The Greek Islands

by Lawrence Durrell

  If he lived at the start of a slightly less muddled epoch, this was because of the power of the written word. Now, exactly when the Greeks started to write instead of to pict is still a matter for speculation. Some recent evidence suggests a date around 1400 BC. But the flashpoint came when one day they took over the Phoenician alphabet; the actual borrowing process cannot be either described or dated with any accuracy, but it signalled the beginning of something momentous – literature! This brings us ourselves closer to the Greeks, for the whole beginning of our intellectual life and culture is rooted in the two great poems which sprang from this take-over bid. The deliberacy and rationality of the act seem beyond doubt, for the Phoenician sign-system was not simply copied, but adapted and modified to fit the needs of the Greek tongue, which was unrelated to the Semitic family group to which the Phoenician belonged. The pre-Greek invaders of the land had brought with them a language which belonged to a group of ancient languages; among them Indian (Sanscrit), Persian and Armenian. Through this vast mesh of historic influences, accompanied by countless changes and trends and overlappings, the Greek language finally precipitated itself like a rare calx – and then with a masterstroke one day appropriated an alphabet in which, as if in a mould, it could marmorealize itself. Written, it also became a channel for psychological elements of the national character to stabilize themselves – to clothe themselves in myth and poetry. But here I must catch myself up sharply, for I have referred to a ‘national’ character quite inadvertently. A quotation from a Cambridge scholar M. I. Finley must put me in my place:

  In one respect the ancient Greeks were always a divided people. They entered the Mediterranean world in small groups and even when they settled and took control they remained disunited in their political organization … Greek settlements were to be found not only all over the area of modern Hellas but also along the Black Sea, on the shores of what is now Turkey, in Southern Italy and Eastern Sicily, the north African coast and the littoral of Southern France. Within this ellipse of some fifteen hundred miles at the poles, there were hundreds and hundreds of communities, often differing in their political structure and always insisting on their separate sovereignties. Neither then, nor at any time in the ancient world was there a nation, a single national territory under one sovereign rule, called Greece (or any synonym for Greece).

  It recedes and recedes from us, this strange land, until it starts to take its place among historical figments and myths and metaphors – with not reality but a haunting dream as its morphological envelope. It becomes as unreal as a Minoan Age or a Minotaur or a peasant crossing himself backwards, or the old men whose baggy Turkish-style breeches have taken their shape because one day a new saviour will be born of a man and one must not risk bruising the infant’s head when it appears … There is an extraordinary tangle of legends ancient and modern which somehow have the right sort of plangence when you are there, on the spot, sitting in some battered café in Chanea drinking ouzo and watching the sun slowly setting upon these grave, poetical abstractions. The stout walls are Venetian. Yesterday, walking by the shore of a small viscous lagoon, I noticed an overpowering smell of rotting iodine; and then herons rose and clanked awkwardly away to the further marshes, uttering their desolate cry which was supposed to be a Turkish word once – but what word had slipped my memory. It is also hard to imagine a siege of twenty-two years, or the extraordinary beauty of hundreds of parachutes falling out of the sky, Icarus fashion, in 1941. Everything exists in an eternal present locked in this extraordinary historic dream which is Crete, which is Greece – a country which has never existed.

  By now the visitor will have made his first experiments with the Greek cuisine – so variable in execution that it can convey the impression of being anything between horrible and good-to-fair. Poor countries do not have the money to turn out great chefs but, though one can eat abominably in many parts of Greece, there has been of late a remarkable improvement overall. The range of choice is limited of course, though the raw materials (as any visit to the fish or fruit market will convince you) are as good as in Naples or Marseilles. What happens to them? There is no general rule. One must work to find one’s own palatable restaurant in whichever place one is, and put one’s trust in the Greeks only when by some accident of nature they come up with something really good. Though limited, the cuisine has a number of really delicious dishes to its credit. The problem is to find them well cooked, and presented reasonably warm. It is not true that all Greeks are born without taste buds: there are a number of fancy feeders in Athens, who spend their time running from one place to another hunting for that delectable dish they ate last week. It is really astonishing too how the wine can vary from bottle to bottle, how taverns can vary from week to week in their fare. You should always be on the qui vive. If you fall upon sofrito (meat stew) well done in Corfu, or souzoukakia (spitted entrails) in Rhodes, you will catch a glimpse of what would be possible if there were money and time – for the fruit and vegetables and fish are as good as anywhere. Cooks vary, and one needs the patience of Job to put up with this. Yet why does this little character-defect not seem to matter too much? You get over your first vexation rapidly and sink into a resigned mood where you accept whatever comes with equanimity – and so much is really good that does come (lobsters or crayfish in Hydra are examples).

