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Places IV                                                 The English translation will be completed soon

 «Το πραγματικό ταξίδι της ανακάλυψης δεν συνίσταται στο να βλέπεις νέους τόπους αλλά να βλέπεις με νέα μάτια». Μαρσέλ Προυστ

Στη σημερινή ανάρτηση εκτός από σχέδια θα συμπεριλάβω και μια σύντομη αναφορά σε ένα βιβλίο που διάβασα αυτές τις μέρες.

Το Τηλεφώνημα που δεν έγινε του Απόστολου Δοξιάδη είναι αυτοβιογραφικό με στοιχεία μυθοπλασίας και επιχειρεί με επίκεντρο μια ταινία, με τίτλο Το τηλεφώνημα, που ο έφηβος Δοξιάδης έφτιαξε όταν ήταν δεκατεσσάρων χρονών, να διερευνήσει  μεταξύ άλλων το νόημα που είχε δώσει σε αυτό το έργο ο έφηβος εαυτός του και πως το νοηματοδοτεί ο ενήλικας μετά από πάρα πολλές δεκαετίες. Σε αυτήν την ασπρόμαυρη δεκάλεπτη ταινία ένας άστεγος αλήτης βρίσκει ένα κέρμα και τρέχει σε ένα θάλαμο να τηλεφωνήσει, μα μένει μετέωρος και άπραγος. Δεν τηλεφωνεί. Είναι ένα ανοικτό τέλος; Το νόημα αυτού του ερωτηματικού καλείται ο ενήλικας πλέον Δοξιάδης να επανανοηματοδοτήσει στην έκτη δεκαετία της ζωής του.

Ο νεαρός Απόστολος είχε γράψει το σενάριο και είχε σκηνοθετήσει την ταινία την χρονιά που ήταν οικότροφος σε ένα σχολείο στην Ουάσιγκτον, όπου ένιωθε ξένος και μόνος, βρίσκοντας διαφυγή στον κινηματογράφο και στη λογοτεχνία. Η ταινία είχε τότε κερδίσει το πρώτο βραβείο στο Φεστιβάλ της Νέας Υόρκης για ταινίες μικρού μήκους που έκαναν μαθητές και μια συνέντευξη στην Ουάσινγκτον Ποστ. Μια αδιάφορη κηδεία ενός σκηνοθέτη που εγκατέλειψε την τέχνη μετά την πρώτη του ταινία πυροδοτεί το ταξίδι αυτογνωσίας του Δοξιάδη εφόσον και ο ίδιος για πολλά χρόνια είχε εγκαταλείψει τον εαυτό-καλλιτέχνη.

Η ταινία στην ιστορία που μας αφηγείται ο συγγραφέας είναι το αντικείμενο ή το σημείο από το οποίο ξεπηδούν περιμετρικοί κύκλοι από ερωτήματα, συναισθήματα, αμφιβολίες και νοήματα, φέρνοντας στο τέλος βαθύτερη επίγνωση. Ο τρόπος που ο συγγραφέας αφηγείται την ιστορία είναι μάλλον συνειρμικός κι αυτό επιτρέπει την διερεύνηση του ψυχισμού του καθώς ξεφλουδίζει τις διάφορες στρώσεις από γεγονότα, ψυχολογικές άμυνες και αντιστάσεις, τον φόβο του θανάτου, τραύματα και αλήθειες. Ο Δοξιάδης προσπαθεί να θυμηθεί τον 14χρονο εαυτό του, τον καλλιτέχνη εαυτό πριν την αλλοτρίωση ή την αποξένωση από εκείνον που έφεραν τα γεγονότα εκείνης της δύσκολης χρονιάς, προσπαθώντας να ξανακερδίσει σημαντικά κομμάτια του εαυτού που πάγωσαν ή κρύφτηκαν σε δυσπρόσιτες γωνιές. Συναισθήματα, ακούσματα, όνειρα, κουβέντες της συζύγου του και φίλων, βιβλία, όλα γίνονται μέρος μιας επίπονης ψυχολογικής διεργασίας. Αναζητά «στιγμές μαντλέιν»**, ακούσιες μνήμες, οι οποίες συνήθως έρχονται ακάλεστες, όπως ήδη γνωρίζει ο συγγραφέας.

