Erinaki - Panagiotis Toundas

Artist: Rita Abatzi Written: 1934 Composer: Panagiotis Toundas Lyrics: Panagiotis Toundas Performer: Rita Abatzi Tags: Rembetiko Links: Original recording

Ερηνάκι για την εμορφιά σου
τριγυρίζω μες τη γειτονιά σου
τραγουδώ πονώ και κλαίγω
τον καημό μου και σου λέγω

Ερηνάκι μου παρηγοριά μου
χάνομαι για σε πονεί η καρδιά μου
δε μ' ακούς δε με λυπάσαι
ούτε και Θεό φοβάσαι
αχ σκληρή καρδιά δε με πονείς
τι σου κάνω και με τυραννείς

Έλα έλα Ερηνάκι
να μου γιάνεις την καρδιά
που στον κόσμο μόνο εσένα
έχω για παρηγοριά

Να μου δώσεις τα φιλιά σου
που πολύ τα λαχταρώ
και τα έμορφα σου κάλλη
Ερηνάκι να χαρώ

Erinaki, for the sake of your beauty
I wander around your neighborhood,
I sing, I ache, and I weep,
I tell you of my sorrow.

Erinaki, my comfort,
I'm wasting away for you, my heart is in pain.
You don't hear me, you don't pity me,
you don't even fear God.
Ah, hard heart, you do not feel for me —
what am I doing to you, that you torment me so?

Come, come, Erinaki,
heal my heart,
for in the world only you
do I have for comfort.

Give me your kisses,
the ones I so dearly long for,
and your lovely beauties —
Erinaki, let me know joy.

Historical context

This is the original 1934 Erinaki — composed by Panagiotis Toundas and recorded in Athens by Rita Abatzi. It should not be confused with the 1983 Stavros Xarchakos / Nikos Gatsos song of the same name in the Ferris film, which is a hashish-and-heroin teke lament with a completely different lyric. The two songs share only a title.

By 1934, Toundas was the recording director at Columbia and one of the most prolific composers of the rebetiko-Smyrnaic school. He had come to Athens in 1923 with the wave of Smyrna refugees and had by then defined the sound of commercial rebetiko in mainland Greece: the café-aman idiom of violin and santouri, the Anatolian melodic ornaments, the love-lament structure. Erinaki is a classic example — a clean serenade, pre-Metaxas censorship, addressed not to the underworld but to the beloved.

Rita Abatzi, who recorded it, was around 20 years old at the time. Together with Roza Eskenazi, she was the dominant female voice of 1930s rebetiko 78-rpm recordings. Her voice on this side is the relatively unornamented Smyrnaic style — direct, plaintive, with the typical τσακίσματα (vocal ornaments) of the tradition.

The song belongs to a recognizable Greek folk and rebetiko sub-genre: the καντάδα της γειτονιάς — the neighborhood serenade, sung by a man wandering outside the beloved’s house. The convention goes back through δημοτικά τραγούδια (folk songs) and the Ionian καντάδες and was absorbed by rebetiko in the Smyrnaic period.

Reading

Erinaki is structurally simple. Each stanza is a complete address to the beloved; together they trace a small emotional arc — declaration, complaint, plea, prayer.

Stanza 1 — declaration. The opening names the beloved (Erinaki) and the speaker’s situation: he is wandering her neighborhood, singing his sorrow into the street. This is the convention of the neighborhood serenade — the lover outside the house, the beloved inside, the music as the only contact between them.

Stanza 2 — complaint, with religious appeal. The middle of the song is where the speaker’s pain gets articulated. He’s wasting away (χάνομαι — losing himself). She doesn’t even fear God — the standard religious-shame appeal, calling down divine judgment on her indifference. Hard heart (σκληρή καρδιά) is the folk image for the unmoved beloved. The closing rhetorical question — τι σου κάνω και με τυραννείς — what have I done to you, that you torment me — is the lament’s emotional center.

Stanza 3 — the plea, soft. Come, come, Erinaki, heal my heart. The verb is γιάνεις — the old folk verb for healing, gentler than the clinical θεραπεύω. In the world only you do I have for comfort — she is positioned not as a romantic interest among others but as his only solace. The song narrows: she is the whole horizon.

Stanza 4 — the request, made plain. The final stanza is the most direct. Give me your kisses, which I long for, and your beauties — let me know joy. The doubling τα έμορφα σου κάλλη is a Smyrnaic-style mixing of registers — κάλλη is a high-register / archaic plural (“beauties” in the Plotinian / liturgical sense), έμορφα is a folk-register adjective (“lovely”). Together they say “your lovely beauties” with a Smyrnaic-poetic flourish that the more austere mainland Greek folk tradition would have avoided.

The song belongs to a world where the courtship code was strict and the woman’s silence was the lover’s whole obstacle. It survives partly because of Abatzi’s recording — the voice of a young Smyrna-born singer in 1930s Athens, pleading on behalf of a generic male suitor for a beloved who never answers.

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