DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27180#0364
PYRAMID AND TEMPLE
Greek things appear on the foreign market. It is rather
curious, because among the great European amateurs in
London and Paris and Alexandria there are rich Greeks
who collect all manner of things. The greatest collector of
Chinese objects in Europe has a Greek name. On the other
hand, they are great connoisseurs of their own landscape and
feel at home in every corner of the Peloponnesus.
We want to be more Greek than the Greeks, and get our
teeth into bits of marble without giving a thought to the
country. The various Apollos and Athenas, and Phidias and
Scopus and Myron and Praxiteles, are part of the vocabulary
of every educated person. Who knows Nauplia? The land
is more Greek than the whole of Greek art: not just one
landscape, but the one and only land, the loveliest and most
varied in Europe, Nature’s real success. Hellas-Acropolis!
We fill our ears with the compound word, for Hellas seems
too simple. For the sake of one hill among a thousand we
forget heaven and earth.
On our journey along the coast we had to call a halt at
every turn. The one quality in which Athenian art is pain-
fully lacking was here present to an extreme degree: I mean,
abundance. Our eyes overflowed. Abundance not only of
changing outlines such as one sees on any journey by sea in
Italy or along the coasts of France and Spain; but abundant
effects of depth. Nature in Greece is an ideal sculptor. The
richness of the shore along which you sail is repeated in the
outlines and the hilly surfaces of a multitude of islands, so
that not the earth but the sea becomes the face of nature. It
is not the water over which we came to the Piraeus from
Asia Minor, far less the endless sea on our northern coasts
which begins in time to weary us. When you cross the high
seas, after the first day the ocean becomes a more or less
pleasant substance which becomes part of the deck-chair in
which you doze (if the passage is smooth), a hygienic inter-
lude between lunch and dinner. The Greek sea is not an
334
Greek things appear on the foreign market. It is rather
curious, because among the great European amateurs in
London and Paris and Alexandria there are rich Greeks
who collect all manner of things. The greatest collector of
Chinese objects in Europe has a Greek name. On the other
hand, they are great connoisseurs of their own landscape and
feel at home in every corner of the Peloponnesus.
We want to be more Greek than the Greeks, and get our
teeth into bits of marble without giving a thought to the
country. The various Apollos and Athenas, and Phidias and
Scopus and Myron and Praxiteles, are part of the vocabulary
of every educated person. Who knows Nauplia? The land
is more Greek than the whole of Greek art: not just one
landscape, but the one and only land, the loveliest and most
varied in Europe, Nature’s real success. Hellas-Acropolis!
We fill our ears with the compound word, for Hellas seems
too simple. For the sake of one hill among a thousand we
forget heaven and earth.
On our journey along the coast we had to call a halt at
every turn. The one quality in which Athenian art is pain-
fully lacking was here present to an extreme degree: I mean,
abundance. Our eyes overflowed. Abundance not only of
changing outlines such as one sees on any journey by sea in
Italy or along the coasts of France and Spain; but abundant
effects of depth. Nature in Greece is an ideal sculptor. The
richness of the shore along which you sail is repeated in the
outlines and the hilly surfaces of a multitude of islands, so
that not the earth but the sea becomes the face of nature. It
is not the water over which we came to the Piraeus from
Asia Minor, far less the endless sea on our northern coasts
which begins in time to weary us. When you cross the high
seas, after the first day the ocean becomes a more or less
pleasant substance which becomes part of the deck-chair in
which you doze (if the passage is smooth), a hygienic inter-
lude between lunch and dinner. The Greek sea is not an
334