A few hours before we all shall die

April 10, 1826. A few hours before his death,

editor Meyer wrote to a friend: Makes me proud 

of the idea that the blood of a Swiss, a grandson 

of William Tell, to mix with the blood of the 

{ heroes of Greece.

    I am proud that my Swiss blood,
    will be mixed up on Messolonghi's* mud
    along with the Greek hero's blood,
    and even if the fight will be a dud,
    I John Mayer, the grandson of William Tell,
    I heard, as William did, the freedom bell..

    Meyer* is part of the story that I will tell.
    A story which I read in the newspaper
    "Missolonghi Greek Chronicles" 1824 and later...

                             Chronicles 

Some years after the American Revolutionary War,

another nation with Messolonghi as its central core,
was fighting for freedom and independence,
bringing in worldwide volunteers was an unexpected attendance ..

A few hours before we all shall die,

I am writing these words prior to my last goodbye.

For a year our city was besieged by the armies
                                                 {of two countries,*      *Turkey & Egypt
and we overcame resistance and hunger boundaries ...

Just before we were occupied by the enemy, our bastion,
a small island where 350 Greek fought with passion
and refusing to surrender, were killed one by one.

We were told to hand over the city and no one wanted to, literally none...
The Greeks answered that their history was their gun
and reiterated "Molon labe"* in a different way     *come and take it
"City keys are hanging from our cannons, night and day"..

So we, the few, decided to attack the two barbarian armies
and may the "Messenger God" the Greek Hermes

be sent to convey to you our decision "Freedom or Death".
Perhaps few will survive, but I'm not holding my breath....

                           __________________

       Alas the plan was betrayed and we lost the surprise attack ..
             Half attacked trying to break through and half turn back....

             From the beginning many were killed, a few survived,
             In the city looked like Leonidas and the 300 Spartans 
                                                                                      [were revived...  

              Each house was converted into a fort
              and should the enemy enter, the last resort,
              to blow the gunpowder warehouse
              along with the enemy, the family and the house ...

        Meyer and his family were killed in the attack,
             as well as five thousand Greeks, a black day 
                                                      [for Greece, really black ..
____________________________________________



Texts and Narration: Odysseus Heavilayias - ROTTERDAM //
Language adjustments and text adaptation: Kellene G Safis - CHICAGO//
Digital adaptation and text editing: Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga - PIRAEUS
Νο: 14

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*Messolonghi is a town in western Greece. Is known as the site of a dramatic siege during the Greek War of Independence, and of the death of poet Lord Byron.

*Johann Jakob Meyer (born December 30, 1798 in Zurich, † 1826), was a Swiss editor. He is one of the most popular philhellenes in Greece.

*Wilhelm Tell is a folk hero of Switzerland. His legend is recorded in a late 15th-century Swiss illustrated chronicles.

  ____________________________________________________________________

Title page of Ellinika Chronika (1824), the first newspaper to appear in Greece, published in Missolonghi under the editorship of Swiss Philhellene Johann Jakob
Meyer who was killed during the sortie.

 Ibrahim attacks Missolonghi by Giuseppe Pietro Mazzola.

The Greek War for Independence

Volunteers :   Germans 342
                          French    196,
                          Italian     137
                          British      99
                          Swiss        35

The Greek Revolution was gaining support among the American philhellene citizens and many were collecting money to help the Greek cause. Through the fundraising efforts of New York philhellenes, the amount of 6,600 sterling pounds was collected in 1824 and was forwarded to the Greek government via London, England.
During a fundraiser in New York City, Nicholas Biddle, a banker, offered the then largest personal donation of $300 to the "New York Greek Relief Committee", while US president John Adams in a letter to the same committee encouraged the fundraising efforts.
Captain Jonathan P. Miller through the efforts of the Greek Philhellenic Committee of New York, he was able to collect $17,500 worth of various relief supplies, which he took back to Greece onboard the ship "Chancellor", on March 5th, 1827.
The same year two more ships, "Jane" and "Six Brothers", left New York harbor bound for Greece carrying various relief supplies of $25,000 in the aggregate.
At about the same time, two more shiploads of supplies totaling about $22,500 left the port of Philadelphia onboard the ships "Tontine" and "Levant", while from Boston the ship "Statesman" carried to Greece cargo worth over $11,500. 

isos...

