Maria Zarimis

Darwinism in modern Greek literature and a re-reading of Grigorios Xenopoulos’ Πλούσιοικαιφτωχοί[1]

ABSTRACT: This paper presents a portion of my doctoral thesis which is near completion.  Charles Darwin’s The origin of species (1859), The descent of man (1871) and The expressions of the emotions in man and animals (1872) provoked an enormous response in literature.  Literary scholarship has shown this to be the case for a number of western literatures, such as British, American and French.  However, in the modern Greek literary sphere scholarship has been scant.  How was Darwinism received by Greece’s literary world?  In this paper I explore the possible reasons for the lack in literary scholarship in Greece.

Nineteenth and early twentieth-century periodical literature played a major role in the dissemination of Darwinism in the scientific and literary spheres.  As an example of this, I examine an early Greek poem on Darwin published in the journal Μη Χάνεσαι.
I also introduce a Darwinian analysis of Grigorios Xenopoulos’ novel Πλούσιοι και φτωχοί (1919), which was perceived as one of the first novels on socialism in Greece.

Furthermore, this paper suggests that it would be worth systematically examining the works of other modern Greek writers, such as Kostis Palamas, Emmanouil Roidis and Alexandros Papadiamantis for Darwinian themes, issues and motifs.

 

No other evolutionary theories have been absorbed so readily and so pervasively as the theories of British naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882).  I will be referring to the following key books by Darwin: The origin of species (1859), The descent of man (1871) and The expression of the emotions in man and animals (1872).[2]  From here on these will be abbreviated as the OS, DM, and EE respectively.  Darwinism placed humanity in nature.  From the nineteenth century to the present, Darwinism has been utilised to probe ‘man’s place in nature’.[3]  The way we interpret Darwinism plays a major role in the way we decide to address nature in our culture.  The biological and medical sciences and religion were the first to feel the impact of Darwin’s theories.  Darwin’s influence then permeated into many disciplines, including the social sciences such as criminology, psychology, political science, philosophy, and into the arts such as literature.  In society and literature, Darwinism was used to interpret aspects of class, gender and race, which were major issues in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The aim of this study[4] is to attempt to understand why there was a delay in the dissemination of Darwinian ideas to the Greek literary world.  Also by introducing an early Greek poem on Darwin I hope to provide an insight to how Darwinism was perceived in the early 1880s by one particular poet.  I also explore the influence of Darwinian ideas in Grigorios Xenopoulos’ novel Πλούσιοι και φτωχοί (Rich and poor) (1919).  This study also provides a brief overview of some of the other Greek writers of the period who need to be examined further for Darwinian elements.

Lack of literary scholarship

In general, scholarship on Darwinian thought in literature is vast, and is especially so in English literature.  However, in Greece commentary as to how literary writers of the past responded to Darwinism has been scant.[5]  The following factors may have contributed to a lack of literary scholarship.

Firstly, Darwinism for Greece constituted a foreign ideological trend.[6]  It did not seem to be in the context of the local ideological debates, which arose to meet the deeper internal needs of Greece at the time.  These local issues included: the ‘continuity of the Greek nation’, the ‘Megali idea’ and the ‘language question’.[7]  The implications of this, relevant here, are that many Greek creative writers and critics tended to draw their intellectual perspective from these internal national issues.  Darwinian thought as an entity on its own or via its social implications may not have seemed relevant to a great proportion of Greek writers or literary commentators.

Secondly, the transmission of Darwin’s theories to Greece was delayed.  It was one of the last western countries to have Darwin’s OS translated into its own language; it was translated into Greek by writer Nikos Kazantzakis in 1915.[8]  This was over 50 years after its first publication in English in 1859.  Also, it was not until 1976 and 1977, over a century after the first publication of the DM in English in 1871, that two separate Greek translations of it were published by G. Vistakis and V. Vasiliou respectively.[9]  In addition, Darwin’s EE of 1872 has not as yet been translated into Greek, although its ideas were presented to the Greek public in botanist Spyros Miliarakis’ Αι Ψυχικαί ιδιότητες των ζώων (Mental traits of animals) published in 1926, and which appears to be his interpretation of Darwin’s EE.[10]

So it was those individuals in Greece who spoke French or German who were able to receive Darwin’s theories in the 1860s.  (Xenopoulos had read Darwin in French, probably in the 1880s while attending university.)  The initial response to Darwinism in Greece would have been limited to those few.

