PHILHELLENE ON THE MARCH

 

A few days before the march commemorating Greek Independence Day was to take place, I received the following text message: «Γεια σου θείο. Μπορούμε να έρθω στην παρέλασι το Κυριακή;». I answered in the affirmative, and as I am wont to do, resent the message with the correct spelling and grammar, highlighting the areas where further revision was required.

The sender of the message was my nineteen year old nephew Ramel, who is Assyrian, although he reliably informs me that my mother in law took a DNA test in which it was revealed that she is seventeen percent Greek, making him at least a member of the tribe as to four percent.

In preparation for the march, Ramel was not content just to try the national dress of Epirus for size. He peppered me with questions as to how and why the costume differed from region to region, what the significance of the embroidery was and what function each component of the costume played. He was considerably taken with the kiousteki, which bore an image of Saint George and we spoke about the important role that Saint has historically played in both our cultures. Then his questions turned to the manner in which the Greek Revolution unfolded in the various regions of Greece, seeking information about the differences, along with the commonalities.

Ramel is no stranger to the march. He is in fact a veteran, having attended a number of parades in full regalia ever since he was a young boy. Back then, his favourite pastime was to assume a fierce hoplarchic expression while proudly pointing a replica flintlock pistol at the dignitaries as he marched past. In those heady days, when as an uncle I was variously considered “funny” and “cool” (in his defence, he was quite young) he proudly wore the costume that I wore as a boy. Now my son wears it and he too aims the same replica pistol at the dignitaries, proving correct the old Greek adage: «το αίμα νερό δεν γίνεται».

Seeing my nephew and his brothers don the Epirus costume so enthusiastically and march down towards the Shrine unself-consciously, without complaint and a large amount of pride made a great impression upon the Greek section of my family who could not understand why there was no consternation expressed over the fact that they were in effect wearing dresses and indeed, instead of being disconcerted about this or embarrassed, were actually enjoying themselves. Back then, I put this down to their affinity with their uncle. However, now Ramel is all grown up and poised to enter Medical School and after two decades of hearing the same anecdotes over and over again, my humour, such that it is, no longer has the spontaneity it once may have had.

The warning signs were there from the beginning though. The lullaby I used to sing to my daughter as a baby was the traditional song Malamo. Unless I held her in my arms and danced the actual dance, she would refuse to sleep. I would sing the song again and again, almost falling asleep myself and forgetting the lyrics until a soft voice would come from the other side of the room: «κι αν σου τσακίσω το σκαμνί» adding the part that in my sleep deprived stupor, I had forgotten. This was Ramel, who unbeknownst to me and just by listening, had learnt the whole song off by heart. He would go on to learn and reproduce much of my vocabulary and idiomatic expressions, until such time as I felt it necessary to take him aside and to explain to him that: «άι στο διάολο» should not be repeated in polite company.

I also had to explain that it was probably not a good idea for him to call me «ρε» for by this time he had joined a local Greek soccer team and his vocabulary of expostulations had grown exponentially, causing me to give him a crash cause in the polite and the profane registers. Some time later Ramel informed me that he had decided to study Greek at his high school and henceforth our interactions were about grammar and pronunciation as well as arguments still unresolved, such as whether the word ταύρος is Indo-European, or in fact a Semitic loanword, for the same word appears in ancient Assyrian as well.

Of a sensitive and devout nature, having felt he had grasped the basic rudiments of the language, Ramel began to read the Bible in Greek. He particularly enjoyed the Psalms and recall to this day how he made my hair stand on end during a family function, where, in the midst of a conversation with his father about Trump being a harbinger of the end of the World, Ramel began to chant with perfect Byzantine intonation, the 135^th Psalm: «Ἐξομολογεῖσθε τῷ Κυρίῳ, ὅτι ἀγαθός…» What? How? I spluttered. “That’s nothing,” he smiled. “Listen to this…” and he began to chant «Ἀγνή Παρθένε Δέσποινα», going to explain the circumstances in which Saint Nektarios composed the hymn, analysing the lyrics and describing how the life of the Saint had inspired him during various times in his life.

It was at that point that our relationship changed. By this time, while studying for VCE, Ramel was scouring the Church Fathers in the original Greek and peppering me with questions as to how the Assyrian theological terms qnume and kyana relate to the Greek ὑπόστασις and φύσις and to what extent πρόσωπον and its derivative parsopa mean the same thing. Then there was the time that he messaged me at a rather ungodly hour to discuss the incongruity of Christ's observation "its easier to pass through the eye of the needle." In particular, he explained to me that in  Aramaic, the primary language of Jesus, the word for camel, gyumla, sounds like the word for rope (gimla). This is used as an argument that the Bible was first written in Aramaic as for those who maintain this, to say "its easier for a rope to pass through the eye of a needle" is more consistent imagery. Compounding this, there is the Greek word for camel κάμηλος and the old Greek word for naval rope (κάμιλος) which sound exactly the same. It was at this point that I decided to refer to the need for him to concentrate on his exams, introducing him to a rather erudite Greek expression that goes something like this: «Βάλε κώλο και διάβασε».