  I always remind myself how the peasantry lives between fiestas. When young I shared many an agricultural worker’s meal in the shade of a tree. Consisting then of two or three cloves of garlic, a hunk of bread, and a gullet full of wine, it was astonishingly nourishing – particularly the garlic, which chases away all fatigue. There is another reason why the Greeks are confused in their kitchen: tourist authorities have convinced them that northern peoples like the Swedes, Britons or Germans will not come to Greece if there is garlic in the food (and of course it is sometimes true). So the meals come up as shoddy imitations of British Railways’ haute cuisine. For people who dream of dancing peach to peach on the sun deck, garlic is of course a hazard. What is to be done? I do not know; this non-garlic scourge has now hit the south of France where in the Langue d’Oc the cuisine in the small hotels has become a shambles, because of a few bus-loads of somnolent Swedes or subfusc Germans. Mass catering, they call it, and the hotel keepers (who do know how to cook) are up in arms but will do nothing to harm their custom. How will the Greek ever improve his cuisine at this rate?

  But the real test is what the Greeks eat at home, and here there is no doubt that they fare well and show both skill and taste. Whenever you are invited to a private house or to an engagement party, say, you are astonished at the variety and tastiness of the food. But it takes a great deal of preparing; always in the background, there is the hovering figure of grandma who has been up since four to start cooking for the feast. The general preference for food in Greece leans a bit towards the meze or amuse gueule; which is understandable when nearly all the food you eat is partaken of outdoors under a vine. The Greeks like a dozen little dishes with a dozen different things à la Chinoise, rather than the heavy structured meal which the French, say, prefer. Moreover their idea of real conviviality is that you and your friends should dip in the same dish … The notion is a sound one.

  As for drink, the controversial rezina has been discussed so often that it seems invidious to do it again. Rezina may well taste ‘like pure turpentine which has been strained through the socks of a bishop’, as someone wrote to me; but it is to be recommended most warmly. You should make a real effort with it, but be warned that it is never as good bottled as it is fresh from the blue cans of the Athenian Plaka. It is a perfect adjunct for food which is oil-cooked, and sometimes with oil not too fresh. Its pungent aroma clears the mind and the palate at one blow. Yet it is mild, and you can drink gallons without a hangover; nor does it ever provoke the disgusting, leaden sort of drunkenness that gin does – but rather, high spirits and wit. If you drink rezina you will live for ever, and never be a trial to your friends or to waiters. If yo
u really cannot take any pleasure in it, you will find today several good little wines, white and red, which are not only stable but very good to taste. I think immediately of Santa Elena (white) and Naoussa (red), which are available almost everywhere because their production is high. But some of the monasteries also have good small wines which do not travel. In Santorin I remember once a red wine that came from volcanic soil and was faintly fizzy. It is worthwhile experimenting with the local brew wherever you are. You simply have to present yourself at a wine shop and say gravely, ‘I want some samples,’ and a glass is produced and you are invited to sit down. Whole mornings can be passed in this delicious sport when once you have tired of ruins and thirsty, dusty valleys.

  Confused memories will remain of the rich groves of orange, lemon and almond, and the darkness of the tall cypresses which rise everywhere, self-seeded it would seem. The two varieties – the slender and the spread-out variety – are supposed by the peasants to be the male and female of the tree; whereas in truth the cypress is monoecious with the male and female flower on the same tree. What else? Yes, the stands of Aleppo pine along the hilly seashore – so often attacked by the Processionary caterpillar, the larva of the moth, whose untidy web-like nets can be seen in the branches. If you camp, watch out for the hairs of this caterpillar which are highly irritating to the skin and can indeed cause blindness. Other trees are the elm, the eastern plane and the white poplar (now alas dying of various fungoid diseases which they cannot as yet cure). Most curious among trees is the Tree of Heaven which, imported into France from China in 1751 as a garden plant, suddenly decided it liked Crete and has naturalized itself. It grows rapidly and seeds itself with winged seeds – which can travel twenty metres. In June and July it is covered with a riot of huge crimson flower-like leaves. However, the peasants hate this tree despite its beauty and call it ‘Stinktree’ – the leaves smell bad, and its seedlings invade their holdings.

