2023-11-30 15:17:38
by ANDREA NICASTRO
The author of Z, the novel that in 1966 anticipated the colonels’ coup and dictatorship, dies at the age of 90. He was 90 years old
At my age I thought I had seen it all. The world war, the civil war, the dictatorship, democracy. Even the freedom that uses incomprehensible words to be a little less free. Instead, I then had to be surprised by the mass captivity imposed by the Coronavirus and by the “Z”, my “Z” of life, drawn on Russian tanks. Vassilis Vassiliks laughed, played, thought, wrote. Until the last one, on November 30th, when he died at the age of 90.
Vassiliks was a lucky man, the right writer at the right time. In 1966 he published a novel, Z, in which he told of a political assassination, the fantastic Time.news of the murder of the left-wing deputy Grigoris Lambrakis, which actually happened three years earlier. It was the book of a man who had been writing for more than 15 years. Someone who had travelled, studied the avant-garde in New York. Someone who already had his best trilogy behind him: The Sheet, The Well and The Annunciation. The new novel, Z, would perhaps have remained confined to the small Greek world, but instead gained global fame the following year when the colonels overthrew democracy with a coup d’état. Suddenly, Z became an instruction manual for understanding the genesis of the coup, the slow advance of the far right, the irresistible persuasion of violence. They alerted me to the coup while I was on my way home. “Stop, stay abroad, otherwise they will arrest you”.
Two years later and the book becomes a film. The title becomes more explicit: Z. The orgy of power. Costa-Gavras directs it, stars such as Yves Montand, Irene Papas and Jean-Louis Trintignant star in it. The soundtrack by the legendary Mikis Theodorakis. Algerian production. There is an air of anti-Americanism and post-colonial revanchism. Not too veiled is the accusation that the US was behind the colonels to curb Soviet communism. Yet it is 1969, there is the Vietnam War and protests against the system are on the streets all over the world. Hollywood feels the wave and adapts: the film wins the Oscar for best foreign work. For Vassiliks the entry ticket into the club of the cosmopolitan progressive intelligentsia.
In his house as an exile in Paris, says Antonio Ferrari, his great friend and historic Corriere correspondent, everyone passed by, from Mitterrand (a great admirer of Greek women) to the wife of the future president (a great admirer of Greek men), actresses and writers and revolutionaries. When democracy returned to Greece, the club moved to his house in front of the Parthenon: English, French and Greek were spoken. It was a free, wide, welcoming world, that of Vassiliks.
With the success of the film, the novel adopted the film’s title and sold everywhere. Thirty-three translations, millions of readers, royalties pouring in. With Z – writes Vassiliks in his autobiography – my mandate in the world of Letters could have ended. Had I had an early, possibly violent end, I would have been declared a great talent who did not have time to complete his work…. In fact, none of his 120 other books including novels, poems, essays, translations, screenplays , achieved Z fame. But, fortunately, Vassiliks survived. Until yesterday.
Grandfather hunter, father successful lawyer, sister table tennis champion, the young Vassilis would have been predestined for a comfortable life in his Thessaloniki. Instead, like Jason of the Argonauts, the protagonist of his first work at the age of 19, he feels cramped. He tends to go out, travel, revolt. He chooses literature as a lifestyle. When I was little, my father tried to convince me to give up. “You will die poor.” Today I could reassure him because I lived well with literature. I have always been a political writer – said Vassiliks in one of his last interviews with the “Corriere” -. Not someone sick of literary art than the cellulite of narration, but a writer, yes.
My models? Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. Then Calvino. But in addition, compared to them, I have the advantage of being Greek. For you Italians, the grandmother of the novel is the novella. And so for almost everyone: novel, novela, nouvelle. The root is always “novelty”. In Greek no. We call the novel mithistorima, the sum of history and myth. For us the roots are more important than the innovations.
With the electoral victory in 1981 of the Greek socialists (his guests in Paris) he became deputy director of state television, then ambassador to UNESCO and from 2019 to April this year parliamentarian for the left of Syriza.
I wrote my first poems on the back of my father’s election leaflets. He lost every election and for me, every time, it was a trauma. When they offered me the top spot in Athens I knew I could erase Vassiliks’ curse. Vassilis laughed and thought, worked, wrote. Until the very end. Yesterday, unfortunately.
November 30, 2023 (modified November 30, 2023 | 11:13 pm)
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