This year marks the 50th anniversary of Greece’s first Nobel Prize for Literature, awarded to poet and diplomat Giorgos Seferis (1900-1971), “for his eminent lyrical writing, inspired by a deep feeling for the Hellenic world of culture”.
Giorgos Seferis, in his speech at the Nobel Prize Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm on December 10, 1963, said: “I belong to a small country. A rocky promontory in the Mediterranean, it has nothing to distinguish it but the efforts of its people, the sea, and the light of the sun. It is a small country, but its tradition is immense and has been handed down through the centuries without interruption. The Greek language has never ceased to be spoken. It has undergone the changes that all living things experience, but there has never been a gap.”
Greece’s recognisable characteristics such as the landscape, the weather, the culture, its people and the language, as defined by Seferis and through the personal experiences of every Greek either home or abroad, or as defined by the imagination, are all important parts of our individual and collective memories and identities.
Which experienced or imagined Greece, though, is predominant in the eyes and minds, in the hearts of Greek Australians?
Poverty and necessity motivated numerous Greeks, mostly from rural areas, to migrate in numbers to post World War II Australia. Our grandparents and parents, without having a formal education, managed to achieve much working in factories or running small businesses in this country. Thanks to the efforts of these humble men and women, present day Australians of Greek descent can be found in business, professional, academic, political and in the world of arts and crafts.
Greece though, as defined and understood by the majority of them, does not take into consideration the entire depth of the cultural and intellectual wealth and heritage of the “rocky promontory in the Mediterranean”, as Seferis called the country.
For example, Greek Australians may not know the names, let alone the compositions, of Nikos Skalkotas, Manos Hadjidakis or Eleni Karaindrou, or may not be aware of the poetry of Giorgos Seferis or of Odysseas Elytis, the other Nobel laureate poet.
How many of us, shaped predominantly by Australian cultural attributes, are aware of Nikos Kazatntzakis’ (1883-1957) profound words about death, in the opening paragraph of his creative autobiography Report to Greco? Writing about old age and death, famous Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis wrote: “I collect my tools: sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, intellect. Night has fallen, the day’s work is done. I return like a mole to my home, the ground. Not because I am tired and cannot work. I am not tired. But the sun has set. The sun has set, the hills are dim. The mountain ranges of my mind still retain a little light at their summits, but the sacred night is bearing down; it is rising from the earth, descending from the heavens. The light has vowed not to surrender, but it knows there is no salvation. It will not surrender but it will expire.”
As the crisis continues to embroil modern Greece, a resilient country used, abused, misunderstood, taunted and denounced by many, and while the Greeks are searching for alternatives and hidden attributes, let us remembers the words of Giorgos Seferis again: “The garden with the fountain in the rain/ you will see only from behind the clouded glass/ of the low window. Your room/ will be lit only by the flames from the fire place/ and sometimes the distant lightning will reveal/ the wrinkles on your forehead, my old Friend.”