The Greek Islands

by Lawrence Durrell

  There are many corners of Rhodes that have not been swallowed up by the tourist development – which has largely restricted itself to the butt of the island upon which the original town of Rhodes was constructed. There is a pleasant little spa at Callithea which is a longish walk from the town, but a good place to picnic – a place with medicinal springs which the Italians had hopes of turning into a health spa. Then there are wonderfully peaceful corners like the old stadium or the grove of pines at Rodini. One night, up in the stadium after dark, while we were having a late night drink after a bathe, we saw lanterns and torches moving about – a group of half a dozen young men it would seem. They were looking for someone. The night was starless. Then one of the figures cupped his hands around his mouth and uttered a cry, calling out the name of a girl with an anxiety that stirred the blood. Or perhaps what really thrilled the blood was the name he uttered – ‘Eurydice!’ It is a cry that echoes on through world literature: ‘Where are you?’ Moreover he pronounced it in the Greek way as ‘Every deechi’ with the accent on the third syllable. He only called once. The little group moved on slowly over the brow of the hill and were lost to sight. But the name seemed to echo among the dark shadows. Nor did we ever discover who the young men were, or whom they sought.

  When steam replaced sail, Rhodes like the other big islands became less important, and at the time of writing it seems that only brisk tourism will keep the island’s economy balanced. The Greeks have wisely kept a customs union with the Dodecanese which confers a wide margin of autonomy as far as prices of commodities go; it was to cushion the fall of the island from the relative opulence in which it lived under Italy against the privations of an impoverished post-war Greece. The plan worked well and is still in force. Tourists also benefit in terms of cheap drinks and smokes.

  There could not be a pleasanter place to buy a cottage for the summer; I venture to think that of all the island climates I know, the Rhodian climate is the best in every sense – though Greeks get so passionate about their favourite islands that one hardly dares to say anything like that to them. Compared with the other big Greek islands – Crete, Cyprus, Chios, Samos et al. – I think I am right. My memories of its winter weather are still sharp after more than thirty years of living in various other places. It was always with a pang that we took ships to leave Rhodes; the farewell siren echoed up there on Monte Smith and among the green glades of Callithea and Rodini with heartbreak in it.

  Carpathos · Nisyros · Casos · Tilos · Astypalea Symi · Castelorizo · Cos · Calymnos · Leros Patmos · Icaria

  After Rhodes it is fair to call these islands smaller fry. This may seem somewhat opprobrious for a section devoted to such smaller beauties as Carpathos and Castelorizo, even though they are definitely poorer in monuments than the larger key islands whose modern reputation has reflowered under the impetus of tourism. Yet it is necessary to stress a change of scale, for lack of communications makes these islands a little remote. They are for those who seek out quietness rather than ruins, or for those who have work to finish which needs concentration mixed with sea-bathing. Carpathos is an ideal hideaway; and it is not so very tiny, being some forty-seven-odd kilometres in length with a ten-kilometre midriff in parts. It is mostly orchard and vineyard, but rich in trees with plenty of water and shade. The little harbour is pleasant but not memorable: only when one moves inland and strikes villages like Messochori and Kilion does one realize how delightful it might be to rent a room with a family and stay on for a bit. Just a few words of Greek would do the trick – though, as in all these small islands, there is someone who has spent twenty years in Detroit and is hungry all over to talk English again.

  From Pigathi, the harbour, you can rent a boat to visit Casos – a smaller, stonier version of the same sort of thing. Or you can ask the harbourmaster to cadge you a lift on a passing caique with stores to unload here and there, and thus catch a glimpse of some of the other members of this scattered group. One of these is Nisyros, a rocky little islet with an extraordinary volcanic crater (diameter four kilometres) punched into its stony armature. According to the ancients Poseidon, in a giant-killing mood, scored a near miss with his trident on a giant called Polybotes; irritated by this he chunked off a giant stone from Cos and hurled it at his enemy, thus crushing him into the ground. Is the crater the product of an earthquake, a volcano or a meteorite? The question remains open. Nisyros is a depressing place, with its burning stones and lack of shade; so you will not be sorry to carry on towards Tilos and Astypalea. Neither of these will seem a patch on Carpathos, even if Astypalea has a somewhat more distinguished history and once harboured the Roman fleet in its spacious bay. Astypalea is also no nest of rocks but relatively fertile, and its Venetian fortress is most picturesque though recently restored. Nevertheless, the charms of Carpathos usually carry the day – I have taken several people there in the past for a few days’ holiday.

