Vagelis Galanis, Psychologist, MA in Creative Writing

Mimis Souliotis, Poet, Professor at UOWM

Anastasia Alevriadou, Associate Professor at UOWM

International Conference "Education Across Borders"

Florina 5-7 October 2012

Madness, «in literal terms, is what the scientific community calls psychosis or insanity, in earlier times. The term includes schizophrenia, paranoia and manic – depressive or emotional disorders. These conditions are all characterized by a surreal conception of the world around us, a conception that ruins the relations of the individual with its surrounding environment and pushes the individual to do and say things that appear irrational, weird, outrageous» .

(Hartocollis 1999: 87–88)

We try to decode madness in modern Greek narrative with prohibition and variation terms.

A presence … «multivalent, unsettling, hauntingly familiar, a fundamental element in every language, will pose basic questions regarding our human substance… it will remind us the connection of a human being with its fantasies, its inevitability, its shadows and the frightening gaps of his reason, with its overflown pain».

(Tsalikoglou 1991: 17)

«The limits of my world are the limits of my representations»

Sadistically paraphrasing Wittgenstein

The link between the text, the world outside the text, the fiction and the reality has been a literary issue since the ancient times. They can be connected with a variety of representations – inscriptions, when codes, conventions and symbols appear between the writer and the reader, which change and evolve from time to time.

(Anagnostopoulou 2007)

Representation is a key element of literature because, although it is a fictional creation, it is also a comment on reality – an external reality – which it mimics in a selective and partial way.

(Hawthorn 1999: 171)

It is not just a simple picture or a register – reflection of reality, but it is a complex nexus of conventions, points, ideas and symbols that provides us with condensed feelings, perceptions, traces of experiences, fantasies, cultural interests, all through linguistic images; it is not a copy of the real, but it is a web of views of the reality, imbued in a pool of fantasy.

(Anagnostopoulou 2007: 14)

When it comes to fiction, is the representation of madness static or ever changing? The madman will be marginalized, accepted or rejected? Are there stereotypical characteristics in his behavior and appearance? Through fiction, is the social representation of madness torn apart, and are its variations undermined? Finally, is it possible to represent the “logic” of madness through literature, or is it impossible to express it, and «…it constantly lapses into an unreal – non authentic representation?»

(Karakitsios 2000)

In the field of fiction, the representations of behaviors and persons that deviate from the “normal” forms have had a constant charm. The feeling that rules the contact of people with madness has always been ambivalence.

In every era, mutatis mutandis, the mad person is considered to be the carrier of a terrifying, and at the same time, alluring meaning.

Ever since the Middle ages, the faith in good and bad spirit that captivate the human existence in an endless struggle, grants madness its metaphysic exterior, which will be preserved until the beginning of the 18th century. During the 15th century, madmen stacked in ships (as depicted in paintings by Hieronymus Bosch) will waste their un – reasonable lives in the quest for logic, and will be thrown out of the cities. Nevertheless, up until the 17th century, madness «…roams free, as an integral part of the decorum and the common language» .

(Tsalikoglou 1991: 20)

The research method we used is the context analysis (qualitative context analysis). Our material consists of twenty eight short stories (1884 - 1995) (Soldatos 1994). The registration and analysis unit is the total of the short stories. The semantic categories in which we ranked our material are as follows:

a) Etiology of madness

b) Symptoms of madness

c) Phenomenology of madness

d) “Eutopia” and “Dystopia” of madness

Short Stories (Soldatos 1994).

The crazy with red lilies (Xenopoulos Grigorios) Karavelia (Grabalis Athanasios) The mad woman (Eftaliotis Argyris) The engine of the madman (Paroritis Kostas ) The mad kid (Grigoris Gerasimos) Night with delusions (Pittas Triantafillos) The son of the moon (Zarkos Giorgis My life in Dromokaitio (Filyras Romos) A crazy (Mitsakis Michael) Shrew mother (Papadiamantis Alexandros) Madman (Nirvanas Paul) Obedient daughter (Papadopoulos Alexandra) Madman (Gonatas E.Cr.) Mad woman (Klimis Joseph)

Short Stories (Soldatos 1994).

