MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
" Er RITISH troops," we read, "jiave now cleared the Ardhittos LI hill and it is expected that before long the road to Phaleron will be permanently opened." We read or hear these daily com- muniqués, being conscious only of a deep regret, of an inner sense of irritation that such things should happen as between the Greeks and ourselves in the very streets of Athens. We read• with aston- ished admiration and anxiety that the Prime Minister has swooped down upon the Greek capital, striding stockily into the very centre of the hornets' nest, bringing to a situation in which all sense of proportion has been thrown to the four winds his own incomparable instinct for the right relation between space and time. We see him there in that cold• room, warming his hands upon the hurricane lamp in front of him, staring in humorous perplexity at the violent men around him, who in their passionate individualism are doing themselves and their country so much harm. We hear the snipers' bullets whine and plomp along the pavements and listen to the machine-guns rattling in the Kerameikos. And suddenly we realise that these insane happenings are taking place, not in Kabul or in Meshed, but in the very heart of Athens itself : that the tanks lumber and turn among the olives of Kolonos, " gleaming Kolonos, where the nightingale in cool green covert warbleth ever clear." "0 shining old town of the violet crown," wrote Pindar, " 0 Athens the envied! " There would be few indeed who envy Athens today. Cold and thirsty, hungry and afraid, the Athenians creep at night- time from cellar to cellar, while the yellow flares drift down from the skies and throw curious shadows aslant the Parthenon. In- evitably in such times of senseless confusion the mind flings back to the serene, the Periclean, pattern of Athens which we hold in our memories. The staid and solemn symmetry of life which their philosophers expounded and their artists enshrined,—was it in fact ever a reality in Athens? The ideal calm of mind, of character, of body which the Periclean age has left us—was it ever more than a vague esoteric ideal? Was it not rather that the Athenians, then as now, would scream and strike each other in the streets?
* * * *
Trained as we have been in the high-lights of Greek culture, influenced as we may unconsciously be by the Tory propaganda so ably diffused by Aristophanes, we forget sometimes that we have but little real conception of what the ordinary Athenian citizen felt and thought in the fifth century B.C. " It was the smithy," wrote T. R. Glover, " and the seat in the sun that made Greek life." How often, as I have sat for a moment in some way-side tavern in Greece, and watched hcr.v in twos or threes the villagers would gather round me, have I recalled that memorable phrase! The local schoolmaster would arrive, or perhaps an officer of the gendarmerie, and then the questions would begin. I had come from England—how many children did I have, and what was my profession? Was I a Liberal or a Communist? How many drachmae did I earn by writing? How much had I paid for my riding-breeches and how many spare suits did I have at home? "The exchange of ideas," wrote Glover, " political discussion, tales of travel, what not? And out of it came Greek industry, Greek art, Greek democracy." But it is something more than conversations in the sun which render the Greeks so difficult and so entrancing. It is in the first place their immense, their insatiable, inquisitiveness, their love of wild experiment. And it is in the second place their arrogant assumption that the opinion of every man is as valid as the opinion of any other man and that everyone else is probably quite wrong. " The smithy and the seat in the sun,"—and in a few minutes the bullets begin to spatter along the pavements and chip the stucco from the walls.
* * * * We picture the youth of Athens in the great period walking staidly with eyes cast upon the ground, speaking little, stepping aside as their elders passed them, deft and scrupulous about the hang of their tunics and the way that they sat decently down. We pic- ture Aristotle's " Magnificent Man," tall aeld silent, refraining from all gesture and loud sounds, " speaking ill of no one, not even his • enemies—unless it be his purpose to insult them"; being careful, even when he is gay and humorous to keep within the limits of good taste. But was it really as serene as all that, and are the gay, the quarrelsome, the irresponsible Greeks of today really so unlike their statuesque forbears? I do not believe it. There was always a Thersites in Greek politics, and in the background of Aristophanes one has a sense of hot, narrow streets, where the flies cluster thick above the figs and honey in the little stalls, and where the stink of the dried-fish shops pierces the noisy air. The very diet of the ancient Athenians must have been a•• dry and meagre affair. Vegetables they had, and. the mother of Euripides kept a small allotment and sold green-stuff in the agora. Sprats, anchovy and sardines could -be purchased in the market-place, and wheat and barley were imported from the Ukraine. But the staple diet was dried fish from the Sea of Azov, eked out with a crust of bread; a shred of garlic or of onion, and softened by the ubiquitous olive oil, which people carrier) round with them in a small flask. For the rich there was heavy fish, and thrushes and ring-doves, and, above all, hare and hare soup.. And then there were eels : —" Eldest of Copais' fifty daughters, 0 loved and lost and longed for! Heaven send that not in death itself may I be without thee stewed in beet- root! " Assuredly even in Panathenaic days, there was a fish-and- chips side to the calm life of Athens. * * * * Let us not assume, therefore, that the modern Greeks are but the degenerate relics of a once great race. There did, it is true, occur a phase of degeneracy when Greece lost her liberties and therefore her power of self-expression. Juvenal was not 'a loveable man, and his famous sneer at the contemporary Greek need not be taken too literally ; but it is clear that Cicero himself, who loved Greek passionately, could not wholly bring himself to love the contemporary Greek. The Greek character flowers only in the sun of liberty, and when that sun is shrouded from them Greeks become as rank as little weeds. But when, as in the War of Independence, liberty is suddenly (perhaps too suddenly) restored, then there comes a sudden exuberance, an astounding florescence, which we younger and more elderly peoples regard with disapproval, It was the same in 1821. One had the first great wave of -national insurgence against the com- mon oppressor when Archbishop Germanos (that true precursor of Damaskinos) raised the standard of the cross at St. Laura and seized Kalavyrta. Success came to them too rapidly and too completely, and the inevitable dissensions then arose. By 1824 there were four distinct Greek parties, each regarding every other as more pernicious than the Ottoman oppressor. There was Colocotronis, who had gained control of the Mores and who ruled it with an iron hand. There was Mavrocordato, who had once given lessons in Greek to Mary Shelley, and who represented the liberal ideas of western Europe. There was Petro Bey, who held the peninsula of Maim in semi-feudal dominance. And there was the brigand Ulysses, who dominated Eastern Greece and who held his camp upon the Acropolis itself. Each one of these leaders represented his rival as either a brigand or a reactionary, as either a corrupt and incompetent politician in the pay of Britain or Russia, or else a wild untutored Klepht out only for plunder and power. It was years before the Concert of Europe could extract unity from these warring feuds. * * * *
In sad and dangerous times it is always a temptation to -divert indignation against those who appear selfishly to add to difficulty. Let us be fair to the Greeks, whether they belong to Elas or to Edes, whether they may seem to be fierce brigands or subtle poli- ticians. It is a mistake to interpret their traditional conduct in terms of our own traditions. They are playing true to form. From this evil, which seems so senseless to our ordered minds, something of good will • in the end emerge. They are a fine, a generous, an impulsive and a deeply patriotic race: it is sad that they should prefer bullets to ballot-boxes, but that is their ancient malady ; their friendship for us will outlast this horrible ordeal ; whatever happens, we must preserve our friendly feelings towards them.
Previous page
