Most of them laboured in secret to lighten their countrymen’s lot. The administration was fierce, but it was also idle and corrupt. Under these conditions ruse and compromise became virtues. Flexibility and quick wits were the keys to survival and the road to riches. (Nés dans le serail, as it were, ils en connaîssaient les détours.) This is where the word Romiòs begins to take on its pejorative sense. It implies that, the enemy once removed, a deposit of the wicked arts by which the Greeks had outwitted him for ages, still remained: weapons now aimed at their fellow-countrymen. Abetted by the untamed customs of the mountains, they slowed up the smooth conduct of a regenerated and sovereign state. Indeed, the phrases “romaïka pragmata!” and “romaïkes douliès!”—“Romaic things!” and “Romaic doings!,” always accompanied by a series of disapproving clicks of the tongue—mean “slovenly goings-on” or, worse still, “dirty work.”
The Turkish occupation is a boundless limbo. But it is full of wonderful stories of Odyssean ruse, picaresque adventure and the skilful exploitation of chaos. Tales abound of soaring careers and distant wanderings in search of fortune which can vie with anything in Gil Blas, Hadji Baba and the Arabian Nights. Romiosyne at its humblest and most comic level, is epitomized in the shadow-play of Karayiozi. This fascinating dramatic tradition is thought to have begun in China; at all events, it held sway for centuries in many lands from Manchuria to the Adriatic Sea and in each country it moulded itself to the ideas and manners of the inhabitants. In some parts of the Orient it was rabelaisian and lewd. Among the Greeks, it took on a lively, witty, parabolic turn. It has become profoundly and inalienably Greek.
The actors are transparent silhouettes cut out of camel-hide and coloured, jointed and manipulated by the invisible puppet-master and his apprentices on long rods which flatten and animate the figures against a stretched white linen screen lit from behind. The scene, often adorned with palaces, mosques and seraglios, is laid in Constantinople or in occupied Greece at any time in the last two or three centuries. The one-act plays performed there, of which there are over a hundred—a fixed canon varying slightly according to the skill and imagination of the puppet-master—aim only to amuse; but they do much more: they depict, by comedy, caricature, parody and farce, the entire Romaic predicament.
The protagonist and anti-hero is the Karayiozi himself. He is the epitome of the poverty-stricken and downtrodden rayah; his home is a wooden hut on the point of collapse. (“Karayiozi’s hut” all over Greece, is synonymous with a hovel.) He is small, bald and hunchbacked; one of his arms, apt for the whole range of Greek gesticulations, is preternaturally long, a survival of the phallus which has such a bawdy role to play in the Arabian Karaguz. Ragged, barefoot, illiterate, nimble and versatile, he is a fast, pert and funny talker, and his speech is full of comic mistakes. Though he is a willing thief—Romaïka pragmata!—he is often caught; he is bold and timid by turns, skilled in subterfuge and disguise, volatile, restless, resilient, irascible and pugnacious, soon dashed, swift to recover. His schemes nearly always go awry and bring on a harvest of blows. Talking, jumping, gesticulating, arguing, he darts about among his towering and more static fellow-shadows with the restlessness of a firefly. However absurd and monstrous his behaviour we are always on his side. He is deeply likeable, a comic David surrounded by Goliaths. A small man pitched against intolerable odds, he corresponds to something in all of us; a pin thrust again and again into the balloons of vanity and self-importance; he is a perfect manifestation of the passion of the Greeks for mocking themselves and each other. The laughter of the audience is directed against themselves by proxy, and they know it.[3] He is the essence of Romiosyne.
Karayiozi, then, is a Romiòs. But “Romiòs” covers a wider field than the candle-lit quadrilateral that confines his antics. It suggests, as we have seen, the ghostly splendours of Byzantium, the sorrows of servitude, the “dirty washing,” and the absurdities of the shadow-play. It also bears a meaning which is free of any sad or derogatory undertone. It conjures up feelings of warmth, kinship and affection, of community of history, of solidarity in trouble, of sharing the same hazards and aspirations, of being in the same boat. It is the emblem of membership of the same family, a thing that abolishes pretence and explanation and apology. A Greek recognizing another Greek in adversity or exile or emigration, salutes him as a fellow-Romiòs and stands him a free meal or a bed and lends him a helping hand.
