The House with the Scorpions
1947
(Diary of Exile)
A
Everyone must have found themselves at similar moments. There are reams of warm appeals. Green, yellow, mauve they rise from every plant. The sea blows angry or calm, wraps them and sends them high up to our patient house. I must speak to you about this house. Its expression reflects the wrinkles of the tortured mountains. It has something of the long-drawn-out lament about it.
B
One could immediately make out the wall of trees that wrap it around with care and affection. Between them is the distance of people of equal strength, the distance between two similar rays that are directed from the depths of the ocean towards two isolated gulls.
C
Five steps from the roots of the trees you touch the whitewashed stones that support the patience and dreams of our house. Its smile is always assured. Its knowledge is sharpened by the scorpions and by the north wind that often skirts it in fear on December nights when it squints at the boundless sea, its eyes fiery and provocative.
D
After a restrained, calm dream, he woke, confronting the sea, bloodied to the roots of the earth. He was disturbed by the thousands of delicate and fleeting smells chasing each other together with the butterflies and bees over the Sun’s pure white sheet. It was time to hurl his first thought towards the firmament which pinned it to the earth with condescension and irony. Maybe he didn’t know that our boat was already crossing the Aegean and that even before our mothers were born, our coming up here had been decided on.
E
We had trouble understanding its assured smile as well as its strange habit of summoning the stray clouds that move about, groping in the thickets and on the slopes of the mountain. And so we had trouble discerning our own eyes, we had trouble getting used to this sudden and violent transformation between the light and the hoarfrost, to the waves and the drawn-out voice that launched itself every so often in the direction of the western Aegean. This is how we lose our personality as we become one with the strange dreams which, although they have anchored themselves in sealed centuries, reach out towards the distant points that mock the circles and the returns.
F
In any case there is something which, although it doesn’t attract you, binds you tightly. You think you are continuously extending forwards while your footprints become tangled in the roots of the bushes that surround you with deathly joy.
The beautiful season will come for you too!
G
Now I must speak to you about its joys and its anger. The calm story-telling in the shade of the arbutus trees. Its completely mysterious love for the south-eastern spring. The nostalgia of its whitewashed walls that were once used for looking out across the Aegean at the pirates, as they would turn their heads uneasily to greet it with respect and fear. Above all, though, its main concern over the ages was that endless and pointless struggle going on inside it between what existed and what came.
H
At this hour, the horizon disappears under the pressure of the sky and the rising of the sea. There is a feeling of understanding that spreads through the air. Love and hate combat one another in the little clouds that travel towards the sun. In a little while the light will be shared equally, as the sun obliterates the shadows and the scruples that led it towards its painful and famous fall. Its last ray is directed towards the familiar road to our house. We accept it calmly, without shouting. We’ll speak to it all night. We’ll dream together.
I
There is a necessity that opens up a long, uneasy path between the clouds. Along this path the thoughts of our house will pass, its silent concerns about every thing that believes in life. Everyone is surprised by the depth of its gaze. It tears deep into the slaves of South Africa, as it does into the imprisoned animals of the zoological gardens of Europe. From there, arm in arm, the wounded dreams of the world are returning with their dirty, open sores. At any moment you can see the endless convoy that makes the scorpions curl up in terror.
J
You see how I keep being drawn away from this silver reflection that gives me the illusion I am the brother of the scorpions, child of the walls and intentions of our house. I promised to tell you about its joys and rages.
K
Today the morning came silently. The light escalates on the calm sea forming a bright staircase that extends from the lines of the horizon. Perhaps I could place beside it two thoughts that have the courage to look each other momentarily in the eye? But this calm permits me to hear the strange tumult going on inside me...However much I want to escape, I am a child of its purpose, the brother of its scorpions. What exists and what is coming cannot abide within me. So how do you want me to deny my generation, to permit the hands that tremble with hatred to shake one another, eyes that are lost in insatiable passion to look at each other, cries that are mangled by terror to embrace one another? ENEMIES WITH ENEMIES?
L
In the evening we sit and watch the sea. We sing softly...Often we fall silent, looking down. It saddens us, this continuous observation. We want very much to stay for a moment alone with the scorpions and the walls our only company.
Vrakades, Ikaria, 1947.
