“The literary employment of Hellenism. From the Romanesque of Trapezountian Song to the “Hellenism” by Vassilis Michailidis”

N.G.O. "Romiosini"
1st International Congress on "Romiosini through the centuries"
Amphitheatre of the War Museum of Athens
Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st of May 2009

Introducer: Mr. Nicolaos Orphanides
Member of the Committee of Education Service of Cyprus, Writter.

Subject: "The literary employment of Hellenism. From the Romanesque of Trapezountian Song to the Hellenism" by Vassilis Michailidis

Talking on the literary employment of Hellenism, as we meet it, in Romanesque of the Trapezountian Song, as in the Hellenism by Vassilis Michailidis, but somewhat later in the "Painful Hellenism" by Fotis Contoglou or in the proud but wounded as were "Romiosini" by Giannis Ritsos, that one of the internecine conflict or the postwar ardour, I do believe that we are entering to a particular employment and development for the love to the motherland and at the same time to another, from a semeiological point of view, a particularly of a "national" poetry, being far from the reactions and reflections of the alienated West. Poetry and Literature, that come to meet with the holy land of Byzantium, as the land of east regarding us. With the Sacred and forgotten Byzantium. With the, in the end, unredeemed pain. With the continuity as well as the coherence of our historical memory.

I am thinking, how catalytic, as well as wonderfully dynamic comes out, in a such way, the entrance of Hellenism in the place of our contemporary literature. It deals with an entrance that overthrows all we were accustomed, as being blocked, by most to the evenly more western - way vision of ours. Thad dresses things one to another with a strange light. But in another way with a strange light, of the blessing one of that of grace. As, along with it, jointly with the already forgotten Romanesque and the Sacred Hellenism, enters, entire into the light, the dreaming one and immortal and blessed Byzantium. The Byzantium of our love and of the dream on our longing and our memory.

Such an entrance towards Byzantium and our intertiming soreness leads directly to "our tessellated yearning", to remember our Seferis and jointly with him Cyprus as well. "The tessellated yearning of our Hellenism", as we meet in the poem "Neophytos the enclosed speaks". That is, as speaks a Saint of post Byzantium in Cyprus. Where, on the other hand, has lived painly and wrote and cried for all bad things came after from the North, in the recently historical and painful or crying text of him "About all terrible things that happened in Cyprus".

We were in 1192 and during the taking out of Cyprus by Richard the Lionhearted, and later with the Naitians and then with the Louzinians. The Franks. And as, the drama of Hellenism, the poet Giorgos Seferis, in 1953, during his first visit in Cyprus.

"Excellent architectures by Larion Famagousta Bufavento, nearly scenics. We ware accustomed to think differently that "Jesus Christ Prevails".

Where did we see once the walls of the Queen city, the eaten from the gypsy tents and dry grasses, with the big walls being fallen like strong who lost, the tossed dices.

For us it was a totally different matter the war for the Christ's faith as well as for the man's soul being seated on the kneels of the Unbeaten General, who had in the eyes a mosaic the pain of Hellenism of that large sea of pain as he found the weighing of kindness..."
("Neophytos the enclosed speaks").

The entrance of Hellenism, to the poetic and other sceneries of ours, transforms and transfigurates them. And at the same time transforms and transmutates and alterates and changes men, in order to make them and set off them in martyrs of the nation and to sanctify them. As just it really happened on the 9th of July of 1821 in Cyprus, as to come out after even the identical poem of Basil Michailidis, that poem of irredentism, with the Hellenism, that is "the race being co-habitant of the world".

So, this way the entrance of Hellenism demonstrates our sad songs, in a timeless pain and grievance.

In a same to a certain amount, then, we understand nowadays the entrance of Romanesque in our literature, in that Trapezoundian song, with the heartbrokenly title "Virgin" that talks to us on the Byzantium seizure, of the Romanesque.

So we have, with Romanesque and Hellenism, the entrance of the sanctified Byzantium, that so lightly have left and abandoned and forgotten, having been amazed by the illusory lights of the West, as to remember even our mister Alexander Papadiamantis, as well as to Fotis Contoglou, in his "Painful Hellenism".

