Multiplicities of Zero

Reading the title of Antonis Balasopoulos’s first book of poetry, Multiplicities of Zero (Thessaloniki: Σαιξπηρικόν/Saixpirikon, 2020), one wonders whether the poems were written with the gaze of the poetic subject fixed in the direction of Zero. Whether the poet, disappointed in the world, looked at the dazzling Zero straight in the eyes, and by looking away impressed the shadow of Erebus on the world.

Indeed, Multiplicities of Zero partakes in the tradition of Nihilism, sharing the diagnosis of a certain Nietzsche (and his epigones) that the 19th and 20th Centuries have evinced the existential and political destitution of the Western world. However, the participation of Multiplicities in this tradition is marginal and limited to as much its fruitful dialectics allow for. In other words, the “identification” with philosophical Nihilism exists in name only, as the intellectual and political process Multiplicities invoke stands in diametric opposition to Nihilism.

To prevail over Zero one needs to first navigate through it. A confrontation with Zero remains urgent. What sets Multiplicities apart from philosophical Nihilism lies in how Zero is perceived. Traditional philosophical Nihilism poses a unified Zero that manifests itself either as will-to-power (Nietzsche) or as a frame of undifferentiated beings (Heidegger). In that regard, there is a possibility for Zero to be perceived en masse as a “whole” either via a peculiar categorial intuition or via a fundamental mood. Thus, Zero is concentrated and diagnosed as “pure”; it is isolated, gathered up after dispersal, and becomes fully embodied as Terror, by a subjective pole lacking differentiation from what is real. Hence, the subject persists in Nihilism, and the latter is extended and fulfilled through the enactment of the very diagnosis. Like a self-fulfilled prophecy. In Multiplicities, Zero is not unified  – it remains scattered and dialectic.

Each of the 28 poems constitutes a submergence in a different way in which Zero was empirically subjectivized, in a crucial 20th century; a century in which political subjects experienced Terror through the brutal reality of War, the Holocaust, the uncanny, Capitalism. Zero refers to the dialectical void, to the rift between multiple subjects and the real. These are differentiated Zeros which never converge with themselves, nor do they result in a sterile self-referentiality. This is accomplished via the subjects-heroes of the poems, among which are Osip Mandelstam, Aris Velouchiotis, Miltos Stachtouris, Michalis Katsaros, James Joyce, Paul Celan.  

The poems bear an organic transformation of the human being. In this regard, there is an element of futurism in the poems, and in some the outlet is visible (while in others, such as “Lagoon” [Λιμνοθάλασσα], the outlet itself is the focus). Paraphrasing poet Stavros Zafiriou: There is a progressive development, a dialectic between the identity of the individual and its loss. In this process, the poetic subject takes an inner and an outer view, reflects, becomes the mirror of the passions of the self and the world, the resonator and the voice.

As translator and author Georgios Kentrotis observes, the collection carries an intense biblical element. In my view, the biblicism of Multiplicities, the language, and the symbolisms are reminding of Nietzsche. But the vision, the future prevalence over Zero, differs significantly from Nietzsche’s suggestions. In the shadow of Nihilism, Nietzsche conceives the “overman”, the “free spirit” that replaces truth with interpretation, and which has the life force, the health and the stomach to organically transform oneself and become a life-affirming will-to-power. However, in this Nietzschean  process reality crumbles within voluntarism; it becomes a derivative of will. Nietzsche conceives the process of transformation as a process of metabolism and for this reason he often uses the symbolism of the stomach. The spirit is a stomach that, in its decadent form, is omnivorous and consumes everything in sight; it is a stomach suffering from indigestion and which is incapable of transformation. The stomach of the “overman” is a selective stomach which assimilates and digests the external other, and avoids the consumption of what it would be unable to digest. Thus, prevailing over Nihilism is conceived as a cultural transformation in individualistic and elitist terms.

The symbols of the “stomach”, “the abdomen” and the “entrails” appear in various points in Multiplicities. These are either empty stomachs or the stomach of the cetacean that has consumed the protagonist. Here, the empty stomach (or abdomen) points to a hungry subject: it reveals destitution, inequality, violence of war. It also reveals the potential for insurgence, the potential for insurgent language to reverberate. For equality.

Dr Christos Hadjioannou

Department of Classics and Philosophy, University of Cyprus