Whereas the Mediterranean has not submitted easily to strong theories, still it has inspired a certain kind of theorizing from the ground. The setting of the Mediterranean viewed from the land's edge gave the world theoria, which Greek etymology and usage associates with looking onto a scene with amazement, viewing drama, being sent as an emissary to consult the oracle, or traveling for the purposes of sightseeing. The present essay explores some connections between the Mediterranean and theoria. Following a brief survey of how theoria functioned in antiquity, it studies the case of 20th-century Greek poet Angelos Sikelianos and American director and choreographer Eva Palmer - husband and wife - who sought to revive ancient ideas of theoria. They organized revivals of the Delphic Festivals in 1927 and 1930 as a prelude to re-establishing Delphi as a world center for people with a vision for the world. Their work rivaled that of the Olympic Revivals, except that the Delphic Revival was linked to a particular Mediterranean site and pursued the course of art, music, social thought, and especially tragedy together with athletics. A spectacular, imaginative, ambitious, but stillborn effort, it gives evidence of both the potential and limits of Mediterranean theoria.
This chapter argues that Eva Palmer Sikelianos's encounter with Greece offers a sense of just how complex the cultural terrain can be. Hellenism operates on an assimilative model. It is constantly absorbing new snippets of memory from many different cultures as if they were original to its existence. The process can set off conflicts between groups that vie to infuse the Greek past with their culture of knowledge. Indeed cultural interchange, appropriation, and the dominance of one group over another are imprinted in the history of the idea of Hellenism. The complexity increases when people such as Eva—endowed with the power of Western institutions and invested in the transcendence of the Greek past—meet living Greeks in the crucible of Greece and become enamored of the new Greece that they discover.
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