The Greek Islands

by Lawrence Durrell

  Whatever tourism has done to the island, Mykonos must be seen, cannot be missed out or scamped. It would be like missing out Venice because of the tourists or Fez because of the smell in the souks. Of course scale makes nonsense of such a comparison; nevertheless, there is nothing quite like this extraordinary cubist village, with its flittering, dancing shadows, and its flaring nightmare of whiteness, which haunts its noons and hence your siestas. Its colonnades and curling streets, with their kennel-like houses, sprouting extravagant balconies of tottering painted wood, lead on and on, turning slowly inward upon themselves to form labyrinths, hazing-in all sense of direction until one surrenders to the knowledge that one is irremediably lost in a village hardly bigger than Hampstead.

  Everywhere the white arcades and chapels repeat themselves in an obsessive rhythm of originality and congruence; and what is marvellous is that in Mykonos there are no foreign echoes from Venice, Genoa and the rest. Everything is as newly minted as a new-laid Easter egg, and just as beautiful. You can walk for hours in what is an imitation souk hung with carpets, brocades, island blankets, donkey bags, shawls in all their bewildering variety. Relentless perspectives of light and shade marry the voluptuous shapes of breasts translated into cupolas and apses, into squinches and dovecots. Take Picasso, Brancusi and Gaudi, knock their heads together, and you might get something like Mykonos by evening light, foundering into violet whiteness against a blue-black sea. You forget the Germans, you forget the ladies burned purple, you forget everything and just feast your eyes and mind upon this extravagant bazaar of candescent loveliness. And at the end of every gyre or whorl (you are inside a seashell) you suddenly plunge out upon the harbour with its welcoming lines of cafés and chop-houses, set out under brilliant awnings or in some places shaded by tall mulberries. Nightfall is the time, ouzo-time, after an exhausting day of doing nothing purposefully (the opposite of killing time), when you feel the need of these cafés. The violets, pinks, rose, and grey, of the sinking sun on the walls – just before the wink of the green ray which says goodnight – are all the more haunting for being reproduced in little in the cloudy glass of ouzo before you on the table. It is like inhabiting a rainbow.

  When darkness comes, the little town becomes even more mysterious and beguiling, whether by electric light or by fizzing gaslight or by the serene yellow glow-worm light of paraffin-lamps; the shadows leap and caper on the dancing walls The wind presses on your lips, on your shutters, on your sleeping eyelids; it can rise to a shriek, or sink to a moan like a woman in labour, but it never lets up – always pressing and letting go, pressing and letting go, pressing and releasing your ear-drums. You sleep in a cocoon of wind, and on Delos you hear it whistle like a snake in the burned grass. Its continually changing pressure and eternal whispering give you vertigo. Never will you go to sleep so soundly as you will in Mykonos – and it is the deep sleep of early infancy. In the morning, when you push back your shutters, the whiteness comes up to meet you again like the caress of wet eyelashes.

  The architecture is of no special time or merit; the Greek islander has built himself a home, that is all, and like a sea-animal the shell he constructs prefigures the contours of his nature with its extremes of mysticism and rationalism, asceticism and voluptuousness. Walking about this village, which echoes no age or style, you feel that only paradise could be composed like this, so haphazardly and yet so harmoniously. Here plane geometry takes wing and becomes curved of surface. The little square boxes of houses are pure, unplanned expressions of the islanders’ inner metric. Everywhere the tiny chapels bud and proliferate like some crazy illustration of genetic fission; self-multiplying breasts, fused one upon the other, joined like the separate cloves which go to make a garlic-head or an orange; compartmented upon the same mathematical principle as the pomegranate-fruit which nods its toy crown at you over many a walled garden gate. No, however many tourists come with their chatter and their litter, little Mykonos will not let the stranger down. Its exemplary purity of tone and line will hush them, its island wind alarm their sleep, its black seascape nudge their nerves with the premonition of things as yet unformed and unformulated in their inner natures; perhaps the very things they have come here to experience … It is not cosy, it does not try to charm. It brands you like a hot iron.

