Three Letters (Athens 1932)

An English translation of left-wing writer Yorgis Zarkos’ caustic 1932 letters, recently discovered by Dimitris G. Yfantis.

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“Very soon, the large windows of your shop will be smashed to bits. I don’t believe you’re foolish enough to ask the new head of security to protect them. Even he wouldn’t want to get involved in a job that will grease up his soles and make him slip like Koutsoumaris. After the smashing, I don’t believe the law you’ve bought and which is for sale will have the audacity to intervene, since I’ve already shitted on it…I’m telling you, and you must believe me because I always say the truth: I’m telling you that I will play the fool.”

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Yorgis Zarkos (1902-1967) was one of the most radical and uncompromising figures in interwar Greek literature. The poet Thomas Gorpas remarked on Zarkos’ singular oeuvre, writing that “rarely do writers like Zarkos appear in world literature who make art in order to destroy it.” He was born in 1902 in the village of Amaliada and died in Athens on April 7, 1967, barely two weeks before tanks stormed the city and ushered in the military dictatorship of the Colonels.