Dr Dimitra Tzanidaki-Krpes

Lecturer, Department of Classics

University of Reading

Candidate Examination Number ………………..

Seat Number …………….

You are allowed ten minutes before the start of the examination to acquaint yourself with the instructions below and to read the question paper.

Do not write anything until the invigilator informs you that you may start the examination. You will be given five minutes at the end of the examination to complete the front of any answer books used.

May/June 2008

THE UNIVERSITY OF READING

Part Two Examination for BA,

INTRODUCTION TO MODERN GREEK LITERATURE

ANSWER question 1 and ONE other question

1. Discuss ONE of the following passages

EITHER a)

“Yes!” she said decisively. “I do have something heavy inside me, something very heavy, my child! Up till now only God and my confessor has known about it. You’ve read a lot and sometimes talk like my confessor himself, even better. Get up, close the door, and sit while I tell you. Perhaps you’ll provide me a little consolation, perhaps you’ll feel sorry for me and come to love Katerinió as if she were your sister”.

These words, and the manner in which she pronounced them, threw my heart into great confusion. What had my mother to entrust me and not to my brothers? She had told me all she’d suffered while I was away. All her life before that I knew as if it were a fairy tale. So what was it she had been keeping from us up till now? What has she not dared to reveal to anyone except God and her confessor? When I came over and sat down next to her, my legs were shaking from a vague but powerful fear.

G. Vizyinos: My Mother’s Sin

OR b)

Deep, deep the fall,

deep, deep the ascent,

the airy statue enmeshed in its open wings,

deep, deep the inexorable benevolence of the silence-

trembling lights on the opposite shore, so that you sway in your own wave,

the breathing of the ocean. Beautiful, ethereal

this giddiness – be careful, you’ll fall. Don’t look at me,

for me my place is this wavering – this splendid vertigo.

Y. Ritsos: Moonlight sonata

OR c)

The Alexandrians came in multitudes

to have a look at Cleopatra’s sons —

Caesarion, Alexander, Ptolemy —

who save Caesarion were children still,

and who all three, shown now for the first time

in the Gymnasium, were to be proclaimed

Kings, amid brilliant military display.

And Alexander — they acclaimed him King

of Media, of Armenia, and of the Parthians;

and Ptolemy — they acclaimed him King

of Syria, of Phoenicia, and of Cilicia.

Caesarion — he stood more in front,

wearing a princely gown of roseate silk,

and on his breast a bunch of hyacinth;

his belt, a double row of amethysts

and sapphires; his shoes, fastened with white ribbons

deftly embroidered with rose-coloured pearls —

him they addressed as greater than the youngsters,

him they addressed and hailed as King of Kings.

The Alexandrians certainly understood

that this was verbiage and showiness:

but then the day was warm, poetical;

the sky, a wondrous piece of lightsome blue;

the Alexandria Gymnasium,

triumphal evidence of what art can do;

the get-up of the courtiers, sumptuous;

Caesarion, distinctly elegant,

distinctly handsome, (son of Cleopatra,

of the blood royal of the Lagidae):

so to the festival, in multitudes,

holiday-loving Alexandrians ran,

and cheered gladly, in Greek and in Egyptian,

and some of them in Hebrew, — one and all

delighted with the glorious spectacle,

although they knew, of course, how little it meant,

what vacuous verbiage these Kingships were.

C. P. Cavafy: Alexandrian Kings

OR d)

Man frays easily in wars;

man is soft, a sheaf of grass,

lips and fingers that hunger for a white breast

eyes that half-close in the radiance of day

and feet that would run, no matter how tired,

at the slightest call of profit.

Man is soft and thirsty like grass,

insatiable like grass, his nerves roots that spread;

when the harvest comes

he would rather have the scythes whistle in some other field;

when the harvest comes

some call out to exorcise the demon

some become entangled in their riches, others deliver speeches.

But what good are exorcisms, riches, speeches

when the living are far away?

Is man ever anything else?

Isn’t it this that confers life?

A time for planting, a time for harvesting.

G. Seferis: Last Stop

2.How far would it be fair to say that Cavafy perceives history as a theatrical stage and historical events as acts of a play?

3.What does the mad pomegranate tree symbolize in Elytis’ poetry?

4.Discuss Vizyinos’ narrative techniques including perspective, voice, plot, time and point of view.

5.Examine the connection between Seferis’ life and his art.

6.How does Ioannou’s *****scomb reconstruct his own racial and historical memory of Thessaloniki?

7.How does Ritsos perceive poetry?

8.For Elytis, Greece is a revelation for all senses. How is this represented in his poetry?