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Chapters: El Greco, Constantine Andreou, Lydia Venieri, Giorgio de Chirico, Nicos Nicolaides, Miltos Manetas, Antonio Vassilacchi, Odysseus Yakoumakis, Constantin Xenakis, Marco Basaiti, Polychronis Lembesis, Nikiphoros Lytras, Chrysanthos Mentis Bostantzoglou, Théodore Ralli, Yannis Stavrou, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, Theophilos Hatzimihail, Konstantinos Maleas, Spyros Vassiliou, Chrisostomo Tsotso, Theophanes the Greek, Demetrios Farmakopoulos, Michael Damaskinos, Ioannis Altamouras, Demetrios Galanis, Nicholas Georgiadis, Panagiotis Doxaras, Nikos Engonopoulos, Eucharides Painter, Nikolaos Gyzis, Dimitris Yeros, Hermon Di Giovanno, Alekos Fassianos, Georgios Jakobides, George Bouzianis, Nikos Nikolaou, Theodoros Stamos, Yannis Tsarouchis, Christos Kapralos, Photios Kontoglou, Yiannis Moralis, Theophanes the Cretan, Toni Milaqi, Christodoulos Aronis, Alexandros Alexandrakis, Jannis Kounellis, Dimitris Mytaras, Dionysius of Fourna, Theodoros Vryzakis, Mina Papatheodorou-Valyraki, Périclès Pantazis, Yiannis Spyropoulos, Litsa Spathi, Foulidis Eleftherios, Nikolaos Vokos, Panayiotis Tetsis, Stylianos Miliadis, Theocharis Mores, Michalis Oikonomou, Epameinondas Thomopoulos, George Papassavas, Alexandros Christofis, Andreas Krystallis, Diamantis Stagidis, Yiannis Poulakas, George Savakis, Ioannis Koutsis, Phaedon Anastasiades, Philopoemen Constantinidi, Konstantinos Volanakis, Yiannis Psychopedis, Kourouniotis, Konstantinos Parthenis, Nikolaos Xydias Typaldos, Lefteris Theodorou. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 267. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: El Greco (1541 April 7, 1614) was a painter, sculptor, and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" (The Greek) was a nickname, a reference to his Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=140639 ... Read more

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Word count: 979. ... Read more

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1928 novel, tr Wm Carlos Williams ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Surrealism at its best
Forget plot.Who needs it when the author is as skilled and imaginative as de Chirico, and with "Hebdemeros", de Chirico has created a surrealistic masterpiece that rivals the inspired novels of Raymond Roussel as "the" template for surrealistic literature.
Hebdemeros, the title character, is the single thread that holds together the hundreds of images, detours, and roadside attractions that this continually evolving narrative attempts to weave.Like the best Escher paintings, de Chiciro starts off with a simple premise- Hebdemeros in his home village- and with every image and thought that enters Hebdemeros head, de Chiciro follows that image through every connection and abstract tangent possible.Hebdemeros looks out his window and sees a man walking down the street, which reminds him of a poem he once read, a poem which references birds, so de Chiciro spends several lines discussing birds, which naturally leads him to migration patterns, which takes him south, where he ends up discussing southern culture, etc etc, until we end up back at Hebdemeros and soon find ourselves back on another flight of fancy.The language, the descriptives powers of the author, the unpredictable yet logical detours made every few sentences, seem to come effortlessly and reflect the writings of an artist truly comfortable within the genre he is writing.
Surrealist writing, despite having a profound impact during the early decades of the twentieth century, has in many instances not aged well."Hebdemeros" is one of the few that still reads fresh and alive.While the majority of this work floats by with no purpose, the concluding pages find the title character in a reflective mood, and while de Chirico refuses to abandon his surrealist ideals and make a statement, he does allow Hebdemeros the character the chance to reflect on life and its purpose.He doesn't find any answers or come to any definite conclusions, but that only further enhances the overall effect of this unique work.
An unforgettable read!

The vivid clarity of a heartbreakingly beautiful dream
Giorgio de Chirico is justly famous for his work as a painter, which in its evocative, anticipatory calmness & eerie power has little equal. But in this short novel, he brings the same qualities to bear in prose, with no diminishing of that power. For those who expect a conventional novel, disappointment & confusion await; but if you give yourself over to the flowing language & transporting imagery of this work, you'll be richly rewarded.

