PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies
Friday, May 1, 2015
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103
Abstract
“Our Inner Life’s Unbroken Melody”: Bergsonism in Modern Greek Aesthetic Discourse as a Case Study of Musico-literary Intermediality
The abuse of words such as “musical”, “melodious”, “symphonic”, etc. in the description and interpretation of literary texts that are considered “musicalized”, constitutes a major methodological problem in the theoretical field of “musico-literary intermediality”, as it has been indicated by Calvin S. Brown, one of the field’s pioneers. The formalistic typology offered by Calvin Brown and others as an answer to that purely subjective rapprochement and which sought to establish specific structural analogies between music and literature, it may be very useful, but it usually faces the danger of becoming a-historical. What theoreticians have often failed to notice is that this “abuse” of musical terms is intrinsic in aesthetic discourse since the period of early German Romanticism. Thus, to escape this ongoing metaphorical abuse of musical terms, a historical contextualization of their use and meaning, in other words their placement and interpretation within their aesthetic and cultural context, is necessary.
The proposed paper aims to focus on the ambiguous and problematic metaphorical use of musical terms in Modern Greek aesthetic discourse during the interwar period by illuminating a crucial yet neglected moment in the reception of anti-rationalistic philosophic and aesthetic tendencies that greatly influenced European modernist literature since the late 19th century. In particular, the paper will point out the ways the reception of Bergsonian theories in Greece co-determined the formation of a whole new concept for Modern Greek narrative fiction, clearing the ground for the first “modernist” attempts to “musicalize” fiction.
Through his well-known speech “Henri Bergson”, delivered in Athens in 1912, and, especially, through the translation of Bergson’s Le Rire the following year, Nikos Kazantzakis introduced the key musical metaphor used by Henri Bergson to describe his fundamental conception of “real duration” and “inner time”, i.e. the key ideas with which Bergson attacked every mechanistic and rationalistic worldview that dominated the intellectual thought since the Enlightenment. It is of particular importance that in the Bergsonian phrase “our inner life’s unbroken melody” music is defined simply as a negation of the structures of the spatial and real world, and in this respect “melody” is conceived as completely formless. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, the use of Bergsonian musical metaphors gained a new momentum in Greece through the reception of Virginia Woolf’s and James Joyce’s fiction – a reception heavily mediated and shaped by the French critic Edmond Jaloux, particularly his admiration of “musical” pure poetry. Following Jaloux’s example, a group of intellectuals around the literary magazine Makedonikes Imeres (Xefludas, Delios, Spandonidis and Karantonis) used the metaphor of “formless interior melody” to describe literature’s turn to the inner self and a new narrative form, rejecting the conventions of the realistic novel, which in the context of modern Greek criticism has often been miscalled “interior monologue” or “stream of consciousness”.
Bio
Olga Bezantakou is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Modern Greek Studies at Freie Universität in Berlin. She holds a degree in Classical Studies from the University of Athens and an M.A. in Comparative Literature and Modern Greek Studies from Ludwig Maximilians Universität in Munich. She is currently working on her doctoral thesis, funded by “Sophia Saripolou” scholarship from the University of Athens. Her dissertation project titled Musical methods in Modern Greek literature: Intermediality from Symbolism to Modernism examines the relationship between music and Modern Greek narrative prose fiction during a broad time period from 1890 until the end of the 1930s and primarily aims to point out the diverse functions of music not only as a narrative model but also as an aesthetic category within varied aesthetic and cultural contexts. Since 2013 she is teaching assistant in the B.A. program of the Department of Modern Greek Studies at FU Berlin and during the academic year 2010-2011 she was co-editor of the FU Berlin e-learning program “Didaktik der neugriechischen Literaturgeschichte”.
