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ο μέγας ανατολικός
"Ο Μέγας Ανατολικός" του Ανδρέα Εμπειρίκου είναι το εκτενέστερο νεοελληνικό μυθιστόρημα, οκτώ τόμοι, 2.104 σελίδες, και χωρίς αμφιβολία συνιστά ένα από τα εντυπωσιακότερα και εν ταυτώ τολμηρότερα κείμενα της ευρωπαϊκής λογοτεχνίας. Αποτελεί το έργο ζωής του Εμπειρίκου, καθώς η συγγραφή του αρχίζει το 1945 και ολοκληρώνεται ύστερα από πολλές ενδιάμεσες φάσεις το 1970. Κυκλοφορεί για πρώτη φορά το 1990 -η έκδοσή του διαρκεί δύο χρόνια- και σήμερα επανεμφανίζεται με τη μορφή ενός Ανθολογίου, που αποτελούσε πόθο του ίδιου του συγγραφέα.Το θέμα του μυθιστορήματος είναι ο δεκαήμερος παρθενικός πλους του υπερωκεανείου "Μέγας Ανατολικός" από το Λίβερπουλ στη Νέα Υόρκη τον Μάιο του 1867. Επιβάτες κάθε τάξεως και επαγγέλματος, μαζί με το πλήρωμα, διαπλέουν τον Ατλαντικό, με το γιγαντιαίο υπερωκεάνειο, μια πρωτόγνωρη ηδονική Κιβωτό, απολαμβάνοντας όλες τις μορφές του έρωτα άνευ ορίων άνευ όρων. Επηρεασμένοι από τον τιτάνιο και πρωτογενή ερωτισμό που εκλύει το ίδιο το πλοίο, ζουν την απόλυτη ελευθερία και ηδονή για να καταλήξουν, μέσα από την απόλυτη αθωότητα και ευτυχία, στον Νέο Κόσμο. Στην κιβωτό του Μεγάλου Ανατολικού βρίσκεται συγκεντρωμένη όλη η κοσμοθεωρία και η ουτοπία του ποιητή - η λογοτεχνική, η ψυχαναλυτική και η πολιτική.Σύμφωνα με τον Ελύτη, η απώτερη αξία του έργου "δεν βρίσκεται σ' αυτά [τα περιγραφόμενα]· βρίσκεται στην παναγαθοσύνη του ποιητή, που διαχέεται πάνω στους χαρακτήρες και στις πράξεις των πλέον διαφορετικών τύπων του έργου [... ] και αναεκπέμπεται στον αναγνώστη σαν ένα είδος ευλογίας. [...] Η αγαθότητα του Εμπειρίκου έρχεται από -και τραβάει για- πολύ μακριά. Δεν είναι η δεοντολογική των θρησκευόμενων ή η βλακώδης των αδυνάτων. Υποδηλώνει μια πίστη: ότι τα υλικά και οι προϋποθέσεις για το καλό έχουν δοθεί στον άνθρωπο, που αν δεν τα εκμεταλλεύεται είναι από δικό του λάθος, από την ανικανότητά του να υπερνικήσει τις μακραίωνες προλήψεις και τα χωρίς λόγο κατατυραννισμένα στο σκότος της ψυχής του συμπλέγματα. Διόλου άσχετο λοιπόν ότι ο "Μέγας Ανατολικός" ναυπηγήθηκε με τα υλικά του ψυχαναλυτή στις δεξαμενές ενός οραματιστή και προφήτη".
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Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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114 people want to read
About the author
Andreas Embirikos
33 books43 followersAndreas Embirikos was a Greek surrealist poet and the first Greek psychoanalyst.
Embirikos came from a wealthy family as his father was an important ship-owner. He was born in Brăila, Romania, but his family soon moved to Ermoupolis in Syros, Greece. When Embirikos was only seven years old they moved to Athens. While he was still a teenager his parents divorced; he started studying at the Faculty of Philosophy of the National and Capodistrian University of Athens, but he decided to move to Lausanne to stay with his mother.
