Can The Subaltern Speak?, The Lovers’ Discourse

I. Background Information 

Two of the most prominent figures of 20th century Greek literature, Kostas Karyotakis and Maria Polydouri amalgamated their all-encompassing love for one another along their great lyricism in their individual works. Both members of the Lost Generation movement, growing up during and after the first World War, Karyotakis and Polydouri wrote in a distinct, unfavorable setting of war, economic and political decline, and death. Where there was no room for love to flourish, they created it. Their poems do not only emphasize on the melancholy of vanity and a nostalgia for what once was, but they also critiqued, provoked, and called people to think, listen, and question. Karyotakis, as one of the most important representatives of Greek poetry, writes with imagery; he has an eye for detail, and his nostalgic and melancholic tone manifests itself in his surreal and expressionistic poetry. His inherent sorrow and dissatisfaction with life are central themes of his work, while he advocates for social change and equality. Polydouri, on the other hand, is a strong proponent for romanticism. As a part of the neo-romanticism movement, Polydouri emanates her poems from her deeply beautiful and flawed emotional world in a way so raw and so succinctly real. Amidst a time of great socioeconomic and political adversaries, particularly for women who strived to find their political voice, Polydouri attacked conservatism and hypocrisy in an outstanding way. Her poetry reflects her intensity, bravery, and simultaneous hopeless romanticism, and her deep love and admiration for what she considered to be the one, love. As she herself wrote in her diary, which was found later, “[her] soul and love were born on the same day.” In her poems, Polydouri quests after the one, the ideal eros. 

They met in 1921 – they both belonged in the same literary circle in Athens during the early 20th century– and soon embarked on a passionate and tumultuous love affair, which profoundly influenced their lives and poetry. Soon later Karyotakis was diagnosed with syphilis, a heavily stigmatized disease especially for early 20th century Greece, and asked Polydouri to separate. Polydouri, a progressive woman who rejected the idea that public opinion should influence her happiness, asked Karyotakis to marry her. Karyotakis’ fear of his disease and also of the stigma that he’d have to face, if it became known that it was a woman who initiated marriage, drove him to decline Polydouri’s proposal. This caused a rupture between the two that lasted until Polydouri was diagnosed with tuberculosis and Karyotakis visited her in the hospital. Their love story ended tragically, when Karyotakis decided to take his own life in 1928. Overwhelmed by his personal demons and societal pressures, Karyotakis was battling with depression and a sense of existential despair for a long time. When Polydouri was informed of Karyotakis’ suicide, her illness worsened and she died prematurely at the age of 28, two years after Karyotakis. Despite the tragedy in their love, Karyotakis’ and Polydouri’s relationship endures as a powerful testament to the enduring power of love, passion, and poetry. One of the most poignant and enduring tales in Greek literature, their love continues to resonate with readers through their poetry, which never ceases to serve as a poignant reminder of the fragility of human existence and the transcendent nature of love. 

Living at the turn of 20th century in Greece, Kostas Karyotakis (1896-1928) and Maria Polydouri (1902-1930) wrote amidst a period of significant sociopolitical upheaval. Both members of the Lost Generation Movement, they lived and wrote in interwar Greece, a country which had just gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire and which underwent its own political struggles in an effort to define its national identity and establish a stable governance. The interwar period, a time marked by political turmoil, economic hardship, and social unrest throughout Europe, stigmatized their poems, which echo this melancholy of “what one was”. Moreover, because of the political weaknesses, Greece of the early 20th century experienced frequent changes in government, with shifts between monarchies, republics, and military dictatorships. These frequent shifts often brought about censorship, repression, and political persecution, heavily influencing the cultural and artistic landscape. Because this sociopolitical decline influenced the entirety of Europe, this period was also characterized by cultural upheaval. Despite the challenges, the interwar period saw a flourishing of Greek literature and art, while it was also influenced by broader European literary movements. More specifically, Karyotakis and Polydouri both belonged to the “Generation of the ‘30s”, a social and cultural milieu characterized by intellectuals who sought to express the disillusionment, existential angst, and social critique of their time. 

Therefore, their full of angst, turmoil, and passion poems do not only indicate the physis of their relationship, but more so, the sociopolitical arena in which they wrote. Though most of the selected poems are centered around the themes of love, melancholia, and death, they also connote the scene in which they were written. The aftermath of World War I, the great dissatisfaction and decline, and the constant physical need for destabilization are subtle yet acute and all-consuming notions in both of their works. Both Karyotakis and Polydouri were forced to leave Greece after the war and move to different places, whereas they were both heavily critiqued for their progressive, invoking ideas and rebellious thought. Albeit complicated, their relationship manifests itself in their works and is considered to be one of the most all-encompassing, tragic love stories of the Greek literary scene. Their poems, although they were composed separately, visibly serve as almost a correspondence between them, even in times when they were not together. 

For the purposes of this paper, I have taken 8 poems– 4 from Karyotakis and 4 from Polydouri– and I have translated them to the best of my abilities. Because I wanted to avoid a sterile translation of just some poems, I have chosen those poems that– in my eyes– best encapsulate the turmoil and tragedy in both of the poets’ individual lives and, simultaneously, in the ways they viewed and loved each other. In each poem, one of the striking similarities is the existence of the addresser and the addressee, the speaker and the one who is spoken to. The existence of this polarity made me think about Spivak’s Can the Subaltern Speak? and Derrida’s deconstruction of the binary of the subject and the non-subject. 

Obviously, the poems I chose will be the poems most encompassed with desire, yearning, and the elements of love and death. This comparative analysis in the context of translation, I will approach with some post-colonial translation theories. Though I have translated eight poems in total (the entire translation can be found at a second document under Translated Texts), for the purposes of this research paper, I will exemplify my translation strategies through just two poems, one from each poet. These poems are Nostalgia (1919) by Karyotakis and Oh, then, my dearest (1929) by Polydouri. 

As a general rule, these poems have been translated from Greek into English following an interlinear gloss translation – or, in other words, a word–for–word translation. My main purpose was to translate those poems and manage to keep the livelihood, desire, and turmoil they are conveying with just the poets’ diction. To achieve that, it was necessary to experiment with trying to keep some of the linguistic techniques and media of the original language—Greek—unchanged to the extent that this is possible in the translation to English. As a strong proponent of the foreignization technique, as far as translation theories are concerned, I am employing the foreignization strategy in my translation; I am not trying to domesticate any of the ideas or diction, and I am bringing the reader to the author. My process of translating will be made according to the Leipzig glossing rules. That means, I am following certain conventions on the semantics and syntax of translating from the original language to English when “glossing over” my text. After the first step of interlineally glossing over the text (IGT), I – keeping in mind the strategy of foreignization—am striving for the minimum alteration possible from Greek syntax and meaning to translating in English. Even though it is my utmost desire to keep the translation as close to the original as possible in order to capture the Greek idioms, syntax, and lexicon even in its translation, I am aware that I need to make some alterations in order for the text to semantically make sense for an English reader. 

II. The poems 

1. Kostas Karyotakis, Nostalgia, 1919 

“Nostalgia” is arguably one of Karyotakis’ most notable poems, published in 1919. The poem, as the title rightfully suggests, captures the piercing memory of love lost and the inevitability of time passing. The poem takes on the method of direct address; the narrator in the poem addresses a person (hereinafter “the addressee”) and evokes an emotional response from the audience by skillfully amalgamating imagery, tone, and symbolism. The nostalgic tone is evident from line 2 already, where “from the depth of good times” alerts the reader for the reflective retrospection that is to follow. This reawakening of the memories lost and brought to life is the epicenter of the poem, the bittersweet remembrance that love, albeit frequently depicted as the eternal, holy manifestation of human soul, inevitably ends. The speaker reflects on how past loves, once cherished, now evoke feelings of bitterness and pain, as seen in line 12 with “macabre dance”. Moreover, he also grapples with existentialist themes on the transience of human existence; the narrator’s yearning for the past can be seen as a reflection of the broader human experience struggling to find meaning in mortality and inevitability. 

Lines 1-2 

Μεσ’ από το βάθος των καλών καιρών 

οι αγάπες μας πικρά μας χαιρετάν. 

Glossing over : 

Μεσ’ από το βάθος των καλών καιρών 

Through the depth of the good times 

οι αγάπες μας πικρά μας χαιρετάν. 

our loves bitterly greet us. 

Lines 1-2 constitute the poem’s epigraph, which encapsulates the overall meaning and sets the gloomy tone for the rest of the poem. The translation follows a precise word-for-word translation, which retains the metaphorical language of the original Greek text. In that way, the epigraph, already from the start, conveys the sense of nostalgia and longing evoked through sentiments like “the depth of good times”, a phrase that connotes that the good times have now passed. The Greek sentence starts with a prepositional phrase (‘Μεσ’από’) followed by a prepositional phrase (‘το βάθος των καλών καιρών’). Due to the interlinear gloss translation, the exact same happens in English, as well. In that way, both the Greek and English versions use prepositional phrases in order to convey the idea of traversing through a period of time. 

The loves “bitterly” greet the lovers, signifying the inevitability of loss in love. By preserving the original metaphor, the poet – and subsequently the translation– establishes a dichotomy between past and present, the loves and the (past) lovers. This is the polarity that I will explore through Spivak’s rebuking of Deleuze and Foucault in Can The Subaltern Speak?. 

Can The Subaltern Speak? subverts the notions of the united human subjects that Deleuze and Foucault give birth to in their writings and, instead, suggest their deconstruction. Deleuze and Foucault are generally responding to the idea of the Western subject– which Hobbes and Locke among others famously described. According to them, the human has alienable rights and legal needs, a statement, which, albeit true, can be used as the justification of only the white European man’s position in the world stage. The focus on the western man and the rejection of the existence of anything other than that is the root of the issue at hand and this seemingly innocent statement constitutes, in and of itself, a paradigm of colonialism. 

More specifically, Deluxe and Guattari find the idea of a unitary human subject erroneous due to inherent human change and development, which they call a flux. 

Foucault, on the other hand, doesn’t supply us with a kind of opposite; instead, he seeks to diagnose what the subject is. He sees the human not as a unitary identity, rather as the product of some kind of power emerging. This subjectivity is productive, but its possibilities are restrained by the paradigm within it emerged. Finally, Foucault reaches the conclusion that humans must interrogate the limits of their freedom. 

Spivak rebukes both of those arguments. She underscores that Deleuze and Foucault, in describing their subject, lose sense of ideological determination. Their subject, Spivak argues, is one of no geopolitical consideration, something that Spivak heavily questions on the basis that geopolitical context shapes and determines each subject. In not recognizing differences in the geopolitical conditions, Deleuze and Foucault homogenize human experience. To demonstrate this argument, Spivak also makes reference to Marx; in Marx, Spivak highlights, we can find a better understanding of the subject. Everything in Marx’s universe is reducible to class conflict, a sentiment that– at least, to some extent– establishes a strong representation of a group socially, economically, and politically different. In juxtaposition to Marx, Spivak thinks that Deleuze and Foucault utterly and completely erase representation. She accuses their “non-subject” of being only possible if it is placed in relation to a “relative other,” with Deleuze romanticizing the experience of the colonized and Foucault subordinating class politics in exchange with alliance politics. 

The amalgamation of all of this is what urges Derrida to suggest the deconstruction of this binary: the subject and the other. Deconstruction, in Derrida, has nothing to do with the standard meaning of the word, but it rather describes a method that must be applied to this binary so that each side of the binary is contingent upon the existence of each other. In the context of colonization, therefore, Derrida’s deconstruction would call for the appropriation of the otherness within the “non-subject”. 

