The Tragedy of Eros in a Bucolic Short Story by Alexandros Papadiamantis

This contribution explores the themes of fantasy underlying “Eros the Harvester”, a short story by modern Greece’s most emblematic prose writer, Alexandros Papadiamantis. A close reading of the eventful love affair depicted in this story, subtitled “A May Day Idyll,” uncovers the dramatic consequences of consummation and introduces the wider theme of the author’s problematic view of erotic love. The narrative includes an array of motifs whose complete meaning fully develops in Papadiamantis’s later writings: the interconnectedness of blossoming virginity and spring; the close relationship between two characters representing antithetical expressions of desire; the voyeuristic and sadistic drives of the narrator; an ambivalent attitude toward nuptials; and the overdetermined symbolism of bleeding.