The publisher and editor in chief of PARIANA magazine Nikos Aliprantis during our meeting this winter.

The last issue of the PARIANA magazine and some of the books by Nikos Aliprantis.

PARIANA

Text: Avgi Kalogianni

A journey of 44 years is coming to an end

Captained by Nikos Chr. Aliprantis, the boat of PARIANA has travelled us, over all these years, across the seas of Parian history, tradition, arts and letters providing us with valuable insights and intellectual stimulation.

When I visited Paros in the far-gone year of 1979, as part of a series of educational trips organized by the then Tourist Guides School, I took back with me a guide entitled “Paros – Antiparos” written by brothers Theologos and Nikos Chr. Aliprantis. I still have this guide and I keep referring to it whenever I need some information about the history and figures of Paros.

This is how I first came into contact with Nikos Aliprantis’ work and got a taste of his personality. Yet, my relationship with the island of Paros was to get deeper and closer and my interest in history and culture more profound after the publication of the magazine you are now holding in your hands when I started writing pieces mainly related to the history, architecture and archeology of Paros and Antiparos. My assistant in the writing of these texts was often Nikos Aliprantis’ PARIANA.

Whether the topic was about architecture or history, I knew that I could always turn to PARIANA for valid, reliable and thorough information and, as the author Angelos Sinanis writes in his Facebook post on November 6, 2023, “Some things, it seemed to me, would last forever. Likewise, some academic journals of panhellenic – and broader – scope”. So I, too, thought that PARIANA would be around forever and that, every three months, a new issue would be released with invariably thought-provoking content that I would find at a friend’s house or in another’s shop. I was so convinced of that, that all these years, I neglected – I’m embarrassed to say –to subscribe to the journal and to interview its editor, Nikos Chr. Aliprantis.

I was informed of the news of the suspension of the publication of the journal, a 44-year long venture, by the aforementioned Sinanis’ post, and I must admit that the shock was immense. In fact, back then, I was, once again, about to delve into PARIANA for information on the Dimitrakopoulos Residence. So, some time later, I met Mr. Aliprantis who obliged me by not only giving me the issue I needed but also, with the kindness and simplicity that characterizes him, by offering me the last two issues of the magazine as well as two more of his books. He didn’t grant me an interview –he is too modest for that– instead, he gave me a text where, as he said, I would find all the information concerning himself.

So I’ve picked what seemed to me to be the most important of his life’s facts: a Commendation of the Academy of Athens and a first prize of the Union of Tourism Journalists and Writers of Greece in 1995 for PARIANA; innumerable publications of academic articles and studies in magazines and yearbooks, such as the Cycladic Studies Yearbook; and memberships in scientific committees related to the study of the history, nomenclature, and genealogies of Greece, and especially the Cyclades. Out of the fifty or so books he has penned, the one that deserves special mention is the outstanding, in my opinion, Chronological Panorama of the History of Paros, a modern Parian Chronicle featuring the most important events of the island’s history from 5000 BC through to 1850 AD.

A veritable wordsmith, a tireless inquirer into archives and sources, a deeply religious, and at the same time lyrical and sensitive person – this is Nikos Aliprantis as we got to know him through his writings. The entire body of his work exudes an enormous love for Paros, his birthplace, which has certainly honoured him on several occasions, and which must be considered particularly blessed for the gift of its worthy child. And the question that arises in the minds of the journal’s friends is whether, after his retirement, there will be someone willing to take over.