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The publishing house Η ΔΙΕΤΙΑ 1944-1945 represents a particularly critical and simultaneously highly creative period in the life of Andreas Empeirikos. The harsh December of 1944 holds a traumatic experience for him: He is arrested, without any specific charge (his surname was evidently sufficient), by the ELAS Civil Guard, the OP.L.A., interrogated, and taken hostage, along with many others, to Kroura in Boeotia.
He faces mortal dangers and great hardships until he manages to escape and return in poor condition to Athens, where he is hospitalized for some time. This traumatic experience is indirectly yet clearly captured in his well-known text 'The Road' (written 1964). We also know that Empeirikos has detailed his ordeal in the unpublished 'Chronicle of the Hostage' (written in the 1950s), which was intended to be an entry in the planned autobiographical Dictionary of his.
However, we do have a related publication from this Dictionary, specifically the entry 'Argo or the Balloon Cruise', from which we get a small yet clear picture of the events: “Argo or the Balloon Cruise: A story of my own, completely unrelated to Theotokas' 'Argo'. I completed this story during that dreadful December of 1944, while heavy gunfire and explosions from the street fighting could be heard day and night in the blood-soaked Athens, just a few days before I was unjustly arrested as a hostage or, as was later proven, as a preordained person by the men of ELAS.”
We insist on the fact of Empeirikos' hostage-taking, because, as we believe, his miraculous rescue motivated him so much that the fear of death became, as he would later declare, not only 'the inspiration of life' but also a momentum for creation.
From the very first months of 1945, when things have calmed down somewhat, and the poet has recovered, he begins writing some texts, which for various reasons would be published much later – as is also the case with his own 'Argo.'
Moreover, 'Argo' is not only situated within the grim atmosphere of the civil war but, as we will learn later, constitutes the first Part of Empeirikos' unique trilogy 'The Ornaments of Love and Chariots' which we are publishing today. The second Part of the trilogy is 'Zemphyra or The Secret of Pasiphae', the first text that we presume was written in 1945.
We do not know exactly when the writing of this text began, but we learn, from the relevant chronological indication at the end of the respective manuscript, that it was completed on June 15, 1945. The next text, the third Part of the trilogy, is 'Beatrice or The Love of Buffalo Bill', a text that, as we will see, is directly related to the romantic story, the fiery 'romance' of the poet with his later wife Vivika.
The writing of the third Part of the trilogy, as also indicated by the chronological marker at the end of the manuscript, lasted exactly eleven days: it began on July 24, 1945, and ended on August 3.
Manufacturer
- Author
- Andreas Empeirikos
- Publisher
- Agra
- Publishers
- Agra
- Type
- Romantic-Sentimental
- Subtitle
- Argo or Plough of the Airpost. Zemphira or The Secret of the Passion. Beatrice or The Love of Buffalo Bill
- Cover
- Soft
- Number of Pages
- 249
- Release Date
- 12/2012
- Publication Date
- 2012
- Dimensions
- 12x17 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9789605050139
Important information
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