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State of Siege. First edition
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I start composing again ... and I think of Marina. When I was in the Security, after my arrest, Marina was in the corridor, opposite Cell No. 1, with another girl who wore trousers. She was on hunger strike, I used to hear her bawling out to the warder.
She was to write a poem, a poem which is incomparable in its beauty, its strength and its truth. From the moment I first saw it each word, each image, each meaning entered the pores of my skin. Wounded me. Gave me comfort. Delivered me. It was the voice of all of us. All those hopes which according to one image in the poem ‚turned out to be a rotten grape'. It was our anger. Our bitterness. And our strength. I took the first part of the poem and wrote the music straight off in one go, from beginning to end.
Now, at Vrakhati, I get on to the second and third parts. From the point of view of musical form, I have the opportunity with this work of continuing along the path I had started out on with 'Averoff Epiphany'. It was a new 'flow-song' in three parts. Originally the title was: 'Averoff Women's Prison', since the poem had been written after Marina had been sentenced by the military tribunal. She tore this poem up immediately she had finished it. One of her fellow-prisoners, Athina, managed to save it and sat up at night copying it out:
© Mikis Theodorakis
From: Journals of Resistance, March 1968
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