Katja Petrovskajas Column “Image of the Week” about tragedy and struggle | EUROtoday

I took the picture on my first journey to Athens, that was shortly after the annexation of the Crimea, which appeared unlikely and briefly. It was close to the Acropolis that hovered someplace over these streets. In a method, I photographed her invisible presence. As quickly as I may consider that I used to be approaching a spot that I had dreamed of my entire childhood.

I circled across the Acropolis as if I needed to delay the encounter and took images of the realm. As a toddler, I learn books about previous Greece for years, the myths. In college classes we had constructed a mannequin of the Parthenon, argued about upbringing in Sparta, considered heroes and heroism. This misplaced world appeared shut and acquainted to me as if it had been my very own major experiences.

When I later noticed my unspectacular picture once more, I used to be stunned by a sure similarity to the picture of the Hungarian Expressionist Csontváry. A home that turns from the viewer to the viewer, as if from a fairy story, the cypresses and on the mountain – the Acropolis. My picture appeared to me like a up to date reproduction of his portray. Only the acropolis was lacking.

A traveler involves Athens in one of many gloomy delirium -like tales by László Krasznahorkai. He needs to see the Acropolis, “Acropolis now” insists in his head as if it had been the purpose of his life. However, nothing appears to work round him: there’s an not possible warmth, the airport is a hell, no one picks him up, a taxi driver takes him from making an attempt to cease him, climbing the mountain of acropolis, he repeats the names of the temple, runs the names of the temples, regardless of the whole lot to the acropolis and, when he arrives – blinded from the cruel solar – he can now not perceive what he sees there. may. I used to be additionally not possible to beat the dissonance between my dream and actuality.

I considered the traditional occasions of our childhood that we’ve the appropriate to a dream in our time in our time, and the dearth of acropolis after I went on a brief trip with a bunch of Kiev Kiewer in Chalkidiki, on the Kassandra peninsula. Kassandra has nothing good, however the sea and the proximity of Greek mythology have promised us rest and strengthening.

It was a brief exhaling for the group from Kiev, “Detox from War”, as certainly one of them mentioned. They had left Ukraine for per week, solely girls, for a dance retreat. Some had husbands on the entrance, some mother and father within the occupied areas, and everybody was bored with night time assaults and struggle stress. Then you had been sitting by the ocean, the place the panorama is paying homage to the inaccessible Crimea and appeared on the mountains.

There was the Olympus the place the gods nieste. The mountains generally confirmed up, then they disappeared into the milky air. A quiet reminiscence that we’ve arrived once more in occasions of tragic, nearly unsolvable conflicts and wars. Where are the gods, our keepers? No one spoke concerning the struggle, no one needed to turn out to be a Kassandra. It was danced, bathed, laughed. On the final night we discovered to bop Sirtaki and despatched movies to the buddies in Kiev to amuse them. The subsequent day we appeared unusual as a result of the night time has been the longest and hardest assault on our hometown for the reason that starting of the struggle.

Originally I believed that on this picture I noticed the concern of assembly my dream. Now I see one thing on this home within the peaceable metropolis in a quiet night mild that’s unreachable for my mates in our homeland.

On the final day it bought chilly, we sat on the seashore and picked up stones, white cats with crimson spots on the fur appeared as a lot because the white stones with crimson spots on the seashore, and I may solely bear in mind as a result of the whole lot else was too painful.