Tatiana Gritsi - Milliex

Tatiana Gritsi-Milliex (1920-2005). Tatiana Gritsi-Milliex was born in Athens (in the Thiseio district), the daughter of Michalis Gritsis and Eleni Salari. She completed high school through homeschooling and briefly engaged in dance. In 1942, she enrolled at the University of Athens. After a short period, she left her studies to focus on learning the French language (at the French Institute of Athens) and phonetics (at the Hellenic Conservatory). In 1939, she married the French scholar and philhellene Roger Milliex (whom she met at the French Institute), with whom she later had two children. During the German occupation, she joined the National Liberation Front and volunteered with the Hellenic Red Cross. From 1945 to 1975, she traveled—with intermittent returns to Greece—to France, Cyprus, and Italy. In France (1945-1946), the Milliex couple continued their advocacy for Greece, and Tatiana attended art history and aesthetics courses at the Louvre. During the same period, she participated in the First International Women's Congress in Paris, focusing on the resistance activities of Greek women. After Roger Milliex assumed the directorship of studies at the French Institute of Athens (1947), they returned to Athens, where they stayed until 1959. During this time, she worked at the Center for Asia Minor Studies, participated in various art exhibitions across Greece, and intensified her writing activities. This was followed by a long stay in Cyprus (1959-1971), where Roger worked at the French Cultural Center, and Tatiana focused on efforts to enhance the cultural landscape of the region. They then moved to Genoa, Italy, where they advocated for the establishment of a Modern Greek Studies chair at the university and opposed the Papadopoulos dictatorship, which had stripped Tatiana of her Greek citizenship. After the political changeover in Greece, they returned, and Milliex worked at the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (EIR) (1974-1975, 1983-1984) and ERT2 (1984-1985) as a program director. As a journalist and critic, she collaborated with numerous newspapers ["Anexartitos Typos" (1957-1959), "Anendotos" (1964-1965), "Avgi" (1974-1977), "Kyriakatiki Eleftherotypia" (1976-1984), "Ta Nea" (Cyprus - 1964-1970), "Dimokratiki" (Cyprus), etc.] and many magazines. She was a member of the Racine Academy in Paris, a founding member of the Writers' Society, a member of the Society of Greek Writers, the PEN Club, the Greek Literary and Historical Archive, the Society of Critics and Visual Arts, and the House of Fine Arts and Letters (president from 1981 to 1986). She was honored with the State Short Story Award, the Twelve Award, the State Novel Award, and the Academy of Athens Award. She passed away in Athens in the early hours of Sunday, February 13, 2005, at the age of 85. Her first official appearance in literature was in 1945 with the publication of her short stories in the magazine "Elefthera Grammata." During the occupation, she had illegally circulated a translation of Vercors' (Jean Bruller) work "The Silence of the Sea" and also engaged in theatrical translations performed by the Vouteris, Katrakis, and other troupes. Her first book, "Thiseio Square," was published in 1947, and from then on, she released a new book every two to three years. It is also noted that in 1973, Kedros published a part of her archive that was saved from the confiscation by the April dictatorship, under the title "Sparagmata." The main characteristics of her prose work include an emphasis on depicting psychological processes, which leads to a relaxation of the structure and coherence of her texts. Her writing is also marked by a strong poetic dimension, the presence of elements of imagination, memory—both experiential and intertextual—and internal time. For more biographical details about Tatiana Gritsi-Milliex, see Manolis Gialourakis, "Milliex-Gritsi Tatiana," in the Great Encyclopedia of Modern Greek Literature 10. Athens, Haris Patsis, n.d., and Georgia Farinou-Malamatari, "Tatiana Gritsi-Milliex," in "Post-War Prose: From the War of '40 to the Dictatorship of '67" Vol. VI, pp. 8-26. Athens, Sokolis, 1988. (Source: Archive of Greek Authors, EKEBI).