The text that follows is part of a broader study entitled ‘Poetical Development in the work of T. Patricius’. By looking at the ways in which the work of a poet evolves, one has to also study the changes in his subject matter. It follows that in such an attempt one has to concentrate on only a part of the many themes, both complementary to and independent from each other, to be found in his works. Multiple readings enable us to adopt a complex pattern that predominates in his work. The reason why I call it ‘complex’ is because it rests on an initial contrast between day and night, light and dark, but in the process is enriched by other elements, both homogeneous and complementary. Often, the titles of the poetical collections imply or suggest the stages of this thematic evolution. The main oppositions can be represented as follows:
Day and night, light and darkness
Eyes and sight
‘Facing something’ and being ‘against it’ (Disputations, Juxtaposed Mirrors)
The mirror and the idol (Juxtaposed Mirrors)
Distortion (Distortions)
The world and looking at the world
The poet’s gaze
We should note here that the final two stages are in the nature of conclusions, and not of an epilogue. Since the poet is still active, the stages of evolution continue to accrue, his way of perceiving the world still changing.
The shortest route to approach the development of the topic is to select and examine them, by comparing them, poems from Patricius’ whole poetic oeuvre, with each one of them representing a particular stage in the development. I have opted to quote whole stanzas or even whole poems and to comment on them under the light of the experience of multiple readings of the poetical corpus. By choosing this method I have, of necessity, forgone a more detailed commentary and have also had to select the poems I study somewhat arbitrarily. Nevertheless, I believe it is more important to avoid mere quoting of lines from his work for the sake of completeness, since that would fail to convey the impression of continuity, which is the prime concern of this particular study of Patricius’ work.
Here is the third stanza of the poem Εωθινό from the Επιστροφή στην ποίηση (1948-51) Collection, from the first volume of his collected poetry (pp. 21-22):
Έρωτας παντού χυμένος
σα ρόδι που έσπασε στο πέτρινο κατώφλι
το φως σκίζει τις λέξεις
πριν ακουστούν ολόκληρες
μάτια μαχαιρωμένα απ' το φως
μαβιά πουλιά της αντηλιάς
λυτά μαλλιά λουρίδες ίσκιου
μια φούχτα ήλιος
μια βούλα καυτό μέταλλο
χρυσώνοντας την πύλη της ζωής.
Γκρεμίστηκε η φυλακή σου
τιμωρημένη σάρκα...
The poem Συνήθειες των κρατουμένων from the collection Χρόνια της πέτρας (1953-54), from the same volume (p. 179):
Κάθε πρωί ο ήλιος έβγαινε πίσω απ' τα φυλάκια
φορώντας μιαν άπλυτη πιτζάμα του νοσοκομείου
και διέσχιζε αργά το προαύλιο τ’ ουρανού.
Ύστερα από τόσα χρόνια
είχε κι εκείνος πάρει συνήθειες των κρατουμένων.
Lastly, the poem Σίφνος ή το παιχνίδι με τα ζάρια from Αντικριστοί Καθρέφτες (1980-88), (p. 84):
Τα παιδικά μου καλοκαίρια
τα 'ζησα ανάμεσα σε δύο κύβους.
Απάνω ο άσπρος κύβος του σπιτιού
κάτω απ1 τα πόδια μου η στέρνα
αθέατος κύβος με σκοτάδι".
The poems are relatively close, chronologically speaking; yet the different times of their composition are highly important in determining the poet’s outlook. What changes, radically so, is the amount of light in each. The moment of the day they take place is dawn, and is the same in each instance; the first is entitled Eothine, meaning ‘of the dawn’; in the second we read that κάθε πρωί ο ήλιος έβγαινε... yet the lines of the poem from 1948 convey the impression of a perpendicular lighting and of the sun at its apex, while in those of 1953 the lighting is oblique and weak. The expressions άπλυτη πιτζάμα του νοσοκομείου and διέσχιζε αργά το προαύλιο suggest a sick, languid sun, and set a tone very different to that implied by καυτό μέταλλο and the light that σκίζει τις λέξεις in the first poem.
