Endorsements

To Kaktos Publications, Athens

Dear Sir,

For all countries in the world, I would welcome with great pleasure the creation and continuation of a series of authors from Greek antiquity accompanied by modern translations. I am convinced that today, when knowledge of Ancient Greek is in decline, this has become an urgent duty.

There is, and rightly so, great concern for the preservation of the works of art from this period – its temples, its statues, its paintings. Yet the ancient writers offer no less joy, nor do they enrich us any less. On the contrary, they play an additional role, one that is always living and decisive, we might say, for our own thinking today. In every field, the Greeks of antiquity were radical innovators: they shaped and defined concepts, established principles, identified problems, debated opposing positions, and thus provided Western civilization with its very foundations. And they did so through texts that are simple and that speak directly to us – tragedy, history, dialogue. These texts nourished the Romans, the thinkers of the Renaissance, and they have never ceased to sustain our thought.

How can one today discuss political ideas without beginning with the analyses of different forms of government, with the lucid reflections of the ancients on democracy and law, on the distinction between freedom and license? Those who attempt to do so without these foundations believe they are innovating, yet they are condemned to fall into confusion. The same is true in philosophy. Can philosophical thought progress in the modern world if it is not grounded in Plato and Aristotle, in Socrates and the Stoics, or in Greek Christian thought, from the Gnostics to the Fathers of the Church?

And what of the values that emerge from these texts -the values of Homer and Plutarch- how could one believe that they are no longer alive? All of this, which seems so evident to me, presupposes a complete series that reflects the marvelous continuity of this mode of thought, which never ceases to invent and to define with precision, continually renewing itself, driven by one and the same impulse. It is, I would say, a dialogue -wonderful in its coherence- that reaches all the way to us.

If this is true for all peoples, what should we say of Greece? A modern Greece that were to lose contact with its ancient writers would also lose contact with its modern poets, who themselves were nurtured by the same values – Cavafy, Seferis. It would lose sight of what continues to be its glory abroad and must retain its pride: that it opened the road to Western civilization. How can one imagine that its citizens today might be ignorant of the heritage it has bestowed upon them, a heritage studied now in Finland, in Japan, in Brazil? A young Chinese acquaintance of mine is translating Thucydides into his own language. How can I accept that a Greek might not have the opportunity to read him with ease?

I thank you for this new series, which opens up such new possibilities. It can only move my Greek heart deeply.