Published by The National Herald, November 26, 2004

The Greek State, the Greek nation and the Greek American
Identity Crisis

By Dr. Harry J. Magoulias

Special to The National Herald

Is the Greek American an endangered species? There is no more important question for the Greek-
American community. The recently published biography of the 1963 Nobel laureate, George Seferis
(Geoge Seferis by Roderick K. Beaton, Yale University Press, 2003 – see especially the chapter,
"Beyond the New State: Hellenism," pages 164-166) offers invaluable insights in answer to the above
question.

Although not dealing with the Greek American per se, Seferis’ views help to delineate the crisis
confronting Greek Americans as they enter the 21st Century. A refugee from Smyrna living in
Greece, Seferis, in a fruitful controversy with Kostas Tsatsos, insisted on distinguishing "Hellenism
(Ellinismos)" from "Greekness (Ellinikotita)," and the "Greek State (Elliniki Democratia)" from the
"Greek Nation (Elliniko Ethnos – which includes Hellenes in both Greece and the Diaspora)."

The Greek War of Independence (1821-29) created for the first time in history the modern Greek
State; the Greek Nation, on the other hand, has survived over four millennia.

CATASTROPHIC EFFECT

The defeat of nationalist Greek forces by Kemalist Turks in 1922 had a catastrophic effect on the
Greek Nation residing in Turkey. The consequence of the Greek State’s espousal of the "Great Idea
(Megali Idea)" and its ill-conceived irredentist expansionist policy into Turkey, with purpose of making
Constantinople its capital, was that the Greek Nation living outside the boundaries of the Greek
State, thanks to the forced exchange of Greek and Turkish populations in 1923, was now huddled
within the Greek State on mainland Greece.

For Seferis, "Greece becomes a secondary matter. Whatever obstructs my thinking of Hellenism, let
it be destroyed. If it was right for the country (Greece) to expand its borders (e.g., the irredendist
policy of Venizelos and others before 1922)… it was so that Hellenism – the concept of human worth
and freedom, not the archaeological idea – could develop in a corner of the earth."

Kostas Tsatsos, on the other hand, insisted that "Greekness" is one of several a priori criteria,
against which aesthetic, moral or political actions can be judged.
Seferis rejected "Greekness" as a measure of aesthetic worth, however:

POTENTIALLY PERNICIOUS

"Greekness," he contended, was artificial and a potentially pernicious abstraction. As examples of

introducing to modern Greece a distorted European notion of the achievements of classical Greece,
Seferis cites Adamantios Koraes’ determination to purify the modern Greek language, which was
corrupted and debased throughout the long period of the Ottoman tyranny.

The fabricated Katharevousa (i.e., purist Greek) introduced a bloody literary conflict between an
artificial construct and Demotiki (i.e., demotic form), the living language of the Greek people,
legitimized and glorified by Greek poets and popular literary figures in direct opposition to the
academic works of scholars. As champions of the demotic form, Seferis and Odysseas Elytis each
won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1963 and 1979, respectively.

ARTFICIAL EXPRESSION

Another example Seferis cites as an "artificial expression of Greekness" was the Athens Academy, a
neoclassical edifice completed in 1887, the work of the Danish architect, Theophil Hansen. Once
again, Athens imported a distorted norther European impression of what constitutes "Greekness."
And all this – while the incomparable monuments of the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, the Temple of
Nike, the Propylaia were still standing on the Akropolis, and the Hephaisteion situated below – failed
to inspire a suitable response from architects, both foreign and native. The aesthetic genius of the
classical Greeks can neither be imported into its native soil nor manufactured at will. Thus, for Seferis
Greekness is nothing more than the imitation of an empty form. He called this the "Third Greek
Civilization," following the truly creative periods of the Ancient Greek and Byzantine Civilizations.

For Seferis, it is not a question of how we can become Greeks, but a recognition that we are Greeks.
Only then can the culture of modern Greece be truly designated as a historic continuum.

What is it that makes Greeks the living embodiment of historic Greek cultural values in space and
time? It is the fact that we share a common language and traditions.

