Durrel School of corfu > Seminar 2010

Durrell School of Corfu

Seminar on the History and Culture of the Ionian Islands, 16-21 May 2010

Abstracts of Papers

MARK DAVIES

Constantine Theotokis and Giuseppe di Lampedusa: Literary responses to turbulent times

Constantine Theotokis’s Slaves in their Chains / Οι Σκλαβοι στα Δεσμα τους (1922) and Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s The Leopard / Il Gattopardo (1958), though written forty economically depressed and war-torn years apart and very different in the aesthetic principles they follow, make for interesting comparison on a number of counts. Both are novels by titled authors about the decline of aristocratic island families in times of escalating change: one set on Corfu more than a generation after Britain’s cession of the Ionian islands to Greece in 1864; the other in Sicily and spanning fifty years from Garibaldi’s ousting of the Bourbons in 1860 and the ensuing rapid unification of Italy. As such both are very personal books – though biographical parallels are elaborately displaced through plot, irony and symbolism – and the difficulty both writers had fictionalising the retreat of their class before an expanding bourgeoisie is attested by the barely finished state both works were left in. Both novels moreover are ultimately tragic: aspiring to Shakespearian tragi-comic heights in the classically symmetrical Slaves, wryly humorous but more nostalgic and deeply pessimistic in the interior monologue-like Leopard. How far such differences in tone were the result of choice of genre or mode, personal temperament and age, ideological conviction or the sheer cumulative horror of twentieth-century history is an intriguing question.

This paper examines parallels in the lives and historical contexts of the two authors and in the themes of their work.

JOSEPH WILSON

Using Corfu: the island in the Homeric epics and Apollonius Rhodius

Two poets, Homer and Apollonius Rhodius, make use of the island of Corfu (Scheria, Drepane, respectively) as settings for pivotal events in their epics. For Homer, Scheria serves as the place for the reintegration of Odysseus into the society of men, once he has left the endless purgatory of Calypso's Ogygia behind. And Homer, employing a variant on a trick he had already used in the Iliad, intends that he alone be allowed to use Scheria and never allow it to be accessed by other characters, or other poets: to wit, in the Iliad, Homer in Book 22 allows the entire Greek army (which had virtually disappeared during Achilles' aristeia, to come forward and stab the lifeless body of Hector. Homer repeatedly makes the point that the fate of Troy and the life of Hector are inextricably bound; the death of one encapsulates the destruction of the other. By doing this, Homer is effectively rendering the other works of the Epic Cycle pointless - his story has told, in flashback, synopsis, and foreshadowing, the whole story of the demise of Troy.

Homer repeats the technique in the Odyssey. The issue at stake in that poem is not kleos, the glory won in battle, but nostos, the return of the hero. The Phaeacians, who clothe and receive Odysseus and eventually return him to Ithaca, have dwelt in the land only since the days of Alcinous' father, Nausithoos; in effect, they appear on the island just in time to serve Odysseus' and the poet's ends by transporting Odysseus home. But in Book 13, Poseidon, annoyed at the rescue of his adversary, punishes the Phaeacians by turning the ship which bore Odysseus home into stone and blocking off their harbor.

[JOSEPH WILSON, CONTINUED]

Homer is once more trying to block the work of rival and subsequent poets; the access point between fairy tale and the real world is shut off forever by Poseidon's action. To judge by handful of fragments from the Nostoi, Homer was entirely successful in forestalling other story tellers.

Apollonius Rhodius, however, the 3rd-century librarian and polymath, tried to find a way around the traps that Homer had set. He kept Scheria, now called Drepane, and moved it very much into the arc of fairy tale, keeping Homeric settings and themes but telling the story of the Argonauts instead. He freely mixes, rather than reverses, Homeric order, allowing the Argonauts to sail past another Corcyra, bypass Calypso, and visit Circe, before coming to the Phaeacians. There Jason and Medea wed: a wedding that both recalls and mocks the union of Paris and Helen (for in that story, mayhem followed the nuptials; in Apollonius Rhodius, much of the mayhem is already done, although the Colchian army is stopped in its effort to bring Medea back to her father). To accentuate the point, Medea and Jason are then driven to Libya and the Garden of the Hesperides. Apollonius Rhodius, who contorts geography beyond recognition, has found a way to incorporate once more the Phaeacians into the land of story, by the simple expedient of changing both the story and the land.

