Αισθητικές εξάρσεις, ηθικές παραινέσεις και λογοτεχνική μεγαληγορία στην υπηρεσία του ιδεολογήματος της "αιώνιας Ελλάδος"
Part of : Χρονικά αισθητικής : ετήσιον δελτίον της Ελληνικής Εταιρείας Αισθητικής ; Vol.46, No.Α, 2010, pages 297-314
Issue:
Pages:
297-314
Parallel Title:
Aesthetic exaltations, moral exhortations and literary bombast in the service of the ideology of “eternal Hellas”
Section Title:
Αισθητική - Φιλοσοφία της Τέχνης - Ιστορία της Τέχνης Aesthetics/Philosophy of Art - History of Art
Author:
Abstract:
The article refers to a characteristic case of “flowery writing” as deliberate verbosity and vacuousness of public discourse.This is a text of 1833, an anonymous “traveller’s” report from Athens, which was published in a short-lived newspaper of Nafplion. Both the content and the staging of the article convince that it is a “literary” contrivance of a journalist with ambitions of being a writer, who cobbles together unconnected texts, the provenance of which he conceals. One-fifth of the text is taken up by verbatim passages from the memorandum to the Regency with the urban-planning proposal of Kleanthis and Schaubert for the new capital. A second one-fifth is covered by two intrusive “poetic” passages, whose paternity is suspected to be due to the possible author of the article, Alexandras or Panayotis Sou- tsos. The remaining three-fifths of the article are the traveller’s essential attempt “at reporting” his personal experiences. However, instead of impressions and judgements regarding the Athenians’ feelings and expectations, the state of the city’s urban tissue or the organizational problems of the prospective installation here of the king and government, the author deals with unrealistic visions and alien issues.General conclusion as to the structure of the text: lack of internal cohesion, arbitrary writing of heterogeneous elements, groundless self- importance. The positions of the text are summarized as a heedless and confused adulation of antiquity, an unfounded Hellenocentric superiority, the need to find new and to repatriate exported antiquities, the recognition and reward of the freedom-fighters of the national insur- gence, the flattery of the new monarch. Characteristic of the language and of the feigned literary style of the text are the grammatical inconsistencies and errors, the vagaries of meaning and inaccuracies, the pompous words and the banal expressions, intended to impress.Harsh as the judgement may seem, we cannot but conclude that the article in question belongs in the domain of the ridiculous. The flowery language as hollow grandiloquence sets high aims which it serves with most imperfect means, while the loftiness of phrasing is ineffectual.
Subject (LC):
Keywords:
ηθική, Ελλάς
Notes:
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