Aris Alexandrou

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Aris Alexandrou ( Greek Άρης Αλεξάνδρου ; * November 24, 1922 in Petrograd ; † July 2, 1978 in Paris ), real name Aristotle Vassiliadis , is one of the most important writers of modern Greek literature despite the small volume of his work .

Life

Aristotelis Vassiliadis, who later named himself Aris Alexandrou, was born to a Greek father and a Russian mother. In 1928 the family moved to Thessaloniki and then to Athens . In 1942 he gave up university to work as a translator. At the same time he joined a resistance group of the left-wing ELAS , which he soon left in protest against the stubborn party discipline prevailing there. Nevertheless, he was interned in 1944 on intervention by the British (until April 1945). He spent the years 1947–51 in exile because he refused to make a declaration of loyalty to the right-wing government. In 1952 he was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for fraud, the sentence was later reduced and in 1957 he was released. Shortly after the coup d'état of the junta under Georgios Papadopoulos on April 21, 1967, he went into exile in Paris and stayed there after the overthrow of the military regime (1974). He died on July 2, 1978 in Paris.

The box

Alexandrou's most famous work is his novel Die Kiste (Το Κιβώτιο). It tells the story of the only survivor of a suicide squad who is now imprisoned without knowing the reason. Day after day he writes on numbered sheets of paper for the comrade's investigating judge, without knowing whether he is reading the text at all. The story is about a special unit that had to transport a locked box from N. to K. during the Greek Civil War in 1949. This order was crucial to the war, it was said. Anyone who was sick or injured on the way had to take potassium cyanide in order not to stop the transport. The position had to be reported to headquarters by radio every day, which gave instructions for the following day. There was no doubt to the narrator that the assignment was to be completed, although the group eventually realized that headquarters were literally sending them around in circles. After all comrades were dead, the narrator sent a last position report by carrier pigeon and decided without authorization to bring the box to K. When you opened it you saw that it was empty.

In the reports to the examining magistrate, the narrator repeatedly goes back to earlier events in his life as a partisan. Much is told several times, in new variants or interpretations. After the last report, a brilliant text of 30 pages without a paragraph, the reader has the impression that ultimately nobody knows “how it actually was”. Only one thing is certain: you have to obey the party. However, this dogma is increasingly being called into question by events.

The text is a parabola with no resolution. This takes place in nowhere, in an absurd world. The narrator tries to assert himself in her without being particularly brave or cowardly. All attempts to see meaning in this world must fail.

Other works

Alexandrou also wrote poems and translated works by Dostoyevsky , Gorky , Ehrenburg and Anna Andreevna Akhmatova .

Publications

Poems:

  • Ακόμη τούτη η άνοιξη, 1946.
  • Άγονος γραμμή, 1952.
  • Ευθύτης οδών, 1958.
  • Ποιήματα (1941–1971), 1971,
  • Ποιήματα (1941–1974), Ypsilon Verlag, Athens 1978.

Prose:

  • Η Αντιγόνη (Διαλογικό), 1960.
  • Το Κιβώτιο (μυθιστόρημα), Verlag Kedros, Athens 1975 (La Caisse, Traduit du grec par Colette Lust, Verlag Passeur, Paris 1975; Die Kiste. From the Greek with an afterword by Gerhard Blümlein. Verlag Antje Kunstmann, Munich 2001)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Alexandrou, Aris
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Basiliades, Aristotle (real name); Αλεξάνδρου, Άρης (Greek)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Petrograd
DATE OF DEATH 2nd July 1978
Place of death Paris , France