On the way to the National Day march, Ramel insisted upon playing us a hymn to the Byzantine General Belisarius. I was not at all sure what the relevance of the Justinianic general to Kolokotronis, Karaiskakis and the Panimian Brotherhood of Victoria until Ramel explained to me that in many ways, the Revolution picked up where Belisarius left off, restoring the ancestral lands that granted a people their primary identity, back to them. I did not have the heart to insist upon Zafeiris Melas instead.

Marching proudly down Birdwood Avenue, holding his Souliote rifle, Ramel was adored by the elderly spectators who cannot resist a strapping young man in a skirt bearing arms. To their acclamations he enthusiastically shouted «Χρόνια πολλά!» and «Ζήτω!» before turning to me to ask if there were any other responses he could use. I suggested: «Προλετάριοι όλων των χωρών ενωθείτε!» but I received some especially dark looks from the ladies marching behind us and we proceeded as if that unfortunate incident had never taken place. Instead, Ramel began to teach the other members of our motley band of Epirots assorted Assyrian phrases, mostly relating to the consumption of foodstuffs, for by this time, we were all ravenously hungry.

Having received a blessing from Metropolitan Ezekiel moments before, Ramel was in such high spirits that he didn’t notice when we had marched past the dignitaries and that the parelasi was over. He made us all sing the Greek national anthem over and over again in the car on the way home, instructing me: «κλείσε την πόρτα» so that the door did not close over his foustanella, an occupational hazard unique to the Greek-Australian, but also to the hybrid Greco-Assyrian-Australian as it turns out.

“You know what draws me to the parelasi?” he turned to me suddenly,  adopting a pensive pose. “I know,” I smiled sadly, “but go ahead.”

“I can’t celebrate my own people’s Independence Day. Instead, for us it is massacre after massacre, genocide after genocide. Sometimes I think we will never be free. But then I see what you people did against all odds, and how you keep the memory alive until today, I know that anything is possible. Your liberation is the liberation of all of us. I just wish that one day, you will be standing beside me when we celebrate Assyrian Independence.”

Sending him on his way, he wished me: «και του χρόνου». Between you and I, I can’t wait.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 5 April 2025

IDLES OF MARCH

 

There are few things worse than being the token Greek at a Lebanese wedding, especially one where the guests, having visited the Melbourne barakia in the nineties with their Greek friends, have developed a particular aesthetic when it comes to Greek music. After establishing some sort of mahala-cred upon executing an unelaborate but eminently passable dabke and feigning complete ease at the fact that the Lebanese dances revolve around themselves clockwise, rather than the proper Greek anti-clockwise direction, the whole thing comes unstuck when the sounds of a zeimbekiko begin to blast through the decibel defying speakers.

“You are Greek. Get up and dance,” the groom (and my erstwhile friend) crows.

“Come on Greece!” the best man begins to gyrate, improvising his own moves while pushing me onto the dance floor. “Show us how it’s done uleh!”

I am trying to express the conviction that Mitropanos’ song “Roza,” is a homage to German Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg who was sadly cut down in her prime and thus possibly not the best choice for a song at a wedding. To the Master of Ceremonies who is waving a microphone directly in front of my mouth and demanding that I sing the lyrics, I attempt to explain Rosa’s belief that socialist democracy begins simultaneously with the beginnings of the destruction of class rule and of the construction of socialism, but all he does is bring the microphone closer and closer like a demented ice-cream.

Thankfully my ordeal is over when Fadi my Mitropano-loving friend from Zahle grabs the microphone from the MC’s hand, pushes me off the dance floor and begins to croon:

- Ταχίνι μου στεγανά και ντιπ σασμένα…

“What kind of a Greek are you?” one of the bridesmaids look at me scornfully. “Even Greek we Lebos do better!” her partner exclaims jubilantly.

Pasiphae, aunt of Medea and queen of Crete, punished King Minos for his infidelity, considered the ultimate insult, by causing him via a curse to ejaculate serpents, scorpions, and centipedes, thus killing any unlawful concubine. I find myself thinking of Paisphae, not because I am minded to wish such an excruciating fate upon my interlocutors but rather because like her, I consider them at that moment to be full of bull.

The revellers have quite forgotten me by now. Instead their attention has been captured by a Maltese work-friends who, having imbibed significant amounts of the Johnnie Walker Greek label ostentatiously placed upon the table, is on the dance floor, having a lovely time. Sensing her heightened amounts of jubilation and the fact she is unaccompanied by a partner, sundry male guests move in, as a pack, with the alpha among their number, dancing suggestively in her immediate vicinity and miming movements that hint at him guiding her into various attitudes. She being fulsome in stature, one of the guests sidles up to me and laughs, “It’s like steering a ship into harbour.”

