Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2015. Primer centenario)

Patrick Leigh Fermor, Mani. Travels in the Southern Peloponnese, Nueva York, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1958, pp. 4-5, [hay traducción al román paladino en la editorial El Acantilado, por Agustina Luengo, Mani. Viajes por el sur del Peloponeso, Barcelona, 2010.]

En este libro [que traté infructuosamente de leer en inglés. Demasiado vocabulario. Demasiada riqueza y pirotecnia verbal. Cuesta asimilarla incluso en castellano] encontramos una relación diacrónica de los extrañísimos nombres (para nosotros, claro, no para Patrick Leigh Fermor, aka “Paddy”) de los pueblos que han habitado el solar de la Hélade con sus “Odyssean ramifications”, una “inexhaustible Pandora’s box of eccentricities” que evoca la enumeración homérica de los pueblos que iban a enfrentarse en el campo de batalla ante los muros de Troya por Helena, taeterrima belli causa.

Mani, con Rumelia, El tiempo de los regalos, Entre los bosques y el agua, y el final póstumo de su bellísima trilogía acerca de su Wanderungschaft a pie desde Holanda a Constantinopla, El último tramo, ocupa su lugar de honor en la estantería de honor de mi biblioteca, que como dijo el Capitán Burton es donde uno tiene su hogar.

“I thought of the abundance of strange communities: the scattered Bektashi and the Rufaya, the Mevlevi dervisches of the Tower of the Winds, the Liaps of Souli, the Pomaks of the Rhodope, the Kizilbashi near Kechro, the Linovamkir -crypto-Christian Moslems of Cyprus- the Dönmehs -crypto-Jewish Moslems of Salonika and Smyrna- the Slavophones of Northern Macedonia, the Koutzo-Vlachs of Samarina and Metzovo, the Chams of Thesprotia, the scattered Souliots of Roumeli and the Heptanese, the Albanians of Argolis and Attica, the Kravarite mendicants of Aetolia, the wandering quacks of Eurytania, the phallus-wielding Bounariots of Tyrnavos, the Karamanlides of Cappadocia, the Tzakones of the Argolic gulf, tha Ayassians of Lesbos, the Francolevantine Catholics of the Cyclades, the Turkophone Christians of Karamania, the dyers of Mt. Ossa, the Mangas of Piraeus, the Venetian nobles of the Ionian, the Old Calendrists of Keratea, the Jehovah’s Witnesses of Thasos, the Nomad Sarakatzáns of the north, the Turks of Thrace, the Tessalonican Sephardim, the sponge-fishers of Calymnos and the Caribbean reefs, the Maniots of Corsica, Tuscany, Algeria and Florida, the dying Grecophones of Clabria and Otranto, the Greek-speaking Turks near Trebizond on the banks of the Of, the omnipresent Gypsies, the Chimarriots of Acroceraunia, the few Gagauzi of eastern Thrace, the Mardaïtes of the Lebanon, the half-Frankish Gazmouli of the Morea, the small diasporas of Armenians, the Bavarians of Attic Herakleion, the Cypriots of Islington and Soho, the Sahibs and Boxwallahs of Nicosia, the English remittance men of Kyrenia, the Basilian Monks, both Idiorrhythmic and Cenobitic, the anchorites of Mt. Athos, the Chiots of Bayswater and the Guard’s Club, the merchants of Marseilles, the cotton-brokers of Alexandria, the ship-owners of Panama, the greengrocers of Brooklyn, the Amariots of Lourenço Marques, the Shqip-speaking Atticans of Sfax, the Cretan fellaheen of Luxor, the Elasites beyond the Iron Curtain, the brokers of Trieste, the Krim-Tartar-speaking Lazi of Marioupol, the Pontics of the Sea of Azov, the Caucasus and the Don, the Turcophone and Armenophone Lazi of southern Russia, thre Greeks of the Danube Delta, Odessa and Taganrog, the rentiers in eternal villaggiatura by the lakes of Switzerland, the potters of Syphnos and Messenia, the exaggerators and the ghosts of Mykonos, the Karagounides of the Thessalian plain, the Nyklians and the Achamnómeri of the Mani, the little bootblacks of Megalopolis, the Franks of the Morea, the Byzantines of Mistra, the Venetians and Genoese and Pisans of the archipelago, the boys kidnapped for janissaries and the girls for harems, the Catalan bands, the Kondaritik-speaking lathmakers of the Zagarochoria, the Loubinistika-speakers of the brothels, the Anglo-Saxons of the Varangian Guard, ye olde Englisshe of the Levant company, the Klephts and the Armatoles, the Kroumides of Colchis, the Koniarides of Loxada, the smugglers of Aï-Vali, the lunatics of Cephaolonia, the admirals of Hydra, the Phanariots of the Sublime Porte, the princes and boyards of Moldowallachia, the Ralli Brothers of India, the Whittals of Constantinople, the lepers of Spinalonga, the political prisoners of Macronisos, the Hello-boys back from the States, the two pig-roasting Japanese ex-convicts of Crete, the solitary negro of Canea and a wandering Arab I saw years ago in Domoko, the Chinese teapedlar of Kolonaki, killed in Piraeus during the war by a bomb

–If all these, to name a few, why not the crypto-Jews of the Taygetus?”