PANAIT ISTRATI STREET, PHARAKLATA, CEPHALONIA
PANAIT ISTRATI STREET, PHARAKLATA, CEPHALONIA

Summary/Abstract: The pathways in Panait Istrati’s life were sinuous, meandering, and full of unexpected; similarly to searching for texts in the translations volume I contributed to, taking into consideration the Greek reader. Difficult and perhaps exciting – for this very reason – was the work, to look for and select texts from Panait Istrati’s works, untranslated from Romanian into Greek.The research was completed during February-March 2013, in libraries, bookshops and antiquarian bookshops in Athens, Bucharest and Ploiești. My route initially avoided exactly Brăila, Istrati’s birthplace, to re-find it, at the end, redemptive. The intention was to present to the Greek readership, between one sunrise and one sunset, the world of Panait Istrati. The world he came from, but also the one in which he kept on fleeing. The world – imaginary, but also real – in which he never got, his Cephalonia being Cavafi’s Ithaka. Panait Istrati never stepped on the road bearing his name in Pharaklata, Cephalonia. I to join us and him in the world he was looking for2.

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