BENEDETTA BESSI

The Ionian Islands in the Liber Insularum by Cristoforo Buondelmonti

The aim of my paper is to present and discuss the descriptions of the Ionian Islands as found in the famous Liber Insularum by Cristoforo Buondelmonti, a Florentine monk, who in the early 1400’s left Florence to make his base in Rhodes and learn Greek. Niccolò Niccoli, the great Florentine humanist and manuscript collector was the patron of this adventure, but contacts between the Buondelmonti family and some Latin feudatories in the Greek East may have also influenced his decision to visit this part of the Mediterranean . Members from a branch of the Buondelmonti family had been rulers of Ioannina since the end of the 14th century while Magdalena Buondelmonti, a daughter of his great uncle, Manente Buondelmonti, and Lapa degli Acciaiuoli, had married Leonardo I Tocco, Count Palatine of Kefalonia and Zakynthos. Through this branch of the family Cristoforo was also related to the banking family of the Acciaiuoli, members of which governed Athens and Thebes from 1387 onwards.

It has also been suggested that Buondelmonti might have been involved in an undercover diplomatic mission on behalf of the Florentine Republic, which was interested in an expansion of its diplomatic and commercial relations with the Byzantine emperor at the expenses of Venice. Whatever his political aims might have been, the results of his travels and explorations were summarized in the Liber Insularum, a work containing descriptions and maps of all the Greek islands. The Liber widely circulated in Italy and Europe — 4 different versions and more than 70 manuscripts are attested — and became the standard reference work also for later travellers and visitors to the area. In the Liber the order of the descriptions of the islands probably follows the itinerary of Buondelmonti’s voyage and, as it is to be expected, the Ionian islands occupy the first paragraphs of the book and are presented in the following order: Corfu, Paxos, Leukas, Ithaka, Kephalonia, Zakynthos and the Strophades. Buondelmonti always offers at least a brief and general description of the physical and geographical situation of each island but his treatment of the single cases varies considerably on the base of his acquaintance with that specific island. The paragraph on Corfu, the first in the book, opens with some observations about the etymology of the name and the measures of the islands and then continues with the description of the southern mountainous area in which oak trees producing valanidas grow abundantly. He then mentions the oppidum of Aghios Anghelos and the city of Corfu with the remains of the ancient settlement. The mention of mount Phalarius offers him the possibility of a long excursus on Dodona and its oracle as described in Ovid. Buondelmonti then continues describing a rock which, according to the tradition, was Ulysses’ boat transformed in stone (Pontikonissi), the settlement of Kassiopi, and the nearby church dedicated to the Virgin, visited by many pilgrims. After a brief mention of the mountains of Epirus and Durazzo and a related quote from Vergil, the paragraph on Corfu closes with a reference to the visit of the island of Titus Quintus Flamininus during his war with Philip V of Macedon. .

As it is evident from the example above, one of the greatest merits of Buondelmonti lies in the fact that he was the first of the Western intellectuals to make Greece and its classical heritage the object of autoptical survey. Although the descriptions of the various islands are deeply imbued with his humanistic culture, C. Buondelmonti, had a pioneer role in opening the way to the rediscovery of classical Greece both as a physical entity and a literary topos and the same applies for what concerns the Ionian Islands whose descriptions in later travelers’ and visitors’ accounts often are plagiarized versions of the Liber.

RICHARD PINE

Corfu in the works of Lawrence and Gerald Durrell

This paper will contrast work by Lawrence Durrell (Prospero's Cell, 1945) and Gerald Durrell (The Corfu Trilogy, 1956-78) with writings by Viscount Kirkwall (Four Years in the Ionian Islands, 1864), Sophie Atkinson (An Artist in Corfu, 1911) and the letters of Edward Lear from the years 1858-64. It will argue that, whereas Kirkwall, Lear and Atkinson were observers, commenting on the politics, society, and landscape of Corfu, the works by the Durrells demonstrate a qualitatively different level of empathy and engagement with Corfu and the Corfiots. Even in the case of Lear and Atkinson — both landscape painters — the ‘tourist gaze’ predominates to the detriment of the poetic insight into the culture of the island. I will suggest that, in the works of the Durrells, the act of inscription by an imaginative - rather than an objective - writer can evoke aspects of that culture which seldom appear on the pages of the historian, sociologist or anthropologist.

ELENI CALLIGAS

‘A history of the peasants printed in gaol’ and other unknown texts by the 1849 Cephalonian rebels imprisoned at Argostoli: a first presentation.

