The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places From Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley (8 page)

Brady and I linger at the café, indulging in some world-class sitting and talking, our conversation no more linear than the columns of the Parthenon. And that’s fine. Here, unlike back home, there is no mutually understood cutoff point, no unspoken “we should really get going” signals exchanged. This is Athens. It’s been around for at least four thousand years and isn’t going anywhere. Why should we? All of this past around us, beneath us, makes the present feel a bit less precarious. Maybe that is why the Greeks of today have given up walking and prefer to sit so much. They like the feel of all that reassuring history under their buttocks, steadying them against the cruel present.

We order two more espressos, then lunch, then two beers, and finally two more espressos. “For balance,” explains Brady. I understand. My entire time in Greece, it seems, consists of seesawing between alcohol and caffeine, groping for equilibrium. In doing so, I stumbled across a dirty little secret about the Greek notion of “nothing in excess.” It’s a lie. The ancient Greeks enthusiastically endorsed moderation but seldom practiced it. The Greeks viewed moderation as an end, not a means. Go to enough extremes, they figured, and eventually they cancel each other out and you find yourself in perfect de facto moderation. (That is the theory, at least.) They were closet extremists—“adventurous beyond their power, and daring beyond their judgment,” as Thucydides put it. Perhaps every place of genius is equally overzealous. Perhaps that is why they never last long.

Did people, I wonder, appreciate the goldenness of the age? Did they know they were living in special times, or is such a verdict only possible in hindsight? Digging through the ancient texts, I’ve stumbled across evidence that the Athenians knew they were hot stuff. Witness this bit of swagger from the comic poet Lysippus: “If you haven’t seen Athens, you’re a fool; if you have seen it and are not struck by it, you’re an ass; if you are pleased to go away, you’re a packhorse.”

That statement is highly revealing. For starters, it tells us that in
ancient Athens, the worst thing you could be, the absolute worst, was a packhorse. Second, it exposes a confidence that borders on the arrogant. Pericles laid it on even thicker when he famously called Athens “the school of Greece.” Presumably this relegated the Spartans and Corinthians and all the other Greeks to the status of pupil and goes a long way toward explaining why the Athenians were so widely despised. Yet this confidence rarely veered into outright arrogance. Why?

“Hubris,” says Brady, who had until now been listening, stone-faced, like Socrates.

Ah, yes, hubris, excessive pride.

“Yes, but be careful with
hubris
,” he says, as if speaking of some particularly dangerous species of rodent, or maybe a bad stock pick. “The Greeks didn’t mean it the way we do.
Hubris
wasn’t only a matter of excessive pride. It was an insult against the gods.” And if ancient Greece teaches us anything, it is that we anger the gods at our own peril.

The particular god charged with punishing the hubristic was Nemesis. His name, Brady explains, means literally “going beyond one’s allotment.” This makes sense. Hubris is a form of greed. You’re not content with the lot the gods have given you, so you grab more. That it was a crime against the gods (not a sin, mind you; sin—a Christian concept—wouldn’t be invented for another five hundred years) ensured that Greek self-confidence didn’t balloon into arrogance, at least not too often.

For the Greeks, Brady explains, virtue and genius were inseparable. You could be the greatest poet or architect in the world, but no one would consider you so if you were an arrogant jerk. I marvel at how that differs from our modern view of genius. Not only are we willing to overlook character flaws if the character in question produces brilliance, we have come to
expect
them from our geniuses. Think of Steve Jobs and his famously peevish personality. Only a true genius, we conclude, could get away with that. That’s not how the Greeks saw it. A man was judged not only by the quality of his work but also the content of his character.

Two more Mythos beers arrive, courtesy of the management. These threaten to upset our hard-earned moderation, but we’re willing to take that chance. I fear, though, that we’re nibbling around the edges of
my question, so I blurt it out: “Why Athens? How did a small, dirty, crowded city, surrounded by enemies and swathed in olive oil, manage to change the world?”

The answer, Brady suggests, lies in expertise, or rather the lack of it. Ancient Athens had no professional politicians, or judges or even priests. Everyone did everything. Soldiers wrote poetry. Poets went to battle. It was strictly amateur hour, and that, as far as the Greeks were concerned, was a good thing. They viewed expertise with suspicion, for theirs was the genius of simplicity.