Despite the different experiences and psychological situations described in the two poems, they both have a common denominator, prison. In Εωθινό, the poet is resisting and calls his fellow humans to the struggle. He composes a roll call of both dead and living. The gaol falls, light breaks free. Γκρεμίστηκε η φυλακή σου/ τιμωρημένη σάρκα... And, later ... μάτια μαχαιρωμένα απ' το φως.... The view of the poet at this moment in time is optimistic, looking forward to the future. The title of the poem is no accident, either. Eothine could be taken to mean morning, but it can also mean ‘call’, in the sense of the trumpet call in the army for the men to wake up. ... Συναγερμός, στα όπλα... we read in one of the concluding lines. Also, the Eothine Gospels are read during Sunday Matins, and refer to the Resurrection of the Lord, which took place ‘at eos’, i.e. in the dawn. And that is the reason why γκρεμίστηκε η φυλακή σου/ τιμωρημένη σάρκα... In stark contrast, the poem Συνήθειες των κρατουμένων was written during the poet’s exile and the notion of prison is present in every single word, without needing to be named as such: ‘prisoners, guard houses, filthy pyjamas, hospital, courtyard’. The sun, the symbol of hope, is transformed into a symbol of confinement. It become blurry, and can no longer serve as a way of telling night from day. Time is flattened; nature and man are both imprisoned.
The poem Σίφνος ή το παιχνίδι με τα ζάρια is of a much later date. The author is now far removed from youth and intense political events. He can afford to look at things from a distance. First hand experience does not lead to the writing of contemporaneous verse. Memory and recollection lead him to clarify symbols and to the geometry of a philosophical questioning. Things are now equipped with an outline and a shape, and are spelled through contrasts, with mathematical precision and in laconic fashion. Light is depicted indirectly. Childhood and summer function as metonyms for sun and light. The poetical subject lies between white and black, seen and unseen, familiar and unfamiliar. The house is identified with light and is where the poet lives and works, the past and the present. The cistern is identified with darkness and the unknown, with the future, but also with death. The author contemplates his life, with his viewpoint having changed under the influence of the function of memory and temporal distance. While in the first two poems the lighting is that of the morning, in the third the sun is truly at its apex; it is midday and the contrasts in light are absolute, light and dark. The poetical viewpoint functions both synthetically and in abstraction. It is determined by a sense of perspective in regard to events, a perspective that brings out clearly the outline of things.
The evolution of the topic in the final poem leads us to its second version, that of eyes and sight. Here one must quote the final four-line stanza of the fourth section of Μεγάλο Γράμμα (1952), in the volume Ποιήματα Ι (p. 61)
Ένας ορίζοντας τα μάτια μου σε τυλίγουν. Όπου κι αν κοιτάξεις θα δεχτείς το βλέμμα μου. Κι εσύ κοιτούσες παντού.
Also, the poem Η άλλη πόλη from the collection Θάλασσα Επαγγελίας (p. 29):
Την άλλη μέρα του ονείρου βγήκε ένας ήλιος τόσο
μαύρος που κι οι τυφλοί βλέπαν διπλό σκοτάδι"
Ρώμη, Σεπτέμβρης 1961
And also Ιστορία του Οιδίποδα from Προαιρετική Στάση (p. 21):
Θέλησε να λύσει τα αινίγματα
να φωτίσει το σκοτάδι
που μέσα του βολεύονται όλοι
όσο κι αν τους βαραίνει.
Δεν τρόμαξε απ' τα όσα είδε
μ' από την άρνηση των άλλων να τα παραδεχτούν.
Θα 'μενε πάντα η εξαίρεση;
Δεν άντεχε πια τη μοναξιά.
και για να βρει τους διπλανούς του
έχωσε μες στα μάτια του βαθιά
τις δύο περόνες.
