The Greek Poet of the 21st Century: Between Melancholic Rupture and Insurgent Utopia

21世纪希腊诗人：在忧郁断裂与反叛乌托邦之间 Athina Rossoglou剖析了当代希腊诗歌，将其视为在系统性经济与社会崩溃之悲痛同构想替代未来的反叛乌托邦渴望之间的辩证运动。结合其数字档案项目“阅读希腊”（Reading Greece）中的广泛访谈，Rossoglou展示了现代诗人如何瓦解现代主义式的超然，将诗作转化为集体创伤、不稳定的身体经验以及充满争议的城市空间的另类档案。本次讲座及随后的问答环节，将这些创作置于2015年危机后的左翼忧郁、与历史上受挫世代的对话、跨越爱琴海的移民，以及转向酷儿诗学与机构经典改革的持续演变中进行审视。 Athina Rossoglou基于她在“阅读希腊”（Reading Greece）档案项目长达十年的工作，对21世纪希腊诗歌进行了分析，该项目涵盖了对当代希腊作家的450多场访谈。 (9:31) 当代希腊诗学被界定为在源于金融崩溃、紧缩与系统性危机的忧郁断裂，与重新构想替代未来的反叛乌托邦冲动之间辩证运作。 (7:17) 讲座借鉴了瓦尔特·本雅明和恩佐·特拉韦尔索的“左翼忧郁”概念，以阐明2015年激进左翼联盟（Syriza）政府崛起后破灭的幻灭感，并指出了随后向酷儿诗学和性别批判的转变。 (62:28) Rossoglou认为，现代希腊大学课程必须放眼卡瓦菲斯、塞菲里斯和埃利蒂斯等20世纪中叶的经典人物之外，去接纳有能力在全球文学舞台上一较高下的新兴声音。 (80:46)

Athina Rossoglou argues that 21st-century Greek poetry has abandoned modernist aesthetic autonomy to operate dialectically between melancholic rupture and insurgent utopia, using linguistic experimentation and personal vulnerability to challenge economic austerity, historical amnesia, and official state narratives. Redefining Poetic Agency Beyond Modernist Autonomy (9:31) Drawing on her editorial direction of Reading Greece—a digital archive of over 450 interviews launched in 2016 under the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs—Rossoglou treats the author interview as a performative space where writers construct an active public role. She contends that contemporary Greek poets reject the modernist model of the isolated craftsman devoted purely to aesthetic technique. Facing persistent economic devastation, institutional decay, and precarity, writers have pivoted from a focus on formal technique toward urgent socio-political content. In this framework, poetry acts as an active historical intervention rather than an ideological pamphlet. Rossoglou notes that poets such as Giorgos Prevedourakis emphasize message over form in moments of crisis, confronting contemporary reality directly through saturated commercial and economic metaphors such as bailout loans, bond horizons, and low-cost flights. Poetry as an Alternative Historical Counter-Archive (22:01) Official historiography tends to organize collective experience into rigid political categories and institutional summaries, which Rossoglou argues sidelines lived human suffering. Poetry operates as a counter-archive that preserves fragile, everyday voices, hesitation, and unresolved grief. Instead of displacing Greece's 20th-century history of war, foreign occupation, civil conflict, and dictatorship, recent economic shocks reactivated these older wounds. Citing poets Stamatis Polenakis and Ariadni Kolokyri, Rossoglou shows that contemporary verse approaches trauma not through monumental representation, but through ordinary, intimate details. Formal fragmentation—including caesuras, broken lines, and open syntax—mirrors a fractured historical continuity. Rather than indulging in sentimental nostalgia, poets engage with historical figures of defeat, such as Kostas Karyotakis and Manolis Anagnostakis, using past impasses to critique the present. Linguistic Depletion and the Politicized Body (40:32) Rossoglou asserts that socio-political crisis rapidly debases public speech, reducing complex human existence to technocratic jargon and statistical metrics. Contemporary Greek poets counter this exhaustion by treating language as a site of struggle. Figures such as Thanos Gogos, Thomas Tsalapatis, and Nikos Erinakis compress meaning and revitalize degraded concepts, refusing to let foundational terms like freedom or democracy remain detached from lived reality. This aesthetic struggle extends to the domestic and bodily sphere. Macroeconomic collapse violently permeates intimate relationships, emotional security, and physical health. Drawing on the critical work of Konstantina Georganta, Rossoglou highlights urban poetics that contest civic architecture and reveal who is excluded from public visibility. The vulnerable body becomes the exact surface where austerity, gendered violence, and disciplinary state power are both experienced and contested. Insurgent Utopia and Left-Wing Melancholy (49:07) Rossoglou defines utopia not as an escapist fantasy, but as the insurgent conviction that existing conditions are neither eternal nor inevitable. Rooting her analysis in Walter Benjamin and Enzo Traverso's concept of 'left-wing melancholy,' she characterizes this posture as a reflection on crushed political expectations—particularly following the 2015 Syriza-led government—that avoids fatalism and instead preserves the imaginative capacity to envision alternative futures. This poetic consciousness also confronts the transformation of the Aegean Sea from an idyllic tourist postcard into a site of border violence and drownings, expressing civil solidarity in opposition to official pushbacks. Rossoglou suggests that while the initial fifteen-year cycle of crisis-driven left-wing melancholy may now be giving way to middle-age exhaustion and emerging queer and gender poetics, the work maintains an enduring refusal to accept the present as closed. Rossoglou concludes that 21st-century Greek poetry maintains international, Nobel-caliber significance by preserving the imaginative capacity to rethink society, though she warns that conservative domestic critical establishments and limited academic translation continue to hinder its broader global recognition.

学者兼文化外交官 Athina Rossoglou 在密歇根大学的演讲中指出，21世纪希腊诗歌在经济崩溃、社会断裂与日常朝不保夕的严峻现实下，走出了一条介于“忧郁断裂”与“叛乱乌托邦”之间的辩证道路。当代诗人打破了现代主义对纯粹审美自主的执念，将脆弱的私人创伤转化为公共抵抗与历史替代性档案，并在语言的更新与再造中顽强守护改变世界的可能空间。 超越现代主义自主：危机淬炼下的诗学转向 (12:13) 长期以来，传统现代主义范式将诗歌视为自足的审美客体，要求作者将首要职责托付给形式打磨与风格技艺。然而，Rossoglou 论述道，近年希腊持续的经济萧条、体制瓦解、难民迁徙与宏大历史叙事的破灭，彻底粉碎了这种纯粹审美的幻象。当代希腊诗人拒绝充当抽离的旁观者，而是选择直面历史的动荡现场。诗人 Giorgos Prevedourakis 在接受数字项目 Reading Greece 采访时直言，在危机与紧急状态时刻，诗歌的重点已从探究形式上的“如何写”转向直面内容的“写什么”，诗歌必须成为承载当下生存危机的坚实工具。 这种政治性介入绝非将诗行退化为枯燥的意识形态宣传或行动手册，而是深刻介入共同的感官与认知领域。通过将低成本航班、救助贷款与债券等当代金融隐喻写入诗歌，创作者揭示了资本对本土空间的剥削，使诗歌成为私人见证与集体历史创伤交汇的十字路口。诗歌并不提供现成的解决方案，而是通过打破官方叙事的自满与麻木，提出更具批判力的新问题，重塑公众理解身处世界的方式。 忧郁断裂与作为替代性档案的创伤诗学 (17:16) 希腊当代表达深植于所谓的“忧郁断裂”之中。Rossoglou 强调，这种忧郁绝非被动的怀旧、宿命论或退缩沉默，而是一种催化政治批判的内省停顿。在经历了二十世纪的战争、外族占领、内战和军事独裁之后，二十一世纪的紧缩政策与社会撕裂再次层叠于旧有创伤之上。官方历史学往往依赖僵化的制度分类与宏大政经叙事，抹杀具体的生存阵痛；诗歌在此背景下行使起“替代性档案”的功能，专门抢救官方记录遗漏的日常琐事、细微伤痕、游移不定与无名苦难。 正如诗人 Ariadni Kolokyri 所言，书写细微的表层划痕往往能通向更为深刻的集体创伤。现代希腊诗歌普遍采用断裂的形式、破折号、停顿与开放性结尾，以形式上的破碎呼应历史连续性的断裂。诗人 Stamatis Polenakis 与 Valadis Mastoras 的作品均表明，从失败、绝望和历史暴力的磨盘中提炼诗行，能够让个人的脆弱痛苦向外敞开，凝聚为抵抗遗忘的集体言说，拒绝让受难被虚饰或抹平。 抵抗语义空洞：保卫语言与肉身危机 (32:35) 在危机深重的社会中，公共话语往往被自由、安全、民主和进步等空洞化的高调抽象词汇所垄断，官僚技术主义的语言将活生生的人简化为统计数据。Rossoglou 援引 Thanos Gogos 和 Nikos Erinakis 的论点指出，诗歌的政治力量正来自于对语言本身的质询与激进化。诗人不仅是现实的记录者，更是“语言的守护者”——他们并非守旧地维持语言的原貌，而是通过日常口语的注入、语法节奏的裂变以及对沉默空间的留白，打破意义的僵死闭合，防止核心概念遭到操纵与剥蚀。 与此同时，宏观的社会经济危机并未停留在统计报表上，而是直接穿透并重构了个体的隐秘生活。Rossoglou 指出，危机进驻了人类的肉身、记忆与情感关系：一首关于孤独的诗同时也是关于社会碎裂的诗，关于肉身痛苦的诗亦暴露出整体政治结构的暴力。在 Athens 等城市空间中，诗人敏锐捕捉到街道空间所施加的隔离与阶级对抗，将物理肉身视为性别暴力、经济剥削与抵抗行动的前沿阵地，打破了公私领域的传统分界。 叛乱乌托邦：在未竟世界中坚守可能空间 (49:07) 从断裂迈向乌托邦，Rossoglou 剔除了乌托邦概念中的脱产幻想与乌托邦蓝图色彩，将其重构为一种断然拒绝“现存秩序不可更改”的认知能力——即坚信“事情原本可以有所不同”。诗人 Dimitra Kationi 曾精辟地总结：“诗歌是现实的奴隶，以至于每一首诗都是对现实的叛乱。”正因为诗歌深植于现实的苦难，它才能裂变出超越现实的想象力量。诗人 Elena Polygeni 将诗歌比作在玻璃墙上凿出的裂缝，这道裂口既是创伤留下的伤痕，也是让新事物透进来的通道。 在 Rossoglou 看来，诗歌最重要的政治使命不在于替代具体的社会政策方案，而在于死守“激进想象的空间”。如果一个社会丧失了构想替代方案的能力，就会彻底沦为当下的囚徒。诗人 Dimitris Gkioulos 的作品生动呈现了现实绝境与未来期许之间的拉扯：即使在氧气耗尽、希望化为灰烬的瓦砾堆中，人们依然必须寻找彼此相遇的新途径。诗歌坚定地宣告历史、语言与人类经验本身皆是未竟的事业，从而成为可能性的守卫者。 左翼忧郁的周期演变与制度化挑战 (62:28) 在问答环节中，Rossoglou 进一步结合 Walter Benjamin 与 Enzo Traverso 的“左翼忧郁”理论，厘清了其学术框架的历史定位。她坦言，这种忧郁直接源自2015年希腊左翼政府执政后革命幻象与宏大希望的破灭，以及随之而来的替代方案匮乏与紧缩日常化。经过十五年高强度的危机创作，这批最早抗击紧缩政策的诗人如今步入中年，面临生计、育儿与赡养老人的现实消耗，以传统阶级与国家叙事为主导的左翼忧郁诗学或已行至周期的尾声，逐步向性少数（queer）及性别研究等新兴诗学让位。 此外，希腊诗歌在现实中展现出奇特活力，小型独立出版社大量涌现，诗句频繁被涂抹于街头或被示威者采纳为抗议口号。然而，Rossoglou 批评希腊本土批评体制存在根深蒂固的保守倾向，学者们热衷于反复研究 C. P. Cavafy、George Seferis 和 Odysseas Elytis 等已故大师，严重漠视正在发生的当代创作。她坚信21世纪希腊诗人拥有问鼎诺贝尔文学奖等国际最高荣誉的深厚才华，但前提是学术界必须跳出怀旧温室，通过系统的翻译、专著研究与大学课程，将这批反映全球共通困境的当代作品引入国际视野。 本场讲座通过 Reading Greece 近十年累积的450余场深度访谈与大量前沿文本，系统勾勒出21世纪希腊诗歌在创伤承载与可能重塑之间的独特张力。Rossoglou 提示，当代诗学虽面临左翼政治幻灭与批评体制边缘化的双重挑战，但其将个人脆弱转化为集体见证的实践，为理解全球资本危机下的文学抵抗提供了关键视角；至于随着第一代危机诗人的中年化与性别视角的崛起，希腊当代诗歌将如何开辟新的形式与阵地，仍是有待文学史持续追踪的开放议题。

[32:35] Athina Rossoglou: The political power of poetry does not emerge because poetry repeats political language. It emerges because poetry questions language itself. [42:23] Athina Rossoglou: The crisis is not only outside us, it becomes part of the way we inhabit the world. It enters the body, it enters memory. It enters language. [17:16] Athina Rossoglou: Between melancholic rupture and insurgent utopia, poetry becomes not only an artistic practice, but also a way of thinking politically about the world we inhabit. [53:26] Athina Rossoglou: Before societies can create new realities, they must first become capable of imagining them. [40:32] Athina Rossoglou: The poet does not offer final answers. The poet creates new questions. [40:32] Athina Rossoglou: The Greek poet of the 21st century becomes a guardian of language, not a guardian who preserves language unchanged, but one who keeps it alive through transformation. [9:31] Athina Rossoglou: The interview is not a neutral medium through which poets simply provide information about their work. It is a dialogic space in which writers construct and perform their literary identities. [38:01] Athina Rossoglou: A closed language produces fixed interpretation. An open language allows alternative possibilities.

