Book presentation / Treasures of the small form

Another elegant work of minimalist writing by H. H. Papadimitrakopoulos is being reissued by Kichli publications. This is the collection of short stories “The Treasure of the Nightingales” that was first published by Gavrielides Publications in 2009, embellished, then as now, with the delicate drawings of Evi Tsaknias that match so well the style and ethos of the author’s stories.

Awarded with the Peter Charis Foundation Prize of the Academy of Athens in 2010 and with the Grand State Prize for Letters for his entire work in 2015, H. X. Papadimitrakopoulos since his first appearance in letters in 1973 with “Toothpaste with Chlorophyll” to this day he tirelessly serves his great love for the short story with a constantly renewed mood. Small, extremely simple narratives, where behind the seemingly associative discourse there is always an artful, precisely and clearly constructed construction, which always serves a specific thematic core, from which many other, perhaps secondary, issues arise, which all together they create the elaborate whole.

Seemingly insignificant details sometimes gain weighty importance and become the occasion for the small and insignificant to be highlighted and for the invisible to gain voice and substance. Many times the initial detail or the object around which the narrative is woven ceases to be in focus and the author leads us with suggestive, inconceivably elegant steps and always using a mixture of beautiful Greek with expressions in the katarevousa at a point where the unexpected lurks , the random, the ephemeral, a kind of everyday magic that only the marked observer can collect. And all this without a trace of didacticism, but always with a playfully ironic mood that does not like seriousness but brims with seriousness and which tries to say something universal, theoretically speaking only for itself.

We watch glimpses of life in “Treasure of Nightingales”, just like in the short story “Lyubitel 2”: The “luxurious Russian monocular reflex” which the narrator buys for 225 drachmas in 1962, and while serving from physician to physician in Kavala, allows him, although it is extremely difficult to use but ultimately effective, to look back on his past life. “Photographs from that distant time allow me today to remember some stations of my past journey: in fact, they drag me there,” he says. So Papadimitrakopoulos drags us towards the pre-war Tower of lost childhood (“The Eighteen”), but also towards the heartbreaking loneliness experienced in the early 1950s (“New Year’s Eve!”), where objects such as the cousin’s photograph that was lost in the Civil War (“Plasmodium falciparum”) or the basket of an old motorcycle (“Compensation”) become the symbols of a world that is slowly being abandoned and abandoned and that leaves only faint traces, which as time goes on fade away. Papadimitrakopoulos is more bitter in “Treasure of Nightingales”. The humor recedes somewhat and a sense of futility, openness and desolation takes its place. A sense of desolation, where the old world is imperceptibly crumbling. And it’s not just nostalgia. She exists too. It is a constituent element of his writing. But also a feeling that the old is covered by something else, which is trivial and fake. However, here too, as in all his work, the seemingly simple story that unfolds at the beginning also includes another more complex, darker one, which works underground and allusively and which always reserves a small crack for the finale.

Among the most beautiful pages of the book are the five short stories under the general title “Children’s stories” and the motto of the lyrics by Christos Roumeliotakis: “Lyke, lyke I don’t believe/ no matter what you say to me,/ I know you’re alone/ and in the evenings are you crying…”. These are five short stories with animals, which, however, have anthropomorphic characteristics. With unparalleled sensitivity and an acutely direct pen, Papadimitrakopoulos imbues us with the despair of defenseless creatures. “You slaughtered me” says Argyro to the butcher who slaughters the pig with a single movement while he, used to behaving like a playful cat, was only looking for his caresses. An impression of absurdity, violence and unspeakable sadness. Thus closes the collection.

Master of the short form is H. X. Papadimitrakopoulos, a continuation of our great short story tradition, himself a point of reference for every aspiring short story writer.

INFO:

H. H. Papadimitrakopoulos, “The treasure of nightingales”

Kichli Publications

Pages 96

Price: 10.50 euros