The composition of the poem "the 9th of July of 1821 in Nicosia, (Cyprus)", by Basil Michailidis, on the making of the holiness and blessing of Hellenism, but of the sacrifice and martyrdom of the nation martyr archbishop of Cyprus Cyprianos, and the poem "Parthen" by Constantin P. Cavafis, with the Romanesque of that local historical Trapezountian song, have only passed only a few years. The first one, that of Vassilis Michailidis, in a Cypriot dialect, with the Cypriotic voice, is written within 1884 - 1895. We find it in the first consolidated edition of his Poems, in 1911. Basil Michailidis, who got up and came in 1875 as volunteer in Greece in order to fight for the independence of Epirus and Thessaly, leaves his tests in the purist and erudite style of phanariots ("Unwell lyre, 1882") in order to write in the cypriotic dialect, in that ancient Hellenic voice his grievance and love for his country.

In a similar way, Constantin P. Cavafis, who early abandons the old romantic exercises in the hard poetically purist wording, he should meet with the Pontian voice and the Trapezountian grievance of the popular song, though the remodeling of the poem "Parthen". The cavafian poem is written in March of 1921, and it is still unpublished. It is a prophetic poem, as it mourns, before the following one, that big defeat and disaster of the nation in 1922 in Asia Minor.

The poet Constantin P. Cavafis knows the poetry of Basil Michailidis. In the same way he knew and defended, under his signature and his writings, the national agony of Greeks in Cyprus and their struggle for the Union. He knows and appoints, as the critics and scholars of his own work and comes out in the notes in the books at his bookstands he left, as well as on the inscription "For the hung Archbishop Cyprianos" as well as on the one "The 9th of July of 1821 in Nicosia (Cyprus)", and to some other poems of Vassilis Michailidis.

I do read first, his only that epigram under the title "For the Archbishop of Cyprus Cyprianos":

"You who have been killed for the light
Get up and see the sun
Wake up to look at your blood
How it became a kingdom".

Monumental, on the other hand his reference, in the poem "The 9th of July 1821 in Nicosia (Cyprus)", in Hellenism. But in the excellently way the dramatic dialogue of nation martyr and, why not, the new martyr archbishop of New Justinianis and Allover Cyprus Cyprianos with the Turkish commander:

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"eh you Bishop, my own opinion shall never be really changed by me, and whatever if you should tell me be sure that only one thing I shall believe in you that I have very inside my mind, Bishop, to slaughter and hang, and if could where the Romanesques the Cyprus to clear away and even if I could the world overthrew, everywhere to kill all of them and do not let ever a soul!

Hellenism one care being of the same time as the world itself is, and no-one has been found to can disappear.

No-one as gives a protection from the high sky the God himself of mine Hellenism should never be dead, even if the whole world is been lost.

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Slaughter us well, ever if our blood runs through a canal way make the whole world a mayhem and Greeks playing cards but he would knew how nice smelling would be having cut the read as all over and everywhere tree hundred birds are singing. Who even isn't able to eat the earth, does eat it and live, as always that one who eats and the next one will be eaten..."

Excellently dramatic shall be the outgoing of life, as it was really the archbishop's Cyprianos martyrdom:

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"And then, the Archbishop stood up to see at the sky, and suddenly were there all little being crying, and it was shown how he was pained inside his soul, and said then these just two words through his lips burnt:

"Oh my God, as a stone you have never any kindness and sorrow us and so give us a little amount of joy to Hellenism", and then run all things going on far from his face where the sun as was having a very hot such an air and afterwards they put following moment everything was all over".

Going back once more to the poet Constantin P. Cavafis, we find a mournful poem, in a voice that sounds strange, just as it was the voice of Cyprus, with the Cypriot poet. The poem "Parthen", "with his local strange language":

"Just these days I was reading some popular songs, saying about the fighters" achievements and the wars, things being really sympathetical and all our of us the Greeks. I also was reading the mourning ones for the loss of Constantinople. "They have gotten the Constantinople, they did gotten the Salonica".

And the Voice just there where they singing, "to the left the king, to the right the patriarch", it was hard and said to stop, on the spot "stop you priests the papers and close up the gospels" the have taken Constantinople, they have gotten the Salonica".

But much more all the others even more touched me more the song the Trapezountian one, that in such a strange language and with the sorrow of the Greeks of so far having come that maybe much more they believed that we still could be saved".

I am still standing to this Trapezountian song, in such a strange language.

To this so uniquely melodic, archaizing, mournful language of the Pontian Land. Just as the same of the Cyprus one. This ancient, this forgotten voice.

And much more, to the mourning, the heartbreaking of Hellenism. The mourning of Romanesquian, as it is expressed by the popular anonymous historic poem of the Pontian places, but at the same time, even another one being originated from Constantinople, who lives in Alexandria, the southest extreme of Hellenism.

