Lawrence Durrell - Sicilian Carousel - Adventures on an Italian Island

His belongings consisted of a sleeping bag and a mackintosh, plus a pair of shapeless navvy’s boots. The suitcase was empty save of a copy of a novel entitled The Naked Truth .

Roberto was punctual and accepted full responsibility for the plot concerning Beddoes’s disappearance. Apparently the authorities often turned a blind eye to the disappearance of people into Etna. He said: “There’s only one other volcano where one can arrange that sort of thing for hopeless lovers or bankrupts or schoolmasters on the run like Beddoes. It’s in Japan.”

The car drummed and whined its way into the mountains and I began to feel the long sleep of this hectic fortnight creep upon me. I had a drink and pulled myself together for we had to envisage a good walk at the other end, from the last point before the crater, the observatory. It became cooler and cooler. Then lights and mountain air with spaces of warmth and the smell of acid and sulphur as we walked up the slopes of the crater. Somewhere near the top we lit a bonfire and carefully singed Beddoes’s affairs before consigning them to the care of a carabinieri friend who would declare that he had found them on the morrow. The boots burned like an effigy of wax — he must have greased them with something. Poor old Beddoes!

Then the long wait by a strange watery moonlight until an oven lid started to open in the east and the “old shield bearer” stuck its nose over the silent sea. “There it is,” said Roberto, as if he had personally arranged the matter for me. I thanked him. I reflected how lucky I was to have spent so much of my life in the Mediterranean — to have so frequently seen these incomparable dawns, to have so often had sun and moon both in the sky together.

Autumn Lady: Naxos

Under spiteful skies go sailing on and on,

All canvas soaking and all iron rusty,

Frail as a gnat, but peerless in her sadness,

My poor ship christened by an ocean blackness,

Locked into cloud or planet-sharing night.

The primacy of longing she established.

They called her Autumn Lady, with two wide

Aegean eyes beneath the given name,

Sea-stressed, complete, a living wife.

She’ll sink at moorings like my life did once,

In a night of piercing squalls, go swaying down,

In an island without gulls, wells, walls,

In a time of need, all stations fading, fading.

She will lie there in the calm cathedrals

Of the blood’s sleep, not speaking of love,

Or the last graphic journeys of the mind.

Let tides drum on those unawakened flanks

Whom all the soft analysis of sleep will find.

Besaquino

No stars to guide. Death is that quiet cartouche,

A nun-besought preserve of praying time,

That like a great lion silence hunts,

At noon, at ease, and all because he must.

His scenery is so old, His sacred pawtouch cold.

A lupercal of girls remember him

In nights defunct from lack of sleep

Tossing on iron beds awaiting dawn …

He wound up his death each evening like a clock,

Walked to obscure cafes to criticize

The fires that blush upon the crown of Etna.

Leopardi in the ticking mind,

Lay unknown like an exiled king,

Printing his dreams among the olive glades

In orchards of discontent the fruitful word.

Though all the characters in this book are imaginary I would like to thank some real people who made it possible as well as pleasurable. M. Pages and Madame Robert of Nimes-Voyages for their itinerary and Simone Lestoquard for hunting up the illustrations in Paris.

LAWRENCE DURRELL

A

Aedoni 146

Aeschylus 38, 94–95, 109, 148

Agrigento 69, 78, 131–193, 196–198, 201, 235, 254, 284

Akragas 93, 150

Alcibiades 37, 120

Alexandria 2, 12, 59, 86, 180, 211

Apollinaire, Guillaume 184

Arabs 73, 138

Aristotle 76, 176, 180

Athens 4, 66–68, 70, 73, 76, 78, 109, 116, 118, 120, 133, 135, 156, 160, 167, 174, 180, 265, 285