In spite of the intervening lustre of Byzantium and the woes of foreign domination, consciousness of descent from celebrated ancestors in the ancient world survived, however dimly, among even the humblest Romaíoi. All this, for modern Greeks, is caught up in the word “Hellene.” Though time, among the unlettered, may have driven this feeling into the subconscious or reduced it to the irrelevance of an obsolete legend, it was always there; even though circumstances removed the word from general currency for centuries. Scholars and men of letters, sadly reduced in numbers, kept this heritage alive and when the Turks were driven away at last, it was not a revived Roman Empire of the East, centred on Constantinople, which emerged, but Hellas with its capital (after a period of indecision) in Athens. The dome of St. Sophia retreated—(not very far; it still hovers beguilingly in the awareness of all Greeks)—and the Parthenon, neglected for many centuries, sailed aloft as a new lodestar for their national life; and it was not as Byzantines or Romaics that the Greeks, perhaps rubbing their eyes with wonder, began their new life, but as Hellenes. It may be compared to the revival of an old, forgotten, but authentic title long in abeyance. Romiosyne, as we have seen, had the pungency of the familiar and the immediate; Hellenism has the glamour of an idea. They are two aspects of the same thing.
It would be hard to fire the blood of an English road-mender with the names of Boadicea, Caractacus or Cadwallader, or a French grocer’s with that of Vercingetorix. At the rebirth of Greece, the inhabitants were suddenly, so to speak, taken in hand by rulers and hellenizing poets and scholars and by professors who had studied in the universities of the West, and introduced to a whole museum-load of forgotten marble relations. They were pleased; they were also overcome with shyness. These gods, philosophers, generals and heroes filled them with awe. They had always known about their grand kinsmen in a half-apprehended fashion; even though the only one they knew by name was Alexander the Great, the connection was a source of vague pride. The ancients were now presented as exemplars, almost as Confucian cult-objects. The modern Greeks, thought the classical innovators, had only to take them to their hearts for an emulous new Golden Age to begin and outshine the reign of Pericles.
It is hard to blame them. They lived in an age of wonders. The marvel of liberation had happened. There was much to be criticized in the recent Romaic past, many alien barnacles to be chipped away, modes of thought to be rooted out and impurities to be purged from the noble Greek tongue....It was too early for them to understand that their fellow-countrymen’s descent from the ancient Greeks (and from a Greek past far remoter than the fifth century B.C. they had arbitrarily singled out as their starting point) was more convincingly asserted by hundreds of humble customs and superstitions that seemed backward and barbaric to their mentors, than it was by the rather charming neo-classical stucco buildings which began to spring up in Athens. It was impossible for them to grasp that the despised demotic was the rightful heir to the speech of the ancients, while the “pure” idiom in which they wrote—for Katharévousa has never been heard on human lips[4]—was, for all its noble descent, stone dead. Perhaps the words “Hellas” and “Hellene” sounded as awkward and unreal to them, at that moment, as “Britain” and “British” still do, after a century or so of empire and commonwealth, to the inhabitants of the British Isles: words only used by sovereigns, politicians, passport officers, journalists, Americans and Germans; and no one else; least of all the Welsh and Cornish, the only islanders entitled to them; only, quite correctly, by the inhabitants of Brittany.
