Roumeli by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Author:Patrick Leigh Fermor
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59017-520-0
Publisher: New York Review Books

“Really!” I can hear some Athenian exclaim at this point. “Are we to stop progress for the sake of an occasional eccentric traveller? Undo the work of a hundred-and-fifty years? Bring back piracy and reinstall the brigands, encourage armed faction, civil war, assassination, malaria, illiteracy? What else? Sloth, bribery, dirt, disease, poverty; lawlessness, superstition, stone-age agriculture, the whole wretched inheritance of Ottoman times—all to supply a refreshing change from the sophistication of the West? You seem to forget how poor the country is. Are we to call a halt to industry and tourism? Stop building roads, opening up communications? What about the mountain people for whom you profess such fondness? Ask them what they think...!” Were I engaged on the task of demolishing my own argument, I would begin on exactly these lines; for he is right, and his questions are unanswerable.

“And,” the hypothetical Athenian might continue, a little wearily, and with equal justice, “there is little sympathy, I notice, or only a few grudging and perfunctory words, for the terrible difficulty that confronted us; little praise for the efforts of the Neo-Hellenists, the Modernists, the Westernizers, or whatever we are, to deal with it all. You seem to forget the size of the task when we got rid of the Turks. We needed whatever inspiration we could find: why not Ancient Greece? I think”—and here I detect a tolerant smile behind the voice—“we have as good a right to it as the rest of the world. And we are not really quite the philistines or pedants you imply. It is true that many things of value are being sacrificed. We know it and we regret it. It is inevitable, and the same is happening everywhere. But surely the gain outweighs the loss...?”

His words are true and as they die from the air I realize how severely they damage my case. The civilized tones of this imaginary Athenian also remind me of the growing number of Greeks who are sadly aware of the predicament: men who must feel the hopelessness of the imbalance with an anguish far deeper than anything that can affect a foreigner. I remember, too, painters like Ghika, poets like Seferis, and a whole world of literature and the arts which has not only assimilated the ancient world and tapped deep sources of inspiration in the world of Byzantium and Romiosyne, but absorbed all that the West has to offer as well. They have almost—though not entirely, I hope, in the interests of human variety—reconciled the Helleno-Romaic Dilemma.[8] But, above all, the invisible speaker brings home yet again the ineluctable doom of Romiosyne; by underlining the blessings that accompany its passing, he almost reconciles me to it.

And yet...

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.