A Japanese in Athens: When beauty is distracted
The opposite of injustice is not justice. Once the injustice is done, it is not cured, nor reversed. The only antidote is beauty.
Japanese engraving loved to capture the fleeting beauties of life, hence the features are called ukiyo-e that is, images of the fleeting world.
The haiku is a Japanese poetic form consisting of 3 groups of 5, 7 and 9 syllables. A haiku is read in one breath. Most of the time it is accompanied by some ukiyo-e.
Is there Distracted in Japanese? Even if no one can answer with certainty, what is certain is that beauty is distracting.
Perispomeni Publications they are housed in a neoclassical in the Athenian center with marble canopies and a marble frame around the wooden front door. The interior seems to be suffocating with books occupying every nook and cranny, but it is indistinguishable. Beauty is the only possibility.
The books of Perispomeni publications are full of flowers and poetry. Beautiful gardens and true poems require patience, answers and true powers. Just the opposite of today’s poetic modes.
The publisher Sotiris Selavis he remains suspicious of ease, of anything that is not accompanied by a dedicated disposition, that is definitively and entirely.
Poet, keen translator and illustrator, he considers books life companions. For him, even the most bitter poem is a promise of tomorrow’s beauty, because sorrows make a person better, and nostalgia means a desire to return not only to what one has lived but also to what one has dreamed of.
Good books aren’t just read, they’re read, until they’re like friends you’ve had forever. That is why the concern for appearance in Salavi—does not arise from aestheticism, but from the very nature of books. Thus, companionship—and beauty—seems irreplaceable.
Perispomeni Publications hopefully has 130 titles after 12 years of operation. The number didn’t matter if it wasn’t for books designed one by one by hand. Proof or red, green or blue binding thread inside each copy.
As a child, Sotiris Selavis had a weakness for manual constructions. He loved drawing, calligraphy, the feel of paper, paintings and illustrations. But all this did not mean that he also knew how to make books. He had to learn. And of course he continues to learn.
Rilke, Novalis, Gates, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Heidegger, Belzos, Marcellos, Lambrou, are some of the lifelong friendships that another Japanese world in Athens generously gives us with a single breath.
Why does Sotiris Selavis translate, write and publish poetry? Because “Rilke is as necessary as the priest on the battlefield” (Tsvetayeva).