Eleni the Beautiful

Helen of Sparta with a Goddess Aphrodite

Written on 26th of December 2013

There is one painting of Michelangelo “Leda and the Swan” I was interested in during all the years I have spent in Italy; not because it was lost, but because it is telling one of the Greek myths. The colors chosen for this painting seems to be unusual for Michelangelo, or maybe the copy was not that precise...The painting was lost, but the story still stirs the imagination...
Here it is...
A wife of a Spartan king, Leda (Λήδα), was admired by Zeus (Ζεύς), who seduced her in the guise of a swan. As a swan, Zeus fell into her arms for protection from a pursuing eagle; this is how the most beautiful woman on earth was conceived. Her name was Helen (Ἑλένη-Eleni). She was half-a human, half-a goddess. We Greeks, call her H Ωραία Ελένη (E Orea Eleni-Helen the Beautiful), but she is also known to the world as Helen of Sparta, and Helen of Troy. She was a wife of Menelaus the king of Sparta, and a lover of Paris, a prince of Troy.
Her story can be read in Iliad because the Trojan War was all about her....

This story is as old, as the story of all Greeks, and up till now every Greek man is in love with an elusive, undescribed beauty that makes people forget the reality, and do what the loving heart says. Every Greek man is in love with Eleni the Beautiful.
Well.....Eleni is still alive, you can find her on the streets of Sparta, doing her everyday chores, somewhere in Athens, busy, going for a meeting. I met Eleni recently....... in England.

It happened unexpectedly, a few days ago on the flight from London to Edinburgh. My 6 months old son was delighted, my husband was surprised, I was stunned. Eleni had big blue eyes, blond hair and beautiful legs. She was dressed in a business suit and had a delicate aura around her. Eleni spotted us in the plane very quickly. It was not that difficult, because Oresti, my son, is right now a magnet to anybody who loves babies. He has a head full of very dark hair, big dark eyes, one tooth which he shows while smiling and...and he is mumbling to himself, nobody understands what is he talking about ...but he is talking. Eleni has heard us speaking Greek and at first sat in her own seat, but soon changed to the seat close to us. In no time she became a friend of Oresti. He was seducing her by smiling and showing his only tooth. Suddenly, she looked at me strange way and introduced herself: ‘My name is Eleni’ At first, I thought that it was a joke, since she can be easily called Helen the Beautiful, but it was not a joke. She opened her purse, found there a small pouch, where she has kept her business cards, and gave one to me.

Her name was really Eleni... the last name was Gaelic. She was..... a Scottish Eleni, not Helen, ELENI. She did not speak Greek, as I hoped for; she did not have any Greek connection except the name.... and the looks....  I was expecting an interesting story, and I got one...Eleni’s mother was so much in love with Greek culture that she not only gave her a Greek name but also cooked Greek food. Eleni was brought up very Greek and was told Greek myths very often. The only thing missing was a knowledge of a Greek language...she did not speak any Greek, but love it... that is why she wanted to be close to us, to listen to our language...her mother passed to her a love of everything Greek....

At the Edinburgh airport Eleni was picked up not by a Paris, prince of Troy, but by a one handsome man who had a very Scottish name... Brian.

Bonding à la grecque

 

 

 

 

 

 

Written in 20th of  November 2013

On Thursday evening the man I love and I went out. Oresti, our son, stayed for a few hours with his grandparents. Everything was very romantic, except that we missed our son. My husband called his parents dozen of times and asked how is Oresti.... On eleventh time my father in law lost his patience and told my husband do not call again, because they were bonding with their grandson and his calls were disturbing the process. After we heard that they are bonding with Oresti, we lost our desire to be out and we wanted to see how their bonding looked like.

When we entered their home this what we saw:
Three of them were in the master bedroom. Oresti, like a little bundle was lying in the middle of the bed. Hypnos, a Greek God of sleep was taking care of him; he was sleeping like a baby.
My parents in law brought two chairs from the dining room, put them side by side in front of the bed just like in the theater, sat quietly there, and watched Oresti sleeping. Our calls disturbed this process…

We were so touched by the picture we saw, we have barely said anything on the way home, and then, half of the night we talked about…love.

Our End of Greek Summer

Anavyssos, Greece

 

Written on 26th of August, 2013

There are two months in a year I love the most: June and August. First, because people I love were born in June: my father, my brother, my husband and my son…and then there is August, the month of fulfilled dreams, the month of lions, I was... born in August…Well, I am not that big lioness, rather a small one…August is also the warmest month of the year, and as long as I remember, we have always spent it in Greece. I love August, the month of the shooting stars. We have seen many of them this year. This August was very special to me. I had the first vacation with the man I love, and with our son.

Our last week-end in Greece is over ….on Thursday we will close the doors of our new home here, and say Good Bye to Anavissos, to Glyfada, to Sparta, and to Gythion, to all those places we have in our blood. Until next summer they will stay in our thoughts and in our dreams. We will remember warm winds in the morning, and the smell of the citrus trees in the yards…

We will miss all that, and we will talk about it ….




