Call to young people, “to dive into their genetic material, to interfere, to talk to their Greek and Christian past, to love it, to maintain it passionately, and to diagnose the loud example that the free besiege offered,” Nikos Dendiasspeaking the festival of the day, after the tragedy today in the heroes’ garden in Mesolongi, for the 199th anniversary of the exit of the free besieged.
At the same time, Nikos Dendias emphasized that “the free besieged shows and proved that the homeland is created and survived only with selfless blood supply, as the lambs of modern Hellenism, because their sacrifice came from the Navarino surgery.”
Following is the text of the speech of the Minister of National Defense, Nikos Dendia:
“It is a maximum honor to attend not only as a representative of the government, but also as a mere Greek citizen, in the sacred city of Messolonghi, on the 199th anniversary of the exit.
Dionysius Solomos, with his poetic genius, attributed to the defenders of Messolonghi the verbally contradictory, but deeply true characterization of the ‘free besieged’. With this designation, they passed the gate of national memory, of national truth. Because in Greek it is the denial of oblivion, of forgetfulness. It is the preservation of memory today and especially in tomorrow.
The ‘Exit of Messolonghi’ is not honored as a mere important historical event. It is not only mentioned as the one that mainly leveled philhellenism. We cannot forget the philhellenes who fought here.
But the fact is wider, much broader. It concerns the Homeland Faith in Freedom of Man.
The sharp, no big -time, joint response by the starvation, to the English mediation that was subject to bread, drugs and amnesty over tradition, is a decent stockpile: ‘We have the administration of which we follow the orders, and the orders.
The free besieged people paid consciously and anxiously supreme tax. As a fee, ‘after laurel’, in the eternity of the collective memory of the Greek nation.
With a fully different path of life, the same choice was expressed in particular with his death in Mesolongi, by Lord Byron. One of the greatest poets in the world, perhaps the main expressor of the romantic movement.
‘The Land of Honourable Death Is Here’ (‘The Land of Honorable Death is here’), proclaims in the poem of ‘on this day i complete my thirty sixth years’ (this day I am 36 years old), prophetic on January 224, 1824, a few months ago dies, on April 1924. In the 37th year of his life.
He died here, in Mesolongi, in Mark the soil, where his great Byron soul came out, as the Great Solomos writes in the first design of the free besieged.
I address the young Greeks. These opinion and knowledge are mainly important to the future of the country. I fully understand the fatigue, perhaps the aversion that has the younger generation of the empty, meaningless festivities who hear from their school years. I fully understand the demobilization and refinement of everything that causes events in Greek society. But please warmly the young Greeks and the young Greeks, please see through today’s fog. Please see with the eyes of their souls, for this is the only way that Elytis describes as a ‘distant homeland; my Rhodes Amaranto’.
I beg to dive into their genetic material, to interfere with, to talk to their Greek and Christian past, to love it, to maintain it passionately, to diagnose the young Greeks the loud example that the free besiege offered.
The big dead speaks and if you want one can hear them, Constantine Tsatsos had said in my home country, Corfu, speaking in that case, about another ‘saint’ of Hellenism, John Kapodistrias.
The struggles here in Mesolongi were not the recipients of any state benefit. After all, there was no state. There were citizens of Greece before the existence of the Greek state. Most of the most uneducated, mostly patients, wounded most of the, adorable, starving, destitute everyone, were found before the Great Sea of Existential Selection.
And calmly and freely they chose. They chose with the blood of the same, and even more difficult, they chose with the blood of their families. They chose in favor of a revolution that was blowing the leo. They chose a homeland that existed only in their souls. They chose in favor of the birth of a national narrative that existed only in their hearts. They chose to give everything to a future homeland, without the slightest hope of getting anything.
Thus the uneducated, the patients, the injured, the impoverished, the sufferers, the starvation, made people with A capital. From ” Upper Thrick ‘, which means I look high. They became Greeks with a capital. Before there is even New Greece.
They have shown and proved that the homeland is created and survived only with selfless blood supply. As the lambs of modern Hellenism, because their sacrifice came the intervention in Navarino that saved the revolution.
The revolution of ’21 at the same time with bravery and sacrifice involves humble, corruption, civil stories, stories of shame. The history of Greece contains extreme contradictions. Height and depth. The national virtue and the national minority.
National offering and extreme corruption. Through the timeless extreme contradictions as a Doric column, the memory of the free besieged rises to heaven to declare a noblest potentially destination for the Greeks.
For this reason, ‘the Greeks of these free besieged the Great Memorial’, as George Vlachos typically writes in the Kathimerini of April 9, 1933, regardless of the juncture, will find the Greeks all, the true, the healthy, the heirs, the heirs.
No matter how many years have passed, no matter how long they have, those who represent Greece will come here with laurel leaves, which will be gathered from the free land of the Greeks grateful, to deposit here the anniversary of the exit, in the soil where they were the most inferior, where they have been the dirt. In the soil that was the most ideal virtue, in the soil of Bishops Joseph and Porphyrius, in the soil of Razi, Kitsu Javella, Mark Botsaris. In the soil of Lord Byron, in the soil of the free besieged, in the soil of the Holy City of Messolonghi. “