Utopia Festival
Literature Utopia

Details to be announced.

Excerpt from UNTIL THE VICTIM BECOMES OUR OWN
Chapter V

Why is this night different from all other nights? High up in the sky, the day endures for a little longer, but the houses below have gone dark and the lights are already coming on, more and more of them now, they keep coming on, only a few windows are still dark, time passes, here is one that came on late, and that’s about it now, there will be no more, time passes and then once again, one by one, they will go out, they came on for only a few hours, now it’s time for them to turn off, just a few will stay on, sparse, forgotten, and the people will lower their eyelids and turn to sleep. But, no, tonight they all stay lit, and if you come near the window, you will see that the large table has been set, the candles are burning and will drip forth all the light they have been keeping inside them. And as the night advances, all things will light up, no house tonight will stay in the dark, the light pierces and shines forth through everything, even through walls and the fog and smoke that loom over the city, and, tonight, not even he who closes his eyes, not even he will find darkness. Because tonight, this night is different from all other nights, and it has only come to bring light, to bring along with a different kind of sleep inside of which everyone awakens and remembers, they remember that night, that night from another world, when they had wrapped up their sleep along with the rest and had taken it with them, and now they remember how they had left at that time. It was at that time, that night that had opened the door for them, and they left, led by this flashlight that showed them the way from above and brought them here, where the city is now, this city whose doors kept opening and closing, tonight, and all the people went from house to house, and doors kept opening and closing like thousands of wings. Because they had come here all together and they never forgot that, they remembered and they rejoiced, how it came to be that they left at that time, how during that night, the door was drawn open, the one that had never been opened before. That’s why they were seated around this table, this is what they were celebrating tonight. And they kept talking about that house, which was always in their minds, which they knew was expecting them somewhere, and they talked about he who had come to take them with him, who beckoned them and they all went out in the street, and that’s how they left at that time, and now they were here and every year they kept recounting the story, they rose to speak in turns while the others listened, and the children listened so that they would come to learn how the blood dripped on their doorstep and unlocked the door, how they packed their things in the dead of night and left, how they ate in haste, stealthily, in the dark, and when the day broke, they were all on the road, and a plangent cry was heard everywhere as they left, the loudest and the most mournful that had ever been heard, and nothing like this would be heard ever again, but they did not look back, that was the hour when day broke, the sun was opposite them, the sun was in their eyes and mud was on their feet, a salty kind of mud, the mud, reeds, and mosquitoes, and then the dust, they were unable to see because of the wind and the dust, and no water at all, not even under the stones, nothing, nowhere, not even a drop, only the animals that quenched their thirst with blood, and from the blood of one to the blood of the next they kept going, and went on eating their animals one after the other, but still their thirst kept stalking them. But in the end, they found this river that, as soon as they set foot upon it, stood still as if its water had turned to ice, and let them pass. And they passed. And today the city is standing around them and it has no limit, they said, no place exists outside of us any longer, we have been free ever since and you are hearing the story tonight, so that you can tell it, later, when we are gone, and keep telling it and we shall keep coming home to this great feast.

INTERVIEW - Violence and Its Other
By Toti O’Brien

DIMITRIS LYACOS describes his new book, Until the Victim Becomes our Own, as a prequel to his world-renowned trilogy, Poena Damni—which begins with a fugitive on a train, but never clarifies what, whom, and where from he has fled, hinting at the past only through the traces it left, showing us a mere geography of scars. Until the Victim Becomes our Own reels us back to the pre-fugue universe, mapping both an archeological grid and a bird’s-eye view of our very own Western civilization, founded on Judeo-Christian traditions, then evolved through industrialization and capitalism up to the digitally-global present day.Though he was bound to Israel when  TOTI O’BRIEN reached out to him with her questions, Lyacos agreed to interweave their conversation with his travels, and we are glad he did.

Poetry? Prose? Delirium, myth, prediction?
“Poena damni” di Dimitris Lyacos

Poesia? Prosa? Delirio, mito, previsione? Per Dimitris Lyacos i confini non importano. Sono binari da attraversare sperando che non passi nessun treno, sono linee fatte per essere superate, recinti mentali che la penna può attraversare impunemente e modificare con un semplice tratto che s’interrompe, si torce, si distende: un segno scritto, una parola. Un verso, una frammento, una pagina.La sua ricerca è ardua come la salita a un monte troppo liscio per essere scalato: il significato di ogni passaggio sfugge e si mimetizza agli occhi dei lettori dentro un testo complesso e articolato eppure così esile da sembrare velocissimo.

