Nikos Engonopoulos always kept his distance from the glaring lights of publicity. “The artist has to be honoured, but the man has to remain in the shadows”, he used to say. Most of the interviews included in the book were given at the few presentations of his work to the wider public. And here we must note that Engonopoulos avoided exhibiting or selling his works, with very few exceptions. He sought in art a truer, more profound communication with his fellows, and he most certainly did not seek to make a noise nor did he seek fame. “We create for men... To give him or her an outlet to his solitude. The strength to do away with his insulation. Communication. That's all that art can give...”

Reading Engonopoulos' interviews, I think they offer valuable materials for the making of a collection of contemplations that ought to lie by the bedside of every Greek, and I do mean by the bedside of every human being who cares about cultural life, not just about art, or about the visage of both the modern world at large and the Greek one. Engonopoulos saw the continuum running throughout the Greek world, but never with a sense of sterile localism.

Engonopoulos loved the Greek light, this “extravaganza of nature and the sun” as he loved “the humanity that is in the Greek, from the Ancients to 1821”. And yet, he also felt deeply the universality of humanity: “The years, I do declare, have tought us that the more personal an art is, the more it pertains to all humanity”.

It is precisely this universality that Engonopoulos sought, with a fond, enchanted gaze, a gaze of desire for the world, and I do believe that it is precisely this gaze that he wanted to transfer to his work in order to help him heal himself from his malady of “unbearable loneliness”. And thus, he painted and wrote his “songs”, as he used to call his poetry, seeing in art a fairy tale binding people together. And so, he attempted to become the teacher of a new humanism, creator and interpreter of the most profound human truth, that of the world of the subconscious, while he himself was exposed to what it had to reveal, teaching us to think and above all to live our fantasies in a different way, and to doubt our “cold logical sense”.

Engonopoulos was a a great teacher of otherness, that awful cohabitaton of Self and Other; on this very complicated topic he was refreshingly plain: “Muslims say abdullah about madmen, meaning God has taken hold of them, and that is why I personally am all in favour of madness”. This divine madness, and the existence of unknown forces within man too, he saw as the starting point, the foundation for every kind of art, art always being great, according to Engonopoulos, when it was close to man: “Man is the measure for everything: he is the measure of all money...”

“Man”. That is what Engonopoulos talks about in his interviews. “In my work man has much the greater role. I paint for man. Man is my topic. (...) But here we have to explain what art is. Many have been fooled and have accorded divergent duties to art; some have wanted art to obey to particular sets of laws, while others have demanded all sorts of virtues from art.  And what is right? The right thing is for a work of art to contain the human presence in it. Raphael, Panselinos, Solomos, Delacroix, Lautréamont and the others are great because their works focus on man, regardless of what school or genre they belong to”.

According to Engonopoulos, “man is the proper subject matter of Hellenism”. He considered both Ancient Greek and Byzantine art to be fundamentally about man: “Greek physiognomy refines man -who does not cease to be harsh and harmful for a moment- rendering him more humane and purified... Greek and Byzantine painting breathes a free air, with no string attached, and exudes a devil may care spirit mixed with bravery... It is like the Greek Orthodox Church, which participates in Plato”.

For which man did Engonopoulos paint, and what kind of man does he dream of in his work, both poetry and painting? Such a train of thought and such a quest could help us attain the heart of ideas. In his own words: “There are but two aims: love and freedom”. It is these two ideals, both of them, not singly, that justify man's place in the world. The man of Engonopoulos is Romantic and Rousseauian, the man of everyday virtue, while also being zany and soulful; above all else, he enters into dialogue with the Other.

This is the man that, in a spirit of prophecy, Engonopoulos contrasts to great political systems and programmes and any sort of 'braininess': “A shame on all sermons promising happiness!... When you can see how suspenseful life is, then you can't ask for anything”.

And yet, Engonopoulos did ask for something. He asked it through unusual, heretical paths, certainly not from the paths of 'cold logic'. He sought his teachers and he found them in Solomos, Baudelaire, Hölderlin, but not just in these. He adds Hadji Sehret, the author of the Alipashiad to them, because “he does away with cold logic, he bases himself on the absence of logic and only invokes sex and fantasy. What is logic? Today we are, tomorrow we are not. The only logic is that tomorrow we are not.”

And Engonopoulos goes on: “All else is absurdity. They accuse Surrealism of having nothing to do with life, that it is incoherent. And I ask you, is life coherent? Isn't just as incoherent as everything else?”

But what did Surrealism mean to Engonopoulos? This matter resurfaces in his interviews, and those who would like to form their own ideas will find rich material here. Throughout the book the spirit of surrealist subversion, parody and black humour runs riot. The phrase that I would like to bear in mind is: “I am fond of saying that surrealist poets are the best, but Homer, Pindar and Solomos are surrealists too. These I consider to be surrealists, because although there might be many schools of poetry, poetry itself, as I never tire of saying, is one”. Here's another one: “Personally, I do not believe in Surrealism as a school. And yet it fits me. What I ventured to do is to renew it with Greek elements, to add some Greek metaphysics to the mixture, take Surrealism further than where the Franks had left off. I think that surrealism today means whatever one contemplates with passion”.

'Greek metaphysics' brings us back to the matter of hellenism and Greek identity: “I am a Greek, but I am no Greek! And that is why I never lose faith in the magnificent virtues of our race... It's a matter of what kind of Greek you are; and if you're a good one, how much stamina you have, so the bad 'uns don't wipe you out...”

Just who are the bad ones for Engonopoulos? “The boors, the worshippers of money, the ignorant ones”. We could also add, paraphrasing his words, those with no passion. It is these people with whom he had to consort, collaborate and live together, throughout his multifaceted and tireless friction with modern Greek reality; during his time as a junior clerk in his harsh youth, during the painful adventures of the war, udring his time as a university teacher, during his incessant peregrinations throughout Greek space as a surveyor of traditional architecture, or as a stage designer for productions of Ancient Drama.

On the other side, that of the good ones, one will find “the long-suffering ones”, the men of “hypersensitivity” and those who server their art “with the blood of their hearts”, as he used to say. And there are his own teachers, with whom he served his apprenticeship, such as Constantine Parthenis, Fotis Kontoglou, or his friend, Andreas Embeirikos. And here we must point out that Engonopoulos knew well something that most modern day people tend to ignore, namely how important the notion of apprenticeship is both for art and for life in general. And that is why he never ceases to express, in humble manner, his gratitude to his teachers, thereby giving us a lesson in principles. This is probably the greatest lesson this book has to teach us; “love synthesizes, it does not dissolve”.