one Christmas. Although my great-grandmother had lost the power of speech a few days before she died, she still took pains to illustrate her point. The priest had arrived and was hunched over his portable communion case, preparing the chalice. Slowly, she raised her gnarled hand, took hold of the fabric of his anteri and looked at me, the fabric and the communion chalice. “See,” her gaze said, in rage. “This is what black signifies.”

I wore black at her funeral and wanted to continue to do so but my great-aunt told me I was too old to expect that acts of such blatant gender transgressive idiocy would be tolerated. Instead, in accordance with tradition, I refrained from shaving for forty days, observing with horror the preponderance of blonde and white hairs sprouting from my chin. In this, as with everything else, my great grandmother had the last laugh.

Kyria Koula has been a widow for fifteen years now. Approaching a hundred, her mind is as fresh as a drop of morning dew. She lies on the bed in her nursing home, clad in a robe whose kaleidoscope of colours would put Joseph’s coat to shame. “You know when my husband died, your «συγχωριανές» took me to task for “removing the black” after forty days. But there was no way I was ever going to wear black longer than that. No way. I was very young when they came to the house to announce that my father had died. At first, I failed to understand. It was only when, amidst the shrieking my mother and my aunt’s began to pull the bedsheets and pillow cases from the beds, remove the tablecloth from the table and the curtains from the windows, that the shock hit me. When they took all these things outside and dyed them black. Imagine living in a house with black curtains, black sheets, black table cloths and having to wear black clothes. I got sick. Yes they judged me. But I cannot abide that colour. When I die, make sure none of people wear it to my funeral.”

“Which colour should we wear instead?” I dare to ask.

“Red!” she exclaims triumphantly.

Try as I might, I cannot remember if we buried my great-grandmother in her black headscarf. I have this sneaking suspicion that we didn’t. It was the only time that her absence of shadow would have signified her own absence, rather than that of my long-departed great-grandfather, obtaining in death, her own shadow, rather than that of another that she wore all her life.

At the funeral of a friend, his life tragically cut short after an unexpected illness, my black-clad neighbour approaches to offer a greeting. Glancing at his widow, her eyes red raw with tears, barely able to stand, she shrugs in sympathy:

-           -Ούι, κρίμα η καημένη. Και δεν της πάνε τα μαύρα.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 23 November 2024