“At my age, I thought I had seen it all. The world war, the civil war, the dictatorship, the democracy. Even the freedom that uses incomprehensible words is a little less free. Instead, I had to be surprised by the mass imprisonment imposed by the coronavirus and by the “Z”, my “Z” of life, drawn on Russian tanks.” Vassilis Vassilikós laughed, played, thought, wrote. Until the last, on November 30th, when he died at the age of 90.
Vassilikós was a lucky man, the right writer at the right time. In 1966 he published a novel, Z, in which he told of a political assassination, the “fantastic” chronicle of the murder of left-wing MP Grigoris Lambrakis, which actually occurred three years earlier. It was the book of a man who had been writing for more than 15 years. Someone who had traveled studied the avant-garde in New York. One that already had its best trilogy behind it: The Leaf, The Fountain and The Annunciation. The new novel “Z” might have been confined to the small Greek world, but it achieved worldwide fame the following year when the colonels overthrew democracy in a coup. Suddenly, “Z” became an instruction manual for understanding the genesis of the coup, the slow advance of the far right, the irresistible conviction of violence. “They alerted me to the coup on the way home. “Stop, stay abroad, otherwise they will arrest you.”
Two years later the book became a film. The title becomes clearer: Z. The Orgy of Power. Costa-Gavras directs and stars such as Yves Montand, Irene Papas and Jean-Louis Trintignant. The soundtrack comes from the legendary Mikis Theodorakis. The production is Algerian. There is an air of anti-Americanism and postcolonial revanchism. The accusation that the USA was behind the colonels in order to contain Soviet communism is not too veiled. And yet the year is 1969, there is a Vietnam War and all over the world they are protesting “against the system”. Hollywood feels the wave and adapts: the film wins the Oscar for best foreign work. For Vassilikós it is the ticket to the club of the cosmopolitan progressive intelligentsia.
At his home as an exile in Paris, says Antonio Ferrari, his great friend and historical correspondent for the Corriere, everyone came by, from Mitterrand (a “great admirer of Greek women”) to the wife of the future president (a “great admirer of Greek women”) Men”, actresses, writers and revolutionaries. When democracy returned to Greece, the club moved to its house in front of the Parthenon: English, French and Greek were spoken. It was a free, wide, welcoming world, that of Vassilikós.
With the film’s success, the novel took over the film’s title and sold everywhere. Thirty-three translations, millions of readers, revenue galore. “With Z – writes Vassilikós in his autobiography – my mandate in the world of literature could have ended.” If I had met an early, possibly violent end, “I would have been declared a great talent who had no time to complete his work complete…” In fact, none of his 120 other books, including novels, poems, essays, translations and screenplays, achieved the fame of Z. But fortunately, Vassilikós survived. Until yesterday.
Grandfather a hunter, father a successful lawyer, sister a table tennis champion: young Vassilis would have been predestined for a comfortable life in his Thessaloniki. Instead, like Jason from the Argonauts, protagonist of his first novel at the age of 19, he feels restricted. He tends to go out, travel and revolt. He chooses literature as a way of life. “When I was little, my father tried to convince me to give up. “You will die poor.” Today I was able to reassure him because I was getting along well with the literature. “I have always been a political writer,” Vassilikós said in one of his last interviews with Corriere. Not someone who is tired of the literary art that is the cellulite of storytelling, but a writer, yes.”
“My models? Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre. Then Calvino. But more than that, I have the advantage over them of being Greek. For you Italians, the short story is the grandmother of the novel. And that’s the case with almost everyone: novel, novella, nouvelle. The root is always “newness.” In Greek No. We call the novel Mithistorima, the sum of history and myth. For us, the roots are more important than the innovations.”
With the election victory of the Greek Socialists in 1981 (his guests in Paris), he became deputy director of state television, then ambassador to UNESCO and, from 2019 to April of this year, a parliamentarian for the Syriza left.
“I wrote my first poems on the back of my father’s election leaflets. He lost every election and for me it was always traumatic. When they offered me the top spot in Athens, I knew I could erase Vassilik’s curse. Vassilis laughed and thought, worked, wrote. Until the very end. Yesterday unfortunately.