I comment that the word govern, comes via the Latin gubernare, from the Greek κυβερνᾶν, that is to steer. Aeschylus for example describes a ruler as «ἐν πρύμνηι πόλεως οἴακα νωνῶν» that is, plying the tiller at the ship's stern. Just how good a helmsman our chief steerer is, however, is a matter for the Parliamentary Steering Committee. There are a number of entendres there of a single or duplicate nature but I am too tired to count and all I receive in response is a quote I instantaneously identity as belonging to Sir Mixalot: “Baby got back.”

Encouraged, I proceed to tell him about Sophia of Montferrat, imported to Byzantium by the Emperor Manuel II to be the wife of his son John. According to the chronicler Doukas: “The young woman was extremely well-proportioned in body. Her neck was shapely, her hair blondish with braids flowing down to her ankles like glimmering golden streams. Her shoulders were broad and her arms, bosom, and hands well proportioned. Her fingers were transparent. She was tall in stature and stood very straight -- but her face and lips and the malformation of her nose and eyes and eyebrows presented a most revolting composition. In general, she may be described in the words of the vulgar adage: "Lent from the front and Easter from behind."

“I’m actually Muslim,” he reveals, prompted by the punchline.

Oblivious to his lack of engagement, I regale him with the tale of the time that Greek revolutionary Andreas Lontos fell head over heels in love with Italian prima donna, Rita Basso. The Father of the Revolution Theodoros Kolokotronis among others was scandalised by the revealing, figure-hugging nature of her clothing, prompting him to exclaim in wonderment:

"I saw something I had never seen in all my years. Up until now I knew that women bulge at the front, in Athens I learned that they bulge at the rear."

The Maltese work-friend has managed to extricate herself from the clutches of a bawdy dance partner and appears tired and emotional. I cast my eye arοund for a drink. There is no wine on the table, the beverages on offer all being of a spirit nature. Considering the coupling of Scotch and Bourbon as an uncouth pleonasm, the only other choice is vodka, a particularly virulent concoction, that manifestly has been brewed during the Russian Potato Blight of 1846. The weather is unseasonably hot and as I am thirsty, I begin to chortle quietly to myself as I devise a hitherto Greek hero who, while on a pub crawl in Russia has too much vodka and stumbles across the border into Moldavia, inadvertently sparking off the 1821 Greek Revolution: Tipsylantis.

There is much banging of drum now and a good deal of jiggling of various body parts. I part through the testosterone-filled dance floor as a veritable Moses (sotto voce as he is not too popular at the moment among the revellers) parting the Red Sea, telling myself that all I have to do is to put one foot after the other in order to make a bee-line for the conveniences. After all, the Greek word for sheep «πρόβατο» literally means “that which walks forwards.” Upon reaching my destination, I gaze up at the harsh, unrelenting glow of the light fixture and apply myself to the task at hand with all the powers of concentration I can summon, channelling the archaic bard Hesiod: «μηδ' ἄντ' ἠελίου τετραμμένος ὄρθὸς ὀμείχειν». “And do not urinate upright facing the sun.”

“I love you man,” my Muslim friend from earlier gushes and enfolds me in an embrace that I would have appreciated slightly more had he first placed his hands under the Dyson Airblade Hand Dryer.

“Straight talk now. Let’s call a spade a spade. Who is more better, more sexier than the Lebos and the Greeks?” he whoops, grabbing my posterior by way of punctuating his point.

The poet Yiannis Ritsos was wont to seek to call a fig, a fig and a kneading trough, a kneading trough (έτσι, να λέμε πια τα σύκα-σύκα και τη σκάφη-σκάφη) but did not the great philhellene Oscar Wilde confess: "I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for."?

My mind is too stepped in bad alcohol to be in a position to appreciate the full parameters of the question. If I was compelled to describe my psychological disposition, it would be mantipolar, «μαντιπόλος» ie. frenzied or inspired, this being the term used in the epic of Saint Cyprian to describe his mental state during his sojourn in Phrygia. I determine then to resort to «Ὁμηρίζειν» that is to Homerize, which in ancient Greek, meant to lie. Apparently, Aristotle made the extraordinary claim that Homer “taught other poets the proper way to lie.”

“Brother, there are three types of people in this world,” I slur finally. “Those who are Lebos, those who thank God… hang, how does it go? Those who are, those who aren’t and…

“What’s the third type bro?” he asks, his eyes wide with anticipation as my hands unconsciously create a protective cocoon around my parts privy.

“I don’t know,” I finally shrug. “I never think these things through.”

