Based on true events – a story in sequels

PART 5

The real language issue

GEORGE LIOPON was born in 1890 and left his island, which was then Italian, when he was 16 years old. He stayed in Russia – St. Petersburg, Kiev and Odessa – for a little over ten years, until the communist revolution in 1917 when he went to Greece, to Athens. He used his knowledge of the Russian language to talk to his brother about professional matters, so that no one at home could understand them.

When George went out with Sevasti for business, he would meet his compatriots, that is, people of various nationalities who had lived in Russia and had now found refuge in Greece, and he would speak to them in Russian.

- "Does he speak Russian?" they asked him, pointing to Sevasti.

- No.

- You're not doing well, Mr. George. It's a shame you're not teaching the child the language.

Sevasti always complained that her father did not share his second language with her, because she had the ability to learn languages. She had uttered a few words and knew how to say “Christ is Risen” and “Death, you have trampled on death” in Russian. Her uncle had taught her the hymn, written it for her in Greek characters, but she never used it. All the religious services she attended were in Greek. That was exactly what George thought, that Sevasti would never use Russian. She would marry a Greek man and as a woman she would not need to do business in Russian.

- But a language is a culture, his friends said.

- Exactly. Sevasti will be Greek; and she will never become Russian, and I take full responsibility for that.

As fate would have it, Russia remained communist for almost the entire duration of Sevasti's life, and as we said her family had been expelled by the communists, so she never had the reason or desire to visit, despite her complaints. And despite her father's concerns, Sevasti was never divided between languages and cultures. She had only one devotion, the language of Homer, which was at the same time the sacred language of the clergy, the language that connected each of its speakers to the Greek identity.

To master the modern language of Modern Greek as it was in its literary form, to master the Katharevousa, was her ultimate goal and she knew that this was her destiny. Every Sunday she went to church alone, without family or friends and, repeating the service, she memorized all the archaic endings of nouns, perfecting her speech to come as close as possible to the language of the New Testament, to the divine words of Jesus.

However, George could not consider all the available options and the paths they would lead to, because Sevasti became a passionate student of French. She loved the language so much that she managed to convince her father to give her money to go to the French Academy in Athens for beginner's courses.

English was never a language choice, there was no British Council back then, or if there was, she didn't know about it. It took decades for the English language to gain the global reach it has today, for America to become a superpower, and for English to become a learning trend in Athens.

"All languages are tools. All of them, except Greek, because they are our identity," her father used to say.

But the money for French ran out and the unexpected happened—a marriage to a man many years older than her. She promised herself that if any of her children from that marriage could learn French, she would help them. So she added this disappointment, of not learning other languages, to her long list of unfulfilled dreams.

Greek became her identity, but she had no other tools to process it like her father had. George loved the Greek language very much, the language of his homeland, the language of the longed-for land. And Sevasti loved Greek very much, the language of her ancestors' deep desire for life and the language of her own religion and that of her loved ones. She was happy to be Greek, but every now and then she thought about what would happen if she too became a bird and spread her wings like all those who came and went to Greece.

“Dad, I want to be a flight attendant.” They laughed with her sister when they thought about how they would make the announcement to him. They never announced it to him. Not to him, not to her husband, not to anyone. It was good that she learned what she learned, she should be happy, they told her. And when Sevasti raised her children and found some time, she learned Braille, the language of the blind. She translated The Odyssey for the Center for the Blind in Kallithea.

Sevasti had finally found her own language. Her fingers danced across the paper as she translated the Odyssey, each dot of Braille a small rebellion. Where her father had refused to teach her foreign languages, she now built bridges with a language no one in her family could read. Every time her students read with their fingertips about Odysseus sailing the seas, Sevasti felt like she was traveling with them.

But the only journey she made was with her eyes closed. She was aware of her inability to see what she wanted, what she needed - and she held that awareness like an Oedipal curse from which it was her destiny not to be able to escape.

(goes on)

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