An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Paint The Lyric

Odysseus Dreams of Returning to Ithaca by Elias Mesisklis

I am indebted once more to Anastasia Gavilanes, who was so helpful to me when I arrived on Ithaca at the end of my odyssey last year (see this blog An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague – 13: 29 September - 4 October 2020), for telling me about the Paint The Lyric festival planned to take place on the island later in 2021.

The theme is simple. Artists are invited to give their perspectives on The Odyssey – a character, a theme or the whole story – and their visions are brought together for an exhibition on Ithaca.

The wonderful painting above is an example of what can be expected...

If you want to know more and/or get an entry form, visit the Paint The Lyric Facebook page.

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Per Ardua Ad AstraZeneca

Vaccination is turning into an Odyssey of its own... I was due to get the Oxford/AstraZeneca one today... But then the GP practice told me at the last minute that they had run out of AstraZeneca and were now using Pfizer.

Not particularly keen on having an mRNA vaccine, I cancelled... and instead responded to one of the relentless NHS letters that keep coming through my door. And now I've been booked to have the AstraZeneca just a couple of miles from where they are now dishing out the Pfizer.

I felt a bit disappointed by the U-turn, or V-turn, on vaccines at my GP surgery – not least because the name of the helpful man who made the booking was... Ulysses.

You couldn't make it up...

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Return to Ithaca

 

Ithaca street sign  Photo©Nigel Summerley

Odysseus had to put up with quite a few things he would prefer to have avoided in order to get back to Ithaca.

So maybe having a Covid vaccination – however unwanted – is a small price to pay for, hopefully, being able to travel to that wonderful island again.

Nothing is definite of course... but it looks as if things are headed, particularly in Greece, towards the authorities wanting proof of vaccination before they let anyone in.

And as I have work to do in Ithaca in May/June – the gods permitting – now is the time to prepare the way.

But, like the wily Odysseus, I'm planning to ward off any unpleasantness... and stocking up on the homeopathic remedy made from the same vaccine that I'll be taking. 

If you are knowledgable about homeopathy (or, strictly speaking in this case, isopathy), you will know that the remedy is taken not to negate the vaccination but in order to deal with any unwanted side effects. 

And what could be more appropriate? Since the theory of homeopathy – the curing of like with like – dates all the way back to the ancient Greeks... 

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Parthenope

 Fontana della Sirena - Piazza Sannazar, Naples

Odysseus had a tendency to fall under the spell of enchantresses – at least that was one of his excuses for being late getting home to Ithaca.

However, one alluring female not only found herself being resisted by him, but she was so distraught at her failure that she surrendered her own life.

She was Parthenope, one of the Sirens, who flung herself into the sea and was washed up dying on the shore of what today is the city of Naples. Greek settlers here, on the west coast of what became Italy, originally named their town after her.

Parthenope was half-bird and half-woman (as the Sirens were originally described). Her legend became entwined with the history of Naples, and there are now three fountains in the city that commemorate her.

The most unusual is the Fontana di Spinacorona whose "lactating" breasts actually spill water over Vesuvius below her. In their impeccable guide Secret Naples, Valerio Ceva Grimaldi and Maria Franchini recount that this 15th-century depiction of Parthenope was intended to have a calming and contemplative effect, but "it has always been popularly known as the 'fountain of the tits'."

Fontana di Spinacorona

Another Parthenope tribute is the Fontana della Sirena at Piazza Sannazar (at the top of this post) and the third is the more modern one at Napoli Centrale railway station (featured along with other Siren images from my 2020 odyssey on this blog at An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague  – Siren Land).

It was only in the Middle Ages that the image of the Sirens underwent a makeover with their emergence as half-woman and half-fish – and a merger with all the many legends of mermaids who lured sailors to their doom.

Over the centuries, depictions of the Sirens have become increasingly erotic, one example being the Fountain of the Sirens at Maratea, which I passed through last year, heading up the beautiful west coast of Italy, north to Naples. 

Fountain of the Sirens at Maratea

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Uneven Stephens

I'm not a Stephen King fan. Horror and terror are not my idea of entertaining reading. But I was told that I really should read his half-autobiography, half-instruction manual, On Writing. Which I did – in pretty much one sitting.

King is a fantastic writer – mainly because he (mostly) follows his own rules for writers: keep the language simple and just tell the story.

As far as King is concerned, adverbs should be banned, and there is no need to pile up huge lists of adjectives to describe people and things.

So my advice to Stephen King might be to avoid the words of Stephen Fry – which are so flowery and over-decorated that they could seriously shock the king of horror.

The ubiquitous Fry has been retelling the legends of ancient Greece with his books Mythos and Heroes... and now Troy, which I was kindly given a copy of as an audiobook.

It's rollicking stuff, but Fry is not keen to use one word where ten will do. It's great that he may be introducing a new generation to the joys of the Greek myths, but let's hope his verbosity doesn't put some of them off.

Now he's done Troy, one suspects The Odyssey will be next in his sights – not a story that needs much in the way of hyperbole, although I suspect that wouldn't stop Fry going over the top once more.

The Troy audiobook is 11 hours long... I reckon Stephen King could get it down to around 100 minutes. 

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Old Calabria

 

Norman Douglas (whose praises I sang over his Siren Land) has done it again – or, rather, did it again. Since his follow-up book Old Calabria was published in 1915.

What Siren Land did for the Sorrentine peninsula, Old Calabria does for the lands to the south of Naples – and in spades. It is a joyous and witty ramble around the foot of Italy, packed with historical, geographical, philosophical, anthropological and downright arrogant observations on life there a century ago.

Here is just one of Douglas's useful tips: "The foreigner in Italy, if he is wise, will familiarise himself not only with the cathedrals to be visited but also, and primarily, with the technique of legal bribery and subterfuge – with the methods locally employed for escaping out of the meshes of the law. Otherwise he may find unpleasant surprises in store for him."

After my encounter with the border police in Brindisi (see this blog An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague – 10: 8-14 September 2020), I would certainly endorse the enduring need for such preparedness. Although perhaps it is not necessary to go so far as one practice that Douglas observed. "In England," he says, "we should think it rather paradoxical to hear a respectable old farmer recommending his boys to shoot a policeman, whenever they safely can. On the spot [in Calabria], things begin to wear a different aspect..."

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Calilo

 

The good thing about Mykonos is that it attracts the kind of people who want to go to a completely commercialised and spoilt island – thus reducing the chances of them turning up seeking "fun" on unspoilt Greek islands.

There seems to be something of this theme in the new resort of Calilo (pictured above) on the island of Ios.

According to their PR, the Michalopoulos family "witnessed the overdevelopment of the neighbouring islands of Mykonos and Santorini" and were "determined to save Ios from a similar fate... they bought one quarter of the island, all of it coastal, and promised to develop just 1% of it in low-density development for tourism. It is thought to be the largest private coastal conservation project in the world."

That 1% development is now aimed at couples who want to stage a big expensive Greek wedding in 2021 (if they are allowed to travel, presumably). 

But a traditional Greek church set in the middle of a swimming pool? Alongside L-O-V-E spelt out in huge letters?

Perhaps one has to accept that this is the price of conserving the other 99% of the site? The Mykonos principle at work...