I started every morning from Georgiou Olympiou, passed Koukakiu square, took Orlof, reached Mouson and from there I climbed vertically up the hill of Filopappos to the monument. There following taking a brave break and traveling my gaze as far as Piraeus, Hymettus and the entire Attic basin I slowly descended to the opening of Lumbardiaris, there I usually stopped for a short stop which became longer if chants poured out from its small temple Saint Dimitri. Byzantine sounds I’m sure fit best either in the first light of day or the first darkness of twilight. From there I slowly rode up the hill once more with my gaze caressing the Holy Hill and reached Pnyka and the Observatory. Another time I will tell you regarding the daily shudder that ran through me as I imagined the Church of the Municipality in assembly. Then I would take the way back through Apostolou Pavlou and Dionysiou Areopagitou and I would return exhausted but with a hug of impressions and a couple of handfuls of priceless images.
Today, as soon as I entered Orlof and reached the height of Zaharitsa, a garbage truck was in front of me and was slowly moving towards the hill. To avoid it, I turned right on Karatasou. I ran all the way down the beautiful street with the well-kept neoclassical bipeds, the colorful bougainvillea and my unnecessary irritation and I arrived at the densely planted steps of Drakou, at its end towards the hill and the meeting of Muson Street with Garivaldi. There I turned right there was almost no traffic and there was absolute silence. The cloudiness as the time passed became heavier and the clouds hung like bunches of curls above the Attic sky. It was also a bit cold and I had zipped my jacket all the way up. I took it down a bit as soon as I got outside Mickey’s house, to get a better look at it, it’s been a while since the great composer left. I stood for a while across the street and observed the damage that time has done to the building, in some places it had even injured it.
I walked heavy and overcast by the foothills. Taking into account the pines, olives and bushes that reached as far as the asphalt of Garibaldi. As I walked, lost in my thoughts, the last musical phrases from Antonis, Miki’s song with lyrics by Campanelli, poured out from Fratti’s corner sofa. Life is a rosary of mindless coincidences, I thought and leaned in Fratti’s corner, whispering the poet’s verses along with Faradouri’s voluminous voice.
The Jew falls on the step
and the staircase turns red
and you, my leventi, come here
rock double bucket.
I get double, I get triple
My name is Antoni
and if you are a man, come here
on the marble threshing floor.
Mikis had once spoken regarding this song. He thought, when he had written it, that it would meet with a warm reception which did not happen in the big field concerts he gave. Acceptance came slowly, slowly, although the song had everything that characterizes the work of the great composer, emotion, epicness, strength, hope, solidarity. This song in some Central Asian countries is something like their second anthem. With the end of the song, the announcer of the radio station was heard.
“YEAR OF JACOB CAMBANELLI” IN 2022
The Ministry of Culture and Sports declared 2022 as the “Year of Iakovos Campanelli”, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth. On December 2, 2021, his birthday, the opening event of the “Year of Jacob Campanelli” took place. All the events, within the context of the dedicated year, are under the auspices of the Ministry of the Interior”.
I reached the end of Garibaldi, passed Roberto Galli, and sat on the steps, behind the statue of Maria Callas, which glittered under the gray light of cloudiness and doubt. I took the “technology” out of my pocket and via the internet I left for other states. Anyway, my morning schedule was swallowed up by the garbage along with the local garbage. But it might have been for the better, I thought and read the first words aloud from the official website for the great Greek.
“Iakovos Kampanellis was born in Naxos on December 2, 1921 and is the sixth of nine children of Stefanos Kampanellis, an experienced pharmacist, and Aikaterini Laskaris. His father came from Chios, while his mother came from an old aristocratic family of Constantinople.
Even as a student in primary school, he was distinguished for his inclination towards literature. After the first two grades of high school, where he has a classmate, Manolis Glezos, severe livelihood problems force his family to move to Athens. They settle in Metaxourgeio. During the day he works and at night he studies as a technical designer at the night Sivitanideo School”.
At the start of World War II he planned to go to the Middle East and ended up in Austria where he was captured by the Nazis and imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp until the end of the war. Returning to Athens, he attended a performance at Karolos Koon’s art theater and as he said later: “there I discovered myself and my destiny”. He took exams at various drama schools but was repeatedly rejected for lack of a high school diploma. Determined to enter the field of theater by any means, he began to write plays.
