Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Αστρονόμοι

Τοιχογραφία 12ου αιώνα από υπόσκαφο ναό της Καππαδοκίας

Ως αστρονόμοι, ιδόντες τον του Χριστού αστέρα, ότι ουκ εποίει πορείαν ως οι λοιποί αστέρες από ανατολών προς δύσιν, αλλ’ από άρκτου προς μεσημβρίαν, έγνωσαν ότι γέννησιν μεγάλου βασιλέως δηλοί, και πεσόντες προσεκύνησαν αυτώ και προσήνεγκαν αυτώ δώρα, χρυσόν και λίβανον και σμύρναν και ούτω τη προστάξει του Αγγέλου υπέστρεψαν εις την χώραν αυτών.

Καλά Χριστούγεννα!

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Controlled human flight

The original 1903 Wright flyer at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC (USA)

110 years ago, on 17 December 1903, the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright, inventors and aviation pioneers made the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight near Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina (USA).


Monday, December 16, 2013

Boston Tea Party

1846 lithograph by Nathaniel Currier: "The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor"

240 years Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party (initially referred to by John Adams as "the Destruction of the Tea in Boston") was a nonviolent political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, on 16 December 1773. Disguised as American Indians, the demonstrators destroyed the entire supply of tea sent by the East India Company in defiance of the American boycott of tea carrying a tax the Americans had not authorized. They boarded the ships and threw the chests of tea into Boston Harbor, ruining the tea. The British government responded harshly and the episode escalated into the American Revolution. The Tea Party became an iconic event of American history, and other political protests often refer to it.
From Wikipedia

Friday, December 13, 2013

Massacre of Kalavryta

Kalavryta, as seen from the memorial site

70 years from the Massacre of Kalavryta
The Massacre of Kalavryta (Greek: Σφαγή των Καλαβρύτων) refers to the extermination of the male population and the subsequent total destruction of the town of Kalavryta, in Greece, by German occupying forces during World War II on 13 December 1943. Aside from the deportation and murder of over 80% of Greece's Jewish population, it is the most serious case of war crimes committed during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II.
In early December 1943, the German Army's 117th Jäger Division began a mission named Unternehmen Kalavryta (Operation Kalavryta), intending to encircle Greek Resistance guerrilla fighters in the mountainous area surrounding Kalavryta. During the operation, 78 German soldiers, who had been taken prisoner by the guerillas in October, were executed by their captors. The commander of the German division, General Karl von Le Suire reacted with harsh and massive reprisal operations across the region. He personally ordered the "severest measures" – the killing of the male population of Kalavryta – on 10 December 1943.
Operation Kalavryta struck from Patras and Aigion on the Gulf of Corinth and from near Tripolis in central Peloponnese. All "Battle-Groups" were aimed at Kalavryta. Wehrmacht troops burnt villages and monasteries and shot civilians on their way. When they reached the town they locked all women and children in the school and marched all males 12 and older to a hill just overlooking the town. There, the German troops machine-gunned down all of them. There were only 13 male survivors. Over 500 died at Kalavryta. The survivors told their story of survival, saying that after the Germans machine-gunned the crowd, some falling bodies were covered by the dead. This way, when the Germans went through again to finish off those still alive, the few lucky ones escaped the coup-de-grace. The women and children managed to free themselves from the school, some say after a German soldier took pity on them and let them escape, while the town was set ablaze. The following day the Nazi troops burnt down the Monastery of Agia Lavra, a landmark of the Greek War of Independence.
In total, nearly 700 civilians were killed during the reprisals of Operation Kalavryta. Twenty eight communities – towns, villages, monasteries and settlements – were destroyed. In Kalavryta itself about 1,000 houses were looted and burned and more than 2,000 livestock were seized by the Germans.
Today the Place of Sacrifice is kept as a memorial site and the events are commemorated every December. War reparations was paid in 1960 (115 million deutschemarks), Greece accepted the payment and agreed not to come with any more claims. Greece has however since then demanded more money, claiming they did not get all that they had asked for. On 18 April 2000, the then-president of the Federal Republic of Germany, Johannes Rau, visited the town of Kalavryta to express his feelings of shame and deep sorrow for the tragedy; however, he didn't accept responsibility on behalf of the German state and did not refer to the issue of reparations. He felt unable to do so as his position is largely a ceremonial one and does not allow the President the ability to raise such matters.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Seferis, Nobel Prize in Literature 1963


I feel at this moment that I am a living contradiction. The Swedish Academy has decided that my efforts in a language famous through the centuries but not widespread in its present form are worthy of this high distinction. It is paying homage to my language - and in return I express my gratitude in a foreign language. I hope you will accept the excuses I am making to myself.

I belong to a small country. A rocky promontory in the Mediterranean, it has nothing to distinguish it but the efforts of its people, the sea, and the light of the sun. It is a small country, but its tradition is immense and has been handed down through the centuries without interruption. The Greek language has never ceased to be spoken. It has undergone the changes that all living things experience, but there has never been a gap. This tradition is characterized by love of the human; justice is its norm. In the tightly organized classical tragedies the man who exceeds his measure is punished by the Erinyes. And this norm of justice holds even in the realm of nature.

«Helios will not overstep his measure»; says Heraclitus, «otherwise the Erinyes, the ministers of Justice, will find him out». A modern scientist might profit by pondering this aphorism of the Ionian philosopher. I am moved by the realization that the sense of justice penetrated the Greek mind to such an extent that it became a law of the physical world. One of my masters exclaimed at the beginning of the last century, «We are lost because we have been unjust» He was an unlettered man, who did not learn to write until the age of thirty-five. But in the Greece of our day the oral tradition goes back as far as the written tradition, and so does poetry. I find it significant that Sweden wishes to honour not only this poetry, but poetry in general, even when it originates in a small people. For I think that poetry is necessary to this modern world in which we are afflicted by fear and disquiet. Poetry has its roots in human breath - and what would we be if our breath were diminished? Poetry is an act of confidence - and who knows whether our unease is not due to a lack of confidence?

Last year, around this table, it was said that there is an enormous difference between the discoveries of modern science and those of literature, but little difference between modern and Greek dramas. Indeed, the behaviour of human beings does not seem to have changed. And I should add that today we need to listen to that human voice which we call poetry, that voice which is constantly in danger of being extinguished through lack of love, but is always reborn. Threatened, it has always found a refuge; denied, it has always instinctively taken root again in unexpected places. It recognizes no small nor large parts of the world; its place is in the hearts of men the world over. It has the charm of escaping from the vicious circle of custom. I owe gratitude to the Swedish Academy for being aware of these facts; for being aware that languages which are said to have restricted circulation should not become barriers which might stifle the beating of the human heart; and for being a true Areopagus, able «to judge with solemn truth life's ill-appointed lot», to quote Shelley, who, it is said, inspired Alfred Nobel, whose grandeur of heart redeems inevitable violence.

In our gradually shrinking world, everyone is in need of all the others. We must look for man wherever we can find him. When on his way to Thebes Oedipus encountered the Sphinx, his answer to its riddle was: «Man». That simple word destroyed the monster. We have many monsters to destroy. Let us think of the answer of Oedipus.

50 years from
Giorgos Seferis' speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall of Stockholm, December 10, 1963