Μέσα από ασκήσεις μνημονικής, συνειρμική γραφή και ερωτήματα που θέτει προσπαθεί να ανασύρει μνήμες, να συνδέσει το παρελθόν με το παρόν και κατά κάποιο τρόπο να ενσωματώσει (integrate) τον αποκομμένο εφηβικό εαυτό.  Θυμάται βιβλία και ταινίες και καλλιτεχνικά ρεύματα που επηρέασαν τον έφηβο, όπως λόγου χάρη, το βιβλίο του Ντύλαν Τόμας, Το πορτραίτο ενός σκύλου. Γράφει: «Αλλά δεν αρκούσε αυτό ως εξήγηση για την προτίμηση μου στον τίτλο του Ντύλαν Τόμας. Γιατί, ενώ το βιβλίο προφανώς μιλάει για ανθρώπους όχι για σκυλιά, η μεταφορά που χρησιμοποιεί άγγιξε την καρδιά μου, τόσο που, ακόμα και τώρα καθώς θυμάμαι τον τίτλο, το «young dog» μου προκαλεί ένα ρίγος, προφανώς με τις ρίζες του σε κείνα τα χρόνια. Γιατί όμως να νιώθει ένα δεκατετράχρονο αγόρι ταύτιση με έναν νεαρό σκύλο»;

Καθώς αναζητά τις αιτίες που τον οδήγησαν στην δημιουργία της ταινίας και το πραγματικό της νόημα, τηλεφωνεί και σε έναν παλιό συμμαθητή του από το οικοτροφείο,  ο οποίος τον βοηθά να καταλάβει ότι ο ήρωας της ταινίας, ο αλήτης, ίσως να αντανακλούσε τον έφηβο καλλιτέχνη εαυτό του και ότι το πρόσωπο στο οποίο δεν μίλησε και από το οποίο δεν μπόρεσε τελικά να ζητήσει βοήθεια ήταν ο χειραγωγικός και απρόσιτος πατέρας. Ίσως ο ήρωας του Δοξιάδη να καθρεφτίζει τον καθένα από εμάς που δεν καταφέρνει να μιλήσει και να ζητήσει βοήθεια. Στη διάρκεια αυτού του εσωτερικού και εξωτερικού ταξιδιού ο συγγραφέας θα θυμηθεί λεπτομέρειες  γύρω από την εμφάνιση του φόβου του καρκίνου και τις ψυχαναγκαστικές αντιδράσεις του νεαρού εαυτού του καθώς θα θυμηθεί την ευθανασία του σκύλου του και το βιβλίο που του χάρισε ο πατέρας του εκείνη τη χρονιά.  Θα ανακαλύψει πως ο έντονος φόβος του θανάτου, προκάλυμμα βαθύτερων πόνων,  είναι σφιχτά δεμένος με τον πατέρα και τη σύγκρουση μαζί του.

Το σχετικά σύντομο βιβλίο μοιάζει με έναν μακρύ και επίμοχθο διάλογο με κομμάτια του εαυτού του, και αγγίζει θέματα σχετικά με την τέχνη, την δημιουργική πηγή του εαυτού μας, το πώς κόβεται ή χάνεται το νήμα στην παιδική ή εφηβική ηλικία, το πώς και πότε αποξενωνόμαστε από κομμάτια του εαυτού μας, του κοινωνικού φθόνου, τις προσωπικές άμυνες και αντιδράσεις του συγγραφέα, και τέλος την λύση του αδιεξόδου μέσω της αναζήτησης του μη αλλοτριωμένου εαυτού.

A small excerpt from the book:

“And there, in the blossoming park, we’ll find our bum sleeping on a bench. We’ll wake him up and pick him up and take him by the hand, you will take one hand and I will take the other, and we’ll take him once more to the glass [phone] box. Don’t worry, I have the coin, I have kept it in my pocket ever since, for ten cents are of great value. I’ll give them to the bum, and then, I promise, he’ll finally be able to call. And to speak.

** Involuntary autobiographical memory, also known as madeleine moment, occurs when cues encountered in everyday life trigger recollections of the past without conscious effort, whereas, voluntary memory, is characterized by a deliberate effort to recall the past. Marcel Proust first coined the term involuntary memory, in his novel In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past. He viewed involuntary memory as containing the “essence of the past,” which was lacking from voluntary memory. It is called madeleine moment because when the protagonist of Proust’s novel eats a tea-soaked madeleine, a long-forgotten childhood memory of eating tea-soaked madeleine with his aunt is restored to him. He then slowly recalls the childhood home and the town. This becomes a theme throughout the book,  as memories of the past are evoked through the senses [source Wikipedia].

