It’s our blog’s Birthday today (first post 5/7/2007) and we’d like to “celebrate” performing something different: the most famous greek song about environmental destruction. It’s not a rock song, but it has the protesting and accusation attitude like many rock songs we use to present. It’s about the “Persephone’s Nightmare”, a poem-song included in Manos Hadjidakis’ album “Ta Paraloga” (“The irrationals”) (1976) (Lyrics: Nikos Gatsos, Composer: Manos Hadjidakis, Performer: Maria Farandouri)
It’s a lament about how Eleusina was ended up. A sacred place in ancient Greece, and famous all over the ancient world for the Eleusinian mysteries and the cult of Demeter and Persephone, a beautiful natural landscape was lost forever in order to become the most polluted and industrialized place in Greece. The poem focuses mainly on the aesthetic pollution and abuse of the once sacred, respectful and untouchable place. It makes many hints too, either direct or indirect, about the downgrading of life quality and public health.
In Greek mythology, Persephone was the embodiment of the Earth's fertility at the same time that she was the Queen of the Underworld and the parthenogenic daughter of Demeter (goddess of fertility and agriculture). She becomes the consort of her abductor Hades in the Underworld, after making a deal with Demeter to let her go up to the living world and her mother for six months a year.
The figure of Persephone is well-known today. Her story has great emotional power: an innocent maiden who was abducted, a mother's grief at the abduction (by bringing on autumn and winter time), and joy at the return of her daughter (by bringing on spring and summer time). Thus, it is cited frequently as a paradigm of myths that explain natural processes, with the descent and return of the goddess bringing about the change of seasons.
Eleusina is the town where the majority of crude oil in Greece is imported and refined. There are numerous heavy industry plants all around and some of the biggest in Greece: 2 refineries, 2 steel industries with melting furnaces, 2 cement industries, 2 shipyards and 1 ammunition industry. Companies of storing and transportation are gathered more and more in the area thus increasing traffic and air pollution every day by tracks and any kind of fuel consuming vehicles. To make matter worse more than the half of all these industrial plants have been installed out of the defined by laws industrial area and too close to residential areas and archeological sites.
References
Wikipedia-Persephone
Greek Newspaper “TO BHMA”
The song in Greek:
Ο Eφιάλτης της Περσεφόνης
Εκεί που φύτρωνε φλισκούνι κι άγρια μέντα
κι έβγαζε η γη το πρώτο της κυκλάμινο
τώρα χωριάτες παζαρεύουν τα τσιμέντα
και τα πουλιά πέφτουν νεκρά στην υψικάμινο.
Κοιμήσου Περσεφόνη
στην αγκαλιά της γης
στου κόσμου το μπαλκόνι
ποτέ μην ξαναβγείς.
Εκεί που σμίγανε τα χέρια τους οι μύστες
ευλαβικά πριν μπουν στο θυσιαστήριο
τώρα πετάνε αποτσίγαρα οι τουρίστες
και το καινούργιο πάν’ να δουν διυλιστήριο.
Κοιμήσου Περσεφόνη
στην αγκαλιά της γης
στου κόσμου το μπαλκόνι
ποτέ μην ξαναβγείς.
Εκεί που η θάλασσα γινόταν ευλογία
κι ήταν ευχή του κάμπου τα βελάσματα
τώρα καμιόνια κουβαλάν στα ναυπηγεία
άδεια κορμιά σιδερικά παιδιά κι ελάσματα.
Κοιμήσου Περσεφόνη
στην αγκαλιά της γης
στου κόσμου το μπαλκόνι
ποτέ μην ξαναβγείς.
Below, you can find our (clumsy) effort for a free translation of this amazing poem:
Persephone's nightmare
Where once herbs were grown in the fields
with leaves and flowers full of fragrance
Now there’re plants making concrete and steel
and birds fall dead in melting furnace
Sleep away Persephone
inside earth’s embrace
never, never come up to our world again
The place where priests stood in devotion
before the ritual of mysteries begins
now, passing tourists throw their litters
and they rush to see the new refinery
Sleep away Persephone
inside earth’s embrace
never, never come up to our world again
Once the sea was blue and crystal clear
and flocks and herds carefree grazed in the fields
now dusty tracks carry workers to the shipyards
spreading noise and pollution all around
Sleep away Persephone
Inside earth’s embrace
Never, never come up to our world again
Another attempt to translate the lyrics word by word, exactly from the prototype you can find here: www.dalaras.com . In this site they also give a wider interpretation of the lyrics by including some other heavy industrialized places in Greece, once beautiful natural landscapes:
Geography: 1st verse: the Pelion mountains (Volos has one of the world's biggest cement factories). 2nd verse: Elefsina (once a place of mystic cults, now refineries). 3rd verse: my best guess is Megara.
You can hear this song in you tube in three different performances:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ7sTXzIW4g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7w0nDNP3MA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMh_ri36k1E
2 comments:
Pretty useful information, thank you for your article.
It can't truly work, I think this way.
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