Book presentation / The darkness of the other side

We met Konstantinos Dominik a few years ago with the collection of short stories “Opa-opa blatimoi”, a work that was very positively received by the critics and could be a brake for the second difficult step of the author, who, in any case, is always called to prove that he can overcome, develop or surpass what has already been achieved.

With “Kako anilio” K. Dominic, as he leaves himself more and more to the allusion and escapes from the stress of conclusive explanation, seems to take a decisive step towards something more complete, which has no need of seriousness to impose itself, managing to connect paganism with the religious element in a fruitful and playful way. Through the folklore and traditions of Pieria, he creates his own strange, dark, complex, gothic, mysterious creatures, subject to a universal metaphysical horror, which seem as if they have sprung from the pages of Edgar Allan Poe and settled on the pages of H.F. Lovecraft.

K. Dominik distorts reality and, through imagination and an openness to the metaphysical and the inexplicable, creates and reveals at the same time another reality, which is not explained by the limiting laws of logic and normality, which does not submit to the easily understood and ordinary, but it is a strange, otherworldly, mysterious reality, which contains within it something magical, incomprehensible, which must be explored but which, no matter how much it is explored, something will still escape, and this something makes it so interesting. Narratives that tap into myths and legends of the region, things that have been handed down or perhaps invented, verisimilitude is of no importance. What matters is the “truth” of the narratives that comes from something idiosyncratic, authentic, a force almost metaphysical, which submits but also highlights a language that is confident, strong, capable of creating the required tension by itself: something threatening that nestles in the atmosphere, something otherworldly that waits in the shadows, that whistles with the wind, that drags you on journeys that may not even have a return. Something extra-real. Constantinos Dominik creates cracks and channels in reality, he indulges in the open space, transforming it into something real, fertile, nervous as well as cryptic. A primal fear, a macabre awe hide behind his lines. The dopiolalia is integrated in an experienced way in the flow of the narrative – that is why it is not deemed necessary to refer to a glossary, a choice that I do not agree with, as the “study” of the dopiolalia would give another dimension to the reading-, it gives a a sense of aliveness, of a continuity with the past, which joins the present and creates a linguistic situation alive and pulsating, from which the “state” of the world created by the author emerges.

K. Dominic does not make a graphical impression of the past, because the past exists in the present and provides for the future. This is his view and he succeeds in drawing the reader along with this belief. After all, one of the demands of narratives, as they catalyze logic, is to bend any reader’s disbelief in order to be able to unfold their authorial grace and consequently compensate. Obviously, it is a type of writing that is difficult to “set up” and hardly gives such a solid result. But Dominik manages to hide the authorial labor and leave effortless narratives that look like reverse fairy tales: Here the impressive use of metaphors does not always convey a meaning, here the world of the living is drawn into a common mass with the dead and creates a new whole which remains inextricably linked, here good is contained in evil, here nature is threatening, dark creatures subjugate good intentions, the conclusion refuses to be formulated, the finale hangs open to any interpretations, without the stress of confirmation. The world will never stop creating threats.

None of the twelve short stories is inferior to the others. I will single out, however, “The Palindami”, where the ruined house stands up and totters in order to deal with whatever is harassing it. “[…] observing then, with a terror of death, the whole old house being mysteriously uprooted from the ground, like a supernatural stone-skinned whale, and then trudging downhill […]». Constantinos Dominik sows the seed with the lyrical rawness and at the same time the plummy austerity of his writing.

Info

Konstantinos Dominik, “Bad Sun”

Ikaros Publications

Pages: 80

Price: 7.99 euros