Free Besieged

Thank you for your post, maria-37. Ahhh, I'm disappointed that Solomos did not actually buy his words from the peasants. It was really a nice story in the film. Still, it's pretty amazing how Solomos was able to excel in Greek poetry despite having to learn the language as an adult.

When I first saw this film, I thought that it was amazing that Bruno Ganz could speak Greek. I admit I was a little disappointed when I found out later that his part was dubbed. It doesn't take away from his performance though, which has to do with his how he expresses himself through his face and body language. When I found out about the dubbing, I was reminded of a scene in Truffaut's Day for Night, where an actress explains that when she worked with Fellini, they simply dubbed in the dialogue in post-production :-)

The words korfula mou (2 words), xenitis and argathini have nothing to do with Solomos.

They have everything to do with Solomos (and Alexander).

The words remind Alexander of Solomos, they make Alexander think about the meaning of the words, which correlate to Solomos' state of mind and being, which correlate with his own state of mind and being; he finds the reflection of his soul in Solomos because of the meaning of the words.

The poem Free Besieged is about besieged Greeks fighting for freedom and self-preservation - they are fighting to preserve their lives and culture and nation against destruction, just like Alexander and Dionysios.

Korfoula literally means "word of comfort and metaphorically means "heart of a flower" and love, closeness, intimacy, and also represents the heart of the Greek village, the Greek essence. Xenitis literally means "stranger" and metaphorically represents the soul, and estrangement from everyone and everything, exile, alienation. Argathini literally means "very late at night" and metaphorically means time, twilight or twilight of one's life, which in turn metaphorically means "intense philosophical meditations on life and death".

Alexander and Dionysios were seeking comfort (korfoula) from their emotional and physical suffering, both were seeking salvation in Greek's essence (korfoula), Alexander was a stranger (xenitis) in his own country and to himself (xenitis - alienated state of soul) and Dionysios was a Greek "exile" in Italy who returned to Greece as a stranger alienated from his own culture, both the film was focused on the twilight of Alexander's life, and Dionysios experienced a symbolic twilight (argthini) of his life when he moved from Italy to Greece and finally began to dive into his ancestral culture.

Dionysios witnessed the rubble and ruins of his heritage, of Messolongi and Zakynthian, he dived into a language he knew he would never master; he wanted to participate in a Greek rebellion against the Turks through his poetry because to him, language meant freedom,to him, language meant the reunification of the Greek language, the Greek people. His twilight lasted the remainder of his life as he struggled to express in Greek a tapestry of emotions pertaining to ancient Greece and the Greek identity and worldview - emotions and thoughts that would always be too incomplete to accurately express, and could not be accurately expressed due to his incomplete knowledge of Greek.

His life from the time he returned to Greece as a young man through to his death was a twilight because he realized immediately that he would never fully grasp, never fully express, and that bittersweet pain haunted him just as it haunted Alexander, and the fragmentary, incomplete nature of Free Besieged represents this lifelong twilight, this bittersweet struggle to transcend the corporeal bounds of his unfinished existence, which also correlates to Alexander wanting to translate national/cultural Greek poetry in order to preserve a dying culture and complete the unfinished aspects of his life and memories, which he had subconsciously always known would remain incomplete and unresolved (and in a stroke of irony he selected an unfinished poem to translate in order to proverbially "finish" his life).

Both Alexander and Dionysios engaged in anamnesis, recalling to memory recollections of histories, of events, of emotions, fragmented, diminishing, to piece them together, in order to connect themselves to their fading culture (and thus reverse their feelings of xenitis), to salve their suffering with fragmented essences (korfoula) of Greece, to place before their mind's eye all that came to pass in Greek history and their lives, in order to find some meaning in the twilight (argthini) of their unfinished lives.

Dionysis gave Greeks an incomplete poem that reminded them (comfort) of their ancient roots and cities (heart of a flower...) and the incomplete nature of the poem also reminded them that although their culture was dying (exile, alienation, loss, identity crisis), the poem was open to the future, to be completed, never dying (time: argthini)...

So there was this legend that he used to buy words from the peasants. It's not true of course

Not literally, but symbolically - he figuratively bought words from peasants by writing his poems in Demotic/Demotiki, the "language of the peasants"/"the language of the people" (peasants referring to peasants, rural Greeks, uneducated Greeks), which was a language weaving together Greek folk language (folk poetry) and vernacular and spoken/oral Greek (oral narrative) and rural linguistics, as opposed to using linguistically pure or elite classicist Greek language (the katharevousa of his time). Solomos fought against using elitist language, and w

It also meant Dionysios sought out local native Greeks, uneducated Greeks, peasants (exiled Greeks, exiled by their own culture), etc, to learn about real Greek traditions and history and language, to learn about life and language in a real ethnic Greek village, to learn the essence of Greeks.

People read his poetry and thought, "his poetry is so purely Greek, so purely expressed the Greek soul, he must have purchased his words from the very peasants who built our ruins and tilled our soil..."

Dionysios paid a price for his words - he was first stripped of his heritage and native tongue during the most important years of his life (youth, early adulthood), the price he paid by not having been raised in Greece was likely devastating to him, he realized that he simply could not "learn" a culture and language and mindset overnight or in a lifetime, he knew that because he was robbed of the Greek essence as a child he would never capture into his soul the essence as an adult regardless of all his efforts at channeling his perceptions of that Greek essence into Greek poetry; he simply could not buy with words a language, culture, mindset, that were never his own.

Alexander paid a price for his words as well - his literary work alienated him from his wife and family, from taking basic pleasure of Greece's natural beauty, from his own heritage; only later in life, very late at night, in his twilight, did he realize the price he paid, what he lost was impossible to recapture, and could never be bought with words, and his attempt to translate an incomplete poem that nobody had ever been able to translate was his ultimate attempt at trying to buy back his life and buy more time to live, because the poem embodied a living culture refusing to be destroyed and incomplete fragments waiting to be finished...