continent. 1.3 (2011): 201-207.

“Poetry is experience, linked to a vital approach, to a movement which is accomplished in the serious, purposeful course of life. In order to write a single line, one must have exhausted life.”—Maurice Blanchot (1982, 89)

Nikos Karouzos had a communist teacher for a father and an orthodox priest for a grandfather. From his four years up to his high school graduation he was incessantly educated, reading the entire private library of his granddad, comprising mainly the Orthodox Church Fathers and the ancient classics. Later on in his life he sold the library for money, only to buy a little more time before he went broke again: “I carry sorrow like a cage/ I got no birds/ as I come back from her hair/ I see the profit emptied/ cool from terror.” (1993, Ι, 101)

Nowadays—and ridiculously recently—we are more than apt to speak of a certain insouciance pertaining to the Greek form of expenditure: expenditure without any type of investment, sometimes not (even) symbolic. In the vaults of the European unconscious, this imprudent stance still conjures a “capital punishment” in the form of de-capitation, reflecting back the fear of excess and the terror of its consequences.1 Thus the Greek way of living is very close to what a stranger could have termed as “the Greek way of dying.”

Yet, what is not often understood is that the Greek esprit, the same one that invented the maxim μηδέν ἂγαν (“nothing in excess”), does not experience death solely as an imminent fear of bankruptcy. For it miraculously combines its unconditional acceptance with the promise of a resurrection that is always there in the scents of Spring, from Dionysus to the orthodox Christ: “Everyone resurrects himself through dying [….] Resurrection is the switching of mortalities.” (2002, 94)

Hence, if an entire library was imprudently traded for a plate with seven olives, a sliced tomato and some fresh goat cheese, let us not be fooled: this is not the meal of the pauper, but that of “an aristocrat from God” (1993, II, 491) feeding his eloquent loudmouth, ridiculously cut open in an otherwise rock-solid caput.

***

To speak of the Greek experience is to speak about a half-dead language that still utters in life what is seemingly excluded from it and thus forbidden to be talked about: death. Death as anything that is out of this world, as something that will never return.

Still, along with an experience of death that recently waned as a worn-out academic fashion, the Greek experience is dead too. Nearly 2300 years of written words separating Homer from the fall of Byzantium equal 500 books on a library traded for money: “I am with the killed. Hence my deepest solitude. I do not feel this tremendous macho society, beyond from the fact that it is a ruthlessly consuming one. It is me who pays all the time.” (2002, 57) Let us do the math and see how much this dealing with the Greek experience is costing the poet and how much dealing with the Greek experience might cost us today.

***

“I do not guarantee a single word.”(Karouzos, 1993, II, 454)

Through its various dialects and forms, the Greek language speaks through an incessant historical dissemination. Anyone who is aware of this terrifying polymorphy and still calls himself a poet, must stand against a white sheet of paper, pen-in-hand, with a very particular duty: to be as fully inconsistent as possible. In the formally ironic uniqueness of the poem, the poet functions as “a band-aid for lesser and greater antinomies.” (1993, I, 251) Of course these antinomies are not exhausted in language—they are historical, political and, alas, existential. Yet, beyond appearances, it is language that ruthlessly encodes them through history, submitting the poet to the temptation of placing them one next to the other on a single white sheet. The closer their neighboring, the greater the scattering of the writer in the ironic uniqueness of the paper. In a work where poetic license is described as a “freedom-impasse” (2002, 51), this task is undertaken in full conscience of its personal consequences: “what I am interested in is to escape my individuality (envisioning the non-ego) […] Nevertheless, my dissociations never achieve duration.” (2002, 74-75)

Hence, though poetry is the “deserted direction of will,” (1998, 62) the stance of the poet is not that of a Nietzschean “great man.”2 Whereas drunkenness provides a thread between the poem and the excess it both presupposes and infuses (“Poetry always enlarges. ‘Drunkenness’ is nothing more than that,” (2002, 85)), whereas language flashes in loudmouth spurts of déraison (“When I am alone I do something else. I utter words. For example, while having my ouzo and listening to music I am most likely capable of randomly shouting ‘Electricity!’” (2002, 138)), the poet never gives in to the double affirmation that would eventually risk the “element of pleasure in discourse.” (2002, 80)”

