“The peculiarity is that no former prime minister writes in the present tense. Everyone writes in the past tense”
“Ithaca is not a destination, it is an eternal journey”, says O Alexis Tsipras speaking about his forthcoming book with the same title, on the “BookVoice-the podcast” platform.
In the discussion with the actor Emilios Chiilakis, who read the recorded version, and the presenter of BookVoice Spilios Lambropoulos, he says: “This book has a character of debt towards history, but it also has a character of purification, self-awareness, re-approaching the truth and facts.”
Condensing highlights:
– My book has a peculiarity. And the peculiarity is that no former prime minister writes in the present tense. Everyone writes in the past tense. I do my self-criticism, but I also criticize.
– I haven’t left anything out… I admit that from the first writing to the last there has been editing, mainly not with an eye on the future, with an eye on trying to be as objective and as less unfair as possible, because you can’t be unfair at all towards people and events. That’s why I have the book – it was written once and twice and three times, and there was one attempt from July until now. I watched it enough times so that every word represented me and was as close to the truth as possible.
– For me, this whole process of writing had a character of redemption, purification. So one could say psychotherapeutic, of self-awareness. And yes, indeed the part of the narration, when it enters into dialogues and an attempt to transfer to the text, let’s say the experience, has a charm.
– When I decided to resign (from the leadership of SYRIZA), I had in my mind that the moment is coming when I have to speak. Because, pay attention now, everyone has talked about these dramatic, about this dramatic period of Greek modern Greek history, many foreigners and Greeks have talked.
– Ithaca is not a destination, it is an eternal journey. And this concerns each of us. Because we all experience our own Odysseys and have our own Ithacas. But it also has to do with politics. It has to do with the Left, it has to do with society, it has to do with social struggles, the evolution of the world. It doesn’t stop, it never stops…
In this sense, the title I have chosen also has a philosophical value. Of course, I chose him six months ago, having structured the book and having finally realized that there is an allegorical field of everything we lived as a collective adventure and the adventure that each person has by fighting, claiming, hoping, dreaming and conquering some of them.
Alexis Tsipras also mentions that it is not just a book but a piece of the country’s modern history and adds about the critical period: “We took the responsibility to muddy the future of a people that others had muddied. The moments had a poignancy and anguish for ordinary everyday people. All this was the domain of everyday life, because the negotiations did not take place behind closed cameras. Many people have spoken about that dramatic period, but not the main protagonist. It is a debt to myself but also to history. I had to dive into a sea of data to capture the real facts. And let it be a dedication of the soul.”