Parole spalancate
FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE DI POESIA DI GENOVA

Poietika 2024
International Festival

MicroMega
Dubravka Ugrešić and Dimitris Lyacos

Chapter D from UNTILE THE VICTIM BECOMES OUR OWN
Image Journal - Issue 120

I WOKE UP AGAIN and while I wanted to get up and leave, I couldn’t see where to. I leapt over the parapet and found myself in the middle of a road, empty lanes covering the entire space before me. Another parapet, rather low, then again a tarmac, like tangent causeways heading in divergent directions, like rivers merging and separating again between medians that rise from sinking mud only. I can find no other way to describe it. Then another parapet, and I thought that if I leapt over it the space would open up. From one road I leapt to the next, but where one ended the other began, a gray tangled ball of yarn, overpasses and bridges over and under, low barriers and nothing beyond them, a cluster of lanes and interchanges, a net without limit, and at that point it dawned on me that it made no sense to go forward, so I went all the way back. Then, I cannot remember, a blank spot, and then again, I could see. Unfamiliar faces bent over my head, I couldn’t tell how this happened, and they were smiling at me. One spoke and said: this dream of yours, it is real. It took you far away and brought you back, but all that time we were here waiting for you to wake up. A sleep so deep we thought you had fainted, you could hardly manage to breathe. We brought you here and put you on that mattress and let you sleep. All is well now. Do not be afraid. How many days did you sleep? A few hours, you will say. If I ask you, that’s what you’ll say, that’s what you’ll think, but look at this bread. Take it in your hand, look at it. It is dry, but it was fresh when we baked it, and now it’s hard as a stone. Since that day you have been fast asleep. And once you had woken up, you got scared when you saw us. You do not know us, and because you do not know us, you are afraid. Don’t be afraid of us. We will do you no harm, we are also like you, we have all come here from the very same place and we all have the very same mark upon us. Feel it with your hand. You may notice, it’s as if your forehead had swollen a bit, as if something sticks out a bit. You feel it only a little, but you and I, all of us have it. And all of us share the same dreams, more or less, and everyone is afraid of the very same things. You are not alone. Not in that either. And many times we wake up in the dead of night and can’t find any rest. You will see for yourself. And you will see that little by little during the day we forget why we are here, but, as we have one another, we only see what’s here for us, and this suffices for us, and from that moment on, we go on living only with this, and we say: there is no judgment, no judge, there is no other world. And for you, the rest of it was all a dream. Yes, it was true, but it was a dream, and now that you have woken up, put it aside. This is how we reason, and one forgets with the help of the other. We found each other, and we all decided to stay. It’s good enough here. We don’t need to leave and go anywhere else. We are far enough away that no one can watch us, and you don’t need to go any farther to avoid being spied upon by the one who chased you away. Coming up to this place, that does it. Of course, there may be books and lists as well, and the one who took your name down will keep you in there, his book will remember you, but we are all written down in it, so let him stay with his book, and we will stay where we are. And since he can no longer see you, forget about it as much as you can. Don’t bother. Whoever he is, over here we cannot see him at all, neither do we ever see him, nor does he exist. We forgot him and let him forget about us and let’s forget what has happened. That’s all over and done with now, and we’ll stay here and build. For us, there is no judgment outside of here, no judge, no other world. This place is us. And you can stay with us. You start again from the beginning, from a new hiding place. Quiet, dark. They had set up tents. Not all; some had a few blankets thrown down and were lying on them. Often there was a man with a woman and child on each blanket. It seemed a little odd to me, because some had dug a hole and built a shallow shelter with the blanket on top. It might get very windy and cold at night. Even now it was rather windy. Dust was raised up all over the place and more was likely to come, since there was hardly any vegetation. In a partially buried tank there was still some water, but as it seemed to run out, they called me to join them and go fetch some more. On that side there was sand nearly everywhere, and nothing grew there. The opposite side looked like a shore—it could have been a coast. When we went for the water, walking among them, I noticed that there were others, many others around, and others behind those who could not be seen beforehand. Some were busy with building, and they greeted me when I passed. This was the first house I saw. I looked inside, and it seemed dark and cavernous, and it sloped down a little. This coolness of a deep, moist place wafted out from it. You felt it just oozing out of the entrance. And more people were building, and there would be more of those houses eventually. After I had walked awhile, I turned to look from a distance and peered back at the whole thing, whatever it was, houses, tents, with blankets in between, people standing, people lying down, and the others who kept coming out of those cave-like places, raising scarves to their eyes. And the open space in between, the passages, the narrow roads carved in the sand, white veins and then a little red from the setting sun. The air was a translucent skin, and from below it showed how the recesses of the city were growing and forming. I was thirsty. The others had made their way ahead and had almost got to the water.In the evening, we sat down and shared food, what little they had, what each one had brought. I don’t know if they were all there, but there were a lot of us, no doubt about that. Some had brought fruit, someone had beans. No meat whatsoever. None had been brought, none had been found, and no one had gone out for a kill. They were boiling weeds, but someone tasted them and said they were tough. Then someone who had brought an animal with him said to the animal, come here, in front, and sit next to me with the others. They kept staring at it, and he brought it among them, and the animal stared back at them and they stared at it too. Like mute witnesses of some kind, as if they were expecting the animal to ask them a question. Nothing happened, however. We ended up being the last ones who stayed to feed the fire. Then a fable was told. A little farther away, two people were rolling and hugging, and for a moment I felt as if they were touching me, as if I were trembling the way they trembled, the way he entered her. I gazed at them and did not listen, then I heard a little of the end of the fable: the house had fallen on someone, crashing down upon him, and he ended up dying inside the house.And once more, a few feet away in a tent that suddenly flapped in the wind, two distinct shadows, merging, at the next moment, into one another again, tents trembling in the light of the fire, each person nesting inside a darkness they had set up for themselves, all at peace now, or almost, only that thing floating up, and I follow it with my eyes: a torn page upon the wind.

