After an early life spent in Eastern Rumelia (now, Bulgaria), Kostas Varnalis (1884-1974), Greek poet and Communist activist, attended the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 1902. He studied literature, and found himself in the middle of a roiling linguistic debate: “The Greek Language Question” (or, Το Γλωσσικό Ζήτημα).[1] Forced to choose between Demotic Greek (the Greek spoken by the Greek people) and Katharevousa (the literary version of Greek based on the ancient language), Varnalis chose the demoticist side, as did many other Leftists (including Nikos Kazantzakis).[2] After graduating in 1908, he taught both in Burgas, his hometown, and in Greece, for some years, alongside journalism and translation, before the Second Balkan War began, and he enlisted in 1913.
Varnalis was in Paris when he found Marxism – or, perhaps more accurately, Marxism found him. Having travelled there on a scholarship in 1919 to study literature, sociology, and philosophy, he fell directly into the agitative atmosphere of post-Versailles Europe, where Marxism was prominent.[3] He joined the Communist Party of Greece (Κομμουνιστικό Κόμμα Ελλάδας, or KKE) within this atmosphere, and, in 1922, wrote “The Burning Light” (Το Φως που Καίει), under the name Dimos Tanalias.[4]
In “The Burning Light”, Varnalis synthesises the three big Cs: Classics, Communism, and Christianity. Written after the October Revolution, the poem lampoons the bourgeois system and its exploitative relationship with the working class and imagines a triumphant revolution in the flame that burns. Varnalis shows Prometheus nailed to the rock, and Christ crucified in Calvary, and both speak to each-other through Momus, the mythological personification of satire, who, in the Cypria, was blamed for the beginning of the Trojan War. The unfair nature of both ancient Greek society and Christian ideology are exposed in Marxist terms by Momus, while Mother Earth occasionally voices the People, who cry out for freedom. In the second part of the poem, there are four tragedic choruses – the Oceanids, the Seraphim, Mother Mary, and Mary Magdalene. Parts continue, but “The Burning Light” closes with “The People’s Song” (Το Τραγούδι του Λαού), which shows the People find their way forward, after a successful revolution, towards freedom.[5] Prometheus here stands once again as a revolutionary figure, as he has so often for leftist artists – Tony Harrison being a recent example, with his 1998 film Prometheus – and facilitates the envisioning of a radical break from the chains of moribund, capitalist society.
His association with the KKE – and the publication of a section of “The Burning Light” in Hestia magazine – led to his dismissal from the Pedagogical Academy in 1926, where he taught, and
prevented him from undertaking any further state employment. He then dedicated himself to journalism, and to marital life, with poet and translator Dora Moatsou. Both he and Dora were prolific translators of ancient Greek theatre and literature, and, throughout his life, Varnalis completed translations of Euripides’ Children of Heracles, Trojan Women, and Hippolytus, Sophocles’ Ajax, Xenophon’s Memoirs, and a number of Aristophanes’ comedies (Frogs, Ecclesiazousae, Knights, Lysistrata, Plutus), while Moatsou is known for her translation of Euripides’ Helen, toured around Greece in 1966, 1982-1983, and 1985-1986.[6] In 1931, he delved into Communist Classics again, with his prose work, The True Apology of Socrates (Η Αληθινή Απολογία του Σωκράτη).
The True Apology ‘uses Socrates and Athenian democracy to show the rot of class society and to project the revolutionary perspective’ (Kakavanis 2014).[7] Apparently, Varnalis was in Paris in 1924 when he read Plato, Aristophanes, and Rabelais, and then, in 1925, read Plato’s Apology in one night. This then led to a synthesis of the three authors in his work; ‘Aristophanes’ loud laughter and stinging rants about the old democracy; Rabelais’ open-hearted satire … ; the high note of Socratic thought before the ignorant jury; the cannons of the world war; … the drums of the proletarian revolution, which beat ever closer’.[8] Rather than Plato’s Socrates, who accepts the law, Varnalis’ Socrates realises the classism inherent in those laws, and decries “justice” as a tool of violence in the hands of the bourgeoisie, much like the gods and philosophy. When he hears his death sentence, he apologises, and blames society itself – both the bourgeoisie, the rulers, and the people for sitting back and doing nothing. He criticises Athenian democracy, functioning as a historical allegory for Varnalis’ own criticism of his modern democracy and the various coups that had co-opted it in Greece’s recent history. Indeed, as Kakavanis (2014) again writes: ‘He wanted to satirise modern Greek misery, … to cauterise … the “public opinion” of the herd … . For Varnalis, the ancient democracy …, like modern bourgeois democracy, was a sham democracy, a semblance of democracy.’[9]
He attended the Soviet Writers’ Conference in Moscow (1935) as a representative of Greece, before the accession of Ioannis Metaxas’ (1881-1941) anti-Communist Fourth of August Regime (1936-1941) led to his exile to Mytilene and Agios Efstratios.[10] As an active KKE member, he joined the National Liberation Front (Εθνικό Απελευθερωτικό Μέτωπο, EAM) during the Nazi Occupation of Greece (1941-1944), much like fellow Communist poet, Yannis Ritsos.[11] He also worked in the Society of Greek Writers (Η Εταιρία Ελλήνων Λογοτεχνών), a group of Greek poets, playwrights, and novelists who wrote together to “striv[e] for rights of the Greek writers [and] of the country as a whole”, which he had joined on its foundation in 1934, and whose presidents include Angelos Sikelianos and Nikos Kazantzakis.[12] He was honoured by the Society in 1956, and awarded the Lenin Peace Prize three years later.
