Greece in Colour [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION LORD KINROSS The eastern and the western Mediterranean differ as sharply, one from the other, as two distinct hemispheres. In the west, Europe flowers; in the east it is laid bare. The landscape of Italy smiles, all soft and caressing; that of Greece stares, challenging and tough. Here in the eastern Mediterranean is the hard core of Europe, a land reduced to its essentials of light and form, of rock and sky and sea. Greece is thus a land for the traveller, more than for the tourist. It is a poor land, contemptuous of comfort, reduced in its amenities to the essentials of bed and table and upright chair, of fish and bread and wine. But it is poverty with vitality. The earth yields little. The light gives no half.-tones. Few trees offer shade. The sun warms, the sea cools. Life is a picnic. But it is essentially, vividly, life. There is life in abundance on the boats tossing around the Aegean—among the passengers clamouring, jostling, playing musical instruments, eating and sleeping huddled together beneath the moon and the stars. There is life in the tavemas, surging round the Acropolis, overflowing down the waterfronts: the life of Greeks for ever watching, drinking, dancing, singing, talking with a delight in the sound and the meaning of language. There is life in the streets, on verandahs, in interiors through wide open windows—family life lived openly, staring and stared at, gregarious, resdess, inexhaustible. There is life among the goatherds on the mountains