Artikel
Introduction to Miltos Sachtouris poetics
18 januari 2006
[…] The currents that the poet converses with are symbolism and surrealism at their European starting points, but chiefly at their later established stage. Even so, he interacts with them also in their deeper traditions, as for example in the tradition of the primitives and the pre-romantics. Having said that, what is, elliptically and delusionally, at work here is imagination itself, whilst surrealism suddenly appears as the alter ego of the poetic thought process. In this case, however, it is a very clear language – clear, in the sense that it is cleansed of the forms set by conventional logic but nevertheless not in the least abstract, as it is full of cohesion and constancy with regard to understanding the irrational relationships between the things it describes. This is because, particularly for Sachtouris, symbols are not abstract or invented; they are the things themselves, things outside their boundaries and confines, things that are broken into. As a result, symbolism is meaningfully transformed within the poet and does not merely remain a mood or school of thought; it is a faithful representation of the motion of the world’s real symbols that are known to us all, and it is an inner motion – to the deepest depths of life – a liberated motion – to the point of dissoluteness. The poet can penetrate these symbols and, through their explored relationships and motions, he is able to transmit “actual” information, albeit without fusing with the symbols themselves. “The dog, the beggar woman, the fever, the mission are ‘actual’ symbols”, he admits. Of course, their motions and interrelationships within his poetry, as in the following example,
and a beggar woman selling cakes in the sky,
render, in conjunction with his poetic language, their existence absurd. “On the other hand, the cockerel-man, the dog-butterflies, the ghost-car are pure poetic symbols,” he clarifies. Which is to say that none of the latter has ever appeared as an experience in his field of vision. It does not matter whether these symbols, along with all the rest, in the end serve as expressive mortar, functioning as structural articulations and as key concepts in his poetic realities, irrespective of how he has experienced or conceived them.
Just as he shuns symbolic fluxes, he equally avoids abstract symbols, symbols-cum-ideas. After all, both his descriptions and his concepts are extremely concrete. Although one might say that he is a staunch exponent of our contemporary fragmentation – at its most ephemeral version, as a matter of fact – he does not omit to target, at a second phase, the so-called great and ultimate archetypal symbols. With regard to these two targets of Sachtouris, if we judge from the subject matter of a lot of his poems and, occasionally, from their technique, we may assume that apart from the spectacles of the street and the times, which we have already mentioned, he must have also watched numerous motion pictures, such as:
obscure B-movies of the kind dealing with mushy feelings, action and horror,
but also high-standard films that are imbued with the great and archetypal symbols, as we implied.
His own answer seems to repudiate the question. “I haven’t been to the cinema,” he explains, “since my mid-forties, at least not regularly”. And then, almost immediately after: “I like Bergman best”. He likes Bergman even at his most absolute, demonical moments – which are not in the least metaphysical, in Sachtouris’ opinion. What about Bunuel? For Sachtouris, he’s unequal. And the surrealism in his films? He would like it to be different, arising from the depths of things and manifesting like an explosion. “For instance,” and he jumps onto another art category, “just like it happens with Dylan Thomas”. Thomas holds a very high place in Sachtouris’ esteem, of late. In 1971, he wrote in his collection The Receptacle:
Today as I rage and enter the fifty second year of my life
it is with awe and admiration that I greet you
my brotherly spectre Dylan Thomas
who so young knew how
to put fire into words
and set them off
and they, with booms and god alike
exploded into the infinite.
Throughout his poetry, his love for the bards – an inherited penchant from neo-romantic symbolism – meets with his love for the lunatic, the demonised, the saintly; the subtitle of his poem is most eloquent: Dylan Thomas saintly king goes round and round like a lunatic. This love intertwines with his similar penchant for, and transcendence of, surrealism.
“Surrealism,” he confesses, “liberated me from many things. More than anything else, it liberated me from the stern education I received from my father and from the confines of narrow family traditions. And as an artisan it taught me how to discern genuineness in poetry and use all words without fear”.
Similarly, when his mother died, he distanced himself from every biological and social dependence and conventionality – “I began to liberate myself from many things, both from within and outside myself; my sight became more perspicacious and my hearing sharper,” he said, and, as a result, his umbilical chord to any intellectual tradition and conventionality was cut. And then surrealism came his way and shook him up. It did not provide a stylistic roof over Sachtouris’ head, nor did it become a method of linguistic communication. It may have dazzled him in his greener years, but even then a poem written in the surrealist style could have meant all manner of things for him: a bit of Kariotakis, or something of the “damned” of French neo-symbolism; a trace of contradictory reality, or the horror of the impending war and post-war era all around him; and of course the by-products or ultimate symbols from the motion pictures that we have already mentioned. In other words, for Sacthouris, surrealism meant turmoil at the very depths of life but never the alluring surface of passing fads.
