“Narrating one’s Life Story: Storytellers, Storytelling Cultures and the Dimensions of Self-Presentation among the Greek-Orthodox Refugees of Asia Minor”

ISBN 978-960-404-283-8 [SET]ISBN 978-960-404-285-2

www.kentrolaografias.gr

Publications of the hellenic folklore research centre – 31

athens 2014

narratiVes across sPace anD tiMe:transMissions anD aDaPtations

ProceeDings of the 15th congress of the international society for folk narratiVe research

(June 21-27, 2009 athens)

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CONTRIbuTORS

Scholarly Supervision: Aikaterini Polymerou-Kamilaki

Editorship Committee: Aikaterini Polymerou-Kamilaki, Evangelos Karamanes, Ioannis Plemmenos

Editing of texts: Ioannis Plemmenos, Georgia Tsichritzis

General Congress Secretary and Programme Co-ordinator: Marilena Papachristophorou

Secretariat: Anthoula Bakoli, Socrates Loupas

Design and Production: G. A. Argyropoulos LTD

© Copyright 2014 ACADEMY OF ATHENS HELLENIC FOLKLORE RESEARCH CENTRE 3, Ipitou str. - 10557, Athens, Greece Telephone: +30 210 3318042 / +30 210 3664751 Fax: +30 210 3313418 / +30 210 3664735 e-mail: [email protected] http://www.academyofathens.gr http://www.kentrolaografias.gr

ISbN 978-960-404-283-8 [SET]ISbN 978-960-404-285-2

PubLICATIONS OF THE HELLENIC FOLKLORE RESEARCH CENTRE – 31

NARRATIVES ACROSS SPACE AND TIME:TRANSMISSIONS AND ADAPTATIONS

PROCEEDINGS OF THE 15TH CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR FOLK NARRATIVE RESEARCH

(June 21-27, 2009 Athens)

VOLuME II

ATHENS 2014

ACADEMY OF ATHENS

CONGRESS COMMITTEES

Honorary Committee

Panos Ligomenidis, President of the Academy of Athens, Regular Member, Academy of Athens†Nicolaos Matsaniotis, Secretary General of the Academy of Athens, Regular Member, Academy of Athens†Constantinos Drakatos, Regular Member, Academy of AthensChrysanthos Christou, Regular Member, Academy of Athens†Iakovos Kambanellis, Regular Member, Academy of AthensPanayotis L. Vocotopoulos, Regular Member, Academy of AthensConstantinos Krimbas, Regular Member, Academy of AthensSpyros A. Evangelatos, Regular Member, Academy of Athens

International Scientific Committee

Aikaterini Polymerou-Kamilaki, Director of the Hellenic Folklore Research Centre, Academy of Athens, GreeceEleftherios Alexakis, Hellenic Folklore Research Centre, Academy of Athens, Greeceulrich Marzolph, university of Göttingen, GermanyMarilena Papachristophorou, Hellenic Folklore Research Centre, Academy of Athens, GreeceÜlo Valk, university of Tartu, Estonia

Organizing Committee

President: Aikaterini Polymerou-Kamilaki, Director of the Hellenic Folklore Research Centre, Academy of AthensGeneral Congress Secretary and Programme Co-ordinator: Marilena Papachristo-

phorou, Hellenic Folklore Research Centre, Academy of AthensTreasurer: Evangelos Karamanes, Hellenic Folklore Research Centre, Academy of AthensMembers:Vassiliki Chryssanthopoulou, Hellenic Folklore Research Centre, Academy of AthensParaskevas Potiropoulos, Hellenic Folklore Research Centre, Academy of AthensGeorgios Vozikas, Hellenic Folklore Research Centre, Academy of AthensElo-Hanna Seljamaa, Dept. of Estonian and Comparative Folklore, university of TartuLouisa Karapidaki, Hellenic Folklore Research Centre, Academy of AthensAfroditi Samara, Hellenic Folklore Research Centre, Academy of Athens

CONTENTS

VOLUME II

COMMUNICATIONS

Aikaterini Polymerou-Kamilaki, Water Management in Myths and Legends of the Greek People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Maria Kamilaki, The “Orality-Literacy” Continuum in e-Man-tinades: Continuity, Discontinuity and Restructuring of the Traditional Distich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ioannis Karachristos & Michael Warlas, Narrating one’s Life Story: Storytellers, Storytelling Cultures and the Dimen-sions of Self-Presentation among the Greek-Orthodox Ref-ugees of Asia Minor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Evangelos Karamanes, Space and Imaginary in the Legends of Aspropotamos Region, Prefecture of Trikala, Thessalia, Greece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

George Katsadoros, The Versatility of Fables: The Case of Plutarch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Desmond L. Kharmawphlang, Nature as Mother Metaphor: A Study of Some Khasi Rice Myths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Kristel Kivari, The Concept of Underground Force in Estonian Folk Belief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Mare Kõiva, Inter-patient Narratives in the Internet . . . . . . . .Aggeliki Kompoholi, Charming Divine Wrath: The Presenta-

tion of a Greek Woman Charmer From Messenia, Greece .Aggeliki Kompoholi, Storytelling in a Hospital and the Self’s

Homecoming . The Act of a Greek Woman Storyteller from Nauplio, Greece and the Art of Narration . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

David Konstan, From Isis to Islam: The Metamorphoses of Apu- leius’ Metamorphoses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ioannis M. Konstantakos, Adventures in the Land of Gold: Tales

