NAME: Demetrios (Mimis) Despotidis of Antonios and Virginia
PLACE OF BIRTH: Amorgos
PLACE OF DEATH: Athens
PLACE OF RESIDENCE: Athens
SPOUCE / MAIDEN NAME: Anthi Rera / Rera
PROFESSION: Publisher
CAPACITY: Scholar, Intellectual
The following biographical note on the Amorgian scholar Demetrios A. Despotidis was written by the Amorgian philologist – researcher Georgios A. Mavros, in the form of a speach honoring the scholar. It was extracted from the archive of the G. A. Mavros which was granted in its entirety to the Digital Audiovisual Folk Music Archive of Amorgos and its Islands. The structure, the spelling, and the punctuation of the text in Greek have been preserved. The English translation has been mildly edited.
Tonight, within the framework of this cultural four-day event we are organizing, an attempt is made to express the Amorgian poetic feeling in a simple way through its chronologically evolving course. This, as another long due tribute to a bright agonistic figure, our compatriot who marked the Greek progressive thought, Dimitris Despotidis.
My first reference will be to Simonides the Amorgian. Iambographer and elegygrapher of the 6th century BC who lived and created in Amorgos and owes his name to this island. This reference is to a work that overflows with an intense sparkling wit and a richly mocking mood. Its continuation is found in the folk verses that reveal all the satirical mood, the cheerfulness, the joy, the optimistic attitude towards life. The folk verses that, at the same time, express local struggles and characteristics – the struggle for survival, lamentation, the struggle of immigration, the quiet life that flows between the sea, the coffee shop, and the dusk. This environment, together with personal specificity and sensitivity, the social coordinates, the natural environment of white and blue, give birth to the now famous creators.
It is Amorgian poets we present today. It is an attempt to introduce and bring the Amorgians closer to the people who represent them better in the sphere of art. It is a due honor to the spiritual man of our land who, in the unpleasant, anti-poetic climate of the times, manages to advocate the best while remaining human. A tribute to those who perform their first duty to the breed, feel all the ancestors in them, illuminate their ancestor’s momentum and continue their work. And above all it is a meagre, we acknowledge, tribute to the man who made the free spread of ideas, the cultural uplift of the country, the education of Greeks, his life’s work. It is a minimal tribute to the man who makes us, regardless of our political positions, feel proud to be his compatriots. Our land, and the Amorgian younger generation honor the man who throughout his life encouraged and guided the youth in the struggle for a better world.
Dimitris Despotidis was born in Plaka on April 1, 1924, to Amorgian parents. Antonis and Virginia Despotidis. His father was a well-known pharmacist of the time. Most of all, his childhood was influenced by his uncle Mihalis Despotidis, the well-known Minoan, teacher, scholar, and poet of Amorgos. He decisively influenced Dimitrakis, (as the Amorgians call him) Despotidis to turn to letters and humanistic ideas that in those years took root and developed in our country. Mimis Despotidis showed from a very early age his special inclination for art and philosophy, but at the same time his sensitivity and militancy. As an excellent student at the 1st high school of Plaka, he organized the first occupation soup kitchens for the students of Athens. Symbolically, it is worth mentioning that the student soup kitchens were held at the Polyclinic of Athens, where four months ago he died. He began his militant and cultural activity as a member of OKNE. A founding member of the EPON, known by the pseudonym Petros, he was an educator of Athens and, with his fiery and enlightened guidance, the animator of the youth in the struggle against the occupation. The man who made our youth, the youth of Athens, “drunk,” says the poet Michalis Katsaros, when he dedicates to him the oratorio “Against Sadoukaion” set to music by Mikis Theodorakis. In the offices of EPON he organizes cultural evenings with the leaders of progressive thinking and warms the ice-cold souls of the youth with the hope of a better tomorrow. As a young boy, he passes to the mountains of Roumeli, in the then liberated Greece, where he serves the National Resistance. At that time, he was the sole inspirer of the impetuous EPON artistic movement that was connected in the soul of the people with the message of the EPON. He knew how to put into practice more than anyone else the motto of the youth at that time, the motto “we fight and we sing,” a motto that he himself kept throughout his life. A life full of painful national adventures that never brought him to his knees. Imprisoned by the authorities during the civil war, after an endless series of transports he was sent to Makronisos. His attitude evokes the admiration and respect of all the prisoners. In the hell of SFA he stood as a hero. In their futile attempt to extract a statement from him, they hit him on the head with a pitcher, causing him to lose his sight for some time and the ability to walk. He remained true to his ideas to the end and with that familiar bright smile etched on his lips. During his many years of imprisonment, he studied modern Greek history with a holy passion and broadened his horizons enormously. After his release from prison he married Anthi Rera, a well-known fighter of the EPON, Mrs. Anthi Despotidou, who is with us today, and with whom he had two children who bear the name of his Amorgian parents.
