Μιχαήλ Ι. Μουσαίος: Ο γάμος του Μαλώνη Αντιφάτου

Abstract

The drama The marriage of Malonis Antifatis (more exactly the first
act of the theatrical work), is the only example of theatrical art from the
region of Lycia (Livisi) on the southeast Aegean coast of Asia Minor. It
is written in the local Greek dialect; its author is Michail I. Mousaios
(1829-1896), one of the outstanding local scholars of the 19th century in
that area, who is a characteristic representative of the «delayed enlightenment
» of the Greek orthodox population of Asia Minor. His primary
motive in the composition of the play was his belief that the purity of the
spoken language offered unmistakable evidence of purity of the cultural
origins. So the goal of one of his works, Battarismoi, a vocabulary of the
Greek dialect of the region in the form of a lexicon, is firstly to describe
the alienation and decadence of the spoken language in his homeland, and
secondly to «improve» it, that is to purify the Greek and to eliminate the
Turkish words which were in common use.
The same goal is served by the theatrical work The marriage of Malonis
Antifatis which plays in 1823, two years after the outbreak of the
Greek revolution, and reenacts all the phases and activities of a tradi-

donai engagement as well as the negotiations preparing the marriage. But
the author’s interest is not a folkloristic one. It is, as he explains in the
introduction, first a linguistic one, and secondly it aims at the cultural
enlightenment of his compatriots. His intention is to give them an initial
stimulus to purify their language and habits. The drama is characterised
by an anticlerical attitude: the Orthodox priests and the great landowners
(Kocabasi) try to stop any attempt at enlightenment and progress and
they are responsible for the «Asiatic» decadence of the community. The
Turkish words, sentences and proverbs in the text have not only the
function of giving a sense of couleur locale, but they show expressively
the decadence of language, culture and institutions. These are the ideological
highlights of the drama, which the main figure, Prokopios, puts
foreward in extended soliloquies.
The drama was not written to be played on the stage. But it does not
lack theatrical qualities: the dialogue between the father and mother of
Malonis Antifatis is quick and vivid with stimulating turns, giving an interesting
insight into folk mentality and strategies of match-making. But
when Prokopios enters the stage, the style becomes more didactic, in a
manner of giving lessons at school. Prokopios, who often addresses the
public directly, uses the Greek «katharevousa», the purified language of
scholars and literateurs in the 19th century. He, as «hieromonachos», is
the idealised model of correcting language and manners as Mousaios puts
it.
This unique drama from the Lycian province is an important cultural
document of Asia Minor both for its content — language, habits and manners,
customs, mental structures, ways of life— and for what it symbolizes—
the effort at enlightenment in the second half of the 19th century
(when enlightenment in Greece was «démodé» for some decades). The
play is a didactic manifesto against uncultivated conservatism, ignorance,
and provincial backwardness, as these things are institutionalised in the
class of priests and landowners. The Marriage of Antifatis is an important
literary and ideological document in the history of Greek literature
and, last but not least, a theatrical monument from an area without theatrical
tradition.