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of Precious Lands in the Ancient Greek and Near-Eastern Traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Anu Korb, Siberian Estonians’ Tales about their Ancestors and Founders of Estonian Villages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Maria Koumarianou, Narratives, Genealogies and Matrimonial Strategies on the Island of Psara, Greece: An Emic/etic Ap-proach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Georgios Kouzas, The Speech of the Margin: Life Stories and Representations of Self and Other Among Migrant Beggars in an Urban Area of Greece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Violetta Krawczyk-Wasilewska, Global “Singlevillage” and On-line Dating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Eva Krekovičová, Death Personified as a Bride in Central Eu-ropean Folklore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Monika Kropej, The “Changing life” of Some Slovenian Super-natural Beings From the Annual Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hans Kuhn, Between Masquerade and Confession: The Games Rímur Poets Play with their Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Vera S. Kuznetsova, The “Folk Bible” Among Russian Settlers in Siberia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Vivian Labrie, Serenity (ATU 707), This Boy’s Life (ATU 590), Star Wars (Lacourcière 305A), Solaris (ATU 652)? About Extending the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Tale-Type Identifi-cation Insight to Movies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Outi Lehtipuro, The Mind of a Discipline – Toward a Finnish Theory of Folklore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Maria Leontsini, Wonders of Nature and Heroism in the Nar-ratives of Herakleios’ Campaigns Against Persia . . . . . . . .

Isidor Levin, Überlegungen zur psychologischen Erzählfor-schung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Åsa Ljungström, The Lost Book of Charms and an Overlooked Notebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Anna Lydaki, Folk Narrative and Social Reality: The Female Presence in Mythical Νarratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Fumiko Mamiya, Vorstellungen von Raum und Zeit in der An-derswelt im Japanischen Volksmärchen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Zoi N. Margari, Dancing Greek Minority Experience: Memory and Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ljiljana Marks, Interpretative Levels of the Oral Legends Writings Kinga Markus-Takeshita, Belief Tales in the Shahname: The

World of the Preternatural in the Iranian National Epic . .

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CONTENTS IX

J. J. Dias Marques, The Legend of the Little Seamstress (“A Costureirinha”) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Mrinal Medhi, Propp’s “Tale Role” and “Characters”, and As-samese Folktales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Mirjam Mencej, Belief in Stories about Witches in Contempo-rary Slovenia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Wolfgang Mieder, “I’m Absolutely Sure About – the Golden Rule” Barack Obama’s Proverbial Audacity of Hope . . . . .

Tatiana Minniyakhmetova, Time and Space in Telling of Dreams (an Udmurtian Example) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Vaitsa Moisidou-Hani & Anna Kalintzeva, Folk tale Themes and Narrative Structures in Ethno-cultural Context: Bul-garian Folk Tales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Tzeni Moraiti, The Environment as a Narrative Landscape in the Fairytale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Rūta Muktupāvela, Looking for Oedipus Myth’s Transcultural Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Athanasiοs Nakas & Jina Kalogirou, Patterns of Word and Phrase Repetition as Linguistic Universalia in Folktales . .

Siraporn Nathalang, Protecting Nature through Folklore Re-production: Case Studies from Thailand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Elena Nosenko-Stein, Christianity or Judaism? A Choice of Jews in Modern Russia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jana Nosková, “Being Home again”: Narratives about Remi-gration and Settlement among the Czechs from Volhynia after World War II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ayelet Oettinger, Fools Teaching Wisdom, and the Adaptation of Genre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Maria Palleiro, The Lady Ghost and The Black Devil: Colors of Memory in Argentinean and Estonian Folk Narrative . . . .

Ulf Palmenfelt, Dominant Units in Life History Narratives . . .

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Ioannis Karachristos & Michael Warlas

Narrating one’s Life Story: Storytellers, Storytelling Cultures and the Dimensions of Self-Presentation

among the Greek-Orthodox Refugees of Asia Minor

There is a relatively long tradition of using oral material as a source for scientific inquiry among scholars dealing with modern and contemporary Greek history and especially with Folklore Studies. We are thus inclined to think that a brief genealogy of this enterprise is needed before we turn to our specific topic, which deals with the dimensions of self-presenta-tion within the life stories of Greek-orthodox Asia Minor refugees. The first attempt to collect such material was undertaken by Greek scholars participating in the competitions organized by the Greek Literary Association of Constantinople during the last decades of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The participants had to collect folkloric and linguistic material –information on local history since the antiquity, customary law, local customs, local dialects and their affinity to the stan-dard/official Greek language, folktales, songs etc.– from regions situated outside the borders of the Greek State such as Macedonia, Thrace, the Aegean islands and Anatolia. Many of these scholars originated from the villages or the regions they worked on and based their texts both on per-sonal knowledge as well as on information gathered on the field. Many of the participants were not trained historians, folklorists or philologists and they followed the pattern as well as the guidelines set by the Greek Literary Association of Constantinople. The outcome of their work, the so called Living Monuments, were used to support the Greek State’s ir-redentist claims, since ethnographic maps and assertions of the Greek national identity among the local population were often based on these collections (Εxertzoglou 1996, Anagnostakis and Balta 1990).

During and immediately after the end of WWI both the character as well as the use of oral testimonies changed. The Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople in collaboration with the Greek-orthodox communi-ties situated in Asia Minor organized a large-scale campaign, aiming to conscript all the executions, discriminations, brutalities etc., which took

44 IOANNIS KARAChRISTOS – MIChAeL WARLAS

place against the Sultan’s Greek-orthodox subjects during this period.1 This denunciation discourse continued even after the 1922 events. Upon their arrival in Greece many refugees visited the police or the judicial authorities to testify against the Turks and the Turkish state, accus-ing them for rampages (Κapsis 1992, Warlas 2003, pp. 148-150, Warlas 2004).

On March 1923 the International Women’s Association founded in Athens a Boarding House for Refugee Girls, which gave shelter to 150 girls between 14 and 24 years of age. For psychotherapeutic purposes the girls were invited on 1924 to write down their autobiographies. They tried to explain how they found themselves in that terrible situation in the first place, and to justify their misery and poverty, not neglecting of course to express their gratitude to the Association. Forty of these texts were published between 1926 and 1928 in a volume, sold in order to support the needs of the Boarding house.2

In a time when the official policy was trying to promote oblivion rath-er than memory –which perhaps explains why both Asia Minor and the Asia Minor refugees didn’t find their place in the official Greek historiog-raphy during the next decades– Melpo Merlier founded in Athens the Centre for Asia Minor Studies (Kentro Mikrasiatikon Spoudon). Starting in the 1930’s the Centre’s researchers collected several oral testimonies from Asia Minor refugees who were settled in various locations with-in the Greek state. The interviews were structured according to fixed questionnaires and the information, in the form question – answer, was ordered in folders according to the refugees’ place of origin in Asia Minor (Merlier 1974, pp. 28-31). Thus, following the doctrines of the Folklore Studies of their times, they valued the information more than the infor-mant or the narrative as a whole and parceled the interviews in a way which makes it difficult for the researcher to reconstruct the whole text of the interview. This information is preserved in the Centre’s Oral Tradition Archive and can be combined with music, photographs, refugees au-tobiographies, different kinds of objects, personal archives etc. which are

1. ecumenical Patriarchate 1919, Central Council of Pontus 1922. See also Warlas 2002, especially pp. 24-26. A series of pamphlets on persecutions of Greeks in the Ot-toman empire from 1914 to 1923 can be accessed at Greek Genocide 1914-23 [Online].

2. Από τας ημέρας της Μικρασιατικής Καταστροφής. Αυτοβιογραφίαι των Προσφύγων Κοριτσιών του Οικοτροφείου του Διεθνούς Συνδέσμου Γυναικών [From the days of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. Autobiographies of Refugees Girls hosted in the Boarding house of the International Women Association], Athens 1926/1928.

NARRATING ONe’S LIFe STORy 45

also preserved in the Centre for Asia Minor Studies.3 During the same period and following more or less the same methodology, the Hellenic Folklore Research Centre of the Academy of Athens conducted research in various refugee settlements in Greece. The researchers collected oral material concerning the everyday life in certain communities, as well as photographs and songs.4 The left-wing writer elli Papadimitriou earns special attention because she focused on testimonies as texts, which ex-press experiences of the People in the course of their historical route.5

This approach generated a particular type of narrative on local his-tories, personal reminiscences and local folklore, which is very popular among Asia Minor refugees and their descendants. Reading, writing and publishing such books became a social action, which was considered a personal duty of every refugee and a collective moral obligation of the refugees’ unions and the local authorities. Preserving and mediating the knowledge on local history, local folklore and personal reminiscences is considered to promote and to legitimize local refugees’ identities, even for people who were born long after their ancestors had left their homelands.

The memory of the old homelands became a critical component of the refugee’s new identity under the circumstances of poverty and so-cial degradation. As a response to the negative stereotypes, which were developed by the locals, they created a particular discourse in order to defend their dignity and self-respect (Κatsapis 2003, pp. 115-116). They reacted by accentuating their high living standards in Asia Minor and their cultural, religious and ethical superiority against the local Greeks. In a more academic context A. I. Aigidis undertook the “mission” to re-fute the conservatives’ allegations against the refugees, by publishing a book with the eloquent title, Greece without the refugees (Αigidis 1934). In his book Aigidis analyzes the benefits of the refugees’ movement and settlement in Greece, confutes the accusation concerning the ethno-cul-

3. On the history and the activities of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies, see Cen-tre for Asia Minor Studies 1974, Kitromilides 1996, Petropoulou 1998. For a critical approach see, Papailias 2005. For a better understanding of the spirit of Melpo Logo-theti-Merlier, founder of the Centre, see Logotheti-Merlier 1948. On the recollection of the Centre as an Oral history Archive, see Nomikou 2006.

4. For the first attempts of these recollections see, Μegas 1939, pp. 156, 160. A large number of unpublished manuscripts containing folklore material on Asia Minor refugees’ culture are preserved at the Archive of the Academy of Athens hellenic Folklore Research Centre.

5. See Petropoulou 1999-2000, Warlas 2003, pp. 169-170; see also Papadimitiou 1952, 1962, 1975 and 1977.


tural purity of the refugees and, finally, spotlights the advantages of the religious and educational life within the Asia Minor Greek-Orthodox communities. Both Aigidis’ apologetics and his argumentation still influ-ence the refugees’ and the academic discourse on these matters.

In our research on refugees’ memory we have traced dichotomies between Public memory and vernacular culture, functional and reservoir (storage) memory and we have tested their operational value and their methodological limitations.6 The institutionalized or public memory in this specific case was developed in the context of social and educational institutions, such as refugees’ unions and clubs, the Academy and the University of Athens, and the Centre for Asia Minor Studies. This public memory organized the narrative of the so-called Asia Minor Hellenism according to the grand narrative of the Greek nation and the doctrines of folklore studies, which dominated the studies of social and cultural aspects of the past. Public memory was –and still is– based on written sources, testimonies of important or elder persons mediated by the re-searcher, commemoration ceremonies and rituals, like the memorial ser-vice (Mnimosyno) for Smyrna’s bishop Chrysostomos, roads’ and cities’ name-giving, annual reunions and festivals etc.7

The refugees’ mnemonic art was developed within the context of their settlements, neighborhoods, associations and community or family gatherings, where they felt safe to propagate their beliefs, thus enforcing their local and family bonds.8 Reminiscences, short tales, parables and an-ecdotes form a corpus of what should be called communicative memory. Communicative memory focuses on narration and representation and is closer to biography and individual experience. It uses more interaction, personal contacts and performing processes than media, propaganda and mass communication. It is created in the context of small mnemonic communities and affects maximum 3-4 generations (Assmann 1999, p. 56).

