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Georgios N. Soutsos. Alexandrovodas the Unscrupulous (1785). Introduction and translation Anna Stavrakopoulou. Istanbul: The Isis Press. 2012. Pp. 123. Paperback $15.00
The recent publication of Georgios Soutsos's satirical comedy Alexandrovodas the Unscrupulous, translated into English and prefaced by Anna Stavrakopoulou, introduces a fascinating yet little-known work of the Modern Greek repertoire to a broader international audience. The fact that the present edition appears in Istanbul, where the work was orginally composed and read, constitutes in itself an important event. On the one hand, Soutsos's Alexandrovodas is a testimony to the vitality of the Phanariot literary activities in the late-eighteenth century. On the other, however, the circumstances of its composition and original circulation underscore the relative precariousness of Phanariot letters at the time, which partly accounts for the fact that important works like Alexandrovodas only truly became an object of study for scholars of Modern Greek literature in the last few decades. Soutsos's play, written in 1785, was never performed and only existed in manuscript form until Dimitris Spathes's edition (1995), to which the publication reviewed here is much indebted.
As noted by Stavrakopoulou, while the work retains many of the formal elements that define eighteenth-century European theatrical satire, it nevertheless constitutes a rather puzzling anomaly within that genre, due to the virulence of its attacks on a prominent political figure of the time, whose identity is never concealed by the use of coded language or allusion but, on the contrary, explicitly stated in the title, as well as throughout the play. In short, the extent of Soutsos' satire never seeks the safety of what could be called théâtre à clef, providing instead a very frank denunciation of well-known members of Phanariot society in the 1780s.
Set in the Ottoman capital immediately before and after the departure for Jassy of Alexandros Mavrokordatos...