 

The Land of Gods

  

Written on August 9th, 2013

We are in the heart of Laconia, in Mani, in the place the man I love comes from….Gythion (Γύθειον) Gy Theon - Γη Θεών- which means - The Land of Gods…..and it really is…Gythio - one of the oldest harbour towns known in the history of human kind. In this port, prince Paris of Troy kept his boat when he was visiting Menelaus, the king of Sparta, and to this boat he had brought the wife of Menelaus, Helen of Sparta, which he had stolen from the king. This is how the Trojan War had started.

Our story here is not that dramatic. We stay in the white house surrounded by red, very fragrant roses. My father in law has already introduced to his world his first born grandson – our Oresti…. they share the same name and surname….the life goes on…

My American Spartan has put our bed on the balcony. We are having here very tender nights, full of love whispers…. We are watching the stars, the stars are watching us, we are a part of the universe….but we have not seen yet a shooting star….this is something to wait for…
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Today, I have a birthday and my American Spartan takes me and our son to the town where a Greek poet Maria Polidouri was born…to Kalamata… the town of kalon mation- καλών ματιών…the town of beautiful eyes…. Do people have beautiful eyes there? I’ll find it out today..

The Man Who Thought He Was Greek



Admiral Willhelm Canaris

Written on 22 of May 2013

Ever since I was a little girl, I had at home history lessons other people could only dream about. My father, a mechanical engineer, was, and still is, a great history enthusiast. He used to read a lot and share with the family stories, which, we children, remembered for the rest of our life. To my brothers’ delight, my father studied all possible wars, and all possible battles that happened in history. Many times a kitchen table served as a ground, where Alexander the Great was fighting Persians, where King Leonidas was fighting Persians, and where all great battles of WWII were recreated…

Later on, our teachers in the college were opening their eyes wide, since all three of us, my brothers and I, we had an extended knowledge of the military history …..Including small details....

The story, we children always liked, was about German admiral Willhelm Canaris.  He was born on January 1st, 1887, in Westphalia, to the wealthy family of an industrialist, and brought up and schooled in a very patriotic way. From the times of the Prussian King Frederick I, Germans loved their army.  A military career was considered very honorable, and most of the aristocratic, and rich youth started their adult life serving the country.  Willhelm Canaris was not different, what separated him from other young men was his name, and his look.  Mediterranean looking Canaris was very interested in his family roots, and one day discovered that he carried the same name as the most beloved Greek hero Konstantinos Kanaris, and this fact shaped the rest of his life.

Born on the island of Psara, just near the by the Chios island, Konstantinos Kanaris became an orphan in very early age. It was his uncle who took care of him, and who inspired him.  Kanaris became a seaman, famous freedom fighter for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire, and later on, a legendary admiral, and the Prime Minister of independent Greece.

Young Wilhelm Canaris was very attracted to the idea of being a descendant of a Greek hero. He visited Greece on several occasions and like many other young men fell in love with the Mediterranean, but he went much further in his admiration, he had learned the Greek language, and in 1905, at age seventeen, he had joined German Imperial Navy.  He also always carried with him a picture of Admiral Konstantinos Kanaris which was given to him while on vacation in Kerkyra (Corfu).


Wilhelm Canaris’ talents were recognized very early. Fluent in German, English, Spanish, French, and Greek, he was involved in intelligence,  as well as served as a German Navy officer.  In between the wars Canaris was making a career similar to many other German officers who were members of a Nazi Party with this difference, that he had never been a Party member.  How he became one of the most powerful people in III Reich without being an NSDAP member, will be forever a mystery.  As a matter of fact, he opposed Hitler and all the Nazi madness from the beginning of Hitler’s career. During WWII Canaris was already an admiral and a chief of Abwher  -a  German Military Intelligence. Germans always had a very ambivalent opinion about Canaris, they were afraid of him, he was one of those who did not make a career because of Hitler, he came from the 'old money', was educated and able to win the mind battles…He was a German Odysseas.  They suspected that he collaborated with British, but the Greek Gods were taking care of Wilhelm Canaris.  He had an extraordinary ability to analyze the situation and avoid a danger, even though; he was a member of some radical groups, which were plotting against Hitler. As a chief of  Abwehr, he knew about the atrocities of WWII and was personally involved in saving Lubavitch Jews in Poland.  By the end of WWII opponent of Wilhelm Canaris, Heinrich Himmler gathered some evidence which resulted in dismissing Canaris from Abwehr. He was put under the house arrest and subsequently, on 9th of April 1945, just one month before the end of the war, executed in the Flossenbürg concentration camp for the act of high treason. He was 58 years old.

Whole his life Wilhelm Canaris believed that he had a Greek blood in his veins and that he was a descendant of Konstantinos Kanaris.  In reality, his family wasn’t of Greek, but of Northern Italian descent, originally was called Canarisi, and lived in Germany from the 17th century.

Last night, when we could not sleep and talk a lot about everybody and everything, I told this story to my husband.  He loved it, as much as I and my brothers loved it, when we have heard it for the first time..