For the purposes of this paper, I will take this fundamental theory of post-colonization and I will apply it to the translated poems of Karyotakis and Polydouri. I will take the “others” to be the lovers, any type of lovers one can encounter in this world. Through the full of turmoil and desire poems, I will exemplify the analogy between love and Derrida’s notion of deconstruction, the appropriation of polarity within the others, the strange, the alien. 

Lines 4-7: 

Δεν αγαπάς και δε θυμάσαι, λες. 

Κι αν φούσκωσαν τα στήθη, κι αν δακρύζεις 

που δεν μπορείς να κλάψεις όπως πρώτα, 

δεν αγαπάς και δε θυμάσαι, ας κλαίς. 

Glossing over: 

Δεν αγαπάς και δε θυμάσαι, λες. 

You don’t love and don’t remember, you say. 

Κι αν φούσκωσαν τα στήθη, κι αν δακρύζεις 

And if the breasts swelled, and you tear up 

που δεν μπορείς να κλάψεις όπως πρώτα, 

that you can’t cry like before, 

δεν αγαπάς και δε θυμάσαι, ας κλαίς. 

you don’t love and don’t remember, then cry. 

‘Ας’ literally translates to let’s ; however let’s in English is let us, which wouldn’t make sense as a translation for ‘ας’, since here, ‘κλαις’ refers to a second singular person. Still, if we are still “les’s”, another possible translation closer to the original meaning would be something along the lines of “let you cry”. But “let you cry” would connote that the narrator in the poem would let the object of his desires cry, which again connotes the wrong meaning. There is a twofold way in which ‘ας’ is used here: (1) the narrator addresses the addressee and establishes that [they] don’t love and don’t remember, even though [they] cry, and (2) the narrator addresses the addressee and establishes that [they] don’t love and don’t remember, then cry. In my translation I chose the latter interpretation; thus, the english ‘then’ in line 7 of the poem. 

Lines 8-11: 

Ξάφνου θα ιδείς δυο μάτια γαλανά 

–πόσος καιρός!– τα χάιδεψες μια νύχτα, 

και σα ν’ακούς εντός σου να σαλεύει 

μια συφορά παλιά και να ξυπνά, 

Glossing over: 

Ξάφνου θα ιδείς δυο μάτια γαλανά 

Suddenly you’ll see two blue eyes 

–πόσος καιρός!– τα χάιδεψες μια νύχτα, 

– how long it’s been!– you caressed them one night, 

και σα ν’ακούς εντός σου να σαλεύει 

and as if you hear shaking inside you 

μια συφορά παλιά και να ξυπνά, 

an old misery stirring and waking up, 

Line 8, “suddenly you’ll see two blue eyes,” effectively captures the imagery of the original text while conveying it in English. The use of “two blue eyes” preserves the visual imagery present in the Greek phrase “δυο μάτια γαλανά”, which further intensifies the melancholic tone of the poem. 

Lines 12-15: 

Θα στήσουνε μακάβριο το χορό 

οι θυμήσεις στα περασμένα γύρω, 

και θ’ανθίσει στο βλέφαρο σαν τότε 

και θα πέσει το δάκρυ σου πικρό. 

Glossing over: 

Θα στήσουνε μακάβριο το χορό 

They will set up a macabre dance 

οι θυμήσεις στα περασμένα γύρω, 

the remembrances of the time past, 

και θ’ανθίσει στο βλέφαρο σαν τότε 

and like then, your bitter tear will 

και θα πέσει το δάκρυ σου πικρό. 

well up on your eyelid and fall. 

“…and like then, your bitter tear will well up on your eyelid and fall ” takes the eye motif that is exemplified throughout the poem and takes it a step further. The word-for-word translation maintains the emotional tone and intensity of the original Greek, while it also effectively conveys a sense of sorrow and longing. The preservation of the emotional depth that Greek conveys allows English to be another medium of communication for everyone to get Karyotakis’ so important message. 

