Celebrating "No"
Why is the the 28th of October an important day?
A) It is just 2 days before my birthday(!!!)
B) It is a Greek national celebretion day.
On the 28th October 1940 Greece entered World War II. The Italian Ambassador in Athens visited the Greek Prime Minister (Greece was under a dictatorship at that time, but anyway, this guy liked to call himself "prime-minister") very early in the morning and asked his permission for Italian troops to pass through Greek land and maybe "stay" there for a while.
In a surprsing move, this guy, who his political ideology was very close to fascism and nazim (he was sympathetic to Hitler, but eventually he gave up because Hitler was not sympathetic to him) said "NO" expressing for the first time during his administration the will of the Greek people.
Probably, we are one of a few countries that officially celebrate the beginning of the War and not the end of it but, at least until the Nazi's attack against Greece in April 1941, the war was actually very successful. The Greek army had pushed out the invaders and had advanced in Albania (that was under Italian occupation)
It even made Winston Churchill say: "Until now we would say that the Greeks fight like heroes. From now on we will say that heroes fight like Greeks".
Greek resistance to the Axis lasted 219 days during which 13,676 soldiers died. In the following 3 years of Nazi, Italian and Bulgarian occupation of the country almost 750,000 people died from famine, executions and in Resistance battles.
Constantinos Kavafis (one of my favorite poets and actually one of the greatest Greek poets of the modern time wrote at the beginning of the 20th century (1901, translated from Greek and not by me...):
Che fece... il gran rifiuto
To certain people there comes a day
when they must say the great Yes or the great No.
He who has the Yes ready within him
immediately reveals himself, and saying it he goes
against his honor and his own conviction.
He who refuses does not repent. Should he be asked again,
he would say no again. And yet that no --
the right no -- crushes him for the rest of his life.
(And in French!)
A quelques uns arrive un jour
d'avoir à choisir entre le grand Ouiet le grand Non.
Se révèle aussitôt celuiqui a le Oui tout prêt en lui,
et de le direle fait aller
plus loin dans l'honneur et dans sa conviction.
Celui qui refuse ne regrette rien. Si on lui reposait la question,
c'est non qu'il redirait. Et pourtant il l'accable, ce non -
dans sa justesse- durant toute sa vie.
A) It is just 2 days before my birthday(!!!)
B) It is a Greek national celebretion day.
On the 28th October 1940 Greece entered World War II. The Italian Ambassador in Athens visited the Greek Prime Minister (Greece was under a dictatorship at that time, but anyway, this guy liked to call himself "prime-minister") very early in the morning and asked his permission for Italian troops to pass through Greek land and maybe "stay" there for a while.
In a surprsing move, this guy, who his political ideology was very close to fascism and nazim (he was sympathetic to Hitler, but eventually he gave up because Hitler was not sympathetic to him) said "NO" expressing for the first time during his administration the will of the Greek people.
Probably, we are one of a few countries that officially celebrate the beginning of the War and not the end of it but, at least until the Nazi's attack against Greece in April 1941, the war was actually very successful. The Greek army had pushed out the invaders and had advanced in Albania (that was under Italian occupation)
It even made Winston Churchill say: "Until now we would say that the Greeks fight like heroes. From now on we will say that heroes fight like Greeks".
Greek resistance to the Axis lasted 219 days during which 13,676 soldiers died. In the following 3 years of Nazi, Italian and Bulgarian occupation of the country almost 750,000 people died from famine, executions and in Resistance battles.
Constantinos Kavafis (one of my favorite poets and actually one of the greatest Greek poets of the modern time wrote at the beginning of the 20th century (1901, translated from Greek and not by me...):
Che fece... il gran rifiuto
To certain people there comes a day
when they must say the great Yes or the great No.
He who has the Yes ready within him
immediately reveals himself, and saying it he goes
against his honor and his own conviction.
He who refuses does not repent. Should he be asked again,
he would say no again. And yet that no --
the right no -- crushes him for the rest of his life.
(And in French!)
A quelques uns arrive un jour
d'avoir à choisir entre le grand Ouiet le grand Non.
Se révèle aussitôt celuiqui a le Oui tout prêt en lui,
et de le direle fait aller
plus loin dans l'honneur et dans sa conviction.
Celui qui refuse ne regrette rien. Si on lui reposait la question,
c'est non qu'il redirait. Et pourtant il l'accable, ce non -
dans sa justesse- durant toute sa vie.
posted by Immortalis at 11:56 π.μ.
2 Comments:
Excellent post. I will be stealing your title for my blog use on your bithday. Only, it will be "Celebrating a NO that wouldn't have been necessary ahd things worked out a few years before"
beautiful thanos! i don't think i've ever really learned anything on a blog before. :)
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