Louis Macneice Arrived in Athens in January 1950 to Take the Post of Director of the British Institute. Only a Year After the En

CHAPTER 7 AN ISLAND TEMPERAMENT Louis MacNeice arrived in Athens in January 1950 to take the post of Director of the British Institute. Only a year after the end of the Greek Civil War (1943-49), the country was entering a post-war period of new tensions stigmatized by the recent political developments. MacNeice was also a radio practitioner and his work at the Features Department of the BBC from 1941 initially involved propaganda while, Richard Danson Brown argues, his commitment to the Allied cause entailed choosing between Ireland and England and “Ireland’s neutrality affronted his increasingly dualistic interpretation of the War”.1 In an article near the close of 1945 he regarded the end of the war, Peter McDonald notes, “as an important starting-point for new developments, a necessary humbling of the 1930s generation, whose form of pride ha[d] been changed by events”.2 The “successful combination of metaphysics with discursive form” which, McDonald argues, MacNeice professed to support in the 1945 article, mapped out his concerns for the next eight years and lay behind poems like Ten 1 Richard Danson Brown, “Neutrality and Commitment: MacNeice, Yeats, Ireland and the Second World War”, Journal of Modern Literature, XXVIII/3 (Spring 2005), 122. For MacNeice’s work at the BBC, see Barbara Coulton, Louis MacNeice in the BBC, London: Faber and Faber, 1980, 52-60. In May 1941 MacNeice joined the Drama and Features Department of the BBC for a career that lasted until his death in 1963: “Wartime features, presenting civilized values, attacking the threat of tyranny and oppression, celebrating the victories of allies, alternated with plays on historical or literary themes.” See also Barbara Coulton, “An Air-Borne Bard”, The Honest Ulsterman, LXXIII (September 1983), 77-78 and A Bibliography of the Works of Louis MacNeice, eds C.M. Armitage and Neil Clark, London: Kaye and Ward, 1973, 105-109. 2 Peter McDonald, Louis MacNeice: The Poet in His Contexts, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991, 130; the article referred to is “L’écrivain brittanique et la guerre”, La France Libre, XI/62 (15 December 1945), 109. For more on the context of the British Thirties, see Cunningham Valentine, British Writers of the Thirties, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. 154 Conversing Identities Burnt Offerings (1952), written during MacNeice’s sojourn in Greece.3 Upon his arrival at Athens, MacNeice launched himself into work with poetry readings and the organization of a lively cultural programme while he lived in the hubbub of the Athenian centre and frequented tavernas with Kevin Andrews and Patrick Leigh Fermor:4 The Greeks have a tiresome habit of filling their homes with frosted glass doors which make one feel in a consulting room. This is counteracted by street cries from below which make one feel in a bazaar. And we have cognac in great wicker-clad containers & a mad cat who eats olives. (from a letter to W.R. Rodgers, May 1950) We live in a somewhat streamlined flat full of frosted glass doors like a dentist’s but the street below is full of streetcries & donkeys & fruit stalls & from our roof we get a v.good view of the Acropolis. (from a letter to E.R. Dodds, May 1950)5 3 McDonald, Louis MacNeice: The Poet in His Contexts, 131. 4 In 1950 alone, MacNeice gave public lectures in Salonica and Patras, advised on translations from Greek to English and vice versa and became a member of the Ikaros Translations Committee, arranged on behalf of the BBC special recordings of Christmas music by Greek artists, gave advice and wrote introductions to Greek visitors to the United Kingdom, such as Dora Stratou, Kay Cicellis and Elsa Verghis, gave lectures to the Anglo-Hellenic League in Piraeus and to the American School of Classical Studies, contributed a short piece on Byron to the Greek daily press and an article to the Corfu Council’s publication Prospero and travelled around the Greek islands and Nauplia on weekends. This information is taken from MacNeice’s Personal Report on his activities in 1950 as Director of the British Institute, and after the summer of 1950 as Assistant Representative, held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Kevin Andrews (1924-1989) was an American writer and archaeologist who arrived in Greece in 1947 in the midst of civil war. He travelled around Greece (especially the Peloponnese) and recorded his impressions in Castles of the Morea (1953), rev. edn, Princeton, NJ: The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2006 and The Flight of Icarus: A Journey into Greece, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1959. Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) was a British author and soldier who fought in Crete during the German occupation in the Second World War and in 1944 was one of the protagonists in capturing the German General Heinrich Kreipe. His writings include books of his experiences in Crete, Mani and Roumeli. 5 Letters of Louis MacNeice, ed. Jonathan Allison, London: Faber and Faber, 2010, 526, 527. .

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