The Owl's Legacy (L'Héritage de la chouette)

By giving its support to these series, the Onassis Foundation wished to explore

the links existing between the culture of ancient Greece and the world today.

It was never in it intention to associate itself to any opinion concerning the

history and the political life of modern Greece.

The Onassis Foundation insists in clarfying that the choice of the themes as well as the

selection of the interviewed persons are the sole responsibility of the director.

THE OWL'S LEGACY

SYMPOSIUM or Accepted Ideas

It all began in summer 1987.

The idea for the television series based on Greek culture

had just cristallized and we were facing the spectre

that haunts the realm of cultural documentary

that Chekov defined for eternity:

'To say things that clever people

already know and that morons will never know'.

Our friend Jean Pierre-Vernant had the idea of banquets

around the world.

In Paris, the great ++++++ suited

our purpose particularly well

hanging as it does over the caves

where antiquties rest, in shape of plaster +++

waiting for the old clear signal.

What does it mean to you?

What is a banquet...a symposium?

What is 'drinking together'?

Symposium means drinking together and discussing things together.

We have a choice:

Listen to music, recite poems,

choose a topic to discuss,

behave well or badly.

It could be wild or wise. We shall see.

There is a ritual:

The wine is passed round in roughly the same order

as the sequence of conversation.

As in Georgia today...

in highly civilized countries -

every meal has a 'host'.

The banquet master.

Once the meal has started the host chooses a subject

to which he proposes a toast

and to which, in turns, the others must respond.

Food - well, one must eat...

But wine is on a different level,

a spiritual level, I would say,

the civilized level.

...our feast had a forerunner:

Plato's banquet during the plague

Diotima, what causes you sadness?

What confidence stops oblivion?

The alley-ways of the heart

drive away the desert darkness open the door for friendship.

Are these the spells of Mary the Harpist?

Coiled in her hands, by a trick of fate

The Arabian hurricane plays on her harp.

The last pledge, perhaps, of immortality -

Symposia are taking place

in France, Russia and America

but we are doubly priviledged.

The location for our symposium

is the heart of ancient Greece -

the cradle of world civilization.

We also speak the same language

in spite of certain changes.

The Owl's Legacy is the title of our series.

The contribution of Ancient Greece

to our modern world

and the means of finding out

how Athens or Greece in general

became the culture of the world.

The more I get to know Americans the more I love Greece.

It's the kind of love...

...it's mystical.

When I look at this civilization,

a civilization of open spaces a mass society...

...of modern communication,

the more I feel that a least

we can find refuge in memories

true, as false as they may be -

and a sense of belonging.

People often talk about 'roots'

and when I look for mine

it's emotionally, first and only then, intellectually.

Greece is my mother.

It's not something I say every day

maybe because my generation

still studied Greek and Latin.

When I was a schoolboy of 13 or 14

I was amazed...

...during my brief Greek course

I suddenly came face to face with the poetic.

I had never found it in Latin.

Latin is about as poetic as... ...as accountancy,

while each word in Greek has a Mediterranean vibrancy...

...which I found indispensable.

There are some Greek sayings that are as old as the world,

like Antigone's saying:

'I wasn't born to hate but to love.'

I can even say it in Greek.

I know it's just a small asset but it's enough.

I don't want to enter a debate be it chauvinist or racist

but at certain times in history

there have been incredible fusions in human intelligence

that have filtered through history

to blend with other innovations by people from other ages.

They were like signposts.

These periods of Ancient Greece

from the 7th century BC

to the 3rd BC or even later

have produced ways of thinking

and their consequences left their marks everywhere.

That is the essence of 'Greekness'.

A much more general concept

not limited by time or space.

A diffused way of being based on judgement and rationality

and on all human mental processes

some of which are yet unknown.

This amalgam fascinates me.

Plato's dialogues describe Man

as riding the 'Chariot of Life'

where one horse represents Reason

but it's Man who must determine what direction to take.

He can pull the reins either way for things to take their course.

The notions of internal complexity and consciousness already existed.

People cannot grasp the fact... that the individual