H.D.

AEGINA

(1933)

So I will tell you how I went to Aegina.

A gaitered bishop preceded me up a winding stony path,
a donnish group chattered of the temple.

The place, I knew, was dedicated to Hygenea, daughter of
Asklepios. It was a shrine of healing. There were small dwarf
pines. A bee clung to a magenta-tinted cytisus. The bee was
outsized, a sort of bee from Gulliver. We were large, then
small.

The temple when we found it, hidden among those dwarf pine
trees, was small. The stones were piled in heaps, some jagged
earthquake-shaped piles of stones looked like new building
material rather than ruins. Someone spoke in a cultured voice
of the original statues of the pediments, now unhappily in Munich
or in Berlin, I forget which. I wandered away from the party
but the cultured voice of the donnish lecturer followed me.
I lay down under a tree. Pine needles made a cushion. A bird
was singing, unbelievable! Through the thicket of little
shrub and tiny pine shoots, more voices of an acrid sweetness,
women of that indeterminable sex that England only can produce,
were discussing this and that angle for a hasty water color.
An improvised easel was apparently being adjusted behind the
bushes. The bird sang and sang from below, from a cut in the
hill that made of this a minute Vale of Tempe.

The bird went on singing. The voices went on, out of
another dimension. I was apart, caught into the tiny island;

2

the voices were part of another dream, talking through walls.
I was almost glad of the voices, the donnish rise and fall and
perfectly modulated syllables, saying not too much, not too
little, being not too scholarly, being a trifle -- in the best
taste -- flippant. I need not turn or move. Sun beat down, fell
down, rose from the warm pine needles. If I turn, an inevitable
bee will be clinging just beyond stones set as in a carefully
negligent garden crazy-pavement. Will the cytisus he clings to
be white, that old-ivory, tinted with honey color? Or will the
cytisus be this strange astringent rose that someone said was
due to the iron in the soil? Iron in the soil! All these things
are interesting, hold me here, hold me to something. The donnish
voice stopped. There was apparently a little well-bred wrangling
going on above, as to how the Germans got the marbles, though no
one mentioned Elgin. The unsexed sweetly acrid lady-artist
remarked to her companion, "It's the nightingale."

So it was the nightingale, singing in noonlight. The
nightingale was extra. The nightingale was too much. I got up.
I went down the path. The pines were low, dwarf, I was too tall,
the temple was too small. The island was a toy, it was my island.
I would enclose it in a cytisus leaf as I might enclose that bee
as we did in hollyhocks as children. I could, just for the fun
of it, catch this island like a bee in a cytisus-flower and then
let it go. It was so small. At the other end of the island,
someone had said there was a Greek convent and some hundred tiny
special chapels for saints. I should like to go and crawl into
each separate tiny Byzantine little chapel, set a candle to each

3

saint. There was no division to me, as in Greece, there never
had been, between God and the gods. Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison,
Kyrie eleison, it was all God.

I was in the heart of this -- I was -- I found I had a tiny pine
cone in my hand, I found I had stooped for a fragment of the pumice
stone that is washéd up here. I remembered how the popular dean
had been bargaining on this ledge, as the launch landed, for a
sponge. I had not bought a sponge. Peasants, with baskets, were
waiting for the return of the tourists above. It was so still.
The island was curved like a seashell. I would walk to the next
curve. Each curve made a special invitation, one could slide off.
I did not want to slide off. Then I knew I had gone.

I had expected some revelation at Delphi but it hadn't happened.

It happened at Aegina.

I just wasn't there now.

I think I must have walked past about five of those curves
that made this coast a shell. I had maybe walked a quarter-mile,
still in full sight of the boat, still slightly conscious of the
return of the visitors above, watching group after group put off
in the ship launches. The place was so still. I belonged here.
I was not here. I had not expected any special revelation. At
Delphi, as I say, I had half-expected revelation. This was that
revelation. This was the Sun, still accessible to mortals. This
was the island of the great and sacred Asklepios and his maiden
daughter. My human vibration had stopped.

I could go on to something; I didn't know what. It was

4

absolutely conceivable that Christ should be snatched up in the
body, actually. There is actual truth in that myth. There is
actual truth in the myth of Asklepios, that other Healer. These
tales are spiritual facts. There is Virgo, that daughter; Virgo
is that Christian mother. For a split second, they were super-
imposed and in that perfection of harmony I could get out. I
was fully expressed. If I paused one second, I would get out.

I would be gone.

I could go.

Where would I go?

There might be awkwardness,

The boat would wait, the passengers would be distressed.

Anyhow, I must go back.

I found, in the launch, my hand was clasped on something.

I perceived one small pine cone and a strip of grey pumice stone
on my palm. I said to the wife of the popular, aging dean who
had opened a black umbrella, "It's funny the things one brings
back." She said, "Yes, we got quite a huge sponge for only
a single drachma."