Home and Displacement: The Dynamic Dialectics of 1922 Smyrna

Abstract

The destruction by fire of Smyrna, a rich port city on the coast of Asia Minor, in 1922,at the climax of the war between Greece and Turkey, and the consequent exchange of populations signed at Lausanne in 1923 are events that have left a lasting mark on Greek national narratives and modern Greek literary production. 1922 Smyrna also marked one of the final acts in the emergence of early-twentieth century nation-states constructed upon the idea of homogeneity. The inheritance of the implications of enforced homogeneity led writers to return to Smyrna to explore the instability of identities behind the traumatised narratives of war and expulsion and to interrogate the narrative production of „home.‟ This article examines how three novels originally published in the English language and thus widely available, namely Eric Ambler‟s The Mask of Dimitrios (1939), Jeffrey Eugenides‟s Middlesex (2002) and Panos Karnezis‟s The Maze (2004), return to 1922 Smyrna as to a site traumatised by war and create a discursive space lining 1922 to other historical times and to other narratives and modern anxieties. The focus on displacement counteracts the neat arrangement of nationalities designed by the Treaty of Lausanne making Smyrna a real utopia.