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John Fowles often talked about "the Aegean Blues", a form of depression he blamed largely on endless sunshine and cheap wine.
"The Greece of the islands is Circe still; no place for the artist voyager to linger long, if he cares for his soul."
("Why I rewrote The Magus", 1978)
"A novelist has to enter deeper exile still. In most outward ways the experience was depressive, as many young would-be writers and painters who have ever gone to Greece have discovered. We used to have a nickname for the sense of inadequacy and accidie it produced – the ‘Aegean blues’. One has to be a very complete artist to create good work among the purest and most balanced landscapes on the planet…The Greece of the Islands is Circe still; no place for the artist-voyager to linger long, if he cares for his soul."
"This Circe-like quality of Greece" (The Magus, 1966)
The Aegean Sadness
Sun upon sun distils the land
Over the pulsing, cobalt sea;
Sun upon sun and endless sun,
Scent of wild resin, cicada-song.
Olives and wine and small fried fish,
Aeon-dark islanders lost in a shade;
Day after day we sit on the terrace,
Over the waves and unknown lives.
So strangely sad, this heat and sun.
Is this why they left to sail for Troy?
To make the same sadness seem complete-
To kill Astyanax and call it joy?
John Fowles, from Poems , The Ecco Press, 1973
The Corfu Blues are different: they're more profoundly existential, and frequently environmental.
Another missed opportunity: the opportunity to have a drink with John Fowles. We could have discussed the differences between the Aegean Blues and the Corfu Blues. Strange that we we were both drawn back to Dorset.
From The Journals, Volume 2, 2006, John Fowles on Crete, 25 March, 1986:
