Rodis Roufos on Bitter
Lemons: A Suppressed Section
of The Age of Bronze
David Roessel
The Greek author Rodis Roufos published The Age of Bronze, a
novel about the struggle for independence on Cyprus, in 1960.
Although Roufos wrote the novel in English and published it in
London to put the Greek point of view before an English audience,
Roufos's book has been largely ignored by that public. Such neglect
is particularly problematic for Durrell scholars, since Roufos wrote
The Age of Bronze as an answer to the Cyprus book of his one-time
acquaintance on the island, Lawrence Durrell. Roufos states this
directly at the end of the section printed here: "Another book [other
than Bitter Lemons] was needed to fill the gaps, to give the Greek
view." The relation between the two works remains clear in the
published version of The Age of Bronze, where two contrasting and
conflicting passages from the work of Durrell are used as epigraphs
for the opening section of Roufos's novel. Four years after the
appearance of The Age of Bronze, the Cypriot writer Kostas Montis
published Kleistes Portes [Closed Doors], which announces on its
title page that it is "an answer to Bitter Lemons of Lawrence
Durrell." There is a touch of a colonial mentality in the way certain
readers of Durrell still talk about Bitter Lemons as a fair or even
pro-Greek book without acknowledging, indeed without even being
aware, that Greek and Cypriot responses to Bitter Lemons are part of the
public record. And The Age of Bronze is hardly an unknown and
obscure book among the Greek reading public. The Greek edition,
translated by the author, remains in print and continues to sell well.
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Thanks to the generosity of Arietta Roufos, the widow of Rodis
Roufos, a section of The Age of Bronze which discusses Durrell's
book and was removed from the test because of fears that it was
libelous is published here for the first time in the original English
text. I hope that after Rodis Roufos is given his full say, readers will
look at Bitter Lemons with a more critical eye.
In the opening section of The Age of Bronze, Roufos had
included several pages which dealt directly with his opinion of
Bitter Lemons, which is referred to under the pseudonym Sour
Grapes. For those in the literary community of Cyprus, the
pseudonym would have seemed extremely thin, as there was a
review of Bitter Lemons entitled "Sour Grapes not Bitter Lemons"
by Socrates Evangelides in the Times of Cyprus magazine in 1957.
Indeed, since Roufos discusses particular passages and events from
Bitter Lemons in this section, there is not a shred of doubt about
which book is being criticized. Roufos's publisher in England,
Heinemann, agreed to publish the novel on the condition that the
pages about Sour Grapes be removed. By today's standards, the
suppressed pages do not seem to warrant removal from the text, and
I am left wondering what exactly was so offensive in them in 1960.
The pages published here are from the original typescript
that Roufos sent to Heinemann. Several other editorial changes were
made before the novel was printed in addition to the removal of the
section about Sour Grapes. For example, the character based on
Durrell was called Maurice Ferrell in the first version and in the
pages printed here, but becomes Harry Montague in the published
text. (The editors at Heinemann changed "Maurice" to "Harry" in
very case except two, on page 50 and page 52, which remain to
puzzle the reader with no knowledge of the textual history). The
section printed, if it had appeared in 1960, would have begun on
page 12 after the sentence "It was impossible to condense it all in a
narrative." The typescript then reads: "The only book I know of
about present-day Cyprus is Maurice Ferrell's Sour Grapes. It is
important and deserves consideration here." The pages published
here would then follow.
Roudis Roufos (1924-1972) was from the group of Greek
writers who emerged after the Second World War. His major works
of fiction are the trilogy Chronicle of a Crusade (in Greek—
comprising The Root of the Myth, 1954; March in the Dark, 1955; and The
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Other Shore, 1958; it has not been translated) and the historical
novel The Greeklings (in Greek; 1967). Although primarily a prose
writer, Roufos also published poetry, drama, and translations from
Ancient Greek.
Like the famous Greek poet George Seferis, Roufos served
in the Greek diplomatic service. He was posted to Nicosia as the
Greek consul (since Cyprus was a British colony it could not have a
Greek embassy) from 1954 to 1956. His experience on Cyprus was
used in his play The Day of Judgement (1957; in Greek) and a short
story "The Chance Occurrence" (1963; in Greek) as well as the
novel The Age of Bronze. Although the official position of the Greek
government did not advocate Enosis, the union of Cyprus with
Greece, in order to avoid antagonizing England, Greek officials
unofficially encouraged the activities of the Cypriots. Roufos
served as a conduit for communication between Athens and the
Cypriot Enosis movement.
