Islands of the Mind, Corfu, 2019; "Islomania" and the Others

A Corfu Symposium, June 2019

Thanks to David Roessel for bringing it to my attention.

Among the topics: the psychology of “islomania” – the “affliction of spirit” for those “who find islands irresistible".

Maybe Maria Strani-Potts would have something useful to contribute?

From my paper at the Hydra Conference, September 2018, "Insiders and outsiders: Beverley Farmer and Maria Strani-Potts":

The Protectorate ("Empire") Writes Back!

"Maria has written other stories about islands which she knows well, Corfu, Bermuda, Ile de Ré – but, although her father came from Zakynthos and her mother from Paxos, she does not suffer from the affliction of islomania, as discussed by Lawrence Durrell at the beginning of “Reflections of a Marine Venus”. 

In many ways, Maria had become disenchanted with the many novels, memoirs and stories written by foreigners (including the Durrells) about their colourful lives on Greek islands, with their picturesque descriptions and humorous portrayals of quaint customs and behaviour, their enthusiasm or distaste for manifestations of “Otherness”.

Maria set out, in The Cat of Portovecchio, to re-occupy that territory, to regain possession of her own personal and Corfiot narrative, to write a book in English that would present life as it had been for an insider, a Greek growing up on a Greek island in a small community where gossip played an important part in everyday life and some of its trivial interactions, where “the café armchairs in the squares are the best and most effective psychiatrists’ couches the world had to offer, where houses were merely places to sleep in”.

The Greek edition of the book that inspired her love (as a child) of remote, tropical islands, and the simple life:

Robinson Crusoe, of course!

Raul Scacchi's take on "Man Friday"