Disclaimer: Nothing within this page or on this site overall is the product of Panagiotis Kondylis's thought and work unless it is a faithful translation of something Kondylis wrote. Any conclusions drawn from something not written by Panagiotis Kondylis (in the form of an accurate translation) cannot constitute the basis for any valid judgement or appreciation of Kondylis and his work. (This disclaimer also applies, mutatis mutandis, to any other authors and thinkers linked or otherwise referred to, on and within all of this website). 





Kondylis’s addendum “Fotis Apostolopoulos in Memoriam” to Fotis Apostolopoulos’s Overview of the history of linguistic thought Structural linguistics (Ferdinand de Saussure) (= Παναγιώτης Κονδύλης, «Στὴ μνήμη Φώτη Ἀποστολόπουλου», στό: Ἀποστολόπουλος Φώτης, Ἐπισκόπηση τῆς ἱστορίας τῆς γλωσσικῆς σκέψης Δομικὴ Γλωσσολογία (Ferdinand de Saussure), Στιγμή, Ἀθήνα, 2001), is, apart from some passages in the Answers to 28 questions, the only published indication, by Kondylis, of Kondylis “the man” (possibly e.g. a Hellene (with undeniable "existential bonds" connecting him to Greece (Q.13 of Answers to 28 Questions, pp. 40-41) writing (something like) a hagiography about another Hellene known personally? [1]) rather than Kondylis the “(social) scientist” i.e. “observer of human affairs”, as he preferred to refer to himself. And what an indication it is! In the Greek, the literary qualities of Kondylis’s writing speak for themselves. The translator, in addition, would like to convey to the reader that the process of the “rise and fall” of “the West”, i.e. from the Fall of Greco-Roman Power and Hellenism as all-round cultural and geopolitical Power, to the Rise of (Italo)Latino-Frankish Catholicism and Ottoman Islam, roughly in the period 1204-1453 A.D., and thereafter, throughout the Western discovery and conquering and or control of the New World and much of the world in toto; the Reformation; the Puritan and Glorious, the Industrial, American, French, Russian, Chinese, cultural and other Revolutions; and two “World Wars”, the “Cold War” and proxy wars; the Western world (either under British (and to a lesser extent French) or American imperialistic tutelage), until the end of the 20th century, remained paramount in the many changing manifestations of the globalising “world system”, notwithstanding that it is now absolutely clear that from the 1970s, if not World War I, looking back, in retrospect, demographic and relative economic decline, as well as profound cultural-ideological changes, amounted to something, in at least some situations, novel in the recent up to a few thousand years of settled human civilisation: mass-scale, albeit not absolute, detachment and alienation from “blood and soil”, or, ancestors, race, ethnos, and the fatherland or motherland. Such detachment and alienation has included a wholesale upheaval in attitudes towards not only the Divine and Life’s Purpose, but also towards the sexes and the Other, with consequences which could range from relatively small “population shifts” and the “enrichment” of Western culture, up to the latter’s potentially total effacement and at least potentially (partial) Genocide of otherwise relatively white nations, peoples and cultures. When one acts as “an observer of human affairs”, one simply describes and explains what has happened, is happening and might happen, to the extent that one is able. When someone, however, includes his emotions and cultural-political-ideological preferences in a text, then one of two things can happen: either a, or all, sense of proportion is lost (e.g. one conspiratorially grossly overstates the causal significance (causal depth and breadth) of a particular group or “tribe” on Change in the West over the last one or two hundred years by confusing disproportionate (or over)representation as compared to the percentage of the total population, in (not just a few of) the upper echelons of society (banking and finance, business and trade, (mass) media and entertainment, academia, etc. (c.f. the Chinese or Indian diasporas in certain Asian(-Pacific) countries)), and in the vanguards of Change - due to relatively superior merit? intelligence? (in-group) networking? hard work? impulse control?... (as well as perhaps a particular aesthetical distaste for the overall "look" of a particular people, jealousy, etc.), with the great Waves of social-historical forces bringing about Change in any event and apart from the existence of the particular group or “tribe” in question), or, one writes like the incomparable Kondylis in memory e.g. of a card-carrying Communist teacher [2] when Kondylis was still influenced in the 1960s by all that was scientifically useless in Marxism. The translator commends this piece by Kondylis as a Paean to a truly good man of the Old Left (Apostolopoulos) and as a Memorial for modern Greece in particular and, more generally, a West which at the very least has radically changed in part, inter alia, Fertility, Descent, Beliefs, Mode, Colour, Values, Texture, Roles, Balance and Reproduction, if not absolutely its Identity (identities). Whether such Change is found to be desirable, pleasant and edifying, indifferent or a repulsive, revolting Nightmare, is not only essentially a matter of taste, but also constitutes indisputable Fact.            


[1] Additionally, from: Μελετόπουλος Μελέτης, «Στοιχεῖα γιὰ τὸν βίο τοῦ Παναγιώτη Κονδύλη», Νέος Ἑρμὴς ὁ Λόγιος, ἔτος 4ο, τεῦχος 10ο, Καλοκαῖρι, 2014, it is related, inter alia, that: "Kondylis held his grandfather and his father in awe. His grandfather Panagiotis was killed on the Asia Minor Campaign [= Greco-Turkish War] (1919-1922)]. His father Demetrios [= Dimitrios] (1915-1989), belonging to a military family, studied at the Military Academy. He was an Honorary Colonel, war invalid, resistance fighter" (p. 70), and, "Panagiotis Kondylis, as I got to know him, above all, was a simple, accessible person with an intense sense of humour, full of love for life, for the intellect and spirit, for people and for his Fatherland" (p. 81). The translator further informs the reader that an educated Greek of Kondylis's generation would almost certainly have had an awareness, if not veneration, of the ascetic, almost monastic, fully Greek Orthodox life stance of one of all of Greek literature's (including the Ancients) greatest summits - Alexandros Papadiamantis (Ἀλέξανδρος Παπαδιαμάντης), who is literally and absolutely untranslatable into English and probably any other language due to the numerous linguistic registers at play in a language more than 3,500 years old.

[2] Apostolopoulos was a linguist and Classicist, and organised Communist from 1935 onwards, who tutored Kondylis for three months in respect of exam preparation in 1961. Kondylis, however, kept in regular contact with Apostolopoulos (b. 1914) until the latter’s death in 1980, and thereafter with Apostolopoulos’s widow (Μελετόπουλος Μελέτης, «Στοιχεῖα γιὰ τὸν βίο τοῦ Παναγιώτη Κονδύλη», Νέος Ἑρμὴς ὁ Λόγιος, ἔτος 4ο, τεῦχος 10ο, Καλοκαῖρι, 2014, pp. 70-72). Furthermore, Kondylis never wrote about "potential genocide" of relatively white nations, peoples, ethne and/or (sub-)races, but did indicate that it was an open question as to what elements of, and to what extent, Western civilisation would survive in the 21st century; he also never wrote about a "tribe", etc.. Kondylis's view was that Greece would very likely fall further down the scale of nation-states in the mass-democratic planetary era owing, inter alia, to low productivity, parasitic consumption and too many imports rather than a sufficient level of exports, low birth rates, an inability or simply a lack of will to protect its borders, a very poor education system, administrative apparatus, and national elite; perhaps even a will to be collectively euthanised; the translator is inclined to add that Greece is potentially facing some sort of "Lebanonisation"...  



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