Ἡ Φόνισσα
Αλέξανδρος Παπαδιαμάντης (1851–1911), 1903
★ 4.21 from 8.6k ratings on Goodreads
A poor island grandmother counts the daughters she cannot marry off and begins to see each as a debt she must cancel. Papadiamantis writes her from the inside with terrifying calm. A calm, lyrical voice carries you through dread and family pressure, with a gothic edge and a slow, unsettling pull.
Feels like dread, passion and unease. About power, family and society.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you are drawn to psychological portraits of women under crushing social expectations and can sit with a narrator who stays eerily composed. Be warned that the Greek is demanding and some readers find the pace slow, especially through the long interior stretches.
Why read it
Read it for a spare, unsettling study of guilt and necessity, and for a portrait of island poverty that makes the central figure both horrifying and painfully human.
Pages from the book
A hand closes over a baby's mouth, and the room goes quiet.
Ἡ φωνὴ τοῦ βρέφους ἐπνίγη. Μίαν χεριὰν ἀκόμη ἐχρειάζετο νὰ κάμῃ ἡ Φραγκογιαννού. Μὲ τὴν ἄλλην χεῖρα, τοῦ ἔσφιξε δυνατὰ τὸν λαιμόν… Εἶτα ἐμάζωξε τὸ λεπτὸν πανίον διὰ νὰ τὸ ρίψῃ πάλιν ἐπάνω τῆς στεφάνης. Ἡ χείρ της προσέκοψεν εἰς τὴν σανίδα, κ᾽ ἔκαμε μικρὸν θόρυβον. Ἡ γραῖα, ἥτις δὲν ἐκοιμᾶτο βαρέως, ἐξύπνησεν. Ἀνετινάχθη, ἐσκίρτησεν. Εἶδε τὴν Φραγκογιαννοὺ ν᾽ ἀποσύρῃ τὴν χεῖρά της καὶ ν᾽ ἀποχωρῇ, ἀνεγειρομένη ἐπὶ τῶν γονάτων, ὀπίσω εἰς τὴν θέσιν της. She hears the monastery bell at midnight and thinks: how lucky, to have known so early.
Καθὼς ἀνήρχετο τὴν ράχιν ἀντικρύ, πέραν τῶν κήπων, ἄνω τοῦ ρεύματος, ἤκουσε τὸν μικρὸν κώδωνα τοῦ μοναστηρίου νὰ ἠχῇ γλυκά, ταπεινὰ καὶ μονότονα, νὰ ἐξυπνᾷ τὰς ἠχοὺς τοῦ βουνοῦ, καὶ νὰ δονῇ τὴν μαλακὴν αὔραν. Ἦτο ἄρα μεσονύκτιον, ὥρα τοῦ Μεσονυκτικοῦ, ὥρα τοῦ Ὄρθρου! Πῶς ἦσαν εὐτυχεῖς οἱ ἄνθρωποι αὐτοί, οἵτινες εὐθὺς ἀμέσως, ἐκ νεαρᾶς ἡλικίας, ὡσὰν ἀπὸ θείαν ἔμπνευσιν, εἶχον αἰσθανθῆ ποῖον ἦτο τὸ καλύτερον τὸν ὁποῖον ἠμποροῦσαν νὰ κάμουν ― τὸ νὰ μὴ φέρουν, δηλαδή, ἄλλους εἰς τὸν κόσμον δυστυχεῖς!… καὶ μετὰ τοῦτο, ὅλα ἦσαν δεύτερα. Τὴν φιλοσοφίαν, αὐτοί, τὴν εἶχον λάβει ὡς ἐκ κληρονομίας, χωρὶς 〈νὰ〉 σκοτίσουν τὸν νοῦν των εἰς τὴν «ζήτησιν τῆς ἀληθείας», ὅπου ποτὲ δὲν εὑρίσκεται. A grandmother watches a sick baby and wishes for the symptom that means the end.
