I a kov ido u

Sophie Iakov idou

D e m ocr it u s Unive r s it y of T hr a ce

The Author as Reader: the case of Margarita

Karapanou

The publication of the journal and notes that Margarita Karapanou

kept during her adolescence revealed an early and acute reader. Beyond her
lineage, it is the range and speed of consumption of books (as well as other
writers’ journals) that determined her literary destiny. What is striking,
however, is her reading preferences: steering clear of Greek literature, which
she blames for political polarisation, she almost exclusively focuses on for-
eign writers, mainly English and French-speaking ones – and she always
reads them from the original. Such is proved to be also her own “literary
citizenship” when she attempts her creative take-off with her first literary
book. Kassandra and the wolf is namely her own rebirth by means of writing.
It is also her proper portrait of the artist in early childhood. I will examine
the ways in which she attempts to “correct” her own biography through her
own readings. I will elaborate on three dimensions: a) re-writing her child-
hood, which was proven to be equally fascinating and traumatic, using as a
projection screen of her own experiences The Turn of the Screw by H. James,
a novel haunting her entire work, b) the theory about writing and reading
that she develops through another child, daughter of another famous writer
in Kassandra and c) the way she is led to choose the career of a creative fic-
tion writer over the one of a literary critic or academic.
What persists throughout her life is a constant interweaving of real-
ity and fiction, a tendency to see her life more clearly when reading. This
constant sense of unfulfillment, leads to a propensity to flee, to travel;
Bucolic,
Theophilos
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in brief, what her other great love, Flaubert, attributed in an unrivalled way School”, where the former narrates the birth of the young heroine and the
to Madame Bovary and what forms the overwhelming “bovarism” evident latter her first day of school, when she starts learning to read and write by
in Karapanou and probably in each real reader and writer. syllabizing. At that point, the letters, this bizarre combination of illegible
If we take as a point of departure her last published book while she was signs and vocal patterns, which represent objects, concepts and feelings lock
still alive, Mum, a clear statement, comprising all the above, stands already into words. Words cut into syllables – “it hurts when I cut words in half”,
there as a résumé of her life and work: says the child with tears in her eyes– even though this interrupted speech,
Σαρτρ, Μποβουάρ, Κνουτ Χάμσουν, Χένρυ Μίλλερ, και τόσοι άλλοι! this difficult rise of the inner language to the surface or the order of Logos,
Πέφτω με τα μούτρα στο διάβασμα. Μου τρέχουν τα σάλια, κλαίω, is something that she already knows from her own stutter when speaking
γελάω, από το πρωί μέχρι βαθιά τη νύχτα. (...) Το χαρτί μυρίζει σαν in front of important people, and what will later turn into her unique mark
ξεχασμένη χαρά. Θέλω κι εγώ να πληγώσω το χαρτί, να του βγάλω
on writing with the fragmented style, the few phrases that are left alone at
αίμα. Τη νύχτα διαβάζω με τον φακό. Οι λέξεις πηδάνε χαρούμενες.
Το διάβασμα μου έσωσε τη ζωή. Ακόμη και τώρα είναι ο πυρήνας
the beginning of the blank page, the sharp episodes and the frequent dots
της ύπαρξής μου. that adjoin in a whole, like leaves of plucked days and read passages that bind
into a book. The young Kassandra of the first book might not yet know how
[Sartre, Beauvoir, Knut Hamsun, Henry Miller and so many more! I
to read, but her house is frequented by promising poets, she speaks English
dive deep into reading. I drool, I cry, I laugh, from morning till deep
as she is raised by an English governess, French as she visits her mother in
in the night. (...) Paper smells like forgotten joy. I, too, want to hurt
the paper, make it bleed. At night I read with a torch. Words jump Paris where she consorts with the offspring of other artists and is looked af-
happily. Reading has saved my life. Even now, it is the core of my ter by known philosophers during children’s parties. The entire network of
existence]. dark atavistic conflicts within which Karapanou will realize her own difficult
(Karapanou 2004: 127) creative take-off is already here with its dazzling but constant duplicity. The
childhood, equally golden and nightmarish, bountiful and at the same time
She goes on to say:
emotionally depriving, as the child is raised by a whole group of servants and
Δεν ξέρω πως έγινα συγγραφέας. Ίσως η βαθιά δυστυχία να με
educators but not by her mother and father1, overprotected and at the same
ώθησε. Μια μέρα, άρχιζα το πρώτο μου μυθιστόρημα. Έκλαιγα
από χαρά, τα δάχτυλα μουντζουρώνανε τις σελίδες. Μητέρα, κι εσύ
time insidiously promiscuous, since among the serving staff and the parents’
έκλαψες από χαρά. Τα γραμμένα χαρτιά επιτέλους μας χώριζαν. intellectual friends lurk molesters, already foreshadows a work, not only the
Εκείνη τη νύχτα δεν είχα εφιάλτες, με κατέκλυσε μια γλυκιά first book but all those that will follow, where nothing is as it seems and op-
γαλήνη. Είχα γεννηθεί... (p. 128) posites will coexist or appear equivalent naturally. More than her descent (she
[I don’t know how I became a writer. Maybe it was deep unhappiness is the daughter of not only Liberaki, but of a failed poet, as she calls her fa-
that drove me. One day, I was starting my first novel. I was crying from ther, and the great granddaughter of the publisher Fexis) it is this perpetual
joy, the tears were smudging the pages. Mother, you too cried with joy. ambiguity that prepared her literary destiny, in its dual – again – sense: as
The written pieces of paper were finally separating us. That night I had the formation of a reading criterion, and as a writing ideal that will always
no nightmares, I was overcome by a sweet serenity. I was born...] tend towards ambiguity. It is not accidental that her first book, even though
This second birth through writing, this painful yet redemptive secession it is written in Greek, is first published in English, and is acclaimed by great
from the mother, was nevertheless the narration of the chronicle of all that figures of the international realm like J. Updike, J. Charyn and R. Chandler,
preceded learning to read and write. This is so because Karapanou’s first book, while the second, The Sleepwalker, wins the award for best foreign novel in
Kassandra and the Wolf, that bears the dedication “To my mother, Margarita France, and the third will dare to bear as its title a complete foreign language
Liberaki”, begins with the chapter “First Day” and ends with “First Day of expression, Rien ne va plus.

