(Or, Can a Greek Be Beat?)

by GEORGE MOURATIDIS and DIMITRIS TROADITIS

If you stand before a funhouse mirror at midnight and incant ‘the poet’s eye obscenely seeing’ (that undying line from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind)*, then Tasos Denegris will flare up in your brain, pointing a Super 8 at you, his other hand scribbling strophes in the air. This ‘eye’ – at once spectator and spectacle, recording instrument and performance – and belong to anybody, any poet, camera, performer. How then is this poet’s instrument unique? The offbeat attuning of Denegris’ naked (optic) neural streets, telescopic and microscopic, bears a poetic dynamism that synergises visual modes of engaging and interpreting ‘the surface of the round world’**. What we encounter is an artistic sensibility and language singular in Modern Greek poetry in the latter half of the twentieth century.

A stream of objectivist imagism and projective notation chases a visceral oneiric language of vulnerability through Denegris’ stanzas. That Denegris was an actor and filmmaker as well as a poet only bolsters such a sensorial impression. Impossible though it may be to consider Denegris and his work solely in terms of any one of these mediums, it is a truism that his artistry as a performer-cum-auteur informed his poetry, and visa versa. Approaching Denegris in this way, we can situate the poet and his work within a small group of contemporary ‘underground’ Greek visual artists who also write, such as Maria Mitsora and Panos Koutrouboussis, himself also involved in film.

Like Koutrouboussis, Denegris is one of a handful of Greek poets who have often been characterised as ‘Beat’ or seen to share some elements of this literary aesthetic.

The comparison may be due to the impression of an organic, spontaneous poetics and idiomatic oral language in Denegris’ first collection, Θάνατος στην Πλατεία Κάνιγγος/Death in Kaningos Square (1974), a collection with a surrealist backbone, not unlike that of poets Bob Kaufman and Philip Lamantia.

Is it possible to talk about Beat aesthetics or a ‘Beat scene’ of local writers in Greece? Would it contribute anything to a reading of Denegris’ pioneering artistry if we accept the terms by which he is popularly known in Greece: ‘beatnik’, ‘neo-surrealist’, ‘rock poet’? Perhaps not. At least not in terms of a single one of these labels, but probably some amalgam of elements from each. The difficulty in categorising or defining Denegris’ oeuvre speaks to the impossibility of a clear definition of Beat itself.

Despite the persistent association with Beat aesthetics, Denegris was, even by the time of his death in 2009, not comfortable in a black turtleneck, often denying such a characterisation. He even went so far as to insist that Beat poetry is irrelevant to Greece. It is, in his view, an American phenomenon. Curiously, though, it is in his perpetual evasion of the ‘Beat’ label that Denegris inadvertently reveals his unique understanding of it, as he told one interviewer, Makis Freris, in September, 1996:

To reconsider what makes Denegris Beat is to reevaluate the geographical and cultural parameters of Beat literature. Let us draw some comparisons and find some common ground to further expand Beat’s porous borders. It is crucial to first acknowledge that the United States and Greece entered post-World War Two life at extreme opposite ends of the socio-economic scale. At the same time we can see that, not dissimilar to the Beats of New York and San Francisco, whose poetics and politics were shaped by and against a Cold War climate of conservatism, exclusionary affluence, anxiety, and political intimidation, Denegris’ rebel yawp was forged in the long twisted schizoid shadow of the Greek Civil War (1946-49), Truman’s interventionist Marshall Plan, and a pervasive climate of instability, fear, and persecution of the Left (or anybody remotely progressive). There was no shortage of pricks for a young poet to kick against, perchance to find their voice, solace, a new direction.

To imagine an equivalent post-war generation of ‘beat’ or ‘beatific’ Greek poets to accommodate Denegris is not so far-fetched, especially when we consider some of Beat’s common aesthetic DNA with the three key avant-garde groups that emerged in Greece at the time. These were (in broad terms) the surrealists, the existentialists and mystics, and the poets of romantic nihilism and disillusionment known as η Γενιά της Ήτας/the ‘Generation of Defeat’ (referring to the defeat of the Left in the Civil War) – each one a distinctive response to the prevailing socio-cultural and political climate. While Denegris’ close ties with many writers from each of these groups comes as no surprise, it is with an earlier post-war Greek literary generation that he identified more closely, namely the poets of the ‘Generation of the ‘30s’ (which includes pioneering modernist Nobel laureate George Seferis, as well as surrealists Andreas Embirikos and Nikos Engonopoulos).

This chronology may seem strange given that Denegris’ debut in Greek letters wasn’t until two decades later when, in 1952, at the age of eighteen, he published his first poems in the major literary journal Στροφή/Strophe. This incongruity notwithstanding, Denegris belongs to a clearly discernable genealogy of aesthetic, linguistic, and cultural progressiveness, exploration, and experimentation in Modern Greek poetry, whose tapestry of lines runs through numerous literary and artistic generations. Despite his generational alliance of choice, Denegris has also been popularly identified with the ‘Generation of the ‘70s’: this was a younger group of aesthetically progressive, experimental, fervently anti-establishment poets who came of age during the military Junta in Greece of 1967-74, the Athens Polytechnic uprising, and the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, and whose work was overtly influenced by contemporary global avant-gardes and countercultures. Whatever the category, Denegris always baulked at the thought of belonging wholly to any one movement or moment. This eclecticism, fluidity, and adaptability, is perhaps what is most characteristic of the poet and his work.

