“I don’t know if there is a form that awakens in us so many images of epitaphs and resurrections; I was ready to say that his work could be framed by the highest form of spring that I know: the Greek Great Week. “That’s how he says goodbye Seferis to him Sicilian in his “Trials” in 1951.

Holy Week, the highest form of spring. And let it begin with the blackness of death and the cry of Mary: “The fifth day you hated me, May Day I lose you, / spring, the son who loved and rose higher,” as the mother mourns in “Epitaph” by Ritsos.

“Today Hades has moved / Golgotha ​​has become a bridge / and in death you follow the shore / the untold road / touch and touch / the greatest of the greatest / the greatest of the greatest,” lamented gatsos “nothing” Good Friday.

It is Holy Week that leads to the ecstasy of rebirth, to the victory of the sweet life over the darkness of death, to paraphrase Solomon. “Two flames that kiss / this is the Resurrection. / Two flames that do not kiss / this is Good Friday”, put them in their places Stratis Paschalis.

But “short days are fraught with great sorrows,” wrote O. Alexis Traianos· “ear small ear deep ear broken” as if added Caruso. Friday, however, is Great, and the pause in time – if only for a short time – brings wild joy, with Christian colors and Dionysian roots, since “in Greece, Dionysus is also Crucified,” according to him. Seferi.

Wild joy from the “last kiss”, like “M. Friday Elitis: “As if I, he says, are death itself, but / still a young beardless man, just a beginner / and for the first time hearing in the light of candles / “go, take the last kiss.”

That same young beardless man – like the other “Dionysodotus Christos” or “Apollo Dionysodotus” of Sicilian – with the described George Ioannou in the “Lament of Epitaph”, on the balcony of a crowded inn in Agios Konstantinos in Omonia: “Epitafios, leaving the church, first stretched sideways, pushed into quarters with closed, as we said, basement, with censers, and we hardly saw him . (…) However, we heard the first notes of his removal, and this was the only moment when we felt cramped, that we kept away from the crowd and the surf, while we were there, we could be behind him, kicking up dust and ashes with our feet, but while we were not thinking about it, we sat at the window to see his glorious return to his carved monument. And when traffic stopped, small children took the lead, candles were lit on the upper floors, we too prepared to enjoy the grand spectacle in the dark bedroom.”

“But Easter is over, mother. And we / what will become / on the bench / immortal / at nightfall?”

Maybe O John Antiochus he wanted to show his yellow Christ, although he would have preferred Satovriandu Street: “That’s when I want to invite you to come and see: / – how the crucified / yellow Christ of Gauguin stands here / this unbridled accomplice of ours / this is the sun – / then I want to convince you together raise His cross, take it to the edge of the pier, anoint it with the dead man’s cologne, incense, take it.

And somewhere there, between Mary, the humanized Virgin Mary, mournfully asking “where is His beauty”; Magdalene, hoping through him Christianopoulosthat “maybe my name will remain forever as a symbol / of those who were saved and redeemed, because they loved much”; his own Magdalene Varnali: “Only I felt it when I was dirty and simple … / How much, Christ, you are a man! And I will lift you up!” between Judas, who for him Nikos-Alexis Aslanoglu“it doesn’t matter if he gave the last kiss / fever burned in the mouth; it doesn’t matter if silver adorned life / death was the only concession”; and somewhere out there, therefore, he brings it all together – with a bouzouki for balance – Manos Hadjidakis, in his own epitaph, in “Melissanti”. But always “the whole world longs for this Resurrection”, such as 1945, which he cherishes in his “Days”. Seferis.

Hungry for passions that end in a week: “Of course it was Great,” insists Varveris, “full of passions, betrayals, crucifixions – / how much do they want mere mortals to submit? / Just like that, from Vaii until today / we will We somehow had to adapt. / But Easter passed, mother. / And what will happen to us / on the bench / immortal / when night falls?

But she reassures him with her – enthusiastic – tenderness. Zoe Karellis: “There is always a resurrection, / Unfaithful and probable, / There is an incredible magnificent glory, / Bright ecstasy, people cannot / without it, / Waiting in fasting and prayer.”

With the same rapturous tenderness Shakturi: “So / as if the Resurrection came / dressed in black / with a red candle / I went out / went crazy / through the streets / I was yellow / a bird / like those written / by Modigliani.”

And always, of course, Solomos: “Christ is risen! Young, old and young, / all, young and old, get ready; / in the churches the laurel-bearers / unite with the light of joy; / open your peace-bearing embrace / before the saints and kiss each other; / kiss sweet lips on the lips, / say Christ is Risen, enemies and friends.

Even if “the people were made white by the blood of the lamb,” Mr. Caruso.