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Maybe all this external enthusiastic reception was but an old rendez- by Simone de Beauvoir or Roger Martin du Gard’s Les Thibaults); real rela-
vous: in her own country Karapanou will be loved by the public, yet the tionships on the other hand that are fatal or abortive but which she already
critics2, or her esteemed colleagues will never show the same enthusiasm dreams of transforming into narratives like the ones they resemble (her lov-
as their counterparts from abroad, whereas the academic critique only re- er reminds her of the protagonist of Malcolm Lowry’s Under the volcano and
cently has begun to delve into her work with increasing interest (Prinzinger she hopes to convey such an aura to her upcoming book, the Sleepwalker);
1997, Iakovidou 2008, Voulgari 2008, Nazou 2011). journals, correspondence and novels that cured her writing crises, provid-
At the age of 13 she transcribes in her journal a whole passage from ing lessons of literary style (like the ones by André Gide or Emily Brontë to
a Greek book she had just read – it was Θύματα ειρήνης (Peace’s victims, whom she returns regularly, especially if she is not pleased with her own lit-
1957) in order to show or remind herself of what she doesn’t like in litera- erary experimentations); psychoanalytical interpretations of art (De l’ art à
ture, i.e. descriptive literalism, especially regarding a love scene. A teenager la mort by Michel de M’Uzan) and even mental testimonies that differ from
is already a mature reader, capable of putting aside anything that may be her own, even from those to which she refers in her journals, like those by
related with teenage awakenings (she is in love again with a boy at that time Violette Leduc, constitute a whole galaxy, her own intimate resort.
and she admits that the specific love scene excites her, but this doesn’t af- “Whoever keeps a diary is a potential writer”, she will stress later on in
fect her barometer as a reader). A few days or pages before she had devoured an article dedicated to two of her favourite authors, Gustave Flaubert and
Les faux monnayeurs by Gide which astounded her. It is rare that one of her Henry James, to whom she never ceases to return, from the beginning and
recorded days or experiences doesn’t include a reading or a film, almost ex- till the end of her life and work. Both of their journal testimonies were not
clusively foreign, French or English, that the young girl always reads in the pages of the episodes of a lifetime but rather pages of a work that is yet to
original. As it was shown by the publication of Karapanou’s journal (which be written, or, as Karapanou phrases it much more visually, they resembled
in a dramatic or significant coincidence took place shortly before her death) “the negative of a film that has not yet reached the stage of processing”
she was an early and acute reader. (Karapanou 1986: 1125). It would be a futile effort, though, to attempt to
The journals that came out as a volume entitled Η ζωή είναι αγρίως discover among the variety of her readings the possible negatives of her
απίθανη (Life is wildly improbable) cover the twenty-year period from 1959 own upcoming work. She is clear when she prompts herself in her journal:
to 1979 (we cannot know if they are the exhaustive publication of all the “I must reread Under the Volcano and Wuthering Heights. Not to copy, but to
notebooks and notes that she kept in a chest, which were ordered by some- smell a little passion. It must be something extremely violent, I have it in
one in the publishing house)3. They start as a teenage journal and end up me, I must bring it out”, she notes as she is already pregnant with the Sleep-
more as a writer’s working notebooks, a kind of “helix”, as she noted “be- walker (2008: 324).
cause it spirals constantly around itself” (Karapanou 2008: 422). In this If a joy or a love is not something one can return to, or relive exactly as
sense the amount of readings that parade within them – their range and it was, and if violence persists even in the most hypothetically benign rela-
quantity cannot but be impressive, especially if associated with each age – tionships, “literature, oddly, makes us taste life more correctly, more fairly.
create a continuous spiralling movement around her already weaved work. It is this dimension that crystallizes a fleeting motion and conveys it to us
Books in which she searched her identity as a girl and then as a woman (Mé- wholly, eternally” (1986: 1127). Literature as a form of justice, and especial-
moires d’une jeune fille rangée by Simone de Beauvoir or An unfinished woman ly as a perpetual, imaginary restoration of the disorder and randomness of
by Lillian Hellman); books that offered a view to her recurrent obsessions, life with the proper ethics and aesthetics; perhaps there isn’t a more concise
both psychic and auctorial (Les Eaux Profondes by Patricia Highsmith, which description of what Karapanou seeks both as a writer and a reader. Though
she finds “very constructive”); books in which she found “real human be- she is supposedly referring here to her beloved Flaubert and James, she is
ings” or literary heroes in whom she recognized real friends (Les Mandarins in fact speaking more than ever about herself. Every comment (of a writer

