In awe of a poet

I have done one braver thing

Than all the Worthies did,

And yet a braver thence doth spring,

Which is, to keep that hid.

It were but madness now t'impart

The skill of specular stone,

When he which can have learn'd the art

To cut it, can find none.

So, if I now should utter this,

Others (because no more

Such stuff to work upon, there is)

Would love but as before.

But he who loveliness within

Hath found, all outward loathes,

For he who colour loves, and skin,

Loves but their oldest clothes.

If, as I have, you also do

Virtue attir'd in woman see,

And dare love that, and say so too,

And forget the He and She;

And if this love, though placed so,

From profane men you hide,

Which will no faith on this bestow,

Or, if they do, deride:

Then you have done a braver thing

Than all the Worthies did;

And a braver thence will spring,

Which is, to keep that hid.

This is John Donne's song 'The Undertaking', which blew me away. Donne served as secretary to the future Lord Chancellor Thomas Egerton during the last years of Elizabeth I's reign in the late 16th and early 17th century. He had a brilliant career ahead of him, but he lost it all when he secretly married Lady Egerton's niece and was subsequently fired and imprisoned for a while when it all came out. After some years of scraping by, he found employment in the church and eventually worked his way up to become Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. After the death of his wife, he dedicated himself completely to the church and died a famed preacher, having made a name for himself in the pulpit.

Donne poems and songs are a strange mixture of highly erotic love poems in which he praises women, their bodies and sex in general - which he sees as one of the highest attainable delights in the universe and by definition divine - and devoted praises of God and the trinity. In his poems, you feel him professing his love for his wife as well as for the godhead and this makes into a devoted religious leader as well as a mortal lover and family man (they had 11 children before she died giving birth to the 12th).

This song struck me because it expresses the hurt he must have felt when he wanted to share his love with the world but was forced to keep his marriage a secret from fear of retribution of her family. It touched me in a way and filled me with the sadness he must have experienced. I am exactly sure when this piece of art was created but it seems to me that he was at a point in his life where they were still successfully keeping the marriage a secret and they did not yet know what the future had in store for them. It is a tragic moment, only to be ended with the joy of being able to openly profess his love combined with the loss of all his prospects and confrontation with poverty.

Anyway, I just wanted to share my enjoyment of having discovered this poet. There are other things that have happened this month. Jorryt & Lilian came by, as did Bart & Tineke and Pieter & Nicole after their long trip through South America. For more info on what we did together, I refer you to Olaf's weblog. For now, I have to go teach one more class and then we are off to tour the Netherlands (Randstad only) for the weekend!

My maiden voyage

Wow! There is no other word for it. Just 'wow' - or possibly 'oh' or 'ah' or some other sound that involves opening my mouth in awe and not being able to shut it for a while. Or perhaps no sound would be necessary and the mere silent opening of the mouth would suffice. In any case, I was baffled, dazzled, dumbfounded, stunned, befuddled, astounded, flabbergasted and flummoxed - all in one go.

As a classical scholar, I should have gone to Greece ages ago. It is a country I have dreamt of, phantasised about, longed for and romanticised. I have always loved reading about Greece, studying its history, trying to make heads and tails of the constant wars, flourishing of city states and kingdoms, successions of rulers and seemingly endless conflict paradoxically influencing and/or being influenced by some of the greatest wonders of intellectual development and a plethora of artistic production and a delightfully complex system of religions and mystery cults.

And I loved it - I simply did. Seeing the Akropolis took my breath away, the famous Caryatids mesmerised me with their elegant serenity and the Byzantine monastery of Moni Daphniou amazed me with its piercing mosaics. Walking around the Classical Agora and the adjoining Roman Forum, following the Sacred Way out of the city gates and through the Kerameikos cemetery, watching the sights from up high on Lykavittos/Lukabettos Hill... It was all too good to be true. The weather was great, a very decent 25 degrees all around, quite sunny but not too hot to go sightseeing all day - perfect for admiring the remains of ancient Greece. My favourite part of Athens, funnily enough, was not ancient at all. The tiny, sunken Byzantine church of Hagia Kapnikarea on Odos Ermou (aka The Street of the Flying Cows (Air-Moo)) actually stole my heart...

