Smyrna in Flames, A Novel
This powerful and moving historical novel is inspired by the written recollections and the memories that haunted the author’s father, Nicias Aridjis,—a captain in the Greek army, who returned from the fields of battle to Smyrna, 50 miles northwest of his hometown of Tire, in 1922 just as Turkish forces captured this cosmopolitan port city. Smyrna in Flames , by the internationally acclaimed Mexican writer and poet Homero Aridjis, lays bare the unimaginable events and horrors that took place for nine days between September 13 and 22—known as the Smyrna Catastrophe. After capturing Smyrna, Turkish forces went on a rampage, torturing and massacring tens of thousands of Greeks and Armenians and devastating the city—in particular, the Greek and Armenian quarters—by deliberately setting disastrous fires.
After years of fighting in World War I and the Greco-Turkish War, Nicias enters a Smyrna under siege. He desperately moves through the city in search of Eurydice, the love of his life whom he left behind. Wandering the streets, the sounds of hopelessness commingle in his mind with echoes of the ancient Greek poets who sang of the city’s past glories. Images and voices, suggestive of Homeric ghosts adrift in a catastrophic scenario, conjure up a mythological, historical, geographical quest that, in the manner of classical epic, hovers between the heroic and the horrible, illustrating the depths and depravity of the human soul.
Making his way from district to district, evading capture, Nicias observes the last vestiges of normal life and witnesses unspeakable horrors committed by roaming Turkish forces and irregulars who are randomly abusing and raping Greek and Armenian women and torturing and murdering their men. What he experiences is literally a living hell unfolding before his eyes. As Nicias passes familiar buildings, cafes, and churches, his mind and soul fill with nostalgia for his earlier life and the promise of love.
Fortunately for the reader, the brutal and bloodthirsty scenes of the Smyrna Catastrophe are leavened by the voice of this “visionary poet of lyrical bliss, crystalline concentrations and infinite spaces,” as Kenneth Rexroth has described Aridjis. His portrayal of a genocide-in-progress floods our senses, turning these chaotic scenes into a poignant drama.
At the very end, aboard one of the last ships to take refugees out of Smyrna before its final fall, Nicias scours the throng of thousands of desperate Greeks and Armenians pressing forward to escape on already overcrowded ships. Suddenly Turkish forces move in to shoot and stab, and, overwhelmed by the all-pervasive tragedy, Nicias abandons Smyrna and Asia Minor forever.
Homero Aridjis, born in Contepec, Michoacán, Mexico in 1940, has published 19 collections of poetry, 17 novels, and 15 volumes of short stories, plays, essays, and books for children, and his work has been translated into fifteen languages. He has received important literary prizes, including the Xavier Villaurrutia (Mexico), the Diana-Novedades International Fiction Prize (Mexico), the Roger Caillois, for the ensemble of his work (France), the Grinzane-Cavour (Italy) for 1492 The Life and Times of Juan Cabezón of Castile, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, The Smederevo Golden Key for Poetry (Serbia), the Premio Letterario Camaiore Internazionale (Italy), the Violani Landi University of Bologna Poetry Prize (Italy), the Premio Letterario Internazionale L’Aquila Laudomia Bonanni (Italy), the Erendira State Prize for the Arts (Mexico) and two Guggenheim Fellowships. He has been Mexico’s Ambassador to Switzerland, The Netherlands and UNESCO, and served two terms as International President of PEN International, during which he strove to make PEN less Eurocentric.
Among his books in English are The Child Poet, 1492 The Life and Times of Juan Cabezón of Castile, Eyes to See Otherwise, A Time of Angels, Solar Poems,Maria the Monarch and News of the Earth. A visiting professor at New York University, Indiana University and Columbia University, Aridjis was Nichols Professor for the Humanities and the Public Sphere at the University of California, Irvine. As founder and director general of the Michoacán Institute of Culture he held memorable poetry festivals, bringing to Mexico Jorge Luis Borges, Günter Grass, Tomas Tranströmer, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kazuko Shiraishi, Seamus Heaney, Andrei Voznesenski, Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, Vasko Popa, Ted Hughes, Breyten Breytenbach and many others. In 1985, Aridjis marshalled 99 other renowned artists and intellectuals in Mexico to found the legendary Group of 100, an activist organization that addresses national and international environmental and ethical issues. A champion of grey whales, monarch butterflies, sea turtles, and rain forests, and one of the earliest voices to sound the alarm about climate change, Aridjis has been called the green conscience of his country. His passionate defense of the Earth has been acknowledged with various international awards, including the UNEP Global 500 Award, the Orion Society’s John Hay Award for Nature Writing, and the Millennial Award for International Environmental Leadership given by Mikhail Gorbachev.
is a journalist, editor and translator who lived for many years in Mexico and Spain. Her journalism and criticism have appeared in the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and The Nation, among other magazines. Her translations from Spanish and French include Teresa, My Love by Julia Kristeva, Marriage as a Fine Art by Julia Kristeva and Philippe Sollers, Petite Fleur by Iosi Havilio and Narcoland by Anabel Hernández.
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