How does Hellenism differ from Greekness? By understanding that "Hellenism is the accumulated
and accumulating cultural heritage that knows no boundaries in time or space." Seferis decries what
he calls "European Hellenism," the kind of Hellenism which, since the Renaissance, was
appropriated by the culture of Western Europe. But in the Greek language, Hellenism is not an
abstract quality, but a collective entity; the totality of the Greek people, no matter where they reside.
Since the Renaissance, Hellenism was Europeanized and became something not Greek at all.
BASTARDIZED

Again, Seferis wanted to repatriate to Greece her ancient poetic legacy while rejecting its bastardized
Western version. The challenge for the bearers of modern Greek culture, then, is to create a
distinctively Greek Hellenism.

Seferis also agreed with Isokrates who, in 381 BC (in his Panegyric Speech), insisted that "the
designation, Greek, should be thought no longer a matter of race. It should be given to those who
share in our common origin." The continuity of Hellenism was linguistic and cultural, rather than a
biological continuity or a matter of genetic inheritance.

On the other hand, I would argue that, if we are not descendants of the ancient Greeks, as some
have contended, then terms like "Greek State" and "Greek Nation" would make no sense. We would
be "Phil-Hellenes" and nothing more. The fact that the Greek language survives as a living language
in evolution, since antiquity and the remarkable continuation of ancient cultural practices and beliefs
in the life and folk culture of modern Greeks, is proof enough that there is Greek DNA in the veins of
the Greek people no matter how diluted. Otherwise, the inhabitants of Greece would be speaking a
Slavic, Albanian or Turkish language, as do their neighbors; their church services today would not be
conducted in the Koine (i.e., commonly spoken language) Greek of early Christianity. In answer to
those who point out that today’s Greeks do not look like their tall, blue-eyed and golden-haired
ancestors – descriptions, by the way, of Scandinavian peoples – we might look carefully at the
painted archaic sculptures in the Acropolis Museum, where you will see black-haired and black-
bearded figures which look startlingly like the modern Greeks. You will also see a magnificent Kore
with abundant black hair and dark, wide eyes.

Again, in response to Seferis’ differentiation between the Greek State and Greek Nation, the
connection between the two is critical. What Seferis does not say is that, had the Greek War of
Independence not ended with the creation of the Greek State, wherein the Greek Nation could be
safely huddled, the specter of 20th Century genocide might have succeeded in annihilating large
numbers of the Greek populations of both Turkey and Greece herself. The Armenian Genocide is a
frightening reminder of what awaited the Greeks of Turkey. The survivors of the 1922 ethnic debacle
– absorbed by the Greek State, in spite of their tragic circumstances – were free to prosper and
contribute incalculably to the culture of the modern Greek State, and for this, the Greek Nation must
be grateful. The same holds true for the Anatolian Greeks who found refuge among their fellow
Greeks. The enemies of the Greek State came not only from the East, but also from the West. In the
Second World War, the Nazis threatened Greek survival by a war of starvation and wholesale
executions.

ASSIMILATION LEADS TO ANNIHILATION

But what has the present plight of Greek Americans to do with the controversy over the Greek State,
Greek Nation and Hellenism? The first thing we should notice is that the Greeks of Turkey and Egypt,
where there were once thriving Greek communities, communities which managed to preserve their
language, religion and cultural traditions never called themselves Greco-Turks or Greco-Egyptians.
Total assimilation always results in the annihilation of ethnic identity.

In America, Hellenic immigrants and their descendants generally refer to themselves as "Greek
Americans." In so doing, we are making a determination that we share our "Americanism" with all
other citizens of the United States, regardless of nationality or ethnic origin. The same holds true for
the designation, "Greek Orthodox." We share our Orthodox Christian faith and traditions with all other
Orthodox Christians of the world. "American" and "Orthodox" are actually generic terms. What
specifically defines us, then, is our Greekness, or what Seferis would call our Hellenism.

WE ARE WHAT WE INHERIT

What exactly, then, do we mean when we say we are Greeks? What we are is largely what we
inherit, a specific past that is present to some degree in the "now" of our lives. We find ourselves part
of a living tradition, and whether we recognize it or not, we are entrusted with a sacred responsibility
as bearers and custodians of that tradition, a tradition which is transmitted from pre-literate Neolithic
times and continues through Mycenaean, Archaic and Classical Greece to the ecumenical Hellenistic
and Roman periods and then to 1,100 years of imperial Byzantine Christian culture and civilization,
and is followed by nearly 400 years of Ottoman domination and oppression, and 175 years of a free
modern Greek State.