The ancients were a theme for pride; they were also a cau
se for self-reproach. How could the Greeks compete with these antique resurrected wonders? (How can any of us?) Their inadequacy suggested a hopeless falling-off; those stony faces were a standing rebuke. An inspiration to some, to others they were a source of bewilderment, and for a few, a subject for resentment, almost for anger: why not blow up the Parthenon? The new trends seemed to put the whole of Romiosyne, all that made life worth living, in the wrong. Anyway, the Romaic Pantheon was full. The spirit of Byzantium was enthroned there, and Constantine and Helen and Basil the Bulgar-Slayer and the last Palaeologue; a whole phantom parade of emperors whose City was still in bondage. There, too, were the Virgins, the saints and the martyrs of Orthodoxy: their ikon lamps burned in all their houses; their frescoes, dark with incense and blurred by the kisses of a thousand years, covered the walls of their churches. It was not for their mystical significance that this painted army was loved, but for the miracles they wrought, and their ghostly succour in dark days. To these had been added the mountain chiefs and the sea captains of the War of Independence: Kolokotrones, Karaïskakis, Athanasios Diakos, Miaoulis and Kanaris and many others. These whiskered heroes were Romaíoi to the backbone. Apotheosis crowned them; theirs were the yataghans, the long guns and the fireships that had delivered Greece from the Turks. Leonidas and Miltiades, meanwhile, could look after themselves. They had performed brave deeds against the Persians, it was said. But it was such a long time ago.[5]
There is a purpose behind this preamble: to lull the reader into receptivity before launching a private theory of my own which I shall call the Helleno-Romaic Dilemma. The cornerstone of this theory is the supposition that inside every Greek dwell two figures in opposition. Sometimes one is in the ascendant, sometimes the other; occasionally they are in concord. These are, of course, the Romiòs and the Hellene; and for the sake of the present theory, the word “Hellene” is distorted to mean only the exact antithesis to “Romiòs.” All Greeks, according to my theory, are an amalgam, in varying degrees, of both; they contradict and complete each other. But it is the antagonism of the two which concerns us here, not their possible synthesis. “Two souls, alas,” my hypothetical Greek might exclaim with Goethe, “live in my breast.” It suggests a lifelong Zoroastrian war in which the Hellene is Ormuzd and the Romiòs, Ahriman. I advance all this with diffidence. Greek friends on whom I have tried out the Helleno-Romaic Dilemma were interested and amused by the idea and thought there might even be something in it. The easiest way to present it is by drawing up two parallel lists of characteristics, allegiances and symbols taken at random from a larger catalogue which could cover many pages. Some, for the sake of illustration, are purposely slight and frivolous. Here they are.
THE ROMIÒS THE HELLENE
1 Practice Theory
2 The Concrete The Abstract
3 The real The ideal
4 Private ambition Wider aspiration
5 Argument Rhetoric
6 Concentration Diffusion
7 Instinct Principle and logic
8 Improvisation System
9 Empiricism Dogma
10 Love for the recent past Love for the remote past
10a Admiration for Western material progress, distrust of Western theories Admiration for European civilization, rooted in ancient Greek liberal ideas. Some distrust of Western materialism
11 Retention of Romaic customs Adoption of Western customs, abhorrence of Romaic orientalism
12 Distrust of the law. Readiness to bypass it by manœuvre, favouritism or by any of the bad old short-cuts Respect for the law. Hesitation, on principle, to bypass it by the means opposite
13 Self-reproach about Greece’s material limitations Self-reproach about Greece’s Romaic blemishes
13a Respect for learning as a means to advancement Respect for learning for its own sake
13b Belief in quick returns Reliance on the long view
14 Reliance on inherited precedent and proverb Search for analogy in the ancient world
15 Seeing the outside world as a field to be exploited Travel in search of knowledge or legitimate commerce
16 Evaluation of things in terms of money Admission of other values
17 Reluctance to admit ignorance Admission that there are things beyond his range of knowledge
18 Compulsive labelling of everything, whether accurate or not[6] Compulsion to define, explain and classify
19 Looking on Greece as outside Europe Looking on Greece as a part of Europe
20 Seeing Europe as the region of alien “Franks” Europe the region of fellow-Europeans
20a Reaching agreement by bargaining Settlement by negotiation
21 Belief in the sacredness and indestructibility of Romiosyne Belief in the destiny of Hellas
22 Strong regional loyalty, distrust of people from different provinces, e.g. Crete v. Mani Centripetal tendency towards Athens. Contempt for provincial rivalries and limitations
