Michel Bernanos’s Final Voyage

Grove Koger

Today’s post from the series I’m calling “Sea Fever” deals with an account of a surreal voyage by a little-known French writer who died on July 27, 1964.

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La Montagne morte de la vie (Éditions Pauvert, 1967); The Other Side of the Mountain, trans. by Elaine P. Halperin (Houghton Mifflin, 1968)

The son of French novelist Georges Bernanos, Michel Bernanos was born in 1923 and shared a peripatetic life with his parents, traveling to the Riviera, Majorca, Paraguay, and Brazil. He lied about his age to fight with the Free French Naval Forces in World War II, then returned to Brazil for two more years before spending another two in Algeria. Along the way, he made himself into a writer, but published under pseudonyms to avoid confusion with his well-known father.

Bernanos’s only claim to fame in English is this short work, which begins as a typical adventure novel, develops quickly into a harrowing story of survival at sea, and concludes as a surreal meditation on the futility of human aspirations. After a night of drinking, its eighteen-year-old narrator (whose name we never learn) is persuaded by a friend to sign on as a crewman in a galleon. Ignorant of life at sea, he finds himself keel-hauled by the sadistic crew and is saved only at the last moment by the captain. Afterward he’s taken on as an assistant by the ship’s cook, Toine, a stoic character whose perseverance marks him as the novel’s moral center.

As it nears the equator, the ship is becalmed, and its crew, deprived of food and water, begin to go mad, resorting to mutiny and cannibalism. Rain finally arrives, but it trails a gale behind it that destroys the ship. Cast adrift, Toine and the young man eventually reach land, but it’s a land like none they’ve ever encountered, with blood-red soil, threatening plants, and disturbingly lifelike statues of men and women. A pulse-like beat shakes the ground. They find themselves drawn to a distant mountain, but after a struggle to reach the summit they find themselves at a kind of dead end, doomed to … But I’ll leave that revelation for you to discover.

Like his two characters, Michel Bernanos himself reached a kind of dead end on July 27, 1964. He killed himself in the Forest of Fontainebleau near Paris, having carried—in a gesture that in retrospect appears all too obvious—an empty travel bag into the forest with him. Like his other literary works, The Other Side of the Mountain dates from the early 1960s, but it was published only after his death.

The fantastic voyage has a long and varied history, ranging from Homer’s Odyssey (8th century BC) to Edgar Allan Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838) and William Hope Hodgson’s Boats of the “Glen Carrig” (1907) and beyond. I’ll be discussing those works and others in future posts.

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The image at the top of today’s post reproduces the cover of my Dell paperback edition, but its artist is not identified. 

A Taste of Naxos

Grove Koger

Nearly every island, it seems, can boast certain food and drink specialties born of happenstance or necessity. The Greek island of Naxos, for instance, is noted for a fresh, soft cheese called xynomyzithra that you’ll probably find crumbled over your green salad. Another specialty is a citrus liqueur based on the leaves of the citron tree.

The citron (Citrus medica) is one of the world’s original citruses. It may have originated in India, and Alexander the Great’s soldiers may have been instrumental in its spread westward. The citron fruit itself is relatively large, oblong, gnarled, and bitter. In Greece, its thick rind is sometimes sliced thinly and boiled in sugar syrup to produce what’s known as a “spoon sweet” to be served with a glass of cold water. And it’s in Naxos that an entrepreneur created Kitron (KEE-trohn).

Maggie and I visited the original Vallindras Distillery in the attractive little village of Chalki (once the capital of the island) in 2011. The operation was founded by Grigorios Vallindras, and its first product was apparently a version of the traditional Naxian citron-flavored raki known as kitrorako. It was the founder’s son, Markos, who created Kitron in 1896, and its popularity soon surpassed that of its traditional cousin. Today, the building is given over in part to a tasting room and small museum displaying equipment, bottles, documents and other artifacts from the distillery’s early days.

Workers begin harvesting citron leaves in September or October, when they’re at their most aromatic, after which they’re mixed with water, citron peel and spirits. After half a day or so, the mixture is filtered and distilled. The brightly flavored distillate is then sweetened with sugar, tinted with colorant, and bottled. Kitron comes in three categories. The sweetest is lowest in alcohol (about 60 proof) and green, while the driest and strongest (72 proof) is yellow. A clear version falls somewhere in between in sweetness and strength.

The export of Kitron began in 1928, but today little of the distinctive liqueur is shipped beyond the island, as the number of citron trees has declined. Kitron carries a European Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), which safeguards the reputation of the liqueur while outlawing unfair competition.

The image at the top of today’s post is a sign dating from the early days of the Vallindras Distillery, and the two photographs beneath it are scenes from the distillery’s museum. The modern yellow leaflet advertises the strongest version of Kitron, while the photo at the bottom shows a typical house in Chalki.

