Galery

3

2

1

KIOURTSAKIS: Contrary to what happens in Western societies, where the rift with the past, what modernity by itself is, nevertheless to some extent it represents the transformation of pre-existing, local, traditional structures and forms, in Greece (it seems to me in the Balkans in general, and more generally throughout the Western world), this disruption was more radical and dramatic as it literally marks the relentless uprooting of all previous tradition, which was basically verbal. This unbridgeable gap prevented tradition to update dynamically and naturally as it did this in the past. In any case, this does not mean that our tradition does not always penetrate deeper cultural layers that we can easily recognize every time we look deeper into ourselves - and here I will first mention as an example the Greek language. And vice versa: in our times the last wave of modernity - that we call “postmodern” – has swept even the West, the very values and hierarchies of modernity bringing all this world to an unseen spiritual turmoil.

QUESTION: What do you think is the reason for the revived in recent decades interest in Karaghiozis by researchers of the shadow theatre?

KIOURTSAKIS: The rise of theoretical interest in Karaghiozis dates back mostly to the 1970s and 1980s. My research on the topic along with many others were written and published in this period. As for today's living presence of the shadow-puppet theatre, I confess that it evinces something amazing for myself as I was - and still I am – quite pessimistic about the future of folk culture. Naturally, Karaghiozis is no longer - and can not be - what it used to be when this was the most popular folk spectacle for a huge audience of adults who were for the most part  were illiterate. But the fact that today there are young talented artists of the shadow theatre, who earnestly and faithfully perform this art and find resonance in the audience (comprised not only of children) is certainly indicative of some things. What are they exactly? Anyway, that - whether we like it or not - Karaghiozis remains one modern symbol, albeit a caricature, that can tell us much about our collective self.

QUESTION: Your Book of Endeavour and Time is merely the last volume of your trilogy The Same and the Other that began with Like a Novel  and continued with We and Others. Each of the three parts can be read as a self-contained work, no matter in what order. These are extensive essays on creativity, which enters into dialogue with Greek language and thought, with European culture and its multifaceted spiritual heritage, and with modern Greek folk tradition and verbally spread cultures around the world. What was your motivation to write this literary text open to multiple interpretations which literally sculpts itself before the reader’s eyes?

KIOURTSAKIS: The main incentive was the deep anthropological transformation  that not only Greece and Europe, but I think the whole world, have faced with in the second half of the twentieth century and which has changed all of us - individuals and nations – and, of course, it has changed me, the writer too. The writing of this work took me two decades (this is where the words “endeavour” and “time” stem from). And inseparable from this metamorphosis is the strenuous effort to impart through my literary work and the experience it has given me another, entirely empirical and personal answer to the question: how spiritual heritage, which we bear in ourselves - the Greek language, European culture, literature, art - can help us in the maelstrom of the times in which we live to feel, ponder and live a little more human - or, to recall the words of the first Greek Nobel Prize winning poet Yorgos Seferis – “to be elevated yet a little higher” («να σηκωθούμε λίγο ψηλότερα»). 
 

QUESTION: In your latest book A Yokel in New York you are wandering through this world metropolis, watching it with the eyes of a traveler, writing entries in your diary how you – the modern European – see the New World, which, in turn, is making you look differently upon your own “old” Europe and even upon ancient Greece. As you write: “[...] I had always thought that today there is no need to travel to America as America itself - even more than necessary – has taken care to travel and settle down anywhere in the world, and I understand that I made a mistake. America throughout the world differs from America in America as the reproduction from the original. And one should always refer to the original - in this ever-roiling melting pot of humanity - to figure out America in the world a little better.” What thoughts did your first-hand experience of America engender that would not have arisen without visiting it?

KIOURTSAKIS: New York impressed me with the strange fascination this megalopolis exerts even on a man brought up with “old Europe and even with ancient Greece” like me, who arrives in America full of reservations. This made me think deeper over the fearsome magnetic, attractive force of the American pattern in generations of immigrants who lived and eventually created this immense country. But this pattern, as it have become - and is – the subject of mass export cannot be generalized; its power still has its limits. This, I think, is why “America around the world” will not be able to become a new America. At least today, it reminds more of a globalised province devoid of a centre. This partly explains the numerous tensions, violent nationalist awakenings, prominent anti-Americanism that erupt almost everywhere as the sub-product of “Americanisation” itself. “The “the old world” type of man resists and eventually takes revenge. And if today’s humanity fails to draw the necessary conclusions from this finding, our “global village” from which we can no longer escape, will continue to stumble, sway and lurch in agony.