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own mirror-house to the readers and at the same time she sent a letter to
about another writer) is always/already “both for the self and the Other”, it her mother just like the one young Kassandra dictates to her grandmother:
would be almost redundant to repeat it (Clément 1999: 7-24, Ricoeur 1990), VERSE
as well as the fact that a writer becomes first and foremost the type of read- «Αγαπημένη μου μαμά, πότε θα γυρίσεις; Θέλω να σε
σκοτώσω.
er he or she once was. If it is true that one is not born a woman but becomes
Σου στέλνω πολλά φαντάσματα
one, as Beauvoir said (whose work Karapanou read in completion), then it Δύο μαγικά
is even more true that one is not born a writer, but becomes one. And even Κι ένα λουλούδι
if the first process is something whose indelible traces of childhood, all that Κασσάνδρα»
one is subject to since presumably he or she cannot control it, one struggles
(Karapanou 2001a: 75)
to rearrange throughout a lifetime the second, the devenir écrivain, one can
claim it on his or her own terms. One can impose his or her own justice, be
“My Dear Mother, when are you coming back? I want to kill you.
born anew and remain there, even if he or she has physically left. The sec-
I am sending you a bunch of Ghosts
ond birth through writing that Karapanou attempted amidst her personal 2 magic pigglepig
chaos, this creative ejection into her chosen realm, bears her own geogra- And 1 flower
phy, or better yet her own literary citizenship. If the range and speed of the Kassandra”
consumption of books mentioned in her journals bears nothing unnatu- Karapanou 1975b: 36)
ral for a real writers’ digest, there is nevertheless something rather awry.
Karapanou seems to prefer clearly the French-written and English-written “I want to write a ghost story where ghosts are more real than people”,
literature, while she stands in a “slight angle” towards the Greek-written lit- H. James writes in his Notes, and this is exactly what the reader of Kara-
erature, which she accuses of its political polarization, as well as its “absence panou senses when focusing on her characters in order to discern physical
of ambiguity” which, according to her, is one of the characteristics of top- figures. “The whole novel The Turn of the Screw is incorporated in this ex-
level literature (2008: 336). Could this mean that she is less familiar with quisite phrase of the Carnets”, remarks Karapanou about the above desire
Modern Greek Literature and thus underestimates it or vice versa? When of James to make ghosts more real than humans (Karapanou 1986: 1126),
the writer was asked if she had read Δύσκολες νύχτες (Difficult nights) by which will also be her own way to talk about people who were essential in
Melpo Axioti, as the book presents similarities with her Kassandra, she re- her childhood. The Turn of the Screw will not only be the textual screen for
sponded vaguely that she must have read it in the past (Faubion 1996: 221). the identification of her own ghosts, but also for their projection, creating
But, Kassandra is somewhat different to Axioti’s young heroine, who is also thus a palimpsest that could remind us of fan fiction, with James’ heroes
raised in a rich home but without a mother and in a constant distancing going on with their lives as avatars in the life of Karapanou a century later.
from many aspects of the world that surrounds her, as she is also different In case it was a novel and not real life – although the writers, living to a
to the little girl that is raised in the bourgeois Parisian home of Mémoires great extent through reading, end up living between reality and fiction or
d’une jeune fille rangée, who already presents anxiety crisis as a denial of the even feeling like living in the latter rather than in the former. This will lead
rules that she needs to begin to respect, and who will later become Simone to Kassandra and the wolf, which will be attempted by Karapanou with a view
de Beauvoir. And this because within the golden shell that encompasses her, to rewrite her childhood. The first dedication ‘To my mother, Margarita Lib-
young Kassandra moves half as an angel half as a devil in her own house eraki, with love’ (as if the title or the name was not enough, but the reader
of horrors, a dimension that is totally absent in the two narratives above. should be informed of the relation of the novice writer with the established
Karapanou, like another Alice, walked through the mirror and showed her one), will be followed by a concise first chapter that will be in sharp contrast

