Today I have a humble but most delicious dish that I consider a ticket to heaven.

And I must confess, I never say no to a ticket to heaven, no matter what the price.

In this case, the price is minimal.

Green peas in their shells

This is not the result of my cooking skills and incredible experience; alas, I have to admit that it is 99% due to the sublime quality of the ingredients.

Green peas

The freshest ingredients were grown and harvested in the seaside town of Oreoi in Northern Evoia, Greece, where I spent Easter 2013 with my cousins Kostas and Maria.

Maria gave me the peas and the artichokes as I was leaving to drive back to Marathon.

Artichokes and green onions

We talk about peas and we think sweet and fragrant. Add “crunchy”. They were so fresh that I could eat them all uncooked.

They key to cooking the best ingredients is to preserve their flavor and texture, and only add the minimum of taste enhancement agents.

I added olive oil and butter on a deep pan, and let it melt and mix.

Potatoes in olive oil and butter

I then sautéed potatoes (grown in Marathon) to enhance the color and coat them with the oil and butter mix.

On top of the potatoes I grated lemon peel, and added salt and pepperoncino.

Grating lemon peel

After the potatoes got a golden brown color, I added the peas, thinly sliced green onions, fresh coriander, some water and two sliced sun dried tomatoes.

Green peas, potatoes and artichokes in the pot

I let them come to a boil and then added the artichoke hearts, the stems and the juice of one lemon.

After 15 minutes they were ready.

Green peas, potatoes and artichokes – served

I let them rest for 20 minutes, and then served with fresh bread and white wine, preferably asyrtico of Santorini.

Green peas, potatoes and artichokes – detail

Bon appetite!

Bohm’s Herrenkeller

It has been a long time since I visited Nurenberg in Germany, the birthplace of Albrecht Durer and Hans Sachs.

But it is never too late to reminisce and retrieve from memory an exceptional experience of traditional regional food served in an unassuming but warm dining room in Bohm’s Herrenkeller, a restaurant and pub located centrally, in Theaterstrasse.

Bohm’s Herrenkeller, Nurenberg

A natural choice in this “regional” cuisine would be sausages.

Saure Zipfel

We started with a very light and tasty sausage dish: “Saure Zipfel”.

It is bratwurst steamed in broth with vinegar, onions and spices.

Bratwürste auf Kraut

The light dish was followed by “Bratwürste auf Kraut”, Grlled Bratwurst on sauerkraut, served with dark bread and hot mustard.

A dish that must follow the light, almost etherial zipfel.

Ofenfrische Schweineschäufele mit Kloß

I somehow managed to contain the urge to have the same sausages again and again, and proceeded to taste a roast pork dish.

Ofenfrische Schweineschäufele mit Kloß, Roasted pork shoulder served  with a potato dumpling.

I did not regret it.

Bohm’s Herrenkeller – The dining room

But in a sense I did.

Because I could hardly move after the meal.

“During the First World War Hoelderlin’s hymns were packed in the soldier’s knapsack together with cleaning gear”.

Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art”.

Demonstration in Athens, March 1942

Today’s object is not available to me.

As a matter of fact, I have never seen it.

Today’s object has no photograph that I can show you.

Military Academy of Athens

Today’s object has been destroyed.

Today’s object is a poetry book in English.

Today’s object is a book without a title.

At some unknown point in time, it became a possession of my uncle George.

Allied forces in Gazi, Athens, 1944

This might have been the result of a gift or a loan or a purchase.

But it is not important to dwell on that.

It was sometime before or during the second world war that George got hold of it.

Greek Civil War 1944-1949

Shortly after the Germans withdrew from Greece in October 1944, another War started, the Greek Civil War that lasted until 1949.

At that time George was an officer of the Greek Army, and served at the front line.

Map of Grammos

It was during a long engagement of the Greek Army with the communist – supported “Democratic Army of Greece” in the Northwestern area near Konitsa, called “Mastorohoria”, that the story with the poetry book unfolded.

George had taken the book with him.

During one of the skirmishes with the enemy, George’s unit had to cross in a haste the river Sarantaporos; in the process he lost the book.

Pyrsogianni – Πυρσογιαννη

When George’s unit took the offensive again, they crossed the river going north, and succeeded to push their opponents further to the north.

During this successful offensive, at the end of an operation they went by a machine gun bunker.

There was smoke coming out of it.

As a standard procedure, they had to go in and ensure that it was safe.

Sarantaporos River, Northern Greece

They went in and found that all inside were dead.

In the middle of the burning debris and the dead bodies, the officer in charge found a and picked up bloodstained book.

Much to his surprise, inside the book he saw an inscription with George’s name.

After the officer finished his inspection of the burned bunker he came out carrying the poetry book in his hands and went straight to George.

Plagia (Zerma)

“George, is this your book?” he asked.

George took the book in his hands: “Yes, it is mine”

“Do you want to take it?” the officer asked.

George did not take the book.

He left it there.

The windmills of Mandraki, Rhodes, acrylic on canvas, painted by NM.  Οι μυλοι στο Μανδρακι, Ροδος, Ακρυλικο σε μουσαμα, εργο του ΝΜ

Εισαγωγη

Τα μαγαζια με εναλλασσομενα προσωπα με γοητευουν.

Αναφερομαι στα μαγαζια που συνδυαζουν πολλαπλες χρησεις, σε διαφορετικες περιοδους της ημερας και της νυχτας.

Ενα τετοιο θρυλικο μαγαζι, που δεν υπαρχει πια, ηταν η Ταβερνα του “Μπαμπουλα” στην περιοχη του Κοβα της Ροδου.

The tavern of Baboulas – Η ταβερνα του “Μπαμπουλα” (Αρχειο Γιωργου Ζαχαριαδη)

Αυτο το ενθυμιο του “Μπαμπουλα” ειναι κατα καποιον τροπο ενα μνημοσυνο για τον πατερα μου, που το λατρευε αυτο το μαγαζι και περασε σε αυτο πολλα μεσημερια τρωγοντας ψαρια και θαλασσινα και πολλα βραδυα – μεχρι το πρωι – διασκεδαζοντας με ολο το κεφι και τον ενθουσιασμο που τον χαρακτηριζε.

Θελω να ευχαριστησω θερμα για την συνεισφορα τους στο αρθρο αυτο τον φιλο δημοσιογραφο Γιωργο Ζαχαριαδη που προσεφερε τοσες φωτογραφιες απο το αρχειο του, οπως επισης και την διευθυνση της εφημεριδας “Ροδιακη” πηγη πολυτιμου υλικου που χρησιμοποιησα.

Η περιοχη του Κοβα

Η περιοχη Κοβα ειναι στο ανατολικο μερος της πολης της Ροδου.

Municipal slaughterhouse in Rhodes – Δημοτικα Σφαγεια Ροδου

Στις δεκαετιες 1920-1930 οι Ιταλοι κατασκευασαν πολλα βιομηχανικα κτηρια εκει. Ενδεικτικα αναφερω τα Δημοτικά Σφαγεία (1925), την Ηλεκτρική Βιομηχανία (1921), το Οινοποιείο της CAIR (1928) και την αλευροβιομηχανία SAMICA (1938).

Στη δεκαετια του 1960 αρχιζουν οι προσωπικες μου αναμνησεις,

Η περιοχη ειχε ηδη γινει πολος ελξης για μικροβιοτεχνιες, συνεργεια αυτοκινητων, λαστιχαδικα, βουλκανιζατερ και αλλα μικρα εργαστηρια και μαντρες.

Η Ταβερνα του Μπαμπουλα (Αρχειο Γιωργου Ζαχαριαδη)

Το 1964 οι γονεις μου αγορασαν ενα αυτοκινητο απο τον Αλεξη, που ειχε το συνεργειο του στην περιοχη Κοβα.

Αυτο το συνεργειο ειναι το πρωτο που θυμαμαι απο την περιοχη.

Η δευτερη αναμνηση ειναι η ταβερνα του “Μπαμπουλα”.

The tavern of Baboulas -
Η Ταβερνα του “Μπαμπουλα” (Αρχειο Γιωργου Ζαχαριαδη).

Ο Μοιραρχος Χωροφυλακης εν αποστρατεια κ. Σεραφειμ Αθανασιου τοποθετηθηκε ως χωροφυλακας στην Τροχαια Ροδου αμεσως μετα την απελευθερωση των Δωδεκανησων το Μαρτιο του 1947.

Σε σε αρθρο του που αναδημοσιευτηκε στη “Ροδιακη” το 2012 γραφει:

“Και μέσα στην πόλη της Ρόδου, περιοχή του Κόβα, όπου βρισκόταν τότε το μοναδικό κέντρο (ψαροταβέρνα) Μπαμπούλα, δεξιά και αριστερά της οδού Καναδά, υπήρχαν χωράφια με φασολιές, ντομάτες, καρποφόρα δένδρα και  αραιά πανέμορφα σπίτια.”

Η Ταβερνα του Μπαμπουλα (Αρχειο Γιωργου Ζαχαριαδη)

Η ταβερνα του Μπαμπουλα

Η ταβερνα του Μπαμπουλα ηταν μια ξυλινη κατασκευη στηριγμενη σε πασσαλους, που ξεκινουσε απο την προκυμαια και προχωρουσε μεσα στη θαλασσα.

Υπηρχε κατι σαν μια μικρη γεφυρα που ενωνε το πεζοδρομιο με την ξυλινη κατασκευη.

Απο μακρυα το “συγκροτημα ” φαινοτανε σαν μια παραμορφωμενη παραγκα.

Η πρωτη φορα που πηγα ητανε ενα μεσημερι, με λιακαδα, στο πρωτο μισο της δεκαετιας του 1960.

Ο πατερας μου προχωρησε μεσα στο μαγαζι και βρηκε τον ιδιοκτητη, που – φυσικα – ειχε το παρατσουκλι ο “Μπαμπουλας”. Ετσι τον φωναζανε ολοι.

Μια παρεα στου “Μπαμπουλα” (δευτερος απο δεξια). Ο πατερας μου δεν φαινεται καλα, ειναι ο τριτος απο αριστερα (Αρχειο Γιωργου Ζαχαριαδη)

Ο διαλογος ητανε απλος.

Ο πατερας μου: “Γεια σου Μπαμπουλα, τι εχεις φρεσκο σημερα;”

Ο Μπαμπουλας: “Κυριε …. εχω μεγαλα μπαρμπουνια.”

Ο πατερας μου: “Βαλε τα στα καρβουνα.”

Το μαγαζι ητανε προς το φτωχο και ατημελητο.

Καθησαμε στο σχεδον ακαλυπτο μερος της ταβερνας, και φαγαμε ολα τα μπαρμπουνια που ειχε ο Μπαμπουλας εκεινο το μεσημερι.

Αυτα ηταν τα συμβαντα της ημερας που γνωρισα τον Μπαμπουλα.

Στο ακαλυπτο μερος της ταβερνας του Μπαμπουλα (Αρχειο Γιωργου Ζαχαριαδη)

Θυμαμαι τα ολοφρεσκα μπαρμπουνια και το περιεργο οικημα επανω στη θαλασσα.

Σχεδον πενηντα χρονια μετα, μιλωντας με τον θειο μου τον Γιωργο για φρεσκο ψαρι,  μου ανεφερε τον Μπαμπουλα και τα μπαρμπουνια του.

Ο Γιωργος ζει εδω και 60 χρονια στην Αμερικη, και ομως δεν εχει ξεχασει τα μπαρμπουνια του Μπαμπουλα!

(Παρενθεση: Η Ροδος ειχε και ενα αλλο πλωτο εστιατοριο, το περιφημο “Κοντικι”. Αυτο ομως ειναι θεμα για μιαν αλλη αναμνηση.)

Ομως στου Κοβα υπηρχε και μια αλλη ζωη, η ζωη της νυχτας.

Κι αυτη η ζωη της νυχτας ειχε ενα μεγαλο πρωταγωνιστη: τον Μπαμπουλα.

Χορευτρια στον Μπαμπουλα (Αρχειο Γιωργου Ζαχαριαδη)

Εκει που τα μεσημερια οικογενειες τρωγανε ψαρια και θαλασσινα, και με την μυρωδια των εδεσματων της θαλασσας ακομη στην ατμοσφαιρα, τα βραδυα παιζανε τα μπουζουκια.

Μερικα βραδυα – αναλογα με τη διαθεσιμοτητα των καλλιτεχνιδων – στο κεντρο εμφανιζονταν και χορευτριες με ελαφρα ενδυμασια.

Στη δεκαετια του 1960 οι περισσοτεροι λαϊκοι τραγουδιστες και οργανοπαικτες περασαν απο τον Μπαμπουλα.

Ενδεικτικα αναφερω:

Ο Γιαννης Καμπουριδης, που ητανε στη δεκαετια του 1960 Ενωμοτάρχης, εκπαιδευτής στη Σχολή Χωροφυλακής Ροδου αναφερει σε συνεντευξη του στη “Ροδιακη”:

” Στο κέντρο του «Μπαμπούλα», στου Κόβα, τραγουδούσε ο Καζαντζίδης, η Καίτη Γκρέυ, ο Γαβαλάς.… Όλοι πέρασαν από τη Ρόδο. “

Στην ιστοσελιδα της πολης “Κοκκινογεια Δραμας” διαβαζω για την τραγουδιστρια Σεβας Χανουμ (Σεβαστη Παπαδοπουλου): “Από το 1966 μέχρι το 1970 σε διάφορα κέντρα της Ελλάδας, όπως: στο «Μπαμπούλα» της Ρόδου, στη «Βεντέτα» (1968) της Θεσσαλονίκης με τον Τσιτσάνη.”

Απο μαρτυριες γνωστων του Σωτηρη Καλυμνακη, διαβαζω: “Στην ταβέρνα «Μπαμπούλας» στην Ρόδο ιδιοκτήτης ήταν ένας θείος του πήγε να δουλέψει και κάθισε 4 χρόνια .Εκεί συνεργάστηκε και με την Καίτη Γκρέυ . ”

Sevas Hanoum and Stelios Kazantzides

Ομως το νυκτερινο προσωπο του Μπαμπουλα ειχε μεγαλη γκαμα εκφρασεων, που δεν περιοριζονταν μονο στα μπουζουκια και τους χορους οριεντάλ.

Ο Γιωργος Ζαχαριαδης, φιλος και δημοσιογραφος της “Ροδιακης”, γραφει στην ιστοσελιδα της εφημεριδα:

“Kάθε φορά που ερχόταν αεροπλανοφόρο στη Ρόδο , οι νταβατζήδες του Πειραιά φρόντιζαν να φέρνουν γυναίκες και μουσικά συγκροτήματα από την Αθήνα για την διασκέδαση των ναυτών. Και τα καμπαρέ στου Κόβα γέμιζαν γυναίκες που πρόσφεραν διάφορες «υπηρεσίες» στους Αμερικανούς, μάλιστα δε το φημισμένο  νυχτερινό κέντρο της εποχής ο «Μπαμπούλας» δεν λειτουργούσε σαν μπουζουξίδικο, αλλά σαν …καμπαρέ με «καλλιτέχνιδες» από την Αθήνα.”

Χορευτρια αριστερα, ο Μπαμπουλας δεξια (Αρχειο Γιωργου Ζαχαριαδη)

Ειχα την ευκαιρια να επισκεφθω τον Μπαμπουλα και βραδυ, και μαλιστα μετα απο εντονη διαφωνια των γεννητορων μου. Η μητερα μου διερωτατο με μαλλον εντονο τροπο “τι δουλεια εχουν τα παιδια στο κεντρο αυτο”, μια και δεν μπορουσε να αρθρωσει τη λεξη “μπουζουξιδικο”. Απο την αλλη μερια ο πατερας μου, διαμαρτυροτανε γιατι “ενα ψαρι θα φαμε, θα ακουσουμε λιγη μουσικη και θα φυγουμε”.

Επικρατησε ο πατερας στη διαμαχη αυτη και καταληξαμε ολοι οικογενειακα στον Μπαμπουλα στην αρχη της νυχτας.

Δεν μπορω να πω οτι θυμαμαι λεπτομερειες, αλλα το μαγαζι ητανε πηχτρα. Οσο λιγοι ητανε το πρωτο μεσημερι που πηγα με τον μπαμπα, τοσοι πολλοι ητανε το βραδυ.

Ο Μπαμπουλας (πρωτος αριστερα) με πελατες (Αρχειο Γιωργου Ζαχαριαδη)

Τα γκαρσονια εκαναν τεμεναδες στον μπαμπα, που οπως καταλαβα αργοτερα ητανε “διακεκριμενος” πελατης.