Lines 16-19: 

Τα μάτια που κρεμούν– ήλιοι χλμοί– 

το φως στο χιόνι της καρδιάς και λιώνει, 

οι αγάπες που σαλεύουν πεθαμένες, 

οι πρώτοι ξανά που άναψαν καημοί… 

Glossing over: 

Τα μάτια που κρεμούν– ήλιοι χλμοί– 

The eyes suspended– pale suns– 

το φως στο χιόνι της καρδιάς και λιώνει, 

the light in the snow of the heart and it melts, 

οι αγάπες που σαλεύουν πεθαμένες, 

the loves that are stirred deadly, 

οι πρώτοι ξανά που άναψαν καημοί… 

the old sorrows that ignited again. 

As evident, the translation of Karyotakis’ Nostalgia revolved around the maintenance of culture and complexity of language. The poem resists dominant linguistic and cultural discourses– it doesn’t immediately follow the English language’s structure, syntax, meaning, depthness. This resistance is symbolic, and while the text itself may not explicitly discuss postcolonial themes, the act of translating it aligns with principles found in postcolonial translation theories. 

1. Maria Polydouri, Oh, then, my dearest, 1929 

Polydouri’s Oh, then, my dearest follows a similar syntaxical structure as Karyotakis’ Nostalgia; there is the poet and the muse, the addresser and the addressee, the lover and the beloved. This exact binary is at the core of my research paper– its realization and delineation offers the reader the opportunity to explore the possibilities in which love, among all other things that follow this structure, is born on the basis of polars. The existence of the relative subject and the ‘non-subject’, to quote Derrida. Polydouri, here, addresses her beloved, her dearest, as can be seen in line 1. The poem was written after Karyotakis’ death and it can be easily inferred that it addresses him; the phrase (“… near to God you dwell…”) gives it away. The poem works almost as a confession; Polydouri feels so guilty she cannot live without Karyotakis, she asks him for forgiveness of her own death. 

Lines 1-7: 

Ω, τότε, αγαπημένε μου, κοντά στο Θεό που μένεις 

θυμήσου στα παρθενικά μάτια μου πόσα πήρες 

λουλούδια τα πρώτα όνειρα, όλης μου της θλιμμένης 

αγάπης το φτωχό δόσμιο, κρυμμένο από τις μοίρες, 

και φέρτα δώρα στο Θεό, ζητώντας να επιτύχης 

το τέλειό μου εξαφάνισμα στο χάος των αιώνων. 

Glossing over: 

Ω, τότε, αγαπημένε μου, κοντά στο Θεό που μένεις 

Oh, then, my dearest, near to God you dwell 

θυμήσου στα παρθενικά μάτια μου πόσα πήρες 

remember in my virgin eyes how much you took 

λουλούδια τα πρώτα όνειρα, όλης μου της θλιμμένης 

flowers the first dreams, all of my sorrowful 

αγάπης το φτωχό δόσμιο, κρυμμένο από τις μοίρες, 

love the poor giving, hidden from the fates, 

και φέρτα δώρα στο Θεό, ζητώντας να επιτύχης 

and bring them as gifts to God, asking him to achieve 

το τέλειό μου εξαφάνισμα στο χάος των αιώνων. 

my perfect disappearance in the chaos of the centuries. 

Line 2 “remember in my virgin eyes how much you took” captures the essence of the original Greek text while preserving the emotional and poetic imagery and tone. The translation directly conveys the meaning of the Greek phrase, facilitating the English readers’ understanding of the imagery and emotions expressed in the poem. The reason I opted for a word-for-word translation might be clearer in Polydouri’s poem: the specific words and phrases used carry a sort of heavy cultural significance, as well. The virgin eyes, the fates, the heavy urn in the following lines all encompass characteristics of ancient Greek culture and literature. Therefore, by preserving the exact meaning of those in translation, I aimed at preserving Polydouri’s possible source of inspiration and majestic emotional world, as well. 

