Here, to appreciate the originality of the work would be in obvious contrast with its scope.
The typology of a byzantine icon in its own context can be another example: the artist’s signature is preceded by the expression “by the hand of …“ showing the artist to be a humble medium, liberated by his ego and subsumed under the collective. If we remind ourselves of Shakespeare’s appreciation of similarity, on the other hand, we may realise that different aesthetic criteria existed in a not so remote past. I suppose this has a part in what Durkheim has said about the cult of the individual in modern societies: we all want to be different and appreciated in our uniqueness. Originality as a measure of excellence is a romantic concept, further developed during Modernism and finally dealt with playfully by postmodernity. I suppose this remark in the beginning of The First Death may be easily understood as ironic because of our aesthetic priorities: Originality is one of the major goals of any creative endeavour, it is the hard currency of our aesthetics – you are on the safe side if you possess it, whether an artist or a collector. I remember the first-ever review of this book back in 2001, where Robert Zaller, mentioned: ‘“ Nothing in this book is original”, Lyacos says slyly, “except perhaps by mistake” – a remark that is itself a quotation’. Can you comment on how this relates to your writing?Ĭertainly, this sentence does not relate to my work in any postmodern sense of employing pastiche or any other technique of imitation, benign or tongue-in-cheek. Your work has been widely characterised as “genre-defying”, “avant-garde” and “postmodern”, engaging with major narratives of the Western Canon and utilising fragmentation. In the epigraph to your third book in your Poena Damni trilogy, The First Death, you quote Hodges: “Nothing in this book is original, except perhaps by mistake”. So far translated into ten languages, Poena Damni developed as a work in progress over the course of thirty years, with subsequent editions and excerpts appearing in journals around the world, as well as in dialogue with a diverse range of sister projects it inspired. Dimitris Lyacos is the author of the Poena Damni trilogy (Z213: EXIT, With The People From The Bridge, The First Death ).
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