From the notes of a madman (Tanagras Angelos) The Ravaged village (Patatzis Sotiris ) Give way to madmen (Potamianos Themos ) The monk painter (Valtadoros Giorgos The madman of Athens (Kabouroglous D.Gr. I, the frog (Stamatis Stefanos «According to the Geneva convention …» (Koutsoukos Elias The consequences of an old story (Vizyinos Geogrios ) Night history (Karagatsis M.) What was best? (Voutyras Demosthenes ) Ladies hairdresser (Skaribas Giannis ) The seniorita of Egaleo (Soldatos Giannis ) The Siamese cat (Aranitsis Eugene ) The reasonless (Pratikakis Manolis)

We decided to use short stories instead of novels, as they are short and strictly structured narratives. The prevailing characteristic of a short story is the narrative tale of an event with a concise and precise manner. It depicts a part of life, while the novel depicts life itself. Moreover, they have the structure of oral speech, therefore they are more likely to present the “quality – individuality” of the words of madness.

(Pratt 1994: 99 – 101)

The short story does not present a full story, but mostly expresses a feeling, it records a scene or an episode, it focuses on the characters and their psychosynthesis and not on the evolution of the plot; it lacks the conventional plot .

(Kalogroulis 2012: 11)

In order to mark the normality of reason, it is necessary to ostracize the non – normality, the madness, either as a silent prohibition, or a dubious suppression of those who threaten this supposed unity and compassion .

(Tziovas 2006: 16)

In regards to our specimens, the effort of solving the afore mentioned problematic ranges between “an integrated marginalization” (the madman is a part of the society, but every effort of giving meaning to his behavior and his words is cancelled and the subject of madness has been “objectified”) and “a mediated rejection” (institution and disfunction of asylums and other places of ghettos, such as churches, monasteries, magi, healers, exotic treatments etc).

(Tzavaras 1991: 29-30)

The madman of the village or of the neighborhood occupies an intermediate position, between the familiar and the different. His existence positively depends on the rules of acquaintance (family, kin, neighborhood, friends, village, community) but his behavior is still unpredictable and provocative and causes stress, fear and shame to the family and his social surroundings. By enacting an almost legislated role, he is the “scapegoat”, either for his inbred aggression of those who reason or for the projection of their immorality.

In the framework of “intermediate rejection” he takes the place he deserves, usually at the edge of the city. So close, and yet so far, as it is elegantly described at the short story “I, the frog”: «You ignored my mother’s cries; you tied me up and threw me at the back of your car».

When madness was certain, because of the first institutionalization, «… This time my parents protested, when the wise men let me go. So, I came back to my parent’s house, but I noticed that every night, before they went to bed, they locked their door…».

The asylum is everywhere and is described in full detail. It is an ideologically charged notion, fantastically invested in many ways. Either as a “charitable foundation”, on the footsteps of a “romantic psychiatry” from the end of the 19th century, appropriately constructed as to tend for its inmates, such as in the short story of Vizyinos: “The consequences of an old story” or the threshold of Hades, “a different place altogether” as in the short story of Filyras, “My life in Dromokaitio”.

When studying the etiology of madness, we discover the importance of loss; either as a symbolic loss, a lost love, a rejection, a non – response, a deprivation of the object of our passion, a love object, an abandonment, a betrayal, or even as a real loss, like death. This representation is clearly close to the folklore / traditional apprehension of madness, but it is also close to the official views of psychodynamic psychiatry, especially when it comes to depression, melancholy and mourning.

In the pretext of madness, fiction renegotiates two dominant meanings, those of love and death, the instincts of love and death. The short stories that talk about madness are used as study objects for death and life, loss but also, erotic relationships and betrayal. The feeling that surpasses all others is that of madness; madness, as a demonstration of extreme sensitivity.