If anyone is interested in reading more about memory, you can go to my post Knowing how memory works is empowering [6-9-2014]

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Places III

Places and trauma

“So much of who we are, is where we have been.” William Langewiesche

A. This summer the acclaimed Irish writer, Edna O’Brien, passed away at the age of ninety three. I discovered her in my teens and read half a dozen or more of her books, but had not read anything by her since. Those books sort of belonged to my youth. I vaguely remembered the stories, but the themes and ambience of her work and her beautiful prose, had lingered on in my memory. The news of her death took me back to that time. I decided to read something more recent and this brought me to her memoir Country Girl, published in 2012, and her novel Girl, published in 2019.

Girl is inspired by the abduction of 276 schoolgirls in 2014 from the Government Girls Secondary School in the town of Chibok in Nigeria by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram. About a third of the girls are still missing.

At the age of 88 O’ Brien crossed continents and cultures in order to do research, to interview and write about the pain and loss of these girls. The book is compact with great economy, but also contains beautiful descriptions of nature. As with all her stories, the writer focuses intensely on women’s bodily distress and discomfort, emotions and inner lives in contexts of physical and mental constraint, while revealing the particular patriarchal and theocratic structures that keep them there. The book is painful to read. One feels that the word trauma has exploded. O’ Brien lays bare the trauma of these young girls. For instance, her precise description of the stoning of a girl to death makes us want to turn our eyes away or skip the page, but hopefully we keep reading and allow the narrative to unleash our empathy. For the reader relief comes both through allowing oneself to feel and through the glimpses of hope that the writer offers at the end of the book.

Maryam, the central heroine and narrator of this story, is a composition of the girls O’Brien met.

She begins her narrative:

“I WAS A GIRL ONCE, but not any more. I smell. Blood dried and crusted all over me, and my wrapper in shreds. My insides, a morass. Hurtled through this forest that I saw, that first awful night, when I and my friends were snatched from the school.”

Maryam is forced by her abductors into marriage and motherhood, but she somehow manages to escape with her baby daughter and a friend. Although the circumstances in this African setting are hellish, the theme of the two friemds fleeing is actually reminiscent of the two friends, Cait and Baba in O’Brien’s early work, The Country Girls.  Maryam’s friend dies along the way, but she and her baby manage against all odds to return, and finally, to be reunited with the only surviving member of her nuclear family, her mother. We witness how she is both a hero, and an unwanted reminder of where she has been and what has been lost,  a source of shame and a site for stigma and projections. A new ordeal begins for Maryam, as she struggles to distance herself enough not only from the extremists, but also, the authorities and her extended family, so as to be able to find her voice again and piece together her story, as well as, to remain alive and be reunited with her baby that has been taken from her as the child is unwanted and a source of both shame and fear for her extended family and community..

Edna O’ Brien’s memoir, Country Girl, includes themes to do with people, events, history, places, self-exile and homeland, how they all reside within us, and how they are renegotiated over time. In the prologue she writes; “I got out a cookery book from Ballymaloe House in County Cork, where I’d stayed a couple of times and partook of delicacies such as nettle soup, carrageen moss soufflé, lemon posset with rose-scented geranium and gooseberry frangipane with baby banoffees. It was where I had seen for the first time and been astonished by Jack Yeats’s paintings, thick palettes of curdled blues that spoke to me then as deeply of Ireland as any poem or fragment of prose could do. I looked up the recipe for soda bread and did something that I had not done in thirty-odd years. I made bread. Broken piano or not, I felt very alive, as the smell of the baking bread filled the air. It was an old smell, the begetter of many a memory, and so on that day in August, in my seventy-eighth year, I sat down to begin the memoir which I swore I would never write.”

.Snippets from O’Brien’s Country Girl:

“History is everywhere, it seeps into the soil, the subsoil, like rain or hail or snow or blood. A house remembers, an outhouse remembers, a people ruminate, the tale differs with the teller.”

“… and it was as if the two countries warred and jostled and made friends, inside me, like the two halves of my warring self.”

“It had something to do with going back, for ever the need to go back, the way animals do, the way elephants trudge thousands of miles to return to where the elephant whisperer has lived. ‘We go back for the whisper,’ she said, the dreamed-of reconciliation”.  From Edna O’Brien’s memoir Country Girl

B. Today I also have some more drawings inspired by places in Greece and accompanied by passages by writers Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller, and Greek poet, Kostas Varnalis. To some extent, these narratives are time bound, and they are all very personal, coloured by the writers’ experiences and worldviews. They are as much about Greece, then and now, as they are of the writers themselves.

From The Greek Islands by Lawrence Durrell:

“Poros is a most enchanting arrangement, obviously designed by demented Japanese children with the aid of Paul Klee and Raoul Dufy. A child’s box of bricks that has been rapidly and fluently setup against a small shoulder of headland which holds the winds in thrall, it extends against the magical blue skyline its long herbaceous border of brilliant colours, hardly quite dry as yet; the moisture trembles with the cloud-light on the wet paint of the houses, and the changing light dapples it with butterflies’ wings. As the harbour curves round, everything seems to move on a turntable hardly bigger than the hurdy-gurdy of a funfair, and you have the illusion that without getting off the ship you can lean over the rail and order an ouzo. And this sense of proximity is increased so that you seem to be sailing down the main street with the inhabitants walking in leisurely fashion alongside the ship. You feel that finally they will lay friendly hands upon the ropes and bring it slowly to a halt. The best description of entering Poros is that of Henry Miller, who captured the port in masterly fashion in his Greek travel book.”

The American writer Henry Miller, whom Durrell refers to, travelled for five or six months around Greece in 1939, sometimes with friends he had made in Greece like Katsimbalis, who is the real colossus of Maroussi, and the Nobel prize winner, poet Georgios Seferis. His stay in Greece proved transformative for him and he believed he had had an awakening of sorts. In the afterword of a more recent edition of The Colossus of Maroussi, which I’m reading, Ian S. MacNiven writes: ”Miller leaves Greece for America on 28 December. With the world crashing into war, he drafts The Colossus of Maroussi, a paean to cross-national, multi-lingual friendship, to Greece, to peace. An idealized yet real portrait of Greece and the Greek character. Restlessly, still professing to believe that the war has nothing to do with him, Miller sets out on his year-long tour of the United States with the avowed intention of writing a parallel panegyric to his native land.” On his return to America he writes The Air-Conditioned Nightmare and a sequel, Remember to Remember, two years later. He gives up urban living and moves to the south of San Francisco. He lives in isolation in the wilderness in a cabin overlooking the Pacific Ocean, where he writes his long trilogy, The Rosy Crucifixion, the Sexus, Plexus, and Nexus volumes.

Miller’s beauitful description of coming into Poros:

“If there is one dream which I like above all others it is that of sailing on land. Coming into Poros gives the illusion of the deep dream. Suddenly the land converges on all sides and the boat is squeezed into a narrow strait from which there seems to be no egress. The men and women of Poros are hanging out of the windows, just above your head. You pull in right under their friendly nostrils, as though for a shave and haircut on route. ….  To sail slowly through the streets of Poros is to recapture the joy of passing through the neck of the womb. It is a joy almost too deep to be remembered. It is a kind of numb idiot’s delight which produces legends such as that of the birth of an island out of a foundering ship. The ship, the passage, the revoking walls, the gentle undulating tremor, the green snakelike curve of the shore, the beards hanging down over your scalp from the inhabitants suspended above you, all these and the palpitant breath of friendship, sympathy, guidance, envelop and entrance you until you are blown out like a star fulfilled and your heart with its molten smithereens scattered far and wide.”

Greek poet Kostas Varnalis wrote about Aegena in the 1920s:

“One afternoon I took the boat at Perasia, the famous “Chryso”, and went first to Aegina. I had intended, starting from Aegina, to search around the Saronic until I found a suitable place to perch permanently. I wanted to always be close to Athens. Because I didn’t have much trust in myself. I knew how easily I get tired and bored. So I needed to be able to easily take the boat and come to the city of the Gods, to regret it and flee from the furnace of fire and manure to the coolness and quiet of the pelagos. In Aegina where I went first, I dropped anchor forever. I really liked the evening walk I took, along the shore from the “column” all the way to Saint Basil. I rented the second floor (two rooms) of a quiet house and returned to Athens to bring back my things. On a small table I placed some favorite books. On the walls all around I pinned a bunch of photographs of works by Greco, Poturizio, Botticelli, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, etc., bought from the Louvre Museum and the Vatican Gallery. I used to get up at dawn, lean out of the window in the yard and look at the sky and below me were vines, almond trees, pistachio trees, a well, a goat with its bell, a flock of chickens…. And then the landlady would bring me milk and coffee and I would sit to write, happy and optimistic or pace the room gesticulating animatedly as I recited the verses I had written, testing their sound by ear.”

“A little before noon, Syra appeared. It stretched its warm and dry lines to the horizon, reflecting around it the heat of the sun, with no vegetation to absorb it. As the ship approached, the slopes of the dry rocks were shown in their unique nakedness, bathed in an irresistible light.” M. Karagatsis

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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. “