Thirdly, as further indicated by Krimbas, Darwinism was received only passively by the Greek scientific world, mimicking the western ‘prototype’ without its challenging ideas or developing them further.[11]  This lack of challenging or questioning may also have translated into the literary world.

Fourthly, Nietzscheism and Bergsonianism were the foreign ideological movements which appear to have primarily occupied the creative writers and critics of Greece more than Darwinism.  A likely reason for this is that these two philosophies had a metaphysical basis, unlike Darwinism, which is based on the natural sciences.  Greece’s general lack of interest in literary applications of Darwinian thought was perhaps associated with its comparative lack of interest in the natural or biological sciences.  Anthi Sotiriadou in her 1990 study on Darwinism in Greece observes that from the eighteenth century onwards Greeks generally have tended to show little interest in the studying or teaching of the natural sciences.[12]  Krimbas maintains a similar stance, and according to educator and academic Lucia Prinou, Darwinism has had a low priority in Greek secondary school education up to the present day.[13]

So it appears that while the impact of Darwinism was immediate in many countries, in Greece only a minority group responded initially.  Prior to the Greek translations of Darwin’s two books OS and DM, those who could not read English, French or German, were obliged to rely on biographies and essays on Darwin and on excerpts from his works, translated and published in Greek newspapers and periodicals.  Periodical literature appears to make the first contribution to publishing a Greek translation of Darwin’s work, based on a German translation and published in the journal Εστία (Estia) in 1877.  The work is Darwin’s ‘A biographical sketch of an infant’, the famous biography of one of his children.[14]

Whereas non-Greek literature, particularly English literature, reveals Darwinian elements in novels and poetry as early as the 1860s, generally speaking, with a few exceptions, Darwinism in Greek literature will surface later in a muted form in the naturalist novels, and in the twentieth century in post-Darwinian form.

The 1882 poem ‘Darvinos’

In my research I was able to find what appears to be one of the earliest pieces of Greek Darwinian poetry published.  To the best of my knowledge, no literary critic has commented on it.  It is a 13 stanza poem titled ‘Δαρβίνος’ (Darwin) which was published in May 1882 in the Greek philological journal Μη Χάνεσαι (Don’t lose yourself).[15]  Charles Darwin died on 19 April 1882, so from my reading the poem appears to be a memorial to him.

The poet wrote under the pseudonym (in Roman letters) ‘Dock’.  He wrote at a time when the contents of the poem may have been offensive to some and so he would have wanted to remain anonymous.[16]  The name Dock here probably tells us a lot (that is, that he may have had a medical background or that he may have had an English or American affiliation).  My research shows that at the time the poet and doctor Pavlos Nirvanas (1866-1937) was writing in Μη Χάνεσαι in 1884 under the pseudonym of ‘Χαχόλος’.[17]  Ηis other pseudonyms include ‘Iατρός’, ‘Herr Doctor’, ‘Δρ. Α’, ‘Δρ Απ’.[18]  It is possible that Nirvanas may have written this poem at the young age of 22, as a medical student at the University of Athens.  Dock appears to be well informed on Darwin and his theories.

Stanza1.
Θέλω το μέγα πνεύμα σου Δαρβίνε να υμνήσω
Όμως ο νους μου σταματά στο τόσο μεγαλείο:
Αντί εμπρός, η πέννα μου ζητά να στρέψη οπίσω,
Σαν άλογο που μυριστή στο δρόμο του θηρίο,
Ή νοιώση άβυσσο εκεί π’ ατάραχο βαδίζει,
Και στέκεται, και χλιμαντρά κι αδιάκοπα αφρίζει!

Stanza 7.
- Μα πώς, ρωτούν, ο τέλειος επλάσθη τελευταίος ;
Και άλλοι - πώς ; ο άνθρωπος κατάγετ’ από στρείδια ;
Και να ! θρησκευτικός αγών βγαίνει στη μέση νέος,
Και στο Δαρβίνο ρίχνονται οι ευλαβείς σαν φίδια!
Μα για σταθήτε μια στιγμή, θεοσεβείς, σταθήτε,
Αν αγαπάτε το θεό, τον Δάρβιν αν μισήτε !