  I say this advisedly, for as late as October 1976 I visited it with a couple of French friends who had never seen it. I was pale with terror, lest its glamour had been defaced, lest its purity had departed. They were just the people to enjoy and evaluate the momentous experience it had to offer. But then, what the devil? Was I romancing about this place, which I first knew in 1940 when there was not a single hotel there? I am given to rhapsody and exaggeration. Perhaps Mykonos would be a terrible experience? I was afraid. But nothing had changed and the island was virtually empty. On the cool sea-front at evening we counted half a dozen other tourists like ourselves. It was a miracle. And the new tavernas were marvellous, the seafood they served being in the best Athens style, which is saying something when you recall the sea-front tavernas below the yacht club in Turkolimano, Piraeus.

  Mykonos has so little history to intimidate one that it is a pleasure to get to know that little. Always overshadowed by famous Delos, it is the Cinderella of the islands, even today. There is nothing much to see except the granitic earth, lightly covered by parched grass which is stirred by the harsh unslaked wind. Apparently the island was used by Poseidon once to batter in the skulls of some giants he found irritating. More interesting than this was the invasion of the Ionians, for they brought with them the cult of Dionysus, and thenceforth the coinage of the island wore the god’s head on one face and a bunch of grapes on the reverse. There is not much more to know, and anyway I supplied my potted biography of this aggravating god of wine in the section on Naxos, where he was rightly regarded as the most interesting man of the season.

  As for the three hundred and forty little Orthodox chapels in the capital, they all seem to be private property, belonging to the various families who, at one time or another, had estates in the island. They are all tiny, and seemingly decorated con furioso by unbalanced monks with Sicilian backgrounds.

  In the violet whiteness of the falling dusk, if you go astray and tumble into one of these chapels you can say a prayer for the goddess of labyrinths who managed to inspire it; and at dawn, when you throw back the shutters to emerge on the balcony of the doll’s house you have rented for a night, you will be all the more overcome by the confused yet marvellously homogeneous composition of interpenetrating staircases which rise up at you – some broken off and eclipsed, only to restart again at another level, higher up; some candidly broken off, like the stems of plants. You will delight in the live trees growing right up through the centre of houses which politely give them room, built round them so that washing can be hung out to dry in the branches. (What else is a tree for?) To crown it all is a fantastic display of variegated chimney-pots and weather vanes spinning in the wind, which opens and shuts the palms with a clicking sound as if they were Chinese fans.

  Mykonos offers you a sort of prototype of the eye-caressing beauties which will charm you in less selective places – in Poros, in Paros, or in vine-wreathed Naxos. Everywhere else, history has created a sort of jumble sale of styles which are jolted together and made pleasing simply by paint and whitewash and blue sea; disjunct forms – Venetian mouldings, modern balconies, medieval windows, concrete pavements … Not so Mykonos. Here is a true primitive form with its cyclopean eggplant style, its bulb chapels; a form decorated not only by rhapsodic Hellenistic statues of the classical epoch, but by those primitive ladies with faraway smiles who inhabit the tiny museum on the Acropolis, the wicked Cycladean queens in exile.

  If you are a painter or a poet, you will feel, when you walk here at early morning, or late at night, by a full moon, part of the extraordinary natural forces which have shaped a peach, have ensured the exact calibration of a starfish or an orange or an octopus. It seems as if you divine intui
tively the function of this vast, desolate, hungry machine we call nature. This is no less true in the terrible but more famous desolation of Delos, where you may stand on a deserted threshing floor with the jackstraw blowing about your ankles and wonder at the effort that human beings have made to try to stamp a reminder of their little significance upon places like these – these nude islands brindled like sand-lions, ravaged now only by wind which moves across the embers of past civilizations, stirring here and there the pathos of an historical echo. There are no cicadas here, or few, for cicadas like shade and the violin accompaniment of running water if possible. But there are occasional wild hares in the hills, brown as their brown soil and big in size, which are good eating, if you can hit one.