Local and amateur historians of refugee origin attempted to trans-form this stuff into history with limited success. even nowadays, field-work with interviews and participating observation is usually the best

6. On these dichotomies, see Assmann 2003, pp. 130-142 and Bodnar 1993. On the shift from personal to collective – social memory, see halbwachs 1950 and Con-nerton 1989. On the distinction between oral reminiscences and oral traditions see Vansina 1985.

7. In the words of Assmann (1999, p. 56), all these practices could be classified as elements of a society’s cultural memory.

8. For these practices as parts of the vernacular culture, see Bodnar 1993, pp. 13, 18-19, 56-57, 248.


way to explore the echo of refugees’ memory.9 Memory can be examined from different aspects and in different contexts, but we think that communicative memory is what fits best our case, because it is closer to biog-raphy and individual experience and it allows old people to formulate a personal version of their life story.

Attempting to answer the question Why people remember, we found ourselves facing noteworthy peaks concerning both the writing of auto-biographies and the collection of testimonies. We believe that the term memory crisis (Terdiman 1993) is the most suitable one to describe these fluctuations. Such crises increase the interest in these types of recol-lection not only for the institutions, which organize such projects, but moreover for broader social and cultural audiences. The most recent memory crisis can be traced in the mid 1990s and encouraged not only the recollection itself, but also a revived interest for the study of the history of refugees’ memory as well as of the memory of their so called lost or unforgettable homelands.The events that triggered this memory crisis are:

• The biological dissolution of the last two generations of refugees, the one whose members experienced the Catastrophe as adults, and the next one whose members lived in Asia Minor either as children or at most as adolescents. Reaching at the end of their lives people consider it their duty, to preserve this knowledge for the next generations.

• The relatively recent turn to political history, which encouraged scholars to work on events like wars, population exchanges and refugee movements, but from a new and certainly much broader angle than in the past.

• The rise of a new identity issue in the context of migration move-ments to Greece and the anti-globalization rhetoric.

• A revived interest for the national and for the local history, which nowadays has a very strong nostalgic color, and affects broader population groups.

The development of Mass Media Communication and of desktop publishing facilitated the participation in this game and encouraged “or-dinary” people to express themselves in public.

Technological advancements in audiovisual media as well as the turn to oral history marked the last attempts for recollecting testimonies, which took place in the late 1980’s and continue until the present day.

9. On both possibilities and limitations of research strategies in Oral history, see Larson 2007.


Various documentaries incorporated testimonies, and the Historical Archive for Refugee Hellenism, which is based in Kalamaria, Thessaloniki collected several interviews both in audio and video formats with lo-cal focus in northern Greece. Since 1997 the Foundation of the Hellenic World has organized a large scale of autobiographical interviewing of the last people who were born in Asia Minor and the Pontus and of a few of their descendants, who grew up in refugee settlements in Greece. A number of circa 300 interviews, most of them in video formats, con-sists the body of the Asia Minor Refugees’ Testimonies Archive of the Genealogy and Oral History Department (Warlas 2003, p. 171).

Most of the interviewees were actually very old and were living in very different and sometimes problematic conditions at the time of the interview. Thus, it was very difficult for us to follow strictly the same, standard practice in every interview concerning a number of parame-ters, such as the position of the talking person, the shooting style, the lighting or the duration of the interview. Nevertheless, we did our best to follow a set of standard rules, which could ensure a minimum of unity and coherence for the project. Although we met some of our informants more than once, the taped interview was limited in one session. We chose not to return in order to complement or clarify parts of the inter-view in subsequent sessions. We usually reached, in common with our informants, decisions on where they will be seated during the interview, as well as on the background, which they often decorated with family photographs and souvenirs from their homelands.

The researcher was seating next to the camera in order to maintain eye-contact with the interviewee, who could at the same time look into the lens of the camera. At the opening of the interview the informants were asked to introduce themselves, a prompt which led some of them to long autobiographical monologues. In any case we encouraged them to feel free to talk slowly, and to take all the time they needed in order to complete their answers. And of course, the researchers didn’t hesitate to answer questions about their family or their personal lives, thus cre-ating a relationship based on reciprocity and mutual confidence. Despite of opposite suggestions we noticed that an emotional approach and the assimilation of the interview to a social contact helps older people to feel more comfortable and not hesitate, to express their personal life course according to their storytelling culture (Karachristos and Warlas 2008, Bron 2008, Lindahl and Gano 2008). The choice to interview people in their place, home or office, gives both parts –researcher and narrator– a sense of familiarity, which is getting more intense by accepting the usual offers like coffee and home made cookies.


In order to obtain a general overview to the hypertext of our inter-views we take into consideration the particular story telling culture, which is possibly developed within the refugees’ groups and communi-ties. Narrator’s mother tongue language (in our specific case Greek or Turkish), his/her gender, educational level, generation concerning the 1922 events, his/her place of origin and his/her role in the family’s or community’s memory either as an “ordinary” speaker or as a “memory keeper”, are the parameters, which allow us to explore the similarities as well as the variations among the different groups which probably represent the various storytelling cultures.

A significant proportion of refugees spoke a Turkish idiom as their mother tongue language (Mavrogordatos 1983, p. 193). In the sample we used for this presentation 4 out of 11 informants have learned Turkish in their parental home and continued to speak Turkish in a narrow circle until their old age. They often mention this fact as a disadvantage in school and everyday contacts with other people.

