«ΑΝΑΖΗΤΩΝΤΑΣ ΤΗΝ ΟΜΟΡΦΙΑ»

της Μαρίας Κολοβού Ρουμελιώτη

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Μια πεταλούδα η ψυχή
στους οπωρώνες της γης
αναζητά την ομορφιά
να τρυγήσει το νέκταρ.

Η χρυσαλίδα δεν ξαναμπαίνει στο κουκούλι της!
Μια φορά γεννιέσαι!
αδειάζοντας της μάνα σου τη μήτρα.

Γυμνός βγαίνεις στη Λεωφόρο του Σύμπαντος.
Σε κυκλώνει το καυτό αίμα της γαστέρας και ξυπνάς.
Μαγεύεσαι τη θαλπωρή της ανάσας.
Παίρνεις μαθήματα ζωής.

Αχ και να μπορούσαμε
να κάναμε τον Άδη να σκάσει απ’ τη ζήλια του‧
να θανατώναμε τη φθορά‧
αιωνία να ζούσε η καλή μνήμη!

Η Τιτανομαχία αντέχει ως τις μέρες μας…
Ποτέ δεν κλείνουν οι Πύλες του Άδη!

Πώς να περάσουμε τις συμπληγάδες δίχως απώλειες;
Δίχως το τσάκισμα των φτερών;

Μόνος θα κολυμπήσεις τα αρχαία νερά της Αχερουσίας…
Κραυγάζοντας μετ’ οδύνης θα διασχίσεις
τον Κωκυτό ποταμό,
τον παγωμένο Αχέροντα
και τον φλεγόμενο Πυριφλεγέθοντα
απ’ την ζωή ως τον θάνατο!…

Πέμπτη, 11 Ιανουαρίου 2024

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LONGING FOR BEAUTY

by Maria Kolovou Roumelioti

My soul is α butterfly
in the orchards of the earth!
longing for beauty
to harvest the nectar.

The chrysalis never goes back into its cocoon!
Once, you are born!
emptying your mother’s womb.

Naked you go out on the Avenue of the Universe.
The hot blood of your mama
surrounds you and you wake up.
You are enchanted by the warmth of the breath.
You receive life’s lessons.

If only we could
make Hades to be exploded by jealousy!
Should we kill decay!
May the good memory live forever.

The Battle of the Titans endures to this day…
The Gates of Hell never close!

How to get through the battles without losing?
Without the ruffling of our feathers?

You will swim alone in the ancient water of Acherousia lake…
Screaming in agony
you will cross the Kokytos river,
the frozen Acheronda
and the flaming Fiery One
from the life to the death!…

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A Review of the Poems “Longing for Beauty” & “Seeking Beauty”

By: Rizal Tanjung

Works of Maria Kolovou Roumelioti

In the land of Greece, where the winds of the Aegean still carry the echoes of Homer’s verses, where the stones of the Parthenon preserve the footfalls of Plato and Aristotle, a poetic voice emerged and unfurled like a butterfly: Maria Kolovou Roumelioti. She is not merely a poet, but also a painter who weaves lines of color with threads of words. In her hands, poetry is no longer a sequence of sounds, but a canvas where the human soul is displayed beneath the Attic sun and the shadows of Hades.

The poems “Longing for Beauty” and “Seeking Beauty” are twin hymns of the soul, as if born from the womb of Greek mythology, yet gazing intently at the unease of modern humanity. Within them lies a double resonance: a classical echo clothed in contemporary metaphor.

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The Soul as a Butterfly

Maria opens her poetry with the image: “My soul is a butterfly in the gardens of the earth, longing for beauty to harvest nectar.”

This metaphor is no mere ornament, but philosophy. For Maria, the human soul is fragile and beautiful. It moves from flower to flower, from experience to experience, seeking beauty as the nourishment of life. Here, life is understood not merely as the search for rational truth, but as a quest for the aesthetic that gives meaning. Just as the butterfly cannot return to its chrysalis, so too man: once born, he cannot return to the womb, nor can he resist the current of time.

There is an echo of Heraclitus here—panta rhei—all things flow. The soul cannot return to its former state. Life is a one-way road, from birth to death, from light to shadow.

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Hades and Mythology as Existential Philosophy

Maria revives Hades, the Titans, and the rivers of the underworld: Acherousia, Cocytus, Acheron. Yet mythology in her hands is not a relic, but an existential allegory. “The gates of Hades are never closed,” she writes, as though to say that death is not a foreign event but a door always ajar at the edge of life.

Here, ancient Greek philosophy intertwines with modern anxiety. The battles of the Titans become symbols of eternal conflict: between body and soul, between hope and decay, between love of beauty and the certainty of mortality. Maria’s question—“How can one pass through the battle without defeat?”—is humanity’s universal question. From Socrates to Sartre, no philosopher has escaped wrestling with it.

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Aesthetics as Rebellion Against Mortality

The line “If only we could make Hades explode from jealousy!” is revolutionary. For Maria, beauty is not mere entertainment but resistance against mortality. If Hades symbolizes death, then creating beauty means provoking death’s envy. Beautiful memories are the soul’s refusal of decay; art is transcendence, a small immortality that laughs at the grave.

Here Maria stands with the philosophers of aesthetics: from Plotinus, who saw beauty as a path toward the One, to Nietzsche, who declared art the only reason life is worth living.

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Rivers of Suffering as Ritual of Purification

In both poems, the rivers of the underworld are not merely symbols of sorrow, but of purification. “You will swim alone in the ancient waters of the lake Acherousia… Crying out in your suffering you will cross the river Cocytus.”

