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The Unwritten
Greece, with its some twenty-five hundred islands, is, like the human body, made up mostly of water, and like the body of someone you love, is finite, but inexhaustible. Now that my time here is getting short, I realise that the literal size of this country is deceptive, that I will leave here having never seen much that I dreamed of seeing.
I cannot resist another brief but strenuous mountain trip to a region called Agrapha, partly because I am drawn by the meaning of its name, the unwritten, although it does not fit the intricate, if hidden, logic of my other routes. Agrapha borders Thessaly, and is famous guerrilla country, the site of savage medieval battles between the Byzantines and the Bulgarians, the boyhood training ground of one of the most famous strategists and soldiers of the War of Independence, Yiorgos Karaiskakis, the home of the national leader and soldier Nikolas Plastiras, whose role in the Asia Minor disaster saved many refugee lives after the war was lost, and a center for the Greek resistance during the Second World War.
The region is called “the unwritten,” according to the most of the explanations I’ m given, because the Turks never controlled the region, and so didn’t include it in their tax books, as opposed to grammena, or “written,” regions. It is, many say, still the least developed part the country.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row heading_color=”light” bg_type=”image” bg_image=”11424″ bg_image_type=”fixed” pattern_overlay=”yes” column_gap=”5″ padding_top=”50″ padding_bottom=”50″ font_color=”#ffffff”][vc_column width=”1/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1526461068008{padding-top: 3% !important;padding-right: 3% !important;padding-bottom: 3% !important;padding-left: 3% !important;background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.8) !important;*background-color: rgb(0,0,0) !important;}”][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][grve_title title=”Patricia Storace”][vc_row_inner css=”.vc_custom_1526461137826{padding-right: 3% !important;}”][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][grve_single_image image_mode=”thumbnail” image=”11422″ align=”left”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1526461759548{padding-right: 5% !important;}”][vc_column_text]American poet.
She is the 1993 winner of the Witter Bynner Poetry Prize by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a 1996 recipient of a Whiting Award.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_empty_space][grve_quote]In a story, you must always listen for the voice you cannot hear, the one that has been ignored or silenced. In that crushed voice, there is a strain of truth, as a crushed grape yields a drop of wine.[/grve_quote][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row heading_color=”primary-1″ footer_feature=”yes” padding_bottom=”100″ margin_bottom=”0″ padding_top=”100″][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Dinner with Persephone by Patricia Storace, 1996
Where is love that with one stroke cuts time in two and stuns it?
I was surprised that Patricia Storace chose this line from George Seferis’ poem, “the Mood of the day” to add in the first dedication page; it shows that she has a sense of the language.
Patricia Storace has written numerous essays that have appeared in various periodicals in the US. This is her first book of prose. The book has been cataloged in the Library of US Congress as Journeys – Greece – Description and travel and has been awarded the title of the Notable book of the year. The New York Review of Books presents the book as “full of insights, marvelously entertaining… haunting and beautifully written.”
The author has decided to “be [in Greece] for a year and a bit” and during this time she captures in a very individual way the Greek way of thinking, lifestyle and culture. She is interested in both the present and the past, and I was amazed how nothing escapes her. Her book is full of little observations and details; she first looks at the contemporary picture, then she connects it with the history or mythology and she does not omit to put her personal touch, which is always to the point. I really enjoyed her remark that Greeks consider a desert tasty if it is not too sugary!
L. V. Paidoussi
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