Ὅλ᾽ αὐτὰ τὰ ἐνθυμεῖτο, καὶ οἱονεὶ τὰ ἀνέζη ἡ Φραγκογιαννού, κατὰ τὰς μακρὰς ἐκείνας ἀύπνους νύκτας τοῦ Ἰανουαρίου, ἐνῷ ὁ βορρᾶς ἠκούετο ἐκ διαλειμμάτων νὰ συρίζῃ ἔξω, πλήττων τὰς κεράμους, καὶ κάμνων νὰ ἠχῶσι τὰ παράθυρα, ὁπότε ἠγρύπνει παρὰ τὸ λίκνον τῆς μικρᾶς ἐγγόνης της. Ἦτο ἤδη τρίτη ὥρα μετὰ τὰ μεσάνυκτα, καὶ ὁ πετεινὸς ἐλάλησε καὶ πάλιν. Τὸ θυγάτριον, τὸ ὁποῖον μόλις εἶχεν ἡσυχάσει πρὸ μικροῦ, ἄρχισε νὰ βήχῃ ἐκ νέου ὀδυνηρῶς. Εἶχεν ἔλθει ἀσθενικὸν εἰς τὸν κόσμον, καὶ προσέτι, φαίνεται ὅτι εἶχε κρυώσει τὴν τρίτην ἡμέραν, εἰς τὰ «κολυμπίδια»*, ὅταν τὸ εἶχαν λούσει ἐντὸς τῆς σκάφης, καὶ κακὸς βήχας τὸ εἶχε κολλήσει. Ἡ Φραγκογιαννοὺ ἀπλήστως ἀπὸ ἡμερῶν παρεμόνευε νὰ ἴδῃ συμπτώματα σπασμῶν εἰς τὸ μικρὸν ἀσθενὲς πλάσμα ―ἐπειδὴ τότε ἤξευρεν ὅτι αὐτὸ δὲν θὰ ἐσώζετο― πλὴν εὐτυχῶς τοιοῦτον πρᾶγμα δὲν ἔβλεπε. «Εἶναι γιὰ νὰ βασανίζεται καὶ νὰ μᾶς βασανίζῃ», εἶχεν ὑποψιθυρίσει, χωρὶς κανεὶς νὰ τὴν ἀκούσῃ, μέσα της. What readers say
Readers often describe a dark, unsettling experience, with anger or disgust at the central figure and the era’s treatment of women, alongside pity and empathy. Many admire the psychological portrait and suspense, though some find the language difficult or the reading slow.
Αλέξανδρος Παπαδιαμάντης.Papadiamantis was a island priest's son who spent years as a monk and lived in near-poverty in Athens, writing in the katharevousa he resisted; his grave on Skiathos is still visited by fishermen.
Books that feel like this
More by Αλέξανδρος Παπαδιαμάντης
Λαμπριάτικος Ψάλτης
Αλέξανδρος Παπαδιαμάντης, 1912
A priest waits for a helper on Easter night in a crumbling chapel above the sea, while a stranded elder takes the wrong path in the moonlight.
Θέρος-Ἔρος
Αλέξανδρος Παπαδιαμάντης, 1911
Spring and hunger, maidens and wolves, on a Greek island where the fields blaze with poppies and a gypsy girl reads a letter three times.
Στο Χριστό στο Κάστρο
Αλέξανδρος Παπαδιαμάντης, 1892
A priest vows to hold Christmas liturgy in a ruined cliff-top church. To keep it, he must cross a winter sea with his parish.
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Questions readers ask
- Is Ἡ Φόνισσα for me?
- You may like it if you are drawn to psychological portraits of women under crushing social expectations and can sit with a narrator who stays eerily composed. Be warned that the Greek is demanding and some readers find the pace slow, especially through the long interior stretches.
- What is Ἡ Φόνισσα like?
- A calm, lyrical voice carries you through dread and family pressure, with a gothic edge and a slow, unsettling pull. Feels like dread, passion and unease. About power, family and society.
- What should I read after Ἡ Φόνισσα?
- If you liked Ἡ Φόνισσα, try King Lear (William Shakespeare), Dracula's Guest (Bram Stoker) and The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson).
A taste of the feed
A man stands in the worst weather he can imagine and asks for worse.
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Smite flat the thick rotundity o’ the world! Crack nature’s moulds, an germens spill at once, That make ingrateful man!
King Lear · William Shakespeare
You walk toward your own double across a quicksand.
One night his dream was so vivid that when he awoke he could not believe that it had only been a dream. He shut his eyes again and again, but each time the vision, if it was a vision, or the reality, if it was a reality, would rise before him. The moon was shining full and yellow over the quicksand as he approached it; he could see the expanse of light shaken and disturbed and full of black shadows as the liquid sand quivered and trembled and wrinkled and eddied as was its wont between its pauses of marble calm. As he drew close to it another figure came towards it from the opposite side with equal footsteps.
Dracula's Guest · Bram Stoker
Watch a man talk himself out of his own remorse.
Manfred, though persuaded, like his wife, that the vision had been no work of fancy, recovered a little from the tempest of mind into which so many strange events had thrown him. Ashamed, too, of his inhuman treatment of a Princess who returned every injury with new marks of tenderness and duty, he felt returning love forcing itself into his eyes; but not less ashamed of feeling remorse towards one against whom he was inwardly meditating a yet more bitter outrage, he curbed the yearnings of his heart, and did not dare to lean even towards pity. The next transition of his soul was to exquisite villainy.
The Castle of Otranto · Horace Walpole
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