INVENTING PARADISE REVIEW

By Dino Siotis

(Translated by Nina Gatzoulis)

 Edmund Kelley, “Inventing Paradise – The Greek Journey 1937-1947”-, Farrar, Straus and Giroux Publications, New York, 1999, p. 253.

            There is always a code of communication within the secret communities of poets and authors throughout the world.  Poetic societies, regardless of distance and location in Larissa and Kolonaki in Greece, Missouri in USA, Osaka in Japan, etc, have a common language and a universal attitude that can not be erased despite the fact of literary globalization attempts.  Edmund Kelley with his “Inventing Paradise” searches and lists these codes and offers to the Modern Greek reader a marvelous book with excellent metaphors, conflicts, uninterrupted magic and every day-life.

            Kelley, a friend and colleague of George Seferis, Odysseus Elytis and Yiannis Ritsos, “entered the soul” of Greece like no one before him.  He “entered” it not as a visitor, but as a native, born and raised in prior and post war Thessalonica (he is an honorary Greek citizen). He was molded with Greek poetry and learned very early about the habits and peculiarities of the poets and their associates during the Greek literary decade of 1937-1947.  -Therefore, his book became the mirror of that decade, reflecting all the significant historic events and exuding the literary aroma of that particular era.

            In the nine chapters of the book (“The First Eden”, “Almost Blessed Island”, “The Mythmakers”, “Travelling Through the Light”, “About Gods, Demigods and Demons”,

 “The Garden of Earthly Pleasures”, “Sailing Out of Paradise”, “Eden on Fire” and             “Emerging Out of the Ashes”) the reader gets a glimpse of Durell’s and Henry Miller’s first contact with Greece (later on it turns into a love affair), the era before the German Occupation, Metaxa’s years of dictatorship, the German Occupation, the Civil War and the myth of the

 “New Letters”.  The history and the myth of the “New Letters” era is supported by George Katsibalis and the poets Angelos Sikilianos, George Seferis, Yiannis Ritsos, Andreas Empirikos, Nikos Egonopoulos, Odysseus Elytis, Nikos Gatsos, Dimitris Antoniou and Nanos Valaoritis appear through the pages. In addition we catch glimpses of Nikos Hatzikyriakos-Gikas, Constantine Tsatsos, Andreas Karantonis, Ioanna Tsatsou, Georgios Theotokas, Patrick Leigh Fermor and James Merill, who represent the 1930s generation in all its magnificence.

            Lawrence Durell got to know both George Seferis and George Katsimalis and in his book “Spirit of Place” he describes Katsibalis’ house in Marousi as the house of “Wuthering

Heights”.  Seferis, Katsibalis and Miller would gather at Katsibalis’ house on Sundays and discuss Greek literature in depth till Durell’s heart “would bleed”.  Henry Miller in his

 “Colossus of Marousi” describes Seferis as being “passionate about his country and its people, without being chauvinistic about it, but the passion was rather the result of patient research and discovering the country and its people after so many years of being away from Greece”.  Miller again in his “Colossus of Marousi” writes of Durell’s letters about Greece “that they were quite poetic, but ambiguous, a mixture of dream and reality, history and myth” and that “that he never dreamt that one day he would encounter the world of the Greek “light”.  When Durell invited Miller to visit him on the island of Corfu, neither of them knew that this visit would be the corner stone of a close friendship and that Greece would be the country with which both of them would have close ties for the rest of their lives.

            Durell discovered Katsibalis in 1935, a few years before Miller arrived in Greece.  In July 1939, when Miller came to Greece, Durell introduced him to Katsibalis and his friends George Seferis, Nikos Hatzikyriakos-Gikas, Dimitris Antoniou, Dr. Theodore Stephanides, Seferis’ sister Joanna and her husband Constantine Tsatsos.

