From the Elephant's Back: Collected Essays & Travel Writings

by Lawrence Durrell

  Can Dreams Live on When Dreamers Die?

  1947

  IN THE ANCIENT WORLD they set great store by dreams. One ancient author[1] divides them into five classes of which the fifth is dreams of divination, or oracles. People practiced what is known as incubation—that is to say, sleeping within the precincts of a temple—in order to have the dreams they felt would yield useful interpretations, the dreams which might give them guidance in their lives or settle problems for them. When the great cult of Aesculapius[2] arose, dreams played a great part in the technique of healing the sick; there is still a good deal we do not know about ancient medicine, but what we do indicates that those who were sick travelled to one of the many temples where they entered a special building and spent the first night in incubation. There were hundreds of temples all over Greece, and today we think that those which we have unearthed at Epidaurus and Cos[3] must have been the most famous. On arrival the suppliant made his sacrifices and performed some sort of ritual whose details are not known to us today; then he slept in the special dormitory set aside for him, and during his sleep the god appeared and either healed him outright or prescribed a course of treatment for him to follow. So you see dreams were a form of diagnosis, just as for the psychoanalyst today the patient’s dreams give a kind of symbolic picture of his subconscious preoccupations and his problems. But they were far more important in the ancient world because everybody believed they came directly from the god himself.

  I was thinking along these lines one hot August day in 1939 when some friends suggested a trip to Epidaurus in southern Greece.[4] I had never seen the temple and very much wanted to go, so we set off. It did not take long from Corinth, where we were then staying, and as the car bumped down the shallow gradient into the valley I could quite understand how not only the temple but the whole of the territory of Epidaurus was considered sacred to the god. The plain is very green and encircled by wooded mountains, and gives one the strangest impression: as if, not only the temple, but the whole landscape had been designed deliberately by men. There was something at once intimate and healing about it all. A light wind ruffled the arbutus and holm-oak; the sea was just out of sight but one heard it, like the whispering in a sea-shell; above us in that shattering blue silence of the Greek sky, two eagles sat, almost motionless. We spent the whole day wandering about the theatre and the temple, and looking at the treasures in the little museum.

  The guide was an amiable fellow, a typical Greek peasant, and while I was talking to him he told me that he had managed to get a transfer to another place—Mycaenae.[5] As this is rather a bleak fortress perched on a hill I asked him jokingly why he was so silly as to get transferred from this peaceful valley with its silence and greenness: and to exchange it for a place like Mycaenae. “If I told you why,” he said, “you would think me mad. It is because of the dreams. I can’t bear the dreams we have in this valley.” This, in a fantastic sort of way, was interesting. “What dreams?” I said. “Everybody in this valley has dreams,” he said. “Some people don’t mind, but as for me I’m off.” I was, I suppose, rather skeptical about the whole thing, because he looked at me and made a face as much as to say: “Yes, you think I’m mad like the others.”

  I asked him to tell me some of the dreams but he seemed reluctant to do so. “They’re a lot of rubbish,” he said: and then, as an afterthought, “But I’ll tell you one thing: the old man in the fresco appears frequently in them.” The fresco in the museum showed a grave Assyrian-looking face with dense ringlets falling down to the shoulders. I cannot remember now if it represented Aesculapius or not: at any rate it is an extraordinary piece of stone-carving. The guide went on: “Now you’ll perhaps imagine that it’s natural enough, when I spend almost every day in the museum, that the old man makes an impression on my mind; but tell me one thing. Why should my two kids dream about him when they have never set foot in the museum?”[6] The two children were sitting under a tree playing and I tried to question them. The boy was too shy to talk and hung his head, but the little girl was made of sterner stuff; she was about twelve. I asked her if she dreamed about an old man and if she could describe him. I cannot say that she said anything of great interest, but one little gesture she made was curious. She spread her fingers and drew them down from her ears to her shoulders as she described the old man’s hair. By this time the rest of the party wanted to move off, so I had no chance of pursuing the matter further. As I was leaving the guide said, in rather a cynical or sardonic way: “If you don’t believe me, ask any of the peasants who live in this valley. They all have dreams. The valley is full of dreams.”

