‘Greece - Patrick White’s other Country’: is Patrick White a Greek Author?

Abstract

“As soon as you’re successful and have got any Greek connection we’ll include you as a Greek; Patrick White is a Greek author” - Nikos Papastergiardis, Antipodes Writers Festival 2012
 
Though made as a flippant and provocative remark, Papastergiardis’s statement evokes another made by Patrick White himself. Invited by the democratic Greek Government to give a speech as part of celebrations marking the fall of the military junta, White travelled to Athens in November 1983. His speech ‘Greece - My Other Country’ while never actually delivered, is a declaration of cultural affiliation and affection, in which White asks rhetorically, “How could I resist returning at this point, when the close ties of love and friendship, the events of history, and those vertiginous landscapes of yours, tell me that Greece is my other country?” White’s connection to Greece permeates his work, from short stories set in Anatolia, Athens, and the Levant, to Greek characters in many novels, to the the prevalence of Greek religious and symbolic imagery. At the same time, ‘Greekness’ was a literal and prominent concern in White’s life, embodied, of course in the presence of Manoly Lascaris, White’s partner of forty-nine years and his “central mandala” (Flaws in the Glass 100). This paper will explore the signifier of ‘Greekness’ as inscribed by White through an examination of the Greek, Byzantine and Orthodox facets of his work, with a particular focus on The Twyborn Affair. It will attend to the implications of these Greek objects, entities and moments for the representation of fictional selves, and consider the interplay of fictional and biographical elements in their construction.