Pavlos Kalligas and Thanos Vlekas: The Lack of Common Sense among the Greeks

The little read Thanos Vlekas directly addresses some of the major problems that plagued the newly established Greek state. Its approach to brigandage, the language question, the inefficiency of the state, and the apportionment of lands is unusual not only because the fiction of the time avoided such a frontal assault but because this novel was written by a member of the establishment. Pavlos Kalligas (1814-1896) identifies the source of Greece's dilemmas precisely in those virtues (heroism and the resistance to authority) responsible for the achievement of freedom and independent statehood. A minor character, an American missionary, provides the gauge by which these problems are meant to be viewed--namely, "common sense", a trait that the novelist believed was lacking among the Greeks. This unnamed cleric was probably suggested by Jonas King, whom Kalligas defended in a trial that exposed the contradictions in Greece between the constitutional belief in the freedom of religion and the sense among the Orthodox that the Eastern Church was at a financial and cultural disadvantage compared to the Protestant sects represented by the missionaries who had entered Greece after the Revolution to proselytize.