https://deniseharveypublisher.gr/books/rhigas-velestinlis Rhigas of Velestino (1757-1798), or Rhigas Pheraios as he is more popularly known, is one of the great national heroes of modern Greece, for it was he who some thirty years before the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821 first conceived the possibility of a full-scale national revolution to free Greece from the domination of its Ottoman overlords. His aim was not simply an armed rebellion but a regeneration of the Greek people, through education, literature, propaganda, and social and political awareness. He wrote patriotic stories, poems, scientific lectures; he published detailed maps, translations from French and Italian, and drafted a constitution based on the ideology of the French Revolution. He was the first Greek to insist that the popular language, or demotic Greek, should become the official language of independent Greece. Born in Greece under Turkish rule Rhigas nevertheless received a good education, of the sort tolerated rather than encouraged by the Turkish authorities, and subsequently emigrated successively to Constantinople, Bucharest and Vienna. He recruited his supporters and laid his plans among the expatriate Greek communities, and he also had many contacts, through his successful activities as a businessman, in the Greek mainland and islands. But … Continue reading →

https://www.facebook.com/sorisaris/posts/10219015225357124 In one of his lectures, mentioning the cheerful mood that appeared to be prevailing during the laying of wreaths at the statues of heroes on national anniversaries, the astrophysicist Manos Danezis said: “We are happy standing here because we are not in their position. Who would really like himself/herself or his/her children to be in the position of Kolokotronis, or Bouboulina, or Capodistrias? Who would want to be a statue? Precisely that, the dessicated, empty and desolate mood, the absence of lightness, is what is being reproduced by the Aegina committee for the bicentenary of the Revolution. With the perspective of the world of sales and psychiatry, Capodistrias has become something sleek, like a project for a museum showcase. The dominant economic and intellectual “elite” of this island, of every political hue and rank, has seized the unexpected lifeline of the Governor’s timeless renown. They borrow a little radiance from the reflected starlight to project it onto the stage of their other-directedness. They feel they are offering something to the collectivity, doing their part towards the common goal, which is nothing other than the promotion of the island. In Aegina, where the tourism monoculture is already showing its teeth, … Continue reading →