  As we bumped back to Nauplia in the twilight, through the enchanted Greek landscape, I could not help wondering whether the dreams of those countless thousands of suppliants had stayed behind in this valley; whether they were the dreams of the ancient Greeks which had lingered on there. Naturally enough, I tried the subject out over dinner and got heartily laughed at for my pains; but sometimes these odd ideas prove to have something in them. However, we were then on the point of war with Germany and the whole thing slipped out of my mind. It was not indeed until 1945 that it all came back to me.

  I was on the island of Cos at that time, and was working for the British administration that took over the Dodecanese Islands. In Cos, you will remember, there is a centre of the Aesculapian cult which was as famous in ancient times as that of Epidaurus. The archaeologists have located the place and dug out most of the temple. I decided to have a look at it. So I borrowed a three-tonner from a charitable UNRRA[7] official and drove out along the dusty summer roads to the shoulder of hillside where the Aesculapium stands. The site itself is enough to take your breath away; the temple is laid out on the slopes of a green hill, and standing at the top you look down across the flat and verdant plains of Cos to the blue sea.

  I was drifting about in the silence and heat of this summer afternoon when I caught sight of a tent top sticking out of a dip in the ground and I walked towards it. A couple of soldiers were lying reading yellowbacks[8] and I passed the time of day with them. They were both red-faced Yorkshiremen, and I think they belonged to some Ordnance unit which was clearing up the German and Italian ammunition which littered the island. We sat and had a yarn, our voices sounding thin and clear in that rare atmosphere. They asked about the “blinking temple,” as they called it, and I gave them all the blinking information I could muster up about it. I told them about the cult of Aesculapius and what I knew of healing technique employed by the god. When I got to the dreams I noted they exchanged glances, and I was suddenly reminded of my encounter years before with the guide at Epidaurus.

  Almost before I know what I was saying I had asked them whether they had noticed anything peculiar about their dreams up here on the hill. They both looked rather startled and embarrassed but finally the elder of the two piped up and said: “Well, as a matter of fact, we used to camp up there inside the blinking temple, but we didn’t like it, so we came down here. Better atmosphere, ain’t it, Charlie?” Charlie said it was. They were not very communicative—Yorkshiremen aren’t. But as far as I could make out they had spent several very disturbed night within the temple precincts, and Charlie had had one or two nightmares. “And when you think of the beer ration,” he said plaintively, “you can’t put it down to that.” No, there was something queer about the place itself; and though they could not describe their dreams very clearly, I was reminded very forcibly of the guide’s little daughter at Epidaurus as she combed out imaginary ringlets with her fingers. It was somehow odd to come across the same sort of evidence in two different places, and from two different sources; yet both places were sacred to Aesculapius and in both of them the same sort of ceremonies and practices took place. Was it possible, I found myself wondering again, that dreams do not disappear? That long after we are dead our dreams remain behind us? And especially in a place like this which must have been charged with hundreds of thousands of dreams, and with the fervent beliefs of the dreamers, t
he ancient Greek dreamers; had Charlie, that red-faced, unimaginative British soldier somehow made a contact with the ancient Greeks by letting their dreams invade his sleeping mind?

  I said nothing of this to the two soldiers. They stood politely by the temple and waved goodbye to me as the truck rattled down the road to Cos. But I resolved there and then to visit the Aesculapium and sleep in the suppliant’s corner of the temple; and to record any dreams I might have in a notebook. I’m afraid there is not time to give you the results of this experiment; or rather this series of experiments. In the first place, they are not complete and it may be years before I have time to visit Greece again and do some more work on them. But the material I have to date is interesting enough to suggest that dreams do perhaps live on in these ancient centres of healing, and can tell one things of great esoteric significance.[9]

