“Athena’s dream breeds monsters” (The Greece that hurts, 2024, p. 13)

“In the summer of 2004, I was 22 years old. I had just completed my degree in Classical Philology and secured a scholarship from the Greek Ministry of Education to study Modern Greek in Athens.

I arrived at Eleftherios Venizelos Airport knowing almost nothing about the man after whom it was named, but with my classics firmly under my belt. I knew enough Greek to communicate excitedly with the bus driver and to search the signs I came across for traces of Antiquity in that alphabet which had remained unchanged. That summer, when Greece was set to host the Olympic Games and win the European Championship, the slogan of the National Tourism Organisation, which could be read on large billboards along the motorway leading to the centre of Athens, was: “Live your Myth in Greece”.

I am writing this book almost twenty years on, and with it I return to a Greece transformed by the passage and vicissitudes of time, a country whose rise and fall were widely reported in the media against the backdrop of the 2009 financial crisis and the 2015 migration crisis. These crises succeeded in shifting the focus from Greece’s ancient past to its present, arousing not only a morbid but also a sincere interest among many people outside the country.

I hope that these pages will serve both as a tribute to ancient and modern Greece, and as an invitation to explore its paradoxes through the presence of antiquity in the poetry written by Greek men and women in the 21st century.”

Spanish version:
“El sueño de Atenea produce monstruos” (La Grecia que duele, 2024, p. 13)

“El verano de 2004 yo tenía 22 años, acababa de obtener mi licenciatura en Filología Clásica y una beca del Ministerio de Educación Heleno para estudiar griego moderno en Atenas.

Llegué al aeropuerto Eleftherios Venizelos sin saber casi nada de quien le diera nombre, pero con mis clásicos bien aprendidos. Sabía el griego suficiente como para comunicarme emocionada con el conductor del autobús y buscar en los letreros que iba encontrando las huellas de la Antigüedad en ese alfabeto que nada había cambiado. Ese verano, en el que Grecia iba a acoger los Juegos Olímpicos y a ganar la Eurocopa, el lema de la Organización Nacional del Turismo, que podía leerse en grandes carteles a lo largo de la autopista que lleva al centro de Atenas, era: “Live your Myth in Greece” (“Vive tu mito en Grecia”).

Este libro lo escribo después de casi veinte años y con él vuelvo a una Grecia cambiada por el paso y las vicisitudes del tiempo, un país cuyo ascenso y caída fueron célebres en los medios en el contexto de la crisis financiera de 2009 y la crisis migratoria de 2015. Esas crisis que consiguieron desplazar el foco de la Antigüedad al presente de Grecia, despertando el interés no solo morboso, sino también sincero, de muchas personas fuera del país.

Confío en que sus páginas sean a la vez un tributo a la Grecia antigua y moderna, y una invitación a conocer sus paradojas a través de la presencia de la Antigüedad en la poesía que escriben en el siglo XXI los griegos y las griegas.”

“Kazantzakis's Odyssey: A (Post)modernist Sequel” (Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 2021, p. 365)

“In a famous essay, T. S. Eliot (1932) claimed that whenever novelty occurs in literary tradition, the existing order and meaning of previous works of art is altered. In a similar way, one might say that whenever novelty occurs in literary criticism, our understanding of tradition changes. Both statements, I believe, are pertinent to the reading of Kazantzakis’s Odyssey that this paper argues for. On the one hand, it is unquestionable that the meaning of ancient Greek literature, the Homeric epic in this case, is informed by the readings and rewritings of artists like Kazantzakis, who, over the centuries, have contributed with new meanings to the original myths. On the other hand, it is a verifiable truth that new theories in literature (often driven by new philosophical and aesthetic attitudes) alter the interpretation of earlier works. As times change, literary canons change. What was once essential becomes forgotten. Meanwhile, figures and works once considered secondary are rescued from oblivion and become influential. Finally, the very definitions of literary movements adapt to new sensibilities and to modifications made in the literary canon.

I maintain that through the lenses of modernism and postmodernism it is possible to read the Odyssey in a new light, one that reveals its tremendous value and central role in Kazantzakis’s literary production. Furthermore, this reading of the poem, by situating it in the context of literary modernism and recognizing in it postmodernist elements, challenges some opinions previously held, namely, that Kazantzakis’s Odyssey is a dead end in his career, and that modernism in Greece was introduced by the generation of the ’30s. This reading also helps explain how the author developed his narrative techniques and became a novelist with a very recognizable style, one who, indeed, thrives in the process of constantly reworking ideas, characters, and episodes. What we find in Kazantzakis when we interrogate his texts about modernist and postmodernist concerns is the very unfolding of the ideas, characters, and literary techniques that characterize both movements.”