The ceremony took place on Monday at the Benaki Museum in Piraeus
In a warm atmosphere – among colleagues and companions the older ones and accompanied by the enthusiastic audience of their friends the younger ones – the authors who were honored with the State Prizes for Literature 2011 for literature, the translation and the children's book received their awards at an official ceremony that
took place on Monday evening at the Benaki Museum on Piraeus Street.
Although the book is severely tested by the crisis, "the creative forces of the place, the ones that will get him out of the crisis, they are not only present but more intrusive than ever, this is the most optimistic message that tonight's celebration sends to Greek society" said Culture Minister Pavlos Geroulanos, concluding his greeting, who attended part of the ceremony and presented the first prizes.
Politicians of every color were absent from the packed auditorium, but not politics and the Greek crisis. "To the sacred memory of the dead of Distomos and to those who are fighting to prevent the creation of a bed in which the tumult of neo-Nazism will run over the martyred body of this homeland" George X dedicated his award - amid a storm of applause. Theoharis, who received the Testimony-Chronicle Award for his book "Distomo – 10 June 1944: the holocaust" (Contemporary Expression, 2010).
Earlier, the poet Thodoris Rakopoulos' reference to the diaspora Greeks and the new wave of immigration drew prolonged applause. "I wish to reverse the current situation that forces Greeks to live and write in Greek far from Greece" concluded the author - who has been living abroad since 2004 –, who shared the new Debut Author Award with prose writer Michalis Gennaris.
Others spoke in a more personal and emotional tone. George Markopoulos, honored with the Poetry Prize, dedicated the evening to the memory of the poets of the generation of the 30s as well as the post-war poets, "to the iron artillery of Greek poetry that fed us crusty bread and good milk" but also to the recently deceased fellow travelers Yannis Varveris and Argyris Hionis.
The winner of the short story prize, Christos Oikonomou, thanked the readers, saying that he is happy if with his short stories he helped some people "to keep their faith when the world conspires to make us lose it"..
"The translation and your eyes" exhorted the young translators, veteran Aris Berlis, who was honored with the Award for performance of a work of foreign literature in the Greek language, the first award in his forty-year career, and completed: "The role of the translator in the national literature is as important as the role of the writers who produce primary literary work".
From his side, the classical philologist Dimitris Maronitis, the recipient of the new Award for performance of ancient Greek literature in modern Greek, with the phrase "It is the first time that the honor of intralingual translation of a fundamental work of ancient Greek literature has been officially recognized" underlined the importance of the new prize for the dialogue with our archaeolinguistic past.
Carmen Villela was warmly applauded, Roid's translator into Spanish, when she expressed her emotion about the Award for performance of a work of Greek literature in a foreign language, which he shared with the Greek-born American neo-Hellenist Peter Jeffries. "The prize is important to me because you Greeks are giving it to me and I thank you from the bottom of my heart" said the Spanish translator who has just completed the translation of "Captain Michalis" by Kazantzakis.
If translation facilitates dialogue with the Other and its reinforcement by the state intensifies our extroversion, the children's book is what builds readers. "Children's literature is not an offshoot of adult literature, we sculpt our readers at an early age with a good children's book and there is a great need to strengthen it today, which has to fight the electronic image", Christos Boulotis reminded us of the obvious that we often forget, who received the Children's Literary Book Award.
The event was attended by the former Minister of Culture Thanos Mikroutsikos and Greek artists, however, there were many absences from both the literary and the publishing world.
Dinos Christianopoulos was conspicuously absent from the awardees, who did not accept the Grand Prize of Letters for his entire work.
"If his work dictates to Christianopoulos not to accept the honor, however, it does not cancel the distinction of the state" emphasized the New Hellenist Dimitris Kargiotis, speaking on behalf of the jury.
the "against", as expressed in the famous text of the same name by his Christianopoulos 1979, in which, among other things, the poet opposes awards "wherever they come from", is for Christianopoulos a statutory condition, the speaker pointed out, "it is the regime that defines the man of the spirit".