Feeling my way outside by clasping the wall, I make valiant attempts to make my way to my car. There is a shopping centre car park nearby, and some of the guests have obtained shopping trolleys in which they are entrenched and engaged upon an environmentally friendly form of drag race. In between dodging the speeding projectiles and attempting to find my own, I finally make it home, unable to explain why my head feels as if it has had a shisha bar land on it. The last thing I remember is launching into an exposition about Greco-Lebanese brotherhood with a tattooed trolley-dolly and trying to explain to him that the ancient Greeks placed a coin in their dead loved one's mouths, in order to enable them to obtain a shopping trolley in the afterlife.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 29 March 2025

 

KOLOKOTRONOCLASM

 

It is a phenomenon as old as the world itself. The Vikings knew it, which is why all their myths coalesce around Ragnarök, the last battle in which the gods would be vanquished and the world broken. The Hindus knew it, and they awaited Shiva to destroy the world in order for another to be forged in its place. The Greeks however, could not foresee the end of the usurping Olympians, though they were happy to dethrone them, desecrate their temples and trample over their statues and built triumphant new edifices proclaiming their adherence to a new set of beliefs.

Yet it was not us who invented iconoclasm, the action of attacking or assertively rejecting cherished beliefs and institutions or hallowed personages. The archetypal iconoclast can be found in the arch-heretic pharaoh Akhenaten of Egypt who had the temerity to reject the anthropomorphic gods of the Thebaid, only to worship the sun-disk as sole deity. To this end he caused his officials to carve or scratch out all references to the old gods on the temples and public buildings of his land.

The Jews of old too were iconoclastic and this was a Divine imperative. In Numbers 33:52 God commanded that they “drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, destroy all their engraved stones, destroy all their moulded images, and demolish all their high places.”

Some Orthodox icons proudly depict the smashing of ancient statues. Some statues still survive of the goddess Aphrodite, rendered suitably harmless by the large cross carved on her forehead. Yet for all that, ancient statues, particularly the good ones, were revered in Byzantium, repurposed as works of art.  According to the Patria of Constantinople, the statue of Aphrodite outside the brothels reputedly set up by Constantine the Great in Constantinople was used as a touchstone for chaste women and virgins who were under suspicion. Those whose chastity were under question would be made to approach the statue. If they were chaste, they would pass by unharmed. However, if the opposite was true, a “sudden apparition would confuse her and reluctantly and against her will, as soon as she approached…and lifting her dress in front of all, she would show her genitals before all.” Onward Christian Soldiers indeed…

When it came to Byzantium, iconoclasm arose out of feelings of insecurity and vulnerability. The adherents of aniconic Islam had swept into the traditional Byzantine territories of the East and were making conquest after conquest. This caused many to reflect upon the perceived shortcomings of their own society, ascribing Byzantine losses not to it being significantly weakened by incessant prior wars against external enemies, internal strife, and a lack of manpower (that would have been too complicated) but instead to the Byzantines veneration of icons. Perhaps the only way forward was to smash, deface or destroy the scapegoats of one’s shortcomings.

Of course it didn’t work. One hundred or so years later, the icons returned and they have been with us ever since, in unaltered form, standing silent vigil during that time, as our people lost the known world, remained in darkness, and then, in 1821, forged their world anew. Along the way, they found new icons, whose likenesses, in the form of statues, busts and pictures, adorn classrooms, kafeneia, public squares and textbooks. Kolokotronis, Papaflessas, Athanasios Diakos, Georgios Karaiskakis were and remain the new icons: impenetrable, unassailable, completely unsurpassable. Until now that is.

Recently, the pedestal of the statue of Theodoros Kolokotronis, the so-called “Old man of Morea” outside of the Old Greek Parliament was defaced with graffiti. The slogans spray-painted upon it in livid red angrily proclaimed: “Dead Men Cannot Rape,” and “Queer Rage.” Cries of shock and shame immediately emanated from all quarters. How dare they? How ungrateful! How indicative of the decline of a society which far from progressing is turning upon itself to consume itself!

In Victoria, Marty Sheargold was recently cancelled for permitting himself to perform a similar form of iconoclastic blasphemy against the Australian women's national football team. His transgression was flippant and in poor taste and the reaction it provoked indicates how deeply people feel the need to idolise their betters and just how beyond reproach or indeed critical analysis they want them to be. Kolokotronis and his like are no different. They occupy a plane above the reach of mere mortals. Their achievements are superhuman, so their moral virtues must also touch the Divine, lest or whole belief system come crashing down on our heads.

We know for instance that Kolokotronis could be rather blunt when in search of funds. In 1822, he wrote to Ignatios, Metropolitan of Ungro-Wallachia, a man who selflessly and single-mindedly devoted his life to raising money from Greeks Abroad, in order to fund the Greek Revolution, seeking money to repair the fortress of Nauplion. He wrote:  “You're to send it to me without fail. If you don't, I'll be at war with you, war without mercy, war without end, and I'll leave it to be carried on by my descendants." So much for friendly camaraderie.