“The first is to apologize for not speaking Greek fluently because I didn’t go to school as well and I’m illiterate. In our village we all just spoke Turkish and this is my complaint and I’ll say it. When we came here all the kids ... and the mothers and the grandmothers we talked only Turkish. They did not even know a word in Greek, which is why we did not know either. When we went to school we talked Turkish and the teacher told us whoever talks Turkish will have to bring an egg the next day. The teacher was collecting baskets full of eggs but with Greek, we got no better. It was too difficult. Then, the war in Albania occurred and we stayed [illiterate]. Later, when our children were born, we have learned together. And they went to school and at the university. But we are in the worst situation; we came from Asia Minor, we did not know the language, and were ashamed. There is also something else … My aunt was living in Thessaloniki; she learned Greek – she came from Asia Minor but she learned – because she was among Greeks. Here in Mavrolofos [the village] everyone came from Barla … and my aunt was ashamed for us. Our cousins were ashamed to go out with us, while visiting our aunt, because we did not know Greek. That was my big complaint”.10

10. Maritsa Isaioglou-Paschalidou, Interview to Michael Warlas, Mavrolofos, Serres, 18/3/2006, Foundation of the hellenic World Testimonies Archives, Digital Genealogical Collection of Central Macedonia, PePkm_vid_037, 00:41-02:15.


In Asia Minor Karamanlides, the Turkish speaking Greek-Orthodox population, have developed a specific kind of texts, both in form and in content, which remain in use many years after they left their home-lands.11 Two of our informants retained old karamanlidika books at home and father Chrysostomos enotiadis was very proud and happy to read a Gospel passage in front of the camera.

“At the Second Resurrection is customary to read the Gospel in different languages. This was set by the Church in order to demonstrate to the different nations that the Bible is written for everyone, not just for the Christians, [the Greeks] but for the other nations as well. Among these different Gospels there exists the Greek, the ancient Greek; there also exists the English, the Russian, the Bulgarian, the Romanian, the German … but also the Turkish and the Armenian. In Turkish language therefore, someone who speaks Turkish, he may read the Gospel in the Turkish language. I do that every year from the time I became a priest. I read that Gospel here in the Parish; first in St. Constantine where I was serving and afterwards in the Hagioi Anargyroi. But many times I was also going to Chalcis. Because here we were celebrating in the morning, and in Chalkis Vespers was being held in the afternoon… I was going there because I was known and they were asking me to read [the Gospel]. Now I will read a piece of this [Gospel] for you to listen ... (Followed by the Gospel in Turkish)”.12

In many of these communities people still sing songs in Turkish, thus mediating to the new generations a piece of their specific identity. Anas-ta Smyrnaiou, a talented singer of traditional Turkish songs from Konya, speaks very emotionally about the poor villagers’ reactions when they listened to her songs.13 The fact that the interview was conducted in Greek influenced the informants, who seem to speak shorter than the

11. This language is known as Karamanlidika and was used in official and in re-ligious texts as well as in personal communication through letters. Balta 1987a, Balta, 1987b, Salaville and Dalleggio 1958-1974.

12. Protopresbyter Chrysostomos enotiadis, Interview to Michael Warlas and yula Vulgari, Nea Ionia, 20/3/1997, Foundation of the hellenic World Testimonies Archives, Mart008, 22:30-25:06.

13. Anasta Smyrnaiou, Interview to Michael Warlas, Thessaloniki, 2/2/2006, Foundation of the hellenic World Testimonies Archives, Digital Genealogical Collec-tion of Central Macedonia, PePkm_vid_011, 13:46-15:40.


other –Greek speaking– participants of the project and usually apologize for their supposed linguistic incompetence, although they actually spoke Greek fluently.14

Another very interesting group is the Pontic Greeks with their tradi-tional theater, which, among other things, also mediates their local histo-ry and identity (Puchner 1994, Samouilidis 1980, Κarachristos 2002). In connection with this group one should not neglect their long tradition of epic-historical songs, which were and still are performed both in private and public gatherings. Their dialect and their dances constitute such a core element of their identity that they sometimes rag themselves about their identity, wondering how they can be of pontic origin if they can’t speak and dance pontic.15

Greek speaking informants constitute the majority of our sample (7 out of 11 informants, but 3 of them in Pontic dialect). even they faced similar language/dialect problems in their daily communication until the recent homogenization of the everyday language due to the education system and to Mass-Media broadcasting.

Gender affected interviews concerning the informants’ autobi-ographical aspects in so far as men are more public space- and grand history-oriented, when women speak more personally and about house-hold and family affairs. Despite the fact that many of our female infor-mants had to work outside their households, they organized their life story according to the stages of their household life cycle.16 While all our female informants had just basic education, only one male informant stopped his education at primary school, while two out of six continued even after Gymnasium.

Our informants’ place of origin covers the whole area of Anatolia, which can be divided into three major cultural parts according to cul-ture, history and language of their Greek-orthodox inhabitants: Western Anatolia, the interior of Anatolia historically known as Cappadocia and the Pontus. Grouping our participants according to their generation or according to their age is more complex. A turning point in the history of this milieu is the forced migration from Asia Minor around the year 1922. eight out of eleven persons in our sample were born in Asia Minor, but only two of them were in their adolescence or youth when they left

14. See above the passage from Maritsa Paschalidou’s interview, fn. 10.15. On cultural elements as formative parts of the pontic identity among the first

generation of refugees in Greece, see Vergeti 1994, pp. 220-231.16. In order to see how gender differentiates appropriate life scripts, Fivush

2008, pp. 51-52.


their homes. Five of the rest were still in their childhood at that time, and another one was just born. Our last three informants were born in refugee settlements in Athens and in Northern Greece. In general, younger participants offer more coherent and comprehensive narratives about the past, especially when they reproduce their parents’ stories or a second hand memory and knowledge.

