In August, a small Greek focus obliges in the company of Iakovos
Kambanellis, of his play The Four Feet of the Table, followed by hisessential concentration camp story: Mauthausen. Still in Greece, in a
different vein: Carnets de garde by Spyros Tsovilis. Tsarist Russia: a
small sample of Leo Tolstoy's Fables. Return to the Balkans with The
Dervish and Death by Mesha Selimovic and The Cursed Country by Svetislav
Basara; Finally, the last part of our journey into the stars:
Meteorites, Messengers from Space by Bernard Melguen. ---- "The more a
researcher finds, the less time he has to know his new ignorance" Henri
Michaux ---- Iakovos Kambanellis ---- Iakovos Kambanellis was born in
1921, on the island of Naxos. Poet, playwright, screenwriter and
novelist, he is the sixth of nine children in a large family.
Kambanellis quickly emerged as one of the most prominent Greek
playwrights of the 20th century and is considered the father of modern
Greek theatre. As a survivor of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp,
he wrote, in addition to his memories of the camp, the lyrics of the
Mauthausen Trilogy to the music of Mikis Theodorakis. He is also the
author of plays, screenplays and about a hundred songs. He was only
officially recognized in 2000, when he was elected a member of the
Academy of Athens. In 2011, Kambanellis was rushed to hospital due to
kidney failure and died at the age of 89.
The Four Legs of the Table
At the beginning of the play The Four Legs of the Table (published by Le
Miel des Anges, translated by Hélène Zervas and Michel Volkovitch) by
Iakovos Kambanellis (already encountered twice in the chronicles of Le
Rat noir of March and July 2023 - do a search in the ad hoc box on the
website of Le Monde libertaire), we find ourselves in the room where
Asimakis Kavalas, a wealthy 99-year-old Greek industrialist, is dying.
At his bedside: the two eldest of his seven children. Costas and Aliki
(who consider their brothers and sisters to be "ungrateful and voracious
and ambitious thirsty people") take stock while trying not to speak too
loudly about their father's condition so as not to be heard by the other
siblings, gathered in the next room. Especially when it comes to the
consequences of the patriarch's impending death and the dismantling of
the family patrimony that they must share among their heirs. So what can
be done to limit the massacre and preserve a semblance of family
cohesion? Change the father's will? Arrange his biography?
A delicious little play full of chilling, fierce and macabre humor. All
the more credible when we know that the facts evoked come from the
history of a very real Greek family. A macho and violent universe where
through their constant innuendos and barbs, we read "like an open book"
into the depths of the intimacy of each of the protagonists.
Convolutions, coalitions, betrayals, role-playing games. And what if,
against all likelihood, after this great deadly revelation, the solution
consisted quite simply in finding other "Turkish heads"?
Mauthausen
In his foreword to the first edition of Mauthausen (trans. Solange
Festal-Livanis) dating from 1963, Iakovos Kambanellis explains the
reasons why he had taken twenty years before deciding to write about the
conditions of his detention at Mauthausen.
In the foreword to the second edition from 1995, he reveals why thirty
years later he began to rewrite everything, but this time focusing on
the three months he spent from May 5 (the date the Americans arrived in
the camp) to mid-July 1945, with the few thousand Jews and other
political prisoners before they were sent back, drop by drop, to their
countries of origin. And for the Jews who wanted to, to reach Palestine
as soon as international agreements gave them the opportunity. And that
is what makes this story so original. No one had done it before him. It
was then that Kambanellis delved back into his notes after reading the
works of Vassilis Vassilikos and Hans Marsarek, which had allowed him to
discover many things he had not known. Between these dates, Kambanellis
had become passionate about theatre (see above, as well as the Rat noir
of March 2023 and July 2023 - search in the ad hoc section of the Monde
libertaire website).