Stanza 12.
Χιλιάδες έτυχε φοραίς, να ιδήτε, πιο μεγάλη
Μία σταλαγματιά νερού, τυριού κανένα θρίμμα ;
Άι δεν γνωρίσατε εκεί του βίου μας την πάλη
Στου κόσμου του αόρατου το κάθε ένα βήμα ;
Εκεί, εκεί θα νοιώσετε την αλληλοσφαγία,
Εκεί την μεταμόρφωση και τη δημιουργία...

Stanza 13.
Όλα αλλάζουν, τίποτε αιώνιο δεν μένει,
Ημέρα - νύχτα γίνεται δημιουργία νέα,
Βαδίζουν’ όλα, και κανέν το άλλο δεν προσμέναι
Κι όλα κρατούν την πρόοδο, στο χέρι τους σημαία...
Ναι, όλοι τρέχετε εμπρός, πάντοτε προχωρήτε,
Και μη σταθήτ’ αν ο θεός δεν σας ειπή - Σταθήτε !!
(Emphases are in the original)

Τhis poem has all the hallmarks associated with the initial response to Darwinism; issues which were encountered in the early Darwinian works of writers in other countries.  Here these issues include: the debate between religion and Darwinism; transformation via the struggle for survival, implying natural selection; and the emphasis on the word ‘πρόοδος’ (progress) which up to the twentieth century was seen as synonymous with evolution.

Xenopoulos’ Πλούσιοι και φτωχοί (Rich and poor)

This novel was first published in the Athens newspaper Estia in serial form in 1919 and in book form in 1926.[19]  Critical review has tended to view it as a social novel and as one of the first novels depicting socialism in Greece.  In my thesis I argue that the novel does not stand as a social novel without an evolutionary framework, in particular one that is Darwinian.

The novel, set in Zakynthos and Athens in the late nineteenth century, is about the young lower middle-class Popos Dagatoras who appears initially in his life to have it all: nurturing parents and a university education in mathematics.  In spite of this, he struggles to establish himself financially and turns to socialism.  Finally, Popos’ alleged political views see him in gaol where he dies.

During his life Popos develops a quasi ‘scientific’ theory of the eyes which he bases on physiognomical observations and on Darwin’s theory of natural selection.  He uses this theory of his to explain the inequality of the social classes, which he refers to as the ράτσα των πλουσίων (the race of the rich) and the ράτσα των φτωχών (the race of the poor).

His own poor family and relatives, he believes, have a particular eye physiognomy, characteristic of lambs’ eyes.  He describes them as:
‘[...] ήμερα […] γλυκά [και] αδύνατα μάτια [...] μάτια αρνιών. (p. 40)

They are in contrast to the eyes of the Roukalis family who have a different look altogether.  Popos describes these eyes as those of a hawk:
‘Το ίδιο άγρια, το ίδιο δυνατά, το ίδιο κοίταζαν σα να σε φάνε [...]

Το σόι λοιπόν [...] Η ράτσα [...] Μήπως, αλήθεια, το γνώρισμά της, η σφραγίδα της, ήταν τ’ αλλόκοτα αυτά μάτια; (pp. 39-40)
Popos alludes to Darwin’s theories on a number of occasions where he compares the two alleged ‘races’ with the two species of animals, the lambs and the hawks.  The narrator draws our attention to the fact that Popos had an idea of Darwin’s theory of natural selection (p. 42).  Popos’ theory becomes an obsession.  It is cumulative in the sense that Popos begins to relate everyone’s eyes to their social class.  In other words, those with the lamb eyes belong to the class of the poor and those with hawk eyes belong to the class of the rich.  His theory, though imaginative, is far-fetched and subjective.  Perhaps Xenopoulos is parodying Darwin’s own method of scientific observation in the OS.  Natural selection becomes the mechanism of Popos’ final extinction.  He perceives himself as inferior (‘unfit’ in evolutionary terms) because of the heritable trait of the alleged lamb’s eyes, and in the struggle for existence, he fails and dies.