It is exactly because the gap of the antinomies is so vast that poetry is not meant to be written with a hammer. Neither does writing consist in a reevaluation of those elements. In short, poetry is not an affirmation of difference, but the surprising beauty of chiming antinomies. We might never transcend them, but it is up to us to put them together. Yet again, this voisinage is not to be identified with the necessity of chance as an eternal return.4 On the contrary it is a return from that very return:

Let us treat Yes as a No to No and No as a Yes […] And let us not forgetthat this pissed affirmation crumbled down Nietzsche’s intellect in the darkpaths of this world. (2002, 88)

This return from the “vicious circle” should in no way be taken as a form of artistic prudence. Rather it can be seen as a dribble of demonic inconsistency as Dionysus transforms himself into a Christ that is in turn de-theologized: “Who can forbid that? Every man is capable of his own theology, nothing can stop him.” (2002, 73-74) This is a turn towards an existential vision of the world, historically coinciding with a particular political defeat of the Left, to which the poet devoted all his life:

after the defeat of the popular front I raised the question “why do weexist?” while others were asking “why we failed.” (2002, 57)5

But most of all it is a return to poetry that exceeds the existential question itself, going beyond the issue of faith.

Poetry comes in as a question of return after a defeat that is confessed in full profanity. Though it accepts the necessity of the defeat, it does not affirm it. Though it negates it, the negation is not in the name of a promise to be delivered in the kingdom of heavens. Following a historical and existential defeat, poetry is born post mortem. It signals a return to Christ as “groundless religiousness in the surprise of the real as such” (2002, 72) which is at once a return to the refuge of childhood. It is not a question of endurance towards an eternal return. Rather it is a question on the possibility of an existential return. Returning in a world as someone who cannot enjoy any returns exactly because he is averse to guarantees. A return without returns.

***

PHOTOCOPY OF HAPPINESSWhen I was young I used to pin down cicadasand step on ant nests.I used to stand there silent for hours.With threads I decapitated bees.Now I am a dead man breathing.(Karouzos, 1993, II, 336.)

The return to the “paradise of childhood” (2002, 68) constitutes the devouring refuge of its own memory when defeat becomes the synonym of adulthood. The political struggles of a young communist in a country torn up by a civil war right after World War II fraught with incarcerations and exiles. Historically they resulted in the defeat of the communist movement in Greece and opened up a long turbulent road that would peak in the dictatorship of 1967. Existentially they led to a series of disillusionments: mental breakdown, divorce, abandonment of studies in law school. To the question “why do we exist” the answer was poetry.

Still this exposé should not be read as a sweeping chronography of a man. For it actually happens to coincide with the historical fate of a nation that after its modern constitution never stopped dreaming of the glories of its past youth, in a present that was (and is) sweepingly disappointing. But isn’t this return to youth finally a way of compensating for a loss of youth that necessarily results in a losing adulthood? Will Greeks, the eternal children of Plato and Nietzsche, ever learn? How to return without dying, how to remember without wasting time?

WE ARE IN THE OPEN MEANINGLiving the coldest mauve night right across ParthenonI went to take a piss on some foliageand I was enjoying the foliageas it was steaming.(Karouzos, 1993, II, 340)

Beyond the historical tragedies of modern Greece and away from any personal disappointments, the relation that this land holds with language and history is mediated through the Greek light—whose omnipresence is the very condition of its transcendence. All historical contradictions from Dionysus to Christ took place under this light; all those disseminated dialects were spoken beneath its warmth. To paraphrase Lévinas,6 light is both the condition of the world and of our withdrawal from it—a withdrawal towards the invisibility of God, of the dead, of meta-physics, resulting from the temptation that all is still here, behind this light the visibility of which they once evaded: “birds, the allurement of God.” (1993, I, 17)

Under that luminous sky, if Greeks can do anything at all, it is to envision a return that will never come. All they can do is write poetry—which is doing nothing; other than lending an ear to a disseminated language whispering a unity that cannot be promised, as an adulthood in defeat is ready to recognize. Trying “to trap the invisible in visibility” (1993, II, 483) they forget that they have grown up and one day they die—with the promise of return. Hence an additional meaning must be given to this return to childhood. It does not signal salvation but rather its promise. To the ears of an aged continent it means that the return to/of poetry is a losing game, a return without returns. “Europe, Europe… you are nothing more than the continuation of Barabbas.” (1993, I, 295)

