ANGELOS SIKELLANOS
Anarchic Love to feel untouched
introduction-anthology: Charis Vlavianos – Euripides Garantoudis
Epimeter: Eleni Sikelianos
ed. Pataki, page 288

Can we read Sicilian today? Can we recommend it to new readers? To you readers? I’m using the feminine here, not for political correctness, but as a literal question: can a modern woman read it? Frankly, let’s ask ourselves: what are the conditions for his poetry to be presented dynamically in the future, and not in a museum? Questions clearly cause even the ignorant to think that the matter is not without thorns, and the answer is self-evident. Similar considerations apply, as is well known, to Palamas. An anthology, which Ilias Lagios has attempted with inspiration and judgment (Ermis, 2001), offers considerable assistance in reading the latter. This is what we want, I thought as I read Lai Palama. This is a book that you can put in the hand of a younger reader and tell her: look at the anthologist’s point of view, read the verses it offers, and think/feel for yourself.

In an anthology of poems by Angelos Sikelianos, which they attempt to accompany with a concise, accessible, belligerent introduction, Vlavianos and Garadoudis, in turn, whet the modern reader’s appetite for Sikeliano’s taste. This is what we need, even if I do not say “extremely necessary” – although I think so. Like Palamas, the Sicilians are giant icebergs that are seriously threatened by climate change.

To face the danger, Garantoudis and Vlavianos decide to confront the arguments and counter-arguments that make up the somewhat contemporary debate about the poet, from Lorenzatos and Sinopoulos to Kapsalis and Berlis. Poets and critics of great scope, but from earlier times, are of necessity left out, since the anthologists’ justified anxieties are focused on the present day. I’m talking about anxiety, because Lefkaditis, despite the innovation and boldness of his “liberated” verse, seems to close the past era rather than open to the future. Thus, in Sicilian there are elements that easily “throw out”, as they say, today’s reader. I believe that it is not so much the highness, nor the subjects. In the eclectic maelstrom of postmodernity, who would argue that a poet is obsolete because of subject matter and style? We have learned (thankfully!) to eat from all cuisines and freely choose what suits us. The problem with Sicilian has more to do with what the anthologists, with the help of Harold Bloom, call the “holistic conception of the mystic poet”. This, if I understand correctly, undermines to the very foundations the plausibility of the voice speaking in the poem, and distances us. And yet, at the same time as I write this, a doubt surrounds me: is this true? What, then, explains the unfading ability of Sicilian poetry to enchant? What drives us? If we are alienated by the intention and point of view of the poet, does what remains incredibly effective, despite objections, remain poetry itself? “Like a leaf that sways but doesn’t rustle”? Lorenzatos offered a disjointed, fragmentary reading of such an organized poet as Sepheris. This is, of course, an argument that cannot stand. But Laios brought it back in his own Palamas anthology. I am in awe of turning over the Sicilian passages: “the sun creaks / like a millstone above me.” Was this particular poet an explosion that left not a building but precious shards still burning?