Abstract
Chapter 6 analyses three Greek historical novels published in 2004, 2005, and 2008, all of which deal with Greece’s Ottoman legacy in ways that challenge hitherto prevalent perceptions of this legacy. The chapter highlights the novels’ use of non-Greek protagonists as a means to develop a less ethnocentric historical consciousness yet without losing the devotion to Greek language and culture. The novels adopt nostalgia and friendship as literary tropes to create emotional engagement and cultural intimacy with a side of the Greek past that has been hitherto ignored or denounced. As the plots are all set in the late Ottoman period, modernization, Europeanization, and nationalism play a central role and point to evaluations of the contemporary epoch.
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Notes
- 1.
In a frequently quoted interview, the leading author and intellectual Georgios Theotokas, from the so-called ‘Generation of the Thirties’, called remnants of ‘Oriental’ (Ottoman Turkish) culture in contemporary Greek culture ‘the dirty linen’ (Fermor 1966: 100).
- 2.
Greece, of course, shares Greek as national language with Cyprus, but in both countries it is a language of ‘Hellenism’ contrary to, for example, English or Spanish which are used as a specific national and literary language in many different nations.
- 3.
In January 1996, a serious military crisis erupted between Greece and Turkey regarding the territorial rights to some uninhabited islets in the Aegean Sea called Imia in Greek, Kardak in Turkish. During the crisis, the navies of both countries were mobilized and US diplomacy worked at full speed to mediate between the parties to prevent a heated incident. Three Greek soldiers lost their lives when their helicopter crashed over the islets, but it was never revealed whether the crash was an accident or a result of open fire. The dispute ended without an official settlement regarding the islets’ territorial belonging but with a mutual agreement of respecting disagreement (status quo ante). In 2016 and 2017, symbolic acts and statements from officials in both countries prove that the islets still have the potential to function as a trigger of tension and enmity between the countries.
- 4.
Video from the public TV channel NET: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpNOB4kQYU0 (accessed 14 June 2017).
- 5.
Georgios Dalaras, Asia Minor (1972). Lyrics by Pythagoras and music by Apostolos Kaldaras.
- 6.
Dimitris Kitsikis (1981: 307) refers extensively to the same interview where Papadopoulos said: ‘Personally, I believe that history leads us towards a federation of Turkey with Greece. It will happen in say 20 or 50 years. But it will happen’.
- 7.
Maria Repousi was head of the academic team behind the writing of a new history textbook. It was implemented in the sixth grade of primary school in 2006 but withdrawn after only a year due to fierce protests from the Church hierarchy and a signature petition initiated by a conservative nationalistic Internet forum. See also Chap. 2 for more on these controversies.
- 8.
http://news.in.gr/greece/article/?aid=808446 (accessed 3 October 2016).
- 9.
http://www.tovima.gr/opinions/article/?aid=102902 (accessed 3 October 2016).
- 10.
On this issue as well as Liakos’ position, see the analysis by Erik Sjöberg (2017: 132–133).
- 11.
- 12.
For an account of how the concept of nostalgia in literature has been revised in the theoretical literature in recent decades, see my chapter ‘ “Everything Has Its Place in God’s Imaret”: Nostalgic Visions of Coexistence in Contemporary Greek Historical Fiction’ (Willert 2018).
- 13.
In Crete and to some degree also in Thessaloniki, Muslims spoke Greek as their primary language. As we shall see, the phenomenon of Greek-speaking Muslims is also a central point in the novel Imaret by Yannis Kalpouzos.
- 14.
Today Bitola in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
- 15.
Pontian refers to Greek Orthodox inhabitants of the Black Sea region.
- 16.
In April 2002, at its eighth congress the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) changed its name to KADEK (Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress) and claimed to commit itself to fighting for a democratic solution within the existing state system instead of aiming at the creation of a Kurdish nation-state (Gunes 2012: 140).
- 17.
Crossing of religious boundaries was a more widespread phenomenon in the Ottoman Empire than is usually recognized. From oral testimonies by Greek Asia Minor refugees, we know that religious holidays and sacred shrines were often shared by Muslims and Christians, even if the testimonies by Christians mainly highlight that Muslims approached their Christian religion to indicate its superiority (Doumanis 2013: 110–114).
- 18.
The Greek spelling of the Turkish name Necip is Νετζίπ [Netzip].
- 19.
The chapters are entitled with the name of the respective protagonist who narrates the chapter in the first person. Thus, when I cite from the book a parenthesis indicates the initial of the narrator (L for Liontos and N for Necip) and page number. The first and last chapters are narrated in third person by an impersonal narrator. Quotes from these pages are referred only with page number.
- 20.
