It was a national tragedy as well. The resistance of Polytechnic students to armed assault in 1973 was a heroic act of defiance after six years of military dictatorship. It was a major contribution to the Junta’s fall eight months later. It changed the outlook of the nation. Before the massacre, the length of the dictatorship’s rule seemed indeterminate; after, it seemed only a matter of limited time. That the commemoration of this event six years after the return of democracy should divide rather than unify the citizens of this country is tragic.
Ohi Day on Oct. 28 celebrates the occasion of the country’s concerted defiance of an aggressive force from without; the Day of the Polytechnic should celebrate the occasion of defiance to an evil force from within. The fate of a nation is determined both by its external and domestic acts and by its demonstrations of unity. It is a great shame that the celebration of the Polytechnic resistance should be marred by those having special interests. Every effort should be made to make it an official occasion that demonstrates national solidarity, thanksgiving and remembrance.
Defaming the Famed
VILIFICATION in the press is a common enough practice but in the last few weeks it has touched quite sensitively on certain personalities and organizations of high repute. On November 16, the adventurous daily newspaper “Avriani” announced in a banner headline that a prominent statesman’s wife was a thief, which prompted the gentleman to have a writ issued against the paper for slander.
If defamation seems to be an unavoidable part of political life, it is certainly rarer in the realms of poetry, although Greece produces poets and prime ministers with equal prodigality. And more’s the pity that the affront in question should come from France, to whose culture Greece has been of late so particularly attached (former President Tsatsos’ knowledge and devotion to French letters being well-known and the present Prime Minister’s liquid,
Gallic “r” in speech speaking for itself).
Getting down to the issue and the unpleasantness of it all, the Panhellenic Union of Arcadia has taken umbrage at the fact that the title of the French homosexual magazine is “Arcadia”, and has protested about this in a letter to their deputy in Parliament, Mr. Mandzouris. Mr. Mandzouris has informed the French Embassy and President Giscard d’Estaing of the matter.
The implication in this use of “Arcadia” that present-day Arcadians’ honored ancestors such as Daphnis, Damon and Cory don dallied with each other and not with the other honored ancestors such as Phyllis and Chloe in the bucolic groves of ancient Arcady is of course repugnant to their stout and virile descendants. And for those who might be tempted to dismiss the Panhellenic Union of Arcadia as an unlettered bunch of agricultural socialists largely employed in making sour cherry spoon sweets in the central Peloponnesus, it should be made clear that the Union represents 165 affiliated organizations and 200,000 stalwart Arcadians now resident in the Athens metropolitan area. (French Embassy guards, beware.) The letter also proves that the Union’s members are well versed in the heritage of their literary past. Pointing to the poetic injustice of it all, the letter reads:
“Legendary Arcadia, home of a civilized and manly folk which sprang from the hardy mountains of Arcady, with its populous progeny of immortal shepherds, with its idylls of love for Nymphs, Dryads and Hamadryads, with its pastorals which gave bucolic poetry to the world, has never at any time evidenced a penchant for degenerate or unnatural love, as can be proved from an examination of ancient Greek and Latin texts.” So there!
Copies of the letter have also been shot out to the National Greek Tourist Organization, UNESCO, the Committee for the Protection of Human Rights, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture, the Academy of Athens, the Pan-Arcadian Unions of America, Canada and Australia. And if some misguided gentlemen of whatever sexual bent employed by these worthy organizations should put aside the letter as a minor expression of bucolic special pleading, let him come forth and distinguish a dryad from a hamadryad or forever hold his peace.
A third and final example of recent press slanders is the most outrageous of all, involving Alexander the Great, no less. On the eve of the opening of “The Search for Alexander” at the National Gallery in Washington on November 16, in a monumental case of journalistic sabotage of Hellenism, The New York Times published an article suggesting that Alexander the Great was an alcoholic. That Alexander could have staggered from Greece to India in a drunken daze is a thought that can only be distasteful to all Hellenes and lovers of the Classical Ideal. The retort to this theory by archaeologist Manolis Andronikos, whose spectacular finds at Vergina are a central display at the Washington exhibition, was pointed and scornful: “It’s a popular saying that civilizations only develop where there are vineyards, and common sense that you can’t achieve much under the influence of Coca Cola.” The issue seems insouble, anyway, and the attempt to prove the theory, that is for archaeologists to dig along the thousands of miles in Alexander’s path searching for empty bottles of Mavrodaphne (which the Ayatollah Homeini would probably ban anyway as being contrary to the Islamic ideal of temperance) would be obviously too costly and time-consuming to contemplate. If Mr. Andronikos’ statement seems a little hard on Americans, perhaps another explanation could be put forth for this intoxicating debate: namely, that it has arisen from an over-addiction by scholars to America’s new favorite aperitif which “Napoleon didn’t drink but which Alexander the Great did.”
The Endangered Green
ANY suggested encroachments on the city’s green areas naturally arouse the suspicions of Athenians. Although most Greeks are eager to enter the Common Market they are less, enthusiastic at the prospect of the Common Market’s entering the Zappeion Gardens, thereby reducing its size. The cafe chantant “Aigli”, which in its modest way has played the role that Florian’s and Quaddri’s do in Piazza di San Marco, is slated along with the Aigh Cinema next door to make way for a building which will house visiting officials of the Common Market. These turn-of-the-century structures have remained to evoke the epoch when the Zappeion was the City’s favorite promenade and an integral part of its outdoor social life. As it is, parts of the Gardens are already being stealthily usurped by parked cars although parking there is said to be strictly forbidden.
Meanwhile, the National Gardens next door have been threatened from another direction. The barracks of the Presidential Guards, or evzones, at the corner of Vassilisis Sofias and Irodou Attikou have been declared insufficient. The building which was constructed in the 1870s, is to be torn down and replaced by a more commodious one. The press claims that the present building is at least large enough to allow the men to change into their fustanellas and has implored President Karamanlis to change his mind.
One major improvement in the city’s landscape recently has been the removal of some out-buildings and other structures in the Rizarion area opposite the National Gallery. Although little has been done to plant it, nature has done its own work with the coming of the autumnal rains. The only difficulty here is that the area has been reserved for the construction of the city’s new Cultural Center and even the most ardent lovers of art are beginning to wonder if it might not be better left as it is. In any case, the public has been assured that the proposed museums, theaters and galleries will only take up one-third of the park area, thus giving both Art and Nature their due.
Shooting the Meteora
THE James Bond film-in-pro-gress For Your Eyes Only is certainly not for the eyes of the monks of the Meteora. In the middle of October the film’s producer was granted permission by the Ministry of Culture to shoot scenes for the Roger Moore movie in and around the monastic buildings which are spectacularly perched on the tops of precipitous rocks. Hearing, however, that Bond films were devoted to sex and violence, the monks took unilateral action. They locked the monastery gates and declared a strike which would last during the fifteen-day shooting schedule. The Public Prosecutor was fetched from Trikkala who, however, was unable to communicate with the monks who had barricaded themselves inside their impregnable eeries and refused to answer the telephones. Each time the film’s helicopter flew over the buildings on errands the monks could clearly be seen making obscene gestures in the air. This impasse caused certain alterations in the shooting script and it was decided to keep to exterior shots. The monks, however, were undaunted. When the next day dawned, the walls and roofs of the buildings of Agia Triada were found camouflaged with Greek and Byzantine flags, festooned with altarcloths and vestments, while meter upon meter of nylon stripping hung or flapped in the air. It was decided at this point that religious zeal had won the day and the actors and crews decided to complete the missing sequences in Corfu or the studio back in London.