Ο ιδιος ο Μπαμπουλας ηρθε στο τραπεζι και πηρε την παραγγελια.

Και αφου φαγαμε, αρχισανε τα οργανα.

Ο Ανδρεας Μπαρκουλης στου Μπαμπουλα το 1962 (Αρχειο Γιωργου Ζαχαριαδη)

Η αδελφη μου θυμαται οτι αυτο συνεβη το 1964, και οτι επαιζε μπουζουκι και τραγουδουσε ο Βαγγελης Περπινιαδης.

Αυτο ητανε το πρωτο και το τελευταιο βραδυ που πηγαμε οικογενειακα στου Μπαμπουλα.

Συνεχισαμε βεβαια να πηγαινουμε για ψαρια το μεσημερι σε καθε ευκαιρια.

Ανεξαρτητα απο το τι χαμος γινοτανε τα βραδυα με τα οργανα και τα τραγουδια, ο Μπαμπουλας ειχε φρεσκο λαχταριστο ψαρι!

Ο Μπαμπουλας υποδεχεται πελατες (Αρχειο Γιωργου Ζαχαριαδη)

Οι θαμωνες

Ο Μπαμπουλας ητανε μαγαζι για ολους.

Καμμια σχεση με τα σημερινα μαγαζια της νυχτας, που το καθενα εχει την δικη του ομαδα και τυπο πελατων.

Ο Μπαμπουλας καλοδεχοτανε καλλιτεχνες, ηθοποιους, μεροκαματιαρηδες, επιστημονες, επαγγελματιες, σκοτεινους αλλα και φωτεινους πασης κατηγοριας.

Ο Μιμης Φωτοπουλος σοτν Μπαμπουλα (Αρχειο Γιωργου Ζαχαριαδη)

Οπως εμαθα αργοτερα, την ημερα του Σαββατου, απο καιρου εις καιρον, ο πατερας μου επαιρνε τους συνεργατες του και κατεβαινανε απο το εργοταξιο στου Μπαμπουλα κατα τις 4 το απογευμα.

Τρωγανε για μεσημερι, πηγαινανε σπιτι για ξεκουραση, και ξαναβρισκοντουσαν εκει το βραδυ για να κλεισει σωστα η εβδομαδα.

Ο πατερας μου (πρωτος αριστερα) στον Μπαμπουλα τον Μαίο του 1962

Το τελος

Καποια μερα ο Μπαμπουλας επαψε να υπαρχει πια.

Το οικημα κατεδαφιστηκε, για να μην πω – οπως ειναι το σωστο καταθαλασσωθηκε.

Λεπτομερειες δεν ξερω.

Κατα πασα πιθανοτητα ο Μπαμπουλας κατεδαφιστηκε ως κτισμα παρανομο, ή / και ως κτισμα που δεν ηταν συμβατο με την σχεδιαζομενη αναπτυξη του λιμενος της Ακαντια.

Ο Μπαμπουλας ενας σωρος χαλασματα (Αρχειο Γιωργου Ζαχαριαδη)

Η αδελφη μου μου ανεφερε οτι ειχαν αρχισει οι κινησεις για να κατεδαφισουν τον Μπαμπουλα απο το 1956, και τελικα το κτισμα κατεδαφιστηκε στα τελη της δεκαετιας του 1960.

Ο Μπαμπουλας ομως θα παραμεινει αξεχαστος.

Today’s dish is a combination of some of my most favourite ingredients.

Bacalao fillets

First of all, bacalao.

In spite of the fact that in Greece we do not have the top quality bacalao of Spain, I cannot resist the urge to cook bacalao as often as I can.

Garlic cloves

Second, garlic.

I loooove garlic.

Zucchini

Last, but not least, the freshest zucchini from farms a few kilometers away from my home.

Respect for the ingredients should be reflected in the way they are prepared and cooked.

One of the best ways to express this respect with the specific ingredients is to “confit” the garlic and the bacalao.

I start by placing the garlic cloves in a frying pan with olive oil that covers half of the clove’s height.

Garlic cloves

The temperature should be low enough so that the garlic is not fried, but “boiled” in the olive oil

Once the garlic has started assuming a “brownish” color, I place the bacalao fillets in the pan without adding more oil.

Bacalao fillets with garlic cloves in olive oil – confit

The garlic has infused the oil with its aroma and fragrance, and makes the slow cooking process a very fragrant one.

I keep the heat low, so that the bacalao and garlic mix “boils” and not fries.

Bacalao and garlic confit – detail

After 40 minutes or so, depending always on the thickness of the fillets, the fish is cooked.

While the fish was cooking slowly, I cut and floured the zucchini sticks and flowers, and then fried in corn oil.

Bacalao confit with zucchini sticks and garlic cloves

I serve the fillets on top of the garlic cloves, sprinkled with chopped parsley, with the sticks and flower on the side.

Bacalao confit with zucchini sticks and garlic cloves – detail

The fish is soft, juicy and tasty from the garlic infused oil, while the garlic cloves melt in your mouth and are just divine. 

Bacalao confit with zucchini sticks and garlic cloves – detail

The crunchy zucchini flower is fragrant and provides the necessary textural contrast to the fish and garlic.

Bacalao confit with zucchini sticks and garlic cloves – detail

Finally, the zucchini sticks are somewhere in the middle in terms of texture, while their almost sweet taste brings a nice complement to the savoury fish.

I enjoyed the dish with a glass of Avantis Estate Syrah.

My good friend Elaine reminded me that I have no comprehensive collection of my paintings on the web, and so I started to compile a third part, to complement the first two that I published some time ago.

The first set was about the island of Paros.

The second set was about landscapes By the sea

This third set is about fishing boats, one of my absolutely favourite painting subjects.

Please note that inevitably the grouping is not subject to “pure” partitioning rules.

Fishing Boats in Amalfi

Fishing Boats in Amalfi, Campania, Italy

Fishing Boats in Epidaurus, Greece

Fishing Boats in Epidaurus, Greece

Fishing Boat in Epidaurus, Greece

Fishing Boat in Epidaurus, Greece

Fishing Boat in Anavissos, Greece

Fishing Boat in Anavissos, Greece

Fishing Boat in Thessaloniki, Greece

Fishing Boat in Thessaloniki, Greece

What is life but a form of motion and a journey through a foreign world?

Compared with the emigrant the explorer is the greater traveler; his ventures are less momentous but more dashing and more prolonged.

Train arriving at the Geneva Station

The idea of migration is often latent in his mind too: if he is so curious to discover new lands, and to describe them, it is partly because he might not be sorry to appropriate them.

On the train from Geneva Illinois to Chicago and back

But the potential conqueror in him is often subdued into a disinterested adventurer and a scientific observer. He may turn into a wanderer.

On the train from Geneva Illinois to Chicago and back

He may turn into a wanderer. Your true explorer or naturalist sallies forth in the domestic interest; his heart is never uprooted; he goes foraging like a soldier, out in self-defense, or for loot, or for elbow room.

On the train from Geneva Illinois to Chicago and back

The inveterate wanderer is a deluded person, trying like the Flying Dutchman to escape from himself: his instinct is to curl up in a safe nook unobserved, and start prowling again in the morning, without purpose and without profit. He is a voluntary outcast, a tramp.

On the train from Geneva Illinois to Chicago and back

The latest type of traveler, and the most notorious, is the tourist. Having often been one myself, I will throw no stones at him; for facts or for beauty, all tourists are dear to Hermes, the god of travel, who is patron also of amiable curiosity and freedom of mind.

On the train from Geneva Illinois to Chicago and back

There is wisdom in turning often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor. I do not think that frivolity and dissipation of mind and aversion from one’s own birthplace, or the aping of foreign manners and arts are serious diseases: they kill, but they do not kill anybody worth saving.

On the train from Geneva Illinois to Chicago and back

Ulysses remembered Ithaca. With a light heart and clear mind he would have admitted that Troy was unrivalled in grandeur, Phaecia in charm, and Calypso in enchantment: that could not make the sound of the waves breaking on his own shores less pleasant to his ears; it could only render more enlightened, more unhesitating, his choice of what was naturally his.

On the train from Geneva Illinois to Chicago and back

The human heart is local and finite, it has roots: and if the intellect radiates from it, according to its strength, to greater and greater distances, the reports, if they are to be gathered up at all, must be gathered up at that center.

On the train from Geneva Illinois to Chicago and back

A man who knows the world cannot covet the world; and if he were not content with his lot in it (which after all has included that saving knowledge) he would be showing little respect for all those alien perfections which he professes to admire.

On the train from Geneva Illinois to Chicago and back

They were all local, all finite, all cut off from being anything but what they happened to be; and if such limitation and such arbitrariness were beautiful there, he has but to dig down to the principle of his own life, and clear it of all confusion and indecision, in order to bring it too to perfect expression after its kind: and then wise travelers will come also to his city, and praise its name.

On the train from Geneva Illinois to Chicago and back

Notes:

1. All the photos I have taken in the train journey from Geneva Illinois to Chicago and back.

2. The Philosophy of Travel by George Santayana

Vines outside my door

Today’s dish is a variance of a classic: vine leafs stuffed with minced beef.

Before I proceed with the dish, there are some clarifications required on the words used to name the dish.

Literally speaking, the vine leafs are not “stuffed”. They are “wrapped”.

Vine leafs – detail

The Turkish word for stuffed is “dolma”. We find the same word in Persia. In Arabic though, stuffed is “mahshi”. The relevant word in Armenian is “tolma”.

The Turkish word for wrapped is “sarma”.

And the Turkish word for leaf is “yaprak”. The same word is used in Persia and Albania.

In Greek we use all three words: ντολμαδες (dolma) σαρμαδακια (sarma), γιαπρακια (yaprak).

Minced beef, lemon zest, parsley and coriander

Having somehow sorted out the vocabulary, lets turn to the cooking.

I blanche the vine leafs, 5 seconds each, and let them rest without placing them in a cold bath. 

I like the stuffing to be minced beef with parsley, coriander, lemon zest, sauteed chopped onions and a handful of bulgur wheat.

I do not like to add rice to the stuffing.

Stuffing

I sautee the onions but not brown them, let them rest, drain them, and then add them to the minced meat mix.

Ater the stuffing has rested for about 30 minutes in the fridge, I wrap the vine leafs and place them over medium heat, adding a moderate amount of the onion liquids.

While the “yaprak” are cooking slowly, I take thin slices of tender beef pastirma, remove the paste covering it (cemen),  and chop them.

Stuffed vine leafs

The paste is the best ingredient to spice up the fresh yogourt that will accompany the “yaprak”.

After 45 minutes the “yaprak” are ready.

I remove from the heat and let them rest for 30 minutes.

Stuffed vine leafs with spicy yogourt and chopped pastirma

I serve the “yaprak” on a bed of the spicy yogourt, and sprinkle over them the chopped pastirma.

A medium bodied red is the best wine to accompany this dish. Enjoy it.

House by the Sea, Paros, Greece, painting by NM

House by the Sea, Paros, Greece, detail – painting by NM

House by the Sea, Naoussa, Paros, Greece

House by the Sea (translated by William Arrowsmith)

 

Here the journey ends: 

in these petty cares dividing

a soul no longer able to protest. 

Now minutes are implacable, regular

as the flywheel on a pump. 

One turn: a rumble of water rushing. 

Second turn: more water, occasional creakings.

 

 

Here the journey ends, on this shore

probed by slow, assiduous tides.

Only a sluggish haze reveals 

the sea woven with troughs

by the mils breezes: hardly ever

in that dead calm

does spiny Corsica or Capraia loom

through islands of migratory air.

 

You ask: Is this how everything vanishes,

in this thin haze of memories?

Is every destiny fulfilled

in the torpid hour or the breaker’s sigh?

I would like to tell you: No. For you

the moment for your passage out of time is near:

transcendence may perhaps be theirs who want it,

and you, who knows, could be one of those. Not I.

There is no salvation, I think, for most,

but every system is subverted by someone, someone

breaks through, becomes what he wanted to be.  

Before I yield, let me help you find

such a passage out, a path

fragile a ridge or foam

in the furrowed sea.

And I leave you my hope, too meager

for my failing strength to foster

in days to come. I offer it

to you, my pledge to your fate, that you

break free.  

My journey ends on these shores

eroded by the to-and-fro of the tides.

Your heedless heart, so near, may even now

be lifting sail for the eternities.

Notes:

1. The poem “Casa sul Mare” is in the collection “Ossi di Seppia – Cuttlefish Bones”. It was published with the original poems and the english translation by Norton in 1992.

2. The critic and Montale’s friend Sergio Solmi observes about the “House by the Sea” that the poem adumbrates a theme dear to Montale, “the sense of a failed and enclosed life, despairing now of being equal to its original idea… escape from the ‘limbo of maimed existences’, succeed in living fully and saving itself”.

3. “For you the moment for your passage out of time is near”: is the “passage out of time” the poetic interpretation of “death”?

“A fresh sardine is better than stale lobster” Feran Adria, Celebrity Chef. 

Today’s recipe is the result of inspiration. I dedicate it to my Friend M, who loves sardines.

Tomato skins and basil leaves

I was preparing a tomato sauce the other day, and had in fornt of me a dish full of the tomato skins and the basil leaves that were left on the sieve after I pressed the tomatoes through.

Fresh sardines

On the other bench in the kitchen I had a bag with fresh sardines.

It all came together in a split second.

“Sardines fried in a tomato skin batter”.

Sardines in the batter

The batter is made with all purpose flour, baking soda, vinegar, eggs, salt, pepper, the tomato skins and basil mix, and water.

I let the mix rest for one hour in the fridge.

In the meantime, I gut the sardines and take the head off, but I leave the bone.

You could flour them before immersing in the batter, but it also works without.

Sardines fried in a tomato skin batter

I fry in corn oil until orange brown.

You will notice that:

1. the sardine’s flesh melts in your mouth,

2. the bone is just a crunchy substance,

3. the acidity of the skin adds a wonderful counterbalance to the sweetness of the fish and the basil

Sardines fried in a tomato skin batter

Enough written, enjoy it with a robust white wine.

Some time ago I wrote about one of the most stunning and moving themes in the work of Edward Munch: The Madonna.

Some of the paintings and etchings of the “Madonna” series I used in a subsequent post on poetry: “Naked heart forever.”

Munch described “Madonna” in this way: “Now life and death join hands. The chain is joined that ties the thousands of past generations to the thousands of generations to come” (qtd. in Hughes 281). He painted a woman in warm hues, her torso bare and her head tilted back, with long reddish hair flowing around her body. Her eyes are closed, her lips slightly parted in silent rapture. Her face is pale and bony, and crowned with a deep orange halo. The corpse-like face above the voluptuous, sensuous body is a strange rendition of the Madonna as virgin-especially given that the work was originally presented with a painted frame of circling sperm. The lithograph versions have the sperm border, and a fetus with its arms crossed in the corpse position looking up unhappily at the Madonna from the lower left corner. Munch is playing with opposites here: fertility and virginity, lust and chastity, and in his words, life and death. (1b)

Edward Munch, Self portrait with bottle of wine, 1906, Munch Museum, Oslo

The “naked heart forever” post ended with an etching by Munch that sets today’s topic: “Death and the Maiden”.

But what is the origin of this theme in the western world?

I quote from “Black Calavera“

Rudolph Binion argues that artist Hans Baldburg painted Death and the Maiden during the early 1500′s, which also originates from the ‘Dance of Death’.

According to Binion, the Renaissance Reformation introduced the Death and the Maiden to the public sphere. These particular paintings featured death holding or touching a woman in a suggestive and sexual manner.

