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Marina Nikolova

Z. Mihaylova was awarded the 2010 State Prize of Greece for foreign language translation for the poetic anthology by Yannis Ritsos Scripture of the All-Seeing One. She says in an interview for GRReporter that it would be better if poets and intellectuals could change the world and shares her views on Greek poetry and ethno-psychology.

How did you feel when you learned that you were awarded the most prestigious prize for translation in Greece? Did you expect it?

I have been named to the so-called short list of finalists two or three times during the past seven years. I was very surprised when I received the news because I could not believe that the awarding finally happened. Many factors must coincide for a translator to be awarded this prestigious prize. Ritsos is "heavy artillery" for Greek literature, and it took hard work, skill and flair for poetic speech to get to the publication of Scriptures of the All-Seeing One. I wish to thank the publisher Malina Tomova from Stigmati publishing house for her cooperation. I had always wondered how  books ranked in the “obscure languages” category are assessed, as committee members usually speak one or two of the main European languages. I was told that the publication was submitted to a professional "reader" with Bulgarian as their mother tongue for assessment. Her positive mark and the added value of the criterion of long-standing contribution to the dissemination of Modern Greek literature, which is also taken into consideration by the committee, have led to my award.

The news was officially announced by the Greek news agency ANA-MPA on the 1st of March, but the official award ceremony by the Minister of Culture will be held at the end of April. On the one hand, the prize gives me personal satisfaction, but on the other  it is a sign of a breakthrough in the attitude towards translations into the so-called "small" or obscure languages, such as all Balkan ones, including Bulgarian.

In a broader sense, the prize honours not only me, it is also a recognition of the systematic presence and promotion of Greek Literature in Bulgaria in general. The short article by literary critic Manolis Pimblis in Ta Nea newspaper on the occasion of the news was not gratuitously entitled “Greece in Bulgaria”. Naturally, the award is an occasion for joy, pride and satisfaction in a job well done, as well as public recognition by the Greek State for the efforts that anyway have brought personal satisfaction to me over the years. And this is a part of the mutual approach – Greeks recognize my work to spread their language and literature. The feeling is different when a Hellenist is rewarded with a similar prize for his or her contribution.

Ritsos is loved and translated in Bulgaria, and his proletarian poetry is known better there. He wrote in a very different style during the later period of his work after 1974, and I have sought to present these less-known works of his in Bulgaria. This is the third book by Ritsos that I translated after the philosophical and mythological monologues of Fourth Dimension (of the 13 poems included in the book, besides my nine, three are translated by Yana Bukova and one by Dostena Lavern) and the fragments in prose entitled Ariostos the Observant Recounts Moments of his Life and Sleep. The play Anonymous Saint based on one of those Ritsos’ stories is currently on stage at Teatro Tehnis (the Greek Art Theater) of Karolos Kuhn in the Stoa tou Vivliou (Book Arcade). The leading role is played by our talented fellow countryman actor Chris Radanov. Translation work into Bulgarian (for the collection Fourth Dimension) was first short-listed for the State award in 2003. Then we had some reasonable expectation for the prize and naturally disappointment followed when it did not make the final cut. So, this time I had a strong feeling that this subsequent Ritsos book had all the qualities to be recognized, but without high expectations since I know that always something might happen between short-listing and the final awarding procedure.

There is a long-standing tradition of translating Greek literature in Bulgaria. There are several Departments of Modern Greek Philology too. Are Bulgarian graduates interested to continue this tradition?

The main benchmark works have been translated. There remains Modern Greek literature – vast and diverse – still not sufficiently promoted on the Bulgarian book market. Departments of Modern Greek studies in Bulgaria provide a solid education, but the diploma of philologist is one thing and it’s quite a different matter whether any of these young graduates would be interested and prepared to get engaged with literary translation in the future. Personally I am not aware of the names of young graduates in Greek literature who are systematically making literary translations, this being among their priorities. Experienced and apt translators include Yana Bukova and Dragomira Valcheva, Classical Philology alumni. But perhaps there are also well-prepared Modern Greek Studies graduates with the requisite interests.

