Issue No. 13367
Concert, University Stadium, Caracas, August 1973
FEW 20th-century Greek artists have suffered more for their principles, and none has tasted greater glory and love from the public than Mikis Theodorakis.
From the Greek resistance in the 1940s to the fight against the junta in the ’60s, Greece’s most famous composer paid for his “utopian” communist beliefs with exiles and torture.
Today, at 84, he remains a cultural icon. And when he steps into the public discourse with statements and articles, Greeks listen. In an exclusive interview by email with the Athens News, Theodorakis explained why the concepts of homeland, nation, internationalism and communism remain a guiding force in his life.
How do you rate Greece’s political and cultural presence on the world stage today? And what is your vision for Greece’s future?
Mikis Theodorakis: Greece is absent from global political and cultural goings-on. As for my socio-political and cultural vision, I hope it is sufficiently known to everyone after 50 years of musical works, interviews, books and activities.
For decades your music gave a voice to the left wing. Do you agree with those who say that ideologies are over and there is no more left and right?
I want to believe that my music gave voice to all Greek people and not just some - because in difficult periods it expressed progress by castigating reactionary ideology. Naturally, it was embraced by those who, in that era, were leftists, whose ideology and action were a step ahead of their time.
Today, although my music remains the same, the left wing of that era is now called ‘traditional’. They cannot have the same relationship with my music which, remaining the same, continues today to express progress, which all of the existing political forces have stopped expressing.
On the contrary, many people continue to embrace my music, it gives voice to anonymous individuals and groups among the people. People who with their life, work and stance serve progress, attempting, just as Leonidas’ 300, who ‘battled under the shadow’.
For the 300, the ancient shields of the Persians hid the sun. Today the shields have been replaced by the black cloud emitted by unified, intertwined groups of power - economic, sectional and political - which altogether constitute the social, cultural and political reaction of the country.
Has your art been politically engaged?
Art and artists, whether they know it or not, are one of the main forces that help humanity move forward. From that perspective it is something much more than politically engaged. It is progress itself.
Your music brought great poets to the people. What role does poetry play in Greek cultural life and which poets have influenced you?
Greek poetry and art more generally were the province of the higher educational and social classes, creating a large gap parallel to the social-class gap that divides our country into the few and the many.
Hence, any act that would deprive the few, the powerful and the privileged of the monopoly of high art was authentically revolutionary because it armed the underprivileged majority with a new moral, ideological, political and fighting strength.
I stress that this was undertaken consciously and successfully only in our country. However, it was subsequently attacked due to the junta and the ideological-political confusion that followed its downfall, from which the powerful, the haves and those who decide on the fate of our people and land benefited.
Can the experience of your Lambrakis Youth movement teach contemporary youth? What advice do you have for young people who want to work for a better tomorrow?
The painful experiences of the civil war and dictatorship left behind psychological wounds and neuroses, which kept hostage the most sensitive and politico-ideologically sensitised portion of our people - such as the left, the intelligentsia and journalism. That led to party formations, neuroses and actions that influenced the younger generations, rendering them hostage to a past that led to impasses.
Now I think we are starting to see the freeing up from dependencies among the new generations, which face reality head-on as it is. Slowly, they will be able to become armed with fresh ideas, which will allow them to create another Greece than that of today, the Greece of the future.
The youth are entirely absent from TV and public discourse. Why is that?
That confirms my analysis. The dependent continue to dominate in TV and the press and, naturally, they fear and hate the free - as we say, the devil hates incense.
Blasting the terrorists
You were a leader in the anti-junta resistance. Are there threats to freedom today which the Greek people must resist? And how might such a resistance be organised?
If you mean the few hundred hotheads hidden in deep holes who emerge suddenly in the night wearing hoods to kill or place pots filled with explosives and gas canisters, they are not a threat. All they do is leave mothers without children, break windows and provide fodder to newscasts. That way their presence is magnified, citizens are terrorised and our country is maligned internationally.
At the same time, they serve as an excuse to divert public opinion from real and substantial threats. Those threats are hidden under our socio-political system and the mass media, which disorient the people in various ways and corrupt them in every way - spiritual, moral and psychological. Hence, if we really want to resist the true threat, there is only one way: the ideological-political.
What made you dignify the verbal attacks of a terrorist group - Conspiracy of Cells of Fire - with a response recently? How do you view the role and motives of post-1974 Greek terrorism?