In comparison Enrico De Pascale  claims that “The origin of the theme lies in Greek Mythology, in the abduction of Persephone by Hades, king of the Underworld who epitomised the eternal conflict between Eros and Thantos, between love (life) and death”

Hans Baldburg Grien: Death and the Maiden, 1518 – 1520

“Death and the Maiden” is an even more explicit rendition of the same themes. The woman and the skeleton clasp each other in a purely erotic pose. She is, as in the “Madonna,” very sensuous and voluptuous, while the skeleton is cold, thin, harshly white. The figures-death and sex-are thrust together within a background that is black and chasmic. They are framed by red, upward-moving sperm cells on the left, and two fetuses on the right in the same style as the “Madonna” fetus, with their arms crossed over their chests in the corpse-position. The moment of conception parades around the figures, who are taunted by the hollow stares of the fetuses. The unborn present their judgment on the nature of sex, conception, life, their own ultimate demise.(1b)

Edward Munch, Death and the Maiden, Oil on Canvas, 1893, Oslo

The link between Eros and Thanatos is embodied in the images-he imbeds it there so that he might reach us through our own relationship to love. He presented his paintings as packets of emotional impressions rather than as a narrative, thereby allowing us to arrange and rearrange the impressions, to create our own oppositions and links. Throughout, though, he firmly establishes the destruction inherent in creation. A creation of the union between two people results in conception, which is quite clearly the beginning of death. The idea of love involves an opposition in trying to combine with the other person, in trying to break the original barriers of communication. It is an attempt to move together towards one space while still retaining one’s own identity. (1b)

This motif dates back to the Middle Ages, but has been repeated and developed throughout the history of art thereafter. A precursor of the strong focus on the erotic that we find in Munch’s engraving Death and the Maiden is Albrecht Dürer’s portrayal of death as a skeleton, part-seducer, part-rapist. Yet in Munch the roles are reversed; it is the woman who is the seducer, and the man who allows himself to be ensnared by her, loses his integrity and his creative powers – and dies, if not physically, then figuratively. Perhaps this mirrors the man’s scepticism vis-à-vis the sexually and socially emancipated woman – the femme fatale in various guises was a popular motif in literature as well as art at this time of change and upheaval – yet above all it reflects Munch’s own horror at the fact that an all-consuming relationship with a woman should stand in the way of his artistic vocation. The link between love and death was graphically real for Munch, as it was for many other artists of the age. Woman was a creature who, by virtue of her bodily cycle, was closely bound up with life and death, and who therefore brought man face to face with his own transience. (1a)

Edward Munch, Death and the Maiden, 1894, Private Collection

Matthias Claudius, Der Todt and das Maedchen - Death and the Maiden

Das Maedchen – The Maiden

Vorüber! Ach, vorüber!

Geh, wilder Knochenmann!

Ich bin noch jung, geh Lieber!

Und rühre mich nicht an.

Over!

Oh, pass by!

Go, wild bone man!

I’m still young, go dear!

And do not touch me.

Edward Munch, Dance of Death, 1905

Der Todt – Death

Gib deine Hand, du schön und zart Gebild!

Bin Freund, und komme nicht, zu strafen.

Sei gutes Muts! ich bin nicht wild,

Sollst sanft in meinen Armen schlafen!

Give me your hand, you beautiful and tender form!

I am a friend, and come not to punish.

Be of good cheer! I am not fierce,

Softly shall you sleep in my arms!

P J Lynch: Death and the Maiden, 2010

Musical Interlude: Der Tod und das Mädchen (Death and the Maiden), D.531; Op. 7, No. 3, is a lied composed by Franz Schubert in February 1817. It was published by Cappi und Diabelli in Vienna in November 1821. The text is derived from a poem written by German poet Matthias Claudius. The song is set for voice and piano.

Júlia Várady soprano sings and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau plays the piano.

Egon Schiele’s painting ”Death and the Maiden” puts us in mind of the circumstances of Schiele’s own life at this moment. He is on the eve of conscription. Perhaps then the mood of this painting is being tainted and informed by the thought that he is being spirited away into the arms of death. He has also just chosen between two women in his life, with great callousness. One he has married, the other, a model of long standing, he has abandoned.

The man’s stare is blank and wild, disinterested, otherwhere engaged – look at that distended pupil. With the long and bony fingers of his left hand he appears to be caressing, as if dispassionately evaluating, the dome of the woman’s skull. The impulse of the other hand appears to suggest that he may be repulsed by the way in which she is exaggeratedly enwrapping him with the long curve of her left arm.

That curiously long arm of hers is rendered all the thinner, longer and stranger-looking by the fact that the sleeve of his coat part-conceals it. Her fingers – are they loosening their grip even as they embrace him? – are turning and twisting about. We have noticed that he appears to be disengaged from this embrace – even though it is everything that is happening here. She too looks askance, into the middle distance. There is no pleasure in that look of hers.

Meanwhile, everything behind and beneath them, all that agitated landscape, seems to be engaged in a kind of heaving, in-and-out breathing, erotic dance of sorts, coaxing the two of them into a dance of death. In this case, the last dance with death perhaps. Or the last dance with the jilted or jilting lover. (3)

Death and the Maiden (1915-16) by Egon Schiele
Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna

Joseph Beuys, the man who can fairly be called Europe’s most influential postwar artist, was influenced by Munch.

A characteristic feature of Joseph Beuys is the identification with everything from mythological figures and historical personages to writers and artists. Edvard Munch is one of them. Beuys developed an interest in Munch towards the end of the 40s, when he was going through an existential crisis, partly attributable to splitting up with his childhood sweetheart.

In a long series of drawings from this period, Beuys explores woman, love and death, for example in Loving Couple (1948-49), Autumn of Life (1952) and Death and the Maiden (1957). We recognise Munch’s ambivalent attitude to woman in a number of these, where she is portrayed as a blend of the fascinating and fear-inspiring – as a dual symbol of eroticism and death. (1c)

Joseph Beuys, Death and the Maiden, 1957, Ink and Watercolor on a manila envelope

The drawing depicts the shadows of two skeletons in an intimate embrace upon the back of a manila envelope stamped ominously with the address of “Auschwitz.”

Andy Warhol
Portrait of Joseph Beuys

In contrast to traditional iconography, Beuys changed the perspective in his watercolour of 1957, Der Tod und das Mädchen (Death and the Maiden) by representing the maiden, too, as dead in her encounter with Death. Death, so it seems, is communicating with his equal. In this image Beuys refers to a life that is ruled by Death. Life appears here as a strangely unfamiliar paradox: Death speaks to us, and by way of the element of death in life, the human being ultimately achieves a new awareness of life. (2)

Ana Mendieta
About giving life, 1975
Photograph, 33.65×50.8cm
Documentation of performance,
Iowa 1975

Ana Mendieta and Marina Abramovic place the motif in a contemporary feminist context. By substituting their own bodies for the maiden they take on the female role that was so alarming and novel in Munch’s time. In a ritualised episode, life and death become acquainted with one another and the woman confirms the cyclical power of her sex. These two artists also reiterate Munch’s analysis of himself and his relation to his surroundings. His role as outsider in the bourgeois society of the day becomes a parallel to the female artist’s situation in a society dominated by man. (1a)

Dying

Is an art, like everything else.

I do it exceptionally well.

Sylvia Plath

Self portrait with skeleton by Marina Abramovic 2003 Photograph: Marina Abramovic/Sean Kelly Gallery New York

Death,

I need my little addiction to you.

I need that tiny voice who,

even as I rise from the sea,

all woman, all there,

says kill me, kill me.

Anne Sexton

Sources

(1a) Ana Mendieta, Marina Abramovic: Death and the Maiden 

(1b) Anna K. Norris, Ruminations on Munch

(1c) Joseph Beuys: Woman as Symbol

(2) Michael Kröger: Death keeps me awake’ The Thresholds of Life and the Consciousness of Death in the Work of Joseph Beuys

(3) The Independent: Great Works: Death and the Maiden (1915-16) by Egon Schiele, Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna

Ο Νικολαος Μαυρης ηταν ο νονος μου.

Τον εχω στην καρδια μου και ενθυμουμαι πολυ καλα τις συναντησεις μας. Επισης εχω αρκετα απο τα βιβλια του.

Σε αυτο το κειμενο συνυπαρχουν προσωπικες αναμνησεις, στοιχεια βιογραφικα και αποσπασματα απο τα γραπτα του Δρος Νικ. Γ. Μαυρη (οπως πολυ συχνα υπεγραφε τα κειμενα του).

Αυτονοητα, αυτη ειναι μια προσωπικη ματια.

Θελω να εκφρασω αυτην την αυρα που απεπνεε ο Νικολαος Μαυρης, και ειχα την τυχη να απολαυσω.

N G Mavris in front of the “Roses” Hotel in Rhodes, 1950 – Ο Ν Γ Μαυρης στο ξενοδοχειο των Ροδων, στη Ροδο το 1950

Αιγυπτος και Κασος

Ο Νικολαος Γεωργιου Μαυρης (ΝΓΜ) ηταν ενας Ελληνας της διασπορας.

Γεννηθηκε στην πολη Zagazig της Αιγυπτου το 1899, γιος του γιατρου Γεωργιου Μαυρη απο την Κασο, ενα μικρο νησι στη Νοτιοανατολικη γωνια του Αγαιου, χωμενο αναμεσα στην Κρητη και την Καρπαθο.

Tο Zagazig ειναι μια πολη στο Δελτα του Νειλου, περιπου 50 μιλια βορια του Καϊρου και θεωρειται το κεντρο της εμποριας βαμβακιου και σιτηρων της Αιγυπτου.

Μερικες φορες ο ΝΓΜ αναφεροταν στην περιοδο της ζωης του που εζησε στην Αιγυπτο. Παντοτε με πολλη αγαπη και νοσταλγια.

Την θεωρουσε την πιο “αθωα” περιοδο της ζωης του. Εκεινες τις στιγμες ανεφερε και μερικες αραβικες λεξεις χωρις παντα να τις μεταφραζει.

Ητανε τοσο ωραιος ο ηχος των Αραβικων λεξεων, αντηχουσαν σαν μουσικη!

Zagazig, Egypt

Σε αρθρο της, η Φωτεινη Τομαη στην εφημεριδα “Το Βημα“, μας ενημερωνει σχετικα με τον Ελληνισμο της Αιγυπτου:

“Κατά το τέλος του 18ου αιώνα ο ελληνισμός της Αιγυπτου δεν ξεπερνούσε τις 2.000. Η κατασταση αλλαξε ριζικα μεσα σε ενα αιωνα. Σύμφωνα με μια πρώτη επίσημη απογραφή της Αιγύπτου το 1907, οι κατέχοντες επισήμως την ελληνική υπηκοότητα κάτοικοι της χώρας ανήρχοντο σε 132.947. Το διάστημα μεταξύ 1880 και 1920 σημειώθηκε η μεγαλύτερη οικονομική ανάπτυξη των Ελλήνων της Αιγύπτου. Δημιουργήθηκαν κοινότητες με προεξάρχουσα εκείνη της Αλεξανδρείας, αλλά και του Καΐρου, σύλλογοι και εμπορικά σωματεία, αδελφότητες, ενώ ιδρύθηκαν νοσοκομεία, πτωχοκομεία, ορφανοτροφεία ακόμη και φιλανθρωπικά σωματεία για την ενίσχυση με συσσίτια των αδυνάμων να συντηρηθούν οικονομικά. Γενικά ο ελληνισμός της Αιγύπτου ανεδείχθη σε κυρίαρχη από οικονομικής πλευράς δύναμη, με έντονη πνευματική και κοινωνική δράση, λαμπρύνοντας την ίδια του την πατρίδα, την Ελλάδα, στη φιλόξενη γη της Αιγύπτου, μιας χώρας με μακραίωνη επίσης ιστορία.”

The old hardour in Fri, on Kassos island – Το λιμανακι της Μπουκας στο Φρυ της Κασου

Στον Προλογο του πρωτου τομου της Δωδεκανησιακης Βιβλιογραφιας του εκδοθηκε το 1965 (βλεπε και παρακατω), και απεσπασε το Βραβειον της Ακαδημιας Αθηνων το 1957, ο ΝΓΜ αναφερει:

“Εχει μια μικρη ιστορια το βιβλιο αυτο. Μια ιστορια που αρχιζει πριν απο πολλα χρονια, οταν ο γραφων – νεαρος τοτε μαθητης του Γυμνασιου στο Καϊρο – ενδιαφερομενος για την ιστορια της ιδιαιτερας του πατριδας, ερευνουσε διαφορα συγγραμματα και περιοδικα, ιδιως στην εκει Εθνικη Βιβλιοθηκη, με τον σκοπο και την ελπιδα να βρη κατι σχετικο με την ιστορια της Κασου.”

Απο τα γυμνασιακα του χρονια λοιπον ξεκιναει το μεγαλο ταξιδι της βιβλιογραφικης ερευνας, που τοσα πολλα απεδωσε και στα Δωδεκανησα αλλα και στην Ελλαδα.

Ειναι χαρακτηρισιτκη η προταση με την οποια ο ΝΓΜ κλεινει τον Προλογο:

“Ετσι γραφτηκε το βιβλιο αυτο, που για μενα δεν ειναι απλως ενα βιβλιο αλλα ενα αληθινο βιωμα, αφου τοσα χρονια το εζησα και με εζησε.”

N G Mavris, Governor of the Dodecanese, 1948

Απο την Αιγυπτο στην Αμερικη

Το προθεμα “Δρ.” στο ονομα του, οφειλεται στο οτι ο ΝΓΜ ηταν ιατρος. Σπουδασε ιατρικη στην Αθηνα απο το 1918 εως το 1923.

Το 1923 επιστρεφει στην Αιγυπτο, οπου παραμενει μεχρι το 1925.

Το 1925 πηγαινει στο Παρισι οπου εξειδικευεται στην οφθαλμιατρικη, και παρακολουθει μαθηματα φιλολογιας και νομικης.

Το 1935 παντρευεται την Ιουλια Νικολαου, κορη Κασιωτη εφοπλιστη, με την οποια απεκτησε τεσσερα παιδια.

Το 1936 εγκαθισταται οικογενειακως στην Αθηνα, οπου θα παραμεινει μεχρι το 1940.

Πρακτικον Ιδρυσεως της Εταιριας Δωδεκανησιακων Μελετων

Στις 15 Απριλιου 1936 ιδρυει μαζι με επτα αλλους Δωδεκανησιους διανοουμενους την Εταιρια Δωδεκανησιακων Μελετων.

Το “Πρακτικον Ιδρυσεως Εταιριας Δωδεκανησιακων Μελετων” αναφερει:

“Εν Αθηναις σημερον την 15ην Απριλιου 1936 ημεραν Τεταρτην και ωραν 7 μ.μ. οι υπογεγραμμενοι Δωδεκανησιοι διανοουμενοι συνελθοντες εν τη οικια του Δρος Νικ. Μαυρη απεφασισαμεν την ιδρυσιν οργανωσεως υπο την επωνυμιαν ‘Εταιρια Δωδεκανησιακων Μελετων’ οι σκοποι και αι κατευθυνσεις της οποιας καθορισθησονται δια του καταστατικου της υπο την εγκρισιν απαντων των ιδρυτων.

(ακολουθουν τα ονοματα και οι υπογραφες των ιδρυτων)

Μιχ. Μιχαηλιδης Νουαρος

Δρ. Νικ. Γ. Μαυρης

Εμμανουηλ Πρωτοψαλτης

Βασσος Βαρικας

Ανδρεας Παπανδρεου

Αναστασιος Φραγκος

Γεωργιος Θ. Γεωργιαδης

Βασσος Χανιωτης”

Η φωτοτυπια του Πρακτικου περιλαμβανεται στον εκτο τομο του περιοδικου συγγραμματος “Δωδεκανησιακον Αρχειον“, 1976.

Ο ΝΓΜ αναφερει (σ.187): “… η ωραια εκεινη προσπαθεια δεν ειχεν αμεσον συνεχειαν. Ολη η προσοχη και η δραστηριοτης των συμπατριωτων μας τοτε, ητο εστραμμενη  κυριως και πρωτιστως προς τους απελευθερωτικους μας αγωνας. … μονο μετα την απελευθερωσιν  των νησιων μας και την ενσωματωσιν των επραγματοποιηθη η ΔΙΛΕ (Δωδεκανησιακη Ιστορικη και Λαογραφικη Εταιρια)”

(Σημειωση δικη μου: Η ΔΙΛΕ θα επανασυσταθει το 1948 και θα εκδωσει την “Δωδεκανησιακη Βιβλιογραφια” του ΝΓΜ. )

Ο ΝΓΜ δεν θα παραμεινει στην Αθηνα για πολυ. Μετα απο μια συντομη παραμονη στο Παρισι, και με την εναρξη του Β’ Παγκοσμιου Πολεμου, ο ΝΓΜ μεταβαινει στην Αμερικη.

Αμερικη

Αναπτυσσει δραστηριοτητα υπερασπισης των υπο κατοχην Δωδεκανησων, διδάσκει μαθήματα νεοελληνικής λογοτεχνίας σε Πανεπιστήμια των Η.Π.Α. (οπως το Κολουμπια της Νεας Υορκης) και εκδίδει το περιοδικό Βυζαντινά-Μεταβυζαντινά.

The Dodecanesians are not enemy aliens, 1942

Η πρωτη μεγαλη του επιτυχια στην Αμερικη ηταν η αρση του χαρακτηρισμου των Δωδεκανησιων ως “εχθρων” απο το Αμερικανικο Υπουργειο Εξωτερικων.

