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In the dim light there is a child, in the sunlight that shades and illuminates the photography. He touches his right arm with his left hand, amber salt, and Pindar whispers to him: “Dream of a shadow, this is the man”. A little man who grew up like millions before him, Nikos Aliagas is a multilingual, journalist, TV and radio host who tells us from behind the camera about Greek DNA and French life. He has exhibitions in France and around the world (last year also in Venice at the Palazzo Vendramini Grimani). This story is black and white, light and dark, life and death, past and future, and rises to poetry through quotations from dozens of authors, from Homer to Sappho, from Plutarch to Xenophon, from his contemporary Nikos Kazantzakis to Nobel Prize winners for Odysseas Elytis and Giorgos Seferis. Greek spirit. My basic motto It is a travel diary, a book of timeless ideas, a collection of aphorisms from authors, a Greece that everyone loves. It is first and foremost a triumph of Greekness. On the other hand, how can we not remember Marguerite Yourcenar? Memoirs of Hadrian”, he wrote: “Almost all the best things that people say, they say in Greek”.
“Whoever speaks and thinks in Greek is a free man”
Aliagas is a modern Greek who grew up in the classical era: in the quiet of Missolonghi, his mother Harula, bent over a sewing machine, taught him the difference between strong and sweet spirits, and his grandfather Spyros read to himIliad Under the shade of the olive trees, it is repeated to him: “He who speaks and thinks in Greek is a free man”. Then, the encounter with Greek thought, the attempt to decode and understand ancient Greek in modern Greek and, finally, the acquaintance of Laure De Chantal, one of the directors of the series Beautiful Literature, and the invitation to let images dialogue with the contemporary. in ancient words. Thus, Aliagas, with a booklet in his hands, combines glimpses and quotations of Greek with the precision of the words: “Almost before I knew how to read Greek, I discovered it and I felt it as the closest recollection of my existence, a voice from outside, an ancestral music that had always slept in me.” Les Belles Lettres, temple of erudition, the Yellow Book Publishing House publishes translations and commentaries of the ancients. Greek SpiritIn Greek, it is πνεύμα, the breath that makes us brothers with Homer. It is not easy to find something so profoundly in dialogue without being anachronistic or exotic: it all thanks to a profound exploration of the original and intimate meaning of these words. This becomes timeless, poetic, eternal.
Contemporary photos and ancient texts
A woman at the crossroads of Sifnos, the lagoon of Missolonghi, a glimpse of the sanctuary of Delphi, the villages of Ithaca, a sea of olive trees, sleepy sheep, bees gathered on the frame, eyes of embers, Corinthian capitals, faces dried by the sun, fishermen in the sun: Greece today is a country moving towards the ancient Esperanto. Look at the hands of those women struggling to eat pasta, maybe I pasta Karpathos. He wears a watch on his wrist, and today, there is also a Combination skinIn the past, the times of prayer were crystallized in cotton bracelets, almost Orthodox rosaries. They were glances, gestures, expectations, requests, invitations, shadows. They were moments: “Learn to recognize the good moments, the right moments,” Pitak writes. KairosThis moment, the private time of each person, is the energy that flows through us. It is full of quotes: “Life is short, Art is long” (Hippocrates), “Do not keep immortal hatreds, you are mortal” (Menander), “Not only power reveals man, but man also reveals power” (Plutarch), “The greatness of a people is not measured in hectares, but in the blood and the fire that burns in their hearts” (Costis Palamas), “Official or forbidden love does not exist. There is only love, without adjectives” (Andreas Embiricus)
The value of Greek
The black and white image leaves room for silence, for the wind that ruffles the hair, for the spring scent of oregano, for the song of some Sunday morning worship, all gathered in the dazzling blue cover: always, in Greece, everything, every inspiration begins and ends with the sea. Even for our Europe, it is necessary to continue speaking Greek, thinking in Greek, in order to survive: as long as there is language, there is no need for violence. All that is needed is a thousand-year-old language, the intimate conscience of each person, to go back to the origins, understand the journey and draw new horizons: “Man is created with the sour fist of yeast, he is born like an angel, he dies like a barbarian. All that remains of his life is a language and a homeland, which are his first comfort and last hope” (Nikos Garsos).
Nikos Aliagas, Greek spirit. My basic mottoLes Belles Lettres, pag 238, 17 euros
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