As even Cyprus as well.

So in this way is that enters to the poetic passages the so forgotten Romanesque land. The forgotten Byzantium of our sorrow and also our own love. The heartbreaking Minor Asia as well as the Pontian Land. Trapezounta, but even Constantinople and also Salonica:

"They have gotten Constantinople, the have got Salonica" points out Cavafis in his own poem, embodying the verse out of that very ancient popular poem.

But, how Cavafis does start his meeting with history, as well the passions of Hellenism? Such accountancy with Constantinople, the Pontian Land, the Romanesque land?

"During these days I was reading popular songs, on the achievements of mount fighters and wars, our own sympathetical matters, of Greeks being owned".

The days of poet Constantin P. Cavafis are of March 1921, a year of composing this anecdote poem. We are in the years of the expedition to Minor Asia. It is when Hellenism is opened to the un-freed lands, trying to put in effect the materialization of the Great Idea. So, we are in critical historical times. As, when it happened then, when Constantinople was fallen. But a little bit before the greatest second large defeat of Hellenism. That one of the 20th century, in Minor Asia.

The ending of the poem is properly mourningful:

"But alas a fated bird "from Constantinople is coming".

Inside the feathers like paper is being written. And by no means had neither the vineyard nor the garden gone to live at the pine root".

Prelates cannot (or they do not want) to read "Widow's son, Gianicas is" he takes the paper. And as he reads it he laments.

"Get up and read it, do no be crying as it is heard by the heart. And threatens us and alas for us, Romanesque is parthen".

Hellenism is found in the place of History Painful. This way takes it Fotis Contoglou, than Byzantine of the exile. For this reason he uses this term as a "motto" in his homonymous book in which he embodies the following:

"Hellenism is a race
being of the same time as the world is,
no one has been found
to put an and to it
no one, it is roofed
by God from his heights.
Hellenism would disappear
whenever the world itself disappears".
under the inscription "Basil Michailidis Cypriot.

But, which is really the Painful Hellenism of Contoglou? All himself appoints as a sub-title, as saying, contents of his work, define the parameters of what is taken as being accepted on his part of the "Painful Romiosini".

Hellenism is directly connected to the sacred Byzantium, as a counter directory point land in history. Up to nowadays.

Having as center of such an ecumenical Orthodox life and memory and tradition as well the Queen City, the pride of all living under the east of sun. The magnificent Bosporus. The living time and all being acted project through History as called Legends of Saints.

This way, as a legendarian, Contoglou meets the uptaking of the Queen City as well as his last Emperor.

And it is for this even the Mourning legend of Constantinos Palaiologos. And since now and on the road of passion shall be opened as well as of that one of blessing.

The Painful Romiosini. Inside of herself and under her roof the humble saint painters during the Turkish occupation. The new martyrs, the glory of our Church. The ark of Orthodoxy.

But even the sacred independence revolution, which come later. And next to it the beautiful, holy our songs. All them summed up and expressed the grievance and martyrdom being existed during the Turkish occupation, the principal axis of our self conscience. But all and everything have expressed the Resurrection of our Nation. And all those that then had followed. All of them are saving us and still go on and keep us joined.

Such continuity as well coherence the love to our land deposits, finally, Ritsos, in his Romiosini, as an antidote to the passion and the brotherly heartbreaking. We are, then, between 1945 and 1947. So it is shown and set "Romiosini", expressing its pain and sorrowness for the historical and political suffering.

Here is the light, that is never-setting and enlightens our land and also discovers the naked ones. Just as they are.

Up to our days:

"This land is hard as it is silence,
tightens in his bosom its red-hot stones
tightens in the light its lonely olive-trees
and vineyfarms tightens its teeth. There in no water.
Only light. The road disappears in the light and the shadow of the wall is of iron.
Trees are in motionless, rivers and fountains inside the white of sun.
The root comes to an end before the marble.
The powdered begetation. The mule and the rock.
All of them are out of breath. There is no water.
All are thirsty. During lots of years so far.
All of them chew a mouthful of sky
are set on their bitterness".

Such a poetry, in which enters the painful Romiosini, the one being sunk in the time Romanesque, is a blessing poetry. Poetry of grace. It goes jointly with all sorrow of our memory that follow us with no interruption at all.

And even to the land of our east and with the unique universality and unity of the Orthodoxy.

With its own ecumenism. So far from whatever kind of contemporary nationalisms of the West, that came out in history, spitefully and hysterically, as a pathogeny as well as an heresy.