In 1823, when Alexandros Mavrokordatos was elected head of the Legislative Body at the Assembly of Epidauros, the Bishop of Arta was sent to Kolokotronis to break the news. As he sang the praises of Mavrokordatos, Kolokotronis drew his yataghan and started waving it in his face. The horrified bishop protested that the whole Legislative Body would have no choice but to leave the Peloponnese if threats like this continued. Soon after, they did so. Soon after, Kolokotronis as Vice-President of the Executive summoned Alexander Mavrocordatos, and told him that unless he resigned his office at once he would mount him backwards on a donkey and have him chased out of the Peloponnese with whips.  Mavrokordatos, the only man in Greece who at the time wore a European frock-coat and thick rimless spectacles, a polymath and speaker of eight languages, resigned in the face of this intimidation, proving that democracy is all well and good, but being a warlord who governs by fiat, was far more persuasive.

This man was a staunch fighter for freedom. He was also a sworn enemy of whoever harmed his interests, no matter where he was from or what beliefs he espoused. Under his leadership, the massacre of Tripolitsa took place, where innocent Muslim and Jewish civilians were massacred and raped, despite promises of protection and safe conduct. Perhaps this is what the aggrieved iconoclasts are seeking to draw our attention to, with their defacement of public property.

It is a debate worth having. In his own memoirs, Kolokotronis records how sicked he was by the massacre committed by the troops under his command: "Inside the town they had begun to massacre. ... I rushed to the place ... If you wish to hurt these Albanians, I cried, "kill me rather; for, while I am a living man, whoever first makes the attempt, him will I kill the first." ... I was faithful to my word of honour ... Tripolitsa was three miles in circumference. The [Greek] host which entered it, cut down and were slaying men, women, and children from Friday till Sunday. Thirty-two thousand were reported to have been slain. One Hydriote [boasted that he had] killed ninety. About a hundred Greeks were killed; but the end came [thus]: a proclamation was issued that the slaughter must cease. ... When I entered Tripolitsa, they showed me a plane tree in the market-place where the Greeks had always been hanged. I sighed. "Alas!" I said, "how many of my own clan – of my own race – have been hanged there!" And I ordered it to be cut down. I felt some consolation then from the slaughter of the Turks. ... [Before the fall] we had formed a plan of proposing to the Turks that they should deliver Tripolitsa into our hands, and that we should, in that case, send persons into it to gather the spoils together, which were then to be apportioned and divided among the different districts for the benefit of the nation; but who would listen?"

It is not at all clear whether Kolokotronis participated in the massacre. It is likely that, as he candidly states in his memoirs, that he did not, but allowed his troops to run riot, as this was the ordinary practice during the warfare of the age. Similarly, one can assume that we would have been mystified by the moral outrage that actions of this nature would cause in the present time.

Do we do wrong, if we take down the icons of those we revere once in a while, give them a good dusting, and after the cobwebs are clear and scrutinise them anew, debate whether they are still worthy of veneration? Do we do wrong, if in accordance with Queer Theory, we seek to analyse the manner in which Kolokotronis’ deeds and character is portrayed as establishing a set of gender norms? Certainly not. Today’s heroes are tomorrow’s enemies of the people, as the ostracisers of ancient Athens knew and civilisations will discard heroes they no longer have use for and replace them with others, despite our conviction that immortality can be purchased through word or song or deed. For those who need to worship still, no amount of historical research, interrogation and conversation will convince them of their idols’ defenestration. For their brethren, who prefer a more nuanced and spherical view, continued debate and research can only serve to flesh out a more complete picture of a personality, which was just that, a human being, albeit an outstanding one, with all his foibles and accomplishments.

The slogans on the statue of Kokokotronis are suggestive of an absence of such a process of dialogue: when one departs from the realm of hagiography only to embrace daemonography. And while these questions are worth discussing over a glass of something pungent, after a particularly heavy dinner in congenial company, a single plea becomes pertinent: Please be gentle.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 22 March 2025

FROM THE BRINK: REVIVING GREEK VIA HEBREW

It is, perhaps no coincidence that Φάρος, the Greek word for lighthouse and thus a beacon to guide one to safety and ensure their survival, rhymes with Χάρος, the shady mythological figure whose job it was to guide the souls of the no longer living across the Acheron River, into the land of Hades. Sooner or later, despite the best efforts of the former, an encounter with the latter is inevitable. To exhaust the death motif to its ultimate tortuous extent, if sarcophagy describes the process by which flesh is feasted upon and is decomposed, then glossophagy denotes the manner in which one language is slowly subsumed by another.

