To discover the Greek soul

(BRUXELLES2 back from Athens) It's a small pocket book, " Greece, the new Odyssey »Written by Adea Guillot and Francoise Arvantis, two journalists who are anchored in Greece, and decrypt for us what constitutes the Greek soul: this mixture of memories of the past, intransigence of freedom, resistance but also acceptance of a certain fatality. This story, quite short, is accompanied by three interviews with Greek intellectuals who are also worth the detour.

The feeling of being victims

Through a description, very accurate, very lively, which mixes lived experience and testimonies, the authors try to make us understand what we can perceive, without really situating it, when we wander a little in the Greek capital: improvisation of architecture, orthodoxy and history present at every street corner... They also describe, very precisely, this feeling of a confiscated destiny, this feeling of being victims (which is not entirely wrong when you look at history), of having to suffer the influence of others, this conspiracy theory sometimes put forward, which wreaks havoc in Greek society, as in the political class, and are still present today.

The culture of the majority

« With us, it is the notion of majority that counts says Nikos Diamandorous, sociologist and professor of political science and former European mediator. " Whoever wins the elections can more or less free himself from the constraints of the rule of law and act in a more or less arbitrary way. Result, the back and forth between parliamentary life and coups d'etat which characterizes Greek political life. In the Ottoman conception, the notion of intermediate bodies so dear to Montesquieu does not exist. There is no checks and balances on the executive. All the countries that came out of the Ottoman Empire, from Romania to Morocco, suffer from the same ills. »

A mixture of influences

This mixture of influences - Ottoman (the Turkish presence), Orthodox (religion, conservative), and Western (the Age of Enlightenment) - explains certain behaviors but is difficult to decipher. “The complexity of Greece comes from the fact that it has Western structures and a population that wants to belong to Europe without losing its part of the East. The Greek people straddle two worlds. » This no doubt explains the resilience of the Greeks who, despite all the snubs of the last economic crisis, a drastic and brutal drop in purchasing power, still retain their sense of humor and kindness.

Get Greece out of the pretense

Perhaps they will have made theirs, as Pericles said, this maxima - which appears at the beginning of the book -. " There is no shame in us in admitting that we are poor, but there is in doing nothing to get out of this state..

• Greece, the new Odyssey », Adea Guillot and Françoise Arvantis, Ed. Nevatica, Soul of the peoples collection, 96 p., 9 euros