A significant part of our informants, almost one third of them, are or-dinary speakers, who haven’t talked in public before. Another one third can be classified either as community or family memory keepers; three of them were prominent figures in their communities and had partici-pated in documentaries and TV programs and had published books with reminiscences and stories from their lives. The last group comprises spe-cial cases, which had lived exceptional lives, like the famous writer and member of the Academy of Athens, Tasos Athanasiadis, or the writer and journalist in one of the oldest newspapers in Greece, yorgos Lampsidis.17

Responding to our initial question, the informants introduced them-selves and continued with a short description of their lives. In the course of our project we encouraged interviewees to talk longer and to present themselves more detailed. This change was facilitated also by technical advancements in digital video equipment, which allowed us to work without a crew of three to four persons, which was inevitable when working with the analogue video. At the recent phases of the project self-presentation emerged in some cases as an essential part of the inter-view, like in Sophia Patsiura’s and Lazaros Papadopoulos’s cases. These opening passages, which are dedicated to self-presentation, vary a great deal according to their length, and of course according to the kind of information included. Some interviewees restricted themselves to few phrases, while others talked even for half an hour.18 While analyzing the interviews we noticed that, apart from these opening passages, the infor-

17. Tasos Athanasiadis (1988-1995) is the writer of a four volume novel, where he represents the history of Asia Minor Greeks through the story of a bourgeois family in its movement from Salihli to interwar Athens. yorgos Lampsidis (1992, 1962, 1971) wrote among others two popular books on Asia Minor refugees and on the Pontus Genocide.

18. Sophia Patsioura, Interview to Anna Nomikou and Michael Warlas, Nea Philadelfeia, 9/5/2007, Foundation of the hellenic World Testimonies Archives, Dig-ital Genealogical Collection of Attica, PePat_vid_PatsiouraS_001, 00:00-31:05. Laza-ros Papadopoulos, Interview to Ioannis Karachristos and Michael Warlas, Nikaia, 16/2/2007, Foundation of the hellenic World Testimonies Archives, Digital Genealog-ical Collection of Attica, PePat_vid_PapadopoulosL_001, 00:00-35:30.


mants talk about themselves in several other occasions within the inter-views. So, we chose to examine self-presentation as a functional part of the whole interview. References on self, on character or on identity play a significant role in the course of the interview, because these passages justify, clarify, blur or sharpen the interviewee’s narrated actions.

A very interesting question in connection with self-presentation is how our informants treat time in their narratives. Despite the modern trend to think of historical time as linear, this isn’t always what our informants had in mind while talking to us, and especially while writ-ing their reminiscences. Important historical events are present in their narration, and usually function as landmarks, both in their personal life stories and in the stories of their communities. Their narratives are not organized according to a strict timeline of events, but resemble more episodes and snapshots. This fragmented memory, which is typical for many of our informants, especially when they describe the life in their homelands, mediates the idea of stillborn communities where almost ev-erything never changed.

According to common autobiographical writing, one expects narra-tives to start with the birth of an individual and then to follow more or less strictly the timeline of the events of the individual’s life. Although all our informants start with the events of their birth, they do not order the events of their lives strictly, according to time. They often go back and forth to tell something they forgot, but also to emphasize certain events or to explain certain developments by connecting them to prior episodes. Regardless of how neatly they order in time the events they choose to incorporate into their narratives, they seldom bother to talk about exact dates. Instead of a chronological perception of linear time, which is known from chronicles and is certainly also a typical aspect of modernity, they prefer to determine the date of an event by placing it in a sequence of prior and simultaneous events, i.e. I was born when the event A happened. This is a more traditional perception of time, which is based on the principle that the content of time is more important than its linearity or its exact measurement. This perception of time is found in the Lives of Saints, although we can’t argue that it was mediated solely through these texts. Another hagiographic model is also found in descriptions of childhood (Κiousopoulou 1997, pp. 73-75): Some of our informants mediate an image of a very smart child, who knew a lot and had an extremely acute judgment for its age.

“… and we say … let’s hide the weapons! Inside the courtyard there was a well. The yard was walled; raisins were in the front courtyard.


The yard was walled. And, I’m telling to the others ‘don’t come out’. I was picking the weapons and I was … dropping the weapons into the well. Weapons, grenades, mauser … jewelry, money. … I was carrying them and dropping them inside”.19

This motif is sometimes incorporated into their polemic against the local Greeks. Some of our interviewees inform us that when they went to school in Greece they knew more than their other classmates and ascribe this superiority to the very high standards of education in their home-lands.

“In Skyros there was a blind chorister and a kid. The kid was helping him and he was chanting. Well, when we went there [in Skyros], of course, he was sometimes making room for us in the Psalter. I was ten years old at that time and asked to read the Apostle; and so I read the Apostle in the church, and when the chairman of the community, Stefanidis, heard me and immediately made a speech there and said: ‘Look, these people who came here, how religious and how much Greeks they are. Did you see that kid? Bring one of your own at his age and ask him to say “Pater Noster”; not to have the courage to read the Apostle in the Church. So these people are good people and we must love them. And from that day our lives changed somehow. And I got a prize from the Committee, some money, I do not remember exactly how much”.20

Most of our informants talk about all their age stages. We must ad-mit though that childhood and youth are often much better presented than i.e. old age. Up to an extent this is due to our scientific interest in these specific age stages. Our questions may have guided them to speak more on these topics. But judging from the tone of their voice, their body language and their emotions, we think that there is more into that, than

19. Filio Chaidemenou, Interview to yula Vulgari, Nea Philadelfeia, 29/3/1997, Foundation of the hellenic World Testimonies Archives, Mart027, 22:34-23:23. In her book (Chaidemenou 2005, pp. 91-93) she proudly presents herself as a very smart child who always knows what should be done and helps her parents out of difficult situations. For the well incident see Chaidemenou 2005, pp. 118-120.