Augusta 58–59, 137

B

Baedeker 122

Baudelaire, Charles 184

Bellini, Vincenzo 28, 37

Besaquino 284, 290

Buddha 180, 217

Butler, Samuel 218

Byzantine empire 133, 138, 224, 256, 264

c

Caesar, Julius 278

Calabria 133

Calatafimi 236–237

Caltanissetta 148, 164

Cameirus 43

Capri 51, 273, 275–276

Caravaggio 115, 121–122

Carlentini 43

Carthaginians 93, 138

Castello Maniace 101

Catania 3, 6–7, 10–21, 23, 41, 59

Catanian Plain 42

Cavafy 184

Cefalu 257, 260–264

Centuripe 284

Chaos 158

Charles V, Emperor 216

Cicero 76, 173

Colonna, Vittoria della 148

Corfu 18, 65, 85–86, 100, 149, 262

Corinth 17, 73

Cos 236

Crete 3–4, 15, 17, 77, 81, 183

Cyprus 2–5, 9, 13, 17, 29, 47, 52, 63, 65, 131, 133, 136, 148, 152–153, 171, 206, 208, 258, 275

Dali, Salvador 178

Damarete 93

Delphi 181, 183, 215

Diocletian 142, 146

Diodorus Siculus 190

Dodecanese Islands 145

Douglas, Norman 275

E

Egadi Isles 216

Egypt 68, 73, 78, 192, 208, 210

Empedocles 60 175–176, 178, 180, 183, 286

Empedocles (port) 195

Enna 275

Epicurus 75, 176, 179

Epidaurus 236

Erice 212, 214 279

Eryx 215, 217, 219, 226

Etna 15–16, 34, 38, 41, 52, 76, 180, 183, 272, 274–275, 284, 286–287, 290

Euphemius 138

F

Famagusta 13

Favignana 216

G

Garibaldi, Giuseppe 37

Gela 69, 92, 94–95, 141, 148–150

Gelon 89, 92–95

Goethe 33, 44, 46, 103, 238

Guido, Margaret 190

H

Hadrian, Emperor 78–79, 146

Harrison, Jane 78, 107

Heraclius, Emperor 142

Hieron I 94

Himera 88, 93–94, 254, 264

Homer 74, 134

Hymettus 78, 160

I

Ionian Sea 16

Ithaca 218

K

Kazantzakis 180–181

Kephissos 75

Kesserling, Field Marshal 278

Kininmonth, Christopher 144

Kyrenia 30, 47

L

Lampedusa 103

Latomie 102, 114, 121, 279

Lawrence, D. H. 62, 103, 274–275

Lentini 43

Leopardi 184, 290

Leptis Magna 199

Levanzo 216

Lindos 85–86

Lucretius 176

Lycabettos 108

M

Mackenzie, Compton 275

Marettimo 218

Marsala 150, 204–205

Mentobello Beach 245

Messina 241, 255, 259, 261, 264–268, 284, 286

Midi 7, 111–112, 123, 136, 138, 187

Miller, Henry 63

Minoa 81

Mistral, Frédéric 184

Monreale 255

Monte Giuliano 216

Monte Pellegrino 251

Morgantina 146

Mycenae 192, 234

N

Naxos 2, 46, 269 280, 282, 289

O

Olympia 80, 234

Ortygia 85–86, 101

P

Paleocastrizza 86, 262, 273

Palermo 201, 208, 226, 233, 241–242, 244

Pantalica 284

Paphos 17, 133

Parparella 218

Paul, Saint 121, 180

Pausanias 69, 78–81, 258, 285

Persia 17, 208, 270

Piazza Armerina 141

Pindar 78, 94, 279

Pirandello, Luigi 103, 158–159

Plato 75, 176

Pliny 273, 280

Plymerion 120

Pompey 278

Porto Rafti 157

Psychico 157

Pythagoras 171

R

Rhodes 6, 15, 43, 63, 65, 73, 78, 86, 136, 145

Rimbaud, Arthur 184

Roger II, Count of Sicily 264

Rome 2, 6, 8–10, 51, 74, 103, 209, 222, 273, 279

Rosalie, Saint 249–254

Russell, Bertrand 176

S

Samos 85, 227

Seferis 181–182

Segesta 226, 233–242, 283

Selinunte 192, 195–212, 254

Sikelianos 180–184

Simeto river 43

Simonides 94

Smyrna 133

Socrates 76, 180

Spain 136–137