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Authors: Patricia Storace
Dinner with Persephone
PATRICIA STORACEDinner with Persephone
A native of Mobile, Alabama, Patricia Storace was educated at Columbia University and the University of Cambridge. She is the author of a book of poems,
Heredity
, and the winner of a prize for poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her essays have appeared frequently in
The New York Review of Books
and in
Condé Nast Traveler.
This is her first book of prose.
FIRST VINTAGE DEPARTURES EDITION, SEPTEMBER 1997
Copyright © 1996 by Patricia Storace
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1996.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Cambridge University Press
: Excerpt from
Folk Poetry of Modern Greece
by Roderick Beaton. Copyright © 1980 by Cambridge University Press. Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press. •
Hestia Publishers and Booksellers
: Excerpts from “Demotiko Tragoubi Tis Xenitias,” translated in this work by Patricia Storace. Copyright © 1990 by Hestia Publishers and Booksellers. Reprinted by permission of Hestia Publishers and Booksellers. •
Ludlow Music, Inc.
: Excerpt from “This Land Is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie. TRO Copyright © 1956, renewed 1958, 1970 by Ludlow Music, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Ludlow Music, Inc. •
Original Book, Inc
: Excerpts from
Oneirocritica
by Artemidorus, translated by Robert J. White, 1990. Reprinted by permission of Original Books, Inc. •
Princeton University Press
: Excerpts from “Denial,” “Syngrou Avenue, 1930,” and “The Mood of a Day” from
Collected Poems of George Seferis
, translated by Keeley Sherrard. Copyright © 1967, 1981 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Storace, Patricia.
Dinner with Persephone / Patricia Storace.
p. cm.
1. Storace, Patricia—Journeys—Greece. 2. Greece—Description and travel. I. Title.
DF728.S76 1996
949.5—dc20 96-7650
eISBN: 978-0-307-76533-8
Author photograph © Jeffrey Weiner
Random House Web address:
http://www.randomhouse.com/
v3.1
For Mrs. Emily M. Flint
and in loving memory of
Mrs. Louise S. Lovett
Where is love that with one stroke cuts time in two and stuns it?
—
From “The Mood of a Day”
by George Seferis
In the different cities of Greece and at the great religious gatherings in that country … in the largest and most populous of the islands, I have patiently listened to old dreams and their consequences.
—Artemidorus of Daldis
May we believe in Greece.
—Serapheim, Archbishop of Athens and All Greece
ONTENTS
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank Lynn Nesbit, for her support of this work. I also owe thanks to the Department of Hellenic Studies of Princeton University, and in particular to Dimitri Gondicas. Affectionate thanks also to Richard Burgi, Robert Lane, Demos Kounidis, Krista Zois, and John and Athina Davis, for evenings of white wine and Cavafy, and much more. My heartfelt thanks and love to my dear friends Sofia Theonas, Zacharias Thrillos, the poet Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, and the painter Yiannis Zikas; nothing would have been possible without them. I am grateful to Robert J. White for his eloquent translation of the
Oneirokritika
, from which all the Artemidorus quotations are drawn. Thanks to the painter Peter Devine, for joyful hours spent looking at Greek art; and love and gratitude to Ron, involved in this book in more ways than he knows. A number of people did not want acknowledgment, for reasons of privacy; you know who you are, and you know my gratitude.
It is an honor and an education to work with the editor Erroll McDonald; the guidance of such a profound literary mind is beyond thanks.
It is rightfully against the law to remove antiquities from Greek territory; and yet I brought home ancient treasures in the form of Greek words. Thanks to my teachers, Tryphon Tzifis and Dora Papaioannou, without whose patient work I could not have shared in these precious possessions.
The chapter “Dream of Love After the Dance” includes references and quotations from the books of the archives of P.S. Delta “First Memoir” and “Memoir of 1899” which were published by Hermes Publishing House under the supervision of P.A. Zannas and Alexandros P. Zannas. The quotations have been reprinted with the permission of Alexandros P. Zannas and Asimina Zannas.
ARBLE
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