El Greco: Domenikos Theotokopoulos

poetry by Manolis

Synopsis

It's hard to write poetry of affirmation in a post-modernist culture where irony is a compulsive tic. But this new collection by Manolis, a series of meditations on the life and work of the great Cretan artist Domenikos Theotokopoulos – El Greco – triumphs in its lyric intensity and open-hearted transcendentalism. This is a celebration of Hellenic culture and an affirmation of human aspiration amid the chaos of history and the muddle of consensus reality. The poet discovers epiphanies of a heightened vision in the iconography of the paintings. The offset four-line stanza form gives space for reflection and shape to his unfolding narrative.

As the poet enters the space where El Greco worked and sits before the canvasses he's overcome by what the philosopher Colin Wilson calls "Faculty X" – an existential grasp of the actuality of the past as a living present, an intuitive gnosis. "The movement of the brush / waves through the air of / sulphur and darkness..." Vivid images from nature are linked with the exalted vision of the painter, creating a Blakean sense of the world as suffused with a divine energy. As we contemplate the paintings, reproduced in the book, our own vision is re-energized and refreshed.

Excerpt

Dawn
Nauseated with the littleness
of city non-living,
the savage humdrum
mind grasping splinters

	on the surface of nowhere
	never sated with the neck-down delights
	and all carnal pleasures,
	I embark on a quest for that 

special conifer, the sequoia,
that special flower in the midst
of the impassable thicket
the man who sees man as man. 

	Many a time with tenderness
	I shared a soft pillow with
	a hardened, suspicious Death.
	Many a time I took Him by the hand...

...He shares with me a non-fat latte
at the neighborhood Starbucks.
Many a time I challenged Him, and,
always with a short giggle 

	He walked away gracefully saying...
	"Not yet...
	Not yet...I
	have things for you to do..."


My spirit I summon from the
realms of the void,
to descend in the roots and
trace a course. 

	I dive deep past all
	sunlit gates of consciousness
	looking for a sign,
	straight like a blue spruce 

with duty marked on its fresh bark.
I search for a beacon,
as the lyre slices the air
in pieces of silver.
"I believe that people like Conrad, Nabokov, Jonas, Manolis, and Bronowski have an advantage in crossing over from another language; they do things with English words which native speakers would never think of. El Greco illustrates my point superbly."
– John Skapski

About the Author

Manolis was born in the small village Kolibari west of Chania on the Greek island of Crete in 1947. At a young age his family moved first to Thessaloniki and then to Athens where he was educated, achieving a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science at Panteion Supreme School of Athens. He served in the armed forces for two years, and emigrated to Vancouver in 1973, where he worked in several different jobs over the years.

He attended Simon Fraser University for a year, taking English Literature in a non-degree program. He has written three novels, a large number of collections of poetry, which are slowly appearing as published works, various articles and short stories in Greek as well as in English. After working as an iron worker, train labourer, taxi driver, and stock broker, he now lives in White Rock where he spends his time writing, gardening, and traveling.

Towards the end of 2006 he founded Libros Libertad, an unorthodox and independent publishing company in Surrey, BC, with the goal of publishing literary books.

More on Manolis Aligizakis