 

Lisbon’s Elegant Elevator

Grove Koger

Maggie and I had scheduled only a few days in Lisbon toward the end of our 2017 visit to Portugal, but in retrospect we could have filled weeks. The city’s central districts are built on the steep banks of the Tagus River, and negotiating the maze of their streets can be more like a climb than a walk. As a result, we picked out a handful of destinations and arranged taxi rides.

One of our most enjoyable outings involved riding the elegant Elevador de Santa Justa. It’s an elevator, all right, but one that rises seven stories (nearly 150 feet) from the Rua de Santa Justa, just a few blocks from the city’s waterfront. A part of the city’s public transport system, it links the lower district of Baixa and the Largo do Carmo (Carmo Square), saving quite a bit of climbing. More importantly to us, however, its observation deck affords a breathtaking panorama of the city and the Tagus. Our hotel in Lisbon lacked a rooftop terrace, but the elevator nearly made up for it.

Designed by Portuguese engineer Raoul Mesnier de Ponsard, who represented the Companhia dos Ascensores Mecânicos de Lisboa, the elevator began operation in mid-1902. It was powered at first by a steam engine (installed where the viewing platform is now) that pumped water into and out of tanks beneath the two elevator carriages, but the system was replaced by an electric engine in 1907. The structure is decorated with ornate ironwork, and the stylish carriages feature wood paneling, brass fittings, and mirrors.

After enjoying the view from the Elevador, we sought out a café for tea and some delectable pastéis de nata (see my post for May 5, 2020).

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The photograph at the top of the post is by titosoft and is reproduced from Needpix.com. The second photograph, which shows the Elevador prior to its conversion to electric power, is by Paulo Guedes and is reproduced from Wikipedia. 

With George Borrow on the Peninsula

Grove Koger

Today’s selection from my book When the Going Was Good deals with the best-known book by English writer George Borrow, who was born July 5, 1803.

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The Bible in Spain; or, The Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman, in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula (London: John Murray, 1843)

The Byronic George Borrow, so famous during his lifetime, so thoroughly forgotten today, is surely ripe for rediscovery. A student of Roma (gypsy) life and lore, he cast himself as a scholar adventurer, providing enthusiastic readers with fictionalized accounts of his early years and travels with the Roma in Lavengro (1851) and The Romany Rye (1857).

Borrow was an apostle of the open road, and made a marathon walk of 27.5 hours in 1833 from his home in Norwich to London, where he applied for a position with the British and Foreign Bible Society. Posted first to Russia, he was next sent to Portugal and Spain (for Borrow “the land of old renown”) to print and distribute copies of the New Testament, a work then proscribed by the Catholic Church. Borrow arrived in Lisbon, Portugal, in late 1835, revisiting London in 1836 and 1838 but otherwise remaining in the Iberian Peninsula and nearby Morocco until 1839, when official Spanish opposition drove him home.

Borrow based The Bible in Spain to a large extent on his letters to the Bible Society. While it reads like a breathless catalogue of picaresque adventures—brawls and narrow escapes abound—the book seems on the whole to be a truthful document. The Iberian Peninsula was then in the throes of the political turmoil precipitated by the Napoleonic wars, and Borrow supplies some suitably grotesque anecdotes of military savagery. Not surprisingly he is also virulently anti-Catholic. As to his ostensible mission, Borrow admits to accomplishing “but very little,” yet pronounces the period “the most happy years of my life.”

If you’re looking for a good edition of The Bible in Spain, the Macdonald edition (London, 1959) includes notes by Peter Quennell. The Everyman’s Library edition (London: Dent; New York: Dutton, 1961) includes an introduction by Walter Starkie, a fellow student of the Roma. The Century edition (London, 1985) includes an introduction by Ted Walker.

Borrow’s other works include The Zincali; or, An Account of the Gypsies of Spain, with an Original Collection of Their Songs and Poetry, and a Copious Dictionary of Their Language (1841); and Wild Wales: Its People, Language, and Scenery (1862).

And if you’d like to know more Borrow, see Michael Collie, George Borrow, Eccentric (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Robert R. Meyers, George Borrow (New York: Twayne, 1966); and David Williams, A World of His Own: The Double Life of George Borrow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).

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The image at the top of today’s post is a scene of Segovia from the 1843 Murray edition, engraved by Georges-Henri Manesse after a sketch by A. H. Hallam Murray. The portrait of Borrow is by an unidentified artist and is reproduced from the 1920 Dent edition of The Life of George Borrow by Clement K. Shorter, while the bottom image is a view of Toledo engraved by Manesse after a sketch by an unknown artist.

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