Delphi, on the other hand, was a bit of a disappointment. We got on the bus to go there well enough but it obviously broke down on the way there. And at quite a conspicuous moment, it turned out. As soon we had lost (?) some part of the bus, we got out and were stunned by the amazing scenery. A high road between mountains with their peaks hidden in low-hanging clouds was going to be the scene of our play, and not a bad site at that, invoking all kinds of Oedipean phantasies this close to the Triodos of ancient Thebes. It almost immediately started raining though and we were happy enough to get back on the bus.

After the surprisingly short period of 20 minutes, a replacement bus arrived which safely transported us to Delphi. By this point, we were quite excited and filled with anticipation. We were going to visit another Modern Wonder of the World (The Akropolis being another one). So we got off the bus full of energy and ready to go exploring the site. We passed the museum first and though the sky looked like rain, we decided to do the ruins first and the museum afterwards. We felt it would be a more logical order - and besides, it was only 2.30pm and our bus back wouldn't leave until 6pm. As we got closer to the actual site, we started feeling the first raindrops but we persevered. What's a little rain anyway, huh?

As we got to the entrance and almost got run off the path by tourists hurrying away from the site trying to get to a dry place, we were told they were closing in 20 minutes. We knew we were not likely to come back any time soon and we decided to go for it. While it started raining cats and dogs, we ran through the site taking pictures at random and getting completely soaked. We made it up the mountain and back down in an amazing 12 minutes, managing to see the whole site except for the stadium, at which point the rain miraculously cleared and we were stuck in that town for another three hours while everything closed. Fortunately, the ruins of the Sanctuary of Athena with the photogenic tholos and the gymnasium stayed open a bit later, but we were simply forced to spend the rest of the afternoon drinking beer overlooking the admittedly very pretty valley that Delphi presides over.

We got the chance to go to Greece because Olaf had a conference in Volos on the Friday and I joined him there. Volos itself, said to be the site of ancient Iolkos from where Jason and the Argonauts set out to obtain the Golden Fleece and ended up with Medea - though evidence is scarce - is nothing but a 1950s post-earthquake waterfront boulevard accompanied by residential areas cramped between hills and the slopes of Mount Pelion. It had a cute Archaeological Museum though, consisting of 5 rooms focusing on a) Stone and early Bronze Age culture in Thessaly and b) Greek grave stele through the ages, a pier with great views of the mountains surrounding Volos bay and a very ugly Jewish Memorial to the victims of the Nazi regime. It being what it was, it provided me with ample entertainment for the three hours I had to spend before being able to meet up with Olaf and his colleagues.

Modern Greeks are scary, by the way. When we got back from our day trip to Delphi, we took a taxi into the city centre. At some point, the atmosphere on the street changed radically and suddenly we were the only car on the road going into the city centre and were met by lots of people running and cars driving in the opposite direction. At this point, the taxi driver told us we had arrived and basically pushed us out of the taxi, made a U turn and took off, only just giving us time to realise there was an angry mob coming towards us protesting against - or for, who knows - something. Fortunately, we were able to jump into a sidestreet which led us to a parallel road where tourists were quietly eating their meals, blissfully unaware of the mayhem that was ensuing 50 metres from where they were sitting.

All in all, it was a great experience, quite refreshing after years of dreaming about a country I did not know anything about. For a selection of pictures, click here (a Facebook album). But let me repeat myself, I loved it - and I took advantage of spending lots of time on buses and trains (Volos > Athens, Athens > Delphi and Delphi > Athens) to read about the rest of Greece in the guidebook and I have decided I definitely want to go back!!!