Xenopoulos utilizes this theme of the eyes throughout the novel.  The theme is not merely an aesthetic device but central to the book’s intellectual background.  In my thesis, I also relate the theme of the eyes to theories of physiognomy which are linked to Darwin’s EE.
In addition, the title of the novel denotes the theme of poverty which was utilised extensively by writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in western countries.  The plight of the poor becomes a real issue in most countries and Greece was no different.[20]  The bipolarity of the classes creates a literary discourse which sees the poor as a separate breed or race.  The plight of the poor, a theme of class, receives a biological literary treatment.  This approach is seen in such novels as H. G. Well’s The time machine (1895) and his A modern utopia (1905), Jack London’s People of the abyss (1903), and Francis Galton’s eugenic utopia titled ‘Kantsaywhere’ (1910).[21]  As highlighted by literary commentator Angelique Richardson, the biologization of the poor would indicate that poverty was ‘immune to the environmental changes that could be brought about by social reform’.[22]  The political and social discourse becomes a debate between the hereditarians and the environmentalists.

In science in the late 1800s hard inheritance through the germ plasm, or the gene as we know it now, excluded the belief in a Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characters or other types of soft inheritance.  Natural selection becomes the only mechanism for evolution and so Darwinism becomes neo-Darwinism.  Xenopoulos approaches the story in such a way as to indicate that no matter what his protagonist does, he is doomed because his genetic constitution renders him unfit to fight his environment.

Overview of other writers

Xenopoulos was not the only writer to be interested in Darwinism and its application to literature.  For instance, I examine some of the essays of Emmanouil Roidis and analyse his undated short story ‘Ιστορία ενός πιθήκου’ (The story of an ape).  In addition, I have looked at essays and poems of Kostis Palamas which also show the influence of theories of biological evolution, neo-Darwinism and Herbert Spencer.[23]  There has also been some discussion in terms of a Darwinian influence in Alexandros Papadiamantis’ 1903 Η φόνισσα (The murderess).  In the novel, old woman Frankojannou (also known as Hadoula) goes about systematically and single-handedly killing all the new-born baby girls on the island of Skiathos because she considers them a financial burden to their families and to society.  Commentators Jina Politi[24] and Dimitri Tziovas[25] appear to agree essentially that Frankojannou acts as a force of natural selection to reduce the female population.  Politi maintains that the novel takes on a Darwinian world-view (p. 164), whereas Tziovas argues that the novel is antisocial and anti-evolutionary (p. 100).  Katerina Kitsi-Mitakou sees Frankojannou as the personification of Darwinian law and Christian law. [26]  In addition, she addresses the ‘surplus female population’ on Skiathos and claims that Papadiamantis was influenced by T. R. Malthus’ Essay on the principle of population (1797) which later contributed to Darwin’s work.[27]

In my thesis I also consider that at the time The murderess was written, eugenics was a world-issue.  Eugenics had been popularised by Francis Galton in his Inquiries into human faculty and its development (1883).[28]  Various sectors of society were preoccupied with it as a consequence of the fear of the fin-de-siècle degeneration of society.  Poverty, seen as a symptom of degeneration, was widespread in Greece and this can be reflected in the high rates of abandonment of babies at orphanages (βρεφοκομεία) in Athens, in particular of female babies; babies were given up primarily due to the inability of needy parents to keep them.[29]  Greek islands such as Skiathos would not have had the institutions to accommodate such babies.  Episodes of female child infanticide were documented at the end of the nineteenth century in Greece.[30]  In his DM Darwin discusses the issue of infanticide, in particular, female infanticide in primitive cultures; this was a form of artificial selection for economic reasons.[31]  At that time, these eugenicist ideas were seen by some as a panacea in the reduction of poverty and also in the improvement of the human race.  Eugenic feminists felt it their responsibility to educate on the reduction of the births amongst the poor, who were perceived to be overpopulating society and sending it into decline.

Some creative literature reflected society’s preoccupation with positive and negative eugenics and its application.[32]  Views adapting Galton’s eugenics, degeneration and the counter-discourse of regeneration may very well have been a major inspiration in Papadiamantis’ novel.  It is worth exploring the argument that Papadiamantis also portrays Frankojannou as a masculinised, degenerate form of the New Woman (a literary negative representation of women of the Woman’s Movement) who eugenically controls the female population via artificial selection.