            Henry Miller was always attracted to Greece and he learned several things from a Greek college student on board the ship that carried both of them to Piraeus.  -Miller learned that Greeks are not only “enthusiastic, extraordinary and passionate people” but also, “endowed with the most human elements, such as contradiction, confusion and madness”.  Miller, as Durell before him, also found his “paradise” in Greece.  -In a matter of hours, Kelley writes, Miller, became a typical Athenian.  -And what turned him into an Athenian?  Nothing more than not to visit the Acropolis – something that is done by grade students and lovers who want to see the full moon on a starlit night and apparently not something done by contemporary Athenians. Miller cast his first glance on the “Greek paradise” at Zapio Park.  “There is no other park in my mind that resembles Zapio.  -It gives the feeling that you are looking at a canvas or you are dreaming of a place you would like to be but you can never find it”, writes Miller. Miller learns to love Greece and the Greeks instantly at Zapio, looking at lovers in the darkness quenching their thirst with water and kisses, says Kelley. It is in Zapio that the American author becomes acquainted with the Greek temperament.      

            The Greek artist Malliarakis who lived in Paris prompted Miller to go to Greece:  “Miller”, he said, “you will like Greece. I am certain of that”. Reality however, is somewhat different. The reason that Miller had to take his only trip to Greece was the eighteen-year-old American, Betty Gordon (Elizabeth Ryan) who lived in Paris at the time and had become Miller’s lover.  -She had arrived in Greece when a Frenchman had made available to her his home in a village on the island of Andros.  -Today Betty Gordon, advanced in age, lives at a cheap motel somewhere in New Hampshire, playing chess with a contrived opponent and she still remembers the days of glamour with Miller in Europe.  -It is an omission that there is no reference of her at all in Kelley’s “Inventing Paradise”.  -Betty Gordon brought Miller to Greece and there are references to her in all of Miller’s non-fiction works.  Also a further observation is that the acronym AMOGE does not mean “American Mission for Observing the Greek Elections” but “Allied Mission for Observing the Greek Elections”.

            One may find the book on the shelves of “Literary Criticism” of any bookstore; however we could say that “Inventing Paradise” it is not only a criticism but many other things as well.

 -First this is a book, which chronicles that renowned era in Greece that many people still remember.

-Secondly, it is Kelley’s personal memoirs, since the author personally knew most of the protagonists of “Inventing Paradise”. Finally, it is partly a historical narration of the most significant literature of Modern Greece. All these elements are depicted with love and passion and they are painted with colors that only Kelley’s pen could illustrate.

            Many historic events are included in the book; there is an abundance of Greek poetry translated into English by the author, there is travel narrative, there is real myth that unfolds tirelessly on the background which supported the foundation of Greek modernism.  -Kelley’s observations about the Greek temperament, the Greek society and the negative results of massive migration to big cities are very objective.

            With “Inventing Paradise” Kelley brought the literary element of Modern Greece into a higher echelon.  -The author refers to a bygone era. However, the aroma of that period will be rediscovered by those who want to find it in some of the cafes and pubs in the center in Athens, or in various literary groups in Athens and Thessalonika, but also in small provincial towns in the mainland and Aegean islands, or in some forgotten taverns in Kesariani and Exarheia. Kelley, through his pages, gives an updated literary account of all these places and we will see more of his impending works in the future.

            The author, toward the end of his “Inventing Paradise”, provides an account of that era and at the same time awards his readers with Miller’s and Durell’s remarkable contribution to bringing modern Greek literature to an international height. Kelley writes:  “The generation of authors that followed Miller and Durell are indebted to them, because they provide new access for them to appreciate Greece.  Peloponnesus in Kevin Andrews’ and Patrick Leigh Fermor’s books is deeply rooted in the modern history of the area. It gives account of the war that brought fright to the inhabitants of its villages, brings up the idiomatic uses of the Greek language and also introduces the traditions of the area. The various portraits of Greece that are depicted by Philip Sherard’s pen, underline the religious and poetic traditions that define the lively culture of the country. All of these American and British authors who came during the war, or immediately after it, were something more than visitors. Whether they liked it or not they “married” the country, they experienced romantic eras and eras filled with disappointments, and they also sampled renewal in that land, whilst remaining steadfast to their beliefs and opinions. Their story is another story and part of it is mine”.  Someone must undertake the task of giving an accurate account of the history of the next generation of authors and poets.  Greek poetry has roots that go very deep into history, while these roots sprouted throughout the world.

            “Inventing Paradise” shines like a diamond in the corpus of Greek literature.  And as we know, diamonds live forever.