The Greek Merchant Fleet: Why the Asian Ports are predominantly Greek ports My very dear friend P. is chastising me for feeling grand to recite Crito & Antigone from Hong Kongs Peak. This is because he forgets that since at least the 1910s these ports are as much ours as anybodys else, Hong Kong Shanghai, Singapore, Manila, Calcutta, Seoul. Because it was the Greek merchant ships with rugged and weather beaten Greek captains, dreamy cadets, and able Greek seamen and engineers, who took the goods, the ore, the soya beans, the machinery of South East Asian countries to the global markets and brought food, wine, luxuries and prosperity. It was the Eugenides, the Livanos, the Niarchos, the Embirikos fleets who came to these places to bring trade and prosperity and not war, death, and exploitation as the British and American and Japanese battleships did. And we carried that history of trade and prosperity to all Asian seas and all Asian cities, to all Asian ports. The fact that we carry these days rags and the deep humiliation of bankruptcy and cleptocracy does not mean that we should consign to oblivion our recent glories, our recent contributions to world prosperity. And indeed some of the younger and better educated seamen and mid-shipmen and cadets were spending the countless hours of waiting αρόδου in Asian ports reading Sofocles and Plato and Aristotle. Nobody tells us all that better than the great Greek poet Nikos Kavvadias, an able mariner himself, who spent most of his life in these Asian ports, working for the Kallimanopoulos fleet, while writing majestic poems. And here are the first two paragraphs from his poem about a young and raw seaman who takes his first trip on sea to these Asian seas: KURO SIWO Our first trip was a charter freight to the South seas Πρώτο ταξίδι έτυχε ναύλος για το Νότο, tough shifts, bad sleep, and malaria. δύσκολες βάρδιες, κακός ύπνος και μαλάρια. The lighthouses of India are so strange Είναι παράξενα της Ιντιας τα φανάρια that you cannot see them, as they say, at first glance from the starboard. και δεν τα βλέπεις, καθώς λένε, με το πρώτο. Beyond the bridge of Adam in South China Περ απ τη γέφυρα του Αδάμ, στη Νότιο Κίνα, You were taking delivery of thousands of bushels of soya beans χιλιάδες παραλάβαινες τσουβάλια σόγια. But you did not forget even for a second Μα ούτε στιγμή δεν ελησμόνησες τα λόγια the words intimated to you during a time of idleness in Athens που σού πανε μια κούφιαν ώρα στην Αθήνα. And here the full poem with the majestic melody of Mikroutsikos and Koutras incredible vocals. youtube/watch?v=qGCspPvN2C0
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 07:39:34 +0000
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