But let me offer a sample:

"Already the air grew warmer and the plants turned green on the plain; the goatherds had come down from the surrounding mountains and played cheerful tunes on their long copper flutes; spring was in the air; in this Nordic country it arrived suddenly, with the striking effect of a stage décor appearing behind a rising curtain; an air of symbolism floated over nature; hundreds of tiny waterfalls, fed by the melting snows, tumbled down the mountainsides; angels with enormous wings, like those of eagles but interwoven with feathers as white and soft as goose feathers, sat by the wayside, one hand on the huge milestones that bore the sculptured likeness of two-headed Janus surmounted by a male sex organ; the angels were watching with a melancholy air the couples who moved off arm in arm beneath the almond trees in blossom."

If this piques your curiosity, then you're in for an astonishing journey, one with all the hyper-reality of a dream, continually pregnant with meaning & possibility. While it's definitely not for everyone, it's a truly visionary work, one that carries the reader in its wise, mysterious embrace to another world.

But as fellow Surrealist Paul Eluard once wrote, "There is another world, and it is this one."

That's the key to this novel, and to Surrealism itself -- the desire, the hunger, the quest to reveal the Marvelous, which is to be found in this world, all around us, if we would only open our eyes & see it fresh. Most highly recommended!

Hebdomeros - Giorgio De Chirico

Giorgio De Chirico is considered one of the founders of the Surrealist school of art, and this is his only novel. De Chirico is famous for a body of work created early in the Twentieth Century, approximately coinciding with the First World War, whose works are classified as "Metaphysical Painting"; these works depict haunting, desolate landscapes and odd arrangements of seemingly incongruous arrangements of objects, depicted with illogical perspectives. Hebdomeros - published in 1929, about ten years after De Chirico abandoned his earlier style in favor of a neo-classical style he was to embrace for the rest of his career - is in the spirit and has the feel of his earlier works; it is a prose version of those haunting landscapes and still lifes.

Hebdomeros cannot be said to have a story or a plot; it is more like an extended series of visions, a tour through the protagonist's dreamlike experiences. The story has an odd familiarity in the form of a similarity to the disconnectedness and illogicality of our dreams or reveries. It feels like being immersed in somebody's dream. Hebdomeros is a featureless being; this novel is not about him but about his experiences.

This novel is like a form of prose poetry. The scenes and images he strings together paint for the mind's eye the same sort of haunting, desolate images represented in his famous works. People, places, things and events have an inner logic of their own, but they all somehow harmonize together into a coherence reminiscent of our dreams.

This is perhaps one of the few novels that can make you look forward to reading it a second time.It is a testament to De Chirico's genius as an artist that he was able to so successfully translate into another medium the world created by his famous works of visual art.

De Chirico's paintings in verbal form
Those who've sampled the often arrogant and self-glorifying work of Breton and other surrealists will find Hebdomeros to be unique.De Chirico's novel is poignantly shameful and delicately heart-wrenching.It isn't easily forgotton.

Unearthly
HEBDOMEROS is quite unearthly and would be a disappointment to anyone looking for a conventional novel. But you are likely here for something else. It moves with the logic of a dream, passing from one scene to thenext with the same warp of tension a plotted novel might have, yetHEBDOMEROS has no plot, it is errant, distracted. "It's strange,"Hebdomeros was thinking, "as for me, the idea that something had escaped myunderstanding would keep me awake at nights, whereas people in general arenot in the least perturbed when they see or read or hear things that theyfind completely obscure." This from the opening page, a comment on its ownstrangeness, instructs the reader a little in what is to come. And whatfollows is completely beautiful. Here is something to finish on:"Hebdomeros turned his steps again toward the rivers with the concretebanks, toward the decaying palaces whose domes and weather vanes rose upunder the ever-fleeing clouds. This forbidding place whose solemn door wasclosed at the moment ought to have saddened him, but the recollection ofwhat he had seen there during moments spent in the midst of a scattered andindifferent public was quite enough to console him. He saw, moving upslowly out of the chiaroscuro of his memory and little by little definingthemselves in his mind, the shapes of those temples and sanctuaries builtin plaster that stand at the foot of sheltering mountains and rocks throughwhich ran narrow passes that made one strangely aware not only of theunknown worlds nearby, but also of those distant horizons heavy withadventure that ever since his unhappy childhood Hebdomeros had alwaysloved." ... Read more