In advance (for decades…) the attempt to "honor" the Thessalonian poet by the state ended in fiasco
How "honorable" it is to be awarded by the current Greek state, humiliatingly brought to its knees by politics, financial and moral bankruptcy; And how willing one is"twisted man"– as the Thessaloniki poet Dinos Christianopoulos describes himself – to become an occasional media exhibit; Even if our faded European province flourished culturally from Gavdos to Prespes, again, Christianopoulos would playfully stick out his tongue at every award. His prize is his 60-year relationship with readers and art lovers.. However, he already owned it, long before the recipients of the Grand Prize of Letters of the Ministry of Culture sought him out in the Upper Town – and according to the popular saying "eat the door"...
"What can I tell them now?; Why did you reward me?; You didn't know I wouldn't accept; They knew it, but they messed up. They thought I might accept" commented the 82-year-old writer after the announcement (for decades) last Monday's fiasco. In his own words, paraphrased, "What shall I do with your prizes?, they are too sugary, fit for chocolate kids…”and so on, also known with the music of Dionysis Savvopoulos.
By the way, Christianopoulos doesn't like this music. They generally discredit the setting of poems. And he does not stop blasting those contemporaries who are not to his taste. Many lifted up the cursed stone. Who is criticizing Elytis?, Seferis (both Nobel laureates – random;), Richos, Vasilikos, Greek poetry after the 70th anniversary; they say. They don't notice that it weighs the whole of a project:
"Ritsos, with all the cheapness he has in his writings, he has written the most amazing verse I have read by a poet and he says: “Heaven begins with bread”».
The cats, Cavafy and Tsitsanis
Child of the Catechist until he sinned by publishing his first poetry collection, herSeason of skinny cows(1950), former librarian at the Municipal Library of Thessaloniki until 1965, meticulous editor of publications, cultural traffic policeman of the city with the magazine "Diagonios" as the 1983 and the "Small Gallery" ("for 25 years I was a slave to painters"), Christianopoulos has dropped anchor on land, almost untraveled. In Cinari, next to the castle, in the company of his cats, on the one hand, loving, the other unacceptable.
Ascetic life, little income, an unequivocal "no" years ago to the suggestion that he do the paperwork to get a "literary pension". And continuous exposure: events, speeches, hundreds of interviews keep him balanced on the wave of publicity.
Pioneer of gay poetry – he himself would simply say "erotic" -, younger declared himself a student of Cavafy: "He was a follower of pleasure, I am a follower of Christian agony".Two large photographs of Alexandrinos and Vassilis Tsitsanis are held firmly by the nails in his house.. Christianopoulos even got on the rebetiko stage to sing, contrasting his genuine inner need with his disturbingly thin interpretation.
The 1979 opposed those who gunpowder him with the coding manifesto "Against": the grants, the state, the newspapers, the cliques, the cultists, ideologies, individual aspirations. And, certainly, the awards:"Getting a prize means admitting spiritual masters – and someday we'll have to kick the bosses out of our lives".
From the 1998 the solitary creator does not publish poems. And he claims"don't want me as their face, just because m’ they love".
Naive or vain;
Just 21 years old was the 1981 Nikos Davvetas, chairman of the state committee that made the risky decision to award Christianopoulos, when he published his first poems. Where; In the magazine "Diagonios"! You say he didn't know the views of the editor of the magazine; Had he not realized the trajectory of the "Against" catapult text that had been unleashed on the public just two years earlier; So what is the old-fashioned obsession for?;
There are two answers to the reasonable question. Either the awardees are bona fide but also amazingly naive, thoughtless, sloppy fans, either they consciously decided to roll the dice: to "remain in History" as the people who "convinced Christianopoulos in his old age" to... be awarded. If the former happens, he is fine – fandom is blinding in the field and literary stands. But if the second happens, the laureates raised a small worthless mound of vanity whose soils quickly overwhelmed them with a related wave in the communication land of the Lotus Eaters.
Perhaps the members of the previous state committee had foreseen something more, as the poet himself now revealed: "And last year, with Mastrodimitris as president, they offered to reward me, but the man understood when I explained to him and did not proceed."They may not have been jealous of the controversial credit of those who allegedly would do it – for a short moon – the Christianopoulos current currency, Neo-Hellenistic "talk of the town".
Cracks in public discourse
* "Since '98 I have been writing poems, I have the impression that God took them and left me like this. And I can't complain. He wanted to cut off my inspiration; Cut it off for me, come on brother!».
* "Thessaloniki was a nightmare. Let's not forget that. But Athens too - sit tight - was Albanian. What we call Hellenism was built on foreign peoples".
* “I live on less than 600 euros without wanting luxuries, cars and houses. And with a few parades I can live".
* "Homosexuality is a pathology that cannot be cured by doctors, is cured by self-awareness".
* "Cavafi had flown 180 poems, which while he considered them rubbish, the philologists came – the great scourge of modern Greek literature –, they found them very great and added them with the good ones".
