Leonard Cohen and Hydra

[seadove]

Who would have known about Hydra if it was not for Loeonard Cohen?

On September 27, 1960, six days after his twenty-sixth birthday, Cohen bought a house in Hydra for $1500, using a bequest from his recently deceased grandmother. This was a "big deal" in the words of one of his friends, a commitment to place and a world that was mysterious and unusual. Buying the house was a complicated act, needing the assistance of his friend Demetri Gassoumis as translator, adviser, and witness to the deed. Cohen later said that it was the smartest decision he ever made. The tree-story, ancient whitewashed building, with its five rooms on several levels, was run down and had no electricity, plumbing or running water. Yet it was a private space where he could work, either on the large riled terrace or in his music room on the third floor.
Cohen described his home to his mother:


It has a huge terrace with a view of dramatic mountain and shining white houses. The rooms are large and cool with deep windows set in thick walls. I suppose it's about 200 years old and many generations of sea-.men must have lived here. I will do a little work on it every year and in a few years it will be a mansion... I live on a hill and life has been going on here exactly the same for hundreds of years. All through the day you hear the calls of the street vendors and they are really rather musical... I get up around 7 generally and work till about noon. Early morning is coolest and therefore best, but I love the heat anyhow, especially when the Aegean Sea is 10 minutes from my door.
He knew he had been accepted by the community when he began receiving regular visits from the garbage man and his donkey. It is like receiving the Legion of Honour. Cohen's house gave him a foundation. To a friend he explained that Having this house makes cities less frightening. I can always come back and get by. But I don't want to lose contact with the metropolitan experience. Buying the house also gave him confidence: The years are flying past and we all waste so much time wondering if we dare to do this or that. The thing is to leap, to try, to take a chance. (2)
It was a place of solitude, of plodding donkeys (even today no cars are allowed on the island; nor would they get very far if they were), cold water and kerosene lamps. In such primitive surroundings, amid the stunning beauties of the island and the glories of the Aegean, where fishermen still wrested a living from the sea and ferries scrabbled one from the land, Leonard found his peace, his sitting-down time, as he called it, where he could -as all pots must - recollect in tranquillity. Here he could live in virtually complete seclusion, at a fraction of the cost it would take in Northern Europe or Canada, where the people were unconcerned as to who you were or what you diod; And where breathtaking vistas opened up for the seeing - both external and internal.

Here Leonard discovered the Greek way of life - its alternating rhythms of work and leisure, both on the seasonal and daily basis, which are so conductive to creative thought and achievement. Here he was able to stand back from the onrush of western man and ask himself the real questions of life and meaning, get his young life, full and successful as it had been, into perspective. Here he began to crystallize the wisdom of some of his best poetry, writing and songs, (or it was here that he was reborn, where he truly began to find himself, where not least, the music of Greece entered his soul, evoking earlier memories and melodies, combining with them to suggest a new style, a new mystique.

And it was here, that he met Marianne, a young woman of great beauty, high intelligence, deep sympathy and fun. The gods had drawn them together, and together for 10 years or so they would make music, exploring the world and themselves, unharried by outside pressures, responding only to the more meaningful pressures of life and love.(1)



http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/hydra2.html

[lizzytysh]

Always so pleasurable to read passages like this. Thank you so much for finding and posting it, seadove.

[hydriot]

Who would have known about Hydra if it was not for Leonard Cohen?

Well, my mother, for a start ...

When Leonard moved to Hydra, he was joining an existing artists' colony, not creating one. In the fifties, the great artists' colony was the fishing-village of Positano near Naples, but by the early sixties the bohemian life of Positano was attracting wealthy hangers-on, rents were rising, and the artists moved on to new places like Hydra.

It is not true to suggest that Leonard lived a life of total seclusion. There was privacy, yes, but also much carousing. In his songbook, one of my favourite photographs (the one with the flagons of Kampas wine) shows him carousing with Chuck and Gordon, an openly gay couple (unusual for the early sixties) who were the centre of the artists' colony, around whom everyone else seemed to orbit.

It is important to remember that Hydra had (and continues to have) a very special place in the hearts of the Greeks themselves. This small island contributed the bulk of the revolutionary navy that defeated the Turks in the War of Independence that started in 1821. Hydra has produced one President, several prime ministers and a saint.

On the artistic front, it was the home of Ghikas ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikos_Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas and http://henrydenander.com/en/poetry/ghikas-house.html ) who on the island is held in much greater esteem than Leonard. As long ago as 1939 Henry Miller visited Ghikas on Hydra (see Miller's The Colossus of Maroussi), so even before the war Hydra was an important focus for writers and painters.

At the bottom of this post I will attach a typical Ghikas painting of Hydra, a view westwards (at the top is the unmistakeable shape of the islet of Dokos) ... don't you just love his evocation of Hydra's endless steps?

And an annexe of the Athens School of Fine Art had already been established in the Tombazi Mansion: painters were coming and going to and from the island in a regular stream, long before Leonard 'discovered' Hydra.

So, the suggestion that Leonard put Hydra on the map will make any islander wince. The island became his muse, but it had already worked its magic on many others before him.

[ladydi]

What a lovely painting by Ghikas! Steps, alleys, ocean, doors...all one. Thank you Hydriot. I long for the day that I will be able to savour the island of Hydra.

Your Mother must have had beautiful memories....

[seadove]

Thank you for the feed back, Hydriot.

Who was that Saint Hydra produced?

[hydriot]

St Constantine.

The Monastery of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (behind the bell-tower) is often incorrectly referred to as the cathedral. In fact, the island's cathedral is a large modern church very high up the hillside, on the very outskirts of the town. It was built at the birthplace of the saint.

Here is an icon: http://www.divinityicons.com.au/Product ... e-Of-Hydra

Constantine was born on Hydra in the eighteenth century and at the age of eight went to Rhodes, where he became a Muslim. He later reverted to the Orthodox faith and became a monk in the Monastery of Iviron on Mount Athos. He returned to Rhodes to preach the Word of God, and the Turkish authorities imprisoned him for apostasy. He was hanged on 14 November 1800.

[siempie1956]

Please: if there is any plan to meet up in Hydra in 2010 - count me in!

Thank you,

Simon

[jarkko]

There will be no meet-up in 2010 on Hydra. The big Event will happen in Krakow Poland in August 2010, and some of our members may also need to have other travel plans for next year.

There are preliminary plans to have the next meet-up on Hydra in summer 2011. (I know that some members plan to visit Hydra in 2010, too, "privately")

[Laura]

...and some of our members may also need to have other travel plans for next year.

"need to have other travel plans"?! I thought our travelling days are done...

Laura

[MaryB]

some of our members may also need to have other travel plans for next year.

Now I will need to work work work more more more to make more more more money money money to travel travel travel

[Laura]

Then I need need need to find a job... Come on, no one needs some help? For Cohen I'd do (almost) anything!

Laura