Dionysus and Apollo

Or how two brothers....ok,half brothers...represent the creative clash of two opposites in every human soul: Reason and ecstasy, structure and chaos, moderation and excess, the sacred and the profane.

 

I spend some time this morning reading about Domna Samiou, a tireless researcher and singer of traditional Greek folk songs. She passed away some days ago, aged 84. She had been honored and venerated for decades.But she had also been attacked by some critics for recording the so called "F****songs". In fact that was the album's title...

Bacchantes or Maenades, female worshipers and followers of Dionysus in crystal by Rene Lalique, 1927.

These are very very old traditional folk songs of the Carnival season. They are satirical and unashamedly pornographic and it is so funny to watch and hear a bunch of absolutely respectable scarf-wearing old ladies singing : " a p***sy is sitting on an apple tree and a phallus is begging it to come down...". I haven't seen anything more surrealistically funny and touching in my life. Flash back 2.500 years and these same old ladies would be taking part in Dionysus celebrations, letting out in profane song and dance, all the frustrations of their everyday lives.

 It is obvious that Dionysus is still strong and kicking and ruling the human psyche along with his more illustrious, logical and artistic brother, Apollo!

In fact the two gods shared the same house: The Temple and Oracle of Delphi. For nine months, Apollo lived there, on the slopes of the sacred mountain of Parnassus with his faithful Muses.

 But the sun God spent the winter months in the land of the Hyperboreans (that is somewhere in Scandinavia). For the three winter months his half brother, Dionysus, took over the management! And, Zeus, did he have a good time!!!

He roamed the forests of Parnassus riding his wild panther mount with his, mostly female, followers (interesting how his first and most faithful fans had always been women). During the winter celebrations of the god in Delphi, woman envoys gathered from all over Greece for some wild night hunting.

Anthony Wardle a Bacchant with panthers 

Both gods were depicted as extremely handsome young men and shared the same father,yes you've guessed it, the King of Gods, Zeus. But Dionysus' mother was a mere mortal,so he was not among the 12 main deities in Olympus.And although Apollo's origins are clearly patriarchal and Dorian, Dionysus's seem to be much much older and very controversial. 

Some say that this ,almost always, intoxicated god of grapes and nature, originated in Lydia or Phrygia (on the southern side of today's Turkey),others claim he came from India via Egypt (one of his main childhood myths-dismemberment,death,resurrection- bears a striking similarity to the Osiris one)

 His was a disturbing presence. According to the ancients, he turned tame housewives into wild, mad, sensuous creatures ,who run naked through the wilderness, having sex and killing animals with their bare hands...He was a god adored by women, both in rural areas and in cities. He was a shamanistic figure, full of passion and irrationality, who withstood the onslaught of reason, enlightenment, moderation, harmony and structure his Dorian blond brother symbolised. Interestingly, the two opposites do not exclude each other as in Good-Bad religions, but coexist like Yin and Yang.

Women of Amphissa  having a nasty hangover after a night hunting with the god.
By Sir Lawrens Alma Tandema.

In Greek mythology and everyday life Apollo and Dionysus represent the eternal clash of reason and ecstasy (a Greek word meaning "to step outside one's self").Euripides honored Dionysus in his-very bloody-tragedy "Bacchae" (one of the by-products of the very ancient festivals and mysteries of Dionysus is theatre). Jung and Nietche recognised the archetypal qualities of the divine brothers and the tango they dance in our souls.


 



 It is not wise to deny our respect to either. Apollo is our civilized persona. Dionysus is the wild one, lurking beneath the veneer, inspiring awe and terror to our oh- so -rational mind. Ancient Greeks had the wisdom to accept both aspects. Christianity embraced the bright faced Apollo's attributes of harmony, reason, healing, moderation and comfort. But it painted the archenemy of all creation, the Devil, using characters from Dionysus entourage:Goat legged Satyr and Pan, both with horns and a tail, intoxicated, ready for sex ,wild, unpredictable and unreasonable (lesser god Pan was striking humans with bouts of unreasonable terror: Panic).
Apollo, being the doctor God, would have explained that there is a time for reason and moderation and a time to let it all go, step out of  boundaries, let the wild one have is't way. It will sleep satisfied and wake up renewed.

The beauty of Athen's 1st cemetery.

I've always loved the First Cemetery of Athens! Even as a child,  following my godmother to clean and tidy our family grave, I was soothed by the deep shadows of the cypresses,the constant birdsong and the profound peacefulness of the place.

Not to mention the beautiful statues ,which have gained the cemetery the title of "the best open-air gallery of Athens".

Lush shadow and peace right in the middle of the city, by the banks of where Ilissos river once flowed.

A few days ago I woke up determined to visit it. Checking the date I realized it was exactly 27 years since my mother passed away and exactly 17 since my great aunt and godmother died. So, I grabbed a handful of flowers and the camera and spend a couple of hours  paying my respects and taking pictures. 

It was a glorious sunny day .
One of the angels of the Pesmatzoglou family monument was in the shade,the other on the bright sunshine.

