Ποιειν Και Πραττειν - create and do

Poets and the Myth of the City 1995

                                  Cities– the way poets perceive them

 

                   

           Ancient Bastide secondary city entrance - Monpazier, Southern France

 

 

Introduction

While a photographer may take snapshots of a city, poets feel its pulse and even more perceive city from both an angle as to what goes on and where possible changes can be made to improve living conditions in cities. They do so in an empirical way and imaginative way, while taking up dialogues with others. This concerns above all the need to retain a linkage to nature and to the wild, untamed side of man.

Cities in transition

Much has changed since the beginning of mankind. Ever since the midst of the twentieth century, the countryside has been emptied as people moved to cities to start of a completely new life. This departure from the village to the city figures largely in the philosophy of Karl Popper who would contrast the determined life in the narrow confines of a village setting to the abstract order to be found in the city and which would leave one the freedom of choice even with regards to whom to relate to and to marry eventually, if that is contemplated at all.

The transformation of the landscape through the almost exclusive focus upon the city is, therefore, not an intentional exaggeration, but rather a matter of fact. Today 80% of the world population lives in cities, if not more. Consequently cities are crowded, congested and convulsive in the way they form and change themselves as millions of people concentrate around this single reference of gravity. Something of that is touched upon in the explanations Anne Born gives as she refers to London before and after the industrial revolution. To imagine 12 million or more people alone around that area, it takes some imagination to understand how such a huge collectivity manages to organize itself and still sustains life so that children can go to school on a regular basis.

Athens alone experienced first after the disaster in Asia Minor in 1921 a flood of refuges, and then again during the fifties and sixties a massive migration of people coming from islands and other remote places in the countryside. They sought work and found shelter by cousins, sisters or uncles all working for the Greek state. The city grew without planning, without plan, without regarding the wisdom of the past and how to utilize the closeness to the sea as much as the elevation of the surrounding mountains. All this has accumulated into a city with a bad imagine, high noise level and traffic congestions whenever everyone converges upon the center at the same time. (There are times when the roads are literally empty and you wonder where all the 4 Million people have gone to?)

Recognizing when a city has become too large for itself to cope, that is not merely an art but also a question to be answered how to go on from there. A city like Helsinki faces similar problems like Athens. Many people come in from all over the country to just live in the city. The drain of the countryside of people makes the congregation in one city into a huge challenge for the future.

At the same time, there has set in a reverse, with cities ever expanding while people flee ever further into areas build up at first as summer vacation retreats, but over time become ever more urbanized as second homes become prime homes. It is the response to life in cities becoming too expensive, too noisy, too diluted, in order to constitute still worthwhile experiences which could uphold not only life, but the life of one household consisting of at least three generations with business intertwined in the reproduction of life. Louis Baeck had already pointed out in his 1994 lecture which he gave at the Fifth Seminar, Cultural Action for Europe, that the Mediterranean culture did not know what is common within the Atlantic tradition, namely a split between culture and economy; rather the Mediterranean culture integrated the economy into the household where all decisions are made with regards to what needs to be done, in order to survive as an entity with so many people making up the household. [1]

Clearly that transition and confusion was expressed best by Brendan Kennelly when he coined the word ‘rururb’ for the land neither rural nor urban, but somewhere in-between city and countryside. This term came about due the impression Forthnet made upon all the participants of the 'Myth of the City' held on Crete in 1995. They started at this location of a modern communication centre with their discussions. By relating the city to culture – technology, poets and city planners got a taste as to what subject matters are entailed under the overall theme of ‘Myth of the City

(see: http://poieinkaiprattein.org/myth-of-the-city---program/ )

For instance, during their stay in Chania, poets gave their viewpoints about the city under following titles:

poetic thoughts about cities

 

 

while at the level of myth following contributions were made:

 

Note: The conference ‘Myth of the City’ was re-visited in 2010, see the interview by Alexia Amvrasi, Athens for Real, of Hatto Fischer with video to be found at following link:

http://www.facebook.com/n/?video%2Fvideo.php&v=1246689896378&mid=22cb8e8G298ebadfG561964fG1d&n_m=hfischer%40poieinkaiprattein.org


 

 


 

 


[1] Prof. Louis Baeck, Mediterranean Economic Thought and Atlantic Tradition, 5th Seminar, Athens 1994: http://poieinkaiprattein.org/cultural-actions-for-europe/the-workshops/workshop-5-culture-driven-economy/mediterranean-economic-thought-and-atlantic-economics/

 

 


 



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