O Achilles Paraschos, a very talented poet born in Nafplio in 1838 to Chian parents. He died in 1895. Once Achilles met the Amalia (Maria) Seraphim, daughter of a noble Athenian family. They fell in love and then their love blossomed from a distance as the strict conservative morals of the time did not allow even elementary intercourse.
It took two years to pass since their first meeting., so that Paraschos and Amalia manage to meet for a second time in person, although in love with each other all this time.
They continue to see each other frequently, without the poet ever even touching the young girl's fingers. And yet, when this very pure relationship becomes known, Amalia's parents lock her in the house, forbidding her to see Achilles again. In fact, her father forces her to write a letter to Paraschos stating that she supposedly no longer loved him and therefore he was free to meet another woman.
When Achilles Paraschos receives the letter, he is stunned. Then. he wrote a poem calling her "outsider", "ungrateful" and "Phryne".
Achilles in his poems gave her the name Maria so that he would not sing the name Amalia, which was the name of the hated Queen, or because he found it more poetic? Who knows: Perhaps he did it out of fear of her family, so that they would not recognize her in his songs. This explanation is not unlikely because the morals at that time were very strict.
That poem was titled "April 5", as it was written on April 5, 1865.
Achilles sends the poem to Maria, but she is unable to respond and eventually falls ill from her grief. Other angry poems would follow: "One dawn rises coldly as oblivion, And writes: "You are free, forget me and live!"
April 5th
A'
So there you have it!... A single line on the map
As if from God, lightning strikes and kills!
As God's! and God's more powerful,
Since He has united everything, He dissolves it;
One line, — a simple line — written without pain
On a sheet of paper, and nothing else, just this,
Only this, a feeling as deep as religion
It can be uprooted so easily
“Oh, only, only the woman shoots arrows like this;
In such lines he can write whatever he wants.
And as a casual acquaintance he easily dismisses
That, O., she called her god just yesterday!
A dawn rises coldly like oblivion,
And it writes, "You are free, forget me and live..."
And send it to an old friend, to a beloved friend,
The lightning, in a fragrant envelope sealed!
O power of insolence, O living shamelessness!
The existence of the departed from the depths of the heart
Without suffering anything, without being disturbed a little,
As if they were to pluck a strand from their hair….
And he knows, not every Phryne is unaware of it
Since this light line weighs heavily,
She knows that her friend's brakes will shake,
And because they lived for this heart, it will kill!
So then! the past is buried forever,
Because a soulless letter was written...
And how! because he wrote some dead elements,
Aren't I her friend and that Maria?.,.
And so much time of love, so many cheerful cares,
So much fire and tears and ecstatic hopes,
So many holy desires, so many throbs and pains,
Does one line destroy all of this alone?
And so we will meet as strangers!
How can he see me whenever I pass by,
Without anything to be felt, the step slows down,
And will she extend her hand to me as before?
The stranger stops in anger if he meets
A cross, which he tries in vain to erase from his memory.
But the woman, in the presence of her friend, proceeds,
With iron shame, leaning on another
“Oh, how, how much the woman resembles the tree!
As it restlessly changes its leaves,
And it is surrounded by new things and forgets the first,
Likewise, she, changing, turns her back
Why not?…The ether has many stars.
How can one forget the others and pay attention to one?
It is Eve's soul, insatiable, vast.
And yet there is one God and one religion!
Heaven is my witness, I am that alone.
I worshipped her, and for her I suffered so much pain!
And while they carried a heart as vast as the sea,
With that complement, they don't seek another.
And already, without love, without her now!
Lamps extinguished, quiet... but quiet as a country,
If a plague has devastated it and it lies in darkness….
Dead, whose existence is still remembered.
But those whom the plague strikes to death it does not throw away.
The oak tree often rises after the storm,
And I am, I am an oak tree, through other storms.
I have fallen, but I rise again, Antaeus of the heart.
Meanwhile, Amalia's father is trying to find a suitable fiancé for his daughter.
Many people attend the engagement ceremony, which takes place at the Seraphim family home. Amalia seemed happy and talkative as if she had accepted her fate. After the ceremony, a meal is served. While Amalia's father wishes his daughter and future son-in-law every happiness, the unexpected happens. Amalia stands up and starts laughing, until she finally faints. Amalia (Maria) Seraphim has lost her mind.
