Dr Aristides George Paradissis

The Man We Barely Knew

The Life and Works of
Dr Aristides George Paradissis, in Historical Context

Izmir, the Turkish version of its original Greek name Smyrna, is now the second-largest port and third-largest city (2.5 million) in Turkey. Found on the Aegean Sea on the innermost reaches of the Gulf of Izmir, it is a city of great historic importance with artefacts dating back beyond 3,000BC. The area was first settled by Ionian Greeks in about 600BC who established the city of Smyrna, now İzmir. It was later conquered by the Persians, retaken by the Greeks, before being subsumed into the Roman Empire. After the split of the Roman Empire, the area became part of the Byzantine Empire until conquered by the Ottoman Turks in the 14th century. Following the First World War the province was ceded to Greece, but was soon retaken by the forces of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1923). As a result of the Treaty of Lausanne, all Greek Orthodox inhabitants of the province had to leave, and İzmir Province was incorporated into the modern republic of Turkey. Despite the religious exodus, Izmir today remains the home of a large and influential Greek community. Though its name has changed between Smyrna to Izmir several times over the centuries, for many Greeks the name remains unchanged.

In the mid-1890s, Elias Paradissis, a Greek resident of Izmir and his business partner discovered a potentially viable deposit of mercury. Elias travelled to London to arrange finance to develop this mineral resource, to discover on his return that his partner had sold their interest in the discovery.

Out of work and with the need to support his wife and six children, Elias travelled to Russia seeking employment, only to be told, “Try China”. His vocation or the nature of his business is no longer known, but acting on this advice, Elias travelled to China in 1898 via Siberia and settled in the naval port city of Chefoo (now Yantai), in the Shantung (Shandong) province, almost due east of Peking (Beijing). In 1900 his six children joined him, including George aged seven, his wife having died shortly before.

In China, at the turn of the twentieth century, anti-government, nationalist, racist, anti-Christian and anti-foreigner sentiments grew and secret societies proliferated. The best-known of these was the Boxers, the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, based in Shantung, so named because of the large number of its members who engaged in the sport of boxing. Its motto was “Protect the dynasty, exterminate the foreigners” and on the fourth of December 1899 a revolt was sparked that history remembers as the Boxer Rebellion. In the following year, attacks targeting Christians and foreigners broke out across China. None of the Paradissis family was harmed, but this was the start of a period of frequent civil and military turmoil that characterised the family’s life in China for the next half-century.

On reaching adulthood, brothers Alexander and George Paradissis founded a silk trading business and they later went on to also develop a successful trade exporting Chinese-made women’s hairnets, principally to the USA. In 1922, in Egypt, George married a young Greek woman, Adamantia, who was born in Egypt of Cephalonian parents, whom he met on one of his silk trading trips. Their first offspring, Aristides George (Ted) Paradissis, entered the world on 14 July 1923. His brother Homer was born in 1929.

The Paradissis family was culturally isolated in Chefoo; there were then only ten other Greeks in that city. A schism had divided the Christian Church into the Church of Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church for a millennium. The children of this Greek Orthodox family had to be educated in Protestant mission schools and the family worshipped in the Russian Orthodox Church, a spiritually compatible denomination, but nonetheless, significant departures from their established cultural traditions.

Ted started his education at the protestant China Inland Mission School in Chefoo and it is thought the children of the previous Paradissis generation also attended there. During the Boxer Uprising attacks in 1900 The China Inland Mission lost more members throughout China than any other mission: 58 adults and 21 children were killed. Later, in 1942, the Chefoo mission school was closed and all its staff and pupils were interned by the Japanese.

Perhaps precipitated by the onset of Japanese military raids into China beginning in 1931 and with the attraction of a more cosmopolitan environment, in 1932 Ted’s father George left the business he shared with his brother and moved his family south, by ship, to Shanghai. His children Ted and Homer were aged nine and three respectively. The family quickly become part of the local Greek community of about one hundred, and George Paradissis established a coffee and cigarette importing and wholesale company. It was a prosperous enterprise until, in 1942, it was confiscated by the occupying Japanese military. This destroyed the spirit and the health of the company’s founder, who died in October 1943 at the age of forty-nine.

In 1931 the Second Sino-Japanese War started intermittently, with isolated Japanese military incursions into China until, in June 1937, it began in earnest when Japan invaded China and bombed urban areas without warning, resulting in millions of deaths. Shanghai was hard-hit, perhaps because of the internationally diverse ethnicity of many of the population and because of Shanghai’s importance as the principal gateway for China’s diplomatic, trade and cultural links with the world.