  If these islands seem rather remoter than they should, it is because they are in the main deep, and voyaging among them constitutes a real journey, rather than a bit of pleasure-boating. You can get blown into harbour by a change of wind and locked up for a long weekend, to wait for the weather to change its tune.

  The most picturesque, though the most grim at the same time, is Symi, which stands between Rhodes and the coast of Turkey, thrust up like a pitted menhir. Yes, pitted is the word, for the whole island seems to be alveolate – honeycombed rock; at any rate it gives that dramatic impression, especially in winter, during the lulls between the heavy storms which play about in this region, pushed up from Africa or Crete. Rounding Symi close in, I remember the noise made by those underground grottoes and blowholes: a prodigious slobbering and snoring, wailing and swishing – as if a thousand whales were holding a political meeting of supreme importance. It was a most awesome and melancholy sound, and gave the little island in midwinter an extraordinary feeling of strangeness and remoteness … as if it were a sort of Tristan, lost in the far Atlantic surges. Also, down here the islands in and around Rhodes are relatively unprotected from the north wind and the crosssurges of the main deep. If you start moving north, on to Cos and Calymnos, you find calmer seas and more protection from the mountains of Turkey; you also travel on the inland waters, between the mainland and the island in question, just as you do in the Ionian, and this makes for safer and more reliable navigation. I have vivid memories of being taken aboard naval craft as a passenger, and scouting these channels with maddening slowness behind that curious instrument called a paravane, which pushed on several hundred yards in front of us to tangle and set off mines. A nervy sort of operation which justified the occasional touch of pink gin all round.

  It would not be fair to move north without casting a friendly glance at the remotest of the little islands, which would make an excellent honeymoon paradise. This is Castelorizo, which almost touches the coast of Asia Minor. It is spare and neat in its scenery, with just enough history to intrigue a visitor without overwhelming him. The bathing is wonderful, the sea of dazzling clarity, and in this remote nook the underwater fishing is excellent. Another pleasure, too, is the small population – under three hundred – which gives a visitor the feeling of intimacy that one has in a small village. One knows everyone by sight in a day, and intimately in a long weekend. The island, however, is completely dependent upon Rhodes for its supplies – apart from seafood – and its needs are covered by a twice-weekly ferry service. It is a long thresh – seven hours in calm seas, and perhaps more in rough ones. When I first saw it (the word ‘thresh’ was deliberately chosen) the link was assured by two lumbering tank-landing craft which chewed their way back and forth across the stretch of open sea with the provisions needed by the island folk. Perhaps now communications have improved in speed and organization, but the journey was what the Navy used to call an ‘open leg’ of sea. You lumbered along the coast of Turkey all night; remote mountain villages twinkled up and disappeared like fireflies. Then, near dawn, you rounded a tall black shape and the
harbour burst into view, with its rectangles of light. All the inhabitants were down at the port waiting for us; they had heard the engines far away.

  As may be imagined, a small, undefended island in such a remote corner, overlooked by the Turkish mountains, has had a long and chequered history of invasions and conquests; it has been owned by seven different nations, and yet had managed during quite long spells to become affluent through skilful use of its fine harbour. Once, towards the turn of the century, it even owned some three hundred vessels, but it lacked the capital to convert to steam quickly enough. The island’s power declined. Then, during World War I, the whole fleet was sold at a blow to the British for use in the Dardenelles campaign; the inhabitants were rich in gold sovereigns for a while, but that did not halt the economic decline. Now there are more island immigrants in Australia than there are residents in Castelorizo itself. They proudly call themselves ‘Kassies’ and frequently come home on visits, as all Greeks do. The last world war proved unlucky for the place, as an ill-calculated attempt at a landing by the Allies provoked a German bombardment of exceptional severity, and a whole quarter of the town was razed. Once the population was some 14,000 strong; now the majority of citizens are Australian.

