Dimitris Liantinis
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Dimitris Liantinis (born 23 July 1942, in Greek: Δημήτρης Λιαντίνης, also transliterated as Dimitris Liadinis) was a Greek deputy professor at University of Athens and writer of 8 books, including Gemma (book) (Γκέμμα).
He has achieved popularity in Greece because of his strange and unexplained dissapearance in a morning of 1998 at the age of 56 years when he left a letter to his family[1] (wife and a daughter) and was never seen again. It is thought that he commited suicide in 1998 on the mountains of Taigetos. His last university lecture was delivered on 13 May 1998. In his letter to his family he wrote "I go away by my own will. I dissapear standing, strong, and proud."[1]
A taxi driver in Greece has claimed that he saw Liantinis as a customer to his taxi car near Sparti (near Taigetos) the day he dissapeared, and claimed that he was wearing a blue shirt and white footwear. In 2005 some human bones where found in the area.[2][3]
It has been claimed that in one of his books, Gemma, he described a philosophical viewpoint that some people consider it being related to his future dissapearance: he wrote that love and death are the same thing and that "I will die, Death, when I want and not when you want. In this last act, your desire is not going to be realised, it is my desire which will be realised. I fight against your will. I fight your power. I fight all of your entity. I will enter into the earth when I decide, not when you decide."
After his mysterious dissapearance, a small minority of people in Greece linked the name of Dimitris Liantinis to various alternative conspiracy theories in Greece (such as that he had been a member of Omada E) which are nevertheless not believed by the majority of people.
Dimitris Alikakos published a biography of Dimitris Liantinis in 2006, published by Livanis Publishing House under the title Liantinis: I lived alone and strong.
In his last lecture (as it is available from liantinis.gr) he made comments that were in support of cremation. At the time (1998), cremation was not legal, nor available, in Greece.
After his dissapearance, a website named liantinis.gr was appeared, but as the website claims the Liantinis family (wife and daughter) asked the authorities to delete it from the Greek DNS domain registry in December 2005.[4]
Some people believe that Liantinis took his own life as a protest against what he saw as the lack of values in the modern Greek society. In his last letter, according to liantinis.gr, he wrote: "My last act has the meaning of protest for the evil that we, the adults, prepare for the innocent new generations that are coming. We live our life eating their flesh. A very bad evil. My unhappiness for this crime kills me."[1]
A website named liantinis.gr claims that in November 1996 Dimitris Liantinis wrote a handwritten letter to Apostolos Kokoris, one of his students and friends, in which he wrote: "I ask my friend Apostolos Kokoris, member of the police, and one of the best members of the Ministry of Public Order, that in case something bad happens to me, he take personally the realisation of the act, this means the ritual. And to realise my last will, which is on my body in written form. And this has the meaning of the testament of a dead person. It is, this means, respectable above the usual laws of the humans."[1]
Dimitris Liantinis had the custom to teach his students not only in the university classroom, but also to take them to ancient archaeological sites in Greece (usually in the spring, every May[5]) and teach them there, next to ancient Greek sites.[6]
According to a website named liberopoulos.gr, Liantinis's wife, Nikolitsa Georgopoulou-Liantini, a philosophy professor in Greece[7], claimed that her husband was still alive, that she possessed important documents about the case, that journalists exploit the name of her husband for their own career, and that Liantinis is very intelligent and also a poet and therefore we have to read his writings in the correct way and not as the journalists interpret them[6].
According to a website named liantinis.gr, a student of Liantinis claims that Liantinis said during his lectures that one of his book, Gemma, was his "last breath".[5]
On a website named liantinis.gr, a video hosted by Google Video incorporates TV coverage where his wife says that Liantinis was born with another name and that he legally changed his name to Liantinis at his own choice.[8]
Quotations
- Whenever two people fall in love, the universe is born.
- Whenever a person dies, the universe dies.
- The 92 elements of matter where created in order to serve love and death.
- We are afraid of death because we are egoists. (from his last lecture)
References
- ^ a b c d http://www.liantinis.gr/gramma.shtml
- ^ http://www.hri.org/cgi-bin/brief?/news/grpapers/typos/2005/05-07-06.typos.html#08
- ^ http://www.liantinis.gr/content.php?category=39
- ^ http://www.liantinis.gr/diagrafi.shtml
- ^ a b http://www.liantinis.gr/content.php?id=37
- ^ a b http://liberopoulos.gr/listcats.php?subaction=showfull&id=1126181836&archive=&start_from=&ucat=36&show_cat=36
- ^ http://liberopoulos.gr/listcats.php?subaction=showcomments&id=1126181836&archive=&start_from=&ucat=36&show_cat=36&page_num=2
- ^ http://www.liantinis.gr/content.php?category=43