Carnival in Athens: centre and neighbourhoods, 1834-1944

In addition, however, the initiative of the committees and the importance it acquired makes clear the relationship between the reinforcement of the role of the city center and the strengthening (demographic, economic, social and political) of the Athenian middle class. The bourgeoisie lived in the center both literally and symbolically: in the center as the place of political and economic decision-making and as the emitter of the values and symbols of power and authority.

The increasing importance of the middle class (and especially their more Europeanized and “modernizing” fraction), and the attempt to deepen their hegemony to levels corresponding to their new power, also acquired a spatial expression: the “reoccupation” of the centre of Athens (meaning the streets of the areas in which they lived) and its appropriate configuration during carnival, as well as an increase in centralization at the level of both state and city. Here it is worth recalling Gruppi’s (1977: 84) definition of hegemony as the ability to unify a social whole that is not homogenous, and transferring it from the level of ideology to that of the city.

Map 2: Epicenters of carnival events in Athens 1834-1940

It seems, moreover, that at the beginning of the 20th century the spatial dimension of the contrast between bourgeois and popular culture has become more intense. Α striking example is provided by the report in the Estia newspaper in the summer of 1901 from Thissio Square, where there was a flourishing district of popular entertainment venues: every now and then the trams brought “groups of sightseers from the rather Europeanized neighbourhoods, coming to see the festivals of the people” (Χατζηπανταζής, 1986: 154). Ι did not detect any similar exploration mission for the carnival period, however the spatial-social dimension of a strong cultural difference was highlighted by complaints in the newspapers about improper behaviour in the main streets during carnival: in 1905 the “crude pranks” of the alleyways of Psyrri were said to have moved to Stadiou Avenue, “the great open-air salon of genteel japes” (Σκριπ 1 March 1905 -cf Σπυροπούλου 2010: 129 for the comparison of Stadiou with s bourgeois salon by the novelist Spandonis in 1893). while in 1920 there is a report of a “brutal invasion of the main streets by gangs of layabouts” (Καιροί 19 January 1920). In 1915 a journalist appeals to the police to remove the “loathsome gangs of masqueraders” who ask for money for the spectacle they offer with the camel, the maypole, tumbling somersaults and “other rubbish”, or at least to “confine them to the outermost neighbourhoods of Athens, so that the people of the centres may escape this aesthetic nausea” (Ακρόπολις 22 January 1915). The “outermost neighbourhoods”, then, are identified as the natural habitat of these spectacles, which lies far from the centre, the “showcase” of the city and, above all, a place where people of more refined culture reside.

The degree of concentration at carnival events peaked at the turn of the 20^th century, and then fell. The critical factor here was the more general transformations that took place in carnival entertainments, moving away from public festivities and spectacles towards dancing (Ποταμιάνος, 2020: 263-267). Of course, the public entertainment venues in the centre of Athens were very crowded, while the carnival balls of the various associations also tended to be held in locations in the centre. It remains a fact, however, that the neighbourhoods were in a better position to compete with the city centre in attracting people to entertainment venues rather than in offering urban spectacles. Moreover, the progress achieved in gender relations, as regards women’s ability to circulate in a public space (Ποταμιάνος, 2020: 232-234), made it less important to create a “civilized space” in the centre of the city where harassment was least possible. From this point of view, then, as well, there was less need for concentration

Of course, after the last parade organized by a komitato in 1920, centrally organized events and parades will be repeated in the 1930s in Plaka, with the “Carnival of old Athens” organized by the Tourism Organization, the municipality and a committee of residents (Βλάχος, 2016: 189, Ελεύθερον Βήμα 2 March 1932, Αθηναϊκά Νέα 26 January 1934 etc). This initiative made Plaka the center of the (weakened) carnival in Athens in the following decades (eg Μπρούσαλης 1963), and seems to have contributed more generally to the establishment of Plaka as a center of supra-local entertainment with its taverns, later bars, etc. It is clear, however, that it was now a small carnival parade, with a much smaller crowd.

My hypothesis is that this reduction in concentration is linked to an increase in the autonomy of popular culture and the popular neighbourhood. The further spatial expansion of Athens, with the doubling of its population in the 1910s and 1920s, would de facto have reinforced various neighbourhood and inter-neighbourhood centres, and a more autonomous life of the “outer” neighbourhoods. As early as 1916, a columnist describes “small neighbourhoods” as self-sufficient, independent units: “there are people who, except for an evening stroll as far as Syntagma Square, do not travel at all to the so-called centres. They belong to the neighbourhood. Its café, its pedestrian area, its pretty young girl, its small theatre, its bustle, become enough from day to day to satisfy their every interest” (Πατρίς 30 June 1916). The classic play “Fintanaki” (1921) written by Pantelis Horn seems to express this awareness, setting its plot in a miniature version of the popular neighbourhood, the “courtyard”, and presenting it as a complete world within which the lives of the inhabitants of the houses surrounding the communal courtyard unfold. Obviously it would be wrong to think of the neighbourhood as an enclosed space, but between the wars it appears to become more self-sufficient and self-contained; the publication of neighbourhood newspapers such as the Φωνή του Παγκρατίου in 1930 is typical of this development. A sense of greater isolation and self-sufficiency was definitely also due to the limited interactions between the native Athenians and the refugees who came from Asia Minor in 1922 and settled in new working-class districts around Athens.

The popular neighbourhood, in these circumstances of increased self-containment, was the space in which a new popular culture arose during the interwar years, exemplified in the emblematic music and overall culture of rebetiko. The evidence I have collected, however, does not appear to indicate any particular dynamism in the field of carnival culture. Older popular spectacles such as the camel or maypole were not restored to their former glory (actually they are often described as being in decline: Έθνος 5 March 1924, Πρωία 3 March 1929 etc), nor were satirical masquerades revived. The Asia Minor refugees, with the possible exception of the practice of flying kites on Clean Monday (as Cleo Gougouli has pointed), did not leave their mark on carnival culture, as they did in fields such as music or cooking. A description of carnival life in the neighbourhood of Agia Triada published in 1924 may be representative: “We did not see the crowds of yesteryear, the camel, the maypole, and the Fasoulis puppet theatre, nor did we see masqueraders. We did see a different crowd, of merrymakers on carts who sang various carnival songs, while in many alehouses others danced.” Festivities involving European and Greek dances also took place in houses, “and it is rumoured that on the last days of carnival, balls will be held at all the alehouses of the neighbourhood, large and small, which will be temporarily transformed into dance halls to which, they say, only masqueraders in costume will be allowed entry” (Εύα 23 February 1924).

The neighbourhood streets would certainly have been busier, especially considering the lack of space in the poorer homes. Let us bear in mind that this activity was only disseminated outside the neighbourhood to a limited extent; it is mentioned that the masqueraders of the interwar period largely stayed within their own neighbourhoods, without leaving them to meet in the centre (Παπαζαχαρίου, 1980: 205-206), This was a reversal of the tendency towards concentration observed in the previous period, a reversal which might be correlated, probably not arbitrarily, with the crisis of middle-class hegemony in the interwar years, which at the political level was expressed in a series of military coups (that is, with the increase in the use of violence and the decline of the institutionalization of political conflict: Κωστής, 2013). This tendency of the popular neighborhoods to become autonomous will reach extreme levels in the conditions of the Occupation of Greece by the Axis powers during the Second World War), and will culminate in the attempted military and political occupation of the centre of Athens, the seat of political power and the middle class, during the civil conflict of December 1944, by a Communist left based on the periphery of the city.