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| Photograph of Alexandros Papadiamantis by Pavlos Nirvanas at Dexamenis Square in 1906. |
By Stelios Koukos
“I write as it comes down to me.” How tragic — and how beautiful! Tragic for a professional journalist when he is asked to write an article and he gets blocked, loses his bearings, doesn’t know where to begin or where to end; and a blessing when it comes to a poet, who is guided by inspiration to write something within the personal form he has established for himself.
This is also the case with a prose writer of the stature of Alexandros Papadiamantis, who uttered the above phrase. It was particularly tragic for him to be asked to improvise, in a sense, on the spot, on a topical subject, writing an article to be published in a newspaper. Nothing could be more shocking for a poet — such as the great writer from Skiathos! Even for the same man who worked in the press as a translator from English and French newspapers.
Nevertheless, Papadiamantis was probably put in an awkward position before his employer, the legendary Constantinopolitan publisher Vlasis Gavrielidis, who asked — or rather entrusted — him with this task. He believed that Papadiamantis would be the most suitable person to write it. Perhaps he even thought that Papadiamantis would express the “line” of the publisher and the newspaper.
Here is how Pavlos Nirvanas conveys Papadiamantis’ words to us regarding this incident. Papadiamantis said to him:
"Gavrielidis ordered an article from me. How could I possibly satisfy him? I don’t know how to write such things. I write as it comes down to me."
And Nirvanas continues: “These are the words of that man, inside the office of the Akropolis, at the moment when at five neighboring desks five pens were writing five articles on five topics to order. There was one ‘pure’ man in that office. He was the eldest — and he was Papadiamantis.”
So he was the eldest — that is, the most experienced, the most capable and precise in the use of language — but, unfortunately, one might say for Vlasis Gavrielidis, he was Papadiamantis. What a disappointment!
Once, when they asked Theophilos Eleftheriadis (pen name Tériade) - or perhaps another legendary figure of his kind — to paint in the Western manner, he replied: “My hand doesn’t go that way.” Likewise, Papadiamantis could not become involved in the journalistic demands of the here, the now, and the immediate. Perhaps he did not wish to become involved in the immediate topicality of political life either. One thing, however, is certain — what he himself declared: “I write as it comes down to me.”
Does he hint at writing poetically, or at least dreamily and by inspiration — or is it just my impression? Be that as it may, Pavlos Nirvanas answers this question indirectly, yet with remarkable clarity. And this clarity is connected with the moment when this well-known man of letters — who also took the famous photograph of Papadiamantis — clearly revealed to us the great writer’s true nature.
Thus, his friend — and fellow islander from Skopelos — Nirvanas, already in 1906, while Papadiamantis was still alive, wrote in the journal Panathinaia the following: “Papadiamantis is not a man of letters; he is primarily a poet.”
And he continues with this astonishing phrase: “In him, the man and the craftsman are of one and the same essence.” Papadiamantis, then, and his work are one and the same. He is a poet, and his work is poetry.
According to the information at my disposal, Pavlos Nirvanas was the first to characterize Papadiamantis as a poet. I do not know, of course, whether Kostis Palamas’ reference to the “poetic breath” of Papadiamantis influenced him to articulate his own characterization with such clarity.
Thus, the poet Alexandros Papadiamantis, working in the press as a translator, when he was ordered to write something that lay outside himself and the world that contained him, was taken aback — he froze. You might ask: did he not also write his festive short stories to order for the publishers of newspapers and magazines? Certainly — but those belonged to him, and he belonged to them! They were his world, his entire life.
And how did he write these things — as they came down to him? Indeed! Only that his poetic fervor knew how to embellish and tightly bind together whatever “came down to him,” whatever he was inspired by. Even if many times he strayed from his line, from the — so to speak — order of his subject, and wandered into other little “themes” instead of the main one. Afterwards, however, he would return, knowing how to grasp the thread once more and bring his written narrative to a happy completion.
This, too, created suspense: an anxious anticipation, an agonizing question — where is he taking it, and does it or does it not relate to his subject, to the main dish of the matter? And you had to be fully alert, as when during a meal the game “Giantes” or “zinápin” is played, as it is called in various local dialects. Such, then, was Papadiamantis’ prose method and dialectic. He would begin to write, and his subject and his inspiration would lead him.
But were these digressions of his perhaps his own topical articles?
Were they his own political and broader social assessments — essentially his immediate interventions in everyday life?
Perhaps because some of them seemed like his own sudden forays into current life, while he himself appeared to be elsewhere altogether, on the rosy shores of his homeland and of his inspiration. Thus everyone else regarded him as distant, uncommunicative — a “lost man, despite all the learning he had,” even a misanthrope!
Nirvanas also notes that “his production has something spontaneous and accidental about it, just as the great natural phenomena appear accidental — subconscious and unpremeditated. No fashion or model ever influenced him. He planned nothing coolly, sketched nothing academically, calculated nothing technically. No obligation of literary etiquette or of a pre-existing, established, or in any way conventional form ever bound him.”