We are living in the era of the palliative care of the Greek language in Australia. Linguists consider gradual language death to occur when the people speaking that language interact with speakers of a language of higher prestige. This group of people first becomes bilingual, then with newer generations the level of proficiency decreases, and finally no native speakers exist. One by one, despite our best efforts, Modern Greek Studies courses disappear from the tertiary syllabus and those that remain, do so on life support. We scratch our heads and wonder why after twelve years of Greek school classes, our progeny cannot construct a coherent sentence in that language that does not include the words souvlaki, Mykonos and rezili, all the while pondering why, in a community that has so many resources and numbers over a hundred thousand, only182 students studied Modern Greek at VCE level in Victoria.

Meanwhile, the lingua franca of our community, the one in which our press releases and media posts is conducted in, is now predominately English and not Greek. Beyond the pretty photos, the printed propaganda, the carefully crafted adulatory and self-congratulatory stage-managed gatherings and panegyria, this is the ugly truth of the precipice we are perched upon. We don’t like it. It makes us feel as uneasy and self-conscious as when we are forced into a situation where we have to speak Greek because we have no choice and there is no escape. Somehow, and we can’t fathom why, we feel personally responsible for the loss of a language which many of us know, but don’t really want to speak anymore, even though we all agree it is such an important part of our identities. On occasion, when we wax lyrical about the size and vitality of our community, our thought processes begin to take us down the path of trying to calculate how much time and money has gone into creating and maintaining our Greek language schools, and how better off we would have been as a community instead if we had taken those funds and allocated them towards property investments instead. But then again, we are supposed to be a nation of entrepreneurs, and we banish those thoughts within seconds.

There are many reasons for our failure, and the solutions we from time to time come up with in our fora, our conferences and our discussions, don’t seem to be working. Throwing money at the problem doesn’t work. Amalgamating Greek schools doesn’t work. Glossy calendars and photos of smiling students learning Greek dancing doesn’t work. Yet for some reason, up until now, our focus has not been on the examples of languages brought back from the brink of, or indeed, of total extinction.

The only language that has come back from the dead has been Hebrew, in Israel, after over a millenium. Dispersed far from their ancestral homelands, Jews adopted the dominant languages of the countries in which they lived, or adapted these to their purpose, while retaining Hebrew as a revered holy language. However, towards the end of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth century, a movement began for the revival of the Hebrew language that reached its apogee after the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel. What kept the memory of Hebrew alive, was its liturgical use and the conviction of those who revered it, that even if they did not understand it, its memory was worth preserving. What ensured its revival was pure ideology and nationalism: a burning conviction that a people should speak their own tongue, one that would express their history, their aspirations an unite them. Remarkably, this endeavour worked, with Yiddish and Ladino, the erstwhile tongues of the European diaspora, now becoming endangered.

While the Jewish experience is unique and cannot be compared to our own, there are lessons and parallels to our own history that can provide inspiration as we try to drag our language back from the brink: Firstly, sheer willpower and the absolute belief that speaking the tongue is necessary. In the eighteenth century, Saint Kosmos the Aetolian traversed western Greece, exhorting, cajoling, pleading with and demanding that the local inhabitants speak Greek to each other and their offspring, instead of Vlach, Arvantic and the other idioms that they had adopted. That this is a slow and painful process is beyond doubt. When Eliezer Ben-Yehuda who wrote the first modern Hebrew dictionary and was responsible for creating much of its vocabulary began his attempts to convince his compatriots to speak solely in Hebrew, only four families could do so. Yet in the fullness of time both of these visionaries had their dreams for language revival fulfilled.

There are flaws in seeking to follow this approach to the letter. Both revivals are a corollary to a national project that is pertinent to the people who reside in the countries created by those projects. Significant state resources over a long period of time have been allocated so as to ensure public knowledge of Greek and Hebrew in those countries. In Australia, however, the dominant class does not share our linguistic history and the experience of the diaspora is different. Of the 99,956 Australians who identified as Jews in the 2021 Australian census, 10,844 or just one ninth stated that they spoke Hebrew. In contrast, in the same census, of the 424,750 Australians identifying as Greek, 229,643 or approximately one half stated they spoke Greek, the extent of their fluency being unknown.

There are also other differences. While the Greek identity has been centred largely around Greece and its language throughout its historical discourse (and of course, the Greek language has been spoken continuously within its homeland for the past four millenia and in its peripheries), the Jewish identity developed by necessity in a centrifugal fashion with more diverse points of reference. Nonetheless, the fact remains that sheer willpower, an almost missionary zeal facilitated the revival of a defunct tongue. It is this imperative for re-genesis, that could provide a source of inspiration for our own community. Before we do so, however, we would have to face the elephant in the room. For all our lip service to the key role of Greek civilisation in humanity, we have already adopted the language of those we subconsciously accept are of higher prestige. The inhabitants of Israel chose to embrace a language that gave them prestige. Our relationship with our identity in this country, is a more ambiguous one. Regardless, the Hebrew experience also teaches us something else that is value: the contexts in which, if language loss is to occur, a selection of ingredients can be preserved, to form the seeds of revival in the future.

