“If there were any poet – and they are certainly more than one in greek literature – that directly opposed the social environment, through his life and his work, it definitely was Karyotakis. Many issues regarding alterity create through his verse an unfamiliar and unreal context, that pushes the poetic subject to the margin of an individual unreality, climaxing in the final act of self-destruction, the utlimate escape from the world of the others as well as the self itself, experienced as the other.

There are two main ideas that keep coming back in the poetry of Karyotakis and they emphasize on the dimension with the widely accepted reality: Failure to identify the self through the eyes of others and, consequently, resorting to a “soul mate”, in a hidden I helping the poetic subject to preserve to a certain extent the conscious of the self and to resist alienation.

The poet and the others

The phenomenon of an artist not being accepted by community and being considered a dreamer, a person living in another world, a world of his own, as well as the opposite case where the denial of the poetic ego to accept the rules and the “principles” of society and its critical attitude towards reality, is common at all times, no matter the literature trends and the poetic schools involved. Moreover, the fact of literary creation itself presupposes that the writer presents a double or even a multiple identity; in particular as regards prose and expecially novel.

André Green, in his preface to Le Double by Dostoevsky, first of all underlines the double writer’s nature: “Each writer has a double nature in many aspects. He has a social identity, that he uses in his public or private life. But he also have a double – or is dominated by the same – the writer that comes out only through his writing. This relationship also unfolds between the writer and the narrator, and then between the writer and his/her hero. However, these relationships need to be read. They are never presented in a direct manner.”

In the case of Karyotakis, the difficult relationship of the poet with the others is more than clear and it is structured around the concept that the poetic subject feels a stranger even to its own body. Physical substence is nullified because of the lack of communication. Themes such as disease, pain, injury, tear, broken or yielded body,  broken wings, fatigue, weakness, symbols of the woren out existence that is incapable of acting, remaining restricted by the bounds of a helpless body prevail.

Τι νέοι που φτάσαμεν εδώ, στο έρμο νησί, στο χείλος

του κόσμου, δώθε απ’ τ’ όνειρο και κείθε από τη γη!

Όταν απομακρύνθηκεν ο τελευταίος μας φίλος,

ήρθαμε αγάλι σέρνοντας την αιωνία πληγή.

Με μάτι βλέπουμε αδειανό, με βήμα τσακισμένο

τον ίδιο δρόμο παίρνουμε καθένας μοναχός,

νιώθουμε τ’ άρρωστο κορμί, που εβάρυνε, σαν ξένο,

υπόκωφος από μακριά η φωνή μας φτάνει αχός.

[…]

                                     [ΤΙ ΝΕΟΙ ΠΟΥ ΦΤΑΣΑΜΕΝ ΕΔΩ…]

Often, there is the impression that the poetic ego does not consider itself part of the wider community of people, but that it belongs to another we that is distinct without defining its identity with precision. It is the case of some people that feel they are almost dead, precisely because they fail to control their destiny through actions and to understand the reason of daily existence; Some people that are at a level below “man”, almost invisible and excluded by feelings that can justify and bear the load of existence, that is “faith” and “love”:

In this hesitant, coulorless, passive and abstracted life, between existence and non-existence, there does not seem to be any room for choise and free will. Like puppets that some incomprehensible god moves, paper dummies that faith directs blindly, human replicas with mechanical movements, they accept scorn but, sometimes, they pose a certain threat, “a distant obscure threat”, for “real” people. What Freud defined as unheimliche (inquiétante étrangeté), that is the feeling of strange and unafamiliar that is produced when seeing something known and familiar in aspect but behaving awkwardly, intelectial incertitude (incertitude intellectuelle) caused when seeing a “mechanical” or “automatic” human dummy, looking real but being inanimate, threatening certitudes and causing fear, precisely the feeling described by Karyotakis in the verse above.

The imaginary city of these “paper”, dreamers, where the poetic subject feels it participates and that differentiates from human society, definitely includes poets. Their material, paper, certainly underlines the fact that they are dummies, depictions; however it makes a direct reference to peotic creation. Although it is obvious that poetic ego suffers and identifies itself with these “beings living on myths”, it is also apparent that it is frustrated with its poetic identity. The dimension experienced with regard to everyday reality does not eventually push him to defend his particularity as an artist, but causes him extra pain and, often, drives him to a persistent self-criticism that does not lack the feeling of guilt and depreciation.

In Όλοι μαζί…he writes: «Αλλάζουμε με ήχους και συλλαβές / τα αισθήματα στη χάρτινη καρδιά μας, / δημοσιεύουμε τα ποιήματά μας / για να τιτλοφορούμεθα ποιητές.»

While in [Είμαστε κάτι…] he concludes: «Στο σώμα, στην ενθύμηση πονούμε. / Μας διώχνουνε τα πράγματα, κι η ποίησις / είναι το καταφύγιο που φθονούμε.»

