About women (Oples, koukles, panoukles...)...

Opla -es (syn. opa) = exclamation

Koukla - es = doll - metaforically, babe, sweetheart

Panoukla -es = plaguee, pest - metaforically, 1.very ugly woman/2. hard, tough, awkaward, complicated

"Oples, koukles, panoukles", three rhyming words used as an exclamation in a couple of Mikrasiatiko songs. They were said as a joke, and for "praising a hymn" to womens beauty. At the same time the third word panoukla is reminding of the problems a woman causes to men.

According to Hesiod "The immortals who lived on Mount Olympus created first the golden race of mankind. Those people lived as gods, without care, pain and sorrows. They were long-lived and not getting old. They died like if they fell asleep..."

Jean Pierre Vernant in his "Feminine figures of Death in Greece" writes , "at that time there were not existing any women(before Pandoras creation) and not Death either. Living like gods together with gods, the men of the golden race were unchangeable during their life and they were covered by something similar to a sweet sleep, instead of death. Death and woman appeared simultaneously...

If we think of a usual company of 5-6 masculine people playing rebetiko songs, I can assure you that they are not missing at all a feminine presence. Τhey are enjoyning themselves, the are competing of reaching the highest tones, they look at each other with a mutual understanding when they sing verses having ambiguous meanings about women. A feminine voice splits up, especially when there is an audience because the eyes are turns to her and that irritates the bouzouki player who likes to play the role of the mortal god who is admired for the way he plays though he mostly do it in the same way with all others.

Rebetiko was and still is a masculine affair, a magic masculine orgasm...

If somebody claims that women were regarded as a secondary accessory they look surprised at you like if you had claimed that the sheap's usual colour is the phosphoric orange...

The following verses of Kaldaras song "A widow in the tavern" (1955 or 19579), "a woman has not the same value as two guys", where the noun woman is regarded a something alien compared tguys refers to an established attitude in the collective subconscious all over the earth. Especially in Greece is extremely emphasized.

Let us see a fragment from Markos Vamvakaris autobiography dictated for Angela Kail (Athens, 1973) : "...Moushoundis (i.e. police chief in Thessaloniki who liked rebetiko and its people) when he saw me said to the police who brought me there, "come here", he said, "did you ask him who he is? - Yes. Didn't you tell me to fetch here the human being (άνθρωπος) and the woman who was there? I fetched him. I don't remember what happenned with the woman...".

Ιn the original text we read the word άνθρωπος (= human being) which is a masculine in Greek as in, perhaps, in all languages, except Swedish where it is feminine(!). The word άνθρωπος is explained with the word man. It is obvious that we have a contradiction between άνθρωπος and woman. Woman is not an άνθρωπος... Α similar example is the contradiction (still existing in Greek) between the word φαντάρος ( = soldier) and άνθρωπος. Τhey are typical exaples of symbols carried in everyday language. We don't bother using them but they form an unconscious ideology.

(to be continued)