A story on family memory and storytelling by Mariza Krallis

What a strange yet beautiful name for a fairy tale title! “Achliptaruda”! A tale, which Konstantinos D. Kalligeris, used to narrate for his children, in wintertime, when they were, some sitting and others “kneeling” (γονύδι), around the great hearth of their house in Sykamia, about 1875. How Imaginative that very word! Combining “achlia” (ash) and “p’tar'” (meatball/pie), we get the word “achliup’tar'” (neuter) which describes, in the local dialect, one who sits too close to the fire, almost on the “achlia”, because they are cold. [1]

The plot of this improvised tale and the manner of composition of its subsequent episodes remain unknown, but it features as a favourite of Konstantinos’ children in the diary, which his son Stratis composed at the young age of 21, to record the important events that shaped his life up to that time. The teenage Greek subjects, inhabitants of Ottoman Lesvos, Angeliko, Marianthi, Ourania, Stratis, Dimitros and Achilleas, thus listen with anticipation to their father’s fairy tales, participating in a scene repeated over the centuries since the time of the bards, when storytelling and poetic creation became the cohesive “software” of human communities. [2]

The 49-year-old father, who was born in Filia in 1826, grew up in the commercial hub of Smyrna and, having struggled in the course of his life for the well-being of his family, already knew that: “Logic will take you from A to Z. Imagination will get you everywhere”. [3] With his fairytales, Konstantinos awakened his children’s imagination and their innate tendency to learn, while also cultivating their creative thinking. Later, the course of his son’s life confirmed the value of his pedagogical schemes. Perhaps it was precisely this imagination, and the open horizons offered by the fairytale in question, that led his son Stratis to leave his homeland and build his own fortune in Egypt.

Observation, flexibility of thought, adaptability and social skills are, according to modern psychologists, skills and attributes that children using their imagination develop. Modern pedagogy relates that the stories that parents make up for their children, often with their own input, are extremely important and beneficial to their growth and development. As for play and storytelling, both have transmuted, in our digital age, into the so-called “gamification” of knowledge of online education. [4]