The Third Wedding

"People don’t like the whole truth. In the real world and in art as well. You could say that. People like to believe that they are better or more heroic than they really are. Let’s say that Kazantzakis, who is a great novelist, presents us with Alex Zorba, who is a great man. But there is a saying that every man is a hybrid of bird and snake. Kazantzakis describes only the bird and says nearly nothing about the snake. Taktsis gives us both. After the critics, it still didn’t sell many copies. But The Third Wedding offers a picture to those who really want to understand how the bourgeoisie in Greece was. It’s real people, in real situations without heroism and poetic narrations. There was a critic who said that if life itself were talking, it would talk like Taktsis in this novel. It is a masterpiece and in fact he became stuck after it. He wrote just this one novel, and about 20 very nice short stories. Nothing else. He was trapped by the significance of this novel. When a writer starts with a masterpiece it is very different to continue because of the fear that people will say the second novel is not as good. No. They were suspicious of his personality. He had a double life. He was a writer and journalist, and a transvestite who would walk the streets and have sex for money. Except that Pasolini was paying for sex, or love, whereas Taktsis was being paid. He was a professional whore. It was very radical, to say the least. But don’t imagine that his novel is sexy or pornographic like his life; it isn’t at all – it’s about the ordinary life of an ordinary family in Athens, from the 1920s to the 60s. Yes. We may say that Greek history is full of wars and revolutions and coups and other great political incidents; but real life went on. Ordinary people didn’t always experience the turbulence in their daily life. History is a backdrop to daily dramas and this is what Taktsis shows. Every Greek who is interested in Greek literature has read, or has to read, The Third Wedding . It belongs to the canon."