Prospero's Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corfu Read Free

is tethered. The rooms look lovely and gracious with their whitewashed walls, and the few bright paintings and books. The windows give directly on to the sea, so that its perpetual sighing is the rhythm of our work and our sleeping. By day it runs golden on the ceilings, reflecting back the bright peasant rugs—a ship, a gorgon, a loom, a cypress tree; reflecting back the warm crude pottery of our table; reflecting back N. now brown-skinned and blonde, reading in a chair with her legs tucked under her. Calm eyes, calm hair, and clear white teeth like those of a young carnivore. As Father Nicholas says: “What more does a man want than an olive tree, a native island, and woman from his own place?”
    6.13.37
    The man and his wife are fine creatures. He is called Anastasius and she Helen. It is obvious from their children that the marriage was a marriage of love rather than convenience. She is most delicately formed in a deep silken olive color; their hair has that deep black which shines out in sudden hints of blue—the simile of the Klepthic poems says “hair like the wing of a raven.” Beautifully formed eyebrows above their dark eyes, clear and circumflex. Only their hands and feet—like those of all peasants—are blunt and hideous: mere spades grown upon the members through a long battle with soil, ropes, and wood. Their daughters are called Sky and Freedom.
    6.17.37
    “Formal geology,” writes Theodore in his treatise, “will still find features of interest in Corcyra; and if the form of the island in general is conditioned by its limestone features, there are many interesting configurations worth the mature attention of field workers.”
    Southward the land falls gently away to the white cape, luxuriant and steaming; every curve here is a caress, nakedness to the delighted eyes, an endearment. Every prospect is contained in a frame of cypress and olives and brilliant roofs. Inlets, lakes, islands lead one slowly down to the deserted saltpans beyond Lefkimi.
    Two great ribs of mountain enclose this Eden. One runs from north to south along the western ranges; while from east to west the dead lands rise sheer to Pantocrator. It is in the shadow of this mountain that we live. Here little vegetation clings to the rock; water, harsh with the taste of iron and ice cold, runs from the ravines; the olive trees are stunted and contorted in an effort to maintain a purchase on this crumbling gypsum territory. Their roots, like the muscles of wrestlers, hang from the culverts. Here the peasant girls lounge on the hillside—flash of color like a bird—with a flower between their teeth, while their goats munch the tough thistle and ilex.
    “All epochs from the Jurassic are represented here. In the north the configurations of certain caves suggest volcanic origins, but this has not yet been proved.” The grottoes at Paleocastrizza are ribbed with jewels which smolder purple and yellow and nacre in the reflected light of the intruding sea. Grapes from this mountain region yield a wine that bubbles ever so slightly; an undertone of sulphur and rock. Ask for red wine at Lakones and they will bring you a glass of volcano’s blood.
    6.20.37
    Zarian sends me a poem about the island in Armenian to which he adds an English translation. Writing of Corcyra he says:
    The gold and moving blue have stained our thoughts so that the darkness is opaque, and we see in our dreams the world as if in some great Aquarium. Exiles and sharers, we have found a new love. This is Corcyra, the chimney-corner of the world.
    Since I have nothing else I reciprocate with my poem on Manoli, the landscape painter of Greece:
    After a lifetime of writing acrostics he took up a brush and everything became twice as attentive. Trees had been simply trees before. Distinctions had been in ideas. Now the old man went mad, for everything undressed and ran laughing into his arms.
    Theodore promises “Maps, Tables, and Statistics.” I am making no attempt to