George Kaskanis reads, selects, and recommends
If there’s one pleasure that our demanding profession lacks, it’s the chance to relax and read a book. It may sound a bit like an excuse, but it’s the truth. And I say this because—unfortunately—I’m not the type of person who’ll pick up a book and read it in many small doses. I like to immerse myself in it, soak it up, and lose myself in its reflections, adventures, and imagery.
That’s why the only ideal time for quality reading is during vacation. Once you’ve shed the stress of the year and feel ready to journey through the pages of whatever book you choose. And here’s another one of my “quirks.” I don’t compile a reading list based on current trends or the various reviews published or circulating among friends or “experts.” Knowing that the ritual of reading will take place in Kapandriti, at Chronis Missios’s home—where books are everywhere you look—I almost never travel with anything specific in mind.
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ
This year, however, I brought along the book by our very own Nasia Dionysiou, *Don’t Write, Arthur* (POLIS Publications), which had been waiting on the living room table for quite some time. A book filled with vivid imagery, the scents of bygone eras, and historical references to an almost unknown period in the history of Cyprus. The transitional period when control of the island passed from the Ottomans to the British. With political messages from that time that resonate even today. And somewhere in the midst of all this, Arthur Rimbaud emerges—a figure whose time in Cyprus very few have explored. And that’s how the need was born in me to explore more about this “monster” of poetry, who was also described as the “adolescent Shakespeare.” And that was the benefit of this particular book.
And, as I said, reaching out at random, I stumbled upon Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece *The Picture of Dorian Gray*, which I hadn’t read. It was a random choice, and yet it seemed to be a continuation of Arthur Rimbaud’s work. A battle between morality and a dissolute life, cynicism and romanticism, the visible human form and the invisible soul, heaven and hell. Masterful writing. Every sentence raises a new question. Every image is a personal test. The beautiful Dorian Gray plunges into a world of pleasure with the sole aim of securing eternal youth. His fate provides an answer to the eternal conflict between the superficial and the essence of life.
And then, Heinrich Böll and “Women in a Landscape with a River.” A postwar portrayal of (West) Germany through the labyrinth of politics. Intrigues, mutual blackmail, the style and ethos of politicians, and their labyrinthine relationships with one another. Bizarre suicides, power plays, and the exchange of money. In other words, everything that continues to this day. And in the midst of it all, a “madman” who destroys the exorbitantly expensive pianos of politicians and bankers…
Finally, as a dessert, a short (118-page) book by Thomas Mann, *Death in Venice*. The middle-aged writer Gustav von Aschenbach decides to take a vacation in Venice. There he will encounter love (a platonic love for a young boy) but also a cholera epidemic. Will he stay or will he leave?
Thomas Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929.
That’s all for now. Until the next reading break.