Abstract
“Late Byzantine Libraries between East and West: the Case of John Dokeianos”Unlike many well-known cases of Byzantines who sought refuge in the West, a full-round study of the Byzantine scholars who remained in Istanbul after 1453 has not been attempted yet. Among them the case of John Dokeianos is particularly relevant. He wrote rhetorical works for the Palaiologan court of Mistra and after the Ottoman conquest in 1460 he moved to Istanbul, where he worked as teacher at the Patriarchate and as copyist at the court of Mehmed II (1451-81).
Dokeianos also held an eclectic book collection which he enlarged in the Ottoman capital, as an autograph list at the end of a manuscript shows. His library encompassed different literary genres, sacred and profane, poetry and history, rhetoric and liturgy, classical Attic texts and Byzantine authors. It tells us a lot about the literary tastes of 15th century Byzantine humanists and it shows that interest in classical texts was equal to that in sacred literature. Dokeianos’ deep knowledge of ancient history, rhetoric and philosophy - as it emerges from his imperial orations - is also mirrored in the content of his library collection. One manuscript in particular bears relevant details on his acquaintance with Plethonic works and it also features notes showing that in the later years he became critical of Pletho. Moreover, the very same manuscript hints at the reading of Pletho in the Ottoman capital in the years when Gennadios Scholarios condemned the philosopher of Mistra. Finally, his library is of crucial importance because very little is known about private libraries in the early Ottoman Empire. Here we therefore have a rare case of a 15th century Byzantine library collection which travelled eastwards from Morea to Istanbul instead of being taken to the West.
Using an interdisciplinary approach encompassing book history, paleography and cultural history, I will examine the problems posed by the reconstruction of a late Byzantine private library, drawing comparisons with book collections from the western medieval world. I will present the manuscripts owned by Dokeianos which I managed to identify on the ground of paleographical analysis. I will trace the development of his library from the years at the Byzantine court of Mistra to those in Istanbul, providing an account of the fate of his books some of which remained in the East after the 15th century.
Using an interdisciplinary approach encompassing book history, paleography and cultural history, I will examine the problems posed by the reconstruction of a late Byzantine private library, drawing comparisons with book collections from the western medieval world. I will present the manuscripts owned by Dokeianos which I managed to identify on the ground of paleographical analysis. I will trace the development of his library from the years at the Byzantine court of Mistra to those in Istanbul, providing an account of the fate of his books some of which remained in the East after the 15th century.
Bio
Anna Calia is a doctoral candidate at the Advanced School of Historical Studies at the University of San Marino and at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris). She holds a degree in Classics from the University of Siena and an MA in Byzantine Philology from the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Beside her academic career, she has taught Italian, Classics and History in schools in Italy and France. She is currently working on her doctoral dissertation. Her thesis deals with the fate of the Orthodox community in Istanbul in the 2nd half of the 15th century and investigates the role played by Byzantine literati at the Ottoman court with a special focus on John Dokeianos’ works and manuscripts. She has presented papers at conferences and symposiums of Byzantine studies and she has published articles on the first Venetian-Ottoman war and the Byzantine-Ottoman transition. She was awarded with scholarships from the University of San Marino, the Orient-Institute (Istanbul) and the French Institute for Anatolian Civilizations (Istanbul). Her research interests include Greek paleography, Late Byzantine Literature, Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Culture.
Abstract
“‘Rustling and Pleading and Weeping at the Feet of Alexander’: The Family of Darius before Alexander the Great in Italian Renaissance Art”
My paper will focus on the representation of the ‘Meeting of Alexander the Great and the Family of Darius’ in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian art. This iconographic theme illustrates a famous act of magnanimity by Alexander in the aftermath of the battle of Issus in 333BC: having defeated the Persian king Darius III, Alexander showed mercy towards the captive women of the royal family, sparing their lives and making sure that their status as queens would be respected. This prestigious moral exemplum from ancient history enjoyed huge popularity in Italian Renaissance art: it was illustrated in several artistic media, from painting to tapestries and the minor arts, and it was almost always included in any fresco cycle depicting episodes from the life of Alexander.
