It is a short story composed of experiential episodes, rendered with realistic detail — an ode to old age and a hymn to life.
It pays tribute to the elderly, to the fluctuations of emotion, to self-esteem, and to the pursuit of our dreams.

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The author’s unique sensibility creates an engaging work, divided into conceptual chapters that, successively and alternately, become descriptively realistic, allegorical, and symbolic — inspired by the human presence and focused on the inner world of the protagonist.

With a lyrical tone, it delves into her emotional universe and expresses personal reflections and social viewpoints with courage and sincerity.

The sections share common threads: deep introspection, emotional sensitivity, and the fragmentation of thoughts born from emotional changes and social concerns.

Gogo Atzoletaki’s narrative pen once again confirms the quality of her writing — her use of a rich, expressive language that unfolds densely, fluidly, and with clarity.

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The author surprises and moves the reader with her sincere, spontaneous, and natural expression, allowing hidden emotions, buried deep within the soul, to unfold and take root in the mind.

It is a deeply emotional work, within whose pages each of us may find our own moments, memories, and aspects of ourselves — truths that mirror our own.

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The short story “The Third Spring” touched me profoundly and moved me deeply.

Within the flow of words and the unfolding of meaning, I found buried emotions and thoughts of anxiety and intense reflection.

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It is an edition in which each narrative section develops into a visual frame — a descriptive narration through independent images.

Familiar, intimate, nostalgic, comic, and even painful images depict behavioral archetypes that give another dimension to the story’s evolution.
Emotions, throughout the text, shift constantly.

The images, vivid and explicit, leave imagination and the subconscious powerfully exposed to influence.

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Gogó Atzoletaki continues her journey through the labyrinths of the human psyche and the branches of the mind.
With an adventurous, restless, yet sensitive and incisive spirit, she expresses her views with strength.

Moved by the social changes that affect people — particularly the elderly — she writes with emotion, respect, and a subtle sense of humor. She speaks of life’s battles that always teach us something, even those we have lost, and of the tangled emotions that unsettle us without our being able to resist, yet which emerge for a purpose that we come to understand only at the end of the experience.

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Through “The Third Spring,” Gogo Atzoletaki sends a hopeful message — and with the expected dignity that characterizes her, she offers a smile of optimism!

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Reading “The Third Spring” sparked vivid imagery that led me to an ardent search for artworks that might correspond — realistically or metaphorically — to the story.

This visual art exhibition, employing varied techniques, stands as a tribute to the stage of life characterized by rich experience, deep wisdom, and the invaluable contribution of our loved ones.

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Excerpts from the book were chosen for artistic interpretation — to give descriptive or symbolic expression to its meanings, emotions, and memories — while drawing the viewer into the unfolding scene as participant, accomplice, or observer.

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These compositions add visual value to the written word and inseparably define the aesthetic framework and artistic outcome.

They embody landscapes of memory with writing that is clear, precise, and elegantly crafted — balanced in form, color, and symbolic meaning.

The artists, through their recognizable brushstrokes, unite in a collective expression using diverse media. They depict with emotional intensity and balanced design compositions — evoking associative memories where nostalgia coexists with contemplation.

With sensitivity and respect, they describe each story and sweet recollection, capturing the changes brought by time — physical changes, yes, but more importantly, the beauty, strength, wisdom, tenderness, and challenges of old age.

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Expressive faces marked by wrinkles of joy and struggle, eyes glowing with warmth and precious experience — familiar and beloved forms that extend, intensify, and embody the descriptive narrative.

Portraits depict dear and familiar people from the artists’ own lives, as well as internationally recognized figures who claimed their lives even in midlife — who fought for their dreams, dared to cast off social and personal restraints, and shaped their own futures, with age never serving as a barrier or obstacle.

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These images awaken memories and offer inspiration — an encouragement to enjoy every moment of our daily life.
Age is always just a number. It depends on us how we experience it.

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A moving dialogue emerges between the reader, the viewer, and the portrayed figure, who lends their wisdom, spirit, and habits — becoming a mediator between past and present, between the “before” and the “now.”

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Art, in all its forms, is a means of expressive creation — a source of emotional pleasure and release that brings recognition, acceptance, self-esteem, and reward.

In the dominion of time, memory becomes our treasury — and every moment is unique and unrepeatable.

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The dynamic Eleanor Roosevelt once said:

​“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

 

Our era often ignores or marginalizes old age, rarely highlighting its priceless value.

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To live is to exist. The ancient Greeks said: “As long as I breathe, I hope” — the well-known Latin phrase “dum spiro, spero.”

The verb “to breathe” (pnéo) is found in “inspire,” “respire,” “exhale” — enclosing within it the essence of hope (sperum, espoir).

 

As the ancient Cynic philosopher Bion of Borysthenes (c. 325–255 BC) aptly noted:

“Do not reproach old age, the state to which we all pray to arrive.”

 

And I, in turn, recall the wise folk saying:

“Where you once were, I am now — and where I am, you shall come…”

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Annita Patsouraki – Art Historian

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