The (revised) 1995 story begins as follows: "It was in April and it was
in 1945. We had finally found out: the war was going to end... The signs
were numerous. The loudspeakers installed in our barracks blared the
Wehrmacht's communiqués, Hitler's speeches had long since stopped. The
sky crackled with hundreds of American bombers and the SS chased them
with their curses and began to joke until they were seized with nervous
laughter. A deleterious surrealist atmosphere where the helpless SS did
not reduce the efficiency of the rooms, even if gas and fuel were
starting to run out."
In a simple and unvarnished style, the author will describe to us day by
day the changes that occurred in the Mauthausen camp, starting with the
hasty flight of the last SS men before the arrival of the Allies on May
5. Scenes of horror, revenge, lynchings, SS men who think they are
complimenting the Russians by telling them that they hate them as much
as the Jews (!) etc.
A mind-blowing scene: the first outing of the prisoners destined for the
SS brothels. And the questions that fly from all sides. Short hours of
"often outraged euphoria, before getting down to work". In each group of
deportees from all countries, representatives are elected (the author
for the Greeks, whether they are Jewish or not). What will their
missions be with the leaders of the American army and the International
Red Cross? Kambanellis regularly cannot help, for the verisimilitude of
the story, to make flashbacks (thanks to his notes kept and taken on the
spot) and deliver to us some of the recurring nightmares or anxieties of
his fellow prisoners. Some speak, others aspire only to revenge, many
remain silent.
A host of details on the organization of the camps, the hierarchies
between deportees, the quarantines, the denial, the omnipresent illness
and death. Historical testimony on "the great escape" (or more precisely
"the great slaughter", according to the author) of the 80 Russians who
managed to escape from the camp. What was their end?
To discover: the difficult relations between the deportees and the
civilian population of the village neighboring the camp. "Were they all
Nazis or their accomplices?" In passing, we also learn a lot about the
phobias of Himmler and others. Moving story about the departure of the
Basque and Castilian anti-fascist Spaniards, rounded up in France by the
French police... Questioning of the other prisoners about their future.
Departure of the Greeks. Great emotion. Kambanellis decides to stay with
the Jews. A difficult return home for the Poles.
Then, the author takes us into his wonderful but difficult love story
given the conditions, with a young Lithuanian prisoner. What happens
then as the Red Army approaches? When the anti-fascist Italians leave in
turn, there is disarray. "The Jews found themselves in a Ghetto again!"
The last chapters are of rare beauty when the time finally comes for the
liberation of the Jews. But which host country to choose? America or
wait for the green light from the United Nations and more particularly
from the English for Palestine? On this subject, the author gives us the
story of the edifying episode of Aliyah Beth, little known to most
survivors of the Shoah. And finally, What decisions will Iakovos the
Greek and the little Lithuanian girl make, because we are still far from
the epilogue? ...
Spyros Tsouvilis: Carnets de garde
Spyros Tsouvilis was born in Paris in 1971. He has held various
positions within the Council of Europe, notably in the field of legal
cooperation and the fight against corruption. In 2007, a serious
accident "brutally interrupted the normal course of things". Since then,
writing has been part of the reconstruction of a new life. With Carnets
de garde, he published his first novel.
It is the notes of Spyros Tsouvilis, scribbled in his notebooks at the
time, which articulate most of the pages of Carnets de garde (published
by L'Harmattan). A journey of 121 days spent in the Greek army, as a
"hexamenite" (Greek living abroad). The latter being required to do 6
months of service.
Thomas Spartios (Tsouvilis' pseudonym in his work), a student in Paris,
is no exception. And on a beautiful autumn morning, our hero goes to the
Missologhi barracks (located on the northern shore of the Gulf of
Patras), to do what in France was called, his classes. He is
accompanied, as tradition dictates, by Michel, his best friend who did
it six years earlier.
One of the first notes in Tsouvilis' notebook completes the hero's
story. It dates from September 20. Discovery of the "joys of service"
with the traditional visit of the premises, mostly inhabited by rats and
mosquitoes. Supply of fatigues and tour of the dirty laundry rooms.