  Family Portrait

  1952

  THOSE WHO REJOICE in the easy generalizations about national character should never visit Yugoslavia,[1] for no country I know presents quite so bewildering a mixture of races, creeds, and landscapes. Even on the map it presents a forbidding picture to those who study the complex crosshatching of mountain ranges, the ragged seams of frontier which mark off the six republics and the two autonomous areas. Six republics, four languages, and three religions. The vertebral column of the country is starred with towns each possessing different cultural characteristics—Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade, Skoplje. How to bring them within the scope of the same focus—that is the problem.[2]

  The various national characters are so sharply defined that for a time one is disposed to regard the country as a parcel of irreconcilable states. Only when one has travelled backwards and forwards a good deal over these invisible frontiers of tongue and temperament does one begin to see the total pattern of the Yugoslav temperament, which borrows a contribution from all of these various characteristics. Above all, one must see the Slovenes not only in Slovenia but also out of it; one must meet Serbs not only in Serbia but also in the other republics in order for one’s observation to condense.

  Yugoslavia is still young; it is like an oil painting which has not quite dried yet—hence the difficulty of framing it. The various characters which are depicted are still, so to speak, fermenting. What are they?

  Slovenia’s inheritance is religious and scholastic. Ljubljana expresses some of the poetry and piety of its character, which carries overtones of clericalism. A passion for order and principle is its chief gift to the nation. The tempo of life is smooth, orderly, for the Slovenes were born to organize. But underneath their temperament lies something deeper, a poetry which is expressed in the wild hinterland of snow-crowned mountains and vivid lakes: a landscape which for us seems to be peopled with witches in conical hats, with gnomes and other inhabitants of the fairy tales. Slovenia is the Scotland of Yugoslavia, and the Slovenes share many of the characteristics of the Scots—sobriety, Presbyterianism, a passion for ruled margins—and one can never see Ljubljana without feeling that it is somehow a compromise between Edinburgh and some Gothic Central European town.

  Pleasure-loving Zagreb lies further south with its talkative mercuric Croats, whose character flowers, so to speak, along the banks of the wide rivers and green fields. There is little that is rocky about the Croats; their humor and self-possession gives them a particular warmth, while the very curiosity of their temperament contributes speed and movement to their talk and gestures. They are eager for new experiences; social life is a passion with them, almost an art. They are quick to make friends and they exhaust friendships quickly. The Croats are impatient not for pleasure—that shallow object—but for happiness; unless life is actively happy, incandescent with happiness, the good Croat feels that he is wasting time. “When I am not actively happy,” says a Croat friend of mine, “when things are just normal it is awful. I feel as if I have toothache.” This eagerness makes them stimulating company.

  Between Zagreb and Belgrade another invisible frontier must be crossed to come to terms with the Serbian character with its curious yet delightful mixture of pride and gentleness. The Serb has still some of the pastoral virtues of the clan and family about him—one thinks of the landed farmer described in Hesiod. His vision of life is simple, straightforward, and aristocratic in the best sense. His character lacks any betraying sophistication; it would be hard to think of a better friend or a more implacable enemy. He is slow to kindle, sometimes a little pedantic, but his warmth and generosity live longer than that of other peoples.

  Yet side by side with this there is a curious, unexpectedly Irish delight in disorder. The Serb likes to take life easily. He is happy-go-lucky. He gives with both hands not only because he is generous but also because possessions mean little to him. His is a character made for the open air—scaling those razorbacked mountains and grassy uplands of his country, or swimming happily in the dense swift rivers like the Danube and Sava. Where the Croat will spend all day exploring ideas in a coffee shop, the Serb will spend his time exploring nature. He is more physical than mental. He doubts less and enjoys more. But he is never garrulous or hysterical. His temperament is based on reticence rather than on a troubled reserve. But once you discover him and prove your worth as a companion, the Serb uncorks himself. (I choose the metaphor advisedly since Serbian hospitality is inseparable from the thought of plum brandy in my mind.) At first he seems too serious, almost taciturn; but buried in every Serbian soul there is a touch of Falstaff.[3] This is what makes him so rewarding a friend.