Απο το 1912 τα Δωδεκανησα ησαν υπο Ιταλικη κατοχη, σαν αποτελεσμα μιας συνθηκης αναμεσα στην Τουρκια και την Ιταλια.

Με δεδομενη την εμποελεμη κατασταση αναμεσα στις ΗΠΑ και την Ιταλια, ηταν φυσικο επακολουθο να θεωρουνται ολοι οι Δωδεκανησιοι “εχθροι”, λογω της Ιταλικης κατοχης, την οποιαν ομως αρχικα παρεβλεψαν οι Αμερικανοι. Ο ΝΓΜ υπεβαλε και παρουσιασε αναγορα σχετικη με το θεμα, και επεισε τους Αμερικανους δια το ορθον του αιτηματος του να παψουν να θεωρουνται οι Δωδεκανησιοι ως “εχθροι αλλοδαποι”.

Η αναφορα που υπεβαλε ο ΝΓΜ εξεδοθη το 1942 σε μπροσουρα με τον τιτλο: «THE DODECANESIANS ARE NOT ENEMY ALIENS»

(Οι Δωδεκανησιοι δεν ειναι εχθροι αλλοδαποι!)

Η επομενη μεγαλη μαχη που εδωσε ο ΝΓΜ αφορουσε ενα κορυφαιο Ιταλο αντιφασιστα, τον κομη Σφορτσα, και τις αποψεις του σχετικα με την επανενωση των Δωδεκανησων με την Ελλαδα.  Η έκδοση του γνωστού φυλλαδίου «Sforza contra Sforza » που κυκλοφόρησε κυρίως στις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες, ανάγκασε τον ίδιο τον Sforza να παραδεχθεί την ελληνικότητα των νήσων.

N. G. Mavris, Sforza vs. Sforza, 1943

O Ιταλός κόμης Sforza 1922 εγινε υπουργος Εξωτερικων της Ιταλιας το 1920, και αμεσως σχεδον απερριψε το συμφωνο Βελιζελου – Τιτονι (προκατοχου του) που προεβλεπε την παραδοση των Δωδεκανησων στην Ελλαδα.

Ο Σφορτσα ηταν αντιφασιστας και το 1926 εφυγε απο την Ιταλια, εχοντας παραιτηθει απο το κυβερνητικο του αξιωμα το 1922, με την ανοδο του Μουσολινι στην εξουσια. Απο το 1940 εζησε για λιγο στην Αγγλια και μετα στην Αμερικη, οπου παρεμεινε μεχρι το 1943, οποτε επεστρεψε στην Ιταλια μετα την καταρρευση του Μουσολινι.

Την περιοδο 1947-1951 διετελεσε και παλι υπουργος Εξωτερικων. Απεβιωσε το 1952.  

Ο ΝΓΜ ητανε πολυ θορυβημενος επειδη ο Σφορτσα στην Αμερικη δεν ειχε λαβει σαφη θεση για την επανενωση των Δωδεκανησων με την Ελλαδα. Το φυλλαδιο που εξεδωσε το 1943 ειχε σκοπο να ασκησει πιεση στον Σφορτσα για να λαβει μια θεση θετικη για την επανενωση, κατι που τελικα εγινε. Ο κόμης Sforza παραδέχθηκε δημόσια την ελληνικότητα των Δωδεκανήσων και στη Νέα Υόρκη συγκαλείται Πανδωδεκανησιακό Συνέδριο (1943), σε ψήφισμα του οποίου κηρύσσεται η Ένωση των Δωδεκανήσων με την Ελλάδα.

Μετά από την αποχώρηση των Ιταλών τα Δωδεκάνησα (1943) πέρασαν στη γερμανική κατοχή και το 1945 παραδόθηκαν προσωρινά σε βρετανική στρατιωτική κατοχή έως τις 31 Μαρτίου 1947, οπότε παραδόθηκαν στην ελληνική στρατιωτική διοίκηση.

Απο το φυλλαδιο αυτο θεωρω πολυ ενδιαφερον και το παραθετω, το ακολουθο αποσπασμα (η μεταφραση απο το αγγλικο πρωτοτυπο ειναι δικη μου):

‘Για περισσοτερους απο τεσσερις αιωνες υπο Οθωμανικη ηγεμονια, αυτα τα νησια (τα Δωδεκανησα) ησαν πληρως αυτονομα. Η μονη τους συνδεση με την Υψηλη Πυλη ηταν η πληρωμη ενος ετησιου φορου που αποτελουσε και την εμμεση παραδοχη της Οθωμανικης εξουσιας. Η κατοχη των νησιων απο τους Ιταλους το 1912 στη διαρκεια του Ιταλο-Τουρκικου πολεμου, χαρακτηρισθηκε απο τον τοτε υπουργο εξωτερικων της Ιταλιας κ. Τζιολιτι σαν “προσωρινη” και “οφειλομενη σε στρατιωτικους λογους”. ‘

Βυζαντινα Μεταβυζαντινα Volume I (1946) PART I

Στην Εισαγωγη του Πρωτου Μερους του Πρωτου Τομου στα “Βυζαντινα – Μεταβυζαντινα”, ο ΝΓΜ γραφει (η μεταφραση απο το αγγλικο πρωτοτυπο ειναι δικη μου):

“Αισθανομεθα οτι η δημιουργια των ‘Βυζαντινων – Μεταβυζαντινων’, μιας περιοδικης εκδοσης αφιερωμενης αποκλειστικα στις σπουδες με θεμα το Βυζαντιο και τη Συγχρονη Ελλαδα, τεκμηριωνεται πληρως απο την σοβαρη ερευνητικη δραστηριοτητα και το ενδιαφερον πολλων γενεων Αμερικανων ερευνητωνπου ασχολουνται με το Βυζαντιο και τη Συγχρονη Ελλαδα… Η δραστηριοτητα του διακεκριμενου Ρωσου ερευνητη καθηγητη Α.Α. Βασιλιεφ στο Ουϊσκονσιν απο το 1925 και Νταμπαρτον Οακς προσφατα, εδωσε μεγαλη ωθηση στις Βυζαντινες σπουδες στην Αμερικη, και τους εδωσε επισης ευρυτερο και πιο συστηματικο χαρακτηρα με την εμπνευση του. “

Ο ΝΓΜ στην Ροδο το 1948

Απελευθερωση  - Πολιτικός Γενικός Διοικητής Δωδεκανήσου

Τέλος στις αρχές του 1948, σύμφωνα με νόμο, τα Δωδεκάνησα αποτέλεσαν Γενική Διοίκηση με έδρα τη Ρόδο και πρώτο «Πολιτικό Γενικό Διοικητή Δωδεκανήσου» το Ν. Μαυρή.

Ο ΝΓΜ παραιτήθηκε στις αρχές του 1950, για να πάρει μέρος στις πρώτες βουλευτικές εκλογές της 5 ης Μαρτίου του 1950 με δικό του συνδυασμό, την «Ανεξάρτητον Πολιτικήν Ένωσιν Δωδεκανήσου» χωρίς να εκλεγεί.

Στις εκλογές της 9 ης Σεπτεμβρίου του 1951 εκλέχτηκε βουλευτής Δωδεκανήσου με τον «Ελληνικόν Συναγερμόν» του Αλέξ. Παπάγου.

Διετέλεσε ξανά Γενικός Διοικητής Δωδεκανήσου την περίοδο Δεκέμβριος 1952 – Απρίλιος 1954.

Μετά τη λήξη της θητείας του το 1954 εγκαταστάθηκε στην Αθήνα.

Για την περιοδο της διοικησης των Δωδεκανησων, ο φιλος του ΝΓΜ Κωστας Αγαπητιδης αναφερει σε ομιλια (1982) αφιερωμενη στον ΝΓΜ τις ακολουθες σημειωσεις του ΝΓΜ:

“Ο ψυχικος παραγων θα ειναι απο τα δυσκολωτερα πραγματα που θα με απασχολησουν. Η πολυχρονος, δηλαδη, σκλαβια, υπο την οποιαν εζησαν οι Δωδεκανησιοι, επεφερε τραυματα ψυχικα, δια την επιλυσιν των οποιων θα εμφυσηθει νεα πνοη. Ειμαι ακομα καταπληκτος απο τον στρατιωτικον χαιρετισμον μερικων κατοικων, και παιδιων ακομα. Προδιδει αυτο μιαν συνηθειαν κτηθεισαν απο την τρομοκρατικην βιαν και την πιεσιν, την ασκηθεισαν υπο των κατακτητων επι του λαου.” 

Η Μουσα της Βιβλιογραφιας

Μετα τα Δωδεκανησα και την Κασο, η μεγαλη αγαπη του ΝΓΜ ηταν αναμφισβητητα η Βιβλιογραφια.

Η αγαπη αυτη συνοδευοταν απο ταλεντο και ικανοτητα.

Η «Δωδεκανησιακή Βιβλιογραφία» αποτελει το πρωτο μεγαλο βιβλιογραφικο εργο του ΝΓΜ.

“Η ιδικη μας προσπαθεια απεβλεψεν εις τον καταρτισμον μιας συστηματικης και εξαντλητικης, ει δυνατον, βιβλιογραφιας ητις θα περιελαμβανε – αυτο θα ητο το ιδεωδες – ολα τα σχετικα με την Δωδεκανησον δημοσιευματα , εις οιανδηποτε γλωσσαν, εις οιανδηποτε εποχην και επι οιουδηποτε θεματος και αν εγραφησαν…Εαν ομως η επιθυμητη πληροτης μιας βιβλιογραφιας δεν εξαρταται παντοτε απο την ιδικην μας θελησιν και προσπαθειαν, η ακριβεια των δηοσιευομενων, αποτελει αντιθετως, ιδικην μας και μονον ιδικην μας υποχρεωσιν και ευθυνην. Δια τον λογον αυτον η περιγραφη των λημματων εγενετο, κατα κανονα, εξ αυτοψιας. Τα ολιγα δε εξ αυτων των οποιων κατεστη δυνατη η εξ αυτοψιας περιγραφη, διακρινονται των αλλων εκ του ατερισκου (*) οστις προηγειται του σχετικου λημματος ”  (σελιδα κε’ του πρωτου τομου)

Ο πρωτος τομος εκδοθηκε το 1965 στην Αθηνα. Ενας δευτερος τομος εκδοθηκε αργοτερα, ενώ μέχρι σήμερα παραμένει ανέκδοτος ο τρίτος τόμος. Οπως αναφερει ο συγγραφεας στην σελιδα κε’ του πρωτου τομου:

 ”Ολοκληρον το περισυλλεγεν υλικον αποτελουμενον απο δεκα, περιπου, χιλιαδας λημματα γραμμενα εις 18 γλωσσας εκτος της Ελληνικης, απεφασισθη, δια να ειναι πλεον ευχρηστον, να εκδοθει εις τρεις αυτοτελεις τομους.” 

Ο ΝΓΜ στον περιβολο της εκκλησιας της Φανερωμενης στη Ροδο

Το δευτερο μεγαλο βιβλιογραφικο εργο του ΝΓΜ ειναι η ιδρυση και λειτουργια της Βιβλιογραφικής Εταιρείας της Ελλάδος. Με το παθος και την επιμονη του η Βιβλιογραφικη Εταιρια της Ελλαδος εξεδωσε Την Ελληνικη Βιβλιογραφια για μερικα χρονια.

Στον Προλογο της Ελληνικης Βιβλιογραφιας 1976, που εκδοθηκε το 1977, ο ΝΓΜ γραφει:

“Εδω, θα θελαμε να μονο να τονισωμε και παλι, την αναγκη να τηρειται, ο ατυχως μη τηρουμενος νομος για την υποχρεωτικη καταθεση στην Εθνικη Βιβλιοθηκη ολων των εκτυπουμενων εντυπων στη χωρα μας…. Μια ειναι, εν τουτοις, η σωτηρια, η μοναδικη λυση για να εχουμε πληρη Γενικη Βιβλιογραφια στον τοπο μας: να προχωρησει η Πολιτεια στη δημοσιευση του νεου νομου ‘Depot Legal’  

Αυτος ο νομος ψηφιστηκε τελικα το 2003. Σύμφωνα με αυτον (Ν.3149/2003) το υλικό που κατατίθεται στην Εθνική Βιβλιοθήκη είναι κάθε αντικείμενο που δημιουργείται για να αποθηκεύσει ή να μεταφέρει, με οποιοδήποτε μέσο, πληροφορίες σε χειρόγραφη, έντυπη, γραφική, ψηφιακή, οπτική, ακουστική ή οποιαδήποτε άλλη δυνατή μορφή.

Στο τελος του Προλογου του 1976, ο ΝΓΜ αναφερεται και στην μητερα μου:

“Στην υπευθυνη της συνταξεως, φιλολογο κυρια Παναγιωτα Μοροπουλου, ξεχωριστες εκφραζουμε ευχαριστιες. Γιατι με δικη της πρωτοβουλια, ανελαβε να διευρυνει τις ερευνες και αναζητησεις που πιο πανω αναφεραμε, παρ’ ολους τους κοπους – σωματικους και πνευματικους – που μια τετοια προσπαθεια προυποθετει. Εργασθηκε επικεφαλης του συνεργειου μας και επετυχε τελικα μια πληροτητα που υπερβαινει καθε προηγουμενηαλλα και με ακριβεια παντα, και με ιδιαιτερη επιμελεια στη συνταξη και εμφανιση του τομου τουτου.”

(Ο προλογος του ΝΓΜ εχει ημερομηνια “Οκτωβριος 1977″. Τον Απριλιο 1977 πεθανε ο πατερας μου.)

Η τελευταια χρονια που επιμεληθηκε ο ΝΓΜ ηταν το 1977. Η εκδοση καθυστερησε δυο χρονια.

Ενα τεραστιο εργο βιβλιογραφιας του ΝΓΜ δεν εχει εκδοθει ακομη, και ισως δεν εκδοθει ποτε.

Ειναι η Ελληνικη Βιβλιογραφια 1864-1897.

(Σημειωση δικη μου: Ο ΝΓΜ αφησε την τελευταια του πνοη το 1978.)   

Ο Ερανιστης, Τευχος 47, Αθηνα 1970

Ενα αλλο δειγμα βιβλιογραφικης τεχνικης του ΝΓΜ παρουσιαζεται στο τευχος 47 του “Ερανιστη“, με τιτλο “Βιβλια ουδεποτε εκδοθεντα“, Αθηνα 1970.

Το ακολουθο αποσπασμα ειναι χαρακτηριστικο:

“Οπως εινε γνωστον, δεν ειναι σπανιαι αι περιπτωσεις των αναδρομικων, ιδιως, βιβλιογραφιωνεις τας οποιας εχουν παρεισφρυσει τιτλοι ‘βιβλιων’ τα οποια ομως εις την πραγματικοτητα ουδεποτε εξεδοθησαν.

Τα βιβλια αυτα δια τα οποια, καθ’οσον γνωριζω, δεν εχομεν ημεις ειδικον ορον, ονομαζουν οι γαλλοι Editions supposees:  , οι αγγλοσαξωνες Bibliographical ghosts και οι γερμανοι vermutete Ausgabe.  …

Ο πλεον συνηθης (λογος για την παρουσια ‘ανυπαρκτων’ βιβλιων’) οφειλεται εις την τυχον υπαρχουσαν διαφοραν χρονολογιας μεταξυ της σελιδος τιτλου (εσωφυλλου) και του εξωφυλλου. Η διαφορα αυτη μπορει να εινε ενος ετους ή και περισσοτερων ετων….

Εις την δημιουργιαν ανυπαρκτων εκδοσεων συμβαλλει επισης η υπαρξις εις ενα βιβλιον δυο τιτλων, ενος ελληνικου και ενος ξενογλώσσου….

Αναλογα προβληματα δημιουργουνται επισης οταν προκειται περι αχρονολογήτων βιβλιων.

Ούτως, επι παραδείγματι, εχομεν εις την Βιβλιογραφιαν των Γκίνη-Μέξα τα εξης δυο λημματα που αφορουν το ίδιον βιβλίον.

*5384. – Διαλογος μεταξυ Ιωαννου και Δημητριου. Μερος πρωτην (sic). Ο Σολωμος και οι υποψηφιοι του. Εις 8ον, σελ. 43. Ανευ ετους, αλλα πιθανως τω 1851. Φ.Μ. [ιχαλοπουλος]. 