Evening with an author
American Library in Paris

Conversation with Nafkote Tamirat and Vanessa Onwemezi
American Library in Paris

Considered a front-runner for a Nobel Prize in literature, Lyacos is known for the drifting, dreamlike quality of his work. Across his considerable oeuvre, he turns a post-modern eye upon time-honored themes and motifs, including the demarcation between body and spirit, and the tensions between life and death. With blistering language and hallucinatory settings, Lyacos creates worlds that sometimes verge upon the dystopian. His work has been translated into more than 20 languages, making Lyacos among the most-translated contemporary Greek writers. [...]

Bluelabyrinths
A Column of Cloud and a Column-of-Fire: Dimitris Lyacos’ Poena Damni

One of the most original and significant texts to have come out of Europe in the past generation is Dimitris Lyacos’ poetic trilogy, Poena Damni. I call it “poetic” because there is no word that quite describes a work that moves alternately between poetry, prose, and drama, and that turns each like a prism in a quest for meaning that yields no final stability but only a “further horizon of pain” (The First Death, Section X). [...]

Rivista Argos
Elogio dell' irrequietezza: Indagini critiche su POENA DAMNI

Ci sono libri che dicono poco e libri che dicono troppo: i primi appartengono al genere balneare, o del dormiveglia e non conta farne menzione; i secondi inquietano lo spirito, sfidano la ragione, sollecitano l’immaginazione a destarsi dall’anestesia di massa.A questa seconda genìa appartiene la trilogia Poena Damni, che leggiamo nella magnifica traduzione di Viviana Sebastio, capace di ricreare in italiano il denso impasto linguistico dell’originale greco, opera di un autore di indubbio talento, Dimitris Lyacos. [...]

Excerpts from Poena Damni
Euphorion

[...]De unde vin? cum mă numesc ? încotro mă duc ? să iau loc, dacă vreau, să stau puțin. Să mă liniștesc, umblam de multă vreme fără țintă până să intru aici și mă temeam s-o iau de la început. Să facă lumina mai mică sau era bine așa? Să nu se dezbrace. Eu să mă întind iar ea să așeze la picioarele mele ca s-o văd. Așa cum mi-o imaginasem cu o seară în urmă când ea se arătase la freastră. Atunci o doream. Glasuri din stradă și din celelalte încăperi, râsete. Pantalonul așezat cu grijă pe spătarul scaunului. La ce-i trebuie șervețelul de hârtie ? Mă culc cu picioarele întinse și lipite și mâinile pe lângă corp. Ca-ntr-un sicriu. Un scurt răstimp îmi țin răsuflarea. Îdar e mai bine să respir, calm și mai rar. Începe, îmi întorc privirea în sus spre tavan. E alb, un cearceaf întins la doi metri deaspra noastră. Măntreabă dacă vreau mai încet sau mai repede, eu nu simțeam nimic i-am zis că puțin mai rar. Senzația unui mădular străin lipit de trupul meu. Un mădular străin care-mi iese din trup. Înapoi înainte, de parcă ar curăța țeava puștii. Înainte înapoi, acum ceva mai lent.Țâțele ei opintindu-se să iasă afară. Eu îmi mișc șalele în sus și-n jos, așa-i mai bine, încet, apoi nițel mai riute. Privea în jos mâna ei așteptând grijulie. O simt cum mă apasă și-apoi cum se deschide și se moaie. O simt pompându-mi sângele în vine, tot mai puternic, nu pricep cum. Voiam doar s-o privesc cum vine peste mine. Nu, încă nu, o clipă, numai oglinda, iar peretele alb, trupul ei musculos peste mine. Pentru un moment nu mai privești niciunde, doar simți, cum trupul se umple, cum saliva coboară, pe dinăuntru fiara zgreapțănă și dă să iasă, și tu ai vrea să ieși, fiara insetată impinge dinăuntru ca să iasă din mintea ta, plină ochi, de dă pe dinafară. Dă pe dinafară, printre degetele ei se năpustește și tu urci spe sâni. Și apoi, apoi parcă nici nu mai ești, parcă ar fi murit și fiara iar eu m-am slobozit de tot într-însa. O, de-aș rămâne tot așa, golit de toate, gol și curat. Atunci lumea ți se ridică drept în fața, alinată și simplă, pașnică și cu- rată sub ochii tăi. Atunci va fi, atunci nu va fi bai, oricât de singur aș rămâne. Zâmbi ca și cum ar fi înțeles, aveam să plec să mă întorc s- o doresc din nou, acum la ea mă gândesc, măcar de-ar fi să mai fie odată. Iă șervețelul și mă șterge. Câteva clipe, apăsat, ca și cum ar stoarce un furuncul.[...]