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  The return to Kastro was dismal. At last we came near; there stood the famous Venetian ramparts with their winged lions of stone. The tired Irish girl drew close in order to lean against my arm, but I could not endure her odor or her leaden eyes—the apple she fed me had covered my lips and teeth with ashes. Moving away brusquely, I refused to let her approach. She, without a word, fell one pace behind me. I heard her sobs. I wanted to turn, clasp her in my arms, and say a kind word to her, but instead I quickened my pace and remained silent. Finally we reached her house. She withdrew the key from her pocket and opened the door. Then she stood waiting on the threshold. Head bowed, she stood waiting. Would I come in or not? Unbearable compassion and a multitude of joyful and sorrowful words rose in me, reaching as far as my throat. But I pressed my lips tightly together and did not speak. I gave her my hand; we separated. The following day I departed for Athens. I had no monkey to give her as a keepsake, but through one of her students I sent her a little dog which liked to snap, a dog I loved. Its name was Carmen.

  15

  ATHENS

  YOUTH is a blind incongruous beast. It craves food but does not eat, is too timid to eat; it need simply nod to happiness, which strolls by on the street and would willingly stop, but it does not nod; it turns on the faucet, permitting time to drain away uselessly and be lost, as though time were water. A beast that does not know it is a beast—such is youth.

  My heart breaks when I bring to mind those years I spent as a university student in Athens. Though I looked, I saw nothing. The world, covered by a dense fog of morality, fanciful imaginings, and frivolity, was hidden from my eyes. Youth is bitter, bitter and disdainful; it does not comprehend. And when one begins to comprehend, youth has fled. Who was the Chinese sage who was born an old man with white hair and beard, his eyes filled with tears? As the years went by, gradually his hair turned black, his eyes began to laugh, his heart was relieved of its burdens, and when he finally neared death, his cheeks became those of a virgin and were covered with delicate childish fuzz. . . . This is the way our lives should unfold, the way they would unfold if God pitied mankind.

  In Crete I had risen in revolt against my destiny. I had given myself over to wine for one moment, touched the Irish girl for another moment. But this was not my road. I felt that I had sinned. Ashamed and repentant, I returned to solitude and books.

  From youth right to old age every word or deed which diverted me from my destiny I considered a sin. What was this destiny of mine, where was it leading me? Since my intellect still could not unravel the mystery, I allowed my heart to decide: “Do this, don’t do that. March! Do not halt or cry out. You have a single duty—to reach the limit.” “What limit?” I demanded. “Ask no questions. Advance!”

  As I listened intently in solitude to my heart’s foolhardy and pretentious advice, my cravings grew overluxuriant and nothing of all I saw or heard around me in the celebrated city of Athens was able to satisfy my hunger. The courses at law school failed to answer my soul’s needs to the slightest degree, nor did they even satisfy my intellectual curiosity. I felt no pleasure whatsoever in the parties my friends had with girl students or simple little dressmakers. The ashes from the apple the Irish lass had fed me were still resting on my teeth. Once in a while I went to the theater or to a concert and enjoyed myself. But the joy was a surface one which did not change the inner man; as soon as I reached the street again, I forgot. I continued my study of foreign languages. The awareness that my mind was broadening pleased me greatly, but straightway the mysterious tepid wind of youth always blew, and all these pleasures wilted. I craved some other good, something beyond women or learning, beyond beauty—but what?

  The two wounds of my adolescence opened frequently. All seemed futile and worthless, since everything was ephemeral and raced into the abyss, incited as a joke by some merciless, invisible hand. I pushed away the refreshing face of every young girl and saw the future crone. The flower wilted; behind the girl’s happily laughing mouth I perceived her skull’s naked jaws. The world in front of my eyes took on a violently rapid rhythm and crumbled to ruins. Youth seeks immortality, does not find it, will not deign to compromise, and thus rejects the entire cosmos—out of pride. Not all cases of youth, only those which are wounded by truth.

