Apodemia: A Walking Tour

  Cities emerging from the past… Literary in their conception, vast, yet, distinguishable, concrete from memory, light, sounds, people… Thessaloniki, Nafplion, Corfu and many more, arise from literacy, mysterious and exotic, admirable by their writers, even haunted to imagination…  In the footsteps of classic and contemporary writers destinations revive meticulously, picturesque in details, urban, undiscovered.

  Metaichmio Publications, quite promisingly, introduces us to textual walks through cities we‘ve fantasized during our dreamy, joyful readings in a new series of 18 volumes: “Cities throughout Literacy’’. Those are the scents, memories and confessions of scholars depicting and exploring their lands in three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa. Destinations of a living Hellenism but also those of a remaining one. Places where myth and lore collides with reality and breathing figures.

  Among others writers of these volumes in a comprehensive anthology of tests are: Roides, Elefthriou, Ouranis, Venezis, Karkavitsas, Papantoniou, Carouzos, Egonopoulos, Sappho, Sotiriou, Kavafis, Seferis, Demou, Panagiotopoulos, Xanthoulis and so many more. A matching selection of the past, along with the contemporary spirit. In the same approach Laurence Durrell illuminates the Mediterranean landscape with his auctorial dyad: “Prospero’s Cell’’ (1945) and the “The Greek Islands’’ (1978). In the first the Greek set of Corfu becomes the epicenter of joy and completeness as opposed to his former life in industrialized London, just before World War II. The second, steeped in the living experience of the Mediterranean combines history and myth with Durrell’s personal reminiscences.

 
  Last but not least Anastasis Vistonites in his work “Literary Geography- Lands-Cities-People’’ establishes a topography of emotions. A phenomenally random composition that incorporates, however, a massive and collective experience of the destinations described.

  Kazantzakis once wrote: ‘’Wherever I used to go, for a walk or by the beach I used to carry with me a copy of Homer, of Dante or some other classic writer…’’. His writings, especially his influential travel books guide us as well, to many of our trips. Especially nowadays travelling demands the elaborate guidance of many readings and, physically speaking a big load of hardcopy bricks in our luggage.

  In the 21st century there is no need for that. Sure, there‘s Internet, but you can’t find everything for free on the web. Teens show us the way, with the vast expansion of tablets, smartphones and even netbooks or laptops, if you will. There is a whole market of eBooks and eReaders and many bookstores saw the opportunity as well. Using leading web technologies offers the ability to buy and download your newly favorite best seller, ignore any sense of burden, except that of your device of course, and ‘’carry’’ your library with you! Modern devices, especially eReaders with e-ink technology will ‘’fool’’ your eyes as it had been real paper!



Want to take a grasp of it? Choose the free ones to see how it’s like. Price, ecology, technology all wrapped up together, show qualities of our future, everyday reality!



Text by GIANNIS KALOFOTIAS