The Osterman Common
Room was packed for a
moderated discussion with
author
Artemis
Leontis
discussing her new book
“Eva Palmer Sikelianos: A
Life in Ruins” on Thursday
afternoon.
The
event
was
part
of the Author’s Forum
series
presented
by
the
LSA
Institute
for
the
Humanities.
The
conversation
was
moderated by Prof. Yopie
Prins.
Leontis’s book is the
first biography about Eva
Palmer Sikelianos (1874-
1952), an American poet,
composer
and
dancer
who extensively studied
Ancient
Greek
history.
Palmer recreated ancient
art forms, staging Greek
tragedy
with
her
own
choreography,
costumes
and even music. She was
most
famously
known
for reviving the Delphic
Festivals
in
Delphi,
Greece.
The lecture began with
Leontis
discussing
how
she had been fascinated
by Palmer’s body of work,
but how research on her
artistic process and life
had been limited. Leontis
recalls how after getting
promoted
to
associate
professor at the University
of Michigan and having
the
resources
of
the
Humanities
Department
backing her up, she was
able to start embarking
on cataloging the life of
Palmer.
In the early stages of
her
research,
Leontis
organized an event that
brought a poet who had
personally known Palmer
to
campus.
Baldwin
shared several personal
anecdotes
with
Leontis
and
helped
shape
the
framing of the narrative of
Leontis’s biography.
“This was not just a
Greek story ... this is also
a
ladies’
Greek
story,”
Leontis said. “Those two
pieces
had
never
been
brought
together.
The
transnational movement,
women who entered into
classical studies sort of
triangled and learned
Greek
and
always
presented
themselves
as amateurs, but had
felt that their life was
quite
interconnected
with
their
one
in
Greek.”
Leontis
said
her
research allowed her
to
travel
to
several
parts
of
Greece,
including
Delphi.
In
these archives, Leontis
describes
finding
fascinating love letters
between Palmer and
her
husband
in
an
archive.
“Most
interesting
and challenging was an
archive of love letters
that were the center for
Asia Minor studies in
Greece,” Leontis said.
“So just finding out the
papers were there was
an adventure.”
When asked about
Leontis’s
feelings
about Palmer, she was
hesitant
at
first
to
respond, as she purposely
tried not to allow her
personal feelings to reflect
in her book.
“I worked very hard not
to develop a relationship
with the person, but it’s
very hard to divorce her
now,”
Leontis
said.
“I
think that she would be
really
quite
unbearable
sometimes. … I think I
would
really
disagree
with her fundamentally
on almost everything …
but I fell in love with her
stuff.”
LSA sophomore Dana
Papandreadis said it was
interesting that Leontis
started off wanting to
document Palmer’s life
but was able to delve
into
so
many
other
disciplines.
“It’s really cool that
she
dove
into
…
so
many
different
angles,”
Papandreadis said. “She
just
started
writing
a
biography but it hit so many
different categories.”
LSA senior Tim Bennett
said the lecture exposed
him
to
a
completely
different aspect of Greek
culture.
“There’s
a
whole
realm of Greek history
that I just knew nothing
about. That there were
even
these
festivals,
these Delphic festivals,”
Bennett said. “That there
were these people who
were bringing aspects of
American culture, Indian
culture, to the costume
design,
choreography.
There’s
archives
for
choreography?
That’s
crazy.”
2A — Friday, September 27, 2019
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