The novel of the Greek civil war in the twenty-first century: (post)memory and the weight of the past (original) (raw)

Abstract

Between the years 2000 and 2015 novels on the Greek civil war (1946–9) flooded the Greek literary market. This raises important questions as to why the burden of the civil conflict weighs heavily upon generations with no experiential connection to these events. This article begins by offering an interpretation for the literary upsurge of the civil war since the 2000s. Then it uses Marianne Hirsch's concept of postmemory to illustrate the authors’ ethical commitment to ‘unsilence’ and redress the past through the use of archival evidence and testimonies. The case studies of ThomasSkassis’Ελληνικόσταυρόλɛξο (2000), Nikos Davvetas’ Λɛυκή πɛτσέτα στορινγκ (2006),and SophiaNikolaidou's Χορɛύουνοιɛλέφαντɛς(2012) serve to illustrate my argument.

Key takeaways

sparkles

AI

  1. The Greek civil war novels surged post-2000, reflecting unresolved historical trauma for newer generations.
  2. Postmemory, as defined by Marianne Hirsch, mediates the transmission of trauma to descendants of civil war survivors.
  3. Three key novels illustrate how authors use archival evidence to confront and 'unsilence' the past.
  4. The characters engage in archival searches, revealing family secrets tied to the civil war's legacy.
  5. Contemporary narratives challenge dominant historical interpretations and explore moral ambiguities of past violence.

Loading...

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

References (19)

  1. On postmemory's 'archival turn', see Hirsch, The Generation, 227-49.
  2. See V. Chatzivassileiou, 'Λογοτεχνικό σταυρόλεξο', Ελευθεροτυπία, 15 October 2000, 24.
  3. H. Foster, 'An archival impulse', October 110 (Fall 2004) 3-22.
  4. Here Skassis blurs the dividing line between fact and fiction, referring to the actual symposium 'Ιστορική πραγματικότητα και νεοελληνική πεζογραφία (1945-1995)' held at the Moraitis School, Athens, 7-8 April 1995.
  5. T. Skassis, Ελληνικό σταυρόλεξο (Athens 2000) 68.
  6. See A. Liakos, 'Aντάρτες και συμμορίτες στα ακαδημαϊκά αμφιθέατρα' in H. Fleischer (ed.), Η Ελλάδα '36- 49. Από τη Δικτατορία στον Εμφύλιο. Τομές και συνέχειες (Athens 2003) 28-9.
  7. N. Davvetas, interview with the author, 23 December 2018.
  8. N. Davvetas, Λευκή πετσέτα στο ρινγκ (Athens 2006) 82-3.
  9. A careful reading of Λευκή πετσέτα as historiographic metafiction is offered in K. Jentsch-Mancor, 'Historiographic metafiction, historical culture and social memory in three novels by Matessis (1990), Davvetas (2006) and Fais (2010)', in A. Anastasiadis and U. Moennig (eds), Trauma und Erinnerung. Narrative Versionen zum Bürgerkrieg in Griechenland (Cologne 2018) 129-50.
  10. Davvetas, Λευκή πετσέτα, 75.
  11. The novel has been published in English translation: S. Nikolaidou, The Scapegoat, trans. K. Emmerich (Brooklyn and London 2015). The English title of the novel, however, does not quite carry the same connotations about sovereign power and the oppressed as the Greek title, which makes a play on Minas' father's favourite saying: 'when elephants dance, the ants always pay the price'. 65 The triple Axis occupation of Greece began in April 1941, after the end of the Greco-Italian War (1940-1). Greece was divided into three occupation zones: Italian (1941-3), German (1941-4), and Bulgarian (1941-4).
  12. The National Schism (Εθνικός Διχασμός) arose over two interrelated questions: whether Greece should enter the First World War and on whose side it should do so. Greece was divided into two rival camps, the Venizelists, who supported Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos and the anti-Venizelists, who supported King Constantine I. See Clogg, 73-93.
  13. S. Nikolaidou, Απόψε δεν έχουμε φίλους (Athens 2010);
  14. S. Nikolaidou, Στο τέλος νικάω εγώ (Athens 2017).
  15. J. O. Iatrides, 'Assassination and judicial misconduct in Cold War Greece: The Polk/Staktopoulos case in retrospect', Journal of Cold War Studies 20, 4 (2018) 124. Cf. also the study by E. Keeley, The Salonika Bay Murder: Cold War Politics and the Polk Affair (Princeton 1990).
  16. A detailed discussion of the 'past presence' of the civil war in the Greek crisis cannot be addressed within the short confines of this article. For a discussion of Χορεύουν οι ελέφαντες as a 'crisis narrative', see G. Katsan, 'The anxieties of history: Greek fiction in crisis', in T. S. Willert and G. Katsan (eds), Retelling the Past in Contemporary Greek Literature, Film, and Popular Culture (London 2018) 117-32.
  17. It is instructive to note Nikolaidou's pun on the victim's name. Gris echoes Greece, implying that Greek people are also oppressed because of the crisis. Also, Gris (meaning grey) creates a pun with Staktopoulos, the first part of whose surname (στακτής) means 'ash grey'.
  18. S. O'Donoghue, 'Postmemory as trauma? Some theoretical problems and their consequences for contemporary literary criticism', Politika (26 June 2018) par. 16. <https://www.politika.io/en/notice/ postmemory-as-trauma-some-theoretical-problems-and-their-consequences-for-contemporary> [accessed 3 January 2019]
  19. A. Kuhn, Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination (London and New York 2000) 5.