23 Certainty of every Romiòs of his own suitability for the office of Prime Minister Decent self-confidence
24 Shrewdness, impaired by (a) credulity and (b) needless suspicion Circumspect acumen
25 Tendency to resolve political difficulties by revolution Belief in constitutional method, with revolution only as a last resort
26 Lack of scruple to gain personal ends The soul of honour
27 Fatalism Philosophic doubt
28 Quick wits Lively intelligence
29 Marriage wholly determined by dowries and parental bargaining Milder version of the same, modified by romantic and aesthetic factors
30 Blind tribal allegiance to a political party, based on regional bias or personal allegiance to a figurehead Strong political partisanship with a greater chance of its being based on private deliberation
31 A passion for newspapers, especially the political sections A passion for newspapers, especially the political sections
32 Unquestioning belief in the printed, as opposed to the written or spoken, word. This is corrected intermittently, by the remark: “Nothing but lies in the newspapers.” The attitudes are often reconciled by the paradoxical ability to believe two contradicting statements simultaneously A stricter approach, and a reduced capacity for the reconciliation of opposites
33 Abhorrence of a naked fact, and haste to clothe, amplify and elaborate: “The mythopoetic faculty” Comparative absence of this bias
34 Daemonic capacity for exertion under stimulus of enthusiasm, interest, patriotism, friendship, ambition The same, tempered by 7, 8, 9
35 Tendency to flag if stimulus and urgency are removed. Dread of boredom The same, corrected or mitigated by 7, 8, 9
36 Procrastination due to 34, and lack of sense of time. Dislike of routine Climatic influences, corrected or mitigated by 7, 8, 9
37 Trust in improvisation (8) and the tendency to allow things to fall into decay through feeling of impermanency of human affairs Belief in maintenance and up-keep, due to greater hope for establishment and security
38 Sensitiveness to insult, which leads to rash, violent and self-destructive acts, or enduring and implacable feud Same sensitiveness, but reaction less violent and calling for milder sanctions
39 Despair and melancholia (stenachoria) if things go wrong. May be mitigated in time by fatalism, proverbs and a saving resilience Same tendencies considerably reduced, corrected by comforts of philosophy
40 Fondness for leventeiá, i.e. the dash and fire of youth, a cheerful temperament, courage, speed, quick reactions, good looks, skill in singing, dancing, marksmanship, capacity for wine drinking and fun, often accompanied by meraklidilíki, its sartorial expression An acknowledgement of the characteristic with a distinctly more restrained and sober approach
41 Importance of philotimo, “honour-love,” i.e. honourable conduct between humans, in chaos of Romiosyne, and, above all, private amour propre, like the Spanish pundonor, or personal dignity. It is wounds to this—“he touched my philotimo”—which must often lead to 37 Honour regarded as a precious lega
cy from the ancient Greeks
42 Bessa: a word of Albanian origin, meaning the inviolability of an oath, especially in guerrilla warfare. The opposite of treachery Probably the same as above
43 Settling the world’s problems over endless cups of Turkish coffee in cafés Settling the world’s problems over endless cups of Turkish coffee in cafés
44 Fondness for cards, backgammon, etc. The same
45 Sobriety and frugality relived by dionysiac interludes Interludes likely to be less dionysiac
46 Addiction to amané songs, i.e. wailing, nasal rather melancholy melopees in oriental minor mode Violent abhorrence of amané as alien and barbaric survivals
47 Urban addiction to rebétika songs and dances: i.e. Athenian low-life, fatalistic, near-apache hard luck stories, accompanied by special stringed instruments. Supposed to have originated in hashish dens. Complex solitary dances, perhaps from Asia Minor. The choreographic expression of the songs Distaste, based roughly on the same reasons as the foregoing. Tendency towards Western music
48 Rustic devotion to mountain, island and country dances (usually a chain of dancers led by a solo performer) Toleration of these as “wholesome” and as part of heroic tradition and folklore and for their possible descent from the ancient Pyrrhic dance
49 Rustic devotion to klephtika or Klepht songs: long, fierce and semi-oriental in style, celebrating mountain warriors’ feats of arms Toleration of the same in theory if not in practice, as humble mementoes of Hellenism’s triumph over barbarian occupation: “Wholesome”: unlike amané and rebétika
50 Outward disapproval, but secret sympathy, in the distant past, for brigandage and piracy; survivals of a lively and anarchic life Understandable condem nation of these as stumbling blocks to government and the functioning of a European state: “Romaikès douliès” at their worst
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