The field notes from September 12, 2002 were an attempt to express the complexity of Hatzidakis’ museum and our experience of it. The juxtaposition of this excerpt with the video of that day highlights an incongruity of text and film footage. Those moments could be articulated in infinite ways textually. This is multiplicity. Still, here we are interested in the idiosyncrasies of Hatzidakis’ material and oral articulations of history.

Hatzidakis’ business card for the museum simply states “War Museum, Private Collection, George Andr. Hatzidakis, ASKIFOU SFAKIA, Chania – Crete – Greece”. One side is in English the other Greek. In the upper right corner there is a canon with carriage and wheels and in the other two swords crossed and one below. The museum is private. According to Hatzidakis he receives no state sponsorship of any kind. In fact the obvious presence of the museum in the village has spawned the creation of a rival museum, much smaller. This situation begs several questions. What do such rivalries have to do with objects? How does the museum legitimate itself? What of the issue of “authenticity”?

One facet of the “authenticity” of Hatzadakis’ museum is supplied by its location at the heart of the Askifou museum—the “saucer” along the Allied withdrawal corridor. Although their numbers rapidly dwindle, veterans who retrace this path inevitably encounter large tractor tires with thick hand painted white lettering—“War Museum”—along the side of the new paved road and are drawn in. Hatzidakis has established the museum as a node within WWII geography.

A second form of authenticity is associated with the objects. For Hatzidakis each piece has a unique life history. Many are stamped with the date of manufacture. A few are presented with handwritten labels that identify a particular location. These place-names will only be recognizable for those familiar with the events of WWII—Maleme, the airbase here was a primary target of the first German invasion forces—Imbros, the deep gorge used as the evacuation corridor for the Allies where they cast aside much of their equipment. The lack of concise and detailed forms of presentation is intriguing. As a private collection this is partly accounted for by Hatzidakis role as interpretive guide. Yet there are also overt associations with the “heroic figure” that fill this void. The interior walls are covered with portraits of Daskaloyannis, dramatic battle scenes and romantic images of WWII war heroes, and in the midst of it all a photograph of Hatzidakis himself. A great irony of the “war museum” is that it transforms abject side of material experience, the blood and death inflicted by weapons of war, into material display. Where is the melancholy in Hatzadakis’s museum? On one level, the process behind the presentation of these objects as culturally valuable displaces the trauma associated with the events of WWII (Nietzsche 1984; also see Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998). These objects are sanitized. Motor oil used to deter rust replaces the smell of hot metal and gunpowder. Unexploded bombs are now used as display stands. Yet perhaps more directly, the identification of these objects with a heroic memory-history serves to obfuscate the wounds inflicted by such experiences.

Hatzidakis belongs to a generation where such objects were part of the collective material experience. Therefore individuals of his generation related and still relate to these objects through experience and reminiscence whereas we understand the collection through language and history. These observations point to a third form of authenticity which is lies in very persona of Hatzidakis. From his performance of heroic poetry to his dress, Hatzidakis character is commensurate with the Cretan figure of resistance. In a sense the museum is less about things than it is about individuals like Hatzidakis. Hatzidakis, a performer of songs who bears the physical scar of war upon his body, presents himself as the ‘genuine’ Cretan partisan. What is on display is the very existence and vitality of the Cretan heroic figure.

These forms of authenticity are channels of legitimization. Still such issues are open to debate and are implicated at the level of community politics, hence a local museum rivalry. These three forms of authenticity are integral to the production of meaning; the production of Anderson’s “imagined communities”. This is “authenticity as a meditation and relationship of past and present” where Hatzidakis “mobiliz(es) heterogeneous assemblages of artifacts, reason, ingenuity, experiences, knowledges, interests, purposes” to such an end (Pearson and Shanks 2001, 115).

In Untimely Meditations Nietzsche refers to the notion of “plastic power”. For Nietzsche plastic power is “the capacity to develop out of oneself in one’s own way, to transform and incorporate into oneself what is past and foreign, to heal wounds, to replace what has been lost to recreate broken moulds” (1984, 62). Not only is the past is malleable, but it is necessarily so. This is Nietzsche’s central proposition in his essay “On the uses and disadvantages of history for life” in Untimely Meditations; “the unhistorical and historical are necessary in equal measure for the health of an individual, of a people and of a culture” (Ibid. 63). The message of the museum falls in sync with broader issues of heroic identity and continuities with such pasts. Suffering and loss, although part of the heroic story, is largely forgotten. What other forms does this take? What of the idiosyncrasies of use and consumption?

Return to Epic Memory Home

---

Forum Home  -  Site Home  -  Find Pages: