Η σύγκρουση των φύλωω στον αρχετυπικό κόσμο της Μαργαρίτας Λυμπεράκη (review)

Margarita Lyberaki is a unique figure in contemporary Greek literature. She developed a very personal and highly erotic female voice in all her fictional and dramatic writings that have set her apart from other writers. The bicultural and bilingual character of her work—half Greek and half French—also contributes to her uniqueness in important ways. Her work has only lately begun to be fully appreciated by scholars and theater practitioners alike. This short study by Walter Puchner is the first attempt at thorough and critical assessment of Lyberaki's work, focusing on her gender politics, her contribution to modern Greek literature, and her theatrical innovations.

Puchner begins the book with an analysis of Lyberaki's most recent, as yet unperformed play, Diaspora (1999). Using this piece as a source, he teases out discreet biographical details about her life. His detailed discussion of the piece also gives Puchner the opportunity to identity some of the basic themes that function as leitmotifs in her fictional writings. Adopting his usual structural methodology, Puchner constructs a developmental scheme for Lyberaki's oeuvre, which situates her formally among the ranks of Western avant-garde artists and German expressionists. Thematically, he connects her to other artists who focus on love and death, an area where the battle of the sexes is of primary importance.

Having developed his typology in the first two chapters, Puchner proceeds in the next four chapters to discuss, in chronological order, all of Lyberaki's works for the stage and the screen, analyzing their structure and discussing the thematic and aesthetic patterns he identified in his introduction. His method is both analytical and syncretic and is supported throughout by an abundance of aptly chosen quotations. This practice creates some difficulties because such is the power of Lyberaki's writing and so long are the passages he quotes that the reader becomes so focused on her words that it is easy to lose the thread of Puchner's discussion. There needs to be a better balance between the critic's critique and the quotes he deploys to support his views. Chapters 4 and 5 are the best in the book precisely because Puchner does this and so he presents a critical discussion of her work that is acute, eloquent, balanced, and convincing. Overall, however, the book generally is in need of closer editing because at it is there are too many inconsistencies, stylistic infelicities, and repetitions.

It is to Puchner's credit that he chose to engage the works of such a highly visionary and important writer. By writing in a style that transcends the usual flat, prosaic tone of scholarly writing, he makes his examination of her work accessible to both scholars and laymen. He also manages to write in such a way as to capture the mythical aspects and the drifting moods of the unconscious that characterize the artistic universe portrayed in Lyberaki's work. Puchner has thus developed an intimate dialogue with the reader, freely exposing, on certain occasions, personal thoughts and speculations; then usually—though not always—tightening the style up and moving back into a more scholarly mode of discourse. There is an undeniable skill and charm in the way Puchner manipulates his readers in the course of introducing them to Lyberaki's magical world and there is something mesmerizing in his own method that matches fully his chosen writer's enchanting verbal and visual constructs.

One has to note also, however, the risks inherent in this approach. At times, he adopts the approach of the literary critic, adhering to rigorous professional methods and standards of inquiry, and writing in the dispassionate voice of a scholar. At other times, he chooses to engage her work as a true fan and writes about it in a free-flowing narrative style that is anything but scholarly. Actually, this switching of narrative and analytical strategies and modes of writing often leads Puchner to make wild interpretive leaps or to engage in unproven speculation, thus leaving analytical gaps in his argument that cannot be covered up by the his self-consciously stylistic games. The author...