Overall, my aim in this paper has been to precipitate further discourse in the area of Darwinian and other evolutionary thought in modern Greek literature.  It has attempted schematically to provide an idea of some of the issues and concepts covered in my thesis.  It also addresses some of the gaps in scholarship associated with Darwinism in modern Greek literature.

 

Selected Bibliography

Apostolidou, Venetia, Ο Κωστής Παλαμάς ιστορικός της νεοελληνικής λογοτεχνίας, Τhemelio, Athens, 1992.

Darwin, Charles, On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life, London, 1859. References here are to the edition by John Burrow, Penguin Group, Harmondsworth, 1968.
——The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex, 2 vols., J. Murray, London, 1871. Here I have used the 1981 facsimile by Princeton University Press, New Jersey. It is a photoreproduction of the 1871 edition.
——The expression of the emotions in man and animals, London, 1872. Again, this first edition is only referred to here. My study refers to the 1969 edition by the University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Delopoulos, Kyriakos, Νεοελληνικά φιλολογικά ψευδώνημα 1800 -2004, 3rd edn, rev., Kollaros, Athens, 2005.

Dock, ‘Δαρβίνος’, Μη Χάνεσαι, vol. 3., no. 289, May 1882, pp. 1-10.

Henkin, Leo J. Darwinism in the English novel 1860 -1910: the impact of evolution on Victorian fiction, Russell & Russell, New York, 1963.

Kairis, Mihalis. N, H ευγονία: διάλεξις γενόμενη εν τη αιθούση της Σιναίας Ακαδημίας τη 24η Μαρτίου 1917, Adelfi B. Frantziskakis, 1917. pp. 1-40.

Kitsi-Mitakou, Katerina, ‘Aquatic spaces and women’s places: a comparative reading of George Eliot’s The mill on the floss and Alexandros Papadiamantis’ H φόνισσα’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, vol. 29, no. 2, 2005, pp. 187–202.

Korasidou, Maria, Οι άθλιοι των Αθηνών και οι θεραπευτές τους: φτώχεια και φιλανθρωπία στην ελληνική πρωτεύουσα τον 19 o αιώνα, Ιστορικό Αρχείο Ελληνικής Νεολαίας: Γενική Γραμματεία Νέας Γενιάς, no. 29, Εθνικό Ίδρυμα Ερευνών (Κέντρο Νεοελληνικών Ερευνών), Athens, 1995.

Krimbas, Costas,‘O Δαρβινισμός στην Ελλάδα. Τα πρώτα βήματα: η αλληλογραφία Χελδράιχ-Δαρβίνου, Μηλιαράκης, Νικολαϊδης, Ζωχιός, Σουγκράς’, Θραύσματα κατόπτρου, Themelio, Athens, 1993, pp. 81-108.

Parren, Kalliroi, ‘Mητέρες παιδοκτόνοι’, Εφημερίς των Κυριών, 24 May 1887, pp. 1-8.

Politi, Jina, ‘Δαρβινικό κείμενο και Η φόνισσα του Παπαδιαμάντη’, Συνομιλώντας με τα κείμενα, Agra, Athens, 1996, pp. 155-181.

Prinou, Lucia, ‘Θεωρία της εξέλιξης: η αναγκαιότητα της διδασκαλίας της και η περιπέτειά της στο ελληνικό σχολείο’, Proceedings of the 4 th conference ‘ Science : teaching , learning and education, Athens, vol. A, 2004, pp. 260-266.

Richardson, Angelique, Love and eugenics in the late nineteenth century: rational reproduction and the New Woman, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003.

Sotiriadou, Anthi, ‘Η εμφάνιση της θεωρίας της εξέλιξης των ειδών, δεδομένα από τον ελληνικό χώρο’, unpublished thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 1990.

Tziovas, Dimitris, The other self: selfhood and society in modern Greek fiction, Lexington Books, US, 2003.

Valetas, Giorgos, Η γενιά του ’80: o νεοελληνικός νατουραλισμός και οι αρχές της ηθογραφίας: γραμματολογικό δοκίμιο, Εκδόσεις Γραμματολογικού Κέντρου, Athens, 1981.

Xenopoulos, Grigorios, ‘Πλούσιοι και φτωχοί’, Άπαντα, vol. 2, Biris, Athens, 1972, pp. 11-317.