  On Sundays I liked to go on solitary outings. I felt that the company of friends—their conversation, jokes, and laughter—debased the sacred silence. The mountains were fragrant with pine and honey. I entered the olive groves and felt my eyes being refreshed. I exchanged a word or two with any peasant who happened to pass—an Albanian, for example, with narrow forehead and a filthy black hat, who smelled of milk and garlic. His words were prosaic, fuddled, full of dark curiosity. These peasants glanced at me out of the corners of their tiny cunning eyes, tormenting their minuscule brains to find out who I was and why I roamed the mountains. A spy? Lunatic? Peddler? They cast rapacious eyes on the sack I carried on my back.

  “What are you selling, friend?” they asked. “Bibles? Are you a Freemason, is that it?”

  One day when I heard chirping and saw a steel-blue bird fly overhead, I stopped a peasant who was passing by.

  “What kind of bird is that, my friend?” I anxiously inquired. “What is it called?”

  “Poor fellow, why worry about it,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “It’s no good for eating.”

  I used to get up at dawn. The morning star would be dripping onto the earth, a light mist hovering over Hymettus. A cool breeze icicled my face. Larks ascended songfully into the air and vanished in the light. One Sunday in springtime I remember seeing two or three blossoming cherry trees in a red, recently ploughed field. Happiness filled my heart. At that very moment the sun rose, gleaming as on the day it first emerged from God’s hands. The Saronic Gulf beamed; Aegina, in the distance, filled with roses in the morning light. Two crows, their wings vibrating like bowstrings, flew by on my right—a good omen.

  On one side, white-maned waves like Homeric horses, long-sweeping, refreshing verses of Homer; on the other, Athena’s oil-and light-filled olive, and Apollo’s laurel, and Dionysus’s wonderworking grape all wine and song. And the dry, frugal earth, its stones tinted rose-red by the sun, the mountains flapping bluishly in mid-air, steaming in the light, peacefully, restfully sunning themselves, all naked, like athletes.

  I marched, and as I marched, I felt that the entire earth and sky were journeying with me. All the surrounding miracles penetrated me. I blossomed, laughed, vibrated in my turn like a bowstring. How my soul vanished on that Sunday, faded songfully into the morning light, just like the lark!

  I climbed to the top of a hill and gazed out over the narrow rose-colored beaches, the sea, the faintly outlined islands. What joy that was! Greece with her virgin body, how she swims through the waves and lifts herself above them, the sun falling upon her like a bridegroom! How she has tamed stones and water, rid herself of matter’s inertia and coarseness, and conserved only the essence!

  I was roaming in order to become acquainted with Attica, or so I thought. But I was really roaming in order to become acquainted with my soul. I wished to find it and come to know it in trees, mountains, and solitude—but in vain. My heart did not bound with joy, a sure sign that I had not found what I was seeking.

  Only once, one day at noon, did I believe I found it. I had journeyed all alone to Sounion. It was summer already, and the resin flowed from the slit bark of the pine trees, filling the air with balm. A grasshopper landed on my shoulder and sat there; for some time we traveled together. My whole body smelled like a pine, I had become a pine. Then, as I emerged from the pine forest, I saw the white columns of the temple of Poseidon, and between them the hallowed sea, a deep scintillating blue. My knees gave way beneath me; I halted. This is beauty, I thought to myself. This is the Wingless Victory, the summit of joy; man can reach no higher. This is Greece.

  So great was my joy that for a moment, viewing Greece’s beauty, I believed that my two wounds had h
ealed and that this world, even though ephemeral—precisely because ephemeral—possessed value. I believed I was wrong in my attempt to divine the future crone behind the young girl’s face; rather, I should re-create and resurrect in the face of the crone the freshness and youth of the girl who no longer existed.

  The Attic landscape is truly fascinating in an inexpressible, penetrating way. Here in Attica one feels that everything is subordinated to a rhythm which is simple, sure, and balanced. Everything here possesses an aristocratic grace and ease: the frugal, arid land, the graceful curves of Hymettus and Pentelicus, the silver-leafed olive trees, the slender ascetic cypresses, the playful glare of rocks in the sun, and above all the buoyant, diaphanous, completely spiritual light which dresses and undresses all things.

