December 3, 2005
-
Works and Days
“So, after all, there was not one kind of Strife
alone, but all over the earth there are two…. For one fosters evil war and battle, being cruel: her no man
loves; but perforce, through the will of the deathless gods, men
pay harsh Strife her honour due.”On this date in 1944, “A bitter civil war broke out in Athens….”
“Cambridge was colder and darker and offered even fewer distractions
than before the war. By June, 1943, Minakis had done the maths tripos
with honors…. He read Cavafy and Seferis and T.S. Eliot:There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate…Minakis was happy for his colleagues when the war ended but felt
little on his own account or that of the country he had left; the Greek
government was a British prop that could not feed its people, the
Communists and the Monarchists were at one another’s throats like
savage dogs, and civil war was inevitable.Better to return to grim Cambridge….”