If we are the heirs of classical Greek civilization, we are more immediately the descendants of the
Byzantine Greeks. Because of Alexander the Great’s conquests to the East, the Greek language
became the lingua franca (koine glossa) of the successor Hellenistic Kingdoms and the Roman
Empire. As a result, the Apostles of Christ, were able to preach the new religion of Christianity
throughout the then-known world in one language, the Koine, or common Greek (i.e., the demotic
Greek of the New Testament spoken by large numbers of the Roman Empire’s inhabitants).
Moreover, it was in the Byzantine Empire that the doctrines of Christian faith were formulated by the
first Seven Ecumenical Councils (321-787 AD) and, significantly, in the Greek language.

Byzantine scholars, both monastic and secular, made the Italian Renaissance possible. It was the
Fathers of the Greek Church who focused on the value of Greek letters and learning, and resolved
that the Greek classics should be included in the curriculum of Christian learning. Had the Greek
Fathers rejected classical literature from the pre-Christian past as morally objectionable, none of the
masterpieces of ancient Greek culture – Homer, Hesiod, Herodotos, Thucydides, Greek tragedy and
comedy, poetry, the work of the mythographers, Greek philosophers and moralists – would have
survived. They very likely would all have been destroyed as pagan, and all which would remain of
classical Greek learning and civilization would be its ruins, the haunting specter of a mute miracle.
The world therefore owes a great debt to Byzantium for preserving the literary legacy of the ancient
Greeks for humanity at-large.
CONTINUED THE CHALLENGE

The Byzantines, in fact, continued the challenge of the ancient Greek poets and artists: to make the
invisible visible in the attempt to capture ultimate reality. Perhaps no other religious art in history has
so successfully portrayed the miracle of the incarnation of the spiritual and the divine in material form.
One has only to visit the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Hempstead, Long Island, for example, to sense
the numinous impact of the Byzantine mosaic icon. To quote William Butler Yeats, "standing in God’s
holy fire as in the gold mosaic of a wall (we are gathered) into the artifice of eternity." Seferis was
overwhelmed when visiting the Church of Chora (Khariye Camii) in Constantinople and viewed for
the first time its incomparable 14th Century mosaics and frescoes, many of whose masterpieces
were replicated in the Cathedral of St. Paul. This is precisely what Seferis meant when he said that
Greeks today should be creating authentic Greek works of art instead of inferior Western copies.

BASILEIOS DIGENIS AKRITAS

The one great work of Byzantine folkloristic literature is known as "The Epic of Basileios Digenis
Akritas."

Basileios was the hero’s Christian name, and "Digenis" defines one who is born of two nations or
races. Basileios’ mother was the beautiful daughter of the Byzantine strategos (i.e., military governor)
of an eastern Byzantine province along the borders facing the Muslim enemy. Basileios’s father,
however, was an Arab emir and a Muslim by faith who converted to the Orthodox Christian faith. The
"Akritas" is a border baron, a military chief who is responsible for defending the frontiers, the "akra,"
against foreign invaders in a life-and-death struggle for Hellenism and the Christian faith.

The very same struggle is still going on in places like Northern Epiros and the island of Cyprus. The
importance of the "akritai" to the defense of Greek culture and Greek Christianity was never
forgotten.

During the Greek Cypriot struggle in the 1950’s to win their independence from Great Britain, the
codename of the leader of the freedom fighters, George Grivas, was "Digenis Akritas." It was, in fact,
the "Akritika," the ballads of the Basileios Digenis Akritas epic, which continued to inspire the Cretans
in their heroic struggle against the Turks, until they finally won their independence in 1898. During the
German occupation of Greece, the poet Angelos Sikelianos wrote his "Akritika," poems in honor of
the modern Greek "akritai," who were now defending Hellenism within the boundaries of the Greek
State. Tapping the various streams flowing out of the classical and Byzantine past which created
modern Hellenism, Sikelianos rallied the desperate Greeks to persist in their struggle for survival.

