Κοινότητα Αναγνωστών Βιβλίων - readers.gr

Η Γκαίηλ Χόλστ πρωτόρθε στην Ελλάδα το 1965. Αφοσιωμένη φίλη της ελληνικής λαϊκής μουσικής παράδοσης, την οποία αντίκρυσε με ματιά φρέσκια και καθαρή, έγραψε για το ρεμπέτικο ένα βιβλίο που κυκλοφόρησε στα αγγλικά το 1975 γνωρίζοντας μεγάλη επιτυχία. Από τότε επανεκδόθηκε πολλές φορές και αποδόθηκε στα τουρκικά, στα γερμανικά και στα γαλλικά. Αυτό το βιβλίο, μεταφρασμένο από το Νίκο Σαββάτη, αποτελεί το πρώτο μέρος του τόμου "Δρόμος για το ρεμπέτικο" και έχει αναγνωριστεί, τόσο στο εξωτερικό όσο και στην Ελλάδα, ως μία από τις καλύτερες εργασίες γι' αυτό το μουσικό είδος. Ε...

Elder Porphyrios, a Greek monk and priest who died in 1991, stands in the long tradition of charismatic spiritual guides in the Eastern Church which continues from the apostolic age down to figures such as Saint Seraphim of Sarov and Staretz Silouan in modern times. In this book he tells the story of his life and, in simple, deeply reflected and profoundly wise words, he expounds the Christian faith for today. This book was compiled after his death from an archive of notes and recordings of his reminiscences, conversations and words of guidance, and was first published i...

"...this dialectic of blood and light which is the history of your people..." Sherrard to Seferis, 20 March 1950 Philip Sherrard first came across George Seferis's poetry when as a young man still in the army he was transferred to Greece in 1946. It made such a powerful impression on him that when he returned to England he started corresponding with Seferis, began translating his poetry into English, and ultimately decided to do his PhD on modern Greek poetry. Much later Sherrard was to translate, together with Edmund Keeley, Seferis's Collected Poems for Princeton Uni...

Philip Sherrard in his introduction to this collection of his essays writes: "The Greece of the classical heritage and of the romantic philhellene has gone, and anyhow has always been irrelevant to the Greek situation. Greece is not and never has been a lost paradise or a haνen for tourists or an object of study , and those who approach her as if she were any of these will always fail to make any real contact with her. For to achieve this it is not enough to act in the manner of those who singly οr in droves are to be seen pouring exhaustively and exhaustingly over the G...

We are becoming increasingly aware that the forms of our life and art - of our modern civilization generally - have over the last few centuries been characterized by the progressive loss of precisely that sense which gives virtually all other civilizations and cultures of the world their undying lustre and significance: the sense of the sacred. In fact, the concept of a completely profane world - of a cosmos wholly desacralized - is a fairly recent invention of the western mind, and only now are we beginning to realize the apalling consequences of trying to order and mould...

Lambros Kamperidis's study of Peris Ieremiadis is a work of therapy for our times. Not our modern introspection, but therapeia, the attending to and healing of wounds that sever the relationships between ourselves and others. This therapy is bodily, visceral, full of colour and of darkness. The death of his friend who spent his last creative energies painting variations of dragon-slaying Saint George on his regal horse triggers in Kamperidis an exuberant litany of associations, a delicate interlace linking pagan and Christian, Germanic and Greek, spiritual heroes and evil m...

Travellers, poets, artists, even scholars, still go to Greece iη search of something they feel that nο other Iand quite offers them. Partly nο doubt this is a by-product of the enormous prestige the world of ancient Greece acquired subsequent to the Renaissance; partly , too, it is due to the sheer physical beauty with which Greece presents one at practically every step. Even though the stereotype of classical Greece has now worn thin, and island after island, seashore village after seashore village, are overrun by the Iife-starved fugitives from the industrial wildernesses...

The "Murderess" has been regarded as Alexandros Papadiamandis’s finest work. Set on his native island of Skiathos it tells the story of Hadoula, a widow with grown-up children, who has convinced herself that it is better little girls should leave this life when young so that they and their parents should not suffer the trials that inevitably would be inflicted on them by an inequitable society. In the throes of this misguided compassion she first murders her own granddaughter and afterwards finds herself set on a course she is unable to stop despite the promptings of her co...

