Blue Thirst Read Free Page B

breathtaking—they say it’s like a branch of an almond tree, a wreath of almond blossom, raised upon the night. Well, together with these poets I also met very briefly, and I can’t claim to know him very well, the author of Zorba, Kazantzakis, and a highly dramatic, flamboyant poet called Sikilianos who, with his American wife, reinvented the festival of Delphi, which for nearly 20 years was one of the most singularly spectacular festivals of Greece, and really put cultural Greece on the map. And he was a very amusing, delightful and enormously flamboyant poet of the old school, very theatrical. I heard an anecdote which illustrates that particular kind of Greek temper. One night he was dining with Seferis, my friend, Kazantzakis and himself in a little tavern near Mycenae, and he was saying how really the poet could do anything, there was simply nothing that was beyond his powers. And that Jesus was a poet and that he, Sikilianos was also a poet and that really if the poet had the thing in him he could even raise the dead. Miracles like that were no surprise. Well, he was talking in this vein and the innkeeper came out and said to him, “A chap just died upstairs, perhaps you would like to try.” Well, Sikilianos is not the sort of person to be put off by that at all—he said, “What a good idea, I’ll try; you’ll see.” And so he went upstairs. They didn’t know what he did, perhaps he murmured. Perhaps he recited poetry; they heard all sorts of incantations and so on. And finally he came down and said, “He’s so damned obstinate.”
    Now what I did was to bring along a few old and somewhat faded pictures from my scrap book in the hope of making this talk a bit actual, of illustrating it with places and faces. Well, when I asked the backroom boys to knock me up some lecture slides they looked at the quality of my prints and burst into tears. But I pinned my faith to the fact that after all this was an advanced technological institute and therefore able to perform wonders—after all, these were the people who were keeping Sky-lab in the sky. Surely they could keep poor Durrell talking? My faith was not misplaced; they dried their tears and got to work, and the magnificent results, many in color, you will see right now. So without more ado let us unleash the artwork. Behold!

    Taken by the village photographer during my first year in Corfu. Second from left my landlord, on extreme right myself next to his wife.

    The temple of Delphi where you make your big wish.

    Niko, who sails like a demon and taught me Demotic Greek.

    These marvelous monks combed their beards and sang Gregorian chants.
    Well, now, this is the white house about which I was talking. Corfu town is in the distance there. It’s a good 2½ hours on caïque. And this little white house is the place where I lodged on this promontory here which is directly facing Albania, and where at night you get the most extraordinary displays. For example, in the autumn a kind of bacteria which I’m sure you must know, is washed up into the sea. The sea becomes thick and curdled and when you dive into it you’re set on fire. I mean, you’re not scorched or anything, but this animal, I’ve forgotten it’s name, it throws out sparks so that when three or four people dive in you see figures of flame going into the water and off that point at night so frequently in the autumn we did that wondering why we weren’t burnt because if you open your eyes you really do think you’re going to be scorched.
    Here’s a closeup of the house and a bad picture of the caïque coming to take them off, and that’s my landlord up there looking wistful, I don’t know why. This was taken much later. I lived on the top floor and the family lived on the bottom floor, and we had a boat which since has sunk, which used to be attached in that boat house. In winter the sea was so rough that it