Places ΙΙ Edited 15/09/2024
Kostas Karyotakis wrote about the sea [θάλασσα]:
“…. Without further ado I would descend from a peak, bringing handfuls of flowers. Still a child, I contemplated the rhythm of her blaze. Lying on the sand, I traveled with the passing ships. A world was being born around me. The breeze touched my hair. The day shone on my face and on the pebbles. Everything was welcome to me: the sun, the white clouds, her distant cry. But the sea [θάλασσα]:, because she knew, had begun her song, her song that binds and comforts.”
Today I’m posting a few more ink drawings of places in Greece I will most likely not get the opportunity to visit again. Meanwhile, I’m reading Lawrence Durrell’s book, The Greek Islands, published in 1978.
The first time I read anything by the Durrell family was when I was a student, way back in 1976. An English teacher had suggested Lawrence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons and Henry Miller’s The Colossus of Maroussi. Lawrence Durrell was an English expatriate, who had lived in Greece for many years before settling in France. Bitter Lemons, first published in 1957, is a travelogue written during the ‘emergency years’ in Cyprus, when Durrell had settled in the Greek village of Bellapaix, where he had bought a house and was restoring. Decades later, as an adult and while visiting Cyprus, I read the book again.
Durrell claims that Bitter Lemons: ‘[This] is not a political book, but simply a somewhat impressionistic study of moods and atmospheres of Cyprus during the troubled years 1953-6,” This claim has been critiqued as containing multi-layered contradictions. First how can a work that claims to be a “study of the moods and atmospheres of Cyprus during the troubled years of 1953-6” not be a political book, and also, a great part of the book directly addresses the political situation on Cyprus. And perhaps one could shake off the factual mistakes in the book and read it as a travelogue, if the book were not to become a significant literary version of events in Cyprus around the world. There have been responses to the book, both by the Greek Cypriots and the British. Durrell’s narrative of those years of conflict has been critiqued to be one-sided, which perhaps was to be expected since Durrell also worked as an employee in the Public Information Office, during the last years of the British colonial rule in Cyprus,
But let’s return to the book I’m currently reading by Lawrence Durrell, The Greek Islands. It’s not a tourist guide book. On embarking on a journey around the islands one would need to get more typical guide books, with all the major sites and the multi-layered history of the Greek islands. In relation to this complex and multilayered history of Greece, Durrell writes: “A glance at the synoptic history of the place {Corfu] will do nothing to decrease the sense of being out of one’s depth, submerged by too much data. But as time goes on, as sunny Greek mornings succeed each other, you will find everything sinking to the bottom of your mind’s harbour, there to take up shapes and dispositions which are purely Greek and have no frame or reference to history anywhere else. It is important not to care too much.”
Also, the boundaries between historical facts and mythology and the complexity of their interconnection may not always be clear. For instance, in discussing the mythical gorgon, Medusa, he writes: “…. a vast palimpsest of myths and tales to which real people had become attached, in which real figures had become entangled. Men became kings, and then gods even in their own lifetimes (Caesar, Alexander, for example). When Pausanias came on the scene – already terribly late in the day (the second century ad) – he was shown the tomb of the Medusa’s head in Argos and assured that she had been a real queen famous for her beauty. She had opposed Perseus and … he cut off her head to show the troops. In Apollodorus’s version, however, she upset the touchy Athena, who organized the revengeful killing out of spite – and also because she wanted the powerful, spine-chilling head for her own purposes. Perseus (Athena was almost as affectionate towards him as towards Odysseus) skinned the Medusa as well, and grafted the horrid relic of the insane mask to the shield of Athena. This is a different story. There are several other episodes among the different biographies of our Gorgon…..”
Durrell’s book is much more personal. It is more of a literary text. It delights the senses and it contains humor. It also reflects the writer’s memories of Greece, his personal preferences of places and islands, his outlook on life and political views and biases, and probably some pre-conceived mental constructs of this place and its people, and maybe, a description of a reality patronized by colonialism. The book was published in 1978, and includes descriptions of Durrell’s travels around Greece in different periods, like for instance, during World War II on his way to Egypt. Durrell writes: “… my choice was to be as comprehensive as possible, yet at the same time completely personal. The modern tourist is richly provided with guides and works of reference, particularly about Greece. The idea was not to compete in this field, but simply to endeavour to answer two questions. What would you have been glad to know when you were on the spot? What would you feel sorry to have missed while you were there? A guide, yes, but a very personal one.”
Finally, I’m sure a lot of things have changed since the times the book was written and since the years Durrell lived in and explored Greece, and yet, there is a lοt of what he has recorded in this book, that is probably still here to be found and experienced.