Generally, throughout the poem, the English translation mirrors the structure of the Greek sentence. For example, the opening line of the poem “Oh, then, my dearest, near to God you dwell” starts with an interjection followed by a noun phrase and then a prepositional one – “my dearest” and “near to God you dwell”, respectively. In this way and by not altering the original Greek syntax, both Greek and English texts use the same lexical structure in order to subtly convey the relationship between the speaker, the beloved, and God. 

Lines 8-10: 

Δεν θέλω πλέον. Απόκαμα, πάρε με από της τύχης 

τα νύχια εσύ… Συγχώραμε… Το βάσανο των πόνων 

ήταν χειρότερο για με. Συγχώραμε να σβήσω. 

Glossing over: 

Δεν θέλω πλέον. Απόκαμα, πάρε με από της τύχης 

I don’t want anymore. I have grown too weary, release me from fate’s 

τα νύχια εσύ… Συγχώραμε… Το βάσανο των πόνων 

claws, oh you… Forgive me… The suffering of pain 

ήταν χειρότερο για με. Συγχώραμε να σβήσω. 

was worse for me. Forgive me to be put out. 

Here, the same motif follows. The simplicity of the English translation from the original Greek connotes and preserves the urgency that Polydouri is conveying with her poem. A simply written poem, yet with an emotional weight and a delicacy so particular that simplicity and sensibility entangle harmonically. 

For example, in like 8, “ I don’t want anymore” is straightforward, yet the simplicity hides a painful truth. Those moments are moments that I feel are crucial to the overall effect the poem has – in whichever language– and that is why it was important for me to leave it unchanged with a word-for-word translation. 

Lines 11-17:

Όταν περάσω, παίρνοντας του λυτρωμού το δρόμο 

απλή σκιά, τα μάτια μου σεμνά θα τα σφαλίσω, 

και θα πηγαίνω αλύγιστη και με γυμνό τον ώμο. 

Θα με γνωρίση τότε αυτός γερμένος από τα ύψη. 

Θάχω στον ώμο μια βαριάν υδρία. Θα με γνωρίση 

ακόμα από το βάδισμα σαν τότε, από τη θλίψη, 

απ’την υδρία των δακρύων που μούχε αυτός χαρίσει. 

Glossing over: 

Όταν περάσω, παίρνοντας του λυτρωμού το δρόμο 

When I pass, taking the road of redemption, 

απλή σκιά, τα μάτια μου σεμνά θα τα σφαλίσω, 

mere shadow, my eyes modestly I’ll close, 

και θα πηγαίνω αλύγιστη και με γυμνό τον ώμο. 

and I will go unchained and with my shoulder bare. 

Θα με γνωρίση τότε αυτός γερμένος από τα ύψη. 

He will then know me, leaning from the heights. 

Θάχω στον ώμο μια βαριάν υδρία. Θα με γνωρίση 

I will wear on my shoulder a heavy urn. He will know me 

ακόμα από το βάδισμα σαν τότε, από τη θλίψη, 

even from walking like then, from sadness, 

απ’την υδρία των δακρύων που μούχε αυτός χαρίσει. 

from the water of the tears that he had gifted me. 

“He will then know me, leaning from the heights”: Polydouri here most likely refers to deceased Karyotakis, the person who will see her when she, following his example, “leaves” her life and goes up, to the “heights”. When she reaches, she will wear “a heavy urn” on her shoulder; here, the translation maintains the original Greek metaphor of carrying a heavy burden (‘υδρία’ = ‘urn’), which symbolizes the weight of sorrow and suffering. Faithfully translating this metaphor ensures that the cultural symbolism not only is not lost, but it is further enhanced. The emotional resonance of the original text is preserved and the adherence to the cultural symbolism contributes to the decolonization of the language, as it celebrates the expressions and metaphors of the source culture. 

