The road to Alvaniada: Asma heroiko kai penthimo as a performance piece

In 1938, two years before the publication of his debut collection Orientations (1940), Elytis put himself in the spotlight when he argued that some contemporary prose writers (whom he left unnamed) ‘abandon their standards, make continuous cutbacks, flatter the audience, an audience which – why hide it – is still barbarous and unguided’.Footnote ¹² In 1940, Elytis revised his views following the unexpectedly warm reception of Orientations: ‘It is now certain that the mentality of the large, so to speak, audience […] has undergone a remarkable shift in recent years, categorically refuting my earlier pessimistic predictions.’ He then admitted that his latest poem had fallen into the sphere of the ephemeral. When asked about the influence of the Second World War on his own work, Elytis replied: ‘I could not but write an occasional poem (poème de circonstance) entitled “Barbaria” which I still don't know whether I shall publish.’Footnote ¹³

When Greece entered the war eight months later, Elytis served as a second lieutenant on the Albanian front until February 1941. The first draft of the Alvaniada dates, as Mario Vitti argues, to 1944, the final year of the Axis Occupation.Footnote ¹⁴ An implicit reference to the poem, however, exists in a 1942 letter sent to Elytis by K. S. Konstas (1911-1987), a scholar from Missolonghi who had also fought in the war, losing both feet.Footnote ¹⁵ Though Konstas had never met Elytis, he contacted the poet to congratulate him on his new poems (Sun the First) first published in Nea Estia in 1942: ‘Like the tragic Oswald’, Konstas wrote, ‘who sought for the sun, the sun and nothing but the sun, so am I, in my charmless youth, searching for an “alibi”, an escape from my harsh reality in reading and in books.’ Konstas then expressed a desire to read war poems, and recalled the ‘poème de circonstance’ to which Elytis had referred back in 1940.Footnote ¹⁶ From Konstas’ second letter we learn that Elytis had shared with him information about his latest projects: ‘You inform me that, beside your hitherto unknown poem “Barbaria”, two other poems of the same category exist, written after your return from the front’.Footnote ¹⁷ If we assume that the Alvaniada is one of the two poems, the other must be the Asma, which was to be published in the magazine Tetradio in September 1945.

In the early post-Liberation period, Elytis became more and more involved in national cultural politics: he joined the newly-formed EIR and was appointed Programme Director (April 1946 - January 1947); he was a regular columnist for the daily Eleftheria and a contributor to the newly-established journal Anglo-Greek Review; finally, he supported the endeavours of George Theotokas to reconstruct the postwar National Theatre.Footnote ¹⁸ As Elytis explains: ‘In the aftermath of the war, the times called for it and we felt it our duty as writers to reach a broad audience, to enlighten it, to talk about the burning issues that preoccupied it.’Footnote ¹⁹ Elytis’ poetry, however, was still left out of literary radio programmes, owing to EIR's conservative classics-only policy, which excluded modernist writers from the Greek airwaves until as late as the mid-1950s.Footnote ²⁰ Among the popularizing initiatives of this period was the establishment of the Athinaion Educational Association (1946-67), the first institution to host a public performance of Elytis’ Asma (see Table 1).Footnote ²¹

Table 1.

The multimedia appearances of Elytis’ Asma heroiko kai penthimo between 1945 and 1962.

To celebrate the 28th of October 1947, the Athinaion held a public reading of the Asma: the poem was performed by the theatre director Sokratis Karandinos, with an introduction by the eminent literary scholar Linos Politis, who was to be appointed as Professor of Modern Greek Literature at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1948.Footnote ²² In his introduction, Politis noted that ‘the audience of the Athinaion is well informed and does not need any (preliminary) explanations in order to hear a work of modernist poetry.’ He then argued that Elytis’ war poem is ‘perhaps the first text in which modernist poetry, while staying faithful to its familiar sounds, stretches its wings, soaring towards broader horizons.’Footnote ²³ In the following year, Karandinos gave three performances in the well-known theatrical venue Theatro Alikis. Under the title ‘New Greek poetry’, Karandinos’ venture aimed to popularize modernist poetry beyond ‘informed’ audiences. The first performance was devoted to Seferis (1.12.1948), the second to Elytis (17.1.1949); the third (25.2.1949) presented poems by eleven poets.Footnote ²⁴ The evening on Elytis closed with a performance of the Asma, which Karandinos had previously read at the Athinaion. Elytis, who had already embarked on his sojourn in Europe (1948-52), wrote a warm letter to Karandinos expressing his gratitude: ‘certain attempts like yours […] hearten us and make us believe that, in the end, what we do is not completely in vain.’Footnote ²⁵