When it comes to diagnostic categorization, schizophrenic psychosis is dominant, with delirium tremens, manic – depressive psychosis and melancholy as fundamental characteristics. Obviously, there can be short stories in which the character is mentally disabled. Hysteria, the research field off Freudian discoveries around the beginning of the 20th century, is completely absent from our short stories.

«The appearance and the confirmation of short stories has been connected with an effort to record the space and the customs of life of people living in the country and has favored the realistic representations of the external characteristics of men… It appears that, by selecting specific details from the looks and the image of the hero, the writer will make clear, but also prepare the reader for a smooth acceptance of the madman, as something different, to say the least».

(Karakitsios 2000: 18)

The mention of the madman’s eyes is of the utmost importance, their color and their movements. A mirror of madness, danger, inner turmoil, «… he opened his mouth wide and stared…» the eyes of Gravalis’ hero in the short story “Karavelia”. In rarer occasions, eyes may even contain the last drop of sanity, «… his eyes had kept their deep blue color, and they were wet and dreamy, with their youthful sparkle and that weird, undetermined expression. Had I seen him outside in the street, his eyes would be the only thing I would have recognized…» by Ksenopoulos.

In all of our short stories, madness is considered a non – reversible process. Its only ending is death – melancholy, or/ and suicide. Madmen of every social caste, origin, age group and educational level, parade through the stories indiscriminately. In at least four stories, we can discern a whole new category of madness. Its cause is the extreme love for literature.

From this afore mentioned category, there are no women appearing in the stories. They usually go mad from love!

The psychiatric / psychological terminology (conscious, unconscious, libido, stress) is absent. The terms used include obsolete therapeutical practices (electrical shocks, straitjackets).

There is no effort of treatment . Even the use of pills. As a therapeutical practice, the stories suggest institutionalization, isolation in special mental institutions, in order to cure the mad and protect the sane. These efforts are often covered with a veil of compassion. This practice is even portrayed in more recent stories.

We are now faced with a stereotypical representation of the madman who barely changes, despite the fact that there has been a 100 – year time frame since the first and the last fictional story. The production of short stories, cannot incorporate the new scientific breakthroughs concerning madness; the clear change in scientific hypotheses that appeared in psychoanalysis, psychology, psychiatry, sociology and even history, first in the western hemisphere and then – with a little delay - in ours, since the 19th century.

In the short stories of Aranistis, Pratikakis and Skaribas, there is a different representation of the madman, close to surreal demands. Here, madness holds the scepter, and not the miserable logic. The mental experiences, no matter how painful, are being romanticized. The madman, as well as his speech, is broken and shattered, both physically and mentally.

Madness, with its multiple declarations and its “situational” incoherence, ends up (both in and out of the world of fiction) in a meaningful “void”, on which are projected our primitive fears and worries about normality and deviation, the fundamental fear caused by something different, and, more precisely, madness. In the short stories we examined, madness seems to preserve its enigmas, either as a sort of super – truth, or as a degenerated form of logic.

One would expect that the representation of madness should be amended, in accordance with the evolution of psychiatric knowledge. However, its fictional representation leads to over – simplification, as a constant “collage” of symptoms, from the schizophrenic and manic – depressive and melancholic behavior, to an obsession with the description of simple behaviors or outward thinking, that “provoke” the reader.

All in all, the registration of madness as a reflection of its reality through (re) presentation collides with its own “situational singularity”; it is nothing, if not simple. It also collides with the situational limitations of the story itself, concerning the realistic representation of every reality, and even more when it comes to the (non) reality of madness, as an absolute variation. As a humble conclusion, the chosen short stories of our study cannot represent madness; it stays in the surface of naivety or at the depths of a surreal depiction.

Fiction is encased in a “compulsive” realism – the accurate reference of every detail of things or scenes, the description of the things we understand. It does not manage to extract us from the excruciatingly defined world of madness (symptomatology, phenomenology, etiology) and lead us to the unsolved mystery of its mental pain. Even the surrealistic representation of a delirium speech, renders the reading too familiar, «…up to the point when we are ready to swear on its authenticity».

(Preisendanz 1990: 107)

Fiction is unable to familiarize itself with the unfamiliarity of madness