of Nof A. Mfairly the alternative
For just a few days now, the small lake that’s the Greek bibliographic group on social media and the web has been fairly agitated, to the purpose of small ripples, on the event of an article by the brand new prose author Rena Luna on a website Internet Lifo , within the case of the deconstruction of M .Karagatsi, focusing primarily (however not solely) on his novel “The Nice Chimera”. Rena Luna then selects some passages from the ebook to argue that Karagatsis, along with his different faults, is dominated by rampant sexism/misogyny, which is especially seen in the best way the narrator describes the principle character’s relationship, Marina, with intercourse, eroticism and violence, at all times underneath the shadow of guilt but in addition the highly effective ethical and emotional management of the boys in her life, particularly her husband and brother-in-law.
In gentle of Karagatsis’s feminist “cancellation”, with which generations and generations of youngsters and younger readers have been fed in our nation (with disastrous outcomes, I’ll say, however extra on that beneath) Luna’s article precipitated a torrent of adverse and disgusting feedback on the web , whose principal argument was that “we can’t decide an writer retrospectively, in keeping with the factors of our time” and that Karagatsis’ writing needs to be thought of a part of his time, ie (these feedback are to be understood) b’ maybe with elevated tolerance for his remedy of ladies (which many commentators would don’t have any downside admitting was kind of appalling).
In my humble opinion, Luna’s preliminary argument suffers a bit by specializing in the difficulty of gender, which provides her a possibility to gloss over the larger difficulty, which I believe results in Karagatsis’s books not being learn anymore, not simply i. the sunshine of feminism, however primarily the essential good style of what constitutes sufficient literature. I want to level out right here {that a} comparable dialogue, that’s, concerning the compatibility of the work of the previous with the current, can also be going down overseas, within the context of redefining the angle of intellectuals and – artists with a filter of the feminist,. gender and the anti-racist motion (the so-called awakening, in keeping with its critics). It’s value noting, nevertheless, that this dialogue by no means managed to succeed in the center of Western literature which was there till lately.
Even the problematic views of Hamsun, Celine or Pound, even the narrative bait of pedophilia in Nabokov, even the scattered historical references to Dante, Cervantes or Shakespeare, have been by no means sufficient to cloud the common character of the work. And this, not as a result of we stand in nice worry of their creation, as is critical within the scenario underneath dialogue, however, quite the opposite, as a result of these creations assault themselves on our minds and senses shut collectively, harmlessly, like highly effective ice breakers, the tip of time, social modifications, dominant ideologies in succession. An important challenge doesn’t want any type of safety or “ideological replace”, not whilst a footnote in its reception. Quite the opposite, a problematic writer even for his time, reminiscent of Ian Fleming, maybe the style and political predictions of the approaching generations are fading away altogether. The issue, nevertheless, will likely be his personal, not the generations he’ll not have the assist to seize their imaginations.
As a result of, to get to the purpose, the issue with Karagatsis will not be (solely) his apparent ignorance. The most important downside is that the literature he writes is poor and outdated, even by the requirements of his time. It’s a literature that, thirty years after Kafka, Proust, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, has not paid consideration to the elemental problem posed by the modernist motion, which was writing in the identical third individual, absolutely the authority of the all-powerful narrator . the self-religion of writing—God, overseer and decide of all issues, with which (the much less delicate prose writers) wrote within the nineteenth century. A literature filled with limitless dialogue, apparently watered by Dostoyevsky, and through which everybody says what they imply and what they imply, and even when they’ve doubts and ideas inside, they’re offered subtly and pretty disturbingly , with out the slightest reward. (Quite the opposite: Karagatsis’s poems are filled with description filled with unflinching grandeur, over and above any idea of narrative coherence, because the narrator at all times makes certain to announce his presence by overshadowing every part, emphasizing every part, in a high-minded type. which seeks unmitigated sensuality however finally ends up as thrilling as a thick pot of jam.)
