Sicilian Carousel by Lawrence Durrell Page A

politics … were the very things which made it precious in the eyes of Aeschylus. Or was it perhaps something else of which the tyrant himself may never have been aware? I mean the existence of the secret religious sect professing a Pythagorean life and principle? We know that there was such a sect of philosophers in Gela.
    But enough of these idle imaginings; one day (I made a mental note) I would ask Martine’s daughter just how much she remembered of the history of Sicily—the potted history her mother had once given her as they sat in the cool darkness of the great churchlistening to the cooing of doves in the brilliant sunshine outside.
    So bright indeed was it that those of us who had dark glasses must have been glad of them. Mario had gone off with the bus telling us that he would pick us up by the Fountain of Arethusa in an hour or so—leaving us time to loiter away a moment in the museum which stood just opposite the cathedral—or in any other place of our choosing. The Microscopes, for example, recoiled at the very word Museum and retired to a pleasant bar, and I may have well done the same, but as Deeds had marked the place with an “Ought” I thought I would please him by giving it a look over. To be truthful, despite its handsome rooms with their fresh and open views over the harbor it is rather disappointing—a prodigious jumble of bits and pieces of pottery and stone, for the most part without any kind of aesthetic importance but simply preserved as a historical illustration of an epoch or a trend. Yes, there is an elephant’s graveyard of such vestiges and one cannot help feeling a certain sympathy with Martine’s contention that “we are in danger of preserving too much worthless stuff.” However, it gave me pleasure to watch Beddoes staring vacantly at the Paleolithic fossil of a dwarf elephant and then turning to Deeds with a “I can’t see any point, can you?” It was all right, I suppose.
    I even did my duty by the famous Venus Anadyomene in Room Nine, which the guide assured me was remarkable for “its anatomical realism” which is a politeway of dealing with the more vulgar aspects of its style. Haunchwise, as they would say in New York, she is anything but kallipygous. She is softer than cellulitis and her languorous pose feels debased in a fruity sort of way. She could have gone back into stock without the world needing to feel too deprived. The fame of this insipid lady is due not to the poets but to the historians.
    There were indeed one or two fine smaller pieces but truth to tell it was the cathedral which was nagging at me and I could not resist slipping away for another quick look round in it. The service was over but there were still candles burning in the side chapels with their characteristic odor of waxen soot. A fly flew into the flame of one and was burnt up—it expired with the noise of a match being struck. What was it that was really intriguing me? It was the successful harmonization of so many dissimilar elements into a perfected work of art. It didn’t ought to be a work of art but it was. It is true that the builders of the great cathedrals did not live to see their work completed but they were operating to an agreed ground plan; here the miracle had been achieved by several sheer accidents. And with such unlikely ingredients, too. Start with a Greek temple, embed the whole in a Christian edifice to which you later add a Norman facade which gets knocked down by the great earthquake of 1693. Undaunted by this, you get busy once more and, completely changing direction, replace the old facade with a devilish graceful Baroque composition dated around 1728–1754.And the whole thing, battered as it is, still smiles and breathes and manifests its virtue for all the world as if it had been thought out by a Leonardo or a Michelangelo. I caught them up in a side street wending their desultory way to the point of