[0:00] ARTEMIS LEONTIS: So good afternoon, [0:01] everybody, and thank you for your presence here. [0:04] As many of I'm Artemis Leontis and I am the C.P. Cavafy [0:08] professor of Classical Studies and Comparative [0:11] Literature and the director of the Modern Greek program. [0:15] And I'm delighted to welcome you to this, the third Vakalo [0:20] Visiting Family-- [0:21] Vakalo Family Visiting Artist/Scholar Lecture. [0:25] So thank you again for coming. [0:27] To begin, I want to thank Elaine Madro, who [0:30] is our events coordinator for helping to set up this lecture. [0:35] And also Daisy Freitas, who worked [0:40] to guide us through the steps involved [0:43] in bringing an international visitor [0:45] to the University of Michigan, which [0:47] has become more complicated in the last year. [0:51] The Vakalo name is known throughout Greece [0:55] for the wide range of contributions [0:57] made by George and Eleni Vakalo to poetry, [1:01] the visual arts, criticism, education, [1:04] and cultural activism. [1:06] Their son, Dr. George Emmanuel Manos Vakalo, [1:11] brought this legacy to the University of Michigan [1:13] as a professor in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, [1:17] and he is remembered as an inspiring educator. [1:22] George Eleni and Manos Vakalo lived brilliant creative lives, [1:27] and they marked by a deep care for the work [1:29] that they did and for the people that they reached. [1:33] And their memory is alive here in this audience. [1:38] With the establishment of the Vakalo Family Visiting [1:41] Artist/Scholar Lecturer endowed fund, [1:44] Kathleen Vakalo, doctor of Vakalo's wife who is here [1:47] with us today, wishes to honor her family's contributions [1:52] to Greek culture, language, and history [1:54] by supporting emerging scholars, poets, writers, translators, [1:59] musicians, and visual and performance artists. [2:03] The effort to support emerging young scholars and artists, [2:07] bringing contemporary Greece to an international audience [2:11] above and beyond the achievements of the country's [2:14] ancient past, perhaps best characterizes [2:18] the educational and cultural legacy of the Vakalo Family. [2:23] The endowed Vakalo Family fund for visiting scholars [2:26] and artists thus provides support [2:29] for visiting residencies by emerging scholars and artists [2:35] in the modern Greek program. [2:36] So, Kathleen, thank you for this extraordinary gift to our campus [2:41] community, a gift that carries the legacy of the Vakalo Family [2:44] forward. [2:46] To date, the endowed fund has supported two short residencies [2:50] and talks. [2:52] The first Vakalo Family Visiting Artist/Scholar [2:56] was Phoebe Yancey, professor of Architecture [2:58] at the University of Thessaly and a renowned poet in Greece [3:01] and now in the world. [3:03] Her lecture performance explored chimeras. [3:07] Marios Chatziprokopiou was the second Vakalo Family Visiting [3:11] Artist and assistant professor of Culture and Creative Media [3:15] and Industries at the University of Thessaly. [3:18] His debut collection, tropical tropics, Topikoi Tropikoi, [3:22] was shortlisted for the Greek State Literary [3:24] Award for best poetry, and he spoke [3:27] on metamorphosis translation as a transformative act. [3:33] Today, we are thrilled to present the third Vakalo Family [3:38] Visiting Scholar and Artist Lecture featuring Mrs. Athina [3:43] Rossoglou, a cultural diplomat and scholar [3:46] who works at a very high level in the Greek ministry of Foreign [3:49] Affairs. [3:51] It is a joy to have you here in residence [3:55] working with our students and visiting [3:57] with colleagues and friends. [4:00] And to anticipate now this lecture, [4:02] the Greek poet of the 21st century between melancholic [4:06] rupture and insurgent utopia. [4:10] And now to introduce Ms Rossoglou and her subject, [4:14] I turn the podium over to my colleague Vassilis Lambropoulos, [4:17] the C.P. Cavafy professor emeritus of Classical Studies [4:22] and Comparative Literature. [4:25] [APPLAUSE] [4:37] VASSILIS LAMBROPOULOS: Ms Athina Rossoglou [4:39] serves as a press attaché at the Greek ministry of Foreign [4:43] Affairs. [4:44] A graduate of the Department of Foreign Languages Translation [4:48] and Interpretation at the Ionian University. [4:52] She holds a postgraduate degree in public history, [4:56] and is currently a doctoral candidate [4:59] at the Ionian University. [5:02] Her research explores Greek poetry of the 21st century, [5:07] with particular emphasis on the ways in which it engages with [5:12] the concepts of history, nationhood, public space, [5:17] and identity formation. [5:20] She has co-edited, together with the Finnish translator Riikka [5:25] Pulkkinen, the bilingual anthology [5:27] of contemporary Greek poetry, [INAUDIBLE], [5:31] which was awarded the 2023 Greek State [5:35] Prize for the translation of a work of Greek literature [5:39] into a foreign language. [5:43] Mrs. Rossoglou was responsible for 10 years [5:46] for reading Greece, a web project promoting [5:50] the international dissemination of contemporary Greek [5:54] literature. [5:55] It's still on the web. [5:57] This week she will launch maybe tomorrow, maybe Wednesday-- [6:02] And you heard it here first. [6:05] This week she will launch another project, Greek Voices, [6:09] a sequel of sorts, a website bringing together [6:13] young writers, artists, scholars, and intellectuals [6:18] who create and evolving map of contemporary Greek thought [6:22] and culture. [6:24] Greek Voices will be hosted by our modern Greek program. [6:29] Her critical and scholarly work follows emerging trends, [6:33] supports new writers, and places literature [6:37] in today's sociopolitical context. [6:41] She is spending October on our campus [6:43] as the third Vakalo Family Visiting Scholar, doing [6:47] her own research, meeting colleagues, visiting classes, [6:51] and exploring the daily life of our modern Greek program. [6:56] Today, she will introduce us to some of the most dynamic Greek [7:00] poets. [7:01] Please welcome Ms Athina Rossoglou. [7:04] [APPLAUSE] [7:17] ARTEMIS LEONTIS: OK. [7:18] Good afternoon. [7:19] It's a great pleasure and honor to be among you today. [7:23] I would like to express my gratitude [7:27] to the Modern Greek program of Michigan [7:30] and its director, Artemis Leontis, for inviting me here [7:34] to teach, to learn, and to conduct research [7:38] in this wonderful campus. [7:40] And of course, I'm more than grateful to the Vakalo Family [7:45] for making this visit possible. [7:50] It is particularly meaningful to speak to Jay [7:52] in the name of Eleni Vakalo. [7:55] The generation of Greek poets I will [7:57] be discussing today who has studied and admired her work. [8:01] And I think that such a great personality, who [8:05] devoted so much of her life supporting and guiding [8:09] younger writers, would be very deeply [8:12] proud to see that her influence continue [8:16] to resonate with poets today. [8:19] The phenomenon I want to explore is by no means [8:22] exclusively Greek. [8:24] Around the world today, poets increasingly position themselves [8:28] not as detached or static figures, [8:31] but as engaged agents deeply implicated [8:35] in the historical, political, and affective [8:38] landscapes of their time. [8:41] The Greek poetry I will discuss today [8:44] emerges from a similarly charged understanding of the poet's [8:49] position in the world. [8:51] It does so, however, from a particular historical [8:54] experience, that of a generation shaped by crisis, rupture, [9:00] and the profound uncertainty of the future. [9:03] My argument is that this poetry oscillates [9:06] between two seemingly opponent impulses, melancholic experience [9:11] of rupture and an insurgent desire for utopia. [9:15] And I would like to point out that these two impulses are not [9:19] opposite at all. [9:21] Rather, contemporary Greek poetry [9:23] often finds itself its utopian energy precisely [9:28] within the experience of loss. [9:31] Before I begin today's lecture, let me give you some information [9:35] about reading Greece, the source of my primary material. [9:40] Reading Greece has been a digital platform. [9:43] A digital cultural project initiated [9:47] by the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs [9:49] through the portal Greek News Agenda, launched in 2016 [9:54] as a platform dedicated to the promotion and dissemination [9:59] of contemporary Greek writers. [10:01] It has evolved over nearly a decade [10:04] into an extensive archive of more than 450 interviews [10:09] and conversations with contemporary Greek writers, [10:13] poets, translators, publishers, scholars, [10:17] and other key figures of the Greek literary field. [10:20] What is particularly significant for the purposes of this lecture [10:24] is that this archive is not simply a pre-existing corpus [10:29] I have subsequently chosen to study. [10:32] I have been directly involved in its creation at every stage. [10:37] I have determined its editorial direction. [10:41] I have selected the writers and literary figures [10:44] to be interviewed. [10:45] I have contacted the conversations myself [10:48] and edited the interviews for publication in English. [10:52] This sustained engagement has enabled me [10:55] not simply to document contemporary Greek literary [10:58] production, but also to observe over time [11:02] the ways in which Greek writers articulate questions of history, [11:07] identity, cultural memory, and the international circulation [11:11] of Greek literature. [11:14] The importance of this archive is not only [11:17] in the number of interviews it contains, [11:20] but also in the nature of the material itself. [11:24] The interview is not a neutral medium [11:27] through which poets simply provide [11:29] information about their work. [11:31] It is a dialogic space in which writers construct and perform [11:36] their literary identities. [11:39] Through their responses, they articulate [11:42] what they believe poetry is, what role [11:46] they assign to themselves as writers, [11:48] and how they understand their relationship [11:51] with society and history. [11:53] In other words, interviews are approached as spaces [11:57] of self-representation. [11:59] When poets discuss poetry, language, history, society, [12:04] they are simultaneously constructing [12:07] a vision of what the poet represents [12:10] in contemporary culture. [12:13] When we speak about the poet of the 21st century, [12:17] we are confronted with a fundamental question, [12:20] what does it mean to be a poet in the 21st century. [12:24] Is the poet still imagined as a solitary figure, separated [12:28] from the pressures of history? [12:31] Or has poetry become one of the spaces [12:34] where societies examine their own contradictions, conflicts, [12:39] and unresolved questions? [12:41] For a long time, modern literary thought [12:45] emphasized the autonomy of poetry. [12:48] The poem was approached primarily [12:50] as an aesthetic construction, and the poet [12:53] was often perceived as a figure whose main responsibility [12:57] was directed towards language, form, and imagination. [13:02] Yet the historical experience of the last decades has challenged [13:07] any simple perception of how they work between poetry-- [13:14] the poets of the 21st century writes after profound historical [13:19] ruptures, economic crises, political transformations, wars, [13:24] displacement, and the weakening of collective narratives that [13:29] once offered a sense of continuity. [13:32] The central argument of this lecture [13:35] is that contemporary Greek poet constitutes [13:38] a political and historical subject. [13:41] By political, I do not mean that poetry may necessarily-- [13:45] must necessarily become ideological or directly [13:49] activist. [13:50] Poetry becomes political because it intervenes in the ways [13:57] reality is perceived. [13:59] It questions dominant narratives. [14:01] It preserves experiences threatened by oblivion. [14:05] And thus, it creates new forms of perceiving and reimagining [14:11] the world it inhabits. [14:13] Contemporary Greek poetry offers a particularly revealing example [14:18] of this transformation. [14:20] Greek poetic tradition has always [14:23] maintained a profound relationship [14:25] with history, memory, and collective experience. [14:29] The 20th century left behind multiple layers of historical [14:34] consciousness-- [14:35] war, occupation, civil conflict, dictatorship, migration, [14:41] and social transformation. [14:43] In this tradition, poetry has never existed outside history. [14:49] Rather, it has functioned as a space where personal experience [14:54] encounters collective memory. [14:57] My homeland is a low cost flight. [15:00] It lives by sapping of shorelines like goats grazing [15:04] on salt in postcards. [15:06] A bailout loan drags it along. [15:09] All sorts of hoists lifting its limbs [15:11] with snippers at the corners covering the procession. [15:15] Doing one takes of it, I recognize it [15:18] from its bond-like form and investment with a time horizon [15:23] surely. [15:24] I accredited androgynously script-like. [15:28] I wear vintage glasses so it can see its own reflection [15:33] and treat it to mastic liqueur I had stolen from it. [15:37] It lights up a fag and looks once again through my glasses, [15:42] my short film of a homeland, laden in awards at festival [15:47] abroad's. [15:49] Poet Giorgos Prevedourakis are reflecting on the relationship [15:54] between poetry and time. [15:57] In its interview with Reading Greece [15:59] describes poetry as a way of engaging with temporality [16:03] and experiences. [16:05] His understanding of poetry is connected-- [16:09] as connected with time allows us to see the poem [16:12] not as an isolated object, but as a space where [16:16] different temporalities meet the past, the present, [16:21] and the future. [16:22] For the contemporary Greek poet, writing [16:25] becomes an attempt to understand how time [16:29] is experienced and transformed. [16:32] This historical consciousness is also [16:35] central to poeticizing reflection on poetry. [16:38] Discussing the evolution of his poetic practice, [16:42] he notes that he moved from an emphasis on the poetic [16:45] how to the poetic what because, in times of emergency, [16:50] the message is what matters the most. [16:53] This statement is particularly important for understanding [16:57] the contemporary Greek poet's position. [17:00] Formal innovation remains essential. [17:03] But all poetry also becomes a response to historical urgency. [17:09] The poem is not detached from reality. [17:12] It searches for the language capable of confronting it. [17:16] Poet Yannis Doukas expresses this relationship [17:21] between poetry, history, and human experience [17:24] when he describes his writing as concerned with the past, [17:29] the many ways it survives under and around us and with humanity, [17:35] and how it is tested against our time. [17:39] His words reveals a crucial characteristic [17:42] of contemporary poetry. [17:44] The past is not a closed historical period, [17:48] but a living presence that continues to shape the present. [17:53] This relationship between the past and the present [17:56] leads us to the concept of melancholic rupture. [18:00] The contemporary Greek poet writes with the awareness [18:05] that something has been lost, that previous certainties have [18:10] weakened, and that history has left unresolved questions [18:14] behind. [18:16] Yet melancholy does not necessarily lead to silence. [18:20] It can become the beginning of critical reflection [18:24] and creative transformation. [18:29] You balance between stability and change. [18:32] You hope for a total eclipse. [18:34] Your presence presages history. [18:38] The poet inhabits a space of tension [18:42] between personal vulnerability and public responsibility, [18:46] between inherited memories and new realities, [18:49] between historical burden and future possibility. [18:53] This tension is not a limitation. [18:56] It is precisely what gives contemporary Greek poetry [19:01] its urgency. [19:02] The experience of vulnerability can itself [19:05] become a movement towards collective speech. [19:10] Poet Valadis Mastoras, reflecting [19:12] on the origin of his first poetry collection, [19:15] describes it as beginning with an attempt [19:18] to negotiate the condition of defeat [19:21] and the pain, loneliness, and despair that emerges from it. [19:26] Poetry thus moves from the individual experience [19:30] towards a desire for connection. [19:33] The private experience does not disappear. [19:37] It becomes the point from which a collective address becomes [19:41] possible. [19:42] The Greek poet of the 21st century emerges, therefore, [19:47] as a figure situated between history and imagination, [19:52] the poet carries the weight of the past while searching for new [19:56] forms of expression capable of responding to the present. [20:02] Between melancholic rupture and insurgent utopia, [20:05] poetry becomes not only an artistic practice, but also [20:10] a way of thinking politically about the world we inhabit. [20:15] Don't be so fucking melancholic [20:18] Everything around us is shit [20:20] Come down let's die for a chimera [20:23] Beneath your balcony carrying bags from the street market [20:27] Every now and then at least some vagrant passes by [20:31] That's what it looks like [20:32] Come down let's ring in some nonsense [20:36] I'll set off in ten minutes [20:38] If I'm late trying to decide which path to choose [20:42] From the little we are ever given [20:44] Until I make it back to a home [20:47] That isn't there. [20:48] Call me and fucking curse me [20:51] Don't be melancholic [20:52] We drank from a tap that has run dry [20:55] Like so many others and in winter [20:58] Dry it will freeze [21:00] The iron will burn the tongue and come spring [21:04] The rust will show [21:06] Don't be melancholic we have fingernails [21:11] We'll dig [21:12] Where our dead told us to dig [21:15] Places and changing faces and we will find a promise [21:20] Probably one no one will keep [21:23] But accomplices in this game of immortality [21:26] we'll take the trip in secret [21:29] We are still melancholic [21:31] Even when an impossible orange sky wraps itself around us [21:36] and we fade into little clouds [21:39] A transparent psychic solution. [21:42] We breathe ourselves in [21:44] Our sober selves envy us this ecstasy [21:48] They come and collect us by proxy from the game [21:51] With our own voice and we return melancholic [21:54] Put them to sleep and come down [21:57] If they aren't there [21:59] Burn the house. [22:01] If the poet of the 21st century is a historical and political [22:05] subject, this is first of all, because the present is never [22:10] independent from the past. [22:12] Contemporary Greek poetry emerges [22:15] from a profound awareness that history does not disappear [22:19] when events come to an end. [22:21] It continues to exist through memories, absences and silences, [22:26] inherited experiences and concerns, [22:29] as well as unresolved traumas. [22:32] Thus, memory occupies a central position [22:35] in contemporary Greek poetry. [22:38] Memory is not that the simple act of preserving the past. [22:42] It is not a passive archive of events that [22:46] have already been completed. [22:48] In poetry, memory becomes an active relationship [22:51] with history. [22:53] It is a way of questioning what has been forgotten, [22:56] what has been excluded from official narratives, [23:00] and what continues to influence the present beneath the surface [23:04] of everyday life. [23:06] The contemporary Greek poet asks not only [23:10] what happened, but also how does what [23:13] happened continue to shape us. [23:15] How does the past inhabit the present? [23:19] What remains when official history has finished speaking? [23:23] These questions are particularly significant in the context [23:26] of contemporary Greek poetry. [23:29] Greek poetic tradition has always been deeply connected [23:32] with historical consciousness. [23:34] The experience of the 20th century created a cultural [23:38] environment in which memory became not only a personal [23:42] experience, but also a collective responsibility. [23:46] The 21st century introduced new forms of rupture. [23:51] Economic crisis, austerity, uncertainty, [23:54] and social fragmentation created new historical roots. [23:59] Yet these wounds became layered upon existing memories, [24:03] creating what we might describe as a continuous dialogue [24:08] between historical periods. [24:11] The defeat we thought of [24:13] As not belonging to us [24:15] Since it was greater [24:16] From its shadow [24:18] Since we were shorter [24:19] From our sum [24:21] Located us in the map [24:23] As this cloud [24:24] That dropping the counterweights [24:26] Stood above us [24:27] And broke two. [24:29] Poet Stamatis Polenakis offers a particularly revealing [24:34] perspective on the relationship between poetry [24:37] and historical time. [24:39] Speaking about his collection, The Roses of Mercedes, [24:43] he describes its central thread as the passion [24:46] of man in the tremendous throes of history, [24:50] while identifying memory, disaster, loss, and the attempt [24:55] to break free from historical time. [24:58] Among the recurring concerns of his poetry, [25:01] he also observes that although the years disappear and cannot [25:05] be recovered. [25:07] The past, the present, and the future are all the very same. [25:12] Thus poetry becomes a space where historical periods do not [25:17] simply follow one another, but remain [25:20] in continuous conversation. [25:23] We turned off the lights after all this [25:25] You gently leaned on me and said [25:28] "We shall live stitching with a thread [25:31] The holes of history-- [25:32] whatever was before this [25:34] Can never be restored." [25:36] At least, that before, [25:37] As events negated furthermore, [25:40] We should reject that too. [25:42] What is to be stored on this Earth in the present out of all [25:47] this rumination, whose remaining breath leads us [25:50] to our obliteration, at the same time, [25:53] we turn our backs to what is ever present. [25:57] We lay wreaths and weep. [25:59] But we are what we burn. [26:01] We are what we bury deep. [26:04] The contemporary Greek poet writes within this accumulation [26:08] of time. [26:09] The past is not behind us. [26:11] It surrounds us. [26:12] It speaks through language, through inherited memories, [26:15] through social structures, and through experiences [26:18] of individuals. [26:20] This is why poetry can be understood [26:23] as an alternative archive. [26:25] Official history often organizes events [26:29] according to political categories, [26:31] institutional narratives, and collective explanations. [26:35] Poetry works differently. [26:38] It can be understood as an alternative archive. [26:43] It preserves what is fragile emotions, everyday voices, [26:48] personal experiences, moments of uncertainty, [26:51] and forms of suffering that may not enter official records. [26:56] The poem thus becomes a place where the human dimension [26:59] of history remains visible. [27:05] Poet Dimitra Katoula's reflection [27:08] offer another important dimension [27:10] to this understanding of poetry as an alternative archive. [27:15] She describes her poetry as driven by a need [27:18] to unearth the past, to rescue memory, and at the same time, [27:23] to look deeply into the presence while challenging [27:26] regular narrative, creating gaps or building bridges. [27:31] Thus, the task of poetry is not simply [27:34] to preserve what has disappeared, [27:37] but to reopen the relationship between the past [27:39] and the present, and to question the narratives through which [27:42] that relationship has been constructed. [27:46] Poetry Z.D Ainalis' reflection are [27:49] particularly relevant to this understanding of poetry. [27:53] The poem is a vessel of memory. [27:56] He describes poetry as a vault of humanity's [27:59] lived experience, an arc of humanity's vicarious memories. [28:04] This formulation is crucial because poetry does not simply [28:10] remember individual experiences. [28:13] It preserves forms of collective existence [28:16] that might otherwise disappear. [28:19] However, memory in contemporary Greek poetry [28:22] is never a simple return to the past. [28:25] It is often accompanied by trauma. [28:29] The trauma introduces a difficulty. [28:31] Certain experiences cannot be easily presented. [28:35] Some historical wounds resist direct narration [28:40] because they exceed ordinary language. [28:43] They remain present precisely because they have not yet [28:46] been fully resolved. [28:49] Poet Ariadni Kolokyri, reflecting [28:52] on the relationship between the personal and historical [28:54] dimensions of suffering, observes [28:57] that by writing about the superficial scratch, [29:01] we potentially arrive at the broader concept of trauma. [29:05] This movement from the apparently minor good [29:08] towards the broader structure of trauma [29:10] is important because it suggests that poetry does not [29:15] need to reproduce historical catastrophes directly [29:18] in order to approach it. [29:20] The intimate and the apparently ordinary [29:23] can become pathways towards a deeper understanding [29:26] of collective wounds. [29:28] Poetry approaches trauma differently [29:31] from historical explanation. [29:33] It does not necessarily interpret or explain suffering. [29:38] Instead, it creates a space where [29:41] suffering can remain visible. [29:43] This is one of the reasons why contemporary Greek poetry often [29:47] appears fragmented. [29:49] The fragmentation of the poem reflects the fragmentation [29:52] of experience itself. [29:55] The broken line, the pose, the absence [29:58] of a complete narrative-- [30:00] these are not simply stylistic choices. [30:04] They become ways of expressing a world in which continuity [30:09] has been disrupted. [30:10] Human beings experience time not as a simple sequence of moments, [30:15] but as a complex interaction between memory, presence, [30:19] and anticipation. [30:21] The past is not a closed chapter, [30:24] but an active present that continues to shape [30:27] contemporary existence. [30:29] The poet therefore works against historical amnesia. [30:33] Forgetting is never neutral. [30:35] The disappearance of memory often [30:38] means the disappearance of experiences [30:41] of voices and perspectives that challenge dominant narratives. [30:47] Poetry resists this disappearance. [30:51] I opened holes in fate [30:53] And shoved my sadness in like a piece of clothing. [30:57] Memory doesn't know how to use [31:00] Its scissors [31:01] But time won't bleed again [31:03] Which is why I don't scalp the dream [31:06] I accept it like a greedy branch in my throat [31:11] Dumbly drawing away my water. [31:14] Contemporary Greek poetry therefore [31:17] does not preserve memory because it is nostalgic. [31:21] It preserves memory because the future depends on how [31:25] we understand what came before. [31:28] Poetic transformation is inseparable [31:31] from historical transformation. [31:34] To change the way we speak about the world [31:37] is to change the way we understand it. [31:40] This is why poetry after rupture does not [31:43] represent the end of history. [31:45] On the contrary, it reveals history [31:48] as an unfinished process. [31:50] The Greek poet of the 21st century, [31:53] therefore becomes a figure who inhabits the space between [31:56] mourning and creation. [31:58] It transforms absence into presence. [32:01] It transforms silence into speech. [32:03] It transforms memory into a possibility of understanding. [32:08] The poem reminds us that what has happened [32:11] continues to matter, and that the way we remember [32:14] determines the way we imagine what comes next. [32:18] Between trauma and hope, between memory and possibility, [32:23] contemporary Greek poetry creates [32:25] a space where the past remains alive, not as a burden, [32:30] but as a source of critical awareness and future [32:33] imagination. [32:35] If memory is the way through which poetry confronts history, [32:40] language is the space where this confrontation becomes possible. [32:46] We live in a world saturated with words. [32:49] Yet the abundance of language does not necessarily [32:53] lead to a deeper understanding of the world. [32:56] Quite often the opposite occurs. [32:58] Words are repeated so frequently that they lose their complexity [33:03] and become empty signs. [33:06] Concepts such as freedom, security, progress, democracy [33:10] circulate constantly within public discourse. [33:13] They appear to describe reality, but they often [33:17] become detached from the experiences of the people whose [33:21] lives they claim to represent. [33:24] In this context, poetry acquires a particular political [33:28] significance. [33:29] The political power of poetry does not [33:32] emerge because poetry repeats political language. [33:35] It emerges because poetry questions language itself. [33:41] In his interview to read in Greece, [33:43] Thanos Gogos highlights the political potential [33:47] of poetic language by describing poetry [33:50] as a form capable of expressing both emotion [33:54] and the harsh societal critique. [33:57] His emphasis on reaching the maximum potential [34:00] of a single word suggests that poetry's power [34:04] lies not only in what it says, but also [34:07] in the way language itself can create [34:10] social and political meaning. [34:13] Through its condensed and powerful form, [34:16] poetic language can challenge established values, questions [34:20] social realities, and give voice to collective struggles. [34:25] The idea of a poet as a figure who transforms language in order [34:31] to transform perception is also central to Thomas Tsalapatis [34:35] understanding of poetry. [34:37] In his Reading Greece interview, he [34:40] argues that the poet proposes a new way of handling language [34:45] and words, and thus reality. [34:48] The poet does not simply describe the world, [34:51] but it participates in redefining [34:54] the ways through which the world becomes meaningful. [34:59] The first day [35:00] In Alba's neighborhood [35:02] And he is boiling water, always boiling water [35:06] In the curved part of language [35:08] Whose words stagnate [35:10] The unused ones, the ones on walls, [35:13] The non-smoking ones [35:15] In the water [35:17] In the storm [35:18] And he is [35:19] Boiling water, always boiling water [35:22] Learning that what is scarce is what takes charge [35:26] Learning how being tough lose their flat roofs [35:30] How zeta and ksi dry up at the roots [35:34] How vowels get murdered [35:36] How language bubbles up. [35:39] And offering of the silent [35:41] For those who grew silent. [35:44] The Poet's task is not simply to describe [35:47] the world more beautifully. [35:49] It is to discover where the existing forms of language [35:54] are still capable of responding to human experience. [35:59] New realities appear before new worlds have [36:02] been created to describe them. [36:04] Experiences of uncertainty, displacement, social exclusion, [36:09] and collective anxiety often exceeds the vocabulary [36:13] available to us. [36:15] The Greek poet of the 21st century works precisely within [36:19] this gap. [36:21] For the contemporary Greek poet, language is not merely [36:26] a cultural inheritance. [36:28] It is also a field of experimentation and conflict. [36:32] The poet receives a language set by centuries of history, [36:37] but must also transform it in order [36:40] to speak about the present. [36:42] Poet Ioanna Lioutsia offers a particularly [36:46] contemporary perspective on this problem. [36:49] She describes her desire to create a poetic language based [36:53] on modern living, everyday language capable of expressing [36:58] the now we are living. [37:00] Poet Efstathia P places this communicative dimension [37:05] of poetic language at the center of her practice. [37:09] For her, poetry is a way of sharing [37:12] a point of view and of making experience a common ground. [37:17] The political dimension of poetry [37:19] exists in its capacity to make visible [37:22] what dominant language often excludes. [37:25] If poetry preserves humanity's experience across time, [37:30] then language becomes an ethical responsibility. [37:35] The poet must protect not only words themselves, but also [37:39] the experiences carried within them. [37:42] Words contain histories. [37:44] Words contain memories. [37:46] Words contain struggles over meaning. [37:51] To transform language is therefore also [37:54] to transform in the ways in which history can be remembered. [38:01] The relationship between language and power [38:03] becomes particularly visible during periods of crisis. [38:08] In moments of social instability, [38:11] public language often becomes dominated by abstractions. [38:14] Human experiences are transformed [38:17] into statistics, categories, and political terms. [38:21] Poetry moves in the opposite direction. [38:24] It returns from abstraction to experience. [38:27] It restores the individual voice. [38:29] It reminds us that behind every social category, [38:33] there is a human presence. [38:37] Poet Nikos Erinakis takes this argument [38:40] one step further by describing poetry as a response [38:44] to a moment when language has been exhausted. [38:47] In such a condition, he argues, we cannot simply surrender [38:51] our most important words to empty or distorted meanings. [38:55] What is required, instead, is the creation [38:58] of new symbolic forms for individual and collective ideas [39:02] and actions. [39:03] For Erinakis, the regeneration of language [39:06] can also regenerate imagination, allowing [39:10] us to visualize and potentially transform reality. [39:14] On her part, Poet Evi Liakea offers a delicate account [39:19] of the relationship between words and silence. [39:23] She explains that she seeks to leave space for silence [39:26] through words, syntax, and punctuation, [39:29] while allowing anything an inner rhythm to emerge. [39:33] Poetry creates a space where the unsaid remains meaningful. [39:37] The fragment, the interruption, and the incomplete sentence [39:41] become ways of approaching realities that [39:43] resist simple representation. [39:46] In this sense, poetic language does not close-- [39:50] that does not close meaning. [39:51] It opens this. [39:53] This openness is one of poetry's most important forms [39:56] of resistance. [39:58] A closed language produces fixed interpretation. [40:01] An open language allows alternative possibilities. [40:05] The contemporary Greek poet, therefore, [40:08] works against linguistic exhaustion. [40:12] That which exists will be destroyed, [40:15] Every single clay cast [40:18] Every single figure [40:20] The soul to expose the vulgarities [40:22] To the sudden repetition [40:24] Flooding the empty air, empty? [40:27] The air full of empty meanings [40:29] Don't turn around [40:30] Don't believe it [40:32] Don't delude your mind with these phantoms. [40:37] The poet does not offer final answers. [40:40] The poet creates new questions. [40:43] In a world where language is often [40:46] used to simplify, classify, and control, [40:50] poetry insists on complexity. [40:54] In a world where words are often separated from experience, [40:58] poetry reconnects them. [41:00] In a world where meaning is constantly [41:02] threatened by repetition and indifference, [41:05] poetry restores attention. [41:07] Thus, the Greek poet of the 21st century becomes a guardian [41:12] of language, not a guardian who preserves language unchanged, [41:17] but one who keeps it alive through transformation. [41:21] If memory connects-- the Greek poet of the 21st century writes, [41:31] within a world marked by instability, [41:34] the present is characterized by economic uncertainty, [41:37] social fragmentation, migration, the transformation of public [41:41] space, and new forms of vulnerability. [41:45] These conditions enter the intimate sphere [41:48] of human existence. [41:49] They shape, emotions, relationships, identities, [41:53] and the ways in which individuals imagine themselves [41:56] in the future. [41:58] This is why contemporary Greek poetry cannot be understood only [42:03] as a representation of social reality. [42:06] It is also an investigation of how [42:08] social reality is experienced. [42:11] The crisis is not only outside us, [42:14] it becomes part of the way we inhabit the world. [42:17] It enters the body, it enters memory. [42:20] It enters language. [42:23] The transformation of public space is also one [42:26] of the defining experiences of the 21st century. [42:30] Cities have become places of both connection and exclusion. [42:33] They bring people together while simultaneously producing [42:38] new forms of separation. [42:40] Poetry examines who belongs in public space [42:44] and who becomes invisible within it. [42:47] It asks whose stories are represented [42:50] and whose stories remain absent. [42:52] It restores attention to ordinary lives [42:55] that are often overlooked. [42:58] Konstantina Georganta does work on urban poetics, [43:02] provides an illuminating framework [43:04] for understanding this relationship between poetry [43:07] and the city. [43:08] The city becomes a place where past and present intersect, [43:13] and where poetry can reopen the political and historical [43:17] meanings embedded in apparently ordinary spaces. [43:24] A stray idea for revolution [43:26] Fills the square [43:27] It is the reign of the summer day [43:29] Just before the quarries are hung [43:31] On the fingers of devoted vacationers [43:34] And the still heat [43:35] Sharpens ingestion and speech [43:38] Mouths surrender to the range [43:40] Open to rocks [43:41] And unfold on the surface [43:43] The secretion of sweat [43:45] Everybody on the streets [43:47] Haven't got time to party [43:49] Gilts and hopes [43:50] With as much love as has been left in pockets [43:54] Let us demolish the city. [43:57] For many poets, the crisis means not only [44:00] unemployment or economic insecurity, but also [44:04] a deeper uncertainty about belonging, [44:07] identity and the possibility of imagining a future. [44:11] For poetry, this means that the crisis-- [44:15] for poetry, this meant that the political [44:18] could no longer be considered separate from the personal. [44:22] The political entered the intimate. [44:25] A poem about loneliness could also [44:27] become a poem about social fragmentation. [44:31] A poem about uncertainty could also [44:33] reveal the effects of economic structures. [44:36] A poem about an individual body could reveal the conditions [44:40] of an entire society. [44:42] Poet ceases to choose reflections are particularly [44:46] relevant here, because they place [44:48] the body at the intersection of personal and structural [44:51] experience. [44:52] Discussing her writing, she emphasizes [44:55] themes including gender violence, the exploitation [44:58] of vulnerable individuals, and class [45:01] struggles, while insisting that everyday life [45:05] intersects with deep persistence of power, control, [45:09] and resistance. [45:10] Her work therefore demonstrates that the intimate body [45:14] can become a site where broader social contradictions are [45:18] experienced and articulated. [45:21] Poet Lena Kallergi's reflection also [45:26] offer another way of understanding [45:28] this relationship between uncertainty and embodiment. [45:32] Speaking about her poetry, she describes the poetic voice [45:36] as a traveler confronted with existential and linguistic [45:40] uncertainty, inhabiting a world of multiple realities [45:44] and undecided routes. [45:46] The poet does not simply report crisis. [45:49] The poet reveals its hidden dimensions. [45:52] The language of poetry allows us to perceive [45:55] what ordinary discourse often in growers. [46:00] There are verses [46:02] To kick you [46:03] To drag you [46:04] To caress your head [46:06] To burn your hands [46:07] Before they are written [46:09] Before they are uttered [46:11] There are verses [46:12] Not to hear a thing anymore [46:15] There are verses [46:16] There is silence [46:18] Fresh fire. [46:21] The Greek poet of the 21st century does not stand outside [46:25] crisis. [46:26] The poet writes within-- from within the crisis. [46:29] But writing from within crisis does not [46:32] mean surrendering to it. [46:34] The poem becomes an act of resistance [46:36] because it refuses the idea that the presence is inevitable. [46:41] It preserves human experience against abstraction. [46:44] It protects memory against disappearance. [46:47] It creates connections where society experiences [46:50] fragmentation, and ultimately it preserves the possibility [46:55] of another future. [46:57] This is the political significance [46:59] of contemporary poetry. [47:02] It does not simply describe a world in crisis. [47:05] It reveals how crisis enters human existence [47:09] and how language can still