Biography and Memoir

Audio only

Eva Palmer Sikelianos

A Life in RuinsBy Artemis LeontisNarrated by Suzanne Stroh

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

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

About the author

Artemis Leontis

View all by Artemis Leontis

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