Above all else, however, symbolism merged with his innate tendency which we mentioned earlier, enhancing it more permanently. It also enhanced his devotion to all those individuals in whose solitude quietly burns an unquenchable flame. His engrossment in insightful or controversial personalities is characteristic. For instance, he loves, and I am quoting more or less his own words, Hälderlin’s lonely fate, Kirkegaard or Kafka’s wasted existences, Blok and Rilke’s lives, inside and outside the social whirl. “The poet loves outside his lived life,” he repeats emphatically. He loves, and continues life and existence, transferring them from one art to another, as he is wont. And this life and existence bear the seal of a crystalline silence and crust, in the vein of Baudelaire or, possibly, of Cezanne, but surely also of our own Parthenis and definitely of Bouzianis. Another example might be that of painter Diamantis Diamantopoulos, another solitary figure of our times.
Due to Sachtouris’ persistent reference to mostly yesteryear’s recluses and iconoclasts, one gets the impression that his study and focus are, after a certain point in time, fixated, and that his point of view is deliberately isolated.
and a beggar woman selling cakes in the sky,
render, in conjunction with his poetic language, their existence absurd. “On the other hand, the cockerel-man, the dog-butterflies, the ghost-car are pure poetic symbols,” he clarifies. Which is to say that none of the latter has ever appeared as an experience in his field of vision. It does not matter whether these symbols, along with all the rest, in the end serve as expressive mortar, functioning as structural articulations and as key concepts in his poetic realities, irrespective of how he has experienced or conceived them.
Just as he shuns symbolic fluxes, he equally avoids abstract symbols, symbols-cum-ideas. After all, both his descriptions and his concepts are extremely concrete. Although one might say that he is a staunch exponent of our contemporary fragmentation – at its most ephemeral version, as a matter of fact – he does not omit to target, at a second phase, the so-called great and ultimate archetypal symbols. With regard to these two targets of Sachtouris, if we judge from the subject matter of a lot of his poems and, occasionally, from their technique, we may assume that apart from the spectacles of the street and the times, which we have already mentioned, he must have also watched numerous motion pictures, such as:
obscure B-movies of the kind dealing with mushy feelings, action and horror,
but also high-standard films that are imbued with the great and archetypal symbols, as we implied.
His own answer seems to repudiate the question. “I haven’t been to the cinema,” he explains, “since my mid-forties, at least not regularly”. And then, almost immediately after: “I like Bergman best”. He likes Bergman even at his most absolute, demonical moments – which are not in the least metaphysical, in Sachtouris’ opinion. What about Bunuel? For Sachtouris, he’s unequal. And the surrealism in his films? He would like it to be different, arising from the depths of things and manifesting like an explosion. “For instance,” and he jumps onto another art category, “just like it happens with Dylan Thomas”. Thomas holds a very high place in Sachtouris’ esteem, of late. In 1971, he wrote in his collection The Receptacle:
Today as I rage and enter the fifty second year of my life
it is with awe and admiration that I greet you
my brotherly spectre Dylan Thomas
who so young knew how
to put fire into words
and set them off
and they, with booms and god alike
exploded into the infinite.
Throughout his poetry, his love for the bards – an inherited penchant from neo-romantic symbolism – meets with his love for the lunatic, the demonised, the saintly; the subtitle of his poem is most eloquent: Dylan Thomas saintly king goes round and round like a lunatic. This love intertwines with his similar penchant for, and transcendence of, surrealism.
“Surrealism,” he confesses, “liberated me from many things. More than anything else, it liberated me from the stern education I received from my father and from the confines of narrow family traditions. And as an artisan it taught me how to discern genuineness in poetry and use all words without fear”.
Similarly, when his mother died, he distanced himself from every biological and social dependence and conventionality – “I began to liberate myself from many things, both from within and outside myself; my sight became more perspicacious and my hearing sharper,” he said, and, as a result, his umbilical chord to any intellectual tradition and conventionality was cut. And then surrealism came his way and shook him up. It did not provide a stylistic roof over Sachtouris’ head, nor did it become a method of linguistic communication. It may have dazzled him in his greener years, but even then a poem written in the surrealist style could have meant all manner of things for him: a bit of Kariotakis, or something of the “damned” of French neo-symbolism; a trace of contradictory reality, or the horror of the impending war and post-war era all around him; and of course the by-products or ultimate symbols from the motion pictures that we have already mentioned. In other words, for Sacthouris, surrealism meant turmoil at the very depths of life but never the alluring surface of passing fads.
Above all else, however, symbolism merged with his innate tendency which we mentioned earlier, enhancing it more permanently. It also enhanced his devotion to all those individuals in whose solitude quietly burns an unquenchable flame. His engrossment in insightful or controversial personalities is characteristic. For instance, he loves, and I am quoting more or less his own words, Hälderlin’s lonely fate, Kirkegaard or Kafka’s wasted existences, Blok and Rilke’s lives, inside and outside the social whirl. “The poet loves outside his lived life,” he repeats emphatically. He loves, and continues life and existence, transferring them from one art to another, as he is wont. And this life and existence bear the seal of a crystalline silence and crust, in the vein of Baudelaire or, possibly, of Cezanne, but surely also of our own Parthenis and definitely of Bouzianis. Another example might be that of painter Diamantis Diamantopoulos, another solitary figure of our times.
Due to Sachtouris’ persistent reference to mostly yesteryear’s recluses and iconoclasts, one gets the impression that his study and focus are, after a certain point in time, fixated, and that his point of view is deliberately isolated.
© Yiannis Dallas
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