ABSTRACT
The location of Greek culture Imagining himself looking down at Europe from an aeroplane in 1929, Giorgos Theotokas noted the innumerable contrasts which the continent presented to his view. Europe, he reflected, could be likened to the domesticated space of a garden where contending national colours blended into a harmonious ensemble. 1 For Theotokas at least, Greece's European destiny hinged centrally on the rejection of a critical tendency, exemplified by the writings of Fotos Politis, to pit the nation's indigenous traditions against the new cultural formations and technologies of the West: jazz, aeroplanes and motorcars. If the country's cultural life was to remain buoyant, it was, in his view, imperative to disencumber the nation of its exclusive 'Byzantine traditions and search for a new path' westwards.2 Among those writers celebrated as embodiments of national Greek values by Politis's 'provincial' brand of criticism, one whose work represented a treasure-trove of 'Byzantine and popular art' was Alexandros Papadiamantis.3