***

“Life is not there to verify theories.”7

The records show that Karouzos was finally given a second-class pension from the Greek government, at the time when he was being recognized by the literary press as one of Greece’s major contemporary poets. Being neither a bourgeois nor a nobelist, he proclaimed himself to be an anarcho-communist, unconditionally faithful to the utopia of a classless society. He also drank, heavily. “Capitalism made an animal out of man/ Marxism made an animal out of truth/ Shut up.” (1993, II, 369)

Perhaps one of the most scandalous divides of our times has been the one between the living and the dead, the latent prohibition that the living should not be concerned with the dead based on the mere impossibility of the dead to be concerned with the living in the first place. What adds to this scandal is that this divide abuses anything that cannot return to us by subsuming it under the same futility. Hence death is no longer “loss” in the usual sense. It no more refers to the things we lost but to our “loss” (of time, money and well-being) as we insist to dwell on them. Death is a waste —of time.

It is this waste that we find in the insouciance of Greek expenditure; the waste in dealing with a language that most of its historical part is no longer spoken (a dead language); the waste in translating a poet who is ex definitio untranslatable; the waste of his vision, his money, his life. The waste of dealing with anything that cannot return and that cannot bring in any returns.

But it is also the waste of life that poetry itself presupposes, the waste of dealing with invisibility, with anything that is out of this world and thus invokes the fear of death that is in turn—and surprisingly—nowhere to be found. Instead of death, what is there, beyond the light, is the being without us (to recall the Lévinasian il y a), the mumble of our own nothingness which constitutes the price to be paid for writing poetry under an evergreek light. To understand this to-and-fro, is to realize that poetry is something out of this world that nevertheless takes place in this world, by virtue of this world. But to ridiculously equate this to-and-fro with death as non-existence, is to exile poetry along with its own possibility from this same old world:

I do not believe that poetry will ever disappear from this world. […] ButI am also sure that it does not have many chances of playing, as you say,a redemptive role in our vertiginous technological future. Without beingendangered as a creative need, it will be placed on the side of history.(2002, 32)

It is mainly there that we would like to locate the meaning of Nikos Karouzos’s poetry today. If we are willing to include the Greek original it is because we consider that it will be both a waste of time for us to do so (since most of you cannot read Greek) and because it might induce you to the even larger waste of learning it. We would additionally be glad if this small introduction served as an equally wasteful, academically useless piece of reading, gesturing towards a taboo of investing in anything Greek—that is in anything dead among the living, in anything that will never come back and maybe was never here in the first place. This is the only way to reserve for ourselves the possibility of poetry and preserve the light of its promise.

“To return: that is the miracle.” (1993, I, 17)Athens, GreeceJuly 10, 2011

NOTES

1 “Capitale (a Late Latin word based on caput “head”) emerged in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries in the sense of funds, stock of merchandise, sum of money or money carrying interest.[…] The word and the reality it stood for appear in the sermons of St. Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444) ‘…quamdam seminalem rationem lucrosi quam communiter capitale vocamus’, ‘that prolific cause of wealth that we commonly call capital’” (Braudel, 1992, 232-233).

2 “A great man – a man whom nature has constructed and invented in the grand style – what is he? First: there is a long logic in all of his activity, hard to survey because of its length, and consequently misleading; he has the ability to extend his will across great stretches of his life and to despise and reject everything petty about him, including even the fairest, ‘divinest’ things in the world.” (Nietzsche, 1968, 505, §962)

3 Cf. Deleuze, 1986, 186-9.

4 “Return is the being of becoming, the unity of multiplicity, the necessity of chance: the being of difference as such or the eternal return.” (Deleuze, 189)5 In this 1982 interview Karouzos refers to the defeat of the communist movement in Greece after the civil war of 1946-1949 between the Governmental Army and the Democratic Army of Greece, the military division of the Greek communist party. Karouzos’s father was a member of the communist National Liberation front (EAM) members of which formed the mainl resistance movement (ELAS) in Greece during WWII. The poet was a member of the United Panhellenic Organization of Youth (EPON), which was a youth division of EAM. After the end of the war, ELAS was called to disarmament in view of the formation of a National Army. The members of EAM resigned from the government of national unity and a series of protests led to a 3 year civil war between ELAS and the Government Army. After the defeat of ELAS the Communist party was outlawed and many communists were exiled in deserted Greek islands. Karouzos, who took action in the Greek resistance and was active during the Greek civil war, was exiled in Icaria on 1947 and in Makronisos on 1953 where he was called two years earlier to do his military service.

