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The Cretan Renaissance and proceeds to explore the characters concerned: Abraham, Sarah and Isaac. The Sacrifice is therefore unlike the English plays of the same name; it is neither a mystery nor a morality. I can vouch for its effectiveness on stage, since I saw it at the Athens Festival. It was played, quite rightly, fast and naturalistically, and despite the disadvantages of confining scenery, consisting of a set of rocks based on the iconography of Cretan painting, and some over-acting from Katina Paxinou as Sarah, it held the multi-racial audience. But then the story, with its miraculous denouement, is a ‘natural’ for the stage; and especially moving in the Greek because of the beautiful speech of young Isaac - played by a girl - as he waits bound for his father to sacrifice him. He moves from prayer to resignation. He asks Abraham to kill him gently, caressingly. He wishes his mother were there for him to kiss and say goodbye: Mother, no more will you come to my bedside to dress me, To wake me tenderly and to caress me. I am leaving you and you are losing me - like melting snow, Like a candle which you hold and the wind blows it out. He tells Abraham to come near, to leave off tightening the rope, and for a moment he seems to take courage – for his mother’s sake. ‘And tell her how I go to find Hades full of joy.’ Then the last request: whatever of mine is left in the house, clothes, papers both written and unwritten, and the basket which contained them, give them all to Eliseel, our neighbour, because he is my playmate and companion and best friend at school. I have nothing more to say, he says, just my goodbyes. But at the last moment his nerve breaks: Sir, you fathered me, can you not pity me? God who created me, help me! O Mother, where are you? The Sacrifice of Abraham is almost certainly by Vincenzos Kornaros, the author of the Erotokritos. (Apart from the superiority of these two works over all other Cretan literature, their linguistic similarity makes it likely that one man wrote both.) Erotokritos, more than ten thousand lines long, is the heroic romance of modern Greece. The epic Digenes Akritas and the Erotokritos have to be for modern Greece what the Iliad and the Odyssey were for ancient Greece. Parva componere magnis: nevertheless the Erotokritos is beautiful and important, not only because it ties in with Greek nationalism. It is an astonishing poem. The model is the extremely popular French romance ‘Paris et Vienne’; Kornaros knew an Italian version 57
The Great Island of this (the work-was translated into nine European languages!). The whole of the Erotokritos is a paean to courtly love, which is a western invention. And yet the Erotokritos is not only Greek in spirit – it has been a major force in preserving the Greek spirit. Bury called it ‘a long and tedious romance saturated with Italian influence’. In my opinion it is much better than this, though I grant the longueurs. What happens? Heracles, king of Athens in ancient times, had a daughter Aretousa. Erotokritos, son of one of the king’s counsellors, loves her. To win her heart he serenades her at night; and she begins to love the unknown singer. The course of their love does not run smooth. The king has marked down the Prince of Byzantium as a suitable husband for Aretousa. But in the end, when the king of Vlachia declares war on Athens, Erotokritos comes back incognito from his exile and saves the day by winning a single combat. King Heracles is overwhelmed with gratitude, and the marriage can now take place. That is the story, reduced to the thinnest of skeletons. It does not sound particularly Greek. The king is king of Athens; but the story is set in no particular period of history. Intentionally it takes place in an ‘ideal’ place and time. Listen to the first words of the poem: The turnings of the circle, which come and go, And the turnings of the wheel, sometimes up, sometimes down, The changes brought by time, which have no ceasing, But keep moving and running for better or for worse, And the turmoil, enmities, heaviness of arms, The powers of love and the joy of friendship; These things have moved me this day today To tell the actions and the fortunes of a girl and a boy, Who were involved together in an affair of love Without repose but without ugliness. Whoever has toiled at any time in the grip of desire, Let him come and listen to what is written here. From this easy, courteously didactic beginning, the rhymed couplets flow smoothly on, unfolding the long tale with a leisurely wisdom. The girl Aretousa, reflecting on the suitor who sings below her window, expresses this wisdom: From whatever beauty there is in man, words have their grace To make each heart take encouragement; And whoever knows to speak with knowledge and with style Makes the eyes of men to weep and to laugh. 58
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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 so, one need hardl
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The Great Island Byzantine general
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The Great Island This is of no grea
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The Great Island body wants to sing
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The Great Island way into the Greek
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The Great Island Here the nightinga
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The Great Island dialogue between t
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The Great Island verses, sticking s
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The Great Island Personally, I like
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12 Sphakia - Impressions Spkakia. T
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The Great Island three-day struggle
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The Great Island could be done unti
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The Great Island on, the dry stone
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The Great Island tremendous beyond
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The Great Island With flower of pur
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The Great Island We did not actuall
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The Great Island it. It is the will
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13 Sphakia - The Vampires Les habit
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The Great Island above Sphakia wher
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The Great Island night, and as a re
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The Great Island When they reach ho
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Western Cretan wedding The laouto (
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The Great Island was due to the vio
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The Great Island never saw a vampir
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The Great Island the saint’s day
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14 Return to Asi Gonia I went up to
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The Great Island Greek, on the assu
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The Great Island to. People do slee
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The Great Island the wheel, iron sh
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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 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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