Discovery of his future companions. "The irreproachable, the future
lieutenants, the pistons and the horde of the slow to take the trigger"
... We then get to know his section neighbors. The handsome Orpheus,
self-taught bouzouki player; Marcos, the German-speaking intellectual
and the communist Vengelis; And of course, the other Hexamenites, often
German expatriates, but also from Australia, South Africa, Sweden,
Georgia, the former USSR, Albania, Romania, the former Yugoslavia, etc.
"It was as if all the tribes of Israel had gathered here"! In this
closed universe, Tsouvilis discovers how much the Hexamenites are
considered by the other conscripts as privileged and hated as such by
the "elders" and even more so, by the career soldiers. We then get to
the heart of the matter: "The following days, I don't know how quickly
things went wrong, I lost my composure, my humor and my courage at the
same time". Welcome to a virile, nationalist world, sometimes close to
the atmosphere of a schoolyard "violent impulses, hazing, stupidity, law
of the strongest or loudmouths, frustrations of all kinds"! With daily
activities: collective morning prayer (!), chores, exercises, parades, etc.
To be highlighted: very beautiful passages of poetry taken from the
author's notes. Reflections of heated discussions in barracks about
love, politics, philosophy. Beautiful souvenir images of permissions and
the possibilities offered or even flashbacks to Tsouvilis' early
childhood spent with his grandparents in a small village near Parga.
Arriving at the second part of the book, we follow Thomas for his last
months of service, in his new assignment in Yannitsa, in central
Macedonia, as well as his three comrades from Missologhi, Leandros,
Orpheas and Markos, the weightlifter "shot-putter with a tender heart".
For better or for worse. And for worse, we will not be disappointed!
Colorful, unusual or dark idiot characters. Unusual circumstances that
will deeply mark the author's thinking and future.
Leo Tolstoy: Fables
Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 in Yasnaya Polyana. Famous for his novels
and short stories that depict the life of the Russian people at the time
of the tsars, but also for his essays, in which he condemns the civil
and ecclesiastical powers. He was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox
Church and after his death, his manuscripts were destroyed by the
tsarist censorship. He wanted and intended to highlight in his works,
the great issues of Civilization. He also left behind stories and plays.
A Christian anarchist, he advocated manual work, life in contact with
nature, the rejection of materialism, personal abnegation and detachment
from family and social commitments. He hoped that the simple
communication of the truth from one person to another, would make all
the superstitions, cruelties and contradictions of life disappear.
Jean-Pierre Piseta, the translator of this small work, waits for the
postface to tell us the genesis of Leo Tolstoy's Fables (ed. Allia) and
how the selection of the texts gathered here was orchestrated.
They come from the Four Russian Reading Books, written by Leo Tolstoy
with the aim of "dedicating them to all Russian children, from those of
the imperial family to those of the humblest peasants".
But their often rural content suggests that they were mainly intended
for the latter.
As for the themes evoked, Tolstoy drew his sources from both classical
texts (Greek, Indian, etc.) and popular ones, others from his own
imagination. Among them, we find real little treasures like The
Serpent's Head and Tail, who hate each other and fight to know who will
be in front! Elsewhere, the story of a greedy peasant woman who fed her
hen too much and will pay dearly for the consequences. A sharing of an
inheritance between two brothers that ends badly. The (common sense)
reflections of a horse by Moujik. The hilarious and hilarious tale
featuring a lord who sends his servant to buy the best pears at the
market, but... Further on, "How to describe the color of milk to a blind
man"? A beautiful moral of the tale about the wolf and the bow. Finally
a very beautiful "all Tolstoyan" conclusion in the last fable where a
crow, a pigeon, a snake, a deer and a hermit try to answer the question
"Why does evil exist in the world"?
To put in everyone's hands!
Mesha Selimovic: The Dervish and Death
Mehmed "Mesha" Selimovic was born on April 26, 1910, in Tuzla
(Bosnia-Herzegovina). He studied at the Faculty of Philosophy of the
University of Belgrade and participated, from 1941, in the National
Liberation Committee. His work includes novels, an essay, collections of
short stories and memories which have earned him the highest literary
awards.
