Arcadian poplars

I got a mail from Arcadia. I know it sounds like getting a parcel from Atlantis or a commercial sample from the Silk Road. But I really got a mail from Arcadia. Poly has sent an Easter greeting from the mount of Maenalus where the god Pan and the nymphs used to live surrounded by the pastoral poets of the eclogues until on the very first Easter – if we are to believe  to Plutarch and Eusebius – it was announced on the island of Paxos: “the great Pan is dead!”


The mail reminded me of this picture that I have kept for a long time. Poplars bordering the road to mount Maenalus, a photo by Nikolaos Frestis. I saved it back then because it has recalled a poem of Kostas Karyotakis. Karyotakis was literally an Arcadian poet, he was born just some miles away in Tripoli, in 1896. These three stanzas of his “Στροφές” – “Strophes” comprising ten impressionistic sketches were set to music by Photis Ionatos.

Photis Ionatos: Strophes, on Kostas Karyotakis’ Στροφές. From the CD Ithaque (1988).

Τι χάνω εγώ τις μέρες μου τη μία κοντά στην άλλη, κι όπως μου ασπρίζουν τα μαλλιά ξινίζει το κρασί, αφού μονάχα όταν περνώ το βλέμμα από κρουστάλλι, με νέα ρετσίνα ολόγεμο, βλέπω τη ζωή χρυσή; Η νύχτα μας εχώρισεν από όσους αγαπάμε πριν μας χωρίσει η ξενιτιά. (Να 'ναι όλοι εκεί στο μόλο;) Σφύρα, καράβι αργήσαμε. κι αν φτάσουμε όπου πάμε, στάσου για λίγο, μα ύστερα σφύρα να φεύγουμε όλο. Λεύκες, γιγάντοι καρφωτοί στα πλάγια εδώ του δρόμου, δέντρα μου, εστέρξατε ο βοριάς τα φύλλα σας να πάρει. Σκιές εμείνατε σκιών που ρέουν στο μέτωπό μου, καθώς πηγαίνω χάμου εγώ κι απάνω το φεγγάρι.

How my days are getting lost one after the other as my hair is growing white and the wine gets bitter: only when I glimpse through the glass full of new retsina I can see the golden life. Night has already separated us from everyone we loved even before exile separates us. Will they all be there on the shore? Whistle, ship, we are late and when we arrive to our goal wait a little, and for a last time whistle so we all go ashore. Poplars, giants nailed here to the border of the road my saplings, you have let the northern wind to take your leaves away shadows of shadows you’ve become that fall on my forehead as I am making my way here below and the moon his one up there.

Lajos Vajda: Masque with moon, 1938

Et ego in Arcadia, I could quote the painting of Poussin, I also live in Arcadia, I also have my saplings, the long row of giant poplars bordering the garden like a wall. In the twilight I come up from the garden under them, and in the night I see from my desk the moon passing between them above the forest. At these times, I often recall this poem of Karyotakis.


I greeted them with this poem when we came here for the first time, fifteen years ago. Then they were thirty: now they are sixteen. Trees are having bad times lately. Forests are cut down, the water of the brook is being polluted. The empty places among the poplars growing in number from year to year also recall the other meaning of Poussin’s motto: et in Arcadia ego, even in Arcadia I exist – Death, I mean. From year to year I understand more of this poem.

Van Gogh: Starry night, 1889