Here Maria declares that suffering is inseparable from the soul’s journey. One must cross it alone, naked, without armor, just as one is born. Yet it is precisely in that solitude that the soul discovers its authenticity and courage.

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The Classical and the Modern United

What is most wondrous in Maria’s poetry is her ability to bind two worlds: the classical realm of Greek gods and the modern realm of existential anxiety. She speaks in the language of butterflies, yet also in the logic of Hades; she reminds us that beauty is the purpose of life, yet also awakens us to the truth that beauty matters only because death shadows it.

Maria Kolovou Roumelioti’s poems are not merely works of art, but pilgrimages of the soul. She invites her readers to dance between flowers and gravestones, between nectar and the flames of hell. As Greece once gave birth to the world’s philosophers, Maria appears a true heir: a poet who does not merely write beauty, but questions, doubts, and plunges into the mysteries of life.

She affirms that life is a single chance, a single beat of butterfly wings. Yet if that beat is directed toward beauty, even Hades will grow envious.

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II

Greece: The Womb of Philosophy and Poetry

In the land encircled by the blue Aegean, Greece has always given birth to souls who bridge art and philosophy. From Homer, who chanted the Iliad as both poetry and cosmology of war, to Plato, who wrote the Symposium as dialogue on love and beauty, poetry and philosophy in Greece have never been divorced. Maria Kolovou Roumelioti arises within this tradition. Her poetry is not merely an aesthetic song, but a philosophical inquiry into life, death, beauty, and mortality.

In “Longing for Beauty” and “Seeking Beauty”, she does not merely play with words. She unveils the very structure of existence: birth as cosmic event, life as Titan’s struggle, and death as a sojourn along the rivers of the underworld.

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The Butterfly: Pythagoras’ Metaphor

The image of the butterfly that opens Maria’s poems recalls Pythagoras. The philosopher believed in the transmigration of souls—that the human spirit is a wanderer moving from form to form, from one body to another. Maria writes:

“My soul is a butterfly in the gardens of the earth, longing for beauty to harvest nectar.”

Here the butterfly is a symbol of metamorphosis. The soul is not static; it transforms. It was once a chrysalis, then a butterfly, and it will never return. The chrysalis never returns to its cocoon.

Pythagoras saw the soul as number and harmony; Maria sees it as a fragile, luminous butterfly. Both seem to declare the same: the soul is motion, change, and the search for harmony within the cosmos.

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Beauty and Plato

In the Symposium, Plato teaches that love of bodies is the threshold to love of souls, then to the eternal love of Beauty itself. Maria repeats this teaching in the voice of poetry: beauty is the nectar the soul seeks. The butterfly does not merely sip flowers; it undertakes a pilgrimage toward the Idea of Beauty.

Yet Maria does not stop at Platonic idealism. She challenges Hades; she wishes to make death envious. For her, beauty is not only reflection of the Ideal World, but a weapon against mortality. Beauty is resistance, not mere contemplation.

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Heraclitus and the Flowing Rivers

In her poems, Maria summons the rivers of the underworld: Acheron, Cocytus, Acherousia. Heraclitus once said: “No one ever steps into the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.”

Maria echoes this: the human being must swim alone in ancient waters, crossing with cries of pain. The rivers are emblems of life’s flow, unrepeatable. Life happens only once, just as the butterfly cannot return to its chrysalis.

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Nietzsche: Art as Defiance of Death

In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche taught that art is born of two poles: the Apollonian (beauty, harmony) and the Dionysian (chaos, suffering). Maria embodies both: the blossoms for the butterfly, and the rivers of death aflame.

Her cry—“If only we could make Hades explode from jealousy!”—is Nietzschean. Art and beauty are not escapes, but rebellions. Hades, death’s symbol, can be mocked if humanity creates memories of beauty that endure beyond the grave. This is Nietzsche’s “affirmation of life”: life is beautiful despite its finitude, and precisely because of it.

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Camus: The Absurd of the Rivers

Albert Camus spoke of the absurd: humanity’s search for meaning in a mute world. Maria stages this absurdity in her passage across Acherousia and Cocytus. She writes: “You will swim alone… screaming in your suffering.”

The solitude of the underworld rivers is the metaphor of humanity facing existence without certainty. No one can help. Yet Camus urges rebellion through awareness—to live though absurd, to love though fleeting. Maria discovers her answer in beauty: though one must cross rivers of pain, the soul still seeks blossoms, still desires to make Hades envious.

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Heidegger: Death as the Authentic Gate

Heidegger called man Sein-zum-Tode, being-toward-death. Life is authentic precisely because we are aware of death. Maria voices this truth: “The gates of Hades are never closed.”

Life is made authentic because the gate is always open. The battle of the Titans is the symbol that man cannot escape conflict with mortality. Yet beauty—as longing, as pursuit—gives life its worth. By embracing death, the soul can love life more purely.

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Maria: Heir of Greece in the Modern Age

The poetry of Maria Kolovou Roumelioti is a bridge between the classical and the modern. She brings Greek mythology into the language of contemporary poetry. More than that, she binds it to the philosophical struggles of humanity: from Pythagoras to Heidegger, from Plato to Camus.

Maria’s butterfly is our shared soul: born once, unable to return, destined to swim alone across rivers of suffering. Yet so long as we seek beauty, so long as we create memories luminous and enduring, even Hades will be jealous.

And therein lies the meaning of Maria’s poetry—not merely as art, but as philosophy of life itself: life is longing, and the search for beauty that outlives death.

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