The sun was struggling to warm me with its weak rays in the cold winter morning, it would have succeeded if the norther with its repeated gusts had not pushed me with all its force towards the south and with all its stubbornness to the frosty door.
I had leaned against the small, rudimentary theater of Eleftheria Square facing west, from where I was waiting for my date to arrive, which, as everything seemed, had run out of time and would end up in a meeting – shipwreck. Suddenly as if by magic the north calmed down and let the sun’s rays do their duty, which as all my senses together claimed, was to warm my frozen body. I got more comfortable on the concrete curve of the theater structure and pulled my cell phone out of my pocket to see what I was going to do with my lost day’s schedule. I digress, however, because just as unexpectedly and metaphysically the north stopped, so unexpectedly and metaphysically I lost interest in the meeting, which was to take place and as time went by I became convinced that it would not happen. It was a meeting for which I had worked long and diligently, in the morning I longed for it, but now I no longer craved it. “In a little while” I thought and paraphrased the poet’s tomorrow “”Tomorrow”, you say, and within this small postponement lies the whole vast never”.
I was digging through my mobile phone and unconsciously the ashes of my canceled meeting to see how I would spend my leisurely free morning, when I came across a text by Mr. Giorgos Douatzis in the self-proclaimed “Map Electronic Journal of Speech and Art” and read about the actions, the painstaking efforts and the agonies of rescue from the clutches of the bulldozer and the indifference of the poet’s house.
“For the record, I want to mention, writes G.Duatzis, that Tasos Livaditis was born in Metaxourgeio, at 74 Leonidou Street, and lived until his death at 35 Acharnon Street. In the year 2000, the School Buildings Organization expropriated the surrounding space and the poet’s father’s house, in order to build the 156th Primary School.
With many efforts we managed not to demolish the building, to save the house and with the Official Gazette 484/05-11-2007 of the Ministry of Culture, the buildings on Leonidou Street with numbers 70 & 74 as well as the wall at number 72 were classified as monuments The specific buildings are typical examples of small-scale buildings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they belong to one of the oldest neighborhoods of Athens and their preservation will contribute to the preservation of the special character of the area from an urban, historical and architectural point of view. ». The house of Livaditis, since then, belongs to OSK”.
With the last sentence I understood that just as people managed to save the poet’s house and that the bulldozers did not take it under the tracks and this year, which is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great poet, it seems that people have achieved their goal and they will deliver to the city of Athens a corner of priceless memory. With the last sentence I again realized that I was a few hundred meters from the poet’s childhood nest, so I found Leonidou 74 on my mobile phone map.
And the good things about technology, I thought of the internet and the social media, which we all bombard day and night and many times without even being wrong, but here it was gold, because I put it on the possibilities of the little one and not the last one my mobile technology. So I started lightly, with the smile of someone who has found something that he has been looking for for a long time and now he does not let it go from his grasp. I crossed Piraeus opposite the IKA and entered the narrow streets of the silk factory. From Millerou, I turned left to Agesilaou and right to Salaminos. It didn’t take me long to find Leonidou 74. The sight was heartbreaking as iron columns and tins clumsily tried to hold back what was left of the poet’s house. I squatted down on the opposite sidewalk and trying to escape from the heartbreaking sight, I again looked for the poet’s text entitled “The father’s house” in my mobile life preserver.
“I walked for hours. Perhaps I had crossed all limits, when a house appeared in front of me. “My God, my father’s house!” I whispered. I ran up the stairs, my mother herself opened the door for me, I was shocked, but I was ashamed to tell her that she was dead. In her hands she held a small coffee grinder that had been given to her when she was a bride. And he was turning the handle of the mill with such earnestness that I wanted to cry. On the wall hung a diary, which as it blew through the open door, the diary began to disintegrate, scattered the faded leaves of “why, mother,” I tell her – “yet you loved me.” Then I saw my brother, who had also died, but in a strange way he was still sleeping in the house, the father, in fact, was so much in need of us that he was trying, even though he was dead, to wake him up so that he could go to work, “but I work elsewhere, father” my brother said, finally before going down the stairs I managed to see an old maid of ours, from the old days, also dead, hastily closing the curtains on the windows of this mysterious house that I didn’t know where is located, nor would I ever know…”
He was born in Athens in 1922, and was the fifth consecutive child of the Livaditis family. But his origin was from Kontovazaina in Arcadia. He studied at the Law School of the University of Athens, but his great love was literature and poetry. With intense political activity in the field of the left, he is organized in the United Panhellenic Youth Organization (EPON). During the Occupation in 1943, he lost his father. When he was in exile in Makronissos in 1951, his mother also passed away. After Makronisos, the following year, he was again sent into exile to Ai Stratis and from there to Athens to Hatzikosta prison, from where he was finally released in 1951.
In addition, he was acquitted by the Five-member Court of Appeal of Athens, due to doubts. “If you want to be called a man, you will never stop fighting for peace and justice” I whispered, I had squatted for a while in front of the poet’s house and warmed my body with the winter rays and my soul with seeds his lyrics from here and there and various biographical details of him that I remembered again digging on the internet.
His first “appearance” to the Greek public took place in 1946, writing in the column of the magazine “Elefthera Grammata” and later he collaborated in the publication of the magazine “Themelio”. In 1952, he published his first poetry collection, entitled: “Battle at the edge of the night”. In addition, during the years of the Dictatorship, under the pseudonym Roccos, he translated or adapted works for magazines of various subjects.
“Our sin: that we wanted much, our crime: we did so little”
I rummaged through the poet’s verses and easily found myself from the places of his exile to the places of his loves and back again.
“Our palate is a graveyard where thousands of unspoken words rot”
Verses of his poetic work were set to music by great Greek composers, including Mikis Theodorakis and Manos Loizos. His poems were translated into at least 10 different languages. About 24 collections of his poetry have been published. He breathed his last in Athens, at the General State Hospital on October 30, 1988, from an abdominal aortic aneurysm, leaving behind rich poetic material.
“At night I have found a nice way to sleep. I forgive them all one by one”
The poet Tasos Livaditis dreamed of a revolution and described a society that never came and what appeared in the valleys of History, looked more like nightmares than his dreams.
“Nothing. Sleep. We are done. She has no more tears. Those who are still hoping in the background are crying.”
I had squatted for a long time, my knees were seized, they were buckled, I got up slowly, slowly and laboriously, with grief in my lap and futility in my fist. I was moving away towards the narrows of Metaxourgeio without any intention of going anywhere. Suddenly I hear behind me.
“And maybe you’ll have to lose yourself completely, to find out who you are someday”
I turned around and there was no one, it might have been my idea, I said, to the dog that was soaking up the sun outside the small cafe with the half-erased “cafe – Elpis” sign.
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