A significant factor in this aesthetic openness is Denegris’ multilingualism. In addition to his native Greek, Denegris was fluent in English, Spanish, and Italian, translating works by Octavio Paz, Jorge Luis Borges, and John Dos Passos, among others. Not only did this practice inform Denegris’ expansive and eclectic influences, it also helped shape the universalism and orality of his own poetics and language. Denegris was a poet of pure, elemental and essential speech, whose broad literary worldview includes the influence of the Beats. The ambiguity of Denegris’ denial of his mantle as a Greek Beat and his distinctive interpretation of that particular loose-knit network of poets, writers and artists does very little to dissociate him: just when he thought he was out, we’ll pull him back in.

The role of Greece during the 1960s as a popular hub for itinerant writers, poets, artists, and other ne’er-do-well bohemians is well known. Moving away from the psychotropic Mediterranean islands, we find a makeshift yet significant Beat scene in Athens through which many passed. In a recent interview, the publisher and co-owner of City Lights Books, Nancy J. Peters, recalls this nexus of local and international poets at the home of another anointed ‘Greek Beat’, Nanos Valaoritis:

In Greece in the early 1960s, I became friends with Nanos Valaoritis and Marie Wilson who were at the center of an international bohemian/surrealist community. They had a large home which was always full of travelling writers and artists whom they made welcome. The Beat writers were among their guests, and City Lights was frequently talked about as a place everyone would meet up someday.+

Denegris was no stranger to the Valaoritis-Wilson hive. This Greek-Beat juncture explodes brilliantly across the pages of the renegade literary magazine Πάλι/Pali (meaning ‘again’), published from February 1964 to December 1966 (ending shortly before the 1967 coup in April). Denegris was actively involved with Pali as an editor and regular contributor. In addition to regularly featuring Beat writers (for instance, the inaugural issue includes translations of poets Ted Joans and Harold Norse, as well as other luminaries of the nascent counterculture, such as Aldous Huxley), Pali brought together a who’s-who of the mid-century avant-garde in Greek literature as editors and contributors. Some of these poets Denegris has oft cited as his touchstones, specifically the aforementioned surrealists Embirikos and Engonopoulos. To complete his holy trinity, Denegris added the existentialist poet Nikos Karouzos++.

With Pali, Denegris was at the heart of a confluence of the most experimental and progressive local writers the country had ever seen. Along with Valaoritis, the journal’s editorial team comprised other Greek Beats, Dimitris Poulikakos and the aforementioned Koutrouboussis, as well as big names of the post-war literary underground, Manto Aravantinou, Giorgos V. Makris, and Costas Taktsis. It cannot be overstated how deeply Pali shook the foundations of the nation’s literary establishment by publishing the most radical poets, writers, and artists of its day from within and without Greece. Despite its relatively brief life, Greek arts and letters were forever changed in the wake of Pali, leaping headlong into postmodernity. Farewell to Seferis’ disfigured hands fumbling to hold up eyeless marble heads.

While Pali offers an insight into Denegris’ influences, it is in his poetry collections where his Beat-adjacent bell rings loudest. As stunning and successful a debut as Death in Kaningos Square was in 1974, it is Denegris’ 1989 collection Η Κατάσταση Των Πραγμάτων/The State of Things that cemented his status as an exuberant, irreverent, deeply ironic non-conformist poet in Greece and wider Europe. Even though Denegris was active in the arts for over half a century, he published only six collections during his lifetime (a further collection was published posthumously). One reason for this may be that Denegris consciously avoided the fleeting glories of acclaim and publicity.

Rejoicing in our first sweeping brushstrokes and snapshots of Denegris life and art, we find that perhaps it his interviewer Freris who introduced Denegris best with the poet’s own lines from ‘Faust and Indian Cannabis’: «Σπάνια άνθρωπος έχει γράψει στ’ αρχίδια του / μαζεμένες τις αξίες του ευρωπαικού πνεύματος»/‘Rarely has a person completely not given a fuck about / the sum values of the European spirit’+++. Naturally, we have included this poem.

DID YOU KNOW? Tasos Denegris was the location manager for legendary B-director Roger Corman’s Atlas (1961), which was shot in Athens. Who are we to resist a touch of sandalled schlocky goodness in the night?

* Lawrence Ferlinghetti. “3.” A Coney Island of the Mind. New Directions, 1958, p. 13.

** Ibid.

*** Makis Freris. «Μια Συνέντευξη του Τάσου Δενέγρη» (“An Interview with Tasos Denegris”). Municipal Station of Ermoupolis, Sept, 1996. Η Τρύπα: Περιοδικό Περι–οπής (He Trypa: Periodiko peri-opes. www.periodikotrypa.wordpress.com. Accessed: 12 Feb, 2022.

+ “A Woman’s History of City Lights: Interview With Nancy J. Peters.” City Lights Booksellers and Publishers, 1 March, 2022. www.citylights.com/a-womens-history-of-city-lights-interview-with-nancy-j-peters/?fbclid=IwAR25ac-aRFcZaaE0SbC_GX4I23QcDuIGwYkylcf7xTop8EPvzJofCTN6Ir4. Accessed: 27 March, 2022.

++ Freris.

+++ Ibid.