Audio only
Length11h 41m
About this audiobook
This audiobook narrated by Suzanne Stroh reveals the untold story of a visionary twentieth-century American performer who devoted her life to the revival of ancient Greek culture
This is the first biography to tell the fascinating story of Eva Palmer Sikelianos (1874–1952), an American actor, director, composer, and weaver best known for reviving the Delphic Festivals. Yet, as Artemis Leontis reveals, Palmer's most spectacular performance was her daily revival of ancient Greek life. For almost half a century, dressed in handmade Greek tunics and sandals, she sought to make modern life freer and more beautiful through a creative engagement with the ancients. Along the way, she crossed paths with other seminal modern artists such as Natalie Clifford Barney, Renée Vivien, Isadora Duncan, Susan Glaspell, George Cram Cook, Richard Strauss, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Nikos Kazantzakis, George Seferis, Henry Miller, Paul Robeson, and Ted Shawn.
Brilliant and gorgeous, with floor-length auburn hair, Palmer was a wealthy New York debutante who studied Greek at Bryn Mawr College before turning her back on conventional society to live a lesbian life in Paris. She later followed Raymond Duncan (brother of Isadora) and his wife to Greece and married the Greek poet Angelos Sikelianos in 1907. With single-minded purpose, Palmer re-created ancient art forms, staging Greek tragedy with her own choreography, costumes, and even music. Having exhausted her inheritance, she returned to the United States in 1933, was blacklisted for criticizing American imperialism during the Cold War, and was barred from returning to Greece until just before her death.
Drawing on hundreds of newly discovered letters, this biography vividly re-creates the unforgettable story of a remarkable nonconformist whom one contemporary described as "the only ancient Greek I ever knew."
Audiobook details
GenreBiography and Memoir
Length11 hrs 41 mins
Narrated bySuzanne Stroh
FormatAudiobook
Publish dateJul 28, 2020
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Opening Anno
21Eva Sikelianos in the Field of Greek Music
2Introduction
22Patron of Greek Music
3Chapter 1: Sapphic Performances
23Lessons from India's Decolonization Movement
4The Implications of Reading Sappho
24Chapter 4: Drama
5"Old Things Are Becoming New"
25Isadora Duncan's "Multiple Oneness," 1903
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6"Charming Tableau"
26Atalanta in Bar Harbor, 1905
7"Going Back with Knowledge"
27Delphic Visions on Mount Parnassus, Early 1920s
8"If I Can Ever Sing to You"
28Prometheus Bound in Delphi, 1927
9"My Orchard in Mytellini"
29The Persians at Jacob's Pillow, 1939
10Chapter 2: Weaving
30Chapter 5: Writing
11"One Handwoven Dress"
31Upward Panic
12"Beautiful, Statuesque Girl, Heroine of Two Social Continents"
32The Loom Is the Key (Again)
13The "Anadromic Method" and Experimental Replication
33"Politics"
14"My Happiness Hangs on a Thread"
34Translating Angelos Sikelianos's Act of Resistance
15"The Key to the Matter Is the Loom!"
35Angelos's Akritika Thrusts Eva into Politics
16Chapter 3: Patron of Byzantine Music
36"Greek Home-Coming Year"
17The "Musical Question" and the Oresteiaka
37Epilogue: Recollecting a Life
18Penelope Sikelianos Duncan
38Cast of Characters
19After Penelope
39Closing Anno
20Konstantinos Psachos and the Field of Greek Music
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