the past is a perfect country


my grandparents, ca. 1927






my mother Electra, 1955






me, autumn 1966
The legendary "phasiolos" (=bean)
in a school book on phytology (1964), a
common joke in the 60s and in the 70s
because of the use of the old -and not
really spoken- language in education

  my father and his daughter by an 
advertising campaign for milk, Easter 1996








on Saturday or Sunday, 17th, 18th or 19th July
(view from the Souda Bay)


http://s531.photobucket.com/user/erwdios_80/media/100_2841.jpg.html



I received this book (Colas Breugnon by Romain Rolland) as a gift from my uncle Yorgos, the older brother of Electra, as I was 16 or 17 years old. At that time I was more preoccupied with How the Steel Was Tempered (Ostrovsky) etc. than with historical novels of a pacifist citizen of the world (fortunately, a short time). Today (1 August 2015) I found out that Nikiforos Vrettakos, the last autobiography writer before the summer break, was the editor of this book. The translator's name is Margarita Kaloumenos, in all likelihood the daughter of the communist Nikos Kaloumenos, executed 1952 with Beloyannis, Batsis, Argyriadis for treason. My uncle had experienced both -in his family environment- the right and the left in greek politics during the 1940s.  





my favourite occupation






http://www.animierte-gifs.net/cat-menschen-98.htm"


  

The first play Kostas Tachtsis, my actual autobiography writer, translated, was Miss Margarida's Way by Roberto Althayde (discovered yesterday, the 1st January 2016). Tachtsis adapted the play for a one-woman show which was performed by the great Greek actress Ellie Lambeti. I saw the play, my first good theatre experience. I was 14 years old and  I remember it well. At the Dionysia Theatre, Athens.




More than 10 years ago, I was working on another research project concerning Elpis Melena (alias Marie Espérance von Schwartz), a british-german traveler who spent many years in Crete between 1866 and the beginnings of the 1890s. Then I learned about William James Stillman, the American consul in Crete in 1865-1868, his autobiography etc. Yesterday (22 June 2016), I had an unexpected "déjà-vu" experience which connected me with the past and also with my present work: the Pre-Raphaelit painter Marie Spartali-Stillman (1844-1927), daughter of a Greek consul in London and second wife of W. J. Stillman. The most important connection to the present lies in my recent reading of W. B. Yeats' autobiographies -because of my actual project- dealing inter alia with his early Pre-Raphaelitism. Here a lovely video with "The Enchanted Garden of Messer Ansaldo" (1889) by Marie Spartali Stillman -inspired by one of the tales from Boccaccio’s medieval literary masterpiece The Decameron-, the "Autumn Day" (1902) of Rainer Maria Rilke and the Rondeau from Henry Purcells incidental music (1695) for Aphra Behns play Abdelazer.  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNweVw5QACU



Associative memory, the theatre again. In 1983 or 1984, I attended a speech or panel discussion on theatre in Athens. The main participants were Victor Ardittis and the theatre director Yorgos Sevastikoglou, husband of Alki Zei, one of the autobiographers of the final project section. The couple lived many years in exile as political refugees (USSR in the 1950s and 1960s, Paris during the colonels' dictatorship 1967-1974). I think, a subject of the discussion was Stanislavski's system and probably Jerzy Grotowski's "poor theatre". The 1980s was a significant decade for the Greek theatrical culture, I personally found my place among the amazed spectators of the Stage Theatre (since 1982, Kleist's The Broken Jug), founded 1981 by the legendary theatre director and actor Lefteris Vogiatzis. Back to Sevastikoglou, there are associations to other theatrical experiences. First, Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, an excellent performance of the Vilnius State Youth Theatre (director Eimuntas Nekrošius) on June 8, 1988 in Vienna (Wiener Festwochen). At the end of the performance, I had to wait until the audience left the hall, for my tear glands had taken on a life of its own, a wet disaster... Second, the performances 1992 at the Roman amphitheatre Carnuntum (Lower Austria, theatre festival Art Carnuntum): as far as I remember (today, the 11th November 2017), Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis (La MaMa Theatre, director Yannis Houvardas), Aeschylus' Persians (Attis Theatre, director Theodoros Terzopoulos) and Euripides' Dionysos (=Bacchae, Suzuki Company of Toga, director Tadashi Suzuki).  
In the interval between the exiles (1965-1967), Sevastikoglou was in Athens and taught acting at the Michailidis' Drama School. Terzopoulos was a student of him.


https://www.facebook.com/AttisTheatre/videos/1239482706109655/



Und so hat alles -in meiner Geburtsstadt Athen- angefangen. Mein erstes Deutsch-Lehrbuch, die Lehrerin Frau Karin aus Hamburg, das Ebenbild von Ingrid Thulin -zumindest so sah ich sie, auch wenn ich mit 7 die Thulin nicht kannte-, unschuldig, blonder Dutt, selbstgenähte hellfarbige Kleider, Handgeschick, musikalisch, ein Wesen aus einer anderen Welt. Schon am ersten Tag sprach sie mit mir auf Deutsch. Einige Jahre später brachte mein Vater zu Weihnachten einen riesigen Tannenbaum, wir mußten die Spitze abschneiden; mit Frau Karin lernte ich Weihnachtsschmuck basteln -eigentlich schaute ich zu wie sie aus verschiedenen Materialien kleine Wunder hervorzauberte- und deutsche Weihnachtslieder singen. Dieses Buch, seine Bilder kannte ich bis ins kleinste Detail, ich schaute sie mir immer und immer wieder jahrelang an. Ein halbes Jahrhundert seither (heute, den 13. August 2018), seit jener Entdeckung. 
   















https://www.instagram.com/p/Bd23d-phoPU/?taken-by=wienmuseum
25 October 2018







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