The following years Embirikos studied a variety of subjects both in France and in the United Kingdom where he studies at King's College London.
However it was in Paris where he decided to study psychanalysis together with René Laforgue.
His poetry can be defined by two major tendencies. On the one hand, he was one of the major representatives of surrealism in Greece. His first poetic collection, "Ipsikaminos", was a heretic book, characterized by the lack of the punctuation and the peculiarity of the language. As the poet himself admitted it was precisely the originality and extravagance of his work that contributed to his relative commercial success.
On the other hand, together with Yorgos Seferis, Embirikos was the most important representative of the generation of the 1930s. He contributed greatly to the introduction of modernism in Greek letters and he helped change once and for all the poetic atmosphere of Greece.
Arguably, the most significant and influential work by Embirikos is "Megas Anatolikos". The poet dedicated many years of work to this particularly long novel, that consists of more than one hundred chapters. In this work, Embirikos narrates the first trip of the ocean liner Great Eastern (Μέγας Ἀνατολικός) from England to America. Embirikos describes the Great Eastern as a hedonic vessel, where the multitude of the passengers enjoy love without and beyond limits. During the ten-day trip (an allusion to the Decameron) they discover a new form of happiness and innocence. For this work, Odysseas Elytis called Embirikos "a visionary and a prophet".
Embirikos also wrote articles of literary criticism; at least two of them are worth-mentioning. The first is "The hidden necrophilia in the works of Edgar Allan Poe"; the second, "Nikos Engonopoulos or the miracle of Elbassan and Bosphorus".
Embirikos came from a wealthy family as his father was an important ship-owner. He was born in Brăila, Romania, but his family soon moved to Ermoupolis in Syros, Greece. When Embirikos was only seven years old they moved to Athens. While he was still a teenager his parents divorced; he started studying at the Faculty of Philosophy of the National and Capodistrian University of Athens, but he decided to move to Lausanne to stay with his mother.
The following years Embirikos studied a variety of subjects both in France and in the United Kingdom where he studies at King's College London.
However it was in Paris where he decided to study psychanalysis together with René Laforgue.
His poetry can be defined by two major tendencies. On the one hand, he was one of the major representatives of surrealism in Greece. His first poetic collection, "Ipsikaminos", was a heretic book, characterized by the lack of the punctuation and the peculiarity of the language. As the poet himself admitted it was precisely the originality and extravagance of his work that contributed to his relative commercial success.
On the other hand, together with Yorgos Seferis, Embirikos was the most important representative of the generation of the 1930s. He contributed greatly to the introduction of modernism in Greek letters and he helped change once and for all the poetic atmosphere of Greece.
Arguably, the most significant and influential work by Embirikos is "Megas Anatolikos". The poet dedicated many years of work to this particularly long novel, that consists of more than one hundred chapters. In this work, Embirikos narrates the first trip of the ocean liner Great Eastern (Μέγας Ἀνατολικός) from England to America. Embirikos describes the Great Eastern as a hedonic vessel, where the multitude of the passengers enjoy love without and beyond limits. During the ten-day trip (an allusion to the Decameron) they discover a new form of happiness and innocence. For this work, Odysseas Elytis called Embirikos "a visionary and a prophet".
Embirikos also wrote articles of literary criticism; at least two of them are worth-mentioning. The first is "The hidden necrophilia in the works of Edgar Allan Poe"; the second, "Nikos Engonopoulos or the miracle of Elbassan and Bosphorus".