“Real” life that the poetic ego of Karyotaskis desires is unreachable and its opposition to reality seems so extreme that the latter ends up being experienced as a daily death. Although in otherness theories, death is the absolut other, the inconceivable unknown, precisely because it occurs at the moment when ego ceases to exist; it is not rare for artists putting themselves in the condition of a living-dead, between existence and non existence, thus trying to evade an unbearable present as well as to free themselves from the fear of death, trying to live through writing a post-death situation. There are cases where the poet observes his ghost; he observes his dead self and/or sets the scene himself for his end, seeking not only liberation from existence but also a type of victory for his poetic nature. The procedure of self-observation, in other words the capacity of the poetic subject to come out of itself and to observe it from a distance, being conscient that it is the same involved, the phenomenon of the strange self or the ego as the other, is a result of the rupture between the poet and hostile reality, with an unbearable right here right now that he avidly desires to evade.

In the poem Δικαίωσις, the soul of the poet frees itself through its art, at the moment of its death. Poetry becomes a Song and releases even from its author (αδέσποτο θ’ αφήσω), however it does not escape the scorn from others.

Τότε λοιπόν αδέσποτο θ’ αφήσω

να βουίζει το Τραγούδι απάνωθέ μου.

Τα χάχανα του κόσμου, και του ανέμου

το σφύριγμα, θα του κρατούν τον ίσο.

Θα ξαπλωθώ, τα μάτια μου θα κλείσω,

και ο ίδιος θα γελώ καθώς ποτέ μου.

«Καληνύχτα, το φως χαιρέτισέ μου»

θα πω στον τελευταίο που θ’ αντικρίσω.

Όταν αργά θα παίρνουνε το δρόμο,

η παρουσία μου κάπως θα βαραίνει

– πρώτη φορά – σε τέσσερων τον ώμο.

Ύστερα, και του βίου μου την προσπάθεια

Αμείβοντας, το φτυάρι θα με ραίνει

Ωραία-ωραία με χώμα και με αγκάθια.

                                   [ΔΙΚΑΙΩΣΙΣ]

However, the vindication the poet seeks following his death never comes, except as a gruesome joke, a practical joke set up by the poetic subject through the poem to the detriment of others as well as itself. A fake life can only end up in a fake death; He who never really lived can never really die either. «Θα ξαπλωθώ, τα μάτια μου θα κλείσω / και ο ίδιος θα γελώ καθώς ποτέ μου»: it seems more like an imitation of death, a staged game that only the poet is aware of and makes every necessary move, says the necessary lines in order to fool the others («Καληνύχτα, το φως χαιρέτισέ μου» θα πω στον τελευταίο που θ’ αντικρίσω.). Actually perhaps this staging of the end, the imitation of death is depicted on verse precisely to draw attention, to shake people’s indifference and to give a certain gravity to the real event that will occur in the future, no matter in what way, and that the poet is afraid that it will mean nothing to others. The expectation of the other is characteristic; the necessary spectator and witness of the staged death, whom he waits until the end to address to him his last wish, the last greeting, thus verifying his existence.

Perhaps the last verse denotes bitterness and irony for fruitless life that is accompanied by a inglorious, not “pretty” at all, even torturing death (και του βίου μου την προσπάθεια / αμείβοντας, το φτυάρι θα με ραίνει / ωραία-ωραία με χώμα και με αγκάθια), maybe human absence is eventually absolute (το φτυάρι θα με ραίνει), however there is a unique moment when the poetic ego will experience some kind of vindiction, even at least a comic regognition of its existence: η παρουσία μου κάπως θα βαραίνει / – πρώτη φορά – σε τέσσερων τον ώμο..

The “burden of self”, the burden of the body that the poet carries but is strange to him, has not an equivalent gravity for society . The “suffering body” with the “broken wings” doesn’t manage to elevate itself and approach the other, but becomes dust that people step on, ignoring its presence; this waits for the fall and the burden of others. In Karyotakis poetry, the burden that presses natural existence to the ground is due to the contempt from “people” that nullifies the social and artistic existence of the poetic ego. Thus, to come back to Δικαίωση, only through death, staged or real, will its presence manage to obtain some gravity – “for the first time” – and to be placed above the others, its body to become a small burden for the others, who will have to – even in this way – bear its weight as well (η παρουσία μου κάπως θα βαραίνει / – πρώτη φορά – σε τέσσερων τον ώμο). This is a type of vindiction too, a kind of funny revenge that will cause laughter and self-sarcasm to the poetic subject (και ο ίδιος θα γελώ καθώς ποτέ μου).

The soul and conscious of oneself

Except for reality that is perceived through senses, we also find in Karyotakis another world that is invisible and that is perceived only through writing. It is the world of the soul.

