"Epiphania"

by Mikis Theodorakis

Precisely because the verses were so intellectual, I wanted to present Epiphany in popular dress to the widest public possible - to make it a popular song, so that it would accompany the people everywhere, on construction sites, in the tavernas, on trips and get-together...

When we were recording I told Bithikotsis >Watch out for the semi-colon. Where you say 'we lived our lives', pause before you say 'wrongly'<.

In my mind's ear I heard the exhortation - supplication of the poet: >The semi-colon! The semi-colon! Otherwise you reverse the meaning<.

In the end, however, it proved impracticable, with the result that the word >wrongly< stuck to >We lived our lives< and reversed the meaning of the poem. But how comprehensible it was to the people who, to a greater of lesser degree, had lived their lives wrongly!...

In the fall of 1962 Seferis, George Savidis, my father and I spent a whole night going from taverna to taverna in Plaka. The poet wanted, with his own eyes, to see the artists and the people singing On the Seashore in all the clubs. He wanted to hear it with his own ears... Maybe never before had someone like Seferis become like a small child. He laughed, he radiated happiness and I think that night he permitted his stern heart to love me.

In the measure that it is permitted a diplomat..."