WE MUST PARTAKE OF TWO CULTURES

By identifying ourselves as Greek Americans, we should recognize that we, too, are "digeneis" and
"akritai." Regardless of whether our parents or grandparents emigrated to the U.S.; regardless of
whether we ourselves are second-generation Greeks; and regardless of whether we are the offspring
of a "mixed marriage," we must all, out of necessity, partake of two cultures.

Konstantine Kavafy was one of the 20th Century’s great Greek poets. He flourished in the Greek
Diaspora of Alexandria and died in 1933. It was a remarkable moment, during the funeral services for
Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis, a Roman Catholic, for us to hear over the radio Maurice Templeman,
of Jewish heritage, reading her favorite poem, "Ithaki," written by Kavafy, a Greek who was living in
Egypt in 1911. The poem was printed in the New York Times:

As you set out for Ithaca

Hope your road is a long one,
Full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops, Angry Poseidon –
Don’t be afraid of them…
To learn, and to go on learning,
From those who know…

"To learn and to go on learning" what constitutes our Hellenism, "full of adventure, full of discovery,"
is the admirable goal set for all Greek-Americans.

GREEK AMERICANS ARE LIKE THE POSEIDONIANS

Kavafy wrote a second poem in 1906 which seems like it could have been written expressly for
Greek Americans. The poem is called "The Poseidonians." The Poseidonians (Poseidoniatai) were
the citizens of Poseidonia in Italy; their colony was founded on the Gulf of Salerno before 600 BC.
From the Latin Paestum, it is now known as Pesto. Although of Greek origin, the Poseidonians
eventually, over the passage of time, forgot the speech and customs of their ancestors. They
desperately hung onto their ancient festivals, music and games (if we substitute games for Greek
cuisine, the same thing is happening in America). The Poseidonians would pronounce the few Greek
words they still remembered but hardly understood. They bemoaned the fact that they had become
excluded from the Hellenic way of life, "lamenting loudly and weeping, they go their way."

It is truly sad to see that the Greek Orthodox Church in America is encouraging the disintegration of
its own Hellenic continuum. While the Greek American community is making the choice to acquiesce
in the loss of the Greek language spoken by the family nation for 4,000 years, the Church has
succumbed to the deconstruction and demystification of the original language of Christianity by way
of rampant translations into an inadequate American English vernacular. The irony is that all non-
Greek Christian denominations in the world today can not know the essence of the Christian
message without a profound knowledge of the New Testament written in Koine Greek. It is this which
sets the Greek Orthodox Church apart from all other Christian communions in the world. Even the
language of the Church of Rome for the first three centuries was Greek. Listen to what Czelaw
Milosz, the Polish Nobel laureate for literature, has to say in his Poem "Bells in Winter."

You asked me what is the good of reading the Gospels in Greek.

I answer that it is proper that we move our finger
Along letters more enduring than those carved in stone,
And that, slowly pronouncing each syllable,
We discover the true dignity of speech.

COMPULSORY

T.R. Glover, a classical scholar, delivered a sermon at Oxford from the pulpit, in which his theme was
that the teaching of Greek should be compulsory. He quoted from Acts 21.37. St. Paul had been
seized by the Jews in Jerusalem, taken to the Roman military tribune and accused of being an
Egyptian terrorist leading 4,000 insurrectionists to the city. The tribune was about to give orders for
Paul’s immediate execution. Paul approached the Roman officer and asked, "May I have a word with
you?" The tribune was taken aback and asked, "Do you speak Greek?" The fact that St. Paul spoke
Greek saved his life. A Roman citizen who spoke Greek could not be a terrorist. If Professor Glover
believes that the teaching of Greek should be compulsory, what should we Greek Americans be
doing about it?

Kenneth J. Dover, another great Oxford classicist, was invited by the Japanese to speak to them
about the ancient Greeks. The Japanese professors asked, "Why study the ancient Greeks in the
age of multiculturalism?" Dover replied that certain ancient cultures "have more to teach us than
others."

"Do you mean," asked the Japanese, "that in the history of culture, children can choose their
parents?"

"Yes, of course," Professor Dover answered.

