Report to Grego (20 page)

I climbed to the top of a hill and gazed out over the narrow rose-colored beaches, the sea, the faintly outlined islands. What joy that was! Greece with her virgin body, how she swims through the waves and lifts herself above them, the sun falling upon her like a bridegroom! How she has tamed stones and water, rid herself of matter's inertia and coarseness, and conserved only the essence!

I was roaming in order to become acquainted with Attica, or so I thought. But I was really roaming in order to become acquainted with my soul. I wished to find it and come to know it in trees, mountains, and solitude—but in vain. My heart did not bound with joy, a sure sign that I had not found what I was seeking.

Only once, one day at noon, did I believe I found it. I had journeyed all alone to Sounion. It was summer already, and the resin flowed from the slit bark of the pine trees, filling the air with balm. A grasshopper landed on my shoulder and sat there; for some time we traveled together. My whole body smelled like a pine, I had become a pine. Then, as I emerged from the pine forest, I saw the white columns of the temple of Poseidon, and between them the hallowed sea, a deep scintillating blue. My knees gave way beneath me; I halted. This is beauty, I thought to myself. This is the Wingless Victory, the summit of joy; man can reach no higher. This is Greece.

So great was my joy that for a moment, viewing Greece's beauty, I believed that my two wounds had healed and that this world, even though ephemeral—precisely because ephemeral—possessed value. I believed I was wrong in my attempt to divine the future crone behind the young girl's face; rather, I should re-create and resurrect in the face of the crone the freshness and youth of the girl who no longer existed.

The Attic landscape is truly fascinating in an inexpressible, penetrating way. Here in Attica one feels that everything is subordinated to a rhythm which is simple, sure, and balanced. Everything here possesses an aristocratic grace and ease: the frugal, arid land, the graceful curves of Hymettus and Pentelicus, the silver-leafed olive trees, the slender ascetic cypresses, the playful glare of rocks in the sun, and above all the buoyant, diaphanous, completely spiritual light which dresses and undresses all things.

The Attic landscape determines the lineaments of the ideal man: handsomely well built, taciturn, freed from superfluous wealth; powerful, but capable on the other hand of restraining his power and imposing limits on his imagination. Sometimes the Attic landscape reaches the borders of austerity. But it does not cross them; it stops at a cheerful, good-natured seriousness. Its grace does not degenerate into romanticism, nor, by the same token, its power into asperity. All is finely balanced and measured. Even its virtues do not run to excess, do not break the human mean, but stop at a point beyond which, if they proceeded further, they would become either cruelly inhuman, or divine. The Attic landscape does not swagger, does not indulge in rhetoric, does not degenerate into fits of melodramatic swooning; it says what it has
to say with a calm, virile forcefulness. By the simplest means possible it formulates the essential.

But now and again in the midst of this seriousness there is a smile—two or three silver-branched olive trees on a completely arid slope, some refreshingly green pines, oleanders at the edge of a dry, brilliantly white riverbed, a tuft of wild violets between blazing blue-black stones. All opposites join together, mix, and are reconciled here, creating the supreme miracle, harmony.

How did this miracle happen? Where did the grace find so much seriousness, the seriousness so much grace? How was the power able to avoid abusing its force? All this must constitute the Greek miracle.

There came moments, as I roamed through Attica, when I had a premonition that this land could become the highest lesson in civility, nobility, and strength.

After each of my wanderings through the Attic countryside, at first without knowing why, I climbed the Acropolis to view and review the Parthenon. This temple is a mystery to me. I can never see it the same way twice; it seems to change constantly, come to life, undulate while remaining motionless, play games with light and the human eye. But when, after longing to see it for so many years, I confronted it for the very first time, it appeared immobile to me, the skeleton of a primordial beast, and my heart did not bound like a young calf. (Throughout my life this has served me as the infallible sign. When I encounter a sunrise, a painting, a woman, or an idea that makes my heart bound like a young calf, then I know I am standing in front of happiness.) The first time I stood in front of the Parthenon, my heart did not bound. The building seemed a feat of the intellect—of numbers, geometry—a faultless thought enmarbled, a sublime achievement of the mind, possessing every virtue—every virtue except one, the most precious and beloved: it failed to touch the human heart.

I felt that the Parthenon was an even number such as two or four. Even numbers run contrary to my heart; I want nothing to do with them. Their lives are too comfortably arranged, they stand on their feet much too solidly and have not the slightest desire to change location. They are satisfied, conservative, without anxieties; they have solved every problem, translated every desire into reality, and grown calm. It is the odd number which conforms to the
rhythm of my heart. The life of the odd number is not at all comfortably arranged. The odd number does not like this world the way it finds it, but wishes to change it, add to it, push it further. It stands on one foot, holds the other ready in the air, and wants to depart. Where to? To the following even number, in order to halt for an instant, catch its breath, and work up fresh momentum.

This sober enmarbled rationality was unpleasing to youth's rebellious heart, which wants to crush everything old and remake the world anew. An excessively prudent dotard it was, who desired with his counsels to give excessively short rein to the heart's impulsion. Turning my back on the Parthenon, I submerged myself in the superb view which extended as far as the sea. The sun stood at the zenith; it was noontime, the culminant hour, devoid of shadows or any play of light; austere, sublime, perfect. I looked at the blazing, brilliantly white city, the hallowed sea sparkling around Salamis, the surrounding mountains which were sunning themselves, bare and contented. Submerged in this vision, I forgot the Parthenon which stood behind me.

But after each new return from Attica's olive groves and the Saronic Gulf, the hidden harmony, casting aside its veils one by one, slowly, gradually revealed itself to my mind. Each time I climbed the Acropolis again, the Parthenon seemed to be swaying slightly, as in a motionless dance—swaying and breathing.

This initiation lasted for months, perhaps years. I do not remember the exact day when I stood completely initiated before the Parthenon and my heart bounded like a young calf. This temple that towered before me, what a trophy it was, what a collaboration between mind and heart, what a supreme fruit of human effort! Space had been conquered; distinctions between small and large had vanished. Infinity entered this narrow, magical parallelogram carved out by man, entered leisurely and took its repose there. Time had been conquered as well; the lofty moment had been transformed into eternity.

I allowed my gaze to creep over the warm, sun-nourished marble. It touched the stones and rummaged through them like a hand, uncovering the hidden mysteries; it clung to them and refused to depart. I saw the seemingly parallel columns imperceptibly incline their capitals one toward the other so that concertedly,
with tenderness and strength, they might sustain the sacred pediments entrusted to them. Never have undulations created lines so irreproachably straight. Never have numbers and music coupled with such understanding, such love.

T
his, I believe, was the greatest joy I experienced in my four years as a student in Athens. Not a single feminine exhalation came to cloud the air I breathed. But I had several friends I liked very much. I went mountain climbing with them, and in summertime we swam together in the sea. We chatted about fleeting everyday things, and occasionally we held parties to which some of them brought their girl friends. We laughed without cause, because we were young; we grieved without cause, again because we were young. We were like fresh unspent bull-calves who sigh because their strength is strangling them.

How many possibilities were held out to each of us! I looked my friends in the eye, one by one, struggling to guess in which direction their strength would blaze a trail. One, when he parted his lips to speak of some idea or mad folly that he loved, caught fire all at once; it was an immense pleasure to hear the great epigrammatic force with which, never stumbling, he enumerated his thoughts. As I listened to him I felt envious, because whenever I opened my mouth to speak, I immediately regretted it. Words came to me with difficulty, and if I happened to advance an argument in support of an opinion I had, the opposite argument, equally correct, always came immediately to mind. Ashamed to tell lies, I fell abruptly silent. . . . Another friend was reserved. Extremely sparing of words, he never opened his mouth except during the law school recitations, and then the professor and all the rest of us listened to him with admiration as he purposely made tangled knots of the problems of justice and then undid them by feats of prestidigitation. Another was a great organizer who ruled the masses. He became involved in politics, organized demonstrations, gave speeches, went to prison, came out again, resumed the struggle. We all said that one day he would doubtlessly become a great statesman. Another, a pale, soft-spoken vegetarian with faded blue eyes and ladylike hands, had by dint of great effort established a club whose emblem was a white lily with the inscription, “The feet cleaner than the hands.” He loved the moon. “The
moon is the only woman I adore,” he used to say. Another was an untouched lily—pallid, melancholy, with large blue eyes and long-fingered hands. He wrote poetry. I have been able to remember very little of this poetry, but when in solitude I whisper the verses to myself, my eyes fill with tears. For one night this young man was found outside the monastery of Kaisariani, hanging from the branch of an olive tree.

There were many others as well, each with his own individual soul full of closed buds. When are they going to flower, I asked myself, when are they going to bear fruit? Dear God, I implored, let me live long enough to see them, let me live long enough to see, in my own case, which buds will open inside me and what kind of fruit they will form. I looked at my friends with anxiety and unutterable sadness, as though bidding them farewell. For I was afraid that time might be the gale which blows when nature burgeons, afraid that it might blow mercilessly and strip these souls bare.

D
eparting from Athens, I left two laurel crowns behind me, the only two I was ever awarded in my whole life. The first I received for fencing. It was heavy, interwoven with white and blue ribbons, and composed of laurel supposedly picked in the Delphian gorge. This was a lie. I knew it, everyone knew it, but this lie bathed the leaves in splendor. The second I received in a playwriting competition. I don't know why, but one day my blood caught fire and I wrote an ardent drama full of melancholy and passion. It was about love; I called it
Day Is Breaking
. To be sure, I believed that I was offering the world a superior, more moral morality, a greater freedom, a new light. The professor who was judge, a serious, close-shaven man wearing a high collar, ruled that mine was the best of all the plays submitted. But, giving way to fear, he stigmatized [in irreproachable katharévousa] its audacious phrases and unbridled eroticism. “We give the poet his laurel crown,” he said in conclusion, “but we dismiss him from these sacred precincts.” I was there in the great university auditorium, a beardless inexperienced student, and I heard. Blushing to the ears, I stood up, left the laurel crown on the judge's table, and walked out.

I had a friend who was an attaché in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We had recently made plans to travel together in western
Europe. “You'd better take along the fencing crown,” he said to me one day. “We won't be able to get laurel leaves up north, and we'll need them for stew.”

I hung the crown on the wall and saved it. Years passed. When our dream finally came true and my friend and I departed for Germany, I took it with me. In two years we had consumed all the leaves in stew.

I
RETURNED
to Crete for the final summer of my student years. My mother I found seated in her usual place by the window which gave onto the courtyard. She was knitting socks. It was evening, and my sister had begun to water the pots of basil and marjoram. The trellis above the well was laden with bunches of fat, still-unripened grapes.

Nothing in the house had been moved. Everything stood in its place: the sofa, mirror, lamps, and all around on every wall the heroes of '21 with their thick mustaches, hairy chests, the pistols at their waists, wild, passion-governed souls who were capable of doing—and did—both good and evil, according to how their spleen prodded them. Karaiskakis wrote to Captain Stournáras, “Most valiant brother, Captain Nikólaos: I got your letter; I've seen everything you wrote. My prick has trumpets and it also has toubelékia. I play whichever I please!” The toubelékia is a Turkish musical instrument, the trumpet a Greek. These heroes were not pure souls, they were great ones. And great souls are always dangerous.

I often contemplate what a mystery it is that in such dung the blue flower of liberty could have found nourishment and put forth shoots. Hatred, betrayals, dissension, feats of bravery, ardent love for the fatherland, the dance at Zálongon!

Bright and early the next morning I went to find my two classmates, whom I had not seen for four years. The former members of the Friendly Society were unrecognizable. Life had already rolled over them and leveled them flat. When they spoke of the Friendly Society, they burst out laughing. One had a fine voice and was invited to all the marriages, baptisms, and holiday festivities. He ate, drank, and sang. People admired him for his sweet voice and he shared their admiration. He had started along the downgrade;
his hands already trembled from too much drink. The other had studied the guitar. He played passionate airs and lively ditties, accompanying his friend. I found both of them well nourished and satisfied, with noses already turning red. They had found employment in a soapworks; they were earning their living, enjoying life, and looking for wives.