The iconographic theme of the ‘Meeting of Alexander and the Family of Darius’ emerges around the mid- fifteenth century, when the tradition of ‘the myth of Alexander’ underwent a dramatic transformation. The humanist recovery of ancient historical accounts of Alexander – by Plutarch, Curtius Rufus, Arrian and Diodorus Siculus – resulted in a significant change in the received view of Alexander. The new availability of these texts through Latin and vernacular translations, epitomes and printed editions had a profound influence, not only on the general conception of Alexander, but also on the visual arts. From the mid-Quattrocento, the iconographic tradition based on the medieval Alexander Romance, which had enjoyed a huge popularity from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, was gradually superseded by a different portrait of Alexander: the figure of the fabled explorer and chivalrous knight of the medieval legend was replaced by the virtuous prince and military commander, whose heroic acts were recounted in the newly discovered historical sources. Among these episodes, the ‘Meeting of Alexander and the Family of Darius’ occupied a central place: not only was it by far the most popular and multi-faceted of the Alexander’s stories taken from ancient historical accounts, but it was also the first to appear in the new iconographical tradition.
In my paper, I will examine this episode from its first emergence on fifteenth-century panels on marriage chests to its firm establishment in the iconography over the course of the sixteenth century. I will discuss a selection of images and relate them to the literary sources on which they rely. These will include an unusual depiction of the subject found in a little-studied painting of the 1490s from a Sienese palace, as well as the famous Veronese painting, which was described by Henry James in the words quoted in my title.
By adopting the methodological approach of a close comparison between texts and images, I hope to demonstrate how a major shift in the written sources transformed the visual representation of Alexander. The ‘Meeting with the Family of Darius’, with its emphasis, firstly, on Alexander’s moral virtue and, secondly, on his military prowess, exemplifies this transformation and shows how and why the Renaissance came to envision a new Alexander.
Bio
Claudia Daniotti is a PhD candidate in History of Art at the Warburg Institute, London. She holds a BA and an MA in art history from the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her area of expertise is Italian Renaissance art, with an emphasis on iconography and the classical tradition. She is currently completing her doctoral dissertation on the reception of the myth of Alexander the Great in Italian art between the fifteenth and the sixteenth century, focusing on the transition from the legendary, almost fairy-tale hero of the Middle Ages to the historical, virtuous prince of the Renaissance. Alongside pursuing her research interests, which have resulted in a number of publications and talks, Claudia has also worked in museums, both in the education and curatorial departments.
Abstract
"An 'Addicted' History of Greece: What Drugs Tell Us About the Interwar Greek Society"
The consumption of psychoactive substances is a universal and millenarian phenomenon with regional and historical particularities. Historians and other social scientists have conventionally studied this phenomenon by looking at the history of drugs in different socio-political contexts. Yet, the practices involving psychoactive substances (traffic, production, consumption), and the discourses developed around them shed light on various aspects of the society under scrutiny. In other words, the politics and discourses on drugs do far more than assess an individual conduct or a health issue; they convey broader anxieties and reflect more general issues that concern society as a whole. As such, they can serve as alternative analytical tools with which to approach the history of modern societies.
This paper employs such tools in the case of Interwar Greece. In doing so, it draws upon my doctoral research, which focused on the attitudes of Greek society towards drug use and drug users during this period. Without dealing with the patterns of drug use per se and by enlarging the scope of what drugs can tell us about Interwar Greece, the paper is intended as a contribution to three intertwined historiographical fields.
Firstly, it contributes to the history of the formation of the state and its institutions. The implementation of drug legislation and the establishment of a prohibitive regime, a process that culminated in the Interwar period, are telling of the several factors that affected state action, such as the influence of interest groups or the role of foreign policy and international relations. The creation of institutions related to drug consumers, such as special police corps or psychiatric clinics, shows the Greek State’s priorities, as well as the range and the limits of its authority.
