Surrealism in Greece: An Anthology

Nicolas Calas

Nicolas Calas (1907–1989) ​ T w o ​ B orn in Lausanne to an upper-class Athenian family, Nikolaos Calamaris soon chose the path of radical left-wing politics.The first published Greek surrealist (albeit in his presurrealist period), he was skeptical about the movement before being “initiated” by Embirikos; after leaving Greece he became an important figure of international surrealism, maintaining little contact with Greek activity until the 1960s, when he reemerged via NanosValaoritis’s journal Pali. In the seventies and eighties he published his Greek poems and early essays in book form, while remaining an undesirable in the eyes of the Greek academic establishment. Translator of Benjamin Péret and Gisèle Prassinos. “He arose, full of dreams, inflamed like a forest by his strong desire, or like a decision arises and traces its orbit in the firmament” (Andreas Embirikos). I. From Texts on Poetics and Aesthetics (1982) (collection of articles and essays written between 1929 and 1938, either under the pseudonym M. Spieros—after Robespierre—or under the author’s real name Nikos Calamaris; ed. Alexandros Argyriou) Problems of Proletarian Art (abridged version)1 (First published in Νέοι Πρωτοπόροι [Neoi Protoporoi], no. 9, August 1932, signed Spieros) Objections: “No use dealing with art—you are of bourgeois descent—today the proletarian Nicolas Calas    5 7 alone is in a position to create art, he alone understands and feels deeply the desires and needs of the oppressed.” Another communist: “Art?—a useless thing to us today—other problems preoccupy us now, the proletarian has no time for artistic education, he is fighting—tell him how to overthrow the existing establishment—do not tell him that power will be seized by reading novels, however revolutionary these may be—do not paint proletarian pictures— useless too—as for music, tell me, if you may, when its essence is or is not revolutionary .—If you create art leave the proletariat alone—you are a bourgeois—you write for the bourgeois public, they are the ones who read most these days—they have the time and the inclination to produce works of artistic ambitions—for you the struggle of the proletariat is a book topic—you are but a modern Nero thrilled by the burning of Rome.” Let me answer the first objection: Complete ignorance of the temperament of the intellectual fighting on the proletariat ’s side. Disregard of the real reasons that make him fight against the bourgeois class. Man—as opposed to animals—, better to fight unpleasant objective conditions, seeks their causes—not the tile that falls but the roof itself: that is the cause which must be corrected. The discovery of the cause is often difficult, the contemporary form of social life being so complex. The opponents’ arguments are wise, their intellectual weapons many. The mental struggle for the correct path is hard. And the mechanism is in the hands of our opponents. They have the money to buy the years of their intellectual preparation. The worker lacks the capital for such time-consuming occupations. It is there that the intellectual is most needed: to study the cause, to draw up the plans for fight. The difference between workers and intellectuals does not lie in their aspirations, but in their intellectual and emotional formation—a result of the abhorred financial inequality. The latter is, I fully agree, terrible, unfair—socialism will abolish it—there, I again agree—still, do not be blind, acknowledge that it does exist. By realizing, not ignoring, this truth, we shall be better prepared to avoid in our struggle the paradoxes it creates. This does not always happen, in Greece at least. I discern, in our intellectuals, a tendency— deriving from their fear of being isolated from the workers—to regard the cultural position of the Greek worker as the ultimate criterion of their artistic production. This ludicrous exaggeration conceals an immense cowardice. “Whatever the worker likes,” I often hear friends from N. Protoporoi tell me. And what if the worker likes musical reviews, or films about life in Hollywood? —A sophism, they answer. “Not what any worker likes, but what is favored by the vanguard, by the conscious fighter.” Yet, in order to become a conscious fighter, 5 8    The Founders in order to appropriate the Marxist line, one must first react to many tendencies that one may find more attractive emotionally. Many a “whatever one likes” is thus annulled, many innate tendencies are destroyed...