Caresse Crosby by Anne Conover

Author:Anne Conover
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Distribution
Published: 2018-02-22T20:46:52+00:00

Chapter X

SUN AND SHADOW

“The surreal for me is the greatest reality of all.”

—Caresse

The Greek edition was the last—and in many ways the most difficult and rewarding—of the Portfolios.

In going to Greece at this time of crisis, I hope to gather into Portfolio VI an expression of what new Greece, young Greece, is feeling and hoping . . . at a moment when her future is in the balance and the eyes of the world are on her political problems, even her problems of survival, I intend to present every intellectual viewpoint that I find there, whatever its political background, and also to publish an expression of the direction of Greek thought in terms of art, literature, poetry and music.

The Boston Herald review of March 28, 1948 was amazed that Portfolio VI could come out despite the chaotic political situation under the military government. Caresse’s introduction, “Sun and Shadow;” described the appalling poverty, the shortages, the gigantic inflation, and wondered “at the beauty of the moon-drenched Parthenon [while] Greeks were fighting in the hills and children were starving just around the corner.”

When Caresse first arrived at Hassani Airport in May 1947, “the hills were the color of the sidewalks of New York, stripped bare of all living foliage.” During the bleak years of the Nazis, the Greeks survived without gas or electricity, and wood was the only source of fuel for cooking, even to propel the buses that carried the people to work. She noticed that the buses were still “crippled little derelicts with great caverns in their sides . . . they were back on gas now; but each bore a gaping smoke-blackened wound in its side.”

Caresse was startled to discover from currency control at the airport that two one-dollar bills brought a huge mound of 10,000 drachmas at the current exchange rate. On the drive into Athens in an ancient taxi, she saw the impoverished Greeks sitting on patched and unpainted chairs at little tables in the cafés that lined the way, nursing a small cup of coffee (Turkish), but more often, only a glass of water.

“I learned later,” Caresse wrote, “that one ordered water, then scooped a spoonful of a sweet resinous paste, masticha, from a center jar; this is dipped in the water to give it flavor, or licked slowly from the spoon . . .” (With 5,000 drachmas for the taxi, plus a tip here and there, the two dollars in exchange were quickly spent.)

The venerable Grande-Bretagne Hotel, Caresse’s favorite hospice, had no vacancies so she continued on to the other luxury hotel, the Acropole Palace. A threadbare room with an army cot and a dilapidated bath that provided water for only one hour per day was luxury in 1947 Athens (and a bargain at 50,000 drachmas—at the current exchange rate, U.S. $10—per day).

Caresse’s first stop was Aetos, the bookshop under the Colonnade that she remembered from her last visit in the ‘30s. There she met Nicholas Calamaris, a young Greek poet with a rebellious look in his eyes, who became her “constant cavalier” and followed her back to Paris.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.