UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference

Inclusion Exclusion

16-18th February 2006

Friday 17 February 10:00 – 11:30: Panel D4: Identity in Literature

Kirsti Solveig Thorsen (University of Bergen): ‘Urban poetry as a cultural filter in 1930s Greece’

Greek culture exhibits a deep ambivalence concerning the belonging to East or West. Furthermore, it has to deal with issues of cultural homogeneity versus heterogeneity in relation to national identity. This paper examines the role played by poetry in structuring cultural discourse. Specifically, it compares two forms of poetry that acquired particular importance in Greece in the 1930s: the poetry of Nobel laureate George Seferis, and the rebetika urban folk song.

In the aftermath of the Smyrna catastrophe in 1922, the 1930s saw an upsurge of poetic activity and creativity in Greece. These developments may be viewed as a response to the cultural crisis and to the need to arrive at a new vision of national identity. Seferis was a dominant figure in the so-called ’30s generation of Greek poets and belonged to the social and intellectual elite in Greece. His poetry is inspired by European Modernism and seems essentially concerned with the Classical heritage and the Greek landscape.

The rebetika song appeared within the outsider culture of the mangas group in the urban underworld of Piraeus and other Greek ports. Originally stigmatised for this reason, it gradually became enormously popular in the 1930s. The imagery in the song texts borrows many elements from the Ottoman period, especially the Muslim dervish cult.

There seems to be a tendency in Seferis’ poetry to systematically exclude references to the Ottoman heritage and the Greece’s multicultural reality and to associate Greek identity with the West and with the Classical past. The rebetika lyrics, on the other hand, incorporate a multicultural aspect both in imagery and language. I will examine the way these art forms contribute to defining and defending the borders of Greek culture, thus functioning as filters for the inclusion or exclusion of cultural elements.