"By giving its support to these series, the Onassis Foundation wished to explore the links existing between the culture of ancient Greece and the world today." "It was never in it intention to associate itself to any opinion concerning the history and the political life of modern Greece." "The Onassis Foundation insists in clarfying that the choice of the themes as well as the selection of the interviewed persons are the sole responsibility of the director." "THE OWL'S LEGACY" "04 NOSTALGIA or the Impossible Return" "I was born on an island in a lake in the Epirus region near the Greece-Albania border." "My grandfather, grandson of a defrocked archbishop, was a very cultivated man and told me many stories." "One day I asked him 'Where is Ithaca?" "'" "He pointed in one direction but he didn't seem very sure." "Later I asked him the same question he pointed in another direction." "So I said: 'You're lying to me." "You said it was over there.'" "'Yes, but the Earth is turning.'" "So when I was 8 I understood why Ulysses got lost." "Lets not forget that Homer who wrote the Iliad and Odyssey was a Greek from Asia Minor." "To sail towards the West they had to cross the Aegean sea and circle the Peloponnese." "The African coast was occupied by the Phoenicians who were much more advanced seamen." "So the Greeks could only go West." "Ulysses tried after the Trojan War the Corinthians refused him access." "Going around the Peloponnese the wind pushed him towards Libya." "He then headed for the Ionian Sea through the straights of Messina" "between Sardinia and Corsica and from Spain on to Gibraltar." "Taking the African coast to Sicily he went around the Aeolian islands and was shipwrecked near Corfu." "There he was given hospitality and was taken back to Ithaca." "So in using the Odyssey story Homer meant to set the Greeks against the Corinthians and help Asia Minor sailors." "Ancient geography was political." "The Corinthians claimed they originated from the Cyclops but Ulysses poked out his eye." "Homer was all-pervasive using very emotive stories." "He educated the young and those returning home to lend a hand to their people." "And with the Lotus-eaters story he warned children to be wary of dangers to come and not to forget their homeland because Ithaca awaits them." "We learned the Odyssey when we were 12 or 13 years old." "Not in the original, but in Kazantzakis' translation which is marvellous." "It was a delight for us." "It was like a fairy story." "I'll never forget it." "What I love most about Greece is being by the seaside and hearing a mother call out:" "'Calliope' or 'Euterpe' or 'Persephone come here', etc." "Suddenly it all comes back to me, here is this dark-haired child and her name is Persephone." "It takes my breath away." "I was astonished this morning by the names of the children." "Orpheus, Prometheus, Diogenes..." "I asked myself 'why' not for the first time either." "There's a book by a Greek writer called 'The Third Ring', also out in France, which said that the Greeks give their children ancient names" "in the hope that they might save a bit of past, reunite it with the present." "The present isn't very pleasant, sometimes it's even disastrous." "These names offer some securtity as if through them they conjure something very solid and safe." "Modern Greeks know very well" "that Ancient Greek civilization" "is the heritage of all humanity." "We don't consider ourselves the only inheritors." "But we exist as well along with the others." "And it's not just that we exist," "we exist as we exist, but that we keep on struggling." "We exist in spite of the others, what's more, we continue" "with all the means at out disposal to fight for those same ideals" "which are the heritage of humanity." "That's all you can say." "There has always been a conflict within Christianity between Athens and Jesuralem." "During the High Renaissance Athens was dominant." "The idea of the great civilization uniting religion, art, philosophy." "For the puritans and radicals Jerusalem prevailed." "People like Luther and Calvin always tried to reject their Greek heritage which really, as they suspected, has always been polytheistic." "This struggle within Christianity has altered the destiny of Europe." "Today the mystery comes to rest." "We talk about Ancient Greece, we are surrounded by it, our education, politics, culture, but Israel actually exists." "Modern Greece and Ancient Greece have nothing at all in common." "It's a parody." "It doesn't even exist." "I once met Mr Steiner at Delphi." "He came up with the same argument based on his admirable research on Antigone's heritage in the modern world." "He demolished our Greek tradition." "So I answered him that," "I don't mean to sound patriotic, we retain our ancient tradition that's how we differ from you, by calling our girls Antigone, we are different from Europeans." "One of our Resistance heroines was called Electra." "We come from the Ancient Greeks we give our children their names it's a continuation." "But it also poses problems." "A people who, ever since the war, the liberation from the Turks, have been seeking their identity." "Identity is our basic problem." "Who are we?" "All countries have this problem but none as intensly as us." "As you are no doubt aware there have been so many invasions that in the end we can't pretend," "though we have the same language, that we are near to the Ancients." "We don't know about the Byzantines." "They may have been Asians." "They were from all over the world, Arabs, Jews and Greeks." "In Byzantium, Byzantine Greece was a 'thema', a little province." "In my opinion" "what defines the Greeks on a more intellectual level is nostaliga for a homeland which they no longer have." "'Greekness' prevails abroad, at home they mimc the foreigners." "I don't think there are points" "that can re-unite Ancient and Modern Greece." "Ancient culture no longer exists or only in books." "I've met foreigners who know our history and culture much better than we do." "With cultural