In Shanghai, after completing his primary school years, Ted attended the cosmopolitan English-speaking Saint Jeanne D’Arc College and then Saint Francis Xavier's College, a college founded by Jesuit Fathers in 1893. There he passed his matriculation exams at the age of sixteen. When he reached the requisite entrance age, in 1940, Ted matriculated and began studying in the French-language section of the French Université l'Aurore in Shanghai where he studied economics and law. Enrolling in the French-language section enabled him to advance his French language skills and, remarkably, he gained his Licence en Droit (French law degree) in just two years, graduating in June 1943, shortly before his twentieth birthday.

After their business was confiscated in 1942 the family initially subsisted on donations from the International Red Cross and, upon the death of his father in 1943, Ted became head of his family. To supplement their meagre income he undertook teaching work where it could be found, including time at Saint Jeanne D’Arc’s College where he had been a pupil.

Ted, his mother and his younger brother Homer survived the war and for about a year during 1945-46 Ted was employed as an interpreter in Shanghai for a U.S. Army Military Police battalion (United States Army Criminal Investigation Command), using his multiple language skills in Mandarin, Shanghainese, English and French. Of course he also spoke Greek fluently as that was the principal language spoken at home, but his written skills in that language were, so far, not of a high standard.

In 1945 the Nationalist Chinese forces reoccupied Shanghai from the Japanese, but they eventually collapsed to the Chinese communists and Chiang Kai-shek fled to Formosa (now Taiwan) on the 10th December 1949. With the mounting success of the communist forces’ drive south led by Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), to escape the civil war and in search of greater job opportunities, in January 1947 the family fled to Egypt.

Once in Egypt they were in the company of family from Ted’s mother’s side in Egypt; his mother having been born there. They soon became part of the strong Greek community, which helped Ted to consolidate his sense of Greek identity. Through this community affiliation he met and fell in love with a young Egyptian-born woman of Greek parents, Antigone Catravas. She was nineteen and her father refused them permission to marry until she reached the age of twenty-one. Ted taught English and French at British schools at Alexandria while his brother Homer worked as a civilian employee of the British Army, but the family again found itself in a theatre of increasing conflict as Egypt became embroiled in civil ferment.

In those colonial times in North Africa, France controlled Syria and Lebanon, and Great Britain controlled Palestine, Transjordania and Egypt (which included the Suez Canal owned by the multinational Suez Canal Company). The defeat of the Egyptian, Lebanese, Syrian and Jordanian coalition, formed to attack the newly created state of Israel, increased the xenophobia against foreigners and intolerance and protest towards the Egyptian royal family. In 1952, there was a successful coup d´état, the country became a republic and its new president, General Gamal Abdel Nasser, began forcing Greeks living in Egypt to leave the country. The expiry of Suez Canal Company’s ninety-nine year lease, granted in 1856, was on the verge of expiry and Nasser nationalised the canal in 1956. This led to yet another dangerously serious international crisis, followed by several decades of pro-independence uprisings throughout the continent of Africa. On twenty-third of December 1956, on Nasser’s orders, the statue of Count Ferdinand de Lesseps, which had stood at Port Said at the entrance to the canal, was demolished. De Lesseps the visionary French diplomat who was responsible for the construction of the canal was the first chairman of the Suez Canal Company. It was also his vision that led to the construction of the Panama Canal.

Soon after the Second World War Australia opened its doors to migrants, particularly from Western and Southern Europe, who sought refuge from their war-ravaged countries. Those people, in return, took their skills, their qualifications and their Western cultural compatibility to Australia, contributing to the growth of that developing country struggling to recover from the damaging social and economic effects of its involvement in the Second World War, and from the loss of many of its young men. One immediate and significant outcome of this immigration initiative was that Australia changed from a society comprised mainly of citizens of UK and Irish heritage into a trans-European multi-ethnic melting pot, a development that mirrored the similar transformation of the USA some decades before.

As the internal situation in Egypt deteriorated and, anticipating imminent problems for foreigners, Ted explored migration opportunities. He applied to several countries and it was Australia which granted him a visa and he was offered a position as a high school teacher in Tasmania. Ted took the courageous decision to accept the offer and he arrived alone in October 1949 to take up his job. His mother and brother Homer joined him in April 1950 and he then awaited the arrival of Antigone when she reached the age of twenty-one.

