Book: The Murderess by Alexandros Papadiamantis, tr. Peter Levi

I spent most of my childhood in a state of perpetual immersion in Ancient Greek culture. I wanted to be an archeologist, so getting a head start on the available information seemed like a proactive way to spend my time. My twelve-year-old self would balk at the fact that I had chosen a book on anything besides Ancient Greece, but she also taught herself how to write in Greek1 instead of doing math homework and now I can’t multiply… so what does she know? That said, when I was browsing for what to read for Greece I opted for a more modern read from a period of its past that is often overlooked.

The Murderess was written in 1903, in Greek katharevousa — a version of Greek that is essentially obsolete today (more to come in Beyond the Book). The translator, Peter Levi, warns us about the impossibility of accurately producing “the texture of the original.”

In 1903, Greece was at the tail end of King George I’s reign. The Greek king was a young Danish prince when he took up the throne in 1896. His reign and the formation of Greece as we know it was fraught with conflict. In the 20th century, the Greek people saw civil war, famine, a right-wing military dictatorship, and a fledgling monarchy being abolished and restored and then abolished again for good.

In 1903, Greece was essentially bankrupt. Mass immigration to the United States helped ease the plight of poverty, especially in rural areas, but advancements in infrastructure aiming to ease that burden was slow, leaving large parts of the population in dire straits - something that is clearly felt throughout this book.

About the Book

The Murderess is what an enduring, Brothers Grimm-esque folktale is made of. It’s a story I imagine tired mothers would tell their restless children to frighten them to bed, or shared by children at sleepovers, testing each other’s bravery. In Mexico, it could be La Llorona, but in Greece, it could be our main character, Old Hadoula.

In the remote Aegean island of Skiathos, Old Hadoula is keeping watch over her ailing newborn granddaughter. Day and night, Hadoula sits by the cradle and makes sure she’s still breathing, still eating, still alive. After 10 days of sleepless nights where Hadoula falls further and further into a delirium that had her remembering every misfortune in her life — she accidentally suffocates her granddaughter.

Consumed by guilt, she convinces herself that because she hadn’t been caught, God had to have approved of her actions. She had saved her granddaughter from a lifetime of misery and her family from dealing with the burden of her birth. The thought leads her to try to spare other little girls from lifetime of misfortune. What ensues is a bit of a killing spree, and Hadoula slowly becomes the prime suspect before making a run for it.

Throughout the book, the author forces us to reckon with backstreet abortions, the station of women in life & society, and the burden they both bear and impose through the obligation of providing a dowry in order to marry them off.

The book ends on the precipice of divine and human justice — Hadoula is imprisoned by her own guilt and insanity, eventually receiving what can only be interpreted as poetic justice.

Beyond the Book

Greece is home to one of the most interesting linguistic phenomena called diglossia2, which is when two or more dialects coexist in the same language community. It is strictly present when one version is used in more common, day-to-day affairs, and another in more formal situations, like literature and governance. Demotic Greek and the ever-changing katharevousa are one such case.

In the 20th century, the subject of Greek language was a politically charged affair steeped in classism. During this time, the conversation around what to make the official language of Greece had been in the public consciousness for about 120 years. The genesis of the conflict came from the disdain that had grown around Demotic Greek during the push towards independence from the Ottoman Empire. Demotic Greek borrowed heavily from Turkish — a fact that seemed incompatible with the re-formation of a proper Greek state.

The primary goal of Katharevousa was to eventually return Ancient Greek to the forefront of their newly independent nation, but Greece had neither the organizational capacity or governmental stability to impose such a large-scale change. The phonological and morphological elements that Katharevousa maintained from Ancient Greek meant that it was often unintelligible for the uneducated masses. The hope that written Katharevousa would start making its way into the spoken Demotic was ridiculous, and it resulted in a huge developmental hinderance to the population. Until 1881, schools only had textbooks in Ancient Greek, which meant that children learned to read and write in a language they could not speak. If this sounds like a headache — it’s because it was!

Since Demotic Greek was seen as “vulgar,” the Greek Orthodox Church never allowed for the translation of any religious texts into the more accessible language. The few people that tried to do so were promptly and aggressively dealt with. For example, Queen Olga recognized the language gap when she had tried consoling soldiers of the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 and realized they could barely understand what she was reading. She then set off on translating the Gospel of Matthew, which eventually led to such widespread opposition that it resulted in the Gospel Riots of 1901. When the translation sold like crazy, the response of the Greek Orthodox Church was to ban the translation of any biblical texts into Demotic Greek throughout the Ottoman Empire. Another set of riots erupted in 1903, when the trilogy of the tragedy of Oresteia (consisting of Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides) was translated and performed in Demotic Greek.

The conversation only changed when philologist Ioannis Psycharis proposed that Demotic Greek actually was Ancient Greek - it was simply the version of the language a few thousand years down the evolutionary line! His ideas found widespread support (and a fair amount of pushback), but it wasn’t until 1976 that the government managed to finally end the Greek language question by making Demotic Greek the official language.

Quotes

“In her private thoughts, when she summed up her entire life, she saw that she had never done anything except serve others.”

“‘O God, why should another one come into the world?’”

“Taxation took over from looting, and ever since then the whole beloved people has continued to labour for a vast central stomach which has no ears.”

“It was about the first crowing of the cock, when memories arise like ghosts.”

“Her accustomed prayer for little girls was ‘May they not survive! May they go no further.”

“All the world know what it means for a woman, not yet widowed, to be both mother and father to her daughters.”

“Better to for them to make haste above.”

“Her brain had gone up in smoke.”

“Even if I am a sinner… I never meant to do evil.”

Read if you’re interested in: Greece, Baba Yaga-esque characters, women.