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 4, 2021
Η συγκεκριμένη έκδοση υποτίθεται είναι επιλογή από τα καλύτερα μέρη του βιβλίου. Δεν είναι έτσι. Είναι λογοκριμένη έκδοση κατά την οποία αφαίρεσαν το 50% του βιβλίου προκειμένου να μην σοκάρει. Απο ότι διαπίστωσα η αρχική έκδοση είναι ενα ακραίο πορνογράφημα που δεν μπορεί να σταθεί στην κοινωνία του σήμερα, κυρίως λόγο των σεξουαλικών σκηνών μεταξύ ανηλίκων. Ωστόσο αφαιρώντας το σεξ από μια τσόντα, το αποτέλεσμα είναι ενα αδιάφορο, βαρετό και ασυνάρτητο βιβλίο που δεν έχει λόγο ύπαρξης. Αντί για πλήρη διαγραφή, θα μπορούσαν να είχαν διαγράψει μόνο τις ηλικίες των νεανίδων και κανείς από τους αναγνώστες δεν θα καταλάβει το νεαρό της ηλικίας τους. Τα δυο αστέρια της βαθμολογίας είναι για την συγκεκριμένη έκδοση που είναι πραγματικά δύσκολο να την διαβάσει κάποιος και οχι για το βιβλίο στην πλήρη μορφή του (την οποία δεν γνωρίζω).
November 7, 2019
Ότι χειρότερο έχω διαβάσει. Δεν πίστευα ότι θα έλεγα ποτέ κάτι τέτοιο. Είναι απλά ερωτικές σκέψεις του γράφων και τίποτα άλλο. Αυτό φαίνεται κιόλας από το ότι Δεν το εξέδωσε ο ίδιος. Αν το είχα γράψει εγώ λχ θα ήμουν για φυλακή με τα παιδεραστικα σκηνικά και την κοπροφαγία. Επειδή όμως το έγραψε ο Εμπειρίκος (τον οποίο πραγματικά εκτιμώ , κυρίως ως λάτρης της ποίησης) είναι "αριστούργημα"
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October 15, 2021The Great Untranslated: O Megas Anatolikos by Andreas Embirikos
This is to inaugurate a new category of this blog. It will be an idiosyncratic overview of works not translated into any language that I can read or not translated at all, but which, judging by the secondary sources, seem to me not only tantalisingly interesting reading matter but also an important contribution to world literature.
I would like to begin with Andreas Embirikos, the famous Greek surrealist poet, and his epic novel O Megas Anatolikos (The Great Eastern). Embirikos worked on this meganovel for more than two decades, and it was published only after his death in 8 volumes. The novel has 100 chapters and clocks in at more than 2000 pages. The main characters of the work are the passengers of the ocean liner the Great Eastern travelling from Liverpool to New York in May, 1867. The action takes place within 10 days, but despite this, it is not so much Boccaccio’s Decameron this notorious book has been compared with, but rather Donatien Alphonse François’s The 120 Days of Sodom. The novel is said to contain lots of extremely explicit scenes, and this translation of the more innocuous passages might give you the idea. Follow this link with caution: definitely not-safe-for-work type of content! One can imagine something like a voyage of the ship Anubis from Gravity’s Rainbow described in minute detail over a couple thousand pages. In the open ocean, far from the shore and unaffected by any social constraints and taboos, the passengers of the ship indulge in all possible hedonistic pursuits many of which might be mildly called perversions. Besides the Marquis de Sade, the volume is also an obvious homage to Jules Verne’s nowadays obscure A Floating City. It is a sea adventure novel set on board of the Great Eastern in which a woman travelling with her husband realizes that the man she is in love with is among the passengers. Jules Verne got his inspiration by actually taking a transatlantic trip to the United States on this ship with his brother in 1867.
The publication of the novel made quite a splash in Greece, dividing the reading public into belligerent opponents and ardent supporters of Embirikos’ magnum opus. It is worth noting that among the champions of the novel was the Nobel Prize laureate Odysseas Elytis who admired its visionary quality. According to him, in contrast to the Marquis de Sade who used sexual subject matter to depict hell on earth, Embirikos employed the same material to create paradise. Thus the liner comes to represent some kind of sexual utopia and universal celebration of eros flying in the face of the strait-laced Victorian society.
