THE GOLD OF TIME
"It is here in the company of the Greek orators, scholars and poets that I have created a peaceful retreat among immortal beauty.”
Théodore Reinach
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Beneath this founding phrase hangs a large brass plaque with a surface covered in Greek letters. It resembles the ancient gold strips on which the Orphics used to inscribe instructions for the journey of the deceased. Here, on the contrary, it is a poem addressed to all the living.
The result of extensive research and reading, this text is a collection, verse by verse, of Greek poems from Antiquity to the present day. There is no chronology, because "isn't the very essence of poetry to escape time? This is how we hear the voice of the poets of yesteryear, despite the light years that may separate us from them" (Jacques Lacarrière,
Orphée, in
Dictionnaire amoureux de la Grèce).
Antiques: Sappho, Heraclitus, Golden Lamellae, Palatine Anthology (Palladas, Glykonos, Ptolemy, anonymous), epitaph of Seikilos.
Modern: Cornaros, Elytis, Séféris
Contemporary: Rouvalis, Erinakis, Kyparìssis, Poulios, Liondakis, Rouvalis, Stravropoulos, Ganas.
Perforated and riveted brass, steel structure
134 x 300 cm
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(Excerpt)
I have something to say that is crystal clear and inconceivable
words that don’t make you laugh,
neither ornate nor festooned
I know that I am mortal and ephemeral life is a theatre and a game
life is an essay transparent stone pulsation untouched night
we are the grain that dies
we are reborn day after day from the night
keeping nothing of our previous existence
we already caress the grass
that will grow on us and our cities
we have become strangers to yesterday
and start a new existence today
and we have said let us become water
water without memory between the shadows
I’m burning and perishing with thirst
I ask a thousand years or an instant
what sparks does memory preserve
what is next and what is not
our decision to forget
who will take it into account
I say to myself what have I retained how many times
have I found myself inside the word that caught fire and is still burning
for me neither honey nor bees
I regret having let a wide river flow
through my fingers without drinking a drop words know
poetry alone is what remains
poetry just essential and right
the Sibyl’s voice travels
through thousands of years
and memory returns to sunken cellars
on broken bridges
where the winds blow gently
walk the unknown road
further on you will find cold water
flowing from the lake of Mnemosyne
the road that goes up and down
one and the same
this path is endless without change
but you have to calculate where you’re going
(...)