*6886. – Διαλογος μεταξυ Ιωαννου και Δημητριου. Μερος πρωτην (sic). Ο Σολωμος και οι υποψηφιοι του. Εις 8ον, σελ. 43. Ανευ τοπου και ετους, αλλα πιθανωτατα εν Ζακυνθω τω 1856. ΛΟΒ.Κ. Ι/ΙΙ.  ”

Ιδιοχειρος αφιερωση

Οδος Νεοφυτου Βαμβα 3

Απο τις ζωηρωτερες αναμνησεις μου αφορουν τις επισκεψεις στο σπιτι του ΝΓΜ στο Κολωνακι, οδος Νεοφυτου Βαμβα 3, στη δεκαετια του 1960.

Φθαναμε με την μητερα μου στο σπιτι (και γραφειο) του ΝΓΜ γυρω στις 5 το απογευμα.

Ηταν ενα ευρυχωρο μεγαλο διαμερισμα στον δευτερο οροφο. Δεν υπηρχε γυμνος τοιχος, παρα μονον στην κουζινα και την τουαλετα.

Ολοι οι αλλοι τοιχοι ηταν καλυμμενοι απο βιβλιοθηκες που στεναζανε κατω απο τα βαρη των βιβλιων που κρατουσαν.

Το πρελουδιο της συναντησης ητανε μια συζητηση αναμεσα στον ΝΓΜ και την μητερα μου, συνηθως με θεμα το παθος του, τη Βιβλιογραφια, αλλα και τη Λαογραφια.

Συντομο πρελουδιο ομως , για να προλαβουμε το θεατρο: Ιψεν, Στριντμπεργκ, Ντυρενματ.

Δεν θυμαμαι καλα. Παντα απογευματινη παρασταση, που τελειωνε λιγο μετα τις 8.

Και μετα το θεατρο με τα ποδια πηγαιναμε στο Εστιατοριο ΚΟΡΦΟΥ, στην οδο Κριεζωτου , που δεν υπαρχει πια.

(Σημειωνω οτι το εστιατοριο εκλεισε περι το 1975. Το κτηριο κατεδαφιστηκε και εγινε παρκινγκ αυτοκινητων.)

Το τυπικο γευμα ειχε βραστα κολοκυθακια (στην εποχη τους), φετα σφυριδα, και κρεμ καραμελ για επιδορπιο.

Οι σερβιτοροι με τα κολλαριστα σακκακια και την μαυρη γραβατα εκινουντο ως σε χορογραφια. Παλαια σχολη, άλλα ηθη εκεινη την εποχη.

Το γευμα ηταν και το πιο ζωντανο για μενα κομματι, αφου ειχα την ευκαιρια να μιλησω με τον νονο, κι αυτος ειχε την καλη διαθεση να με ακουσει και να συζητησει μαζι μου.

Δεν τον ακουσα ποτε να μιλαει αρνητικα ή ασχημα για ανθρωπο. Ητανε εξαιρετικα ευγενης και εσωστρεφης ανθρωπος.

Μου εδινε την εντυπωσε οτι στο μυαλο του κλωθογυριζανε πολλες σκεψεις ολη την ωρα.

Μονο στο ΚΟΡΦΟΥ εδειχνε χαλαρος και γελαστος.

Ο ΝΓΜ χαιρετα την Παναγιωτα Μαυρογενους το 1953

Παρνηθα

Ο ΝΓΜ για το μεγαλυτερο διαστημα της ζωης του ητανε ενας ανθρωπος της μεγαλης πολης, του αστικου κεντρου.

Ο Κωστας Αγαπητιδης, στην Ομιλια που αφιερωσε στο ΝΓΜ το 1982 αναφερει χαρακτηριστικα:

“Οταν ηταν βουλευτης (1951-1952), μου ελεγε πως το ξενοδοχειο της ‘Μεγαλης Βρεταννιας’, οπου εμενε τοτε, ηταν ο,τι καλυτερο μπορουσε να υπαρχει γι’ αυτον ως διαμονη. Οποιαδηποτε στιγμη, βγαινοντας εξω, του ηταν πολυ ευκολο να παει στη Βουλη ή στην Πλατεια Συνταγματος, στη Βιβλιοθηκη της Βουληςγια τα παλια ή το Βιβλιοπωλειο Ελευθερουδακη για συγχρονα βιβλια. Μεσα σ’ αυτη την περιορισμενη εκταση μπορουσε να ζησει, να εντρυφησει, να δρασει, να συγγραψει, να ψυχαγωγηθει.”  

Και δεν ειναι βεβαια τυχαιο οτι οταν εγκατασταθηκε στην Αθηνα για τα καλα επελεξε το Κολωνακι για τοπο διαμονης του.

Προς το τελος της ζωης του ομως ο ανθρωπος του αστικου κεντρου παρουσιαζει μια “στροφη”.

Δεν γνωριζω τα αιτια, και δεν εχουν ισως καμια σημασια.

Ισως η επιδεινωση της υγειας του του επεβαλε τον αγερα της εξοχης.

Το γεγονος ειναι οτι ο ΝΓΜ αρχισε να επισκεπτεται συχνα την Παρνηθα, οπου λειτουργουσαν τα ξενοδοχεια “Ξενια” και “Μον Παρνες”.

Εμενε εκει αρκετες εβδομαδες τους θερινους μηνες.

Εκει ητανε και η τελευταια φορα που τον ειδα, το καλοκαιρι του 1978.

Τον επισκεφθηκα με την μητερα μου στην Παρνηθα, λιγο πριν αναχωρησω για την Αμερικη οπου θα σπουδαζα.

Ητανε εμφανως καταβεβλημενος και αδυνατος. Μιλησαμε ελαχιστα.

Με φιλησε και μου ευχηθηκε επιτυχια.

Ο ΝΓΜ απεβιωσε στις 3 Νοεμβριου του 1978.

Ο ΝΓΜ το 1959

Επιλογος

Η Δωδεκανησιακη Βιβλιογραφια ειναι αφιερωμενη απο τον ΝΓΜ ως εξης:

” Στα Παιδια μου. Για να γνωρισουν καλυτερα την πατριδα τους και να την αγαπησουν ακομη περισσοτερο.”

Green beans (haricot vert) “yahni” is one of the most delicious dishes during the Greek Summer.

Today I cook the deconstructed dish.

The desire for deconstruction was triggered in the open market where I bought the beans. They were so fresh and fragrant and the same time so delicate that I felt the need to maintain the “essence” of the green bean while at the same time enjoying the tomatoes, the onions and the garlic that are the key ingredients of the “yahni” dish.

In what follows I present the preparation of the three key ingredients of the dish as they were prepared and cooked.

Tomatoes in the sauce pan

The first key ingredient in a good “yahni” is the tomato sauce. A good tomato sauce is made from fresh tomatoes. I use small tomatoes, of the variety that they use for the canned ones (thicker skin, firm flesh).

The first stage in the making of the sauce is to cut them in half, add salt and pepper, a bit of dry oregano and olive oil, and put them in a sauce pan in medium heat.

Green beans (haricot vert)

The focus of the dish is the green bean. To extract maximum natural flavor I sliced them very thin.

Green beans (haricot vert) thinly sliced

To maintain the natural flavor, I only blanched them for two minutes.

Sliced green bean detail – before blanching

Lets return to the tomato sauce.

Tomato sauce – stage 2

When the tomatoes get soft, I add chopped basil and then put them through the sieve to remove the skins.

Tomato sauce – removing the skins

What remains will develop intense flavor after it is reduced to a thick juicy sauce.  What you need for that is to add some olive oil.

Tomato sauce final stage: reduction

As the sauce is being reduced, I blanch the green beans. It is important for me not only to maintain the flavor but also the texture. I do not want them to be mushy, but crunchy.

Blanched green beans – detail

I let the beans relax and add garlic cloves and fresh onion stems in a pan with olive oil in low heat.

Garlic and fresh onions in olive oil

After half an hour I have delicious soft garli cloves, and onions. that maintain their original shape and have maximum flavor.

Fresh onions and garlic

I keep the olive oil infused with the garlic and onion flavor on the side and start building a stack..

Bottom layer is the onions and the galic, then the green beans, and on top the sauce.

Deconstructed green beans yahni – served

Enkoy with a robust white like asyrtico or a fine medium bodied red like a pimot noir. 

Bon appetit!

I saw Edgar Degas’ “The Tub” and Jeff Koons’ “Woman in a Tub”at the Art Institute of Chicago back in April and was inspired to write about paintings and sculptures depicting a woman having a bath.

This is a personal view (most views are). I selected the paintings and sculptures I like and/or find interesting. 

One of the most important feature of the paintings and sculptures is – of course – the way the artist has depicted the female body.

Another is the degree of privacy and intimacy of the instance depicted.

Ingres, The bather of Valpincon, 1808, Louvre, Paris

I would like to start the journey with Ingres. The painting “The Bather of Valpincon” (my thanks for the photo to “The Art Appreciation Blog“) that hangs today in the Louvre in Paris marks in my book the beginning of a new era in the depiction of the nude female. The setting is domestic, the subject is alone. And the body is not perfect. The depicted woman is a real woman. There is no story in the picture. It is a “boring” mundane scene in the domestic life of a woman.

Although there is not tub in Ingres’ picture, in my view he creates the context for the topic of my overview.

Edouard Manet (1832-1883)
Woman in a tub
1878 Paris, Musée d’Orsay
Pastel on canvas

The first painting strictly within the context of this article is Manet’s “Woman in a Tub”. Manet painted his picture in 1873.

My adoration of Manet started with “Olympia” (1863) and “The Luncheon on the Grass” (1862-1863), both exhibited in Paris’ Musee d’ Orsay.

I quote from Musee d’ Orsay’s web site:

“This pastel is one of the artist’s most beautiful portrayals of a woman bathing. All the characteristics of Manet’s style are there: a special blend of spontaneity, freshness combined with precise composition, and a taste for light, curving lines against a background of horizontals. The background is in fact divided up into subtly coloured bands, formed by the mirror, the dressing table and the floral cretonne cloth.

A large metal tub, always used by Degas in these scenes, occupies the lower part of the pastel. But whereas Degas’ models usually appear to be unaware of the viewer, here the model is unconcerned at being observed by the painter. She knows that her nudity, even though imperfect, will attract a friendly or even tender glance.

After Manet’s death, Degas produced his stunning series of women bathing, where he used plunging perspectives and more sophisticated poses. But it was Degas who, after 1877, first started to produce less innocent scenes of women washing, painted in brothels. It is difficult to determine from that point, which of the two artists had the greater influence on the other. Degas’ sarcasm is absent from Manet’s work; it is Bonnard’s gentle scenes of women at their toilette that are the real precursors of this Woman in a Tub.”

The palette of the picture is light. Only the tub turns to heavy grey.

Edouard Manet
La blonde aux seins nus
vers 1878
huile sur toile,
musée d’Orsay, Paris, France

Contrast the bathing woman to the bare breasted blonde of the same year. The air of “neutral” intimacy of the bathing woman is gone, and replaced by the naked aggression of the breasts. Totally different.

Edgar Degas, Woman in a Tub, Femme au tub, 1883, Pastel on paper, Tate Gallery, London

I continue with another master, Edgar Degas.

Degas’ picture “Woman standing in her bathtub”, painted in 1883, adorns the exhibition halls of Tate Gallery in London.

It was in London’s National Gallery in 1996 that I saw the exhibition “Degas beyond impressionism”. This exhibition marked the beginning of my admiration for Degas’ work.

The woman seems to be drying herself, and is totally absorbed in what she is doing.

The picture is full of contrasting lights and shadows, of bright and dark colors.

Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub, 1885
Edgar Degas 
Charcoal and pastel on paper, Metropolitan Museum, New York

Another nude in a tub by Degas is the picture he painted in 1885, which you can see today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

When Degas exhibited his “suite of nudes,” which included this pastel, at the eighth—and final—Impressionist exhibition, in 1886, critics viciously attacked the ungainly poses of his bathers. After the exhibition, Degas gave the picture to Mary Cassatt in exchange for her Girl Arranging Her Hair (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.).

Edgar Degas
The Tub, modeled 1889 (cast 1919/21)

And now the tub I saw at the Art Institute of Chicago.

I quote the Art Institute of Chicago’s text:
“This charming work, cast in bronze after Degas’s death, is a particularly appealing, even playful, variation on that subject. In a round basin partially filled with water, a young woman relaxes and absently plays with the toes of her left foot…The Tub is innovative in another, more subtle way. The female nude is of course a central subject in the history of Western art, associated with many conventions and traditions. However, unlike so many of his predecessors and more conservative contemporaries, Degas did not depict his adolescent bather in the guise of a nymph or goddess, nor did he imbue her features and gestures with eroticism. Instead, she is self-absorbed, modest, and engaged in a mundane activity.”

Edgar Degas, The Tub, c.1896-1901, Pastel on wowe paper, Glasgow Museums

Pablo Picasso, The Blue Room, 1901

Pierre Bonnard, Woman in a tub, 1912

The Bath – Baignoire (Le Bain) 1925
Oil paint on canvas, Tate Gallery, London

“Like Degas, Bonnard painted a lot of nudes in the bath. Sometimes he even photographed them.  So the bathtub appears as a kind of original place, Plato’s chora in which forms materialize, or space, the matrix of Derrida.”

“This is one of a series of paintings that Bonnard made of his wife Marthe in the bath. Though she was in her mid-fifties, the artist depicts her as a young woman. Marthe spent many hours in the bathroom: she may have had tuberculosis, for which water therapy was a popular treatment, or she may have had an obsessive neurosis. The bath, cut off at both ends, and the structure of the wall create a rigorously geometric composition. The effect is strangely lifeless, and almost tomb-like; as if the painting were a silent expression of sorrow for Marthe’s plight.”

Matisse, Large reclining nude (The Pink Nude)

Pierre Bonnard
La Grande Baignoire (Nu), 1937–1939
The Large Bathtub (Nude)
Oil on canvas, 94 × 144 cm
Private collection

Pierre Bonnard: La Grande Baignoire (Nu), 1937–1939
The Large Bathtub (Nude)

There is a formula, which fits painting perfectly,” wrote Bonnard, “many little lies to create a great truth.”

Nude in the Bath and Small Dog. 1941-46.
Oil on canvas. 48 x 59 1/2″ (121.9 x 151.1 cm). Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Bonnard 1941-1946: Nude in the Bath and Small Dog (with thanks to Sheila Thornton)

The efflorescent explosion of colors in “Nude in the Bath and Small Dog” (1941-46) almost bars us from making any sense of the painting were it not for a few key recognizable objects–notably the dog and the bathtub, within which the details of the immersed figure of Marthe slowly appears. Bonnard places the figure frankly in the center of this fantastic scene. We witness the inanimate becoming animate as the bathtub mutates to adhere to Marthe’s form: bulging to accommodate the bend of her right knee and expanding with the curve of her head. The walls seem to gently breathe like a living organism, warping in dazzling, undulating waves along with the ripples of the tub water.

Ostensibly the scene is serenity itself, yet Bonnard allows us no rest in front of it. Not only does the bathroom sway in our vision, the whole of it will not come into focus at once from any one position. We must move from side to side and back and forth. By thus “performing” the painting we are made all the more conscious of our movement in contrast to the stillness of Marthe’s body. Marthe died in 1942, at age 72, before Bonnard had finished the painting.
Nude in Bathtub, the last of Bonnard’s treatments of this subject, is one of the great nudes of the twentieth century. The audacity of color that characterizes the artist’s mature work is evident in this painting’s dazzling mosaic of oranges, yellows, pinks, blues, violets, and greens. The originality of Bonnard’s chromatic daring is nearly equaled in this painting by a pictorial construct in which perspective and volume are denied and forms are piled up to hover over the flat plane of the canvas.

Bonnard transformed this domestic environment, with its comfortably curled-up family dachshund, into an exotic setting in which a young woman floats in a pearly tub, her flesh reflecting the opalescent colors that surround her. Marthe appears as the youthful woman of Bonnard’s memories. The result is a sensual, dreamlike, and private evocation.

Jeff Koons: Woman in Tub, Porcelain, 1988, Art Institute of Chicago

Landing from Bonnard to Koons is a shock.

It is like landing on another planet.