Greek literature is scarcely known in Bulgaria and it is not easy to find a publisher to take a risk with unknown authors, even though they may be award-winning or “cresting a wave” in Greece, even translated into some major languages, as was, for example, the case with Rhea Galanaki when I translated her first novel The Life of Ismail Ferik Pasha. The book, which came out in 1998, concerns itself with dual identity. It is the story of a Greek recruited into the Ottoman imperial system who rises to the highest rank in the entourage of Mohammed Ali, Khedive of Egypt. The issues are about dual identity, Christian-Muslim, Greek-Ottoman, Western-Oriental, traditionality-modernity, the Ottoman Empire confronting modernity, the role of the Western Powers. Much work and persistence is necessary after completing the translation to make a book by a modern Greek author popular in Bulgaria. In fact, only new editions or re-editions of older translations of Cavafy, Seferis, Elytis, Kazantzakis and Ritsos would probably manage with no advertising. These are the four poets and the prose writer unconditionally accepted by Bulgarian readership as “great” authors; all others need presentations and advertising of their work to become known to an Bulgarian audience.

You have translated some of the poems most cherished by Greek readers. Which poems are closest to your emotions and what do you associate them with?

It is hardly a coincidence that Greece gave the world two Nobel Prize winners and they are both poets – Seferis and Elytis. And some of the most rivetting poems were written in Greek: from the Palatine Anthology to the universal Cavafy who had rarely left his native Alexandria, and poets such as Angelos Sikelianos, Yiannis Ritsos, Tassos Livaditis, Takis Sinopoulos, Nikos Engonopoulos, Miltos Sahturis, Manolis Anagnostakis, Tassos Livaditis, modern ones too such as Mihalis Ganas, Yannis Kondos, Jenny Mastoraki, Katerina Angelaki-Rooke and many others.

Early in the twentieth century, Cavafy in his native Alexandria began to realize what his avant-garde stance would mean for poetry. His reflections on the fate of the artist, on the sacrifice a great poet is compelled to make, show how insightful and bitter his awareness is of the long and rough road he himself would have to travel until he gained recognition and claimed his individual voice in poetry.  "Full of mishaps" was the road Cavafy traversed to the symbolic meaning of Alexandria, where he was born, spent his whole life and died till it turned into a fortunate creative discovery for him making out of it a scale model of the world. This revelation came later, in his fifties, after a long, hard struggle with his own self and with this city. Only after a certain age does the poet realise the symbolic dimension the city offers to him and he becomes reconciled with its reality, utilising the diachronic tradition of Greek culture – antiquity, the Alexandrian epoch, the glory of Byzantium conceived as an interim step from ancient to the modern Greek world.

My favorite poem by Cavafy is “As Much As You Can”:

AS MUCH AS YOU CAN

And if you can't shape your life the way you want,

at least try as much as you can

not to degrade it

by too much contact with the world,

by too much activity and talk.

Try not to degrade it by dragging it along,

taking it around and exposing it so often

to the daily silliness

of social events and parties,

until it comes to seem a boring hanger-on.

(Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)

Seferis’ poetry not only brings the readers the joy of overcoming of the triviality of everyday life and takes him on a journey to ancient myths with rich symbolism, but it will also show them the way to intuitively follow magic paths leading to a world of distant and free associations. To a certain extent one could say about his verse, as about Cavafy’s, that he is an "historical poet". Spiritually - and sometimes physically – he is present and creatively involved with the most significant events experienced by his country transforming them into poetry. With the gift to expand the spiritual meaning of an event of Greek history (the Asia Minor disaster, the Nazi occupation), using different characters, he is able to make out of it a universal event symbolising what has happened, happens or  might happen. The poet easily weaves his own intimate personal experiences into important historical events. The verse of the first Greek Nobel prize winners take us away from mundane, tedious life to remind us that we are additionally spiritual beings who want to "raise themselves a little higher."

Should a poet be a rebel to write good poetry?

It would be better if poets and intellectuals could change the world and they should play the role of social “adjusters” in all cases. I think there is room for them in the forefront and it is always appreciated when they play this role.

If not a rebel in the social sense – because not all poets are revolutionaries or in the vanguard of a social change, or leftists, some have conservative views – often the great poet displays an unorthodox attitude to the language, in usage of words, which marks the beginning of new and contemporary forms of expression. And this is also a kind of rebelliousness.

The question reminds me of a quote by Kurt Vonnegut who wrote in one of his novels: "You don’t have to be crazy to work with us, but it helps." Not all poets who have left their mark had conspicuously anti-establishment tendencies. For better or worse Ritsos is a leftist poet, because this is what he could and wanted to be (Celine and Pound, for example, were advocates of fascism). Thanks to, or despite, his unorthodox leftism Ritsos was one of the greatest (not only Greek) artists and intellectuals who devoted their work to the so-called "committed" art of their times, deeply immersed in history, taking significant aesthetic and civic decisions, sometimes right, sometimes wrong. As Ritsos himself wrote: "If poetry is not forgiveness - whispered in private – then mercy would come from nowhere."

