THE MOST HUMBLE OF TEACHERS – Excerpts from the Memoirs of General Makriyannis

In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Makriyannis’ death, the 35th anniversary of Elliniko Theatro’s founding in New York, and the commencement of Elliniko Theatro’s residency at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, Yannis Simonides presents excerpts from the Memoirs of General Makriyannis, the legendary military leader who at a young age emerged as a key general of the revolutionary army, and afterwards as one of the founders of the Modern Greek State and a formidable politician.

Makriyannis learned to read and write expressly in order to produce this extraordinary document of the period during and after the Greek War of Independence. On the basis of his Memoirs, he has come to be regarded as one of the most important Greek literary figures of the last three centuries.

Makriyannis’ language is the vigorous common speech of the peasantry of central Greece, enriched with a host of expressive words and phrases borrowed over the course of centuries from Turkish and Italian, and enlivened by the great treasury of Greek folksong, which was part of Makriyannis’ inheritance and on which he was always willing to draw for the entertainment of his comrades.

To many, especially to George Seferis, Makriyannis was a poet and his language that of Homer and his heroes. In 1963, a few months after receiving the Nobel Prize, Seferis characteristically said:

“Since 1926, when I first held the Memoirs in my hands, down to this very day, no month has passed without my reading some of its pages, no week without my reflecting on some of the exquisite passages which I have found there. These pages have been my companions through voyages and peregrinations; in joys and sorrows they have been sources of illumination and of consolation. In this country of ours, where we are sometimes so painfully self-taught, Makriyannis has been the steadiest and most humble of my teachers.”

There is a natural rhythm to demotic Greek, which forms, in the hands of a master, the raw material of poetry. All the agony and horror and glory and beauty of the War of Independence comes brilliantly alive through Makriyannis’ natural poetry and primitive grace.

“Makriyannis’ name is not unfamiliar to us. His visage and the courage of his voice, his lively and wise folksy speech, have been forever engraved in our hearts and minds. For the contemporary Greek who knows the history of our land, Makriyannis is not just a fighter who shed blood for his country. He is the prototype of the wise man of the people, who is not informed by thoughtless fanaticism but rather by deep moral speculation and objectivity. He was stubborn enough to learn how to write at an advanced age in order to spell out in his own ‘gibberish’ his reflections on the Greek Revolution and on the true meaning of freedom and of the Greek character.”

“This dramatization by Simonides is so indelible because the actor transforms himself into an expressive channel not only of the authentic voice of the Roumeliot Makriyanni but also that of the other characters that enrich the Memoirs, such as Ghoghos and Gouras, Haideck and Otto.”