In the website of the Art Institute of Chicago, we read:

“Woman in Tub, based on a postcard, depicts a female nude acting out a crude sexual joke in the bathtub. Jeff Koons explained: “There’s a snorkel and somebody is doing something to her under the water because she’s grabbing her breasts for protection. But the viewer also wants to victimize her.” The cartoonlike rendering of the form belies the exquisite hard-paste porcelain finish, typical of 18th-century Rococo figurines. Part of his Banality series, which is characterized by oddly eroticized, comic, and kitsch images, this work demonstrates Duchampian and Pop Art strategies of appropriation and, combining imagery from multiple sources, makes the primary subject taste itself.” (1)

Jeff Koons: Woman in Tub, Porcelain, 1988, Art Institute of Chicago

An article in Art Tattler International informs us: Koons has a strong connection to Chicago where he came in the 1970s to study at the School of the Art Institute under artists Ed Paschke and Jim Nutt and briefly worked at the MCA as a preparator. For Koons, this was a critical time in his development — what he calls a period of transcendence. In practical terms, working for and befriending the artist Ed Paschke taught him that he could be a professional artist. Koons began to see his ideas in dialogue with Dada, Surrealism, and the Chicago Imagists, all genres that communicate with personal icons: from Salvador Dali’s mustache to Paschke’s tattoo parlors. Through Paschke and others, he looked to the external world to find his personal iconography, which he used to explore his subjectivity, transcend his limits, and fulfill his potential as an artist. 

It is time to recap.

What a journey!

Edouard Manet

Manet’s picture is effecting a dialogue between the woman/model and the observer/painter.

There is no idealization of the female body.

Edgar Degas

Degas is painting with passion, but the woman looks like an object enclosed in a solitary space.

We can see her, but she cannot. She is alone.

No idealization of the female body here.

Pierre Bonnard

Bonnard moves us to a different world.

The interplay between the flesh and th water, the function of the tub as the defining space, the luminosity of the tiles, they all contribute to create a world of ever changing illusion.

Jeff Koons

Koons is ending the journey as a hurricane, There is violence, panic, and sensuality. And a very peculiar sense of humour.

Relevant posts: 

Painting the human body, October 2011

Three female nudes, October 2010

Sylvia Plath in Yorkshire, 1957

It was sometime in the early 1980′s.

I was in my late 20s and doing postgraduate work in the United States of America.

As luck has it, I was cohabitating with a woman. I do not want to comment on the merits of cohabitation before marriage here. Suffices to say that it was one of the wisest things I have ever done. And I will explain why later.

My good cousin “J” one day introduced me to the genius of Dan Hicks.

“I scare myself” became an obsession for me.

Dan Hicks

Before I continue, I must warn the reader (if there is any) of this that the text and the images and the songs and everything about it may appear to be totally incoherent and structureless.

This is one of the conditions of life that cannot be changed. So I take it for granted, as a given inevitability and continue. (You have been warned!)

But who is Dan Hicks?

In order to answer this question in a respectable way I will borrow from Wikipedia.

Hicks at the Santa Fe Brewing Co. June 28, 2009

“Daniel Ivan Hicks (born December 9, 1941, in Little Rock, Arkansas), is an American singer-songwriter.

Hicks’ father, Ivan L. Hicks (married to the former Evelyn Kehl), was a career military man. At age five, an only child, Hicks moved with his family to California, eventually settling north of San Francisco in Santa Rosa, where he was a drummer in grade school and played the snare drum in his school marching band.

At 14, he was performing with area dance bands. While in high school, he had a rotating spot on Time Out for Teens, a daily 15-minute local radio program, and he went on to study broadcasting at San Francisco State College during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Taking up the guitar in 1959, he became part of the San Francisco folk music scene, performing at local coffeehouses.”

The Charlatans in 1966 or1967. Dan Hicks is the first from the right.

And now I switch to another source, “Triviana Magazine”.

‘After earning his bit of fame and fortune in his early 20s, as a folkie in Bay Area  coffee houses, singing and finger-picking in 1963, he joined the Charlatans as a drummer in 1965 — the Charlatans being the blues-rock band that a lot of people are now calling the beginning of what became the San Francisco rock scene.

But Hicks wasn’t content to sit behind the traps, so started his own band, doing an acoustic swing-folk kind of thing with just him on guitar, a bass player  and two female singers. That eventually became Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, and from 1968 through about 1973,  they were, indeed, hot.

Dan Hicks has said about the song: “I was in love when I wrote this song…either that, or I’d just eaten a huge hash brownie.”‘

Dan Hicks

As I have already mentioned, I gor to know Dan Hicks because of the song “I scare myself”.

‘I Scare Myself’ and ‘It’s Not My Time to Go’… I think they’re two of the best songs ever written” – Elvis Costello

If Elvis Costello says so, we better listen!

The thing is though, I loved the song long before I Read what Elvis Costello said about it.

With hindsight, I can say that I loved the song because I was scared when I heard it.

I did not know what the hell I was going to do with the cohabitant.

I was receiving mixed signals and was perplexed.

Was she true love, or was she just a passer by?

She already had a failed marriage in her bag, I was a marriage free person at the time.

Life always twists things and gives the answers to the unsuspecting humans.

This is exactly what happened with my situation.

One day my cohabitant fell out of our love nest, then she came back in tears asking for re-admission.

But is there a jailed person who sees an open door in the jail complex and shies away from it?

I beg to say there is not!

And so my cohabitation ended in glory, but my love of the song remains to date.

And I continue ot be scared. Mostly for other reasons now.

The song was released with the album “Striking it Rich” (1972).

I scare myself

I scare myself
just thinking about you
I scare myself
when I’m without you
I scare myself
the moments that you’re gone
I scare myself
when I let my thoughts run

and when they’re runnin’
I keep thinking of you
and when they’re runnin’
what can I do?

I scare myself
and I don’t mean lightly
I scare myself
it can get frightenin’
I scare myself
to think what I could do
I scare myself
it’s some kinda voodoo

and with that voodoo
I keep thinking of you
and with that voodoo
what can I do?

but it’s oh so, so, so different
when we’re together
and I’m oh so so much calmer, I feel better
for the stars have crossed our paths forever
and the sooner that you realize it, the better

then I’ll be with you
and I won’t scare myself
and I’ll know what to do
and I won’t scare myself
and then I’ll think of you
and I won’t scare myself
and then my thoughts’ll run
and I won’t scare myself

then I’ll be with you
and I won’t scare myself
and I’ll know what to do
and I won’t scare myself
and I’ll think of you
and I won’t scare myself
and my thoughts will run
and I won’t scare myself…

Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks live at the High Noon Saloon in Madison, WI, Sunday, December 9th, 2007, Dan’s Birthday!

Original Recordings

Pendle Witches: Mist II Paula Rego 1996

Dan Hicks is a wise man.

He knows that love can hurt.

And so he sings that he does not want love, if love ….

This is a treatise on gastrolinguistics. In case you wonder what gastrolinguistics is, do not worry, you are not the only one.

Instead of giving an answer to the difficult question, I cope out and invite you to read what Dan Hicks says.

I don’t want love

“Hey, that’s pretty cool

Why don’tcha turn that up?”

Some folks say when you fall in love

You lose your appetite
If love makes you feel that way

Listen to what I say, dear

If love makes you give up steak and potatoes

(That’s what you eat?)

Rice, corn, chitlins, and tomatoes

If love makes you give up all those things

I don’t want love

If love makes you give up ham and greens

Chicken pot pie and lima beans

If love makes you give up all them things

(Don’t want it)

(Don’t want it)

I don’t want love

Ooo…

Well, I am here to say to you that

I love my bread and my meat

Take a look at me and it’s plain to see

That I’m a man

That loves to eat

So, if love makes you give up steak and tomatoes

Eggs over easy and hashbrown potatoes

If love makes you give up stuff like that

(Oh no)

Heh, I don’t want love

No, no, no, no, no, no, no

If love makes you give up corn-dogs and mustard

Cracker Jacks, tootie fruity custard

If love makes you give up onion rings

I don’t want love

(Don’t want it)

If love makes you give up pizza night

Garlic mashed potatoes, then it’s outta sight

If love makes you give up all those things

No no, not me

Well, my baby’s awful skinny

And she don’t like meat

And she can’t stand breakfast in bed

And as for me, well, where’s my seat?

‘Cause it’s time that I was fed

So if love makes you give up saute and pate

And foie gras

And stuff you have to flambé

If love makes you give up buffalo wings

I don’t want love

No, no

Not me

No sir

No siree

I, I, I, I, I don’t want love

Pass the sausage!

“I don’t want Love”

After this wonderful declaration lets watch an original 1970′s video for old times’ sake.

Dan Hicks and his hot licks in 1972

In closing, two more songs, one by Dan Hicks and another by Tom Waits.

Both wonderful.

Thank you Dan!

…and please,

“Pass the sausage!”

Dan Hicks & His Sidekicks – Canned Music

The Piano has been drinking – a Tom Waits Song

Sources

1. Triviana Magazine “Gettin’ in His Licks!”

2. Wikipedia

3. Al Gravitar Rodando

“I never interpreted my paintings or sought to understand what they might mean. Anyway, must they necessarily mean something?” Balthus (2)

Balthus and his Japanese wife Setsuko

Back in 2009 I wrote an article on Balthus, one of my favorite painters of the 20th century, where I presented some of his paintings. I did not attempt (futility prevented me) to analyze them, I simply presented them, some of them with one sentence comments or questions.

Today I revisit Balthus after having seen three of his works at the Art Institute of Chicago. This time I will succumb to futility and write some purely subjective sentences, some borrowed, some mine.

Paraphrasing Gadamer’s central thesis of hermeunetics, objectivity is not a suitable ideal for understanding art, because there exists no correct or wrong interpretation of art.

One of Balthus’ palettes, Metropolitan Museum of New York

Born in Paris in 1908, Balthus spent the bulk of his life secluded from the public, produced some 350 paintings and 1,600 drawings and died in February 2001, 10 days before his 93rd birthday.Balthus came from an intellectually privileged environment. His father was a Polish art historian, painter and critic whose close friends included Andre Gide and Pierre Bonnard. Two years after his parents separated in 1917, his mother became the lover of poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Under Rilke’s tutelage, the young Balthus began to flourish as an artist. In 1921, when he was only 12, Balthus published a book of 40 drawings with a preface by Rilke. (1)

Cartier Bresson: Balthus and his cat

It was Rilke who, “showed me nocturnal paths, giving me a taste for slipping through narrow passages to reach The Open.” This concept of The Open, an ethereal crossing to a place of mystery, became the sought after truth of his art. Balthus referred frequently to his Catholicism, his prayerful approach. I suspect he could have used other rites or religions to arrive at The Opening. His faith, while sincere, became a part of his craft, a device as much as a dedication. (2)

In 1949, Albert Camus provided an introductory essay for an exhibition of paintings by his friend … Balthus. “We do not know how to see reality,” wrote Camus of Balthus’s strange and sometimes sexually suggestive paintings of adolescent girls, “and all the disturbing things our apartments, our loved ones and our streets conceal.” (4)

Balthus saw himself as a laborer humbly approaching his craft. He spent years on each canvas, usually painting on three at once so that a dialogue would evolve between them. “I often insist on the necessity of prayer. To paint as one prays…to accede to silence and what is invisible in the world. I am not sure of being followed or understood…given that a majority of morons make so-called contemporary art, artists who know nothing about painting. But that doesn’t matter. Painting has always taken care of itself. In order to reach it even slightly, I’d say it must be ritually seized. To snatch what it can offer as a form of grace.” (2)

Balthus with Frederique Tison by the window at the Chateau de Chassy, 1956

Solitaire (1943)

The most known painting that I saw at the Art Institute of Chicago is “Solitaire”.

In the Art Institute’s website I read: “Balthus is best known for his mysterious, emotionally charged scenes of adolescents, which often place the viewer in the position of a voyeur. Solitaire was painted in Switzerland, where the artist returned during World War II. It reveals the influence of such Old Masters as Piero della Francesca and Paolo Uccello in its monumentality as well as its awkwardness, both of which Balthus used to underscore the irrational and disconcerting nature of unconscious human behavior.”

Balthus, Solitaire, 1943, Oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago

In the next sentences I will try to deconstruct the painting with a view to revealing their underlying complexities and hidden contradictions.. Note: This is not an exercise in futility (I hope).

“Deconstruction, in other words, guards against the belief — a belief that has led to much violence — that the world is simple and can be known with certainty. It confronts us with the limits of what it is possible for human thought to accomplish.” (5)

Some of the key components of this painting are:  a young woman, cards (a game of “solitaire”), a chair, an armchair, a (jewel?) box (open),  a table, a candle, a window covered by a striped wallpaper, a folded curtain, a carpet.

Young women are consistently a subject in Balthus’ paintings. Points of interest: the tension of the muscles of the left leg as it extends backward in order to provide support to the leaning forward body. The hands. The horizontal face.

The light red – thick orange jacket. Compare the jacket to that of the “Sleeping girl”. By the way, the identity of the woman posing in the “Dormeuse” is not known, but she looks like the woman playing “solitaire”. The year is the same, 1943.

Balthus, Sleeping Girl, 1943, Tate Gallery, London

Solitaire: The aim of the game is to arrange the set of cards in order from ascending to descending, and sorted by suite. This is a game of luck. The probability of winning is low, which is good as the purpose of the game is to increase patience, a virtue that adds to one’s personality. (Wikipedia). I would like to suggest that Blathus is using the game metaphorically. He is one of the players of another game, one he plays with the spectator of the painting.

Balthus, Patience, 1954-1955

Armchair: a device of loose solitary confinement. Very often Balthus includes an armchair in his paintings (see “Girl and Cat”).

(Jewel) Box: In “solitaire” we see an open box on the armchair.  I cannot resist the temptation to recall Freud’s Dora: “Dora’s father wakes her up because the house is on fire. Dora gets dressed quickly to leave the house, but her mother wants to look for her jewel-case before going. Dora’s father exclaims that he will not let himself and his two children die to save his wife’s jewel case.”

Striped wallpaper: this appears to be a device of space manipulation.

Folded curtain: ITs curve complements the curved body of the player. It also covers something.

Carpet: Its beautiful patterns and colours introduce asymmetry in the picture. Something can always function in an unsettling way.

Balthus, Study for Solitaire, 1943

Japanese photographer Hisaji Hara has created a series of photographs inspired by Balthus’ paintings. (I thank the “arte facto” blog for the unveiling of Hara’s art).

Hisaji Hara, Solitaire

Artist Michelle Arnold Paine has published in her website a sketch of solitaire. She writes:

“I was particularly interested in Balthus’ close attention to the negative shapes – the spaces between the arms, between the torso and the table, etc. These are shapes of air — where there is no object, but just as important as the “positive” shapes (the objects in the painting).”

Michelle Arnold Paine’s sketch of Balthus’ Solitaire

Diversion: Game of Cards (1950)

I copy from the highly informative text written by Paloma Alarcó and presented in the Thyssen Museum’s webpage (7):

“The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Card Game is a canvas in large format painted between 1948 and 1950, when Balthus resumed painting with renewed energy after the war. It shows two youngsters, a boy and a girl, playing cards at a table on which a candlestick stands, inside a simple, stark room. The austerity, monumentality, geometry and colouring of the painting clearly denote Balthus’s admiration for the work of Piero della Francesca. In the scene the light that enters from the right-hand side of the room coldly illuminates various objects and adds to the mystery of the picture.

Balthus, Study for The Game of Cards, 1947

In Balthus’s paintings girls are queens and are therefore always portrayed as the winners. Boys normally play a more secondary role in the scene as impassive companions or rivals in games which they invariably lose. Although in the present painting the boy is prepared to cheat in order to win, the girl’s veiled smile shows that once again the norms governing Balthus’s world will prevail and she will be the winner in the end. The boy’s disjointed pose, which combines a frontal and profile view simultaneously, had already been used by Balthus in the illustrations forWuthering Heights. The obscure childhood world of the main characters in Emily Brontë’s work, on which the artist made a large series of drawings in 1933 that were published in 1935 in Minotaure, the Surrealists’ magazine, is the origin of much of Balthus’s mature work.”

Balthus, Game of Cards, 1948-1950, Thyssen Bornemisza Museum

Diversion: The Cardplayers (1973)

This work was painted in Rome when Balthus, born as Count Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, was director of the Académie de France in the Villa Medici. It is said that Balthus started the work after visiting a Kabuki performance in Japan. This form of theatre features re-enactments of historical events and highlights moral conflicts in the love between man and woman. Because women were forbidden from taking part in these performances, the female roles were played by male actors. This perhaps explains the androgynous appearance of the figure on the right.

Balthus, The Cardgame, 1973, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands

Untitled (1972)

This drawing (Graphite and charcoal on tan elephant paper) is an interlude between solitaire and the girl and cat.