In the beginning of the book Durrell writes about the light in Greece, something that artists and poets have written about, and anyone who has been to Greece becomes aware of.
“By biting, like a coin, the sea itself that / Gave you this glow, this light, the meaning you are seeking.” Odysseus Elytis
Durrell writes:
“In what way does Greece differ from Italy and Spain?’ will answer itself. The light! One hears the word everywhere, ‘To Phos’, and can recognize its pedigree – among other derivatives is our English word ‘phosphorescent’, which summons up at once the dancing magnesium-flare quality of the sunlight blazing on a white wall; in the depths of the light there is blackness, but it is a blackness which throbs with violet – a magnetic unwearying ultra-violet throb. This confers a sort of brilliant skin of white light on material objects, linking near and far, and bathing simple objects in a sort of celestial glow-worm hue. It is the naked eyeball of God, so to speak, and it blinds one. Even here in Corfu, whose rich, dense forestation and elegiac greenery contrasts so strangely with the brutal barrenness of the Aegean which he has yet to visit – even here there is no mistake about the light. …..He is not of course the first visitor to be electrified by Greek light, to be intoxicated by the white dancing candescence of the sun on a sea with blue sky pouring into it. He walks round the little town of Corfu that first morning with the feeling that the island is a sort of burning-glass.”
“The first impression of the country, from whatever direction one enters it, is austere. It rejects all daydreams, even historical ones. It is dry, barren, dramatic and strange, like a terribly emaciated face; but it lies bathed in a light such as the eye has never yet beheld, and in which it rejoices as though now first awakening to the gift of sight. This light is indescribably keen yet soft. It brings out the smallest details with a clarity, a gentle clarity that makes the heart beat higher and enfolds the nearer view in a transfiguring veil…”
Durrell was considered a philhellene and was knowledgeable about Greek history, mythology and the language. In the book he makes several references to the language.
“The language given to me, Greek / the house, poor, on the sandy beaches of Homer. My only concern is my language on the sandy beaches of Homer…” Odysseus Elytis
He writes: “The language too is crisp and melodious, full of pebble-like dentals, which give it a lapidary feel. In the clang and clatter of the embarkation [when a traveler arrives]he hears words he almost understands. A sailor shouts to another ‘Domani, domani. avrio!’ It is like the Rosetta Stone yielding up its secrets. For ‘avrio’ must mean ‘tomorrow’! A beautiful word!”
“If you can learn the Greek alphabet, start by spelling out the shop-signs which are among the most picturesque decorations in the surrounding scene. It is interesting how many words are of ancient provenance (Bibliopoleion, Artopoleion – Bookshop and Breadshop – for example); words which must have been familiar to Plato or Socrates, and which must have been scribbled up everywhere in the ancient agora of Athens. But in the spoken tongue, the demotic, bread has become psomi. It is curious that if you learn modern Greek with a teacher, he will kick off with the ancient Attic grammar. It is the first memorable lesson in the perenniality of the old Greek tongue. In contrast, you could not teach a Greek English if you started him off with Chaucer. The Attic grammar is that from which Socrates must have learned his letters. Is there, then, something indestructible about Greek?”
“Among the most venerable words still extant you will come across words like ‘man’ – anthropos means ‘he who looks upwards’. In common use also are earth (gee), sky (ouranos) and sea (thalassa). Then, somewhat paradoxically, many of the commonest modern words, though they appear to have no ancient Greek roots, prove on examination to derive from perfectly legitimate ancient Greek sources. Water, for example, (nero) has the same root as Nereid – even the freshwater nymph of that name still haunts the springs in remote places. Ask any peasant. Bread also (psomi) comes from the ancient Greek word opson, anything eaten with bread.”
Two of the drawings posted today have been inspired by two islands of the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea, Paros and Naxos.
In one extract about the Cyclades Durrell comments:
“The Cyclades is one corner of the map where the word “seduction” applies with more appositeness than anywhere else on earth. Yet so many of them could with justice be called just sterile rocks; but in the heart of the Grecian sea, where the gods have scattered them, these humble rocks glimmer like precious stones.’……….. And the presence of so many famous islands so near to you, softly girdling the confines of the seen world, has a cradling effect – your imagination feels rocked and cherished by the present and the past alike. The very names of the islands are like a melody.”
About Hydra he says:
“With the sun, the island opens like a dark rose, and you forget any of these small annoyances which can dog a traveller in these waters. Just lying on deck and watching the rigging sway softly against the pure white light will make you glad that you have lived long enough to realize the experience of Hydra. “
