Menelaus Loundemis

Menelaos Loundemis ( Greek Μενέλαος Λουντέμης , transkr too. Loudemis and Ludemis, actually Dimitrios (Takis) Valasiadis Δημήτριος (Τάκης) Βαλασιάδης, maiden name Balasoglou; * 1912 in Agia Kyriaki ( Turkish Kemerbend today Taşpınar ), Vilayet Bursa ; † 22. January 1977 in Athens ) was a Greek writer and translator . He chose his pseudonym after the Loudias River , on whose upper reaches ( Moglenitsas ) he spent his childhood after the family was driven out of Asia Minor . As a communist and representative of socialist realism , he was persecuted for a long time in post-war Greece and spent several years in exile in Romania . Nonetheless, he was an important figure in the intellectual life of  Greece in the 1970s and one of the most widely read authors in the country during this period.

life and work

Dimitrios Balasoglou came from a wealthy family on the east coast of the Marmara Sea ; his parents were Grigoris Balasoglou (who after fleeing to Greece Valasiadis called) and Domna Tsouflidi; he had four sisters. The originally wealthy family lost all of their assets when they were forced to move to Greece as a result of the Lausanne Convention in 1923. The family first moved from Yalova to Aegina , then via Edessa to the small town of Exaplatanos , where they still settled in 1923. Because of the poverty of his family, the pupil was dependent on earning his own money, so he worked as a kitchen boy, shoe cleaner, church singer and teacher in the villages of Almopias , and finally as a supervisor for work on the Gallikos River .

The first publications appeared under his real name, in 1927 and 1928 poems in the journal Agrotiki Idea in Edessa  and poems and short stories around 1930 in the journal Nea Estia . He first used his pseudonym in 1934 for the short story Mia nychta me polla fota kato apo mia poli me polla asteria ('A night with many lights under a city with many stars').

In the fourth grade of the then six-year middle school (gymnasio) , Loundemis was "taken from school" for political reasons and excluded from all Greek gymnasia . This was followed by an odyssey that took the poet through Edessa , a boarding school in Kozani and - following a traveling theater troupe - to Volos and finally to Athens, where he became close friends with Kostas Varnalis , Angelos Sikelianos and Miltiadis Malakassis .

His short story collection Ta plia den araxan ('The ships don't anchor') was awarded a Grand State Prize for Prose in 1938. Malakassis got him a position as librarian of the Athinaiki leschi (an Athens club based on the British model) that year, which gave him a financial basis. At the same time, his friendship with the Byzantinist Nikos A. Bees enabled him to attend courses at the university's philosophical faculty as a guest student. His first literary successes followed, and he became a member of the Greek Writers' Union, then chaired by Nikos Kazantzakis .

During the German occupation of Greece in World War II , Loundemis played an active role in the national resistance movement : for the National Liberation Front ( EAM, Greek Ethniko Apeleftherotiko Metopo Εθνικό Απελευθερωτικό Μέτωπο) he worked as secretary of the organization of intellectuals. During the Greek Civil War (1946-49) he was arrested for his leftist ideology and sentenced to death for high treason , but the sentence was not carried out. Instead he was interned first on the prison island of Makronisos , then in the camp on Agios Efstratios , where Mikis Theodorakis  and Giannis Ritsos were among his fellow prisoners. His book Vourkomenes meres (Βουρκωμένες μέρες, about 'Tearful Days'), published in 1958, was banned by the courts . Under the Greek military dictatorship (1967-74) of Georgios Papadopoulos , Loundemis emigrated to Bucharest and was stripped of his Greek citizenship. He continued his work in Romania , some years after the change of government in 1974. During this time he made several extensive trips, including to China and Vietnam . He processed the trip to Vietnam in his book Bat-Tai (gr. Μπατ-Τάι, 1966). It was not until 1976 that he regained his Greek citizenship and returned to Athens. There he died of a heart attack the following year , and his body was laid out in public.

Loundemis left around 45 books of novels, short stories and poetry. He has also translated numerous Romanian authors into Greek.

reception

Memorial stone for Loundemis in Exaplatanos

Loundemis' books have been translated into several languages, mainly those of the Eastern Bloc countries such as Polish , Romanian and Bulgarian , some also into Chinese and Vietnamese . In the rest of Europe some of his texts appeared in newspapers and magazines, and his novel Ena pedi metrai t 'astra also appeared in German translation. Some of his poems were also set to music, such as Erotiko kalesma (Ερωτικό κάλεσμα, for example 'invitation to love') by the brothers Charis and Panos Katsimichas with the singer Giorgos Dalaras . The composer Spyros Samoilis released a record in 1976 with some songs on Loundemis' lyrics. For this record, Loundemis recorded an excerpt from the poem Ime kala (Είμαι καλά, 'I'm fine').

The Greek film director Tonia Marketaki made her debut in 1967 with the short film o giannis ki 'o dromos (ο γιάννης και ο δρόμος,' giannis und die straße ') . In 2004 David Nachmias shot a documentary about Loundemis for the Greek television ERT , which uses extensive image and film material from Loundemis' lifetime.

Loundemis received the Laurier d'Or Paneurope in Paris in 1951 . A public building in Bucharest was named after him in his honor . The National Greek Writers ' Union awards him the Menelaos Loundemis Prize (gr. Vravio Menelaou Loundemi Βραβείο Μενέλαου Λουντέμη) in his honor.

literature

Works in German translation

in: Melpo Axioti and Dimitris Hadzis (eds.): Antigone lives. Modern Greek stories, Berlin (East) (People and World) 1960.

Secondary literature

• Loundemis, Menelaos, in: Alexandros Ziras: Pangosmio Viografiko Lexiko, Vol. 5, Athens 1986
• Menelaos Loundemis, Vangelos Chatzivasiliou: I mesopolemiki pezografia - Apo ton proto os ton deftero pangosmio polemo (1914-1939), Athens (Sokolis) 1992, 5th part, pp 232-252
• O dikos mas Menelaos Loundemis (conversations and interviews with journalists), Athens (2005).

Web links

• The short film O Giannis ki 'o dromos (1967) on vimeo.com
• Portrait on booksinfo.gr (Greek)
• Four Loundemis' poems online
• David Nachmias: Menelaos Loundemis, television documentary (2004) on Youtube

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Portrait on a page about the city of Exaplatanos ( Memento of the original from December 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ Recording of the song on Youtube
3. ↑ Details on the new edition of the record as CD at musical.gr
4. ↑ Spyros Samoilis: I kerasies th 'anthisoune ke fetos on Youtube
5. ↑ The film at IMDB

Remarks

1. ↑ according to information from the former community of Exaplatanos 1911; according to other sources also in 1906 or 1907
2. ↑ According to another source , this happened as early as 1962