It was drizzling that evening in Paris, and a sharp cold pricked us as we stood on Mont Parnasse outside the Rotunde, going on with an endless discussion about contemporary art and its sources, and about primitivism.

 

"When I was back in my country," Gounaropoulos said suddenly, "I saw in Volos some painting which enchanted me. They were by a folk-artist whose name is Theophilos, and he comes from Mytilene. His many-colored works are bathed in a gold light, sparkling blue, the silver of the olive-tree."

 

Gounaropoulos spoke slowly and deliberately, as if he were revealing some great secret. And Teriade and I, listening to him, were deeply moved as he made those works alive for us and told us the life-story of this strange artist. Slowly slowly, as if by magic, the fog of Paris dissolved, an all-blue sky dazzled our eyes, sunshine warmed our wooden bones, the saltiness of the Aegean moistened our breath. And suddenly there shone before us, alive and warm, our island, Mytilene, and across it, darting here and there like mad, on the mountains, in the valleys, among the olive trees, on the beaches-a dirty foustanella. "A fey creature light of shadow", other-worldly. Two shining eyes full of wonder and beauty, and a heart enclosing within itself a unique goodness and love: Theophilos Hadjimichalis.

Thus unexpectedly that evening, Theophilos made his first-shall I say unofficial-appearance in Paris. An appearance which was to be decisive for the later brilliant impact of his unpretentious art.

Other friends also, among the elite of Art and Letters, who chanced to see his work, were deeply moved and wrote many pages about this humble artist: Spiros Melas, Tombros, Ouranis, Venezis, Spiteris, and many others.

As for me, the work and personality of this untaught painter began to occupy me in earnest. Was Theophilos a schizophrenic who could not adjust to life and lived outside reality? Or was he a day-dreamer who saw only beauty and was above the common measure of man?

Even when Teriade entrusted to me thirty works by Theophilos, works which we kept near us, took care of, and come to love year by year; even then, when our house was flooded with his wonderful painting, I do not think I succeeded in "psychologizing" him and analyzing correctly his curious and particular personality .

I remember.The difficult years of the war and of the occupation, when, in moments of weakness, we would unfold the kabot with infinite care, and we would stand up in front of us Odysseus Androutsos, Athanassios Diakos, the Old Man of the Moria. In a word, all the heroism and legend of our native land, and gazing steadily at them, we took fresh courage. And it was not only because they were figures of the brave men of 1821 that they strengthened us. There was in addition some secret force which sprang from those paintings, a burning flame which warmed our hearts- the same faith, the same flame, which moved the hand of the painter who painted them.

 

Later I observed the reactions of people when they first confronted Theophilos works, for example, when we arranged an exhibition in our home and first showed Theophilos to the public officially. From the first moment all the artists fell in love with him. And as long as the exhibition remained open, they came daily to our house to study and enjoy his works. But the official people and the general public reserved judgment and were even somewhat ironic. No-one however,-not even the most conservative-failed to react intensely. Perhaps because poetry and truth always touch all men in some way. Even the driest ones. Later, with Rex Warner, Katsimbalis, and others, we organized a second exhibition at the British Institute; the poet Georges Seferis introduced it with much affection, and the reactions of the public were similar.

 

So the question which I had to put to myself about the phenomenon of Theophilos was for many years unanswered until at last I took into my hands the manuscript of Nestor Matsas.

This young man had to be, without doubt, a man of welling talent, sensitivity, lyricism, imagination, love of truth; a writer who had caught the deeper meaning of life because he was close to human suffering; he had to be, let me say, Nestor Matsas, to make his own grief of Theophilos, so that I, the psychiatrist, could see more clearly the image of Theophilos.

 

How justly and how truthfully Marcel Proust expresses it when he says I Albertine Disparue "How destitute of psychology is psychology!" Furthermore, it is well known that the most powerful psychological observations and the most vivid psychiatric images are provided by neither psychiatrists nor psychologists, but by writers and artists. But let us go back to Theophilos. I think now that his Good Fate did not give him a blank check on life.

 

He refused the dry, conventional kind of life, not because of psychic anomaly, but from bio-psychical need because the world around him did not move him. In it he found neither the beauty nor the truth which his flowing sensibility so passionately sought. So he fled into a world of his own, into a fairyland where he embellished life without falsifying it. And this flight was not the escape of a weak man, but the voluntary emigration of suffering strong man to the great, bright city of dreams. That is way this flight was so creative.

 

Theophilos, like a genuine diamond, was prepared by the very composition of his being to accept the divine light in order to transmit its brilliants; he was an inspired intermediary who incarnated the Greek myth in his pure and modest art. And he gave himself wholeheartedly to its spell. He made it his song and the rhythm of his life. And as he had a weak body and could not flourish in this intense rhythm, he wore the foustanella in order to be brave and the helmet of Alexander the Great in order to become himself a hero. Thus he objectified his violent desire to identify with his idol- as Bergson said- and he lived in an utterly beautiful reality of his own. And, as in dreams the forms are confused in place and time, so too Theophilos, when Kolokotronis was in danger, called up Alexander the Great to help him.

 

Was it only from sympathy for the Old Man of the Morea, or was it in order to help himself? It was so that he should not waken from the dream, should not come back to his better life. But how sweet now would be the awakening if it could come about! Could he indeed believed it, he, the persecuted one, the imbecile as the called him, if he found himself officially received in Paris, then sent on a well-managed tour to Switzerland? Led, however, by the unfaltering hand of an exceptional compatriot- another Mytilenian who devotes himself to art in Paris, Stratos Eleftheriadis - Teriade-he strode into the Palace of the Louvre, and sat himself down for good. And all the heroism of our race followed him there. Now beside all the Louis'-with their powered wigs, their lace, their velvets, their gaudy gold decoration- our pallikaria stand swaggering with their pistols and their moustaches: our Athanassios Diakos, Odysseus Androutsos, Kolokotronis and Karaiskakis.