Fifteen or so years ago, I came across a short article in the newspaper Ethnos describing the trip Albert Camus made to the island of Lesvos and his having expressed the desire to die in a small fishing village there. The question burned in me, “Had Camus visited Sigri, and is this the village he described?”
For years, I desperately tried to find more information about this. I asked every French visitor to Sigri if they knew of Camus’s trip to Lesvos, I had my friend Vasileia contact an academic in Paris who specializes in Camus’s work, but no one could tell me anything of this trip. I had almost given up hope, until the day a box of books, donated for the new village library, arrived at my doorstep. Inside that box, I discovered the book In the company of Albert Camus (Ermeias publishers, 5th edition, 2004) by Leto Katakouzinou - this was the very book I had read about in the newspaper!
Katakouzinou describes the time she and her husband Angelos spent with Camus, both in Athens and on their various excursions throughout Greece.
It is June 1959 when Camus writes of his trip to Lesvos; I quote directly from Katakouzino’s book:
“He would be going to Sigri, the small fishing village on the western edge of Lesvos, the following spring. There, he planned to complete a theater play he had been working on. Theater, his greatest love! He was just returning from Lesvos, where he had gone on the boat belonging to his friend Gallimard; I believe the artist Prasinos was also in their company. In Mytilene, his friend became ill, and the locals, without knowing who they were, treated them with such kindness and hospitality, such humanity, that it made an impression on Camus’s sensitive heart.
Later, when we docked at Sigri, I was enchanted by the picturesque austerity of the landscape, the simple people, the petrified forest and the myth of the other forest that is said to exist in the depths of the sea. ‘Here is where I want to live and write,’ I said at one point, ‘Right there, in that remote house!’
‘What is the foreigner saying?’ one of the curious locals asked. And when my friend explained to him, the owner of the house whole-heartedly replied, ‘Take it, it’s yours. Come and stay as long as you like!’
‘You see,’ Camus excitedly exclaimed, ‘It is the land of the gods! Whatever you ask for is given to you.’
We were finding out all of this while the telephone in our house was ringing off the hook, reporters from all the newspapers were calling to enquire into the whereabouts of Camus. ‘We heard something, he was reported seen in the Aegean, or is he in Athens? You’re his friends, you must know!’ Of course we wanted to help the reporters, but we were obliged to respect our friend’s wish. And for that reason, we responded to them with, ‘We do not know where he is, we have just returned from America.’ This was true, we simply omitted to tell them that when we had arrived home, just a few hours earlier, we had received the message from Camus. And so, we took the phone off the hook and continued to drink in peace. With the utmost secrecy, because our friend’s whereabouts had to be kept secret, we too planned a trip for the spring, perhaps we would go to Lesvos to meet with our friend.
‘Your island is beautiful, Angelos, beautiful and masculine,’ continued Camus. ‘The olive groves-- green hills, tender curves, silver-adorned odalisques bending in the Aegean air-- mesh harmoniously with the tall, masculine mountains, who admire the women leisurely lying at their feet. Mountains that look far into the horizon, towards the East, proud heirs of the Ionian philosophy.
However, my dear friends, great European literature, from Dostoevsky onwards, ignores the landscape, turns its back on the immortal beauty of nature, and prefers instead the wide avenues of the urban setting.
But beyond the far-reaching natural history of the island, I am very much impressed by its inhabitants. Just as you think them dry, like the oak trees surrounding them, you discover they house valuable, hidden treasures deep inside their souls, like the silver of their olives.
That is where I will live, Angelos, on your island. But on the western edge, on the bare rock of that picturesque fishing village. Who knows, maybe forever…’
Camus, swept away by his ideas, rambled on, as he was prone to do, as if he were delivering a monologue. And the circle closed. A valuable ring, an engagement between Camus and our country.
And we, sunk in our chairs, our souls rejoicing, continued to listen to our friend, we saw his face, distinct in the dusk, pale and beyond this world.
‘I’ll stand on the edge of the river, staring into the sea, the waves of the Aegean bringing me messages from the past, messages from Tipassa, scents from my homeland…I will stand there by the hours, the salt stinging my eyes, drying my lips … And I will bid farewell to the sun at his every setting, so as to become accustomed to separation. And in that way, I will not be afraid of the ultimate separation… Death… I contemplate… How
beautiful, how magnificent, separation is…
At other times, alone in my little boat, the sail taut in the fierce wind, I will sail like a mad man in the raging sea, pursued, lonely, lost soul. And maybe, having found shelter from the wind, exhausted by now, as I lean over the gunnel to contemplate the sea’s depth, maybe those souls will appear, those souls buried in the sea’s bowels, buried forever in eternal silence. Forest petrified, that everyone says can be found in that depth but which I was not lucky enough to have seen for myself...’
An unforgettable evening. Camus lost in his visions, dreaming of a life in Sigri. Where he lay down his heart. ‘My heart, never faithful…’
It was the last time he came to our home. He never returned to Greece,” continues the narration of Katakouzinou.
He never returned to Greece, he never again visited Sigri. Before the so-awaited spring arrived, in January of 1960, Albert Camus was killed in an automobile accident. The driver of the car was his editor and friend Michel Gallimard, on whose boat he had sailed to Sigri.