  The Attic landscape determines the lineaments of the ideal man: handsomely well built, taciturn, freed from superfluous wealth; powerful, but capable on the other hand of restraining his power and imposing limits on his imagination. Sometimes the Attic landscape reaches the borders of austerity. But it does not cross them; it stops at a cheerful, good-natured seriousness. Its grace does not degenerate into romanticism, nor, by the same token, its power into asperity. All is finely balanced and measured. Even its virtues do not run to excess, do not break the human mean, but stop at a point beyond which, if they proceeded further, they would become either cruelly inhuman, or divine. The Attic landscape does not swagger, does not indulge in rhetoric, does not degenerate into fits of melodramatic swooning; it says what it has to say with a calm, virile forcefulness. By the simplest means possible it formulates the essential.

  But now and again in the midst of this seriousness there is a smile—two or three silver-branched olive trees on a completely arid slope, some refreshingly green pines, oleanders at the edge of a dry, brilliantly white riverbed, a tuft of wild violets between blazing blue-black stones. All opposites join together, mix, and are reconciled here, creating the supreme miracle, harmony.

  How did this miracle happen? Where did the grace find so much seriousness, the seriousness so much grace? How was the power able to avoid abusing its force? All this must constitute the Greek miracle.

  There came moments, as I roamed through Attica, when I had a premonition that this land could become the highest lesson in civility, nobility, and strength.

  After each of my wanderings through the Attic countryside, at first without knowing why, I climbed the Acropolis to view and review the Parthenon. This temple is a mystery to me. I can never see it the same way twice; it seems to change constantly, come to life, undulate while remaining motionless, play games with light and the human eye. But when, after longing to see it for so many years, I confronted it for the very first time, it appeared immobile to me, the skeleton of a primordial beast, and my heart did not bound like a young calf. (Throughout my life this has served me as the infallible sign. When I encounter a sunrise, a painting, a woman, or an idea that makes my heart bound like a young calf, then I know I am standing in front of happiness.) The first time I stood in front of the Parthenon, my heart did not bound. The building seemed a feat of the intellect—of numbers, geometry—a faultless thought enmarbled, a sublime achievement of the mind, possessing every virtue—every virtue except one, the most precious and beloved: it failed to touch the human heart.

  I felt that the Parthenon was an even number such as two or four. Even numbers run contrary to my heart; I want nothing to do with them. Their lives are too comfortably arranged, they stand on their feet much too solidly and have not the slightest desire to change location. They are satisfied, conservative, without anxieties; they have solved every problem, translated every desire into reality, and grown calm. It is the odd number which conforms to the rhythm of my heart. The life of the odd number is not at all comfortably arranged. The odd number does not like this world the way it finds it, but wishes to change it, add to it, push it further. It stands on one foot, holds the other ready in the air, and wants to depart. Where to? To the following even number, in order to halt for an instant, catch its breath, and work up fresh momentum.

  This sober enmarbled rationality was unpleasing to youth’s rebellious heart, which wants to crush everything old and remake the world anew. An excessively prudent dotard it was, who desired with his counsels to give excessively short rein to the heart’s impulsion. Turning my back on the Parthenon, I submerged myself in the superb view which extended as far as the sea. The sun stood at the zenith; it was noontime, the culminant hour, devoid of shadows or any play of light; austere, sublime, perfect. I looked at the blazing, brilliantly white city, the hallowed sea sparkling around Salamis, the surrounding mountains which were sunning themselves, bare and contented. Submerged in this vision, I forgot the Parthenon which stood behind me.

  But after each new return from Attica’s olive groves and the Saronic Gulf, the hidden harmony, casting aside its veils one by one, slowly, gradually revealed itself to my mind. Each time I climbed the Acropolis again, the Parthenon seemed to be swaying slightly, as in a motionless dance—swaying and breathing.

  This initiation lasted for months, perhaps years. I do not remember the exact day when I stood completely initiated before the Parthenon and my heart bounded like a young calf. This temple that towered before me, what a trophy it was, what a collaboration between mind and heart, what a supreme fruit of human effort! Space had been conquered; distinctions between small and large had vanished. Infinity entered this narrow, magical parallelogram carved out by man, entered leisurely and took its repose there. Time had been conquered as well; the lofty moment had been transformed into eternity.

