#pandelis prevelakis

[no-passaran]

In writing all of this, I fear that the modern reader, who doesn't know it, might scorn it or consider that reading it is useless. But, nevertheless, he who forgets the arts and customs of old forgets life itself, made of the struggle of men and their hard work. The history that books write to be read in schools is nothing compared to the sweat that men poured daily on their tools and work materials to fill the world with rich and beautiful things. Each one according to his possibilities —this one with his carpenter's bench, that one with the anvil or the potter's wheel, the other one with the hammer, the needle, or the distaff— increased mankind's heritage, it was beneficial to himself and it was also more beneficial to the others than the spiteful warrior, who spends without producing anything and lives off the others' effort. For this reason, with just talking about the arts and tools of our ancestors I feel like I return to their times, I enter their lives and I enter their souls like no war history would allow me to do. This is where I want to drag the reader and that [the reader] doesn't get mad at me, because my intentions are good.

Pantelis Prevelakis (Παντελής Πρεβελάκης), Chronicle of a Town (1937).

[feral-ballad]

Pandelís Prevelákis, tr. by Kimon Friar, from Modern Greek Poetry; “I knew with you those quiet hours”

[thetrinityquotes]

We loved each other in the darkness of nights.

Aurora to Klaus

[evefreemind]

In the evening ...

[feral-ballad]

I was like an archangel who had fallen asleep, holding his sword in his hands.

Pandelís Prevelákis, tr. by Kimon Friar, from Modern Greek Poetry; “When under the last verse”

[feral-ballad]

..my body inflamed, flushed red, like an open wound that knits into flesh,

Pandelís Prevelákis, tr. by Kimon Friar, from Modern Greek Poetry; “In this upper jerusalem”

[feral-ballad]

I fought the winds and the wings of night, the fears and the longings of conscience.

Pandelís Prevelákis, tr. by Kimon Friar, from Modern Greek Poetry; “In this upper jerusalem”