“The Great Provocateur” – Part III, by Dimitris Papadimitriou

“A Song Cycle dedicated to intellectual, moral and aesthetic liberty – and, why not, to libertinism! Which is say that it’s dedicated to the poetically rebellious, the poem as an act of disobedience; to provocation, in other words. It is also dedicated, the uncompromising hunt for an immaculate, unsullied, absolute truth that automatically consigns its standard-bearers to the fringes of society and to an unseen Inquisition. Because there’s nothing more deathly anti-social than large doses of uncompromising truth.

This is the last of the three parts of the project. Aristophanes, Villon, Embirikos, Cavafy, Karyotakis, Koropoulis, Lapathiotis, Laforgue, Leontaris, Brecht, John Donne, Palamas, Rilke, Baudelaire, Seferis, Alexandros Schinas, Auden are but a few of the protagonists in this cycle of heretical poetic forms.

The cycle’s title intentionally plays on the notion of provocation – a nod to the ‘great heretic’ – in honor of those who are not afraid of self-mockery, mocking those who hold themselves in high honor (I mean this playfully, of course) – something very much in the spirit of our own Manos Hadjidakis and his ‘Great Erotic’ song cycle, as some of you may have guessed.

Our literary consultant is no other than Giorgos Koropoulis.”

– Composer Dimitris Papadimitriou