While Karandinos recited an unabridged version of the Asma (which would have lasted around twenty minutes), the first adaptation of the poem took place in 1950 as part of the performance ‘Proscenium’, directed by Alexis Solomos and staged (again) at the Theatro Alikis. At first, Elytis was reluctant to permit the on-stage adaptation of his work: ‘With things of this sort you run the risk of instantly falling into the realm of the ridiculous’, he wrote to Nikos Gatsos, asking him to act as his proxy.Footnote ²⁶ ‘Proscenium’ combined various Greek works (Andreas Kalvos, Makriyannis, Elytis) with writings by Strindberg, Cocteau and Anatole France. Tο introduce a dramatic element into a ‘monophonic’ poem, the Asma was staged as a lament for three voices (two female, one male), with some choral parts. The performance was accompanied by flute music composed by Giorgos Kazasoglou.Footnote ²⁷ This multivocal approach also marked the radio adaptations of the Asma: in 1952, the poem was aired on the BBC Greek Section broadcast from London and, as a surviving typescript reveals, performed by two members of that Section.Footnote ²⁸

We should recall here that the reworking of the Alvaniada in the early 1950sFootnote ²⁹ coincided with the successful multimedia performances of the Asma. After his return to Greece, Elytis was appointed EIR's Programme Director from April 1953 to May 1954. Shortly after his resignation, the Asma was transmitted on EIR's Second Programme, now adapted by Gatsos, who also divided the poem into three voices (two men, one woman), and accompanied by Manos Hadjidakis’ original music score.Footnote ³⁰ The success of this programme is indicated by its broadcast the following year (28.10.1955) and its upgrade to the more powerful transmitter of EIR's National Programme. ‘This elegy [i.e., the Asma] established Elytis to a wider public’, noted the literary critic and radio producer Andreas Karandonis, arguing that, because of the Asma, ‘it has now been proved that this poetry [i.e., ‘modern poetry’] can be both patriotic and national.’Footnote ³¹ In my view, the successful broadcasts of the Asma in 1954 and 1955 explain Elytis’ decision to present the Alvaniada on the state radio as his new war poem.

‘The poet of the Albanian epic’: broadcasting the Alvaniada

‘On the evening of 28 October, at 8.45 sharp, the Second Programme of the Athens Radio Station will transmit, for the first time, Odysseus Elytis’ epic poem the Alvaniada’, wrote the daily Ta Nea a few days before the broadcast.Footnote ³² The poem's title, Alvaniada, obviously invited the association with epic, and the image of the epic bard was evoked in the on-air introduction to the poem:

Τhe ‘grand epic’, the experience of the Greek army in Albania, called for a poem of epic proportions, and Elytis initially intended for the Alvaniada to unfold in three parts, of which the first comprised two hundred lines. (This was the only part that that was eventually completed.) As to its technique, Elytis resorted, for the first time, to the dialogue form or, more accurately, to the ‘parallel monologue’ technique, since the two speaking voices do not directly address one another. Elytis further cultivated this technique in his late poem Maria Nephele (1978) which bore the subtitle ‘poem for the stage’ and was structured as an interplay between two voices. But whereas in Maria Nephele each voice utters lengthy, often page-long speeches, in Alvaniada the exchange of voices is swift, each utterance ranging from one to five lines. In 1981, Elytis was to acknowledge that ‘many works that I had finished (like The Axion Esti, The Monogram, Maria Nephele) contained elements appropriate for their stage or musical exploitation.’ What may have triggered this intermedial tendency, he argued, was the influence of new media: ‘it is not unlikely that I was subconsciously motivated by the growing, in our times, power of these media, which create a language of international communication.’Footnote ³⁴ Although the Alvaniada is not included in the above list, it is nevertheless the poem which signalled this intermedial turn in Elytis’ mature poetics.

By contrast with the Asma, therefore, which had to be adapted in order to be staged/ broadcast, the Alvaniada needed no external intervention, for it was inherently radiogenic. A juxtaposition between the 1956 radio programme and the 1962 Panspoudastiki version, reveals minor discrepancies, suggesting that Nikos Gatsos (director of the radio programme) remained faithful to the written text.Footnote ³⁵ The element that ultimately distinguishes the radio/ audio from the printed version is Hadjidakis’ original musical score. With the aid of Hadjidakis’ musical interludes, we can divide the poem into six parts, which are not identifiable on the printed page. The opening part (l. 1-19) introduces the essential qualities of the two speaking subjects: Voice A represents, according to the opening announcement, ‘the classic Greek world, historically reaching up to modern popular [laikē] Greece’; Voice B stands for ‘the Roman [world], up until its totalitarian fascist state’:

The second part of the poem (l. 20-56) situates us more precisely in time and place. ‘Scorpio has just touched the circle of Libra’ (l. 28): we are in late October, while, down on earth, ‘a black shirt’ (l. 33) – evoking the fascist army, the Camicie Nere (Blackshirts)Footnote ³⁶ – casts its shadow over the Tyrrhenian Sea.Footnote ³⁷ ‘Footsteps and voices under the Colosseum’ (l. 43) denote a state of unrest as fascist Italy states its claims: ‘“The Mediterranean Sea”, they say, “our sea”’ (l. 51). The third part (l. 57-109) thematizes the early hours of the invasion: from the silence of the night, when the invasion started (‘the chain wheels, not a cry was heard’, l. 64) to the thunderous sound of the city's sirens signalling the outbreak of war. Throughout this part, Voice B announces the procession of Italian military divisions, while Voice A captures the first reactions of the Greek world:

The invaders – ‘those who committed the evil’, as stated in the Asma – here appear with their actual (historically accurate) names. Although sixteen years had passed from the day of the invasion, it is not unlikely that these names were familiar to EIR's listenership, not only because some of the listeners, like Elytis, had fought in Albania, but also thanks to the repeated radio news bulletins transmitted throughout the war. The Second World War was, after all, the first ‘radio war’, because, as Ian Whittington notes, ‘for the first time, belligerent nations mobilised wireless broadcasting on a global scale for both domestic and international persuasion and information.’Footnote ³⁹

Radio bulletins, for instance, occupied a central role in MacNeice's 1941 radio play The Glory that is Greece, mentioned at the start of this article. There, two young Italians, Giuseppe and Andrea, listen to Mussolini's radio speeches, and get the latest information regarding developments on the Albanian front (‘The whole of Albania was bristling with our bayonets’), as well as the names, magnitude and itineraries of the invading forces:

In addition to reenacting wartime radio listening, the detailed description of the invading forces serves, in both Elytis and MacNeice, to highlight the material superiority of fascist Italy over Greece. In MacNeice's play, this encourages an extended analogy between the Greco-Italian war of 1940-1 and the Persian Wars. In this context, the line from Aeschylus’ Persians (405) ‘νῦν ὑπὲρ πάντων ἀγών’ becomes a key theme in MacNeice's play, first heard through Ioannis Metaxas’ radio address on 28 October 1940: ‘[…] The whole nation will rise as one man. Nun huper panton agon.’Footnote ⁴¹

The same line from Aeschylus emerges as the final line οf the Alvaniada. After portraying the assembly of the combatants and the first battle scenes (l. 110-149 and l. 150-186), the sixth and final part of the poem introduces more a contemplative tone (l. 187-200): ‘No one, no one but God / is there to comprehend / the path of blood’ (l. 187-9) read the opening lines of this part, which closes with an homage to the lost soldiers, the ‘lads’, on both sides:

The line from ‘Giovinezza’, the official hymn of the Italian National Fascist Party, and the battle-cry from the Persians, which circulated widely in the early years of the war,Footnote ⁴² tie Alvaniada firmly to the historical context it represents, suggesting that – far more than the Asma – Alvaniada falls into the category of poème de circonstance. Some direct allusions to historical facts, like the line from ‘Giovinezza’, were altered in the Panspoudastiki version,Footnote ⁴³ possibly because Elytis feared that students in the early 1960s would not grasp such allusions. Was the poem's overt occasional nature responsible for its lukewarm reception?Footnote ⁴⁴ According to Elytis, the Alvaniada did not achieve ‘any popularity, despite the fact that its radio presentation helped to bring out its idiosyncratic technique’. This discouraged the poet from continuing with his ambitious project; for, as he admitted, ‘I am not one of those poets who can write regardless of the audience. I need [my work to have] an “impact”.’Footnote ⁴⁵

It was thus only to be expected that Elytis would leave the Alvaniada out of the first edition of his Selected Poems (Εκλογή 1935-1977), published in 1977. What was unexpected was that, in that same year, he would give permission for the poem to be staged by the National Theatre of Greece as part of the anniversary performance ‘The Great Hour (28 October 1940)’, directed by Giorgos Messalas (Fig. 1). Although that performance brought together poems from various collections of Elytis’ poetry (from the Orientations to The Light Tree and the Fourteenth Beauty), it was announced as a staging of Alvaniada.Footnote ⁴⁶ Moreover, Elytis himself was referred to in the press as ‘the poet of the Albanian epic’.Footnote ⁴⁷ The on-stage adaptation of Alvaniada fared better than its radio debut and was restaged twice, on 28 October in 1978 and 1980.Footnote ⁴⁸

Fig. 1.

Kostas Kastanas and Fanis Hinas in the performance ‘The Great Hour (28 October 1940)’, presenting selections from Elytis’ poetry, 1978. @ National Theatre of Greece.

Neglected by literary scholars, almost disowned by its creator, and inaccessible to a contemporary readership, the Alvaniada nonetheless served an important twofold purpose. It established Elytis’ reputation as the ‘poet of the Albanian epic’, ensuring the dissemination of his work via national cultural institutions such as the state radio and theatre. And it paved the way for the development of his mature poetics of intermediality and his later interest in having his poetry adapted to non-print media. This aspect should become evident, I believe, when Elytis’ notes, drafts, and guidelines for multimedia adaptations of his work, now stored in his personal papers, are carefully studied. Finally, beyond its importance for Elytis’ own poetics, the study of Alvaniada as a radio poem highlights the role of mid-century radio broadcasting in shaping the national literary canon.