Surrealism in Greece: An Anthology

Nine

Nanos Valaoritis (b. 1921) ​N i n e ​ B orn in Lausanne, like Nicolas Calas; close to the “modernist” milieu of the 1930s from the age of eighteen, Valaoritis had an early mentor in Yorgos Seferis, but he soon frequented the Embirikos milieu and became a regular at meetings and discussions of surrealism during the war. Having developed a surrealist tendency by the mid-1940s, he spent the first postwar years in London, where he translated and introduced modern Greek poets. In 1954, Valaoritis came in contact with the French surrealist group via Marie Wilson, whom he later married , and participated in surrealist activity in Paris, Athens, and the United States. The vast body of his work, which includes a recently completed trilogy of novels and other texts not represented here, is unique in combining the experience of the Embirikos/Engonopoulos tradition with the lived actualityof postwar international surrealism. Valaoritis has also translated texts by Breton, Duprey, Mansour, Paz, Alain Jouffroy, Jean Tardieu, Jorge Luis Borges. “[M]orning and evening star, Nanos Valaoritis” (Andreas Embirikos). I. From The Tower of Aleppo (1983; written 1945–1955) Dream Reader of Railways H o m o N at u r a l i t e r F e r r o v i a r i u s E s t For Andreas Embirikos 2 1 2    The Second Generation When the train halted its course abruptly, the passengers realized in horror that there was no station in sight. An exchange of glances began, full of promises, overcharged with love, between the occupants of opposite seats. Would the train ever start again? Would the hearts ever vibrate as before, thus replete with emotion? Would her eyes maintain their devotion to him? Would the explosion occur according to calculations? These and other questions of a similar nature were nursed by their troubled souls. And when the train started they all pondered the driver’s name, when it entered a tunnel, that of his wife, when it exited, they phoned to call for a doctor, when the train passed through intermediate stations without stopping, the ladies hurried to the lavatory, when the train changed lines the men hurried to examine the locomotive, when the train waited for another train to pass on an adjacent line, everyone flirted with the handsome valet, when the train crossed the bridge over a river, old memories awoke and the firmament attained a rosy hue toward the west, without the slightest interference from the sun, when it passed through an industrial town, the young man slept on a soldier’s bed, his right hand wounded, bandaged, and his inconsolable comrades weeping around him, when it passed through a coastal town, if it was a bathing resort, the girls dived straightaway into the water with scandalous gestures and very scantily dressed, if it was a port the men stood on the quay wearing top hats and waving goodbye, tears discerned in their eyes, the ocean steamer in the background, the sun setting. If it traversed another bathing resort near the Alps, policemen entered at lunchtime and conducted arrests, if the train stopped at the border, the railway employees alone were arrested. When many trains traversed a city simultaneously, if the whistles were heard a rainy day was in store, if only the locomotives were heard, the intervention might operate to the advantage of a third person, if the sound of the train was heard, habitually deafening, as though it crossed the very room of the patient, then the sailing vessels would depart without their crews; if, on the other hand, the train stopped at a distance of two millimeters from the bed of the sleeping and unsuspecting maid, the vessels would be restored intact to their bases. If the train was late and the passengers were obliged to wait at the station beyond the twelfth hour, on the morrow the event would be passed over in artful silence by the press. If the railway employees were all to go on strike, demanding the liberation of their colleague, the press would assume the identity of the referee. If, suddenly, and with no previous warning, the locomotives were sold to a foreign state and replaced by electric ones, the press would complain because the public had not been asked for its opinion. If at a film theater a train derailed by red-skinned Indians were to fall from a precipice, the young girl would ask her mother to allow her to sleep on...