IMAGES AND IDEALS
A VISUAL TRIBUTE TO ALEXANDROS MORAITIDIS
At the Alexandros Papadiamantis House Museum
& the Zisis Oikonomou House Museum
Organized by: Municipality of Skiathos
Curator: Iris Kritikou
Opening: Saturday, 13 July 2023
Duration: July–November 2024
Images and Ideals
A Tribute Owed to Alexandros Moraitidis
“I took part,” notes Alexandros Moraitidis, “in all her feasts and festivals.” In Skiathos, his birthplace, he was present at processions and dances, such as “her archaic dance, the Kamara, enchanting in its indescribable originality.” There he walked and breathed among “bays and small harbors,” “on mountain peaks,” “in forests and valleys,” in wooded landscapes and along the seashore where “every branch of myrtle or pine” confided to him “an old story,” and “every little harbor” whispered “a tale.” In the remote parts of his beloved island, he rested in humble chapels which, “as if alive,” greeted him saying, “Welcome to us. Welcome.” He wrote stories about his homeland and about the scattered deserted islets surrounding it, each of which “knows how to recount a story, a shipwreck, a collision, a breath of ‘gentle breeze.’”
Yet his deeper desire—that these impressions of thought and devotional writing might transcend the borders of Skiathos, capturing and transmitting what is universally yet spiritually unenslaved Greek—was clearly expressed in his own words. He wished his writings to possess a character “not merely Greek but national,” to become “Images and Ideals of the Nation,” forming elements of collective memory from a time “when our homeland had no other elements of culture except faith and customs.”
The exhibition Images and Ideals, echoing this wish and continuing previous distinguished collaborations with the Municipality of Skiathos, was conceived as a living attempt to trace the life and work of the “other” Alexandros — the third cousin of Papadiamantis, the eminent though less widely known Greek writer Alexandros Moraitidis. Presented in the summer of 2024 in Skiathos, at the emblematic Alexandros Papadiamantis House Museum and at the neighboring and significant new cultural landmark of the island, the Zisis Oikonomou House Museum, it fulfills a long-owed tribute to this important spiritual son of Skiathos.
Within the framework of the exhibition, distinguished Greek visual artists were invited to study earlier thoughts, writings, and images, and to create new and moving works. These works establish an organic dialogical field of historical, spiritual, topographical, and symbolic multi-layered visual references connected to the writer’s life, psyche, and oeuvre — to his beloved homeland, the island of Skiathos; to Mount Athos, where he worshipped and believed; to Athens, where he lived and worked; and to Magna Graecia, which he visited deeply moved. These precious traces of his thought and life compose the intimate body of the “Images and Ideals” — the inseparable natural and metaphysical universe of Moraitidis.
Alexandros Moraitidis, later the monk Andronikos, immersed himself in all the literary genres of his time, from poetry and ecclesiastical verse to short stories, novels, travel writing, and theatre. His short stories are imbued with intense religiosity as well as love for every small and wondrous element of the natural world around him. With his wife Vasiliki Foulaki, they met through their spiritual quests and lived “preserving virginity,” later becoming monastics, following the example of Saints Andronikos and Athanasia. Nurtured in the liturgical tradition of Skiathos — influenced by the spiritual movement of the Kollyvades — Moraitidis, deeply devout, was also a lover of tradition, recording in his writings the customs of his homeland as well as the traditions, manners, and spiritual figures he encountered during his travels to centers of Orthodoxy — Constantinople, Smyrna and its environs, Palestine, and Mount Athos.
During the preparation of the exhibition, it became evident that there is a lack of updated scholarship and recent editions of his work — a gap inconsistent with the breadth of Moraitidis’ literary and translational contribution, already honored in 1914 with the Award for Letters and Arts.
This symbolic visual tribute to Alexandros Moraitidis — the “other” Alexandros — is offered with emotion by all of us, and especially by the Municipality and the people of Skiathos who took the significant initiative and embraced this endeavor. May it prove to be a small beginning toward bringing once more into full light the spiritual imprint he left on his era and his literary work.
