Greek writers at Cankarjev dom

Anastassis Vistonitis, an old friend of Slovenia, is coming to Cankarjev dom with three highly acclaimed Greek writers for a special event: writer, as well as literary and film critic Tassos Goudelis, novelist Michalis Modinos, and poet and prosaist Yiorgos Chouliaras, current president of the Hellenic Authors’ Society.

Anastassis Vistonitis is one of the most prominent poets, essayists and critics of his generation. A book of his Selected Poems (“Sonce na jarku”) translated by Veno Taufer was published in 2004. Modern world and ancient myths and figures (Eurydice, Medea and Ariadne) have a special place in his poetry. He lived in Ljubljana from 2016 to 2018 and made a research on the mythical route of the Argonauts in their return from Kolchis on the eastern shore of the Black Sea to Greece, and how that myth was depicted by Roman and Slovenian (Valvasor), as well as Austrian historians. The result will be a book called “The Return of the Argonauts,” to be published both in Greece and Slovenia (by Beletrina).

Tassos Goudelis writes short stories, novels and essays. Apart from writing reviews for literary books he is an expert on cinema as well. He has written scripts for short movies and teaches at the school for actors and directors of the Greek National Theatre. Tassos Goudelis is also the editor of the magazine “To Dentro” (The Tree) which is one of the oldest and highly esteemed literary magazines in Greece. His prose style is close to the European high modernism combining personal experiences and allusions to modern world.

Michalis Modinos is one of the most prominent novelists in Greece with a highly singular voice and an unmistakable narrative flow. Contemporary adventures of his characters in Greece and abroad (in Africa especially) are combined in his books with western myths, African and Greek landscapes in a world in which mother nature is in danger. He writes book reviews for “Ta Nea” (The News), one of Greece’s top newspapers.

Yiorgos Chouliaras is president of the Hellenic Authors’ Society who spent many years abroad (in the USA and Europe) as a press attaché. Chouliaras is a master of understatement in his poetry as well as in his prose. In his poetry, memories of his childhood and modern issues blend with the echo of the past in a diction and precision absolutely his own. He has a special sense of bitter-sweet humour rooted deeply in human nature. Chouliaras is also one of the finest commentators on social and political issues in connection with the Greek and world literature.

The Greek world (both in Western and universal contexts) is omnipresent in the work of the above writers who consider European literature to be a homogenous whole, bypassing languages and national borders. On the other hand, they are all masters of their mother tongue.