Since its emergence as an independent nation during the first decades οf the nineteenth century Greece has produced a succession οf poets οf whom any country would be proud. Their poetry has behind it the majestic and awe-inspiring worlds οf ancient Greece and Byzantium, as well as the centuries-old tradition οf folk-song and ballad; and each οf them has drawn upon this background in various ways. At the same time their imaginations have been enriched through contact with other European cultures. It is this fusion οf the local and the cosmopolitan that gives their poetry it...

Demetrios Capetanakis was born in Smyrna in 1912, twelve years after the Greek poet, George Seferis, was born in the same city. Seferis himself is reticent about his younger compatriot. Perhaps this is not accidental. Seferis on his own confession had "nο idea about philosophical positions". Capetanakis was a philosopher in the true sense of the word: a lover of wisdom. Before he came to England in 1939 he had received his doctorate in philosophy from Heidelberg University, and had written, in Greek, various philosophical studies, notably , "The struggle of the solitary sou...

Τhe division of Christendom into the Greek East and the Latin West has its origins far back in history but its consequences still affect Europe, and thus western civilization. Philip Sherrard's study seeks to indicate both the fundamental character and some of the consequences of this division. He points especially to the underlying metaphysical bases of Greek Christian thought, and contrasts them with those of the Latin West; he argues persuasively that the philosophical and even theological differences, remote as they might seem from practical affairs, are symptoms of a d...

Zissimos Lorenzatos (1915-2004), during his last years, was generally acknowledged to be the most important man of letters in Greece. An essayist, poet and thinker, he was perhaps the last of his generation with a vision that is both deeply religious and humane. His profound knowledge of European literature and thought, and his familiarity with the writings and philosophy of the East, along with his thorough assimilation of the long Greek tradition, enabled him to explore, with unusual insight, the spirit both of Europe and of modern Greece. This second selection of his es...

The diary of travels in the island of Crete in 1864 (4 April - 31 May) illustrated by the author's own drawings and paintings in both colour and black and white, with an introduction, notes and appendices by Rowena Fowler.

Edward Lear first visited Corfu in 1848 and the island seems to have made a deep impression οn him. At all events, he returned in 1855, after further travels in Greece, Albania, Egypt and elsewhere; and for the next years Corfu was to provide him with the nearest he got to at least a winter base until he finally settled at San Remo in 1870. Lear's Corfu years coincide with the last years of the British Protectorate (the Ionian Islands were ceded to Greece in 1864 ); and his letters and journals written οn Corfu, from which the text of this book is composed, form a commentar...

Alexandros Papadiamandis (1851-1911) lived in the midst of an uncertain age of transition for modern Greece. It was a period of post-Enlightenment turmoil that followed closely on the heels of Greece's War of Independence, when the traditional old ways were being undermined and were fast disappearing under the pressure of the indiscriminate adoption of western mores and ideas. His reflections on and observations of some of the most complex facets of Greek life in both his native island of Skiathos and in urban Athens during this time define the modern Greek experience in a...

"The Blind Man with the Lamp", originally published in Greek in 1983, is the first English translation of a complete collection of poetry by Leivaditis. A pioneering book of prose-poems, Leivaditis here gives powerful voice to a post-war generation divested of ideologies and illusions, imbued with the pain of loss and mourning, while endlessly questing for something wholly other, indeed for the holy Other. A substantial introduction by the translator, N. N. Trakakis, situates and reviews the poet and his work within his times with special reference to this present collec...

Angelos Sikelianos (1884-1951) is generally recognized as the most important Greek poet between Cavafy and Seferis. This selection, although first published by Princeton University Press nearly twenty years ago, still remains the only collection of his poetry in English in volume form. Both the English and Greek texts of this present edition have been emended. Included here are works from the full range of the poet's career and in his several voices -those of the lyricist, the narrator, the seer. The volume also offers samples of the poet's varied forms, from sonnets to lon...