Could we talk about commonalities among the Greeks? What are they in your opinion?

Yes, all nations including the Greeks have an ethno-psychological portrait. If rebelliousness is a hallmark of poets, then they are a nation of poets. I first heard from my Greek friends at the university the theory – half jokingly, half seriously – that half of the Greek nation were sailors and the other half were poets. One of the features of the Greeks I especially like is their disobedience and theomachy, their non-conformity to undemonstrable authority; there is no authority that cannot be questioned and ultimately overthrown, as witness Prometheus’ revolt against the gods for which he is severely punished. The sentiments του έλληνα ο τράχηλος ζυγό δεν υποφέρει (a Greek’s neck will endure no yoke) or το αδούλωτο των ελλήνων (the unconquerableness of the Greeks) are sometimes indulged in to extremity, but extremes may express national character although having their pros and cons.

What impressed you favourably in your first contacts with the Greeks?

Spontaneity, liveliness, wit, openness, compassion, their self-respect (φιλότιμο), sensitivity for freedom, the ability to enjoy life, to do well.... In Greece, I had the feeling it was easier to breathe somehow, but that may be delusional; one remembers  the maxim "scarcity in warm countries is endured more easily...".

I began learning the language without having communicated with actual Greeks, although I knew descendants of political immigrants, Bulgarian Greeks from the Black Sea community. The main feature of the Greeks – their spontaneity and rebelliousness – attracted me at first. And after I had already decided to study their language, I liked the people too. My first contact with Greeks from Greece was during my university years. I am a graduate of Journalism and there were no faculties of mass communications in Greece at the beginning of the 1980s, so many people studied in Bulgaria and I was fortunate enough to come in contact with some of them. This was at the beginning of that decade, relatively soon after the fall of the military junta, when the Greek students were the bearer of all ideas for social change and enthusiasm to build a different Greece. In practice, I spent my student years in Bulgaria with the daily news from Greece my colleagues brought.

Are there features in the Greeks that trouble you?

Some of the qualities I mentioned co-exist with ethnocentricity and conservatism – a strange combination, on the one hand, of curiosity and openness to the world, giving rise to a global culture, and self-obsessed navel-gazing on the other. But the Greeks do not need psychoanalysis in the light-flooded landscape that surrounds them. Maybe they don’t even realize every day how blessed is this corner of the world where they are destined to live. The caressing warmth and the Mediterranean transparency of the air does not allow the soul to be covered by the mould of melancholy, so – I do not remember to whom the phrase is attributed – perhaps Freud himself said it – that Greeks do not need psychoanalysis, there is no space for Nordic angst in the contours of the Greek landscape.

Do you cooperate with the Hellenic Foundation for Culture in Sofia?
 
Two Greek poets whom I have translated – Titos Patrikios and Nasos Vagenas, and two Bulgarian poets – Sylvia Choleva and Ivan Teofilov – were present at its official opening in 2008. Last year's celebration of the birth centenary of the poet-sailor Nikos Kavadias was also marked by my translations of his works. Аn exhibit of State award-winning Greek books of poetry, novels, short stories, essays etc. arranged at the National ‘Cyril and Methodius’ Library in Sofia from March 24 to April 14 this year will also present trends in modern Greek literature in order to attract not only the public interest but of Bulgarian publishers too. The writer Ismini Kapandai will speak about new trends in Greek literature. I recommend the Bulgarian translation of her book Seven Times The Ring: seven stories related in an unusual way through a ring which is handed from generation to generation and from hand to hand.

Although we are talking about Greek literature, the question about the presence of Bulgarian literature in Greece is unavoidable.