Similarly, “from the water of the tears that he had gifted me” poignantly captures the emotional depth of the original text while maintaining its cultural specificity. It is important to make such a realization since the poem does not revolve around topics that are very clearly centered around postcolonialism; however, there is a subtle yet loud message here. Even with topics such as love and death, as in Polydouri’s poem, post-colonization theories do not cease to exist. They continue to live vicariously through the poem, and they always find new ways to loudly confirm their existence. That is because, in my opinion, these theories, theories like Spivak’s and Derrida’s not only shaped an important part of post-colonial 20th century culture, but they also established a new way of thinking about identity and colonialism, binaries and the world. 

Overall, similarly to Karyotakis’ Nostalgia, Oh, then, my dearest preserves the cultural nuances and imagery present in the original text. By retaining the emotional depth and the poetic language through a word-for-word translation, the poem manages to elicit an emotional response from the audience and reflect cultural hybridity. By rejecting a domesticating technique, namely bringing the author to the reader and translating in a way that would most make sense in the translating language, the translated text resists the imposing dominant linguistic or cultural or social norms, allowing the original language’s essence to shine through. Arguably, the poem might have been prettier, or sounded better, if I had followed a more sense-for-sense, domestication approach. However, this would have betrayed my own, personal beliefs about such translations, and the complexity of the original language, as well. The resistance to the one, “godly” standard of the West aligns with postcolonial translation theories, while it preserves the voice and identity of Maria Polydouri and conveys her yearning for Karyotakis. 

III. Lovers as the Subaltern 

Evident from the sociopolitical conditions under which the poems were written and the word-for-word translation, the themes of longing, suffering, and seeking redemption in the face of adversity in Karyotakis’ Nostalgia and Polydouri’s Oh, then, my dearest resonate with experiences of marginalization and subalternity. 

Spivak’s Can the Subaltern Speak? subverts the notions of the united human subjects that Deleuze and Foucault give birth to in their writings and, instead, suggest its deconstruction. Albeit not very different from one another (Deleuze argues for the continuous “flux” that the human subject undergoes, while Foucault supports that this subject emerges in response to some kind of power, whose possibilities are restrained due to social conditions), both of those thinkers, in describing the subject, lose a sense of ideology, according to Spivak. Not only that, but they also fail to make mention of any geopolitical consideration, homogenizing human experience and, in defining the subject, also creating another, “non-subject”. For Spivak, this binary to the “relative other” highlights the need for people to embrace this “otherness” within them, an otherness which, in the context of colonization, must be deconstructed. Taking Spivak’s argument a step further, Pym’s Cultural Translation clearly defines that cultural translation refers to a process rather than the product in contrast to Foucault’s view on the merging of the subject. 

I recognize that the project I embarked on is an ambitious one; Spivak herself perhaps wouldn’t possibly imagine that her theories on the Subaltern would be studied and related to those on the lovers’ discourse. But, I find the comparison a plausible one, easily inferred from the two poems I have translated in this paper. The continuous motifs of binaries, that of the addresser and the addressee, the alive and dead, the goldy and earthly, resonate with Spivak’s binary of the subject and the non-subject. Complicatedly intertwined, the lovers in question spoke; they spoke through the poems not only to each other but to the whole world. The question, however, remains: can they really speak? The last thing this paper aims at is at reducing Spivak’s postcolonial theory on historically marginalized groups to a romantic relationship. To be clear, this is neither my goal nor what this paper is about; it is noteworthy and extremely interesting, however, to be at least aware of the similarities between the interactions in those two groups. Spivak reached a pessimistic conclusion; the subaltern are not able to speak and, subsequently, are not heard. I am afraid that, despite all efforts to prove otherwise, I, myself, have reached the same conclusion. Lovers, in whichever discourse they choose to manifest themselves, cannot speak either, the poems and the tragic love story of Karyotakis and Polydouri attest to that. Despite all efforts, binaries inherently create and maintain a sort of chasm; chasm between worlds, feelings, and discourses. By using post-colonization theories and relating them to foreignizing translations from Greek to dominant English, I have proven that lovers constitute an overlooked marginalized group, and that Spivak was, unfortunately, right. They cannot speak.