“Deep inside the interbrain of Krikor Kevorkian…”. This is the opening of the chapter ‘Corpus Callosum’ ( the strip of nerve tissue linking the two hemispheres of the brain – as the author informs us.)
As well as “all was quiet inside the brain”. There, it may be so. But in the interbrain, nothing is quiet.
In another chapter, the “miraculous palimpsest”, Ambrosios de Laon, who read a story called ‘Abyss’, given to him by Blue, says that he preferred Blue when she was not creating. When she had no way out other than destruction. Wild.
The fact is that Blue created in order to find a way out from destruction. The recognition of monsters and beasts may not reconcile us to them, but may reconcile us to ourselves. Blue searched in the abyss, inside herself, in the interbrain, in order to compose stories which, in another chapter of the book, in “Without a Future” the doctor who is supervising the “blood-stained ball, the heart” (the blood-stained heart of Blue) with which Billy the dog would play, characterises as an “abnormal phenomenon”. The following question, which is in the black hole of the stories which compose “Blue”, arises: what does “normal” mean?
Blue is an abnormal story. Araouzou calls it a Gothic novel, which, once we finish and some time has passed to enable us to recover from the shock, we realise with awe seems normal to us. We have, without realising, searched the subconscious with the author and the world of dreams and nightmares becomes part of our everyday life. Let me say, now, without hedging, that “Blue” is an authentic masterpiece, which goes beyond the boundaries of current Greek writing and falls within the leading contemporary achievements of European prose.
One must be a Delian swimmer however in order to follow this terrifying undertaking of self acknowledgment which Araouzou attempts. I refer, of course, to the ironic Socrates who, when asked how he found the “On Nature” (“Peri Physeos”) of Heraklitos (not the extracts which remain today), answered: “I understood some of it, some I did not. One needs to be a Delian swimmer to read Heraklitos”. The Delian swimmers were the most reputable divers of the time. A Delian swimmer, mutatis mutandis, is needed in order to dive into the depths of the sea and research all the strange and amazing creatures moving under the shining surface of the sea and the ordinary pages of a novel.
These creatures, as I have already noted, are not “abnormal creations” for Araouzou and the competent readers of the book. Reading, drop by drop of blood, as, it is obvious, the book of Araouzou was written, one can see the world under a new light, as the new shudder passes through one, which has been associated, at times, with Rebeau, Kafka or Becket. It is one of the very few books, of which, as a reader of 50 years, and a critic of 40 years, I have difficulty in understanding how it was written. I speak in the same manner, mutatis mutandis again, as I now understand how the stories of Herodotos were written, but cannot understand how the history of Thucydides was written.
I assume the author herself would find herself it difficult to explain how she ended up starting and completing “Blue”. There is no linear narrative. Nor are there any orderly flash backs. No concessions to the reader, no explanation or comments nor a “translation” of the text. Extreme economy of language. Stories-chapters which seem disconnected, but move within the same space and time, even if the dates often given take one centuries back. Time runs continuous, the same inside us and outside us and the location is a castle with many rooms, where parallel and homogeneous stories take place. Blue and the other “heroes” move with ease within the centuries and the districts of a mythical country and their adventures remind me of the “Metamorphoses” of Ovid.
Read the “Metamorphoses” after “Blue”. Ovid starts from Greek mythology, Araouzou from the archetypes which haunt her subconscious.
A mythology with a common foundation in the dark depths of the soul, which encompasses blood stained feelings and people. Struggling in a world which sometimes seems “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”..
I do not think one can possibly start this book and not finish it, hoping in vain that on reaching the epilogue, one will “understand the story”. We are not talking about a pedestrian story, but a multi-faceted novel. It is about the myth of man, who, searching inside himself, draws out images which will not compose the cathedral of Chartres (with the beautiful blue coloured stained-glass windows) but a Labyrinth, where the Minotaur and his like wander unrestrained. From the prologue of the book, which starts with letters written by one half of the being to the other, one can be consoled, if one needs consolation, that this merciless search is carried out not only to find the way to an integral being, but also for the completion of one person by another. The anguished but also exciting stories of “Blue” are bottles in the sea with desperate SOS messages which do not reach their destination.
The book of Araouzou, to be fair, requires a criticism equivalent in wealth, depth and aesthetic achievement to the book itself. When Sartre was once asked to write a prologue to “The Works of Flaubert” he sent a passage of two thousand pages.
Pari passu, having read and re-read “Blue”, an exquisite, truly exceptional, masterly piece of writing, I would like to write a book about it. Each chapter, each paragraph, demands our reaction. And, the truth is, I want to write this ‘book about a book’.
For now, I stop here. “Blue” is our literary passport into Europe. I have no doubt it will be translated, published and read in many languages. I consider myself fortunate to have initially read it in Greek, in a style unprecedented in modern times. Unadorned, with a total economy of means, undecorated, unperfumed and sullen like the oracles of the Cumaean Sibyl.
Any brave Delian swimmers, dive into “Blue”.
Review by Mr. Andreas Christofides. Minister of Education, printed in the ‘Philoleftheros’ newspaper on 19 January 1997.
