Almost twenty years after his death, I still see E.H. Gonatas searching frantically in the large leather bag he always carried, seemingly like a doctor, to find the precious tool that would best help him explore the world: his glasses, an eye drop, a photocopy, a newspaper clipping, his keys. It was as if he was trying to cure the contradictory and disturbing nature of reality with a minimal but necessary "nothing," well hidden, within the secret and uncontrollable spiraling of time – a doctor of our soul? Perhaps.

The critics of his generation called him a "dreamer," "paradoxographer," "hermit of Kifisia," "self-exiled in his workshop." Only after 1980 did his work begin to become known, discussed, inspire younger readers, gain devoted followers, find students, and be adapted for the theater. Because it is no secret that he introduced the Greek reading public to the virtues and magic of the so-called "short form," the literary miniature. He achieved this by consciously cultivating a prose with poetic scope.

This prose, peculiar and restless, is related to paradoxography, fantastic literature, the "novella of marvelous deeds," Breton’s "merveilleux," the dreamlike narrative, and has taken the shape of the brief and strange story.

This book began to be written some time ago. It was born during my friendship with Gonatas, which lasted from our acquaintance in 1980 until his death. Initial material was formed when I taught his work within the framework of postwar literature and avant-garde movements in the Department of Philology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The final form is the result of intensive effort in recent years.

The first part of the book follows the life and intellectual formation of the author through his work and correspondence, his relationship with his mentors, especially Nikos Engonopoulos, and with his friends Giorgos Kotzioulas, Giorgos Makris, Miltos Sahtouris, Dimitris Papaditsas, Nikos Kachtitsis, Alexis Akrithakis. The second part includes "Notes," in which I return more extensively to his beloved authors and friends and to key issues of his work.

E.H. Gonatas (1924-2006) published his first book in 1945, the heterodox and contemplative prose work The Traveler, at the age of 20, and continued with poetic and prose texts, The Crypt (1959) and The Abyss (1963). However, he was not included in any poetry or prose anthology published until the 1970s.

He was a writer of few works and for a long time operated on the margins of literary life. After 1980 he published the books The Hospitable Cardinal, The Preparation, and The Three Dimes. Both with his books and with his overall relatively obscure activity – the publication of the magazine First Matter in two issues, in 1959 and 1961, his exceptional translations of Ivan Goll, Coleridge, Flaubert, Lichtenberg, Antonio Porchia, and also the painstaking effort through which he introduced us to the Writings of Giorgos Makris – E.H. Gonatas offered a different perspective on literature in critical times.

On the cover: E.H. Gonatas, photographed by his nephew Lambros Valleras, in the late 1970s.