20. Protopresbyter Chrysostomos enotiadis, Interview to Michael Warlas and yula Vulgari, Nea Ionia, 20/3/1997, Foundation of the hellenic World Testimonies Archives, Mart007, 20:08-21:07. A shorter version of this incident can be found in the written autobiography of Fr. enotiadis 1994, p. 47.


just our possible guidance. They also find these parts of their lives inter-esting and worth remembering for many reasons. For those who lived these age stages in whole or at least partly in Asia Minor, memories are also connected with their homelands, and are thus much more idealized.

“Kios –I will say this also elsewhere– for at least three years I could not sleep; I was dreaming of visiting Kios. I was once preparing to write something relevant for teaching the history of Asia Minor. I was wondering, what has become of our schools, our churches, the church of the Assumption, and our stores, that the Turks have opened and plundered them and so on. My mind was there for three years and even more. Love for the fatherland”.21

But even the others, who lived their childhood and youth in refugee set-tlements, have a nostalgic feeling despite the great difficulties they were facing at that time. Idealizing the past can obviously help people escape from an, according to their perceptions, problematic present.22

The images of the Self are perhaps the most important part of self-pre-sentation. But almost equally important are all other collective social subjects to which the interviewees feel that they belong. This fact calls for a study of the images of both the Self as well as of all other collective social subjects. But let us begin with the images of the Self.

• The Self who manages to survive in a personal level,23 and to help his/her family24 or his/her community.25

• The self who is proud of his/her achievements. Sometimes nar-ration on these achievements is followed by narration on events, which didn’t allow the informant to continue his/her life the way they would like. They usually mark these events as unfair or unjust.

21. Vasileios Kouligkas, Interview to Michael Warlas, Neo Faliro, 20/3/1997, Foundation of the hellenic World Testimonies Archives, Mart055, 21:14-21:58.

22. On idealizing the past by the refugees, see Loizos 1981.23. Protopresbyter Chrysostomos enotiadis, Interview to Michael Warlas and

yula Vulgari, Nea Ionia, 20/3/1997, Foundation of the hellenic World Testimonies Archives, Mart007, 27:18-Mart008, 10:08.

24. Sophia Toufektsi, Interview to Michael Warlas, Zografou, halkidiki, 8/2/2006, Foundation of the hellenic World Testimonies Archives, Digital Genealogical Collec-tion of Central Macedonia, PePkm_vid_022, 36:19-39:02.

25. See above the passage from Fr. enotiadis’ interview, fn. 20.


“My father says ‘you are my only daughter and will not go to school anymore’. So I cried a lot; I got sick, and, imagine that ... my books and my notebooks, I kept them until 1922. And when they said would be leaving to escape the massacre –they said we would be leaving– the first thing I got, the first thing, that was my books and my notebooks. I loved [learning] a lot and so I was always angry with my father, because he did not let me go to school”.26

• The suffering Self. In all the observed cases suffering is con-nected to certain events, which disrupt the ego’s personal life course, such as the death of parents or the father’s second mar-riage.27

• The excusatory Self. Informants apologize for their poverty or ignorance and they ask for our understanding about their poor economic conditions or their inability to talk to the camera.

Images of the self reflect strategies of self-defense or self-promoting. The suffering Self for example is expressed in the context of a victimized collective subject where the interviewees find their role as the victim-ized or the surviving subject. The affiliation of the interviewee with a larger group or community reduces the burden of displacement and emphasizes the personal triumph of the survivor. On the other hand, asking for understanding hides a loss of self-respect and self-estimation, which may be normal when an old man/woman with such a life story has to talk to the camera, which symbolizes the power of mass media and the exposure to publicity. Furthermore, due to the existing tradition of the mnemonic recollection, they feel that they have to represent their community or even the whole refugee population and that makes them feel uneasy.

The Asia Minor refugees are perhaps the most often mentioned and certainly the broadest collective social subject, which expresses all the suffering of the refugees during the population movements as well as

26. Filio Chaidemenou, Interview to yula Vulgari, Nea Philadelfeia, 29/3/1997, Foundation of the hellenic World Testimonies Archives, Mart026, 22:27-23:11. See also Lazaros Papadopoulos, Interview to Ioannis Karachristos and Michael Warlas, Nikaia, 16/2/2007, Foundation of the hellenic World Testimonies Archives, Digital Genealogical Collection of Attica, PePat_vid_PapadopoulosL_001, 07:24-08:45.

27. Protopresbyter Chrysostomos enotiadis, Interview to Michael Warlas and yula Vulgari, Nea Ionia, 20/3/1997, Foundation of the hellenic World Testimonies Archives, Mart007, 27:18 and forth.


during the next decades in the refugee settlements. Feelings of injustice, of loss of persons, of properties and finally of a way of life are often con-nected to suffering. But the Asia Minor refugees were also smart, hon-est, openhearted, and diligent. So, they managed to make a living under difficult circumstances. Tasos Athanasiadis claims an Ionian origin and continues to refer to certain aspects of his character, which are due to his life in Asia Minor.