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with the ‘love’ expressed in the dedication (“I was born at dusk, hour of and the evil.5 At the same time, they transmit to the reader some of the verti-
the wolf, July, under the sign of Cancer. When they brought me to her, she go, the quiver, the dual nature of evil, which is often disguised as good (just
turned her face to the wall”, Karapanou 1975b: 3) but not with the twilight as presented through the books of our childhood, in the form of the wolf
zone in which ghosts or visions make their appearance. Ghosts haunt the in Little Red Riding Hood, for instance), disturbing their own beliefs, their
nanny of Flora and Miles, the two children-heroes in the Turn of the Screw own sense of security, their own complacency in reassuring categorizations.
which she manages to decode with the assistance of the housekeeper: it is Such appears to have been James’ main objective upon writing this novel:
the nanny’s predecessor, Miss Jessel and the servant Peter Quint, who had Only make the reader’s general vision of evil intense enough, I
an affair with the children’s tolerance and complicity. “Who corrupts whom said to myself – and that already is a charming job – and his own
remains a mystery, it is the adults who corrupt the children or the other experience, his own imagination, his own sympathy (with children)
way round”, as it is put forward by the young psycho who is proved to be and horror (of their false friends) will supply him quite successfully
a literature teacher and the heroine’s lover in a later testimonial book by with all the necessary particulars. Make him think about the evil,
Karapanou on mental disease, entitled Yes (Karapanou 1999: 47), referring make him think about it for himself, and you are released from weak
again to James’ novel which he, too, finds fascinating (as if the ideal lover is specifications.
(James 1908: Xxi-Xxii, Prinzinger 1997: 104)
the one who shares with us the same madness, literature, and even the same
readings, which he has fathomed with the perceptiveness of a specialised Karapanou as a reader took in all the scope of this evil and as a writer
scholar). Besides, in Kassandra and the Wolf, Peter is also the name of the she directly dramatized it, highlighting thus the disguised misfortunes of
housekeeper of Kassandra’s grandmother, who often looks after the little her own biography - «Dramatize, dramatize!» as remarkably James prompted
girl in the grandmother’s absence. Already in the second chapter, entitled himself and the other authors to do. In the chapter “Saint Sebastian” of Kas-
“The Wolf”, he teaches the girl to read and write seated on his knees and sandra, consisting of a bizarre masked ball, the little girl claims and makes
reading with her “the book with the pictures”, rendering her thus both a the adults give her the missing half of the homonymous painting, depicting
reading subject and his erotic object. Karapanou gives Vassilis, the real ser- the evil ones throwing arrows (p.56); literature as a means of doing emo-
vant in her grandmother’s bourgeois mansion where she grew up, the name tional justice or as “the finally regained childhood”, as Bataille would put it
of the hero in James’ novel, so that she can talk since the very first lines of (Bataille 1957). In the same chapter, which narrates one of the little girl’s
her first novel about her traumatic abuse experience with Vassilis – which dreams in which the men are dressed as women, Peter is dressed as a nan-
she will manage to confess many years later in Μήπως; (Maybe?), the dia- ny (his transvestism makes allusion to H. James’ Peter Quint who in the
logic book that resulted from her discussions with F. Tsalikoglou (Karapa- nanny’s visions – appearing at dusk – wears someone else’s clothes and acts
nou-Tsalikoglou 2006: 166). Is the divulgence of a trauma on paper better as an actor. Another common trait is that he is also red-haired like Karapa-
protected when covered under the paper of another text? Maybe in this way nou’s Peter); the dream conveys the fantasy picture or function of the ser-
mental ghosts are better identified as real ones, since their attempt to see vant for her: she sees him as a woman, the closest person to her, namely as a
the light is enhanced. What is more, it is not by chance that Karapanou mother (Karapanou 2001a: 167, 171). This gender and role intermingling is
gives her heroine the name Kassandra: it is not just someone who foresees elaborated in the chapter “The Lesson”, where Peter persistently demands,
misfortune, but also the one who discloses truths the others may not see or in an almost extortionate crosstalk, that the little girl should acknowledge
refuse to admit.4 Such are the difficult truths of literature. And the writer and adopt a gender other than the one she feels as her own. At the end of
who brings them to the fore takes the place of an impertinent child who, the chapter, due to the pressure exerted by the servant by way of a game, the
disrespectful to his parents, does exactly what he was told not to do, risking girl is forced to consent to belonging to the male gender, dropping the knife
thus being told off in a fierce way, as Georges Bataille points out in Literature she was holding – with which she was peeling a banana. Phallic symbols,