And the reason for this, he explained, is that the Greeks, after all, invented philosophy, theater,
libraries, competitive athletics, political theory, rhetoric, zoology, biology and atomic theory. Because
of its intrinsic worth, its sheer brilliance, and originality, Greek civilization is unique in history.

As Greek Americans, we have no need to choose our parents, but only to recognize them. Greek
Americans, however, must not limit their studies to the classical Greeks. As stressed earlier, we can
not know who we truly are unless we expand our historical horizons to include the Byzantine Empire,
the fate of the Greek Nation under the Ottomans and, just as important, the serious study of the
creation of the modern Greek State. We must become intimately familiar with the struggle of the
Greeks of the 19th and 20th Centuries in order to preserve our Hellenism. We need to know that, to
do so, they made incalculable sacrifices. When we speak of Greek civilization, we must be adamant
in insisting that we do not mean the ancient Greeks alone, but that we have an extraordinary
medieval and modern history, as well.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

The question, then, that Greek Americans must ask themselves is: Can we, "creatures of a day,"
transmit our enduring cultural order to the next generation? If we heed the words of H.G. Wells,
"Education is a race against catastrophe," we must. What then must we do to achieve the
preservation of our Hellenism and the supreme vehicle of its transmission, the Greek language? I
have three proposals that the Greek-American community might consider.

First, we can organize exchange programs with sister cities in Greece. The purpose will be to send
annually, for a period of two summer months, as many youngsters as possible to responsible Greek
families in whose homes they will hear and speak only Greek, learning the language by total
immersion. At the same time, they can visit historical monuments and come to know the beauty of
the Greek landscape and islands and, especially, the Greek people by virtue of firsthand experience,
instead of sterile references in books. We can return the favor by taking children from Greece into our
own homes to learn English and become acquainted with American life and institutions. The major
expense would be air passage, but the value in return would be incalculable. Such an experience
could be transformational for many of the participants.

Second, we should cease expending our financial resources and energies on the building of banquet
halls and exercise and arts and craft facilities, all of which are easily accessible outside the Greek
community. Our primary need is to establish Greek American educational centers whose sole
purpose will be to teach a core curriculum of Hellenic Studies covering the Greek language (Ancient,
New Testament and Modern), as well as Greek History (Ancient, Medieval and Modern) and literature
from Homer to Elytis. Professors and specialists from neighboring universities and colleges could be
engaged to give a proper academic grounding to our educational efforts. Educators involved in
Modern Greek Studies programs in universities where they already exist would be ideal in
formulating such programs. Special programs could be offered, on the one hand, for youngsters up
to 18 years of age and, on the other, more advanced courses for the adult population, including
retirees.

And third, those youngsters who would be unable to take advantage of the summer exchange
programs with Greece could attend Modern Greek Language Summer Camps in the U.S., whose
purpose, again, would be to learn Greek through total immersion. In addition, in conjunction with the
exchange programs, our children would be able to learn Greek beyond one summer by attending
language camps one summer after another.

ABSURDITY OF THE AMNESIAC

For Greek Americans to be Greekless and ignorant of our Hellenism is to suffer the absurdity of the
amnesiac who is a non-person. Those who contend that what is important is not our Hellenism, but
our Orthodox Christianity, are guilty of promoting deracination and the disappearance of our Hellenic
identity as a historical community. We will have become "American Orthodox Christians," just as the
Greek Orthodox Church in many regions of this country is already becoming Americanized (i.e.,
secularized).

TRANSMITTERS, NOT TERMINATORS

Let me emphasize, furthermore, that in a very real sense, all Americans are Greeks in a later stage of
social, political and cultural evolution. It is the United States of America, the champion of democracy
and freedom, which continues the ancient Greek experience in the modern world. Greek Americans
can be proud that they are home. But before it’s too late, let us combine our resources, material,
spiritual and intellectual, and choose to be transmitters of Hellenism, not its terminators. We owe this
to our parents. We owe this to our children. We owe this to ourselves. We owe it to America.

Editor’s Note: Dr. Magoulias is Professor Emeritus of Byzantine History at Wayne State University in
Detroit, Michigan. He earned his doctorate from Harvard University in 1962. He currently resides in
Del Mar, California.