All intellectual breakthroughs, says Brady, from Darwin’s theory of evolution to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, made the world a little bit simpler. “There is this chaotic mess of seemingly unconnected data out there, and then someone says, ‘Wait, here is how it all fits together.’ And we like that.”

Mathematicians, for instance, speak reverentially of an “elegant proof.” An elegant proof is not merely correct but highly streamlined. Nothing extraneous, and nothing missing. An elegant proof is pleasing to the mind the way an elegant design is pleasing to the eye. The Greeks always sought the most elegant solution to any problem. Invariably, that meant finding connections, for, as historian Edith Hamilton put it, “to see anything in relation to other things is to see it simplified.”

Brady concedes that, despite his scary smartness, he often falls into the complexity trap. He can’t help it. He’s an academic at heart, and complexity is what academia encourages and rewards.

When President George H. W. Bush visited Athens, Brady was assigned translation duties. The president was about to address the Greek parliament and thought it would be nice to open his comments with a few words in Greek.

“How do you say ‘Long live Greece’ in Greek?” President Bush asked Brady.

“Well, Mr. President, there’s actually no simple answer to that question because, you see, there are at least two ways of saying ‘Long live Greece,’ each with a very different connotation. For instance, if you say . . .”

Brady looked up. President Bush was nowhere in sight. He had gone to ask someone else how to say “Long live Greece” in Greek.

I’m digesting that story, my mind a churning whirlpool of caffeine and alcohol, when Brady does something I haven’t seen anybody in Athens do before. He looks at his watch. He has to go.

He starts to walk away, but suddenly stops and pivots. “It’s all about interlocking feedback loops.”

What? Wait, Brady. What does that mean? But it’s too late. The Brady is gone, swallowed up by a glistening sea of Greek light, now in its full afternoon glory.

I reach for my fork but it is not there. Nor is my napkin or, most alarming of all, my coffee. Where have they gone? They don’t exist yet. Not in the Athens of 450 BC, and that’s where I am now. I’m dining at a restaurant called Archeon Gefsis, or Ancient Flavors. It aims to re-create the dining experience of Athens in the time of Socrates. It strikes me as the perfect place to explore the connection between food and creativity, an area littered with romantic notions such as that of the starving artist. That’s nonsense, of course. A truly starving artist creates nothing but his own misery. We need food in order to create, but how much and what kind? Did the Greeks eat their way to genius?

The restaurant is tucked away on a small street in a largely immigrant neighborhood, well off the beaten tourist paths. When I had entered, a waiter, dressed in the loose-fitting, togalike clothing of the day, handed me a copy of the
Ancient News
, which doubles as a menu. Cute. The interior is all stone walls and dim lighting and chairs covered in white fabric that looks as if it was cut from the same cloth as the waiter’s outfit.

My dining companion is Joanna Kakissis, the National Public Radio correspondent in Athens. Raised in North Dakota, she returned to her ancestral homeland a few years ago. I like Joanna, and besides, in ancient Athens to eat alone was considered barbarous, and I make it a point not to be barbarous.

We sit down and peruse the
Ancient News.
My eyes are drawn to a quote by Epicurus: “The source of all pleasures is the satisfaction of the stomach.”
A nice sentiment but a misleading one. The Athenians were not foodies. Far from it. Most people, no matter their social stature, were satisfied with a hunk of bread, two onions, and a small handful of olives. The typical Athenian meal consisted of two courses, “the first a kind of porridge, and the second a kind of porridge,” quipped the historian Alfred Zimmern. Even the food served during religious festivals was cardboard bland. Clearly, Greek genius did not extend to the kitchen.

Athenians simply didn’t care what they ate, or even how much. Their caloric intake was remarkably low. Aristophanes, the satirist, credited the meager Athenian diet with keeping their bodies lean, their minds sharp.

I return to my menu. Some of the items—olives and chickpeas, for instance—sound familiar. Others, such as the stuffed piglet and goat leg, less so. None of the dishes contain potatoes or rice or tomatoes. The ancient Greeks didn’t have any of these. They did have wine, thankfully, and the
Ancient News
contains this bit of wisdom from Sophocles: “Drunkenness relieves pain.” No argument there. We order a carafe of red, which arrives, I am pleased to report, undiluted.