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identifications, the gender construction, are in such a way weaved on the you have no right to do so, nobody will love you.
dense parodic canvas of the text, leaving aside “weak specifications” just like - I want to live. To get rid of this terrible judge.
James would do, that Karapanou herself seems to have had to go through - You have the judge because otherwise what you wanted would be
a long, painful analysis process in order to grasp their obscure, yet particu- horrible.
larly eloquent content. Most probably, the closer a writer gets to the focus - What?
of their exposition to a familiar audience, the more they are facilitated in
- To kill all men, to stay with your mum, but you hate her and are
decoding their own work: this becomes obvious through the pages of the scared of her, she is terrible, she’s gonna eat you.
diary kept by Karapanou shortly before her book was published in Greek.
- You see? We are fighting. That’s why I have depression. Instead of
The book had already been published in English (1974) and French, but it
allowing me to let out my fears, you’re strangling them. Mum is my
was some time before its imminent publication in Greek (1976), while the man. I want men for women, or to put it better, she’s the woman and
writer was submitted in frequent psychoanalytical sessions, when in a dia- I’m her man and the men I want are like women.]
logue between Ego and Superego in her diary, she admitted:
By means of James’ text, Karapanou draws her own cryptogram of
- «Το μάθημα» είναι το σκότωμα της μητέρας, δεν είναι; Αυτό το
gender inscription or rather its amphoterism, as well as the overall unbear-
βιβλίο, την Κασσάνδρα, πώς τόλμησες να το γράψεις; Σου ξέφυγε,
έλα όμως που τώρα πρέπει να το εκδώσεις. Ο αληθινός σου εαυτός
able distress of her personal life. Besides, the reader gets access here to the
είναι άσχημος και πρόστυχος και μολυσμένος. Γι’ αυτό είμαι από whole range of sexually ambiguous characters in her work: the decadent
πάνω να προσέχω μη σου ξεφύγει τίποτα. Θα λες μόνον αυτό που artists in the Sleepwalker, who fail to complete their work, plunged in al-
θέλω εγώ, γιατί είσαι κακό κορίτσι. coholism and their homosexual or pederastic tendencies (“The one I want
- Δεν είμαι και τόσο κακό κορίτσι. has to be really strong to get between me and mum, so that I won’t want
- Είσαι γιατί σκέφτεσαι φοβερά πράγματα για τη μαμά σου και γι’
her. That’s why I love the losers, I’m not scared of the weak ones”, p. 314-5),
αυτό θα τιμωρηθείς. Η τιμωρία είναι πως δεν θα ζήσεις, δεν έχεις
δικαίωμα, δεν σ’ αγαπάει κανείς.
the heroine’s homosexual husband who finally kills himself and her man-
- Θέλω να ζήσω. Να μην έχω από πάνω μου αυτόν το φοβερό δικαστή. like friend in Rien ne va plus, the definitely inseparable couple of mother
- Τον έχεις, διότι αν δεν τον είχες αυτό που θα ’θελες θα ήταν φοβερό. and daughter in Mum (2004, written three years after M. Liberaki’s death)
- Τι; where the mother still domineers the life – or the imagery – of her daughter
- Να σκοτώσεις τους άντρες όλους, να μένεις με τη μαμά σου, αλλά even after her death. Despite the disclosure of the events presented later in
τη μισείς και τη φοβάσαι, είναι φοβερή, θα σε φάει.
Kassandra – the fact that mother and daughter have the same name is a first
- Είδες; Τσακωνόμαστε. Γι’ αυτό έχω κατάθλιψη. Η μαμά είναι ο
άντρας μου. Τους άντρες τους θέλω για γυναίκες (..) ή μάλλον αυτή
sign of an implied incestuous relation as declared by herself (p. 323) – and
είναι η γυναίκα κι εγώ ο άντρας της, και οι άντρες που θέλω είναι despite the fact that the analysis she underwent brought to light a big part
σαν γυναίκες. (p. 312-314) of this material, Karapanou consciously blocked the process that rendered
[- “The Lesson” is the mother’s killing, isn’t it? How did you dare many other writers of her theoretical background thorough and exhaustive
write this book, Kassandra? It was a mistake, right, but now it’s time critics of their own work: “I am starting to understand”, she writes down
to publish it. Your real self is ugly and grotesque and dirty. That’s in her diary. “I can’t deny my other self, the one that wrote the book. It’s
why I’m here to see that you don’t disclose anything. You will be a wild, terribly wild self, it’s going to eat me. I can now see that this self,
saying what I want you to, because you are a bad girl. too, is me (..) A horrible depression. Maybe I shouldn’t read Kassandra with
- I’m not such a bad girl. a psychoanalytical eye. I have never dared do it. (AND I SHOULDN’T).”
- You are, because you think terrible things about your mum, that’s (p. 319-320).This direction to herself does not constitute evasion due to
why you will be punished. The punishment is that you will not live, the terror involved, it is rather a decision not to sabotage her creative flow,

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not to interfere with it. She decides to go out to the abyss in the light of her both in the title of Ionesco’s play that his daughter and wife are attending
new writing, with a new book: “Because what is writing? A constant effort (which is cryptically called Rabies and Diarrhea) and in the way the wife is
to shed light on the horrifying ghosts who live down there. To shed light taking care of her husband’s diet (she prevents him from eating anything
just for one moment on the faces, to acknowledge and be acknowledged, a that could remind him of alcohol, like vinegar or even lemon!).“When he is
twofold display of power.” (p. 324).Original fiction is the most crucial way writing, my dear Kassandra”, she says to the hostess “I cut a few pages from
to get on with one’s dialogue with their parents. Besides, a writer can go the Bible and boil them for him with a sprig of celery” (Karapanou 1975b:
on reading, metabolizing the work of others, instead of being the reader of 44).Thus little Kassandra also cuts, the day after, a few pages from the Bible
their own work, since “It is not us that read books, the books read us” (Bon- («The offering of Isaac» in particular, a blatant parody of the misfortune of
nefis 2009: 6).We can therefore read ourselves through them. being a writer’s child), she cooks them with onions:
This however is not necessarily the usual attitude of the children of «Η θυσία του Ισαάκ» πέφτει όλη μέσα στον καμπινέ, πάω να
famous writers: they may choose an intellectual career not in order to make σκάσω απ’τη χαρά μου. Βγαίνω από το μπάνιο, ο ποπός μου στον