In later years his efforts turned wholeheartedly to the cultural uplift of our people. Despotidis was among the first to understand with the greatest acuity how Marxism and socialist culture had to be linked to scientific research and pioneering pursuits in art. His vision was the proper marriage of the cultural policy of the Movement with all kinds of vanguardism in education, art, and science. Despotidis lays the foundations for a different understanding of publishing. He believed that publishing companies in general should become laboratories for critical reflection, for structuring and developing personalities and discourse. He believed that no political body in the field of culture can become the custodian of the people. But, instead, political bodies should become the rallying point for spiritual forces that would play a redemptive role in the liberation of the people and the betterment of society. He believed that they should be schools of creation, not guardianships and blinders. He believed deeply in freedom of inquiry and information, in pedagogy, in the development of a critical spirit. The practice of simplification had no place in his view. No simplification can have anything to do with the democratic movement, which above all must respect the people to whom it is addressed and the creators it calls upon to fight with it. With this broad and enlightened vision, Despotidis opens up new paths and puts his personal stamp on the cultural development of our country in the recent critical years. He associates his name with three great cultural conquests. “Epitheorisi Tehnis,” “Themelio” publications, and “Leshi tou Vivliou.” “Epitheorisi Tehnis” was founded by the brightest minds and the liveliest hearts of progressive thought. Names like Titos Patrikios, Kostas Kouloufakos, Porphiris, Dimitris Raftopoulos, Giorgos Petrou, Yannis Haitis, Nikos Siapkidis. However, at first the magazine is not free from the original sins of the movement, a narrowness and dogmatism. M. Despotidis comes in a little later. From the time he takes charge of its publication, issue by issue the quality rises, the magazine is liberated, expanded and embraces wider and wider circles. It becomes a broad, wide-ranging literary magazine, an intellectual instrument that contributes to the vibrancy of the democratic movement in the intellectual and student world. He stood as the main contributor to its publication until the time of the junta. About 130 issues. At the same time M. Despotidis proceeds with his life’s work. With the support and valuable cooperation of loyal friends, he founded the “Themelio” publications. With meagre financial means and with only his personal appeal, the trust he inspired and his sacred passion for proper and free publishing activity, he managed to make a series of publications that gave a new impetus to the publishing of books in our country. In difficult years, from 1963, he published dozens of progressive books in a new and refreshing spirit. In a spirit of publishing that shapes, enlightens and makes the masses aware. Without prejudice and barriers, it brings to our people what is most right and useful, in the most perfect and responsible way. He knew well that true, creative citizens are those who have the capacity for comprehensive knowledge, judgment and choice. And that is what he envisioned and offered. He becomes one of the initiators, founders, and organizers of “Leshi tou Vivliou” in Athens, Thessaloniki and Heraklion. It was an attempt to create a creative relationship between reader and text that awakened many consciences. He was the first to open public debates bringing the general public in contact with young authors. He brought to the surface, brought to light young people. He has a unique ability to sneak into the soul of the creator and reveal, after long discussions, the source of their inspiration. And most importantly, he helps in determining the actual form that the work must take, to poignantly represent that first stimulation. Socratically, he strives to discover the promise that exists in every living man and to push him to fulfill it through his own efforts. Of this uniqueness, Vassilis Vassilikos says: “Outside the Walls and Z would never have been written if it had not been for Despotidis. These two books were his own creations.” He organizes events for the resistance and for women. He presents “Mauthausen” by I. Campanelis. He discovers the Theophilos of Cyprus, the folk painter Mihalis Kassialos, this old man who at the age of 80 fell victim to Turkish atrocities during the invasion of Cyprus. Mimis Despotidis is responsible for the setting of “Romiosini” to music, despite the reactions that he and M. Theodorakis encountered from the reactionary perception of some. He is also responsible for the pairing of Mikis Theodorakis and Iakovos Campanellis in the lyrics to “Mauthausen.” The progressive essay, militant writing, texts directly related to the war in Vietnam, become familiar materials for the public through “Themelio” publications. He encourages and collaborates with the magazine “Dromoi tis Eirinis” and spearheads the two Marxist Thought Weeks in 1965 and ’66.
His political and cultural activity is violently interrupted in ’67 with the dictatorship that dissolves the “Themelio” publications. Persecuted a second time, he manages to escape abroad. He went into self-exile in Paris. There, full of fire and faith, he is a comforting and optimistic voice for the exiled democrats abroad. No matter how dark the horizon grew, and no matter how numerous the bad news became, nothing made him lose his courage. Ms. Tatiana-Gritsi Milieux, also in exile in Paris, writes about his attitude: “If he learned that one of us was in an ugly mood, he would immediately leave his company and, like an optimistic god by machine, he would unload the stone from your soul, this emissary of Loyal Hermes or Apollo.”
In Paris he experienced the splitting of the Greek Left and, from the very beginning, he joined the KKE Esoterikou, becoming also a member of its Central Committee until his death. In Greece he would fight with all his strength through his party against every effort that diminished the vibrancy and humanity of his ideal, wherever it came from.
Others leave behind their writings, their books. Despotidis stubbornly refused to enshrine his ideas in writing. This man, passionate about books, claimed for himself the spoken word, discourse, dialogue.
He offers his ideas generously, unselfishly, so that others may be found to make use of them. It is modesty and selflessness of thought that characterizes him. His political creed may have remained unwritten. But it is a work both historical and living. It is embodied in all the efforts he took part in, either directly or in collaboration with others. It is also embodied in the work of dozens of creative artists for whom Despotidis’ proposals and ideas were the stimulus and impetus for their work. He is alive in the minds of young people who his example will inspire, leading them to continue with the same passion. His last wish was to be buried in Amorgos. He can rest assured that the land of his parents will warmly welcome him, this master cantor of love for man.