Louis de Bernieres on Corfu and Greece

This article by Louis de Bernieres is well worth reading and re-reading.

"How I learned to love Greece again", The Observer, 20 March 2005.

Did Gerald Durrell have the Corfu blues? "Corfu", by Gerald Durrell, Sunday Times magazine, Impressions in the Sand series

This is from a January, 1988, feature article, entitled "Corfu", by Gerald Durrell (from a Sunday Times magazine travel series, Impressions in the Sand). I now have confirmation from The Sunday Times that it was published on 24 January 1988, before the articles in the series by Margaret Drabble and Dirk Bogarde. Gerald revisited Corfu in late July 1987.

Information from The Sunday Times (with thanks to Clare Conway):
Impressions in the Sand.
Gerald Durrell.
The Sunday Times (London, England), Sunday, January 24, 1988; pg. 16; Issue 8529. (3722 words)
Category: Feature Articles.
_______________________

Gerald Durrell describes how he fell in love with Corfu when he was eight years old, but how the island has since been ravaged by the disease of tourism.

"The people of Corfu were blessed with a magnificent, magical inheritance, an island of staggering beauty, probably one of the most beautiful islands in the whole of the Mediterranean. What they have done with it is vandalism beyond belief".

Strange to say, that is not how visiting friends from Northern Europe and Australia seem to see it. They absolutely love it here and constantly praise its beauty, from Dassia to Palaiokastritsa.

See also, Dirk Bogarde's article on the Riviera, reprinted from the same Impressions in the Sand series (14 February 1988). Other articles in the series of six; Sue Townsend on Majorca, Howard Jacobson on the Costa Brava, Jack Rosenthal on the Algarve, Margaret Drabble on the Amalfi Coast of Italy.

Further pages from the Gerald Durrell Corfu article (unable to scan in full)

Better copies, photographed pages:

Greece, Senses & Sensitivity, coffee table book

I keep forgetting to mention this fine photographic book, "Greece, Senses & Sensitivity, a photographic journey alongside poets and travellers". It was published by Travel Times Publishing, Athens, 2007.

Apart from the work of some outstanding photographers,  there are many well-chosen literary quotations from poets and writers like Homer, Sappho, Byron, Lear, Cavafy, Seferis, Ritsos, Palamas, Mavilis, Marlowe, Dyden, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, Napier, Spenser, Elytis, Yeats, Shelley, Pope, Tennyson, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Callimachus, Pausanius, Plato, Peter Levi, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Francis King, etc.

I still feel quite chuffed that my own writing is also represented in such illustrious company, with three separate quotations!

Henry Moore in Beijing

I count myself lucky to have seen the Henry Moore Exhibition in Beihai Park, Beijing, in 2000.

Many years before, I wrote this poem about a Henry Moore statue in the grounds of Kenwood House. It couldn't have happened in Beijing, with all the guards around! Even at Kenwood House, they have surrounded the sculpture with a secure enclosure, which diminishes the artistic impact.

 
The poem was first published in ACUMEN magazine.

PODPIS

The Henry Moore is well located

Within the grounds of Kenwood House:

An imposing sculpture, a work of ages,

But soon we mark the dribbling doodles

Trickle down the sculpture's base

(At two corners sniffing noses,

At two corners lifted legs).

The dogs approach it more than people,

For our gaze is drawn, distracted,

By the random art and patterns

Of four renewed and subtly varied

Rivulets of canine piss.

These signatures are surely statements,

Messages for Man to read

About aspiration v. perception,

And the interface of Art and Space.

Australia, 1947-1948

Chinese Calligraphy

Calligrapher

By the lake in Beihai Park

A woman draws Chinese characters

In water on the paving-stones,

Using a brush like a pointed mop.

A whole poem, perhaps, is written there.

We watch it fade as the water dries.

I once had a few Chinese calligraphy lessons in Beijing. I soon gave up:

On the need to study longer with Yu Qi Long

Call that calligraphy ?

Chicken-scratchings !

No flow, no balance,

No interplay of yin and yang.

You must have more lessons.

You'll need a lifetime

To achieve the Ch'i.

Wadham College, Oxford, 400th Anniversary

Sad to say, I've missed all the splendid events arranged to celebrate the 400th Anniversary of Wadham College, Oxford.

From the JCR Group Photograph, Wadham College, Trinity, 1965 

Those who read English at Wadham might choose to dig out some of the bawdy, satirical poetry associated with John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, or with Sir Maurice Bowra.

 There will be an event, "Wadham Poets", on 4 September (Wadham Day), which I would have liked to attend, but it is not to be. On the same day Melvyn Bragg (Lord Bragg) will lead a discussion on "Wadham in Our Time".

Let me make up for my absence by quoting a wonderful verse by Aphra Behn:


Hail Sacred Wadham! whom the Muses Grace,
And from the rest of all the Reverend Pile
Of Noble palaces, design'd thy Space
Where they in soft retreat might dwell,
They blest thy Fabrick, and they said- do Thou
  Our Darling Sons contain;
We Thee our Sacred Nursey ordain,
  They said, and Blest, and it was so..."

 and, from Robert Parson's sermon preached at Rochester's funeral:

"As for his education, it was in Wadham College in Oxford...there it was that he laid a good foundation of learning and study, though he afterwards built upon that foundation hay and stubble."

John Dryden (1683):

"For this in Wadham's peaceful halls reside,
Books be thy pleasure, to do well thy pride -
Quit not for public cares thy college life..."


Peter Levi, from The Hill of Kronos:


"I spent much of my time in museums, teaching myself to draw a few details from Greek vases, teaching my eyes to see them. I remember as a theological student going to see Sir Maurice Bowra in Oxford, when I knew I was destined to teach there. I wanted to know how to behave, what sort of teacher to be. God knows what I wanted. He asked what my main interests were. I said literature, and within literature rather Greek than Latin, though both, and rather poetry than prose, but also Greek vase-painting. It came out in a  sort of stutter. 'I see', he said, 'Pots and poetry. Like me. Pots and poetry. No way to pay and promotion. No way to pay and promotion'.


Eric Korn, a review of 'My Oxford', ed. Anne Thwaite, Robson; from TLS, April I, 1977:

"It is generally agreed that Oxford widens one's horizons, especially if they have been narrowed by spending one's childhood the way one must if one is to have a chance of getting in".