studies on the parent’s work6or to make the truth speak in an academic αέρα, ανεβαίνω στο τραπέζι και κοιτώντας τη μαμά φωνάζω:
«Μαμά, μαμά, κοίτα! Έκανα μια εντριβή!»
voice, namely straight from the horse’s (child) mouth, but in order to dis-
(Karapanou 2001a: 82)
credit the parent, by dedicating for example studies to the work of their
most hated opponent. And this attitude or option is uniquely dramatised The offering of Isaac pours into the lavatory bowl; I am beside myself
in Kassandra, as it seems to have been a reality in Karapanou’s direct en- with joy. I rush out of the toilet, my bottom bare, and climb on the
vironment too, while she stayed in Paris with her mother. Thus, writing as table, and, looking at Mother, I yell:
a travestied autobiography is also recognized by France, in a chapter that “Mother, Mother, I’ve just made a dissertation!”
bears this name in Kassandra.“France”, who is not the actual country, but (Karapanou 1975b: 44)
a friend of the young heroine and daughter of the writer of Hippopotamus, What «εντριβή» means (a notion unfortunately lost in Germanacos’
(as she is explicitly delineated in the novel) up ongoing to the opening night translation, despite his highly creative rendering of a passage heavy in
of one of her father’s plays,suspiciously asks her mother whether what the connotations) little Kassandra has just learned from the somewhat older
heroes just said on the scene wasn’t exactly what her father had said to her France, who, some years later wants to make a thesis on Strindberg (the
mother the night before.“Sure enough, it was Mother and me hanging from writer whom her father detested):
the roof of the stage, and we had wings on too, and Father was down be- Να, παίρνεις ένα βιβλίο και το τρίβεις πάνω σου ώσπου να ξεβάψει
low, in a mousetrap” (Karapanou 1975: 43) she says to Kassandra with her και να πέσουν οι λέξεις χάμω. Μετά τις μαζεύεις και τις φτιάχνεις
mouth open and her mother hastens to explain sinisterly that her father όπως θες εσύ.

represented them as angels because those who live go to Heaven, whilst (Karapanou 2001a: 80)

those who write go to Hell. “Well, you see, you take a book and go to the middle of a desert or
Marie-France, Ionesco’s daughter, was truly a friend of young Marga- something and then you bury it in the sand for a long time and then
rita. Yet by keeping only her second name in Kassandra, she alludes meto- you dig it up again and you find that all the words have got mixed up
nymically to the experiences and acquaintances of the writer’s childhood like the sand and then you put them all back in place only this time
in France, reflecting all elements that constitute Karapanou’s personal you put them back anyway you want.”
bildung. What is more, “France” offers a whole theory about reading and (Karapanou 1975b: 43)
writing. Reading as a nurturing diet and writing as its immediate, overflow- Whatever lurks unseen in language seems here to have been trimmed
ing, disintegrating, profane metabolism, are depicted with grotesque clarity through the child’s language and revealed its real nature. The Greek word

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“writing”, which involves “touching” (γραφή/αφή), becomes clearer to the (“my whole life is no more than infinite, desperate expectation” she writes
point of rendering metaphorical expressions such as “this book has pro- in her 16th year of age in her diary, p.219) and, along with those, the constant
foundly touched me” actually literal. longing, the unattainable goal of the completion of creation, experienced by
And then the so-called thesis (εν/δια-τριβή), the time-consuming the artists gathered on the island of The Sleepwalker and also the escape to the
dwelling in the text of the other, until its words fall down and become dream and the conflict with reality (“Is this my eternal damnation? To be in
one’s own property. However, little Kassandra already knows, thanks to her constant conflict with reality, a reality always so different from my dreams?”
granny, that the theses destroy femininity: “I want to become a policeman she keeps wondering in her 21st year of age, p. 262), imagining of oneself as
and wear a uniform and a gun. You know something, though, you are going a hero of a novel (little Kassandra imagines that on a nearby island another
to spoil your frocks with all these dissertations and diggings and things” granny lives, who has kept the books of her childhood and reads to her the
(1975b: p. 43), she says to France, and this constitutes a double strike. She Turning of the Screw by H. James and Kassandra almost immediately grasps
attacks both the bourgeois morality that her granny wanted to impose on the parallels between, on the one hand, the nanny of the novel, the servant,
her and those who think they can continue the dialogue with their family their perverse relationship with the two kids and on the other hand her own
not through the production of their own original work but by commenting experience), the concept of literature and reading as better than life/real-
on the work of others, finally talking like ventriloquists. The refusal of a ity (in Rien ne va plus, the protagonist and her –homosexual– husband have
potential career as a literary critic, a researcher or a university professor/ sex and after that they read Proust’s Le temps retrouvé, which ends with the
academic seems to have been a rather early, conscious and brave choice for phrase “the only life, the only truly experienced life is literature”), all those
Karapanou. She remained a frantic, almost bulimic reader whose few but that Flaubert depicted on Madame Bovary seem to constitute the unbear-
pervasive articles fathom spectacularly certain literary issues or writers, in able bovarism of Karapanou. Maybe, more or less, of every writer –and of
the same way that her own, richly imaginative literary creation does. every genuine reader. Most probably because it sums up “ways of reading,
Those processes, which Didier Anzieu calls “permanent attachment ways of being” (Macé 2011). Or, according to Barthes in 1978,in one of his
of the ego” (prothèse permanente du moi), leave their traces on the support- phrases that were meant for the work of other theoreticians and writers or
ing and constructive work of her creation-to-be in her diaries. According even intended to be a frontispiece of their books: «Nous sommes tous des
to Anzieu (1981: 75-76) who regards them as a transformative remain of Bovary, des Bovary qui nous laissons mener par des modèles, des phrases et
early sensory stimulations of the infantile stage, which somewhat perpetu- des images comme par des leurres». Emma was to him the character whose
ate indefinitely the remote mother’s care into one’s inner self, can produce life « au sens le plus brûlant, le plus dévastateur, est formée, façonnée (télé-
three types of writers: a) the theoretical or intellectual one (like Henry guidée) par la Phrase ». Even « à même le leurre, la Phrase littéraire est initia-
James’ brother, William, American philosopher who conceived the notion trice : elle conduit, elle enseigne, d’abord le Désir (le Désir, ça s’apprend) »,
of the stream of consciousness), b) the writer who is overwhelmed by intel- but also, he adds, « la Nuance » (Barthes 2003 : 150). It is not accidental
lectual images (thus a predominantly imaginative/fictional writer like H. that, just before Karapanou wonders in her last book why Flaubert keeps on
James himself, who was thought to be “the idiot of the family” because he haunting her, the same images, the same phantoms return:
was constantly making up stories which he narrated),and c) the writer who Μοναξιά... Μετράω τις ώρες.. Η μαμά και ο Μάριο κοιμούνται..
combines both those types, like Jean Paul Sartre, who was both an intellec- Μέσα στο δωμάτιο ταξιδεύω. Διαβάζω το Gustave Flaubert,

