Interview with Dimitris Nollas in the Czech literary magazine PLAV

The latest issue of the Czech literary magazine PLAV features an interview with Dimitris Nollas conducted by Nikol Soumelintisova, as well as an excerpt from the novella *Shipwrecked Creatures*.The interview is republished here in Greek: In the novella Shipwrecked Creatures, you refer to the topical and growing problem of refugees in Greece. What place do themes of contemporary social reality – such as the refugee crisis, xenophobia and the effects of the economic crisis – occupy in Greek literature? As early as 1990, following the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the influx of thousands of people into Greece, seeking a better life, has intensified particularly in recent years with the increase in mainly Muslim refugees from Asian and African countries, a development that has brought about changes in Greek society previously unknown. I emphasise the religious factor because the first refugees of the 1990s were people with whom we share the same religion and the same set of values, such as Georgians, Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians and other Slavs. Here, I exclude the Albanians, with whom we are nevertheless linked by common cultural roots, as well as shared struggles against the Ottoman Empire. These are age-old ties, which enabled them to integrate successfully into Greek society, and Greek society to accept them, as it had done in the past. There was no serious problem with any of them, except that, from a certain point onwards, they became the recipients of our discontent, a feeling of intolerance, because their presence clouded the glittering backdrop of the economic bubble that was taking shape at the time and the plastic money in which we were swimming. All this before the 2009 crisis. Because when the bubble burst, we had to find someone to blame for our downfall. Unable to look within ourselves, we pointed the finger and blamed our neighbour, the other, the stranger, our fellow human being, ready to return to the jungle. The crisis exacerbated, it did not create, the pre-existing malaise. I recommend Konstantinos Tzamiotis’s novel *The City and the Silence*, which is a very fine portrait of the years of crisis in Greece. As are Christos Oikonomou’s short stories, “Something Will Happen, You’ll See”. These are testimonies to the emotional, spiritual and material struggles faced by Greeks today, whilst also representing high-quality literature.What role does the fact that many Greeks have experienced the problem first-hand play in addressing the issue of today’s refugees in Greece, and conversely, as economic migrants to Western European countries or as political refugees in Eastern Bloc countries after the Civil War? No role at all. Many years have passed since ships full of destitute Greeks set sail for America and Australia and train carriages unloaded workers in Germany and Belgium, and the memories are an unbearable burden. And I say that the fact that the Greeks themselves experienced the problem plays no part, because that is precisely what they do not want to remember. Amidst the false prosperity of the 1990s, to which I referred in your previous question, we found ourselves surrounded by miserable, destitute people who seemed to be holding up mirrors to our faces, reminding us that we too had once been in a similar situation. Nor does a person who has lived like a child wish to remember this, nor does he want to know that in human history, what has happened will often happen again. And that a responsible person must be vigilant. Instead, we chose to hate our neighbour. Your novella was published in 2009. Do you see any trend towards change over the last five years? How is Greek society shaping up under the influence of the economic crisis in relation to the issue of refugees coming to Greece? Yes, an improvement in daily life is visible. Violence, for example, which was visible – tangible, one might say – in all kinds of public gatherings and demonstrations in recent years, is now, one might say, monopolised by organised extremist terrorism. It is an improvement in everyday life, which also reflects a change in mindset. What I mean is that, until recently, we gave the impression of a group of people who were all pitted against one another, whereas today there are clear signs that we are tackling the problem as a society, bearing in mind that we are defending something that concerns us all. And I believe that is very important. A crisis helps you refocus on the fundamental issues of your life and your relationships with others. We certainly need to find a way to resolve the issue of uncontrolled refugee entry. We have vulnerable borders, and they are the EU’s borders. Without the solidarity of other states, we will struggle to control them on our own. Personally, I am not afraid of anything and do not feel threatened. We have been through more difficult times in our history, and that knowledge gives us strength. In any case, as long as misery and war spread (look at what is happening in the countries of the Middle East), persecuted people will be knocking on our door and we have a duty to open it and offer them refuge.Will the children of refugees create a new