Prospero's Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corfu by Lawrence Durrell
Authors: Lawrence Durrell
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Rome. The wind whitening the reedy stretches of Paleopolis and shrieking through the olive groves of Perama. On the northern escarpment the seas pounding at Peristeri (Island of Turtle-Doves), and running white and yellow with the undertow of silt from the Butrinto estuary. Civil servants yawning away a winter over wood fires making inventories of fodder and shipping. “In the last campaign between Pompey and Julius Caesar, the former increased his navy by the shipping of the isle; and had it occupied by the main body of the Fleet under M. Bibulus.”
Here Titus, Vespasian’s son, watched with some impatience games given in his honor.
10.20.37
Geneseric, the ally of Attila, says Zarian, was a man who always trusted “that the winds would bear him to a land the inhabitants of which had provoked the divine vengance.” He frequently visited this indented coastline in person with his pennoned fleet; and after the Vandals came the Goths under the terrible crooked Totila, to pillage and burn.
Having secured Rome, Totila had equipped 300 galleys manned by Goths and sent them down to conquerand ravage Greece. Justinian could only muster 50 sail and 5,000 men to oppose them. It was the Ice Age settling down on the Roman Empire; and for all the valor of Belisarius and Narses it could not be averted or withstood.
10.21.37
Somewhere in the lovely Valley Di Ropa you will come upon a small chapel-covered mound remarkable for the two superb umbrella pines growing thereon. Above you to the left rises the single crag of Peleka above this expanse of green. To the right, almost hidden by the dense woodland, you will see a long curving drive lined with trees which aims slowly round upon a house with peeling green shutters. The cypresses lining the road are perhaps the most ancient in the island; their plumes are almost black, and near the ground are powdered by the fine golden summer dust. Mournful and unkept to the outward view, the house lies hidden from the main road.
This is the retreat of the Count D., and it is here that Zarian brought me one day to make the acquaintance of this celebrated recluse into whom the philosophic scepticism of a classical education had bit ten so deeply. The old Count, a man of about sixty, was stocky and heavily built; he possessed a pair of remarkable eyes set in a head which was a little too big for his body. But the small hands and feet gave a distinctly Byronic cast to one’s first impressions. Whenwe first met it was some five or six years since he had first retired from the social life of the town to the calm of his country estate. In an island where loquacity and an overburdening sense of hospitality are the norm it was natural that he should rank as a recluse and an eccentric. Zarian had made his acquaintance in the course of some negotiations about the rent of a town house he was intending to lease from him, and something in the temper of his mind (Zarian was incapable of conducting business except in terms of Neapolitan opera) must have appealed to the Count, for they became immediate and fast friends. And now we spend the first week-end of every month staying in the old house as guests.
10.27.37
Count D. is interesting. Unlike the majority of recluses he is a hospitable man. Comfortably off, fond of his cellar and his immense library, he is content to spend summer and winter beyond the limited range of town amusements and gossip. He shoots, assists at olive pickings, and christens children; while the wine yield of his property is a constant and delightful concern. The house and gardens were built by an Italian architect, so that though the walks are unkept and the trees unpruned the whole place retains some of the formal humanist charm of the Italian country house.
Here we spend our time in endless conversations.And here Zarian makes the effort of rising at dawn in order to verify the appositeness of the adjective “rosy-fingered,” which the Count maintains to be the most exact as
Here Titus, Vespasian’s son, watched with some impatience games given in his honor.
10.20.37
Geneseric, the ally of Attila, says Zarian, was a man who always trusted “that the winds would bear him to a land the inhabitants of which had provoked the divine vengance.” He frequently visited this indented coastline in person with his pennoned fleet; and after the Vandals came the Goths under the terrible crooked Totila, to pillage and burn.
Having secured Rome, Totila had equipped 300 galleys manned by Goths and sent them down to conquerand ravage Greece. Justinian could only muster 50 sail and 5,000 men to oppose them. It was the Ice Age settling down on the Roman Empire; and for all the valor of Belisarius and Narses it could not be averted or withstood.
10.21.37
Somewhere in the lovely Valley Di Ropa you will come upon a small chapel-covered mound remarkable for the two superb umbrella pines growing thereon. Above you to the left rises the single crag of Peleka above this expanse of green. To the right, almost hidden by the dense woodland, you will see a long curving drive lined with trees which aims slowly round upon a house with peeling green shutters. The cypresses lining the road are perhaps the most ancient in the island; their plumes are almost black, and near the ground are powdered by the fine golden summer dust. Mournful and unkept to the outward view, the house lies hidden from the main road.
This is the retreat of the Count D., and it is here that Zarian brought me one day to make the acquaintance of this celebrated recluse into whom the philosophic scepticism of a classical education had bit ten so deeply. The old Count, a man of about sixty, was stocky and heavily built; he possessed a pair of remarkable eyes set in a head which was a little too big for his body. But the small hands and feet gave a distinctly Byronic cast to one’s first impressions. Whenwe first met it was some five or six years since he had first retired from the social life of the town to the calm of his country estate. In an island where loquacity and an overburdening sense of hospitality are the norm it was natural that he should rank as a recluse and an eccentric. Zarian had made his acquaintance in the course of some negotiations about the rent of a town house he was intending to lease from him, and something in the temper of his mind (Zarian was incapable of conducting business except in terms of Neapolitan opera) must have appealed to the Count, for they became immediate and fast friends. And now we spend the first week-end of every month staying in the old house as guests.
10.27.37
Count D. is interesting. Unlike the majority of recluses he is a hospitable man. Comfortably off, fond of his cellar and his immense library, he is content to spend summer and winter beyond the limited range of town amusements and gossip. He shoots, assists at olive pickings, and christens children; while the wine yield of his property is a constant and delightful concern. The house and gardens were built by an Italian architect, so that though the walks are unkept and the trees unpruned the whole place retains some of the formal humanist charm of the Italian country house.
Here we spend our time in endless conversations.And here Zarian makes the effort of rising at dawn in order to verify the appositeness of the adjective “rosy-fingered,” which the Count maintains to be the most exact as
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