ABSTRACT

The 1960s and 70s were marked by a proliferation in the rewriting older works, an intertextual phenomenon in which the moments of reading and writing most tellingly converge. Archaeology in Drosinis Pentzikis's Ersi entails a controlled ideological and reading framework that aims at highlighting the Greek classical past. The young archaeologist Pavlos Rodanos spends six months on an idyllic Aegean island with his beautiful wife, Ersi. Spots of indeterminacy concern both objectivities, such as events, people and things, as well as space and time. Fictionalizing these blind spots has become a fixture in postmodern texts, not least because the notion that an object can be described in its entirety has been associated with realism. Pentzikis is more drawn to the narrative potential offered in Psellus, rather than the nationalist ideological implications it carries as a Byzantine text. Yet, Pentzikis's work should not be identified with orthodox manifestations of surrealism.