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The Weekend Neos Kosmos : 28 March 2015
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DIGITAL.NEOSKOSMOS.COM THE WEEKEND NEOS KOSMOS | SATURDAY 28 MARCH 2015 27 OPINION DIATRIBE DEAN KALIMNIOU Speaking Greek in March, in Olbia Kαι τώρα πώς εξέπεσαν, πώς έγιναν, να ζουν και να ομιλούν βαρβαρικά, βγαλμένοι - ω συμφορά! - απ' τον ελληνισμό. Cavafy If Cavafy's poem Ποσειδωνιάται is anything to go by, the phenomenon of diasporan Greeks feeling concerned about losing their mother tongue in their adopted countries is neither a product of the post-colonial, globalised capitalist world or a product of cultural imperialism. Instead, it is a historical inevitability. In his poem, set in Poseidonia in southern Italy, colonised originally by Greeks from Sybaris, who over a long period of time assimilated with their Latin neighbours, Cavafy sets out the manner in which assimilated Greeks struggle to make sense of their cultural heritage, going through the motions of conducting ‘Greek’ rituals, mouthing words they barely understand and finally, being overwhelmed with the sense that they have lost something they really can't define. Cavafy's poem was inspired by the ancient writer Athenaeus, who wrote that the Poseidonians celebrated an annual festival of ‘forgetting’, where they called up from memory the remnants of their heritage and, lamenting their loss, went their separate ways. Cavafy, and Athenaeus, are making a pertinent point - despite what we may have been led to believe by the various myths that underpin and inform our ethnic identity, geographic alterity does produce amnesia. Otherwise, LETTERS A genuine humanitarian The Honorable Malcolm Fraser, former prime minister, was a great Australian, a true statesman who promoted multiculturalism and a genuine humanitarian who advocated social justice. As prime minister, he gave us, amongst many other things: - multiculturalism (he was the first PM to adopt a formal multicultural policy); - SBS; - the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs (killed off by Bob Hawke in 1983); - Migrant Resource Centres. When it came to multicul- turalism and social justice, his political ideology was put aside. Post politics, he was a tireless community leader, a passionate social justice advocate, an international caring voice. His legacy in helping shape Australia will live on. Peter Jasonides Victoria Please note that the submission of a letter does not guarantee that it will be published. We reserve the right to edit your letter for clarity, grammar, spelling and style. Letters that use inappropriate language will not be published. All letters published will include the author’s name and location. Comments posted on Neos Kosmos’website, Facebook and Twitter pages can also be included for submission at the editors’ discretion and will be edited accordingly. Have Your Say LAST WEEK’S QUESTION: As talks resume between the Eurogroup and Greece, who should back down first? 81% Eurogroup 19% Greece THIS WEEK’S QUESTION: Αnother airplane crash claimed 150 lives this week. Do you still feel safe travelling by plane? Vote online now. Go to neoskosmos.com Published by Ethnic Publications Pty Ltd (ABN: 13005 255 087) of 169 Burwood Rd, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122. Printed by Rural Press Printing, Ballarat. NEOS KOSMOS Published since 1957 Contacts Reception Phone: (03) 9482 4433 Fax: (03) 9482 2962 Email: enquiries@neoskosmos.com.au Phone: (03) 9482 4433 Email: advertising@neoskosmos.com.au Web: www.neoskosmos.com Advertising letters Email: letters@neoskosmos.com.au NEOS KOSMOS - English Publisher: No. 5556 Address: Level 1, 169 Burwood Road, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122 Mail: PO Box 6068 Hawthorn West, Victoria 3122 Subscriptions Phone: (03) 9482 4433 Email: subscriptions@neoskosmos.com.au Fax: (03) 9482 2962 Letters should not be more than 200 words and they must indicate your full name, address and a day time telephone number for verification. By submitting your letter to us for publication you agree that we may edit the letter for legal, space or other reasons and may, after the publication in the paper, republish it on the internet or in other media. Editor-in-Chief: Sotiris Hatzimanolis Graphic Design: Peter Kelidis Fotis Petsinis Contributors: Dora Kitinas-Gogos Christopher Gogos Journalists: Proof Reader: Angela Costanzo Maja Jovic, Helen Velissaris, Michael Sweet, John Pyrros, Nelly Skoufatoglou, Anastasia Tsirtsakis what real need is there for our ‘Speak Greek in March campaign’, or indeed our many other festivals which, rather than exhibiting or expressing a dynamic culture of their own making, instead appear to be a litany of past remnants of memory, re-enacted so as to not be forgotten? Olbia Pontica, nowadays called Nikolayev and situated in the Ukraine, also provides a striking parallel to our contemporary reality. Founded by Greek settlers in the sixth century BC and serving as the granary of Greece, Olbia remained a predominantly Greek city until 63BC, when an army of Dacians and Getae captured and