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Zdravka Mihaylova 
Exclusively for GRReporter  
Yannis Kiourtsakis was born in Athens in 1941. He graduated in law in Paris. His studies devoted to the first Greek Nobel Prize-winning poet Yorgos Seferis (Modern Hellenism and the West in the Works of Seferis, Kedros, 1979), the Karaghiozis shadow-theatre (Carnival and Karaghiozis. Origins and Metamorphoses of Popular Laughter, Kedros, 1985), the carnival spirit in Bakhtin’s oeuvre, point out that verbal tradition and folk culture are tools for understanding the fundamental sources of modern Greek history and art. His essay “The Problem of Tradition” is included in the Bulgarian edition of “Who are the Greeks?”, a collection of modern Greek essays, (Foundation for Bulgarian Literature, Sofia, 2002, translated by Zdravka Mihaylova).  

In the period 1995-2007 Kiourtsakis was working on the novel and essay trilogy under the general title The Same and the Other in which the author is himself the protagonist. As the literary critic Aris Marangopoulos wrote, “his work fits in the European tradition of self-referential rhetoric where, from Saint Augustine to Rousseau and from Thomas Bernhard to Nabokov the author, the narrator and the character of a literary work are the one and same person.” A few years ago Kiourtsakis presented his river-of-consciousness book entitled Like a Novel that sparked the attention of literary criticism.  

Kiourtsakis belongs to the tradition of eminent Greek authors who alongside their original works of literature have interesting critical essays too. In 1986 he was awarded the second Greek State Prize for essays, and in 1996 he received the best novel award of the Greek literary magazine Diavazo. The use of the self as an anthropological “guinea pig” in a creative work-in-progress - which by definition reflects the variegated society in which he lives, is not limited only to that originality but the literary result is complemented by a vigorous language delightful to the reader that smartly intertwines critical thought with the best novelistic traditions. With his literariness, comprehensive reflection framework and anthropological vision Kiourtsakis’ works fit in the best inherited from the Greek critical self-consciousness. It, therefore, represents an ideal approach entering the complex universe of modern Greek world - from its social organization to the prevailing attitudes and cultural patterns. 

Exclusively for GRReporter Zdravka Mihaylova talk with Yannis Kiourtsakis.
QUESTION: There is no Greek of the older generation who has not spent countless carefree hours of laughter with the shadow-theatre protagonist Karaghiozis. Karaghiozis is invariably a pauper, hungry, ragged, barefoot; he survives thanks to various tricks, people laugh at him, taunt him often, even throw him into jail. Karaghiozis is a figure of fun through his coarse jokes, his vagaries and those of his mischievous children. We often hear him exclaim: “Ooh,  mama, now I’m really for it!" («Αχ, μανουλα, τι επαθα;»!) The Greek theatre of shadows revives ordinary folks’ hard life and their efforts to eke out a livelihood. Do you share the view that on a symbolic level Karaghiozis is an exponent of the Greek soul? Does this deep reservoir of the Greek people’s talent for self-deprecation have the power to overcome today’s crisis of values? 
 

KIOURTSAKIS: For me, the identification of Karaghiozis with the spirit of the Greeks is an implied consequence of its collective creation by the folk audience during the years of its heyday at the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. Even though the shadow theatre had been introduced after the independence of Greece from Turkey as an “oriental spectacle”, the verbal tradition and folk arts of our country so drastically “grafted” it little by little and ”mingled” it with so many Greek people's lives that it has become an authentic Greek folk spectacle. It is all about the natural result of its verbal nature, which, as I pointed out in my book Verbal Tradition and Collective Creativity, turns the personal business of those who play the Karaghiozis theatre into a common knowledge for the audience. This audience - part of the Greek people – in fact is the collective creator of the Greek Karaghiozis. Of course, something like this cannot be valid today when verbal tradition is obsolete. Therefore, there are countless performances devoted to this “grotesque” character the symbolic codes of whom are completely strange to us, but they were completely close and clear to a traditional audience. However, a self-deprecation society - in the theatre of shadows, or elsewhere, remains the first step towards collective self-knowledge. From this perspective it is a tool to cope with – I am not saying to necessarily overcome - an existential crisis like today’s. Just see how some caricatures in the press portray the current situation in the country better than any profound and insightful analysis.

