George Gikas for The Critiques.
Paris Takopoulos' Critiques are a great help for anyone who loves theater, or works in it, and not so much because the reader learns from his critical thoughts, but mainly because he is delighted by the unique style of his writing.
Takopoulos, as a self-deprecating satirist, "creates" criticism in whatever he writes. There is a unity in his speech and style in all his works against vital lies, which reaches its climax in his two-volume Empty Testament, the most revolutionary, original genre of writing, in form and substance, in our language, according to Kanellopoulos, the unique equivalent of James Joyce's writing for us.
In these Critiques from 1966, you will find many revealing analyses of Beckett, Ionesco, Pinter, and other contemporary foreign and Greek writers, as well as many original insights into Shakespeare's works and our own Ancient works, as well as many syntactic texts, mainly by Teleteratos, because the ridiculous bothers Takopoulos, even more than the red cloth bothers the bull. However, even when he attacks, he maintains his humor, and his target is never individuals, but things. He may mercilessly criticize Kazantzakis one day, and praise his travel writings the next. He may praise a work by his friend Kampanellis today, and criticize another work of his tomorrow. And he has the audacity to break every taboo while turning into a raging Hercules at the sound of any bad translation.
But read better what his beloved friend, Eddie Duckworth, the most cultivated and sharp critical mind that existed until yesterday in Greece, writes in his Forewords.
And read, especially, the "bad" critiques of Paris against the works of Lidoriki, Psatha, and "historian" George Roussos, and against every "Bougiouklitsa," because I, at least, believe that "bad" criticism does more good than any beer.