Unfortunately, it is not so extensive as the presence of Greek literature in Bulgaria the tradition of which, as I said, dates back to the 1960s. Bulgarian masterpieces such as Tobacco by Dimitar Dimov, and works by Emilian Stanev, Anton Donchev and others have been translated in the 1970s. I think they were published by a Thessaloniki publishing house but are long gone. There has been a keen interest in Balkan literatures, Bulgarian among them, after 1989 and the early 1990s, and other Greek publishers already have a series of Balkan literature with Kedros leading the way. Some of its translated Bulgarian works include Anton Donchev’s novel The Mysterious Knight of the Holy Book (O περιπλανώμενος ιππότης του ιερού βιβλίου), The Sound Pot (Το εύηχο σκεύος) by Y. Radichkov, Sevda Sevan’s trilogy Rodosto, Rodosto, Somewhere in the Balkans and Der Zor (Αρμενικό τρίπτυχο). Mission London (Αποστολή Λονδίνο) by Alek Popov was published recently. Most of the translations are made by Panos Statoyanis, who graduated on journalism at Sofia University. We were colleagues. He himself is a writer and has a wonderful command of Bulgarian language. Livanis published three novels by Vera Mutafchieva (1929-2009) in Statoyanis’s translations: I, Anna Komnene (Εγώ, η Άννα Κομνηνή), The Case of Jem (Τζεμ, ο ικέτης της Ανατολής) and Alkibiades the Small, Alkibiades the Great (Αλκιβιάδης ο Μικρός, Αλκιβιάδης ο Μέγας). Vera Mutafchieva was an expert in Turkish studies, and these novels are a fairly good literary "adaptation" of her erudition as a historian, written in a fascinating and interesting manner.

What to expect in your translation after Ritsos?

I finished the translation of the novel by Takis Teodoropoulos The Left Hand of Aphrodite that refers to the story of Venus of Milo, which generally can be classified as an archaeological thriller, because it is about the discovery of this ancient masterpiece and its smuggling out of Greece. The style of the author combines documentary and fiction. He uses the diaries of the French researchers who came to Milos as part of a larger marine expedition charged with mapping new territories. Teodoropoulos has researched the archives of the French Consulate on Milos that existed at the time and of all that have been connected with the statue’s removal and sale and its exaltation on a pedestal in the Louvre as a masterpiece. The gaps in these documentary records are complemented by his fiction and first-person reflections. His interference in commenting on the events is quite direct. The book is more than an archaeological thriller, covering as it does a wide range of issues such as great power rivalry in the late 18th and early 19th century and their presence in Greece, its liberation, cultural imperialism and the fight mainly between France and England – which country will "capture" the greater part of ancient art for the Louvre or the British Museum respectively. In the case of Milos, Frenchmen prevail. So, I think the book – to be published by Ciela – will be of interest to a vast readership. I am currently finishing the translation of another novel by Elena Houzouri entitled Gloomy Vardar, whose action takes place in Melnik and Thessaloniki during the Balkan Wars.   

Zdravka Mihaylova on Yannis Ritsos’ Fourth Dimension:

The level of intertwining of philosophical issues in Fourth Dimension is supplemented by the concrete and the historical, in which the echo of modern Greek history is quite tangible: there are references to events occasioned by the colonels’ dictatorship colonels (1967-1974); an associative analogy is made to the harsh test of the Greek people during the Civil War (1946-1949), then linked with the worst national disaster in the history of Greece after the fall of Constantinople – the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922, which in turn is projected onto the national liberation uprising of 1821, then reflected in the Peloponnesian War and the Trojan War. So, the mythological prism through which history is refracted becomes the focus of a centuries-long historical memory.

The monologues from Fourth Dimension included in the prize-winning volume have a mythical and historical basis set by the archetypal image of the lineage and deeds of ancient heroes. A second layer encompasses the personal memory of different mythological paradigms, in particular the time of the poet's childhood, when his family is marked by a particularly tragic fate. The "Dead House" is the once-wealthy, now slighlty seedy, paternal home of Ritsos in his native Monemvasia in the Peloponnese, easily identified with the rise and decline of the palaces of Mycenae. Here in the poet's childhood the fundamental psychological layers of the poems could be found, the key to personal relationships in the family, even Freudian complexes that emerge in such an interesting way in these texts, bearing the idealized image of his mother as Klytemnestra and a vеry domineering father, etc. The heavy emotional content of a child's life is highlighted, a life that was subsequently to wallow in disease, destruction and mourning. Most often monologues dominate in a closed house, worn by the signs of ruin and decay synonymous with the poet's father's home, surrounded by the nature of Laconia, the fields near the Evrotas river, or the cut "blue ridges" of the Mount Taygettos of his childhood.

It is also no coincidence that epigrammatic poems by Ritsos from the period of the dictatorship, inspired by antiquity, are entitled "Repeats."

Ritsos, by merit, ranks among the constellation of the most celebrated Greek poets of the last century, and among the world-class artists with universal resonance, whether leftist or not, who have enlightened the history of the twentieth century with their truths and deceptions.