Aegean Notebooks: Reflections by Sea and Land in the Archipelago

by Zissimos Lorentzatos

Zissimos Lorenzatos (1915-2004), essayist, thinker and poet, was arguably Greece's most significant man of letters in the twentieth century. In the Aegean Notebooks, a record of his observations and reflections while sailing among the Greek islands in the 1970s and 1980s, the special quality of his literary and philosophical gifts, and of the man himself, are vividly present. Along with everything a mariner yearns to bring ashore, all he has felt and experienced at sea with the wake of the boat unfurling behind him, Lorenzatos brings us in addition a lifetime's learning and contemplation. For him, life, and the living of it, was of the essence. As he observes in his foreword to these notebooks: '...life itself writes nothing, it erases everything that is written about it, and simply, irreplaceably lives, like the inaccessible "well of water springing up".'

'Zissimos Lorenzatos was the wisest Greek critic of his generation, and he left us a legacy of elegant thinking that extended beyond literature to the broader issues at the center of the human heart.' Edmund Keeley, Charles Barnwell Straut Professor of English Emeritus, Princeton University

'The breadth and depth of Lorenzatos's knowledge is humbling...' Elizabeth Jeffreys, Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature Emerita, University of Oxford

'Lorenzatos writes about things that matter in a way that matters.' David Ricks, Professor of Modern Greek and Comparative Literature, King's College London

The book includes a fold-out map of southern Greece and the Aegean Sea.

136 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2013

Reviews

[Charis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a thoughtful collection of Zissimos Lorentzatos' adventures traipsing around Greek islands. There are almost daily entries where he briefly records activities for the day, e.g. swimming in this sea, entering this village, eating this food, turbulent waves etc. But the meat of this book are his longer musings on some particularly thoughtful days where he reflects Greece's relationship with its intellectuals, the power of Orthodox religion, spirituality, language, Marxism. I'm a self-professed Grecophile so this was absolutely enjoyable, I imagined myself lying on a boat, island-hopping, building campfires too...

[Celeste · Rating 4 out of 5]

Due to geographical proximity I ended up at the Lemoni Bookstore, lauded by reviewers for its intelligent curation of reads. It was situated in a (presumably) upscale neighborhood, regrettably desecrated by graffiti (which made me think about the graffiti vs street art debate, and how one instinctively classifies vandalism out of hooliganism/ rage).
I was worried the bookstore, with its admittedly more serious titles, wouldn’t carry any English books — but it did, one pile amongst numerous, a small selection of commentaries and critiques, stocking only one of each title. I eventually decided on this book — Aegean Notebooks — as I was visiting Aegina in a few days, and wondered if his musings would allow me to appreciate the island(s) better.
The shopkeeper was a beaming, elegant man with an indescribably large, warm smile. He produced my receipt of 10€ with a flourish.
This book touched on many large topics I was familiar with. The idea of totality, expounded by Georg Lukacs; how writing and art can only represent life but is not life itself; the mistakes the modern educated man makes in presumptuously prescribing a certain form of education. I enjoyed his musings on romance, his observations of locals who ‘throw in the lot’ with foreigners, and the painful, exquisite truthful end to notebook six (quoted below).
Lorenzatos mentioned there are roughly only 3 paths one can take in life: of religion/ faith, of science and philosophy, and of poetry. Regrettably I (still) do not enjoy poetry, but I wonder if I’m too far down the second path to ever crossover to the others.

***

“I ponder on writings of significance, on how light they all are, on the inherent lightness of even the most weighty matters that we grapple with; how they must always function as a proxy, in the face of life’s (and death’s) immediacy, in the face of the incommunicable reality. What, in all honesty, can they be worth? And what does a reckoning leave behind it? All these matters, great and small, which torment us or occupy us and trouble our minds, day and night, with the small — the infinitesimally small — fraction of truth which the world can contain: what do they all amount to for man, at the critical moment? And what do we leave behind us? When you put everything together within yourself and sum it up — prophecy, mysteries, knowledge, faith — what finally remains, in this world, apart from love? What is left even of those countless worlds which circle endlessly in limitless space in the universe?”