"I undertake this story, without reason, without profit for myself or
for others[...]I do not yet know what will be recorded, but in my trial,
I am at the same time judge, witness and accused", warns us Amhed
Nuridin, the narrator of The Dervish and Death (published by Gallimard,
translated from Serbo-Croatian by Simone Meuris). We have already come
across Mesa Solimovic and his magnificent novel, The Fortress, in the
June 2023 column of Le Rat noir (do a search in the ad hoc boxes on the
website of Le Monde libertaire).
But let's get back to Ahmed, our hero, who is none other than the sheikh
of a Mevlevi Dervish convent. Having reached forty, his inner peace will
be seriously challenged when his brother Harun ends up in prison. Which
is what decides Ahmed to go and find the old Djanitch in agony. It is
therefore his daughter, beautiful but enigmatic, who welcomes the
Dervish. Ironically, it is she who then asks Ahmed, skeptical, to do her
a favor. But over time, impromptu events will follow one another and
complicate everything. Will Ahmed then lose his bearings and religious
convictions in the face of infallible reality? Will his view of the
world change? Especially since everything gets tangled up: the ambiguous
or indifferent attitudes of his fellow dervishes and the revelations of
his friend Hassan, a "free and frank" boy who explains to him that all
that is reproached to his brother is "knowing too much".
As the plot progresses, we find one of the key themes of Solimovic's
universe: the steamroller of the established order. The conclusion of
the novel offers us everything that one can expect from the most
beautiful oriental tales! In passing, the author treats us to a
beautiful summary of the history of Bosnia and the conditions of its
inhabitants, unfortunately unchanged to this day: "We belong to no one,
we are always on one border or another, we are always someone's dowry.
For centuries, we have been looking for each other, we sometimes find
each other. Soon, we will no longer know who we are. We are gradually
losing our own face and cannot take on that of others. We live on the
edge of worlds, on the border of peoples, exposed to all attacks, always
guilty. The waves of history break on us like on a rock!
Svetislav Basara: The Cursed Country
Svetislav Basara is in 1953, in Bajina Bashta. Serbian writer and
politician, he is particularly active within the Christian Democratic
Party of Serbia. Considered a representative of postmodern literature,
he is admired for his scathing humor and his fantasy. "Is he crazy,
brilliant, libertarian, or even a cheeky and sentimental entertainer?",
critics have often wondered.
What a pleasure to dive back into the disconcerting world of Svetislav
Basara (already encountered in the June 2024 issue of Le Rat noir, with
Copie d'un manuscrit brulé). This time, destined for the Cursed Country
(ed. Gaïa, translated from Serbo-Croatian by Alain Cappon).
The narrator of the novel, a British ambassador, goes incognito to a
village in the country of Etracia. A land where mythology and the
passage through the socialist era intersect before falling into
oblivion. A space with blurred borders, stuck between two no man's
lands. In this edge of the world, our narrator will first find himself
facing his own ghost, then Eros and Thanatos, but will also come across
"a number of slave traffickers, fake film directors, broke businessmen,
or even fallen Russian princesses, mercenaries, prostitutes, drug
dealers, and seekers of nothingness".
In short, lost in a fauna that, we don't know how, continues to multiply
from second to second. Hence the high crime rate. Oddly enough, there is
also an impressive number of publishing houses and printing houses
"while here, no one reads"!
Intrigued, our hero goes to the only bookstore in the village and buys a
book by an illustrious stranger named Robert T. Cincaid. Probably also
an ambassador, also British and "therefore necessarily homosexual and an
agent in the pay of Moscow"!
His only work The Cursed Country (coincidentally translated by a certain
Svetislav Basara!) takes place, as one would have guessed, in Etracia,
"This country absent from any encyclopedia except present in rather
vague terms, in a Russian encyclopedia "unrivaled in terms of
inventiveness because, Etracia does not exist, that does not mean that
it will never exist!" ... Here we are plunged, for our greatest
pleasure, into the depths of this great mystery.