destroyed it. In his Borysthenitica, Stoic philosopher Dio Chrysostom of Prousa describes his visit to the city in 95AD. He relates how the local inhabitants were obsessed with remaining Hellenes. “Those that come here,” one citizen complained to Dio, “are nominally Greeks but actually more barbarous than ourselves ... but you would appear to have been sent to us by Achilles himself.” During his visit, Dio found himself in a time warp. The Olbians were determined to impress him with their Hellenism, much as we do visitors from Greece, but it was an archaic and obsolete version of Hellenism that they clung too. In addition, they appeared to Dio to be as much Scythian as Hellenic. His definition of ethnicity had nothing to do with genetics and descent but with the clothes, customs and language. The Olbians wore Scythian clothes and the Greek they spoke was barely intelligible. Walking through the town, Dio met a young man by the name of Callistratus on horseback and started a conversation. Callistratus seemed straight out of a museum. He was wearing 'barbarian' trousers and a cape, but on seeing Dio, he alighted from his horse and covered his arms, observing the old Greek rule that it was bad manners to show bare arms in public. Like other Olbians, he knew Homer by heart and was immensely proud of this, however poor his spoken Greek was. But Dio was even more fascinated to discover that Callistratus was gay. He boasted that he was already famous in the city for his courage in battle, interest in philosophy, his beauty and because he had many lovers. Dio saw this not as a statement of sexual orientation but as a wonderful survival from a bygone age. Here, in the time of the Roman Empire, flourished still the ancient Atheni- an veneration for homosexual love as the supreme intellectual experience. The Olbians supposed that in the world beyond the sea, homosexuality was still in fashion. At this stage Dio, being a stranger and overtly 'Greek', was being swamped by other Olbians who, believing that all Greeks ever did when they met each other was to discuss philosophy, begged him to discuss Plato with them. In the manner reminiscent of the 'older' Greeks, they all sat down outside the portico of the temple of Zeus to hold their debate. As the older men sat down, Dio noticed that they all wore beards, at a time when shaving had been the fashion in Greece for half a century. Dio was touched by the 'real Greekness' which he found surviving at Olbia. It appeared to him that they were more Greek than the Greeks in many respects, a sentiment echoed here in Melbourne time and time again by visiting Greek dignitaries and indeed, in sentiment and prac- tice, not much seems to separate the Olbian Greeks from their Melburnian counterparts two millennia later. As such, campaigns such as ‘Speak Greek in March’ and our various festivals may appear to some to be trite, kitsch, or anachronistic, given that they either present an idealised, ossified reconstruction of a culture that bears no resemblance or relevance to a modern reality, or, at least, in the case of the Speak Greek campaign, represents a futile and ultimately doomed attempt to stave off the inevitable. However, arguably what we can do, in view of our history and current practices, is to realise that perhaps insofar as any concepts of Greece or a Greek identity inform our composite sense of self, our culture is a culture of memory, and a culture whose sole aim seem to be to stave off amnesia. Having accepted this, we can then accept another key value, something that our diasporan ancestors have troubled themselves with for thousands of years: that regardless of the state of preservation, or of the intensity of our own efforts to effect such preservation, whatever we understand to be Greek culture or language is important to us, and since our culture is founded upon our attempts to preserve it, without its preservation, we will cease to exist. Undoubtedly, users of the Greek language among the second and third generations of Greek Australians do not possess in adequate numbers the fluency or dedication that will see the Greek language used for daily discourse beyond a generation or so. Yet faced with such a bleak prospect, our Olbian ancestors provide consolation. For the wheels of history turn in unexpected ways. Centuries after the Greek language died out, Catherine the Great resettled the entire area with Greeks eager to leave the Ottoman empire. The vibrant communities that they founded provided the impetus for the creation of the Philiki Etaireia and the emergence of Modern Greece. The creative impetus of these communities has largely died out as they too have become assimilated, culturally and linguistically, with their neighbours, yet the shared memory of both sets of ancestors' exploits appears to be enough to sustain them, until the next turn of the cosmic wheel. In absence of all else then, we can do as the Olbians do, and always remember. * Dean Kalimniou is a Melbourne solicitor and freelance journalist. Email your letter to: letters@neoskosmos.com.au
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