create forms of understanding, [47:12] solidarity, and imagination. [47:15] Between vulnerability and resistance, [47:18] the Greek poet of the 21st century transformed [47:21] the experience of crisis into a space for self-reflection [47:26] and renewal. [47:29] Through this lecture, I have argued that the Greek poet [47:31] of the 21st century emerges from a condition of rupture. [47:36] The contemporary Greek poet writes after the collapse [47:39] of certainties-- [47:41] political certainties, social expectation, [47:44] economic assumptions, and cultural narratives [47:47] that once provides societies with a sense of continuity. [47:54] The condition may be described as melancholic rupture. [47:58] Melancholy emerges from the awareness of loss. [48:02] It recognizes that something has disappeared, [48:05] a certain relationship with history, [48:08] a certain belief in progress, and certain confidence [48:11] in the future. [48:12] Yet melancholy, its most creative form, [48:15] does not simply look backward. [48:17] It creates the conditions for reflection. [48:20] Contemporary Greek poetry constantly [48:23] moves between memory and imagination. [48:25] It looks towards what has been lost, [48:28] but it also asks what can be created. [48:32] Poet Alekos Lountzis offers a particularly suggestive [48:36] formulation of this movement between memory and possibility. [48:40] Speaking about his collection, The Next Us, [48:42] he describes one section as composed of poems of projection, [48:47] drawing their own material from immediate reality [48:50] and stretching toward possible future. [48:52] Poetry thus becomes a movement outward [48:56] from what is given toward what has not yet become. [49:01] The movement from rapture to utopia [49:04] begins precisely at this point. [49:07] However, the idea of utopia requires clarification. [49:11] Utopia is not a fantasy of perfection, [49:15] nor is it an escape from historical reality. [49:19] In contemporary thought, utopia represents the capacity [49:23] to imagine alternatives. [49:25] It is the refusal to accept that the present [49:28] on the order of things is natural, permanent, [49:31] or inevitable. [49:33] Utopia begins with a simple but radical possibility. [49:37] Things could be otherwise. [49:40] I want no more dirges [49:42] I want no more verbs belonging to the non-combatants [49:46] I need a new language, not pimping [49:48] I'm waiting for a revolution to invent me [49:51] Hungering for the language of class war [49:54] A language that has tasted insurgency [49:57] I shall create it! [49:59] Ah, what arrogance! [50:00] OK, I'll be off [50:02] But take a look-- [50:03] in my face the dawn of a new poetry is breaking [50:07] No world will be left behind, held hostage. [50:10] I'm seeking a new passage. [50:13] Every poem, in its own way, challenges the assumption [50:17] that reality has only one possible description. [50:21] Poetry transforms perception. [50:23] It reveals possibilities that remain hidden [50:26] within ordinary discourse. [50:28] The poetic act is therefore already an act of imagination, [50:33] and imagination is not opposed to politics. [50:39] It is one of the conditions of political transformations. [50:43] A society that cannot imagine alternatives become imprisoned [50:47] within the present. [50:48] A society capable of imagining differently [50:52] preserves the possibility of change. [50:54] Poet Konstantina Georganta offers a particularly compelling [50:59] formulation of this relationship between poetry and possibility. [51:03] She describes poetic texts, a historical, political, [51:07] and cultural documents that can expand [51:09] our awareness by revealing a world that is insufficiently [51:13] defined. [51:15] Poetry, she suggests, does not simply [51:17] describe the world as it is. [51:20] It allows us to imagine it anew, one word at a time. [51:25] This is why contemporary Greek poetry [51:28] is particularly significant. [51:30] Emerging from experiences of historical burden, [51:33] economic crisis, social uncertainty, [51:36] and cultural transformation, it does not simply [51:39] document a worldly decline. [51:41] It searches for new forms of connection [51:45] and new ways of understanding collective existence. [51:48] The contemporary poet inhabits a space [51:51] between two movements-- the recognition of what [51:54] has been damaged and the desire to imagine [51:57] what has not yet been created. [52:00] This tension defines the relationship [52:02] between melancholic rupture and insurgent utopia. [52:08] I know you have to leave now [52:10] There is no more oxygen here for us to breathe. [52:13] We have to get away from here. [52:15] My eyes are desperately searching among the clouds [52:19] The ashes of my hopes are lost on the horizon. [52:22] You cannot help me the way I need it. [52:25] We need to find new ways to help each other [52:28] Find a way to meet each other. [52:30] The distances will be annihilated [52:33] What we forgot [52:34] Will appear as unprecedented experiences [52:38] The city will be demolished and built again in that night, [52:41] Failures will acquire new meaning [52:44] Old friends will be loved again as the first time [52:47] The rival camps [52:48] Will be stacked one against the other [52:51] And they will fight. [52:53] Find a way for us to meet [52:55] The battle will be victorious, [52:57] The winter will be over. [52:59] And happiness will cut open your belly like a sharp knife [53:03] From side to side. [53:05] Everything you always wanted will overflow your body [53:08] And will appear before your eyes for the first time. [53:14] Poet Dimitris Gkioulos expresses this tension [53:18] between the possibility-- [53:21] the future possibility and present political reality [53:24] with remarkable clarity. [53:26] The poet, he suggests, may speak of a potential future, [53:30] but must also fight for the here, for the now. [53:33] Poetry, therefore, is not a retreat from the present [53:36] into an imaginary future. [53:38] It is a way of remaining intensely [53:40] present while refusing to accept the present [53:43] as the final horizon. [53:45] In this sense, poetry performs a political function [53:51] not because it provides a program [53:52] for social transformation, but because it [53:55] preserves the imaginative space necessary for transformation [53:59] to occur. [54:00] Before societies can create new realities, [54:03] they must first become capable of imagining them. [54:10] Poet Elena Polygeni, for instance, [54:13] describes poetry as creating cracks in the glass wall. [54:18] This image of crack is particularly [54:20] useful for understanding melancholic rupture. [54:23] The crack is both wound and opening. [54:27] It marks damage, but it also allows something to enter. [54:33] Contemporary Greek poetry refuses both nostalgia [54:37] and despair. [54:38] It does not idealize what has been lost, [54:41] but it also refuses the belief that loss defines everything. [54:46] The poem transforms absence into a space of reflection. [54:51] It transforms memory into a form of responsibility. [54:55] It transforms uncertainty into a question. [54:59] Poet Dimitra Kationi captures this paradox in one [55:05] of the most striking formulations [55:07] found in the reading Greece interviews. [55:09] Poetry is a slave to reality, so much so [55:13] that every poem is a rebellion against it. [55:17] This paradox is essential. [55:19] Poetry is a slave to reality because it cannot escape this [55:23] historical, social, and linguistic conditions from which [55:27] it emerges. [55:28] Yet precisely because it is bound to reality, [55:31] every poem becomes capable of rebelling against the reality it [55:35] describes. [55:37] The Greek poet of the 21st century, [55:40] therefore occupies a paradoxical position. [55:44] The poet stands between mourning and creation, between memory [55:48] and hope, between what has ended and what has not yet begun. [55:53] This is why contemporary Greek poetry remains [55:56] politically significant. [55:58] Its political gesture is not always found [56:01] in direct statements or explicit declarations. [56:04] It exists in its refusal to accept the realities complete. [56:08] It exists in its insistence that another language, [56:12] another perception, another future remain possible. [56:17] I have no more than a life [56:19] And scattered dreams from previous lives to offer [56:23] But it is at the altitude of dreams [56:25] where the battle takes place [56:27] I am with no one and this means I'm with the majority [56:30] It's the new symmetry [56:31] We know nothing, but we will not retreat yet [56:35] Because nothingness has been uttered [56:37] And the time for something has come [56:40] A while has passed but not time [56:42] Paradise has not yet been defined [56:45] Perhaps only innocence [56:47] So many gods we have invented [56:50] We are bound to find the one [56:52] And if only death and nothingness [56:54] are the only things left for us, [56:57] Then in death and nothingness we shall find hope. [57:01] The Greek poet of the 21st century is therefore not simply [57:05] a witness of an aging crisis. [57:08] The poet is a guardian of possibility. [57:11] Between melancholic rupture and insurgent utopia, [57:14] poetry becomes a practice of remembering, questioning, [57:18] and imagining. [57:20] It reminds us that every ending is also [57:23] a beginning of interpretation, that every crisis contains [57:27] the unresolved question of what comes next. [57:30] And perhaps this is the difficult-- [57:33] the deepest political power of poetry-- [57:35] not to tell us what the future will be, [57:37] but to preserve our ability to imagine that the future can [57:41] still be different. [57:43] I would like to conclude with a simple idea. [57:46] In times of historical uncertainty, [57:48] societies need to not only answers, [57:52] they also need languages capable of asking better questions. [57:57] Contemporary Greek poetry gives us a language for memory, [58:01] a language for grief, a language for resistance, [58:05] a language for possibility. [58:07] The utopian dimension