Secondly, the paper sheds light on issues of cultural and intellectual history. The scientific discourses on drugs and drug addiction, and their main themes, such as the degeneration theory or the eugenic projects, can help us map the institutional ties and the academic and social networks between experts of drug addiction (university professors, doctors, psychiatrists, jurists, etc.). It can do the same for the cultural ties with and transfers from other European countries, e.g. Germany or France.
Finally, it contributes to understanding the mentalities and sensibilities of the period under question. The addicts’ social representations give insights into major concerns of the Greek Interwar society: the relation of Greece to modernity and change, identity questions regarding the place of the country within the East-West binary, worries about the nation’s “health”, the role and place of women in society, anxieties relating to the abandoned and errant youth, as well as the relations to the nation’s Other, whether defined by origins (e.g. the refugees from Asia minor), or by religion (e.g. the Jewish communities).
Bio
Konstantinos Gkotsinas has studied history and archeology at the University of Athens (B.A.) and history at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris (M.A.), where he pursued his studies as a doctoral candidate with a scholarship by the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY). He is currently completing his PhD dissertation entitled “Social ulcers”: attitudes towards drugs in Interwar Greece”. Based on official and administrative sources, medical and psychiatric writings, press articles and literary works, as well as urban folk songs (rebetika), this research examines the emergence of drug use and drug addiction as a social problem, in the nexus of prohibitive legislation, scientific knowledge and social representations of drug users and dealers; it also aims at studying various aspects of the Greek society between the two World Wars (political, economical, ideological, cultural) through the lens of discourses on psychoactive substances.
Abstract
“The Making of a Nineteenth Century Jewish Trade Network in the Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond through Newspapers”
The flourishing historiography on Jewish trading diasporas has essentially approached them from the frameworks of ethno-religious networks relying on homogenous notions of ‘family’, ‘community’ and ‘ethnic identity’. Similarly, Greek historiography has approached trading diasporas chiefly from the viewpoint of one locality and using pre-conceived notions of Greekness. Additionally, Greek Jewish historiography has overwhelmingly focused on the 20th century, on state-minority relations and on questions of assimilation and anti-Semitism within the clearly delineated boundaries of the nation state.
As they work within the physical or imaginary boundaries of the ‘nation’, these approaches ignore the importance of regional, liminal and highly hybrid spaces of Greco-Jewish life, chiefly the Adriatic, which connected the Ionian, Ottoman and mainland Greek Jewish communities with centers of Jewish life in the western shores such as Padova, Trieste and Ancona. My paper focuses on Corfu and its Jewish community and places it inside this maritime region examining how commerce and cultural contact mutually reinforced each other, fostering a unique space of Jewish exchange.
With the inauguration of the “age of steam” in the Adriatic in the 1830 and the foundation of the Austrian Lloyd, a regular and reliable means of transportation and shipment emerged that forged intense links between different regions of the Adriatic (Corfu and Trieste), the Adriatic and the Eastern Mediterranean (in particular Alexandria) as well as Northern Europe (Manchester). Jewish merchants participated as key agents to facilitate trade inside the Adriatic and beyond. Taking a historicized “micro-view” in this Greek-Italian-Ottoman-British-Habsburg border region, I will use three local Jewish newspapers to show the ways in which their engagement with commerce created a microcosm of regional hybridity. Specifically, my paper will look at three Jewish newspapers Mose Antologia (published in Padova and Corfu from 1878-85), Israelitika Chronika (Corfu, 1861-64) and La Famiglia Israelitca (Corfu, 1879-81) and their role in strengthening commercial Jewish networks by promoting a local and regional identity. The newspapers created and maintained a commercial network through news, reports and prominently featured merchant benefactors. Local and regional ties were particularly important in establishing and maintaining trade relationships, and the Jewish newspapers acted as a central means of information, communication and contact. Moving beyond diasporic schemata that examine Greek and Jewish commercial life through the lens of ‘family’ or ‘community’ in a nation state framework, I will examine how regional identities were constructed through commerce and newspapers.
