The new book by Sotiria Stavrakopoulou, titled "The Inner Thoughts of Dino Christianopoulos," is published by IANOS. It consists of a series of conversations between the author and Dino Christianopoulos, a confessional "muhaberi," as he liked to call it, that lasted for almost ten years. Through this, the torrential and "provocative" personality of the poet unfolds, breaking all the barriers of the "decency" of today's intellectual world.

Excerpt from the Preface of the book: We met in 1982 when a mutual acquaintance of ours, the sculptor Kyriakos Kampadakis, took me to Christianopoulos' office in "Diagonio" to gift him my first collection of prose works—I was aspiring to join our literary circle, hoping he would like it and ask me to collaborate for Diagonio. I considered him, in a way, the patriarch of post-war letters and sought, let’s say, his blessing.

“Don’t call me ‘patriarch,’” he corrected me. “I’m a little afraid you’re missing the mark. Call me ‘patriarchidès.’” And we laughed along with those present in his office.

In March 2003, Dino favorably presented my book "The Receptions" at "Ianó," along with university professor George Kehagioglou, causing envy among my colleagues. At the end of that year, shortly before he had heart surgery, he organized a presentation of my literary work at the Telligoleio Foundation of Arts, which is part of the university.

The serious gentlemen of our neighborhood, public officials and shopkeepers, came with their wives—Wednesday afternoon, with the shops closed—to hear the famous poet Christianopoulos talk about their neighbor, a university professor and prose writer, as well as some of my colleagues and a few local writers. For two hours, he kept belittling me and my work, denying everything he had said at "Ianó" a few months beforehand.

“I am anti-conformist,” he replied to his various critics. “I don’t talk with the stereotypes of the respectable gentleman. And that makes some sense. A lot. Like an electric shock.” Nevertheless, I held no grudge against him; enchanted by his original writings and his literary texts, I wanted to write about his work.

Towards the end of 2004, I made him the same proposal. “Alright,” he said, “since you insist. But no studies and biographies. Enough. I’ve started to loathe literary things.” “Well then, what?” I asked him. “We love each other. We’ll throw ourselves into the muhaberi. Do you know what muhaberi is, Sotiroula? Chats, but free, without a set agenda or purpose. Yes, because in our social lives, we’re a bit uptight; we don’t talk as we think. [...] So, out of love, we will start a conversation, where I will tell you everything in the raw. Don’t laugh. As it comes to my mind. About my life, about my work, about my cats, about writers, about friends, about rebetes, about events [...] Oh, we’ve said a lot tonight. Goodbye now, I’m going home to feed my cats.

Biography

Sotiria Stavrakopoulou was born in Volos (1957). She graduated from the Philosophy School of A.U.Th. (1980) and works as an assistant professor in the Department of Philology at the above School. She has published various articles, studies, and book reviews concerning early folk and modern Greek literature.

She has published the following studies: Periklis Sfiridis – Paraphyades II: Literary texts and book reviews 1999-2008 (Kastaniotis, 2008) and Periklis Sfiridis – The prose writer and the criticism of his work (Estia, 2011), Ep’ aforimi – Studies on the literature of Thessaloniki (IANOS, 2011), The German occupation in Thessaloniki prose writers (Malliarris Paideia, 2015), Four interviews with Periklis Sfiridis (Malliarris Paideia, 2016), Bibliography – Literature of Konstantinos K. Papoulidis: 1960-2016 (Kyriakidis Editions IKE, 2016), The non-love: Virtù for senses – Interpretative views of late medieval and Renaissance literature: 12th-17th century (Kyriakidis Editions IKE, 2017), Art without embellishment (Malliarris Paideia, 2017).

She debuted in literature in 1980 with the short story collection "Ta Zoumbera" (Ermis), followed by the following works of literature: "The Chordofasa and the Circle" (narrative: Ermis, 1982); "The Laparotomy" (short stories: Livanis, 1983); "Jump" (novel: Ermis, 1989); "The Receptions" (novel: Estia, 2001); "The Drunken Woman" (novel: Estia, 2005); "Rare Truths" (novel: Estia, 2008); "Oh, Greece, I Love You" (novel: Estia, 2012).