This reunification was the end of over half a century of the wider family on the move in search of safe refuge from civil strife and military conflict and it marked the beginning of a fresh start; a settled life in Australia.

On the sixth February 1951, his strikingly beautiful fiancée and her mother arrived in Melbourne from Egypt and four days later Antigone (Ada) and Ted
were married. Ada’s father joined them in Melbourne about two years later after settling his business affairs in Egypt. After a year together in Tasmania, the family chose to settle in Melbourne, where greater vocational, cultural and academic opportunities beckoned. Ted was appointed to a position at Trinity Grammar School, Kew, teaching French and English, starting at the beginning of the 1952 school year.

Many former Trinity boys will have memories of a gentle, compassionate and caring man; well-dressed and sophisticated, who had a guiding influence on them. It was not uncommon for boys to receive extra tuition in his home; such was his interest in their academic success, and where his charming wife Ada welcomed them with refreshments. While at Trinity, Ted studied extramurally for a B.A. at the University of London through The University of Melbourne, majoring in Ancient Greek. He gained his BA (Hons), much of the study for which he undertook during his daily tram rides to and from work.

In 1958 he was enticed to Essendon Grammar, beginning there at the start of the third term. By that time he had begun work on his Master’s thesis at The University of Melbourne. This job change meant his work was closer to his home and he had more time to devote to his studies and to helping to raise their newly born son Michael. The headmaster of Essendon Grammar at the time, Frank Shann Jnr. was a former pupil and teacher at Trinity and was the son of former Trinity headmaster Frank Shann (1917-1943).

At Essendon Grammar the school benefited from Ted’s passion for theatre, with his involvement in the school’s drama programme and he took a keen interest in improvements to the library. He also transformed the school magazine, Triune, into more a journal of written expression than before. In 1959 he introduced audio-visual language teaching to Essendon, the first school in Australia to use this technique. His time at Essendon Grammar was short and he moved to Strathmore High School briefly before engaging in full-time postgraduate study and the further pursuit of academic achievement.

Undoubtedly it would have taken him several years to adapt to and settle in the vastly different environment that was Australia in the 1950s – and to find his true vocation. With several school-teaching positions in little more than a decade, there can be little doubt that Ted did not settle well into that vocation and he certainly did not achieve a sense of being appreciated and valued. Perhaps differences in cultural background, his own stricter Jesuit schooling and pupils with different academic aspirations from his own, caused him difficulty in adjusting to the more casual, rough-and-tumble antipodean way of life. While at Trinity Grammar, commuting from his home in Essendon each day meant it was impractical for him to become involved in the school’s extracurricular activities, which possibly put him at a disadvantage in achieving a sense of true belonging within the Trinity community.

In 1959 he presented his Master’s thesis in French, L’humanisme d’Antoine de Sainte-Expupéry and was awarded an MA (Hons). The following year he began researching and writing his 753-page doctoral thesis entitled Humour and Satire in Balzac, under the supervision of Professor Jackson. He became a part-time lecturer in French at The University of Melbourne which, with the compassion of hindsight and recognising his future academic successes, signalled that, at last, he had found his true vocational home. In 1962 he travelled to Paris with his wife and son to continue his doctoral research. While there he did a course for foreign students at the "Institut de Phonetique" and came first among over 100 students. He also attended a series of lectures by Professor Castex at the Sorbonne, France’s leading Balzac specialist. Being a mature age student and researcher for his PhD, Professor Castex befriended Ted and it was he who suggested Ted go to Chantilly to search for unpublished works by Balzac. Ted did discover an unpublished work at Chantilly which he subsequently published in his book Annee Balzacienne. The family returned to Melbourne after about nine months, and he defended his thesis in 1964.

In 1964 La Trobe University was established as Victoria’s third university and the soon-to-be Dr Paradissis became a foundation member of the staff as a lecturer in French. In 1967 Ted became a senior lecturer, a position he held until his retirement in 1985. In the early days of his tenure at La Trobe he studied Spanish and was the first student there to gain a Master’s Degree in that language. His thesis titled Bondad y Maldad en algunas obras de Benito Pérez Galdós (Kindness and wickedness in some works of Benito Perez Galdos) and he was awarded his second MA (Hons). In 1974 the family spent almost seven months in Spain, enabling Ted to research some Galdós manuscripts and to experience a brief period of total immersion in Spanish language and culture. During his career at La Trobe that spanned two decades he lectured in World Literature and both French and Spanish Language and Literature.