  You can swim across the harbour and climb to the little museum, which houses quite a number of mementoes of the island’s past. Among the most singular are the pictures of the harbour full of hydroplanes during the thirties, when the place enjoyed a brief renaissance. There were as many as eight flights a day from Paris! There are also some nineteenth-century pictures executed during a prosperous period when the seafaring families owned about three hundred three-masted schooners. A history of ups and downs if ever there was one.

  Since there isn’t much to do in the island except get brown and swim, it is amusing to hear the local gossips talk, after the manner of peasant-poets, about a lost treasure chest full of gold pieces, buried somewhere in the foothills around the town by pirates during the Middle Ages. There is also, according to Strabo who once visited the island, a lost city with the charming name of Cysthine, which has left no trace. Such legends, if they are legends rather than literal truth, make one keep a sharp eye out when picnicking on the bare, brown hills with their rare outbursts of vine and vegetation. If time and tide are favourable, the local patriots will insist that you visit their famous grottoes. It takes about an hour to reach them, but the trip will not disappoint anyone energetic enough to undertake the somewhat chancy journey along the fretted coast of the island. The grottoes are finer than those of Capri, but the visit has to be carefully calculated; for, when the sea rises under wind, the entrances get blocked, and there is a risk of being trapped inside. They have several names, one of which, Fokiali, suggests that seals once congregated here, as in so many places in Greece. The dimensions given for this fine natural feature – 150 metres long and 80 metres broad – do not manage to convey its real splendour, which comes from the height of the ceiling (in places 35 metres). Prodigious sea shadows falter and flicker about in the blue darkness. It is worth the risk and effort. Go!

  The visit will make you realize, too, that here in Castelorizo, one is halfway to Patrick Kinross’s Orphaned Isle, Cyprus, submerged now as once Crete was in the toils of that hideous Laocoön, international politics.

  The slow return to Rhodes must be faced before you are free to skirt gaunt Symi and head north into Cos, the island of Hippocrates, which has never failed to excite the visitor to eulogy. Poet and wayfarer alike have always appreciated Cos for its green abundance and quietness. It lies lapped in a fold of the Turkish mainland, which thrusts out great promontories now, one upon another, with spectacular fjords laid up between. Cos, the most sheltered of the Dodecanese Islands and deservedly the most praised. It would be downright dishonest to raise a dissenting voice against merits so self-evident in these green and smiling valleys, rich with fruit and flowers. Even its long and variegated history seems less full of bloodshed than that of its neighbours – though perhaps this is an illusion.

  There are places benign and places baleful; and I seem to remember that in the treatise on Soils, Airs, Waters attributed to Hippocrates himself, the doctor-saint of Cos makes some attempt to describe the often fortuitous combination of the three elements necessary to create a site with natural healing properties. Such a study was an obvious undertaking for the ancient Greek priest-healers, since it was in these benign spots that the Aesculapia were erected – not always where there were mineral springs, though sometimes, as in Cos, these were present. Without being unduly imaginative, the modern visitor to such choice areas will feel, or seem to feel, some of the harmony and natural richness which in the past made these ancient sanatoria places of world pilgrimage for the sick and troubled. The gaps in our knowledge about ancient methods of healing are particularly irritating, for what we know comes largely from late Roman sources. The incubatio is an example; a room where the sick patient was made to sleep, his diagnosis being dependent on the dreams produced during his first night. The great snakes also, that lived in the pits, had a definite role to play in the process – symbolic or functional, who can say? Aesculapian lore is a hopeless tangle, and we live in hopes that one day soon the Indian elements of the caduceus will be sorted out by some competent student of comparative religion, so that we may enjoy more deeply our visits to Cos and Epidaurus. These two places seem to bask in the same choice calm and smiling peace.

