Една забравена звезда. Прочит на романа Елени или Никой на Реа Гала-наки
A Forgotten „Star”. A Reading of the Novel Eleni, or Nobody by Rhea Galanaki

Summary/Abstract: The current text offers a reading of the novel Eleni, or Nobody by the contemporary Greek author Rhea Galanaki, drawing on Mark Freeman’s concept of the relationship between memory, narrative and Self. According to Freeman, memory does not only have a reconstructing function, but also a “poetic” one - by remembering the past with the help of the narrative and from the distance of time, we give the past a new form and meaning. The novel Eleni, or Nobody is a biographical one, telling the story of the first female artist in the 19th century, who dresses as a man and thus creates Nobody – the male dimension of identity – in order to fulfill her dream of studying art in Italy and becoming an artist. Her story is tragic. Following a short-lived marriage to the Italian artist Saverio Altamura, Eleni is forced to go back to Athens with two of her children; her third child – the youngest one - is taken by Saverio after their separation. For a while she makes a living as an artist in Athens, but then she retires to her birthplace – the island of Spetses. There, following the death of her children, she spends the last twenty years of her life hardly ever leaving the house, wandering between “reason and madness”. The study is built on two layers – the first deals with the heroine, who is trapped by her past and is desperately trying to reconcile the warring aspects of her identity – Eleni vs Nobody, whereas the second one is related to the way in which Galanaki manages to re-write the myth of Eleni and create a “female Odyssey”.

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