After twenty-one years at La Trobe, in 1985 at the age of 62, Dr Ted Paradissis took early retirement to devote more time to his writing. In the years that followed he added significantly to his already impressive list of literary and poetical works; in 1971 he became the first Australian of Greek heritage to publish a book of poetry in English with his collections of poems A Tree at the Gate. His literary tally is an impressive 126 works, comprising collections of poetry, short stories and academic works in English, Greek, French and Spanish. His one novel, Dragonsleep, a story inspired by his wartime experiences, was published in 1995. Some of his poems are included in anthologies, such as An Endless Place, a collection of 3305 poems from authors in Australia, New Zealand and the United States published by the International Library of Poetry in 1999, which included his award-winning poem “Old Known Friends”. His last work, Poem Written on a Paper Towel was in fact, a poem written on a paper towel while he was in palliative care at Cotham Private Hospital, Kew, shortly before he passed away.


POEM WRITTEN ON A PAPER TOWEL

By A.G. Paradissis



The Great Grey Ship sails through the stellar night

and storms of particles that line the Milky Way:

the crew and passengers inside remain bright

and warm as they slowly approach Infinity Bay.

Bottles bloated bellies narrow beds that move:

this starship transports the sick in their longer orbits

and busy busy nurses gladly prove

that tricking the stars is still worth a few plaudits.

In the corridors food-trollies trundling along

bring us back to this Earth with a nearly soundless thud

as French Impressionists cling to the walls and their song:

“Vite, messieurs, le temps passe!” Ignore the blood

and the pain as you travel on a travelling day

buffeted by boundaries on the way to Infinity Bay.


On the 23rd December 2005 Ted died at the age of 83, survived by Ada, his adoring wife of 55 years and their son Michael. He died of pancreatic cancer.

A review of his many achievements reveals an outstanding linguistic talent, literary creativity and seemingly boundless intellectual energy. At Trinity, in the 1950s, nothing was known by his pupils, and perhaps even by his teaching colleagues, of his precocious academic success and his painful past. The full potential of the man was, yet, not revealed, and in any event would have been beyond the perception, understanding and appreciation of mere teenagers, reluctantly struggling to learn the basics of French.

His life and work is being (2010) researched as a component of a PhD thesis-in-progress by Catalina Ribas Segura. Catalina is a PhD candidate at the University of Barcelona and lecturer in English Language and Culture in the majors of Media Studies, Journalism and Teacher Training at the University College Alberta Giménez (Palma de Mallorca). Catalina is working towards getting his works better known in Europe and has delivered papers on Ted at European universities. She has travelled to Shanghai, Melbourne and Sydney on more than one occasion in pursuit of her research. It is gratifying that a comprehensive study of his life and times will be recorded and preserved in the archives of academia.

Law graduate, interpreter, teacher, polyglot, author, poet, scholar, devoted husband and father, Ted Paradissis had a powerful and positive influence on the many whose lives were touched by this extraordinary humble man. He is remembered as one who made a significant and lasting contribution to the academic and literary evolution of his adopted country.



Graeme Bridge
Wellington, New Zealand

Sources:
Mrs Ada Paradissis
Mr Homer Paradissis
Catalina Ribas Segura, lecturer, University of Barcelona
www.austlit.edu.au, The Resource for Australian Literature
Library of The University of Melbourne
Library of La Trobe University, Melbourne
For the Green and the Gold and the Mitre – Trinity Grammar School, 1903-2003, Jane Mayo Carolan
Penleigh & Essendon Grammar School, A History, Victoria Peel
Neos Kosmos newspaper, 13 Feb 2006, obituary, Christos Fifas
Neahapoikia magazine, May 1996, Dragonsleep A Multicultural Experience, article, Christos Fifas
Melbourne Herald Sun, 09 Feb 2006, obituary, anon
Australian Poets and their Works, William Wilde, Oxford University Press, 1996
Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia, Izmir

Acknowledgements:
Photograph: A G Paradissis on the occasion of his capping with his first M.A. (Hons), The University of Melbourne, c1960. Printed by kind permission of Mrs Ada Paradissis.
Poem Written on a Paper Towel also printed by kind permission of Mrs Ada Paradissis.