Mr. Deane's latest inspired work, Dimitri turns a witch into a goddess is a tragi-comic examination of a life that gives itself to the service of tradition and ideals that are rooted deep in the past. For Dimitri, the eponymous protagonist of this excellent work, the chthonic and empyrean deities of legendary history are as vital as they were when they were the focus of faith. For him, spirituality is not a condition to be studied or the subject of intellectual pursuits of scholars, such as archaeologists who imposed anachronistic values on the finds they misappropriate. Dimitri is a natural saint or holy man, externally torn between the ancient, mythical faiths of ancient Crete, and the modern Greek Orthodox faith. Yet his soul is independent of any religion. He can do his duty without the rigours or promises of any creed, even when his duty requires him to perform superhuman feats on behalf of either creed. Dimitri is a self-effacing, demure character who delights in solitude and who is exasperated by the delights and temptations of the flesh, though he does not condemn or despise them in others. He is not concerned with the concept of sin, though he intuitively lives a virtuous life without assuming others should live by his idea of right. Nevertheless, those around him know instinctively that he lives as a righteous man should.
Dimitri is not strongly drawn into the pursuits that tempt others. He is curious but not fascinated by athletic competition that delights Evander, a character who delights in horse racing and who apparently arrives to displace Dimitri, a substitute for religion or belief. Such a pastime is not an end in itself. Evander is balanced by the more effete Michalis Midasakis who always carries a book and likes to live what he regards a life of the mind, much to the chagrin of his father Georgios, a landowner, attached to the land and who struggles to maintain patrician traditions. To do so he hopes to acquire the residual holdings of his nieces, the Sfakianakis sisters.
Dimitri has a great deal of sympathy with Georgios Midasakis, respecting him as a patrician, a surviving scion from the distant past. Nevertheless, his lineage is precipitous; he quietly despairs of his only son of whom he says, ""My son, Michalis, is probably even odder than my nephew. He pares back all his fingernails every week, except for the ones on his little fingers. He says that a gentleman needs those two long so he can clean the wax out of his ears. Also, when they are long they prove he does not do manual labour for a living." Though both Georgios and Dimitri are at very different rungs in the social hierarchy they do not disagree in their views on the purpose of life. Both aspire to autarky. They are not torn between the intellectual and the physical, or impelled by passion to satisfy their own desires. Though both Evander and Michalis, representatives of the next generation, are notorious for their oddity, they remain attractive as eligible bachelors falling as they do within acceptable social parameters. Dimitri and Georgios are outside the mainstream, though the former is revered as he is exploited and the latter is held in awe as he exploits. The two lifestyle of Evander and Michalis are the fruits of modem decadence because they are both foreign to the heroic vision of the spirit that constituted the axis of the best Western classical traditions.
Dimitri's spirituality essential to his vitality; it is the spirit that flows from preceding generations that precede recorded history. In death, he does not seek redemption or eternal life. He apotheoses Thalia to impart of divine continuity to the land he has cultivated. He engenders a goddess who will revive a spiritual autarky to his fatherland, a renewal that will make an economic autarky more possible. a way of life and that its measure does not consist of notions, theories, and ideas that have been stored in one's head.