Dimitris Nollas: Evil never ends.

Interview with Dimitris Nollas by Yannis Baskozos for the newspaper To Vima, 7 April 2013 The novelist talks about his latest book, the terrifying Western modernisation and the ‘trinkets’ proposed by party gangs.A young man, a perpetual student in Germany, visits his hometown, Thessaloniki, shortly after the assassination of Lambrakis, accompanied by a ‘runaway’ girl, Chrysanthi. There he will find his roots but also his worst self, the product of the people who created modern Greece. The Journey to Greece (Ikaros Publications), Dimitris Nollas’s new novel and the second part of a trilogy, is a journey through history and a descent into the Evil that tyrannises us.His hero, Aristos, finds himself in a society full of informers, loan sharks, get-rich-quick types and relationships built on thin air, based on self-interest. He will also realise that his own identity – which he has renounced whilst abroad – consists of ‘money, names, words and phrases’ that bind him to places and people he would rather have forgotten. Rich in meaning, minimalist in expression – as always – Dimitris Nollas’s novel gives us the opportunity to discuss with him some of the issues it raises. Your protagonist’s search for identity raises a question: is there today an identity for the individual defined as a ‘modern Greek’? And what is it? ‘Yes, it exists, for those who claim it and are proud of it. Now, as for what constitutes it, we could start with the basics: faith and language.” In your novel, you return to the darker aspects of our history and, in particular, to the Civil War, which forms a central chapter of the book. You even pose the question: ‘Can anyone remain neutral in a civil conflict?’ What do you think about this? ‘Yes, this question is raised, though it is not the central one. Life’s dilemmas – and a civil conflict is one of the most extreme – can sometimes turn out to be a blessing. Because they remind us how tragically free we are, whilst ‘our fall is certain’. A fever can be cathartic, let alone a serious illness, which comes to reorient us towards values we have neglected, such as tolerance of others and forgiveness. And love, above all, which never fails.” Reading the story you tell, one senses that there is a fate, a destiny, an “evil” from which no one can escape. “Evil never ends and we cannot escape it except by choosing Good. It is an illusion that we can eradicate it, and usually its eradication is used as an excuse for the Ego to swell, suffocating the Universe. ‘Only when man ceaselessly battles Evil does he become human.’ You speak somewhere of the ‘multitude of material things’ that oppress our lives. Does the crisis perhaps offer a way out of this? ‘When we are incapable of building relationships with one another in any other way, the crisis, like war, always offers a way out.’ ‘Truth is what could happen’ or what has happened. Is truth ultimately something elusive? “It is an age-old truth of art: what is true is not only what happened, but also what might have happened. And what could be more captivating than the ceaseless search for truth?” If the hero, Aristos, were to return to the present day rather than 1963, what exactly would he see? “We shall see together, when the third part of this Journey to Greece is published.” You write somewhere that “the right-wingers have always envied the left-wingers”. What is the relationship between the Left and the Right today? Is it true, as they say, that this distinction has now been lost? “It is the envy born of the desire for power that maintains the distinction/identification between the Right and the Left remains so strong, and it is from this that the kinship between the party gangs, with all the salvationist trinkets that surround it, emerges and becomes glaringly obvious. And chilling.” The gamble on modernisation was lost in the 1960s, just as it was in the 1990s. Is it that Greek society is ultimately incapable of (Western) modernisation?Greek society has proven that it has the capacity to modernise; it knows the art of survival. We need only recall that island Greece, with the advent of steam in the 19th century, could have been wiped out. It took it about fifty years, but it weathered the storm. And as you can imagine, in this land, which has learnt to converse with the centuries, fifty years mean nothing. It is the scale and the haste of Western modernisation that terrify Greek society and hold it back.” “Writing and rewriting the same thing,” you write on the blank pages before your narrative begins. How do you situate this book in relation to your earlier works? “If the motto I quote at the beginning holds true – and it does – then all my books form a chain that hauls up and down the bucket of water that quenches my thirst. This particular book is a link in that chain. The last one, the penultimate one, whatever God provides.”