- Hey! we missed you. No "Dialogues" in the last issue. Where on earth have you been?

- I am not sure I was somewhere on earth. I had a summons from Charon, the perennial ferryman. He wanted to carry me over to the other side of the Acheron. I just managed to escape.

- You were ill?

- I'd rather not talk about my experience. At least not in medical terms. But having walked in the dark, I am now in a position to talk about the light.

- You speak like a mystic.

- Oh no. It is much simpler. There was this vision that kept coming back. A long whitewashed wall under the midday sun. A dark blue sky overhead. Almost blue-black. Irregular shadows on the wall - they never align stones so evenly in the Cyclades. Strong light. The contrast was so hard, you had to squint.

- You probably remembered a street in Myconos or Hydra...

- No, this was not a real place. The wall went on for miles and miles - and it became whiter and brighter. I knew there was a door at the end. A dark wooden door, like in old monasteries. I did not want to reach that door.

- Why?

- Because, behind the wall, where the sky became darker, there - I felt - would be the reverse side of the Greek sun - what our poets have called "black light".

- Seferis: "Light, angelic and black". I remember his famous sentence: "In principle, I am a matter of light".

- Elytis too: "Light and history in Greece are one and the same... down to that void which is black." But the list could go further back - to grandfather Homer. He never uses the word "alive" without explaining it in terms of light. His cliche sentence is: "living, and seeing the light of the sun".

- I know your thesis about Greeks being "the children of light".

- It is not mine. The poets again. Seferis, searching for our identity has written: "I wonder - is it the climate or the race? I think it is the light. There is something in the light that makes us what we are." And Elytis: "To be Greek... is a function immediately related to the drama of light and darkness".

- But you have elaborated this into a whole theory!

- No, just a commentary on what Elytis called: the "metaphysics of the sun". I added an analysis and a series of photographs demonstrating how Greek light transcending itself turns abruptly into total darkness¹.

- The "extreme" light, that goes all the way until it reverts into its opposite.

- I call this light "absolute". It is for me the only absolute thing a human being can experience during its stay on earth. This absolute light illuminates a non absolute world, giving it a semblance of eternity.

- This is why all the Greek poets and philosophers glorified light?

- Parmenides said light is Being, Plato identified it with Truth, and, of course, the Byzantine mystics with God.

- But then you write something about our light being addictive.

- Yes. Just like a drug: its presence makes you euphoric - its absence depresses. You see, all addicts are after totality - all addicts chase the absolute. No wonder Greeks were always obsessed by light - and could never get enough of it.

- Ajax, in the Iliad. He fought in a dark cloud and protested to the Gods: if you want to kill us - do it in the light! He asked for light in order to enter darkness!

- Darkness... It is so interesting that Greeks never elaborated a theory about the meaning of death, never worked out a coherent account of afterlife. For them it was only the absence of life (and light). Something utterly negative.

- Achilles to Odysseus, visiting in Hades: "I wish I were a slave on earth - rather than a King of the Dead".

- You know your Homer by heart!

- I usually read a rhapsody before going to sleep. But we have talked too much about the ancients. What about your vision?

- My vision, I think, was a condensation of all the luminous experiences in my life. They embodied themselves in this long Cycladic wall to shield me against Darkness.

- Which, according to your theory is the other side of light.

- Not even the other side - it is the continuation, the culmination, the climax. Should you look directly at the sun, you will earn a black dot on your retina. "If you stretch white, you reach black" to quote Elytis.

- Isn't that just a poetic allusion?

- No. Think of it that way: Greeks were - and still are - light addicts and life addicts. The nemesis of addicts is the overdose. Greeks exaggerate. They want more and more and want it now. The result is 'hybris' which leads to...

- ... I know. Tragedy. The tragic hero exceeds his limits, confronts destiny and sinks into darkness.

- An overdose of white leads to black. An overdose of life leads to doom. It is not accidental that Greeks invented tragedy. Tragedy is the exaggeration, the extravagance of life.

- What I find interesting is that some of your conclusions apply not only to philosophers and poets but also to the Greek in the street. He constantly exaggerates, he has a tragic sense of life - and deep down a secret panic before Darkness.

- Yes. For a Greek (even a modern one) death is a non-fact. His only reaction: he tries to ignore it. So many cultures have been built around the event of dying, the mythology of afterlife. Think of the Egyptians or the Aztecs. But in Greek art there is no picture of Hades.

- Still, although Greeks are life-maniacs, they do not seem happy, nor are they optimists. Most of the time they grumble and complain.

- Greeks have been pessimists from the times of Homer. Only their pessimism does not proceed from a denial of life but from a passion for life. The Sages of the Orient - think of Buddha - believe that life is suffering, pain and distress. They try to negate life, to kill desire, to annihilate the Self. Christianity speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven, promises Paradise in afterlife. Not so the Greek. He finds life wonderful - but too short. His Paradise is here. That is why he dreads darkness. His is the anxiety of the rich man - who has much to lose.

- The way you describe it - he has everything to lose and nothing to gain. I don't know... I find your whole theory very poetic - but isn'it after all a construction? Most people in history have worshipped the Sun and the light, not only the Greeks...

- But only Greeks have reached the extremes of tragedy. Look - I have lived for many years under the sun, in other countries. I have never seen the dark, black abysmal shadows which you can find in the Greek summer. There is the difference: in the contrast, the clash and the crash.

- Well, what to me is important is that you managed to stay on the sunny side of the wall. "Living and seeing the light of the sun". Welcome back, friend! One more summer, glorious Greek summer, for all of us.

¹The reference is to "Light of the Greeks" a photographic essay by N. Dimou, (1984, 2nd edition: Nefeli publishers)