I order a pomegranate salad and smoked fish. It isn’t bad.
Inoffensive
is the word that comes to mind. Joanna feels the same about her lamb shank. And I can vouch that forks are overrated. I manage fine with my knife and spoon.

We try to take our minds off the lackluster food with conversation. Now that I think about it, perhaps that is why the Greeks were so eloquent—it was a coping mechanism, something to take their minds off the god-awful food. As I pick at my salad, I wonder, if ancient Greek cuisine had been better, maybe they wouldn’t have invented democracy or philosophy or any of their other accomplishments?

It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. We only have so much creative energy; we can channel it into philosophy or soufflés, sculpture or truffles. Yes, I recognize that cooking can be a creative act, and Julia Child was no doubt a culinary genius, but every activity we pursue comes with an opportunity cost, as the economists remind us. Time spent commuting to
work is time not spent with your kids. Time spent debating the relative merits of kale versus arugula is time not spent discussing the nature of beauty and truth. I look down at my plate of bland grub with newfound respect.

I have another reason for meeting Joanna, one that extends beyond the gastronomical. I’m curious how she, a Greek American, feels about the burdens of history. Normally, we think of these burdens in terms of war and sundry calamities, but golden ages can also scar. Future generations feel the sting of comparison, and nowhere is the distance between past glory and current ignominy greater than in Athens.

“People feel they can’t live up to the ancients, so why bother?” says Joanna, gnawing at a chewy slab of lamb. That’s why so few Athenians visit the Acropolis, she says. It’s not the site’s familiarity but, rather, its greatness that deters them.
Look at what we once had, at what we once
did. The Acropolis looks down upon modern Athens in more ways than one.

Does this burden of history, though, weigh on all Greeks equally? It’s one thing to be a Greek taxidriver or nuclear physicist. Those professions didn’t exist in ancient Greece. But philosopher most definitely did. What does it feel like to live and work under that shadow? I take a sip of wine and then explain to Joanna that I’m looking for a Greek philosopher.

“Well, there’s Socrates, of course, or Aristotle. Oh, you could try Thales, too, but he was pre-Socratic.”

“No, I’m looking for a modern Greek philosopher. A
live
one.”

Joanna furrows her brow. This is not a typical request. Most visitors to Greece prefer their philosophers dead. Philosophy is like wine. There are good years and bad years but, in general, the older the better.

“I did know one philosopher . . . Never mind.”

“What? I’ll take whatever I can get.”

“He’s dead. He committed suicide.”

I stare at my ancient food, silently wondering why, from its inception, philosophy has gone hand in hand with suffering.

“Wait,” says Joanna, suddenly perking up. “I know a philosopher. A live one. His name is Plato. He travels a lot, though. Let me check with him and get back to you.”

First Aristotle. Now Plato. Any moment now, I think, and I’ll be meeting a Socrates.

We nibble a bit more on our food, then, in typically generous Greek fashion, Joanna picks up the tab. She pays by credit card, which the waiter gladly accepts. It’s the restaurant’s one concession to the twenty-first century.

Plato sends his regrets. He’s on a business trip and won’t be able to meet with me. Why are these Greek philosophers so difficult to nail down? Joanna is completely out of live philosophers and tries again to foist a dead one on me, but I demur. I make a few queries elsewhere and, sure enough, stumble upon a real live Greek philosopher. His name is Nikos Dimou, and he is a minor celebrity in Greece. Back in the 1970s he wrote an essay called “On the Unhappiness of Being Greek.” It hit a nerve when it was first published and continues to hit various Greek nerves as the nation mines ever-deeper reservoirs of unhappiness.

Nikos lives in a far northern suburb of Athens, so he suggests we speak by phone. I call him at the appointed time, pleasantly surprised that Tony’s phones work. Nikos is friendly but sounds a bit stressed. Being a son of Socrates isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, he says. “We’re all very proud of our ancestors and we love to say that philosophy and drama were born here, but we haven’t actually read any philosophical books or plays. It’s terrible—not only to be unable to surpass your father’s work, but not to understand it either.”

Other books

Bang by Kennedy Scott, Charles
Devil's Ride by Roux, Clementine
Heirs of Cain by Tom Wallace
The Scarlet King by Charles Kaluza
Tamberlin's Account by Munt, Jaime
Brooklyn Graves by Triss Stein
Power Couple by Allison Hobbs
Warsaw by Richard Foreman


readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024