With his explosive and very particular style, Svetislav Basara indulges
with pleasure in a pastiche of "what the diplomatic novel of the
Serbo-Croatian tradition could have been". Here, intertwined are
narrative, correspondence, biographies, extracts from works relating the
past and present deeds and actions of the protagonists, all in the
sights of an authoritarian government under the orders of a "puppet
king" and his all-powerful security services. "Holy drunkenness,
rehabilitation of the pyres for witches and apology for the "absolutist
monarchy". A
novel "with drawers without keys" which before our hypnotized eyes, will
become more and more hyperrealistic, bathing in a universe in which
time, space, meaning and especially people disappear in turn! But in
this Maelstrom, what will happen to our narrator?
Bernard Melguen: Meteors, messengers from space
After Life in the Universe and Exoplanets published in the July 2024
chronicles, here is the third part of our journey into space. We will
discover Meteors, messengers from space (published by Apogée). In his
introduction, Bernard Melguen, professor of astronomy at the University
of Nantes, gives us some general considerations on these "celestial
bombardments, unpredictable, constant and which have lasted for millennia".
Hundreds of tons fall on Earth each year, at an average speed of 100,000
km/h, or more! Have these meteorites (a term that was coined in 1822)
been an object of fear or veneration since ancient times? Were they
guilty of eradicating 80% of life on Earth 65 million years ago, or did
they contribute, on the contrary, to bringing the first seeds of life to
our planet?
In any case, "they have become in recent decades the most precious
stones we know."
Overview of the main themes covered in this small collection. First of
all, the evocation of some legendary meteorites that have left traces in
mythology since 1450 BC. In the Bible, then in Greco-Roman antiquity
(meteorites of Aegos Potamos), in Asia Minor (Pessinonte), among the
Phoenicians of Emesa (the betyl of Elagabalus), the Black Stone of Mecca
and other meteorites described in China. The problem that all these
peoples then faced was to try to understand the origin, almost
everywhere in the world, of these various objects made of pure iron
(often associated with 10% nickel) and attested in ancient texts and
visibly "older than the traditional Iron Age."
Bernard Melguen then introduces us to the long scientific debates, more
than 2,000 years old, on the subject of "these stones fallen from the
sky": Were they messages from the gods sent to men, or simple
extraterrestrial cosmic falls? These questions will give birth to
"cosmochemistry", which is booming today.
In the following chapters, we will discover, through scientific
discoveries, the origin of meteorites: are they orphan stones? Parent
bodies of asteroids (the first having been discovered in 1801 by
Guiseppe Piazzi, the director of the Palermo observatory)? Shooting
stars or even cometary dust? How to recognize the three categories of
meteorites (stony, ferrous and mixed or siderolites)? Then comes a very
instructive passage on meteorites and radioactivity, on their messages
in terms of "nudeosynthesis" and more precisely on the conditions of the
formation of the solar system, the age of the Earth and the birth of
atoms in the heart of stars. Hence this real hunt for meteorites,
particularly in Antarctica, but made all the more difficult because of
the extent of the oceans. A Martian meteorite can reach on the "market",
up to 100 times more than its weight in gold! What are the
characteristics of the fall and impact of meteorites? What about craters
and what are the largest listed on Earth? Next, a history of the famous
or most astonishing falls, from the oldest to the most recent.
This is when we enter the heart of a "real police investigation" into
the disappearance of the dinosaurs. Investigation initiated by Luis
Alvarez (nuclear physicist) and his son Walter in 1978. And always
questions. Would the disappearance of the dinosaurs have had a positive
impact on the development of humanity? Would meteorites have brought the
first germs of life to our planet? Finally, a very relevant question:
are meteorites threats to the Earth? Swords of Damocles or "insemination
forces"?
All the answers are hidden in this fascinating little book, prodigiously
well illustrated!
Patrick Schindler, individual FA Athens
A stowaway (Bernard CRML)
https://www.ainfos.ca/fr/ainfos26959.html
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https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=7959
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