  Perhaps my somewhat proprietary feelings about Mykonos are due to the fact that I first saw it about 1940, just as the war was really beginning. For a long time we had lived in the penumbra of a war declared on all sides but not implemented; almost a whole year, with the Maginot Line frozen and Greece technically a neutral. But the whole of Europe was breaking up under us, like the raft of Odysseus, and we knew it. It was a matter of time before we would have to swim for it. Already leave-takings were sharper and more poignant because they foreshadowed the more definitive leave-takings the true war would bring. Nobody dared to hope he would survive. It was popularly supposed that German bombing would obliterate in a couple of hours all the capitals of Europe. Thus it was in the twilight of European history that I said goodbye to Henry Miller, who was ordered back to the States by his Consul. I posted off the letter which was afterwards to make a postscript to his Colossus of Maroussi, and took ship at night for Mykonos, where I hoped to spend a fortnight of quiet with my wife. At that time, I had begun to understand Greece through the friendships I had made with the young people of Athens, a remarkable body of spirits – some of fortune, some poor – but all endowed with the riches of the buoyant Greek nature. Moreover they were all raised in four languages, and consequently the whole of Europe was theirs. Of exceptional personal beauty and style, the type to which they belonged was always recognizable on Greek coins or sculptures in the museum. Rich or poor, they could live like nabobs or like tramps without ever losing their taste for life, without ever yielding before adversity. These young men were an education in themselves. It is a pleasure to put down their names – each had something personal to teach me through his attitude to life and his intrinsic Greekness. I think of Andre Nomikos, painter; Stephan Syriotis, high functionary; Matsas, diplomat; Seferis, poet; Elytis, poet; Alexis Ladas, Peter Payne, among so many others. Stephan Syriotis spent his summer hidden in Mykonos with his small boat, living in seclusion almost, and coming back to the little hamlet of Mykonos only for provisions of lentils and rice and wine. For the rest, he led the life of a seabird, swimming on faraway beaches, reading and sleeping away the days until he needs must return to Athens and his job.

  I admire solitariness and realized then that in the heart of every Greek there is a buried monk, waiting to emerge when fortune fails and when youth is spent; it is not only the bandits who dream of retirement in some distant monastery. It is to Stephan that I owe my first visit to Mykonos and, by the same token, to Delos, where he made me free of two tiny beaches which are still there, still untenanted. They are hardly bigger than a concert-grand, it is true, but there is some undercut rock, where you can hide provisions in the coolness of wet sand; and the little shelving beach slopes quickly into deep water where, while you paddle, you can watch the island of Hecate glowering at you across the way.

  I re-discovered this tiny corner in 1966, using the same technique that Stephan had shown me in 1939. I think it would work even today. Get hold of Janko or Pavlo or any of his descendants and strike a price for a boat – quite a small benzina will do. Ask him to borrow a sack and place therein twenty bottles of beer, some ham, a tin of butter, a chunk of bread and some fruit, all separately wrapped. Bid him take you to the bay of Phourni and decant you below the old site of the abandoned Aesculapion. It is technically forbidden to camp on Delos, but Apollo made an exception for my wife, who was recovering from a grave operation, and even welcomed her with an evening calm and a special sunset. I practised a slight deception, knowing that the guardians retire early (there is nothing to steal on Delos; everything is either smashed or too big to lift). Janko came back in the evening, ostensibly to take us back to Mykonos, but in fact to bring us some welcome Thermos flasks of hot coffee and soup. Then he returned to base, and the guardians presumably thought we had gone with him; but no, we unpacked sleeping bags and waited for the moon to rise. How silent and ominous Delos is at night, with the slither of snakes and huge green lizards among the stones.

  We swam by the rising moon, the old Apollo therapy, and came back dripping and shivery to our warm soup, bully beef and coffee. At about midnight, the moon was so flaring white that we both awoke with a start, thinking we had heard a cry, perhaps from some wild seabird. We took a prowl among the ruins. There was a hole in the barbed wire which gave access to some proconsular villa, built by some long dead Roman magistrate. The tessellated floor had a fish or dolphin design, I don’t remember which now; but the salt and dust had dried over it and obliterated it. At any rate (we did not need the torches we had brought; you could have read a Greek newspaper by the moon’s light), I filled a pail with seawater and swished it over the floor and suddenly the whole design printed itself like a photograph does in a developing-tray. I still remember the way the eyes emerged, even though I do not recall if they were dolphin’s or fish’s. Fish, I think.

  Mykonos at that time was little frequented because of faulty and haphazard communications with Athens; but it was a choice and secret place which Athenians loved, and which they kept very much to themselves. It was a compliment to be made free of this little club of Mykoniots d’élection, and I have never ceased to be grateful to Stephan Syriotis for tipping me off about it.