The First cemetery of Athens was founded a few years after the new Greek State had welcomed-well not really but whatever-it's first King, a German prince,Otto. It was 1834 when the cemetery first opened it's gates and since then it has offered eternal rest to anyone who has been anyone in Athens:prime-ministers and generals,heroes of the revolution and poets, famous actors and composers, archbishops and pop idols but also to common people wise enough to buy a plot there in time (as my great grandfather did in the 1920s).

A brave general with an impressive mustache and under his glare, one of the selfassured and plumb felines of the cemetery. Notice the resemblance???

What I really love to do is to read the inscriptions on the older of the graves and imagine their story. Who was Kathrine who died 18 years old in 1891? I'm almost certain she died of TB, rampant in those days. Her grave is left to the tender care of mother Nature ,a sign that the family has died away.

Sophia has also been 18 when she died of TB. But her grave is the most famous in the cemetery. The sculpture of the young woman by G.Halepas, a legendary artist of the 19th century, is known as the "Sleeping girl of Halepas" .Every single day for more than 140 years, there is a fresh flower in her hand .

A beloved wife, a rather sour looking seated matron ,Glory or History in very flimsy clothes pointing to an inscription (unreadable now due to the elements) and a bunch of Egyptian Sphinxes on a famous and extremely wealth merchant's monument...
Hundreds of life stories-remembered or forgotten- hundreds of marble faces eroding under the bright sun.

My mother's family had always had a very friendly relationship with death. Every Saturday, during Lent in Greece, is dedicated to the souls of the departed. In anticipation of Easter, family graves have to be spotlessly clean and supplied with fresh flowers. So, many years ago, my godmother used to organise cleaning trips to various dear departed ones,armed with a thermos of hot chocolate and lots of delicious ham sandwiches.

The cemetery trees are a heaven for all kinds of birds. They get fat by gorging on the,traditional for memory services, boiled wheat.

 We used to start at N.Smyrna cemetery "to visit great aunt Elpiniki and great uncle Savvas", then to the beloved First to "say hi to her parents (and my great grandparents)". While vigorously scrubbing the marble with lots of water and soap, she loved to tell me wonderful family stories- wars, romances, and scandals all over the Balkans! Then we used to have lunch in the shade of the cypresses before heading back home. What a treat !!
 "Bless her soul!", I thought grabbing the soap and a bucket of water! The grave was under a carpet of pine tree needles and needed a good scrub!
I then left the flowers in the vase and headed for the exit.

A funerary procession passed me by near the gates! And just three feet away,fur sparkling, eyes alert, Life posed for the last photo :) 

Why Greece failed (example 1)

If you live abroad and come to Greece for vacations,this country rocks!!! It really does. But for us locals, everyday life in Greece is an exercise in surrealism and the fine, time-honored art of surviving on a daily bases without:

a. Getting a stroke.

b. Strangling a public servant.

c. Being locked in a lunatic asylum

d. All the above together

A recent example of why we failed as a State is the infamous extra-tax -on-your-house thingy. The extra tax comes with the electricity bill-which means if you don't pay the whole sum, the power company cuts the power. So far, it is just unfair...the surreal comes next...nah nahnana nahnanana...you are now entering the Twilight Zone...

After waiting in vain for three months for the tax bill to arrive,I got worried. I asked some of the other tenants in our apartment building and I found out that out of  9 apartment owners ,only 4 had received the tax bill. 

Further investigations revealed that the Municipality of our area has no data base of  all the buildings it should tax. Why? Because the power company-which has the data and issues the bills-doesn't want to share them with the Municipality. But it is the Municipality which has to inform the power company to whom it should send the bills. So if your house or shop is not in the Municipality's data bank=no extra tax bill....wait!!!

It gets even scarier!!!

I also found out that the Municipality should have been collecting another property tax since 1997,which it hasn't collected from about 30% of apartments and shops ,because the said shops and apartments do not "exist" in their data bank!!! AND NOBODY IN CHARGE EVER CHECKED!!!

The Municipality/State has been loosing millions of euros every year since 1997.Multiply this by all municipalities in Greece and send me the biiiiiillll and a box of antidepressants!!

A huge box!

The new Johnnie Walker ad  is quite good for the morale!

Keep walking Greece :)

To the inevitable question: Are they-the people in the management of the State- stupid/lazy/incompetent? the sad answer is "No".

It is by design that this State is functioning by isolating one public service from the other. It is by design that this unbeatable Hydra bureaucracy is strangling anything new (like it has been fighting for years against fully computerising the whole public sector)!

(The "why" is a long story, requiring some knowledge of Greek history and a M.D in psychiatry...sigh*

P.S .Now,as good and loyal citizens, we have to:

1.Pay the "normal" property tax for the last 5 years.

2. Pay the "normal" property tax for 2012

3.Wait for the extra 2011 property tax with the next electricity bill

4.Wait for the extra 2012 property tax with the next electricity bill.

 But what the hell?!

For a lesson in surrealistic survival it was priceless!!!