QUESTION: Karaghiozis combines the spectacular and carnival element, it has something in common with the so-called 'grand spectacle'. In his essay ‘Karaghiozis’ the Greek surrealist poet and artist Nikos Engonopoulos detects similarities between him and the Italian comedia dell'arte, with the Italian folk hero Bertolodo and Nasreddin Hodja (in the same essay Engonopoulos mentions that somewhere in the Greek mountains in Arcadia, an old woman confided to him: “Nasreddin Hodja was one of us, my boy, Stratis Hodja” ....) Maybe what they have in common is that the protagonists exchange thoughts, witticisms and obscenities, that the action is very dynamic. But entirely Greek characters also appear - like the heroes of the liberation uprising of 1821 - Katsandonis and Diakos, or ones from ancient times like Alexander the Great, but also Ali Pasha of Yannina and his beloved Kyra Vassiliki, and even Othello and Desdemona. I wonder if the motley troupe of Karaghiozis does not reflect the different influences on today's Greece.

KIOURTSAKIS: Let me repeat that Greece of today is far from Greece which created Karaghiozis. Therefore, it is difficult to say that this theatre reflects our present society that has undergone profound transformations. But this spectacle inevitably contains elements which reflect with devastating preciseness some more permanent, diachronic, structural features of the Greek. A good example is the hut of Karaghiozis: this permanent decor that symbolically and tangibly embodies not only the gap between the poor and the rich (as it sticks out against the magnificent and imposing seraglio of the pasha), but also something deeper: the uncertainty, instability, lack of self-confidence and incoherence, I would say even the mess in our collective life. At the same time, however, the unexpected resistance of this eve- ready-to-collapse building, as is our society - consequently, “the imminent resistance of modern Greek history”, to quote the famous Greek historian Nikos Svoronos.

QUESTION: Last year’s decision of UNESCO Karaghiozis to be awarded Turkish “citizenship” put an end to the dispute between Turkey and Greece about to which of the two countries this favourite character of the shadow theatre belongs. The origin of the shadow-puppet theatre is rooted back in ancient times - it comes from Java and China and from Persia, passes to the Ottoman Empire, and reaches Greece. With respect to what is the Greek theatre of shadows autonomous compared with its predecessors?

KIOURTSAKIS: It’s a pity to witness how a significant international organization the purpose of which is protection of cultural heritage, such as UNESCO, ignores in such an impressive way the verbal folk art: creativity that knows no boundaries, because it is and multinational, and local: it is transformed everywhere it roots. As for the “autonomous” nature of Greek Karaghiozis from its ancestor, I would only say that if its Turkish paradigms are identifiable to the researchers, they have become unrecognizable to the average viewer, as they have undergone radical changes in Greece. This is evident in every aspect of its art: repertoire, major types and minor characters, set design, picturesqueness, music and speech.

QUESTION: Russian avant-garde from the beginning of the century comes to the forefront of theoretical thought in the 1960s again. So-called Russian formalists are presented brilliantly by the then young Tzvetan Todorov in the classic French edition of 1965 with a preface by Roman Jakobson. By that time Julia Kristeva reinvents the also forgotten Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) for the West. Bakhtin’s monograph on Rabelais and Folk Culture During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is published in 1965 and makes the author the name of the day in scientific circles. What are the views you received from this theory and used for your studies of the carnival phenomenon? 

KIOURTSAKIS: Bakhtin’s book about Rabelais revealed to me that multinational nature of the symbolic language of the carnival and its live presence in the "high-grade" literature as well as in the "low" folk genres and firstly in all folk spectacles – in the East and the West. So, it helped wholesale to decode, enlighten and interpret every aspect of today's Karaghiozis, starting with his “grotesque” characters and his language of gestures and going on to his speech - even in his most foolish or, apparently, utterly nonsensical pun. This was one of the goals I set for myself in my research “The Carnival and Karaghiozis”. Beside the theoretical approach to carnival, however, for me Bakhtin has become a teacher, deeply penetrating - completely unconsciously for me at first - into my literary work with his amazingly fruitful reflections on dialogic nature of literature and language itself.

QUESTION: The issue of continuity of tradition has been your concern for a long time. There is often the assumption that tradition is something static, frozen in the past, rigid and conservative. In your essay “The Problem of Tradition” you write that the crisis in the tradition of a country is a crisis of identity, of genuineness, an existential crisis. What do you think is Greece’s perception of the issue of tradition, its continuity and renewal?

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.

QUESTION: You have recently come back from Paris where the French edition of your book Like a Novel entitled Dikolon (the carnival mask bearing on its back its dead brother, a personal reference to the loss of his own brother Kiourtsakis experienced) was presented. What was the response?

KIOURTSAKIS: It is too early to say ... You know, modern Greek literature and modern Greek culture in general are essentially strange, not to say non-existent territories in France. Greece is not in vogue, except for the problems it causes in the euro zone (as if they are not innately inherent for the European currency). This is how mainstream media show it as they impose their fashions, even in literature. However, even the mere fact that the book was published by a small but nevertheless esteemed-among-literary-circles publishing house, Verdier, closely linked to the best bookshops in France, and the fact that many bookshop owners have already read it and loved it is a good sign, perhaps not only for my work.