Roufos met Durrell in 1954, soon after both men arrived on
the island. Indeed, Roufos, helped facilitate Durrell's introduction
into Cypriot literary society, as the two men had friends in common
in Athens. Durrell's first year on Cyprus was a halcyon time. He
met nearly all the Cypriot writers of note, such as Pantellis
Mechanikos, Nickos Kranidiotis, and Kypros Chrysanthis, and
received a warmer welcome than that given any other English
writer. The end came abruptly when Durrell took the job as public
information officer. The reason can be seen in a passage from The
Age of Bronze, where the narrator visits Mantague's village and talks
to the villagers about him. When the narrator suggests that
Mantague speaks against Enosis because "he's an Englishman, he's
working for his country," the villagers disagree. "No, Mr. Montague
was not an ordinary Englishman. He said he was our friend, a
friend of Greece. And now he has betrayed us and gone over to the
other side" (169-70). Durrell, it seems, presented himself as a
different sort of Englishman, and the disappointment among the
Greek Cypriots when they discovered he was not so different aft all
was crushing. Roufos's disenchantment with Durrell can be seen
in his poem "Ionian Captives on Cyprus, 498 B.C." (reprinted in
this issue of Deus Loci), which has a dedication "to Lawrence
Durrell" and was dated October 25, 1955. Given the political
context of the compositon and the political message of the poem,
the dedication is clearly a criticism of Durrell rather than a sign
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of admiration. And the final issue of the literary journal Kypriaka
Grammata, which appeared in 1956, contained an article by Roufos
and Nikos Kranidiotis about philhellenism and so-called
philhellenes. Although these philhellenes were not named, one of
the targets was almost certainly Lawrence Durrell. So it is not all
surprising that Roufos took up his pen again after he had read Bitter
Lemons.
Roufos's novel begins when Dion, who worked as a Greek
diplomat on Cyprus and seems vaguely modeled on Roufos himself,
Receives an autobiographical manuscript from a Cypriot friend condemned to die fro his participation in the guerilla war against the
British. Dion and another friend, Daisy, read the manuscript
together, at times interrupting to add their own memories. Alexis,
the writer of the manuscript, becomes a teacher at the Gymnasium in
Nicosia, and his story relates how he evolved from indifference to
the cause of Enosis to an active participant in the struggle. The fact
that Alexis is made a teacher in the very school where Durrell taught
indicates how The Age of Bronze functions as an answer to Bitter
Lemons. Roufos gives a very different portrait of the students and
their role in the struggle. Where Durrell suggests that the exuberant
youths were excited beyond the control of the teachers who initially
incited them, Roufos shows them to be quiet, serious, and careful to
follow orders. Further, by depicting the difference between how the
Greek Cypriots spoke among themselves and how they would
dissemble to the English, Roufos slyly suggests that Durrell could
not possibly be aware of their real views. The Age of Bronze is most
effective when it allows the Greek characters to express their
opinions, which are often very different from the opinions that
Durrell has them express in Bitter Lemons.
Another way in which Roufos attempts to correct the
perspective of Bitter Lemons is by presenting a critical view of the
author in the character of Harry Mantague. This picture of Durrell
as a cynic who will say anything because he believes in nothing runs
throughout The Age of Bronze. It may well reflect Roufos's real
opinion of Durrell, but it is an effective weapon against Durrell's
book as well. For if the writer of Bitter Lemons is simply a "pocket
Machiavelli" (as Roufus suggests), then he would not hesitate to
stretch the truth for his own advantage.
One of Roufos's major objections to Bitter Lemons is that it
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presents fiction as fact (see particularly his discussion of the death of
Nicos/Panos, which is accurate). This may explain why Roufos's
response to Bitter Lemons is a novel; he refused to follow Durrell in
allowing fiction to masquerade as truth. By taking this stance,
Roufos lets Durrell keep a signal advantage. Bitter Lemons is still
thought of as nonfiction, as, in the words of one review, "personal
documentary narrative." But perhaps that may begin to change with
the publication of Roufos's critique of Durrell's book.
Author's Note: I am very grateful to Arietta Roufos for allowing the
following text to appear in Deus Loci. My thanks also to Dimitri
Daskalapoulas, who let me read his unpublished essay "The Bitter Lemons
of the Age of Bronze" and to Nikos Kranidiotis, Michalis Pieris, and Zoe
Detsi. My work on this subject was funded by the Cyprus Fulbright
Commission and the Seeger Fund of the Hellenic Studies Program at
Princeton, and it was supported in other ways by the University of Cyprus,
the Cyprus American Archaeoligical Research Institute, and the Center for
Neo-Hellenic Studies of the National Research Foundation of Greece.
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