There are other languages which, although never extinct, have had their decline arrested: Welsh, Hawaiian and Basque to name but a few. In this case, such a revival came as a consequence of state intervention and language policy. Once upon a time, our community was heavily invested in language policy in this country, but as the definition of multiculturalism has evolved over time, this no longer seems to be of priority. Perhaps it is time this changed.

Whatever the future may hold, we cannot, like the Bourbons before us, continue on as before, having forgotten nothing and learnt nothing. If we are serious about language retention, let us study the success stories and learn from them, drawing upon the strengths of our own cultural memory. The time is now.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 15 March 2025

ΚΡΙΜΣS ΑΓΑΙΝΣΤ ΑΛΦΑΒΣΤS

 Some things get my goat like no others. One of the major ones, are persons who misspell their parents’ names on their tombstones. Tombstones are civilisation’s lame attempt at a final stab at eternity. The person buried beneath them may no longer be gone but their name is supposed to endure, at least for a little while, so one may as well get it right. For some reason however, many Greek-Australians are oblivious to the fact that the consonantal cluster ΚΣ can ably be represented by a letter known as Ξ, and that ΠΣ can more efficiently be rendered by the letter Ψ. Similarly, the progeny of many a dead Greek appear blissfully unaware of the fact that the letter, not the watch brand, Omega, according to one tradition, was invented by lyric poet Simonides of Ceos and its use became established in Ionia by the sixth century.

In 403BC, at the urging of Eucleides, the Athenians voted to replace the old Attic alphabet with the Ionian one, making the omega official. Someone obviously forgot to inform the Greeks of Melbourne, many of whom universally employ O instead of Ω, and criminally on occasion, Φ. Given that they probably don’t use this alphabet anywhere else, possibly what we are witnessing is the emergence of a unique script which in the future, archaeologists shall term Tomb Script. The ancient, endangered script of the Chams, a linguistic minority of South East Vietnam and Cambodia, is so integral to their identity, they must learn it before they can go to the afterlife. We on the other hand, don’t learn ours, so that our progenitors may stay with us forever.

Alphabetic liberties are taken on a daily basis in our community. From the undertaker who uses a V to write the word Vεκρώσιμη on his premises in Bell Street, thus burying the Greek alphabet as well as his clients for good measure, to the church in the western suburbs that proudly uses the equally and fittingly western Greek alphabet to inscribe upon its entrance: IERA ARXIEΠΙΣΚΟΠΗ, with linguists contending that the said R should be pronounced as it is in English, giving the Greek an Irish tinge, in our hands the alphabet is a pliable instrument, with every single letter being as negotiable as a cheque before the banking reforms of 1908.

Nonetheless, it cannot be disputed that the Greek alphabet forms a major part of our identity. We are inordinately proud of the fact that the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter is represented by the letter π regardless of the fact that the Babylonians were the first to make a written approximation of it centuries before Archimedes’ calculations. We are also extremely proud of the fact that we “gave” our alphabet both to what ended up being the Latin West and the Slavic East, forgetting that we adapted it from the Phoenicians, according to Herodotus. This, we have difficulty in accepting, except for the Cretans of Melbourne, who still use the Linear B script (the Cretans of Sydney prefer Linear A) and the Cypriots who still use the ancient Cypriot syllabary with an extra two ideoglyphs to represent koumbaroi and shetalies,  leaning more likely to the more facile and elegant solution of the polymath Patriarch Photius who attempted to explain away the reason why the ancients referred to our alphabet as  Φοινικήια γράμματα in the following way:

 

“The Lydians and Ionians [report] that letters came from Phoinix the son of Agenor who invented them. But the Cretans report differently that they were developed from writing on the leaves of palm trees (phoinikes).

Skamon, in the second book of his Inventions, says that they were named for Aktaion’s daughter Phoinike. The story goes that he had no male children, but that he had daughters Aglauros, Erse, and Pandrosos. Phoinike died still a virgin. For this reason, Aktaion named the letters "Phoenician" for her, because he wished to give some honour to his daughter.” We did after all, invent everything, including invention itself.

 

Type the words “Ancient Macedonian alphabet,” in Google and a number of Glagolithic and Cyrillic Scripts emerge upon the page. This is of course nonsense, for the ancient Macedonians used the Greek script, but substituting the letter X for Ξ, which is why Social Media Warriors and Defenders of the Faith who secretly lust after Colin Farrell gush over a historical figure they refer to in writing as ΜΕΓΑ ΑΛΕΧΑΝΔΡΟ, pronounced in like fashion to the object of Lady Gaga’s lament:  “Don't call my name, don't call my name Alejandro…”

 

