During my time in Greece I took a ferry to Hydra island – a place of solitude, a place which inspired Leonard Cohen and where he found solace in the late 1960s, where Henry Miller found inspiration in the 1930s and where Sandra Cisneros finished The House of Mango Street in the 1980s.
I hope you will enjoy this video of my walk around this tranquil island.
“Our destination was Hydra (…). The town, which clusters about the harbour in the form of an amphitheatre, is immaculate. (…) This purity, this wild and naked perfection of Hydra, is in great part due to the spirit of the men who once dominated the island.”
The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller (written in the 1930s)
“Living on Hydra was like (…) somewhere between reality and the imagination. I lived a life enchanted (…). I worked best at home and preferred to come down to the port only when I needed groceries (…). Though I enjoyed company, I was happiest when I stayed aboard my own landlocked ship, content to admire the world from that remote vessel called home. (…) My house [in Hydra] was just a cottage, yet it was the most beautiful place I’d ever lived, then or since. (…) I loved the privacy of its high walls. I sat at my bedroom window with one leg indoors and one leg out, as if straddling a great white winged horse, admiring both the interior and exterior worlds at once. I was at home. I considered even staying forever. (…) I thought I was Penelope during my Greek days, but now I realised I was Odysseus. “As you set out for Ithaca / hope your road is a long one, / full of adventure, full of discovery.” As in Cavafy’s poem, I’m grateful for the marvellous journey.”
A House of my Own. Stories from my Life by Sandra Cisneros, an author of The House on Mango Street (Cisneros finished The House on …. while living on Hydra island in the 1980s)
