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The Cretan Renaissance
Charos himself, who not only demonstrates his kingdom but also
teaches how it is original sin which caused human death.* Of course all
this preaching is quite alien to folk poetry. Nevertheless there are
popular elements in the poem, as there are also in the similar Apokopos
of Bergadis, where the shades might be speaking in a folk poem:
You come from the world, the country of the living.
Tell us, does the sky hold up and does the world still stand?
Does it lighten, tell us, and thunder, are there clouds and rain,
Do the waters of the Jordan river still run down,
Are there gardens and trees, and birds to sing,
Do the mountains smell and the trees blossom,
Are the meadows cool, the breezes sweet,
Do the stars of heaven shine, and the Morning Star?
It is a bitter poem. The insistent question of the dead is ‘Are we remembered
?’ and the poet offers little comfort. The young women whom you
left behind widowed, plant their kisses on other lips, dress their new
lovers in your old clothes, and if they speak of you at all, speak only ill.
Only a few remember.
Most of these Cretan poets were worthy and uninteresting. The
exception is Stephanos Sachlikis, whose racy satires enlivened Candia
around 1500. One scholar remarked that he preached virtue by a
complaisant description of his own immorality; but with Sachlikis as
with some other satirists, there is the feeling that he was trying to convince
himself, that even after his ‘conversion’ he was fascinated by
vice. He was born at Candia. He loathed school and ‘culture’; spent his
youth and his substance on debauch, until a connection with a widowed
whore named Koutayiotaina landed him in gaol. Like Dellaporta
earlier, he was inspired by his imprisonment to write. Sachlikis’s poems
are scurrilous, bitter and autobiographical. He tells of his riotous youth,
his imprisonment under tyrannical warders, his attempt to find peace
in the country, and his return to town as a lawyer. Neither lawyercolleagues
nor whores escaped his lashing tongue. The whores are
listed one by one, and Koutayiotaina, the origin of his misfortunes,
comes in for especially vicious treatment.
Sachlikis’s verses give a surprising picture of the life and manners of
Candia under the Venetians. One tends to forget - through concentrating
too much on the life in the countryside, which has changed
little – that town society was quite different then. Time after time
* Charos (no longer Charon) in modern Greek folk-lore is not just that grim ferry-
man, but the black knight of death himself. He combines, in fact, the functions of the
ancient Charon and Thanatos, and his kingdom is called Hades.
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