By transgressing imperial, national and colonial borders, this study offers new contributions to debates on geographical frameworks that are not confined to the nation state, empire or the Mediterranean at large. Exploring the utility of “regions” and “seas” as heuristic tools, I examine the role of the Adriatic as a region of the Mediterranean and how it became intricately enmeshed with the geographically close border lands as well as distant cities and regions of Northern Europe, through the circulation of products and information and the commercial and cultural activities of Ottoman, Ionian, Greek, as well as Italian, Sephardic, Romaniot and Ashkenazi Jewish merchants.
Bio
Constanze Kolbe is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at Indiana University, Bloomington. She holds a BA from Maastricht University including a one year Erasmus exchange at Sabanci University, Istanbul. Before coming to the US for doctoral studies she obtained an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London and completed one year intensive Greek language studies with a scholarship from the Greek State Scholarship Foundation (IKY) at the University of Ioannina. The Alexander S. Onassis Foundation and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture funded her research on Jewish trade networks in the Adriatic and Eastern Mediterranean during the nineteenth century.
Abstract
"‘Read by ear’: literature and sound technologies during the Greek Long Sixties"
Drawing on the recent (new) materialist turn within contemporary literary studies, this paper aims to provide a critical study on the introduction of sound technologies in the Greek literary field during the Sixties (1958-1974), by pondering the intersections among technological progress, mass culture, media devices, agents, and procedures in the literary activity. Inaugurating an interdisciplinary approach between media history and Greek literary studies, and based on extensive archival research and on hitherto unexplored cross-domain primary sources, my analysis will investigate how almost hidden parameters in the literary history, such as sound technologies, enrich the literary activity with new material substrates, establish new forms of literacy and constitute innovative discursive networks, beyond the printed word.
Serialized novel readings over the airwaves, specialised radio-directing techniques (‘Cinemaphone’), adaptations, abridgements and dramatizations of literature flourished on many specialised radio programs during the Sixties, in the midst of the golden age of the Greek Broadcasting. At the same time, the introduction and adoption of the (7-inch) 45 rpm record format by the entire newly-established Greek record industry, as a smaller, more durable and higher-fidelity record standard, allow a series of experiments with sound-recording technology in distributing verse. While record albums and marketing labels (‘Dionysos’) with poetry readings by Elytis, Seferis and of Cavafy’s works are introduced as a spin-off activity of publishing houses like Ikaros, these great sounding products of authorial voices, alongside the recordings of poems set to popular music, influence the popularity of Greek literature –both in Greece and abroad− while epitomizing the decline of modernist divide between high and popular culture. Few years later, within a society accustomed to numerous media formats and well-trained in listening, cultural resistance to the Colonels’ regime (1967-1974) was -among others-‘sonorous’: what ends the deafening silence of the majority of intellectuals is Seferis’ declaration against the Junta’s regime (28 March 1969). That was a self-recorded and radio transmitted message, while a plethora of oral readings and poetry happenings succeed to remediate the censored words.
Ultimately, my paper aims to further explore how sound technologies force a widespread interest in the Greek public sphere towards the oral and the aural modes of perception, echoing their current international awareness towards the material and technological aspects of communication, including issues of secondary orality and new media ecologies, as discussed by Marshall McLuhan and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Challenging conventional ways of thinking about the reading experience and its agents, these cultural technologies remodel the very conditions of literary communication, and accelerate the modernisation of the literary circuit as well as the commodification of its processes.
Bio
Anna-Maria Sichani is a postgraduate research student at the Department of Philology at the University of Ioannina, Greece. She holds a first level degree in Medieval and Modern Greek Literature, an MPhil degree with Distinction in Modern Greek Literature, both from the University of Athens, and a second Master’s degree in Digital Humanities from University College London. Her ongoing research project, in the intersection of literary history, cultural studies and media history, studies how the ideological discourses, social developments and cultural technologies, entwined in the 1960s’ Greek public sphere, remodel the conditions of as well as the discussions around literary activity during the Long Sixties (1958-1974).
Last updated 3/31/15