# το κυριότερο με?



## OssianX

Helpful as everyone has been, I hesitate to ask this, because I'm not at all sure it's a language problem.  It may be a poem problem.  Yet I think there's a language problem involved.  The line I can't get is this: "Όμως αυτό είταν το κυριότερο μ' ένα κομμένο λέμονι· ..."

It's possible that my difficulty has to do with "anaphora" in the linguists' sense: that I can't understand the sequence, nor therefore the reference of "αυτό."  If anyone is interested, here's the whole poem, of which this is the penultimate line:

           ΚΑΛΥΨΗ
Η θέα περιοριζόταν λίγο-λίγο.  Τα κοντινά μεγεθύνονταν.
Οι κάμπιες περπατούσαν στα τούβλα της οικοδομής.
Ο οδοκαθαριστής καθόταν κατάχαμα στο πεζοδρόμιο.
Μιά μύγα χτυπιότανε μέσα στ’ αναποδογυρισμένο ποτήρι.
Κ’ ίσως γι’ αυτό χτές το βράδι ο Θανάσης
έσπασε με τη γροθιά του το τζάμι του εστιατορίου.
Ύστερα δυναμώσαν τα μεγάφωνα.  Κανένας
δεν κατάλαβε τίποτα.  Η υπόθεση σταμάτησε εκεί.
Όμως αυτό είταν το κυριότερο μ’ ένα κομμένο λεμόνι,
που το πατούσε κάτω απ’ το τραπέζι η αμίλητη γυναίκα.

I believe I understand everything up to the last two lines, and also the last line.  But what about "αυτό"?  Does it refer back to "ο θανάσης"?  (I can't find another masculine or neuter noun to link it to.)  Even if it does, how does that line make sense?  "Yet he was the main [one?] with a cut-up lemon; …"  If that's what it means, I'll deal with it -- but as always, I wonder if I'm missing a construction that would make better sense.  Specifically, I wonder if "με" has a special meaning after a comparative that would help bind the parts of that line together.  Something that would make "αυτό" mean "it" (the whole situation, for example)?

(If it's any comfort, I'm coming very close to the end of my first, what-the-hell-does-it-mean run-through of these poems.  With any luck, most questions I ask in the future will be less elementary, and more interesting!  Let me say yet again how much I have appreciated the help of many people on this list.)


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## makot

Here's my (gut) interpretation...

'and that was the main thing about the lemon part
that the silent woman stepped on underneath the table'

YOU, of course, must improve this translation, but the rationale goes:

This is the story of something that went really bad. Something that made the man (Thanassis) break the window, and kept the woman transfixed to a mechanical and (to my mind's eye) repeated motion of stepping on sth. 
She's fixing on the details, to avoid seeing, remembering, reliving the whole picture. Nothing is explained. Whatever happened, it was so tremendous, so hurtful, that she refuses to face it. She's concentrating on the little things that don't matter, because she cannot deal with what actually took place. The focus on the cut lemon she kept treading at with her foot was her refuge, her way out of the pain. That is what made it so important. That is why there are so many irrelevant and neutral 'snapshots' (the fly, the construction worker - life unrelated to her and to what took place 'last night'). 
In the same way, the title (Coverage) may be interpreted in two ways: 1) technical (hence from a distance): this is an incomplete film coverage, since we only get still frames/details that are not linked (snapshots+a scene[abrupt motion+noise and then silence+repeated motion ]) and 2) emotional: cover what matters (and hurts/frightens most) beneath a heap of meaningless/neutral impression.

You were looking for a link - your heroine is trying to dismantle everything to such an extent that it will no longer hold any meaning for her... Try to live the fear of memory - and you'll produce an outstanding translation.

(Once again, my friend, if I have confused you instead of helping, just ignore me. My approach to poetry is kind of peculiar...)


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## OssianX

Your interpretation of the whole poem is intriguing and persuasive.  What you say about apparently irrelevant details describes Ritsos's main method--a surrealist method of cataloging fragmentary visual elements (somehow hyper-realistic in their isolation) within a scene that is never explained but is pointed toward by those details.  (There's a surprising connection here between surrealism and Imagism or Modernism more generally--hm!)

