Page 150 - GREC14N_JTR_05

The
White

connection

From the “flaring whiteness’’
of Mykonos to the sacred white
moonlight of Delos to the White
House in Kalami, Corfu, Lawrence
Durrell praises the Greek islands
better than anyone else. Από το
εκτυφλωτικό λευκό της Μυκόνου
στο ιερό λευκό φως της σελήνης
στη Δήλο και στο Άσπρο Σπίτι
στο Καλάμι της Κέρκυρας, ο Λώρενς
Ντάρελ υμνεί τα ελληνικά νησιά
καλύτερα από κάθε άλλον.

by Vassia Antonopoulou
FROM
MYKONOS
TO CORFU and sleeping bags. The boatman dropped
them there early in the morning and left.
“Its colonnades and curling streets This was usual. The boatmen dropped the
with their kennel-like houses, sprouting tourists in the morning to Delos and came
extravagant balconies of tottering back to fetch them early in the afternoon.
painted wood lead on and on, turning The Durrell’s boatman returned allegedly
slowly inward upon themselves to form to take them, making sure that the guards
labyrinths, hazing-in all sense of direction would see his boat, but the couple stayed
until one surrenders to the knowledge that there. According to Durrell, the evening
one is irremediably lost in a village hardly was perfect, they had Apollo’s protection,
bigger than Hampstead.” Zephyr’s, who controlled the calm breeze,
This is one of Lawrence Durrell’s and Aphrodite’s, who orchestrated for
comments on Mykonos, which he visited them a dreamy sunset. They swam when
before the bursting of WW II and its the moon rose, and as dusk fell they
overrun by tourists. His love for Greece returned to their sleeping bags. They were
and his adventurous nature managed to awaken in the middle of the night by the
offer him one of the most magical nights bright, white light of the moon, which
of his life in Delos, where he stayed at night was so strong, as Durrell recalls, that “we
beside the prohibition of the authorities, could have read a newspaper”. They
with the cooperation of a boatman, who prowl among the ruins without difficulty
left him and his wife to the Bay of Phourni, and they discovered a wonderful mosaic
below the abandoned Asclepeion. They depicting a dolphin. Durrell describes
had with them a sack with provisions Delos as “silent and ominous” at night, but

Paraportiani church

150 GREC14N 2019