There were two armed rebellions in Cephalonia during the British Protectorate of the Ionian Islands, in 1848 and in 1849. The first was dealt with by High Commissioner Lord Seaton who tried to diffuse the situation and play down the uprising so that it would not jeopardise the extensive reform programme he was trying to persuade London to concede to before his term of office ended. A year later it was quite another matter. Sir Henry Ward, the new High Commissioner, far from sharing his predecessor's commitment to reforms, sought ways to curtail them. When a second armed uprising occurred in Cephalonia, he was determined to take an exemplary stand and crush it. Courts martial and gallows were liberally employed and the various brutal, arbitrary acts of the administration were reported in the Ionian and British press. Twenty one people were hung, while others were imprisoned for their involvement. Despite the administration's best efforts, no direct link was found between the rebels and the Rizospastai, the radical-unionist political activists who were deemed responsible for any discontent among the population.

At the time, the Cephalonian rebellions were the subject of a volume of British Parliamentary Papers and a memorandum submitted to the Ninth Ionian Parliament in 1850, and reviewed by Gladstone during his tenure as Extraordinary High Commissioner in 1858. More recently, two doctoral dissertations focused on the topic, one by Μιράντα Παξιμαδοπούλου-Σταυρινού (Οι εξεγέρσεις της Κεφαλληνίας κατά τα έτη 1848 και 1849, published by Εταιρεία Κεφαλληνιακών Ιστορικών Σπουδών, Athens 1980) and the other by D. Hannell (‘‘The rebellions of 1848 and 1849 in Cephalonia: their causes and international repercussion’’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Wales, Swansea, 1985). There is however a source related to these events, which was not consulted by any of the above. In July 1850, the Argostoli prison authorities found seven handwritten booklets hidden in the cells of some of the prisoners condemned for the 1849 rebellion. The offending articles "contained quantity of doggerel Verses in Greek some of which contained an account of the proceedings of the Rebels in August and September last, and others abusing the Bishop in most unmeasured terms". They were confiscated and sent to the High Commissioner in Corfu. They must have lain there undisturbed for some time, as I have not come across a reference to their existence in any of the literature.

The seven booklets are small and appear to have been hand made. The name of the prisoner in whose cell each one was found is written on the cover. Five of them contain versions of the same historical narrative, one has a 'lament for Cephalonia' which is an indictment of the local bishop, and one is a love poem. Apart from their historical value, the texts are of interest linguistically and also for their connection to folksongs.

My paper will present the context of the composition & discovery of the booklets; an outline of their subject matter; and some of my preliminary conclusions about the booklets, as well as the issues that remain unresolved.

ATHANASIA GLYCOFRYDI-LEONTSINI

The reception of Scottish philosophy in the Ionian Islands During the British Protectorate

The paper deals with the impact of Scottish philosophy on Modern Greek philosophy, via French Eclecticism, during the 19th century. It points out the importance of the Ionian Academy of Corfu, an Institution established during the British Protectorate and considered as the first University in modern Greece. Scottish philosophy was incorporated in the teaching of some Greek scholars because of their philosophical training in 19th century France where "spiritualists and eclectics" formulated the French branch of Scottish philosophy, thus supplying the most effective weapons against materialism and skepticism. In this institution, established in 1824 by the initiatives of Lord Guilford during the British Protectorate of the Ionian Islands, taught successively NikolaosPiccolos, Neophytos Vamvas, Andreas Kalvos, P. Vrailass-Armenis, intellectuals who had close relations with French philosophers and intellectuals through their studies in Paris. The introduction of Scottish philosophy into the Ionian Islands reflects also the official line of Lord Guilford who intended to organize the Ionian Academy on the model of the Scottish professors.

EVANGELIA SKOUFARI

Aspects of the coexistence of Orthodox and Catholic Church in the Ionian Islands during Venetian rule through Greek and Italian historiography

