Modern Greek Short Stories (review)

156 Reviews Papers by Thanos Veremis, Theodore Couloumbis, and Van Coufoudakis on defense, foreign policy, and Greek-Turkish relations, respectively, are informative and exemplify the high standards one expects from these recognized experts in their fields. I admit that I am less enthusiastic about Susannah Verney's study of PASOK and the EU. In my opinion she does not take sufficient account of the purely personal factor in the EU view of Greece: that Greece was fortunate to have knowledgeable people in Brussels and not just "comrades." Nor am I very enthusiastic about Vasilis Kapetanyannis's somewhat superficial piece on the Left in the 1980s; there is too little on the Left and too much about PASOK. Also, I would like to have seen a chapter on PASOK and die military and another on the fate of literature and the arts under populism, as well as die chapter on the economy that is "regrettably not included in the present volume" (xiii). This book will not be the last on "the populist decade," but I know of no better introduction to yet another troubled period in Greek history. Richard Clogg deserves our gratitude for having edited this excellent volume. Ole L. Smith Gothenburg University Modern Greek Short Stories. Translated with an introduction and biographical information by Nicholas Kostis. Athens: Odysseas. 1993. Pp. ix + 285. $14.95. Nicholas Kostis's superb command of English, Greek, and French, combined with his expertise in comparative literature, serves him well in his selection and translation of the stories for this much needed anthology. Modem Greek Short Stories contains tales by Greek writers from the mid1800s to the present, filling a void in contemporary Anglophone letters. For although Greek novels and poetry have crossed the frontiers of Greece, particularly through Kazantzakis, Cavafy, Seferis, and Elytis, Greek short stories are still relatively unknown. Yet this genre, which combines the conciseness and magic of poetry with the development and form of the novel, is an integral part of Greek literature. Kostis has carefully selected representative works from wellestablished writers in order, as he states in the foreword of his book, to present the reader with a "greater understanding of both the Greek temperament and its special contribution to consciousness and literature." He has achieved his goal admirably. The chosen texts provide a fine balance between realism and romanticism and between the use of the puristic and demotic, as well as reflecting die authors' various social, political, and religious preferences. In his impeccable English, which both respects the original text and is a joy to read, Kostis has succeeded in rendering each author's particular style. This selection of stories, which covers one and a half centuries of Greek literary history, is not merely a reflection of Greek experience during those Reviews 157 formative years of the nation. For, despite the so-called break of four centuries caused by the Turkish occupation, since the nineteenth century this literary genre has developed side by side with its European counterparts, drawing from common archetypal sources and undergoing similar influences. Thus, while the background of these stories spans Greek history from the Turkish occupation to both World Wars, a civil war, and a military junta, and while the stories are very different from what we diink of as French, English, and German short stories, they also bear striking similarities to diem. The collection's opening selections, for example, are realistic in the manner of Maupassant and Chekhov, who sought to paint people's ordinary lives. Even the tragic episode in Vizyinos's "My Mother's Sin" is presented in the most everyday atmosphere. Notwithstanding their realism, Papadiamantis's "Dream on the Wave" is an allegory fraught with mythological imagery and Cavafy's "In Broad Daylight" belongs to the fantastic mode. Karkavitsas's "The Prince" evokes the old folk tale with its archetypal theme of the primordial sacrifice of the leader, its indefiniteness, and its accounts of magic, monsters, and impossible tasks. More modern in technique are Ioannou's "The Teacher," which is Jamesian in the complicated way it plays widi degrees of awareness through sentences full of reservation and qualification, and Hakkas's "The End of the Matter," which employs stream of...