  The seascapes are very fine here in the approaches to Cos. Northward, in the blue haze, are the dark shapes of the Calymnos hills, while opposite is the strange wild hinterland of Turkey, with its vast empty spaces seemingly so wild and untenanted. The deep water sweeps round gradually, changing colour as it enters the noble little bay of the capital, which is crowned with a fifteenth-century fortress left behind by the knights when they abandoned these smiling regions for a grimmer and bonier Malta. Dotted around hereabouts one also sees a number of strategically placed martellos, which were used once to keep the narrow straits under observation – for this little corner was, in terms of warfare against the infidel, always a ‘hot’ area. Big fleets could gather in the shade of Turkey for an assault on the Venetian or Genoese forces. There were excellent yards for re-fitting at Symi and in later times in Leros. Yet despite the dangers and rigours, ‘There is no pleasanter land under the Heavens than Cos’, writes Pourqueville, ‘and viewing its lovely scented gardens you would say it was a terrestrial paradise.’

  Today this is even more true, for it remains an unspoilt backwater where the visitor will find good beaches, unsophisticated but clean little hotels, and cool breezes even in mid-summer.

  The old capital was called Astipalea, but after it was sacked the Coans decided to move house, and a new city, Chora, was established on its present site in 366 BC – a very successful move, if we are to believe the eulogies of Diodorus: ‘The people of Cos at that time settled themselves in the town they now enjoy, adorning it with the gardens it now has. It became extremely populous and a very costly wall was constructed right round it, and a harbour built. From this time onwards, it grew apace, both in public revenues and in private fortunes, and in general it rivalled the most celebrated cities of the world.’

  There is little in modern Chora which echoes this golden period, though the green gardens are still there, and the oleanders and olives continue to flourish. Today, the little town is on the scruffy side. Among the shadows and echoes of its remoter renown, one comes upon several evocative names which are almost as celebrated as Hippocrates himself. Among them is Theocritus, who came all the way from his native Sicily to study with Philetas and who is popularly supposed to have used his Coan experience to furnish the detail in his Seventh Idyll. Whether this is true or not is a problem for profounder scholars than I, but some of the difficulty in disentangling influences may come from the similarity between the two landscapes. Sicily is, in this sense, as thoroughly Greek as Cyprus; the poet must have felt quite at home in Cos. Another echoing name is Apelles, whos
e world-famous statue of Aphrodite is supposed to have adorned the Aesculapion – which lies some two miles out of town on very easily negotiable roads and should not be missed at any price.

  Although the site of the Aesculapion is really the thing most worth seeing, the three-terraced sanatorium lies in a beautiful position, tucked into a limestone fold of the hill. It has been in part reconstructed and perhaps retouched by the Italians, but not too fancifully I think. The original has disappeared, but we know that the Hellenistic version, on which the Italian archaeologists worked, covered the ancient site – which was revived and remodelled by a physician called Xenophon, who is said to have poisoned the poor Emperor Claudius. (History is full of surprises, and one wonders whether a man capable of reviving such a hallowed site would also be capable of dispatching his emperor.) Talking of poison reminds me that the grave and noble formulations of the healing code – the Oath of the Hippocratic doctor – do not appear in even the most detailed guide books. It is worth quoting here, since even in translation some of the magical quality of his idealism and humanity comes through and it is relevant to the spirit of Cos:

  I shall look upon him who shall have taught me this art even as one of my parents. I will share my substance with him and relieve his need should he be in want. His children shall be as my own kin, and I will teach them the art, if they so wish, without fee or covenant … The regimen I adopt shall be for the benefit of my patients according to my ability and judgment, and not for their hurt or for any wrongdoing. I will give no deadly drug to anyone, even if it be asked of me, nor will I counsel such, and most especially I will not aid a woman to procure an abortion. Whatsoever house I enter, I will go there for the benefit of the sick, refraining from all wrongdoing or corruption, and most especially from any act of seduction, of male or female, of bond or free. Whatever things I may hear concerning the life of men during my attendance on the sick, or even apart from them, which should be kept secret, I will keep my own counsel upon, deeming such things as sacred secrets.