As mentioned in the Introduction, imarets were Islamic soup kitchens often associated with mosques, caretaking functions for the elderly or sick, travellers’ lodgings, and learning institutions (see Introduction, p. 16 n. 23).
- 21.
The most famous example being Ivo Andric’s The Bridge on the Drina (1945).
- 22.
On Ottoman clock towers see, for example, Uluengin (2010).
- 23.
Folkloristic realism, or ethografia, emerged as a literary trend in Greek letters from the 1880s as a result, on the one hand, of influences from European realism and naturalism, and on the other, demands in domestic political and cultural life for a national literature of the people. It has been a recurring feature in Greek literature up through the twentieth century, and now it is revived by the current trends in historical fiction on the Ottoman period.
- 24.
The novel Imaret can be characterized as a chronicle of the town of Arta and as such it continues a tradition in Greek literature that was perhaps initiated with Pantelis Prevelakis’ Chronicle of a Town (1937), which is a heavily nostalgic depiction of the Cretan town Rethymnon from 1898 to 1924 that also speaks respectfully of the town’s Muslim inhabitants, and to some extent idealizes the cultural coexistence of the time before the forced expulsion of Cretan Muslims in 1923. Maro Douka’s Innocent and Guilty (2004) also takes up the genre of the town chronicle, in her case of Cretan Chania, but with a narrative twist as the historical town is experienced through the eyes of a contemporary Turkish descendant of the expulsed Muslims.
- 25.
Personal written interview with author (22 March 2017).
- 26.
Throughout the novel calendar years are indicated according to both Muslim and Christian calendar.
- 27.
An eyewitness account by a Christian (Greek) woman who was expulsed from Cappadocia in 1923 describes with similar words the departure: ‘We saw our houses for the last time, our land, and we cried. […] We kneeled, crossed ourselves, took a handful of earth […] and while crying we mounted the animals’ (Testimony from the Center for Asia Minor Studies, Mourelos 1982: 21).
- 28.
The author himself estimates that it can have been read by up to 500,000 readers: ‘So far 115,000 copies have been sold, while the readers are estimated (more readers within the same family, borrows from libraries and borrowing from person to person, something that in the years of economic crisis has exploded) at 500,000’ (personal written interview, 22 March 2017).
- 29.
Personal written interview, 22 March 2017.
- 30.
Personal written interview, 22 March 2017.
- 31.
The Greek Christian protagonist’s life depended on the nourishment he could get from the Turkish Muslim protagonist’s mother because his own mother couldn’t feed him; the successful career of the Turkish protagonist depended on the Greek education he could get by learning from his Greek friend and eventually attending his Greek school.
- 32.
A similar plot is seen in the blockbuster A Touch of Spice (2003) directed by Tassos Boulmetis, which tells the story of a childhood love between a Greek boy and a Turkish girl in Istanbul in the early 1960s. The relationship is abruptly ended with the Greek boy’s family’s expulsion to Greece but the nostalgia of that love, both between the two individuals but also between the expulsed and their former home, marks the lives of the protagonists who finally meet again as adults, only to recognize that the common life they had experienced is gone forever, the common language of their childhood erased by the homogenizing efforts of nation-states.
- 33.
Sipahis (Σπαχήδες in Greek) refers to the Ottoman cavalry corps (Greene 2015a: 7–9 and 82).
- 34.
The name Ismail brings to mind the first contemporary Greek historical novel that touched upon the issue of national and religious identity in the light of Ottoman history, Ismail Ferik Pasha: Spina nel cuore (Galanaki 1989). Both Galanaki’s Ismail Ferik Pasha and Kalpouzos’ grandfather Ismail are Muslims with a Christian background: the first was captured by the Ottoman army as a child and forced to convert, the other is a descendant of Christians who converted to Islam. Yet, it is hard to tell whether the intertextual reference is intended. The narrative strategies of the novels couldn’t be more dissimilar, but both play on double identities reflecting a past with more cultural, religious, and linguistic mixing than in the age of national homogenization.
- 35.
- 36.
Ibid.
- 37.
Personal written interview, 22 March 2017.
- 38.
As mentioned above, the author believes that up to half a million have read the novel (see footnote 27).
- 39.
In 2015, the novel was published in two volumes, in an edition adapted for young adults.
- 40.
- 41.
Mackridge rightly refers to exceptions such as Vasilis Arvanitis by Myrivillis, The Chronicle of a Town by Prevelakis, and Captain Michalis by Kazantzakis (Mackridge 2003).
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Willert, T.S. (2019). Appropriating the Ottoman Past in Three Novels: Greek-Turkish Friendship, Nostalgia, and Religious Coexistence. In: The New Ottoman Greece in History and Fiction. Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93849-3_6
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