  Leaving Belgrade you must choose for yourself whether you will hobble southward along bad roads to Skoplje, or scale the mountain bastions which separate you from Sarajevo and the coast. If you are hunting character, then continue southward through the Ebar Valley; but if the Bosnian and Dalmatian intrigue you, then turn off and cross the mountains to the west.

  Sarajevo lies in the lap of the mountains, brilliant as a jewel. A quiet dark-eyed people, gentle voiced and friendly, dreaming away their life behind these stony ramparts. In Bosnia you will discover men whose ancestors were obviously eagles; but on the coast, with its relaxing Mediterranean breezes, its olives and blue coves you will feel the Dalmatian character, supple, resilient, and with more than a touch of familiar far niente about it. For the Dalmatian, one feels, the proper occupation is lying in the sun and writing poetry; it is a surprise to find that they are good executives and administrators as well.

  But the reader will forgive me if I drag him unwillingly back from the coast to Belgrade in order to follow out the journey southward. The Dalmatian coast is justly celebrated for its charms; but they are insidious. Once let a visitor sun his bones along this beautiful coast, and he becomes unwilling to face the mountain passes and the craggy roads back to the capital. After three days he finds that he has become a complete Dalmation, incapable of mustering his sun-drenched senses for the physical exertion of the journey back to Belgrade. Force must be used. Argument is not enough because this is the graveyard of those unwary souls who plan to spend a month in Yugoslavia and “see everything.” Northern visitors would be well advised to leave Dalmatia for the end of their visit, when all their work is done. This is particularly necessary for writers and journalists. How many have returned to their northern homes with nothing more to show for their visit than an empty notebook, a royal coat of tan, and an incoherent desire to return one day and “settle down for good in Dubrovnik”?[4]

  The wise man will press on through the dusty roads of southern Serbia towards Skoplje, and surrender himself to the charms of a landscape whose extremes are not sudden and harsh. The scale grows larger. When there are mountains they stand far back against the sky; the valleys fan away into panoramas of richness. The rivers have all the space they need in which to deploy. They are not pressed for time. Nor dare the traveller hurry, for the road surfaces become wicked after Kragujevac.[5]

  Macedonia is the most withdrawn of the republics and lies within the orbit of Oriental Yugoslavia, so to speak; one feels the
cultural currents setting eastward in the music and costume of the place. Its poetry still carries the inherited flavors of Turkey, and the inhabitants of the republic are proud of their own language which they wear like a pair of new shoes. Macedonia has always been a point névralgique[6] from the political and strategic point of view, and this has contributed a certain sharpness and over-sensitiveness to the character of the people. Their generosity is tempered by suspicion. The Macedonian is always on guard. But once reassured, he is hospitable and friendly as only an inhabitant of the Balkans can be. From Skoplje the lines of communications thin away towards Greece and Bulgaria. We have travelled some seven hundred miles across the country, through one of the most beautiful and varied landscapes in the world.

  These, then, are roughly the components out of which the national character of the future will be composed. How rich and how complex it already is I have tried to indicate. To the three chief religions, Catholic, Orthodox, and Moslem, I am tempted, quite seriously, to add a fourth: Marxism. This is not a joke, for Marxism is much more than a social theory. It is a cosmology which makes exclusive claims upon belief just as Catholicism does. It has its own world view, and to its adherents it has much of the force and coherence of a religion.[7]

  The unification of the Yugoslav peoples is one of the strongest and best-based planks in the government platform. A truce has been made, a unity created between these different republics which has been designed to hold them together until all the memories of past troubles, bitter quarrels, temperamental differences, have become reconciled and unified by time. Whatever reservations a Yugoslav might have on political affairs, it would be difficult to find one who would not agree to the tremendous value of this unifying ideal, and to those of us who have spent any time here, the fruits of this policy are already becoming clear. A new, a tangible unity is becoming apparent in every corner of social life, whether it be in the army or in a state enterprise. The administrative and technical skill of the Slovene, the drive of the Croat, the purposeful resourcefulness of the Serb—they are all finding their place and beginning to make their contribution felt. All that the new Yugoslavia hopes to be must depend on the fruits of that co-operation.