Plain Talk
By
Mursi Saad El-Din
It was a night to remember when H E the ambassador of Greece gave a dinner to celebrate the 2004 Olympic games. A cultural event in the most satisfying sense, the evening featured a musical performance by oud-player Naseer Shamma and a Greek player. An example of east meets west, the evening will stand out in memory for a long time to come.
The Olympic games commenced in Greece in 776 BC. Thereafter they were held at intervals until 393 AD, when the Roman Emperor Theodosius abolished them. The programme was initially confined to a single event, a footrace the length of the stadium. Later on additional races and competitions were introduced: discus and javelin throwing, long and high jump, boxing and wrestling... Such feats, and the sheer skill that went into accomplishing them, were lauded by poets and writers of the time.
In modern times the games were revived in the late 19th century, with the first round held in Athens in 1896. Afterwards they were held in a different city every four years. Countries hosting the games inaugurated them with an artistic spectacle based on their respective artistic tradition.
With the 2004 games held in Greece, history has come full circle. During that lovely dinner, while watching a film about preparations for the games, we were introduced to an event that is almost as significant as the athletic competition itself: the Cultural Olympics, which came into being in 1998 with the announcement of the decision to award the 2004 Olympic games to the city of Athens.
Following the Greek government's decision to instigate this event, a foundation was established with permanent headquarters in ancient Olympia. Supported by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, the foundation drew up a programme of cultural events that started in 2001 and will continue up until the 2004 games.
The film gave some examples of cultural activities in 2001-2002 -- wildly impressive, to say the least, what with Prometheus, Lysistrata, Salome, Zorba the Greek, Fedelio making a range of interesting appearances. But it was in the field of theatre, my own passion, that the cultural Olympiad really excelled: The Oresteia, Electra, The Bacchae, Medea. Besides the performances, there were workshops, conferences, exhibitions, lectures, poetry readings...
It was a fabulous display, which confirmed what everyone already knew about ancient Greece: the birthplace of drama, with its tragedies, comedies and, not least, the dance.
An important event celebrated in July 2001 was the international year of Socrates. The month marked 2,400 years since the death of the sage. A three-day conference was held in his honour at Delphi and Athens. Somehow this reminded me of a story our English lecturer used to tell us while we were studying Aristotle's Poetica:
Describing his encounter with the poets, Socrates would say: "Gentlemen, I am ashamed to tell you the truth. I took the poems that seemed to me most carefully composed and asked the poets who wrote them what they meant." And the gist of the tale is that the poets failed to answer this question.
Commenting on this incident in his book Principles of Literary Criticism, Professor Lascelles Abercrombie writes: "Socrates had, in fact, made a discovery of first-rate importance... He was the first person to distinguish between the ability to criticise literature and the ability to compose it."
But let me not digress.
Going through the programme of cultural events that would take us through to the 2004 Olympic games, one realises the incredible efforts of the government of Greece. One outstanding event, to mention another example, is the Spring of Contemporary Hellenic Theatre, which will be finalised at the end of the month. Twenty Greek plays that have never been translated and 20 well-known ones have been chosen to be presented on an international scale, giving theatre enthusiasts like myself the opportunity of a lifetime to witness an overwhelming abundance of the material that made the dawn of theatre.