Πάλι ξεχώριζε με την αφή τα πράγματα
που κανείς δεν ήθελε να βλέπει.
The three poems are from different decades. A comparison between the first two shows how far the gaze of the poet has shifted. In Μεγάλο Γράμμα, the gaze has no bounds, the eyes always ‘look all over the place’ while simultaneously ‘wrapping up’ the beloved face. There are just two pairs of eyes, the opposite the other. While both see each other, they also take in the whole world. The gaze extends over the whole globe, to a panoramic view of humanity whose onset is provided by love. There is nothing like this in the second poem. In it, the bounds between dream and reality are blurred. The dream stands for day and light, while reality is transformed into a nightmare and is identified with darkness. Excess becomes almost tragic. The sun is ‘so black’ that even the blind can tell the difference. Yet, they are, probably, the only people who can withstand total darkness. Only the first line suggests the ability of sight, but even there it is no more than a deception, since what we encounter is but a dream. The next three lines consist of a chain of oppositions: sun – so black, the blind – saw, saw – darkness. These oppositions culminate in the intense tension of a double darkness. In reality, there is not even a shred of light in the poem.
In Ιστορία του Οιδίποδα the conflict between the person who can see and those who cannot becomes even more intense. Light could be taken to mean truth and the solution to the riddle. The riddle is identified with darkness. Oedipus is a tragic figure because he is condemned to see, even after he has decided to blind himself. He is not afraid of the truth, but of solitude. He is a hero who is continuously walking the tightrope between light and dark. Oedipus, according to myth, solved the riddle that the Muses had put to the Sphinx. In this poem we could very well have an allegory of the poet attempting to solve the riddle of humanity. Yet, at the same time, the relation between Oedipus and the dark suggests the relation between the revolutionary and reality. Patricius’ hero is not in bondage to fate at all. He solves the riddles consciously (the poem starts with the words ‘[he] wills’), he suffers blindness consciously, and he ultimately chooses truth consciously. Maybe Oedipus is a compound of the poet and the revolutionary, his history being the history and the confession of the poet himself.
As the motif evolves, eyes and sight are identified with the notion of personal choice and the stance each person, the poet especially, adopts regarding himself and the truth. And thus we come to the trick of the mirror and to his positioning in respect to ‘facing something’ and being ‘against it’. The poems quoted are from the collections Αντιδικίες and Αντικριστοί Καθρέφτες.
The first poem is Γνωστή αντίθεση from Αντιδικίες, published in 1955 (p.68):
Και πάλι η γνωστή αντίθεση:,
Εγώ, κ' οι άλλοι.
Ακόμα κι ο εαυτός μου γίνεται ένας ξένος
που μ' αντιστρατεύεται.
Κι αφήνομαι στη μοναξιά,
μοναδικό μου καταφύγιο
όταν μετατοπίζω τις ευθύνες
ξεχνώντας πόσο για κείνους είμαι ο άλλος
πόσο τους εξωθώ κ' εγώ στη μοναξιά τους
The second poem is from Αντικριστούς Καθρέφτες (p. 7), and is entitled Το είδωλο, and is the first poem in the collection:
"Τύλιγαν τον καθρέφτη εσωτερικά φυτά σκέπαζαν το είδωλο σου χάδια χεριών που χάθηκαν ψαξίματα χεριών που ακόμα δεν σ' αναγνωρίζουν".
The poem Παγίδες ποιητών is from the same collection (p. 74):
...Στάθηκα στη μέση της κάμαρας και κοίταξα όλο το
ανεκπλήρωτο της ζωής μου.
ΤΑΣΟΣ ΛΕΙΒΑΔΙΤΗΣ
-Μην τους πιστεύετε τους ποιητές
όταν μιλάνε γι' ανεκπλήρωτο της ζωής τους·
μ' αυτό το ανεκπλήρωτο πληρώνουν τη ζωή τους
πληρώνοντας και τη ζωή των άλλων.