The House with the Scorpions
(Diary of Exile)
A
Everyone must have found themselves at similar moments. There are reams of warm appeals. Green, yellow, mauve they rise from every plant. The sea blows angry or calm, wraps them and sends them high up to our patient house. I must speak to you about this house. Its expression reflects the wrinkles of the tortured mountains. It has something of the long-drawn-out lament about it.
B
One could immediately make out the wall of trees that wrap it around with care and affection. Between them is the distance of people of equal strength, the distance between two similar rays that are directed from the depths of the ocean towards two isolated gulls.
C
Five steps from the roots of the trees you touch the whitewashed stones that support the patience and dreams of our house. Its smile is always assured. Its knowledge is sharpened by the scorpions and by the north wind that often skirts it in fear on December nights when it squints at the boundless sea, its eyes fiery and provocative.
D
After a restrained, calm dream, he woke, confronting the sea, bloodied to the roots of the earth. He was disturbed by the thousands of delicate and fleeting smells chasing each other together with the butterflies and bees over the Sun’s pure white sheet. It was time to hurl his first thought towards the firmament which pinned it to the earth with condescension and irony. Maybe he didn’t know that our boat was already crossing the Aegean and that even before our mothers were born, our coming up here had been decided on.
E
We had trouble understanding its assured smile as well as its strange habit of summoning the stray clouds that move about, groping in the thickets and on the slopes of the mountain. And so we had trouble discerning our own eyes, we had trouble getting used to this sudden and violent transformation between the light and the hoarfrost, to the waves and the drawn-out voice that launched itself every so often in the direction of the western Aegean. This is how we lose our personality as we become one with the strange dreams which, although they have anchored themselves in sealed centuries, reach out towards the distant points that mock the circles and the returns.
F
In any case there is something which, although it doesn’t attract you, binds you tightly. You think you are continuously extending forwards while your footprints become tangled in the roots of the bushes that surround you with deathly joy.
The beautiful season will come for you too!
G
Now I must speak to you about its joys and its anger. The calm story-telling in the shade of the arbutus trees. Its completely mysterious love for the south-eastern spring. The nostalgia of its whitewashed walls that were once used for looking out across the Aegean at the pirates, as they would turn their heads uneasily to greet it with respect and fear. Above all, though, its main concern over the ages was that endless and pointless struggle going on inside it between what existed and what came.
H
At this hour, the horizon disappears under the pressure of the sky and the rising of the sea. There is a feeling of understanding that spreads through the air. Love and hate combat one another in the little clouds that travel towards the sun. In a little while the light will be shared equally, as the sun obliterates the shadows and the scruples that led it towards its painful and famous fall. Its last ray is directed towards the familiar road to our house. We accept it calmly, without shouting. We’ll speak to it all night. We’ll dream together.
I
There is a necessity that opens up a long, uneasy path between the clouds. Along this path the thoughts of our house will pass, its silent concerns about every thing that believes in life. Everyone is surprised by the depth of its gaze. It tears deep into the slaves of South Africa, as it does into the imprisoned animals of the zoological gardens of Europe. From there, arm in arm, the wounded dreams of the world are returning with their dirty, open sores. At any moment you can see the endless convoy that makes the scorpions curl up in terror.
J
You see how I keep being drawn away from this silver reflection that gives me the illusion I am the brother of the scorpions, child of the walls and intentions of our house. I promised to tell you about its joys and rages.
K
Today the morning came silently. The light escalates on the calm sea forming a bright staircase that extends from the lines of the horizon. Perhaps I could place beside it two thoughts that have the courage to look each other momentarily in the eye? But this calm permits me to hear the strange tumult going on inside me...However much I want to escape, I am a child of its purpose, the brother of its scorpions. What exists and what is coming cannot abide within me. So how do you want me to deny my generation, to permit the hands that tremble with hatred to shake one another, eyes that are lost in insatiable passion to look at each other, cries that are mangled by terror to embrace one another? ENEMIES WITH ENEMIES?
L
In the evening we sit and watch the sea. We sing softly...Often we fall silent, looking down. It saddens us, this continuous observation. We want very much to stay for a moment alone with the scorpions and the walls our only company.
Vrakades, Ikaria, 1947.
