Introduction: Modern Greek! Why?

“Why modern Greek?” This is a question that almost everybody in Modern Greek studies encounters sometime or another. Students of Greece have to justify the object of their research to skeptical colleagues, granting agencies, and/or university administrators since contemporary Greece lies on the periphery of scholarly interest. In this, Greece occupies the same position as other European countries such as Denmark, Portugal, or Belgium. Yet, unlike those countries, Greece possesses special features that somehow make it stand out from the shadowy regions of scholarly inattention. Most notable are its classical past, the focus of European thought for centuries, and Greece’s relative exoticism, a point of fascination for Westerners since the country’s independence.

But changing historical, economic, and cultural circumstances have undermined these two bases that previously supported neohellenic culture, throwing Modern Greek studies into a crisis of confidence and identity. As a result, the question “Why modern Greek?” is today posed not only by those outside the field but increasingly by neohellenists themselves. Although scholars find solace and pride in the growth of Modern Greek programs in the United States, Australia, and Europe over the last twenty-five years, they mourn Greek culture’s fading allure.

This diminishing interest is most keenly felt in literary studies. Greek writing beyond Elytis hardly makes an impression outside of Greece. While translations of East European, third world, postcolonial, and, in general, non-Western authors receive wide attention and critical acclaim, the works of Greek postmodern novelists, poets, women writers, or memoirists remain virtually unknown abroad. A translator of Greek fiction and poetry finds few interested publishers. Work already available in translation has a small audience.

A tale of two novels

The current situation in Modern Greek literature can best be illustrated by a comparison of two novels, Nikos Kazantzakis’s Zorba the Greek (1946, tr. 1952) and Alki Zeï’s Achilles’s Fiancée (1987, tr. 1991). Kazantzakis’s work, as well as the film version by Michael Cacoyiannis, became enormously successful in Europe and North America. For many readers it represented the ethos of Greece. What images of Greece and of the Greeks does it transmit? There is the orgiastic, nearly chthonic Zorba himself; the premodern peasants ruled by a code of vendetta and unforgiving patriarchal hierarchies; the crazed, pederastic Orthodox monks; the harsh beauty of the Greek landscape. Almost every page enchanted Western readers with exotic scenes, all made accessible by a Western-educated narrator imbued with Enlightenment values. One of the most evocative scenes is that of the death of Madame Hortense. Rather than presenting her final moments, the novel shifts its attention to the actions of the peasants. For, even as she gasps her last breaths the villagers begin ransacking her home. The two “official mourners” in her room, fearing that nothing will be left for them, heartlessly begin their lamentation before she actually dies. The frightful strains of their dirge accompany Madame Hortense to the underworld as they do the villagers pilfering her belongings. Readers are left with a feeling of awe, horror, strangeness, and cruel justice. ¹

What meaning does such a novel have for Western readers today? Are people interested in this Greece? Has not the peasant society of Greece disappeared? These questions cannot be answered definitively; yet they are connected with the fate of Greek culture in the West. We do know with some certainty, however, the fate of Kazantzakis’s work. With the exception of Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ, all of his major novels are now out of print in the United States. This sobering situation should be compared to Kazantzakis’s preëminence a few decades ago. When Kimon Friar’s translation of his Odyssey appeared in 1958 in the United States, it was picked up by the Book-of-the-Month Club, the Book Find Club, and the Seven Arts Club, an astonishing fact for a gargantuan, recondite epic, and one not at all popular in Greece. Moreover, it was hailed as a masterpiece by C. M. Bowra, Edith Hamilton, Lawrence Durrell, Will Durant, Moses Hadas, John Ciardi and other leading writers and intellectuals. Which...