A literature that, on the time when the shadow of Nazism gave start to monsters and even later, when the tip of the Second World Battle created an enormous void in the midst of Western civilization, disappeared, that one may solely whisper respect, void. from which got here Beckett, Fries, Camus, with their unstable heroes, who seemed within the mirror to face the very fragmented face of their world, and due to this fact on the similar time of the darkest depersonalization, she crafts geniuses and absolute masculinity , Nietzschean supermen of the need, who need to management every part, however in the long run they’re crushed not solely by their extreme ambition, however as a result of some seductive and irresistible females stand of their manner and destroy them with carnal allurements the unquenchable the lust… If it isn’t doable to see how inappropriate this theme (the central theme of Karagatsis within the circle of his nice works) within the gentle of the final local weather of his time, I actually have no idea what else he may persuade him. Definitely not the assault of a feminist prose author within the yr of salvation 2024.[1]I’ve been studying excerpts from Kostas Spatharakis textual content lately
: [Μανόλης] “…”That is what nature dictates to a girl; to regulate her bio-theory in keeping with the divisions of her ovaries, that are topic to the dominance of the actual testosterone that irritates them”. Or ”The air round her was saturated with aphrodisiac; … ”What ought to we add?” he asks
Anagnostakis. “We merely ask: Does a author like M. Karagatsis have the correct to put in writing such phrases after so a few years?” Or in different phrases: what veil remains to be hidden at this time the plain biology, the sociological banality and the violent sexism of the textual content?”
“…This literature could at all times be enticing, however it isn’t with out penalties. It leaves even essentially the most devoted readers with an disagreeable style, a way of ethical and mental weak spot that undermines studying itself, as a result of its core is trite and pretend, and its realism superficial and cafe. And, even worse, as a result of it’s hostile to the technical and mental conclusions of up to date prose, it closes the best way for any reader not solely to the nice works of modernism but in addition to the kind of bold modern novels that incorporate and profit from these conclusions. The worth Karagatsis’s reader pays for studying a contemporary Greek harlequin is disproportionately excessive: he’s trapped in a world that’s infuriatingly acquainted and deeply disagreeable, from which there isn’t a escape.
I perceive that every part in artwork is a matter of style, which in fact can range from individual to individual, in addition to from period to period. I believe that for every of the arguments listed above, one may object that Karagatsis is an “unsurpassed storyteller”, a “nice storyteller”, an “incomparable anatomist” (the feminine soul, in fact! ) and even an in depth recorder of the time of. I deal with all of them with due respect (not noticing that the life of each author is at all times born and dies inside his head, the place the prism of his imaginative and prescient is non-obligatory) however primarily as a result of I understand how troublesome it’s for us to desert. the younger man who reads. As a result of that is the center of the matter, I believe. In fact, the issue turns into extra acute when the vast majority of the studying public insists on highlighting such readings as the top of their collective style. However that is one other, a lot greater dialogue…
And one last item, particularly: the truth that the group that wrote the bibliography selected to assault a younger author, who dared to query in an article the “sacred cow” of our nationwide literature, maybe says extra concerning the group her, than on. the topic of the dialogue itself. Within the respective circles of Hesperia, to which we intention to belong, the reflexive response of the intellectuals in opposition to even the supposed brazenness of youth, as a “fireplace workforce” in protection of the widely accepted, will not be sacred and holy. Quite the opposite, the impudence of youth is welcomed, and actually inspired in some ways, with the intention not solely that the brand new era of artists will “kill their elders”, however above all to keep up a collective mental life with vitality, vigilance and mobility of concepts with out fail . That which is eagerly sought is at all times the brand new, in keeping with the “make it new” of the well-known ancestor. Solely in areas the place the pond and upkeep of “conditionally false” has hardly come to an finish virtually in itself, may one observe such a simultaneous and computerized must silence a brand new man’s viewpoint, even with using a disparaging advert hominem . traits of expertise and writing means. And that is what I select to maintain from all this current historical past, as essentially the most ominous and melancholy signal.
As for Karagatsis himself, the simple fact is that nobody goes to shake him from his throne because the everlasting crown of our collective prose decisions anytime quickly.
[1] Nikos A. Mantis is a author
“Acclimatization in Karagatsis”, Per. Vlavi, difficulty 1, Spring 2023.