Vasilis Dioskouridis

By Katerina Karidi, editor We first met Vasilis Dioskouridis, whom we said goodbye to a few days before Christmas, in 1985. A few months after the death of our father, Odysseas Elytis, he demonstrated his trust and support in a tangible way by entrusting us with the publication of “The Little Sailor.”It was a huge responsibility, and the legendary Panagiotis Mermigas, who had been the permanent editor at Ikaros Publications until then, had just retired due to health problems. His then assistant, Julia Tsiakiri, although perfectly capable in her own right, suggested that Vasilis, known at the time as the editor of the magazine Ekivolos, should take on the editing and proofreading of “The Little Sailor.”His knowledge, education, prestige and integrity gave us great confidence that we would do justice to Elytis, that we would best proclaim the continuation of the tradition of Ikaros’s exemplary publications.That was the beginning. With Vasilis and Julia, we went on to produce many books, and we experienced joys, anxieties, tensions, rewards – everything that comes with publishing a book. Until they devoted themselves to their Rodakio.I want to pause and describe, as best I can, a scene that makes me smile whenever I remember it. We all went together, as was our custom: Vasilis, Chrysi and I, to Stefanos Koumanoudis’s house so that he could hand over his grandfather’s ‘Diary 1845–1867’—also by Stefanos Koumanoudis—for publication. We all leaf through the contents of a blue folder together, discussing the peculiarities of the text and how we will address them, agreeing on the layout, the font, the page format and, of course, that the book will be polytonic with accents – a matter of course for Vasilis and for us.We are ready to leave, standing there in our coats, and Koumanoudis cannot bring himself to part with the blue folder. A familiar syndrome when handing over a manuscript. Vasilis holds it on one side and he on the other, and he won’t let go of it. Like children who remember they’re thirsty when you put them to bed so they can prolong your stay in their room, he asks again and again: “Will it be polytonic with grave accents?” “Yes,” we tell him. “With grave accents!” he clarifies. “Of course,” we say again. “Mind you, not just polytonic but with accents too,” he says, pulling out the blue folder. “Definitely with accents,” we say. “Yes, but with accents,” he repeats. And then Vasilis, having lost his Job-like patience, pulls the folder forcefully towards him and exclaims: “But for goodness’ sake, Mr Koumanoudis, you haven’t understood. I AM the grave accent!” That was Vasilis. And one more thing: In one of the many articles that followed Vasilis’s death, I read that “in the 1980s, he trained as a proofreader at Ikaros Publications.” Wrong! We trained alongside him, in proofreading and much more.