6 “Existence in the world qua light, which makes desire possible, is then, in the midst of being, the possibility of detaching oneself from being. To enter into being is to link up with objects; it is in effect a bond that is already tainted with nullity. It is already to escape anonymity. In this world where everything seems to affirm our solidarity with the totality of existence, where we are caught up in the gears of a universal mechanism, our first feeling, our ineradicable illusion, is a feeling or illusion of freedom. To be in the world is this hesitation, this interval in existing, which we have seen in the analyses of fatigue and the present.” (Lévinas, 1988,43-4)

7 Abstract from a TV interview.

THE POETRY OF NIKOS KAROUZOS

From Redwriter [Ερυθρογράφος], in Collected Works, Vol. II, Athens: Ikaros. 1993, 463-4. [Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 9-10.]

JESUS ANTI-OEDIPUS*

Why were we once saving till the fifth day

the Paschal lamb?

The scriptures say: with this victim’s meat

we ought to cleanse all of our senses.

To give life to the whitest wave

miraculous odors in the extension of the chest.

Ideals to death.

For us to witness the illustrious

dawns of Absinthe and for the soul to be

a deeply carved ornament

on the fore we named will.

Then many deer running

amidst the evergreen

growth with watery hymns,

then, the unintended angels descending

with heights spiraling in their momentum

offer themselves to the luminous Adventure.

Whence the need for speech

and our sufferings covered with flags

like the glorified dead.

An incorporeal finger pointing at the flamboyant

and fragrant holocausts

within the tired horizons

and the exhausted breadths with

joys of the mistletoe on fire

and shivering all of the green-leaved love.

Something would have chirped again

had we not driven it away—

maybe the ewe’s grass.

Something would have called us to the eternal resurrection—

maybe the grace of spring.

But now our heart is fiercely blinded,

withdrawn to the appearances of Hades.

Silence and ice incessantly cover

the Infant Spirit in thatched times.

While the cherry trees are dreaming

faintly glowing in absolute darkness

there’s nothing the Babylonians can contemplate

in labs with automatic colored lights.

How to rejoice now in the fifth day of the lamb?

We have forked the stars.

We’ve gradually become supposedly sublime

with plucked chimeras in our hands.

Avenged relentlessly by science.

*Though the poem appears in a 1990 collection, it was actually written in 1968. Hence the reader must be aware in not associating Karouzos’ Anti-Oedipus with the famous 1972 work of Deleuze and Guattari, given that the former precedes the latter.

ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΑΝΤΙ-ΟΙΔΙΠΟΥΣ

Γιατί κρατούσαμε κάποτε ώς την πέμπτη μέρα

το πασχαλινό πρόβατο;

Τα κείμενα λένε: μ’ αυτού του θύματος το κρέας

έπρεπε να καθαρίσουμε όλες τις αισθήσεις.

Για να δώσουμε κύμα στη ζωή λευκότατο

θαυμάσιες ευωδιές στην έκταση του στήθους.

Ιδανικά στο χάρο.

Για να βλέπουμε τα λαμπρά

χαράματα του Άψινθου και να ’ναι η ψυχή

στόλισμα βαθυχάρακτο

της πλώρης που την είπαμε θέληση.

Τότε πολλές δορκάδες τρέχοντας

ανάμεσα στην καταπράσινη

φύση με τους υδάτινους ύμνους,

τότε, κατεβαίνοντας οι αθέλητοι άγγελοι

με κυλινδούμενο το ύψος στην ορμή τους

χαρίζονται της αστραφτερής Περιπέτειας.

