Solomos’ “Woman of Zakythos” and the Making of Refugees
Item
Title
Solomos’ “Woman of Zakythos” and the Making of Refugees
List Of Authors
Spatial Coverage
Subject - keywords
Date
4 December 2021
Abstract
In the past decade, as the official worldwide count of forcibly displaced people rose from 36.4 million in 2009 to 86.5 million in 2020 while support for refugee settlement programmes declined, the cultural interest in stories of refugees has been growing. The same period saw a surge in “refugee literature” – writing that grapples with experiences of dislocation and the tense relationships of refugees with hosts who jealously guard their sovereignty. The generic category or “refugee literature" is new, but modern creative works on refugees go back to the time when national borders were being drawn over the previous imperial order.
This paper reads Dionysis Solomos’ “Η Γυναίκα της Ζάκυθος” (The woman of Zakythos (1826–1833), about an upper-class woman who brutally rejects pleas for help from the displaced women of Messolongi, as refugee literature. Solomos composed the prose work in the aftermath of the siege and fall of Messolongi during the Greek Revolution. He gave narrative voice to a monk Dionysios, who bears his name. Most readings of the unfinished prose work concentrate on the characters of the monk and the woman – especially the monk’s reckoning with evil as he comes to terms with the woman’s refusal to help the desperate Messongitisses and denigration of the Greek cause, and he reflects back on his own (and possibly Solomos’) implication in the dark scene of cruelty. This analysis turns attention to the women of Messolongi, who are invisible in most readings of the story, despite the central role they play. Even a recent staged theatrical adaptation by Dimos Avdeliodis (2013 Athens Festival, 2014 archaeological sites, 2020 Piraeus) – which specifically linked the women of Messolongi with present-day refugees in Greece – did not place them on the stage. It is as if the innocence of the women as victims of the violent clash between national and imperial forces speaks for itself. This talk works against the tendency in order to bring out the sounds, gestures, and voices of refugees. Using tools of analysis from refugee studies, it takes the predicament of the refugee as the organizing question of the text that enables us to explore how refugees emerge together with the nation and Greece’s national poet bears witness to the shifting, gender-structured ground of political life in the Eastern Mediterranean.
(Edited description from organiser’s website)
This paper reads Dionysis Solomos’ “Η Γυναίκα της Ζάκυθος” (The woman of Zakythos (1826–1833), about an upper-class woman who brutally rejects pleas for help from the displaced women of Messolongi, as refugee literature. Solomos composed the prose work in the aftermath of the siege and fall of Messolongi during the Greek Revolution. He gave narrative voice to a monk Dionysios, who bears his name. Most readings of the unfinished prose work concentrate on the characters of the monk and the woman – especially the monk’s reckoning with evil as he comes to terms with the woman’s refusal to help the desperate Messongitisses and denigration of the Greek cause, and he reflects back on his own (and possibly Solomos’) implication in the dark scene of cruelty. This analysis turns attention to the women of Messolongi, who are invisible in most readings of the story, despite the central role they play. Even a recent staged theatrical adaptation by Dimos Avdeliodis (2013 Athens Festival, 2014 archaeological sites, 2020 Piraeus) – which specifically linked the women of Messolongi with present-day refugees in Greece – did not place them on the stage. It is as if the innocence of the women as victims of the violent clash between national and imperial forces speaks for itself. This talk works against the tendency in order to bring out the sounds, gestures, and voices of refugees. Using tools of analysis from refugee studies, it takes the predicament of the refugee as the organizing question of the text that enables us to explore how refugees emerge together with the nation and Greece’s national poet bears witness to the shifting, gender-structured ground of political life in the Eastern Mediterranean.
(Edited description from organiser’s website)
Type specialization
Format
Text
Language
Bibliographic Citation
Number Of Pages - Duration
00:20:00
Rights
BY-NC-SA Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Position: 5469 (11 views)