During the 19th century, a difficult period for the Greek nation trying to consolidate its territorial boundaries, the first important historical works appeared in the Ionian Islands. They were based on scientific research conducted mainly in the local archives that had been organized by the Venetian administration on the example of the chancellery of St Mark's Republic. Since then numerous scholars, in preparing works regarding the history of the Ionian islands, based their research on the material offered by the rich collections of documents preserved in the archives of Corfu and Zakynthos, together with those of Venice. In the last few decades history researchers turned their interest to aspects other than the political and economical organization of the Greek islands during the centuries of Venetian administration: social structure, cultural relations between Venetians and Greeks, art and literature are among the fields of study chosen by scholars for new research. But one of the most interesting fields of research is the long coexistence of Orthodox and Catholic Church in the Ionian islands, in part pacific and in part conflictual, during the centuries of Venetian administration that ended in 1797 with the fall of the Republic of Venice. Despite the strong interest in ecclesiastical history, there are very few general studies on the religious life in the Ionian Islands, due perhaps to the different periods of and manner of inclusion of each island in the possessions of the Venetian Republic, and to the non-homogeneous organization of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches in each island. That is why the majority of studies on the ecclesiastical history of the Ionian islands under Venetian rule have predominantly local character and in most matters no generalizations can be made. In my paper I will deal with the overall organization of the two Churches and the division of territorial influence between the head of each hierarchy. I will present the occasions of collaboration and the occasions of conflict. I will indicate the fields of interest of Greek and Italian scholars – which reflect the aspects presented in the manuscripts preserved in the local archives – regarding the ecclesiastical organization and religious life as it was experienced by the local population, Greek and Venetian, of the Ionian Islands during the centuries of Venetian rule.

ATHANASIOS (SAKIS) GEKAS

“Thalassoviotoi” – Living off the Sea. Corfu port workers and the district of Mandouki in the nineteenth century.

The district of Mandouki is often mentioned as the site of resistance when the Republican French arrived in Corfu at the end of the eighteenth century, but the district was defined more decisively by the arrival of the Parga refugees in 1818, as well as by the building of the first (and only) factories on the island during the last decades of the nineteenth century. This paper reconstructs and examines aspects of the living and working conditions of port labourers in Corfu during the nineteenth century by tracing the history of one of the least explored and well-know areas of Corfu town, the district of Mandouki. Historians – of Corfu as well as other ports – are usually concerned with much more ‘visible’ and ‘important’ groups in the port economy, such as merchants, than the people whose labour was indispensable to the working of the port and who lived off the sea. Fishermen, mariners, caulkers and porters, boatmen, workers loading and unloading goods to and from the ships entering and leaving the port are the groups examined. The paper looks at sources from the period of British rule, compiles a quantitative study of occupational classification of the port labourers and examines how these groups articulated and promoted their interests through petitions to the British-Ionian authorities. The persistence of poverty among the district’s residents combined with the arrival of transit migrants from the countryside.

The thalassoviotoi – those who lived off the sea – as contemporaries called them, negotiated their social and working conditions with the British authorities. Petitions calling for better working and living conditions reveal the agency of these – often ignored – groups during a period of growth of the Corfu port economy. The relations between the residents of Mandouki – until 1864 outside the town walls – and the town’s elite reached critical point during the cholera epidemic of 1855, which started from Mandouki. The decision of the Health Committee to isolate the population of Mandouki, in a vain effort to contain the disease, fractured social relations in a moment of crisis and threatened social peace. The paper can be combined with a tour of the Mandouki district, where some fine Venetian architecture can be seen. Other sites of interest include the Platytera monastery and the now derelict factories.

ANASTASIOS KOUTSOURIS & DENISE-CHLOE ALEVIZOU

Influences and interactions of imperial and indigenous cultures in Heptanese painting of the 18^th century.

The “italianised painting” of the Venetian-ruled Ionian Islands of the 18th century has been persistently interpreted in reception studies as a radical turn towards naturalism, which aimed at the conscious abandonment of the Byzantine painting tradition. Moreover, although the art of the so-called Heptanese School represents a significant chapter in Neohellenic art history, it has been considered as a “provincial phenomenon”, reflecting the radiance exerted by the Venetian metropolis, or as a “regional episode” in the history of art of the Venetian Settecento. Specifically, sometimes regarded as a “colonial symptom”, due to the references and relation of the Ionian Islands to Venice, and perceived as an effort at alignment to Venetian tastes, Heptanese painting raises questions of a doubtful national identity.

An original treatise on the art of painting seemed to contain the necessary evidence for the aforementioned views. Written in 1726 by Panaghiotis Doxaras, founder of the Heptanese School, it was considered as providing the theoretical basis for the Heptanese naturalistic movement. However, it is now safely known as having been an anthology of translated texts from Italian editions. This new evidence, combined with recent scientific and laboratory studies of the painting materials and techniques actually used by the painters of the 18th century in the Ionian Islands, allow us, for the first time, to substantiate how artistic practice actually reflects influences and interactions of both, imperial and indigenous cultures, differing from interpretations, and to perceive Heptanese painting as a totally heterogeneous phenomenon.

