Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece by Patrick Leigh FermorMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
"The seas of Greece are the Odyssey whose music we can never know...insanity and genius vibrate in the air."
Why read a book about an Englishman's travels in Greece published in the 1960's, if you're going somewhere totally different? Why read of sun and sea when you're going to colder climes?
I have this theory... that it's akin to writing cursive exercises over and over again in school, or studying the periodic table and the solar system even though you have zero plans of being a chemist or astronaut. They're all preparation for something else, whether it's coordinated fine motor muscles, or a deeper understanding of the composition of the universe and our place in it.
In Paddy Fermor's case, to read him is to wonder at his powers of concentration and language, and to hopefully develop an eye and an attitude for seeking beauty wherever it may be. No wonder he is the patron saint of travel writing! But his works are so much more than to-do lists of how-to-get-here and what-to-do-there.
Fermor is obsessed with people and languages, and how history and geography shape both. The care with which he takes to describe the torn but proudly worn outfits of the fiercely independent nomadic Sarakatsánissas and their music, freedom personified, the poetry of his word paintings ("Olympus is the sky's echo, Parnassus the rush of an eagle's wing.")...
He keeps reflecting on his past readings and how his armchair travels inform his physical ones.
Fermor wrote of the two contrasting entities that reside in every Greek, calling it the Helleno-Romaic Dilemma. Half of his blood inheritance is the Hellene who speaks pure Katharévousa, "written by a few, spoken by none." This is the language of scholars, of noble ancestors like Plato and Aristotle... unreachable in their godlike dignity.
The other half is the Romaic who speaks Dimotiki, the tongue of the masses.
"Hellene is the glory of ancient Greece; Romaic the splendors and the sorrows of Byzantium," Fermor writes, and records an observation made by a guard they encountered on a boat:
"Greece is an idea... that's what keeps us together... and those old Greeks, our celebrated ancestors, are a nuisance... we can never be as great as they were, nobody can... if we weren't such fools and always quarreling among ourselves, if we could have no wars or revolutions for fifty years, you'd see what a country we'd become!"
He could be speaking of our own Motherland!
There's so much more to this book, and I can't wait to read its precursor, Mani! For Roumeli is the ancient name for northern Greece, and I have the pleasures of the South to look forward to, thanks to book mail!
To read Paddy Fermor is to celebrate life. ❤️
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