assimilation what is left of it?" "Some geographical divisions" "but no more than that." "True, Ancient Greece is the origin of Modern Greek - our language." "We vehemently defended our culture during the Ottoman empire and it survived." "There are moving stories of Greeks fiercely defending their language." "Maybe they felt that the world was holding them responsible for such important things as words and history." "And maybe the Turkish occupation leveled out quite a few things." "Maybe it even helped helped to re-unite people." "Forced them to form a resistance against the occupiers that focused on the language," "which was the only thing which distinguished the Greeks from the Turks." "It was the only difference for many years, centuries even." "All the rest became Turkish, the cooking, everything." "In fact, the very way of life" "became an imposed way of life, imposed by the occupiers." "Our century has seen several waves of diaspora." "In the economic diaspora c. 1900 many left for the USA and Canda." "Then after the war came the emigrant worker diaspora." "They went to Germany, Switzerland," "Belgium - mostly down the mines." "In '45, I sailed as an interpreter with the first emigrant workers and I experienced this exodus," "a national exodus, as you said." "The country it left behind had only old people and children." "The initiators of social change had all left the country." "They had gone to work abroad and contribute to the miracle of West German economy." "The diaspora has always helped to maintain a deep feeling of of love for the country." "You love Greece when you're away and hate it when you're here." "It is a very curious phenomenon common to many expatriates." "We all say the same thing:" "'I am unhappy when I'm there and unhappy when I'm not there.'" "Abroad at least I'm allowed too keep intact my image of Greece." "It's all up here, in the mind." "In reality, there's not much to it." "But the idea is important." "The idea of Ulysses." "The idea of nostalgia." "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be." "I love Simone Signoret's title." "'Nostalgia' is derived from Nostos" " the desire to go home, and Algos - pain." "Pain of desire, desire of pain." "How can we eliminate or exorcise the notion of nostalgia when talking of a wandering nation where almost every family has one member living abroad" "or away at sea, like my father." "All my friends at school had fathers or brothers at sea." "Travelling was part of our lives which was both terrible and good." "Good because this sea around us invites us to travel and so in spite of this this perpetual..." "I must use the word nostalgia when speaking about Greece." "How could we be otherwise?" "Nostalgia is derived from 'algos'." "Algos has to do with pain." "It's a sort of dull pain." "It's the most Greek word I know." "In a sense, it defines Greece." "I use the definition arbitrarily like 'All French are Cartesian'." "It's a generalisation of course." "Well, to generalise, if you seek a definition of Greece this would be the most profound." "The Greeks are nostalgic." "Nostalgic for what?" "For everything and nothing." "They have nothing left, it's all in their heads." "The time of the Colonels was very difficult for me." "The pain of being far from Greece was made ten times worse" "hearing the tragic news abroad." "So I'd say that my 'Greekness', my Greek identity was intensified, came closer to the surface." "But as things settled down a bit I too eventually calmed down." "I could see the advantages of being an emigrant Greek." "You can easily maintain the nostalgia for your country, embelish it as much as you want because you are far away." "You can draw inspiration from it because you are far away." "Then I had to return to Greece and things had changed." "As time passed my rapport with Greece grew wiser." "Maybe now I expect less of her, as if I no longer feel for her this sort of teenage revolt." "Kids always revolt against parents if they don't come up to scratch." "The kids get annoyed with them but as they grow older they say:" "'I hope they don't change if only they'd stay as they are, even tucked away in a corner even old I still need them if only to remain a child.'" "When parents go, the child's gone." "So if I had to deny my country, which can be deeply annoying, if I denied or renounced Greece just because it made me angry" "I'd feel bereft of the homeland to which I am so deeply attached." "'Beautiful, yet strange homeland, the one bestowed on me." "She throws nets to catch fish but it's birds she traps." "She builds boats on the land and gardens on the water." "Beautiful, yet strange homeland, the one bestowed on me." " A poem by Odysseus Elytis" "She threatens to pick up a stone, but then draws back." "She pretends to dig it up, and miracles happen." "Beautiful, yet strange homeland, the one bestowed on me." "With a small boat, she reaches the oceans." "She calles for revolution and gives herself tyrants." "Beautiful, yet strange homeland.'" "What pleases me most in this beautiful text by Elytis is the world 'homeland', which is rather obsolete in French due to its chauvinistic flavour." "It has detestable connotations." "But for Greece, for Greeks, 'patrida' is a sacred word." "Perhaps because we suffered to keep this homeland." "Not in the patriotic sense but in the matriarchal sense." "We also say 'to patrio edaphou' which is a bit like 'fathering', the paternal territory." "I claim the word homeland when it's said in Greek and this phrase 'beautiful, yet strange homeland', used in the Greek sense, moves me deeply" "because it implies roots, history, everything..." "Then the poet lashes out." "He praised Greece when he says:" "'She grows gardens on land' - no..." "'Boats on the land and gardens on the water'." "And looking at Greece, it's true." "There are boats on the land and gardens on the water too." "And so he glorifies it all." "But finally this harsh phrase" "'She calles for revolution and gives herself tyrants.'" "That speaks for itself."