-Να τους πιστεύετε τους ποιητές
όταν μιλάνε γι' ανεκπλήρωτο της ζωής τους·
ο λόγος τους ποτέ δεν φτάνει να πληρώσει
τις άπληστες επιθυμίες που τους κάνουν ποιητές·
In Αντικριστούς Καθρέφτες we come across words such as ‘mirror’, ‘idol’, ‘shape’, ‘mask’, ‘outline’ and, especially, ‘image’ frequently. As has been already observed, the poetical subject in this collection turns on itself, with the result being a way of writing that is self-reflective and self-confessory. The title of the collection and the aforementioned words are indicative of a poetry and of a poet who seek to discover their true face or character. So, in most poems there is a positioning of ‘against’. In contrast, in the earlier Αντιδικίες the language employed is obviously incisive and adversarial. The poet is at loggerheads with the ‘others’, the predominant tone being one of confrontation.
In the poem Γνωστή αντίθεση we can identify much common ground with Ιστορία του Οιδίποδα. Still, in the poem in Αντιδικίες the poetical subject considers his solitude as a retreat, although now he feels alien even to his own self, and not merely to others. Words such as ‘contrast’, ‘others’, ‘alien’, ‘I oppose’, ‘retreat’ and ‘solitude’ suggest the divergence between the poetical ego and the reality confronting it. The last two lines, though, imply the relativity in the placing of the terms of the binary opposition ‘I – the others’. We have dwelt on this poem at some length because, although the opposition is expressed in intense fashion, there are also in it some early hints at a poetic self-examination and at an attempt to understand the viewpoint of ‘the others’.
In Παγίδες ποιητών there is no straight reference to the theme of the idol. Still, the sense of the whole of the poem, the verses on the front page, even the structure of the language, suggest the notion of the mirror. The impression is that the poet stands between two mirrors, placed against each other, unable to look inside both simultaneously. No other poem in the collection hints so directly at the title of the whole (Αντικριστοί Καθρέφτες). The poet is, at the same moment in time, both observer and idol, doubling as reflector in the second stanza. He stands in the middle of the poem, just as the poet he refers to is ‘standing in the middle of the room’; hence the large blank space between the two stanzas. In the first stanza he stands confronted by his self, his life, and everybody else, and expresses the way in which he perceives reality. In the second stanza he states his position regarding the image of his self and regarding poetry. It is an incessant to and fro between observer and idol, between life and desire, real and unreal. Patricius even employs the notion of the mirage, which might be the reason behind the choice of title Παγίδες ποιητών for the collection. The paradox lies in his acceptance of the ‘deceitful image’ as the true one (Να τους πιστεύετε...), which pertains to desire. We also observe a continuous interchange of roles and an extremely relativistic position as to things.
In Είδωλο distortion is expressed in direct fashion by means of play between sight and touch. The line εσωτερικά φυτά suggests closed space, the space in which the poet secludes himself from others. It is also suggestive of low lighting. The contrasts between light and darkness or white and black are cancelled, the images become complex and, at times, downright deceitful. The poet has to resort to the sense of touch to avoid the tricks his eyesight plays on him. That is why we have to underline the presence of words such as 'shape', 'encasing' and 'outline' in this collection. We notice that from the moment the poetic ego adopts the position of 'opposite', in contrast to the 'against' it was before; the image of the rest of the world becomes much less clear and distorted.
Παραμορφώσεις was published in 1989, and although the poems in it were written before that date, they are still among the most recent writings of Patricius. D. Maronitis, in his essay entitled Οι "Παραμορφώσεις" του Τ. Πατρικίου suggested a very ingenious 're-reading' of the poem Επιμονή μιας πόλης by following the directions suggested by the poet's own path. We will attempt to locate the final element in the process of the thematic motif under examination in the poem entitled Ομίχλη. This stage is nothing more nor less than what the title of the collection says, namely distortion. The title itself suggests the physical phenomenon that impedes eyesight, thereby helping distort vision.
