Poet | Mikis Theodorakis: "The words should fly"

It must have been in 1980 that I experienced the premiere of "Canto General" in the Great Hall of the Palace of the Republic in Berlin. Thunderous applause for the composer Mikis Theodorakis, who also conducted, and for the singer Maria Farandouri with her magnificent mezzo-soprano. I hadn't expected such a monumental composition at a "Festival of Political Song," and I felt that Theodorakis was thereby demonstrating his closeness to my country, the GDR. Only later did I understand how this always remained a distance for him. Given his sense of personal independence, he would never have been able to cope if he had been required to conform.

"The Great Canticle" – an oratorio that, in my opinion, would have been just as appropriate for a church. Theodorakis had also composed church compositions, something I didn't know at the time. "Canto General" was based on the famous cycle of poems by Pablo Neruda (it was first published in 1953 in a re-imagining by Erich Arndt in Volk und Welt), but it also evoked the coup in Chile on September 11, 1973, when the military, led by General Pinochet, overthrew the elected socialist president Salvador Allende, who took his own life when the presidential palace was bombed. Neruda died twelve days later, reportedly of cancer. His house was looted and destroyed by the military.

The Chilean poet and the Greek composer were united in their desire to engage politically for a better world. Poetic dreams and the experience of violence – they lived in this tension. Born on the island of Chios on July 29, 1925, Theodorakis grew up in Tripoli on the Peloponnese, where he gave his first concert at the age of 17. At 18, he suffered imprisonment and torture for joining the resistance against the fascist occupation. Barely released, he was arrested again as a communist opponent, exiled to the island of Ikaria, deported to a concentration camp, and there so severely mistreated that he almost didn't survive. I read that he was buried alive twice. How did he manage not to break down?

And it continued. When he became active in 1967 after the "Colonels'" coup against the military dictatorship, he was arrested again and only released under international pressure. "In prison, Mikis received basketfuls of greetings and flower drawings from schoolchildren in the GDR," recalls Hartmut König, who was closely associated with the GDR singing movement. "World-renowned artists such as Arthur Miller, Dmitri Shostakovich, Leonard Bernstein, Laurence Olivier, and Paul Dessau had founded a committee for his release. In May 1970, the junta allowed him to travel to Paris."

Theodorakis lived in exile until 1974. He later revealed how he continually clung to music. As early as the 1960s, he developed his artistic concept of elevating his country's folk music traditions to a contemporary level. His "Sirtaki" for the 1964 film adaptation of Nikos Katzanzakis' novel "Zorba the Alexis," starring Anthony Quinn, became so famous that many considered it a folk song, a symbol of Greece.

Politically, he was always on the side of the left, which he sought to unite on various occasions. He worked for both of Greece's communist parties, the Eurocommunists (the "domestic" CP) and the Moscow-oriented (the "foreign" CP), but he also cooperated with the conservatives. Under Konstantinos Mitsotakis, he briefly became Minister without Portfolio in 1990, which he retrospectively described as a mistake.

Mikis Theodorakis lived to the age of 96 and was extremely productive throughout his life. He composed over 1,000 works – symphonies, oratorios, operas, chamber music, song cycles, ballet, and film music. He also wrote poetry. To mark his 100th birthday, Axel Dielmann Verlag has now published a collection of his poems, translated by Ina and Asteris Kutulas. It also includes drawings by Angela Hampel and photographs by his daughter Margarita Theodorakis. There are two forewords: by Konstantin Wecker and Hans-Eckart Wenzel.

The title "Paradise Hells" opens up the field of tension in which Mikis Theodorakis lived. Many of his early texts were written against the backdrop of extreme existential threat: "I had to fight for my life./ It had secretly escaped from my body/ and spread around me./ Thus I was inextricably bound/ to things and my brothers..."

A lyrical self that circles around itself and seeks to grasp itself, often in an inner dialogue. Passionate love and the search for comfort, grief and the unconditional will to resist. Powerful evocations of longing: "The words should fly./ Swim. Drown./ Disappear./ Until they find you./ Dissolve into thin air./ Become a bubble/ and before you know it/ fade away in your hand."

We see before us a man who was forced to develop great strength and who has the ability to pass this power on through his art. "His poetry demands to be heard, and I advise all readers... to let the words of Mikis Theodorakis melt on their tongues and recite his poems to themselves," writes Konstantin Wecker in his foreword. "Poems are music, and that's exactly how they should be absorbed."

"Here speaks a poet," rejoices Hans-Eckart Wenzel. "His language is enchanted by music and laden with the experiences of failure... The rhythm beats against forgetting and resignation." Remember: "We are dead when we admit defeat." We want to take this sentence to heart.

Mikis Theodorakis: Paradisiacal Hells. Poems & Lyrics. Edited by Asteris Kutulas and Raphael Irmer. Translated by Ina and Asteris Kutulas. With forewords by Konstantin Wecker and Hans-Eckardt Wenzel, drawings by Angela Hampel, and photos by Margarita Theodorakis. Axel Dielmann Verlag, 168 pp., hardcover, €26.