“Those Greeks are crazy!” The phrase refers to the fearless inhabitants of the small Galatian village of Asterix. This begins the surprise publication of the award-winning literary critic Tobias Lehmkuhl, published on July 28, 2022 in one of the largest European newspapers, the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in its famous literary pages. It has already been published in Greek from the digital pages of O Anagnostis, in the context of the discussion about why we are not being read from the outside. Lemkul warmly praises. Surprise at the very fact of his performance is already expressed in the title: “Holes in Concrete”.

The writer is at first surprised by the daring undertaking by which he himself gained access to the vaunted books, that is, to the already discussed editions of Romiosini (edition Romiosini), a small publishing house of the 80s from Cologne, which have now come under the control of the neo-Hellenists of Berlin at the Free University. Old editions are republished, well edited, from time to time new books appear on modern Greek literature (prose and poetry), the humanities (political science, history, etc.), candidate dissertations and conference materials on scientific grammatical topics. Access to the digital version of the books is free, and in printed form they can be ordered at a low price. Thus, a successful example of much-discussed institutional support for translation is quite tangible in Berlin, and we hope it approaches 100 titles. Here is a big hole in the concrete (the German says so too!).

This is followed by a chorus of praise: for “how early modern writing was established in Greece”, for The Origin of the Nine (m.f. Ulf-Dieter Klemm) and Valtinos’ first Cordopatis (f.m. Hans Eidenaier ), which “belong to the most important examples of European narrative art of the 20th century”. The Circus Trilogy (translated by Blumlein, edited by Puhlmann/Schellinger/Klemm) presents “extraordinary views” on the history of World War II that have only recently taken over historiography. Finally, the major part of the publication is dedicated to Alexandros Kotzias’ Jaguaro (translated by H. Eideneijer, edited by B. Hildebrandt), “a one-act play where lightning falls not only symbolically.”

The book clearly satisfies the reasonable curiosity that the recent Greek debt crisis has aroused in Germans. Perhaps here lies another answer to the questions posed in the discussion of The Reader: the “outside” wants to know something about the “inside.” Some in other languages ​​tried to sell revolutionary folklore on this occasion. The matter was quickly forgotten. However, as Lemkul shows, the flagships (Valtinos, Tsirkas, Kotsias) do exist. They appear. They are forced. Let’s not forget that in the same German-speaking firmament, Cavafy and Markaris are constantly meditating – without support. Let’s ask ourselves why.