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Poetica - CD-Cover
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Theodorakis was recently asked what he feared most. - Obscurity.
Obscurity, – the stuff that envelops us, sightless dark, that conceals people and robs all things of their form.
Drains everything of colour. Nothing can be made out distinctly. One can never see clearly. The sick and the dream-tellers lie in wait under their covers. When does this tunnel end and where? One of the songs goes: "To the days that are coming, I give island faces …The nights that pass draw red lines."
Scorching track-marks lead to the bright blood-stained roads that death comes skidding down. That darkness that crashes abruptly in on the day, crushes a man like a rock. Bamboo cane, whip, electric shock. Torture at noon, beatings on the terrace. The moment when light is called pitiless.
Since the dawn of time Greece has been bathed in such light, reflects it; even the landscape gives it off. And man carries it on, far on into the night. Oil-lamps in the graveyard. Lamps on inn-tables. Men's white shirts. Lighthouses. Lighted matches. Melodies. Songs. No tiny church without its flame, the flame of rebirth, symbol of the First Light. The candle on the day of birth, re-lit every year. Lit and blown out, as a reminder that life is easily snuffed out. A reminder of the uncertain, that captures the imagination of artists and will not let them go...
And so it is not surprising that Theodorakis, aged seventy, should compose his Poetica-Cycle - these sombre, thoughtful hymns to Greek light. The light of July and of the moon, the sea's reflections, the dazzling light of death. And the poet Dionisis Karatzas from the Peloponnesian town of Patras gave him the material to capture the "twilight" in music.
One might think that in the "empty light" of this century, Theodorakis has been lucky – he has become a star. A human being with the innate strength himself to "radiate". To be light. To make a gift of himself.
This man with a hole in his skull, his eyes so often closed, stuck together with blood or weariness. So often a moment's standstill. Helios with a dark halo, escaping the cycle of recurrence, heralding the Eternal Now. Then marching feet, a thousand soles striking the earth, shouts, images, spittle in the sand.
Raised voices, united, lost. Sounds for symphonies, harmony and poetry, so as not to go mad. Pour oil on the flames, so they survive through the darkness. In the darkness, affirm oneself, devour oneself, thereby creating oneself.
BE light.
© Ina & Asteris Kutulas
Translated from the German by © Ariel Wagner.
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