Balthus, Untitled, 1972, Art Institute of Chicago

Girl and Cat (1937)

Sabine Rewald writes in her article “Balthus’s Thereses”:

“The painter’s finest portrayals of adolescents are his series of paintings from 1936 to 1939 for which young Therese Blanchard served as model. Therese and her brother Hubert were neighbors of Balthus at the Cour de Rohan, near the place de l’Odeon in Paris… Therese Blanchard also posed for Girl with a Cat of 1937 and its later, more masterly version Therese Dreaming of 1938 in the Gelman Collection. With her kneesock falling down and her sleeves pushed up, Therese in Girl with a Cat looks as if she has been called away from play. Her pale skin and turquoise, white, and red garments stand out against the harsh background of the painter’s studio, in which the fat tiger cat blends perceptibly. Balthus has imbued her quite innocent exhibitionism with suggestiveness. The erotic mood is heightened by the strict discipline of the composition.”

Balthus, Girl and Cat, 1937, Art Institute of Chicago – detail

Notice the asymmetry of the pulled up slieves.

Balthus, Girl and Cat, Art Institute of Chicago – detail

Notice the aymmetry of the socks, one rolled down, the other rolled up.

Balthus, Girl and Cat, 1937, Art Institute of Chicago – detail

The mysterious cat.

Balthus, Girl and Cat, 1937, Art Institute of Chicago

Diversion: Therese dreaming (1938)

With closed eyes, Balthus’s pubescent model is lost in thought. Thérèse Blanchard, who was about twelve or thirteen at the time this picture was made, and her brother Hubert were neighbors of Balthus in Paris. She appears alone, with her cat, or with her brother in a series of eleven paintings done between 1936 and 1939.

Balthus, Therese Dreaming, 1938, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA

Diversion: Therese (1938)

Balthus, Therese, 1938, Metropolitan Museum of Arts, New York, USA

No matter how many times I look at these pictures, I always fell that it is the first time. There is surprise, there is mystery, the unknown is lurking in the face of the subject(s), behing the curtains, under the chairs, in the eues of the cats.

Frederique Tison at the Chateau de Chassy, 1956

In the end, Balthus remained secretive, held true to his word: To know him, know his art. He would explain neither. And that ambiguity is probably best. Impossible anyway to explain the source of his ripening nudes, peculiar portraits and resplendent landscapes. “To go toward The Open,” he said, “to approach and sometimes attain it by snatching deferred moments, and then return to passing time.” (2)

“I detest the word ‘artist’ and find the word ‘creation’–so often used by those who call themselves artists–pretentious. As for me, I would simply call myself a craftsman. The word artist is synonymous with individualism and the assertion of one’s personality, two predominant notions in today’s society. Of course, people often say, ‘One must be oneself.’ But what is ‘oneself’? Who really knows?” Balthus: In His Own Words (6) 

Balthus in his studio at the Chateau de Chassy, 1956

Sources

1. “Vanished Splendors: A Memoir” By Balthus, Dan Tranberg

2. BALTHUS: ALCHEMIST OF VANISHING SPLENDOR, A non-review by J. STEFAN-COLE

3. Balthus vs. Hisaji Hara,  arte_facto [hereges perversões]

4. Hisaji Hara – review,  Michael Hoppen Contemporary London, Sean O’Hagan, The Observer

5. Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction, Mitchell Stephens, The New York Times Magazine, 1994

6. Balthus was the Bomb, cara walz studio notes

7. The Card Game, Thyssen – Bornemisza collection

Rubble after the explosion in Osteria Camugnone

The “Non esiste piu – No longer in existence” series

A year ago, in the early hours of 14th August 2012 a huge explosion obliterated a building in the area of Vergato, near Bologna.

This building housed “Osteria di Camugnone”.

This article is the first in a series of objects that no longer exist.

Today’s object is an “osteria” near Bologna, in Italy.

An “osteria” is an aggregate or assemblage object, and as such it is made of parts.

Aggregate objects are irreducible to their parts.

The existence of all of its parts is a necessary condition for the existence of the aggregate object.

Therefore, the destruction of one of the aggregate object’s part results in its non existence.

Osteria di Camugnone

Local Press clipping (translated from Italian)

14 August 2012. At 0039 hours as a result of an explosion due to a gas leak in Pioppe of Salvaro, around one o’clock, destroyed the old restaurant Camugnone.

The building, which is at the outskirts of Porrettana Pioppe of Salvaro, home to a historic dining hotspot, has been completely razed to the ground. The tremendous roar woke the inhabitants of the houses  of the nearby village of Pioppe and surrounding townships. Debris from the explosion has blocked both the state road and the railroad tracks Porrettana that are within a few meters of the building.

Gas that leaked from the mains at the inn, has filled one or more rooms. Then something has triggered the explosion which was of such a violence that not one stone was left upon another.

Fortunately there were no people inside the building. The osteria was currently undergoing an renovation, pending the resumption of activities by new proprietors.

Osteria di Camugnone

The Osteria

Quite a busy place, most of the clients were local.

Service was fast and polite.

The prices on the very low side.

Value for money extremely high.

I had a mixed salad, garganelli, and pasticcio.

Garganelli

Garganelli

I visited the OSteria back in the Summer of 2006, on my way from the hills around Bologna to Firenze.

It was listed on the Michelin guide as a “good value for money” place.

The first dish that I tasted was the garganelli, local pasta with a veal ragu sauce. Absolutely divine!

Pasticcio

Pasticcio

The word pasticcio comes from pasta and means “pie”, and has developed the figurative meanings of “a mess”, “a tough situation”, or a pastiche.

The pasticcio that I tasted in the Osteria had flat pasta sheets (most likely lasagne), cheese, prosciuto and mushrooms. Extremely rich and tasty!

Insalata

Causal chains 

If the gas explosion caused the destruction of the Osteria, what caused the gas explosion?

Let us assume that the gas explosion was caused by a leaking valve.

What caused the valve to leak?

Some possible reasons come to mind:

• Valve breakdown due to poor maintenance of the Osteria building.
• Valve breakdown due to material failure, not attributable to poor maintenance.
• Valve breakdown due to human action. The fact that the building was undergoing renovation makes it quite plausible that a worker inadvertently damaged a gas valve, causing it to leak.
• Valve breakdown due to superhuman or supernatural action.

I will not pursue the causal chain any further. I leave this investigation to the insurance companies, the fire department, the local administration.

As far as I am concerned, the Osteria no longer exists, and that is that.

Sala da mangiare, Osteria di Camugnone

What is the meaning of “non existence”?

Instead of a conclusion, I would like to offer some thoughts on the state of “non-existence”.

These thoughts do not claim to be anything but thoughts.

Is “non-existence” equivalent to an irreversible change?

Is it may be the epitomy or even the definition of irreversibility?

Does it make sense to talk of (ir)reversibility?

Is it at all possible during a lifetime to regress from one state to another and do so on multiple occasions over time?

If this is the case, irreversibility might wotk as a definition.

The notion of “non-existence” is temporal.

The Osteria does not exist today, but it existed one year and one day ago.

So existence, reversibility, regression, are all temporal.

Now that everything has come together like this, is time reversible?

Why would the temporal be going only in one direction?

Porrettana

There is another dimension of the “non” existence state.

From a realistic point of view, the Osteria today does not exist.

It does not exist in the real world, the world that exists outside of me and you.

However, from an idealistic point of view, the Osteria may exist as an ideal form.

But these questions need to be taken up in another article, on the ontology and metaphysics of restaurants.

Until then, “salve”!

Introduction

Dermot Moran believes that “Samuel Barclay Beckett (1906–89) is the most philosophical of twentieth-century writers.”

His characters exult in endless, pointless, yet entertaining, metaphysical arguments. His work exudes an atmosphere of existential Angst, hopelessness and human abandonment to the relentless course of the world. Beckett’s characters portray a rootless, homeless, alienated humanity. One no longer at home in the world; one lost in a meaningless void. (3)

Peter Gay (many thanks to “a piece of monologue“) asserts:

“Beckett’s principal message, then, learned less from Sartre than from Schopenhauer and his own experience, was that life is a catastrophe from birth, that isolation is a necessary element in the human condition, and that salvation, even though promised, will never come. Nor will self knowledge. Whatever one undertakes, Beckett noted in one of his much-quoted sayings, one must fail, and one’s only recourse is to fail again, of better next time.” (8)

My favorite play of his is “Waiting for Godot”, which was written in French in 1948 and was first performed in Paris as En Attendant Godot.

Today’s post is about Lucky’s monologue in Act I of the play.

Lucky is the old slave of a pompous old man, Pozzo.

Lucky is a wreck of a man. As personal slave to Pozzo, he is forced to endure insults and indignity. He has lost all his ability to be human.

The speech is delivered by Lucky wearing his hat and having a rope around his neck.

Lucky cannot think without wearing his hat. And the rope is what his master Pozzo uses to lead him around.

Vladimir puts an end to the monologue (that apparently nobody understands) by removing Lucky’s hat.

I have read this monologue many times.

At first it looked like it is sheer nonsense. Delivered beautifully of course, but nonsense nevertheless.

But is it?

Having read it again and again, I now have my doubts.

I will start by presenting the monologue in English, continue with some thoughts on various aspects of the monologue,  and conclude with notes on some of the words used.

Lucky’s monologue

Given the existence as uttered forth

in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann (a)

of a personal God

quaquaquaqua

with white beard

quaquaquaqua

outside time without extension

who from the heights of divine apathia (b) divine athambia (c)  divine aphasia (d)

loves us dearly with some exceptions

for reasons unknown but time will tell

and suffers like the divine Miranda (e) with those

who for reasons unknown but time will tell

are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues

and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast hell to heaven

so blue still and calm so calm

with a calm which even though intermittent

is better than nothing but not so fast

and considering what is more that as a result of the labors left unfinished

crowned by the Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry of Essy-en-Possy (f) of Testew and Cunard (g)

it is established beyond all doubt all other doubt

than that which clings to the labors of men

that as a result of the labors unfinished of Testew and Cunard

it is established as hereinafter but not so fast for reasons unknown

that as a result of the public works of Puncher and Wattmann

it is established beyond all doubt

that in view of the labors of Fartov and Belcher (h)

left unfinished for reasons unknown of Testew and Cunard

left unfinished it is established what many deny

that man in Possy of Testew and Cunard

that man in Essy

that man in short

that man in brief

in spite of the strides of alimentation and defecation

wastes and pines

wastes and pines

and concurrently simultaneously

what is more for reasons unknown

in spite of the strides of physical culture

the practice of sports such as tennis football

running cycling swimming flying floating riding gliding conating (i) camogie skating tennis of all kinds

dying flying sports of all sorts

autumn summer winter winter tennis of all kinds

hockey of all sorts penicillin and succedanea in a word I resume

flying gliding golf over nine and eighteen holes tennis of all sorts

in a word for reasons unknown in Feckham Peckham

Fulham Clapham namely concurrently simultaneously

what is more for reasons unknown but time will tell

fades away I resume Fulham Clapham

in a word the dead loss per head since the death of Bishop Berkeley

being to the tune of one inch four ounce per head approximately

by and large more or less to the nearest decimal

good measure round figures stark naked in the stockinged feet in Connemara

in a word for reasons unknown

no matter what matter the facts are there

and considering what is more much more grave

that in the light of the labors lost of Steinweg and Peterman

it appears what is more much more grave

that in the light the light the light

of the labors lost of Steinweg and Peterman

that in the plains in the mountains

by the seas by the rivers running water running fire

the air is the same and then the earth namely the air

and then the earth in the great cold the great dark the air

and the earth abode of stones in the great cold

alas alas in the year of their Lord

six hundred and something

the air the earth the sea the earth abode of stones in the great deeps

the great cold on sea on land and in the air

I resume for reasons unknown

in spite of the tennis the facts are there but time will tell

I resume alas alas

on on in short in fine

on on abode of stones who can doubt it

I resume but not so fast

I resume the skull fading fading fading

and concurrently simultaneously

what is more for reasons unknown

in spite of the tennis

on on the beard the flames the tears the stones

so blue so calm

alas alas on on the skull the skull the skull the skull in Connemara

in spite of the tennis

the labors abandoned

left unfinished

graver still abode of stones in a word

I resume alas alas abandoned unfinished the skull the skull in Connemara

in spite of the tennis the skull

alas the stones Cunard

(mêlée, final vociferations) 

. . . tennis . . . the stones . . . so calm . . . Cunard . . . unfinished . . .

Of a personal God [The (non)existence or the loss of God or the loss of the World]

The opening part of the monologue is a reference to the (non)existence of God.

It is a personal God.

In the predecessor to modern Hinduism, Vedism, God is believed to have many aspects. The impersonal aspect of God is called the Brahman, while the very personal nature of the Supreme, called Bhagavan.

There is a distinct difference between the two major Islamic sects, Shia and Sunni, regarding belief in a personal god. Sunni Muslims believe in a personal god, Shia Muslims do not.

In Christianity, God exists in the context of the Holy Trinity and the Holy Mother. The “personal” aspect of deity applies to Christ, and to a large extent to the Holy Mother, whereas the Father is a more distant, more obscure figure. In this respect, it is not strange that Beckett chooses God to be the one who is (will be) lost to Man.

God’s (non)existence is open to multiple interpretations.

The (non)existence of God may be a point at which we arrive having traveled on a path.

One potential route for the path is that we arrive at the (non)existence of God having started from the (non)existence of God.

In this scenario, nothing changes.

It is just that we confirm at the end of the route that God does not exist, more or less like when we started.

Another potential route is that we arrive at the (non)existence of god having started from the existence of God.

In this scenario things are worse.

At the end of the route we are faced with the loss of God.

Thinking about it, it may read like a loss of God, but at another layer, this may be about the loss of the world.

We project the loss of the world to God, and make it look like a loss of God.

Estragon says at some point: “There’s no lack of void”.

Gunther Anders comments on the scenario of the “loss of the world”:

That this real loss of a world requires special means if it is to be represented in literature or on the stage goes without saying. Where a world no longer exists, there can no longer be a possibility of a collision with the world, and therefore the very possibility of tragedy has been forfeited. Or to put it more precisely: the tragedy of this kind of existence lies in the fact that it does not even have a chance of tragedy, that it must always, at the same time, in its totality be farce…and that therefore it can only be represented as farce, as ontological farce, not as comedy. (2)

unfinished [The Eschaton]

And this is not the end…. It can get a lot worse with the following interpretation:

Vladimir and Estragon conclude from the fact of their existence that there must be something for which they are waiting; they are champions of the doctrine that life must have meaning even in a manifestly meaningless situation…What Beckett presents is not nihilism, but the inability of man to be a nihilist even in a situation of utter hopelessness. (2)

In his essay John Valentine claims that ‘This is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s claim that “Any meaning is better than none at all.”’ (4)

…for Nietzsche, a nihilist is not one who believes in nothing, but one who abandons belief in this world in favor of another world that is (according to Nietzsche) idealized, fictitious, and the product of the mechanisms of ressentiment .12 Nietzsche finds the source of such nihilism in the Platonic/Judeo-Christian worldview, and vigorously exposes this in many works using his genealogical method of analysis. Although Nietzsche does not use the word as such, the idea of a critique of eschatology—and specifically the Platonic/Judeo-Christian idea of the eschaton—figures prominently in his philosophy.

so calm [Man wastes and pines, shrinks and dwindles: The Beckett - Heidegger connection]

All four verbs are translations of the German verb “schwinden” (5, G C Barnard).

In this part of the monologue, Man is faced with a predicament that is worse than the “loss” of God.

When I Read it, I associated the verb “schwinden” to the verb ”verfallen” (expire, lapse, decay, deteriorate), which brings me to Heidegger’s Fall.

“Dasein has fallen into the World.”

Although Beckett never explicitly referenced Heidegger, some critical literature has attempted to connect the two writers. Steven Barfield, argues that, between these two writers there exists an “uncanny and unsettling relationship…which shows similar preoccupations but does not necessarily mean any influence of one to the other” (6)

 M Hunnicutt comments on the Beckett – Heidegger connection:

Both Beckett’s characters and Heidegger’s Dasein are fundamentally Beings-in-the-wor1d. As such, they are subject to anxiety, a basic state-of-mind capable of opening possibilities of authentic action. But Beckett’s characters fail to grasp onto this offered freedom, thus they remain waiting in a death-in-life, inauthentic existence. (7)

the stones [Connemara]

Connemara is the western tip of country Galway in Ireland, an area of outstanding beauty.

The “skull” in Connemara is a stone, the Turoe Stone,  a piece of granite about four feet high. The Turoe stone is National Monument of Ireland Nr. 327.