  It is hard to leave Crete, yet, if this book is ever to end, I must. I have things to say about vampires and volcanoes, but I will keep them until I reach Santorin, which specializes in both. As a cliff-hanger I will just mention that Sir Arthur Evans did not believe in the ‘invasion’ theory as an explanation of the final destruction of the palaces. He believed in a ‘natural calamity like an earthquake’.

  Later I must discuss this theory in great detail, but again the proper place to do so is in the tremendous crater of Santorin. Was it this great quake that finished off Knossos and the Minoan culture?

  Cythera and Anticythera

  By some of those vagaries of pure chance, which in retrospect often seem meaningful, I first heard the words uttered by a girl student one afternoon, in the swimming, grey aquarium-light of an Athens museum. She was leaning forward through the reflections thrown by the glass cases, in order to read a show-card referring to an exhibit which had already caught my attention. Its empty hand is what somehow impressed me in the little statue; it lay there in space, lightly and effortlessly curved around some lost object – a ball, an apple? The empty space itself conferred something like a signature. It seemed symbolic of Greece itself, where so much vital information has vanished, leaving only these tormenting black spaces, clues from which one must try to fashion a mould into which we can pour our notions about these forgotten peoples and times. The apple of truth perhaps?

  She read slowly with a strong provincial intonation: ‘Bronze statue of a youth circa 240 BC. The extended right hand seems to offer something for it is as if curved around some object. It has been suggested that he is a Paris, the work of Euphranos, shown as offering the apple of discord to Aphrodite.’ It had been part of a shipload of statues wrecked off Anticythera en route for Italy.

  The apple – was it an apple? – had been sucked out of the hand by the sea. As for the hand, it haunted me as a sort of symbol too: the Apple of Discord, the Apple of Oblivion, the Apple of Eden, or of the Hesperides – eternal youth! The statue alone knew the truth, and it stood there silently, inhabiting a unique moment of time, limbs tense as music yet full of controlled desire, full of the sufficiency of their own pure, primal weight. To give him a name, to call him Paris, would hardly disturb the smooth surface of the sculptor’s thought. It was balanced there like a bird. Its precious apple lay fathoms deep off Anticythera, an isle about which I then knew hardly anything. Yes, once a fisherman had said that there was an islet somewhere near it called Egg (Avgo) which had a marvellous marine grotto with stalactites and a colony of seals. (The seals all look like Proteus; that is presumably why he was appointed to be keeper of the Olympian sealery.) Not many months later I found myself coming into Cythera for a dawn landfall, as a refugee on my way to Crete and Egypt. I thought of the little statue.

  But it is not for any personal reason that I feel it right to add a note about these two unprepossessing little islands. They have today little charm and less to show in the way of ancient monuments. Some good, safe anchorages for small craft are about all they have, unless you count the two mediocre churches and a sort of nondescript barn of a building which suggests a maritime lazaretto or a dogana. However, Cythera marks the halfway point between the mainland and Crete and, during the long centuries before steam, almost everything either touched it or passed close in, using the island as a convenient lee against the swing of the main deep, or a shield against wind. Yes, that is all, except for one singular and arresting fact, namely that Aphrodite was apparently born here. The small Phoenician trading post, which has now completely disappeared, imported her worship from the Middle East, and it was from here that she went back into Cyprus to lovely Paphos, and forward to the eagle-patrolled heights of Mount Erix in Sicily. In comparison with these two magnetic sites, Cythera seems a dowdy little place to be born in, but then Aphrodite enjoyed a multiple personality and no doubt in each place she took on a separate identity. In Erix – so grim is the place – she must have come in her savage and pitiless version. There is still a whiff of sulphur about the mountain, and obscure hints in the texts of human sacrifices and incredible fleshy orgies. Of course the scholars keep reminding us that she is Asiatic in origin and not Greek, and warning us not to be taken in by bad puns on words like aphros meaning ‘foam’. This is all very well. Once she was adopted, re-cycled and structured by the invincible Greek tongue – that alphabet crisp as a laundered collar – she became, and will for ever remain, the Greek goddess of love – older than Greek, perhaps, but always as young as first love. Under her title Urania, she stood for pure and ideal love; as Genetrix or Nymphia, she was the protector of lawful marriage and favoured all serious unions; as Pandemos or Porne she was the patron of all prostitutes and favoured all lust and venal love. Everything to do with passion, from the noblest to the most degraded, came within her scope. It is her completeness, compounded of many attributes, which wins our hearts. With her, loving had a comprehensiveness that accepted every human foible, good or bad.