Ποτέ δε θα, ποτέ, σαν αποβάθρα απόμεινε το στόμα μου
σ' ένα λιμάνι που η θάλασσα τραβήχτηκε, στεγνό
τρύπα μέσα στην πολιτεία νεκροταφείο ρυμουλκών,
ποτέ, το ξέρω, δε θα μπορέσω να σου πω τα όσα ήθελα
που τελικά ίσως κι ο ίδιος τ' αγνοώ, έτσι μες στην ομίχλη
απρόσιτη, εγώ σε κάνω απρόσιτη, βουλιάζοντας
στη βουή των ορυκτών των όρθιων βάλτων
χαμένος πίσω απ' το παραπέτασμα των άλλων
που μόνος μου το φτιάχνω, το παραπέτασμά μου, το φόβο
την ανεπαρκή πραγμάτωση το χάος ανάμεσα στα στήθια σου
κι έτσι βυθίζομαι διαπερνώντας το κορμί σου, μεθώντας
απ' τ' όνειρο που περιβάλλει το δέρμα σου
τυφλωμένος απ' τη νύχτα σου
με τα λάγνα χέρια μου μεταμορφωμένα σε ψάρια
τις ώρες μου αναποδογυρισμένες μέσα στο δικό σου χρόνο
δίπλα στα σακατεμένα εργοστάσια χωρίς απόφαση ή παραίτηση
μέσα σ' αυτό το σύννεφο από καπνιά και θειάφι
τα μάτια σου το βαθύ τρακτέρ
δυο φεγγάρια όρθια με γοργές σπαθιές
οι δρόμοι κατρακυλώντας μες στους φούρνους
το ατσάλι σκάβοντας τη σάρκα
μια μακρινή ανάσα σου πάνω στα κρηπιδώματα
ξεφτώντας σαν εισιτήριο για μιαν ασήμαντη διαδρομή
φιλί οι αρβύλες μες στη λάσπη σιωπή δεν κόπασε το αίμα
καθώς τρέχανε τα αίματα στο μέτωπο τα μάτια τα ρουθούνια
βλέπαμε ο καθένας μας τον κόσμο αλλιώς παραμορφωμένο.
Looking at the structure and syntax of the poem, we notice that there is a definite spine to it, consisting of a multitude of participles, both in the active and the passive voice. Two important features of this axis are that a.) the participles suggest invalidation and distortion; words like 'sinking', 'lost', 'crippled', 'tumbling', 'dimming' suggest invalidation; words like 'drunken', 'blinded', 'transformed', 'turned upside down', crippled', 'digging' imply distortion; and b.) from a certain point onwards, there are as many subjects as there are participles. Until line 13 the only subject is 'I'. But from line 14 the subect changes continously, describing a world that is in constant flux, always changing and transforming. The last line is the where all the subjects ('I', 'the world', 'we') come together, and where the participles culminate into one, which summarises their meaning: ...βλέπαμε ο καθένας μας τον κόσμο αλλιώς παραμορφωμένο. That is the gaze of the poet, the way in which he views the world.
Light is almost non-existent and night is predominant. The only exception is in lines 18 and 19, which were changed in the rewriting of the poem. They constitute the centre and cast the only shred of light in the poem. A noticable feature of these two lines is that there are no participles in them. They offer a glimmer of hope, since the tractor always implies a positive meaning in Patricius' poetry. There is also a hint of the power that is in love, but love is unattainable within the poem. The words 'erect' and 'sword strokes' are suggestive.
As we mentioned in the introduction to this essay, the thematic motif we are dealing with is only one of several in Patricius' poetry. It would be of interest to make a study of some others, such as:
music, sounds, voices in connection with silence and the absence of sounds,
his dealing with the element of water, the sea especially,
the function of the pair of opposites exile-return,
the function of landscape in the countryside and in the city,
the function of memory and time.