Could we then also claim that his works were indeed a natural phenomenon? Certainly Pavlos Nirvanas does not suggest such a thing, since this “natural phenomenon” issued from the poet’s pen after a great cultivation — both educational and personal, as well as broader spiritual formation. And of course from his relationship with the extraordinarily rich linguistic and poetic tradition of the Church’s hymns and their dense, weighty theological content — a truly magnificent fusion of chant (melody) and poetry.
All these he indeed possessed, and in addition he had a sensitivity of soul and heart that sprang from his character — or from his reserve — as well as from what he lived through in his life: hardships, privations, worries, obligations…
Yet the most “natural” state for him was, essentially, his choice to become a writer. This did not arise because life happened to lead him there. It is well known that this is what he wanted and chose to do in his life — and this is something that even today in our country and in our language borders on heroism. Imagine what it meant in those years — almost tantamount to suicide.
And indeed, that is what happened to him. He “committed suicide”! He committed suicide in worldly terms so that his poetic soul might live.
Thus he found himself essentially outside what we might call normal life, as all who knew him attest. It was a marriage of his character and his choices. He was a man who now played games with his mind and his heart — and there he lived: in the world of writing, of poetry, of inspiration. I do not know how much he was worn down in order to write and publish at first his three novels, before setting sail in smaller craft and vessels with his short stories, novellas, and so on. But The Murderess as well — and this too is a novel. And as Kostis Papageorgis said, the only Greek novel!
He was consequently a poet who wrote short stories, novellas, novels — by poetic conception, essentially, as we mentioned earlier, and with a corresponding poetic formulation.
After all, he himself, as a poet, always looked forward — creatively — and not backward. And so he carved his poems with the whole Greek spiritual world that he had mastered through his studies, while at the same time knowing the Western writers whom he translated for the press, in order to offer them to us as one of the weightiest and most sensitive spiritual inheritances ever given to the Greek people.
And when, on the night of January 2 to 3, 1911 — 115 years ago — he was no longer able to read anything from a book of Shakespeare because his sight had failed, he began to chant a hymn of the Eve of Theophany: “Your hand which touched…” (These were among the great readings in which he had trained, found repose, been imbued - and why not inspired — to create the poetic natural phenomenon he offered us.)
Below you may read that hymn as a simple example of great poetic composition, which calls us to enter into the radiant Feast of Lights and its entire spiritual atmosphere together with the leader of the celebration, Saint John the Forerunner.
Was the chanting of this hymn an attempt on his part to take part himself in the great feast of Theophany that was approaching, which he felt too weak to live through as he had in previous years?
Was it a supplication to Saint John to receive his weary poetic soul and that very hand which had given us this immense spiritual treasure?
However that may be, one thing was certain: he wrote as it came down to him and as it “rose up” to him in inspiration — after a long apprenticeship and cultivation in letters and the spiritual life. Indeed, he did so until his very last fragrant breath on the earth and in his homeland of Skiathos.
We thank him. Beyond his unique literary achievements, which are a true jewel and ornament of our letters, they are also the nourishment and refuge of all sensitive readers, as well as of the great modern Greek writers.
He also discreetly articulated an entire spiritual poetic worldview as an eternal provision for us, without ever being led astray by the whims of his mind and whatever happened to come to him. He was a man well cultivated and spiritually ascetic, and thus what came to him was of a corresponding quality. After all, he himself meant his manner of writing — its form, not its content.
As for us, who may also claim that we write “as it comes down to us,” we certainly cannot say that we establish or offer a corresponding work, such as that which the great Papadiamantis gave us. In a few words: “the turmoil of our passions” — the agitation of our inner swell!
May his memory be eternal!
Glory. Both now. Tone Plagal of the First.
Your hand which touched the immaculate head of the Master,
with which also by your finger you showed Him to us —
lift it up on our behalf toward Him, O Baptist,
as one who has great boldness;
for you were testified by Him to be greater than all the prophets.
And your eyes as well, which beheld the All-Holy Spirit
descending in the form of a dove —
lift them up toward Him, O Baptist,
to make Him merciful to us.
And come, stand here with us,
sealing the hymn and presiding over the feast.
Τὴν χεῖρά σου τὴν ἁψαμένην, τὴν ἀκήρατον κορυφὴν τοῦ Δεσπότου.
Μεθ’ ἧς καὶ δακτύλῳ αὐτόν, ἡμῖν καθυπέδειξας,
ἔπαρον ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν πρὸς αὐτὸν Βαπτιστά,
ὡς παρρησίαν ἔχων πολλήν,
καὶ γὰρ μείζων τῶν Προφητῶν ἁπάντων, ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ μεμαρτύρησαι.
Τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς σου πάλιν δέ, τοὺς τὸ Πανάγιον Πνεῦμα κατιδόντας,
ὡς ἐν εἴδει περιστερᾶς κατελθόν.
Ἀναπέτασον πρὸς αὐτὸν Βαπτιστά,
ἵλεων ἡμῖν ἀπεργασάμενος.
Καὶ δεῦρο στῆθι μεθ’ ἡμῶν,
ἐπισφραγίζων τὸν ὕμνον καὶ προεξάρχων τῆς πανηγύρεως.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