  Nor was she averse at times to using her powers mischievously – as when she took it into her head to light a short fuse under the chair of Zeus in Olympus, which gave him one of the worst attacks of skirt-fever ever to win a place in the Olympian version of The Guinness Book of Records. Was there nothing sacred, he asked her, all lit up like a Christmas tree? Yes, she must have answered, everything is sacred, without distinction, even laughter. Especially laughter.

  It was natural that men should come to worship this graceful blonde pussmoth of a goddess, with her grey eyes and the smile they always mention as playing about her lips – that memorable smile! Of course Hera and Athena were also pretty girls, but they had other qualities which made one feel they were fragile, this-side-up-with-care sort of people. Haughty Hera inspired respect, while Athena’s severe beauty arrested desire. Aphrodite only had to look and one was enslaved. She hovered somewhere between the impossible and the inevitable. But even she had her moments of weakness for, when Zeus returned the compliment and put the Indian Sign on her, she too was forced to fall in love. He had ‘inspi
red her with the sweet desire to lie with a mortal man’.

  If you should happen to make an excursion to Mount Ida, spare a thought for the Trojan Anchises, for he was the lucky man upon whom her eye fell. He was reputed to be easily as handsome as any of the immortals, and there must have been something to it, for she was overwhelmed. He was there, pasturing his flocks on the holy mountain, when he saw this extraordinary apparition come towards him across the shocks of mountain grass. Aphrodite knew she was looking her best, for she had just come back from visiting her shrine in Paphos, where the Graces had anointed her body with fragrant and incorruptible oils and adorned her with her most precious jewelry. ‘Her veil was more dazzling than flame, she wore bracelets and ear-rings, round her throat there were golden necklaces, her delicate bosom shone like a moon.’ Anchises was dumb with amazement as he watched her calmly climbing towards him, with her retinue of shaggy wolves and lions and sleek panthers which frisked and played about her. Who could she be?

  She told him that she was the daughter of Otreus, King of Phrygia, and that she would like to be his wife. Still speechless with amazement he led her to his rough cot, which however contained a comfortable bed covered with the skins of lions and bears. So: ‘A mortal man, by the will of the gods and of Destiny, slept with an immortal goddess without knowing who she was.’ They say it happens to all of us, but usually only once.

  Next morning when she woke, perhaps quite inadvertently, she showed herself to him in all her true splendour. The terrified shepherd fell down before her, fearing the premature old age which is promised to all mortal men who dare to sleep with a goddess, even unknowingly. She reassured him on this score and promised him a son like a god (who proved to be the pious Aeneas) – but he must promise never to reveal the name of his mother. This was her most perfect love-adventure; after it she seems to diminish in size somewhat. Why, for example, did she give herself to the graceless, churlish hunchback called Hephaestus? As a marriage, it was a failure from the beginning, and she sought refuge in other loves like Ares and Hermes. I do not profess to follow her later career with so much interest. Perhaps we do not know all the facts. It would be interesting to write a book which explained all these rather capricious changes of mood. But think what happened to her victims when the spell of her passion was on them. Medea and Ariadne betrayed their fathers; Helen abandoned her home to follow a stranger; the incestuous desires of Myrrha and Phaedra came from her; also the monstrous and bestial passion of poor Pasiphae. It is useless to ask her image about this; all one has in reply is the marvellous smile. ‘When she appears,’ cries Lucretius, ‘the heavens are all assuaged and pour forth torrents of light; the waves of the sea smile on her.’ I do not pretend to understand, but I feel the weight of her enigmatic, smiling presence. Her goodness is terrifying because it is so absolute.