You can find some additional information on Embirikos’ works on the website of the poet’s Greek publisher Agra. As far as I know, there isn’t a separate volume of Embirikos’ poems available in English translation yet, and in order to at least have some idea of what it is about you might have to check this anthology of Greek surrealist poetry or the mammoth A Century of Greek Poetry 1900-2000. There is no any information even about some plans to translate The Great Eastern into any language. All we have to content ourselves with for the time being is his poetry.
Whale Light
The initial form woman took was the braided throats of two dinosaurs.
Later, time changed and woman changed too.
She became smaller, more lithe, more in keeping with the two-masted (in some countries three-masted)
ships that float on the misfortune of making a living.
She herself floats on the scales of a cylinder-bearing dove of immense weight.
Epochs change and the woman of our epoch resembles the gap in a filament.
© Translation: 2004, Karen van Dyck
From: A Century of Greek Poetry: 1900-2000
This is to inaugurate a new category of this blog. It will be an idiosyncratic overview of works not translated into any language that I can read or not translated at all, but which, judging by the secondary sources, seem to me not only tantalisingly interesting reading matter but also an important contribution to world literature.
I would like to begin with Andreas Embirikos, the famous Greek surrealist poet, and his epic novel O Megas Anatolikos (The Great Eastern). Embirikos worked on this meganovel for more than two decades, and it was published only after his death in 8 volumes. The novel has 100 chapters and clocks in at more than 2000 pages. The main characters of the work are the passengers of the ocean liner the Great Eastern travelling from Liverpool to New York in May, 1867. The action takes place within 10 days, but despite this, it is not so much Boccaccio’s Decameron this notorious book has been compared with, but rather Donatien Alphonse François’s The 120 Days of Sodom. The novel is said to contain lots of extremely explicit scenes, and this translation of the more innocuous passages might give you the idea. Follow this link with caution: definitely not-safe-for-work type of content! One can imagine something like a voyage of the ship Anubis from Gravity’s Rainbow described in minute detail over a couple thousand pages. In the open ocean, far from the shore and unaffected by any social constraints and taboos, the passengers of the ship indulge in all possible hedonistic pursuits many of which might be mildly called perversions. Besides the Marquis de Sade, the volume is also an obvious homage to Jules Verne’s nowadays obscure A Floating City. It is a sea adventure novel set on board of the Great Eastern in which a woman travelling with her husband realizes that the man she is in love with is among the passengers. Jules Verne got his inspiration by actually taking a transatlantic trip to the United States on this ship with his brother in 1867.
The publication of the novel made quite a splash in Greece, dividing the reading public into belligerent opponents and ardent supporters of Embirikos’ magnum opus. It is worth noting that among the champions of the novel was the Nobel Prize laureate Odysseas Elytis who admired its visionary quality. According to him, in contrast to the Marquis de Sade who used sexual subject matter to depict hell on earth, Embirikos employed the same material to create paradise. Thus the liner comes to represent some kind of sexual utopia and universal celebration of eros flying in the face of the strait-laced Victorian society.
You can find some additional information on Embirikos’ works on the website of the poet’s Greek publisher Agra. As far as I know, there isn’t a separate volume of Embirikos’ poems available in English translation yet, and in order to at least have some idea of what it is about you might have to check this anthology of Greek surrealist poetry or the mammoth A Century of Greek Poetry 1900-2000. There is no any information even about some plans to translate The Great Eastern into any language. All we have to content ourselves with for the time being is his poetry.
Whale Light
The initial form woman took was the braided throats of two dinosaurs.
Later, time changed and woman changed too.
She became smaller, more lithe, more in keeping with the two-masted (in some countries three-masted)
ships that float on the misfortune of making a living.
She herself floats on the scales of a cylinder-bearing dove of immense weight.
Epochs change and the woman of our epoch resembles the gap in a filament.
© Translation: 2004, Karen van Dyck
From: A Century of Greek Poetry: 1900-2000
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews