1. Synopsis

2. Genre

3. Style

4. Structure

5. Title

6. Publication history and critical reception

7. Further reading

8. References

9. External links

Synopsis

Genre

With the people from the bridge is a cross-genre work combining prose narrative with dramatic monologues written in poetry form.^[10] Verse soliloquies, elements of staging and ritual as well as choral incantations and simple descriptions are combined to create a polyvalent text approximating both poetry and drama.^[9] The makeshift stage as well as the presence of actors give the text its dramatic character, while action and setting, filtered through a spectator's perspective, bring to prominence the dimension of storytelling. Self-reflexive theatricality achieved through a clear-cut presentation of the division of spectators, actors and director^[11] and accounted for by the unifying voice of an external narrator leads to the work's classification as a piece of metatheatre. Further, and due to a constellation of elements including broken narrative, fragmented characters and illusory/imagistic setting, conveyed in the form of a personal experience of an audience member, the work has been categorized as a dinstinctively postmodern play. However, because of its allegiance and focus on a Grand Narrative reconstruction it seems to stand at a distance from postmodern associations.^[12]

Style

The book exhibits a version of postmodern eclecticism,^[13] alternating poetry with prose parts. Despite its postmodern affinities, it can be construed, however, in line with the High Modernist tradition setting aside the postmodern playfulness for a serious and earnest handling of subject.^[12] The text develops in a series of intermittent monologues interspersed with biblical excerpts and the comments of the first-order narrator. The biblical elements together with vampiric and dystopian images work in tandem, creating a sense of foreboding and entrapment.^[5]Language is sparse and fragmentary, leaving enough loopholes to be completed by the reader^[14] and making no explicit mention of its vampire-related theme in order to reveal its storyline in a gradual and minimalist manner.^[15] Short declarative sentences are used to convey immediacy and facticity in the depiction of a grim world.^[16] Allusions and a wealth of cultural references are conveyed through sparse and seemingly casual monologues^[9] and which, at the same time, account for the text heading simultaneously at different directions.^[17] On occasions, the monologues seems to be ungrammatical and on others the characters seem to be turning back on their words. There is an effect akin to stream of consciousness,^[18] the text, however, develops in a linear way among the overlapping stories of the four protagonists. Ellipsis in narrative conjoined with simplicity of stage movement and the framework of a predominantly static performance, point to ritual as well as ritualistic theatre.

Structure

The work is structured in the form of an external-frame narrative by a first-order, unreliable narrator^[19] (the narrator of Exit) who sets the stage for the development of the inside story. Within this master narrative, four hyponarratives by Narrator (internal/second-order), Chorus, LG and NCTV contribute fragments of the story from their own point of view. As different narratives within the play intertwine, new elements come to the foreground but there is also a sense in which each individual narration overlaps with the others creating an effect of multiple focalization.^[20] The language of the text is simple and idiomatic while the syntax is occasionally disrupted by lacunae as well as incomplete sentences.^[8] Partial fragmentation combines, however, with a more conventional (although most of the time elliptical) linguistic use for the purpose of bringing forward the storytelling-like character of the work.

Title

An earlier version of the text, similar in subject matter and structure but significantly different in content and style was published in 2001 in Greek and German^[21] and in 2005 in English under the title Nyctivoe.^[22] The term Nyctivoe, a rare ancient Greek adjective, appears in an incantation to the goddess of the moon^[23] in Magical Papyri, a syncretic compilation of texts from the Hellenistic Period focusing on sorcery and folk religion.^[24] In the previous version of the book, Nyctivoe is a proper name ascribed to the female character of the story, substituted in the new version by NCTV (the sequence of consonants in Nyctivoe).

The current title makes reference both to the setting where the events in the book are described to take place as well as to the bridge crossed by the crowd in the final part of the book. The bridge as the symbol of passage from the world of the living to the realm of the dead relates to the Chinvat bridge in the Zoroastrian religion.^[8] Also, the bridge is a symbol of a non-place^[25] relating to the name of the station(Nichtovo) the narrator of the book recalls to have arrived at. From a perspective of social commentary on contemporary events the title has been also interpreted to point to the "living bridge" of illegal immigrants seeking a Promised Land of plenty.^[19]

Publication history and critical reception

The first edition of With the People from the Bridge had received a number of twenty-one unanimously positive international reviews until autumn 2018.^[26] The book has been the subject of a considerable amount of scholarly criticism^[27] and also appears in the course contents of various university curricula on postmodern fiction.^[28] A second edition was published in October 2018 ({{ISBN|9781910323915}}).

Further reading

• A 6000 words essay by Robert Zaller, analyzing Lyacos's trilogy in the Journal of Poetics Research
• A special feature on Dimitris Lyacos's trilogy on the Bitter Oleander Magazine^[29] including extensive excerpts and a long interview with the author^[29]
• John Taylor interviews Dimitris Lyacos. Gulf Coast (magazine), Issue 30.1, Winter/Spring 2018, Houston USA, (pp.277-286)^[30]
• Overview of the Poena Damni trilogy in Cleaver Magazine:

References

External links

• An excerpt from the book published in Trafika Europe magazine
• An interview with the author in The Writing Disorder Magazine

• Terry Lewis (musician)
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