Χρυσόστομος Σταμούλης, Ο ύμνος της αγάπης: A Hymn of Love

Yannis Tsarouchis

Yannis Tsarouchis (Γιάννης Τσαρούχης) 13 January 1910 – 20 July 1989

Born in Piraeus, he studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1929–1935). He was also a student of Photios Kontoglou, who introduced him to Byzantine iconography, while he also studied popular architecture and dressing customs. Together with Dimitris Pikionis, Kontoglou and Angeliki Hatzimichali he led the movement for the introduction of Greek tradition in painting.

The Art of Odysseas Annitsakis

Γεννήθηκε στην Αθήνα το 1965. Σπούδασε σχέδιο, χαρακτική, γλυπτική και υδατογραφία στο Ανοικτό Εργαστήριο της πόλης Oldenburg στη Γερμανία από το 1992 έως το 1997.

Zissimos Lorenzatos: What Remains…

All these matters, great and small, which torment us or occupy us and trouble our minds, day and night, with the small—the infinitesimally small—fraction of truth which the world can contain: what do they amount to for man at the critical moment? And what do we leave behind us? When you put everything together within yourself and sum it up—prophecy, mysteries, knowledge, faith (yes, even faith)—what finally remains, in this world, apart from Love?  What is left, even of those countless worlds that circle endlessly ‘in limitless space’ in the universe, as the Zakynthian poet Kalvos says:

The storm clouds have fled on the wind,

never and nowhere to be found.

Ο Ράλλης Κοψίδης

Wayfarers by Tasos Leivaditis

WE ARE THOSE who have been on their way for

centuries—we never had a place of our own—where are we

going? Where are we coming from? On occasion we stay

somewhere for a while, but fate quickly remembers us again

and we leave.

And only on occasion, at the time when dusk falls and

the few violets shudder amongst the hedges, we are

overwhelmed by a strange awe, a feeling as though we are

returning to the place from which we have been forever

banished.

         

 Or perhaps the twilight is our only home…

N.G. Pentzikis: Mother Thessaloniki

If, looking at Thessaloniki, one is able to rebut the poetry of the the Waste Land, in which all cities are reduced to non-existence, it is because here in the ruins, in what all things new will eventually become, one senses that everything exists, not for what it was but for something other than that, which never entered our minds when we were building.  This unlooked for other makes it possible for you to live in Thessaloniki, so that however dismal your starting point, you are always when you set out optimistic about the Resurrection. 

- N.G. Pentzikis

Alexandros Papadiamantis in Seven Images

by Nikos Engonopoulos

ΚΩΝΣΤΑΝΤΙΝΟΣ ΣΑΜΟΪΛΗΣ

by Rallis Kopsidis 

Spyros Papaloukas: Visions of Holy Space

SONG OF OLD TIMES by Nikos Gatsos

Λουκάς Γεραλής

For George Seferis

Times change, years pass

the river of the world is muddy

but I go out on the balcony of a dream

to see you bent over your clay

embroider ships and swallows.

The sea is bitter, our land small

the water in the clouds dear

the cypress wrapped in bareness

the grass burns to ashes in silence

and the hunt of the sun is endless.

And you came and carved a fountain

for the old shipwrecked man of the sea

who vanished but a memory of him

remains

a gleaming shell on Amorgos

a salty pebble on Santorini.

From the dew that shakes on a fern

I have taken the drop of a pomegranate

so I can in this notebook

spell out the longings of a heart

with the first star of a fable.

But now that Holy Tuesday arrives

and Easter will come slowly

I want you to go to Mani and to Crete

with your company there perpetually

the wolf the eagle and the asp.

And when you see the shooting star

from another time shine on your face

secretly with delicate twinkle, stand up

bring back again a spring

that wells up in your own rock

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Times change, years pass

the river of the world clouds over

but I go out on the balcony of a dream

to see you bent over your clay

embroider ships and swallows

source: http://nauplion.net/NIKOSGATSOS.html

The Cretan by Dionysios Solomos (Selections from a Fragment)

And the sea, that earlier stirred like boiling liquid,

Became still and everywhere spread calm and quiet,

Like a fragrant flower bed reflecting stars bright;

A certain secret mystery embraced all of nature

Adorning it with beauty and peace like a quiet pasture.