Όθεν η μιλιά γι’ αυτό χρειάζεται

και τα δεινά σκεπάζονται ωσάν

τους τιμημένους νεκρούς με σημαίες.

Ασώματο δάχτυλο δείχνει τα φλογώδη

και μοσχοβόλα ολοκαυτώματα

στους κουρασμένους ορίζοντες

στα εξουθενωμένα πλάτη καθώς

ανάβουν οι χαρές του νεραϊδόξυλου

και τρέμει ολόκληρη η πρασινόφυλλη αγάπη.

Κάτι θα κελαηδούσε πάλι

αν δεν το διώχναμε—

μπορεί της προβατίνας το χορτάρι.

Κάτι θα μας καλούσε στην απέραντη ανάσταση—

μπορεί του έαρος η χάρη.

Μα η καρδιά μας άγρια τυφλώθηκε

πέρασε στα φαινόμενα του Άδη.

Σιγή και πάγος αδιάκοπα σκεπάζει

στους αχυρένιους καιρούς το Νήπιο Πνεύμα.

Την ώρα που ονειρεύονται οι βυσσινιές

και λάμπουν αμυδρά μεσ’ στο απλότατο σκοτάδι

τίποτα δε στοχάζονται οι βαβυλώνιοι

στα εργαστήρια με τ’ αυτόματα χρωματιστά φώτα.

Πώς να χαρούμε πια την πέμπτη μέρα του προβάτου;

Φουρκίσαμε τ’ αστέρια.

Γίναμε σιγά-σιγά δήθεν υπέροχοι

με μαδημένες χίμαιρες στα χέρια.

Μας νέμεται σκληρά η επιστήμη.





From: Redwriter [Ερυθρογράφος], in Collected Works, Vol. II, Athens: Ikaros. 1993, 472. [Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 18.]

DIALECTΙCS OF SPRING

Christ the straight angle; Christ the Pythagorean

theorem.

Christ the infinitesimal calculus from above the blessed

Sets Christ.

Christ the tessellation of massive particles

Christ the zero mass.

Hence we spray numbers and fields of lust.

We are carabineers of diseased logic plus something—

Observed means observer and Hekate

The darkness luminous and light in the dark Astarte

banqueters demons from today.

ΔΙΑΛΕΚΤΙΚΗ ΤΟΥ ΕΑΡΟΣ

Χριστός η ορθή γωνία· Χριστός το πυθαγόριο

θεώρημα.

Χριστός ο απειροστικός λογισμός άνωθεν όλβια

Χριστός τα Σύνολα.

Χριστός η ψηφιδογραφία στα μαζικά σωμάτια

Χριστός η μάζα μηδέν.

Άρα ψεκάζουμε αριθμούς και πεδία λαγνείας.

Είμαστε τυφεκιοφόροι νοσούσης λογικής και κάτι --

παρατηρούμενο σημαίνει παρατηρητής και Εκάτη

σκότος το πάμφωτο και φως εν τῃ σκοτίᾳ η Αστάρτη

συνδαιτημόνες δαίμονες απ’ άρτι.





From: Redwriter [Ερυθρογράφος], Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 18. [1993, II, 472].

CREDO (as we are used to say in Latin)

Α

I believe in one Poet expelled from heavens / fugitive from the god and

vagabond, Empedocles / and here on earth / exile on the

earth etc. of Baudelaire /.

Β

I believe in one Computer inside thunder and through matter.

Γ

Suffering undefiled / substantive / the Poet uplifts himself

slow-burning suicidal implying lengthy sleeps.

Δ

Cutting down on prospective mistakes.

Ε

Of all things visible and invisible officiating the onion-peelings.

Ζ

The Poet has nothing / see the departed /.

Η

I believe in one Poet that says: madness I enjoy; he ridicules existence; let me light up from my mana.

Θ

Syntax he doesn’t care about when musicality commands him. Along with still more licenses, and Ts are played according to the concept sound anywhere. E.g. the winters here, he winters there; it will not come—I will not rest, etc. etc.

Ι

The Poet exercises thought until it’s stripped down.

Κ

And if he’s Greek he must always study the fineness of Attica, in light, mountains, fields and sea. For this fineness teaches language.