In the renowned study Le Double, Otto Rank underlines that primitive people consider shadow as equivalent of human soul and he suggests that the shadow was the means man was able to see for the first time his body. Besides, he makes reference to Homer’s belief according to which “man presents a dual existence: his perceivable presence on the one hand and his invisible image that is set free only after his death. His soul is this, and nothing more than that.” And Rank adds: “It lives inside the living man […] like a guest stranger, a weaker double, his alter Ego, in the form of the Psyché governing the world of dreams.” Lastly, he believes that in certain cases the soul coincides with self-conscious. But Freud as well in Das Unheimliche, his second reference study on this subject, making reference to Rank, supposes that “the immortal’ soul was the first double of the body”.

Karyotakis’ poetry is governed by the dualism of soul and body which extends to the dualism of the soul itself, that has both a spiritual as well as a physical aspect. The soul is divided from the body and constitutes a secondd nature that mainly represents emotion; Dream, passion, hope, freedom, lost innocence as well as memory, pain, disappointment, and solitude.

In the poem Ηλύσια, the discrimination between bodies and souls is denoted even by the structure of the poem and the use of parenthesis. Its verse begins with the state of the body inside parenthesis, which wears and ends up to an inglorious death, in the ground, and goes on with the respective but different state of imperishable souls, outside parenthesis, which are set free and head towards the horizon, towards a beautiful dream end.

(Τόσο πολύ τα σώματα κουράστηκαν,

που ελύγισαν, εκόπηκαν στα δύο.)

Κι έφυγαν οι ψυχές, πατούνε μόνες των,

αργά, τη χλόη σαν ανοιχτό βιβλίο.

(Τα σώματα κυλούν χάμου, συσπειρώνονται

στρεβλωμένα.) Και φαίνονται στο βάθος,

τριαντάφυλλα κρατώντας, να πηγαίνουνε

με τ’ όνειρο οι ψυχές και με το πάθος.

(Χώμα στο χώμα γίνονται τα σώματα.)

Μα κείθε απ’ τον ορίζοντα, σαν ήλιοι

δύουν οι ψυχές, τον ουρανό που φόρεσαν,

ή σαν απλά χαμόγελα σε χείλη.

                                    [ΗΛΥΣΙΑ]

The freedom of the soul from the bonds of the body is not always possible. If in Ελεγεία και Σάτιρες, form where the above poem is taken, the souls of men constitute a collective subject that makes the rise and the evasion towards a peacefull elsewhere, in the previous collection Ο πόνος του ανθρώπου και των πραγμάτων, the poet addresses himself to his own “vain” soul, that suffers along with its body, which is also hurt and does not seem to liberate itself fully from human condition. Dualism leads to the coincidence of the two natures, which feed eachother: the soul reminds the dream to the body and the body binds the soul in vanity. The poetic subject talking to itself and making a projection at the ultimate time and the final retrospection, sympathizes but controls the soul as well:

Μάταιη ψυχή, στην ατονίαν εσπέρας εαρινής,

ενώ θα κλείνεις τα χρυσά φτερά σου πληγωμένη,

την ώρα που σα λύτρωση κάτι θα καρτερείς,

φτωχή καρδιά, θανάσιμα μα αιώνια πληγωμένη∙

όταν, φτασμένη απάνω στον ορίζοντα, θα ιδείς

μίση να φεύγουν οι έρωτες, χολή τα πάθη σου όλα,

όταν ανέβει από τα εξαίσια τ’ άνθη της ζωής

μύρον η απογοήτευση, ψυχή μου ονειροπόλα∙

την ώρα την υπέρτατη που θε να θυμηθείς

μ’ ένα μόνο χαμόγελο τα φίλα και τα ενάντια –

μάταιη ψυχή, στο πέλαγο, στο αγέρι τι θα πεις;

ώ, τι θα πεις, στενή καρδιά, στη χλωμή δύση αγνάντια;

                                                        [ΠΕΘΑΙΝΟΝΤΑΣ]

The soul, «θανάσιμα μα αιώνια πληγωμένη» [fatally but eternally wounded], does not die with the body. It has its own “physical properties” (ενώ θα κλείνεις τα χρυσά φτερά σου πληγωμένη ), its own desires, and its own weight. It experiences at the same time immortality and evolution. Poetic ego perpetuates through the soul and feels the need to protect its existence after death from eternal sorrow. The soul has the option of evading the body and elevating, but thus it is forced to observe from above the past of exitence (φτασμένη απάνω στον ορίζοντα, θα ιδείς / μίση να φεύγουν οι έρωτες, χολή τα πάθη σου όλα) and to account for its vain life (μάταιη ψυχή, στο πέλαγο, στο αγέρι τι θα πεις; / ώ, τι θα πεις, στενή καρδιά).

