Venezis’s granddaughter and great-granddaughter viewing the exhibition
On April 9 large crowds flocked into Cotsen Hall to celebrate the completion of the cataloguing of the Elias Venezis Papers, which were donated to the Gennadius Archives in 2010 by the author’s daughter, Anna Venezi Kosmetatou. The well-known writer and Member of the Academy of Greece, Elias Venezis (1904-1973), wrote novels and short stories that reflect his horrible experiences of cruelty before and after the Asia Minor Disaster (1922). In his first book, Number 31328 (1931), he recounts the fourteen months he spent as a “slave laborer” in Anatolia, rebuilding what had been destroyed during the war between the Greeks and the Turks. His later novel, Aeolic Earth (1943), narrates Venezis’s childhood in his native Aeolia.
A small exhibition of Venezis’ manuscripts, books, private correspondence, and printed materials highlighted the newly catalogued archive. Anna Venezi shared rare photographs from the family’s archive and her personal memories of her father focusing on her parents’ loving relationship. Writer Takis Theodoropoulos eloquently reviewed Venezis’ books about Asia Minor, Number 31328, Serenity, and Aeolic Earth (or Beyond the Aegean), reminding the audience that Venezis’s writings never conveyed nostalgia for the lost fatherland or hatred for the conquerors; on the contrary, his pain appears as a constructive force. Demetra Papaconstantinou (Demos Fellow for 2012) drew the author’s portrait through her study of his personal correspondence, while Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan (Doreen Canaday Spitzer Archivist) presented a lesser known work of Venezis, the American Earth, a chronicle of his trip to America in 1949, showcasing the fact that Venezis was the first in a long list of intellectuals from Europe to visit the United States under the support of the Smith & Mundt Exchange Program.
The Papers of Elias Venezis consist of personal (including Venezis’ letters from the prison) and professional correspondence (correspondence with publishers and critics), unpublished radio speeches (from his career at the National Greek Radio), and newspaper clippings. The online catalogue is available here.