lost generation? Certainly. It is certain that the children of refugees will be the victims of this story. Having experienced armed conflict and having escaped death, when they come here, they will wage war with their local peers. Always claiming something that belongs to someone else to assert their presence. The adults ‘take our jobs’ and their children ‘take our girls’ – human nature. A generation that has it in its power not to be lost, provided it is willing to live with us, in a new homeland with a different culture, different ways, in a place that was not a desert without history before they came here to save themselves.How do refugee (immigrant) writers contribute to Greek literary production? I do not know. Perhaps it is too early to see examples of such participation in Greek literature. Despite all the difficulties they face in their new lives, it is certain that those who possess a gift for their language will not stop writing. Just as the songs of love and the mother’s lullaby have not ceased in their own language.One of the most successful Czech novels of recent years deals with the expulsion of Germans from our country after the Second World War, a subject that has been taboo for us for several decades. In Greece, the Civil War is a traumatic event with consequences that are still felt today; is there a growing effort in Greece to address these traumatic historical events through literature?I would genuinely be interested in reading such a novel, just as I am interested in all stories of people who grew up, loved and suffered in a specific place, until a cruel twist of fate, a war-torn hailstone, comes and uproots them from that sweet soil of their youth. I understand that for a time, until the wounds have healed and tempers have calmed, such stories may be taboo. But in art, taboos do not endure. In Greek literature for a long time, during the second half of the last century, the crimes of the communist Left were taboo, as what we had become accustomed to seeing was an angelic and spotless Left, incapable of doing any harm. And it was Thanasis Valtinos’s novel *Orthokosta* in the 1990s that broke this taboo—the notion that we, the good guys, never do anything wrong—when it addressed the concentration camps, and the gulags, which the communists set up in Greece to punish those who opposed them. In your novel “The Journey to Greece”, Chrysanthi, who emigrated to Germany during the Occupation, returns to Greece where her family has reported her missing. As soon as she arrives in her homeland and steps off the train, she is lost in the crowd.Does she symbolise the generation of Greek political or economic refugees who return to Greece and struggle to (re)find their place in Greek society? Could you say a few words about this issue and how Greek literature addresses it? In my novel, this female character is not a typical migrant. She goes to work in Germany at the very moment the Nazi army has occupied Greece, attempting to conquer the whole of Europe. Don’t forget that we were at war, and she leaves her home, her family, everything that defines her world, and goes far away. She is a strange, misfit individual, whom we would today describe as marginalised. She certainly symbolises the difficulty faced by anyone who has distanced themselves from Greek society in trying to find their place in it again, and I certainly want to show (this is my view) that whoever leaves has been defeated. The winners are those who stay at home and defend it. Of course, at the end of the day, both are victims, because they failed to tolerate one another, to live together without exclusion.How would you characterise the Greek reading public in comparison with the countries you visit? Do Greeks read, or is literature more the preserve of a narrow ‘elite’? Generalisations do not help us to understand reality in depth and in all its manifestations. For the sake of our discussion, however, let us assume that Greek readers form a homogeneous and quantifiable group, the characteristics of which, in my opinion, do not differ significantly from the reading public of any other European country. Greeks read in exactly the same proportion as they visit museums, theatres and concert halls, just as any art-loving Romanian or Czech does who is conscious of the aesthetic and intellectual gifts that works of art afford them and provide for them. What I mean is that we must not be misled by the numbers of books or concert tickets sold when drawing conclusions about a people’s cultural level. Let’s be honest. There have always been few who read, and indeed art concerns a ‘narrow elite’, as you so elegantly put it. If we look at the last two hundred years, taking the French Revolution, Romanticism and the industrialisation of production as our landmarks, we will see that alongside those few who read, there are the many who delight in the vulgar and the obscene. Just as today, alongside the readers of Bohumil Hrabal, Julio Cortázar and Thomas Bernhard, there are thousands of our fellow citizens who feed on television rubbish and trashy pulp fiction. Let us not be intimidated by the figures; quantity has never been a reliable indicator of culture. After all, ‘the salt of the earth’ has never been found in oversupply.