Πεντζίκης: Αγκαζέ

Abstract

Please note: This article is in Greek. In this paper which is a chapter of a forthcoming book publication on the literary work of N. G. Pentzikis, I examine the notion of “engagement”. I begin with a text published in the journal Paramilito in which we are informed that in 1941 the close circle of Pentzikis’ friends were very upset because when walking through the city of Thessaloniki the author wanted to walk linked together arm to arm. They expressed their objection but Pentzikis insisted this attitude has nothing to do with an accepted or unaccepted social practice but was a profound engagement to become united (omoousios) with the other persons. The author’s attitude of course is identical towards not only the physical presence of others, but also to the function of language, narrative structures, aesthetical approach, social ideologies, myths and religion. To put it in other words, Pentzikis abandons himself in the “hands” of things, events and situations that occur. On the creative level someone can test this engagement in every single page of his writings but in this paper I examine the above through some concrete themes e.g. “icon”, “surface”, “scheme” “hero” and so on. Another important question that arises here is the issue of continuity/discontinuity in the narrative construction of writing text. Pentzikis always tries to address this issue by engaging himself in an unstoppable multitude of narrations, from where the most foreign and distant elements are fusing together. At the end of the paper I refer to a discursive engagement between Pentzikis and George Seferis from where someone can understand that their fundamental differences produce two completely opposite aesthetic directions. We now know that for a variety of reasons over the last fifty years George Seferis’ vision of dis-engagement has dominated the Greek intellectual life.