tual and a writer and whose work was also passionately read by Karapanou écrivain. Οι φράσεις του Φλωμπέρ.. Σαν τους χτύπους της καρδιάς
μου. Ο Μάριο, μέσα στον ύπνο του, θα έχει ρίξει το χέρι πάνω
–especially his study on Flaubert (L’Idiot de la Famille), which seems to
στους ώμους της μαμάς, κάτι θα της ψιθυρίζει.. Δεν έχω κανέναν,
have haunted her, as she admits (and wonders about) in Mum! (Karapanou μόνο τον Φλωμπέρ.
2004: 129). However, the perpetual escape, the feeling of dissatisfaction (Karapanou 2004: 125)

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[Loneliness...I’m counting the hours.. Mario and mum are sleeping.. of her mother’s literary caliber is the following: “What comes after. All books talk about it,
without talking directly about it. And here lies the main problem: whether you speak about
In the room I travel. I read Gustave Flaubert, écrivain. Flaubert’s
a slice of bread or about God, this apparition always lies behind your writing. Cavafy had it,
phrases.. Like my heart’s beating. Mario, in his sleep, must have put that’s what made him great. Rita didn’t and she never will. All great people have it” (p. 331).
his hand on mum’s shoulders, he must be whispering something to
her. I have no one, no one but Flaubert.]
References
Anzieu, Didier (1981), Le corps de l’oeuvre, Paris: Gallimard.
Notes Bataille, Georges (1957), La littérature et le mal, Paris : Gallimard.
1 “I was born a bourgeois, but I prefer duality. I had never before reached anxiety so close. It
is, after all, an experience. Doubt: a reined crisis”, Karapanou will write down in her diary at Barthes, Roland (2003), La préparation du roman I et II. Cours et séminaires au Collège de
the age of 21 (Karapanou 2008: 236, underlining is hers. The translation, unless otherwise France (1978-1979, 1979-1980), Paris : Seuil.
mentioned, is ours.)
Bonnefis, Philippe (2009), “Un joyeux désespoir”, La Quinzaine littéraire 997: 6-7.
2 In her diary she quotes the lines taken from The Portrait of Dorian Grey: “When the critics
disagree, the artist agrees with himself” (2008: 150). Clément, Bruno (1999), Le lecteur et son modèle. Hugo, Shakespeare, Sartre, Flaubert,
Paris : PUF.
3 According to copy editor Vassilis Kimoulis (Copy editor’s note, p. 421-2) in the years 1963,
1965-1966 and 1971-1974 the writer did not keep a diary and what ever else saw the light Faubion, James (1996), Modern Greek Lessons. A Primer in historical Constructivism,
was published free of interventions (on his part–we are not sure, however, if the writer Princeton: Princeton University Press (First edition 1993).
herself is included). At the age of 21, however, Karapanou writes (30-11-1967, p. 235): “When
I was ten and I was attending the boarding school of Cours de la Terrasse in St-Germain-en- Iakovidou, Sophie (2008), «Μεταξύ μητέρας και κόρης: το ρήμαγμα. Η περίπτωση της
Laye, I still kept a diary. I still wanted, if possible, to see clearly. I wrote down everything day Μαργαρίτας Καραπάνου», In Λόγος γυναικών, Athens: ELIA, 303-314.
by day, I did not omit a word”; there is no trace of this diary in Life is wildly improbable.
James, Henry (1908), The Aspern Papers. The Turn of the Screw. The Liar. The two Faces.
4 The name, already in the title, bears the quality of its multiple uses in various areas, from New York: Charles Scribner’s sons.
philosophy (where it is first applied by Gaston Bachelard as «Kassandra complex”(1969) in Le
rationalisme appliqué. Paris : PUF) to psychology, where it is first applied by Melanie Klein to Karapanou, Margarita (2001a), Η Κασσάνδρα και ο λύκος, Athens: Kastaniotis, (first
declare the moral conscience of man (whose main function is to warn, often awakening in the published in Ermis 1974).
others the refusal to believe what they know as true, in the form of defence against the stress
and guilt that torment them, see Klein, Melanie (1975). Envy and Gratitude and other works
--- (1975b), Kassandra and the wolf, Translated by N. Germanacos, New York and
1946-1963, New York: Tavistock) and is further specified by Laurie Layton Schapira to denote London : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
the dysfunctional relationships with what she calls «the Apollo archetype”, which refers to any --- (1986), «Μέσα από τον καθρέπτη», Η Λέξη 59/60: 1124-1127.
individual’s or cultural pattern bound by order, reason, truth and clarity. Following Schapira,