  I allowed my gaze to creep over the warm, sun-nourished marble. It touched the stones and rummaged through them like a hand, uncovering the hidden mysteries; it clung to them and refused to depart. I saw the seemingly parallel columns imperceptibly incline their capitals one toward the other so that concertedly, with tenderness and strength, they might sustain the sacred pediments entrusted to them. Never have undulations created lines so irreproachably straight. Never have numbers and music coupled with such understanding, such love.

  This, I believe, was the greatest joy I experienced in my four years as a student in Athens. Not a single feminine exhalation came to cloud the air I breathed. But I had several friends I liked very much. I went mountain climbing with them, and in summertime we swam together in the sea. We chatted about fleeting everyday things, and occasionally we held parties to which some of them brought their girl friends. We laughed without cause, because we were young; we grieved without cause, again because we were young. We were like fresh unspent bull-calves who sigh because their strength is strangling them.

  How many possibilities were held out to each of us! I looked my friends in the eye, one by one, struggling to guess in which direction their strength would blaze a trail. One, when he parted his lips to speak of some idea or mad folly that he loved, caught fire all at once; it was an immense pleasure to hear the great epigrammatic force with which, never stumbling, he enumerated his thoughts. As I listened to him I felt envious, because whenever I opened my mouth to speak, I immediately regretted it. Words came to me with difficulty, and if I happened to advance an argument in support of an opinion I had, the opposite argument, equally correct, always came immediately to mind. Ashamed to tell lies, I fell abruptly silent. . . . Another friend was reserved. Extremely sparing of words, he never opened his mouth except during the law school recitations, and then the professor and all the rest of us listened to him with admiration as he purposely made tangled knots of the problems of justice and then undid them by feats of prestidigitation. Another was a great organizer who ruled the masses. He became involved in politics, organized demonstrations, gave speeches, went to prison, came out again, resumed the struggle. We all said that one day he would doubtlessly become a great statesman. Another, a pale, soft-spoken vegetarian with faded blue eyes and ladylike hands, had by dint of great effort established a club whose emblem was a white lily with the inscriptio
n, “The feet cleaner than the hands.” He loved the moon. “The moon is the only woman I adore,” he used to say. Another was an untouched lily—pallid, melancholy, with large blue eyes and long-fingered hands. He wrote poetry. I have been able to remember very little of this poetry, but when in solitude I whisper the verses to myself, my eyes fill with tears. For one night this young man was found outside the monastery of Kaisariani, hanging from the branch of an olive tree.

  There were many others as well, each with his own individual soul full of closed buds. When are they going to flower, I asked myself, when are they going to bear fruit? Dear God, I implored, let me live long enough to see them, let me live long enough to see, in my own case, which buds will open inside me and what kind of fruit they will form. I looked at my friends with anxiety and unutterable sadness, as though bidding them farewell. For I was afraid that time might be the gale which blows when nature burgeons, afraid that it might blow mercilessly and strip these souls bare.

  Departing from Athens, I left two laurel crowns behind me, the only two I was ever awarded in my whole life. The first I received for fencing. It was heavy, interwoven with white and blue ribbons, and composed of laurel supposedly picked in the Delphian gorge. This was a lie. I knew it, everyone knew it, but this lie bathed the leaves in splendor. The second I received in a playwriting competition. I don’t know why, but one day my blood caught fire and I wrote an ardent drama full of melancholy and passion. It was about love; I called it Day Is Breaking. To be sure, I believed that I was offering the world a superior, more moral morality, a greater freedom, a new light. The professor who was judge, a serious, close-shaven man wearing a high collar, ruled that mine was the best of all the plays submitted. But, giving way to fear, he stigmatized [in irreproachable katharévousa] its audacious phrases and unbridled eroticism. “We give the poet his laurel crown,” he said in conclusion, “but we dismiss him from these sacred precincts.” I was there in the great university auditorium, a beardless inexperienced student, and I heard. Blushing to the ears, I stood up, left the laurel crown on the judge’s table, and walked out.