Excellency. I am almost sure of it. He must be important in some way: Mahmoud Pasha rose almost with alacrity at those few whispered words.
The curiosity about the message remains with me. As does that faint suspicion of Mister Bowles – not suspicion exactly, but a feeling of complicity, of being leagued with him in some enterprise the nature of which I have not yet fully understood. That day in Lydia 's studio I felt something of this. A kind of acknowledgement. From the very first day, the day of his arrival, I felt included in his purposes.
The Greeks do not speak to me, Excellency. They do not look at me. In their minds they have written finis to me. I trail silence with me wherever I go. I am insubstantial to myself. Only here, in this room, where the silence is of my own contriving, only here do I assume my gravity of flesh. Only when writing am I real to myself, and only then is my death completely real to me. It is here I experience my worst fear of death. I look at my hands, so cunning, feel my weight on the chair. My mind orders the words… I will insist on coherence up to the moment of my death. My only courage not to gibber.
Sometimes I dream of getting off the island, getting to Constantinople, finding out what has happened to my reports. I would dedicate it to you, Excellency. My book. There is material for several volumes. I have not yet decided on a title. When I think of this possibility, this crowning of all my life's work, my heart expands with delight. Everything, then, would have been worth it, poverty, loneliness, my narrow life. But it will not happen.
Meanwhile the days succeed one another, days of summer. Hazy mornings, glittering noons, velvet evenings. I wake with the light and seat myself here early, while the mist still lies along the join between the nearer islands and the sea, and along the distant promontories of Asia. I sit here watching this beautiful inter-action, this complicity – that word again – between sea and sky, the way hazes soften the complicated folds and recesses of land-as if these wilful masses needed protecting, the sharp promontories needed sheathing.
The sea is always present to me, whether within sight or not; there on the limits of my existence, glimmering in delicate perspectives or standing brilliant and vertical on the same plane as the sky; there as an element in the light, imparting its own quality of radiance. This pervasiveness of the sea, common to all small islands, gives a provisional quality to life. Exquisite matings of earth, water and air gave us our being here, and still they live in ménage à trois, without those désillusions said to be inevitable. If there is ever a real quarrel we shall be engulfed. Meanwhile the dalliance continues, a game of creation in which islands on the horizon and islands in the sky are glimpsed, surmised, lost again, and shapes of land lodge, swim, dissolve. Out there, far away, on the furthest verge of vision and beyond, other beings inhabit those fleeting shapes, and from their stillness-which seems like motion to me- they are watching with wonder the short-lived shape on which I count for permanency.
It is no wonder, Excellency, that so many philosophers have come from this world – Ionia or the nearer islands. I mean the artist-philosophers who tried to interpret the universe. Not riddling, posturing Socrates, stroking his beard and asking for definitions. Detestable man. No, I mean those who came before that. Faced with the manifold illusion of the senses, the paradox of permanence and change, in this light at once clear and deceiving, they sought always for an extreme explanation, a principle of unity. What a leap of the mind that was, Excellency. What a giant stride. They freed us from matter, to which, of course, with modern science, we are again subjected. Those who talk of the Greek sense of balance, of the Golden Mean, forget these holy extremists. It is in extremes that the true Greek spirit lies.
The curiosity about the message remains with me. As does that faint suspicion of Mister Bowles – not suspicion exactly, but a feeling of complicity, of being leagued with him in some enterprise the nature of which I have not yet fully understood. That day in Lydia 's studio I felt something of this. A kind of acknowledgement. From the very first day, the day of his arrival, I felt included in his purposes.
The Greeks do not speak to me, Excellency. They do not look at me. In their minds they have written finis to me. I trail silence with me wherever I go. I am insubstantial to myself. Only here, in this room, where the silence is of my own contriving, only here do I assume my gravity of flesh. Only when writing am I real to myself, and only then is my death completely real to me. It is here I experience my worst fear of death. I look at my hands, so cunning, feel my weight on the chair. My mind orders the words… I will insist on coherence up to the moment of my death. My only courage not to gibber.
Sometimes I dream of getting off the island, getting to Constantinople, finding out what has happened to my reports. I would dedicate it to you, Excellency. My book. There is material for several volumes. I have not yet decided on a title. When I think of this possibility, this crowning of all my life's work, my heart expands with delight. Everything, then, would have been worth it, poverty, loneliness, my narrow life. But it will not happen.
Meanwhile the days succeed one another, days of summer. Hazy mornings, glittering noons, velvet evenings. I wake with the light and seat myself here early, while the mist still lies along the join between the nearer islands and the sea, and along the distant promontories of Asia. I sit here watching this beautiful inter-action, this complicity – that word again – between sea and sky, the way hazes soften the complicated folds and recesses of land-as if these wilful masses needed protecting, the sharp promontories needed sheathing.
The sea is always present to me, whether within sight or not; there on the limits of my existence, glimmering in delicate perspectives or standing brilliant and vertical on the same plane as the sky; there as an element in the light, imparting its own quality of radiance. This pervasiveness of the sea, common to all small islands, gives a provisional quality to life. Exquisite matings of earth, water and air gave us our being here, and still they live in ménage à trois, without those désillusions said to be inevitable. If there is ever a real quarrel we shall be engulfed. Meanwhile the dalliance continues, a game of creation in which islands on the horizon and islands in the sky are glimpsed, surmised, lost again, and shapes of land lodge, swim, dissolve. Out there, far away, on the furthest verge of vision and beyond, other beings inhabit those fleeting shapes, and from their stillness-which seems like motion to me- they are watching with wonder the short-lived shape on which I count for permanency.
It is no wonder, Excellency, that so many philosophers have come from this world – Ionia or the nearer islands. I mean the artist-philosophers who tried to interpret the universe. Not riddling, posturing Socrates, stroking his beard and asking for definitions. Detestable man. No, I mean those who came before that. Faced with the manifold illusion of the senses, the paradox of permanence and change, in this light at once clear and deceiving, they sought always for an extreme explanation, a principle of unity. What a leap of the mind that was, Excellency. What a giant stride. They freed us from matter, to which, of course, with modern science, we are again subjected. Those who talk of the Greek sense of balance, of the Golden Mean, forget these holy extremists. It is in extremes that the true Greek spirit lies.
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