Λ

And if he’s deeply destined the Poet expresses the unexplainable of the explained; he happens to be a rightful heir to the scientist and his predecessor.

Μ

On the froth he does not last; the Poet blusters at the bottom of the pot.

Ν

Flamebred and never redeemed.

Ξ

The Poet must sometimes say: what a consumption of presence — be a bit lonely for a change!

Ο

The Poet is twilit.

Π

He is susceptible of deaths and resurrections.

Ρ

He looks from the corner of his eye and exists in a glance.

Σ

He follows behind the mother.

Τ

Eveningless when it comes to age.

Υ

I believe in one Poet who says: let the purities coincide. Until the Corinth of the Universe or even further.

Φ

In a higher despair.

Χ

In a brighter quintessence.

Ψ

In one sensation that lifts off.

Ω

Forgiving everyone.

CREDO (ως είθισται να λέμε λατινιστί)

Α

Πιστεύω εις ένα Ποιητήν εκτός ουρανού / φυγάς θεόθεν και αλήτης, Εμπεδοκλής / και επί της γης / εξόριστος πάνω στη

γη κ.λπ. του Βωδελαίρου /.

Β

Πιστεύω εις ένα Υπολογιστήν εντός κεραυνού και δια της ύλης.

Γ

Υποφέροντας άχραντα / ουσιαστικόν / ο Ποιητής ανατείνεται βραδυφλεγής αυτόχειρας εξυπακούοντας πολύωρους ύπνους.

Δ

Τα υποψήφια λάθη λιγοστεύοντας.

Ε

Ορατών τε πάντων και αοράτων ιερουργώντας την αποκρομμύωση.

Ζ

Ο Ποιτής έχει τίποτα / βλέπε τους αναχωρήσαντες /.

Η

Πιστεύω εις ένα Ποιητήν που λέει: η τρέλα μ’ αρέσει· γελοιοποιεί την ύπαρξη· ας ανάψω απ’ τη μάνα μου.

Θ

Συνταχτικό δεν το γνοιάζεται στην προσταγή της μουσικότητας. Μαζί και μ’ άλλες ακόμη λευτεριές, και τα νυ παίζονται κατά την έννοια ήχος οπουδήποτε. Π.χ. τον χειμώνα εδώ, το χειμώνα εκεί· δε θά ’ρθει – δεν θα καταλαγιάσουμε, κ. λπ. κ.λπ.

Ι

Ο Ποιητής γυμνάζει τη σκέψη σε απογύμνωση.

Κ

Κι αν είναι έλληνας οφείλει να σπουδάζει πάντοτε της Αττικής τη λεπτότητα, σε φως, βουνά, χωράφια και θάλασσα. Διδάσκει γλώσσα η λεπτότητα τούτη.

Λ

Κι αν είναι βαθιά πεπρωμένος ο Ποιητής εκφράζει το ανεξήγητο του εξηγητού· τυγχάνει νόμιμος διάδοχος του επιστήμονα και προκάτοχός του.

Μ

Στον αφρό δεν έχει διάρκεια· στο πατοκάζανο μαίνεται ο Ποιητής.

Ν

Φλογοδίαιτος και ποτέ ξελυτρωμένος.

Ξ

Ο Ποιητής κάποτε πρέπει να λέει: μεγάλη κατανάλωση παρουσίας – γενείτε και λίγο μοναξιάρηδες!

Ο

Ο Ποιητής είναι αμφίφλοξ.

Π

Επιδέχεται θανάτους και αναστάσεις.

Ρ

Ακροθωρίζει και υπάρχει σε ξαφνοκοίταγμα.

Σ

Είναι ουραγός της μητέρας.

Τ

Ανέσπερος από ηλικία.

Υ

Πιστεύω εις ένα Ποιητήν που λέει: να συμπέσουν οι αγνότητες. Μέχρι την Κόρινθο του Σύμπαντος ή μακρύτερα.

Φ

Σε ανώτερη απελπισία.

Χ

Σε φαεινότερη πεμπτουσία.

Ψ

Σε μια αίσθηση που πτηνούται.

Ω

Συγχωρώντας τους πάντες.

From Large Sized Logic [Λογική μεγάλου σχήματος], Athens: Erato, 1989, n.p. [1993, II, 521-3].