A crowd of tourists from the Far East surrounded the statue of Callas and started taking one picture following another. Some had sat wherever they found and with various goodies that they took out of their bags, they had a snack when they weren’t busy with their selfies. I saw that they had no intention of leaving me alone, so I packed up and left the clump of trees on Dionysiou Areopagitou and went down to the left. The clouds kept getting thicker but luckily it didn’t say it would turn into rain. When I arrived at Apostolou Pavlou opposite the kiosk I rode the wide terrace and continued my search on the internet.
In 1949, Kampanellis proposed to the National Theater the play “The Dance on the Ears” which was rejected, however in 1950 the owner of a small theater in Kallithea decided to stage it. The work becomes a success and in the following years Campanellis has many successes with works such as: “Dad the war”, “Odysseus returned home”, “The road”, “The gorilla and the hydrangea”. In 1954 – he meets Melina Merkouris who asks him for an original text and he writes “Stella with the red gloves” which becomes a great success, first in theater and later in cinema. In the following years, Kampanellis will write dozens of plays, the most important of which are “The Seventh Day of Creation”, “The Court of Miracles”, “The Age of Night”, “A Tale Without a Name”, “Neighborhood of Angels”, “Viva Aspasia”. , “Odysseus returned home”, “Colony of the punished”, “Our big circus”, “Persons for violin and orchestra”.
Kampanellis was a writer and spiritual person, who, although self-taught, mastered all genres of prose and metered speech with emblematic literary works and essays, insurmountable theatrical texts, timeless film scripts and of course, great songs with music by Mikis Theodorakis.
A fat drop disrupted my entire universe. If the infamous drop landed on my hand, on my head, anywhere, it wouldn’t bother me, but it landed on my cell phone screen and jolted me out of my slumber and violently placed me under the wet Attic sky and the colorful and bustling morning of coincidences. And it didn’t stop there, the drops that followed were smaller, but quite a few at the beginning, many followingwards, until they organized a bora turned around that exploded on my head. How many can those embankment wings of the stand across the street hold? Let alone I was on the edge, the edge of the desperate and the plastic canopy was draining on my back. “Ai Dimitris will save me” I thought and ran away. I was not caught by my already tenuous religious feeling. But I thought that in Ai Dimitris I would find somewhere to hug Lumbardiaris. As I ran I hoped the morning Asian hurricane of tourists hadn’t reached his Grace. I arrived soaking wet. It had no soul, only a beautiful Byzantine melody might be heard, which softened your soul. I smiled, no matter how many left-wing drumbeats we get tired of, no matter how many modernisms we chew on, no matter how innovative the modern Greeks swallow, as soon as the corresponding Byzantine chant is heard at the right time, in the right place, it can bend all our modernism, any rational approach , our every materialistic view.
“The theater is not an artistic representation of external reality, it is mainly a representation of internal reality” notes the great writer. With his 40 plays, Iakovos Kampanellis is one of the most prolific Greek playwrights of the 20th century. His Court of Miracles is considered the opening work of modern Greek drama. Mauthausen’s novel is universally considered one of the reference works of camp literature. Our Great Circus remains indelibly etched in individual and collective memory, as a project – a station for the struggle for freedom and democracy. He also worked in the cinema as a screenwriter: (Stella, Dragon, River, Rape of Persephone) and as a lyricist (Fairytale without a name by Hadjidakis, The Great Circus of Xarhakos, Circle with Chalk by Mamagakis etc.)
In October 1981, Kampanellis was appointed to the position of radio director of ERT, while in 1999 he became an academic at the seat of the Theater of the Academy of Athens. He passed away on March 29, 2011, a few days following his wife, Niki.
The fog had stopped, behind the clouds a figure might be seen that looked like a sketch, a portrait of the great author, but I have this kousuri, in a cloudy sky I can draw you whatever you want. And Iakovos Campanellis with the bitter smile I can draw for you, and Ai Dimitris Lumbardiaris I can, even Antonis on the stairs of tears I can draw for you, with a double and triple rock in his hands, even the comrade loaded on his shoulder , to climb the Wiener Graben, the quarry of lamentations, with a smile.
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