  It is strange to remember how shaky the communications were in those days – now one can telephone for a room! Because of the lack of a safe anchorage and the tremendous bustle of the wind, one was pushed ashore in a bumboat, and, in default of any hotel whatsoever, one had to lodge chez l’habitant as the French guides have it. This led at once to spirited wrangling and enjoyable encounters. In my case, I was adopted by a huge wall-eyed goddess called, strangely enough, Poppeia, who looked like a Sicilian mama fresh from the crater of Etna. But first I was processed and beaten to my knees by her husband Janko, who stood me an ouzo to steady my nerves before leading the way to his little house. After all that flurry and argument I found later that, in an excess of cleverness, he had cheated himself, and I made up the difference. Actually, I lodged among his scrawny chickens in a clean comfortable cot, eating at the tavern under a spreading mulberry tree. It was his boat I used, and his complicity I enjoyed in the Delos connection.

  This huge couple lived in harmony and happiness, shouting and yelling at each other the livelong day. When their paths crossed as they went about their various tasks, which was often for the house was small, they never failed to smack each other resoundingly on the behind with a calloused palm. So Zeus must have lived with Hera in ages past. Their laughter and exultation was infectious; the whole neighbourhood resounded with their chuckles and chortles. It was what Shakespeare has so justly called the ‘marriage of true mounds’. This marvellous couple has alas vanished, and nobody knows what became of them. After the war their house fell down and they never came back. I hunted for them in ’66 but had to make do with a younger and more agile Janko for my illegal Delos run. The spreading mulberry tree was still there, and the tavern had blossomed into quite a big establishment with excellent fare, though under new ownership.

  Of Delos itself, it is hard to write because it is more than one island. Half bank and half shrine, it corresponds to the inimitable Greek spirit, which manages to combine enlightened self-interest with fire-insurance. Moreover, it seems different at different times of the day; when the b
ankers go home, so to speak, the ancient gods come out to enjoy the moonlight. Delos was the Wall Street of the ancient world, and the first thought a visitor has is one of marvel that there exists no real harbour for such a great maritime entrepôt, such a critical staging-post between Europe and Asia. I must confess that none of the explanations I have heard concerning the preeminence of Delos as a maritime centre really holds water; the absence of a good harbour really is a great mystery. The French have been picking away at the island since before the turn of the century and, with their diligence, have unearthed and almost completely identified the separate buildings and temples of this great harbourless complex of trading houses. Of its commercial importance there is no doubt; but how could such a volume of merchandise be brought ashore, stored, re-freighted and re-dispatched?

  Here is the explanation offered by the sailor-scholar, Ernle Bradford:

  Delos, the hub around which the Cyclades (Kukloi-rings) radiate, was formed by nature to be the focal point of a seaman’s world. If one is tempted to ask why so small an island, without any natural resources, ever became what it did, then the answer can be given by any sailor. Delos is the last and best anchorage between Europe and Asia. To the east it is shielded by Mykonos, to the north by Tinos, and to the west by Rhenia. Looking at a chart it is easy to see how the direct sea-route between the Gulf of Nauplia (with Argos at his head) flows straight across the latitude of 37º 10’ north of Patmos and Samos. Exactly in the centre of the trading route between the Dardanelles and Crete. Religious centres may sometimes, as at Rome or Lourdes, attract trade and commerce. But more often one will find that where trade is, there are also temples. Merchants, then as now, are eager to purchase security in both worlds.

  This is fairly spoken, but when you are actually anchored in the tiny harbour of Delos, alongside the ancient mole, whether in a caique or cruise ship, you realize that you could not funnel a quantity of merchandise ashore with any regularity or safety – at least not a quantity which might correspond to the extensive and elaborate storage complex of the ancient town. The whole strait between Rhenia and Delos is a chancy affair, and one constantly looks for the huge harbour which alone could accommodate such a volume of trade, store and re-expedite it. It is all the more mysterious when one thinks of the marvellous harbours available in the surrounding islands – almost anywhere would be surer than Delos. People who have wintered in Greece and snaked about on island craft will also wonder what used to happen to Delos port in winter, when Boreas hurtled down the Rhenia channel and curdled the sea into a mass of white-caps? Even in summer one can be held up for a day by wind in Mykonos.