“The Father as a Fictional Hero,” writes Nikos Vatopoulos in his new book, A Child Raised in Athens, 1934-1944, to be published by Metaichmio. Our distinguished colleague is accustomed to long narratives in which Athens herself, with her memories, is his fictional hero. Here is the shift: Athens is refracted through the life of the author’s father, his diary, his photographs.

“In this Athens of 1942,” writes Nikos Vatopoulos, “there were still revelers who stayed up all night playing baccarat, some apartments had central heating, but these were the few exceptions that were negatively evaluated. In many Athenian homes, some children stood barefoot on the frozen floor, facing the snow. Enthusiastic.” In other words, an ancient fresco and at the same time an insightful look at the relationship between yesterday and today, a city that unfolds in memory. “K” preliminarily publishes the preface and epilogue of N. Vatopoulos from this new book.

pre-publication

My father’s diary has been sleeping in a drawer for many years. Its existence was known, but hibernation marked its course in time.

I knew that these poems were written by my father’s childish and youthful hand over the course of a decade, from 1934 to 1944. The diary was not filled out every day, but whenever there was something worth writing down, or when—force majeure—grandfather’s pressure forced father to sit down and write. However, the pages he filled out – first in pencil and then in ink – were read in a single text many years later, when everything he described belonged to the invisible and weak tribal past.

“Sports was an important part of my teenage father’s life in Patisia,” writes Nikos Vatopoulos.

The distance of time allowed me to see the objective value of what was then recorded through the filter of a childish and adolescent look, at a particularly critical period for the history of Athens and our country as a whole. The pages written during the occupation brought me closer to a daily life unimaginable for the next generations, which, however, despite uncertainty, fear and poverty, continued with intermittent joy and carelessness. This lust for life drew me along. The diary itself is a good book as a subject. The brown leather and elaborately gilded binding, commissioned by my grandfather in the 1930s, is also symbolic of what it meant to keep a diary at the time. Among the pages were found banknotes from the 1940s, which, together with careful lists of food expenses, give a tangible impression of the living conditions common to all Athenians in those years.

Along with the difficulties of the family budget unfolds a number of questions about life in Athens. The diary was kept all these years in a small family house in Terma Patision, and a world observatory was organized on this base.

The schools of Cypriades and then Leonteus of Patisia, classmates, teachers, school life in wartime, pranks, pranks, love between friends, games in the street, tests, French, history as a lesson and history as everyday life – an important chapter that aspects convey school education and life around the school.

The yearning for theater and cinema in the 40s was also a great chapter for peace of mind and fun, as was swimming in the sea in the summer in Batis and Eden, in Paleo Faliro or in Astros, where summer was carefree and endless. During the war, traveling from Athens or Piraeus to the Peloponnese was not an easy task…

Sports were also an important part of the microcosm of my teenage father’s life in Patisia. Sporting, Ilias Zervos and Sarataporou, were a great love, a friendship club that bonded teenagers and young adults for life. In the 1940s, in primitive conditions, basketball was a way out and at the same time a necessity to overcome the everyday life of a narrow outlook.

This daily life has expanded to include basketball, as well as swimming and, of course, football. Around Panathinaikos and the Alexandra Avenue Stadium, a world of ecstasy, phantasmagoria, heroism and action was cultivated for the thousands of children and youth of Athens. Among them was my father, who furiously bought photos of football matches and meticulously wrote names and dates on the back.

The rite of making microhistory public

These little testimonies of distant everyday life were a mosaic of life that was changing rapidly. Athens was also changing, and those who lived in those years recalled the pre-war era with surprise and nostalgia, at least until 1950, when life took over. In my father’s notes during his childhood and adolescence, I highlight a day trip with his classmates to Podoniftis, in the fabulous landscape of Kifissos, a stone’s throw from Leonetio and Patisia. This Athens plays one of the main roles in this labyrinthine flow of thoughts and records. This diary, written about 80 years ago in a house in Patisia, awakens forgotten stories and, more than anything else, makes us think again about the value of each individual existence in the vast land of oblivion.

This diary became an occasion to unravel the tangle of thoughts, memories, desires and associations. It was a cleansing and a springboard.

The diary, written for retrospective and unrestricted reading by third parties, carries an element of pretentious narrative and self-defense. However, the diary pages of a child, and then a teenager, largely retain their spontaneous immediacy and some naivety. It is these elements that give a personal tone to the text, which, 80 years later, evokes a late look and leads to a different X-ray of that time.

The primary appearance of a teenager, since it coincides with a stormy and dark period in our history, is read in different ways. Along with my father, thousands of other children and adolescents in Greece found themselves in similar situations shortly before and shortly after 1940. It is a legacy that, in a sense, concerns everyone.

I have tried to approach this document more as a social history text than as a family heirloom. And so I share it, believing that it can arouse curiosity, provoke and lead to a number of other and perhaps more fruitful associations.

Athens as a matrix of narratives is constantly emerging. Bringing microhistory to the public and turning a particular case into a collective experience is an informal ritual. It reminds of the transition to adulthood and from there to the land of oblivion and memory.