of poetry does not [58:10] consist in imagining a perfect world. [58:13] It consists in maintaining the belief [58:15] that the world is unfinished, that history is unfinished, [58:19] that language is unfinished, that humanity is unfinished. [58:26] The poem remains open because future remains open. [58:31] Between melancholic rapture and insurgent utopia, [58:34] this is perhaps the deepest political gesture of the Greek [58:38] poetry of the 21st century. [58:41] Not to predict the future, not to promise a redemption, [58:45] but to protect the possibility of transformation. [58:49] To keep open the space where a more democratic, more inclusive, [58:55] and more just future can be imagined. [58:58] To conclude this presentation, I would [59:00] like to point out that you may have noticed how [59:03] alongside poetry, the graffiti I have included in my presentation [59:07] also traced this movement from melancholic rapture [59:11] to insurgent utopia. [59:12] I will close with a song related to protest [59:15] against the increasing number of femicides in Greece, [59:19] which captures precisely this shift in practice. [59:24] Give me a sec. [59:30] [VIDEO PLAYBACK] [59:33] [GREEK MUSIC] [62:27] [END PLAYBACK] [62:28] Thank you very much. [62:30] [APPLAUSE] [62:44] ARTEMIS LEONTIS: Thank you so much for an amazing talk that [62:48] was beautifully illustrated. [62:49] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: Thank you, thank you. [62:51] ARTEMIS LEONTIS: Where you had the images, [62:52] and what you were saying in dialogue, [62:54] it was really quite amazing. [62:55] So, thank you. [62:57] I wanted to open the floor for questions [63:00] to be addressed to Mrs. Rossoglou. [63:04] Yes? [63:06] AUDIENCE: You said at the beginning that there were [63:08] vatious the 21st century poets. [63:15] And you obviously talking about the Greek 21st century poets. [63:20] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: Yes. [63:22] AUDIENCE: How would you compare that with the American 21st [63:25] century poet? [63:27] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: I think that around the world, [63:29] poetry today is confronted with the same questions. [63:33] Because governments, both in Greece and the States, [63:37] have a similar political program, [63:39] so I guess that poetry can work in the same way [63:45] to offer an alternative narrative. [63:50] But there are so many similarities. [63:53] We have the same states, government states, [63:56] so we can have the same poetry, or at least similar poetry, [64:01] in both ends of the Atlantic. [64:13] AUDIENCE: Thank you so much, Athina. [64:15] This was fantastic. [64:16] I have a couple questions. [64:18] One would be, I think, an invitation for you [64:23] to think out loud with us about the infrastructure of poetry. [64:28] How is poetry consumed? [64:30] How is it produced, performed? [64:33] How is it made public? [64:34] And how does the production and consumption of poetry in Greece [64:40] speak to the political ontology of poetry? [64:47] That's one question, if you're interested in following. [64:50] Another question-- sorry, this is a little bit, probably, [64:57] simplistic, but maybe you can think through it [65:01] with us who haven't thought through this project [65:04] as much as you have. [65:05] I'm just reminded a lot about Freud's melancholy and mourning, [65:11] and I'm thinking that for Freud, melancholy [65:15] is the refusal to look forward and to move forward. [65:18] And it's stuck in this notion of loss, [65:24] whereas mourning is the processing and the gestation [65:30] and synthesis of the loss, and then [65:34] the ability to integrate it into a forward-looking existence. [65:40] But I think your project seems to be challenging that in a lot [65:43] of ways, in that for you, maybe mourning, [65:48] as Freud would understand, is more of a making peace with [65:51] the status quo and just assimilating yourself [65:55] into the progress-based, linear society that the 21st century [66:05] wants to build. [66:06] And melancholy, then, would be a register of history [66:12] in order to refuse to move forward and assimilate [66:17] and produce this kind of rupture through which we can then [66:22] imagine a utopia. [66:23] So I'm wondering if you have developed or have thought [66:26] about the ways that melancholy in your project [66:30] speaks to the deeper academic bibliography on melancholy [66:34] and what your stance and take is? [66:37] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: OK. [66:38] As for the first question, in Greece nowadays, [66:41] poetry flourishes. [66:43] There is a great number of small publishers [66:47] that are publishing poetry. [66:49] The number of poetic books published every year [66:52] is great, which means that people both have the need [66:57] to write poetry, because they find [66:59] it a way of expressing themselves [67:02] and the reality they live in, and at the same time, [67:05] there are people who want to read this kind of poetry. [67:09] Imagine that in many protests around Greece, [67:14] poems or some verses became some [GREEK] [67:19] became phrases that the protesters used in order [67:24] to express their demands. [67:28] So poetry nowadays is very much present in the public sphere. [67:34] It cannot be easily recognized by critics because they cannot [67:39] understand this term, this shift towards the more political [67:44] and the more social, this fragmentation of language, [67:47] this turning upside-down of rules. [67:53] But people read poetry. [67:57] People write poetry. [67:58] In my opinion, this is very, very meaningful [68:03] about the future we want to construct. [68:06] As for the second question, melancholy in my poetry [68:11] mostly draws from Benjamin and Enzo Traverso. [68:16] So it has to do with society or poets who [68:21] have believed that in 2015, with the rise of the left, [68:28] something will change. [68:29] But then this vision collapsed. [68:32] And now, they cannot find other ways of materializing, [68:38] of implementing this vision of revolt. [68:42] Now the crisis has been normalized to such an extent [68:46] that we don't go out on the streets, [68:49] that poetry of a left-wing melancholy seems to have [68:53] finished, that other trends regarding gender, for example, [68:57] seem to appear, or queer poetry. [69:00] But what melancholy is for me is that we all [69:06] believed in a vision, in a revolutionary vision, when [69:11] the left took the power in Greece in 2015, [69:16] and this collapse of all visions, of all hopes, [69:24] and the search of an alternative, which is not yet [69:27] there. [69:29] I don't know if I have an answer to your questions, [69:34] but this is my vision, more or less. [69:48] AUDIENCE: Thank you for your presentation. [69:50] I really don't know a lot about 21st century Greek poetry, [69:54] but a lot of the themes that you touched upon made complete [69:57] sense, especially economic austerity and the role that [70:00] that's played in generating this new kind of poetry. [70:03] I was wondering if you could tell us [70:05] a little bit about migration and how [70:07] that has figured into the new poetry that is being released, [70:11] and what the perceptions are, I guess, if you will, [70:14] of the poets and the role that migration is [70:16] playing in contemporary Greece. [70:18] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: For Greece, migration [70:23] provoked a very direct shift in the way the Aegean is perceived. [70:31] The Aegean is not-- or the islands [70:33] are not now places of sun, of tourists, of happiness. [70:39] But the Aegean is an archipelago full of bodies. [70:44] And this is imprinted so much in today's poetry. [70:48] We don't have visions of sun, of carelessness. [70:53] We have people suffering. [70:55] We have people being in the depths of our waters. [71:00] So it has been a complete shift in the way poetry imagines what [71:07] has been often considered our Greekness, [71:10] a typical image of Greekness. [71:13] So there is a great shift. [71:16] As people, we are against governments putting up [71:21] fences, boats being upturned. [71:26] We are in favor of people coming to our country. [71:30] We cannot stand these, how can I say it, [71:37] these deaths on our doorstep. [71:41] So poetry captures this social consciousness [71:49] of the Greek society-- not of Greek government, [71:53] but of Greek society, definitely. [72:04] AUDIENCE: Hi, Athina. [72:05] Thank you so much. [72:06] This was great. [72:07] I have a rather naive question to ask about the use of crisis [72:14] as, I don't want to say, as a way of analyzing, [72:18] because crisis itself is an interesting concept. [72:25] So besides the fact that in Greek it also means judgment. [72:30] From an anthropological point of view, [72:32] crisis is an external moral determination, right? [72:37] So is it crisis, or is it fragmentation? [72:42] That's the-- how do you use crisis in your analysis? [72:47] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: In the Greek political scene and social scene [72:51] nowadays, the word "crisis" has been abundantly used to describe [72:57] our sociopolitical environment. [73:00] The reason I used crisis is that it triggered a shift in poetry [73:09] from a more private vision to a social and political poetry, [73:14] in essence. [73:15] And at first, at least, crisis was used in poets' verses. [73:23] It could be a crisis of economy, a crisis of a vision crushed, [73:30] a crisis of society that will never again feel secure. [73:37] But it took different meanings in poetry. [73:42] So I think it's a crisis in sociopolitical terms [73:47] and fragmentation as far as the poetic language is concerned. [74:08] AUDIENCE: The other question that I wanted to ask is, [74:10] is there a relationship between 21st century Greek poetry [74:15] and popular culture? [74:16] Because I think a lot about poetry and, generally, [74:22] literary theory coming out of a very academic space. [74:24] And I wonder how much of this translates [74:27] into modern Greek urban, not-so-academic