14/06/2012: Fotis Komborozos                                    

“...Poetry is life,Art is spice!”    F. M.

These two lines concisely describe the full meaning of poetry and art in our life. Poetry gives us impetus and enthusiasm when we live with it and feel it, while art offers us the perfume of life, a perfume that delights our mind and senses.

We greet with great pleasure the poetic appearance of Eftichia Matalon, who writes under the pen name of Felicity Mat. Her book Echoes of the Soul and the Mind has recently been published by Harmos Publications in Athens, Greece. The first positive impression one gets is due to the artistic, original and tasteful cover, which shows a red bud on a background of blue and green hues, a symbol of the poet’s wish for spiritual and psychological enhancement of the reader deriving from the book’s contents.

The poet, who is of Greek Jewish origin, writes in Greek (her mother tongue) and in English. Using an original poetic form - a dialogue among the personified reflections, poems, elegies and aphorisms which represent the four basic entities of the book - she determines the characteristic elements of each one of them and specifies the content of the different parts that make up her book.

Charismatic in her handling of language and in perfect command of her means of expression, always with inexhaustible euphoria, she conveys her impressions and reactions with originality and offers us a poetry rich in images, using lively, regular and flowing verse with expressions and rhythms that serve her lyrical disposition. Driven by nostalgia, memories and dreams in which one often discerns a hidden sadness, she offers a wealth of tender feelings and elation, where are combined the vulnerability of a soul that has suffered and the poet’s reflective experience. The war, the tragedies and the suffering that followed, have influenced her intellectual orientations. Through her verses, she approaches affectionately and tenderly circumstances and scenes where the human drama has unfolded. The suffering of the soul and a hidden dramatic tendency are rendered with symbolic extensions, sensitivity and deep thought.

Felicity Mat’s moving poems are characterized by a tendency to perfection. Full of meaning, they express a philosophical disposition and a universality in their messages, as well as the passion of a full and intense life, where one can also see a romantic depth in the distant past.

Finally, I would like to cite here some very characteristic verses from Felicity Mat’s poem “The

Poet’s Talent”:           Sensitive and refined, the poet’s talent...

                                    ...Its fine touch and sonority,

                                    Its symbolic meaning and colouring!...

How true is the meaning of this poem! I must beg our humble poet’s forgiveness, but the way I see it is that these verses reflect her own self. In her work, we find everywhere feelings of love and affection for the human being, a constant tendency to perfection, an idealization of special moments and situations, nostalgia for youth and romantic experiences. Her verses, which are transformed into joyful images (nature’s beauty, idyllic landscapes, the Greek islands) but also into unpleasant and dreadful pictures (the Holocaust, scenes of savagery and misery) lead not only to the reader’s catharsis, but to her own catharsis as well.

In Felicity Mat’s book, dominate the feelings which:  ...Have transformed themselves into poems

                                                                           That speak of life and death

                                                                           Love and hate, beauty and ugliness!...

She appeals, she calls on to them to remain with her:  ...Help me to beautify my life.

                                                                             Keep away the undesirable

                                                                             And bring forward pleasure!

Finally, this is the revelation of the book: Poetry can bring bliss. It can bring the true happiness lacking in our lives and in our society!

F. K., Director of the Hellenic Cultural Centre and Library of Montreal

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