A Single Sailor who was Worth an Entire Navy..

             The weather suddenly changed form
                       and our ship was struck by a terrible storm,
                       shortly after leaving the Skagerrak calm,
                       toward the land discovered by Magellan, 
                                                             [the island of Guam.  
                       It caused a lot of damage to the ship ...
                       Our engine was working with 
                                       [much difficulty, and the trip
                       was altered, it was decided to stop at a port for repairs.

                       The radio operator went running down the stairs
                       holding the telegram and shouting "we're going to France"
                       A place we all want to go, the place of romance....


                Several poems of Hugo's collection
                which caused an international meditation,
                directly allude to the Greek War,
                the War of Independence that had ended in 1827
                and the delighted Greeks were in seventh heaven ..

                I had received a letter very recently
                in which it was written that frequently,
                poems of Victor Hugo, often praised an ancestor of mine,
                Kanaris, whose reputation has passed the immortality line.


   Once our ship anchored at Brest,
    I went to the most updated bookstore, 
                                      [in town the best,

    (although the temperature was below zero)
    and I bought Hugo's poems and books 
                                        [on Canaris, the hero.

    So I learned that he lived by the sea since he was a baby.
    Kanaris... a single sailor who was worth an entire navy..

    He achieved the greatest military feat.
    With a torch, gunpowder and a small boat, 
                                 [chased an entire fleet ..

    At that time the fire boat was an unusual weapon,
    and became synonymous with disaster, with Armageddon..

    After successive explosions in several enemy vessels,
        terror into the hearts of the Turkish crews nestles.

        The entire naval fleet leaves the Aegean Sea...
        My ancestor, Kanaris, forced them to flee.
___________________________________

Texts and Narration: Odysseus Heavilayias - ROTTERDAM //
Language adjustments and text adaptation: Kellene G Safis - CHICAGO//
Digital adaptation and text editing: Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga - PIRAEUS
No. 13
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Notes:  

  * Guam : An unincorporated territory of the United States, the largest and most southerly of the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific Ocean. Inhabited since ancient times by the Chamorro people, Guam was visited by Magellan in 1521 and ceded by Spain to the United States in 1898. Agana is the capital.
   The first known contact between Guam and Western Europe occurred when Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer sailing for the Holy Roman Emperor King Charles I of Spain, anchored his small 3-ship fleet in Guam on March 6, 1521
 * Kanaris : At Chios, on the night of June 6/June 7, 1822 Kanaris destroyed the flagship of the Turkish admiral Nasuhzade Ali Pasha (or Kara-Ali Pasha) in revenge for the Chios Massacre. The admiral was holding a celebration, while Kanaris managed to place his fire ship next to it.
   When the flagship's powder store caught fire, all men aboard were instantly killed. The Ottoman casualties comprised 2000 men, both naval officers and common sailors, as well as Kara-Ali himself.
   Constantine Kanaris after the Greek War of Independence served as Minister in various governments and then as Prime Minister, in the provisional government, from March 11-April 11, 1844. He served a second term (October 27, 1848 – December 24, 1849), and as Navy Minister in Mavrokordatos' 1854 cabinet he served as a prime minister for a third term (March 17 – April 28, 1864), fourth term (August 7, 1864 – February 9, 1865) and fifth and last term (June 7 – September 14, 1877).
________________________________________________________

To Canaris, The Greek Patriot

Author: Victor Hugo

             ("Canaris! nous t'avons oublie.")

[VIII., October, 1832.]

O Canaris! O Canaris! the poet's song

Has blameful left untold thy deeds too long!

But when the tragic actor's part is done,

When clamor ceases, and the fights are won,

When heroes realize what Fate decreed,

When chieftains mark no more which thousands bleed;

When they have shone, as clouded or as bright,

As fitful meteor in the heaven at night, 

And when the sycophant no more proclaims 

To gaping crowds the glory of their names,-- 

'Tis then the mem'ries of warriors die, 

And fall--alas!--into obscurity, 

Until the poet, in whose verse alone 

Exists a world--can make their actions known, 

And in eternal epic measures, show 

They are not yet forgotten here below. 

And yet by us neglected! glory gloomed, 

Thy name seems sealed apart, entombed, 

Although our shouts to pigmies rise--no cries 

To mark thy presence echo to the skies; 

Farewell to Grecian heroes--silent is the lute, 

And sets your sun without one Memnon bruit? 

There was a time men gave no peace 

To cheers for Athens, Bozzaris, Leonidas, and Greece! 

And Canaris' more-worshipped name was found 

On ev'ry lip, in ev'ry heart around. 

But now is changed the scene! On hist'ry's page 

Are writ o'er thine deeds of another age, 

And thine are not remembered.--Greece, farewell! 

The world no more thine heroes' deeds will tell. 

Not that this matters to a man like thee! 

To whom is left the dark blue open sea, 

Thy gallant bark, that o'er the water flies, 

And the bright planet guiding in clear skies; 

All these remain, with accident and strife, 

Hope, and the pleasures of a roving life, 

Boon Nature's fairest prospects--land and main-- 

The noisy starting, glad return again; 

The pride of freeman on a bounding deck 

Which mocks at dangers and despises wreck, 

And e'en if lightning-pinions cleave the sea, 

'Tis all replete with joyousness to thee! 

Yes, these remain! blue sky and ocean blue, 

Thine eagles with one sweep beyond the view-- 

The sun in golden beauty ever pure, 

The distance where rich warmth doth aye endure-- 

Thy language so mellifluously bland, 

Mixed with sweet idioms from Italia's strand, 

As Baya's streams to Samos' waters glide 

And with them mingle in one placid tide. 

Yes, these remain, and, Canaris! thy arms-- 

The sculptured sabre, faithful in alarms-- 

The broidered garb, the yataghan, the vest 

Expressive of thy rank, to thee still rest! 

And when thy vessel o'er the foaming sound 

Is proud past storied coasts to blithely bound, 

At once the point of beauty may restore 

Smiles to thy lip, and smoothe thy brow once more.

____________________________________________________________________

Translated by G.W.M. REYNOLDS.
 Victor Hugo's poem: To Canaris, The Greek Patriot

isos...

Rome's "First Lady."

               Caecilia Metella Dalmatica

We the Athenians, two thousand years after,
apologize to Metella for our insults and  laughter...


One hundred and forty six years 
                                 [before Christ..

The Greek army was not sufficed.

They were defeated by the 
                               [Roman legions.

All lands, all areas and all regions.
came under Roman control 
                               [and occupation ..

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      After seventy years, an Asian nation,
            the kingdom of Mithridates became powerful.
           The Athenians rebelled (their success was doubtful).
           They became allies with the King of the Asians.

           The Romans said, with the Athenians we have lost patience,
           and according to Roman authoritarian persuasions,
           they sent General Sulla who led five legions,
           to conquer the Greeks, those demons....

          Sulla's wife Metella* joined him in Greece in 87 BC       *Caecilia Metella
           Romans, cut off the supply of the city from the sea,
          and began a siege that would last until the inhabitants would surrender...

          Sulla was talking with conceit about Rome's glory and splendor,
          when a voice was heard coming over the walls,
          followed by lots of laughter....... The General appalls
          and ordered the interpreter to translate the voice...

          The Poor guy hesitantly replied having no other choice...
          He said..... he said .... "Sulla mother fucker your wife is a slut."
          Fortunately, the head of the interpreter remained uncut....

          This spoof was repeated continuously, daily.....

I will slaughter all Greeks, Sulla was shouting gaily,
when after several months of fighting the Athenians were defeated.
Roman siege machines, and Sulla were both undefeated.

"Kill them all" yelled the General with accumulated rage,
so to not mentioned Athens in history's any page....

Metella came running, shouting "what are you doing?"
(the insults of the Greeks over the walls trying to misconstruing).
"don't you realize that you destroy the city of wisdom and philosophers?
You must immediately stop them, just call your officers."


The city of Athens was saved thanks to 
                                                       [Metella...
In the storm called Sulla, his wife was
                                      [the Greek umbrella...