culture. [74:33] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: I think that when [74:36] we entered this phase of economic and social uncertainty, [74:42] not only literature, but art flourished. [74:46] But it's a more independent art. [74:48] There are small galleries which have multiplied. [74:53] There are theatrical plays all around Athens. [74:58] So I think art flourishes because in times of uncertainty, [75:02] people are searching creative ways of narrating, [75:08] of dealing with, of overcoming the state they are living in. [75:14] So, yes, there is a direct connection [75:18] between the flourish of poetry and the flourish [75:22] of other creative arts, as well, in Greece nowadays. [75:25] AUDIENCE: And can I ask one more question? [75:27] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: Yes. [75:27] AUDIENCE: And I'm just going to challenge you a little bit, [75:29] because I keep thinking about what you are alleging, [75:31] that the new 21st century poetry is kind of devoid of nostalgia. [75:36] But I'm thinking about things that have come across [75:41] in Greek popular culture that, to me, are very much reminiscent [75:45] of nostalgic identity. [75:48] So the rise of [GREEK], for example, or like you said, [75:52] [GREEK]. [75:53] There's a theater production in Thessaloniki in December, [75:56] [GREEK], which is a complete homage, if you will, [76:02] to that past. [76:03] It is this poetry really kind of devoid of that [76:07] and looking towards something different? [76:09] Or are there hints of this Greek past? [76:12] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: I think that it's not nostalgic [76:14] at all, because it is as if a chapter, [76:18] a great historical chapter, has closed. [76:22] So we don't feel nostalgic about, for instance, [76:27] times of economic development. [76:32] We know that this will not happen again. [76:37] So we have closed the door to our ancestors [76:44] and to our poetic predecessors. [76:47] We study generations-- for example, [76:50] the generation of the 1920s or of the 1950s and '60s, which [76:57] were also concerned with defeat, with disillusionment. [77:01] But we don't study Cavafy so much. [77:06] We prefer Karyotakis. [77:08] We prefer Anagnostakis, because we more easily identify [77:14] with them, because their historical environment is [77:18] quite similar of today's historical environment. [77:31] AUDIENCE: I have a question that I asked you yesterday, I think. [77:34] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: OK. [77:35] AUDIENCE: I'd like to ask you again. [77:37] But I could also just follow up on that. [77:38] My impression as well is that there's something clinical [77:42] about the return to the past. [77:44] It's very incisive, like they're holding a scalpel [77:49] and they want to cut into something [77:51] rather than embrace it or hug it or long for it. [77:54] So, for example, a lot of the poetic dialogue [77:57] with [INAUDIBLE], for example, there's [78:00] a sense of, these poets that we're turning back to were very [78:05] ironic, sarcastic, detached. [78:07] And so we're going to return to them in a double detachment, [78:10] where we are also being ironic and detached vis a vis [78:13] these earlier poets. [78:15] That's one impression I have that [78:16] seems to be reinforcing this idea [78:19] that they are not nostalgic. [78:21] The question I had is that-- [78:24] so, this generation started off 15 years ago, perhaps. [78:33] Younger, less gray hairs on their faces and their heads. [78:37] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: [LAUGHS] [78:38] AUDIENCE: Now many of them are-- [78:41] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: In their 50s. [78:42] AUDIENCE: --in their 40s, 50s. [78:44] Some of them have children. [78:46] Many of them are caring for elderly parents. [78:50] And the financial-- the austerity [78:53] has been normalized to such an extent that many of them [78:58] are also precariously employed, don't [79:01] have a lot of material support. [79:03] So there's just a lot of pressure on human beings [79:06] at this phase of their life. [79:08] And I'm wondering how that affects their poetic output when [79:11] they're having to care for children, [79:13] having to care for elderly parents, [79:15] having all these pressures. [79:16] And what is the future of this poetic output? [79:21] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: OK. [79:22] I think that after 15 years of very creative writing, [79:28] it is time to say that this generation, [79:32] this left-wing melancholy in poetry, [79:35] this political-social poetry may have come to an end. [79:40] But that's not necessarily bad, because in all generations, [79:44] after a very powerful period, there [79:47] were periods that followed that there is time for reflection. [79:53] There is time for what we need next. [79:56] For example, nowadays in Greece, there [79:59] is a certain trend towards gender poetry, [80:05] towards queer poetry. [80:08] There is not a trend that we can talk of, [80:11] because there are books written, but we [80:14] don't have a syllabus of many poems to talk about them. [80:19] But for me, it's good that these poets [80:25] offered the best they could. [80:28] And now this chapter is closing. [80:32] I'm looking forward to seeing what will come next. [80:37] But now, I think poetry needs to reflect on what comes next. [80:46] AUDIENCE: Another question that I have is since 2015, [80:50] we've also seen a massive exodus of Greek talent, [80:54] young Greek people who have gone abroad, of course, [80:57] North America in general and everywhere else. [80:59] What is the role of the diaspora now in the 21st century Greek [81:03] poetic movement, if you will? [81:05] Do you have a lot of poets who are also [81:07] writing outside of Greece, but who are of the country? [81:10] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: Yes, there are. [81:11] There's a number of poets living abroad [81:14] because they studied university in the United States, [81:19] in Germany. [81:21] They teach in various universities across the globe, [81:25] although living in Greece. [81:28] So they are a kind of mediators of cultural ambassadors [81:33] of poetry nowadays. [81:34] And I think that modern Greek programs around the world [81:38] play a pivotal role in bringing the students in touch [81:45] with modern trends, with what happens nowadays. [81:49] We have studied Cavafy, and we have studied Seferis, [81:52] and we have studied Elytis. [81:54] And it was very great. [81:55] It was great. [81:57] But now, maybe it's time to talk about what [82:01] happens 100 years later, because I [82:05] consider that poetry written today is very important, [82:09] especially put in a socioeconomic framework. [82:12] It can relate to people across the globe [82:15] because the problems people face nowadays [82:18] are more or less the same. [82:21] So it's a great opportunity for this poetry, [82:24] the poetry of the 21st century, to be taught, to be learned, [82:30] to become a subject of research. [82:34] And this is our bet. [82:37] This is why I'm here, because I consider [82:40] that the contemporary literary scene is very important, [82:46] and people should get acquainted with it. [82:52] AUDIENCE: OK. [82:53] I have a question about all these new poets [82:59] that you have looked at. [83:02] Greece has got two Nobel prizes, both in poetry. [83:05] And Cavafy should also have gotten a prize if he was alive. [83:09] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: Yeah, I think so, too. [83:11] AUDIENCE: You just mentioned those three. [83:13] Now of this new group, do you think one or more [83:18] of them are good enough that in the future, maybe [83:21] in 20 or 30 years, they can be seriously considered [83:24] for a Nobel Prize? [83:25] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: It all depends on [83:27] whether there is research on them, [83:30] because nowadays, critics refuse to acknowledge or study them [83:35] in depth. [83:36] If they are studied more at university level, [83:41] if research is conducted on them, yes. [83:44] Why not? [83:46] Because, for example, [INAUDIBLE] [83:48] has an excellent sense of poetic writing. [83:53] But it's very difficult for modern critics [83:58] to contemplate on this phenomenon. [84:01] It's easiest to study something that has already [84:05] been studied in various ways. [84:08] Let's hope that the critic of the future or the historian [84:11] of the future does so. [84:14] AUDIENCE: OK, but besides hoping, [84:16] I was interested in your guess, in your estimate, [84:21] if some of these are good enough that they [84:23] will attract the critics. [84:24] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: Yes, for me, it's definitely. [84:26] The answer is definitely yes. [84:28] AUDIENCE: Really? [84:28] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: Yeah. [84:29] AUDIENCE: Very optimistic. [84:31] Oh, another comment-- this is true both in the US [84:34] and in Greece. [84:35] People don't really know their history. [84:38] They don't understand how bad things were like 50, [84:41] 70, 100 years ago, how much more poverty there was. [84:45] And then you see people complaining [84:46] every day, and especially in Greece, but here, too. [84:49] I mean, gas prices here is an almost comical example [84:53] that people are so sensitive to. [84:56] And they are high, and especially diesel prices here, [84:59] they are crazy high. [84:59] ARTEMIS LEONTIS: Do you have a question you want to ask? [85:01] AUDIENCE: Oh, this was a comment. [85:03] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: OK. [85:04] ARTEMIS LEONTIS: OK. [85:04] Thank you for the comment. [85:05] I think that maybe we should transition [85:08] to talking to each other outside of the formal setting. [85:14] I want to thank you again. [85:15] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: Thank you. [85:16] ARTEMIS LEONTIS: I want to say-- [85:17] ATHINA ROSSOGLOU: Thank all of you. [85:18] [APPLAUSE] [85:18] ARTEMIS LEONTIS: What an inspiring talk it was. [85:20] And again, [INAUDIBLE].