The Greek poetess, writer, translator and painter Nana Isaia passed away on the 22 January.
She had spent a whole year on Hydra back in the 60's experiencing phantom visions created by drugs such as hashish and marijuana and writing poetry and novels.
"That is the only time in my life, a time of unfailing visionary creation, that I would like to live again. When I speak about vision I mean those moments that everything shines, sending a deep meaning of life that you can not express in words, as you can not define what poetry is" she once said in an interview
She was close friends with Leonard Cohen (as well as with Gregory Corso) which she used as a model for the main character-a poet who lives on Hydra- in her novel "THE HISTORY THEN AND NOW".
In that "book of sun that was written after the sunset" Isaia was monitoring the community of creators that lived at that time (1964-65) on Hydra and their fascination with drugs-mainly hashish- and Buddhism, the explosion of creativity as well as their passions and romances.
"The vision has been destroyed but was that destruction an inherent element of its history?" she was asking at the end of her book.
And she continued: "I don't have an answer. Maybe it was a matter of young and old age although the lost game of that generation, my own generation, seems to be the definitively lost game".
Nana Isaia except her own books haS translated into Greek writers such as Plath, Sontag, Eliot, Hesse, Mann, E.M.Forster and others.
She was born in Athens in 1934.
Demetris
A Leonard's old Greek friend passed away
Thank you for bringing this information here, Demetris. I had the impression she was "old" going by your thread title, but she really wasn't at all. You meant old as in longtime friend. That had to be a very powerful time for people on Hydra.....a time of beautiful, sensory, and magical experience. She asked great questions. Leonard must really feel her loss. Learning of his closest friends continues to add dimension to him.