As soon as she appeared and the presence of Kiki Dimoula was noticed in the packed "Alexandra Trianti" hall of the Athens Concert Hall on Tuesday afternoon (29/1) the first scattered applause also fell. When the spotlights lit up her white hair, not a few stood to applaud the 81-year-old poet as she slowly climbed the steps leading to the stage. "It would be the first time he stayed in one place for that long without smoking" and he finally succeeded.
Not in her case, it is probably needless to mention that a significant part of the youth who read it fanatically was also waiting for it in the audience. After all, "you don't need an occasion to honor Kiki Dimoulas" as the writer Yiannis Efstathiadis said at the beginning of the event (which was made in honor of this "unique literary artist" as her translator Cecile Inglesi Margellou called her, on the occasion of the publication of an anthology of her poems in the English language.
The evening indeed, beyond the expected good reasons, she also had an air of extroversion without necessarily referring to the ambassadors who attended her. Recently - after the poet's recent interview that was featured on the front page of the "International Herald Tribune" and republished by the "New York Times" - a lot has been said, even the magic word "Nobel" was heard.
One had the impression, however, that he was attending an event that had a specific goal and was part of a strategy, even if in some places it was unnecessarily pompous. Declared purpose of the bilingual edition with the 79 poems by Kiki Dimoulas under the title "The Brazen Plagiarist" (The brazen plagiarist) by Margellos World Republic of Letters (MWRL) of Yale University Press, is the worldwide recognition and award of her work.
"I bow to the incomparable national poetess of Greece who is now also a world poetess," said the director of Yale University Press, John Donatich, in a taped message, calling it a "shame" that only "the 3% of titles circulating in the US correspond to translated literature'.
The translator Cecile Inglesi Margellou highlighted the importance of translation - a "deep political act" - in the evolution of culture and the approach to otherness "because give and take is a relationship of two-way and constantly renegotiated parity". In addition, MWRL's special publishing series under the imprint of Yale University Press was created at the end of it 2007 precisely to alleviate "the appalling absence of great world literature in the English language". It is characteristic that in Greece the percentage of translated literature corresponds to 40% of the titles.
To them 50 so far titles in this series, the 10% it concerns books by Greek writers, a percentage that becomes particularly important if one considers that they are somehow co-located in it 19 different languages. "The Greeks have things to offer to the world beyond our ancient heritage," she said, referring to the wish of her husband Dori - who celebrated his sixtieth birthday on Tuesday - "that we publish Kiki in English, one of the largest modern intellectual capitals of the place". She also said that The New Yorker and Vanity Fair magazines want to interview the poet.. Finally, he mentioned the long-distance "difficult but exciting" translation adventure he had with the American poet Rika Lesser, who surprisingly does not speak any Greek.
At the event, a video excerpt from the "Monogram" of Giorgos and Iros Sgourakis was shown, with the poet talking about her childhood and youth in Kypseli, holding a fan in her hand (whole, shortly, on the NET), while the actresses Katerina Didaskalou and Marina Psalti read her poems in English and Greek respectively.
The attendees, including, they heard the poem "Melancholia" by Kiki Dimoulas set to music by Nikos Xydakis (from the "Erebos" collection with which she herself appeared in the letters 1956), the first part of "Two short poems about a riddle and a road" from the collection "On the Tracks" (1963) composed by Tassos Rossopoulos and Christos Papageorgiou (with the cinematographic instructions of Argyris Papadimitropoulos) to improvise on his piano "commenting" on the poet's verses.
Yiannis Efstathiadis, who moderated the evening said, referring to whether and to what extent Dimoula's poetry can be set to music, that "in musical terms her poetry is a contradiction" as she "removes the music so that the sounds of the words can be heard so as to remind us that there is not only the time of music but also the music of time".
Kiki Dimoula took the floor after about two hours during which she watched the various artistic transformations where "everyone translated my poetry with their own inspiration and their own notes". "The translator is a co-creator" he emphasized, among other things, and "must mend the cracks in the writing" where the other language is more generous. "Cécile Inglesi Margellou's flexible translation brought together the two-faced essence of the words giving a certificate of translation legitimacy". It is "a translation so transparent that the reflection of the native language breathes from underneath," he said.
She quietly wondered if "there was poetry before the creation of the world and fear" in yet another personal testimony to the essence of her art. He wished "to save the poverty of our lives from shocking events". He thanked God "for hiding himself from us" and concluded that poetry is probably "a kind of ark to save us from the deluge of so many truths".
Read her poems, he especially thanked the many academics who attended the event and was delighted by the audience's long standing ovation at the end. He's still enjoying it, with a restrained and melancholic character.
