The Greek Islands Read Online Free

present him to the church. Whoever has seen St Spiridion make a progress round the town is not likely to forget the pomp and magnificence of the strange and baroque procession – the monks and priests like a moving flower-bed with their brilliant gonfalons raised on high. The little figure of the saint lies sideways in his sedan chair, pale and withdrawn, as if in prayer. There are four such processions a year; they take place on Palm Sunday and Easter Saturday, on 11 August and on the first Sunday in November. Naturally the summer appearances benefit from the light – that of August being the most sumptuous and colourful.
    Another thing becomes clear as you sit over your afternoon ouzo watching the sunlight decline among the green cones and vales of the Ten Saints Mountain. If the scenery has a certain plumpness, a Venetian rotundity (this is what the Athenians will always say about Corfu: but they are jealous because here is limitless shade and water) then the plumpness is corrected and prevented from becoming too sweet by the ravenous white light playing over people and things. It has a queer X-ray impression, as if the sea were really a dark negative of itself against which the swimmers move, burned to the brown of coffee-beans. It has a red-filter photographic effect that one sees sometimes in Alpine photography. But here it is the lens of the eye that drinks it in.
    Exactly what are the priorities for a proper appreciation ofthis captivating place? Obviously perfect Greek would be useful ; but you are probably no better placed than Shakespeare, possibly managing a smatter of Latin. If you can learn the Greek alphabet, start by spelling out the shop-signs which are among the most picturesque decorations in the surrounding scene. It is interesting how many words are of ancient provenance (Bibliopoleion, Artopoleion – Bookshop and Breadshop – for example); words which must have been familiar to Plato or Socrates, and which must have been scribbled up everywhere in the ancient agora of Athens. But in the spoken tongue, the demotic, bread has become psomi . It is curious that if you learn modern Greek with a teacher, he will kick off with the ancient Attic grammar. It is the first memorable lesson in the perenniality of the old Greek tongue. In contrast, you could not teach a Greek English if you started him off with Chaucer. The Attic grammar is that from which Socrates must have learned his letters. Is there, then, something indestructible about Greek?
    Among the most venerable words still extant you will come across words like ‘man’ – anthropos means ‘he who looks upwards’. In common use also are earth ( gee ), sky ( ouranos ) and sea ( thalassa ). Then, somewhat paradoxically, many of the commonest modern words, though they appear to have no ancient Greek roots, prove on examination to derive from perfectly legitimate ancient Greek sources. Water, for example, ( nero ) has the same root as Nereid – even the freshwater nymph of that name still haunts the springs in remote places. Ask any peasant. Bread also ( psomi ) comes from the ancient Greek word opson , anything eaten with bread. Even an apparently modern word like pallikar (young blood of the village, or buck, as you’d say in English) comes from two words which mean ‘one who tosses a proud head like a horse’. But the most common of all come straight from ancient Greece and remain unchanged today: ti nea ? (which means ‘what’s new?’) and chairete (meaning ‘bye-bye’ or ‘be happy’). And of course both thanatos (‘death’) and even Charon are still on duty.
    A glance at the synoptic history of the place will do nothing to decrease the sense of being out of one’s depth, submerged by too much data. But as time goes on, as sunny Greek mornings succeed each other, you will find everything sinking to the bottom of your mind’s harbour, there to take up shapes and dispositions which are purely Greek and have no frame or reference to