It is the soul, for Karyotakis, an internal existence that he is always in contact and familiar with, an other to which ego addresses but also is part of ego – or ego is part of it –, in one word it is the self. Not the alter ego, that competes or pursues it, that steals its form or tries to take its position, bit him himself, his own feelings, what is behind the “phenomenon” of the paper presence that everyone else sees, protected from their derogatory look, free from the “burden” of a defined body that drifts the individual to it, to the fall. However, at the same time, it is the reflection of natural presence, the content of a suffering content, trapped inside a restrained existence (narrow heart), and desiring perfection. The soul is “beautiful”, because it is “vain”: it loves, it forgives, it dreams, and it remembers.

Επήρες πια τα μάτια σου κι έφυγες σε μιαν άκρη.

Όλα τώρα σε λησμονούν εκεί παραριχτή,

και πού να πέσει, αναρωτάς, το τελευταίο σου δάκρυ

και ποιος να το δεχτεί.

Ά! σε λυγίζει το φρικτό βάρος αγώνα τόσου,

απλώνοντας το χέρι σου ένα στήριγμα ζητάς,

στέκεις για λίγο ελπίζοντας, κρύβεις το πρόσωπό σου,

έπειτα ξεκινάς.

Και πώς πηγαίνεις, ώ αδερφή ψυχή, με τη συγνώμη,

με την αγάπη δίνοντας πίσω κάθε πληγή!

Και πού πηγαίνεις έτσι, αφού σου εκλείστηκαν οι δρόμοι

σε ολόκληρη τη γη;

Ιδέ, χορεύει γύρω σου του κόσμου η αυταπάτη,

σμίγουνε χείλη και σπονδές υψώνονται, γελούν.

Εσύ πεθαίνεις. Και από πριν – ως νά ’σαι πια φευγάτη –

όλοι σε λησμονούν.

Χαίρε! Τη ζωή δεν έζησες παρά μες στα όνειρά σου.

Γι’ αυτό παρόμοιο σου άξιζε τέλος, ωραία ψυχή.

Ήρθε σαν αποθέωση, γίνεται σα χαρά σου

πρώτη και μοναχή.

                                          [ΠΡΟΠΟΜΠΗ]

Soul dies once more, after having lived forgotten on the margins of the world. Much more in this peom, belong to the so-called Παραλειπόμενα that is works most likely denounced by the poet himself, the impression that the soul almost coincides with the poetic ego is born. So, in this respect, the salutation “soul mate” is not by chance in the central verse of the poem.

Soul lives the life of man. It bears the weight of everyday life, of adverse existence; it has a body suffering (tears, hand, face, wound) from the absence of the fellowman, an absence that deprives it of the possibility to move (Και πού πηγαίνεις έτσι, αφού σου εκλείστηκαν οι δρόμοι), not as a way to evade but rather as a prespective, a course towards something else. This absence of the fellowman, that haw the power to softern otherness, leads the soul to a kind of agonizing death which indirectly refers to the Drama of Christ: σε λυγίζει το φρικτό βάρος / με τη συγνώμη, με την αγάπη δίνοντας πίσω κάθε πληγή / γελούν. Εσύ πεθαίνεις / αποθέωση. However, it also leeds to «Apotheosis», the conquering of the other, that kept seeking through the dream meeting the absolute, Aristotle’s “whole and perfect” that is God. Thus, the soul mate is vindicated; it finally becomes “a beautiful soul”, through self-sacrifice and pardon.

According to Freud’s theory, the “double” is created in the context of the dual subject, the relationship between the self and the other, the same and the strange. Besides it bears witness of survival capacities of ego before the destructive impulse of death (threat of persecution, partition, nullification). At the same time he is a fighter against death but also a precursor of it. “From the moment the desire to nullify emerges and the subject aims at zero, the benefactiry duplication works: it becomes two. The fragility of the threatened entityt creates his idol like a medicine – even a poisonous one – for dispair. […] The double confirms our destiny to be divided between the image we wish to have for ourselves and the image that our over-known alter ego sends us.”

Either it is social otherness either it is otherness of psychological origin or – most likely – a combination of the two above, the peotic subject determines itself by looking inside the other’s reflection, that of the neighbour or the stranger. In the case of Karyotakis, this relationship meets almost unsurmountable obstacles, which results in the ego to be turning to oneself, towards the inner world, in order to realize it existence being questioned by others. It is however at the same time a poetic ego, and this means that it also aqddresses to some “external” recipients, it talk to itself but to everybody, actually seeking vindiction, the confirmation of its peotic identity and posthumous fame. The soul, a hidden and ideal self, becomes the inseparable mate that mediates between reality and the other, between existence and memory, wear and perfection, fall and rise. It is not the “poisonous medicine” of an existence cut into pieces but the guarantor of the cohesion of ego, even after death”.