POSTCARD FROM NAVPLIA
I AM staying at Pinchgut. It’s a fifteenth-century .. .. „ Venetian fortress in the bay of Nauplia. The North Shore line is further away than (a Sydney is uninhab-i.-j ited (a pleasing concept). and baa snow-capped peaks, Sydney Cove is where it should be, looks slightly like a Riviera sea front but all the balconies are out of alignment; the buildings just moved when the photo was taken. Pinchgut looked so silly, hogging the view all the time, the only way to avoid staring at it was to move right into it. It’s a hotel rm living in one of the former dungeons. It meat-
ures six feet by nine. It’s a luxury hotel. Over the whole district hangs a heavy atmosphere o f mythology and of guilt. Mine. Nauplia is here, and Argos, and Epidaurus, and Tirynis, and Nemea, and Mycenae. “Please. Sir. I know it just cant remember this moment.” In this countryside Hercules roamed. Before he made the place safe for living it was infested with lions, boars, serpents, hydras, and virgins. Nauplia is very picturesque, in a slightly tiresome way. Like somebody saying clever things all the time. Argos has the Argonauts and Epidaurus a theatre,
and Tirynis is 2000 B.C. Nemea has a pleasant local wine and Mycenae a golden cup somewhere else. While walking from Mycenae to Argos met rows and rows of eucalyptus trees. They stood on the roadside hoping to thumb a lift back to Australia, Expatriate, they assumed a fashionable stooping posJ" 18 Bnd , ,^ he .‘ r J“ ve » curled - 881,1 heUo to them - —GEORGE MOLNAR P.S. About ruins, sacred stones and suchlike: Greece is a very beautiful country. tn spite of its antiquities which make perfectly good spring meadows look like a stonemason’s junk yard. Archaeologists never
had any aesthetic sense. When confronted with art treasures the British looted them, the Germans surveyed them and the Americans restored them. Of these three procedures the first was the only sensible thing to do. As it is, only ruins that look good should be kept, and the rest of the debris should be P lou Zhed under or re"r* 1 to some place out °. sight, where archaeologists can play with them. If clu J s E et mixed up the a rchaeolog:sts would .love it B £ e ” v.P.t>. 1 d Better write my .. next P° slca rd from another country, I think, —G.M.
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Press, Volume C, Issue 29500, 29 April 1961, Page 8
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401POSTCARD FROM NAVPLIA Press, Volume C, Issue 29500, 29 April 1961, Page 8
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