The image of empty chairs in Metropolis of Athens on Saturday (25/10) during his funeral Dionysis Savvopoulos, caused a sensation and an emotional impression. The absence of the political leaders of the parties was extensively commented on, with an emphasis on the complete absence of the Left.
The songwriter and radio producer Odysseus Ioannou reacted strongly through his post on social networks, pointing out the magnitude of this absence. In his text, he characteristically emphasized that yesterday was not the funeral of any “right-wing” Savvopoulos or supporter of specific policies, but the farewell to a Greece that once achieved fraudulent peaks in art. “Farewell to the good version of ourselves, to tenderness, to comfort,” he wrote, emphasizing that the presence in the life of Savvopoulos was a form of collective consolation.
Then he wondered woefully, “How is it that you are absent from tenderness? From consolation? And most of all, who do you think you’re doing it to? Who are you punishing?’ He emphasized that political disagreements with Savvopoulos had been expressed in the past and closed definitively, but yesterday was not about politics, but about feeling and respect.
THE Ioannou acknowledged that some citizens did not attend because they had personal burdens or frustrations with the policies of the past decades. Instead, he addressed the institutional Left, noting that its absence was unjustified: “You should not have been absent. What were you afraid of? Does your presence legitimize some ideology or some governmental fiesta?”
It ends with a deep and bitter observation: “You missed Savvopoulos’ funeral yesterday. You are missing from your lives. From our lives. Again. Again. Pity”.
The full post of Odysseus Ioannou is a key comment on the absence ofof the institutional Left and at the same time a hymn to importance of art, tenderness and collective memory in Greek society.