It is this history of license and abuse which cause me to recall possibly the best verse of poetry ever written, by Greek-Australian poet Tina Giannoukos, in “Bull Days:” “The mellifluous alphabet of pain...” It is a pain intensified by another insidious phenomenon: that of the reckless and insensitive abuse of the Greek alphabet by foreigners, especially Westerners. This is not by any means a new phenomenon. College fraternities have appropriated Greek letters for their so-called “Greek Organisations” as far back as the foundation of the Phi Beta Kappa society at the College of William and Mary in 1776. At least those initials stand for the ancient Greek phrase Φιλοσοφία Βίου Κυβερνήτης, signifying: “Love of wisdom, the guide of life.” The Chi Phi fraternity at Princeton I am reliably informed by initiated members of the Tierra Del Fuegan chapter of AHEPA, stands for Χέστηκε η Φοράδα στο Αλώνι, which is demotic Greek for when one is up a particular creek, sans paddle. Mysteriously, while we are rightfully enraged when our Slavic cousins appropriate our identity, we seem not to mind when frat prats have the temerity to autoidentify as Greek. This is something, I humbly submit, the international copyright experts employed by the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs should look into, and perchance, pursue compensation.

 

I am by persuasion, as anti-Goebbelsian as the next socio-economic entity, but I freely admit I can go the full Savanarola and seek to stoke the pyre of my rage by consigning to it such excremental publications as the prurient Sαlly Griffyη who dares to entitle her “book” on Stone Circles and Sacred Paths: Sαcrεδ joψrηeyξ. Such crimes against alphabets must only be dealt with by condign punishment: the suspension of one’s year four pen license and re-education through labour, self-criticism and failing that, immolation by barbeque.  Similarly, when American property developer Phil South begins to advise you that ΩΗΑΤ ΩΕ ΛΣΑςΣ ΒΣΗΙΝΔ ΦΣ...and the words begin to become as garbled as the time in 1992 when theia Maritsa had a stroke after her daughter brought home a boyfriend who she mistook for an Indian even though he hailed from Rhodes, your rage must be tempered with sympathy, as you recall your Aussie neighbour who goes about his business with the word ΦΡΕΕ emblazoned upon his arm and you recall that in the mid to late nineties when personal computers were still a prestige novelty, countless younger members of Greek-Australian organisations were convinced that if you composed a newsletter in Times New Roman English, highlighted the text and transposed it into Symbol font, the text would magically translate itself into Greek, although you would still have to add the accents in ballpoint pen, Kilometrico for choice. Here then, we transcend the mundane and enter the realms of faith. Just as how Marx never fully explains how the State will wither away, so too are we never to know just how Symbol will convert any alphabet into Greek. You just have to believe.

 

It is for this reason therefore, that try as I might, and egged on by my Neos Kosmos guru, as polymathic as the Patriarch Photius who is his namesake, Fotios Kapetopoulos, I can experience no frenzy and fit into no pique, at the revelation that the divine Queen B’s premier offering to world scholarship “HOMECOMING: A film by Beyoncé (I’ve come to Netflix relatively late in life) is rendered in the promotional material as HΘΜΣCΘΜΙΝG, because I suspect that it either critically treats an imminent delivery of Hommus, or rather, showcases her musical stylings within the context of “black Greek life,” which I understand, refers to African American fraternities and sororities who are federated in an umbrella organisation which has been known as the National Pan-Hellenic Council as far back as 1930, decades before our own Australian Hellenic Council was but a glint in founder Costa Vertzayias’ eye.

 

And it is for this reason that I eagerly await the arrival of the latest version of the filmic medium’s treatment of the Homeric Epic that is being touted as ΤΗΣ ΘΔΨSSΣΨ, which was exactly the same exclamation that I emitted whilst moved to ecstasy the last time I beheld Efi Thodi in concert in Trikala, way back in 2006, when I was still being weaned off the Symbol font. That is to say, I am not so much flattered as confused, for while Odysseus is most definitely described as πολυμήχανος by our Blind Bard, there is nothing in the versions of the text that I have read that refer to Odysseus having ever founded a college fraternity, and I am dying to know more, for I am in the process of preparing my doctored dissertation on Greek-Australian Brotherhoods as frathouses, where according to Grimm’s law in linguistics, the Proto-Indo-European "p" sound evolved into an "f" sound. And after all, we Greeks are not the only victims of Alphabet appropriation. My Russian friends are heartily sick of the letter Я being usurped as either an R or an A, whenever anyone wants to reheat the frozen leftovers of the Cold War. Я is supposed to be pronounced “ya,” which means that yiayia in Russian would be ЯЯ, efficient, cool and eminently inscribable upon a tombstone at a fraction of the cost, to boot. Be thus not dismayed and rejoice,  MY FRIENDS. WE SHALL MAKE GREEK GREAT ΑΓΑΙΝ.

 ΔΕΑΝ ΚΑΛΨΜΝΙΦΨ

Φιrστ ΡθβλισΗεδ ον ΣατθrδαΥ 11 ΜαrcH 2025