Years passed, Achilles Paraschos met his wife Branch Closure, to whom he would remain married until his death in January 1895, while with her he would have two children, in addition to the two children that Cleo had as a widow from her first marriage, whom Paraschos raised as his own.. Achilles Paraschos frequented the literary salon of Mrs. Betsou's sister and there he met Cleo Betsou who at first refused his advances, but after a year she accepted his proposal and married him. In fact, he wrote fiery poems to her.
When Cleo fell ill one day, he sent her a poem titled THE LADY, K...
Read the first quatrain of the poem, the poem consists of 6 quatrains.
"You suffer, and I am not there to support you."
Your beloved head ached when you lay down.
To put you to sleep on my heart,
And may my warm love soothe the disease..."
At one point, the poet is appointed vice-consul in Taigan, Russia.But before he leaves, he feels the need to visit the Mary, who was hospitalized for many years in Corfu insane asylum.
"I want to see her before she dies. I want to apologize to her", confesses to his wife Cleo, regretting that cruel poem he had once written, when he believed that Maria did not truly love him. Cleo, who knew from the beginning about Achilles' love affair with Amalia Seraphim, a love affair that was talked about by all of the secular Athens of the time, did not object.
So, Achilles goes to Corfu. There he asks for Maria, as he called her, and finds an old, disheveled, and unclean woman.
Her clouded mind prevents her from recognizing the great love of her life. A year later, Amalia
(Maria) Seraphim takes her last breath in the Corfu asylum.
"Maria has always been an extraordinary sympathy for me" would confess Cleo Paraschou in an interview in 1929 on the occasion of the unveiling of the bust of her poet husband, which was published in the newspaper Country a few days after her death in October 1930 at the age of 90. "I loved her very much, because she loved Achilles before me. And when she died, my husband and I cried for her together..."
When the news of Amalia's death
(Mary) Seraphim became known, Achilles Paraschos found an image of her, hidden in a drawer, and wrote the following poem in her honor:
MARY
Achilles Paraschos: Poems. Volume Three. 1881. Page 191.
Let us pass, let us pass from this image,
Although time has long since healed the wound.
That is the image of... A poor young man,
How harsh you are towards yourself, how harsh you appear.
Oh! if you had closed your eyes before the charm ceased,
If Mary truly remained Mary,
Such a horrible end would never come...
You yourself have struck your breasts with an arrow.
The breasts? No, you unfortunate one, you didn't hit those.
Phew, you extinguished the sacred ray of your mind.
And now, in a terrible, cold asylum,
You exhale, you extinguished the lamps and you are without myrrh.
Let us pass, let us pass from this image,
Although time has long since healed the wound.
A poem (of imagination) that Achilles Paraschos would write today to his beloved, in an era when love can be expressed freely, but the sensitivity of the soul remains the same.
In the time when I can love you freely
By Dimitris Simeonidis
of Achilles, if he were alive today —
You are no longer a shadow behind windows,
nor a whisper hidden in diary pages.
You are the message that arrives without fear,
You are the light of my soul at midnight.
Today I would hug you.
without fear of father, neighbor or reputation.
I would kiss you in the middle of the street.
and our kiss would not be a scandal —
it would just be true.
We would write poems together in the parks,
I would send you songs and messages.
If you said "I'm leaving," I would know you were free.
If you said "I'm staying," I would know you were mine.
I would love you again – not because I can,
but because you choose me, not because they impose it on you.
But if you were alive then...
I would have to lose you to sing about you.
But now I have you, and poetry
It's your everyday life inside mine.
Maria,
in this era,
You don't have to be crazy about me.
to love you forever.
Πηγές:
Kostas Ouranis: Achilles Paraschos. His Life.
Achilles Paraschos: Poems. Third Volume. Andreas Koromilas publisher. Athens 1881.
Dimitris Symeonidis: Poem – In the time when I can love you freely
photo Unknown, Common Estate File:Achilleas Paraschos (Imerologion Skokou 1888).jpg – https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/