This may explain the “adobe of stones” and the many times the word “stones” is used in the speech.

The names Steinway and Peterman may also be relevant to stones.

Stein in German is stone, whereas Peter comes from the Greek word Petros, originating from Petra, which means stone.

tennis

A well-rounded athlete, Beckett excelled especially in cricket, tennis, and boxing in his school days.

In the monologue Beckett makes continuous and in a sense excessive reference to sports.

Towards the end it is tennis and stones in some sort of a dialogue.

Taking a long shot, I suggest that the “stones” is a metaphor for Nature, while “tennis” is a metaphor for human endeavor that “passes the time”.

It is as if Man is inside Time, whereas Nature is outside Time.

The torture of being inside Time might be eased off by playing games like tennis.

In such a reading, tennis is the escape route, but it does not really work.

Man remains chained inside time.

Delivering the speech

Some actors make the mistake of delivering it at breakneck speed as written in the text as a single sentence without punctuation.  However if delivered slowly and thoughtfully, the bleak meaning of the lines becomes clear; no matter what we do, we shall eventually fade away and die, and our labours will be left unfinished.  It is perhaps significant that the last line of the speech before the others silence him is the single word “unfinished …”. (1)

Notes on the words 

(a) Puncher and Wattmann: German sounding names, perhapds Beckett refers to the fact that most “heavy” philosophers were German. But there are other interpretations. Wattman in French is a tramdriver. Puncher would then be the conductor, the one who punches holes in the tickets to invalidate them. Note also the duplicity of the meaning of “public works”. They can be works (e.g. books, essays, theories) made public by their publication, or they can be literally roads, bridges, and so on.

(b)Apathy: A state of indifference, or the suppression of emotions such as concern, excitement, motivation and passion. Apathy is a Greek word. It literally means the lack of “pathos”, which could be interpreted as covering the spectrum from simple emotion or passion.

(c) Athambia is a word unknown to me. The “Samuel Beckett net” interprets it as” Imperturbability”, which is a state of calm, unruffled self-assurance; aplomb, composure. However, the word appears to me to have a Greek root, a-thambia, this is the state that results from the lack of thambos which in Greek means a bright light, or shining. Therefore, I could interpret the word as meaning a state where no shining can make an impression on you.

(d) Muteness: inability to speak. Aphasia is a Greek word. It can go as far as refer to a person or a state in which there is no understanding whatsoever of the spoken or written word.

(e) Miranda is the daughter of Prospero; the name means “admirable”.

(f) Berne-en-Bresse in the original French. Bourg-en-Bresse is a town in Eastern France, famous for its poultry. Beckett has replaced Bourg with the Swiss Berne. “Essy” and “Possy” are English pronunciations of esse and posse—”being” and “being able”.  Taken from the Scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages. (5)

(g) The original play was written in French. We may have a ply with words in the French original: Testu et Conard. Testicule is the testicle in French, while “con” is slang for vagina.

(h) Obvious association with “fart” and “belch”.

(i) conating—word coined by Beckett, using his favorite word con (stupid asshole) as a root; in this context, it refers to being a dumb asshole for sport. (5)

Sources

(1) Lucky the Suffering Servant – thoughts on Waiting For Godot, Iain Strachan

(2) Gunther Anders, Being without Time: on Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot” 

(3) Dermot Moran, Beckett and Philosophy

(4) John Valentine, Nihilism and the Eschaton in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

(5) Beckett-net: Pozzo/Lucky

(6) Maria Caruso, Outside of Here There’s Hope: A Heideggerian Analysis of Beckett’s “Endgame”

(7) M Hunnicutt, Inauthenticity, Anxiety, Waiting: or, The Unnamable Design

(8) Peter Gay, Modernism: The Lure of Heresy From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond

I recently visited the Vassilenas restaurant in Piraeus, Greece.

It has been one of my father’s favorites.

The restaurant began its life as a grocery store back in 1920. The owner was also serving some “meze” dishes to the grocery’s customers.

When my father started visiting, the grocery store had transformed itself into a taverna.

But not any taverna.

My father’s reminiscences were almost ecstatic.

He would recall that after entering the taverna, the owner, “Vassilenas”, would greet the customer and perform some sort of “assessment”, on the basis of which he would start serving various dishes to the table. The customer was advised to “ride the wave”. And it was a wave of gastronomic nirvana!

Today the taverna has been transformed into a restaurant, and is run by the son of the “Vassilenas” of my father’s days.

In my last visit I had the set menu.

Pumpkin soup

It starts with a pumpkin soup, with cumin, nutmeg and curry.

I do not like soups. Especially in the Greek summer. But I tasted it. And I ate it every scoop of it. Delicious!

Anchovies a tomato marmalade slice of crispy bread and taramosalata (fish row dip) with Arabian bread

Next came marinated anchovies on a tomato marmalade slice of crispy bread and taramosalata (fish row dip) with Arabian bread. The anchovies were light in the salt and vinegar and tender, perfectly accompanied by the tomato marmalade. The fish roe dip creamy and light.

Sea bream

It was followed by sea bream on a bed of spinach and leeks, served with a cauliflower puree and a wild fennel sauce.

The fish was perfectly cooked, and the combination with the greens was delicious.

Duo of salmon

Next came a duo of salmon. Marinated in soy sauce and grilled in a crust of spices.

Duo of salmon – grilled salmon detail

The grilled piece was cooked to perfection. You can see for yourself the photo above.

As I write this, I realize how exciting it has been to taste all these wonderful dishes, let alone relive the experience by writing about them!

This is a very good reason to write indeed!

Grilled calamari and fried cod

In any case, grilled calamari and fried cod fillet came next.

The calamari was served on a bed of smoked eggplant.

I was overwhelmed by the cod, as it was perfectly fried, not oily at all, accompanied by heavenly aioli.

“Rice-shaped” pasta with mushrooms

A “rice-shaped” pasta dish with mushrooms came next, It was cooked as a risotto, and wwas delicious, but I must confess I felt it was rather late in the menu for this type of dish. I am used to have pasta as a first dish, and could not really come around to tasting it as the penultimate dish.

Slow cooked pig’s neck

The slow cooked pig’s neck concluded the savoury part of the menu. I loved it. It was served with quince marmalade, sweet potato puree, confit of onions and angel hair fried potatos.

Lemon tart

All the dishes were exceptional, including the desert, a lemon tart I could kill for.

But I did not, thankfuly.

Instead I paid the bill and went home a happy man.

Dachau Concentration Camp – The perimeter fence from the outside (Photo: panathinaeos)

“In the world in which we find ourselves, the possibilities of good are almost limitless, and the possibilities of evil no less so. Our present predicament is due more than anything else to the fact that we have learnt to understand and control to a terrifying extent the forces of nature outside us, but not those that are embodied in ourselves.”

Bertrand Russell (1)

“Among the moral results of this disaster (he refers to the plague of the 14th century in Europe) the most shameful was a series of attacks upon the Jewish population, who at Mainz and other German-speaking towns were burned in their hundreds or thousands by an infuriated mob in the belief that the plague was a malignant device of the Semitic race for the confusion of the Catholic creed. “ 

H.A.L. Fisher (3)

Beginning on the day in 1975 when his guerrilla army marched silently into the capital, Phnom Penh, Pol Pot emptied the cities, pulled families apart,abolished religion and closed schools. Everyone was ordered to work, even children. The Khmer Rouge outlawed money and closed all markets. The Khmer Rouge especially persecuted members of minority ethnic groups — the Chinese, Muslim Chams, Vietnamese and Thais who had lived for generations in the country, and any other foreigners — in an attempt to make one ”pure” Cambodia. Non-Cambodians were forbidden to speak their native languages or to exhibit any ”foreign” traits. The pogrom against the Cham minority was the most devastating, killing more than half of that community.

The New York Times

Dachau Concentration Camp – Fences (Photo: panathinaeos)

Introduction

Today I want to address the issue of taking action to deter, contain, and even prevent ”Evil Acts”.

I consider that it is not enough to condemn evil acts. Words of condemnation are not enough.

In my view one must also act against “evil acts”.

It all began during a visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp, in the outskirts of Munich in Bavaria, Germany.

Dachau is a sleepy suburb. But once you get to the perimeter walls and the barbed wires, you start getting the bad vibrations.

At the end of my visit I was shocked.

More than after my visit to Auschwitz.

May be because Auschwitz is relatively isolated, whereas Dachau is right in the middle of the community.

Hundreds of thousands of people were tortured and lost their life in this and other camps in Nazi Germany.

More than six million Jews lost their lives during the Holocaust.

Some Germans of the time say that they did not know about it.

This is a frightening thought.

How could you live in Dachau and know nothing about the camp?

An even more frightening thought is that there is no guarantee that evil acts will not be committed again.

As H.A.L. Fisher wrote: “The fact of progress is written plain and large on the page of history; but progress is not a law of nature. The ground gained by one generation may be lost by the next. The thoughts of men may flow into the channels which lead to disaster and barbarism.” (3)

Dachau Concentration Camp – The Entrance Gate (Photo: panathinaeos)

Definitions

I begin by giving some definitions of “evil acts”.

My views address only acts and their implications. I do not refer to ideas, impressions, thoughts and other abstract entities.

Two more qualifications:

• I do not refer to natural acts, like the 1755 earthquake that destroyed Lisbon. This is almost self-evident, but the clarification is needed.
• In addition, I will exclude one person acts like Anders Behring Breivik’s  2011 sequential bombing and mass shooting in Norway.

To start with a definition, I will paraphrase Peter Dews’ definition:

“Evil acts are profound, far reaching desecrations of the human.”

Martha Nussbaum reminds us that Kant considered the human being as capable “under certain circumstances” to commit evil acts:

“Evil is radical, according to Kant, that is to say it goes to the root of our humanity, because human beings, prior to any experience, have a propensity to both good and evil, in the form of tendencies that are deeply rooted in our natures. We are such that we can follow the moral law, but there is also something about us that makes it virtually inevitable that under certain circumstances we will disregard it and behave badly.”

Philosopher Adi Ophir in his book “The Order of Evils” offers the main contention is that evil is neither a diabolical element residing in the hearts of men nor a meaningless absence of the good. Rather, it is the socially structured order of “superfluous evils.” Evils, like pain, suffering, loss, and humiliation, are superfluous when they could have been—but were not—prevented.

Dachau – Smoking is not permitted (Photo: panathinaeos)

Who is the bearer of (good or) evil?

Bertrand Russell’s view (The Reith Lectures, Lecture 6, 1948) provides the answer to this key question:

“That is why the individual man is the bearer of good and evil, and not, on the one hand, any separate part of a man, or on the other hand, any collection of men. To believe that there can be good or evil in a collection of human beings, over and above the good or evil in the various individuals, is an error; moreover it is an error which leads straight to totalitarianism, and is therefore dangerous.” (1) 

Therefore it is one or more individuals who commit “evil acts” and are responsible for them.

One more word about those who claim that the agent behind evil acts may be an impersonal entity like the State. I quote Bertrand Russell again:

“When we think concretely, not abstractly, we find, in place of ‘the state’, certain people who have more power than falls to the share of most men. And so glorification of ‘the state’ turns out to be, in fact, glorification of a governing minority.” (1)

The argument applies to all other “impersonal” agents, like a “system” (e.g. capitalism, socialism) and so on.

Dachau Concentration Camp – Where the barracks were (Photo: panathinaeos)

Why act against “evil acts”?

One may have many diverse motives for acting against “evil acts”. The same of course applies to any other action.

One of the motives may be originating from a moral framework.

A moral framework can be prescriptive, and it is in this sense that I want to deploy it in this article.

Koertge (2) has identified the following building blocks of Popper’s Moral Philosophy:

• self-emancipation through knowledge,
• a dedication to communal problem solving,
• honesty,
• openness to criticism,
• tolerance for other views,
• a society that supports freedom of expression and
• the imperatives to relieve suffering and avoid cruelty.

The moral framework explains the taking of the action and justifies its necessity.

Dachau Concentration Camp: The Administration Building – (Photo: panathinaeos)

Acting against “Evil Acts”

In the context of the moral framework above, all acts against “evil acts” need to conform with the values of the framework and not violate it.

Otherwise, in the name of the action against “evil acts”, you end up committing evil acts. Which defeats the purpose of taking action against evil.

Acting against “evil acts” is a moral duty, if one wants to accept that there is one,

Of course as I have mentioned in a previous section, action may be taken for other reasons.

Acting against “evil acts” is not necessarily effective. This however applies to all actions. The fact that an action may not turn out to be an effective action does not imply anything against the action itself.

Taking action against evil acts is very risky.

It may kill you, or endanger you greatly to say the least.

It may be safely asserted that if evil acts are consistently deterred and contained, this will be the result of some people taking action.

Consistent outcomes cannot be the result of chance only.

Dachau Concentration Camp – A view from inside of the barracks to the outside (Photo: panathinaeos)

Bad end, good end

Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg decided to act and attempt the assassination of Adolf Hitler and the removal of the Nazi Party from power.

He was not alone. He was one of the leaders not only of the plot against Hitler and the Nazis, but also of the German Resistance movement in the German Armed Forces (Wermacht).

Unfortunately the attempt failed and von Stauffenberg was executed in July 1944.

My maternal grandfather gave shelter in his house to a Jewish family for a period of over two years, during the German occupation of Athens.

Had he been caught, his whole family would have been killed, and the Jewish family would be sent to an extermination camp.

Luckily he was never caught, and the Jewish family found a safe way out to the Middle East.

Intention versus consequence

The French press magnate Jean Prouvost, who had collaborated with the German forces during the occupation of France, tried to redeem himself by writing a large check to the resistance when it became clear that the Germans were losing the war. After Liberation, the High Court (in France) granted him a non-lieu (a judgement that suspends, annuls, or withdraws a case without bringing it to trial). The reason he went free was probably that the resistance needed the money and later found itself obliged to keep the tacit promise of immunity that acceptance of the check implied. (4)    

This incident is worth noting because it opens up a discussion regarding the difference between intention and consequence.

The intention of the person in this case may be considered as having nothing to do with acting against evil. The act as far as intentions go appears to serve the person’s self-interest.

On the other hand, the consequences of the action may have been quite significant, judging by the immunity granted to the press magnate.

Dachai Concentration Camp – Guard Tower (Photo: panathinaeos)

Deter, constrain, prevent?

Prevention is of course much better.

But is it possible?

I believe that no one can say that it is not possible, although there is no certainty regarding the outcome of preventive actions.

As an example, it is known that totalitarian regimes are more likely to commit evil acts than other regimes.

This implies that action against totalitarianism is in a way action that potentially prevents evil acts.

This can be generalized.

Once the circumstances under which evil acts are committed are established, all actions that go counter to these circumstances have the potential of preventing evil acts.

Once evil acts are committed, the issue becomes to what extent they will continue.

Action then needs to be taken to deter and contain evil acts.

However, taking action must not lead to committing of evil acts, while trying to deter and/or contain evil acts.

The Syrian Chemical Weapons issue is a good example.

Using chemical weapons is an evil act. There is no doubt about it.

Actions must be taken against the use of chemical weapons.

However, if this action prevents one of the two parties involved in the conflict to use the weapons, while it enables the other party to use them, the action will not be effective.

There is also another issue that needs to be addressed.

If we need to stop the use of chemical weapons, is it not also necessary to stop the production and trading of chemical weapons?

As I was writing this, I saw a brief from the Financial Times newspaper, announcing that “The US and Russia have agreed on a framework for Syria to destroy all of its chemical weapons by the middle of 2014. If President Bashar al-Assad fails to comply with the US-Russia agreement the issue is then to be referred to the United Nations Security Council.”

Dachau Concentration Camp – Extermination furnace (Photo: panathinaeos)

In place of a conclusion

Now that I read again what I wrote it appears to me that a generalization is in order.

I started out by asserting the necessity of action against “evil acts”.

This is good, but not good enough.

There are far too many religious overtones in the word “evil”.

It is fuzzy, blurred, unclear, and easily manipulated.

Almost everything that I wrote above stands if I replace “evil acts” with “human suffering”.

“I believe that there is, from the ethical point of view, no symmetry between suffering and happiness, or between pain and pleasure. (…) human suffering makes a direct moral appeal for help, while there is no similar call to increase the happiness of a man who is doing well anyway.” (5)

Sources

(1) Bertrand Russell, The Reith Lectures, Lecture 6

(2) Noretta Koertge, The Moral Underpinnings of Popper’s Philosophy

(3) H.A.L. Fisher, A History of Europe

(4) Jon Elster, Explaining Social Behavior

(5) Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies