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The Death of Pan So Digenes is familiar in Cretan legend. But he hardly features in Cretan song except in his death, which is one of the most popular themes in Crete, The theme, which is found also in Rhodes and Cyprus (and started of course in Asia Minor), is treated differently in each area; it is a good example of the way themes are incorporated into a local tradition. The Cretan song is thus quite different from the Cypriot. In Cyprus various episodes from the Akritic cycle arc woven into a longish, dramatic account. Charos, dressed in black, comes to Digenes’s house and finds him eating and drinking. They wrestle together for the hero’s soul, and in the end – but only with God’s help – Charos wins. Digenes on his deathbed tells the friends who stand around of his life’s exploits; and when he dies he takes his wife with him in his crushing embrace. This makes a good story. The Cypriot poetares is a professional and goes from village to village reciting his work and selling it in pamphlets afterwards. He combines the function of poet and journalist – very like those accursed Paphlagonians. So he is merely treating the Digenes themes in his usual style. That is, he is primarily interested in the story, which he puts over with a wealth of formulae to help him. You can see in the first four lines of a version recorded by Professor Notopoulos how the bard’s aim is to catch the audience’s attention for a narrative: Schoolmasters and schoolmistresses have told me to begin To sing the song of Digenes the brave. Let us start the song which they have praised so much,. . And thanks to my Creator it has not a lie in it. 1 That is rapid and fetching enough. The Cretan mountaineer treats these themes in his usual style too. So he compresses and reduces and distils, and the result is a short lyrical heroic piece. Digenes lies dying and the earth trembles at him. The heavens lighten and thunder, the upper world is shaken, And the lower world has opened, the foundations grind, And the gravestone shudders – how is it to cover him, To cover the eagle, the brave one of the world ? Houses could not cover him, caves had no room for him, He straddled the mountains at a stride, he jumped the peaks, He played quoits with the rocks. He beat hares at speed of movement, and hawks at flying, At racing and jumping he beat deer and the ibex. Charos is secretly envious, watches him from far off; Wounded him to the heart and took his soul. 111
The Great Island This is of no great value, but it illustrates the method. The whole struggle on the marble threshing floor is gone; Charos dares not come close enough to fight. The song hints at one of the burdens under which Cretan poetry labours – the burden of shortness. Most Cretan songs are heroic; but the heroic, if it is not to be naked and chilling, needs expansive treatment. It needs to be embodied in a story. Too many Cretan songs are statements, not stories – which is all right for the lyrical, but not so good for the heroic.
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THE GREAT ISLAND
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Michael Llewellyn Smith The Great I
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To my Mother and Father
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Plates Eastern Crctc. The north coa
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1 Introduction I first saw Crete, w
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Introduction time from the tyranny
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Introduction And then they were dri
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The Great Island another. He is lik
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The Great Island he found himself i
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2 Roman, Byzantine and Arab Crete N
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The Great Island mother, sometimes
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The Great Island that bishop Titus
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The Great Island earth, which your
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The Great Island still renowned - a
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The Great Island Since the Prophet
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3 Venetian Crete In. the City and i
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The Great Island oppression and ext
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The Great Island the fifteenth cent
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The Great Island In the morning, Ka
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The Great Island political history
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4 Art under the Venetians What did
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The Great Island observed. Art hist
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Fresco of the Abbot Zosimas from th
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The Great Island Orthodoxy; traditi
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The Great Island The Proof by Water
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The Great Island Nor is the doctrin
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The Great Island mainland under Ott
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The Great Island Cretan painter, in
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The Great Island Toplou’s pride i
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5 The Cretan Renaissance Constantin
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The Great Island he was doing - he
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The Great Island travellers and com
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The Great Island of this (the work-
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The Great Island to. People do slee
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The Great Island Now Gyp ark is Emm
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The author with Aleko above the gor
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The Great Island free of them and m
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Epilogue At this point one thinks o
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The Great Island also because he wr
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The Great Island ‘Excuse me for s
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The Great Island When all is said a
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The Great Island Mani, by Patrick L
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The Great Island PASHLEY, ROBERT, T
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Du Boulay, Julie, 126, 128-30, 134,
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Skordylis, Syphis, 81 Smyrna disast
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