Papadiamantis by Zisimos Lorentzatos

This small book, comprising four texts, refers to four islands: the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea, Skiathos, Patmos and Naxos. In Hall Kane’s novel *The Maxiot*, masterfully translated by Papadiamantis, the Isle of Man ‘becomes one’ with Skiathos, and this identification is described in the text ‘An Island’. Rea Frantzi from Christos Vakalopoulos’s *The Horizon Line* meets, at a critical moment, with the Naxian Augusta Mouhra from *The Merchants of the Nations* in *En Patmo*. The text ‘On the Edge of the Cliff’ attempts to explore, as respectfully as possible, Papadiamantis’s writings on the anguish of love. This year marks a hundred years since the passing of the cantor Alexandros Papadiamantis, and the fourth text recounts his final dream.

The flourishing of Papadiamantis studies from the 1980s to the present day is due to the seed sown by Zisimos Lorentzatos in 1961 with his essay ‘Alexandros Papadiamantis: Fifty Years Since His Death’. Later, in 1986, with a shorter but exceptional text, he indisputably demonstrated the absolute mastery of the Skiathos-born short-story writer over the Greek language. Today, fifty years after his first written work on Papadiamantis, we are in a position to appreciate its significance more accurately: without Z.L.’s ‘Papadiamantisian intervention’, there would be no critical edition of Papadiamantis’s Complete Works, which fundamentally shook up, at the very least, the publishing situation of our leading prose writer. Zisimos Lorentzatos, a native of the Ionian Islands with a particular aptitude for poetry criticism, wrote extensively on Solomos; at the same time, however, from 1961 onwards, he engaged daily with Papadiamantis as well, frequently bringing together the names of these two giants of modern Greek literature.

The book brings together a selection – chosen by the author himself – of the writings that N. D. Triantafyllopoulos dedicated, as a token of love, to Zisimos Lorentzatos. These are 16 texts previously published in the magazines Akti (Nicosia), Anti, Nea Estia and Poiesis. The core of Triantafyllopoulos’s interest and his most significant contribution to what has been and will be written about Lorentzatos lies in linguistic minutiae. It is here that the sensibilities of both men converge perfectly. Those who knew him personally will remember their late friend frequently interrupting the conversation and rising from his armchair to consult one of the nine volumes of Dimitrakos’s Dictionary in order to ascertain the meaning and nuance of a word. This subtle spirit runs through the present collection of texts.