The great neo-Hellenist Edmund Keeley writes a book where History becomes literature and then personal revelation. Presenting a synthesis of personal memories, literary criticism, and interpretative narrative, he reflects that the dedication of a literary fellowship in the 1940s kept the allure of Greece alive in the West, while the German occupation, the Civil War, and mass tourism threatened to destroy what they had loved.
Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell meet in Greece with George Seferis, George Katsimbalis, and other writers of the legendary 1930s generation. Together, under the heavy threat of war, they seek the meaning of Greek life, freedom, and art – showing their determination to recreate paradise.
Discussing endlessly through the nights in Athenian taverns, wandering the Peloponnese, and swimming in the islands, Miller and Durrell free themselves from the creative despair they were drowning in at the time, while their Greek friends reaffirm the vitality of their homeland.
In the spring of 1939, Henry Miller felt that Paris could no longer contain him. Tropic of Capricorn had just been published, but, as he wrote to his young friend Lawrence Durrell, people were no longer buying books – they were hardly living – simply “holding their breath waiting for the impending disaster” of a global war. As for Lawrence Durrell, he wrote to Miller from London that he felt deep melancholy, that he was working spasmodically, without real inspiration.
He and his wife Nancy had planned to spend a year wandering through Mediterranean ports where life was cheap – in Spain, Greece, and Turkey – but now things looked so bad that he no longer knew what to do. In the end, he chose Corfu, and Miller did the same toward the end of May, considering it the first stop of a journey.
Neither Miller nor Durrell suspected at that time that, with the help of a few Greek friends, they would create a place that would keep the war at a safe distance and offer them, if only for a while, the new life both were seeking.
“Here unfold the works and days of the eternal Seferis, the “colossus” Katsimbalis with his Homeric laughter, the charismatic Lawrence Durrell, the asthmatic Henry Miller.” Robert Eagles