I have learned to cut with a knife every attempt to throw mud at my person and life. As for the motives of Greek terrorism, my views are known. This is not the first time I was threatened. My name was mentioned in past proclamations of another terror group. Perhaps they know that in the entirely different conditions of foreign occupation and the civil war, I belonged to armed groups in Athens, so I can judge the huge differences between then and now.
I am sorry to be forced to say it, but from whichever angle - ideology and aims or the level of danger and consequences - there is absolutely no comparison.
I remember the voluntary surrender of [17N terror group operational head Dimitris] Koufodinas at police headquarters. The duty officer shook his hand and led him to the upper floors. After they served him coffee, they allowed him to draft his Manifesto to the Greek People, which an officer handed to his lawyer. The lawyer read it out before a forest of cameras, on live TV, so his words could reach from Didymoteiho to Ierapetra in Crete, and from Corfu to Samos, covering the entire country so nobody could complain.
If any of us [back in the resistance] were mad enough to surrender to the Gestapo on Merlin Street or police headquarters on Solomou St, they would have been made into minced meat in the first five minutes.
Of justice, Great Powers and Big Brother
How do you define social justice?
Social justice means each person benefits according to his own contributions and lives off the fruit of his own toil and not that of others. It is not the exploitation of the many by the few - the few who are not necessarily the best but rather the most cunning, and often the sort of whom the people say that they ‘step on corpses’ to reach their goals.
Personally, I believe in ‘just inequality’, on the condition that no person suffers from economic want, and that the standard of living will be the same for all, with small differences based on the truly superior contribution of those few who happen to have greater intellect and greater industriousness.
Many view the word patriotism as an insult today. How do you define it and how does it differ from nationalism?
An insult from whom, and for whom? I declare myself a patriot and I adore the Greek nation. Simultaneously, I am an internationalist and a utopian communist. Let anyone come and challenge me. I remind you that all these concepts - homeland, nation, internationalism and communism - were my guides in my every step, work, decision and act from the very beginning, in 1940, when we entered the war, until today. That gives me the right, for my part, to consider whoever battles these concepts as mudslingers.
Do you think the sharp rise in the percentage of migrants in the population constitutes a threat to Greek national and cultural identity?
Certainly it does, but only if we, the overwhelming majority of Greeks, continue on our path of generalised decay that characterises our national, social, political and cultural existence and life - namely, towards our own decline.
In that case, it is natural and inevitable that those few [migrants] will predominate in the vacuum left by our nonexistence as a people, stripped of the values needed by all peoples who want to live with the kind of authority and character needed to assimilate every minority to its advantage. Take for example the American people, who were not afraid with their free vote to raise onto the pedestal of the highest national office a representative of a minority.
You have often spoken of foreign powers and economic centres trying to distort Greek identity. To what extent has this happened and to what extent are Greeks responsible?
Who will dispute the fact that foreigners imposed on us the two [royal] dynasties that brought us hardships? Who will dispute their [foreign powers’] role in the Asia Minor catastrophe and the partition of Cyprus, and finally in imposing and maintaining the seven-year dictatorship? Just to stick to the most significant events. But for them to do all that and much more, it means there were Greeks that collaborated with them - naturally, not without profit and at the expense of their own country.
You have struggled against American influence in Greece. How strong is that influence and do you think Greek politicians sell out to help their rise to power?
The Americans came with the Greek Civil War and stayed. They preserved with their canons, napalm bombs and dollars the ‘national-mindedness’ that started almost from scratch, to become in the 1950s and ‘60s the dominant force, with its own throne, army, police and two parties, which to this day have trapped 80 percent of the electorate.
All this is the work of the Americans, who know it well, as do the nationally-minded beneficiaries who, although without a throne, have all the other props of power under their two-party control.
Hence, the word sellout is verbally redundant, since everything and everyone is under control anyway. Everyone - the descendants of the nationally-minded - knows that we continue to live in the shadow of Big Brother, whose favour all these people look to, either overtly or covertly - usually covertly.
After the Annan Plan, do you think Cyprus can be reunified as a free and independent state?
I have always believed that the future of Cyprus depends on Greek-Turkish relations. That led me to create Greek-Turkish friendship committees in 1986. Since we did not manage to establish relations of trust by resolving our differences, Turkey continues to block any settlement.
That was clear from President Christofias’ last initiatives, to which Turkish-Cypriot leader Talat largely responded. Then we had the negative intervention of Ankara , which still wants to maintain the wall of shame and the Turkish army on the island.
ATHENS NEWS 12/09/2010, page: 10-11
