Kiki Dimoula - The Periphrastic Stone

[leidhen]

I've been playing this video ad infinitum lately:

(If it's not playing, try this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLZYa5l2z0I.)

Click to view

This is poetess Kiki Dimoula (one of the finest Greek poets) reciting her poem 'The Periphrastic Stone'. The music by Anemos is evocative, if a little saccharine: I could do without it. But I found the poem itself

Comments

[para_xylene]

OMG, don't start me on another Greek poet obsession!

And... what I read was amazing. I MUST listen/watch when I get home from work.

[leidhen]

Heh! Dimoula's poetry is very robust, with bold associations and cutting insight. I'm rediscovering her work now and loving it. Would gladly pass the obsession! :p Only I should find more decent translations. This one needs more polishing. :)

I also love her old woman's voice in this piece (she's eighty now, I think). The poem is scrambled to fit the music, though, which I don't like very much. For one thing it puts too much emphasis on the sea ('thalassa', repeated over and over again!) and misses the point a bit.

[para_xylene]

Ack, I don't see the option for playing it. :< I would really like to listen.

Pfft! Thalassa sounds very much a watery and wavy kind of word. I'm assuming the 'th' is soft, like th in 'with'.

[leidhen]

Agh! I thought I had fixed it, but it's still acting up. Here's the link! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzu7F6UZ53s

Thalassa (Θάλασσα) is a very ancient word, and not actually Greek in origin! It's what we call Proto-Greek, the language spoken by indigenous populations around the Balkan peninsula before Greeks arrived in the 2nd millennium BCE. Words like Thalassa, Ilissos, Hymettos (the mountain you saw in the picture from my balcony!) - those are all pre-Greek words, but they live on. :)
As for the sound: Θ is 'th' as in think.