ADAM SMITH

Corfu canes: olive wood companions from the groves of the Phaeacians

For the nineteenth- or early twentieth-century traveller disembarking at Corfu after the voyage from Italy, Corfu represented the first taste of the East. Lying closer to Constantinople than to Venice, and with the curious admixture of cultures that its history had provided, arrival in Corfu clearly signalled that the tourist had finally left home turf. Moreover, the land they discovered was blest. For many, schooled in classical texts and the ‘dead language’ of the Greeks, it could hardly be otherwise. They now found themselves washed upon the shores of ancient Scheria, alongside Odysseus, surrounded

by a decidedly alive Greek population. They traced Homer’s topography, sought out the garden of Alcinous and resemblances to Nausicaa, and revelled in the manifestation of the stories they grew up on. Alongside the classical allusions, those arriving from any direction discovered that Corfu, with its gentle climate and idyllic landscapes, was an earthly paradise.

Strolling out of town towards the battery of an evening, or travelling along the much-praised roads on excursions into the interior, the one thing that tourists remarked on above all else were the forests of olive trees. Used to seeing pollarded olives in demarcated plots throughout the rest of Southern Europe, Corfu’s unending seas of tall, exuberantly branching trees were perhaps the most remarkable spectacle the island had to offer. The visitors measured them, counted them, picnicked beneath their branches and waxed lyrical about their beauties. Combining unusual elegance with associations both ancient and scriptural, as well as being the mainstay of the island’s economy, the olive trees encapsulated Corfu. How natural, then, that visitors also wanted to take a piece of this magnificent forest, in the form of an olive wood souvenir, away with them as a keepsake of their stay.

The burgeoning nineteenth century obsession with souvenirs created markets for every conceivable form of keepsake. Wherever the traveller alighted, something could, and in many cases had to be purchased to record the visit. Olive wood items from Corfu formed just one such group of souvenirs, and countless thousands of the island’s wooden boxes, bowls and paper knives were distributed around the world, jostled together in traveller’s trunks together with Venetian glass, Black Forest bears and Genoese velvets. Generated before the advent of mass tourism, these carvings were often skilfully produced, lying at the woolly interface between mass production and what would now be termed ‘folk art’. Amongst all the olive wood souvenirs from Corfu, the ones that probably achieved the highest international visibility were the carved walking sticks produced during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Olive wood canes from Corfu, usually but not always inscribed ‘κερκυρα’, most frequently have horsehead handles, but are found with a great variety of other carved subjects. Many feature the stylized faces of Corfiot men, and, rarely, women. Produced at a time when walking sticks were an essential accoutrement, and ubiquitously used, Corfu canes would have struck up a very different relationship with their new owners than other keepsakes. Up until World War I, after which the vogue for walking sticks markedly declined, canes were seen as more than fashion items: they were constant companions. While other souvenirs sat gathering dust on a shelf, the Corfu cane, if properly suited to its owner, would in many cases develop into a trusted friend, a conversation piece and an item of personal sculpture, to be used, ‘worn’ and caressed. Arguably, these olive wood walking sticks would have stimulated memories of their owners’ voyages to the land of the Phaeacians more, and in a more evocative way, than any other souvenir.

Using a variety of illustrations this paper will discuss the iconography of the canes and their production, from the finest nineteenth century examples to the much cruder twentieth century ones. It will then go on to explore the canes’ origins and the now largely forgotten role these olive branches played, both in defining the image of their owners and in reconstructing and transmitting the image of Corfu.

JIM POTTS

The Suliots in Suli and Corfu

Nineteenth century foreign travellers showed an unlimited interest in the Suliot saga, which also gripped the imagination of many writers, poets and artists. Greek historians have been no less fascinated, even in recent years. This paper discusses theories about the origins of the Suliots, and the different views of modern Greek historians concerning the feuds, intrigues, suspicions and vendettas between rival family clans (eg the Tzavellas and Botsaris clans). It goes on to discuss their departure from Parga (where many had sought refuge from Ali Pasha) to Corfu and their reception there as refugees, their involvement in military service (eg the Albanian Battalion) under different masters, and in agricultural work, as well as attitudes towards them as they were gradually assimilated and transformed into ‘Corfiots’, or chose to return to the mainland .

There is a particular focus on the fate of Foto Tzavellas and speculation about how he died.

The paper discusses some of the myths and legends about the warlike Suliots and the heroic and courageous exploits that have been part of the national narrative, and the very different (and often controversial) ways in which the Suliots have been presented and perceived in different ways by Corfiot historians of Ionian Island descent and by those of Suliot descent.