“From Asia Minor, of course I got the morals, the open mind, the cordiality, and the playful nature of an Ionian... Maybe my writing is influenced psychologically; the way I see things. I consider my life in Asia Minor a fortune and a reservoir of memory, even though I left home while still attending primary school. An Ionian has grace, sociability, ambition, progress, tendency to progress and to language learning, and above all sociability. All these, I must have biologically inherited from generation to generation”.28

The meaning of the collective subject “Asia Minor refugees” hasn’t re-mained the same since 1922. During the Interwar period, it referred to a suffering group, which experienced the 1922 events and had to start a new life in the refugee settlements in Greece. Today, almost regard-less of the different generations of our informants, it actually character-izes people as members of a cultural milieu. Various, more restricted, collectivities function as sub-groups within the above mentioned one: The refugees from a certain Greek-orthodox community of Asia Minor, the Pontic-speaking or the Turkish-speaking (Karamanlides). Very often our informants affiliate themselves with even smaller collective subjects such as their family, or the neighborhood’s children.

After the Interwar period, besides the above mentioned ones, also new collectivities were formed, such as the members of the Resistance against the Nazi occupation, the communists, the members of a social group/class, the members of a professional group, the immigrants in Western Germany and, finally, the members of a generation which ex-perienced certain tragic events, such as displacement, Resistance against the Nazis, the Greek Civil War and the following political rivalries. The proliferation of the possible collectivities the informants affiliate them-selves with, is connected with political as well as with socio-economic developments in Greece since the Interwar period.

28. Tasos Athanasiadis, Interview to Michael Warlas, Athens, 14/4/1997, Founda-tion of the hellenic World Testimonies Archives, Mart034, 12:19-13:32.


Turning points in the interviewees’ personal life course play a key role in whether they speak more about their personal or about collec-tive experience. Informants with an autonomous and strong presence in family- as well as in social life usually tend to refer more to them-selves and to their actions, rather than to the various collectivities to which they feel affiliated. Typical examples are Georgios Lampsidis and Chrysostomos enotiadis. Lampsidis starts speaking more about himself after he started his career as a journalist and enotiadis after having left the parental household.

Despite the common trends, we can’t conclude the existence of a com-mon or unified story-telling culture.29 In any case, the interview is a game, which needs at least two sides. Technical means, cultural context, mne-monic patterns play a significant role and they may define up to an extent the course as well as the outcome of the interview. More recent interviews taped in digital equipment allowed people to talk longer and with less hesitation in comparison to old analogical video recording, which required bright lighting and a numerous crew. Longer texts and more personal bias have been facilitated by the technical advantages as well by the revisited strategy of the researchers, who abandoned fixed questionnaires in favor of a more flexible framework. Naive or incomplete questions, short state-ments and humor by the researcher, encouraged people to do almost what they normally do while talking with their familiars about what may consist their history and their identity. On the other hand the more comfortable interview drove to more enhanced and accurate information about their past and the past of their communities, villages or milieu.

Working more than 10 years in an oral history project we wonder if such a thing as a personal memory can exist. In the context of traumatic experience and of a special sense of belonging to a suffering group the interviewee’s subject may be replaced by an imagined collective social subject who takes the qualities the narrator would like to render to him/herself. What we collect as personal reminiscences is a response to our challenge, when we ask them to give an interview. Self-presentation is the mirror of their self in the eyes of the researcher. An exclusive memory as a stable and unique set of reminiscences, either personal or collective, does not exist. Memories are always under transformation, thus also revising personal and collective identities.

29. Sokou (2004, pp. 307, 309) suggests the existence of common motifs in both oral and literary testimonies and furthermore “the existence of common stories both in oral and in literary testimonies stresses the presence of elements of fairy tale and legend in people’s narratives”.


In the context of a theoretical shift from memory to mnemonic stud-ies we think that we must attempt an analogous shift from the study of reminiscences to the study of mnemonic communication.30 Interviewee and interviewer do something more than just collecting or exchanging data. They create together the mnemonic field, in which both the mne-monic recollection and the self-presentation gain meaning and role as components of collective memory.

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Warlas, Μ. (2002) «Η διεκδίκηση της Μικράς Ασίας από την Ελλάδα» [Claiming Asia Minor for Greece], in Bou douri, Ε. and Sideris, Α. (eds.), HenriPaul Boissonnas, Asia Minor 1921, Athens: Benaki Museum, Foundation of the hellenic World, pp. 23-33.

Warlas, Μ. (2003) «Η διαμόρφωση της προσφυγικής μνήμης» [The formation of refugee memory], in Τzedopoulos, G. (ed.), Πέρα από την Καταστροφή [Beyond the Catastrophe], Athens: Foundation of the hellenic World, pp. 148-174.

Warlas, Μ. (2004) «Από τη δικαστική κατάθεση στην τηλεοπτική συνέντευξη: Τεχνολογία ‘μαρτυριών’ μικρασιατών προσφύγων» [From judicial testimony to television interview: Technology of Asia Minor refugees’ ‘testimonies’], Proceedings of the Conference “Claiming History. Aspects of Contemporary Historical Culture”, Athens, 30 November - 2 December 2001, in CD-ROM accompanying the journal Historein 4 (2003-2004), Athens.

ISBN 978-960-404-283-8 [SET]ISBN 978-960-404-285-2

www.kentrolaografias.gr

Publications of the hellenic folklore research centre – 31

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narratiVes across sPace anD tiMe:transMissions anD aDaPtations

ProceeDings of the 15th congress of the international society for folk narratiVe research

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“Narrating one’s Life Story: Storytellers, Storytelling Cultures and the Dimensions of Self-Presentation among the Greek-Orthodox Refugees of Asia Minor”

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