KOSTAS VOULGARIS
Nikitaro, also known as Bettina
ed. Bibliorama, page 256

In this work, which is distinguished by a truly inventive multi-tonality, symmetrically coexist, among other things, faces that undoubtedly exist, surrogate autobiographical comments, but also genuine creations of the author’s productive imagination, completely verified historical events, but also invented folk songs, along with chronicles, which are at the same time the product of explicit and tacit “documentary fiction”, which is directly stated on the page, were accompanied by individual episodes of the mobilization of resistance from the inhabitants of the Central Peloponnese against the German occupying army. What follows is the inevitable series of bloody skirmishes and treacherous acts during the civil war.

In the composition of the text, the method of exhaustive citation of documents is sometimes used, which is easily combined with quasi-documents. I note that both the “Chronicle of Moreos” and “The Princess Isabeau” by Angelos Terzakis are clear indicators of stylistic modes, but also of more specific thematic orientations. I also found that the author’s immediate literary ancestors and fellow citizens, namely Yannis Panou and Thanasis Valtinos, are specifically mentioned in most parts of the story. I also contend that the operation of the official etymology remains significant in all references and self-references, but also in the expected essentially figurative and even more utilitarian paretymology. And all of this is always coupled with a cumulative restoration of the persistent and distinct textual obsessions of the truly formidable Kostas Voulgaris. Thus, his apt exposition once again tests in practice those well-known Nietzschean principles, which, on the one hand, advocate that facts are exactly what does not exist, there are only interpretations, and on the other hand, that the world ” infinite” because it can include infinite interpretations.

The imaginary elements of life, the most intimate places of life, are perceived as if they were the exactitudes of an unimaginable hyperreality. Furthermore, as Jorge Sebrun (1923-2011) argues, “often reality has to be invented in order for it to become true.” The learned lessons of straightforward, nuanced modernism are sufficiently used in Nikitarow.

The author’s objective space-time of birth, namely the doliana of Arcadia in the mid-1950s, is a competent and necessary springboard for the emanations of the verb. And the personality of the semi-real, semi-illusory heroine of the book with two names that make up the title is an amalgam of multiple selective osmosis of established ideologies and mores. On a long-term basis, I emphasize. Therefore, concrete identity necessarily predetermines the diegetic genre. Clearly mixed, but aesthetically acceptable, the entire project of the textually experienced Kostas Voulgaris convinces from the very beginning of its obvious merits.

Moreover, he himself seems to be aware of what Jean Paulant (1884-1968) innately proclaimed, namely, that “the strange fate of language is that there is not a single word that would not bear in itself the cause of its death. “. , something like a mechanism for subverting its meaning. Hence his regular visits to the works of mainly Psellus.