In the sky there was no breath, on the sea the blowing

Wind was gentle as a bee’s brush of a flower in its flying…

And before me, lo, appeared she, dressed in the moon.

The cool light trembled in front of her divine sight,

In her dark eyes and in her golden hair so bright.

I gazed at her, wretched me, she gazed at me intently.

Thought to myself I had seen her, way back in the past

Perhaps in a church painted by an artist unsurpassed… 

In the Woods with Orestes Kanellis

 

 Orestes Kanellis was born in 1910 in Smyrni.  He died in Athens in 1979.

GEORGE SEFERIS: An Old Man on the River Bank

Painting by Emmanuel Zairis 

To Nani Panayíotopoulo

And yet we should consider how we go forward. 

To feel is not enough, nor to think, nor to move 

nor to put your body in danger in front of an old loophole 

when scalding oil and molten lead furrow the walls. 

And yet we should consider towards what we go forward, 

not as our pain would have it, and our hungry children 

and the chasm between us and the companions calling from the opposite shore; 

nor as the bluish light whispers it in an improvised hospital, 

the pharmaceutic glimmer on the pillow of the youth operated on at noon; 

but it should be in some other way, I would say like 

the long river that emerges from the great lakes enclosed deep in Africa, 

that was once a god and then became a road and a benefactor, a judge and a delta; 

that is never the same, as the ancient wise men taught, 

and yet always remains the same body, the same bed, and the same Sign, 

the same orientation. 

I want nothing more than to speak simply, to be granted that grace. 

Because we’ve loaded even our song with so much music that it’s slowly sinking 

and we’ve decorated our art so much that its features have been eaten away by gold 

and it’s time to say our few words because tomorrow our soul sets sail. 

If pain is human we are not human beings merely to suffer pain; 

that’s why I think so much these days about the great river, 

this meaning that moves forward among herbs and greenery 

and beasts that graze and drink, men who sow and harvest, 

great tombs even and small habitations of the dead. 

This current that goes its way and that is not so different from the blood of men, 

from the eyes of men when they look straight ahead without fear in their hearts, 

without the daily tremor for trivialities or even for important things; 

when they look straight ahead like the traveller who is used to gauging his way by the stars, 

not like us, the other day, gazing at the enclosed garden of a sleepy Arab house, 

behind the lattices the cool garden changing shape, growing larger and smaller, 

we too changing, as we gazed, the shape of our desire and our hearts, 

at noon’s precipitation, we the patient dough of a world that throws us out and kneads us,

caught in the embroidered nets of a life that was as it should be and then became dust and sank into the sands 

leaving behind it only that vague dizzying sway of a tall palm tree. 

                                                          Cairo, 20 June ’42

George Seferis, "Mythistorema" from Collected Poems (George Seferis). Translated, edited, and introduced by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Copyright © 1995 by George Seferis.

Zissimos Lorenzatos: “One Instant!”

For it is not enough to say what you are; you must also be what you say.  Without putting into effect God’s commandment to love, man will never change, and neither will the world.  Our only hope lies in this simple thing, which is also the most difficult thing of all.  The world would change in one instant if we were able to love, if we could change the inner man... 

The Art of Fikos

Fikos was born in 1987 in Athens where he still lives. From a young age he painted whatever he saw around him, such as comics, landscapes icons and more.

At the age of 13 he started studying Byzantine painting under the guidance of George Kordis, with whom he also collaborated professionally for 5 years painting murals in Orthodox churches, while at the same time developing his own personal painting style.

In terms of technique, his portable icons are painted using egg tempera on handmade Japanese paper which is glued onto wood, and his murals are painted in acrylics.

Having a background as a graffiti artist and an iconographer in Orthodox Christian churches, Fikos is continuing his developmental journey by painting murals in public places. The value of these works is exceptional, because it is the first time that the monumental byzantine technique meets a contemporary movement such as street art.

The themes of his murals emanate from the Orthodox Christian tradition and ancient Greek mythology respectively and they are related to the places where they are presented, but also didactic.