The exhibition Images and Ideals, a modular psychographic and topographic visual narrative on Alexandros Moraitidis, is presented in his birthplace, organized by the Municipality of Skiathos and curated by Iris Kritikou, with the participation of fifty-four distinguished visual artists from Skiathos and the rest of Greece. It constitutes the fourth dedicated collaboration on the island between the curator and the Municipality of Skiathos, following the exhibitions First Flag (June 2021), The Other Sea (June 2022), and the tribute to Alexandros Papadiamantis “I Was Born in Skiathos” (July–November 2023).
On the occasion of the exhibition, an eponymous catalogue has been published, designed by Nikos Leontopoulos, with texts by: Theodoros Tzoumas (Mayor of Skiathos), Nikos Vatopoulos (journalist and author), Konstantinos Koutoumbas (theologian, iconographer and professor of Byzantine music), and Iris Kritikou (art historian and curator).
Parallel events and educational programs were also organized within the framework of the exhibition.
The Portaitissa
For the first time after so many years, the neighborhood saw her whitewashing her pretty little house, with its tidy little courtyard and an almond tree in the middle, up on the crest of the Rock, in the Upper Quarter — like a well-kept bastion, her pretty little house.
Below stretched the island’s harbor, blue, deep blue. The boats moved in and out with their snow-white sails. The brigs and the yachts, lined up in a row, rested gently, ever so gently, swaying like the thin skins of peeled onions, as if breathless from their swift voyages.
At the landing, farther off, the Zagorian caiques — the crooked little boats — were selling apples and chestnuts; and the village shops, standing in a line hand in hand, seemed as though they were gazing up at lovely Xeni, who was whitening her house above, with a snow-white kerchief over her fair hair.
And down in the marketplace could be heard the brisk sound of her brush against the wall she was whitewashing: splat–splash, splat–splash, rhythmically — as though it were singing the tender song of the day.
Altanou
Now my village is deserted — my Kastro.
Upon its high rock, where once stood the pretty little houses of my village, my Kastro, only ruins remain; and of its many small churches only one is left — Christ alone, the snow-white Christ, who from afar stands out gleaming white, early in the morning, in the radiance of the sun.
And when, at sweet dawn, the shepherd appears on the mountainside above, driving his goats up to Pryi, he will behold Christ — white — the first church, the Metropolis, standing in the midst of my deserted village, my Kastro. And making the sign of the cross, he will say:
— Christ, help us!
And again, when the sailor catches sight of it with his caique from the cape of Glossa or from Zagora, first of all he will see Christ — white — he will cross himself and he too will say:
— Christ, help us!
And if he is an islander, he will hoist his flag upon the mizzen mast, salute his homeland, and say:
— Help me, my Christ!
How many times, O my deserted village — ah, my Kastro — have I crossed your rotten little wooden bridge, my limbs trembling, my heart pounding, with my old mother, to light the silver oil lamps of Christ, or to attend the liturgy, and afterward to gather capers and samphire. My old mother, Papalexandrina, would cross me three times upon the chest:
— Christ help us, Christ help us, Christ help us!
And thus I would pass unharmed over the wooden bridge that trembled and shook as though about to fall into the rocky chasm which separated my deserted village, my Kastro — a small rocky, steep peninsula, an ancient fortress from the time of the Venetians, later abandoned — connected to the rest of the island by a wooden bridge spanning a very deep abyss. In the years of the klephts, that bridge would be drawn up at night for safety, lest bandits set foot upon my beloved Kastro.
How many times after the liturgy did I search among the wild fig trees, and how often gather capers from its rocks, or explore the nests of wild pigeons, at the risk of falling into the abyss of the waves, which forever, foaming, lash like raging beasts against its dark, jagged foundations and die away roaring in the echo from Chalkidiki.
And when at last I wished to return to the town with the other children, we would descend a little below Christ, where the rock drops steeply toward the sea and a dangerous chasm is formed, eternally filled with the sea’s roar and the foam of waves that surge and howl within it — so that the terrible gulf resounds far away, as though some living soul were dying down below, crying out and begging for help.
With the other children, crossing the untrodden ruins of the cottages filled with snakes and scorpions, we would reach the chasm to hear the mournful echo, with dread — to listen trembling to the final groan of Altanou the widow, the widow with many children, engaging in fearful dialogue with the wailing echo:
— Altanoooooou! …
— Oooooouuuuu! …
— Do you have chiiiildren? …
— I haaaave! …
— What’s his naaaame? …
— Manooolis! …
— May Saint Manolis not come ooout!