What you say about my "problem" line is especially helpful.  Again what trips me up is ellipsis, I guess: "the chief [thing]".  Your reading fits nicely.  Thank you!


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## makot

Persuasive - but above all personal.
Any time...


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## OssianX

I'm bringing this back up -- sorry! -- because I still (having reached this point again in my _second_ round of work on these poems) can't quite feel I'm grasping what this line means: "Όμως αυτό είταν το κυριότερο μ’ ένα κομμένο λεμόνι."

Is it possible to turn it around and say, "Yet the main [thing] about it was a slice of lemon" etc -- "it" meaning the whole incident?  What sticks in the speaker's mind is that lemon slice?  I can't quite parse the Greek to mean that, but I wonder.  Could αυτό be agreeing with "ένα κομμένο λεμόνι"?  But "με" is still a problem for me.


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## elliest_5

It sure doesn't make much sense anyway...but I think that the cut/sliced lemon is unrelated to the reference of "αυτό", which should be refering to anything among the previously mentioned events (probably the "strongest" one which was Thanasis breaking the glass). We understand that αυτό does not refer to the lemon, because the lemon is part of a prepositional phrase "με ένα κομμένο λεμόνι" which is a separate constituent of the phrase and, under normal circumstances, it would be modifying an action (like "he broke the glass *with a cut/sliced lemon*) *Edit: In that case αυτό could refer to the whole prepositional phrase like "but that was the most important thing: (that he broke the glass/that the *whatever event* was caused) with a cut/sliced lemon*....or maybe (further edit ) it means "but that was the most important thing, along with a sliced lemon" (it was as important as the sliced lemon) if we suppose that the poet omits a "μαζί" there

Note: I translate "κομμένο" as cut/sliced because to me it could equally mean "cut from a tree" or "cut in slices" - I hope this doesn't complicate things even more...


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## shawnee

I agree with eliest 5 that αυτό refers to both the matter that hangs in the air, that led to breaking of glass etc. and the piece of lemon, but not quite in the sense of "μαζί". It would appear to be a shifting reference as we might find in stream of consciousness writing. So that it is both one and the other, but not both together as a compounded image. I know, I should just shut up, but you've aroused an interest Ossian.


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## OssianX

(Sigh.)  Again it seems the best course is not to resolve something in translation that isn't resolvable in the Greek.  I think I can preserve the general sense but also the confusion by saying:

     Yet that was the main thing with a slice of lemon,
     trodden under the table by the unspeaking woman.

(Does the fact that she's unspeaking have something to do with Thanasis' outburst?)  I realize that it's a cut/sliced lemon, not a slice of lemon; but given the bar scene, I think I can get away with it, and it will help the English reader _think_ he or she understands what's going on, which is probably about the right effect.

Yet again, thanks all.


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## Librarian44

I tend to agree with your final version but as a Greek native (however not an English one) I wonder whether "the main thing WITH a slice of lemon" (or with a cut lemon) is the same as "CONCERNING a slice of lemon". Somehow it sounds better in Greek (if not in English). I think silent is more poetical than unspeaking.


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## OssianX

Thanks, Librarian44.  (Are there 43 others?  Cool!)

You're right that "with" is quite a colloquial choice; I'm (thinking of) using it here more or less as in "What is it with him?" or "What is it with that City Council?"  The longer form would be, "What's up with [whoever]?"

"Concerning" might be excessively formal, but "about" would get the same idea.  Part of the problem -- by now really a translation problem rather than a language problem; sorry -- is that I'm trying to smooth over my difficulty with the line: if it's definitely "about/concerning a slice of lemon,"  then what is the "that" (αυτό) at the beginning of the line?  I don't think (?) the Greek reader feels this as a pressing question, but if I say "That was the main thing concerning a slice of lemon," the English reader certainly will.

But I agree that my solution is suspect.  We'll see whether I stick with it.


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## ireney

I actually like the "main thing with" translation. It gives me the exact same feeling of "huh?" as the original and is of the same, well, not exactly register but you know what I mean: not formal, colloquial but not extremely so, that kind of thing.


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## OssianX

Thanks, ireney; that's exactly what I'm aiming for, and I'm glad to hear you hear it that way.


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