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  • Η διεθνοποίηση της φαντασίας: σχέσεις της ελληνικής με τις ξένες λογοτεχνίες τον 19⁰ αιώνα (The Internationalization of Imagination: Relations of Greek with Foreign Literatures in the 19th Century)
  • Mairi Mike
Georgia Gotsi , Η διεθνοποίηση της φαντασίας: σχέσεις της ελληνικής με τις ξένες λογοτεχνίες τον 19⁰ αιώνα (The Internationalization of Imagination: Relations of Greek with Foreign Literatures in the 19th Century). Gutenberg. 2010. Pp. 288.

Starting out with a phrase by Palamas, "but throughout this century what was also greatly developed was what I would call the internationalization of imagination," Georgia Gotsi attempts to prove, in the three essays of this book, that the nineteenth century was not only national and introversive, but that there was a conscious contact between Greek and foreign literatures as well. She follows three aspects of this contact between the native and the foreign, which could be defined as response/reaction, recreation, and translation.

The first essay, entitled "A Heroic Symbol's Itineraries: Victor Hugo's Kanaris and Nineteenth-century Greek Poetry," traces consistently and systematically a double route: firstly the reception of a national symbol by Hugo's muse and secondly, nineteenth-century Greek poets' attitudes (Alexandros Soutsos, Alexandros Vyzantios, Achilleas Paraschos, Argyris Eftaliotis, among others) towards Hugo's poems. The essay draws the conclusion that the reception of a national symbol by the French poet and its re-adoption by Greeks may contribute to its international glow but it also leads to the reduction of the hero's importance [End Page 300] among Greek national symbols in the field of Greek ethnosymbolism. Gotsi deals with the ways Hugo reads Kanaris both in Orientales as well as in Les Chants du crépuscule and concludes that we are dealing with an "idealistic symbol of an Orientalist world" (86). It would be very difficult for the Greek poets, claims Gotsi, to find anything familiar or artistically fertile in this symbol that has been deprived of its ideology. For them, Kanaris still lived in the newly founded Greek state and represented a standard against which the present was measured. This is exactly where their resistance lies: a cultural resistance rather than an artistic one. As far as they are familiar with Hugo's poems, they object to elements of European literature that are not inscribed in their strong, ideological horizon of expectations.

The second essay, entitled "A Romantic Indian, or Ragavis's Reshaping of a Native American Tradition," deals with the way foreign ingredients can be used to mold a new body and, specifically, with how Alexandros Ragavis re-makes a simple-structured story modeled on the Native-American tradition, creating a poem, "Rapid Falcon," of "impeccable" poetic "artistry" (according to Palamas's review). The poem was submitted to the 1871 Voutsinaios poetry contest and was published the following year under Ragavis's name in the periodical Ethniki Vivliothiki. Following a series of convincing deductions, Gotsi concludes that Ragavis modeled his work upon William Hepworth Dixon's (1821-1879) travel writing New America. The latter reproduces material borrowed from the ethnologist, geographer, geologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's (1793-1864) studies, which emphasized the rescue and recording of the Indian traditions of North America. According to Gotsi, Ragavis's personal contribution lies in the following: he turns prose into verse, turns a retold folk narrative into a romantic story, and "combines its exotic charm with moral didacticism" (131). Gotsi knows her material well; she goes through Ragavis's exotic prose writing, taking into account the conclusions of previous research; she examines "Rapid Falcon's" rhythmical structure and reveals the ways an extensive narrative poem with romantic elements is created. Ragavis's originality therefore lies not in his inspiration but in the way he has recreated the prototype, illustrating how foreign ingredients can be used to shape a new text. The foreign becomes national thanks to his creative intervention, showing us another way imagination "circulates internationally" (131).

Finally, in the third and most extensive essay of the volume, titled "The Concern for Translation of a National Folklorist: Nikolaos Politis and Foreign Literature," Gotsi tries to project, through her research in the periodical and daily press of the nineteenth century, the catalogues of Greek libraries, and the archive of Nikolaos Politis, an alternative image of the national folklore writer. The image becomes enriched through an account of the influence of Nikolaos Politis on the...

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