“What the Cassandra woman sees is something dark and painful that may not be apparent --- (1997), Ο υπνοβάτης. Athens: Kastaniotis, (first edition 1985).
on the surface of things or that objective facts do not corroborate (..). In her frightened, ego- --- (1991), Rien ne va plus, Athens : Ermis.
less state, the Cassandra woman may blurt out what she sees, perhaps with the unconscious
hope that others (especially authority figures) might be able to make some sense of it. But to --- (1993), «Συντηρητική και ανατρεπτική λογοτεχνία για παιδιά», Η Λέξη 118: 657-659.
them her words sound meaningless and blown out of all proportion” (Schapira, L. L. 1988:
65) – just like a child’s speech. If these name resonances are combined with the other half
--- (1999), Ναι, Athens: Okeanida.
of the title, the wolf, their content is further illuminated. One of the latent notions behind --- (2006), Μήπως;, Athens: Okeanida.
this animal is according to the Liddell-Scott dictionary manifested in the expression Λύκον
ιδείν which means I remain speechless upon seeing a pederast (wolf). This etymology is also --- (2008), Η ζωή είναι αγρίως απίθανη, Athens: Okeanida.
mentioned by Prinzinger (p. 104). It is note worthy that in the book the speech problem, the Macé, Marielle (2011), Façons de lire, manières d’être, Paris : Gallimard.
stuttering,is a constant feature in little Kassandra.
Nazou, Panayota (2011), "The crisis of the authorial identity: Margarita Karapanou,
5 Bataille seems to have been a particularly educational source for Karapanou. She refers to him
as the source of her inspiration for a theatrical play she prepares on the issue of incest and from the divided narrative subject to the decentered narrative subjectivity", Modern
madness (p. 392-3. We are not aware of traces of this work in what she left behind) but also Greek Studies (Australia and New Zealand) 15(1): 140-160.
as a constant influence of which she tries to get rid of as a writer (“I gradually leave behind Prinzinger, Michaela (1997), « Το παράλογο και το ανοίκειο: παρωδιακά τεχνάσματα
the influence of Bataille, Carrol, Genet. I enter other ‘influence’ realms (…) Lautréamont,
στο κείμενο της Μ. Καραπάνου Η Κασσάνδρα και ο λύκος», Θέματα Λογοτεχνίας July-
however, persists”, p. 411.)
October: 94-105.
6 Karapanou will only write one penetrating article about Liberaki’s work (1984, «Ο μύθος, το
θέατρο και ο φόνος» (“Myth, theater and murder”) Η Λέξη 31: 8-13). However, her opinion Ricoeur, Paul (1990), Soi-même comme un autre, Paris : Seuil.

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Schapira, Laurie Layton (1988), The Cassandra Complex : Living with Disbelief, A modern P anayiotis Diam adis
Perspective on Hysteria, Bedford: Castle Rock. Unive r s it y of Te chnolog y
Voulgari, Sofia (2008), «Εγκώμιο του ψέματος: ανάγνωση του Rienne va plus της
Μαργαρίτας Καραπάνου», In Λόγος γυναικών, Athens: ELIA, 285-302.
Friends in Crisis: Anzacs and Hellenism

Abstract
Across numerous conflicts in the first half of the 20th century, Aus-
tralians and New Zealanders were at the side of Hellenism: World War One,
the Asia Minor Campaign (1919-1922), and the relief efforts after the Hel-
lenic, Armenian and Assyrian Genocides. Beyond their battlefield record,
these Anzacs and others from the Antipodes provided substantial practical
and moral support for a people going through successive major crises.
2014 marked the Centenary of the outbreak of World War One, and
the commencement of four years of commemorative activity to mark a se-
ries of centenaries related to Australia and the Great War. Across numerous
conflicts in the first half of the 20th century, Australians and New Zealand-
ers were at the side of Hellenism: World War One, the Asia Minor Campaign
(1919-1922), and the relief efforts after the Hellenic, Armenian and As-
syrian Genocides. Beyond their battlefield record, these Anzacs and others
from the Antipodes provided substantial practical and moral support for a
people going through successive major crises. The crises that conflict trig-
gered within Hellenism present some stark parallels with the Crisis within
the Hellenic Republic since 2010, and some lessons unlearned.
With a pro-British elected Prime Minister (Eleutherios Venizelos)
and a pro-German monarch (King Konstantinos), the Hellenic Kingdom
spent the years of World War One mired in a deep political and social crisis,

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