Before these honours, in 1947, Varnalis wrote “The Diary of Penelope” (Το Ημερολόγιο της Πηνελόπης), which seeks to wrest the power of narrative from Odysseus, the typical speaker in Homer’s epic, and lay it on Penelope, his wife, whose diary we pore over alongside Kostas himself.[13] After an introduction which tells us that, if indeed Greece’s whole educational and cultural structure is propped up by Homeric epic, we can’t be blamed for ‘mak[ing] the myth come true’, Varnalis shows us Penelope waiting, loyal to Odysseus and loyal to her nation, the laws, the state of bourgeois Ithaca. But, as she waits, she becomes disillusioned: she sees the people’s rage, their starvation, their radicalisation into a boiling proletariat class, and creates new myths to calm herself, stories of the gods – until a new Odysseus arrives. Transformed from his state as a pig in Circe’s court, accidentally turned human once more, this Odysseus comes and brings new practices, the ancient practices, and marries Penelope, sinking Ithaca’s society back into oppression and class division. In this, we see Marxist historical cycles in action: a revolution, the radical break, stymied before it can reach actualisation. The writing of this work in 1947, during the Greek Civil War (1946-1949), in which the potential for a Communist revolution that the KKE represented through EAM during the Occupation was violently crushed, perhaps explains his disillusionment.[14]
Varnalis passed away in Athens on 16 December 1974, just after the end of the Regime of the Colonels (1967-1974), which dominated Greek intellectual life and brutally oppressed all leftist politics.[15] Yet, when he died, one can imagine the same verse Yannis Ritsos wrote for him in January 1953 running through his head:
Πάνω στις ράγες των στίχων μου
το τραίνο που προχωρεί στο μέλλον
φορτωμένο στάρι και τριαντάφυλλα
είναι η ειρήνη.Upon the tracks of my verses,
the train which goes on to the future,
loaded up with wheat and roses:
this is peace.[16]
This profile was written by Anna Coopey (PhD Candidate, University of St Andrews).
[1] The “Greek Language Question” was a highly controversial issue throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in Greece, intensely bound up with ideas of nationalism, self-perception, and political ideology. For more on this, see Mackridge, Peter (2000): “The Greek Language Controversy” from The Hellenic Communication Service, L. L. C. – https://www.helleniccomserve.com/greeklanguage.html (accessed 13-10-2024, 16:08).
[2] Many Leftists throughout Greece’s modern history have rejected both Katharevousa and the ancient Hellenic world that it is so closely tied to, as a conscious repudiation of and self-distancing from a past so intertwined with Western imperial interests. This kind of rejection can be seen in Andreas Karkavitsas’ (1904) Ο Αρχαιολόγος, an allegory of the Greek national question, through the character of Dimitrakis.
[3] Nikos Kazantzakis was also radicalised towards Marxism after his experiences in Berlin and Vienna (1921-1922).
[4] For more on the KKE, see Nikos Marantzidis (2023): Under Stalin’s Shadow: A Global History of Greek Communism (Cornell University Press).
[5] For more on “The Burning Light”, see Eleni Zouzoula (2005): “Κώστας Βάρναλης: Το Φως που Καίει” from Εκπαιδευτικός Όμιλος: Αντιτετράδια της Εκπαίδευσης (accessed 13-10-2024, 20:02).
[6] On Moatsou’s Eleni, see the APGRD entry on “Dora Moatsou-Varnali” – http://www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk/productions/people/17309 (accessed 13-10-2024, 16:43).
[7] See Iraklis Kakavanis (2014): “Η Αληθινή Απολογία του Σωκράτη” from fractal (accessed 13-10-2024, 18:55). Translation my own.
[8] Quote from Varnalis himself from Independent (Ανεξάρτητος) newspaper, accessed via Kakavanis (2014) (above). Translation my own.
[9] Translation my own. For more on The True Apology of Socrates, see Yannis Plangesis (2011): “Κώστας Βάρναλης, ιστορικός υλισμός, κριτική της θρησκείας, πολιτική και ιδεολογία: αναφορά την ‘Αληθινή Απολογία του Σωκράτη’” from Κώστας Βάρναλης: Φως Που Πάντα Καίει (Σύγχρονη Εποχή).
[10] For more on the Fourth of August Regime, see Harry Cliadakis (2014): Fascism in Greece: The Metaxas Dictatorship 1936-1941 (Verlag Franz Philipp Rutzen).
[11] For more on EAM and the Nazi Occupation of Greece, see Mark Mazower (1993): Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-1944 (Yale University Press).
[12] For more on The Society of Greek Writers, see the current Society of Greek Writers blogspot page – https://etelllogorg.blogspot.com/ (accessed 13-10-2024, 16:53).
[13] For more on “The Diary of Penelope”, see George Melioni (2011): “Το ‘Ημερολόγιο’ της ταξικής κοινωνίας” from Κώστας Βάρναλης: Φως Που Πάντα Καίει (Σύγχρονη Εποχή).
[14] On the Greek Civil War, see Philip Carabott & Thanasis D. Sfikas (2017, 2nd Edition): The Greek Civil War (Routledge).
It is important to note that there is no solid evidence to concretely suggest that the KKE were intending to undertake communist revolution after the Liberation of Greece in 1944. This appears to have been a fiction concocted by the Right in Greece, and by the British Government, to justify state violence against suspected communists and secure British interests in the region against the USSR. On this, see Thanasis D. Sfikas (1991): “’The People at the Top Can Do These Things, Which Others Can’t Do’: Winston Churchill and the Greeks, 1940-45” (pp. 307-332) from Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Sage Publications, Ltd.).
[15] For more on the Regime of the Colonels and resistance to it, see Kostis Kornetis (2013): Children of the Dictatorship: Student Resistance, Cultural Politics and the ‘Long 1960s’ in Greece (Berghahn Books).
[16] Ritsos, “Ειρήνη” (“Peace”). Translation my own.
