The Sunday Times Travel Section feature “Best of Greece”
(Dana Facaros, 14.2.2016) perpetuated a number of myths or half-truths, in my opinion.
On Corfu: “Lush Corfu is
Prospero’s magic island in The Tempest- according to the author Lawrence
Durrell”.
- Lawrence
Durrell wrote a classic book about Corfu ,
“Prospero’s Cell”, but he doesn’t make the claim about the setting of Shakespeare’s
play in his own authorial voice. He attributes the entertaining but far-fetched theory to
Count D; it’s more imaginative conjecture - idle taverna speculation - than accepted hypothesis or historical fact. “I cannot think
that the scholars would support me”, says the Count. Bermuda
has a better claim to links to The Tempest.
On Crete : “It’s also the
birthplace of Zorba”.
- In some respects, yes: the Cacoyannis film
version and the Cretan rhythms adapted by Theodorakis for the soundtrack - but read “The Real Zorbas
and Nikos Kazantzakis” by John Anapliotes. Neither the real George Zorbas, nor
the lignite mine, were Cretan.
On Lefkas: “Vasiliki, near the precipice where Sappho leapt
to her death for the love of a man”.
- Few, if any,
scholars believe in this old myth, which inspired many poets and writers. Read my account in “The Ionian Islands and Epirus, A Cultural History” (Chapter One, Classic Ground, from page 3).
As for Matt Rudd’s Grecophile-baiting column, “I love the
Greeks but…A national character assassination” –
Whose fault is it if
he only ever orders and eats kebabs, fried squid, tzatziki and mousaka?
He writes: “You don’t go to Greece to eat well. You go to Greece to smoke
passively”.
Right about the
smoking. Wrong about the cuisine.
Old myths die hard.
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