Surrealism in Greece: An Anthology

Thirteen

Yorgos V. Makris (1923–1968) ​ T h i r t e e n ​ H is suicide and unwillingness to publish bring perhaps to mind Jacques Rigaut and his namesake Vaché—a facile comparison for an equally unique human case. A member of Embirikos’s wartime circle, close to Sahtouris and Gonatas, Makris evaded both work and “literature”; one of his poems, now lost, was titled “An attempt to become enchanted.” Introduced to André Breton by Nanos Valaoritis, Makris collaborated on Pali, notably with his translation of Paz’s Sunstone (based on Benjamin Péret’s translation and notes). Many texts by Greek surrealists (most famously Embirikos’s “King Kong”) have been dedicated to Makris (both before and after his death), or make references to him. His few surviving works were eventuallydiscovered and published in onevolume. “Makris found it impossible to exist save in the most authentic immediacy” (Nanos Valaoritis). “We are the harbingers of chaos” (Yorgos V. Makris). From Writings (1940–1967; published 1986) Declaration (excerpts)1 Having shared the aesthetic and cosmic viewpoint for which the destruction and mortality of living forms are contained in the outline of life’s fulfillment. Having decided upon the destruction of the Parthenon, to the ultimate end of restoring it to essential eternity, which is nothing but the non-form-conscious/standardized flux, and the rich in probabilities automatic transformation of matter, that which is falsely called loss. Having in mind that man is perhaps nothing but an indirect automatism and a Yorgos V. Makris    2 8 9 versatile natural manifestation; fundamentally acknowledging the work of art, yet sharing an aversion to its temporal/historical consolidation, which we regard as unheard-of and foreign to life. Having also felt that the craving for eternity is one of the basic preconditions of life, and consequently of art, given that art is nothing but a kind of subversive application of life’s fundamental instincts, yet feeling this craving to be essential only in the course of creation. Having understood Salvador Dalí, who dared compose a work out of raw meat and vegetables (irrespective of whether, psychically, he prepared it for eternity, for God, or for himself, all these words being humanly identical, albeit essentially misunderstood ), having indeed understood and appreciated him as much as we have Phidias, who may have invested his work with a temporal/historical substance, but did nothing more in the context of substantial eternity, for which there is neither quantity nor temporal duration, for which a second is no different than three billion centuries, thanks to its voluntary properties and to its dynamic quality, conceivable only in terms of atoms, whose number is of no concern to anyone. Having identified in this temporal/historical consolidation all that is most foreign and deceptive to humans, and what is more, hating National Tourism and the nightmarish journalism written à propos of it. Having been convinced that we are committing a psychically and artistically superior act, one of aesthetic as well as vital pride, by establishing this kind of nihilism —being at any rate certain that not only is the entire ridiculous and false survival not comparable, even unfavorably, to one minute of energetic action, but it is also artistically harmful, seeing as it only prepares the amateur tourists and eunuchs or onanists of contemporary poetry and painting, especially given that—in our case— it does not even belong to the historical cycle of our aesthetics. WE DECIDE 1.To aim explicitly at the explosion of ancient monuments, at the practice of propaganda against antiquities, as well as against any object not to our liking. 2. The first destruction to be undertaken shall be the explosion and perfect demolition of the Parthenon, which has literally suffocated us. . . . 10. This Declaration merely purports to give a measure of our aims. It is a missile, launched with few chances of hitting the multitude, yet having but a tiny minority as its desired target. Extremities I want nothing more to know either of the bird or of the diamond. I walk or stop before the symbol of the stone sheep it fell and its fall hath been great. These revolving doors that cry help were not made for my stretched neck my neck stretched from the height of the roof of the movie theater extends toward an auditorium emptied of people dazzlingly lighted full of the basilisk’s tongue yet the indefinite point causing thirst moves...