Fikos’ painting is not just another artist’s “self-expression”, but a social event a true “creation” (“demiurgia” = demos “citizens” + ergon “work” – a work for the citizens-society).

Besides Greece, his work has been exhibited in France, Bulgaria, England, Ireland, Ukraine, Austria, Lithuania, Switzerland, Norway and Mexico, in exhibitions and museums, television and radio and in private and public places.

Fikos’ vision is the popularization and recognition of contemporary Greek painting at an international level, not as a nostalgic accomplishment of the past, but as a contemporary universal event.

Please visit his site to see more of his remarkable work- http://fikos.gr/portfolio/?lang=en 

Death and Resurrection of Konstantinos Palaeologos by Odysseas Elytis

I

As he stood there erect before the Gate
and impregnable in his sorrow

Far from the world where his spirit sought
to bring Paradise to his measure
And harder even than stone
for no one had ever looked
on him tenderly--at times his crooked teeth
whitened strangely

And as he passed by with his gaze a little
beyond mankind and from them all
extracted One who smiled on him
The Real one
whom death could never seize

He took care to pronounce the word
sea clearly that all the dolphins
within might shine
And the desolation so great it might
contain all of God
and every water drop ascending steadfastly toward
the sun

As a young man he had gold glittering
and gleaming on the shoulders of the great
And one night
he remembers
during a great storm the neck of the sea
roared so it turned murky
but he would not submit to it

The world's an oppressive place to live through
yet with a little pride it's worth it.

II

Dear God what now
Who had to battle with thousands
and not only his loneliness
Who?
He who knew with a single word
how to slake the thirst of entire worlds
What?

From whom they taken everything
And his sandals with their crisscrossed
straps and his pointed trident
and the wall he mounted every afternoon
like an unruly and pitching boat
to hold the reigns against the water


And a handful of vervain
which he had rubbed against a girl's cheek
at midnight
to kiss her
(how the waters of the moon gurled
on the stone steps three cliff-lengths
above the sea ...)

Noon out if night
And not one person by his side
Only his faithful words that mingled
all their colors to leave in his mind
a lance of white light

And opposite
along the whole wall's length
a host of heads poured in plaster
as far as his eye could see

"Noon out of night -- all life a radiance!"
he shouted and rushed into the horde
dragging behind him an endless golden line

And at once he felt
the final pallor
overmastering him
as it hastened from afar.

III

Now
as the sun's wheel turned more and more swiftly
the courtyards plunged into winter and once
again emerged red from the geranium

And the small cool domes
like blue medusae
reached each time into the silverwork
the wind so delicately worked as a painting
for other times more distant

Virgin maidens
their breasts glowing a summer dawn
brought him branches of fresh palm leaves
and those of the myrtle uprooted
from the depths of the sea

Dripping iodine
while under his feet he heard
the prows of black ships
sucked into the great whirlpool
the ancient and smoked sea-craft
from which still erect with riveted gaze
the Mothers of God stood rebuking

Horses overturned on dump-heads
a rabble of buildings large and small
debris and dust flaming in the air

And there lying prone
always with an unbroken word
between his teeth
Himself
the last of the Hellenes!

The Path of Dimitris Pikionis

In Piraeus one day, as I was returning to my father's house, I was intensely aware of the sun scorching my skin; then I stepped into the shade and the coolness caused me to shiver... It occurred to me at that moment that the violent contrasts in the climate of our land, experienced over many centuries, probably helped to explain the sharp antitheses in the character of our race. The ancient Greeks, I considered, had subjected these antitheses to the discipline of their cornices, friezes and architraves. Two days later, among the slums of a working-class quarter of Piraeus, I came upon the actual embodiment of this kind of antithesis: the acute angle made by a lean-to roof at the point where it met the wall behind it. These observations led me to abandon conventional learning and follow a free, autonomous course dictated by nature. Ever since then, the need for combining what the poet Solomos defines as 'il commune' and 'il proprio' became my most persistent pursuit. –D. Pikionis

Mastering the meaning of art necessitates profound thought and subtle, intuitive gifts, if the initiate is to penetrate, albeit gradually and painfully, into the sanctuary where the inner truth will finally be revealed. -D. Pikionis