{"id":3965,"date":"2020-01-09T10:47:29","date_gmt":"2020-01-09T10:47:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marialampadaridoupothou.gr\/?page_id=3965"},"modified":"2020-07-05T17:15:37","modified_gmt":"2020-07-05T17:15:37","slug":"%ce%bc%cf%85%cf%83%cf%84%ce%b9%ce%ba%cf%8c-%cf%80%ce%ad%cf%81%ce%b1%cf%83%ce%bc%ce%b1-%ce%ba%cf%81%ce%b9%cf%84%ce%b9%ce%ba%ce%ae-%ce%b1%cf%80%cf%8c%cf%83%cf%84%ce%bf%ce%bb%ce%bf%cf%85-%ce%b1%ce%b8","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marialampadaridoupothou.gr\/en\/%ce%bc%cf%85%cf%83%cf%84%ce%b9%ce%ba%cf%8c-%cf%80%ce%ad%cf%81%ce%b1%cf%83%ce%bc%ce%b1-%ce%ba%cf%81%ce%b9%cf%84%ce%b9%ce%ba%ce%ae-%ce%b1%cf%80%cf%8c%cf%83%cf%84%ce%bf%ce%bb%ce%bf%cf%85-%ce%b1%ce%b8\/","title":{"rendered":"Mystic Passage, review by Apostolos Athanasakis"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n\n\n

Reading Mystic Passage<\/h4>\n

Readers of Hellenic poetry will be taken to new unfamiliar groves of painful delight, new meadows of ecstatic liminality by the intense, at times unbridled lyricism of Maria Lampadaridou-Pothou's poetry. The title of the present collection, Mystic Passage, may, to some people at least, conjure up images of the contemplative, the serenely transcendent. This poetess, however, is made of unremitting action. Even when she weeps, she must dance, and dance her way to God.<\/p>\n

\n

Winter will find me naked<\/em>
In a dilapidated room<\/em>
With time welling up through the holes of the floors<\/em>
Winter will find me stirring the ashes from my poetry<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Who is speaking? Is it the poet meditating on death? Is the voice that of a pagan, an Old Testament prophet, a Christian, a woman of our\ntime?
All of these, it seems, all of these in one. This quality of oneness\nis pervasive, not only because all things are connected, but also because\nthey are there for all. I, poetry, and the self are all one. Thus even when\nthe self appears it is almost without failure in a communal, sacrificial\ncontext:<\/p>\n

\n

I raise my poetry before<\/em>
\"Garment stained with blood\"<\/em>
I burn it to warm myself<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Maria Lampadaridou-Pothou's world is not one of the spirit, not in\nthe English sense of the word. For her it is her soul that struggles to\n\"loose the bonds\", a soul that is always rooted in the earth, even\nafter it goes beyond the \"mystic passage.\" This is a soul that smells and\nseeks freedom from a body that carries with it the \"odor of birth-blood.\"<\/p>\n

The boundless void, the sky, the frigid stars, the night that \"riddles\" the\nsoul and even Chaos all share an odor that is in no way immaterial or\nmetaphysical. The passage to the other time is to take place in the presence\nof the firmament and begins with the descent to the depths where\nthe shades of the dead dwell. The cosmic reality of our poetess is full of\nabysses, fissures, cracks. The passage to it is paved with the ubiquitous\ndrops of blood, the vengeful hyacinths, the many moist flames. It is as\nthough through the fire of passion a woman is reborn through her own\nwomb. All of her is reborn when she gives birth, and this wondrous\nevent is a veritable blueprint of the rebirth of her soul:<\/p>\n

\n

I bend over and look at myself <\/em>
A flower of the abysmal night <\/em>
To pass my body through to the other time<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The pervasive sensuality of the poems of the Mystic Passage is distinctly\nfeminine. The flame that appears in so many of her verses is now\nthat of love, but now again that of the Resurrection of the candlelit services\nof the Church, the Orthodox Church in whose mysticism and liturgical\npractices the poetess is steeped. To say that she is religious is to\nsuggest that there is some objectivity to her poetry, that she and her sacred reality are connected by habit or convention.<\/p>\n

\n

I am the mother of the Crucifixion, I<\/em>
And my eyes, full of blood <\/em>
Seek the light<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Icons, candles, incense, visions from Revelation, crosses, angels,\nsaints are not comforting accessories but part of the very essence of life.\nYet, this does not prevent her from hearing the footsteps of Homer, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras. Ancient and modem, pagan and Christian blend\ncreatively to produce the ontological spasm that precedes the leap into\nthe mystic passage. The odor of all things great and small, their sweaty\nand tearful existence, gives Maria Lampadaridou Pothou no sleep.\nThus, in \"Eighth Passage\" the odor of memory turns her lyrical strains\ninto an epic lament over the loss of lonia, her father's and hence her own\ntrue fatherland. Yet, in her poetry, all grief must flower into joy, ecstatic\njoy. The same theme, now in the \"Eleventh Passage,\" has a grandly\nepinician tone, becomes an irrepressible affirmation:<\/p>\n

\n

From the Propontis my days have traveled<\/em>
Full of princely islands and the gold of tombs<\/em>
From there I come like a white wave<\/em>
Upright on the winds<\/em>
With a breath of the deep and silent time<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There is a space within this poetess that is as large as the space without.\nHomer's lyre, Sappho's deathless words, the terse and cryptic utterances\nof the great pre-Socratic philosophers, the hum of vesperal\ndevotions, and the bells of Hagia Sophia are all deep within her. So then\nhers is a polyphonic tribute to a tradition that, being neither archival nor\nacademic, is life itself pulsating through her veins, blood of birth, odor\nof memory.<\/p>\n

Maria Lampadaridou Pothou is a prolific writer of plays, novels, and\nessays. Two of her ambitious critical essays, one on Odysseas Elytis and\nthe other one on Samuel Becket have received wide acclaim in Greece.\nShe knew both Nobel Prize laureates, especially Becket, and was greatly\ninfluenced by their work. Her poetry spills abundantly into her prose\nwork. Poetry is the force that moves and nurtures her at all times. \n Lernnos, the beautiful island where she was born and grew up, has stamped her life, filled it with creative tension. \"This place where I came to know suffering is in everything I do. The moment I feel its absence I seek it as one seeks his soul\" she told me when I met her in September 1996. \n She was finishing her monumental historical novel on the fall of Constantinople.\n I later found out that the Greek title of the novel would be They City has been taken, has been taken.!<\/p>\n

knew then I was in the presence of a great\nGreek woman, a woman of Greek letters, one whose memory bums\nlove and death to rise from the ashes like the Phoenix bird of myth\nimmemorial.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This review has been published in the New York academic magazine THE CHARIOTEER, An Annual Review of Moderm Greek Culture, in<\/span> 2000 \u2013 2002, <\/span>volume<\/span> 39\/40<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Apostolos Athanasakis is a proffessor of classics in the University of Santa Barbara<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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