We the Athenians, two thousand years
                                                            [after,
Apologize to Metella for our insults 
                                             [and laughter...
______________________________________


Texts and Narration: Odysseus Heavilayias - ROTTERDAM //
Language adjustments and text adaptation: Kellene G Safis - CHICAGO//
Digital adaptation and text editing: Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga - PIRAEUS
Νο: 12
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*  Caecilia Metella Dalmatica, Daughter of Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus, Pontifex Maximus in 115 BC.   Dalmatica's first marriage was to Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, an aging politician at the peak of his power. The patrician Scaurus was princeps senatus (president of the Senate) and a traditional ally of her family. Dalmatica bore Scaurus two children: Marcus Aemilius Scaurus (II) and Aemilia Scaura, second wife of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.
   Following Scaurus' death, Dalmatica married Lucius Cornelius Sulla. In 86 BC, Gaius Marius obtained his seventh consulship and outlawed his political enemies, ordering confiscation of property and several persecutions. Sulla, at the time in the East fighting king Mithridates VI of Pontus, was at the top of the list. Dalmatica was forced to abandon Rome and met Sulla in Greece. 
   There, she gave birth to the twins Faustus Cornelius Sulla and Fausta (married Titus Annius Milo, praetor in 54 BC). In 81 BC, following a brief civil war with the last of Marius' supporters, Sulla entered Rome and was appointed dictator. Again, Dalmatica followed her husband and became Rome's "First Lady."

isos...

Born in the same year

     Both of us were born in the same year ...
       Both after four years,
                 [in the action of war we premiere,
       she had the ability to sail and to fight.
       I could walk and I could fear the night.

Soon she gained such fame
that the whole world
                   [knew her name.
She was the protagonist of the Pacific
and the younger
         [regard her as something mythic...

She was the hostess when
       [an empire signed submission,
while I was still a child in transition.

In the sixth year we first met.
I approached her,
   [with a boat, an idea to get.

The glorious and famous battleship,
stopped for a few days of her trip
and came into the port of Piraeus*                *port of Athens
                                 to visit and refuel.      

Βoats surrounded the Pacific winner,
                        [the winner of that duel...

The captain did not allow visitors to board
Very few boarded,
                    [I was small and was ignored.



   We met a second time...
                                    [with mediator Tommy Lee Jones,
     in the film "Under Siege", with well-known actors,
                                                       [and some unknowns...

   The years went by, they went fast...

     I became a sailor,

      [both our lives at sea was passed.

    One thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight.

    Both tired and aged... we had a common fate ...

    Both in the same year, we retired from the action.

    Coincidence....?  madness....?  imagination...? 

                                                                  [attraction....?

 

* Extract from "The Broken Mooring Line", an experiential
poetic work // page c40 // e-mail: pmataragas@yahoo.com //
Texts and Narration: Odysseus Heavilayias - ROTTERDAM //
Language adjustments and text adaptation: Kellene G Safis - CHICAGO//
Digital adaptation and text editing: Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga - PIRAEUS//
______________________________________________________________

Missouri was ordered in 1940 and commissioned in June 1944. 
In the Pacific Theater of World War II she fought in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and shelled the Japanese home islands, and she fought in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. 
She was decommissioned in 1955 into the United States Navy reserve fleets (the "Mothball Fleet"), but reactivated and modernized in 1984 as part of the 600-ship Navy plan, and provided fire support during Operation Desert Storm in January/February 1991.
Missouri received a total of 11 battle stars for service in World War II, Korea, and the Persian Gulf, and was finally decommissioned on 31 March 1992, but remained on the Naval Vessel Register until her name was struck in January 1995. In 1998, she was donated to the USS Missouri Memorial Association and became a museum ship at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.


 isos..

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche* gives a unique answer ..

Why such a fury around people with a glorious history ?      
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche gives a unique answer ..

______________________________________________________

     We are tourists who stayed in Athens 
                                                    [for two weeks
     and unfortunately we felt like barbaric freaks...

     What justifies the word "freaks" most,
     is that we ignore the human cost
     while we mock and ridicule the Greeks...

Unemployed and soup kitchens,
                               [these past two weeks,
was the permanent spectacle, anyone
                                      [who dare speaks
would first need to have visited this
                                             [place before.

Easily we forgot that we took by force
                      [their money and even more,

we took their ancient treasures and 

                          [many thousands of souls...

Our civilization which, the great thinker 
                                       [Nietzsche extols,
should indicate to the authors of "Focus"
                                                           [to read

the grounds where the philosopher explains
                                   [why the Greeks bleed ...

