Here at the beginnings of the Western Canon
Whilst in Washington last week doing what I love doing best: connecting with book people and documenting their thoughts and ideas, I receive an email from a friend who lives in Ischia, Italy, inviting me there to participate in and report on Pesce azzuro & Baccala , a first annual tourist festival celebrating the island’s ancient food and fishing tradition.
I tell him that books are my singular obsession, and that they, if anything, will be the focus of any journalism produced. He bites, and so I’m here, swept over by a fair wind, living the maxim that like attracts like, experiencing bibliophilic synchronicity as never before:
Not only did W.H. Auden, a favourite poet whose work I collect, live here for a decade and write a poem called Ischia, some of the earliest found examples of Greek alphabetic writing, scratched and painted on broken pottery, dating to the last half of the eighth century B.C., have been found off the coast of this Eden island. Nestor’s Cup, mentioned in Homer’s Iliad, also just happens to be housed here too at The Archaeological Museum of Pithecusae.
So, from books to books, all to all, serendipity blows me smack into the cradle of Western Civilization and the start of humankind’s written storytelling tradition.
