The present booklet, which Sotiriu says she pulled out of a drawer – ‘a bit shabby and unedited, just like a little refugee, hiding in places where many of my papers had remained buried during the seven years of tyranny’ – is a collection of journalistic notes on the delicate historical-political-military issues that animated the tragic events of the unhappy Greek campaign in Asia Minor after the First World War.
Somewhere in the text is the idea behind the responsibility for that misfortune: imperialism with its political-economic and capitalist designs and implications. Let us say at once that among the various theories of imperialism, Sotiriu seems to adopt the Leninist one whereby the phenomenon is considered the product of the modern nation-state, the result of a potentially aggressive nationalism, when the nationalist drive, which originally almost always takes on a liberal and anti-imperialist character, exhausts its action and realizes that the benefits it achieves are meagre, it changes direction and becomes imperialism, developing aggressive expansionist ambitions and capital investment towards underdeveloped economies.
Sotiriu, in no uncertain terms, stigmatizes the pro-American policy, disguised behind institutions of safeguarding international democratic balances (note the reference to former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger [1923-2023]and Hubert Luns [1911-2002], NATO Secretary General from 1971 to 1984, committed to disarmament policies) with regard to Cyprus, reduced – so to speak – to no more than an ‘Indian reservation’!
A selection of 95 translated poems of Andonis Fostieris. The underlying ontological questions, the original root of existence, the spectral presence of death, the struggle and mutual interpenetration of opposites, memory and oblivion, darkness, but also love, passion, language and poetry itself, play a central role in the thematic framework of Andonis Fostieris (1953). In his work, the inscrutable depth of things and concepts is challenged by a continuous questioning, as nagging as that of an adolescent. Precisely because of this adolescent nature of the inquisitive tone, Fostieris expresses himself at his best in love and poetry. Despite the existential trepidation that lingers in the background, his writing remains graceful, yet at the same time neurotic, creative, often sarcastic (and self-mocking). Fostieris’ poetry is unpredictable, because through the formula of the unexpected he manages to shatter the crystal of human hopes and illusions of happiness. Those who are surprised by his blunt sincerity, in time get used to the darkness of existence. In the end, Fostieris’s poetic universe is a joyful mourning, because his word is joyful nonetheless, like any word freed from sacred constraints and prohibitions. Imbued with Greek and foreign poetry in his timelessness, he sporadically introduces structural elements of tradition into his dictation in a modern way, giving them a new dynamic dimension that opens a path to the postmodern poetics of contemporary Greece. Likewise, his images, despite the philosophical and contemplative undertones they are structured with, appear with all the perspicuity and clarity of visual composition, while the verses never forget their musicality.
See: https://www.etpbooks.com/it/home/225-poesia-e-poetica-di-andonis-fostieris.html
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