Maybe we have destroyed this land ...

History, our right to deride banned...

Maybe we are the reason that today 

                                  [the Greeks have bled?

Τhink a little and ask other to think 

                                      [about what I have said.

ps.

       Ludwig Zacaro and Nina Lahge
       did a proud movement, as life large...

German couple pay Greece £630 'war reparations'

A German couple visiting Greece walked into a town hall and handed over €875 (£630) in what they said were second world war reparations.
Dimitris Kotsouros, the mayor of Nafplio, a seaport in the Peloponnese, said: “They came to my office yesterday morning, saying they wanted to make up for their government’s attitude.
They made their calculations and said each German owed €875 for what Greece had to pay during world war two.”
The mayor of the historic town where the tourists deposited their cheque said the money had since been donated to a local charity. The couple chose his town “because it was the first capital of Greece in the 19th century”, he added.
Greek media reports named the pair as Ludwig Zacaro and Nina Lahge. They say Zacaro is retired and Lahge works a 30-hour week. They did not have enough money to pay for two, one paper said.
Athens is struggling under a debt mountain that amounts to about 175% of the country’s annual economic output. The country has long claimed that Germany owes it payment for a forced wartime loan and other reparations, and the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, recently said Greece had a “moral obligation” to claim payment.
Several senior Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens in Germany have also said their nation should consider paying reparations. But Germany’s economy minister last week rejected the calls. “The likelihood is zero,” said Sigmar Gabriel.
Nearly 70 years have passed since the end of the war during which the Nazis occupied Greece for four years and forced the Greek central bank to give the Third Reich a loan that financially ruined the country.
The dispute has grown in intensity because of tensions between Athens and the rest of the eurozone as Germany leads demands for economic austerity that Greece and other southern European countries are struggling to handle.
Figures from some sources in Athens put the amount still owed by Germany at around €162bn (£117bn), or more than half the level of debt that Greece is struggling with.
_____________________________________________

* The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche gives a unique answer ...

"Proven in every period of its development, the western European culture has tried to rid himself of the Greeks. 
This work is imbued with deep disappointment, because whatever we create, seemingly original and worthy of admiration, lose color and life in comparison with the Greek mode, came to resemble a cheap copy, a caricature.
So again and again soaked in a rage erupts hatred against the Greeks, against this small and arrogant nation, who had the nerve to call it barbaric whatever that had not been established in its territory ...
None of the recurrent enemies had the fortune to discover the hemlock, which could forever be rid of them. All poisons of envy, of hubris, hatred, have been insufficient to disturb the great beauty.
Thus, people continue to feel shame and fear of the Greeks. Of course, occasionally, someone appears to recognize intact truth, truth which teaches that the Greeks are the charioteers of any upcoming culture and almost always as the chariots and horses of the upcoming cultures is very low quality compared to the charioteer, who eventually work out driving his chariot into the abyss, which are beyond the Achilles 'Leap'

Τhe European anti-Greek sentiments : More timely than ever is Friedrich Nietzsche, arguably one of the most important German philosophers, namely one of the first "existentialist" philosophers. His first book, entitled "The Birth of Tragedy" (1872), in particular Chapter 15, Nietzsche made a special reference to the Greek nation by showing that Nietzsche is far ahead of its time.
The attitude of certain circles in Europe toward the Greeks in conjunction with the mistrust that exists around the Greeks have made scepticals from time to time the most severe judges of Greeks.
"The Greeks are lazy and fraudsters" are just some decorative comments heard internationally in recent months by many to wonder why such a fury around people with a glorious history and an enviable culture.

*Focus is a German weekly news magazine published in Munich and distributed throughout Germany. It is the third-largest weekly news magazine in Germany. It is considered conservative and leans towards economic liberalism.
Ιn the period of 2001-2002 Focus Money had a circulation of 149,000 copies.

____________________________________________________

* Extract from "The Broken Mooring Line", an experiential
poetic work // page c36 // e-mail: pmataragas@yahoo.com //
Texts and Narration: Odysseus Heavilayias - ROTTERDAM //
Language adjustments and text adaptation: Kellene G Safis - CHICAGO//
Digital adaptation and text editing: Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga - PIRAEUS
________________________________________________________________


 isos